Quick Combat Questions

Atalkez

Mizik said:

This is like the least helpful advice.

Where's their mana pressure come from? Not their 20% per hit one, but their regular one. Is it just me clotting?

Clotting is the mana pressure unless you’re mind ravaged (20% nuke per attack), pretty sure yeah.

They can only give impatience while prone or with head break, so the usual suggestion is to cure paralysis and stand then get impatience off of you. Track the unweaves/Asthma/haemophilia as needed. As I said though I don’t feel like this actually let’s you survive very well. 

I plan on classleading them not being able to maintain pressure through shield so we can at least lean on shield in tight spots. Most classes can break/aff but Psion gets to break/aff/prone through shield.

Minifie

Mizik said:

This is like the least helpful advice.

Where's their mana pressure come from? Not their 20% per hit one, but their regular one. Is it just me clotting?

Clotting, focus, unweavingmind when critical tears away your mana, just like unweavingbody tears away life. Clumsiness stops everything other than Psion prepares, so when clumsiness procs Psion loses limb damage and all but haemo/para/asthma/clumsiness/epilepsy. Tracking head damage (static 4 hits per break) and when they prepend psi abilities helps, knowing your head is 3/4 and they are at 100% transcendence (takes 5 attacks) can tell you if you need to shield the head break, prio haemo to get bleeding down, tumble out on leg break or flying. It's such a painful balancing act to cure against psion IMO, but using the lightbind drop off window is your best bet and self counting limbs. 

Farrah

I wouldn't call psion's actual attacks slow, or its room hinder weak, but I do tend to agree with Keorin regarding its overall strength. I'm sure its effectiveness varies some by opponent but it's never seemed reliably good to me when using it or threatening when fighting against it.

I'd prio para > haemo > unweaves > asthma. Hinder with clumsy, or as apostate you can stick stupidity yourself too. Para/asthma > para/slickness is good hinder for most classes too, which apostate can do, albeit with a manaleech step in between.

I've just never seen the psion threat, personally. Particularly compared to other momentum classes like serpent, alchemist, and apostate.

Keorin

Mind blast makes the psion's attacks do an equal amount of health and mana damage, that's usually where mana pressure comes from (though this amount depends on strength and artie level, because of that scaling). Psion's only real mana pressure comes from that and unweaving mind stacks. They don't actually do enough bleed to seriously pressure mana that way (it's like 40 a hit, on average).

And when I say psion's slow, I just mean that it's attacks are a bit slower on average compared to most affliction classes. psion hits at about 2.07, usually, or 1.98 on overhand/deathblow only (this is assuming nimble). That puts it at a measure slower than most pure affliction classes, who are generally going to be afflicting paralysis faster -and- get a lot more flexibility with their affliction choices. It's faster than apostate when doing stupidity or asthma, and otherwise it's exactly the same as them. And I have no idea how you're finding them stacking afflictions faster than serpent, when they're a tenth to two tenths of a second slower.

Clumsiness hits them the same that it does most affliction classes these days. The prepare aff (almost always paralysis) is guaranteed to go through, and the other aff gets a 1/3 miss chance. The exact same as serpent and depthswalker, notably.

As for their room hinder, it's very strong when it's up, but it only lasts 22 seconds and then has a several second window where it can be reapplied (and it gives you a momentum hit when you do re-apply it). So any prep class just has to play defensive while it's up, and then run on the break, or else run early to keep them from building that momentum in the first place. I say it's weak because it doesn't seem to fit what the class needs all that well. Psion almost always is going to need longer than 22 seconds to get the multiple kill paths they rely on running, so I tend to think that something like tentacles/pinshot would be stronger for the class.

Psion's a weird class since it's got a lot of things that seem really strong upfront, some of which are abnormally strong capabilities in isolation (great shieldbreak, good room hinder when active, good mental burst), but the class as a whole has a ton of limitations on those. For a psion to be able to pressure multiple kill paths, you usually need to get a lot of specific affs stuck, and a lot of them have to be stuck for long enough for something to stack up. This compares to other affliction classes who can frequently threaten locks on 2-3 stuck affs. It's true that if psion can get the, say, four or five afflictions on you that they'd need to both threaten a lock and deconstruct at once, you're in trouble, but at that point any affliction class would have you on the ropes. Shield strategically, never have something prio'd above para when you're prone, make some manual prio swaps, and I really don't see what they're doing that's stronger than what other affliction classes do. Most of the claims people make about them just aren't based in their actual numbers or mechanics.

Archaeon

Psion weak plz buff

Namino

I have fought a ton of psions and a lot of the advice here just isn't going to work against anyone competent. I have gone over dozens of logs against this class and it just is horrifically oppressive. I don't have access to clumsy so maybe that's the silver bullet here but:

Shielding is almost useless against a psion once they head break and impatience you. They can break shield, prone, and paralyze in a single move. In this scenario, you can't ever eat plumbum or gseal as you have to eat for para in order to stand to prevent them impatience looping you.  And by the time you eat para, stand, and shield, they slam you to the floor and paralyze through shield again. Even if you manage to catch up herb balance to maybe get a standing eat in, the head break gave you stupid, so enjoy using 4 eat balances just to have a shot at 50/50. And then even if that works and binds drop long enough for you to get out, they've probably already half prepped your head again with their unparryable hit so they'll wander in and dunk you back prone para stupid imp in a couple of balances.

They should be able to prone or para through shield. Not both. That's the classlead.

Edit: I'll also add that just because it takes longer for a psion to kill doesn't make them weaker. The real killer here isn't that psions kill quickly, but they make you have to go defensive quickly and then STAY defensive for a REALLY long time. A serpent can make you go defensive just as fast but once you cure off a couple of hypno affs, you can resume your offense. With psion, once you start going defensive, there's no return to normalcy after that. The psion can just put the pedal to the floor and even if you grab impatience, be almost back to a head break (and more impatience!).

Mizik

This is the challenge in facing as a momentum class. That pressure comes fast and is super hindery. Figured I was doing something wrong with my stock curing.

Keorin

Nerfing their shield break would render a class that's actually not all that powerful basically completely ineffective. Psion has a strong shield break, it's true, but that helps make up for a fair few weaker points. Not being able to prio swap on shield is a powerful capacity, but it's not even terribly unique - prio swaps are ineffective are basically ineffective against depthswalker, as well, and its shield break is arguably better.

This is sort of the trouble with a lot of the talk I see about psion. It's got its strong points,

Same with the hinder, really. Psion has very few uniquely powerful hindering tools. Plenty of classes can use clumsy+stupidity. Serpent can land its afflictions faster, bard can give the same afflictions faster and more flexibly, -knights- are more than a decent clip faster with their affliction output (and less effected by clumsiness, generally). Everyone talks about the hinder output, but what hinder capabilities do psions have that's actually uniquely better than other affliction classes?

Pyori

Namino said:

I have fought a ton of psions and a lot of the advice here just isn't going to work against anyone competent.

Idk I watched Farrah fight Penwize a few times, who is without question the best person using Psion recently. I don't think I ever really saw her lose, although she was Shikudo who has access to both lethargy and clumsiness which can bog down Psion pretty hard. You're fighting from the perspective of a class that has no real constant hinder, so it's gonna seem more absurd than it really is. Two-hander also does incredibly well against it.

Apostate I don't think should ever really kill a Psion, outside of some huge mess-ups, but at the same time, I don't think they should really die either if they play their cards right.

Mizik

I think Apostate beats Psion on paper, actually.

Namino

I don't see how nerfing the shield break makes them ineffective at all. Psions attacks are sub two seconds. A shield takes 4 seconds of eq.

Psion head breaks, proning, imping, stupidifying, and paralyzing, victim also probably has asthma from para/asthma loop that got us here. 0s

Victim gets herb balance back, eats for para, and stands, touches shield. (let's say .8 seconds, which is dead center of the herb balance delay, we're also being generous and assuming the head break doesn't come when the victim has just put themselves offbal with their own attack and so paralysis is the only thing limiting them).

Psion breaks shield and paralyses (but doesn't prone). (1.9 seconds, assuming nimble)

Victim eats goldenseal and either gets impatience (good), or gets stupidity (bad). Remains paralysed and cannot attack, psion has free reign. (2.4 seconds with serverside delay of .1 seconds)

Psion gets balance back before the 4s eq time of the victim, and mental affs if they didn't get impatience. If they do get impatience, prone them and give impatience (head is still uncured). (3.8s)

Victim eats paralysis. Still off eq. (4s)

Victim stands and shields (4.8s)

And so forth. Each shield cycle the victim doesn't get impatience on, they're increasingly buried due to the differential between shield touch and psion attacks, meaning the psion frequently gets a shield break and a full cycle normal attack on a paralysed victim. If they get impatience twice in a row (once on headbreak and once again on the reimpatience applied during the four second restoration window), then they're out from under the psion's killset and the psion has lost momentum.

This makes the class have normal cure RNG like every other in the game, with each shield touch by the victim giving them one shot at impatience, with each successive failure meaning their gseal stack is deeper and their odds get worse and worse until ravage and dead. I'll even accept a longer lightbinds in exchange for this so the shield stall doesn't end in the victim always just walking out even if RNG is badly against their favor. Hell, I'll even accept lightbinds just being made into a bear-stance constant hinder rather than a cooldown.

Atalkez is a class with access to clumsy and I've seen him struggle immensely to get out from under Archaeon's loop after headbreak, only to come back and instantly get broken again after two dstabs. Apostate has clumsy and Mizik is struggling clearly. Neither of those two are chumps when it comes to fighting. Monk has an okay out on this because I can cripple instead of shield on stand and buy myself another herb balance to shoot for impatience without the psion being able to vortex me back. But I'm thinking about the other classes. I don't like the argument that 'Oh you're the wrong class so you just can't fight Psion soz."

Mizik

I didn't even know clumsy affected Psion. I've just been locking. Exciting news. 

Also RIP Serpents Re: "wrong class, can't fight Psion"

Keorin

Namino said:

I don't see how nerfing the shield break makes them ineffective at all. Psions attacks are sub two seconds. A shield takes 4 seconds of eq.

Psion head breaks, proning, imping, stupidifying, and paralyzing, victim also probably has asthma from para/asthma loop that got us here. 0s

Victim gets herb balance back, eats for para, and stands, touches shield. (let's say .8 seconds, which is dead center of the herb balance delay, we're also being generous and assuming the head break doesn't come when the victim has just put themselves offbal with their own attack and so paralysis is the only thing limiting them).

Psion breaks shield and paralyses (but doesn't prone). (1.9 seconds, assuming nimble)

Victim eats goldenseal and either gets impatience (good), or gets stupidity (bad). Remains paralysed and cannot attack, psion has free reign. (2.4 seconds with serverside delay of .1 seconds)

Psion gets balance back before the 4s eq time of the victim, and mental affs if they didn't get impatience. If they do get impatience, prone them and give impatience (head is still uncured). (3.8s)

Victim eats paralysis. Still off eq. (4s)

Victim stands and shields (4.8s)

So first off, your numbers are just wrong. Every Psion attack, with nimble, hits at 2.07, except for deathblow (asthma) and overhand (stupidity/sometimes imp). So most of these attacks are hitting .17 seconds slower than you're taking into consideration. Second, shield is 3.4 with diadem, which is what this is clearly based around. So with that said:

On the first eat, there's a 50% chance that the victim cures off impatience, focuses the stupidity, and is fine. Since psion needs impatience for a good half their strategies, and it takes four hits (which have to come from a very specific affliction pool), you probably just reset the psion's momentum.

But let's say they don't get impatience. The psion gets to hit with dizzi/stupid/epilepsy. The victim then shields, and gets to try at 25% odds (at this point, we're at around a 1/3 chance total that they -won't- have cured impatience on one of these two eats).

The psion now breaks shield, and can either pick one of epilepsy or dizziness to give (which most likely won't actually add anything), or pick, say, haemophilia, in the hopes of that someday being more useful. Victim eats another mental, most likely at 33% odds. At this point it's pretty darn likely that they'll have snagged impatience on one of these eats, and probably will have gotten a second eat in on one of these windows too. And again, if impatience gets cured, they're back to re-prepping the head. You do realise that you're just proposing a worse flay for a class that's already a good clip slower per attack and slower to the kill than serpent, right?

But this is all a bit of a silly hypothetical. Psion -does- have decent ways to cover up their impatience, because it's fairly hard for them to deliver in the first place. You're also hardly dead with impatience. For impatience to become a -kill-, the psion has to stick haemophilia for long enough, which would be much easier to cure in a prio swap. For blast, you need a raw number of mentals -and- shield does great for keeping down the mana damage after (ravage is hardly just a kill if you prioritise mana). For deconstruct, neither of two afflictions can get cured. Psion is built all around forcing and taking advantage of priority swaps, and they can't effectively do that if swapping behind shield is pretty much completely safe.

I think it's pretty hard to say that shield isn't effective against psion, you just can't loop it like you might against other classes. Prio swap for an eat and -then- shield, and then switch prios back, and you've both taken a shot at one of the many key affs psion needs to keep on you, and you've lost them a full affliction. And in some cases, shielding just isn't your best call, since it gives them a chance to prone you on a long eq. Just prio swap for a single eat, or even multiple, if they don't immediately stop what they were progressing to overhand/unweave for the prone.

If we're talking you as a monk specifically, you should have a lot of tools to deal with this. First, they can only keep you in the room for 10 hits at a time, so you can reset them before they lightbind to keep them from ever gaining momentum, or after to reset them. Ravage mind shouldn't be much of a threat, because you can just prio mana and kai heal to deal with health pressure. You can leg break and prio swap to clear off their key afflictions. And that's not getting into the rest of monk's (frankly probably -too- strong) set of active defensive toys.

That being said, if you're tekura, I do feel for you. Stupidity is effectively disabling against tekura, which I think needs changing, and psion is practically immune to mind scythe, which throws tekura's kill fork out the window (please make head breaks stop psionics like they do telepathy).

Namino

Why would you be trying to stick haemophilia in that scenario when you can stack mental, ravage, and then rapidly mana kill your target with normal balance attacks? Sipping mana over health is not rapid enough to deal with the manadrain of a psion post ravage, even for a class with an active burst heal like monk. As far as I've ever seen watching other fights and in fights myself, a burst clot for additional mana is probably only necessary against really fat mana targets or people with sip rings for mana.

Anyway, this isn't the main concern of everyone. The main concern isn't that psions kill people. It's that psion's offense once it has momentum becomes you sitting there getting hit while permanently hindered. Again, I don't struggle against most psions anymore because I can simply stand and cripple rather than shield, clear mentals and have my head repaired before they're up again. @Minifie can attest to the efficacy of that. I'm more speaking for other classes who don't have paralysis-proof hinders that they can operate with after dropping paralysis down to deal with other afflictions. We keep drawing this comparison to Psion being *slower* than serpent, but nobody's complaining about that. Once you beat a serpent's prep it takes a little bit for them to get going again, allowing you to throw some offense of your own into the mix. That doesn't happen with Psion. So, it may take a couple more balances for them to get there, but once they're going, even surviving the setup puts you in a scenario that they're only a balance or two away from doing the same thing to you a second time, ad infinatum, ad nauesem.

Keorin

First, that really depends on relative artefact levels. I'll readily admit I don't have the best read on what the drain post-blast looks like for someone with arties, as someone with 11 strength and no mirror. I straight up can't mana kill artied targets with mine.

That said, what mind blast does is make your attacks deal an equal amount of health and mana damage, so far as I understand. So if you can't deal with the mana drain while prioritising it, you should be equally unable to deal with the health drain from their regular hits before the blast, which seems like it would be causing a problem first.

Also, cleave does no damage. They get, at most, 8 attacks in during blast's duration, and shielding some can cut down the mana loss a -lot-.

Namino

Ah, that... probably explains a lot of this disconnect. I'll post a log of my next fight with a high str Psion for you.

Again, the issue most people are talking about here is the fact that those hits they're working in between weaves are typically overhands, reprepping your head. So even if they don't get the manakill, you clear blast and bop, headbreak almost immediately after or during.

Keorin

A psion's head break does two things. It gives them a small burst of afflictions (most aff classes have something that gives them an extra affliction fairly regularly), and it lets them actually hit with impatience, which is needed for half their kills. This is as opposed to most other aff classes that are supposed to stick imp pre-lock, who can usually just do it when they need.

Again, how is this different than bard, or shaman, or apostate, all of which get clumsy+stupidity for hinder, the first two of which attack faster, and all of which move to their kill faster? Prep head -> stick mentals -> drop health below 30% is not a quick kill by any means, why is this scarier than what other classes are putting out?

And if artied psion damage is too high, that's a very valid concern, though it's a pretty different issue from their paths themselves being too good, if so!

Taryius

It's scary because it is much harder to stop, for a few reasons.

Psion is definitely disconnected between prep and momentum classes as well, if you're forced to drop paralysis down on every head break then they've got some of the best hinder in the game every 4 hits. But, even if you try to fight through it, muddle and stupidity buried beneath goldenseals is also some of the most insane hinder I've experienced. It is -very- hard to not lose momentum after that head break, one way or another. If I'm prep, that doesn't matter though.

Mindravage is also definitely not equal health and mana, or if it is it's calculating the mana before any resists and armour. You end up taking 15-20% of your mana per hit, at 1.9-2.1s. That's not tankable for 99% of the population, before even considering unweavingmind ticks. I've got upwards of 8-9k mana in lesser, and it shreds through that

It is a really weird situation because if you're a class with any sort of instant active hinder you can throw on them on head break, you're going to be fine. As a firelord I could conflagrant weave on head break, I'm sure cripple does well enough, as an alchemist I could reset the fight with concussive to break lightbind, but I'd also never get in range to kill before the head break. Serpent I imagine is in the same boat, they can't actually kill before the head break because they can't lock against expunge. But the generic defensive options just don't quite cut it versus Psion.

I'd agree that I actually think all of Psion's other paths are probably a bit weak. So I don't know how you'd target blast without nerfing the others further.

Archaeon

why don't you just cure impat if you have 2 or more of the reqs for ravage?  cure para if not.  A lot of you guys are arguing out of a place of 'i don't know how to cure for this, thus it is OP'

Atalkez

Archaeon said:

why don't you just cure impat if you have 2 or more of the reqs for ravage?  cure para if not.  A lot of you guys are arguing out of a place of 'i don't know how to cure for this, thus it is OP'

You get 1 maybe 2 shots at it, and it’s insulated by the afflictions that also lend to mind blast, let alone if also have unweave stuck. What are you talking about?

Namino

You can't do that, Archaeon.

Being prone means they can re-impat you. By dropping para while prone to try to get impat, not only are you trying to work through a buried aff stack, you're also going to get hit IMMEDIATELY against with impatience on the next balance because you are paralysed and prone. A psion can keep you prone indefinitely if you prio impat while prone. @Armitage

Makarios

I was pretty happy with how psion turned out, but the one major regret I do have with it is the one being highlighted here. It is very priority switch dependent to survive at a high level relative to other classes, which puts a lot of the burden on the target that is traditionally placed on the attacker. I wouldn't say its overpowered or excessive, it just sets the bar a bit higher on the target's side. I personally don't think that's necessarily ideal, but I think that is where a lot of the disconnect comes from.

Namino

@Makarios

How would you respond to the assertion that for classes without active hinders, Psion's loop is too punishing?

Head break > stupidity, impatience, prone, paralysis in a single hit.

Even with good priority swapping in that scenario, classes without powerful active hinders are contingent on staying defensive. Eating paralysis, then standing and touching shield and looping it as the psion increasingly buries impatience on hits in between cleaves, making RNG less and less favorable until lightbinds wear off and they can run away and focus impatience and other mentals. By then they'll have eaten several more overhands (which are typically the attacks the psion is throwing in between cleaves), and the psion will simply break their head again in a balance or two, affording absolutely no opportunity for them to work in their own offense.

Again, the class that I play isn't in this boat because I can active hinder on the head break before taking too many overhands, giving me a few balances to fight back in between headbreaks. I'm worries about the rest of the cast. I can't think of any priority setup that allows you to avoid the prone-impatience reapply infinite while also allowing the non-psion to mount a return offense at all at any point going forward in the fight. I've held tree until after the headbreak so I can eat paralysis, stand, touch shield and touch tree to try to get the impatience off, but with asthma commonly involved at this point, tree is really unreliable.

I'm genuinely curious here. It just feels like you're always fighting a psion just for the opportunity to run away after the headbreak, no matter your prios.

Archaeon

Makarios said:

It is very priority switch dependent to survive at a high level 

Most classes are like this. I have prio swaps for every single class.  At a high level, being able to cure correctly is the only way to su@Armitage

 Namino said:

You can't do that, Archaeon.

Being prone means they can re-impat you. By dropping para while prone to try to get impat, not only are you trying to work through a buried aff stack, you're also going to get hit IMMEDIATELY against with impatience on the next balance because you are paralysed and prone. A psion can keep you prone indefinitely if you prio impat while prone. @Armitage

What I'm saying is that you don't have to prio impat.  You can prio para because you won't have the mentals required for mindravage.

Pyori

Archaeon said:

What I'm saying is that you don't have to prio impat.  You can prio para because you won't have the mentals required for mindravage.

This is pretty much it, honestly. As I said you're arguing from a class that doesn't really have all too great of a hinder. Someone who also does breaks, or para/clumsy spam on demand can slow down Psion quite a lot. You don't have to stay prone, just cure paralysis and continue out-afflicting them. You're also not taking into account classes with passive heals (which is most of them). Lots of things actually do better vs Psion than you might think; there's a reason there was only 1 who actually played it at a consistently high level.

Namino

That's what we're saying we do. We prio paralysis. Stand up. Touch shield. Try to eat impatience and miss. Get cleaved, paralysed, proned. Eat paralysis. Psion gets eq back first, you're prone and and impatienced. They hit you with overhand and mentals. You stand. Touch shield. Try to eat with even worse odds than before. Miss impatience. Cleave. Paralysis. Prone. 

Edit: And even if you get out of this hellish vortex by miraculously catching impatience as it slips away under the stack, they just overhanded you multiple times during the loop so they're about to break your head in two balances again before you can begin to mount anything resembling an offense.

Dochitha

Namino said:

That's what we're saying we do. We prio paralysis. Stand up. Touch shield. Try to eat impatience and miss. Get cleaved, paralysed, proned. Eat paralysis. Psion gets eq back first, you're prone and and impatienced. They hit you with overhand and mentals. You stand. Touch shield. Try to eat with even worse odds than before. Miss impatience. Cleave. Paralysis. Prone. 

A psion doesn't start the fight and immediately have access to cause a downhill battle for opponent. How long does a typical, or even the best psion need, to cause them to come to this advantage? That timing is important for every other classes to build up their counter. Weird ideas like preapplying head the right time works, sometimes just to make them not break the head at the time they like? They can punish the legs while off-salve, but forces them to prep a leg too, which increases the time required before they can cause a downhill battle.

Namino

It's... pretty freaking fast. Again, I'm not complaining for my sake. I can dodge this reliably as a monk.

Pyori

So... Don't touch shield after standing up? Leave, or continue affing them. Again you're arguing from a class that can't really afflict them, let alone match their pressure. It's not really a fair argument for either side. Lots of classes actually do very well against them.

Namino

Lightbinds are typically active. Again, the shield loop is literally just buying time for you to wait for them to wear off, at which point you leave. But you ate all those overhands and when you re-engage, they hit you with lightbinds and pop your head again in two shots.