Kineticist Feedback Thread

[Nora Steele]

My impressions so far of the Kineticist is that it tapers off something fierce by the late game. The only reliable source of damage appears to be Deep Freeze + Sleet Shaft/Mind Crush. Gravity Flux is good situationally to ground flying enemies, but the damage is so low it's better to be levitating and DBZ fight their asses. It's easy to chain abilities together, but you can quickly find yourself spending all your energy in a random encounter (and, sometimes, still losing. Looking at you, Enhanced Rusher.)

Yeah, I find it fun and useful at times but I cannot go without my regular weapons. And even then, against the Rusher and Jasvalla, they are not enough.

 

[mallowmar42]

I've been lurking in patron and lurking in the forums since the only planet in TiTs was Mheng-ga how is this my first post?

Okay so I just finished a playthrough of the kinteticist (or at least I reacheded max level and defeated the most powerful enemies in the game) so I feel like I can leave a good bit of feedback (and possibly eventually outdated build advice) for the kineticist.

So the kineticist is supposed to be the wizard in this game it feels like. You are very (though not entirely) dependent on your powers. It is not inaccurate to state that when you run out of energy you better hope you've almost finished the fight because otherwise the fight is going to finish you. This means that to effectively play this class you need to find the most efficient way to use your powers to end fights as fast as possible and hopefully topped up on energy for the inevitable next one, simple enough. The kicker here is that all of your powers cause some sort of debuff and usually (but not always) combo off of another debuf. Which leads to the kineticist having actually a fairly fun combat rhythm of coming up with your own combo. Kind of fitting considering that the kineticist in play is actually less of a squishy wizard and more of a surprisingly tanky telekinetic monk but I'll get into that in a bit. Lets talk about the powers, thanks to the power of save editors I've used all of them. I'm going to go over all the powers you can choose from and some of the powers you automatically get from leveling up (or at least the ones worth mentioning)

Stats
You can't start any build without talking about the stats and the Kineticist can be somewhat misleading in what stats you think you need. Your primary stats are going to Willpower first, Physique second, and reflexes third (some might even argue that physique is actually the most important stat when you have to choose implants, and they might be right, they certainly aren't wrong). Aim is worthless entirely as there is very little point in ever shooting a gun (you don't even start with one, that you should tell you how useful they are to you) and int is almost completely trap; by the time Syri leaves mhen-ga int will only be there mostly for flavor, you can dump it. I know some of the abilities say they key off your int, those abilities aren't good.

The reason for physique's importance is that it governs your likelihood of proccing debuffs whether you're delivering them with your fist or you mind. Meanwhile int has fringe case uses for certain powers and is good for a single specific build. It's complicated, basically physique and willpower are always going to be good no matter what you do though.

Powers

Spoiler: Level 1

Force darts is an okay power and the only reason to have any int at all. It largely becomes irrelevant by the time you leave mhen-ga though as I found that Thermal sunder out paced against enemies who were weak against thermal energy and most things are weaker against thermal energy than they are kinetic. Plus even with maxed out int the accuracy on this attack is pathetic. It attacks three times and if it hits twice it does as much damage as your level 2 power and if it hits thrice then it does more! It almost never hits three times. Still can pull you out of a sticky situation with some luck.

Spoiler: Level 2

The level 2 powers vary in how powerful they actually are. Kinetic Burst is bad, like really bad. Disarm is a terrible status effect and will actually frequently make an enemy more dangerous (looking at you rusher) plus it does kinetic damage which is frequently the most resisted damage an enemy has usually followed by thermal and hey the other power is thermal which means it will probably do more damage. On top of that it sunders which is a better status effect.

A special shout out goes to entropic leach which is actually a power house in disguise, it regens a pathetic amount of energy (for energy regen purposes entropic leach feels too weak I feel like it should regen 5% of your energy instead of 5 flat energy that way it improves with your level to match the fact you have the largest energy pool) deals one of the best damage types in the game (a damage type that is only weak on uveto) and it deep freezes enemies which sets you up to deal double damage if your weapon has the crushing flag. What weapons have the crushing flag, I hear you ask? All of your best melee weapons. Also don't let the description of the ability fool you when it says it inflicts the freeze effect rarely.

Spoiler: Level 3

Psytuned Vitality as has been stated before Pystuned Vitality vastly outperforms Psionic Shielding but hey you're not the techspecialist so I guess we don't want to step on their toes shrugs. Psytuned vitalities healing is the least of what it does, end game it might allows you to heal enough health to take maybe one or two more hits if you're lucky the real big thing is it doubles the amount of hp you get every level. Psionic shielding I guess can return 12 hp every round? That might be a lot more healing than Psytuned vitality seeing as how you don't have to use a power and it'll eventually more than double it but it's still not enough to matter. I'd say the restoration on both need to be buffed, maybe add a percentage on top of a flat amount so they scale better but that might be too powerful.

Spoiler: Level 4

Other people have gone over Psychogenic Vim and Vitality Siphon. Psychogenic is so much better it hurts, but hey what did you expect? Getting a large amount back instead of some energy and health over time is always going to be better, every class that has something like this is the same. I actually have zero criticism or feedback for Psychogenic Vim and I'm going to stop talking about it because it is an odd name to keep typing out. Vitality Siphon is truly terrible, like I can see no reason to take this ability. Every build of Kineticist needs an effective way to regen energy fast in combo and Vitality Siphon isn't that, absolutely worthless.

Spoiler: Level 5

Both abilities have their pros and cons. Both deal Unavoidable damage which is arguably the best damage in the game (it's unavoidable!) both serve their purpose as crowd control. Honestly Entropy Waves probably edges out Gravity Flux IMO, frequently I found that the most effective way to deal with group fights is to just burn down each enemy as fast as you can individually rather than try to toss out expensive group attacks and Entropy Waves allows you to do that while doing group damage. Still Gravity Flux trips enemies every round and you just got psychogenic vim last level (fuck) so you can just nuke a whole group of enemies without getting touched but you will probably burn all of your energy doing it. Up to you, both are balanced and good aand group fights aren't common enough to worry about it.


Also just to mention Mind Trick: this is another ability that keys off of int. It's also really bad. Mind Trick could be good if it wasn't so incredibly expensive to use. Early game it'll eat up the majority of your energy late game it'll eat up still a significant amount of energy but not enough to fuck you at least as long as the fight wasn't much of a threat anyway. This is a trap don't use unless you plan on immediately running from the fight.

Spoiler: Level 6

Both of these abilities kind of suck if I'm going to be honest, but if I had to choose one I would go with Telekinetic Warrior over Third Eye Aim because at least Telekinetic Warrior has some use instead of being completely worthless. The lowdown on it is that Telekinetic Warrior allows you add your willpower to your unarmed attacks at a very respectable rate as well as making your unarmed attacks crushing (unarmed kineticist ranged attacks are the only crushing ranged weapons in the game!) so they combo with entropic leach (entropic leach is the true mvp of kineticist seriously) this stacks with your physique aim bonus as well. At the base level you get this at, your unarmed attacks will do a base of 19 damage which means they're your best ranged weapons and not as good as the staff you probably bought on myrellion if you can part with the warden shield or the as your stat stick this can let you drop the frostwyrm at level 7 (when the base damage will shoot up to 27!). Still disarmed basically never comes up so that part is worthless and when you get the ability to fly you will never use a ranged unarmed attack again, so Telekinetic warrior is great for 3 levels!

Meanwhile Third Eye Aim is actively bad. It fails at its central idea which is that it's supposed to make needing other stats less necessary. Your status effects are still dependent on your physique or aim and the best weapons in the game have status effects. If grinding other stats out at the ten ton gym is really such a problem for you just use a save editor.

Spoiler: Level 7

This level is a case of having an alright ability and an amazing ability. Blind is one of the best status effects and Debris field has a chance of triggering it every round for three rounds, the damage increase from Vortex Brand might be nice but it can't compete and dodge chance reduction is a joke. Accuracy for a kineticist is never an issue, the majority of your powers just hit, at least all of the relevant ones at this point do; Force Darts has been gathering dust by this point and I never had trouble hitting things. On top of that you don't get less accurate extra attacks you get haste which is better and both attacks have the same high accuracy. If Fen and the devs want Vortex Brand to compete they need to switch the bonuses it gives you: 50% extra damage and a 15% dodge reduction, and make this power deal some damage on top of that like Debris Field. Debris Field is one of your best abilities and is the reason you can beat the Frost Wyrm at level seven, don't sleep on it.

Spoiler: Level 8

And here is where my opinion is going to differ from other people. At level 8 you can either get Concussive Augmentation or Geothermal Spikes and Geothermal spikes is bad. I know from reading on here that it's recommended but I wouldn't, Geothermal spikes is expensive and the damage isn't good for what it costs. The problem with Geothermal spikes is two things, at the time you get it probably the toughest enemy you'll face is the frostwyrm which you want to use it on but can't because it's flying. Also it's split damage, which is objectively terrible for something that has an energy cost. Split damage can be overlooked on a melee or ranged weapon because it's free, but because this has split damage it feels like it does equivalent damage to thermal sunder. Now admittedly this does change if you can reliably trip enemies and you can do that if you picked up the hook staff on uveto. In fact you can have a pretty strong combo at this point if you go entropic leach>melee attack>thermal spike; but consider that you are targeting the two most resisted damage types in the game and it's flaws become more evident. On top of that, the ability can miss and I'm not playing a kineticist so I have to rely on intelligence and still have unreliable powers, I want my abilities to hit damnit!

Concussive Augmentation on the other hand is actually kind of amazing. Sure the damage isn't great but the next three melee attacks you make will deal that extra unavoidable damage. It doesn't last for the next three rounds, it essentially has three charges. It's still weak and in fact I think both things this level are weak, but I think this is the better choice in the long run. My feedback for both abilities is that they need to cost less energy maybe make concussive augmentation just an always on ability but if you do that it'd just be an auto take. Also did I mention, you can cast this without using up your turn?

Spoiler: Level 9

This is it, the best level. The biggest power gain since level 2 (Entropic leach still mvp). This level you get Levitation, Entropic Whip and Acid Cloud and each and every one of these abilities is amazing; it's a shame you can't have all three, seriously I'd trade out some of the later level abilities to have all three. It really depends on what you want honestly, you sadly have to choose between Acid Mist and Entropic Whip but you really can't go wrong with either. I do think that Acid Cloud edges out Entropic Whip, but that's a personal preference thing; they both fuck.

Entropic Whip is a major powerhouse, remember how I told you intelligence powers aren't worth it? This one's the exception, it can miss and that's based off your intelligence from what I can tell (meanwhile the deep freeze chance is again based off your physique). But it can freeze and it gets random crits, I've hit for over 300 with a random crit on this thing. Seriously you can fight Dr Lash with just this and melee attacks, i've done it and not taken any damage. I've done it and regened my shields completely with Psionic Shields when I was testing that out. I frequently took down dr lash without using up all my energy, you just need a crushing melee weapon with a chance to stun. I sure wonder who has one of those.

Acid Cloud fucks. No seriously, Acid Cloud fucks harder than anything called something as generic as acid cloud should (the name honestly doesn't even fit the description of what you're psionically doing, call it something like Molecular Decay or something). This ability cannot auto crit, yes does suck but it does crit on any immobile enemy which is misleading considering what they mean is that it crits on stunned targets. Get yourself a crushing melee weapon that stuns and combine this with entropic leach and you can drop Dr Lash at level 9. Also the amount of things that I've encountered that are strong against corrosive damage I can count on one hand as opposed to there being an entire planet of the fucks.

Finally I have to shout out levitate: it lasts all battle it gives you a sizable evasion boost, it lets you melee flying enemies, toggling it on is a free action that doesn't take up your turn. If something flies punch it, you don't need to grow wings (unless you want to) or have a stupid jet pack, just fly. Put that stat stick back in your ranged hand and lets move on.

Spoiler: Level 10

This is a weird level, listen I know you'll look back through this and everybody will tell you that Mind Crush is better than Deep Impact and maybe for them it was but I tried both out for a while and I never really used mind crush. Maybe it's the gear I had but I eventually respec-ed into Deep impact and I noticed the difference, my melee attacks that were stunning were stunning a little more often. Sure it's a little thing but it was nice, I get that Mind Crush is good damage with a guaranteed stun that lasts 2-3 turns but the problem is that when you combo your abilities the debuffs disappear, so if I used Acid Cloud to get an auto crit off the stun then the stun would fade. Honestly I just found mindcrush disappointing, I don't think it's over priced I just think that it underperforms.

I would recommend giving Deep impact a flat bonus to your crit rate though honestly and to defend the ability a little bit, no your powers can stun if they crit but they have to be powers that get random crits. A crit from a combo won't stun but a random crit from Entropic Whip will stun. Th power isn't clear that this only accounts for random crits not guaranteed ones and I've only seen two powers ever get random crits: Entropic Whip and Gravity Crush.

Spoiler: Level 11

Yet another level with an incredibly easy choice for powers: haste, haste is better and it's not even a contest. Haste is the reason that Kineticists don't get an additional attack ability, they don't need it. Haste for the price of 25 energy gives you an accurate extra attack for five rounds. Maybe a bit over priced in the energy department (I'd lover it by 10 honestly) but still really good. On top of that using haste just causes you to attack twice with your melee weapon and is treated as a basic attack so you're not even wasting a turn to put up the buff. Hit an enemy with freeze and then cast haste and hit them for two hits of damage (three if you set up Concussive Augmentation, an ability that notably doesn't use up your turn)

Then you have Reality Schism, such a cool name for the worst active power you can get. This costs 25 energy and you're boosting the damage of your active powers by 20%, great. Or I could have just used an active power one additional time. Fixing this isn't even hard, just make it a free action and it becomes a pretty alright take for anybody who took entropy whip or eventually takes Gravity Crush.

Spoiler: Level 12

Final level final powers, sadly also a really easy choice. Psychic Slam is shit and Gravity Crush is amazing, there you go. Gravity Crush hits like a truck, deal unresistable damage and can random crit which means it can deal even more damage and stun if you have deep impact. The scales up with size bit is neither here nor there, probably good against the Frostwyrm but I mean you could handle that ages ago. Psychic slam on the other hand is terrible, pathetic damage dealt in three hits, targets kinetic damage the worst damage type to target. The only upside to Psychic slam is that it is a crushing attack so it deals double damage...on the first of it's three attacks. Against Dr Lash this meant I was dealing a total of 150 odd damage...at level 12...Gravity Crush hit him for around 300 without a crit.

Gear

It's kind of straight forward. For melee weapons just go with the best staff you can get until you reach uveto. At this point you have three options for what your BIS is: hook staff, sleet shaft, or custom shock gear depending on what you're going for. If you rely on geothermal spike for your damage, the hook staff is your BIS. If you decided to go with entropic whip, then you can do some pretty crazy freeze crush combos with the sleet shaft (and honestly if you go this route deep impact and Concussive Augmentation are going to slap pretty hard as everything you do can proc it on a crit and you're going to be meleeing mostly anyway), if you pick up acid cloud then custom shock gear is your BIS melee weapon (it keeps up with the higher damaging staves because it deals electricity damage on top of the kinetic damage and electicity is the best damage in the game)

Ranged weapons are just going to be stat sticks for the majority of the game go with something useful. NaN Deconstructor or Warden shield are the best things you can equip. You do super high damage and can usually hit damage types that they don't resist all that much.

Armor: a bunch of options but what you want is evasion, shields, fortification and defense if you can get it, accuracy and crit are pretty nice too as well. The light harness is a great piece of armor if you can get it early and it'll carry you all the way to level 8 or 9 when you can beat up Shizuya for the armor she gives you, Speaking of the modded yellow clothes are stupidly good and can take you all the way to the end of the game. The Zaika Style Gown is my personal piece of endgame armor but if you don't like your tits out the modded yellow is good enough and the leopard print jumpsuit is also good

Accessory: The-Noise Generator is a trash don't use it, the regeneration is pathetic in combat with the one exception of psychgenic vim but that gives you 150 energy back at level 12 and you have better things that can go here, out of combat it'll make resting more efficient but who the fuck cares? Plus 5 shields and health don't make up for how incredibly mid this is. Helm of terror is a good choice, knitted scarf is a good choice, Reaper's Cloak has a crit bonus which means it's probably BIS for an Entropic Whip build, Shield aug bracers are good, Siegwulf is good, and Signet of bravery is good. I went with the signet (higher melee damage better stat procs)

Builds

As I see it there are really three builds to go for in kineticist

Spoiler: Melter

A good all rounder, no real weaknesses and plenty of strengths. You take Acid Cloud instead of Entropic Whip, your BIS weapon is custom shock gear, you want to do everything to land a stun and then drop Acid Mist for crazy damage. You have survivability because you stun often. You main weakness are things that are strong against acid which aren't common at all, and even then you can just fall back on entropic leach>melee combos. For your standard combo you're going to go Entropic leach>melee>Acid Cloud. Make sure you pop haste when you melee it's always worth it. For implants you could go willpower or physique and your stat importance is Will>physique>ref

Spoiler: Freezer

Insanely high damage and no survivability. You function like a Gunner mercenary with a saurmorian railgun in a way, high risk high reward. Only you're better because you can stun and they can't. Your main weaknesses are anything strong against frost damage as you're entirely dependent on it. Luckily they're usually weak to thermal so just use thermal sunder and hope that's enough; also you're high risk high reward, you do a ton of damage but you need every bit of defense you can muster. When you run out of energy you really are fucked, cause debris field is probably what's keeping you alive. Your BIS weapon is the sleet shaft, too bad you get that on uveto and this build sucks on uveto good luck with the frostwyrm or the siege of korgihold fucker! Sucks 'cause the signet of bravery is the best accessory in the game for you, you need all the physique you can get. Luckily Thermal sunder is good enough for Uveto for the most part. Your stat importance is Phys>INT>WILL=REF you're very stat dependent. Just take the hit to WILL with the steroid implant the 10 extra physique is going to be worth it and you have 5 WILL to spare. Also Deep impact and Concussive augmentation do a lot more for you than the other two builds, consider them mandatory, I've stunlocked Dr Lash to death with crits.

Spoiler: Spiker

Takes off a little bit earlier than the other builds does high damage and you don't have to interact with Shizuya (though you probably still should for her clothes). Your weakness is you have the worst damage type and anything flying fucks you entirely. Your big damage dealer is geothermal spike and your BIS is the hookstaff. You're very similar to the melter and could be one if you wanted honestly, concussive augmentation isn't the biggest loss. You peak on Uveto.

Feedback

Kinetic Burst: This ability is bad there's no reason to take it, could be improved if you changed the damage type to electricity. Honestly what the Psychic monk has been thirsting for is some god damn force lightning. I get that electricity is the wheel house of the tech specialist, but the kineticist has access to every element but that?

Level 3 powers: They feel slightly underpowered in general. I think having a small percentage added to the flat amount of either of them would be nice and really make them feel good when they start to scale as the game goes on. Psionic Shieding needs it the most but again I get that shields are the wheelhouse of the tech specialist.

Vitality Siphon: Needs a complete rework or to have the energy return buffed hard cut down on the cost as well. The fact that the first turn doesn't even return the cost is an insult. Not even going to begin to say it should leech a percentage of energy based on damage dealt cause that sounds like a nightmare to balance. Still maybe you restore a percentage of max energy every round?

Level 5 powers: Feel a bit overpriced that's all, drop the cost of energy by 5 and they're fine for what they are.

Telekinetic Warrior: Way to niche, good for 3 levels at best mostly worthless either up the damage or something maybe add an additional low accuracy attack when unarmed?

Third Eye Aim: Pointless, entirely worthless, very thematic. There's no fixing this, probably just needs to be replaced with something else.

Vortex Brand: Needs to do damage, needs to increase the damage dealt by more, the dodge chance debuff does almost nothing. As of now you're sacrificing a turn to do less damage and guarantee you hit on a class that actually struggles to miss with every ability except the one they get at level 1.

Geothermal Spike: make it do one damage type.

Acid Cloud: My main complaint is how generic the name is: Molecular Disruption, Psionic Deconstruction, Atomic Dispersion. The name is so...blah! Also maybe just a tad overpriced, 30 energy feels more appropriate it fucks but it doesn't fuck 35 energy hard.

Deep Impact: consider giving the player a small crit boost if they take this 5 wouldn't be too much

Reality Schism: Shouldn't take a turn to activate.

Psychic Slam: Damage is too low also consider giving this a chance for random crits as well. If you don't lower the damage then making it unresistable damage probably would make it more worth taking or make all three hits combo with a frozen status.

 

[Amakawa Yuuto]

Speed of thought could be good if it wasn't so incredibly expensive to use. Early game it'll eat up the majority of your energy late game it'll eat up still a significant amount of energy

What?
Speed of thought is a passive ability. It costs no energy to use, it's always active.
You're probably thinking of Mind Trick, the level 5 ability.

 

[mallowmar42]

What?
Speed of thought is a passive ability. It costs no energy to use, it's always active.
You're probably thinking of Mind Trick, the level 5 ability.

you're right I am

 

[Der Maskierte]

I would recommend reworking the "Mental Endurance" perks into "Mental Acuity" perks that, on top of increasing maximum energy, grant bonus damage to melee and ranged weapons based on Intelligence, then have selectable mutually exclusive perks at level 6 Telekinetic Warrior and Third Eye Aim increase this for either melee or ranged attacks for further specialization

I also recommend making 'bows' the ranged weapon preferred by kineticists, giving them a bonus to accuracy and critical damage (similar to the damage bonus staves get, but lesser as it's two stats instead of one), as the kineticist would have an easier time controlling the trajectory of arrows than bullets or beams

It would be interesting if all classes also had 'favored weapon' bonuses:

• Mercenary - weapons marked "stun chance" or "crushing"; for ranged: also weapons marked "rifle".
• Smuggler - weapons marked "penetrating" or "bonus hit rate"; for ranged: weapons marked "pistol".
• Tech Specialist - weapons marked "energy weapon" or "cannot crit"; for ranged, also weapons marked "thrower".

 

[Bast]

I disagree that it would be interesting if all classes had favoured weapons bonuses. Forcing builds on players isn't fun.

 

[Amakawa Yuuto]

Mercs and Tech Specialists already have somewhat of a specialization, with TechS getting bonuses to energy weapons (one active and one passive skill, each of which can be avoided, and two passive skills that are either/or, so you definitely get 20% damage bonus on either ranged or melee energy weapons), and Merc getting the same 20% on either melee or ranged non-energy weapons.

It makes sense that kineticists (and smugglers) don't get that kind of weapon bonuses, I guess, since their play styles aren't supposed to be as focused on their weapons.

 

[Tide Hunter]

It would be interesting if all classes also had 'favored weapon' bonuses:

• Mercenary - weapons marked "stun chance" or "crushing"; for ranged: also weapons marked "rifle".
• Smuggler - weapons marked "penetrating" or "bonus hit rate"; for ranged: weapons marked "pistol".
• Tech Specialist - weapons marked "energy weapon" or "cannot crit"; for ranged, also weapons marked "thrower".

There's already a sort of soft bonus to Mercs for bonus hit rate weapons, since they have a lot of multi-attack built into their kit.
Rapid Fire shoots two extra attacks, which can stack with second shot.
Cleave's extra attack only works on groups or group-type enemies, but it's still an extra attack with lowered accuracy.
Obviously, second attack/shot is an extra attack with lowered accuracy.
Sturm and Drang is weird because it's supposedly enhanced accuracy, but I assume the bonus ranged hit from the Second Striker/Shot has reduced accuracy.

Bonus hit rate weapons nullify the accuracy penalty from multi-attack attacks. Given that Sturm and Drang seems to be just doing one melee attack and then doing a full Rapid Fire volley (including the singular base shot, two bonus attacks, and another hit from second shot), I do somewhat suspect that the "enhanced accuracy" is just to negate the accuracy penalty from Rapid Fire.
But aside from that, the level 12 Specialized Combatant ability only nullifies the penalty of the Second Shot/Attack, plus doing Rapid Fire without S&D actually stacks Concentrate Fire (It seems that S&D is very tempermental in whether or not it actually stacks Concentrate Fire, and even if it does, it gets reset by the melee attack S&D starts with). So any ranged merc will still want bonus hit rate weapons.

 

[Theron]

But aside from that, the level 12 Specialized Combatant ability only nullifies the penalty of the Second Shot/Attack, plus doing Rapid Fire without S&D actually stacks Concentrate Fire (It seems that S&D is very tempermental in whether or not it actually stacks Concentrate Fire, and even if it does, it gets reset by the melee attack S&D starts with). So any ranged merc will still want bonus hit rate weapons.

Not in my testing just now. Concentrate Fire activates when opening with S&D and persists through consecutive uses, assuming you continue to hit. In fact, normal Melee attacks can continue Concentrate Fire. The weird thing is if a S&D middle attack misses, Concentrate Fire is not reapplied, even if all subsequent attacks hit.

Mercs and Tech Specialists already have somewhat of a specialization, with TechS getting bonuses to energy weapons (one active and one passive skill, each of which can be avoided, and two passive skills that are either/or, so you definitely get 20% damage bonus on either ranged or melee energy weapons), and Merc getting the same 20% on either melee or ranged non-energy weapons.

The 20% isn't as big as you'd think, because it only applies to the weapon's base damage, not to the bonus from high Physique/Aim.

Third Eye Aim: Pointless, entirely worthless, very thematic. There's no fixing this, probably just needs to be replaced with something else.

It's possible to have a higher Intelligence cap than Physique or Aim. Especially if you took Cybernetic Subprocessor. And it applies to both Melee and Ranged, so you don't have to put points in those stats. Though, as you noted, there are reasons to invest in Physique anyway. You also get it's benefit and the passive stats from weapons, unlike Telekinetic Warrior.
I guess the question is: Does Intelligence do enough for Kineticists that focusing on maxing it out is worth it?

Vitality Siphon: Needs a complete rework or to have the energy return buffed hard cut down on the cost as well. The fact that the first turn doesn't even return the cost is an insult. Not even going to begin to say it should leech a percentage of energy based on damage dealt cause that sounds like a nightmare to balance. Still maybe you restore a percentage of max energy every round?

It would probably help if the 2nd & 3rd levels of Psi-Noise Generator were in. (+50%/100%). Still kind of low, though. +100% would get you net 45.

Getting a large amount back instead of some energy and health over time is always going to be better, every class that has something like this is the same.

I actually disagree with the general point. Deflector Regeneration gives 4/3 what Power Surge does, and you aren't as likely to overheal. Smuggled Stimulant restores more Energy total and since Smugglers don't have any ability that costs more than 25, it's functionally the same as getting it all at once.

Spoiler: Vitality Siphon Analysis

The problem with Vitality Siphon is it's return is so low compared to the alternative. Or what you're spending Energy on. 4 rounds for 15 Energy, when most powers cost at least 20. And that's if you don't use powers and all your attacks hit/you don't get grappled/stunned. It's best if you use Entropic Leech (+15 max) or basic attacks. In theory, you could get an extra turn by setting up Entropy Waves or Debris Field first, but that's 25 Energy for a return of 10 (12.5/15/20). Not really worth it.
You could also have a Drone, but those do fairly low damage unless you're a Tech Specialist. And it would take your Accessory slot, denying the use of Psi-Noise Generator(s).
At Level 4, Psychogenic Vim restores 93.5 Energy, which is 6.23x Vitality Siphon. At level 12, it's 10x. In one round, compared to the 28-40 VS would have to make up the difference.
The one potential advantage is healing. But since Kineticist is so dependent on Energy expenditure, I don't know if that makes a difference.

Percentage max isn't a bad idea. 10%? Would bump it to 12.5 base (because 4 is when you get Mental Endurance 1), but it would scale better.
Or if you get Energy back/hit. Setting up Haste/Entropy Waves/Debris Field/Concussive Augmentation would then be worth it. It would be a lot more powerful vs Groups, but is that a problem?
Or if it lasted all fight. Or at least didn't take a turn to set up.

 

[mallowmar42]

It would be interesting if all classes also had 'favored weapon' bonuses:

• Mercenary - weapons marked "stun chance" or "crushing"; for ranged: also weapons marked "rifle".
• Smuggler - weapons marked "penetrating" or "bonus hit rate"; for ranged: weapons marked "pistol".
• Tech Specialist - weapons marked "energy weapon" or "cannot crit"; for ranged, also weapons marked "thrower".

This kind of already exists with Kineticist in a way. Their class has almost no support for ranged weapons as is so in a way a Kineticist's preferred weapons are crushing weapons that inflict, tripped, frozen, or stunned

I guess the question is: Does Intelligence do enough for Kineticists that focusing on maxing it out is worth it?

This is honestly the better question, arguing which ability is better, Telekinetic Warrior or Third Eye Aim is kind of a trap. Both of them are terrible and if it wasn't for psychic armor, level 6 would be an empty level. I would argue that intelligence doesn't do enough for a Kineticist, you can literally build a kineticist that dumps intelligence with almost no consequence so clearly that is the case. Not that I ever did because Syri makes having max intelligence trivial, but I only ever do that for role playing purposes unless I'm playing a smuggler.

Even with Intelligence doing more for you I still believe that both abilities are awful and need to be overhauled and my opinion on third eye aim is that it is the worst of two completely pointless abilities.

I actually disagree with the general point. Deflector Regeneration gives 4/3 what Power Surge does, and you aren't as likely to overheal. Smuggled Stimulant restores more Energy total and since Smugglers don't have any ability that costs more than 25, it's functionally the same as getting it all at once.

You caught me. I will admit that I have a glaring blind spot in my knowledge of the classes in that Techspecialist is by far the class I play the least. I still think that a large burst of energy/health regeneration is nearly universally the best choice. If for nothing else, because it's a really good way to top up your energy at the end of a fight so you don't have to do any resting in between.

Percentage max isn't a bad idea. 10%? Would bump it to 12.5 base (because 4 is when you get Mental Endurance 1), but it would scale better.

It might be better if you get Energy back/hit. Setting up Haste/Entropy Waves/Debris Field/Concussive Augmentation would then be worth it.
It would be a lot more powerful vs Groups, but is that a problem?

I think percentage max benefits the Kineticist more than most other classes. Kineticists have the most energy and the most health of any class, my problem with something like energy back on a hit is setting something up like that needs a very energy intensive set up costing a total of 110 energy to use every single ability but I'm not going to every problem it has on top of that it takes four turns to set up and at least one of those abilities will fall off by the time you get the set up done. So either live with dealing four hits in a turn or vitality syphon needs to not use up a turn as well. It would notably if you cut out debris field or entropy waves still cost you more to do the set up than you get back on your first turn even at 10% of total energy returned per hit.

Vitality Syphon just has a lot of problems and needs a lot done to fix it. If it's the recovery ability that is good against multiple enemies that's a bit too situational considering that the majority of your fights are going to be against single opponents. Multiple opponents outside of story scenarios are only relatively common on Dhaal or Zheng Shi (depending on how often you get jumped by the rat raiders)

Also just for reference the reason that only has four hits is 2 from haste 1 from concussive augmentation and 1 from debris field/entropic waves. You might think that concussive augmentation goes off every time you hit an enemy with an attack but it only goes off once each time you use the basic melee or ranged attack option in combat (with haste just automatically making you do a basic melee attack when you first cast it)

 

[Theron]

This kind of already exists with Kineticist in a way. Their class has almost no support for ranged weapons as is so in a way a Kineticist's preferred weapons are crushing weapons that inflict, tripped, frozen, or stunned

Everybody benefits greatly from Stun weapons. There are only 3 Trip weapons and all but one of the Freeze weapons are Ranged.
More to the point, if you're relying primarily on weapons with condition flags, that indicates the class abilities are inadequate.

I think percentage max benefits the Kineticist more than most other classes. Kineticists have the most energy and the most health of any class,

They also are the most dependent on abilities. And are either tied for most or least HP.

my problem with something like energy back on a hit is setting something up like that needs a very energy intensive set up costing a total of 110 energy to use every single ability but I'm not going to every problem it has on top of that it takes four turns to set up and at least one of those abilities will fall off by the time you get the set up done. So either live with dealing four hits in a turn or vitality syphon needs to not use up a turn as well.

I didn't necessarily mean all of them at once, just that some setup would be worth it. Would certainly be fun if you could get all those things going at once, though.

It definitely needs something. But I think everybody agrees on that. Except maybe the developers. I would like to hear their reasoning on why it's fine as-is.

If it's the recovery ability that is good against multiple enemies that's a bit too situational considering that the majority of your fights are going to be against single opponents.

Zaika Gangers, Nuka Psyker (& Drone), Shalin Shaman (counts as two enemies, for some reason). Also, group fights tend to be harder. And you need between 28-40 rounds to make up the difference between VS and PV, depending on level. I mentioned the strength against groups as something that probably isn't too powerful. Actually, since the healing is 50% of damage dealt, that aspect already is potentially better vs groups, if you have one of the area attacks.

I haven't gone through the game fully yet with a Kineticist, but I was thinking of combining Psionic Shielding with Evasion boosts. Tech Specialists get (Int/5 + 3) Shields back any round they're not hit at level 10 (13 with 50 Int). Kineticists get +Level every round, guaranteed. That's not a bad comparison on the surface.
But Tech Specialists have perks that make their Shields more resilient and Paralyzing Shock/Overcharge/Stun weapons to force enemies to lose turns.
Kineticists have a Blind, a Trip and +10 Evasion. And Stun weapons, depending.
Evasion is kind of slow to get going, though. And one of the best Evasion items is a melee weapon (Rouser, +10). The highest Evasion Staff is +5.
And while the Light Jetpack is mostly redundant for Kineticists, it's still the best Evasion Accessory in the game.

 

[mallowmar42]

Everybody benefits greatly from Stun weapons. There are only 3 Trip weapons and all but one of the Freeze weapons are Ranged.
More to the point, if you're relying primarily on weapons with condition flags, that indicates the class abilities are inadequate.

I'm aware that every class wants a stun weapon, stun is one of the best conditions to inflict but much like a smuggler, a kineticist benefits from stun more than mercenary or a techspecialist might who just get a turn where the enemy doesn't do anything. A stun lets you double the damage with Acid Mist which is one of your more damaging powers and deals a damage type that is rarely heavily resisted.

As for the trip weapons and freeze weapons I'm aware that there are a number of ranged options for both but you missed the most important qualification for a good Kineticist weapon: it needs to be crushing. One of the more powerful and easy combos to pull off with the Kineticist is freezing an enemy and then hitting them with a crushing weapon, it's actually something they implemented with telekinetic warrior and makes that ability slightly edge out third eye aim imo. Hell it's an entire build for the class, that's only weakness is that it pidgeonholes you into relying on ice and kinetic damage. Most other builds start a combo that way with Entropic leach and then hitting them with a weapon that is crushing and inflicts another status effect they can combo with on top of that. The sleet shaft is notable in that it can just freeze combo forever and combos beautifully with Entropic whip which has an incredibly high chance to freeze an enemy.

As for the weakness in relying on weapons have condition flags it feels like it's built into the class. The later kineticist specific weapons specifically inflict conditions that combo with their powers, I'd expect a stun one to show up except custom shock gear shows up around the same time you can get the sleet shaft.

It definitely needs something. But I think everybody agrees on that. Except maybe the developers. I would like to hear their reasoning on why it's fine as-is.

Lol yeah I deifinitely agree with you on that and obviously I have my ideas on it after trying out everything with them. I'd like it if all their abilities could be good but some of them just feel undercooked.

Also, group fights tend to be harder. And you need between 28-40 rounds to make up the difference between VS and PV, depending on level. I mentioned the strength against groups as something that probably isn't too powerful. Actually, since the healing is 50% of damage dealt, that aspect already is potentially better vs groups, if you have one of the area attacks.

Maybe they were supposed to be? Honestly the hardest fight is a group fight, notably the one where you try to break into the factory in Dhaal, but I did that the hard way just to see if I could, and I did on my second attempt. Kineticists usually do plenty of damage to burn down most non puzzle fights and that includes single targeting down group fights (entropy waves softens them up for this purpose well enough, gravity flux just is too energy intensive for too little results in my experience))

I haven't gone through the game fully yet with a Kineticist, but I was thinking of combining Psionic Shielding with Evasion boosts. Tech Specialists get (Int/5 + 3) Shields back any round they're not hit at level 10 (13 with 50 Int). Kineticists get +Level every round, guaranteed. That's not a bad comparison on the surface.
But Tech Specialists have perks that make their Shields more resilient and Paralyzing Shock/Overcharge/Stun weapons to force enemies to lose turns.
Kineticists have a Blind, a Trip and +10 Evasion. And Stun weapons, depending.
Evasion is kind of slow to get going, though. And one of the best Evasion items is a melee weapon (Rouser, +10). The highest Evasion Staff is +5.
And while the Light Jetpack is mostly redundant for Kineticists, it's still the best Evasion Accessory in the game.

Definitely something to try out, I didn't go that hard into evasion when testing out psionic shielding. I would actually go with the trip build if I was to try that one out fully. Coincidentally, the trip staff happens to be the staff that gives you the best evasion chance. You could rely on that, entropic leech/entropic whip and geothermal spike until you get to Dhaal where you could completely change out your build. IF you want to go fully into evasion, switch out the Staff for the Rouser and then buy the hailstorm for a ranged trip weapon.

You'd reach 50 evasion with the +10 from the rouser +10 from levitation +20-24 from the leopard print jumpsuit or the jumper space suit and +10 evasion from the light jetpack.

If you maintain debris field you might be able to reliably keep from really ever getting hit. Does feel like kind of a waste to be using the light jetpack when you can already fly but hey I guess you're using that for increased aerial maneuverability and it sucks that you can't have something more useful in that slot. Only problem with this build is that it requires 40 physique and max aim and one of the blessings of kineticist is being able to completely dump aim.

Edit oh and the other weakness and annoyance is that when you activate haste it will default to a melee attack for the first round of the power.

 

[Theron]

As for the trip weapons and freeze weapons I'm aware that there are a number of ranged options for both but you missed the most important qualification for a good Kineticist weapon: it needs to be crushing.

The point was the pool of 'good Kineticist weapons' is small. If you insist on Crushing, that reduces the pool even further. Though the two Melee Trip weapons are Crushing. And I think all the Melee Stun weapons are, too.

One of the more powerful and easy combos to pull off with the Kineticist is freezing an enemy and then hitting them with a crushing weapon, it's actually something they implemented with telekinetic warrior and makes that ability slightly edge out third eye aim imo. Hell it's an entire build for the class, that's only weakness is that it pidgeonholes you into relying on ice and kinetic damage. Most other builds start a combo that way with Entropic leach and then hitting them with a weapon that is crushing and inflicts another status effect they can combo with on top of that. The sleet shaft is notable in that it can just freeze combo forever and combos beautifully with Entropic whip which has an incredibly high chance to freeze an enemy.

I feel like Kineticists were supposed to rely on powers more than weapons, which is why they get so much Energy. But as you note, the powers cost so much compared to their damage output that it's often not worth it, and you're better off fishing for Deep Freeze. (If it's like the Freeze Chance weapon flag, it's based on the target's Freezing Resistance.)

gravity flux just is too energy intensive for too little results in my experience))

It does eat their turn to stand up. That's something, I guess. I keep saying it's too bad Deep Impact doesn't proc off of Trip -> Geothermal Spike.

If you maintain debris field you might be able to reliably keep from really ever getting hit.

The idea is not to entirely avoid getting hit, it's that average incoming damage doesn't overwhelm Psionic Shielding. Psychic Armor helps, too. You get to decrease incoming damage by Level, then by Level again, if it actually hits HP.

Only problem with this build is that it requires 40 physique and max aim and one of the blessings of kineticist is being able to completely dump aim.

Well, Kineticist is the best Gym bro/bunny in the game. 200 Energy = 4 workouts.

Personally, I'm hoping for a higher Evasion staff. Or any Staffs past Uveto at all. With the way Psionically Attuned works, they could stand to be a bit more generous with the additional stats, and pull back on base damage a bit. Ideally, an Evasion + modest Crit Bonus for Deep Impact.
The other levels of Psi-Noise Generators would be nice, too.
And repairing the Broken Psi Amp. Savin has said he intends to write it eventually. I don't know what it will do.

 

[mallowmar42]

I feel like Kineticists were supposed to rely on powers more than weapons, which is why they get so much Energy. But as you note, the powers cost so much compared to their damage output that it's often not worth it, and you're better off fishing for Deep Freeze. (If it's like the Freeze Chance weapon flag, it's based on the target's Freezing Resistance.)

In my experience depending on the build you rely on your weapons and your powers in equal amounts. The large pool of energy is still necessary because you will burn through it. Entropic Leech is such a good power because despite it's description it deals alright damage and sets you up for a freeze combo while helping mitigate your rather dire energy use.

You are right I think that it works like the freeze chance with weapons because in my experience it's much harder to deep freeze resistant enemies. I think the actual freeze chance on entropic whip is modified somehow because it's much more consistent then either weapons or entropic leech, entropic leech is about as consistent at max willpower as the weapon flag in my experience.

Also it should be mentioned I actually really love the fact that kineticist feels like a psychic monk, using powers and attacks in equal measure and their best weapons happen to be monk themed weapons: unarmed, staves, and electically charged punching and kicking aids.

It does eat their turn to stand up. That's something, I guess. I keep saying it's too bad Deep Impact doesn't proc off of Trip -> Geothermal Spike.

doesn't proc off of stun -> Acid Cloud either. If it did you could literally melt enemies. Might even justify the extreme cost of acid cloud too (again a really good power but a bit too expensive. It's the most expensive power you can get!) From what I can understand it only procs if something has a random crit chance, most of your powers do not have a random crit chance I only discovered that some of them do because I was playing around with deep impact actually. Was just testing out powers on my favorite punching bag Dr Lash, just mashing through using the same power over and over again and was noticing that he kept getting stunned for no reasons on certain powers. Yeah turns out Entropic Whip and Gravity Crush have random crits on them.

The idea is not to entirely avoid getting hit, it's that average incoming damage doesn't overwhelm Psionic Shielding. Psychic Armor helps, too. You get to decrease incoming damage by Level, then by Level again, if it actually hits HP.

Obviously with an evasion of 50 you probably only need to toss up debris field occasionally which helps with maintaining energy levels.

Personally, I'm hoping for a higher Evasion staff. Or any Staffs past Uveto at all. With the way Psionically Attuned works, they could stand to be a bit more generous with the additional stats, and pull back on base damage a bit. Ideally, an Evasion + modest Crit Bonus for Deep Impact.
The other levels of Psi-Noise Generators would be nice, too.
And repairing the Broken Psi Amp. Savin has said he intends to write it eventually. I don't know what it will do.

Clearly what the Kineticist is missing is dedicated gear in general. It does feel like we're missing more attuned weapons. Part of the reason I feel so strongly about Kineticists being melee focused is because all of their dedicated weapons are melee weapons and their dedicated weapons after Tarkus tend to be incredibly good. Generally the best option honestly. As for an evasion staff I would like to see that too though I worry that already exists with the hook staff.

I would also like to see a Psi-Noise Generator that is worth using. I feel like a large part of what makes Vitality Siphon so terrible is that you don't have a good Psi-Noise Generator to make it work...maybe? I don't know cause honestly there are a lot of really good accessories late game. An accessory that adds a condition to any attack made with an attuned weapon could be really interesting.

 

[Theron]

doesn't proc off of stun -> Acid Cloud either. If it did you could literally melt enemies.

You generally can't apply Stun to already Stunned targets, so I wouldn't expect that.

From what I can understand it only procs if something has a random crit chance, most of your powers do not have a random crit chance I only discovered that some of them do because I was playing around with deep impact actually. Was just testing out powers on my favorite punching bag Dr Lash, just mashing through using the same power over and over again and was noticing that he kept getting stunned for no reasons on certain powers. Yeah turns out Entropic Whip and Gravity Crush have random crits on them.

That's really useful info. Force Darts can, too.
Next question: What determines the Crit rate? Is it always 5%? Is it set for each Power? Is it based on a stat? Does it inherit from one of your weapons? Inquiring minds (and the Wiki) want to know!
Actually, making Power Crit chance based off of Intelligence would make it a lot more valuable.

As for an evasion staff I would like to see that too though I worry that already exists with the hook staff.

5 is good, but it looks kind of paltry next to the Rouser. We have two planets without any Staffs at all. Surely there's room for more.

I would also like to see a Psi-Noise Generator that is worth using. I feel like a large part of what makes Vitality Siphon so terrible is that you don't have a good Psi-Noise Generator to make it work...maybe?

While it would help, the first is on Zheng Shi. Presumably, the 2nd would be on Dhaal and the 3rd on Phaedra. That's way too late to make a Level 4 Perk choice usable.

Spoiler: Vitality Siphon Analysis 2

At Level 4, PV restores 93.75 Energy. VS needs 6+ applications to keep up (28 rounds). And 1 round each time is setup. Keeping in mind, this is if you don't use powers.
At best, you can afford 2 Force Darts or 1 Thermal Sunder/Kinetic Burst and come out about even.

At Level 12 PV restores 150 Energy. VS needs 10 applications (40 rounds).
With +100% Energy, VS restores 45 Energy per use, so it would need 3+ applications. How many combats take 12+ rounds?
That's about 1 Acid Cloud every 4 rounds. PV lets you use 3 Acid Clouds/combat.
But the Psi-Noise Generator 3 doesn't exist (yet).

For healing you need to do ((Steele's HP * 0.75) * 2) in damage to even it out, after you start taking HP damage.

Having written all that, I've come around to the idea that Vitality Siphon is a somewhat different playstyle.

Spoiler: Playstyle Analysis

PV: Enables double Alpha-Strikes. Fully restore Energy in 2 easy combats at most. At Level 12, you can sustainably use 150 worth of powers in one combat. If the fight somehow goes very long, it's capped.
VS: More sustain. By default, you can use up to 15 Energy worth of Powers while VS is active and never run out. With Psi-Noise Generator 1, it's 22 Energy. With P-NG 3, 45. But if you do run low, it's really bad at restoring your Energy.
It actually seems best for the Entropy Leech->Crushing + occasional other powers strategy. Is it worth losing 1-in-4 rounds, though?

Problems, even with the above:
1. Combats don't last long enough for VS to pull ahead. If they do, it's because you're doing no damage 1-in-4 rounds and limiting yourself to weaker powers.
2. The enemy needs to take at least 2 turns of damage, or using VS is a waste. Can one-shot? Entropy Leech only! Edge case?
3. Alpha Strikes are often more valuable, because it gives the enemy less time to do things to you. The fact you heal while VS is active helps with that, admittedly.
4. VS is vulnerable to disruption. If you're grappled/stunned for 2 of it's rounds, you have a net Energy loss.
5. VS doesn't scale by default. You need to devote an Accessory slot to it. PV lets you use 93/112/150 Energy per fight sustainably just for leveling up. And only 1 of the scaling Accessories exists.

I don't know cause honestly there are a lot of really good accessories late game. An accessory that adds a condition to any attack made with an attuned weapon could be really interesting.

Or maybe an accessory that increases the Crit rate of powers.

 

[mallowmar42]

You generally can't apply Stun to already Stunned targets, so I wouldn't expect that.

comboing removes the condition it combos with. Hitting an enemy that is stunned with Acid Cloud removes stun, I've tested this with mind crush which itself is a stun with a multiple round duration. This is what makes the sleet shaft so powerful as well, when you hit an enemy with a frozen enemy with a crushing weapon it removes the freeze condition, with the sleet shaft you can in fact freeze an enemy on an attack that combos with freeze and then leave them frozen for the next round or hit them with multiple crushing hits in a single round if you have haste up.

Notably, what makes geothermal spike worth it despite the fact it's weaker than the other combo options (stun -> acid cloud and deep freeze -> crush) is that geothermal spike doesn't remove the condition that triggers its combo, otherwise I would consider it the weakest kinteticist combo. Ironically because it can combo multiple times in a row it burns a lot more energy than other builds. Its damage is entirely dependent on geothermal spike, just taking down Dr. Lash burns about half of your energy, taking down a Phaedran Warbot takes almost everything you got including a use of PV. The biggest weakness aside from incredibly high energy use is the fact you're completely useless against anything that can fly.

That's really useful info. Force Darts can, too.
Next question: What determines the Crit rate? Is it always 5%? Is it set for each Power? Is it based on a stat? Does it inherit from one of your weapons? Inquiring minds (and the Wiki) want to know!
Actually, making Power Crit chance based off of Intelligence would make it a lot more valuable.

Too bad force darts is probably one of your worst attacks, it's stupidly inaccurate even when your intelligence is maxed out and intelligence is supposed to affect the hit chance of powers with a miss chance. I think it's treated the same as if you were making extra attacks so the first attack is accurate and the accuracy is severely decreased for the next two bolts, but you don't have any weapon that can give it bonus hit rate so it misses all the time otherwise it could be used for crit fishing. Still by the time you get Deep impact it's more useful to freeze fish with entropic leech than to crit fish with the darts.

Something to test, maybe I'll pull my kineticist away from the train station on Phaedra where I left them and kit them out with as much crit gear as I can put on them and then shoot Lash with a bunch of darts to get a really quick large sample size. Honestly it'd be easier if somebody who knew how to open the game up and look at it's guts could tell us. As for crit rate, there's a reason that I think that Deep Impact should give a flat crit chance increase.

5 is good, but it looks kind of paltry next to the Rouser. We have two planets without any Staffs at all. Surely there's room for more.

Five might be paltry but it puts it into the top six evasion weapons, actually looking at the weapons to see what the evasion weapons were if you went with the Leopard Print Jumpsuit you could actually use the deconstructor gauntlets instead of the Rouser, which is slightly better not that it probably matters on your evasion build as your melee weapon is essentially a stat stick.

While it would help, the first is on Zheng Shi. Presumably, the 2nd would be on Dhaal and the 3rd on Phaedra. That's way too late to make a Level 4 Perk choice usable...
...Having written all that, I've come around to the idea that Vitality Siphon is a somewhat different playstyle.

Spoiler: Playstyle Analysis

PV: Enables double Alpha-Strikes. Fully restore Energy in 2 easy combats at most. At Level 12, you can sustainably use 150 worth of powers in one combat. If the fight somehow goes very long, it's capped.
VS: More sustain. By default, you can use up to 15 Energy worth of Powers while VS is active and never run out. With Psi-Noise Generator 1, it's 22 Energy. With P-NG 3, 45. But if you do run low, it's really bad at restoring your Energy.
It actually seems best for the Entropy Leech->Crushing + occasional other powers strategy. Is it worth losing 1-in-4 rounds, though?

Yeah the playstyle it works with is a geothermal spike build, the problem is that the equipment you need arrives really late in the game. If you can reliably regen 25 energy a turn then you can afford to cast geothermal spike as often as the build requires. Every time you trip an enemy with the hook staff you reliably have 3 rounds of geothermal spikes you can cast, so if you pop VS you can almost use that power indefinitely. If you fish for Deep Freeze -> crush before every attack you'll basically never run out of energy.

The powers honestly feel purpose built for each other. The main problem is that you kind of need to rush to Zheng-Shi to get the first noise generator.

Problems, even with the above:
1. Combats don't last long enough for VS to pull ahead. If they do, it's because you're doing no damage 1-in-4 rounds and limiting yourself to weaker powers.
2. The enemy needs to take at least 2 turns of damage, or using VS is a waste. Can one-shot? Entropy Leech only! Edge case?
3. Alpha Strikes are often more valuable, because it gives the enemy less time to do things to you. The fact you heal while VS is active helps with that, admittedly.
4. VS is vulnerable to disruption. If you're grappled/stunned for 2 of it's rounds, you have a net Energy loss.
5. VS doesn't scale by default. You need to devote an Accessory slot to it. PV lets you use 93/112/150 Energy per fight sustainably just for leveling up. And only 1 of the scaling Accessories exists.

Some of the above problems are solved if you proc VS right after tripping an enemy: you can't get cc-ed yourself, and it helps maintain what is probably the most expensive alpha strike mitigating about 66 energy of what would normally cost you 75 energy (as long as you have the accessory equipped).

You still have the problem that PV is still more useful for two trip -> spike combos but this would allow you to make a third without losing as much energy. The problem is what non boss enemies can withstand nine crit geothermal spikes? The only regular enemy that I've come across that is that tanky is the warbot on Phaedra and they can take almost exactly 9 crit geothermal spikes in addition to the weapon damage you're doing to get there.

Working this out I can now see the use case for gravity flux. Basically you should really only take it if you plan on maining geothermal spike as your main power as you can just trip and spike whole groups as gravity flux has a near guaranteed trip chance, though they tend to stand up after only one or two rounds at most (still that's probably two enemies out of the fight).

 

[mallowmar42]

Update Post:
Combos do not in fact remove their conditions. It just so happens that the stun that custom shock gear inflicts isn't as good than the stun that deep impact crits inflict. Testing out a crit fishing build right now. Will post more about it in a bit.

 

[Theron]

Too bad force darts is probably one of your worst attacks, it's stupidly inaccurate even when your intelligence is maxed out and intelligence is supposed to affect the hit chance of powers with a miss chance.

The tooltip describes them as 'lower-accuracy'. I think you're right, and they are 'flurry' attacks. Which means that no matter how high the Accuracy bonus from Intelligence is, each one has a 45% chance of missing (IIRC). Of course, if you use them on a Stunned target, all 3 will always hit. Acid Cloud is 5x Energy. Does it do 5x damage? My testing* suggests it does about 3x. Not a problem for PV, but might factor in for VS.
*Wetraxxel Brawler: 20% Kinetic, 0% Corrosive.

Some of the above problems are solved if you proc VS right after tripping an enemy: you can't get cc-ed yourself, and it helps maintain what is probably the most expensive alpha strike mitigating about 66 energy of what would normally cost you 75 energy (as long as you have the accessory equipped).

How are you calculating that?

Working this out I can now see the use case for gravity flux. Basically you should really only take it if you plan on maining geothermal spike as your main power as you can just trip and spike whole groups as gravity flux has a near guaranteed trip chance, though they tend to stand up after only one or two rounds at most (still that's probably two enemies out of the fight).

Chance to stand up is based on target's Intelligence. If you could Stun them, they'd probably stay down longer.

It just so happens that the stun that custom shock gear inflicts isn't as good than the stun that deep impact crits inflict.

Really? They seem identical to me. Stun wears off next turn (denies target 2).

 

[mallowmar42]

Okay just finished testing out the crit rate on powers using force darts, everybody give our illustrious punching bag Dr Lash a round of applause for his participation in this scientific experiment. Thank you Dr Lash and thank you for your more than 20 million credits in contribution to my wallet, if I ever figure out what to do with that much money I'm sure it'll be useful.

So to start things off I should say the gear I was using, I went with the highest crit bonus gear available at least as listed on the wiki.
Melee Weapon: Plasma Katana
Ranged Weapon: Supercharged Laser Pistol
Armor: Tech Modded Jumpsuit
Accessory: Reaper's Cloak (only available through cheats or playing while halloween events are active).

This setup gave me a melee and ranged crit chance of 30%, at the time I wasn't sure if the crit chance of force darts might be based off of either of those so I maximized both. I then set out to do the tedious task of hitting Dr. Lash with 1000 force darts as I figured 1000 hits would be a good sample size for this experiment. Perhaps if I valued my time less and this information more I could have shot him with 10k force darts but I didn't feel like doing that, I'll leave a sample size of 10k force darts to somebody else.

The fights themselves weren't actually to difficult or RNG heavy, as long as I opened with levitate and debris field I could pretty consistently stunlock Dr. Lash until I killed him with a death of a thousand cuts or more accurately a death of about 45 force darts (give or take 5 force darts depending on the amount of crits). In fact this strategy was so strong that I never once ran out of energy if I used PV but also I only actually died once because I got incredibly unlucky in one fight.

During this experiment I learned what the flat crit rate of your powers probably is, whether weapons and equipment effect that crit rate, some information about condition comboing, and some more info on how powerful Deep Impact is. First the crit rate of your weapon melee or ranged has no effect on the crit rate of your powers this isn't surprising because your weapon having bonus hit rate also doesn't effect the accuracy of force darts. I already knew that about the bonus hit rate but I wanted to make sure with the crit bonus just in case of this during this test. I'm actually kind of relieved this is the case because now I don't have to test which set of weapons would provide the bonus crit rate, so that saves me hitting Dr Lash with another 1000 to 2000 force darts; yay for me and yay for Dr. Lash.

On the other hand armor and accessory bonuses to crit rate do apply. My armor and accessory were providing a 10% bonus crit chance and it was very noticable. Which brings me to the calculated crit chance after 1000 force dart hits (I actually fired 1087 force darts and 83 of those were misses) I ended up with a total of 196 crits, not including misses I crit just over 19.5% of the time if you factor in misses the crit rate was about 18%. If you factor in an error rate of 5% and the gear I had that means standard crit rate is 5% as would be expected. Sometimes I would run hot and crit with every single dart sometimes it would take two or three rounds to get a single crit, though I would crit fairly consistently about every round or two depending.

Finally about condition comboing and Deep Impact in general. I learned very quickly from this that condition comboing from kineticist does not actually remove the condition just that stunned generallly has a very short duration generally one round after it has been applied, just enough time to combo the enemy with acid cloud. This is the case if you stun with custom shock gear, and if proc deep impact's crit stun with one of your force darts. Deep impact works a little different though, Deep Impact is better than normal stuns. Normally, you cannot inflict stunned on something that is already stunned. If you could I would have seen that already with custom shock gear. Deep Impact is built different, a single deep impact stun from critting will stun something for a single round as normal; critting twice on the same turn with deep impact will stun something for three turns which is why I said that deep impact's stuns were better stuns than custom shock gear in my last post. I hadn't known at the time the exact details on it and I posted that after getting my first deep impact stun with force darts, my first test fire with force darts I crit twice in the same round so I didn't know how it worked just yet. As for crit stunning three times with force darts, I don't know how long that lasts. When I procced deep impact three times in the same turn, Dr Lash never recovered from the stun before I managed to proc deep impact again and I would sometimes go dry for four rounds at a time when this happened. I fired a lot of force darts.

In conclusion: my belief that Deep Impact was more powerful than people gave it credit for was correct. It's actually more powerful than I thought it was honestly. Second, force darts only looks weak at first. It's actually incredibly powerful if you build around it, and it's not very hard to build around force darts. Force darts as a power has the potential to be an incredibly powerful and ironically fairly brainless (considering that its accuracy is based off of your intelligence) build for kineticist. Its power cost and set up allows you to chip down even the toughest enemies.

I still wouldn't use VS to power this as VS is actually terrible for this despite what you might think. If you pop VS before you start blasting with force darts you will only ever receive 30 energy back which means you will lose 6 energy every time you cast force darts. As it turns out VS only procs once a turn, at least for the energy return part of it. You will find yourself losing 6 energy everytime you pop VS as you only gain 30 energy back with a combo that costs you 36 energy. This could make chipping down more durable enemies easier though PV returns enough to not worry and costs almost nothing. From full power with PV you get 50 casts as opposed to the 66 you get with VS. I'm not sure if 16 more casts is worth it considering it gives your enemy more time to break stunlock.

Oh and this build probably falls apart against groups in general seeing as how you usually want to take them down with quick high damage.

This leads me to think that it would be really nice if there was a staff that specifically provided a crit bonus to your melee and powers, it almost feels like that is a specific staff we're missing, as well as an accessory that provided a better crit bonus as well or one that returned energy on a crit.

The tooltip describes them as 'lower-accuracy'. I think you're right, and they are 'flurry' attacks. Which means that no matter how high the Accuracy bonus from Intelligence is, each one has a 45% chance of missing (IIRC). Of course, if you use them on a Stunned target, all 3 will always hit. Acid Cloud is 5 times the Energy cost. Does it do 5 times the damage? My testing suggests it does about 3x. If something is very weak to Corrosive, that might change it. Not a problem for PV, but might factor in for VS.

My experience is that most enemies have low corrosive resistance while having high kinetic resistance and things that are weak to corrosive tend to be very weak to corrosive (some of the enemies on myrellion and robots come to mind here). As you said alpha striking tends to be incredibly valuable. Though if you go for a force dart stunlock build, there is no reason to use Acid Cloud unless you're specifically dealing with crowds or need a quick alpha strike (because for example you're in a group fight). This has caused me to reevaluate the cost of Acid Cloud and I'm now of the opinion that it's price should be dropped to fall inline with other powers, there's no reason it should cost more than 25 power to use. Hell most of the 25 point powers should probably be dropped down to a 20 power cost honestly.

How are you calculating that?

by apparently incorrectly reading what you had listed as the energy return. Every time I think VS might be worth it I realize it probably actually isn't because of the energy returns. Energy is so important to a Kineticist I can't find a reason to ever take it, especially since your accessory slot only seems more and more monopolized. More and more I'm learning to hate the 15 power cost of this shit skill, it might useful if you could do it for free.

Chance to stand up is based on target's Intelligence. If you could Stun them, they'd probably stay down longer.

Really? They seem identical to me. Stun wears off next turn (denies target 2).

Yeah apparently the enemies on Phaedra or big dummies then. They took three rounds to stand up pretty consistently where as the genius (and best punching bag) Dr. Lash got up in one unless he got deep impact stunned in which case you'd get three rounds to spike him. As for stun length already covered that in the crit findings.

 

[Theron]

Thanks for the test. Saves me from doing it.

Armor: Tech Modded Jumpsuit

Witch's Robe is better (10). Which is actually pretty appropriate. Could free up the Accessory slot for Psi-Noise Generators. Bad defenses, though.

Deep Impact is built different, a single deep impact stun from critting will stun something for a single round as normal; critting twice on the same turn with deep impact will stun something for three turns...

That is very interesting.

Oh and this build probably falls apart against groups in general seeing as how you usually want to take them down with quick high damage.

I'm fairly certain there are enough other powers you can take for that scenario.

Every time I think VS might be worth it I realize it probably actually isn't because of the energy returns. Energy is so important to a Kineticist I can't find a reason to ever take it, especially since your accessory slot only seems more and more monopolized. More and more I'm learning to hate the 15 power cost of this shit skill, it might useful if you could do it for free.

Indeed. I want to like it. I really do. But that Energy cost compared with the returns and the fact it has a round of setup every 4 rounds is killer.
I still say it would be fine if it lasted all fight. Or gave 10% Max Energy, so it doesn't fall further behind PV every time you get a new Mental Endurance.
Even both probably wouldn't be overpowered. At Level 12 it would mean every damage power effectively costs 20 less (and can refund the difference). Buffs still cost the same.
With PV giving 150, a fight would have to last 8.25 rounds for VS to be better. (Factoring in the startup cost.)

 

[mallowmar42]

Thanks for the test. Saves me from doing it.

You're welcome. I had the game open and I wanted to say something about crit rate but I hate saying something without first confirming it so I just decided to test out the crit rate.

Witch's Robe is better (10). Which is actually pretty appropriate. Could free up the Accessory slot for Psi-Noise Generators. Bad defenses, though.

Yeah only reason I didn't use that was because it wasn't listed on the table in the wiki, somebody should really update the armor table. As for defenses, once you get the crits going this build has the least need for defenses out of any of the kineticist builds (with the exception of group fights). Essentially your crit chance is your defense as you're just trying to pull off enough deep impact strikes to keep your opponent from ever being able to attack. Keep in mind all of this is against Dr. Lash and while it seems like he's a pushover because I hit him with a thousand force darts and only died once, some of those fights were pretty close. Most other enemies can't do much against a deep impact force darts build. The only exceptions I can think of are the phaedran warbot because of how much hp it has and it's kinetic resistances, the milodans (at least when fought at appropriate level) because they are flat immune to stuns with their berserk status, and dangerous group fights like the factory group fight on dhaal (a lot of high hp enemies). One thing to note, from what little testing I did while making this post, while the berserk status on the Milodans makes them immune to the stun of deep impact it makes them so easy to hit that they might as well be stunned for the purposes of accuracy.

The defenses of the robe aren't actually so bad I wouldn't use it either, it has a very solid evasion bonus with a +12 which actually means that it has the 15th highest evasion bonus out of all the armor you can get. Equip that with the rouser, the royal shard bow, a bioenhancement shield and levitation and you're looking at 42% evasion modifier which helps makes up for the rng nature of force darts and deep impact. As for trading out the reaper's cloak for the psi-noise generator could be worth it. That would make it so VS actually paid for itself and three casts of force darts with 1.5 energy to spare, though in this case I think I'd rather go for having a 20% crit chance to be honest, PV covers this build easy enough as is. The main problem is that the two most important pieces of gear for this build are exclusive to halloween events. Why does halloween get the best gear? Probably because halloween is the best holiday.

I'm fairly certain there are enough other powers you can take for that scenario.

Notably Acid Cloud would be an expensive but very available alpha strike for this build. Most group enemies have lower health than solo enemies so a single acid cloud would probably be enough to drop one opponent every other round if you got a crit stun every round with force darts.

Indeed. I want to like it. I really do. But that Energy cost compared with the returns and the fact it has a round of setup every 4 rounds is killer.
I still say it would be fine if it lasted all fight. Or gave 10% Max Energy, so it doesn't fall further behind PV every time you get a new Mental Endurance.
Even both probably wouldn't be overpowered. At Level 12 it would mean every damage power effectively costs 20 less (and can refund the difference). Buffs still cost the same.
With PV giving 150, a fight would have to last 8.25 rounds for VS to be better. (Factoring in the startup cost.)

There are so many things working against VS: the cost, the short duration, the fact that unlike PV it doesn't have as much growth, the fact the energy return only happens once a round, it eats up a turn to activate without any return. Despite all these problems it feels like it's so close to being good which is what makes it so disappointing.

 

[Theron]

Yeah only reason I didn't use that was because it wasn't listed on the table in the wiki, somebody should really update the armor table.

It's listed on the Clothing table. Because they're technically different things, I guess.

The main problem is that the two most important pieces of gear for this build are exclusive to halloween events. Why does halloween get the best gear? Probably because halloween is the best holiday.

Thank goodness for Cheats. At least the Witch costume can be bought. Reaper's Cloak is a random drop.

What implant did you install, by the way?

 

[mallowmar42]

Apparently my last reply requires moderator approval for some reason

 

[Theron]

I saw it, then it disappeared. I wondered what happened. I don't recall anything objectionable.

We've talked Vitality Siphon to death. It's probably the biggest problem with the class. I hope it gets addressed.
Any other glaring problems?

 

[mallowmar42]

Probably because i have a habit of editing grammar mistakes in my posts and maybe I've done that a few too many times.

Yeah we've talked a lot about Vitality Siphon though I wonder how much the energy on it really matters if you have a steady supply of Power potions, that was the other thing I brought up in my post as well as the Iimplants if you didn't see that.

 

[General Drayfox]

Kineticist seems pretty underpowered and in need of a moderate reworking.


Issues in my opinion are as follows:
1.
In my opinion there are just too many active abilities that end up cluttering the UI, and it would be preferable to have a few less but keep upgrading the ones you do have; instead of picking a new active ability nearly every level up you instead have the option of upgrading an existing power one level, passive ability the next, and then a new active ability the level after that, or something similar. Instead of picking geothermal spike for example, perhaps you could just upgrade thermal sunder into a slightly buffed version of geothermal spike?
2
A lot of options you have aren't worth picking over their counterparts in any case. (Thermal Sunder > Kinectic Burst, Psytuned Vitality > Psionic Shielding, Psychogenic Vim > Vitality Siphon, Debris Field > Vortex Brand, Gravity Crush > Psychic Slam)
3.
Compared to the other classes, Kineticist seems to have considerably worse counterparts in the auto-assigned perks, for example 'Unnatural Reserves' is pretty poor compared to 'Die Another Day' (Same effect as the Kineticist's, except with 25% energy AND a free flash grenade), 'Single Minded' and even 'Shield Regen' I'd argue, since shields recharge between fights, stop you from taking damage in the first place, and you get it a full four levels before the kineticist gets 'Unnatural Reserves'.
The Mercenary class getting a larger potential willpower increase from 'Iron Will' than the Kineticist gets from 'Steel Will' also doesn't sit right, not to mention the aformentioned 'Single Minded' willpower bonus.
4.
Some perks are just bad, even useless, such as 'Telekinetic Warrior' and 'Third Eye Aim' (both on level 7, spoiled for choice really). I can see the logic in 'Telekinetic Warrior' as being immune to disarms (in a roundabout fashion) is situationally useful, unfortunately it's on a class that most likely isn't using their weapons for the vast majority of their damage anyway. And 'Third Eye Aim' is just... not good, if it were additional instead of a replacement that'd be getting somewhere, but I think just replacing these with different upgrades for Force darts or something would be a better option.
I also understand the thinking behind 'Mind Trick', an expensive but guaranteed way to break a grapple, one of the most dangerous and annoying status effects! It just doesn't work in practice, given that there is nothing stopping the enemy from just... grapplnig you again. And again. And even again! And now you don't have any energy left and you're still grappled. Making this a much cheaper action, or keeping the high cost and making it work for multiple rounds as a passive defense could work to fix it.
Having 3 entire perks dedicated to increasing your energy pool is a waste of potential, and leaves you weaker than the other classes considering that these upgrades are essential to play a very energy-intensive class. A single perk that gives extra energy for every point willpower might work, say 2 energy per point in willpower or 1 energy per libido for bimbos could be a good starting point.
I'd also argue that 'Mind Crush' really doesn't need it's cooldown, it's already fairly expensive, doesn't always work, and doesn't work against some enemies altogether, feels a bit needless when the Mercenary gets a low-energy, spammable stun move from level 1. I also think that crits from 'Geothermal Spike' should trigger 'Deep Impact', that might be overpowered in practice but it'd sure be fun as hell, and it be a quick fix if no other changes to the class are implemented.
5.
Unlike the other classes, the Kineticist doesn't have two clearly defined upgrade paths.
For most classes these are ranged and melee focused, and I do like that the Kineticist is going for something different, it just isn't quite working. I think one set of upgrades that focuses on enemy debuffs and defensive attributes so you're tankier and the enemies hit less hard, relying on basic attacks against debuffed enemies to do your damage versus a more glass cannon path that aims to do as much damage as possible, combo'ing active abilities off the status effects other abilties inflicted, and generally being more accurate with better status effect proc and maybe with some higher critical chance/ damage would be a lot of fun.
6.
'Acid Cloud' needs a cooler name and description

I do adore the 'Levitate' ability though, that's a lot of fun and really cool!
Sorry if some of this is unreadable, I'm pretty tired right now so I'll go over it after some sleep.

 

[MagicGal]

I've been lurking in patron and lurking in the forums since the only planet in TiTs was Mheng-ga how is this my first post?

Okay so I just finished a playthrough of the kinteticist (or at least I reacheded max level and defeated the most powerful enemies in the game) so I feel like I can leave a good bit of feedback (and possibly eventually outdated build advice) for the kineticist.

So the kineticist is supposed to be the wizard in this game it feels like. You are very (though not entirely) dependent on your powers. It is not inaccurate to state that when you run out of energy you better hope you've almost finished the fight because otherwise the fight is going to finish you. This means that to effectively play this class you need to find the most efficient way to use your powers to end fights as fast as possible and hopefully topped up on energy for the inevitable next one, simple enough. The kicker here is that all of your powers cause some sort of debuff and usually (but not always) combo off of another debuf. Which leads to the kineticist having actually a fairly fun combat rhythm of coming up with your own combo. Kind of fitting considering that the kineticist in play is actually less of a squishy wizard and more of a surprisingly tanky telekinetic monk but I'll get into that in a bit. Lets talk about the powers, thanks to the power of save editors I've used all of them. I'm going to go over all the powers you can choose from and some of the powers you automatically get from leveling up (or at least the ones worth mentioning)

Stats
You can't start any build without talking about the stats and the Kineticist can be somewhat misleading in what stats you think you need. Your primary stats are going to Willpower first, Physique second, and reflexes third (some might even argue that physique is actually the most important stat when you have to choose implants, and they might be right, they certainly aren't wrong). Aim is worthless entirely as there is very little point in ever shooting a gun (you don't even start with one, that you should tell you how useful they are to you) and int is almost completely trap; by the time Syri leaves mhen-ga int will only be there mostly for flavor, you can dump it. I know some of the abilities say they key off your int, those abilities aren't good.

The reason for physique's importance is that it governs your likelihood of proccing debuffs whether you're delivering them with your fist or you mind. Meanwhile int has fringe case uses for certain powers and is good for a single specific build. It's complicated, basically physique and willpower are always going to be good no matter what you do though.

Powers

Spoiler: Level 1

Force darts is an okay power and the only reason to have any int at all. It largely becomes irrelevant by the time you leave mhen-ga though as I found that Thermal sunder out paced against enemies who were weak against thermal energy and most things are weaker against thermal energy than they are kinetic. Plus even with maxed out int the accuracy on this attack is pathetic. It attacks three times and if it hits twice it does as much damage as your level 2 power and if it hits thrice then it does more! It almost never hits three times. Still can pull you out of a sticky situation with some luck.

Spoiler: Level 2

The level 2 powers vary in how powerful they actually are. Kinetic Burst is bad, like really bad. Disarm is a terrible status effect and will actually frequently make an enemy more dangerous (looking at you rusher) plus it does kinetic damage which is frequently the most resisted damage an enemy has usually followed by thermal and hey the other power is thermal which means it will probably do more damage. On top of that it sunders which is a better status effect.

A special shout out goes to entropic leach which is actually a power house in disguise, it regens a pathetic amount of energy (for energy regen purposes entropic leach feels too weak I feel like it should regen 5% of your energy instead of 5 flat energy that way it improves with your level to match the fact you have the largest energy pool) deals one of the best damage types in the game (a damage type that is only weak on uveto) and it deep freezes enemies which sets you up to deal double damage if your weapon has the crushing flag. What weapons have the crushing flag, I hear you ask? All of your best melee weapons. Also don't let the description of the ability fool you when it says it inflicts the freeze effect rarely.

Spoiler: Level 3

Psytuned Vitality as has been stated before Pystuned Vitality vastly outperforms Psionic Shielding but hey you're not the techspecialist so I guess we don't want to step on their toes shrugs. Psytuned vitalities healing is the least of what it does, end game it might allows you to heal enough health to take maybe one or two more hits if you're lucky the real big thing is it doubles the amount of hp you get every level. Psionic shielding I guess can return 12 hp every round? That might be a lot more healing than Psytuned vitality seeing as how you don't have to use a power and it'll eventually more than double it but it's still not enough to matter. I'd say the restoration on both need to be buffed, maybe add a percentage on top of a flat amount so they scale better but that might be too powerful.

Spoiler: Level 4

Other people have gone over Psychogenic Vim and Vitality Siphon. Psychogenic is so much better it hurts, but hey what did you expect? Getting a large amount back instead of some energy and health over time is always going to be better, every class that has something like this is the same. I actually have zero criticism or feedback for Psychogenic Vim and I'm going to stop talking about it because it is an odd name to keep typing out. Vitality Siphon is truly terrible, like I can see no reason to take this ability. Every build of Kineticist needs an effective way to regen energy fast in combo and Vitality Siphon isn't that, absolutely worthless.

Spoiler: Level 5

Both abilities have their pros and cons. Both deal Unavoidable damage which is arguably the best damage in the game (it's unavoidable!) both serve their purpose as crowd control. Honestly Entropy Waves probably edges out Gravity Flux IMO, frequently I found that the most effective way to deal with group fights is to just burn down each enemy as fast as you can individually rather than try to toss out expensive group attacks and Entropy Waves allows you to do that while doing group damage. Still Gravity Flux trips enemies every round and you just got psychogenic vim last level (fuck) so you can just nuke a whole group of enemies without getting touched but you will probably burn all of your energy doing it. Up to you, both are balanced and good aand group fights aren't common enough to worry about it.


Also just to mention Mind Trick: this is another ability that keys off of int. It's also really bad. Mind Trick could be good if it wasn't so incredibly expensive to use. Early game it'll eat up the majority of your energy late game it'll eat up still a significant amount of energy but not enough to fuck you at least as long as the fight wasn't much of a threat anyway. This is a trap don't use unless you plan on immediately running from the fight.

Spoiler: Level 6

Both of these abilities kind of suck if I'm going to be honest, but if I had to choose one I would go with Telekinetic Warrior over Third Eye Aim because at least Telekinetic Warrior has some use instead of being completely worthless. The lowdown on it is that Telekinetic Warrior allows you add your willpower to your unarmed attacks at a very respectable rate as well as making your unarmed attacks crushing (unarmed kineticist ranged attacks are the only crushing ranged weapons in the game!) so they combo with entropic leach (entropic leach is the true mvp of kineticist seriously) this stacks with your physique aim bonus as well. At the base level you get this at, your unarmed attacks will do a base of 19 damage which means they're your best ranged weapons and not as good as the staff you probably bought on myrellion if you can part with the warden shield or the as your stat stick this can let you drop the frostwyrm at level 7 (when the base damage will shoot up to 27!). Still disarmed basically never comes up so that part is worthless and when you get the ability to fly you will never use a ranged unarmed attack again, so Telekinetic warrior is great for 3 levels!

Meanwhile Third Eye Aim is actively bad. It fails at its central idea which is that it's supposed to make needing other stats less necessary. Your status effects are still dependent on your physique or aim and the best weapons in the game have status effects. If grinding other stats out at the ten ton gym is really such a problem for you just use a save editor.

Spoiler: Level 7

This level is a case of having an alright ability and an amazing ability. Blind is one of the best status effects and Debris field has a chance of triggering it every round for three rounds, the damage increase from Vortex Brand might be nice but it can't compete and dodge chance reduction is a joke. Accuracy for a kineticist is never an issue, the majority of your powers just hit, at least all of the relevant ones at this point do; Force Darts has been gathering dust by this point and I never had trouble hitting things. On top of that you don't get less accurate extra attacks you get haste which is better and both attacks have the same high accuracy. If Fen and the devs want Vortex Brand to compete they need to switch the bonuses it gives you: 50% extra damage and a 15% dodge reduction, and make this power deal some damage on top of that like Debris Field. Debris Field is one of your best abilities and is the reason you can beat the Frost Wyrm at level seven, don't sleep on it.

Spoiler: Level 8

And here is where my opinion is going to differ from other people. At level 8 you can either get Concussive Augmentation or Geothermal Spikes and Geothermal spikes is bad. I know from reading on here that it's recommended but I wouldn't, Geothermal spikes is expensive and the damage isn't good for what it costs. The problem with Geothermal spikes is two things, at the time you get it probably the toughest enemy you'll face is the frostwyrm which you want to use it on but can't because it's flying. Also it's split damage, which is objectively terrible for something that has an energy cost. Split damage can be overlooked on a melee or ranged weapon because it's free, but because this has split damage it feels like it does equivalent damage to thermal sunder. Now admittedly this does change if you can reliably trip enemies and you can do that if you picked up the hook staff on uveto. In fact you can have a pretty strong combo at this point if you go entropic leach>melee attack>thermal spike; but consider that you are targeting the two most resisted damage types in the game and it's flaws become more evident. On top of that, the ability can miss and I'm not playing a kineticist so I have to rely on intelligence and still have unreliable powers, I want my abilities to hit damnit!

Concussive Augmentation on the other hand is actually kind of amazing. Sure the damage isn't great but the next three melee attacks you make will deal that extra unavoidable damage. It doesn't last for the next three rounds, it essentially has three charges. It's still weak and in fact I think both things this level are weak, but I think this is the better choice in the long run. My feedback for both abilities is that they need to cost less energy maybe make concussive augmentation just an always on ability but if you do that it'd just be an auto take. Also did I mention, you can cast this without using up your turn?

Spoiler: Level 9

This is it, the best level. The biggest power gain since level 2 (Entropic leach still mvp). This level you get Levitation, Entropic Whip and Acid Cloud and each and every one of these abilities is amazing; it's a shame you can't have all three, seriously I'd trade out some of the later level abilities to have all three. It really depends on what you want honestly, you sadly have to choose between Acid Mist and Entropic Whip but you really can't go wrong with either. I do think that Acid Cloud edges out Entropic Whip, but that's a personal preference thing; they both fuck.

Entropic Whip is a major powerhouse, remember how I told you intelligence powers aren't worth it? This one's the exception, it can miss and that's based off your intelligence from what I can tell (meanwhile the deep freeze chance is again based off your physique). But it can freeze and it gets random crits, I've hit for over 300 with a random crit on this thing. Seriously you can fight Dr Lash with just this and melee attacks, i've done it and not taken any damage. I've done it and regened my shields completely with Psionic Shields when I was testing that out. I frequently took down dr lash without using up all my energy, you just need a crushing melee weapon with a chance to stun. I sure wonder who has one of those.

Acid Cloud fucks. No seriously, Acid Cloud fucks harder than anything called something as generic as acid cloud should (the name honestly doesn't even fit the description of what you're psionically doing, call it something like Molecular Decay or something). This ability cannot auto crit, yes does suck but it does crit on any immobile enemy which is misleading considering what they mean is that it crits on stunned targets. Get yourself a crushing melee weapon that stuns and combine this with entropic leach and you can drop Dr Lash at level 9. Also the amount of things that I've encountered that are strong against corrosive damage I can count on one hand as opposed to there being an entire planet of the fucks.

Finally I have to shout out levitate: it lasts all battle it gives you a sizable evasion boost, it lets you melee flying enemies, toggling it on is a free action that doesn't take up your turn. If something flies punch it, you don't need to grow wings (unless you want to) or have a stupid jet pack, just fly. Put that stat stick back in your ranged hand and lets move on.

Spoiler: Level 10

This is a weird level, listen I know you'll look back through this and everybody will tell you that Mind Crush is better than Deep Impact and maybe for them it was but I tried both out for a while and I never really used mind crush. Maybe it's the gear I had but I eventually respec-ed into Deep impact and I noticed the difference, my melee attacks that were stunning were stunning a little more often. Sure it's a little thing but it was nice, I get that Mind Crush is good damage with a guaranteed stun that lasts 2-3 turns but the problem is that when you combo your abilities the debuffs disappear, so if I used Acid Cloud to get an auto crit off the stun then the stun would fade. Honestly I just found mindcrush disappointing, I don't think it's over priced I just think that it underperforms.

I would recommend giving Deep impact a flat bonus to your crit rate though honestly and to defend the ability a little bit, no your powers can stun if they crit but they have to be powers that get random crits. A crit from a combo won't stun but a random crit from Entropic Whip will stun. Th power isn't clear that this only accounts for random crits not guaranteed ones and I've only seen two powers ever get random crits: Entropic Whip and Gravity Crush.

Spoiler: Level 11

Yet another level with an incredibly easy choice for powers: haste, haste is better and it's not even a contest. Haste is the reason that Kineticists don't get an additional attack ability, they don't need it. Haste for the price of 25 energy gives you an accurate extra attack for five rounds. Maybe a bit over priced in the energy department (I'd lover it by 10 honestly) but still really good. On top of that using haste just causes you to attack twice with your melee weapon and is treated as a basic attack so you're not even wasting a turn to put up the buff. Hit an enemy with freeze and then cast haste and hit them for two hits of damage (three if you set up Concussive Augmentation, an ability that notably doesn't use up your turn)

Then you have Reality Schism, such a cool name for the worst active power you can get. This costs 25 energy and you're boosting the damage of your active powers by 20%, great. Or I could have just used an active power one additional time. Fixing this isn't even hard, just make it a free action and it becomes a pretty alright take for anybody who took entropy whip or eventually takes Gravity Crush.

Spoiler: Level 12

Final level final powers, sadly also a really easy choice. Psychic Slam is shit and Gravity Crush is amazing, there you go. Gravity Crush hits like a truck, deal unresistable damage and can random crit which means it can deal even more damage and stun if you have deep impact. The scales up with size bit is neither here nor there, probably good against the Frostwyrm but I mean you could handle that ages ago. Psychic slam on the other hand is terrible, pathetic damage dealt in three hits, targets kinetic damage the worst damage type to target. The only upside to Psychic slam is that it is a crushing attack so it deals double damage...on the first of it's three attacks. Against Dr Lash this meant I was dealing a total of 150 odd damage...at level 12...Gravity Crush hit him for around 300 without a crit.

Gear

It's kind of straight forward. For melee weapons just go with the best staff you can get until you reach uveto. At this point you have three options for what your BIS is: hook staff, sleet shaft, or custom shock gear depending on what you're going for. If you rely on geothermal spike for your damage, the hook staff is your BIS. If you decided to go with entropic whip, then you can do some pretty crazy freeze crush combos with the sleet shaft (and honestly if you go this route deep impact and Concussive Augmentation are going to slap pretty hard as everything you do can proc it on a crit and you're going to be meleeing mostly anyway), if you pick up acid cloud then custom shock gear is your BIS melee weapon (it keeps up with the higher damaging staves because it deals electricity damage on top of the kinetic damage and electicity is the best damage in the game)

Ranged weapons are just going to be stat sticks for the majority of the game go with something useful. NaN Deconstructor or Warden shield are the best things you can equip. You do super high damage and can usually hit damage types that they don't resist all that much.

Armor: a bunch of options but what you want is evasion, shields, fortification and defense if you can get it, accuracy and crit are pretty nice too as well. The light harness is a great piece of armor if you can get it early and it'll carry you all the way to level 8 or 9 when you can beat up Shizuya for the armor she gives you, Speaking of the modded yellow clothes are stupidly good and can take you all the way to the end of the game. The Zaika Style Gown is my personal piece of endgame armor but if you don't like your tits out the modded yellow is good enough and the leopard print jumpsuit is also good

Accessory: The-Noise Generator is a trash don't use it, the regeneration is pathetic in combat with the one exception of psychgenic vim but that gives you 150 energy back at level 12 and you have better things that can go here, out of combat it'll make resting more efficient but who the fuck cares? Plus 5 shields and health don't make up for how incredibly mid this is. Helm of terror is a good choice, knitted scarf is a good choice, Reaper's Cloak has a crit bonus which means it's probably BIS for an Entropic Whip build, Shield aug bracers are good, Siegwulf is good, and Signet of bravery is good. I went with the signet (higher melee damage better stat procs)

Builds

As I see it there are really three builds to go for in kineticist

Spoiler: Melter

A good all rounder, no real weaknesses and plenty of strengths. You take Acid Cloud instead of Entropic Whip, your BIS weapon is custom shock gear, you want to do everything to land a stun and then drop Acid Mist for crazy damage. You have survivability because you stun often. You main weakness are things that are strong against acid which aren't common at all, and even then you can just fall back on entropic leach>melee combos. For your standard combo you're going to go Entropic leach>melee>Acid Cloud. Make sure you pop haste when you melee it's always worth it. For implants you could go willpower or physique and your stat importance is Will>physique>ref

Spoiler: Freezer

Insanely high damage and no survivability. You function like a Gunner mercenary with a saurmorian railgun in a way, high risk high reward. Only you're better because you can stun and they can't. Your main weaknesses are anything strong against frost damage as you're entirely dependent on it. Luckily they're usually weak to thermal so just use thermal sunder and hope that's enough; also you're high risk high reward, you do a ton of damage but you need every bit of defense you can muster. When you run out of energy you really are fucked, cause debris field is probably what's keeping you alive. Your BIS weapon is the sleet shaft, too bad you get that on uveto and this build sucks on uveto good luck with the frostwyrm or the siege of korgihold fucker! Sucks 'cause the signet of bravery is the best accessory in the game for you, you need all the physique you can get. Luckily Thermal sunder is good enough for Uveto for the most part. Your stat importance is Phys>INT>WILL=REF you're very stat dependent. Just take the hit to WILL with the steroid implant the 10 extra physique is going to be worth it and you have 5 WILL to spare. Also Deep impact and Concussive augmentation do a lot more for you than the other two builds, consider them mandatory, I've stunlocked Dr Lash to death with crits.

Spoiler: Spiker

Takes off a little bit earlier than the other builds does high damage and you don't have to interact with Shizuya (though you probably still should for her clothes). Your weakness is you have the worst damage type and anything flying fucks you entirely. Your big damage dealer is geothermal spike and your BIS is the hookstaff. You're very similar to the melter and could be one if you wanted honestly, concussive augmentation isn't the biggest loss. You peak on Uveto.

Feedback

Kinetic Burst: This ability is bad there's no reason to take it, could be improved if you changed the damage type to electricity. Honestly what the Psychic monk has been thirsting for is some god damn force lightning. I get that electricity is the wheel house of the tech specialist, but the kineticist has access to every element but that?

Level 3 powers: They feel slightly underpowered in general. I think having a small percentage added to the flat amount of either of them would be nice and really make them feel good when they start to scale as the game goes on. Psionic Shieding needs it the most but again I get that shields are the wheelhouse of the tech specialist.

Vitality Siphon: Needs a complete rework or to have the energy return buffed hard cut down on the cost as well. The fact that the first turn doesn't even return the cost is an insult. Not even going to begin to say it should leech a percentage of energy based on damage dealt cause that sounds like a nightmare to balance. Still maybe you restore a percentage of max energy every round?

Level 5 powers: Feel a bit overpriced that's all, drop the cost of energy by 5 and they're fine for what they are.

Telekinetic Warrior: Way to niche, good for 3 levels at best mostly worthless either up the damage or something maybe add an additional low accuracy attack when unarmed?

Third Eye Aim: Pointless, entirely worthless, very thematic. There's no fixing this, probably just needs to be replaced with something else.

Vortex Brand: Needs to do damage, needs to increase the damage dealt by more, the dodge chance debuff does almost nothing. As of now you're sacrificing a turn to do less damage and guarantee you hit on a class that actually struggles to miss with every ability except the one they get at level 1.

Geothermal Spike: make it do one damage type.

Acid Cloud: My main complaint is how generic the name is: Molecular Disruption, Psionic Deconstruction, Atomic Dispersion. The name is so...blah! Also maybe just a tad overpriced, 30 energy feels more appropriate it fucks but it doesn't fuck 35 energy hard.

Deep Impact: consider giving the player a small crit boost if they take this 5 wouldn't be too much

Reality Schism: Shouldn't take a turn to activate.

Psychic Slam: Damage is too low also consider giving this a chance for random crits as well. If you don't lower the damage then making it unresistable damage probably would make it more worth taking or make all three hits combo with a frozen status.

you have saved me bro, also second on the naming scheme of the ability names being super lame. Maybe the Writers or Gamplay Devs haven't seen enough psychic-oriented media but Acid Cloud or Thermal Sunder sound so basic asf from mind powers? Or the fact that we only get staves for weapons.
Thermal Sunder needs a rewrite for the action description alone; you "spray it", god sake man.
When I read the name, this is what I see Steele doing in my mind

 

[Jn_Sinnombre]

Having 3 entire perks dedicated to increasing your energy pool is a waste of potential, and leaves you weaker than the other classes considering that these upgrades are essential to play a very energy-intensive class. A single perk that gives extra energy for every point willpower might work, say 2 energy per point in willpower or 1 energy per libido for bimbos could be a good starting point.

Also, don't all of the other classes have an immediate 100 bonus energy? it's on level 12 which is the last level yes, but compared to gradually gaining 25 energy every like 5 levels it's far better and has a more immediate benefit to you.]

And yeah giving 2 energy per point in Willpower would be nice! but I think it could just end up being too overpowered(iirc Kineticist "max" willpower with Steel Will is like 80 or smt) maybe it could work like Steel Will and gain 5 energy per 5 willpower you have?

Unlike the other classes, the Kineticist doesn't have two clearly defined upgrade paths.
For most classes these are ranged and melee focused, and I do like that the Kineticist is going for something different, it just isn't quite working. I think one set of upgrades that focuses on enemy debuffs and defensive attributes so you're tankier and the enemies hit less hard, relying on basic attacks against debuffed enemies to do your damage versus a more glass cannon path that aims to do as much damage as possible, combo'ing active abilities off the status effects other abilties inflicted, and generally being more accurate with better status effect proc and maybe with some higher critical chance/ damage would be a lot of fun.
6.

Kineticist does seem to have two upgrade paths but the problem is that it's not dynamic enough, it seems like 1 path is more about just using more raw force and going "Unga Bunga" on your enemies, and the other is about inflicting debuffs and do something akin to battles of attrition where you can outlast your enemies.

The core problem at least for me is that ultimately those two paths don't have much resonance, the skills don't feel like they complement each other unlike the other classes where some skills can do some rather disgustingly OP combos (cough Mercenary)

you have saved me bro, also second on the naming scheme of the ability names being super lame. Maybe the Writers or Gamplay Devs haven't seen enough psychic-oriented media but Acid Cloud or Thermal Sunder sound so basic asf from mind powers?

Kineticist is in a kinda weird place, it's like "Squischy psychic wizard but not really" MAYBE adding something related to tease would spice things up but then it would be an over glorified tease attack class.

 

[Theron]

In my opinion there are just too many active abilities that end up cluttering the UI, and it would be preferable to have a few less but keep upgrading the ones you do have; instead of picking a new active ability nearly every level up you instead have the option of upgrading an existing power one level, passive ability the next, and then a new active ability the level after that, or something similar. Instead of picking geothermal spike for example, perhaps you could just upgrade thermal sunder into a slightly buffed version of geothermal spike?

Part of the appeal of 'Wizard' is having a lot of situational options. The question is 'are they good enough when their situation comes up to use them'?

A lot of options you have aren't worth picking over their counterparts in any case. (Thermal Sunder > Kinectic Burst, Psytuned Vitality > Psionic Shielding, Psychogenic Vim > Vitality Siphon, Debris Field > Vortex Brand, Gravity Crush > Psychic Slam)

Spoiler: Kinetic Burst

Kinetic Burst has two problems:
1 Kinetic is a worse damage type than Thermal.
2. Disarm is borderline worthless. In fact, in some situations, disabling the weapon makes the enemy more dangerous.
I suggest making it Stagger. More generally useful, would synergize with later Status-inflicting powers.

Spoiler: Psionic Shielding

The math on PS makes it pretty close to Rapid Recharge (Tech Specialist 10).
1. Tech Specialists have better Shields (more Defense, -50% vulnerability).
2. Tech Specialists have ways to regen Shields in a hurry, if they do get low.
3. Psituned Vitality synergizes better with Psychogenic Vim and Unnatural Reserves.

Spoiler: Vitality Siphon

I feel like the devs think of Vitality Siphon primarily as a Healing move, and the Energy regen is a bonus. But Psychogenic Vim restores so much HP and Energy there's no contest.
The healing is fine. I think they just need to make the Energy return better. 10% max? At least it wouldn't fall behind PV that way. As-is, it takes longer to catch up as your max Energy increases.

Compared to the other classes, Kineticist seems to have considerably worse counterparts in the auto-assigned perks, for example 'Unnatural Reserves' is pretty poor compared to 'Die Another Day' (Same effect as the Kineticist's, except with 25% energy AND a free flash grenade), 'Single Minded' and even 'Shield Regen' I'd argue, since shields recharge between fights, stop you from taking damage in the first place, and you get it a full four levels before the kineticist gets 'Unnatural Reserves'.

If you took Psituned Vitality, it restores more HP than Die Another Day. Kineticists also have more native healing. Single Minded only works if you're below 1/2 HP and maximizes Will. Are you thinking of another Perk? Shield Regen is pretty good, since it scales with a stat that's easily increased by equipment. But Techs don't have any native healing, relying entirely on Shields.

The Mercenary class getting a larger potential willpower increase from 'Iron Will' than the Kineticist gets from 'Steel Will' also doesn't sit right, not to mention the aformentioned 'Single Minded' willpower bonus.

It does feel weird (Iron > Steel?). On the other hand, Merc doesn't have any abilities that scale off of Will.

Some perks are just bad, even useless, such as 'Telekinetic Warrior' and 'Third Eye Aim' (both on level 7, spoiled for choice really). I can see the logic in 'Telekinetic Warrior' as being immune to disarms (in a roundabout fashion) is situationally useful, unfortunately it's on a class that most likely isn't using their weapons for the vast majority of their damage anyway. And 'Third Eye Aim' is just... not good, if it were additional instead of a replacement that'd be getting somewhere, but I think just replacing these with different upgrades for Force darts or something would be a better option.

People keep ragging on Third Eye Aim, but it lets you ignore Physique and Aim, so long as you're not using a Status attack weapon. Cybernetic Subprocessor gives +5 to both Melee and Ranged damage (where Muscular Stabilization System reduces Physique and Steroidal Muscle Augment penalizes Will). It lets you keep access to more Damage Types and you can use the weapons as Stat Sticks, while actually getting benefit from the Perk.

The real problem with Third Eye Aim is Intelligence doesn't do enough for Kineticists natively*, so there's little incentive to max it out, unless you take TEA.
*Accuracy for 3ish powers? Speed of Thought.

I also understand the thinking behind 'Mind Trick', an expensive but guaranteed way to break a grapple, one of the most dangerous and annoying status effects! It just doesn't work in practice, given that there is nothing stopping the enemy from just... grapplnig you again. And again. And even again! And now you don't have any energy left and you're still grappled. Making this a much cheaper action, or keeping the high cost and making it work for multiple rounds as a passive defense could work to fix it.

It's for people who decided to neglect Intelligence and Physique. If you maxed either, you should be able to reliably escape Grapples, regardless.

I'd also argue that 'Mind Crush' really doesn't need it's cooldown, it's already fairly expensive, doesn't always work, and doesn't work against some enemies altogether, feels a bit needless when the Mercenary gets a low-energy, spammable stun move from level 1.

It's damage scales a lot better than Headbutt, or even Deadly Shock, and is 5 points cheaper. It's cooldown might be a bit much, though. As-is, it can only be used every 5th round (1/6/11).

I also think that crits from 'Acid Cloud' and 'Geothermal Spike' should trigger 'Deep Impact', that might be overpowered in practice but it'd sure be fun as hell, and it be a quick fix if no other changes to the class are implemented.

Acid Cloud crits vs Stunned, Paralyzed and Grappled targets. Kineticist can only inflict Stun (at the moment). Generally, Stuns cannot be applied to already Stunned targets. Gravity Flux -> Geothermal Spike + Deep Impact -> Acid Cloud would be a cool combo, yes, but it also lets you Stun-lock a target to death once you've tripped them, if you have the Energy.

Unlike the other classes, the Kineticist doesn't have two clearly defined upgrade paths.

I feel like the two upgrade paths are Weapons vs Powers.

Acid Cloud' needs a cooler name and description

Because of the way Perks are implemented, I'm afraid the name cannot easily be changed.

And yeah giving 2 energy per point in Willpower would be nice! but I think it could just end up being too overpowered(iirc Kineticist "max" willpower with Steel Will is like 80 or smt) maybe it could work like Steel Will and gain 5 energy per 5 willpower you have?

70 (65+5). Unless there's a Will booster I don't know about. (Resolve no longer boosts max.)

Also, don't all of the other classes have an immediate 100 bonus energy? it's on level 12 which is the last level yes, but compared to gradually gaining 25 energy every like 5 levels it's far better and has a more immediate benefit to you.]

+33 (Level 8), + 17 (Level 12). (100/133/150) Unless I'm misunderstanding.
Kineticists get +25 (Lv 4), +25 (Lv 8) and +50 (Lv 12). (100/125/150/200)

 

[Jn_Sinnombre]

Part of the appeal of 'Wizard' is having a lot of situational options. The question is 'are they good enough when their situation comes up to use them'?

Yeah I think this is the core issue with Kineticist, it has situational options, the problem is that a lot of said situational options aren't very useful compared to other classes' alternatives, it's a "This is a Job for Aquaman" situation but with the other classes having a rather much easier time depending on the situation.

It does feel weird (Iron > Steel?). On the other hand, Merc doesn't have any abilities that scale off of Will.

oh fuck i just realize it's a STEELE Will joke god that's an awful pun, I love it lmao.

People keep ragging on Third Eye Aim, but it lets you ignore Physique and Aim, so long as you're not using a Status attack weapon. Cybernetic Subprocessor gives +5

Isn't it the Cybernetic Subprocessor only on Dhaal? which is the penultimate planet which you will see only at the very end of the game? picking Third Eye so it gets useful once you get a very end-game item doesn't stick with me too much imo, Telekinetic Warrior still sucks ass but it feels it has more long and short term bennefits compared to Third Eye which seems more circumstancial at least for me.

+33 (Level 8), + 27 (Level 12). (100/133/150) Unless I'm misunderstanding.
Kineticists get +25 (Lv4), +25 (Lv 8) and +50 (Lv 12). (100/125/150/200)

Just checked, Yup you are right no worries!

Yeah mental endurance seems stronger in comparison! yet for me it somehow doesn't feel that way, yes it has 50 bonus more energy yet i don't know it feels like it's worse? like Drayfox said i think it's because you end up having less bonus perks on the long run while the other classes end up getting 10 bonus perks, the Kineticist ends up having 9 because of how mental endurance is divided in 3 parts and so 3 perks.