So You Want To Play A Kineticist - Pathfinder: WotR 

I did forget to mention that energy blasts are affected by spell resistance as well. People will also point out that you can make a full attack with kinetic blade even if you're not a kinetic knight to which my response is that in order for that to be effective you'd have to have a heavy investment into feats to make it work at which point you should have just gone kinetic knight rather than make a half and half build thats average at two things at best.

One thing you didn't mention is that if you go for the very popular (in Kingmaker) Trip Kineticist build, this synergizes with the Demon path as there is a demonic aspect that further ups your ability to make enemies prone. Knocking over those late-game demons the size of skyscrapers never gets old.

Wow, Gather Power is the most Dragonball thing you can you in Pathfinder

This is a very good guide = two things that I think need to be pointed out though... 1) Spell Penetration feats, including mythic ones, DO affect energy blasts despite them not being spells. Dunno why it works, but it does, and is pretty necessary if you are doing an energy blaster. 2) The general vibe of a kineticist SEEMS to suggest that you use burn as a resource, taking damage to get that extra edge, etc. like a traditional WoW Warlock. Do not do this, except in extraordinary emergencies. Instead, find out how much burn you need to get the maximum benefit of Elemental Overflow at your current level, inflict that burn on yourself while the party buffs (usually by using whatever defese ability you got from your element) then don't take any more burn, Ever. Just figure out how to combine gather power and your other abilities to get the maximum benefit from whatever you're doing and you'll never need to take any more burn than you have to.

This was _extremely_ informative and helpful for me, someone new to Pathfinder in general, trying to figure out what sort of Kineticist build to make. This game honestly does a horrifyingly bad job of explaining the details of how things work to the player, so guides like this are very very appreciated

I’m a big fan of the lich ability that turns all your kinetic damage into negative energy, because lich gets a tons of ways to boost negative energy.

I'm currently playing through as a blood kineticist and I've noticed that wrack is broken when you use it with the composite blast, it deals full damage and the target doesn't get a save. I also went the Legend Mythic Path and being a level 20 blood kineticist / level 19 Bard is super fun.

From my experience, psychokineticist beats everything. The tankiest damage-dealer in the whole game, and one out of 3 most reliable against those AC 99+ guys. I am being serious. If you want to kill someone like Melazmera, Playful Darkness and so on, you need to attack AC against TOUCH-attacks. That leaves us with Mystic trickster, Magus, or Kineticist. They can kill them in two rounds. The difference between ordinary Kineticist and Psychokineticist is that he can do all that kinetic stuff, but also be a tank. 1. You have high WIS, and only 1 lvl monk-tradicionalist turns you into a tank. Tankiest in the whole party, actually, when you get water element and it's shield. No heavy armor class can get so much AC, even with the shield. 2. If you go FIRE+WATER-WATER+FIRE, you get composite Energy( that is important) blast. Blue fire is the only combined energy blast in the game. Others are composite physical+energy, so you lose part of damage potential when casting Wall, for example. 3. Fire kineticist can SCARE as a free action, when it kills someone. And you get highest persuasion checks if you use origin that uses WIS instead of CHA for persuasion. Most of the game you just run around and slash everybody with the fire blade (Energy charge, ignores armour, make sure to get 2 feats Spell penetrate+epic spell penetration). 3-4 attacks per round can give more damage than one maximised ranged attack. Use combination (Blue Fire Wall+Steam Cloud) when you can't just right-click.

Thanks, man. This was one of my favorite classes in Kingmaker, and this will definitely help in building one in WotR

bruh, kineticists were always something I wanted to do but were so intimidated by their complexity. This helps me so much! Thank you! I'm ready to give it a shot on my next playthrough!

This is my favorite class for pen and paper, so I was thrilled to see it in the last game, then carried over to this one. While I enjoy running other classes, this is my default.

Thank you for posting this. You really helped me in understanding this complex class.

I desperately needed this. Thank you so much.

And don't forget the multiclass with monk. Kinetic blade is considered a natural weapon so it works perfectly with monk bonuses. And if you take crane school, you also gain a lot of AC bonuses which can make a psychokineticist almost invulnerable at the end of the game.

Thank you very much. Very helpful guide. I won't play one in my first playthrough, but I'm a fan of the class since playing with the twins in Kingmaker. Blue flame blast with the Infusion that lets you ignore spell resistance is great for stupid amounts of easy to hit fire damage. You also could Do that with a mage, but not nearly as often.

A few more notes: -Azata is amazing as Mortismal said, zippy magic doubles your damage, as it makes you cast the kinetic blast to two enemies instead of one, but still pick life bonding friendship before, is the most op thing in the game unless you are playing solo. - max burn is dangerous, you will have almost 0 hp no matter what con you have, as more con increases your max burn, but extra hp feats and so on that do not depend on constitution or level will help you (false life, tought, and so on) - sometimes in a hard boss y use the healing skills out of combat just to put me max burn and get the bonnuses to hit and damage, so picking something that lets you get burn without enemies is a good way to controll it. - if you automate the burn like .. in elemental engine pick something that cost 0 at max burn but more at less burn, make sure you will get exactly to max, if you need 2 burn for cast or 0 at max burn, and you have even max burn, you will get stuck without attaking at max burn -1, make sure to align with a reduced potency attack our using a healing skill. - water pushing infusion can allow you to solo any fight, keep your party behind and use wall, but you need to pick all the bull rush feats as enemies in wrath have high cmd (you can push back multiple times the same enemy each time they touch the wall) - the furious? earth infusion is op, you can pick it as 3rd option and combo with wall : water (push) -> fire (carnage) -> earth, for a nice cc build (put a pushing wall down before the enemies, and then an earth area below them, they will take a ton of damage while geting close to the wall and then get pushed back and repeat until dead, if they are even able to reach the wall), and while this happens you will be shooting your long range kinetic blasts for more damage. - if you get fire element (as second at least), you will be able to pick dazzling display and dreadfull carnage as bonus feats, so when you instakill 1 enemy and it explodes everyone will be shaken, if you pick 1 lvl in thug, they will run away in fear (but care with your party following or you could pull extra enemies). Also, make sure to bump your persuasion/intimidation if you are doing this. - once you choose your elements remember to pick ascend element (electricity/fire), to ignore resistances. with pure fire composite blast will ensure you always do full damage, but you cant use pushing infusion with this, so damage vs cc - turn based mode was bugged for kineticist in 1.0 (but it could be fixed already), it always uses the move action after the standard action and you cant manually trigger the "energy collection", so you will only attack once each 2 turns reducing your damage by half: - first turn: -- dont attack, -- collects energy - second turn: -- attack -- does not collect energy _third turn -- dont attack --- collects energy this bug is not present on real time. - there is a ring that doubles your critical threat range with kineticist blasts, it stacks with feats., you also have kinetic diadems and kinetic wands that increase your damage if equiped. (there are 2 of each so you can have 2 kineticists fully equiped in your group if you want to) - I've done 1800 damage per turn with an azata just with the base kineticist blast 900(crit) x enemy hitting two with zippy magic, enemies do explode when hit, this also falls into the initial strike, always pull with your kineticist, you will be pulling less enemies. (you can add walls, earth infusions or clouds to this, as they can be precasted without agroing the enemies ) - This was already said, but fire and blue fire (pure damage), is affected by spell resistance, but there is an infusion to ignore spell resistance and with ascendant element fire you will do a ton of damage . - If you want to micromanage you can use quiquened infusion to cast 2 times per turn, a quiquened low burn cast that does not need gather power, and a stronger standard action blast that uses gather power. - kinetic knight can do full attack, but only if you dont gather power, so its not usually worth it as you will not be able to do composite blasts.

I have comments and corrections on this video You CAN full attack with blasts with kinetic blade as a normal kineticist. Kinetic blade is even finessable. if you can get in three hits with this it's better to melee than to empower Say at like, level 8 with a haste spell active. Even better if you're not a kinetic knight because you can take the burn and empower your blast anyway (Kinetic knights lose the Metakinesis which guts the archetype imo :( ) You say you shouldn't use deadly aim, especially on physical blasts Well first off all, yea you kinda do want to use it on low AC opponents or if you have a Witch/Shaman fortune buff ticking or just a lot of +attack roll buffs. it adds a lot of damage And deadly aim doesn't even apply bonus damage to touch attacks(but still give you the penalty) It's also worth mentioning that the touch blasts need to go through spell resistance which is very relevent in this game Oh and btw. You can cheese a lot by innitiating combat with a kineticist. just gather power for all 3 points out of combat and then blast away :D

In my game, I went standard kineticist with azata mythic path. Zippy magic + kinetic blast = double attack (against 2 different targets). Now you can potentially nuke 2 targets down per round. It effectively doubles your damage output. It is amazing.

Really great guide, thanks!

awesome stuff, hope we can see some builds of them soon.

Very informative, now I understand and wish to try one. Thanks.

Just finished my first playthrough, an Aeon Kineticist on core and I gotta say it's the most OP ranged dps class I've ever played in an RPG. Cloud-infused Thunderstorm blast did between 200-400 damage per turn regardless of saves.

Love your vids, it's also nice that you made Kineticist HOWTO, because a lot of people somehow doesn't understand this class and therefore it gets an opinion of being complicated, when it's one of the easier ones, without much dependency on dips, items, and other sources. There's one thing I don't agree with - Kinetic Blade is actually a great thing for a normal non-knight Kineticist if you spec for it a little, you just bump your AC to be a bit more survivable, and then you can go with Trickster + flame blade + ascendant element + crit feats to attack few times per round (normal full round attack) for lots of elemental d6 + some sneak d6 + as a Trickster your every K.Blade attack can crit on 14-20 for x3, AND you target Touch AC, and sure, you can do that as a K-Knight too and a bit earlier/cheaper, but then you'd lose access to other important infusions, such as AoEs, so it's usually better to go for a classic Kineticist if someone wants to go melee, and it's very fun too, it gets crazy OP fast, and you feel that steep power curve at every lvl. I really recommend at least trying something like fire/earth/blue flame melee Trickster Kineticist, with maybe 1 lvl dip into Thug for that special intimidation ability that goes great with Kineticist's fire bonus feats, it's a real powerhouse.

YAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSS I love playing my blood kinetic! thanks for the video

I feel like Aeon can be pretty decent choice for a kineticist. Numerous damage reductions and immunities would cover "glass cannon" and low saving throws part.

Kintiscist are an all in or all fail thing. I am havign much a harder time with my main kineticist than with my main melee playtrough. But sometimes it is super worth it... for example I had 14D6 +22 damage at level 10... and that is BONKERS when you can cast invisibility, true strike and pown any enemy in the first turn.

Darn I can’t wait for this game to hit consoles, but thanks to your videos I’ll be ready!

Something you kinda missed mentioning about Energy Blast is that they interact with Spell Resistance. So it's important to have Spell Penetration feats if you intend to use Energy Blasts.

Thanks for the video! I'm almost finished with my first run (witch lich into swarm) but possibly for a 3rd run was looking at kineticist as they were my first choice, but really over whelming to start with.

Awesome guide!!!!

Thank you. I've avoided the class, since the description doesn't make sound very interesting. I loved this explanation of the class, and now want to give one a roll. I feel like an Oread would suit the elemental nature of this class. With your suggestion of Azata Mythic Path, I can play a smart arse char i.e Chaotic Good :)

Worth noting that kinetic knight with a melee attack can attack of opportunity enemies tripped/knocked prone. With feats that increase the number of these opportunity attacks, there can be some really devastating synergy

Zippy magic on Kineticist is so powerful. It allows your Blasts to target two creatures with one attack. Can't recommend it enough.

Thanks for the good video!

My first character in Wotr was an Elemental Engine, with the Gold Dragon mythic path. It was a monster. Every single round I could fire an empowered, maximized, infused composite blast, dealing around 380 damage if I remember correctly. This with a massive attack bonus so I almost never missed. Deadly Earth infusion is overpowered btw, as long as you keep your party members out of it. Edit: I forgot to mention that, since I used fire as my primary element, I was also permanently hasted. Gotta go fast.

Deadly Aim is *great* on Physical Kineticists. You just have to know when to turn it on and off, just like Power Attack. Use it to clear out trash, or when you have massive party buffs. Turn it off for the boss. The trick with Deadly Aim is that it does not work AT ALL with touch attacks, so you definitely don't want it if you are purely an energy blaster.

I would say that probably the first mythic ability that most kineticists should pick up (at least those that chose an energy blast) would be "Ascendant Element". That ability allows any damage you deal with a chosen energy type to completely ignore energy resistance and immunity. Considering that the main enemies in this game are demons who, baseline, have resistance 10 to fire, acid, and cold and immunity to electricity, that is a fairly huge thing. I would also stress that for anyone who picks an energy blast, invest heavily in the spell penetration feats. Energy blasts are treated as magic spells for the sake of spell resistance (with your kineticist class levels as your caster level) and, again, almost all demons have spell resistance (and some are incredibly high). Spell pen, greater spell pen, and mythic spell pen are going to be essential to make sure your energy blast actually affects demonic targets, even if you are able to hit their touch AC. That said, physical blasts don't have to worry about spell resistance. They DO have to worry about damage reduction, though. And unfortunately spells like align weapon, bless weapon, and crusaders edge won't be able to affect your kinetic blasts, nor will you be able to make them cold iron, so ... you're just stuck with powering through their DR with the admittedly monstrous damage a physical blast already deals. Just make sure you're giving yourself all the advantages to hit that you can, because demons' normal AC can be pretty high.

Very nice idea for a video; have considered it but was too intimidated.

Now that the final DLC is out, I’m going to do a full kineticist play through. Gonna use the “Dark Codex” mod to get azata zippy magic for them too

I picked this as my first character in kingmaker and it was killer. Haven't tried it in wrath tho

Good guide. Kind of reminiscent of PoE Cipher, but in a different direction. I don't want to violate spoiler guidelines, but I wonder if the Kineticist might make for an interesting combination with the swarm....

Not sure if it's a bug or not but Lich Kineticist needs to use one of the archetypes that change your primary stat. Currently, once you become an actual Lich and lose your Con bonus, none of the class abilities swap over to Charisma. So zero bonus to max burn or blasts.

Thanks for this, now I just need to find someone who's done a decent Kinetic Knight build for WotR /laugh

Keep in mind that there is 1 way to circumvent the staggering amount of non-lethal damage you take with burn. Make sure one of your healers (Daeran for example) has overhealing, which gives you temporary HP if you're healed to max.

Awesome Breakdown. Made a blood kin and had issue with burn. Until i found i should not give a kin a melee weapon.

Knowledge like the sea, dude.

I am playing Kingmaker with a Kinetic Knight and love it, but I see the limitations, especially wish you could get the feat that allows opportunity attacks, even so been trying to pick between Kinetic Engine or Alchemist for my Azata character in wotr.

After watching this guide, i think i get the gist of it but i guess i'll just have to play it myself to fully understand what's going on.

I'm planning a Kineticist for one of my Legend builds. Basically an instinctual warrior psychokineticist that wields a blue flame blade into battle with the pure flame infusion. It will be quite tanky, and blasty, but unfortunately that's only after becoming a legend character. Before that, I'm not even sure a kineticist could spare a 2 level dip for the wisdom to AC bonus, because it would be delaying all kinds of important things, like my pure flame infusion, composite blasts, etc. Might dip 2 levels before legend anyways, just so I could be a tanky kineticist before becoming legend. Need to figure out how to deal with the will saves problem though, freedom of movement I guess, I've also heard the magic nullification mythic ability is an option, since kineticists are pretty good just self buffed.

My biggest issue with energy blasts is that the targets spell resistance becomes a factor. Unfortunately, in this game, most of the enemies you fight have high levels of spell resistance which must be overcome before your energy blast even has a chance to hit.

And then there's barbarians. To play a barbarian you get a big sword, and then go hit things with it.

Playing a Kin starting as Earth. Real-Time with Pause isn't so bad when it comes to dealing with trash, but yeah against bosses and other signature fights (like defense situations with loads of enemies and High Value Targets interspersed between waves, especially if you're like me and play with Extra Enemies on) definitely takes the edge off.

What are you using for character creation/management? Looks great .

Kinetic knight has insane mid and late game abilites such as throwing your elemental weapon like a boomerang around you to make a free cleave attack that carries your infusions with it. Which is INSANE but noone talks about it... There are a few other things offensive and defensive but I just gave you the most attention grabbing one here so add it to your next guide maybe ? Cheers

Damn this class looks fun. I’m already 8 hours in. Will I have an opportunity to respec a character into this class from scratch or will I have to start again if I wanted to play this class?

One cool point i ddin't hear is that the Wall infusion doesn't actually roll for an attack when things touch it. They just take damage on contact, so things with absurd AC you can actually just cast walls on the target over and over and never miss even through invis/concealment (hello playfull darkness). A well placed wall before you pull a room can just murder everything as they run at you. For style points you can push things back with blade barrier or knockback infusion to hit them a second time after they pass through it as well. Kineticists are just such an amazing class with some absurd utility and damage.

This question is of topic but do you guys know if dueling sword works with piranha strike? It does work with weapon finesse but i cant find any info if it works with piranha strike.

Any chance you can take a look at Witch of the wail? Looking for a good build that can exploit the use of free invisibility from level1 and free d door from lev 8, and then the d-dor+free grater invisibility at lev 16..... (This is all from the witch of the wail hex at lev 1) (Thanks in advance, if you have any good ideas :-)

You can, and should, full attack with a Kinetic Blade. You are able to use Kineitc Blade on the non-archetyped Kineticist, and by the time you have a second attack (Iterative attack at Level 8, access to Haste from level 5) Kineitc Blade will already have a burn cost of zero, so you won't need to gather power. Basically, choose Kinetic Knight if you want heavy armor and a Strength based build, choose Kineticist if tyou want a Dex based build with light armor. Either way, always go melee, ranged is too much of a damage nerf.

Hello, could you please tell me where do you got the horse and the tiger companions, Thanks.!

bah humbug. I was busy researching a kinetic knight build so i could imbue a kinetic sword with sword of heaven and head cannon it as lariel's sword. plus a kinetic knight dealing holy damage would have just been awesome.

So what would you grade for those archtype ? A B C S ?

Don’t sleep on a Kinetic Knight as a tank or off-tank using earth as your element. I ran Valerie as one in Kingmaker with great success.

I'm playing a Overwhelming Soul right now, and several of the class features are broken. I'm hoping they fix it sson in a patch.

I was wondering about something, the lich path lets you become undead at somepoint right? And as a undead your CON just get replaced with CHA from what I remember from jaethal in kingmaker, so if you become undead how does that work with things like kineticist that scale of your CON modifier? Does it still use even tho it's gone, does it get counted at as 0? Would it be better to pick of the archtypes that replace con with INT or CHA in this situration?

Do i need to multiclass in order to do sneak attacks?

While I'm interested in this character my knowledge of D & D is limited and I was introduced to the genre by my dearly departed brother through Masters of Orion, Imperialism and Divinity Original Sin and the mechanics and character knowledge are beyond me. But thanks for trying I'm missing so much information about D & D I need to learn about it first I think or just go with a fighter as a have chosen because it's far more simple.

BTW, Elemental engine loses the elemental overflow as it is replaced by burnout. Burnout definitely gives more (offensive) bonuses than elemental overflow, especially at max burn. Additional pro for burnout is its damage bonus being added to kinetic blade too (elemental overflow doesn't do this). I think elemental engine is very guchi as melee dps as basically all of the final burnout bonuses at lvl 13 benefit mostly melee play style. Edit: Kinetic blade does get AB from elemental overflow, but not the damage bonus.

I remember playing with the kinectist twins in kingmaker but there wasn’t a whole lot of spell resist in that one. In wotr lots of demons have Spell resists does the kinect blast or infusions ignore resists or do you still need pen?

I was looking for a right class for quite a few days now, i watched the video and im starting as a Kinetic Knight. Does it matter what element i choose at the character creation, and what is best for Kinetic Knight subclass? Thank you for the guide!

Hmm this was very Interesting. I think I might try a Kineticist. Also is the Elemental Engine race locked to the Kitsunai?? Well thank you for posting this it has been very helpful and there are few good guilds on any of the classes for WotR.

Can you give an overview of the elemental combinations? I’m wondering if they changed from kingmaker

Pyrokinetist is a great option for camellia right from the start, she only has 1 attack anyways till level 7 (as straight shaman) and its low damage with rapier. Take ascendant element for the first mythic and you e got a great blaster thru the early game

Man I really wish you would have shown how the elemental overflow size bonus works, because I don't know if it's bugged on my current Elemental Engine guy, but I'm level 9 and even at max burn I cannot find anywhere where I can toggle to increase my dex. I've looked in abilities and items bars (I see you have the spell bar, which is the one that allows you to select spells, but I don't have that bar, it's only on my spell casters like Ember). I really wish I could get that sweet extra dex bonus.

I played a Kineticist in Kingmaker and absolutely steam-rolled (LOL See what I did there) through the game. Seriously OP.

Still the only melee class good in unfair since can use melee touch from the start.

With Ascendant Element, the pure fire kineticist looks extra-tempting. Too bad there are NO composite blasts that are pure energy and two different elements. I suppose you could just get a separate element as your third element, but it seems like elemental barrage won't work well with kineticists.

thanks a bunch, while i played kingmaker, i avoided this class because it seemed very confusing.

I haven't gotten to try it out yet but there is this ring for kineticists that doubles your crit range and stacks with the improved critical feat. Together with the trickster feats you should be able to build a kineticist who crits on almost all hits, right?

Can you just take the burns and do a full attack with the blade? to stack more damage.

Blood Kineticist does not turn your abilities red, so it's basically unplayable

A fair summation, and I don't want to turn anyone off Kineticist. It can be a lot of fun, but overall it's strengths are non-daily limited damage output, consistency, and on-the-fly variety (cone/single target/aoe). It has a moderately high base damage, but low skill ceiling. Examine a level 10 Rowdy. Great Axe, Enlarge (endless potions and scrolls), Lead Blade (probably need a party scribe), 4d8x3 (imp vital strike) +6d6 sneak attack, +1d6 precision strike +10-14 str bonus +4 power attack +weapon enchants. That's off the cuff, so I may be missing a few or miscounting sneak die at 10 even with accomplished sneak attack. also I'd probably roll 1 two-handed fighter/9 rowdy and plan to go legendary 20/20. In which case probably Scythe over great axe. 20/20 rowdy/vivisectionist might work out as well, +4/+4 from mutagen vs +5/+5 weapon group and trading weapon specialization and weapon mastery for more sneak die.

Does ring of pyromania work with fire type blasts?

I do!

I think I may need to watch this video 2 or 3 times

Noob player, enjoying Overwhelming Soul. Please do more spell checkers, thx. Having a ball with this one, cause the build is explained. I’ve been on a few other channels that give builds with no explanation. Most create for none noobs it seems. I’m having real fun with almost wimp mode for now, it allows me learn the game in turn mode as well. Wanted to creat a Necromancer, but have yet to get any good info on the class. I believe regular healing methods killed my Necro. Don’t know the mechanics. Looking forward to your coverage, if you do one.

I really want to play a Demon shapeshifter focused Kineticist who uses melee form.

Does spell penetration work for Kiniticist? or is it better to get weapon focus for Kinitest blast / touch?

So, wouldn't you want to go Legend mythic path as Kinetics/ dodge monk? Monk first to survive then just blow everything up the rest of game, solo?

Hey this is very late, but I'd like to ask for clarification on a few points: What feats and mythic abilities that affect _spells_ work on Kinetic Blast? Someone in the comments mentioned that Zippy Magic does, which surprises me because it specifically calls out spells and not spell-like abilities.

so i tried the class, and my MC is currently lvl 6 elemental engine and has 6 points of burn. according to elemental overflow i should be able to chose two physical stats that gain a +2 size bonus on them. where is the interface element to chose them? i dont see it among the ability tab on top of my hotbar or anywhere else.

Does the Kineticist get the improvement to Gather Power?

hey, quick question, if gather power cannot lower a blast past zero, why do things like extended range lower to zero?

Can energy blast make sneak attack ?

I wonder if it's worth going overwhelming soul to be charisma based and getting two levels as Paladin, meaning your charisma modifier will get added as a bonus to all your saving throws, seems massive, especially late in the game when you will have stupid level of charisma

Wasn't there a specific enemy in an Act1 optional location that dropped Kineticist gear? I forget the spot, but the gear should be worth it if you're rolling Kineticist.

Any Kineticist actually can do a full round attack with kinetic blade if you don't use gather power, it's not restricted to Kinetic Knight. A kineticist can do up to three attacks, four if hasted, in melee with kinetic blade. So that part of the vid is incorrect. But ranged attacks get only one attack per round.

Since the dark elementalist is evil locked, and the azata's core alignment is CG, what's your recommendation mythic path on that front?

What's up with your Nenio?

Does the dragon bloodline increase the the blast damage?