I have to ask; why do you feel that a grenade ability on psyker would ruin the class?
Voidstrike and Trauma are both very close in mechanics to what I was imagining, but it would work on charges and basically meant to be paired with a gun.
If I had free reign over designing the psyker than I would have made the right side of the skill tree into a dedicated full gun build and take inspiration from the character Muerta from Dota 2.
On malice, yes, you can do these.
As many have posted,
I think assail perhaps needs to have 1/4 it’s current shard recharge rate, to compensate give it 50% more charges.
This would allow it to still be effective as it is but not as spamable as you will run out of ammo, and in doing your forced to use it more sparingly.
What?
8 seconds recharge time for 1 shard?
That would be ridiculously terrible.
It would not matter if you had 200% more charges, if they regenerate that slowly and you never build up a cushion.
Even 4 seconds would likely be too much.
I’ll be honest I thought the Regen on shards was 1per second. Maybe 4 seconds then, or 1/2.
So right now assail is
1 shard every 2 seconds up to 10 shards max.
Im suggesting
1 shard every 4 seconds up to 15 shards max.
Maybe also add
On elite or special kill +1shard?
Allowing for the same burst damage, but it’s not infinitely spamable which seems to be the problem.
It is actually closer to 1.5 seconds, not 2 full seconds.
But still.
I think even if the recharge time was doubled, it might already be too much.
Especially when considering how often the shards just miss completely, due to their random movement and strange tracking behavior.
I think that assail’s tracking should be reworked to be more skill based.
Less random movement, but smaller area at which the projectiles auto target.
That would make aiming more important and nerf the ability for those who have no aim (probably a lot of the spammers), while making it slightly better than it is now, for those who have proper aim.
That in combination with a reduction of potentially too strong interactions with Disrupt Destiny, should be fine.
If that is still too strong, maybe slightly increase the recharge time to 2 or 2.5 sec per shard.
Any of the suggestions to slap the ability with an insane nerf, appear completely crazy to me and do not seem to come from a reasonable position, but are an attempt to basically remove the use of assail from the game (as the suggestion in the OP).
i know im gonna be in the minority, but let autoaim die, either its broken and boring, or blanaced and boring
the fact that it can compete with other top end builds is just salt in the wound.
Yeah, assail is not so completely busted that it needs to be nuked.
The ability is honestly fine and not so strong that you could solo an entire mission by yourself just by equipping it.
Imho: the biggest reason for all the calls for the massive nerfs come from a point of frustration and not numerically supported imbalance.
It’s surely annoying to see all the trash mobs die right in front of your face as your are about to hit them in melee. I just don’t see what the big deal is supposed to be about that. When that happens to me, I just stop trying to kill the horde, my psyker teammate has clearly under control, and I set my sights on more important targets.
If I had to “nerf” assail, I’d make the basic shards not be as good against flak but I’d have the aimed ability consume multiple shards for a stronger AP projectile to deal with flak targets instead. If you wanna go even further, you could make that aimed ability not have any tracking or only track after you’ve locked on to the target for 0.5s to 1s.
Now I know for a fact that you are trolling and not attempting to maintain a conversation with me.
Let’s come to an end here. 
Of course it needs a nerf, especially in those difficulties : it’s totally OP even on auric maelstrom and requires literally no skill.
Psyker main detected.
“Oh no, my broken beyond belief ability that i can spam at almost any threat in the game dosent kill the toughest mobs. Whatever shall i do? Totally not pull out my voidstrike and 2 tap that crusher/bulwark.”
But you can do tons of other things in Malice, too.
In Malice, Autopistol Shredder performs pre-nerf.
In Malice, flamethrowers kill easily.
In Malice, you can use the Helbore Lasguns’ bayonet as your primary weapon.
Malice is not the game. Malice is nothing to make balance for.
Malice is a transitionary difficulty offered by Fatshark, so you can learn the ropes OF THE ACTUAL game.
All Heresy and lower difficulties are like this. Every game has an endgame. T5 and Auric missions are this endgame. If you don’t play that, you are not playing Darktide, you are playing the extended tutorial meant to get you there.
But it’s not the Assail. It’s the disrupt destiny empowered Assail that does that.
Please. We must stop the “It’s the Assail” memes. I don’t want 2 out of 3 Psyker Blitzes to end up worthless, because people were inaccurate with their accessment of the cause of the issue.
I don’t think the problem is a necessarily DD.
It seems like DD works really well with assail but it doesn’t work very well with a lot of other things.
I have a topic reworking DD.
But then again my suggested changes won’t reduce how powerful assail can be with DD it would just make it easier for other abilities and weapons to benefit from DD.
.
I think @Flawless may have the best solution here.
By reworking the tracking to be tighter and more aim based it changes the skill required to use the ability as well reduces the randomness of the ability.
It would make the ability harder to use however I can see players getting more benefit from it as to the precision that would be gained from a tighter more focused ability
My opinion is this:
I think possibly reducing the fire rate by 15-30% and the cooldown for replenishment by 100 or even 200% for Assasil.
My main issue however is Blitz. Even without the exploit of “infinite power” it is still extremely useful. You shouldn’t be able to stunlock an entire horde or even less an entire patrol inside a horde.
I’m a Psyker main but it just ain’t no fun to play anything right now unless you are lucky and get a match with people that want a challenge OR are not using broken stuff.
Some people think that these blitz-powers are balanced but i disagree and mostly so because they require next to no skill or brain to use.
And if you place said powers into someone who can play well it becomes even stronger.
Guy says assail deletes ogryn (which is not true).
I say it doesnt.
Your response to me correcting a wrong statement, is to try and make fun of me for that?
Being reasonable does not seem to be your strong suit.
Voidstrike 1-2 tapping crushers and bulwarks has absolutely nothing to do with assail or any other weapon for that matter.
Because you clearly can’t see that assail is an overtuned ability that sucks the fun out of the game for other players.
I’ll give you an example you are probably familliar with. You remember how when you targeted an enemy with the brain burst, every vet in your team instantly targeted that enemy and killed it before you get your cast off? That’s what it feels like to play with assail/voidstrike psyker on your team. Just before you swing your weapon/pull the trigger the goddamn spikes/voidstrike ball fly in and remove the entire horde.
From the damage perspective assail is fine. But the ability to just spam it sucks the fun from other players. That’s why i think that some sort of spike regen nerf is in order. Everything else should stay the same. That way you still have an insanely powerful tool that is able to delete entire hordes, but you can’t just constantly do it.
So someone who wants assail nerfed into the ground, lies.
I point out the misinformation.
And your response to me correcting the lie, is to mock me and to disregard everything i say, because i apparently am a salty psyker main.
And that makes sense because you also want assail to be nerfed into the ground.
Got it.
Yeah… no. It doesnt feel anything like that.
Didnt play vet a lot since the update, but playing ogryn and zealot even with 3 psykers in the group is absolutely no issue.
It is not quite comparable to you casting BB on an enemy for 2 seconds, just for a moronic teammate to then decide to specifically target that exact enemy, although there are 10 other targets to pick from.
Sometimes you go to attack an enemy in melee, but someone kills it from range. That is nothing new and nothing exclusive to assail psykers. It just happens. Just like others will probably melee kill something that you wanted to melee.
Before the update, vets, zealots and ogryn blasted everything with their guns. They blasted everything, reloaded and kept going.
An assail user can throw a mag worth of shards into a horde, but then they get 1 shard every 1.5-2 seconds. Meanwhile, a gun user could just reload a fresh mag in that timeframe and keep blasting with full dps.
Gunlugger ogryn can still do it with a shotgun, but they have no weakness and they completely dump on assail psykers.
They blasted everything, reloaded and kept going.
And they have to manage ammo which have a tendency to end if you just blast everything left and right. Assail has no such problem. After you dealt with the wave of enemies you have enough charges restocked to deal with the next. And the next. And you don’t have to manage them like ammo, because they can’t end.