Tychus Guide

Tychus Overview

Tychus is an excellent kiting hero that deals massive AoE damage with his Psionic Storm and Grenades. He also deals excellent splash damage from his auto-attacks. This means his total damage in the game is going to be very high.

However, he struggles against very high hp targets such as hives and omegalisks. Other heroes, such as Nova, Swann, Anvil, Atlas, etc., can finish off high HP targets much faster than Tychus.

Tychus' Perks

This is the optimal perk build for Tychus for casual and normal Oldschool and Hellwalker games, which is 99% of games involving Tychus.

1. Onslaught
2. Helldivers
3. Weaponsmith
4. (Hellwalker) Long game with many deaths = Tenacity. Short efficient game = Compartment

Helldivers complement Flaming Moes and allow Tychus's minions to tank dangerous enemies while you deal damage. Without them, you will find yourself constantly being forced to retreat, thereby reducing the effectiveness of your hero and delaying your 2500 score. For the Hellwalker perk, Tenacity is essential if there will be many deaths and by consequence, toxic hordes of bosses towards the late game. Tenacity will also allow unfettered movement speed to save allies especially during nightmare drops. 

If the team is unlikely to have many deaths, Compartment perk is much more efficient for shorter games. It allows you to use more Flaming Moes right from the start, and Flaming Moes are excellent tanking pets from beginning to end of the game.

Tychus' Master Order

This is the optimal mastery order for casual and normal Oldschool and Hellwalker games, which will be 99% of games involving Tychus. 

1. Level 0 = Close Quarter Combat/ Flaming Moe
2. Level 10 = Flaming Moe/ Close Quarter Combat
3. Level 20 = Mindbender/Lightweight Equipment
4. Level 30 = Psionic Warrior ULTIMATE
5. Level 40 = Lightweight Equipment/Mindbender
6. 2K Killstreak = Energy/Ranger
7. Level 50 = Ranger/Energy

Tychus has a straightforward optimal mastery order. You can swap one mastery for another, then pick the other immediately as the next mastery. But any efficient Tychus build for Hellwalker and Oldschool must consist of the masteries above.

With Flaming Moe and Helldivers, Tychus can skip Ranger mastery until mid-game since his minions will tank spine crawlers for him. Additionally, Tychus can easily deal with invisible ravagers early game, therefore skipping the need for detection. When the team spawns nemesis and the need to push into more dangerous spine crawlers arises, picking Ranger at level 50 is appropriate only then.

Comments on Tychus' Masteries

Tychus has 14 Masteries:

1. Energy -> Important after your ultimate mastery
2. Lightweight Equipment -> Core Mastery. Reduced cooldown for Flaming Moe and grenades.
3. Weapons Research -> Core Mastery. Increased auto-attack damage and grenade damage.
4. Flaming Moe -> Core Early Game Mastery. Those little minions have block and can tank
5. Iron Man -> Never picked, unless tenacity is picked as a perk to replace it
6. Living on the Edge -> Useless. Damage increase of 25% if under 40% hp and reduced stim pack cooldown is far too little to outweigh other masteries
7. Haywire Missile -> Useless. Damage dealt is far too low to be considered above other masteries. 
8. Oldschool Scavenging -> Situational. Only useful in speedrun games. 
9. Ranger -> Core Mid Game Mastery. Helps to outrange spine crawlers and detect nemesis and toxic bosses on hellwalker
10. Psionic Warrior -> ULTIMATE mastery
11. Nuke -> Global nuke
12. Close Quarter Combat -> Core Early Game Mastery. Increased auto-attack damage, grenade damage and armor
13. Mindbender -> Core Mid Game Mastery. Pick right before or right after psionic warrior ultimate mastery
14. Shadow Nimbus -> Less useless than 6. But still useless

Therefore Living on the Edge(6), Haywire Missile (7) and Shadow Nimbus (14) are only picked when there are no other masteries left to pick.