Psi Ops still suck?

[gimrah]

Isn't mind merge at least a bit decent now it actually lasts through the enemy turn? Like aid protocol it would help a soldier in a bad spot. Or is just not enough hp to matter?

[nightwyrm]

Isn't mind merge at least a bit decent now it actually lasts through the enemy turn? Like aid protocol it would help a soldier in a bad spot. Or is just not enough hp to matter?

Aid Protocol giving defense and actually preventing shots equals to a lot more damage prevented than Mind Merge and AP doesn't end your turn either.

[wadeanthony]

Mind Merge needs a buff and cooldown reduction. The LW1 version was way better.

"Merge minds with the target, granting the target +25% critical chance, bonus will, and temporary health (for aliens) or damage reduction (for humans)"

I would like it if the critical chance returned (maybe a boost to aim and PSI offense has well), this would make less of a "merge with that assault and hope he doesn't die but most likely still would and I wish I just took another gunner instead". Right now it's outclassed by Aid Protocol, who cares about the will bonus? The only good thing it offers is shields which basically only amount to 1 hit by mid game. It needs a cooldown reduction as well, I lowered mine to 2 turns but haven't tested it yet.

As for the rest I lowered Soulfire cooldown by 1, Void rift to 5 (only really shines with Schism imo), Null lance lower by 1 turn (it's a weaker Saturation Fire that doesn't have the wider range or destroys cover). Mind merge and Insanity to 2 turns.

Considering lowering Insanity to have no cooldown but it maybe be OP with Schism.. but honesty I don't think so. It's never done anything worthwhile without it being attached to rift or schism. I only got it to get schism for when I void rift.

[trihero]

Mind merge costs you two level ups to fully upgrade, and is worse than aid protocol = wot

[gimrah]

Fair enough - sounds like mind merge needs some love then!

The other thing I was wondering was can you actually upgrade psi-amp in a reasonable timeframe? Yes they moved it to codex (and nerfed its effectiveness), but don't you need shadow chamber to autopsy codex? Shadow chamber seems like late game tech.

[trihero]

Psis have objectively gotten worse since vanilla

- inspire was removed from their abilities, generalized to officers
- can't learn all skills anymore
- inflated with 2 more useless skills (mind merge/soul merge), got one mildly interesting one (bastion)
- other classes got better (hail of bullets >>>>> soul fire, traverse fire >>>> null lance, psis don't do cover destruction, STING grenades are better area control), psis try to half-ass a lot of different roles and don't do any well
- now they have to actually go in combat to get experience
- infiltration mechanic makes it so you can't just train 2 to use for every mission

And they weren't even that overpowered to begin with in vanilla.

Why are they nerfed so hard, just let them learn all skills and they're naturally nerfed due to everyone else getting better and the infiltration mechanic.

[gimrah]

I'm not keen on them being able to learn all skills. I like the aspect that forces you not to just build them all the same.

I'd like the skills to be made more powerful, have more reasonable cooldowns, and not be reliant on late game tech to be effective. I also think infiltration could have a role in making psi more viable, e.g. psi soldiers having less infiltration time than regular soldiers.

The end point should be that having psi enhances XCom's power, not just that psi ops are a viable alternative for a regular soldier if 8 classes is just not enough for you. Ideally I'd like it to get to a point where psi lab is a viable choice as second building (or certainly third).

I have not tried the 1.2 changes. I suspect it's not enough but will have to wait for others to tell me. I imagine Pavonis deliberately soft-pedalled it for 1.2, just addressing the biggest complaint first (training times) and then seeing what more was needed. The 1.2 patchnotes pretty much acknowledged this.

[trihero]

I'm not keen on them being able to learn all skills.

I'm not keen on a randomized system where you can't get the abilities you want. The AWC is for that kind of system.

Might as well just change psi ops to a "regular" 3 tree pick 1 perk per row system.

[Goumindong]

So something i noticed as i attempted a hard psionics rush...

Psionics costs 3(or 4) cores. 2 cores to research it, 1 core to build it, and 1 core to upgrade to the second slot.

I am going to make a new game and cheat myself the cores to see if that makes a big enough difference when rushing, to make psionics viable.

[trihero]

A little PSA here : don't learn solace. It doesn't extinguish mental effects like disorient as it says it does, and I did some tests to confirm it is the cause of a lot of laggy alien turn issues I've had when I've had psis on the team. I put out a bug report with more details, but again PSA: don't learn it, and you'll be happier.

My next goal is to see if bastion causes similar lag effects (since it renders a similar graphic to solace).

[Saph7]

Damn. I just learned Solace on one of my only two semi-useful psis.

I already noticed that it did nothing as regards removing panic, but I'd been hoping it might at least work on some other things. Hope it doesn't mess up my game too badly . . .

[LordYanaek]

Disorient and Panic are checked at the start of the turn AFAIK which might be why it seems like Solace doesn't work. You can see this with Sectoids Mind Spin too. I usually prefer when they Mind Control one of my guys because the effect ends as soon as you flash/kill the Sectoid and you regain use of the soldier immediately while soldiers who panic/become disoriented only recover at the beginning of the next turn.
Solace is more of shield but unfortunately keeping soldiers in the (smallish) AoE is inviting grenades

[trihero]

Ok, I'm in the middle/late game with psis, and here's my thoughts so far

-the changes in 1.2 barely did anything. The overall training times are *slightly* reduced, but the fact that one of the upper tier skills is forced to show up soon kind of counteracts this; I had bastion and null lance show up in two different psis costing me 16-23 days of training time. That is a lot of training time. I did not want to pick the other skills, because even though they had less training time, they were garbage skills like mind merge and soul fire healing.

-the main issue is that the psi's skills hit like a wet noodle in the late game, and are only mediocre in the early game. They do not shine at any point in the game. Bastion is nifty, but at the end of the day I'm not going to train a psi just for that; I can usually avoid taking aoe damage anyways with careful control of the enemy, use of Incoming, etc. I think it's possible they were OP in earlier versions where you were able to just wait around for their cooldowns, but doom RNFs make that a non-reality. Additionally, their cooldowns are not even that impressive compared to other cooldowns like hail of bullets, saturation fire, trench gun/street sweeper which scale massively well with crit and better weaponry.

Suggestions

- force Dominate to be a guaranteed skill. The psi does not feel unique without it, period. I can deal with the other skills being random, but not this one.

- increase Null Lance width to 2. The one tile width is essentially impossible to hit more than 1 enemy with, and this makes it feel just like a copy of Soulfire for guaranteed damage on one target

- Fix Solace, or remove it (bug report is here http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 17&t=25193)
Maybe replace it with some generic passive personal skill like +2 passive hp regen per second, or increased will, or something. The graphic/rendering causes a lot of lag

- Buff Mind Merge; I think it is entirely reasonable for the upgrade to it (soul merge) to do the following: mind merge no longer requires line of sight (the psi should be able to feel people's minds without having visual confirmation of them), only costs 1 action and is not turn ending (like aid protocol), and it lasts through 2 full turns instead of 1 full turn. I think this is entirely reasonable for investing 2 perk points for a defensive skill, and I suspect it would still be worse than aid protocol (since aid protocol stacks amazingly with high cover). With the proposed changes I would not at least not consider it an outright garbage skill. In its current state, aid protocol/hunker down make it look downright silly especially considering you have to invest 2 perk points into it, while aid protocol/hunker down are free to everyone.

-Soul Fire's upgrade -> in addition to the healing effect, reduce soul fire's cooldown by 1 turn. This should help with late game scaling issues.

I think I would be pretty OK with the psi if the above changes were made. I can live with the whole "randomly learned" skillset as long as the skills themselves were good. But dominate really should be guaranteed, otherwise the other skills are just a super watery version of grenades/hail of bullets/saturation fire/aid protocol.

[Goumindong]

I failed that campaign I started where I cheated myself the cores to get psi early/free. Died to an interdiction mission (and right before that I reset a recruit retal I should not have gone on, and long before that delayed a base assault I never had the power for)

I was able to train a good deal of psi's and had some decently high level skills... But I didn't have the oomph to do anything. The psi's simply did no damage and had no utility. In most missions I did more damage with a basic shotgun on my psi troopers than I did with soul fire. I could have had zero or one cooldown on all of the core abilities and still probably would have failed.

Cooldowns are too long across the board for the basic abilities, they don't scale hard enough, nor are the equipment upgrades cheap enough. The exception might be mindmerge which is actually quite strong in certain situations*... But could still use a buff.

Even though the abilities are theoretically infinite the various mechanics of long war (yellow alert noise generation/short mission timers) mean that they're effectively limited in number and in cooldown. This would be OK if they had impact like some of the other abilities that share this template but nothing psions have is close to the impact of hail of bullets or serial or reaper or saturation fire or kill zone...ok maybe stasis but even then that is cutting it pretty thin.

Overall I don't know why I would bring them over a medic. Which can defensive buff every other round... which can bring 21+ extra HP for any ally... Which can hack robots and objectives... And which doesn't cost resources to produce nor time to level up... And can do all those things and still shoot.

I don't know why I would spend 3 cores and 180 supplies for one of them let alone multiple. Frankly if I got the entire apparatus for free at the very start of the game with no power cost not even using an ant farm slot I wouldn't want to make more than 2 or 3 as novelties.

* it pairs well with dodge/armor tanks because it negates the ability of chip damage to generate wounds.... But once every 4 turns makes a pretty weak wound bulwark.

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

(long post)

Yeah this I can essentially agree with. While I think some people undervalue a "jack of all trades, master of none" "swiss army knife" kind of class, some skills of the psi op are just bafflingly bad. Mind merge is super restricted, Soul Merge and soul steal are just a wasted ability slots. These skills should be more like Schism, "meh-ish" on its own, but able to combo with another skill like void rift does. I am actually thinking about modding in new high level skills that combo with these two, so if anyone has good ideas .

My Ideas so far: Soul Merge makes mind merge last two full enemy and 3 xcom turns. New Highlevel mind merge ability casts soul merge on all squad mates (like a better version of the shieldbearer).

Soulsteal: Soulsteal reduces cooldown as you suggested. New late game ability heals your squad for the stolen hp amount.

If pavonis doesnt want/has no time to develop new skills, simple buffs like you suggested will already help a bit. Also I seem to remember that solace actually did remove debuffs during your trun in vanilla, maybe this is an unintentional nerf?

[trihero]

Yeah and while I appreciate the lowering of the requirements for psi amps, the rarity of codexes/gatekeepers still essentially means you can only expect to have two "good" psis. There's nothing wrong with this, but it creates an awkward "why do I need two tubes?" in the psi lab (too many training tubes).

I actually think vanilla had the idea right here and we went very backwards in LW2.

[bearmans]

Right now it feels like literally the only thing a psi does that can't be done better by another class is mind control. That's the one and only thing it has going for it, and in every other way, it's seriously outdone by another class.

And I'm pretty sure I don't mean each individual thing is done better by another class. I mean a given other class can pretty much do anything better. Even "control" which should probably be a shtick of the psi is done far far better by gunners, grenadiers, assaults, and even technicals, honestly. And any of those classes also does considerably better damage on cooldowns that are either much lower or just as good.

There needs to be a pretty heavy handed redesign of the psi class with a big emphasis on removing all the garbage skills from their trees, of which there are far too many (most skills that improve other skills should probably be rolled into the base skill, mind merge especially if that one doesn't get a full redesign). They could also use a few new tools to be competitive in a game where very large encounters are a frequent norm. And just in general, damage is bad, cooldowns are bad, and any tube time at all is unjustifiable right now (all of this just in comparison to other classes).

To throw out a maybe-crazy idea, what if psi operatives got domination as a base skill? Specialists got haywire rolled into the class; domination isn't even that much better most of the time.

[KevlinTallfellow]

With my fairly limited experience using Psi Ops in LW2, I think the skill I liked the most was Fuse, and that was because it didn't have a cooldown so I could use it every turn, and it would always hit if the conditions were met (i.e., target has grenade, fuse always makes it explode). It was essentially my "F U" power to use against Mutons in cover, as well as many ADVENT operatives.

I suppose the main question that everyone is asking is this: What are Psi Ops *meant* to be?

For the most part, it feels to me that as a support class, Psi Ops should be very similar to Specialists, in that some abilities will end your turn, while many other abilities will *not* end your turn, as well as most abilities having similar cooldowns to Specialists. If this were the case, with all else being equal, then the primary difference would be that while some Specialist skills have charges, Psi Ops skills would not have charges (excluding Domination), making Psi Ops very valuable for the particularly long drawn-out missions in LW2 (base assault, etc.). In most other missions, having limited charges of key abilities is perhaps not even noticeable, as the missions may not last long enough for you to burn through all the charges (unless things got really bad for some reason), in which case the charges are not as much of a limiting factor as the cooldowns themselves.

The primary roles I'm thinking of for Psi Ops in a squad are: ranged support for your squad, ranged damage and control against the enemy, and some tanking ability with Bastion and some armored equipment coupled with Soulfire self-healing. Just like any other class, you really need to have access to all of the tools of the job to make them good at that particular job. The random selection of skills can often prevent this, which is one of the primary issues people seem to have. Of course, you could choose their role based on what skills they have available, similar to choosing roles for other classes based on their AWC skills, but some people don't like playing the game that way. On top of that, the way the training system currently works seems to be a poor fit for the current implementation of the infiltration mechanic.

I guess the bottom line is this: If the current resource costs remain (time, cores, supplies, etc.), then Psi Ops need to be gods among men. If you do not want to have gods among men in LW2, then the current resource costs need to go way down to match the target power level. This includes some tweaking to various Psi Ops skill power levels and functionality.

[trihero]

Ok, this is a bad, bad joke.

My first Master psionics (maximum rank), lacks

-domination
-void rift
-fuse
-bastion

And I was trying my best to fish for those. His offensive capabilities boil down to soulfire, null lance, and insanity. How can you tell me with a straight face this was worth the investment?

He has basically all the other junky skills out there (I didn't pick solace because it's brokenly bad), and a level 1 mind merge.

I take back what I said about being OK with the randomization; going back to just let us learn all the abilities, and also buff them.

My psi lacks aoe, lacks single target, doesn't buff the team, and is essentially a super ghetto specialist that can occasionally stasis something or pick off a 4 hp target with soulfire every 4 turns....sigh there are other options out there for much better guaranteed damage and/or cover destruction. I am also in September without any codex corpses to research for a better psi amp. Dayumn this is bad.

My other three psis are extremely low level right now (I had to dismiss three psis because of the solace bug, and start over with rookies halfway through the game) so I can't say how many psis it takes to get a decent one. You'd probably have to train about 8 of them to master if you wanted all the good skills, if it's even possible due to tech requirements which I don't even know about.

I suspect that there are many tech requirements; for instance on my warlock psi on his last level, he was only offered between mind merge level 1 and solace, he did not have a third choice. This immediately implies there are tech requirements to the higher skills because I wasn't offered fuse or void rift or bastion or domination, etc as a third choice.

If I'm salty sorry, I will make an on topic suggestion to make it usable:

Go back to the vanilla system. No battle experience required, just tube time, and let them learn all the skills. You can even increase the overall training time. I'm ok with essentially being limited to 2 maxed out psis by say, october/november. And buff the skills like I mentioned before - mind merge 1 action not turn ending no line of sight requirement 2 full turn duration, null lance increase to 2 width, soulfire reduce cooldown by 1, replace solace with something that isn't graphically laggy, etc.

[Goumindong]

Even if you had gotten those top level skills you probably would not have been too happy. Hit rates on dominion are super low... Good rift is tiny damage and base insanity on targets in the radius.

Without a mindwhip and an upgraded psi amp and a pcs: psi you have very little guarantee that you're going to even land your CC abilities on weaker troops.

[trihero]

Even if you had gotten those top level skills you probably would not have been too happy.

I know! That's why I'm now asking for all skills guaranteed to be learned + buff most of them on top of that.

[gimrah]

I still prefer a balancing of the existing system than a reversion to vanilla.

I think with vanilla psi-ops we lost a lot of the attachment one gets to soldiers because you just stuck a rookie in the tank and pulled out a fully formed top-rank psi-op some months later. So making them go on missions for promotions is a good thing. Instead, better to reduce training times or some other change to the training/infiltration mechanic such that you get to both use them and level them up.

And I would still prefer a perk system where all the perks are worth having and you have some but limited control of what you get. I don't like my soldiers of a given class to be clones. For example I like the current system for other classes where sometimes you get soldiers with the wrong stats for your usual class build (through combat promotion, purchase or rescue), which encourages you to try a secondary build or other alternative build.

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

I still prefer a balancing of the existing system than a reversion to vanilla.

I think with vanilla psi-ops we lost a lot of the attachment one gets to soldiers because you just stuck a rookie in the tank and pulled out a fully formed top-rank psi-op some months later. So making them go on missions for promotions is a good thing. Instead, better to reduce training times or some other change to the training/infiltration mechanic such that you get to both use them and level them up.

And I would still prefer a perk system where all the perks are worth having and you have some but limited control of what you get. I don't like my soldiers of a given class to be clones. For example I like the current system for other classes where sometimes you get soldiers with the wrong stats for your usual class build (through combat promotion, purchase or rescue), which encourages you to try a secondary build or other alternative build.

I agree. We should build on the current system. I am on my way of creating a mod that adds new abilities that build on currently underpowered abilities to make them worthwhile (see my last post). I will probably raise the number of abilities that can be learned (since my additional abilities will dilute the pool somewhat, making the abilities you get even more dependent on randomization). My goal is not to just make the psi ops "gods among men" again like they were in vanilla. They should rather provide things, that no other class can offer. There are already abilities that do this well (mainly bastion and to a lesser extend domination & voidrift+schism) and others that are unique but just too weak atm (mind merge...).

One of vanillas main advantages of psi was the ability to deal respectable aoe damage on a cooldown, which was very useful for the longer untimed missions (especially the final one). However in LW2 many classes have strong aoe damaging abilities on a cooldown. So the PsiOp needs a new identity: a support that protects your team but also offers some crowd control and damage. Basically an alternative to a healing specialist, that doesnt have the reviving and burst healing capabilities, but can provide mild aoe-healing without charges and damage protection + some other stuff (like cooldown reduction for the squad).

[Tuhalu]

Does anyone know what the current prerequisite abilities are for various Psi-Ops abilities in 1.2? I've been trying to research it, but having no luck figuring out where the new requirements are defined in the mod.

I assume the following prereqs are the same:

• Soul Fire -> Soul Steal
• Insanity -> Schism
• Fortress -> Bastion
• Mind Merge -> Soul Merge
• Stasis -> Stasis Shield

It would be easier to tell if its even possible for a Psi-Op to get a particular ability if we had some idea of the requirements.

[LeaderEnemyBoss]

Does anyone know what the current prerequisite abilities are for various Psi-Ops abilities in 1.2? I've been trying to research it, but having no luck figuring out where the new requirements are defined in the mod.

I assume the following prereqs are the same:

• Soul Fire -> Soul Steal
• Insanity -> Schism
• Fortress -> Bastion
• Mind Merge -> Soul Merge
• Stasis -> Stasis Shield

It would be easier to tell if its even possible for a Psi-Op to get a particular ability if we had some idea of the requirements.

Funny that you ask, I was just researching why some abilities just wont show up in training. Turns out that LW2 makes some rather odd modifications to the prerequisites of psi abilities, probably to ensure that they dont appear to early. Here is what i found:

Code: Select all

	if (Template.DataName == 'Fuse')
	{
		Template.PrerequisiteAbilities.AddItem ('Fortress');
		Template.PrerequisiteAbilities.AddItem ('MindMerge');
	}

	if (Template.DataName == 'StasisShield')
	{
		Template.PrerequisiteAbilities.AddItem ('Fortress');
	}

	if (Template.DataName == 'Domination')
	{
		Template.PrerequisiteAbilities.AddItem ('MindMerge');
		Template.PrerequisiteAbilities.AddItem ('Stasis');
		Template.PrerequisiteAbilities.AddItem ('Insanity');
	}

	if (Template.DataName == 'VoidRift')
	{
		Template.PrerequisiteAbilities.AddItem ('Insanity');
		Template.PrerequisiteAbilities.AddItem ('Solace');
		Template.PrerequisiteAbilities.AddItem ('Soulfire');
	}

	if (Template.DataName == 'NullLance')
	{
		Template.PrerequisiteAbilities.AddItem ('Soulfire');
		Template.PrerequisiteAbilities.AddItem ('Stasis');
	}

Also if I understand correctly the randomized list of psi abilities gets generated once the soldier finishes his first psi training and never changes after this. What this means is: if domination or void rift are on the bottom of this list, your soldier probably has no chance of ever learning this skill (except maybe if you know the prerequisites of skills you dont want and intentionally dont take these prerequisites). LW2 makes sure that some higher level abilities are in the top spots of the list, but those may not necessarily be the ones you want.

EDIT:
Also since solace and MindMerge are so undesirable, many players will never get the chance to learn voidrift, Fuse and domination because of these hidden prerequisites. I find this design highly questionable (why make it undocumented?).