Hello, I have a fairly detailed suggestion for the game. Gun and melee classes have seen a lot of love recently with new weapons and it would be cool for psykers to get some too in the form of a new staff. The selection is becoming a bit stale for long-time psyker players and current staves have a low skill ceiling in terms of aim, meaning skilled players have to resort to gun psyker to experience some challenge and to feel their skill is rewarded.
So I have an idea for a staff that I think would be super fun and resolve this gameplay issue. A brain burst staff. It could work like this. The m1 attack would behave like the familiar projectile attack, but it would do no damage on impact and must hit the target weak spot (the brain). Upon hit it would then apply the glowing head marker that appears when a target is being brain bursted. This would build some peril per attack and could be applied to as many enemies as the player could hit before 100% peril. Then, the player can use the M2 attack to detonate all of the applied charges, resulting in an explosion of simultaneous brain bursts.
This would do very high damage, depending on how many enemies the player could headshot per 100% peril/x number of seconds, but would offer no CC in return (perhaps at the end of the cast it could stagger enemies like BB currently does - that would look really cool). The M2 detonation could require a short period of time to charge like current M2 attacks, costing some additional peril. The weak spot only requirement would be the key to keeping this staff balanced and skill dependent (plus a bodyshot that could BB the target would make little sense). A player with very good aim could headshot many more targets, and hit targets at range with the projectile, than an average skilled player.
One balance issue is that specialising in brain rupture may be somewhat redundant since a staff could apply it en masse (having said that, BB doesn’t require landing headshots with a projectile or the time that that takes). Therefore, if necessary, you could make it so that the damage per burst decreases per enemy, such that one affected enemy could be similar to an unmodified, regular brain burst in terms of damage, cast time and peril generation (the damage stat on staffs could have some effect on scaling here). Or the detonation time could increase per affected enemy. Or not, depends how OP it feels to play. Such tweaks could mean that the benefits of additional skill investment into the various brain rupture talents would still be appealing for psykers who want higher/faster single target BB damage, a staff that can CC or for gun psykers. It may also be necessary to have the glowing head linger for a period of time before disappearing, or to disappear if peril reaches 0 before detonation, to prevent the player from exploiting the mechanics.
The rest of the balancing considerations such as overall damage per BB, damage reduction per target, peril generation per shot, peril generation per detonation, detonation charge time, etc would all depend on testing. But such a staff needs to feel powerful in the hands of a skilled player in order to be rewarding, otherwise it could easily feel inferior due to its drawbacks.
Such a weapon would be ineffective for horde clear but would excel at dealing with groups such as elites (so a kind of antithesis of assail) and stragglers that are outside melee range. It would also be effective against low numbers of enemies that are spread out over a wide area, such as those pesky shooters, providing the player can headshot them from a distance. Dealing with spread out enemies all around the player is a role which currently no staff in the game can efficiently and effectively deal with. It would fill a niche in that respect.
It would also synergise well with many current features: the Perilous Combustion and Wildfire talents, the Warp Siphon keystone and its modifiers, and the various +25% damage perks available for staves. The current worst blessing in the game ‘Run n Gun’ may suddenly become very appealing indeed to many players. Stamina perks/curios for psyker too in that respect, as well as crit (because crit BB would be fun). Run n Gun + Mettle + stamina/sprint would be very good for a faster playstyle. The Voidstrike blessings would be perfect for this staff, so no new features required. Transfer Peril would refund some peril back upon hit so that more enemies can be hit before reaching 100% peril. Surge could work so that a m1 ‘crit’ triggers a second shot that applies a second BB charge, providing it hits (a new way of utilising the currently useless crit for m1: a crit wouldn’t actually do any additional damage, because m1 doesn’t do any damage, but it would apply 2 charges of BB. This could work on top of how regular crit functions on m2 detonation). Sustained Fire could increase the damage of the third and fourth BB charges applied in a salvo, making the ‘salvo’ part skill-dependent. These blessings are restricted to the Voidstrike and they hardly get used because Void is meh at the moment. And nothing beats Warp Nexus and Warp Flurry for it anyway. The options are very limited. So this would be such a good opportunity to give these blessings greater appeal and wider use in new and interesting ways. The possibilities that could open up with this weapon could massively revitalise psyker with new playstyles we haven’t seen before.
It would be super fun to sprint around brain bursting groups of heretics with this staff. BB is very satisfying to use and being able to do it to multiple targets would be even better. I can almost hear the beefy sound of numerous heretic brains bursting together in perfect harmony. For the Emperor.
