Brain Burst feels bad in a team with a Boltgun

I’ve noticed that in teams that have a Boltgun, and especially a Veteran with a Boltgun, Brain Burst feels lackluster. The Boltgun is so strong that with a decent wielder, it’s much harder to contribute to special and elite killing as a Psyker (except for armored enemies & Bulwarks). I can’t tell you how many times by now I’ve started charging a BB only to gain 20% peril for nothing as the Boltgun deletes my target out of existence.

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I gave up on Psyker specifically because it just felt like Brain Burst was mostly pointless. Trying to get stacks with it before someone kills what you’re targetting is frustrating and the stacks themselves go away far too quickly to be all that useful at the times when you need it, say when a horde is breathing down your neck. It just isn’t fun (for me personally) to play.

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They should have a trait or something that lets you target 2-3 enemies with brainburst.

Getting stacks is not really an issue as long as they don’t nerf Psychic communion and Kinetic Flayer to the ground

It’s not so hard to land a BB here and there in the middle of a fight, the idea is that it shouldn’t be your main offensive

BB’s main issue is that it falls off extremely hard in heresy, where most elites you NEED to BB now take two instead of one, on top of there being a lot more of them

That means Psyker also falls very hard in Heresy+
They didn’t need to spam twice as more elites, and make them twice as long to kill with your dedicated skill

Brain Burst needs to scale off gear score or something, right now it’s solely dependant on warp stacks for additional damage, and those still aren’t enough to cross the Heresy threshold

Don’t think it makes sense to actively focus on building/managing warp stacks in the psyker’s current state. Just take what benefits you can from the tree and otherwise ignore them, far less stressful and allows you to focus your attention on contributing to fights in more meaningful ways.

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I mean… it’s not about Boltgun. High Power Plasma or Shotgun can make short work of elites/specials too. Even High Power Mark IV Lasgun if you are consistant with headshots.

Besides that’s the Veteran job. His whole kit is around highlighting specials/elites and have huge range damage bonus to kill them fast and level 30 talents is all about refreshing it so you can even go on 5-10 kills spree during ONE ult.

I find Brain Burst good on bosses/lord DPS and on Dogs and running away specials or campped Snipers.

Brain Burst was never supposed to be better than whole kit of one class + his best range weapon. Lol.

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Someone else already posted that to fix Psyker, it should passively generate warp charges on perils thresholds, and then be used as a spender for Brain Burst.

It would fix the majority of issues. They’d then need to fully rework some of the talents and change the “damage increase” passive to something more constructive like “expending a Warp Charge applies a stack of soulblaze to targets near you” or ANYTHING else. Cuz right now this class feels like hot garbage to play. It’s not fun to be forced into doing ONLY one thing to make your kit work. It’s terrible.

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Agreed, but I do choose to believe it was intended to be usable.
In it’s current state, you’d be better off with a grenade on that button than BB

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dont brainburst unless its “big armor”

just grab your voidstrike staff with good numbers on it, especially resist/vent, and proceed to rapidfire short charge stagger EVERYTHING while charging up the really tasty shots that go through cohesive crowds, or slam the smaller elites with… which actually does kill them, and it staggers them while doing so

i use brainburst only for stuff thats moving between cover, big armored stuff, dogs, and precharging it for bursters… and even those are better to just smack in the face with a charged up voidstrike or couple normal shots

also… it can headshot and it counts, especially if you can send it headshotting through a crowd… preferrably at some poor ranged bastards in the back or an elite

it has decent sustain, passable damage, and pretty brutal CC provided you work on your shot placement

and most of my traits are completely worthless

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Could just give it the trait that if the target dies when it’s complete brainburst just jumps to the next closest enemy. To mitigate this being used on a useless enemy brainburst could gain a 5m suppression of enemies near the killed target and have a 90%/70%/50%/30%/10% (sequential) chance to chain to the next nearest enemy. So in a lucky situation you brainburst six enemies and suppress a bunch.

brainburst needs a far faster charge time and no the lvl 30 talent isnt that big of a help and/or warp charges need to last FAR longer. So far the active skills in this seem very lack luster and really only the guardmans skills seems fun to use and strong. the zelots is very underwhelming and ogryns is decent for the aoe and GTFO and the pushback/brain burst combo is the worst of them all.

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for that matter… why do i lose ALL warp charges when it expires?

its all so ridiculously BB dependant that its just not really worth worrying about… because if all i do is walk around popping heads 80% of the time, im going to be about as effective as a damp towel, and will have about as much fun doing it

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Its not an issue with the bolter is an issue with Brain burst more then anything. It just takes WAY to long to cast.

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I have to say that I’m definitely agreeing with the general sentiment here, Brain Burst just struggles to hold up compared to other classes lategame weaponry on Heresy and Damnation. Bolters, Plasma Guns, Power Swords, Eviscerators and basic chainweapons easily outpace the Psyker’s ability to deal focused, single-target damage to high priority targets to a significant degree.

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Brain Burst/Rapture overall feels bad to use. There’s a lot of wasted time channeling and even more if people are killing what you’re trying to burst.

Some thoughts. Raised as opinions, not stated as facts:

1 - If you’ve got a teammate who is reliably deleting elites with his primary weapon, then use your primary weapon to delete the mobs/shooters? I’d say “lucky you” to be honest; you’ve got a great teammate there. No Elites = Psyker can go nuts on aoe.

2 - Right click charge + left click execute is far preferable to just a left click single target charge. Means you can move the kill shot to another target if your first choice dies.

3 - BB is a grenade skill, not a primary weapon. It might not be as versatile as say Smite, but you can use it to nuke any target at any range, even if you/they break line of sight. You can long-nuke a Crusher in the distance for example to remove them before you even need to engage.

4 - If memory serves; in the olden days (pre patch 13) if you’d got a BB charge going on a target, and someone else killed it, you still got the warp stacks to keep your damage boost going. I think they’ve done away with that? (needs testing)

5 - I also disfavour Brain Burst :wink: . But only because I think the other two Psyker skills are better.

Lots of things in this game just completely invalidate other playstyles.

I was just going in games to practice my Devil Claw parry and I kept getting thrown in with the same player who just Smited everything.

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Firstly. :slight_smile: Because I’ve had that inescapable pairing in the past! Forces you to pick a different tier.

Secondly. There’s a good mod available for the Psykhanium that allows you to spawn active monsters that attack you. You might be better grabbing that mod and practising there. Albeit disclaimer a lag-free-instance has slightly different timings than on a live server.

(*edit - to include link for ease of reference: Creature Spawner at Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Nexus - Mods and community)

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Thanks, appreciate it. I am familiar with mods, have a lot already.

I feel brain burst should be competitive with krak grenades at least.