The new standard set by smite & assail is well beyond the capabilities of brain burst in it’s current state and I’ve come up with a few separate ideas for changes to bring it up to par with the huge CC of smite and the clearage of assail.
Enable it to target tagged enemies through walls/floors/obstructions, even if it’s just the veteran keystone tag.
A variable charge time that depends on the enemy/armour type you are bursting. For example bursting a poxwalker should take almost no time and bursting a monstrosity should take the same time it does now.
3a. Killing a mauler or crusher with a brain burst creates a shrapnel explosion.
3b. Killing any enemy causes some kind of AoE.
Change the ‘Kinetic Flayer’ node by removing or significantly reducing the cooldown but drastically reduce the chance to rupture on hit. For example “All attacks have a 1% chance on hit to Brain Rupture the target. This cannot occur while at or above (?) Peril”
Increase channel time but it’s a guaranteed one-shot on any enemy excluding monstrosities. Could combine this with idea 2 and/or allow it to one shot monstrosities but give it a cast time so long that it becomes a risk vs reward situation.
Enable targeting of multiple enemies at once, even if this comes in a way such as building stacks over time and each stack enables an additional enemy to be targeted by burst.
Enable a chain reaction effect that can be continuously channeled at the same cost of peril for each burst that occurs.
I am curious to hear anyone else’s thoughts on these changes, and even ideas you can think of that weren’t mentioned here.
I think that keeping BB/BR in a high damage single target role fits it better than trying to stuff it in an AoE/multitarget box that is already covered by the other blitzes.
I like targeting ideas like being able to target highlighted or tagged but out of LoS enemies.
The cast time depending on armour/health might work, depending if peril also scales with it or not.
Thematically, however, it doesn’t fit, since you’re not really hitting the armour to get to their brain, and ironically the weakest enemies (terrors) probably don’t really use their brains that much and I can see it being less effective on ogryns due to… physiological differences.
I feel that the current biggest problem with BB/BR isn’t a lack of AoE or multitarget coverage, but that by itself it synergises horribly with every keystone if there is anyone else on the team that kills the target before your brain burst goes off. Pre-patch 13, whether by design or bug you would get a warp charge even if your target died even if you didn’t kill them as long as you had charged halfway or more. I think that that should be re-added to BB/BR that if you are charging on a valid target, if it dies to someone else during the charge , you still get the stack if you had charged halfway or more.
Now that there’s no longer a benefit to BB mobs / scabs/dregs - (before you could keep up your warp stacks) - the targeting engine should prioritise any special in los over trashmobs. And anything marked red above those.
It is possible to hover above a priority target and it sometimes grabs that target, but often it just grabs some trash and you have to retarget.
At that point; I think BB still has its role. Pre-eradicating a crusher before the mob have even been aggro’d is worth its own weight.
*edit - also seconding @zaygr s comments about losing “credit” for the BB if someone else caps the target before you hit 50% charge.
I think these are great ideas, and I am all for some kind of expansion to the trees (along with a level boost to 35 or something?) that allows of more augmentation of playstyle/utility for blitzes.
But BB is dummy strong, and I still think it’s the best Psyker blitz. Clearing little shooters pinning the team down that no one else can get at, grabbing a head and retreating behind cover, it’s so versatile.
What I would like is for brain burst to deal half the damage overtime instead of all at the end. So even if someone kill the target before the end you would still have helped instead of wasted your time.
Or have an early kill based on how much health the target has at anypoint during the BB.
(basicly make BB a tool that can work with the other rather than instead of them).
make it a channel ability rather than cast
make it deal it deal % damge and deliver them in ticks
the higher HP pool the enemy the slower the tickrate.
and have an execute node that imediately oneshots enemies that have less than 15% hp halfed for bosses, (would also shave off that amount of time for obvious reason)
0.25s for groaner, 1s for shooter, 2.5s for ragers, 5s for crusher
To be honest, right now BR feels fine IF you have EP active. The problem with BR is that when you don’t have EP active it feels really really bad. The pace of the game has sped up, and the baseline charge speed is simply too slow to ever justify.
So, IMO, step one would be to make the EP cast-time the baseline.
Then step two would be for EP to provide some different benefit than cast-time.
Quick easy wins here, for which they presumably already have the code, would be for EP to either grant the old Wrack N Ruin (soulblaze area around target), or the old Cerebral Laceration (+25% team damage to target). Personally I’d vote for Wrack N Ruin, as Cerebral with limited EP charges would be a bit too niche, and WnR interacts better with other talents. Or possibly some other alternative.
This would be a nerf, not a buff, in pretty much all situations other than splurging Purgatus into a horde, and you don’t need to BB stuff in that situation. Flayer just needs to be adjusted to only trigger on special/elite/monstrosity, since the days where you would want it to trigger on chaff to grant warp-charges are now gone.
I do like the suggestion to allow BB to target tagged enemies behind cover or through other enemies, but, I’m not sure that would be enough by itself. Baseline BB would still feel awful.
I would also like for BR to keep its identity distinct from Assail, so, IMO multi-targetting or rapid-firing on weaker enemies is a no-no.
For Beloved sake do not ask for improvements - look at the vets skill tree clusterkark and be happy with what we have.
But seriously BB need some solid love from Fatshark.
More than anything, if you do an absolute pure BB build taking every damage talent you can, you should be able to one shot ragers on Damnation. Right now, you cannot, which is pretty unfortunate since the conflict director was ramped up to add hordes and hordes of ragers.
I’d be fine with being able to buff BB and other blitzes through curio stats. Something like Blitz effectiveness instead of wounds, toughness, health or stamina.
Have it affect each blitz differently. Some get range, like grenades, others ge cast time, some might get recharge time, etc.
That way you could stack curios for blitz focused builds, with the trade off being losing out on health, wounds, toughness or stamina giving players new ways to create builds.
