Brain Burst/Rupture Fix + Improvements to the Other Blitzes

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Brain Rupture

Brain Rupture is awkward and annoying to use. And for an ability with such a name it feels weak and timid.

Here is a design solution to make the ability easy to balance in the future and also more involved in use.

Brain Rupture:
(Brain Burst will just be a weaker variant of Brain Rupture with 34% less damage)

Lock on to target to apply pressure on it (left click)

The pressure increases at a rate of 1000 per second, all effects that increase damage dealt apply to pressure increase speed.

If the target hit points fall below pressure applied, it dies (brain ruptured)

Pressure fades at a rate of 100 per second if it is not applied for 0.5 seconds.

Build pressure (right click)

Build up pressure in your hands, up to a maximum of 1000 at a rate of 750 per second. Left click whilst right clicking to lock on and instantly start increasing pressure as normal but apply all pressure built up already.

You trigger Perils of the Warped when:

-You lock on whilst you are at 100 Peril

-You remain locked on for more than 0.5 seconds after reaching 100 Peril during lock on.

Other ability conversions:

Kinetic Flayer Applies a desired/balanced amount of Pressure per proc.

Or alternatively: Kinetic Flayer could be: “Dealing damage causes enemies to gain 10% of the damage dealt as also as Pressure”

All abilities that give buffs to what previously was “one casting” of brain rupture can just say that the buff applies for the first X seconds of casting etc.

All abilities that give casting speed increases to brain rupture instead are converted to pressure increase speed increases.

Comments:

This way Brain Rupture would be way more satisfying to use, it no longer suffers from killstealing, and it can be easily balanced to fit any dps amount you want, it also now supports hybrid combat of the psyker, with applying pressure then closing in to drop the enemy hp below pressure level.

If you want to bring back Cerebral Lacerations, it can easily be done via something like: “Enemies which have more than (for example) 2000 Pressure take 25% increased damage from all sources.”

All numbers can be adjusted here to make the ability balanced to the developer’s liking. It can never deal more DPS than what it is allowed to do. This just eliminates wasted casts and makes the ability fun and makes the psyker feel powerful.

If staying behind a corner is an issue, it can be added that Pressure Increase Speed decreases/Pressure increase stops entirely if the target is not seen by the psyker during the last 1-3 seconds.

Smite

Smite is currently quite a dull ability to use, with boring non-hybrid gameplay or mindless standing & casting associated with it.

Lightning Storm Change (Mutually exclusive with Charged Strike): Press Weapon Special when wielding Smite to shoot a ball of lightning to the ground, which staggers nearby enemies. Press Weapon Special again to cancel the ball. When the Ball is deployed, you cannot cast Smite and you gain Peril over time. Reaching 100% peril cancels the ball. You cannot cast a ball of lightning for 10 seconds after the ball is cancelled.

Charged Strike Change (Mutually exclusive with Lightning Storm): Press Weapon Special when wielding Smite to imbue smite to your melee and ranged attacks, causing All attacks to cause Electrified on enemies hit. Press Weapon Special again to cancel the imbued Smite. When Smite is imbued, you cannot cast Smite and you gain Peril over time. Reaching 100% Peril cancels the imbuement. You cannot imbue smite for 10 seconds after the imbuement is cancelled.

Both of these abilities would not be cancelled at 100% Peril if the Psyker uses Warp Unbound, instead being cancelled once Warp Unbound ends.

Assail

This is the least pressing of the improvement suggestions.

A new node: Empyrean Javelin. Combines 4 Shards into one Javelin, which you can hurl for the cost of 4 shards (both peril and shard count). It flies 4 times faster than a normal shard with three times the damage and three times the cleave compared to a normal assail shard.

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its really not, ive used it for many house in auric and it works fine, now people pick it more than anything else for flayer interactions

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Yes, the game is in a good state build-diversity wise when it comes to Auric, almost all things in the game are fine in Auric, given how accessible it is.

It being fine does not mean it oughtn’t be improved. As you said, it is now used by most as a passive and uncontrolled ability, which promotes no involved gameplay.

Also when talking about this I had Havoc on my mind.

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yeah people still pick it in havoc

if you look up psyker havoc 40 on youtube every other result with psyker is brainburst
flayer is crazy good its a massive buff and many people dont realize that.

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It is, in 30-50% of cases when I try to use it on targets like Bulwarks or Crushers they are just killed effortlessly by other classes before I even able to charge it. There is also problem of targeting which is super clumsy, as many times what you want to rupture is in a crowd of enemies who constantly move and thus you can easily “pick up” a wrong target and waste even more time on nothing, like killing a random chaffer instead. It would make more sense for it to work like tagging, always prioritizing a more valuable target if possible. So if you try to aim BB through a crowd at a Crusher behind it, it would ignore chaff and snap to Crusher automatically. That’s how Arbite’s dog actually works, making it much more robust option than BB when it comes to human-sized targets.

And yes, for an ability that makes you completely defenseless and requires you to spend a lot of time on preparing for an actual attack, it feels underperforming. I need 2 hits of BB with Empowered Psyonics charges to kill a Crusher, what still will take a few seconds, especially taking into account the aiming issues mentioned above - while arbites or zealots can just anihilate couple Crushers in the same time period. And without the EP charges it’s just horribly slow and weak, I rarely even try to use it, because you need to spend time on weapon swap, then 2 seconds charging it - for your target just being killed by other player mid-charging, happens all the time.

It’s good for putting some damage into bosses yes, that’s when it more or less reliable and have certain benefits.

3 Likes
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brain burst lets you eliminate most enemies at any range with one attack, and you can spam the living daylights out of it now, it’s quite good. Buffing brainburst would probably make it OP

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This is not the case in havoc, where the enemies are also more numerous.

And also, I did mention in the write-up, that any number present can be adjusted to have it be balanced. This was not a request for a buff, but a rework.

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havok is nice, but niche. balancing around that would make brainburst very OP for the majority, and no one is going to accept a BB psyker in their team anyway.

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No you can’t spam it, game won’t let you, by constantly sending chaff at you from all directions. At best, you’ll have some opportunities to use it from time to time, in limited short time windows when nobody harasses you, and you don’t have some other obligations, like setting shields or disposing chaff with your weapons. And you still will be limited by the mentioned aiming issues during those.

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i don’t buy that. you can make space at will with a psyker in any conditions

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And your intended target of course will wait till you do so :smiley:

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what they do doesn’t matter. by that i mean you can always make enough space to lock a target with bb then go back to what you where doing.

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Yea, what matters is you can’t “spam” BB when you constantly “clear space”, or dispose specialists with your weapons (because you already have them in your hands while clearing space, it’s faster than switch to BB), or you run from a wave you can’t dispose, or try to avoid get caught in some flames etc. What you definitely almost never have is opportunity to just stay still in place and “spam” BB, that’s theorycrafting in its finest

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you can lock and kill with BB as swiftly as the peril mechanic will really allow. It’s not hyperbole mate, there are plenty of people who will tell you the same.

Trying to make BB better without making it broken is really tricky, and probably relies more on enemy role/ability changes to be more effective.

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you can lock and kill with BB as swiftly as the peril mechanic will really allow

No, you can’t. In the game where everything and you too constantly twitches and runs around, you’ll be limited by your current line of sight to possible targets which can be obstructed by number of things.

But more importantly is that you just won’t want this, as to use BB you have to swap your weapon to it, and back from it soon after that (because it leaves you completely defenseless and you can’t stay like that for long) - and that takes time that needs to be justified, as you could just use your range weapon instead, and in many cases it will be the preferred option. Actually, in many cases I would consider swapping to ranged weapon in the first place, because I still can use it to kill some specialist - and will stay with a range weapon after that I can use to kill a bunch more things that attack me. BB is the last thing I consider swapping to, unless it’s a rare case when nobody attacks you AND you have some target in the distance you really need BB to dispose. Or when the target is armored and hard to kill, that will be 90% of cases I use BB on regular basis.

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Trying to make BB better without making it broken is really tricky

It’s a skill that leaves you defenseless when you use it (unlike Arbite’s dog that covers 75% of BB’s usecases, and is used in parallel with main weapons, and doesn’t have any targeting issues BB has) and requires charging (again, unlike the dog). So it clearly one that is supposed to be used for prolonged, sustainable damage application. Which isn’t possible in this game as 99% of things die in a few seconds, and it won’t allow you to stay in defenseless mode for too long too, unless team deliberately protects you (what needs to be justified on itself, BB isn’t remotely that good atm to justify it).

To make it somewhat usable all the time, they need to make the swap to it and back WAY faster. I would go with unique animations when your character doesn’t swap out their current weapon, but just quickly frees one hand and can use BB immediately - and then can get back to the current weapon in a fraction of a second, without needing to prepare it as usuall.

And then change its targeting to make it work as tagging, always preferring a specialist or elite or monstrosity when aimed through a crowd.

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this would be cool actually, being able to pop a marked target regardless of LoS would be a good buff and feeds into teamplay.

With a scriers/emp. psy. build you can spit out five or six very high damage bursts in a few seconds. There is even a penance for it.

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I still would say the first one is more important and less prone to make it OP accidentally. It’s really a needed QoL adjustment, because currently it’s pretty awkward to use. The game is incredibly fast, constantly forcing you to juggle with weapons and abilities. Making you go all the way swapping to something else than weapon really then needs to be justified. And it’s really justified in boss fights, in case of BB, where you can stay in it for a while attacking a single beefy target. Everything else just dies too fast and probably your help isn’t even needed, you’ll just find out you go all the way to BB and back for no reason in most cases, other players just will do all the work it does faster and naturally.

If we could make the swap to BB and back to your current weapon very fast, the skill would fit much better into current game’s dynamics. May be even Assail could be improved like that, though at least in its case you are not left completely defenseless against chaff, you can protect yourself pretty well without going back to your weapons.

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I do see your point vis a vis speed vs ease of use; having a faint BB ‘target halo’ appear on your nominally targeted enemy whenever you have BB equipped perhaps? Then you would not need to swap AND target but could do both simultaneously.

Combined with the ability to auto-lock a marked target this would give more targeting utility without buffing the already considerable damage.