Changing Psyker Blitzes

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
1

I think it’s a common opinion that Psyker’s Blitzes have some issues. I have some suggestions.

Brain Burst
Is mostly okay. Popping heads is pretty fun, but it’s kind of bland at the same time.
I would suggest a minor tweak to make it a little more fun; perhaps show a shrinking ring around the enemy’s head and the player taps M2 when it reaches its minimum to achieve a small damage boost and small reduction in Peril.
This could be used to help with some breakpoints against tankier enemies, but failure to properly time should not cancel the attack, just set it off without full potential damage. This will mean it can be used against more common enemies to get a convenient kill under pressure, but also give the player an ability and reason to interact more than just holding m1.

Smite
The Killer of Fun, this ability is in a precarious situation of being too strong but also a detriment. It’s almost a trap.
Firstly, it’s a common sentiment for players to be annoyed that they don’t get to engaged with the gameplay when dedicated Smite Psyker can stun every group of enemies. I know most of the time I want to fight them, because this is a game and the melee interactions are fun. With a Psyker I get no say in if I get to play the game, and those Psyker players are forever in a loop of charging, stunning, and venting. Is this really that engaging or fun for anyone?
I understand that Smite players are trying to help - and that’s cool. But perhaps the abilities should be toned down.
My idea would not change the way the controls, only changing some values.
First, add charges. Perhaps six. I don’t know how to go about recharging them, but the rate should be low enough that you have to think about using the ability.
I know it’s a bit unusual, but it’s already on Assail, so why not? It’s like the Psyker is building up a charge within themselves for this.
Tapping M1 will use 1 charge to shoot out a quick and strong shock that has high stagger against one enemy. This way it could be a special way for a Psyker to aid an ally - say he’s about to eat an overhead from a Mauler.
This way he can still help his allies, but he can’t spam it. Thought and skill have to come into play.
Holding M2 will fill a meter, and as it fills it will increase its cost, from 1 to 2 to 3. Let players actually try to eke as much as they can from this; a charge just under the line of 2 can do a little more damage or have a little more stun. Over 2 it will jump to a few more enemies but not nearly as many as right now. If you eke almost to 3 you can squeeze out a few more jumps or a little more damage - allowing players to min-max this way will encourage them to try to do that. If you end up using 3, well - you wasted one, but sometimes you won’t have the time to pay attention to it.
So all this will mean that the Psyker can support the team, still keep the ability’s identity, but it can be engaged with skillfully to get the most out of it.
Also, can we get the sound of it, for at least the user, a bit stronger? It doesn’t sound like I’m frying someone alive, it’s a bit weak. Some sharp “sparks” could do the trick.

Assail
This ability is still too strong and I think it needs a little bit of a redesign.
M1 should be the targeted throw, with a medium range - but not long range. Say 30 meters, that’s enough to still have a lot of utility, but still limitations. That number could be tweaked, of course, it would have to be tested. The super-long range it has now makes it tread on the toes of Brain Burst a bit too much, and it already has nice utility like aiming high to hit enemies over shields.
This leaves a hole, though, for the close-range attack against a group of enemies - so I say make it so tapping M2 adds more Assails (are they called Assails?), up to six. It’s not a charge, tap to add. I would say you should not be able to “remove” them by rolling the number over, as that will lead to players getting stuck in an unfun loop of “damn I got five instead of four, let me roll around . . .” But that would also require testing.
The multiple Assails shoot out in a cone, still flying in crazy circles, but only targeting enemies within close range of the Psyker.
Since Assail charges are limited, you can pick how many you want to shoot out, and players can min-max the ability. It still gives Assail psykers the ability to clear out an area - but now instead of killing every enemy in the area, even that guy friend was already bonking on the head, it only clears out in front of the user.
I figure that the Psyker doesn’t have a shotgun right now, and this can act more like the older-style of shotguns in games that were horribly inaccurate but deleted everything in front of the user. The homing guarantees value for its cost. Because you can actively use too many charges, though (if there’s just, say, four enemies in front of you), the player is encouraged to learn to click the button exactly as many times as they mean - which is more interesting interaction, I think.

1 Like
2

Honestly, aside from a few issues with Brain Rupture, the Psyker blitzes are in a great state and should not be touched at all.

7 Likes
3

I wondered if this would be a response, but I really am surprised. The current blitzes are really bad for gameplay - objectively so.

Smite is an annoying noobtrap, encouraging players to lean on it instead of actually kill enemies, which either means everything is cleared without gameplay being involved for everyone else and locking Psyker into one action for long periods, OR there’s too much and the Psyker goes down almost immediately and the team that was relying on it wipes.

And Assail still kills entire hordes. Just a fire-and-forget weapon that is far too strong!

I am puzzled how they got into the game in this form.

If you mean they’re in a good place in that they at least do what they’re supposed to . . . yeah, I can agree there.

2 Likes
4

You have an opinion on Psykers. To claim that everyone agrees with you or that your opinion is objective, is a flat out Lie.

Rewrite your rant if you expect to be taken seriously.

5 Likes
5

They range from okay to good depending on the difficulty. They’re in a decent place, in auric histg & maelstrom at least:

Smite - Can help offset a lesser experienced team’s lack of survivability. Defuse sticky situations and generally increase the damage mitigation massively, requires a team that sticks together and is relatively useless without someone doing the killing. With a good team a smite Psyker can trivialize most runs. Then again a good team does that with almost any setup.
Smite is balanced pretty well by peril management and its current max targets. It can barely buy you a few seconds when you’ve got a crusher patrol with ragers and maulers mixed in. It’s still fairly useless on its own when you factor in auric spawn rates.

Assail - I barely use it but from what I see on auric it’s only used for clearing squishier roaming elites/gunners. When sht hits the usual fan it falls off too quickly. I’d assume it absolutely dominates regular damnation and below

Brain Burst - A surgical tool to take out snipers, bombers that are too far away to be sniped. Other use is pretty situational due to cast time. Which is fine honestly. I’d give it a tiny 5-10% bump in damage at best.

Honestly the only thing I’d remotely agree with is the little brain burst minigame idea. The rest is neither needed nor wanted

2 Likes
6

Absolutely not.

7 Likes
7

Yes. It is objective that they have few to no mechanics involved to them and actually remove gameplay elements from other people’s games.

What mechanics do they have? Smite only interacts with Peril, which is a very weak mechanic in this game. It means you hold right-click, then press and hold left. If necessary press R afterwards to vent peril, then repeat. There is no aim involved, it propagates even to enemies hidden behind other enemies, and the enemies have no counter to it.

Now, this is just dull, IMO - but that’s subjective.

However, it also means that other players do not get to interact with the game’s systems. That horde that you wanted to, you know, actually fight? In a game about fighting hordes of enemies in intense melee and gunplay? Their AI is now switched off for as long as the Smite is held, and it can be done again in a few seconds. Entire fights are trivialized by one ability, in a game that is meant to be challenging.

This is objectively bad for the game. It goes against the core design philosophy of the entire game. And what’s worse, the Psyker’s team mates do not have any say in this turning off of the game. If it only affected the Psyker himself, it would not be an objective problem.

This is bad, though. Because it’s not a tool that lets players get a little breathing space while they learn the ropes, it puts down a plank so they don’t have to use the ropes. Or some other twisted metaphor. This is objectively a bad thing, and why I call it a noob trap. People think they are getting better when they are actually learning lessons that don’t serve them well.

@nemy123 Assail is actually very strong and can clear entire waves of hordes and even many elites like Ragers. It can be aimed up after targeting a Bulwark and it’ll arc over their shield and headshot them (even before the latest update to shields - this part is good, I think). Assail is broken in how good it is, its ability to clear the screen of enemies is far too high, especially for something that just passively regenerates.

It also lacks much in the way of player interaction. There is a slight aiming for the right-click, but then it homes in - left click is just something you can switch to to spam, and actually get many bonuses from having high peril. This lack of player interaction again, in this case, is subjectively bad.

I didn’t claim this. I said it’s “common”, I have seen many other people have the same sentiment that they think there’s issues with these abilities. Why not talk about why you don’t like my ideas? What is it about the ideas as they exist now that they like? Do you think that Assail should be a fire-and-forget missile? Why?

My opinion is subjective, but I have laid out an objective stance on how some Psyker blitzes are at odds with the clear, core design intent of the game and hurt other player’s experiences.

Look, just don’t engage with this topic if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.

1 Like
8

As I said, I’m purely talking from an auric perspective as gun/melee Scryer’s Gaze Main. I’ve used Smite for 6 Auric runs now to get the penance and it’s as I said above. It is a useful tool, but very boring and shines most when the rest of the team isn’t as skilled. In a competent team it’s merely a cute CC. Which is why I rarely see other Psykers using it on auric runs. The noob trap argument filters itself out pretty quickly from what I’ve seen, because people that got hard carried by smite on easier difficulties pretty quickly get their sht handed to them. Melee/Movement play is the ultimate skill in tide games, it is what gets you out of a hopeless situation and allows clutches.

Completely untrue for Auric Damnation on HISTG/Maelstrom. It’s decent in certain situations at best. Again. I don’t concern myself with lower difficulties. I’m aware it shts on the lower ones. But then again, what doesn’t? I’ve yet to see a competent ‘assail’ main do well in auric on his own.

BB is the only blitz I use and personally the most useful for me. I might switch it up with smite for the occasional situational CC, but BB is just superior to me.

As I said, I don’t see the OP argument you’re trying to make. If you’re dominating a difficulty with an ability, you should move to the next harder one, which is where things change a lot, depending on the ability.

3 Likes
9

I only play Auric Damnation, Smite is still very common, and Assail is still pretty common to see as well.

If you’re not seeing what I’m saying, then . . . read what I wrote? I laid it out very clearly; the abilities are not very engaging, I go into detail on this.

Why, if you only use BB, and like my suggestion for it, are you actually arguing on the others?

10

I read it and I disagree. You might want to accept that not everyone shares your opinion.

Blitzes are supposed to be situational and not an alternative to melee / ranged weaponry. If you want them to be engaging enough to warrant that, you’ve misunderstood their use case.

Because I dislike the ideas. Simple as.

1 Like
11

The more I think about this statement of yours the more I think you just didn’t read what I said, or didn’t understand it.

Right now, people go around using Smite as their main weapon already. My suggestion of giving it charges and making it a single-target attack stagger at default is limiting it so that it can’t be a main weapon. I don’t see how “being more engaging” is in any way a bad thing. Your complaint here is the opposite of what my suggestion is about.

Same with Assail; the idea is changing it from something that is simply fired off to a tool that is used in certain scenarios.

Psyker is unique in that his Blitzes are not just a simple weapon, but hell - even the simple grenades of other classes have more thought that needs going into their use by players! They at least need to be aimed and their limited nature means players have to think about using them, or be accurate with them (if knife).

Psyker should not be the brain-dead class.

12

Psyker’s blitzes are fine and well-balanced right now. Your suggestions are overdesigned and honestly I simply dislike all these ideas, especially brainburst one. Your post sounds like someone who just plainly despises Psyker as the class and wants to play something else entirely. So… just do?

Brainburst is fine as is, the only thing it needs is to target highlighted targets/pinged enemies, so that you don’t lose hits to random poxwalkers walking in front of priority targets you’re trying to get.

Assail doesn’t kill “every enemy in the area”, it deals next to no damage to armored targets. It’s also not that accurate compared to Brainburst which balances it out. You want more precision and control over your ability = go for bb. You want more aoe and burst damage potential against unarmored targets = go for assail.

Smite is controversial-- some people like it, some not. In truth, when it comes to classes and loadouts, there’s always something people hate. Autogun Veteran, Smite Psyker, Loner Zealot, Gunlugger Ogryn. I don’t mind it personally, I disagree that it takes away the gameplay. It’s a great support ability where people need to work together, rather than 4 people dealing damage at the same time. Smite playstyle has its own tricks (peril management, positioning, knowing when to use it or not) that doesn’t make it as “braindead” as some people make it out to be.

3 Likes
13

I hate badly-designed game elements. Psyker is the character who uses their mind to fight, yet their kit requires less thought than others. The kit has great potential, some good ideas, but also a lot of problems.

I do play Psyker at times, actually. When I do I don’t pick the brain-dead skills unless I need to to get access to specific talents. I’ve actually tried out all the stuff I’m talking about first hand, to see what they can do.

The real problem here, as I’ve said repeatedly, is that this also affects other players. I’ve gone and asked, very politely, people who spam Smite at every single wave of a horde for the whole game to please do it a little less often, and I’m surprised by how often I get other people in chat agreeing with me. That and because every serious high-level player hates these abilities for being absolute garbage is why I say this is a common belief. I mean, clearly not common enough since I get Smite Psykers in at least one game every single time I play . . .

A few Assail shots will 2-3 shot most enemies in Auric, and the only enemies they’re ineffective against are Maulers, Ogryns, and bosses. Since they will hit up to three enemies, a few shots can clear entire groups of ragers, gunners, and multiple specials, along with entire waves of hordes. By just looking in a direction and pressing fire a few times without even aiming.

This ability is literally multiple fire-and-forget homing missiles with infinite ammo and high cleave. This is completely brain dead and disappointing.

The right-click lets you lock onto a target from a great distance and aiming up means you’ll get a headshot. You can counter-snipe snipers with this.

You are literally just factually wrong. It freezes enemies in place; they cannot do anything and become just punching bags. They cannot move. They cannot attack. These qualities of the enemies IS the gameplay they present. If their AI is turned off, it is, in the most literal possible sense, taking away gameplay.

No, it’s not. It’s a bad crutch, because it’d be more useful having four people killing enemies instead of one wasting their time tickling locking them down. This is yet another reason it’s a noob trap.

It is, by far, the most braindead way to play the game, and you SEE this all the time even in Auric. People use Smite as their primary weapon.

Positioning? You have the enemy on your screen. That’s the whole “skill” involved in aiming it. Having your back to a wall to cover that side of you is just basic positioning, it’s nothing special or unique to Smite.

Peril management? You see the number get close to 100, you stop and press R. Exhilarating.

Knowing when to use it? Only bosses are immune to it, this is literally a binary decision, it either works or it does not, and from the amount people spam it, it seems this is the extent of the thinking involved.

14

You must absolutely despise the zealot‘s stun grenade then.
A long, continuous stun within a large area. And it even got buffed in the recent update.

You must also hate the ogryn‘s taunt, since nobody has to dodge or block any attacks anymore, while enemies are taunted.

Those abilities also „trivialize entire fights“, but they do not require the „trivializer“ to continuously hold an ability in order to achieve continuous controll.

There is more player interaction with assail, than with pretty much any regular grenade.

3 Likes
15

I think all other classes and their weapons, bombs and weapons should be nerfed because they do more damage than me as a psyker :slight_smile:

1 Like
16

Neither do you apparently.

There’s a mechanic to balance it and it’s called ‘Peril’. Making it single target would make it even more useless on auric malestrom runs. Especially when you encounter mass waves of carapace. A fully charged smite going up to max peril is barely enough to stunlock 2-3 crushers. Which in a wave of two dozen maulers/ragers/crushers is negligable. Smite is fine for what it does.

That is exactly the case for Assail in Auric Damnation maps right now. I went out of my way and give it a go in a Mael run just to check. The damage, speed and utility is too low to be used constantly in a brainless manner like you claim it to be.
Despite claiming to be an auric player you keep repeating the fact that it is OP enough to be braindead. I invite you to play an auric Maelstrum or even just HISTG run and show me what you claim. The kill speed is atrocious compared to a columnus, surge or void staff to be even remotely useful as a main weapon replacement.

The more I talk to you the more I feel like you’re talking out of your ass mate. All your issues with Psyker blitzes are things that ONLY occur on lower difficulties.

Stop playing lower difficulties then.

Your entire issue boils down to “PSYKER BLITZ TOO STRONK AND BORING”, but that only is the case when you’re playing lower level content. That’s honestly just a you issue mate.
I’d rather have something be okay to decent at highest difficulties and OP at easy to medium than have it balanced the other way around, as I don’t enjoy playing easier modes.

I doubt I’ll get through to you though.

3 Likes
17

has ammo, it’s limited. You’re just being intentionally obtuse at this point.

18

Did you miss the patch that removed the actual infinite smite bug?

Cuz you’re arguing as if still existed.

2 Likes
19

It’s still braindead easy to vent and then smite again to have an extremely high uptime.

20

You do realize that the right way to use smite is to use it in the correct situation and not just use it in a braindead fashion.

This whole idea that using it in a braindead way is somehow effective is beyond silly.

If you have a high uptime of smite, you’re using it wrong.

2 Likes