Mental DPS Build Anyone?

Does anyone have a magic build for mental DPS that doesn't see you get steamrolled by almost every other power? I prefer trolling, but with troll role being made quite redundant in 3/4 of the game's content these days, I'm DPSing more and more- with what seems to be one of the worst DPS powers in the game.

Need some additional Information so we can help you:

1. What type of Dps do you prefer?
2. Wich Artifacts do you have?
3. How high are your Artifacts right now?
4. Will you be willing to invest in Dps Artifacts, if you have to Level them up or is it really just to get stuff done without being out-Dps'd all the time?

My observation with Mental since being back is as follows :

The Powerset itself doesn't work "right". Mental's DOT cycles are very irregular and inconsistent, the burst damage is kind of sad, and the Invisibility mechanic is so dysfunctional that it SHOULD be a #1 priority in both Developers and Arkham; simply, it has pieces that should, in theory, fit together that, in practice? Do Not.

Might-based PFTT kind of chugs, and not in a good way; you probably COULD cobble together something from the functional remaining pieces, since a constant rotation would basically maintain a functional output, but you WILL need investment in some Might boosting artifacts. It does have some interesting damage cycle output on a few of its abilities, but the cooldowns make a consistent rotation a little crunchy, and the power interactions no longer make real sense. I wouldn't know a good rotation either, not a Might player, so... Experiment, and maybe get good at clipping / jump cancelling to take extra seconds from the rotation.

Hybrid? Meh. The results are disappointing, I'm sure someone out there has something "good" but for the most part the answer is "no". The offensive power damage cycles aren't consistent enough to maintain throughout an entire weapon combo; the parts of it that used to be good DOT aren't consistent enough to maintain the Hybrid back-end. It has no "great" burst damage to speak of either - you MIGHT be able to come up with something using Grimorium Verum as a replacement PI maintenance / additional damage source. Still not around to testing GV yet, so.

As for a Precision build, you can run something pretty decent, but it's going to require heavy backend from artifacts (level 80 VWD, as well as either level 80 Cog or the Legionnaire's AI, at minimum - you need it to proc, not just provide you with the passive bonus) before it gets "good", and there's not really a "one size fits all" weapon for both Melee and Ranged - the closest being (probably) Brawl, with the Enhanced Shuriken WM / Homerun or Doom Spin WM. The downside is that Mental's Might damage is so questionable that you're basically going to be running 0 offensive Abilities; the upside is you can run Menace, Reflect Pain, and four Shields, and basically never die (as long as you maintain enough space in your rotation timing for your next Shield).

I very regularly chart-top with Mental Might. You can hang with most powers if you're super speed, and have 160+ Grimorium Verum, Scrap of the Soul Cloak, and Eye of Gemini -- if not, then well, you can't. Superspeed loadout is Psychic Prison, Sonic Cry, Whirling Dervish, Mass Terror, Robot Sidekick and Stealth (which while bugged is "reliably" bugged and works 100% the same way, every time). Stealth L/O is Robot, Neo Venom Boost, Speed Drain, Sleep, Pain Blast, and one intentionally-blank spot.

The blank spot must be button mapped to whatever button you use Stealth on. This keeps you from accidentally de-activating stealth by pressing the next input too quickly.

Rotation is Psychic Prison clipped with Stealth, Sleep jump cancelled into Pain Blast, Sonic Cry, Dervish weapon attack cancelled into Mass Terror. Then repeat Prison-Cry-Dervish-weapon cancel-Terror. Any time you can clip with Stealth do so, into sleep jump cancel pain blast, or a supercharge. You may have to cut Dervish short to go directly into Stealth.

Without superspeed you can use Psychic Prison, Sonic Cry, Telekinetic Bolt, Mass Terror, Robot, Stealth. The rotation is similar, but TK Bolt is no Whirling Dervish I've also never used the Acrobatics SC so I don't know how well it works in place of Speed Drain. Vacuum Bubble (or the skimming version) should be fine.

In addition tot he rotation shown you also have to get a feel for when to use a supercharge to proc eye of gemini, and whether to use Neo Venom or Movement SC in any given situation. If you have enough SC built up you can stealth into Neo-Venom and follow with the movement SC.

OR you can go precision and do totally fine without all this flim flam. Mental gets an accelerated Menace (Weapon Buff) mod, making it a very good choice for precision. There are other reason Mental is decent for Prec., but this post is long enough.

That's my cue.

Mental Precision hums right now with the right weapon choice, because you can basically DPS with *just* Menace, and five shields or four shields and RSK as your entire loadout and not really miss the Might damage. It's weird not having an offensive skill, but it's actually kind of refreshing.

Reflect Pain is a severely underrated Shield that does exactly what it says, which improves your DPS. TK Shield and Hard Light Shield both make great pickup coverage; Grandeur allows a consistent second Breakout / control immunity Ability, and I roll with Bastion because I prefer to make myself useful to the group, but you could sub it out for other stuff (if only Mental had a SC worth using, aside from Bastion).

You WILL need to spend some time doing three things - artifact building (you'll want / need a minimum level 80 VWD, a level 80 Cog or Legionnaires, and either Demon's Fang or Mystic Seven), counter game (for Legionnaires but also because weapons fighting means you are vulnerable to counters), and learning how your shield rotation works.

The only real drawback is that - right now - because there's no "one size fits all" weapon, there's not really a universal answer to both Range and Melee DPSing. The Shield range, Reflect Pain, and adding HLS make Melee DPS a possibility, even in some Raids, but it can be a very harrowing experience. As for Range? DW -> Flurry - enjoy, I guess?

Which I just realize I already said. Long Day.

Well, since I went back to Mental I haven't run any alerts or raids as a DPS. I wanted to be a ranged DPS since I don't like being kissy faced with the bosses and bounties. I run the following:
1. Mass Levitation (daze applicator)
2. Telekenetic Bolt (benefits from daze PI)
3. Pyrokenisis (changes PI from daze to terrorized)
4. Mass Terror (benefits from terrorized PI)
5. Invisibility (Sleep and Pain Blast are in that)
6. Psychic Shield
My artifacts are Tetahedron, Grimorium Verum & Solar Amplifier.

Its not the best loadout but it does keep enemies stunned at times so they can be killed. I keep a shield so I can still do pick ups. A guy on youtube has a pretty good melee load out.

kimone has convinced me..one of my mental guys has to switch to Prec...im betting its liberating and devastating...could easily match munis mobility...yeah yeah...and f hammering with might....Prec never has to end...does it Kimone...no empty power bar nonsense ...yeah...that could def work...

My Mental character is one of my higher level ones. I have a lot of alts for different character concepts/themes, but about 3 characters high enough to call mains. One of those three is my Mental character.

She's probably best described as sort of a hybrid controller/DPS. I won't go into all the detail of builds/rotations (not my style of play), and I'd admit my play style with her is probably more suited to crowd control and groups of open world goons than boss fights. That said, she regularly wipes out groups of goons faster than almost any of my other characters (I find Water also very good for that but that's another story), and can hold her own one-on-one with the tougher single goons (like the Mimes and Minotaurs of the Metal content). Overall, I find her pretty effective as a hybrid controller/DPS, and of my favourite characters.

Statswise, I mostly maximise Dominance in gear/augments, with a bias towards Might over Precision (her weapon is the staff) but try to keep them balanced. She mostly uses Mass Levitation (good crowd control), Telekinesis (single targets and tougher opponents), Psychic Shock (once controlled with Telekinesis or Mass Levitation), and TK Shield. I like the Mesmerizing Lasso iconic power also - good for pulling any wayward goons in close enough to mass levitate and then blast - but probably any decent pull ability would do in its place. Demons Fang is her principal artifact (and is probably best suited to a Precision build) but I use the Tetrahedon of Urgrund as well (for the superpowers and Might).

All that said, I don't play the group content much, so she might not work so well for that kind of stuff - YMMV and all that.

(I'm much more about character concept than maximising the effectiveness of any given character, and I think if you experiment enough you can find a good build and loadout for any powerset to do what you want - as an example, I've recently been playing about with my Quantum character who wasn't doing well, and found by trial and error a loadout that works very well for me.)

i wish i could help. two years of trying and i still haven't come up with anything that works for me post revamp. i can give you lots of loadouts that will be fun in open world content or old solo missions but once you move into "at tier" territory and alerts and raids it all falls apart and nothing works.

i have a had time believing anyone else using the powerset being okay with these double casts i experience. psychic shock, telekinesis and cryokinesis almost always fire off a second time immediately after casting them. this might not seem like a big deal but in certain content it is a handicap. in elite raids where i might have to roll away, block , revive someone or hit a short timed cog it messes me up big time. this has been going on over two years.

i also experience heavy infinite cooldowns on various powers-particularly invisibility and terror tendrils. this almost always occurs in raids and at boss fights so much that at times i feel like its being done on purpose to piss me off somehow.

we only have one supercharge. it takes forever to build even using soulcloak, supercharge builders, supercharge mainframe mods and league proficiencies on average i build one bolt barrage per instance and thats it.

we only have one encasement breaker-pyrokinesis. why was this ability taken away from tk bolt and terrorize?

i hate invisibility so much i want people dead.

telekinetic push was such a great power pre revamp/am/wm...now it deals less damage and pushes ads so far back they're fly out of range of most of your other powers.

the powers added to mental post revamp are highly ineffective. psychic prison does not stun enemies when you dps and its a wasted move as a controller as it does not debuff anything. why would a squishy controller need to pull ads away from the tank to him?

i do not understand this whole "robot sidekick" thing that is so valuable to mental. sadly i also handicap myself in that i like to play my characters to their concept, not the devs. i dont like using things that my character wouldn't "in a comic" if that makes sense. my main is telekinetic and telepathic. no where does my guy use a robot sidekick. i get that others might make it work...youre guy is a psychic cyborg of some sort...they do exist in comics as well...but tech stuff is not really what you think of when you think "mental powers".

also my kids are young superheroes. they wont take neo venom.

ugh. i really should just toss my ps4 out the window.

that about sums it up in a sentence.

thankfully, I like the idea of using a sword to tune people up (and that's possible now, so cool) but it's difficult to feel good about the state of the Power otherwise.

Ehhh, power bar is usually not empty, no. You may end up getting countered a lot, so it's not continuous "stream of damage" either, there are interruptions - Counters versus dead spots in power cycle.

I actually experienced that in a raid yesterday (not as mental). I think it's a server-lag thing.

You should probably be able to build supercharge quite a bit faster than that. Try adding range taps between your abilities if you're trying to play from the tray. That having been said, Bolt Barrage really isn't a good supercharge. Some of the bolts can miss, and even if they don't the total damage wasn't great when I tested it. I think Mass Hysteria is a bit better for a supercharge, but that's really a precision focused one.

If you hate invisibility, I fear mental is not the power set for you. It's really the only good thing about the power right now.

Some adds do less damage than others, and it's beneficial to pull them away from both the tank and other adds. The phoenix healer adds in the False Idols raid are a good example. You can pull them away and stun or juggle them and they don't heal the rest of the adds.

I totally get that. It's a super hero game. If the aesthetics didn't matter we'd all be playing Guild Wars or World of Warcraft.

Don't do it!

not enough it would matter..old weapon user here...ill get by...really...wasnt being flippant at all..i gotta try this...best of all..i got 100something mental mothballed with enough money and marks...a quick visit to the watch i got all new loadout all new base mods ready in seconds...kind of stoked actually...i recreated my old sorc loadout on a toon...for years sorc was my main and i played this weapon intensive way...it still rocks...not as much as the old days...but its still more than adequate and a blast to play...weapons being useful again in dcuo is a good thing...

if you understand the counter game, then I think you're gonna enjoy it.

So I did this...its worth it ...some observations
1) Put points in Dom
2) Probably need more SP than someone running 123 Might at same CR...but so what...always strive for more SP...
3) Might 123 Mental is power intensive...this loadout is easily the opposite of that. Huge Plus there
so now I have a Might based Ment and a Prec Ment...and an idea what to do with the third mental I have...

yeah, I have all Health / Dom 35.0 Gen Mods on Galea... low Power outlay and Shield dependence for survival means Health and Dom are useful.... I make up for the difference in Controller by having more SP in Vitality.

As for SP in DPS build, I've currently got +/- 260 and I'm still grinding, the more the merrier.

It's a very viable platform : you're not going to beat every single person, every single time, but as you close in on the top end CR, SP, and Augments / Artifacts, it performs admirably and it's a lot of fun to play; I end up moving about 5x as often as I did playing AM PFTT.

Not sure why anyone would boost dominance for a might-based DPS. It does literally nothing for you. Anyhow, I don't have trouble keeping up with anyone besides munitions 95% of the time.

Main bar: Mass Lev, Pyrokinesis, Tel Bolt, Mass Terror, Invis, Heat Vision (using Solar Amplifier).
Invis bar: Pain Blast, Sleep, Psychic Prison (close range aoe), Freezing Breath, (jump cancel after first tick, activates invis damage when you can't get close), Neo Venom super, HL shield.

Cryo sucks because no PI boosts it. Psychic Shock sucks because its cast time doesn't justify the damage. Tendrils suck because they miss too much. Psychic Prison sucks on the main bar because you usually can't get close enough or get enemies to stand still enough to hit with it.

"end up moving..."...right there...mobility...something the old stand there and pew pew might 123s cant do

He's talking about Precision. +Dom = Shields, four Dom 35.0 = extra 1500 standing Dom, +/-