Psi Armor/Claws. Proof of concept (166 health per second you say?).

[Sovera]

Lets quickly debunk the bombastic clickbait: max Consume Psyche (happens near instantly in x8 content but will take close to 40 seconds starting from scratch against a single enemy), Psycho Barrier up (recharges in 18 seconds and lasts 45 seconds so isn't a problem), Memento Mori used prior to combat (with no enemies in range it recharges in 10 seconds and lasts for 30 seconds so good for a small extra boost with zero downsides, and if push comes to shove it can be used again while in combat), Vigor Radial as Alpha.

 

Without faffing with Memento Mori or taking Vigor Radial it is a less bombastic 142 HPs. Which is still amazing on top of resistances.

 

142 HPs -> With Memento Mori: 150 HPs -> With Vigor Radial: 166 HPs.

 

142 HPs -> Not bothering to use Memento Mori and simply relying on Vigor Radial: 156 HPs.

 

 

Yes, I skipped Shockwave, I can't be arsed to bounce around trying to align a cone then jump back in to hit my PbAoE. I picked Claws to have a single strong AoE allowing me to sprinkle the slots I would otherwise use on a second AoE. If wishing to take Shockwave strip the slots dedicated to regen.

 

Yes, there are is a free power, but there was nothing else that interested me. Pick whatever, be it Taunt or Assault (or Shockwave). Assault kinda sucks. That said we ooze endurance (5.6 EPs and that doesn't take in account the Panaceia and both Perfect Shifter procs) and should be able to afford it.

 

Build has capped S/L/E/N/P with two ATO stacks and Barrier's 5%. F/C lags behind at 72% with two stacks and Barrier while Toxic is near non existent at about 26% with two stacks and Barrier.

 

 

I tried amping defense but there was no real point as I ended with around 33% to melee and 25% to ranged and AoE with no DDR to back it up. So I just took all those slots out and went full bore on regen reaching a majestic 1255% regeneration, or simply, 142 HPs.

 

But, Memento Mori has a ten second cooldown if not used with enemies in range and since it gives +HP then using it prior to combat will add another 148 HP which in turn boosts regeneration to 150 HPs. This last bit will only work for the initial 30 seconds of combat. Using it in combat (or in range of enemies) will make the recharge go up to 300 seconds. Granted that depending on the number of enemies this can elevate regeneration to even higher levels but Mids currently does not account for each enemy hit. That said it has no downsides to its use unlike nearly all T9 panic buttons and the ten seconds recharge means we can have our cake and eat it too by using prior to combat and if things go sour then using it again during combat (or, y'know, kite the enemies until out of range and then use it again, but uff, that's so try-harding).

 

It's one of the few builds where I will take the T9.

 

 

I decided to 'cheese' Mids by having max stacks of Consume Psyche since, unlike other stacking powers, we can have 10 stacks all the time even against a single enemy thanks to the way the dynamic recharge works. Mids in its current state is not taking in account the dynamic recharge (but seriously humongous kudos to the devs of Mids to put out the changes the same day the page releases! Gods amongst men they are) so shows 17 seconds per application but against a single enemy that ought to be closer to 4-5 seconds. It would still take around 40 seconds to stack it 10 times against a single enemy so it is definitely cheesing it for big clickbait numbers, but in regular play so much as fighting against two enemies would lower that to 20 seconds, and of course a single application on a group will fill it up in one go. As we can refresh the stacks even with a single enemy, stacks that last 45 seconds, we can take a page from our Brute brethren and try to not linger between spawns and the 10 stacks will always be up.

 

My initial playing with the build had me going in, hit my AoE, mobs wake up, start running to me, I used Consume Psyche and pretty much capped my stacks. In the meanwhile I would take a bit of damage and would use Psycho Barrier which would heal me and add more regen to the mix while refreshing the buff stacks it brings.

 

 

Speaking of buff stacks Psycho Barrier brings a buff that stacks up to 3 times VS endurance drain, recovery debuffing, regeneration debuffing, and, more to the point, recharge debuffing. Since -recharge is pretty dangerous for a resistance build that relies on its cooldowns to survive I don't rely on stacking the -recharge and prefer starting straight off at 95% at the first use of Psycho Barrier, ergo the slots in Boxing and Brawl.

 

 

The build only has one AoE so it's not min-maxed for massive clears, but Spin is good, and a friend of mine who tested Aura of Confusion said it reliably confused up to lieutenants. This means by dint of leaning hard on the Confuse angle we have a pseudo damage aura. And I'm not talking of the piddly DoT the aura itself does but rather the enemies hitting each other as we wait for Spin to recharge. Confused enemies hitting each other does diminish the XP but I can't say that this bothers me if it makes the clearing faster. I haven't leveled the character yet to see if this is so, just as I don't know if the Cupid proc would actually add anything to it.

 

 

The recharge is pretty decent with Hasten (the benchmark) at 128 seconds (alas, I had it at 124 at one time), but ought to be perma if we consider the FF procs from Focus.

 

 

As for Incarnates pick what seems interesting. I'm thinking of going for Vigor Radial since as mentioned it will further boost the regeneration and slightly boost Aura of Insanity some more.

 

This will do zilch for single-target damage which is where Tankers are ailing, but Musculature 45% only gives around 15% damage, and since I usually picked the 33% version it was actually less than a 15% boost. Might be worth it, will have to see.

 

There might be a temptation to take Rebirth Radial for more regen but I consider my Destiny incarnates as panic buttons which is something Barrier excels at (it's not just the resistance, which we are nearly capped anyway, but the burst of defense to prevent taking more damage if we are severely debuffed). But yes, I could make an even MORE bombastic title with Rebirth. I hope someone appreciates my restraint.

 

 

This can serve as a framework for other secondaries than Claws, though then the fluff slots to amp regen will have to be salvaged. Otherwise the resistances are pretty much baked into the build so the choice of the secondary will not affect them (the three Adjusted Targeting from Impose Presence would simply move to Focused Accuracy).

 

The ST rotation is still Follow-up, Focus, Slash. Strike is just a mule for Gauntled Fist which in the future it can be slotted in Aura of Insanity but for now I am leaning on the Confuse angle.

 

Tanker (Psionic Armor - Claws).mbd

 

 

I can cook a leveling build if someone needs it.

 

Edited Wednesday at 02:27 PM by Sovera

[Sovera]

This is the build I'll be going for. I dropped all +5 from the build in Consume Psyche and Memento Mori since I'm no longer trying to squeeze every ounce for a bombastic title and prefer having those bonuses available when exemplaring. Also traded one of the Touch of Death in Slash for a -res proc. Almost nothing was lost as the build went down minutely from 166 HPS to nearly 163 and 5.73 EPS to 5.66.

Cognitive Core as an incarnate Interface is trying to be alluring to be stacked on top of Aura of Insanity, but if soloing then Degenerative is simply too powerful when facing AVs. But in teams someone else will probably have it as it's a common pick which would free playing with Cognitive. Since I'm mostly a soloer these days I'm going with Degenerative.

 

We can squeeze a bit more recharge, and recovery, and F/C resistances, by going 5 Hecatomb in Slash, but A) I really wanted that 95% -recharge resistance, and B) Slash goes from 257 with 5 Hecatomb to 313 (319 with the original three touch of Death) which is a decent 21-ish% increase. I thought of doing this with Spin but Spin is my only AoE and I want to spam it while Slash can have zero recharge and still fit the ST rotation.

 

Tanker (Psionic Armor - Claws - Nonmax).mbd

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 03:56 AM by Sovera

[Agorazium]

Oooh thank you! I had a Psi/Claws concept I was excited about but wasn't sure where to start with slotting Psi. I'll definitely be playing around with this tonight 🙂

[Soulsifter]

Been faffing about with this as well. I don't mind jousting, in fact I get to use my new favoritest (sic) thing. Speed of Sound (with it's lovely teleport bound to mouse button 5) coupled with combat jumping. It's hard to squeeze in two movement sets, but they work so well together on an in your face build. and allow for amazing mobility. Thematically it's a great Psi/Mage ( think Necromonger from the Riddick franchise)

Edited Wednesday at 03:06 AM by Soulsifter

[Fireburn]

Where did you get the Mids version with the recent changes? i tried downloading it here https://midsreborn.com/   and it says the latest version is 3.7.11.2.  but the new sets aren't there yet

 

p.s. trying to check update with mids itself shows version 3.7.14 but that never works, every time there are major changes i have to unistall and reinstall the new version, wich i cannot find at the moment

 

Edited Wednesday at 01:14 PM by Fireburn

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, Fireburn said:

Where did you get the Mids version with the recent changes? i tried downloading it here https://midsreborn.com/   and it says the latest version is 3.7.11.2.  but the new sets aren't there yet

 

p.s. trying to check update with mids itself shows version 3.7.14 but that never works, every time there are major changes i have to unistall and reinstall the new version, wich i cannot find at the moment

 

 

Their discord has the Homecoming database. They are working at integrating it and hammer out some bugs, but we can download the database and merge it manually.

[Fireburn]

Found it, thanks. I hate playing a new character without a build planned and worse of all, not knowing where to put my slots and having to RESPEC later! Respec, the one thing that is worse than 10 billion master illusionist at once.

[Major_Decoy]

Any particular reason to skip Power Transfer: Chance to heal?

 

There is a ten second lock out timer, so you don't get much for having more than two or so slotted, but it's supposed to provide more health/second than regenerative tissue. 

Though, I wonder if the changes to heal resistance impact these numbers.

 

Edited 19 hours ago by Major_Decoy

[Sovera]

10 hours ago, Major_Decoy said:

Any particular reason to skip Power Transfer: Chance to heal?

 

There is a ten second lock out timer, so you don't get much for having more than two or so slotted, but it's supposed to provide more health/second than regenerative tissue. 

Though, I wonder if the changes to heal resistance impact these numbers.

 

 

Only that it's not reflected in the tooltip and I don't want to math out the results.

[Maelwys]

10 hours ago, Major_Decoy said:

Any particular reason to skip Power Transfer: Chance to heal?

 

There is a ten second lock out timer, so you don't get much for having more than two or so slotted, but it's supposed to provide more health/second than regenerative tissue. 

AFAIK there's not been a conflict with multiple PT procs locking each other out for many years now and when it did exist it was a "one per server tick" thing, not one every 10s.
I've been merrily slotting Power Transfers into multiple toggle/auto powers on my Brutes and Tankers for ages and it's quite common to see 3+ activate simultaneously. 
 

Edited 8 hours ago by Maelwys

[Sovera]

My first impressions on the finished Psi Armor:

 

I was in a ironman mood so started with a SO only run and equipping what I earned. Right at the start Consume Psyche felt immensely OP but this fell off *really* quickly and I was gasping for blue air most of my time.

 

The honeymoon with the ironman fell off quickly as it is quite unfun and slow and I wanted to try Psi Armor and see where it led me so I deleted the character and started over with Psi/Fire Melee on a twinked character.

 

Soloing Posi 1 at 0x6 the first impressions were/are not great. Too much clicking to keep stacks up, too many slots having to be invested in the armor rather than the attacks, and every debuff under the sun crumpled the armor like it was made out of cheap plastic. -def? Dead. -recharge? Dead. Resistance armors continue being second tier compared to master race defense armors. Stone Armor would mostly cruise through since most of those debuffing attacks would simply miss, but, resistance armors have to eat them, and are not even given the tools to deal with them. Psycho Armor stacking is fine and dandy but and in the low levels (and under -recharge, the very thing it is meant to protect) it's difficult to impossible to keep the stacks up.

 

The six shadow bosses at the end creamed me even guzzling resistance insps and sitting at 90% because... Fire Sword debuffs defense. Yeah, as usual resistance armors get shafted about defense debuffs despite having no tools against it, unlike defense armors who get defense debuff resistance. Returning I guzzled defense inspirations instead and they lasted long enough to get a few of the bosses which was enough to tip the balance once they ran out.

 

After many many deaths I eventually crawled to the end of Posi having taken 1h20m rather than the usual 50-55. I decided not to take it against Psi Armor since I had been aching for Hasten (stacks constantly falling off) and didn't have it for the duration since I started Posi 1 at level 10 and took Hasten at 18.

 

 

Today I went for Posi 2 trying to keep a positive attitude. Had Hasten, it was slotted, IOs had been sprinkled. Noticed Mids' numbers are slightly off and psi resistance is actually higher as I was capping it just via ATO stacks and amplifier. I'll have to see if the slotting needs changing.  Just like in Posi 1 a twinked character had nearly no endurance problems despite fighting Clockwork and only had to use one Recovery Serum for both TFs (unlike Stone Armor who would be spamming them). My blue bar wasn't keeping up with Hasten speeding my attacks so I had to place two end mod slots in Consume Psyche to counter it.

 

Posi 2 was... not fun. Again. It took 1h21m where it is usually done in 55-1h. Since I was constantly on the verge of dying I was pouring slots into the armor rather than the attacks and it was slooooow going whittling enemies down. With Stone Armor I'd dedicate four slots and not look back to it until mid thirties. 

 

I decided to STILL not take it against the armor though. Early levels slot starvation aren't strictly the armor's fault and an early slump isn't reason to dump on an armor set, and it also didntt have Aura of Insanity which I'm starting to feel it won't live to the hype I'm building for it in my head (as few things could).

 

 

I'll try Yin tomorrow and see how it behaves and then yes I'll probably give my judgement since there ought to be enough slots for most things by then. But right now I need to slot my attacks, slot my resistance, slot my regen, slot my endurance, slot my 'heal'. Honestly? Not very fun so far.