Well, I’ve gotten used to running Brain Rupture with Kinetic Flayer in any build, just because it gives any psyker build solid extra damage and a nice specialist/elite focus. I almost never feel the need to cast Brain Rupture manually during a match.
I like that these two fit well into any build, but I have a bad feeling that the other blitzes don’t integrate as smoothly. You could fix that by adding a couple of new co-blitz talents for the psyker. You could argue that Charged Strikes already electrocutes, but its overall effect is almost nothing compared to Kinetic Flayer.
Add one more co-talent to Assail that lets the psyker cast shards automatically, either with some % chance or on crit.
Add an electrocute option to Charged Strikes that procs on any hit, but generates peril in return.
Or you could add something else entirely. Either way, I’d be glad to see a real alternative to Brain Rupture.
One thing also they should add before end of September is automated melee block’s and attack’s that come out like ghost weapons on crit because it’s already a glass cannon and has to worry about peril constantly when you have your infernal staff out. So that would help with the class actually surviving in high difficulties (damnation+)
Charged strike is the highest damage option on melee setups. It is plenty strong but I would like the 10% damage to electrocuted enemies to work with the electro staff.
I don’t think one would take assail over brain burst even if a crit throws a random shard in the direction you are looking… Assail can be tuned to be on par with a staff, so it enables a different play style… One with two ranged weapons.
I highly doubt Charged Strikes deals as much damage as you describe with the term “highest”. How do you measure it?
I have a scoreboard mod with plenty of my own fixes, and I can directly see that Kinetic Flayer does 10–15% of all damage in any build. I didn’t think it dealt that much before I decided to count it.
It would be a hard task to separate the Charged Strikes buff component from overall damage, but even if we find a way, it won’t push your output to 10%, simply because you can’t electrocute every target with melee.
I wouldn’t bet that Charged Strikes has more than a 5% damage effect. Frankly, i think it’s much lower.
Brain burst deals 1500 damage every 15s on one target. That is an additional 100 damage per second. Charged strike deals roughly 200 damage over 2s (numbers simplified). That makes 100 damage per second per enemy afflicted.
Nope, it doesn’t work that way, man =)
There are always plenty of circumstances where your blitzes have an effect on targets.
For example — a berserker attacks you:
With Brain Burst you kill him with just one fast attack of your weapon — the burst finishes him off after that. You can even just push him to trigger the effect.
With Charged Strike you kill him in two heavy swings, that’s about 2 seconds, so electrocute won’t add much, because its duration won’t even run out. And the buff won’t have any effect either, since you kill him with the second swing anyway.
So Brain Burst will do its 1500 while Charged Strike does almost nothing.
That’s why you need long-run statistics to evaluate effectiveness.
Bad wording but you definitely have a point. There is much more to consider when doing analysis. All I gave are the numbers and yes they do work that way. But I do not want to argue details.
The great picture is: charged strike is a game changer on melee setups. (It even makes catachan swords God tier. Note: the parry counts as heavy attack.) It gives each heavy attack 200 true damage into every enemy on every swing. Granted you best run it with a melee capable of doing heavy sweeps and heavy strikedowns, and preferable a cleave blessing.
Second note: you should not run melee Psyker if you have trouble with dealing with any enemy type or you will have a hard time.
Well, I had tried it, and I definitely didn’t expect it to surprise me, but it did.
In the first run on “regular Auric,” Electrocute did almost 30%. But I tried it with some effort, using only heavy swings with Devil’s Claw, no ability, no ranged, and keeping 6 Warp Charges on me constantly.
After I returned to my more familiar playstyle in the next run, it was lower, ~20%, still with Catachan.
After I switched to my lovely 2H, it dropped to ~10%, but I got good area control with it.
Well, it’s still much more than I expected, and in some cases, it could be as effective as Kinetic, or even better.
But you can feel the difference: “Kinetic” works with every build and in every situation, while “Charged Strike” works only under special conditions in melee builds. And I can’t say that even under those conditions it would be the best — I did much more with 2H than with Devil’s Claw in a team, comparing overall damage.
So, I think my topic is still relevant, and “Smite” still need more synergy.
I have another fix for ep in mind: I would like to switch to crit chance from scriers to ep: After activating an empowered blitz your critical chance is increased by 20% for 15s.
This would give ep a bigger synergy with the general Psyker tree and reduce the overloaded scriers gaze ability. 15s if one wants to make it synergistic with kinetic, less if not.
EP transfers its +50% damage effect to kinetic autocasts, so if FS adds some new autocast for “assail” and we’re able to increase its chances thru crit, for example — it would be an alternative solution for ranged builds.
Smite could also get some new passive talents that could be improved by EP. Some sort of chain lightning, for example.
Assail with EP is a very potent ranged option. Imo there is no need for further buffs. Try it with the submode that increases the chance to gain an EP charge, it shreds. Even in high havocs
I tried “Assail” a long time ago and in various combinations at Havoc 30+.
And I didn’t find a reason to put it in my setups.
Its problem is that it does nothing but damage in active mode, with no other interactions or effects.
It’s pretty mediocre; the game has enough ways to max damage without Assail. It should be changed.
No one plays with it, and this is an indicator.
Blitzes should have a balance in usage. If something is completely left out, you should take another look at it.
An indicator of what is open to interpretation though. Maybe people either prefer the brain off damage gains from BB+kinetic flayer, or the “fantasy” of being a smyker, to assail.
Really don’t need every option to see equal pick rates across the board. That’s an incredibly stupid way to approach balance that never actually works. The goal should be that the options are good within their niche, don’t step on each others toes too much, and there are worthwhile reasons to use each.
