We had a thread like this recently, and similar to here plenty of people expressed liking and using this blitz:
You should probably read through the comments there, as well as here, to figure out where you’re going wrong with it, because this absolutely is a user issue.
The problem I think is that the other blitzes “can” be used as a primary ability. You can smite or assail your way through an entire mission (maybe not entirely for assail on the highest difficulties, but almost). And so players get the impression that BB should likewise be good enough to use continuously as a “primary ability.”
The thing is BB is already exceptionally good for the niche role it fills as a blitz ability in safely defeating pony targets. People are just expecting it to fill a different and more universal role and so they think it’s weak on that basis.
I’m with others here that BB is my preferred blitz 99% of the time and whether I lean into it with Empowered Psionics or let it be of more situational use I find it’s a great compliment to most of my builds.
Getting really tired of regurgitating this argument over and over. Maybe FS should buff it just to cut down on the merciless complaining about it from people that don’t really understand its utility.
Personally I think people should just learn to use something passably before they come to the forums to complain about it but clearly that’s not going to happen 
This, I feel this is the main ‘issue’ at hand here, and one of the major reasons I wish the base ability (like I said in the other existing thread of this topic) should have some form of stated targeting priority toward specials units.
Obviously it feels like given it ruptures one thing at a time, most should just already assume that this is the case right? But it isn’t that clear cut, given they are all blitzs, and it also doesn’t help the fact that BB goes from ‘completely unusable’ to ‘largely fine if used correctly’ based entirely around talent choice and usage.
Assail functions entirely on it’s own, especially with the other talents on that side of the tree. It also innately crits, and allows you to throw many at once, resulting for most players to look at it and go ‘wow, this thing is just strictly better at what I need it to do, why would I use anything else?’. You slap 2 points into it, grabbing the pierce upgrade, and throw like 5-6 knives out and an entire gunner line is dead, throw out all 10 and like half a rager line is the same.
Meanwhile, throw all 3 points into BB and it feels like cheeks right out of the gate still, as nothing about it is inherently buffed by the talent expenditure. You have to use your Combat Ability to even see one of your talent points effect, or actively not use BB to see the other. This inherently creates a disconnect, exacerbated by the fact that even if you DO do everything correctly, the skill still fails at it’s main purpose pretty wholistically, as it says it does ‘huge damage to carapace and flak’, yet nothing but a scab rager has flak on their head, and that plus all the carapace targets take 3 brain bursts to kill with the base skill (and even after using a combat ability take an age to do so).
But, then Empowered Psyonics enters the picture, and suddenly you’re 2 tapping said elites at a time frame that actually feels cohesive to the fast pace playstyle of high level darktide these days, on top of the fact that you generate no peril doing so, letting you do so effectively for free verses having to use a resource like Veteran’s Krak grenade. The skill suddenly becomes palatable, only limited by it’s heavy targeting challenges for anything that isn’t directly in front of you (I really want to hit that targeted sniper, I do, but every pox walker on the map is apparently more important than it) so the head height difference properly lets you hit it.
Meanwhile, the only other blitz that kinda works that way is Smite, but smite will at least do what it says on the tin (eventually kill small enemies while stunning the rest) without empowered Psioncs, and do it BETTER with empowered Psionics. Same can be said for Assail, though it doesn’t even need the keystone what so ever/actively prefers not to have it most of the time. But then BB is like ‘I demand 4-5 talent points AND expert knowlage to be useful to you’ and you get continual posts like this complaining about it because just putting it onto a build feels awful.
I do agree though that it’s there for a purpose, it’s there to cover range weaknesses for staffs (Inferno/Trauma to an extent) along with generally be a decent tool for clearing out hard armored targets if your build doesn’t have something that does that already. But most in this game usually are clearing out the hard armor with either of their main line weapons, as they can be swapped to instantly and do it without any issue. BB requires a full spec in order to say the same, which allows it to do so for sure, but will still unfortunately then thusly feel terrible for 90% of the player base who just got off their smite Psyker stunning the whole horde and killing 60% of it by just holding a button, or getting off their crit Psyker wiping most of the horde throwing assails, and equip this with similar build mindsents and are like ‘why does it take me 9 seconds to kill a crusher wtf?’.
(it also doesn’t help one of BB’s main penances tell you to kill trappers and dogs before the immobilize your team mate’s/mid jump…and dogs on damnation don’t die to one base level BB (at least I’ve had them live them a good number of times before)…exacerbating the issue that much more)
It’s a solid Blitz most of the time, although it would be great if BB took only one Psionics charge to kill Crushers, Reapers and Bulwarks instead of two.
Reapers and Bulwarks would be unnecessary but fine, one shotting crushers is a hard no. That’d get very silly with EP + Kinetic Resonance. That’s basically infinite kraks on turbo meth.
Yes I could see how Kinetic Resonance would make that pretty overpowered, good point.
Love this idea. Bursting a brain should be fatal. Just charge longer for big targets.
The rest of the complaints about this ability (not just this thread) I see as the usual psyker noob trap of thinking that your blitz is your main weapon.
True, but unlike BB, its hard to waste time on casting Assail. Its very easy to do it with BB. BB is currently the only psyker blitz which you feel you wasted your time on using, especially if you don’t heavily invest into the talents to prop it up. That’s quite a price to pay for something which is supposed to be an occasionally useful utility.
In my opinion you should be able to BB only specialists, elites and monsters, and the cast time should depend on their max HP value.
Make BB always kill the target in one cast, scale charge time based on the target’s current maximum health.
The only time BR feels wasted is when a kill gets stolen. Being able to only target elites/specials would remove the mechanical skill component I like engaging with (but many others don’t), but it wouldn’t fix the KS problem.
I also don’t think scaling time to cast a one-shot on anything solves the issue either. Maybe it would change the behavior of other players, but I kinda doubt it’s going to stop anyone from shooting the glowing targets. And to balance it for one-shotting crushers and the like, I actually think it’d actually make the KS problem worse.
Wasn’t it that you keep the charge state if the target is killed as long as you keep holding M1 and continue on the next head you hover over? It was like that when i tried it last time (a few month back). Yes it is frustrating to get the kill stolen but you don’t lose anything by that.
This is part of it, also I never said anything about one tapping Crushers, 2 tapping them atm is more than enough. Its the default charge time on lesser targets which is the reason why I just cannot be bothered to actively use BB outside very few situations.
In my experience, it’s very inconsistent. If your BR is about to fire right when the enemy dies, you can lose the whole charge and have to start over. But losing your intended target, even if you keep the change and get to spend it on a trash mob next to it, is still a waste of time/peril.
I’m not totally against exploring the time differences for BR, but I think it’s likely got issues of its own. What happens if you start your BR on a medium-sized enemy, where the charge takes half as long as for a crusher, but then medium enemy is killed before you fire? Do you get to swap over to the crusher for free?
At any rate, BR is a blitz. It’s meant to be used sparingly and situationally. Or you can spec into it a bit, like a vet running grenade talents. I think that’s part of the balancing. And I don’t think people being able to run smite or assail for huge chunks of a mission is really the ideal.
One of my issues with BB is how often you’ll go to use it, only for something else to kill your target. The alternative is to precharge and discharge when a target presents itself, but you can only hold that so long as it continues to generate perils.
Additionally, it can often be difficult to target. If something is very distant or mixed in among other enemies/cover, trying to get BB to lock on can feel impossible. Situations where BB could be really useful, often you’re just better off throwing a Voidstrike ball or some bullets downstream instead because you can’t get BB to lock, or alternatively you end up locked on a Poxwalker instead of the Gunner you really wanted to kill.
Finally, it’s just easier to disrupt enemies with the other blitzes. Between Assail shards or Smite, if I need to stop a Disabler that’s just popped up, I can usually do that much faster than with BB, even if it may not kill the Disabler as fast.
This,
At the end of the day, ‘ease of use’ is the main bottleneck. I’m not against an ability requiring skill to use, but in such a fast pace game, cost analysis and risk verses reward is usually what separates widely used talents from the barely used.
And atm, for me at least, the best use of BB is Kinetic Flayer, as the rest of the ability is often to unreliable with Auric Damnation + enemy density to see active play.
I’d rather have my Combat ability on a lower cooldown (Warp Siphon) or get some free move speed and crit bonuses from DD, than dump 4-5 points into making a blitz usable but only sometimes.
I’ve even ran around with a few BB builds to really cement my point, and it very much did so. Ran around with the double shield crit gun build, and it definitely made me rely on BB a decent bit more. But half the time I just felt bad as I would start charging BB on say crusher/bulwark waves only to have half of them die before I even get a BB off, and when I would finally get a BB off, obviously it would half health it, resulting in the kill once again going to another party member just dumping hits into it and I’d once again wonder what exactly I was doing.
It would feel pretty decent when targeting ragers and below, just target a guy in the back and let your team kill the front runners while you pop the back row, but even then that can feel finicky thanks to the entire wave being also in the way, resulting in many wasted Psionic charges on pox walkers and random guardsman.
And toward the end of my session, I found the best use of the skill to end up being clean up, using my Warp Sword IV to proc as stated, Kinetic flayer procs along with my Recon Lasgun against the wave to part it, then may pop a brain of one thing here and there, before going back to reloading and reseting. Which is a playstyle for sure don’t get me wrong, and I’m glad people like it to the point of vehemently defending it!
But I often as this person has stated, like to be able to ‘hot swap’ between all my tools to make sure things aren’t able to bother me, and BB doesn’t really ‘slot in’ well there. It want’s every affordance to be given to it for at best, a decent return, verses focusing on making everything else you do great, and still having something you can use to quickly stun or kill something in a pinch (i.e, with smite/assail).
At the end of the day, most all my builds that take BB do so to get to Psykinetic’s aura to spam my combat ability that much more, and I often just take Kinetic Flayer along with it to feel like it at least still feels like I have a blitz. Otherwise, I just run around with my other two options which are often strictly better choices in most scenarios, so that I can use my full kit effectively, verses watching my team do my job better than me. (said builds that take it usually having some form of relative range deficit, so I can still swap to BB for SPECIFICALLY snipers, on say a melee build, but otherwise just run off of Kinetic flayer entirely. The only build that uses BB with it’s proper use I can find is Inferno staff, as that doesn’t have an M1 that travels far, but even then it’s main use is Perilous Combustion procs to start the flame chain quicker before the wave gets to me).
I am used to the old baseline BB with no cast time reduction or increased damage, so i just use it as a special sniper, locking onto the pesky dog spinning around the map or picking off a sniper barely visible in the distance.
Perhaps not the most ideal ability all things considered, and i can see how players that might not have been forced to use the older versions of it before the buffs and skill tree revamp might not enjoy it when the other options are as good as they are.
I agree with the original poster and honestly seems crazy to me how someone may think BB is fine
The damage is too low (you can not even one-kill a Crusher, in normal conditions) and it takes ages (in a super fast game with multiple dangers at the same time)
The way that BB mechanics work suggest that it was designed to be a very powerful and slow-recharge one-shotter…but assuming it’s been nerfed a fair bit, it seems it’s just not powerful enough to warrant the current mechanics in its current state.
It takes 1 sol year to charge a burst so I think it deserves to be powerful. Not even one-shotting a crusher is crazy.
Again I think people need to consider usage in the field as opposed to isolated in the meatgrinder.
Being able to one shot a crusher for such a slow weapon is totally fine. It might seem powerful in the meatgrinder but in Damnation when a pack of 5 crushers or Bulwarks rock up with packs of rangers and swarms of other enemies…a slow weapon to one shot is insignificant.
I still think scaling charge time depending on enemy HP would make it much more enjoyable for everyone (because maybe there would be less assail psychers if it changed! Lol)
This is a wild take.
What we suggested that we add a pistol to the game where you could shoot a few shots as quickly as this BB one-hit kill on crushers you propose that ALSO killed crushers just as fast - except that it consumed Amoy.
You’re describing a revolver with no ammo requirement. It would be totally OP.
So what if BB only takes half a crushers life and someone else “gets the kill”. You took off half its life. And sometimes it goes the other way and you’re the one getting the kill.
I really don’t have the targeting issues others are experiencing. Maybe make your Psyker taller to see over the trash hordes is the missing piece? I’m able to reliably pick elites and specials out of a horde without much issue.