PSE & Bursting 101
Hey all, I made this guide for my team about a year back and noticed nothing remotely like it on here and figured it is not public knowledge given the utterly terrible bursts and behavior of most players during the very rare bursts in Random MPA's...The guide is more geared to bursting in AQ however. Constructive criticism is welcome as always but please back up your criticism or it will be ignored entirely.
PSE or “Photon Sensitive Effect” is a system in PSO2 that relates to killing monsters in missions, (amongst other things that we will get to later) kill enough monsters fast enough and raise the PSE lv to Lv8 and a PSE Burst will occur. When a PSE Burst is triggered a timer will start counting down from 1 minute, 1minute 30 in VITA blocks, and for the duration of the burst monsters will continually spawn in the party’s location. Killing enough monsters in the right way will cause the burst timer to reset and continue spawning monsters.
In mission areas each type of monster is linked to a PSE effect and depending on the type of mission you will have 3 or 4 possible effects that can happen at once. (EQ only has 3 possible effects whereas VHAQ\SHAQ and most other have 4) Also worth noting is that the monsters linked to a particular PSE effect will change as you move to different areas as it’s all randomly assigned upon creation of the mission instance.
So first thing we need to be doing is to pay attention to which monsters are raising which PSE levels as we are fighting, this will be essential if you want to burst for long periods as ideally we need to control which effects are leveling if possible.
The next is to watch out for the PSE symbols that appear at the top of the screen along with the towers of light that sometimes rise from defeated enemies. The colour of which indicates the element that should be used to kill the mobs in that area. Using a corresponding element will cause the PSE lv to rise faster than using other elements. Forces should be extra aware as they have easiest access to different elemental attacks.
• Red = Fire
• Yellow = Lightning
• Blue = Ice
• Green = wind
• Purple = dark
• White = light
Now the next thing to keep in mind is how maps are run, this is especially important in Advanced Quests as the monsters do not respawn. You will want to look for the most efficient path possible through the map the idea being as soon as one spawn is defeated you are moving as quickly as possible to the next part of the map where more mobs can spawn. Do not hang around collecting items as this should be done as you are defeating the spawn. This can be hard as the map will be hidden so luck is required to a certain degree.
Kill enough monsters fast enough and the PSE effect will hit lv8 and a burst will occur.
Depending on how fast you kill you will either go straight into a PSE burst or you will get a burst chance. If you get a chance then monsters will continue at normal rates to spawn in the party’s location, kill enough in a minute and a burst is triggered fail and the PSE level will reset.
PSE Burst
Finally we have a PSE burst and the timer is ticking down from one minute, what now? Do a mag chain then KILL KILL KILL. Your main objective is to kill enough monsters to trigger more PSE levels. Raise enough PSE levels and when the timer runs out it will give a “one more” resetting the timer and continuing the burst. Raise a different PSE lv to lv 8 and a Cross burst will occur resulting in even more spawns and an extra long timer. There are a number of factors in play but 2 stand head and shoulders above the rest other than simply killing as many monsters as possible as fast as possible.
1. STAY CLOSE TO THE REST OF THE PARTY - Ideally stay within resta/shifta range of each other. This is of utmost importance. The reason being monsters will continually spawn close to the party’s location. If someone is running off to kill more distant mobs it will cause monsters to spawn further away from that lone player and thus even further from the rest of the party. This is especially difficult for melee classes who will want to run off to attack monsters out of their range. Don’t do it, distant monsters are the Forces/Rangers job to kill in a burst. Conversely Ranger and Forces should be looking to kill more distant mobs leaving closer monsters for the melee classes to kill.
2. MAG BLAST CHAINS FTW. Mag blasts during bursts increase the One More chance at the end of a burst. Chained mag blasts increase one more chance greatly. Chaining is very easy to do. When you activate your mag blast you should hold the button down, you will see a large glowing circle, to chain simply overlap your circle with someone else’s circle. The “one more” chance will increase depending on the number of people chaining their mags. 4 player chains in SHAQ are required for good one more chances in full parties.
Always chain as soon as the initial burst happens as this will give the maximum time to recharge that PB gauge and hopefully get another chain in before the burst ends.
If you cross burst you will get a one more guaranteed after the initial cross timer runs out, save your mag chains for after the clock resets for the one more as its wasted otherwise.
ProTIP – Ketos Proi is the best Blast to have on a mag for PSE burst use by a clear country mile. The reasoning is that it does not do any actual damage it gives you and everyone else in range very fast PP regen and it actually charges far faster than the other Blasts allowing you more chances at mag chains. Plus hey, who doesn't need rapid regen pp in a burst! this is available at the Excube shop in the shop area of the Arks ship for 8 Excubes.
Theres also argument that Julius Nifta is a good alternative and I'm sure it has its place but I feel that ketos proi's increased charge rate makes it more suitable for better bursts.
With all this in mind a decently equipped mid/high level party will have little trouble triggering multiple bursts in Advanced Quests. However, you require some real DPS and special tactics to get long bursts in SHAQ since Ep3 came into play.
Now we will look at how we can extend bursts and more importantly trigger Cross Bursts.
So you want to burst for longer do you? Well it’s possible if you’re observant of what mobs boost what PSE levels and have run your map well. I must add that Maps are the lifeblood of bursting in Advance quests, get a bad map and your chances of a good burst drop like a stone. Got a good map? Well we better pray the monsters spawn in a good way. As you can see much is reliant on luck.
One tactic that can be very useful is spawn chaining. Assuming you have a PSE burst and the monsters spawning in the burst are not raising the other PSE levels by much you may want to move the entire party to a different location on the map. You will be looking to leg it as fast as possible to a location that has not had any monsters spawn yet as you want a new full spawn to hopefully bump up the other levels and cause a cross burst. Again this is entirely dependent on luck as we just don’t know what will spawn next.
One thing to be aware of is that monsters will continue to spawn at the original location and along the way as you move through the map looking for the next spawn, forces and rangers it is your job to kill the monsters still spawning from the burst otherwise they will still be on the map once you reach the new location and no more burst spawns will occur till they die.
In an ideal world you will burst, cross that burst, one more, cross again, one more, cross again , one more , cross again then one more as many times as possible. its rare that maps and spawns will allow this but totally possible.
Hopefully this guide has clued you in to what to do to get burst time.
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Originally Posted by spincast
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