Priest/Psion

Tyron

hello.

I used to play Achaea years ago and am thinking of returning. My question is I’ve thought about either Priest/Psion...potentially both whenever I decide to multi class. Can someone give me the lowdown with both I know priest has changed since I’ve been away was wondering is it still viable in PvP and is PvE any good? Also does it still rely on reducing a person’s mana until it can absolve it or are the chants good enough to put in another good kill path. Also Psion, I hear the pve is bad but is it like snb sownon damage but can tank or just like blademaster squishy and not much power behind the attack on pve also pvp how does it function I hear it is different from most classes. Sorry for the long post just super interested thanks!

[Deleted User]

Priest is much more fun than its previous incarnations; virtually every kill route leads to absolve, but the path to get there has been switched up a bit. It relies on a combination of affliction momentum and limb prep to try and get as many afflictions on someone as possible in a short window, because sap now entirely scales to how afflicted someone is (with different afflictions contributing different amounts). Done properly, you can take someone from full mana to well beyond absolve range in one go. It deals very oppressive, fast afflictions, but lacks when it comes to secondary kill paths - locks are trickier to pull off now and damage kills rely heavily on attrition. It's my favorite 'new' class, though. In terms of PvE, it's middle of the pack - the damage isn't great, but it's very tanky so you can get away with harder areas if you want.

Psion is tricky, and truthfully it's both the newest and least played class, so getting a fully informed perspective is difficult. From what I've seen and heard, it's miserable in PvE as it does poor damage and is very squishy. Its PvP is also a hybrid-style offense, involving both limb prep (some of the best in terms of ease, 4 hit breaks unaffected by parry), and a heavy affliction component. Rather than stack afflictions in a traditional way, psion involves shallow stacks that very quickly turn into kills, making smart priority swapping a must to survive them. They have a pretty ridiculous number of kill paths (affliction kill, unique lock, mana kill, damage kill via flurry) but require some finesse and timing to pull off.  Its signature ability, miriad, is amazing - it lets you create copies of yourself to fight multiple people at once! I would say it's not a particularly friendly class to ease into though, since surviving and killing as a psion requires you to use a lot of different tools.

As a side note, blademaster is no longer terrible when it comes to PvE, if that's a consideration.

Eryl

IMO, both Priest and Psion are in the top few super hard to learn classes by nature of having so many different moving parts. It’s easily on the difficulty level of Bard with the added bonus complication of dealing with specialty afflictions instead of standard locking.

Psion has to track limb damage a lot more cleanly than others, as many of their hits have secondary effects based on limb damage or other states (such as prone). Issam mentioned every limb takes four hits, but a recent change to hamstring (the leg hit) has made that particular strike five instead of four.

Priest has to track multiple afflictions that share the same cures, limb damage, limb breaks, enemy mana, prayer chains, angel health, and conviction.

The only two that aren’t really self explanatory are prayer chains and conviction. A prayer always starts at 0, and each prayer after that increases it by 1. After a few seconds of not fighting, the prayer chain closes and starts over at 0. You can also end the chain early and give a second affliction (masochism, hallucinations, or paranoia) by using a rebuke.

Some prayers require a certain prayer length. Glory, for instance, can only be recited if your prayer length is already at least two.

When a prayer ends, you gain 5% conviction per prayer in the chain. You can spend that conviction on stronger prayers.

An example of this is Revelations, Priest’s only way of giving hellsight now. In order to recite revelations, you must have a prayer length of at least 3 and it costs some nontrivial conviction (10%, I believe - I avoid the hellsight route because it takes too long). That means that before you can give hellsight, you have to pray, pray + rebuke, pray, pray, pray, revelations.

Wrath is the other big offender. It requires a length of at least one and costs 20% conviction. It does mana drain with the exact same scaling as sap, just in class balance. This sounds CRAZY, but I’m practice, it’s pretty difficult to pull off. You can, however, surprise people with a wrath/absolve at ~ 75% if you win enough momentum and throw in some well-timed limb breaks.

The final consideration that’s unique to the class is that some prayers can only be used once per chain. Revelations and Wrath both fall under this category. That means after you use either one, you have to close the current chain and start a new one before you can use them again.

This effectively gives you a long-ass setup that can be ruined by using a prayer at the wrong time.

Priest is, however, extremely oppressive as Issam said. They can easily stick things like stupidity, dizziness, confusion, epilepsy, weariness, and clumsiness. The different balance knocks and hindering styles of each add play really well together.

As for unique adds to, they have a few. The important one is guilt. If you have guilt and focus, you cure that mental add but immediately gain another one. Guilt is a lobelia cure, so you have to stick it before you can progress the mental route (arguably the fastest Priest route).

Issam covered the rest wonderfully, with the exception that unartied priest can struggle a bit. It takes EITHER an Artie mace or a diadem to really shine (mace increase smite speed, but a diadem allows you to recite penance (paralysis) + perform sloth (weariness) and get balance immediately after they eat kelp. That makes your next para stick for the entire herb balance and wins you the momentum at the gate.

Eryl

Uhh. Replace all those “adds” with “affs.” Silly phone.

Farrah

I don't bash in psion, but I hear it's fairly weak damagewise and it's definitely a squishy class. Priest isn't great damagewise but is very tanky.

Priest is a lot easier to get into pkwise than psion. It's pretty straightforward. Psion is more complex but sadly probably also ultimately weaker in my opinion. Some people think it's really OP though.

Psion's main 1v1 perk is its movement hinder. It's usable while off balance and follows you when you leave the room, so the class is great at chasing and difficult to run from. Priest is more static since it has some room based buffs it can't just freely put back up when it chases. The other thing people hate fighting against is psion's active heal, which is very strong against some classes.

Psion is stronger at jumping people than priest is, but I'd take priest in a straight up duel.

Edit: Eryl is right that priest struggles more unartied. Psion is likely stronger in that regard.

Tyron

Cool thanks everyone I really do appreciate the information. 

[Deleted User]

I wouldn't say either of them are "easily on the difficulty level of bard".

Archaeon

bashing in psion is worse than bashing as SnB

Torrent

Pvp as Psion it really depends all on how your opponent cures which take a lot of tracking to do and then when figuring it out working out the kill path for it. Some kill paths are blocked off by certain curing priorities. It is almost right up there with Magi on squishiness so survivability is what most Psions have to deal with. Its a really fun class and for those that like to adapt to different kill paths its a fun one. It does a lot of prep work for Psion beforehand you go into fights. PvE yeah its one of the most terrible unless artied, really depends on lot on crits.