Brainburst is miserable to use

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
41

A wild take? Hardly. It does require ammo. The ammo is peril and time.

And a pistol can kill a crusher quicker than BB anyway…lots of weapons can, so I don’t get your point or the relevance of that.

It takes centuries for BB to fully load. I doubt anyone gets to kill a crusher with BB as teammates will have killed it long before 2 whole charges.

If you think it’s too quick then simply scale the time upwards a bit for a crusher, so it has to be held longer but still does so in one go.

Y’all talk about crushers like they’re monstrosities. They’re a dime a dozen and a mere fraction of the danger, even when there’s a pack of 5-8 of them.

The only wild take is that people clearly use meatgrinder as a point of reference for this stuff.

“But it killed an enemy quickly!” Well yeah, now move on to the next 999 enemies you’ll kill in that mission.

It’s always time Vs power. If it’s slow then it can be powerful. That’s simple balance.

3 Likes
42

BB can oneshot already crushers, doing 3600 dmg in one single BB, but it’s rare and not consistent anyway. it needs kinetic flayer and needs to be lucky.

beside this, most of the time people do enough damage that makes you finish crushers anyway in one single BB. in fact BB it is also a cooperative tool, you need to use it, paired when someone is hitting targets to help each other out.

imo it’s perfect as it is BB currently
some people suggested that should target only elites, specials/bosses but would be a bit too op in that way.

2 Likes
43

So did you just forget about kinetic resonance and EP when you wrote this or what? Combining those and one shotting crushers in quick succession sounds very silly to me.

44

I love it when I get the Kinetic Flayer double empowered 1-shot on a Crusher, lobby feels so good.

2 Likes
45

Well if someone else is going to reply to a over-a-week-old thread, I don’t feel so bad …

BB is by far my favorite blitz. It’s a combination of not being limited by ammo, having a relatively well-defined situational use case, and bursting heads.

Given the relative ease of use and safety of BB, I find BB+EP plenty fast enough to use against difficult to target - either due to distance, evasiveness, or cover - Elites. I don’t mind that I’m often merely helping with Ogryns.
I used to be a little miffed when someone would shoot the target I was about to kill, but then BB was still helpful in highlighting and immobilizing the target.

Without EP BB is significantly more situational, but I don’t see that as problematical. It can still go off pretty quickly with Shriek, and even without Shriek still has it’s place as a probably-tertiary ranged option. For when, say, a priority target is out of your melee or Infernus range, and no one else in the team seems interested.

I’m not absolutely convinced Kinetic Flayer is worth it even now, but sometimes I’ll get it when I’m not playing to use any blitz much and have a free point … and more often because, just as in real life, surprise brain explosions are fun.

4 Likes
46

I agree at a basic level. Far too slow for too little effect. It should not take 3 Brain Ruptures to down a Crusher (2 if Empowered Psionics is available, which is hit-or-miss) when a Veteran or Zealot can do it wildly more efficiently, taking a fraction of the time. The Monstrosity damage is also pathetic, being one of the worst ways to kill one of those methods that can be reasonably expected to do so.

That said, I’d rather see damage increases than charge time decreases. Primarily because aiming it requires adequate time to make sure it’s on what you want, but also because you’re just going to end up Peril-locked by just making it faster. Building Peril on just one elite is dangerous because, unlike other resources in the game, it directly affects your other combat options. Won’t be using that staff very quickly if you rapid-cast 3 Brain Ruptures to kill that Crusher, will ya?

In the end though, it’s just one of the worst options for handling elites. Better to let the two Veterans or Zealot on your team that can one-shot those Crushers handle it.

1 Like
47

Empowered psionics plus throwing out your Ability means you can get off around 6 blasts very quickly. If you ever use BB without throwing out your ability, or without empowered, you are doing it wrong. Build variety suffers because of this.

Only issue with it is that you never need to use it if the team is rolling, which is the problem with the psyker blitzes. They look great though.

48

Honestly this is something else I’ve been thinking about when it comes to BB that I think is one of the many factors that leads to it feeling as bad as it does for most, build variety.

On a class touted and even reworked for allowing as much build variety as possible, BB just says ‘no’ to that pretty much off rip. If you want it to be a useful part of your kit that isn’t just ‘alright I cleared everything in front of me with Inferno time to deal with the few stragglers at range’ (or the same but Trauma staff), You HAVE to go down and grab Psykinetic’s Aura (I mean you want it on that side 99 times out of 100 anyway but still), and you HAVE to put 3 points into Empowering Psionics bar minimum, AND you HAVE to use your combat ability before hand or else you feel like you’re wasting your time.

Smite has a similar issue, but it can at least function off of one point in Empowered Psionics, and can work with any of the combat abilities and doesn’t have you sitting here going ‘dang, I need to wait for my CA or else my blitz just doesn’t work’. Assail is even more freeing, working off of Warp Splitting alone (and not even NEEDING that though feeling a lot better with it) and allowing you to freely choose whatever you want for keystone and CA based entirely around what you want your build’s focus to be.

Meanwhile BB as a ‘fully in slot kit item’ is Empowered Psionics or bust, otherwise you just equip it for Kineitic Flayer and Psykinetic’s Aura access before then making the build you want, but realizing your blitz is just there to kill snipers and gunners in a pinch.

This isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it doesn’t feel great compared to what the other two provide, and is often simply carried by the staff’s it’s paired with (Inferno or Trauma), just dumpstering everything within seeing distance so the fact it only kills like 2-3 things an engagement doesn’t matter.

Every build I’ve tried to use that has had it as a ‘key part of the kit’ has felt like cheeks though. For you’re caught between ‘ohh, I should use Warp Siphon to get my CA off cooldown more often’ but then going ‘oh wait, but I need EP to make the ability feel good/actually deal with the big stuff I want it to…heck’ and then your build just kinda flunders not being great at CA spam but also focusing SUPER heavily on ultra maxing an ability that at most will help you like 10% of the time during the mission.

At least with EP on Smite or Assail, I am dealing with the ENTIRE wave and a few specials on top of it, making the keystone selection feel entirely worth while and enjoyable to utilize. With EP on BB, I sit there with max charges for basically the whole mission, try and use them on the waves where it matters, and more often than not utterly atomize a poxwalkers face in the way or watch my team STILL get the kills before my ramped up cast time anyway, resulting in Psykinetic’s Aura never procing and making me unable to get to my CA as fast as I need to to use BB again.

It’s just caught in this loop of not feeling great compared to any other specialized set up, And that combined with it’s hard to use nature makes it feel bad at base outside of using it for pure utility (which I mean is the point but still), but also feel bad ‘fully speced in’ as you can’t deal with targets through waves without stopping and starting multiple times, and every other class does what you do but better.

1 Like
49

On higher difficulties there really isn’t a lot of build variety of I want to be effective with the psyker. Some of the weapons are just a little too clumsy, and some of the skills just aren’t powerful enough to compete without very specific builds that are still weaker than the other classes. If I match with a second psyker with a similar build and neither of us change, it’s pretty much a wipe.

50

BB is just not fun to use.
It is very effective tho.

So +50% speed and -50% dmg node could be a thing I guess.

51

BB slots well into some builds (flame staff particularly) as a ranged problem solver but at the highest difficulties the sheer volume of beefy enemies reduces the value it offers in most combat situations, e.g. if there’s one bulwark cornering your vet, chunking its health and staggering it helps a lot, but if there’s 4 bulwarks your 3s channel time would be better spent doing basically anything else. Kinetic Resonance does ameliorate this somewhat, of course.

One change that would be pretty nice without costing too much dev time is if it would stop advertising your target to allies with the “kill me now please!” aura when you’re charging it. It seems very difficult for people to grasp that I need warp charges more than they need their name on the kill feed.

52

Jesse. I feel you but I think you’re probably not utilizing BB to it’s fullest because of build choices. I used to think exactly the same way about BB but I was making choices in my build that didn’t maximize it.

BB is a fantastic skill, but if you’re not taking Kinetic Resonance and Empowered Psionics with it you’re doing it wrong. BB is still useful without selecting those skills but it becomes a force to be reckoned with them. I also find it easiest to utilize after popping Telekine shield/dome because it’s basically cover you can see through.

This will turn BB into a rapid-fire elite and special killing beast while also massively increasing the damage you do to unyielding monstrosities. Try it. Once you get the rhythm you’ll never look at BB the same.

1 Like
53

This.
BB is incredible. The problem is more the players that kill the special/elite you are about to kill. We always return to the human element of the equation…
BB is a little slow, but nobody is in danger once the enemy is “staggered” (this is not a stagger state, but it is close to that as the enemy cannot move or attack). Still, players kill the targets, forbidding to stack charge (first keystone of the psyker, that is really useful for this blitz).
And I say it in all humility… as before playing a psyker I had did that and had not perceived the nuisance I was. Now, I know.

Indeed.

You may not adopt the correct build for this blitz, cause in my book, BB is incredibly strong. It is slow, true, but it is very strong.

2 Likes
54

I feel like if they gave it the stun on ogryn size and smaller all my dreams would come true. ( this also may make it broken) But as it stands all the brain burst does is provide good killing power to anything that has rapid attacks as well as provide solid damage to monsters and disablers

Edit: so i would say its in a good spot but it could be better

55

Yep.

It’s god awful.

I have had this game since the “beta” tests. I have yet to unlock even one penance for that POS ability.

1 Like
56

meanwhile me
image

3 Likes
57

This is what happens when you insist on throwing the most ridiculous buffs around, because you listen to reddit “muh pve game fun” dad gamer with 17 kids #7864

Other dad gamers inevitably follow suit and demand for their perfectly fine favorite toy to be just as stupid

Power creep, Fatshark, i know you guys are a small indie dev studio and this is your first game and all, but i’m sure you will get the concept some day

58

This dude hates dads lol

2 Likes
59

me looking at the fatshark’s games history
definitely not their first game

60

I’ve been in here a lot, but I figured I’d put one more note, just cause.

I put a decent bit of time into making builds that would make Brain Burst work, and I still think it could use some quality of life improvements, as even with the builds I made, I felt it’s lack of consistent targeting annoying (i.e. just making it hard focus on marked targets before anything else in your vision, allowing you to focus down that 1’s crusher/bulwark in the line and systematically work through them instead of hitting the 1, it falls over, the others run around it, you cry as you can’t get a clear line of sight on the one you weaknend, you rinse repeat for the entire line and never get your EP stack refreshes outside of some lucky hits, and then sadness consumes you. Would also be nice to have the niche of ‘middle of horde target killer’ and play into teamwork a bit more, verses…not being able to do that and just having to let the vet do it all xD this idea was brought up in another forum post but felt it worth saying here too).

BUT, despite all that, I will say what ‘I was missing’ was just saying screw it and going all in. I still think an ability needing 7 talent point investment is a bit insane, but for me the ‘diamond’ I was missing was ‘Psychic Leeching’.

The few other builds I use with EP obviously use Smite or Assail, both of which function super easily off of Soulstealer alone and require talent points in other areas to function, so I never really considered Psychic Leech as a talent ever worth taking.

But it turns out, 15% toughness to EVERYONE on an ability you actively choose to use in specific scenarios actually provides BB a pretty handy niche. Sure, I might just full send on a pox walker instead of hitting that mauler I wanted to, but me and everyone around me just got a decent boost to toughness, and I can do that 3+ times. It’s a tiny little ‘shout’ for Psyker, and while I’m not sure on it’s used case with the other blitzs (smite just stuns everything so everyone will be fine, and assail is just so talent hungry now with warp splitting it’s a bit hard to fit in even if it would be a bit nice…) it fits BB perfectly, and makes the 3 builds I made with it actually feel really nice, even to me, who’s been writting essays about it in here over and over xD.

So I’d recommend trying Psychic Leeching, for those that read this! Might not fix all your problems with BB but it gives it a good novelty and nice us! (and makes periodically just spending a EP point or two on the wave just so that you’re always generating them have a use! )

1 Like