Psionicist
Creation
Guide
by Suul
Archetype:
Arcane Caster
Primary Attributes:
INT,
WIS, VIT
Continents:
All
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class="pn-content-page-body">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
style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> 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.
style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">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:
style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; width: 16%;">STR
style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; width: 16%;">CON
style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; width: 16%;">DEX
style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; width: 16%;">VIT
style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; width: 16%;">INT
style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; width: 16%;">WIS
style="vertical-align: top; width: 16%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">30
style="vertical-align: top; width: 16%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">25
style="vertical-align: top; width: 16%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">20
style="vertical-align: top; width: 16%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">35
style="vertical-align: top; width: 16%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">50
style="vertical-align: top; width: 16%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">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.
src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/album32/PSI.jpg">
style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">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
style="font-weight: bold;"> style="font-weight: bold;">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
style="font-weight: bold;">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
style="font-weight: bold;">
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
style="font-weight: bold;">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
style="font-weight: bold;">
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
style="font-weight: bold;"> style="font-weight: bold;">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
style="font-weight: bold;"> style="font-weight: bold;">
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
style="font-weight: bold;">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
style="font-weight: bold;">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
style="font-weight: bold;">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
style="font-weight: bold;">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.
style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">Other
Psionicist Resources at Ten Ton
Hammer
-
href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&file=index&func=display&ceid=451&meid=147">Psionicist
Class Guide -
href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=497">Psionicist
Spells -
href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=190">Know
Your Role - Arcane Casters -
href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=472">Guide
to Vanguard Statistics
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