Look man, assail and smite (mostly) work for what they try to do. But brainburst absolutely sucks as a warp attack compared to the other two. All I’m asking for is ONE of these changes;
Greatly decrease charge time.
Remove melee brainburst cooldown.
Stun my victim from the beginning of the charge, not just the last moment before the strike.
Compared to the other two warp attacks, it’s outclassed. The issue is Brainburst and Assail are trying to do the same thing; sniping from afar. With assail I can throw my knife and quickly switch to other priorities. But with brainburst I’m vulnerable the ENTIRE procedure. With smite I can lock down multiple at once. I can’t rely on teammates providing overwatch for me when they have to watch their asses too.
That’s all I’m asking for, I can live with the other warp attacks the way they are.
This opinion comes up pretty frequently, but I really disagree with it.
BB and assail don’t do the same thing. BB deals extremely high damage to ANY single target, including crushers. That’s a huge difference. BB is also functionally/mechanically very different from Assail, allowing for very different usage, like grabbing a dog before it runs away or mutie before it turns the corner.
I love BB to the point that I don’t even consider the other blitzes, and I think it’s pretty perfectly balanced. If you want to cast it faster, try it with Kinetic Resonance and/or Empowered Psyonics. And if you want to go crazy, you can grab Bolstered Shield to stack Kinetic Resonance and pop heads like a machine gun.
I made a BB only build a few days ago for shts and giggles to see how far I could push it. And it might be clunky as hell but it also works surprisingly good:
This is an Auric HISTG run and as you can see Damage wise it came close to a Plasma Vet. Granted the guy was below average at best with it, but it’s still decent.
Having gotten 79 elite and 34 special kills and dealt 234k / 429k total damage is also respectable for such a ‘useless’ blitz. All that is without any perilous combustion, which would have massively pumped up the damage and kill numbers.
Not to mention that Kinetic Flayer is one of the best slept on talents for gunpsykers. That BB variant comes in clutch so many times, especially sine the targeting changes. And you don’t even have to do anything.
You can make almost everything in the game work if you stop for a moment and come up with a decent build. Frankly I’m tired of people yapping about everything needing to be buffed. How about you actually try?
to answer this, you can also dodge while using BB
And usually, you should BB behind your team, giving you a frontal shield, and aggroing stuff in the front
so that you can target an enemy, while you are BB’ing, you can check behind if there is any enemies while finishing the animation
using a good build for BB is also the key, that makes you cast bb faster
also very situational BB in a sense that, you don’t have to use it everytime, only really when you know you are safe
While I’d agree with you, I would also like to raise the problem of targeting Brain Burst and how clunky it is. You’re correct with your assessment of the Brain Burst’s unique strengths, but I do believe that as a person who uses it frequently and consequently is likely to have a lot of practice doing that, you might be biased to ignore those very basic issues.
Kinetic Flayer has been recently changed to only trigger on taggable enemies. Brain Burst itself does not have that luxury, and unlike ordinary ranged weapons it snaps to targets and locks onto them. If you use the primary mode, you will lose the charge should someone kill your target instead. So we should be using the secondary then, right? Yes but then we run into the targeting issues - trying to catch a single enemy behind or within a horde runs the risk of latching onto the wrong target just a split second before it goes off. It won’t deny that it can be used somewhat reliably with enough practice, but the core issue doesn’t truly go away.
I’d like some changes to the way targeting Brain Burst works since just like you said, it does feel balanced at the moment when used by a capable player. Perhaps the primary keeping the charge just like secondary could be a good idea, alongside preference for taggable enemies. Or something else, as long as it finally feels smooth to use it.
I’m adamantly against restricting the targeting to taggable enemies only, though. Few things bring me as much joy as bursting a single Groaner 30m away for no other reason than sheer malice.
I agree with you overall and wouldn’t be completely against targeting being looked at in some way, but I don’t think it should only target elites/specials for free by default. The tagged enemy targeting could be a solution, but it feels dangerously close to “for free” to me.
And yes, agreed, there is a skill component to targeting, and yes it can be frustrating to target the wrong enemy in crazy situations. But elites/specials are all significantly taller than regular enemies, which means you can usually manipulate terrain/positioning (jump!) to consistently target them.
All solid tips here, much appreciated. I think I’m already proficient enough with Brain Burst, but it’s good to put it out there for other players to see - especially since people dissatisfied with BB (and thus probably lacking this kind of proficiency) are much more likely to see it here in this thread.
Still though, I do get tired of using it for too long because of the skill and action intensity required for it to be effective. I think it would be an improvement for players of all skill levels if the targeting jank went away.
Yea it’s an interesting line of thought, how to improve targeting. Might be something that could be explored via a mod…I wonder.
To me, the most frustrating part of BR isn’t the targeting, but losing a charge/peril to a stolen kill. I think there’s probably as much skill wrapped up in choosing the right targets (that won’t get stolen) as there is in targeting.
And the tactile/skill component of BR is a big part of why I love it.
If it would stagger immediately, you could spam the beginning of the cast in order to stun a large number of enemies.
It used to work this way, but was deliberately changed to the way it is now, because that is not what FS wanted players to do.
BB is great with empowered psionics and the other talent that makes you cast faster after venting. Perfect for boss killing. Also, you need the node that gives you an extra charge on elite kills.
Without those it’s trash, so I guess you havent tried those talents.
try using Kinetic Resonance and Empowered Psionics (EP). It will change your world. with your EP stacks built up, use a blue stim, then deploy two Telekine Shields (wall) in quick succession—now you’re ready. and just like magic, you can spam BB at an insane speed, almost like you’re cheating!
but that’s not all. With Warp Unbound, even when your peril level reaches its max, you can continue using BB infinitely as long as you’re within the time window.
BB is currently in a pretty good spot - it doesn’t need any nerfs or buffs. It’s voices like yours, from inexperienced players, that get already strong weapons or skills buffed even more, breaking the game’s balance. please stop. I’m begging you.
The best suggestion I’ve seen for improving BB is to have the timing of the charge scale with the HP of the enemy. So a pox walker would take a second but a crusher would take 5 seconds (or whatever time).
