Psionic (EU2012)
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A Psionic is a late game 'extra' class that appears once you tested your soldiers for psionic ability. Higher Will makes the more likely to have the gift. They can use their mental powers on the battlefield to panic/control enemy units or to create physical attacks. Psionic soldiers get access to their regular class abilities in addition to their psychic powers, allowing for some interesting combinations. A Psionic soldier will have a purple effect applied to their class identifier.
| Rank | Ability | |
|---|---|---|
| Psionic |  Causes the target to lose grip on reality, inflicting penalties to Aim(-25), Will(-25), and Movement, and doing 5 base Damage. Robotic units are immune. Lasts 2 turns. 1 turn cooldown. | |
| Specialist |  Removes Mindfray and panic from all allies within 3 tiles, and strengthen their Will by +30 for 2 turns. 4 turn cooldown. |
 Cause target to panic on its following turn, if the target's Will is overcome. Robotic enemies are immune. 2 turn cooldown. |
| Operative |  Create an immobile telekinetic field that lasts through the enemy turn. The field distorts and deflects incoming attacks, granting +40 Defence. |
 Very difficult psi technique that, if successful, grants control of the target for 3 turns. Robotic enemies are immune. 5 turn cooldown. |
| The Volunteer |  Devastate an area with a storm of psi energy. The rift does more damage against targets with low Will, and reduced damage against targets with high Will. 4 turn cooldown. | |
Additional Notes
- Psionics can only be used on an alien that can only be seen by the unit.
- Will penalty from Mindfray stacks with multiple application. Other effects does not stack.
- Telekinetic Field will be centered on the psi user that created it, so it should be given to soldiers that will be near the front line.
- Telekinetic Field don't give defense to enemy units unlike smoke grenades.
- An alien under the effects of Mind Control is treated as one of your soldiers for pretty much all intents and purposes. Your soldiers will take the Will penalty if he dies. Additionally, if he dies while being MC'd, his weapon does not explode, allowing you to capture it at the end of the mission.
- A Mind Controlled unit cannot act on the turn it is controlled.
- Psi Inspiration removes the Fallen Comrade will debuff. This is especially useful when using Mind Control.
- Contrary to the description, Psi Panic will cause the victim to panic immediately and then skip its next turn. This will often cause it to fire on you in your turn if it can see you.
- Only one psi unit can become The Volunteer, and this occurs when they use the alien device in the Gollop Chamber.
- The Rift ability is a wide area-effect psi attack that can inflict massive damage, but has a long down-time.
- Rift is the only Psi attack that can affect Robotic units, and, if the Volunteer is a Heavy, DOES benefit from the HEAT ammo ability.
Tactical Advice
Psionics are clearly an asset to any class. Shotgun Assaults can use psionics to engage at medium range when it's not possible for them to Run & Gun for a close range shot. Snipers can use psionics as a weapon after moving. Heavies can use psionics as a crutch to make up for their terrible aim at high levels. Supports in a way gain the least from psionics, but their Deep Pockets ability allows them to carry a Mind Shield, which gives them fantastic offensive psi ability hit chance.
How To Farm
Searching for your ultimate Psi Squadron is perhaps easier with Second Wave options enabled, specifically Not Created Equally, and Hidden Potential, especially if you're hoping to go toe to toe with Etherials in Impossible Difficulty. This Farming section assumes so, and also utilizes Save Scumming (and will mention when it does so). Either way:
The most important stat is a soldier's Will Score. With your starting supply of soldiers, you may see some signficant Will scores, along with high Aim scores. You may consider saving those troopers for untill after Iron Will is purchased in the Officer Training School. When a potential high-level rookie is found, take them into battle, and save before the final shot of the mission (by this point, either a Sectoid Commander, an Etherial, or the last action of a Council Mission). This way, when you get back to base, if they didn't get the class you wanted, or not as high a stat upgrade as you'd think, you can reload and try again. Or, simply buy New Guy from the OTC, as well.
Something you want to avoid at all costs: receiving a Critical Hit, and especially being put in Critically Wounded status (if not killed outright) puts a severe, permanent reduction to will on a soldier: one who was shaping up to be Savant Psi Warrior may become a wealkling. With New Guy, you can skip the first battle, and simply look for the classes you need to fill out your Psi squadron.
With Iron Will, New Guy, Not Equal, and Hidden Potential, finding Psi Potential then just becomes a matter of money, and dismissing low-statted soldiers, and buying many, many, many new recruits. When wanting to farm, save after completing a mission, and let Scanning run a bit before reloading, as it is best if you do not have any distractions for a few days, so you can focus on finding, and maybe testing for Psi warriors. So save, run to check how many uninterrupted days you have, reload, buy to max out our barracks if you can (or as many as you can afford). If you didn't get any good troopers, or at least not in the class you wanted, reload and buy again. (attempting to farm in Ironman Mode will be expensive... unless you're on the PC version, and manipulating the save files through the OS...) A good median is 65 Will and 75 Aim (from here onwards, Will/Aim will be displayed as "65/75") for any class, though you may make exceptions for exceptional will or aim (though imbalances as bad as 38/89, or 71/49 are not uncommon). Rarest of all is one with both high will and aim: these "Ubers" might come once every mass of hires, and may have stats as high as 75/89, though anyone over 70/80 should always be kept and trained.
Since the Barracks screen only gives name and class, you may want to use lined paper (or multiple papers, separating soldiers by class), or a .TXT or Notepad File (or an Excel Spreadsheet if you really wanna go for it) to organize your potential Psi Armada, listing their names (first initial and full last name will suffice), stats (including HP, though Heavies never seem to have variance), and gender (helps to ID if the name generator uses a lot of similar names, or if you're OCD about having a mixed-gender or all-female squad). If you have room, you may want to have space so you can list their stats as they progess, and once you have a good sample size, you can see if a soldier is coming up nicely or not (class still does matter, as Heavies will always seem to have lower aim growth).
As mentioned, Save Scumming is a 'cheating' way of getting the best out of a Psi canidate, and the two points to do so are when testing and when leveling: Alluded to earlier, when taking That One Soldier into battle to level up, you should be familiar enough to know when a shot will be the last shot of the mission (ie: just before a rapidifre shotgun to the face of an Etherial with 1 HP). Save, take the shot, return to base: even with Iron Will, the upgrade may be between 3 and 12 points to will, for any class. Obviously, you want to go for the highest stat upgrade: if not gotten, reload, enjoy shooting the Etherial in the face again, see what stats you get. In practice, you may want to only take 1 Uber canidate per mission, and if using this save-scumming tehcnique, focus on him/her. If you're taking other Psi canidates "just to have them", they should be ones who's progress won't concern you as much. And you may want to make an extra save of what looks like a high upgrade, so if you don't get a higher one after reloading, you can load that save again.
When testing, again, you may want to first let the Scanning run on the Hologlobe, to see if you're going to get interrupted by, say, a Terror Mission. If you make sure to at least keep 1 clean save, you can even let it fail, as long as you remember to keep a save from before it. Now, the key moment of if a soldier will be found with Psionic capacity or not is when he is submitted for testing in the 3 spaces in the Psi Lab: in what order, and with whom. So, one clean save from before any testing, again for just in case, and a new save for when you've selected the 1-3 solders for testing. Scan for the 10 days, and see who passes or not. If nobody passes, reload the save from when testing began, take them out, and put them back in, and save again (the save file should still be for the same in-game date). If one or two do show positive: note which ones they were, do NOT save, and reload the latest iteration of the save from '10 days ago' again. Take out the ones that did not pass, put them back in, save. Rinse and repeat until all 3 soldiers return as positive. And if you've been ignoring any alerts or missions to get this done, go ahead and reload that last iteration again so you can focus on the mission, knowing that you'll be getting 3 Psi Soldiers soon enough.
Pretty good Colonel stats, using these techniques (or getting lucky with just playing legitmatley) are +110/+110, (with the exceptions of Heavies, which will never receive much in the way of Aim upgrades), easily outstripping most of the "Hero" easter egg soldiers, though with (ab)use of save states, stats the likes of +140/+120 are possible.
Abilities
Psi Inspiration vs Psi Panic
Psi Panic is less useful than it sounds. It causes the unit to panic immediately upon use and then skip the next turn. The problem is that often the unit's panic action will be to take a shot at you, which isn't a massive improvement on what it would have done had you not panicked it. Sometimes the unit will do something else like hunker down or run away, and it does prevent the use of any special abilities like grenades and will prevent the unit from moving to flank.
Unlike Mind Fray, Psi Panic will not decloak a soldier using the Ghost Armor's Ghost ability. The panicked alien will not attack the hidden psi user, but may attack other soldiers that it can immediately see. When used carefully, this can be a good way to disable a single enemy for a turn.
Psi Inspiration gives a +30 boost to Will for 2 turns and removes Mind Fray and Panic. The most important thing this ability does that isn't mentioned is remove the Fallen Comrade Will debuff. This is very useful when using Mind Control, because mind controlled aliens dying will cause this debuff and you'll want to get rid of it so it doesn't hamper your morale and psi abilities for the rest of the mission. The Will bonus will buff your soldiers' offensive psi ability hit chance and defense against enemy psi attacks, making it a useful ability to use before breaching a room. Psi Inspiration can be used to level up to the next psi level quickly, because it can be used on spare turns when not in combat. While Psi Inspiration is an area effect ability, it only reaches two tiles, so can be a pain to get many other soldiers without forming your squad in to grenade bait formation.
Telekinetic Field vs Mind Control
Mind Control is easily the most powerful ability in the game in most encounters. While it's difficult-to-impossible to pull off against psionic enemies, they usually have non-psionic guards (Muton Elites in particular) who can be controlled. The only major enemies it doesn't help against are Cyberdiscs and Sectopods, though mind controlled aliens from a previous group will make for good cannon fodder for them. If in doubt, Mind Control is the ability to take. Like Panic, Mind Control also does not decloak a soldier using the Ghost ability. This way only the mind controlled alien will be at risk of attacks from its allies. Additionally, MCing an alien in an unactivated squad (ie: while in Ghost Mode) will (almost never) immediatley activate the remainder of the squad (or any others nearby) untill your next action is taken. Plus some Squadsight-ing and Headshotting Snipers, this is a good way to wipe out an entire Alien Squad at once.
You can keep track of how many turns are left of a controlled alien by the ability tile on the controlling soldier: if it reads T-3, then the alien will be released at the start of the next Alien Action. Some aliens will immedaitley fire if your soldiers are in range, and be especially wary of any with grenades. However, you can 'force' their action-- or inaction: when the tile reads T-3, have the soon-to-be-free alien Hunker Down, and it will stay in that mode when released. As flanking ignores Hunker Down, and your soldier only needs to be a little away to be invisible to it, this is a safe way to either MC it again, or finish it off.
Telekinetic Field is essentially a psionic smoke grenade that is reusable after a 4 turn cooldown. It is always centered on the soldier creating it, rather than being placeable like a smoke grenade, but it makes up for this by being much larger. It also gives +40 defence like a dense smoke grenade. The main use for this ability is to protect your squad from the attacks of a sectopod or cyberdisc if you have to finish your turn under its guns. Telekinetic Field will not decloak a soldier using the Ghost ability. You may want to take this if your psionic has low will.
Chances of Psi attacks
Chance to land Mindfray/Psi panic is 50 + (your will) - (target's will) %.
Chance to land Mind control is 30% lower, 20 + (your will) - (target's will) %.
Psi armor and Mind shield gives bonus 20% and 30% (respectively) chance to all psi attacks, on top of will bonus.
On classic and Impossible difficulty, there is -10% and -20% (respectively) penalty to all psi attacks.
- Combat drugs will boost does not apply on psi attack.
- If you have 205 will with Psi armor and Mind shield, then you can MC an Ethereal with 100% chance on impossible difficulty.
Equipment
The requirements of your primary class will probably dominate your equipment choice. The only items of particular note for psionic soldiers are the Mind Shield and Psi Armor. The Mind Shield's description portrays it as a defensive item against hostile psionics, but the Will bonus it gives is equally useful for boosting your own psi ability hit rate. Psi Armor is an option for psionics that gives a Will bonus and all the effects that entails, but it's by no means automatic that Psi Armor is the best choice; Ghost and Titan have better defence and Ghost and Archangel have better mobility.
When deciding on whether to use the Mind Shield or Psi Armor, look at the soldier's Will level and consider the sort of psi skills that your soldier will be using the most. A soldier mainly concentrating on buff skills for example will not need to use either, as these skills are not dependent on their Will level. A soldier specialising in Mind Control may want to take one or even both to get Will close to or beyond 100. Most combat oriented builds can get away without either and can use Mind Fray and Psi Panic to a good degree of success against most common enemies except the Muton Berserkers and Ethereals.