Guides · Psionicist

1.19.07 PSI Creation Guide

Shayalyn · originally published by Ten Ton Hammer · 2,914 words

Psionicist Creation
Guide

by Suul

Archetype: Arcane Caster
Primary Attributes: INT, WIS, VIT
Continents: All

Sigil ranks the Psionicist primarily as damage dealer with a secondary role of crowd control. I consider it to work the other way around. Crowd control is the psionicist's first role, and the damage is secondary. The Pscionicist also offers many utlity abilities to its group such as regeneration buffs, counter spelling, the ability to read the enemy’s mind and group invisibility.

Intelligence, wisdom, and vitality are the Psionicist's primary attributes because a Psionicist lives or dies by his spells. Intelligence increases the potency of his spells while wisdom increases his mana pool and chance for critical hits. Vitality helps the Psionicist regenerate energy faster in battle.

Building a good Psionicist takes some careful planning at the character creation screen and requires you to learn a handful of tactics in the lower levels.

Selecting the Right Race

Psionicists of all races start with the same attributes, but the choice of race can affect how many points the Psionicist automatically gets placed into its prime attributes.

Starting attributes:

STR	CON	DEX	VIT	INT	WIS
30	25	20	35	50	50

Each character gets 20 attribute points (AP) per level, starting at level 10. 6 of your AP are placed for you automatically--one per attribute (STR, CON, DEX, VIT, INT, WIS). 4 points are assigned to attributes based on your race if you are not a human (humans are kojani, mordebi, qaliathari, and thestran). You can place 10 (14 for humans) wherever you want to within soft caps of 5 per level (the ones automatically placed count toward this cap).

Additionally, characters get racial bonuses to their soft caps. These are called preferred stats and allow characters of a race to flesh out in a way that reflects the traits of the race. Non-human races get 4 bonus points to soft caps (usually two or three attributes only) while human races get 6, 1 for each attribute. Thus, a human can be more balanced, while a non-human becomes more specialized.

The table below shows the attribute scores at level 50 before gear and buffs for the Psionicist based on the race selected. We've highlighted the best results for each of the primary attributes for you. It is possible to reach the soft cap for three attributes as a human, but those soft caps may be lower than those attainable by other races.

Racial Abilities

The other important factor to consider when picking the race for your Psionicist is racial abilities. With their short durations and long recasts, racial abilities are less important than attributes in the selection process, but they can be used to pick between races that are otherwise equal. The racial abilities are listed below.

Thestran: Inspirational Commands
You will have 3 inspirational commands at your disposal: Inspirational Presence, Inspirational Wisdom, and Inspirational Tactics. Each command is a group buff that will add either 2% to mitigation, a 3% reduction to mana cost of all spells, or a 2% increase in damage. You may only maintain one command at a time, however you may have all 3 effects active at the same time. Recast is instant.

Human Ingenuity: + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge.
Crafting: +10 Ingenuity
Harvesting: +5 Lumberjacking

High Elf: Arcane Balance
This ability will take the cumulative amount of mana in a group, add 25% to that number, and evenly redistribute it to all members. Recast is 15 minutes.

Elven Wisdom: 2% reduction in mana cost
Crafting: +10 Reasoning
Harvesting: +5 Reaping

Kojani: Spirit of Jin
This ability will immediately restore 45% of energy and hit points to the target. This ability has a diminishing effect on any target that has benefitted from this ability (used by another player) in the last 10 minutes. Recast is 30 minutes.

Human Ingenuity + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge.
Crafting: +10 Ingenuity
Harvesting: +5 Lumberjacking

Goblin: Hex of Ghalnn
Whoever is afflicted by this hex will return 3% of the mana and hit points for every hit that is made on them. The effect lasts for 60 seconds. Recast is 15 minutes.

Small Race: 2% bonus to evasion
Crafting: +10 Reasoning
Harvesting: +5 Mining

Half Elf: Symbol of Jin
This ability will apply a rune to every member of the group for 60 seconds, which will mitigate damage by 15%. Recast is 30 minutes.

Human Ingenuity: + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge.
Crafting: +10 Finesse
Harvesting: +5 Skinning

Raki: Planar Shift
While this ability is active, you will gain a 50% mitigation to all spell damage. Recast is 30 minutes.

Animal Reflexes: 10% bonus to run speed.
Crafting: +10 Reasoning
Harvesting: +5 Reaping

Qaliathari: Swiftness of the Sands
For this next 10 seconds, you will evade all melee attacks and spells. Recast is 30 minutes.

Human Ingenuity + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge.
Crafting: +10 Ingenuity
Harvesting: +5 Lumberjacking

Dark Elf: Spawn of Haelufir
This ability allows you to summon forth a small drake for a short duration. The type of drake you summon will be based on class and level. Each type of drake will have a variety of effects at their disposal, ranging from group auras, to breath attacks. The higher level drakes will also learn spells that are sympathetic with their associated class. Recast is 30 minutes.

Elven Wisdom: 2% reduction in mana cost
Crafting: +10 Finesse
Harvesting: +5 Skinning

Gnome: Forge Crystal
This ability allows you to operate a variety of devices, only available to gnomes, which are able to materialize a energy crystals. Crystals will have several common effects, ranging from percentage based mana, health, and endurance heals to several uncommon, rare, and even ultra rare effects such as prismatic group resist buffs, rune and damage shields, minion summons, and more.

Small Race: 2% bonus to evasion
Crafting: +10 Problem Solving
Harvesting: +5 Mining

Kurashasa: Symbiotic Armor
When this armor is active you will be protected by a proc (a process that fires under certain conditions). In addition to a rune that mitigates 25% of all types of damage, you have a chance to apply an effect to all enemies within a 20 meter point-blank radius when you attack, cast a spell, or receive damage. Anyone affected by this debuff will become snared and slowed. Recast is 30 minutes.

Animal Reflexes: 10% bonus to run speed.
Crafting: +10 Reasoning
Harvesting: +5 Skinning

Mordebi: Curse of the Ancients
This ability stuns the target for 8 seconds, and reduces the aggro range to 0. The target will not assist/aggro while stunned, and the effect does not generate any aggro. Recast is 30 minutes.

Human Ingenuity + 10 bonus to all weapon skills, and dodge.
Crafting: +10 Finesse
Harvesting: +5 Reaping

Level 1-10 Tactics

Psionicists are very solo-capable at level 1-10. You shouldn't have to stray far from your starting city or village to find suitable creatures to fight for each level. I have soloed my PSI against red con monsters, but I find it's more efficient to stick with yellow and white con creatures. Be aware of the "dot" system of considering mobs--depending on the monster's abilities, a 3 dot blue con will put up a fight equivalant to (or usually greater than) a 2 dot yellow con. If you want to play it safe, stick with 2 dot white and yellow con monsters and the occasional 3 dot blue.

You should progress from level 1-6 quickly since experience at these levels comes easily. Mental Blast is about all you have when you start out as far as adventuring goes. Once you hit level 2, get Temporal Shift ASAP. It’s a great snare that also slows attacks and does damageover time all in one spell. I usually open up a fight with this, or you can open with Mental Blast and then immediately cast Temporal Shift right after the Mental Blast hits. It’s an instant cast, but there is a cooldown on it, so if it gets resisted, it takes a bit before getting it to stick. Once you’ve opened up on the mob, you can just stand there chaining Mental Blast if you want to for the first few levels. This will change as you level up though, so maybe it’s not a bad idea to start learning to kite now.

If you’ve never heard of Kiting, the simple explanation is just leading a mob around like it’s on a string, never letting it catch up to you. What you want to do early on is get your snare on them and run to max cast distance and start casting Mental Blast. One nice thing in VSoH is that you don’t have to stop moving to cast spells. I’m a big advocate of using mouselook and hotkeying all my spells. I use the WSAD keys to move around and with Mouselook turned on it’s just like playing a 1stPerson shooter game. I hotkey spells to my numbers, numberpad, and extra mouse buttons. Using this technique, I don’t ever stop moving while kiting, and I can look around constantly for adds.

At level 4, you get Simulacrum and Compression Sphere. Simulacrum is a very useful spell and you’ll be using it a lot for the rest of your career. It clones your enemy, and while not doing damage to it, it holds aggro on the mob for quite awhile. So cast Simulicrum, throw on Temporal Shift and Compression Sphere. Compression Sphere is your new DoT, and deals a large amount of damage over 36 seconds. Your Simulacrum (which really just acts like a root) will hold the mob until your dots take almost half of it’s life. There’s a chance they can break early, but unless you’re fighting mobs much higher than you, it usually lasts for quite awhile. Once it breaks, you should still have it snared (recast TS if necessary), so just kite it for the rest of the fight using Mental Blast. I usually throw a few Mental Blasts at the mob while it is still under Simulacrum too just to get the fight over with quicker.

At level 6, we get an upgrade to Mental Blast and a great buff. Expansive Mind makes any friendly target (including yourself) more intelligent. This version increases intelligence by 19.

At level 8, we get some really cool spells. The first is Time Trick which is one of our primary Crowd Control spells along with Simulacrum. TT mesmerizes your target for up to 45 seconds and puts a snare on it for the duration. Targets of TT will heal their hit points during the mez, but you’re normally using it to take a mob out of the fight for awhile anyways, so that shouldn’t matter. Acceleration is a great little spell, too. Not only nice for getting from point A to point B a little quicker, but it’s a great “Oh heck” spell if you need to run away. It lasts 60 seconds and has about a 2 minute cooldown. The final lvl 8 spell is Thought Pulse. This spell is instant cast and does a lot of instant damage but also takes some of your life away as well. The damage from this spell increases every cast as long as it’s within 5 seconds of the last one. If you’ve got someone who can heal the health you are losing, you can get this spell's damage up to incredible amounts after 5 or more casts. Be careful of your health and aggro, though if grouping, and always let your healer know what you’re doing so he or she can watch your back.

Level 10 and beyond

At Level 10, the class really opens up and starts to take shape. You will get an invisibility spell, the ability to talk with other Psi’s across the world (using /mind), your counterspell, your first charm spell, a group evacuation, and some upgrades to your damage. The first charm is more of a CC spell than a pet spell because of the short duration. It can be used for damage, but get ready for it to break and have a plan! Invisibility is great for traveling when you don’t want to get jumped all the time (works when you’re on a horse too).
Union of thought is very cool. It’s a great way to communicate with other PSIs on the server. The power also gives a small energy regeneration boost, so always have this up along with our other buffs. You will learn a lot just listening to higher PSIs talking about their strategies and it’s a great place to ask questions. We are all a lot nicer than you will typically see in the /shout and /ooc channels. ;P

Mind Your Surroundings

Adds, those monsters that attack you while you're trying to take out another one, can be fatal, but fortunately the Psionicist is well prepared for Crowd Control. It's important to know what monsters are around you at all times, and kiting works best in an open area where you have good visibility.

It's important to take out the aggressive monsters in an area first. Look around and find those that will attack you on site, and those that will only attack if you attack them first. (To check if a monster will attack you, just target it. Aggressive mobs will have a red name, while non-aggressive ones will have a white name.) Obviously, the mobs that will aggro you if you run by must be eliminated before you start hunting the non-aggro mobs.

Despite your best intentions, sometimes situations will come up. Perhaps an aggro mob spawned right on top of you, or you didn't see that mob hiding behind a tree. Some mobs are social, and will help their friends if they're in the vicinity. No matter how you acquire an add, we’ve got plenty of ways to deal with them.

We can snare it and add it to the kite for one. We used to call this Quad-kiting in EverQuest when you’d grab 4 mobs at a time and kite themwith area effect (AE) spells. Since we don’t really AE (we do get an AE DoT later), if you choose to kite more than one mob at a time, you need to keep them snared and keep DoTs on them until dead. Thought Pulse is a good way of finishing off a Mob when you need it dead now.

Another option is to cast Simulacrum on the add. This will get the add to attack its clone while you finish off the first opponent. At times, Simulacrum will aggro not only the mob it’s cast on, but the mobs “friends” as well, so don’t be surprised if your clone stops both or all of the mobs from chasing you.

Yet another option would be to use our mez – TimeTrick. This will phase the add into another dimension, and keep it at bay until you’re ready to deal with it. This is preferred if you don’t have the room to kite, or are in a group. Just realize that when it breaks, it’s you that it hates the most, so you’ll need a good tank to taunt it off you ASAP, and a good healer to watch you until he does.

Your last option at these early levels is to just run when the heat gets too high. If you can, snare all aggroed mobs, but either way cast your acceleration spell and make a Bee-line for the nearest safe spot. You can tell when the mobs are done chasing you by the music changing and/or when you are able to sit and rest (you can’t sit while in combat).

Caster Mobs

As a rule, you'll want to avoid mobs that do a lot of casting while kiting. If you’re using Simulacrum, however, they usually have less HP to deal with so you can burn them down quickly. At level 10 you’ll get a Counterspell ability. When you've perceived an enemy's next move, you'll see a message telling you so and notice a timer counting down. This gives you a certain amount of time to react to the spell by using your Nullifying Field. You won't perceive enemy actions all of the time (your perception is linked to your Intelligence and Wisdom attributes, and will increase as those stats increase, as well as through experience and use), but when you do, make certain to use Dissipate for a chance to counter the spell effect, especially on healers or hard-nuking mobs.

There are some casters with limited abilities that you can handle easily enough. Spiders are a good example. They'll snare you, but you should still be able to remain at enough of a distance to kite them without sustaining much damage. The trick is to experiment and come to know the mobs you're dealing with and their capabilities.

Practice Makes Perfect

After a while, you should get the rhythm of kiting and have little problems progressing quickly to level 10. While kiting isn't necessarily the most exciting way to progress, nor the fastest (grouping should get you where you want to go faster than soloing), it's great for the player who likes a little alone time, or wants to learn to play his class well before adventuring with a group.

Other Psionicist Resources at Ten Ton Hammer

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