BB currently is working only up to malice but after that it becomes not worth the cost in peril and more important, time. Your weapons can scale but BB can’t and generating warp charges from killing talents can scale because of a higher count of enemies.
Usually scaling in tide depends on damage, attack speed or crowd control. In the current iteration of BB there is just not enough of it. Feat giving you 25% charge speed is rather weak. I would be OK if this ability was only utility but many feats don’t work well or at all without it.
What I would like is to make this ablitity insta kill man sized enemies and 2 shot ogryns on highest difficulty and leave everything else (damage scales with enemy count) or make it charge faster and stun enemy faster (scaling with crowd control).
Other options would need a lot of work with feats and much more testing in my opinion.
I don’t think we’re going to get instant brain burst. That would be too radical a change, but I do completely agree that the scaling should be looked at. BB is already very cumbersome and slow. Doing it three times for every Ogryn is not viable.
Instant kill after charge. You can kill enemies faster or control them with good staff, the only good part about BB now is sniping ability but good Veteran is much better at this. Killing enemies instantly after long charge on 5 difficulty is not that strong.
If you’re playing completely around brain burst your playing wrong. Psyker is a flex pic, not an elite killer. BB is more of a QOL utility ability. Play veteran for the HVT role
I disagree.
Brain Burst is a core ability and I like that it defines the class ; I just don’t like how clunky it is or how poorly the synergies work and how schyzophrenic the class feels overall.
The way I see the role is as a support, targetting specials and elites with BB to assist in their deletion ; using staves as mid range support weapons to control enemies and melee weapons as last resort.
Problem is that as it is now, BB goes against teamplay.
I’d love a version of the Psyker who can project a force shield to stop bullets (like force sword bullet block but with options to built around that property), allowing Vets to use you as a cover to advance against many enemy gunners.
It is boring gameplay. I have thousands of hours played in VT1 & 2 and playing just using one weapon would get old fast. Defining class by one ability that is not very flexible or engaging is not a good move.
I doubt anyone is advocating for the exclusive use of brain burst.
I (in theory and ideally) see BB as a ranged weapon in VT2, that you whip out to handle elites and specials - the single-shot hard hitting ones, like xbow, longbow or handgun.
This allows you to use a control staff instead of having a redundant revolver.
This is similar to Engi’s crankgun : you don’t play Engi using only the minigun, but it is (in theory) a nice part of the kit.
If there were other better synergies to generate Warp Charges, you could also choose to use BB as a fast way to generate the charges (instead of being forced to use it and it taking ages) and charge into melee - it even promotes decision making.
That what I said, BB and melee hybrid. Without better BB that is too weak and you are much stronger using staves. You can now playing melee psyker but you would be weak on Heresy+.
I wonder if it would be possible to have BB damage scale with the power of your ranged weapon (not its damage but the power value). So you would keep some equivalence between the difficulty as you improve your weapon and the BB from a lvl30 psyker would be far more noticiable that one from a lvl 5.
It would be good if we could assign weapons that strengthened the psychic powers, therefore sacrificing regular combat to increase the psyker powers, leaning more one way or another. That would handle the scaling.
Brain Burst is such a chore to use. I never feel powerful using it and I’m always frustrated when I play Psyker. Managing my Warp Charges makes me play toxic where I need to pop a dude and some jerk singles that glowy guy out and kills him, losing me 4 to 6 charges. That’s such a dumb problem to have with a class.
Warp Charges should not be dependent on kills with BB, maybe quelling 25% to 50% of perils instead. That way you can consistently have Warp Charges with all your Psyker weapons and not be pigeon holed to gaining them with BB on your own. Then, Psyker could truly be a support and BB could serve more for CC and opening up elites to damage for your team. I wouldn’t mind a talent (or the right-click) to only be able to target elites and specials so I don’t waste it on trash mobs.
Agreed, the whole brain burst to warp charge pipeline is a massive wet blanket on the Psyker class.
Structurally the biggest problem with the class is that they made brain burst an ability you can and should use all the time, because that means it can’t actually be a powerful elite killer.
This option relies either on generating Warp Charges differently than BB or BB being able to generate warp charges fast ; and for Warp Charges to actually have a greater impact on damage than 12% (or 18%) which serve very few breakpoints.
Another option is to use BB to help delete elites and specials and focus on staves for control as an entirely different playstyle ; and both should be possible and encouraged.
The playstyles are exclusive right now because of this schyzophrenic class design ; and pushing BB towards one or the other would only force one playstyle or the other, while both seem fun.
My option of setting a threshold on BB damage fixes both :
→ you can target trash to instakill them, gain charges and go into melee (with full Peril)
→ you can target elites and specials and are impactful (instead of casting for 2.5s, having a vet kill your target and ending up with Peril for nothing).
If quelling generated Warp Charges, a rework of the Force Sword to weave Peril and Warp Charges into the swings would also be great.
If the special quelled instead of generating Peril, swapping from ranged to melee would actually be part of the gameplay loop instead of exclusive : charge yourself up with BB or staff, and then get close to wreak havoc with your sword.
Other option, maybe the Force Sword could deal increased damage depending on current Peril and quell on hit, and the Special work as it currently does but also generate Warp Charges.
Ideally Brain Burst would use warp charges to do more damage, but warp charges would be generated by quelling peril.
That way you can still do a brain burst build that uses regular brain bursts to generate peril and charges and then spends the charges on empowered brain bursts. If you don’t like using brain burst as your standard attack though you can get your peril some other way and still have access to a small number of high powered brain bursts when they are appropriate.
Maybe change brain burst to be like a staff power with two charge levels. If you let go before it reaches full charge it just does a zap of damage about on par with a headshot from a high damage staff, if you charge it all the way it uses a charge and gains an additional percentile damage component, like 100% damage on elites, 50% on specials, 10% on monstrosities.
Brain Burst is incredibly slow of a cast for how much it generates, and this scaling issue. Warp Charges are generated mostly by BB (you have that Feat, but… yea), which can increase the damage but such a slow cast on like a random mob to try and keep your Warp Charges up, isn’t very worth it. If we could get a faster speed on it (maybe scales with Warp Charges?), since you only get a couple casts before you have to quell, that’d be awesome!