Hey all, I want to highlight an issue that’s been cropping up a lot in my auric maelstrom missions, making them way less enjoyable. This psyker build revolves around combining the blessing surge (2 shots on critical hit) with warp nexus and 5% crit chance perk (as well as specing into crit with psyker tree), the result? Psykers can reliably reach 48.5% base crit chance, climbing to 68.5% at high peril, allowing them to primary/light attack spam and “surge” their way to absurd damage output.
This build has no meaningful downside and infinite range. It’s braindead to play, with no effort or skill required—just infinite light attack spam. While it’s “effective,” it’s also incredibly boring, and ruins the pacing and fun for others, especially ranged classes like Veterans who have already been getting the short end of the stick recently.
There’s been talk about nerfing/removing other builds (like duelling sword on zealot), and while i generelly agree, this force staff crit spam build overshadows that build by a mile. Mainly due to its range, consistency, and sheer damage output.
A rework to the surge blessing seems like a good way to deal with this without impacting other psyker builds. Maybe adding a slight cooldown on surge, or not letting it trigger with light attacks? If you’d like to test how broken this build is yourself I attached some screenshots
/edit Just to add a little more proof, here’s a maelstrom game with this build where all i did was left click all game, infinite range, infinite ammo and so high damage that it makes every other ranged build like gun lugger ogryn, vet, etc completely irrelevant. And that’s coming from a total psyker noob (level 42) like myself
Globally, the M1 attacks on staffs need to be tweaked to be unique to each staff. There’s no reason for the Electro, Voidblast, and Voidstrike to all have the same generic M1 projectile, when their M2 all feel so different to use.
Electrostaff could have some kind of short-range chargeable M1 bolt that goes straight through stuff. It’s an old idea that’s been around since launch, almost…
No animation cancelling, no macro. Didn’t even use melee weapon, (and keep in mind that I’m a low skill psyker so I’m not playing optimally either.) This was just through manual left clicking and it still outdamages the more experienced psyker who is not using this build/exploit, the gun lugger ogryn and the zealot by a mile. I noticed it becoming more and more common in maelstrom which is why I wanted to call it out before it becomes meta. Don’t take my word for it though, try it out yourself.
I’ve tried it. The mechanics of the build are more interesting than the actual gameplay loop. The real scoreboard atrocities are when the dps gets tripled with a macro - an exploit I think should be fixed.
Edit: try swapping shriek for scrier’s with warp unbound. You’ll be able to push your crit rate to 80% at times and be able to ignore peril except for 1-2 seconds per scrier’s cycle
Totally agree the crit mechanics are interesting, which is why I don’t think the tree itself should be touched but rather only the surge blessing reworked (which triggers more than every other shot and effectively doubles the dps.) Without macros this build is broken, with macros I doubt any player with any build could compete since it essentially becomes an automatic bolter with infinite ammo and range.
Perhaps an internal cooldown on surge so the the really maxed out crit rates can’t abuse it too much.
The best of all worlds would be if the M1s were interesting (and not vulnerable to macro exploits).
Edit: with so many blessings that are useless I’m reluctant to nerf one of the few good ones but an ICD basically caps the crit% that surge would benefit from. The blessing is fine at normal and even high crit rates. It’s silly powerful once you get ~80% crit.
I’ve tried this kind of build quite a few times (and had a teammate using it on some occasions) without macros, just the FullAuto mod to spare my pointer finger.
Even without Scrier’s gaze and +5% crit perk (I prefer the +25% damage boosts), it’s nuts how much damage it dishes out at high Peril at mid and close range. It deals with literally everything just by spamming M1.
Horde’s coming ? Just turn a corner and hold M1 at them while they’re in single file.
Carapace or Ragers are coming at you ? Crits/headshots will stop them in their tracks.
Gunners are tickling your Toughness ? Just spam M1 in their general direction and the insane Suppression will send them running for their mamas.
If the projectile wasn’t managed server-side and behaved like in the Psykhanium (without any lag), it would be better at everything than any gun in the game.
Exactly, and then you just reduce/increase the internal cooldown based on if it’s underperforming/overperforming. It sounds like the easiest way to handle it.
Maybe if they added an internal cooldown to surge, but also made the blessing work on secondary/charged attacks. That way it’s not just an outright nerf but rather a rework. I feel like it would also cause less backlash.
Something that excacerbates this problem is the existence of mods that
let you full auto fire the staff m1 attacks, which with some staves results in a pretty respectable fire rate you couldn’t/wouldn’t want to keep up for the whole mission
let you disable attacks at critical peril
hypothetically possible but not finished yet, a mod that makes you automatically vent upon hitting the limit
in effect these two existing mods just make the gameplay loop become “hold down m1 until it stops firing, vent, keep going” which to me is a really lame way to play a class that’s supposed to be built around risk vs reward and peril management in place of ammo. The mod maker also promised he would be looking into a way to make it autovent, which as I’m sure you can see would simply turn the surge staff M1 into an infinite ammo gun functionally. A pretty good powerful accurate high fire rate gun, even. Not exactly something that’s healthy for the game, regardless of what you think about mods.
I’m not suggesting the mods are specifically at fault either (although I dislike that such mods exacerbate such problems), Fatshark would possibly have to address this issue from their end to not let staves just become powerful & functionally infinite ammo guns. Sort of like when the laspistol firerate got nerfed due to the full auto mod making it busted.
Here, it should be something enough problematic to see a real answer from Fatshark.
By real answer, I don’t expect them to forbid the mod on Nexus, but something in the game code to prevent such macros or mods.
Well, that’s exactly why I want to train on psyker.
To determinate if it is a skill level (totally legitimate), a blessing or talent problem (need balancing) or something else like mods/macro (need fixing).
I would not say they are broken… cause I don’t play enough psyker to affirm anything on this class. However, I can see that, a lot of times, the psykers can do twice and even third the damages of other classes.
But this is not something that happen every times I meet a psyker… so I would not affirm that as the truth.
However, I feel that this thread is interesting. I know several players here play all classes and that they can have a fair opinion on this… I am clearly not this guy, as, I said it, I don’t know enough the psyker.
The funny thing about this entire build you have listed is that this isn’t even that strong compared to others that I’ve used. If you have played and know the mechanics of Psyker overall and know how to play around with your timings on your abilities and movement then this other build I use does even more (I of course can’t see the #'s as I play on console) but you can definetely notice it in matches and in huge horde situations.
I have tried the %25 bonus to Carapace enemy’s but honestly didn’t see a point with it since I can usually just take them down with my melee weapon (Dueling Sword MK IV) so I instead just substitute it for extra crit damage and also don’t see a point in running Prescience as it’s only %5 and you’re gonna be hitting crits constantly without it because of your ability.
I do have to agree though that Surge should be the main thing looked at instead of the class tree itself, it needs more of a internal cooldown like Gideon mentioned or (My favorite suggestion) just allow us to Surge with the secondary attacks of every staff (Other than Voidstrike, that one already does it) and just remove/limit the ability to surge with primary. Now you may be thinking “This will just open the door to even more chaos” which it honestly would but there could be something implemented in where the secondary attack on the Surge does let’s say… half the damage of the first strike IF it even crits that is. But I think it would just open the door to even more fun builds that people could come up with for Pysker and further change the variety of builds that people run and make staffs even more fun to use which IN MY OPINION is needed for some of them.
While I do agree that this kind of thing is absurd, I also think that it’s just a subcategory of more overarching problem named “Staves are OP”. I would be tempted to go even further though, and say that this is further a subcategory of “Psyker is horribly balanced by making up for lackluster base mechanics (talents etc.) with OP weapons”.
As the unique ranged weapon of a Psyker, they have been given unique strengths that no other ranged weapon in the game can achieve. Alright, that’s fine, it wouldn’t be the only class-exclusive weapon unique mechanics.
But on top of their unique strengths they also have infinite ammunition and lightning reload, thus being possible to spam them throughout the entire game with lower skill floor than anything else.
It’s especially worrying because it looks as if this kind of poorly thought out design was entirely intentional. I’m basing this assesment on the case of the other Psyker-exclusive weapon family which has also been shown to be vastly outperforming all alternatives with no downsides - the Dueling Swords. More experienced players knew how broken they were already on Psyker even before the recent skill tree additions, but now they were being given out to other classes as well which finally brought the issue to attention for major part of the community.
Those who played all classes and used them on Psyker have likely been overcome with dread the moment they saw the announcement of making Dueling Swords available to everyone without nerfing them in any manner. Well, at least that was the case for me and as time shows, it turned out to be more than justified.
While I don’t expect this to happen for Staves as well given their unique status, I do think it is important to keep in mind that it’s not an isolated case.
So, my two cents are: yes it’s absurd and should be somehow gotten rid of. Perhaps a straight nerf or rework of Surge blessing would be sufficient, perhaps not. But I do believe that this is just a symptom of a more deeply-rooted issue regarding Psyker’s balance that should be addressed at it’s core.
