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How good is Psylocke?
KDSuperFlash10
Posts: 5,869 ★★★★★
I have a 5 star Psylocke at 2/35 and I was experimenting with her yesterday and I love her abilities, power lock/drain, animations, and she does pretty good damage as well. The main downside is that she gains 25% less power, which really sucks as it takes so much longer to get to bars of power. She's really fun to play though. What do you guys think? How good is she? What tier would you say she's in?
2
Comments
Helps to be able to prevent opponent from reaching their SP3 during those matches.
# Overview
If you’re looking for power control Psylocke will serve you incredibly well. You need to be quite flexible in terms of play-style though to maximise her effectiveness, if you can do this successfully, she is more than capable of dealing with power gain champions or nodes as well as many other opponents. To begin with, be aware that Psylocke gains 25% less power than normal when she is attacking her opponent. However, this only really matters at the beginning of the fight as your first bar of power will open up multiple options to take control of the fight. Psylocke is all about knowing her abilities and choosing how to use them depending on the scenario you’re faced with. In terms of control though, you’ll struggle to find someone as strong as Psylocke in that regard, in the hands of a skilled player, nothing happens unless they allow it most of the time. Ultimately, you should feel as if you’re in full control of the fight, which is one of my favourite things about her.
# Psi Charges and Heavy Attacks
Each time you land 5 hits on your opponent Psylocke will gain a psi charge. These are passive effects that stack indefinitely and have many different benefits. Psi charges can be used for the following:
* If your opponent is brought to 0 power and you have at least one Psi Charge, they will no longer generate power when you attack them. Think of it as a permanent passive enervate unless the opponent hits you or has some form of power gain.
* When using a heavy attack, all Psi charges are consumed to deal additional direct damage to your opponent (this should be used for the ‘big finish’ at the end of a fight). More charges will result in more damage.
* All Psi charges are consumed during a SP3 attack to drain 20% max power per charge. 5 charges will drain 3 full bars. You should use this as a ‘reset’ if you make a mistake, I’ll go into more detail about that later on.
* When your opponent hits you, you lose one Psi charge per hit and they will also gain up to 50% more power for each hit.
# Special Attacks
SP1- This is the one you’ll find yourself using the most, it consists of 5 hits and drains 25% of the opponent’s max power. Additionally, Psylocke will automatically regain a bar of power if this attack causes the opponent to be brought below a power bar threshold. Imagine that you’re facing an opponent with 2 bars of power and after using this attack they only have one left. That’s what this ability implies. The same can be done for bringing them below one bar of power too. Keep in mind that it won’t apply to those with 3 bars of power though, since they need to be ABOVE that power bar threshold for it to work. You can’t go above 3 bars.
SP2- This one applies an active power lock debuff for 10 seconds. It doesn’t drain power but it does consume one Psi charge to grant you 34% of your max power almost instantly. 34% is enough to have a SP1 ready immediately after using the SP2. Sometimes this can be very helpful if you need to stop them from gaining power for a while. You can follow up with multiple SP1 attacks to lower it back down again whilst the lock is active.
SP3- Each Psi charge you have will be consumed to burn 20% of the opponent’s max power per charge which also inflicts direct damage in a similar way to vision. Burning more power will result in dealing more damage. As I mentioned above, 5 charges will be enough to drain all 3 bars completely. It will still use up any excess charges you have though, so if you’re looking to go for that big finish with the heavy, you’ll want to avoid using this attack unless it would help you in a certain situation or you make a mistake and need a ‘reset’. Keep in mind that ‘the big finish’ is not essential to any fight, don’t feel like you have to end them all this way. In addition to burning power SP3 gives you an active power lock debuff for 10 seconds just like SP2. But as a bonus If you do bring the opponent to 0 power with a SP3, they will be stunned for 5.5 seconds.
To clarify, in this situation your opponent is unable to move due to the stun, stuck at zero power due to the drain and power lock, her signature will be active (more details below) and you’ll be able to land enough hits to gain a Psi charge and regain your passive lock/enervate, hence the term ‘reset’. Essentially, if you’re opting for the passive lock play-style, you’ll want to hold on to 3 bars of power so that you’re still safe if you make a mistake and get hit. It allows you to instantly regain control again and give yourself another chance.
# Signature Ability
Psylocke gains some nice bonuses from her signature ability. Two main things happen primarily, your critical damage rating will be increased by a further 900 (5* 5/65 signature level 191) depending on how low the opponent’s power is.
Psylocke can also reduce defensive ability accuracy by 75% at max signature level when the opponent is at zero power. There are lots of situations where this can be useful, one example could be dealing with evade.
# Play-styles
Psylocke has a lot of different play-styles that are all very effective in their own way. Knowing when to apply each and how to combine them is key to utilising her full potential. If you’re unfamiliar with how she operates, go into Realm of Legends and practice until you’re more confident with her abilities and to get a feel for how she works. Flexibility will be the difference between making her an average champion and a great one, you’ll need to adapt to each fight differently and may often find yourself using a variety of methods in some of them. In my opinion, this variety makes her incredibly fun to use because it keeps fights interesting.
The passive lock/enervate method:
There are two main things that you need to do to set this up correctly. Make sure you have a Psi charge, then get the opponent to zero power. Every time your opponent gets a full bar of power, you will gain a Psi charge. One way to set up the lock would be to bait their SP1 attack and then use your own SP1 to drain any remaining power. You could do this from ma parry, immediately after a successful intercept, or even just use the special attack when they dash towards you. After that you just have to focus on not getting hit again, they shouldn’t be gaining any more power for the remainder of the fight so you can easily pin them against the wall with back-draft intercepts. Be aware that this will only be permanent if the opponent has no other form of power gain, such as a buff or node for example. Some things to note about this method:
* At 0 Power your critical damage rating is increased by 1400 as a 5/65 5*
* Every 5 hits you land will give you another Psi charge. Save these up and go in for the big finish with your heavy attack when you think it will be enough for the KO. After some practice you’ll get better at judging when to use that.
* A good tip here is to just save up for a SP3 so that you can keep that as a ‘reset’ if you need to use it. Otherwise, SP2 can have some decent damage if it happens to be critical, but I would recommend saving for SP3 just in case you do slip up and need a second chance.
* Your signature ability will be active.
The power gain method (ideal for opponent’s with power gain buffs and nodes):
As I previously mentioned, Psylocke gains a full bar of power if she’s able to bring the opponent below a power bar threshold with her SP1. Her passive lock won’t work against opponent’s with power gain buffs, so you’ll need to adapt and instead time the use of your SP1 to do this repeatedly. It’s entirely possible to play the majority of the fight using nothing but SP1, she’s more than capable of shutting down champions like Hyperion with this method. Alternatively, you could instead choose to use SP2 or SP3 to get the active power lock debuff, but the SP1 drain is the best way to approach it in my opinion. Fights like this should always be very easy because the invulnerability of the special attack will protect you from any incoming hits. You’ll also be gaining a lot of psi charges since they will be gaining a bar of power very frequently.
# Strong Match-ups
* Debuff immune nodes where power gain could be a problem. Psylocke does not rely on debuffs to control power, she can trap them at zero power passively and her drain will still function in the same way. This is where she can really outshine more popular options like Magik.
* Plagued mind and any situation that could cause your opponent to drop to zero power. If you have a Psi charge, you won’t even need to worry about manually bringing them to zero power as the node will do it for you. This also works with Scarlet witch and your ability accuracy reduction will reduce the risk of being poisoned or inflicted with her other debuffs.
* Anything where a reduction in ability accuracy could be helpful
* Dealing with large power gain nodes/champions that can gain power through their own abilities such as Mordo or Hyperion.
* The majority of fights where her passive lock is a viable option, exceptions could include biohazard nodes due to the lack of immunities.
* Wolverine and X-23, trapping them at 0 power means that they are unable to heal and her ability accuracy reduction could stop the buff from activating in the first place.
* Magik, she can prevent her from gaining power which in turn means she can’t use limbo.
* Buffet nodes, Psylocke doesn’t have any buffs and her abilities make it easy to avoid activating dexterity.
* Opponents with hard to evade special attacks. If they can’t gain power, you don’t need to worry about trying to dodge them.
To summarise, remember that flexibility and being able to adapt to situations differently is essential to making the most of Psylocke and her abilities. Whilst she may sound extremely complicated, she does actually become quite straightforward once you memorise her abilities and become more familiar with her. I absolutely love using her whenever I can, she makes the game really fun for me personally and I’m really glad that I was finally able to get the 5* after chasing her for so long. I rarely make videos of gameplay and wouldn’t normally share them, but a while ago a friend challenged me to take on Ægon in uncollected when he first released. At the time, a lot of people were having trouble with him but Psylocke was able to take control of the fight and get him down pretty easily after that. I remember bringing in my 4* to get the exploration done and it was one of the most fun fights I’ve ever had with her. I’ll leave the link below if you want see some of her abilities in action.
Maybe her psi charges should have an increased chance to bleed, I mean she got swords. Let’s say 1% chance to bleed when crit, 1% per psi charge. Then it will be a bit like wintersoldier, he is good in longer fights and psylocke seems a great champ for longer fights.
If she was to get buffed however, I would hope that all of her current abilities would remain the same. A complete rework would be extremely disappointing and I hope that never happens. Instead, add in a slight passive ability to increase her damage potential. Someone above mentioned bleed, which wouldn’t work well because she would then be applying frequent debuffs (think about nodes like masochism or even opponents like cable where this can hurt you in return). I also wouldn’t want to her to gain buffs since that can be detrimental against buffet and champions like Symbiote Supreme. I liked the idea of a passive attack increase with each psi charge, I think that one small change could increase her appeal to more players and just give her that slight edge in longer fights. But other than that, I personally don’t want to see a buff or change of any kind for her. I’m sure many would would disagree, but she’s my favourite champion in her current state and a rework would mean that I lose that. Pre buff Old Man Logan was another champion that I loved to use, but since his rework I just don’t get that same enjoyment from him anymore. I would be gutted if that same thing happened to Psylocke as well.