Even With this Latest Patch, Psyker Brain Burst needs more Buff

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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It needs a way to stand out and be used in more conventional manners in Damnation and above difficulties than what other classes can do faster and better. The big problem with this Blitz is the Speed and The time to kill against most Enemies are done better by Staffs, Assail and even most primary weapons too (Exception is smite) and even then, how many times us BB users get our kills stolen too?

It needs a faster and stronger way in dealing damage or in dealing with crowds. The buffs this patch didn’t really help make it better at all since the enemy health also was increased so it felt like the same since pre patch. Other classes still have many ways to kill elite or specials way faster than you can burst em. especially when encountering groups of specials or elites.

BB should either have some form of crowd control when bursting or have a faster default charge speed (without buffs). Or maybe have the speed of brain bursting be proportional to the Weight or Mass of an Enemy target. smaller targets is fastest while bigger targets are slowest?

also this Blitz doesn’t exactly pair well with Warp Charges and even Disrupt Destiny. it can only work effectively with Empowered Psyionics. Since the most important thing that BB needs is CHARGE SPEED with what we currently have in our talents. This hurts alot of the build diversity when using this blitz.

speaking of. I can kinda see where Fatshark is going with BB + Empowered Psyonics. Where you gain stacks per elite kill and when there is a group of elites that you can one shot, you can pretty much BB them all one by one from a safe distance since you gain a stack per kill. However those moments are few and far between and can be beaten FASTER by either another player’s Grenade or it becomes pointless when you encounter a group of elites that you cant one shot with your BB.

speaking lacking the damage…Its Boss Damage is really slow. psykers dont even have a build to deal high damage to a boss, while other classes have builds to be able to deal boss damage effectively. It doesnt seem fair and I feel like BB should be that ability to deal the boss damage. like as I said before, if charge speed is proportional to the weight of an enemy, then if they try to charge BB against a Chaos Spawn, I think it would take 15-30 seconds or so before they deal BIG damage, lets say 50% of total health of that boss!

Neat detail I found is that I also notice that brain bursting smaller targets like those dreg gunners and flamers also give them a little stagger or Interruption before they get bursted. Which is a nice touch but would be nice if that also affects BIGGER targets too. Or even better, if BB can have crowd control abilities then giving it the ability to stagger surrounding enemies when brain bursting would be interesting. an explosive BB could also work, The possibilities of the buffs they can give BB are endless! I dont want BB to be OP, I just want BB to have an equal way of fighting in the same way a Veteran, Zealot or Ogryn can when it comes to fighting groups of elites or specialists or even Bosses. Or even better, even give BB the ability to also be effective against crowd control.

I can see it now that BB can have two paths that you can choose where one goes the route where it can deal with lesser crowds or two it deals the traditional high single target damage.

P.S. i love this blitz but it NEEDS the proper buffs to make it stand out as useful in most situations especially in higher difficulties on hi intensities or aurics where we encounter many patrolling groups of elites or specials.

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It’s definitely difficult to justify BB when Assail exists. A lot of BB’s utility came from the fact that it could pick out a single thing and kill it, like a Scab Gunner or Bomber on the other side of the room behind the pack of Poxwalkers, but with Assail, you can use the right-click to replicate much of that functionality, or in most cases just spam left click and dump a bunch of shards toward the direction of your target and kill it and most everything in between in the process.

Against the overwhelmingly vast majority of targets in the game, be it hordes, packs of ragers or gunners, specialists, large shooter groups, etc, just left-click spamming Assail shards in the target’s general direction will be dramatically more effective than BB will, and the Psyker arguably already better tools in their kit (Staves, Force Swords) for the exceptions than BB anyway.

I’d really like BB to do dramatically more boss damage, and should be one-shotting anything that isn’t an Ogryn or Mutie, seeing a Rager stick around with a sliver of health after that is kinda silly.

One thing I would like fixed is some of the BB lock on. It’s infuriating how a box or small railing will prevent a BB lock on at a distance, making it difficult to engage many targets BB should be useful agaInst (e.g. sniper wayyyyy off in the back).

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its pretty much what I said. it needs to standout in a way that other people can prefer BB over Assail. or BB over the Staffs etc…

And Yep, Psyker needs to have a way to deal with boss damage as well with that. Its a missed opportunity! unless these monsters dont have brains to be burst.

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I wrote this a couple of days ago, but would it be a bad idea to tie the charge-up time of the ability to the damage it needs to deal to kill the enemy?

If the enemy has more life than the maximum damage, the skill would work exactly like it does now.

If I erroneously attach my attack to a mob while trying to get an elite, I’d like not be punished twice (one for wasting an attack, and another for wasting time) just because it’s quite hard to select a target in the middle of an ongoing attack.

I also think the skill should be baseline 75% faster (Kinetic Resonance), this alone should also increase the damage output enough to make it a boss killer.
KR at that point could put wildfire stacks on enemies around the target (not just elites), it would temathically make sense since all the wildifre nodes are on that side of the tree.

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As a staunch fan of Brain Burst even in Patch #13, I mostly agree. While Empowered Psionics allows you to meet a lot of important breakpoints, you’re dedicating a Keystone entirely to using BB, which in itself is totally inefficient compared to Assail or Smite builds.

There’s also the issue where Elites have become a significant force in this patch, where you’re likely to run into groups of anywhere from 3 to 15 Shotgunners or Gunners, making BB really inefficient at dealing with threats in general now. Seriously, BB used to be great when it was just 1 or 2 Crushers and Bulwarks, but now you’re not really making a difference when there’s 7 of them charging at your team.

But the issue with Psyker is that they have a lot of “auto-aim” features with their Blitz and Staves, so that presents an issue of balancing the damage with ease of use. And while Psykers have taken the brunt of criticism in Patch #13 because of how conspicuous their stuff is (it’s bright and flashy, hard to miss), they’re generally the least likely offenders in lopsided gameplay experience.

I would love it if BB was very reliable against Unyielding/Boss/Monstrosity enemies. It’s supposed to be a single-target nuke. I think it should be a maximum of 2 casts without EP on a Bulwark or Reaper, and 1 with an EP charge.

Either that or just make it cast like 25% faster by default, please.

2 Likes
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Yep, BB need a buff

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my ideas for BB/BR:

1 - improve it’s stagger on lock-on
2 - give it a stagger-only explosion centered on cast, the violent force of rupturing someone’s head apart should prolly do smth to those around them, stagger should be strong enough to knockdown maulers and (scab)ragers(even mid combo) but not enemy ogryns(unless they are the main target, in which case minor stagger, not knockdown) or monsters/bosses
3 - speed up it’s base charge time and reduce it’s base peril generation by roughly the same amount(understandable for it to be slightly less tho) as the Kinetic Resonance talent, BB/BR needs to be faster without depending on conditional timed buffs, maybe 50% faster charge and 25-33% less peril
4 - replace Kinetic Resonance with a new talent that allows BB to apply 4-6 stacks of soulblaze to it’s main target which fully spreads on a kill(read: with this new talent and the change on point 2 BR would cause an aoe stagger and apply soulblaze to the main target only, and on kill it would apply the soulblaze in the same area as the aoe stagger)
5 - ideally make it so Kinetic Flayer CANT proc on basic mobs, maybe reduce it’s cooldown to 10 seconds too? or add a way to manually reduce it’s cooldown(such as every manual cast of BR reduces the cooldown by 3-5 seconds?)
6 - with it’s base charge speed increased to a better maybe replace the charge speed buff from EP to a buff to the AoE stagger from point 2, making it strong enough to stagger anything in it’s AoE

reasoning: imo BB/BR needs some AoE component to it to compete with the versatility offered by using smite or assail with psyker staves(notably surge and voidstrike), making this AoE component be stagger only at base seems like a fine way to achieve it and expanding it with soulblaze stacks that are spread on kill synergizes with the way the left side of the psyker tree has a bigger focus on soublaze

also it’s charge time is just too slow by default making it feel too clunky unless you have either EP and or/kinetic resonance buffs on, the ability shouldnt feel awful to use without the buffs, the buffs should just make it better

2 Likes
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Yeah, I really dont think Obese Fish is knowing what theyre doing with BB anymore.
Sure it got a decent dmg buff with patch #14, but that only kept its power level where it was previously as a lot of key targets got a HP buff aswell, resulting not in a buff of the ability but more of an adjustment to current HP levels.

As many others have already pointed out, BB needs a shorter charge time and a tad more damage. The increased charge time EP gives now should be integrated into the base ability or be given as a sub node to Brain Rupture.

Also the targeting needs to be improved by a huge margin. Picking out priority targets has become almost impossible because of how much is going on in Auric. A perfect fix for this, imo, would be to bring the ability in line with some voicelines, that go along the lines of “you can hide your body but not your mind”(or smth like that).

Make BB able to target and prioritize tagged enemies through walls. I dont know how many times Ive jumped around like a circus clow just to get my BB to snap to a target that I wanted, that was either far away, or “obscured” by some railing or metal post and thus somehow blokcing my ability, even though I could see the enemy clearly.

Another thing that bothers my is the “downtime” between BBs. If I run the node that increases my charge rate on special ability use and I pop it when a monstrosity appears, my char spents more time reseting his hands to default position before charging again, than charging. Which says a lot about the animation time, considering how long BB already takes to charge.
If that “cooldown” animation got removed or tuned down a lot, it would feel much better.

If I was able to just hold down BB and the game would instantly start channeling another one if the target didnt die, it would also feel much better.

tldr: BB either needs to receive some massive QoL improvements or be reworked entirely to be mor ein line with the other stuff that is currently available

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im feeling that a major overhaul of it would be ideal over minor QoL changes

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Perhaps there should be a way to target that right click charge only on Elites,Specialists or Monsters. like it has a target priority way that will magnetize its BB towards an elite in a horde or prioritize an elite by the farthest distance.

And yes, wholly agree that the faster charge time should become its new baseline charge time and Kinetic Resonance buff to it would do wonders to BB viability.

I also did mention that current BB staggers the target in mid charge. works on smaller target gunners or other range enemies as well as some disablers but not on mutants or ogryns. so BB could do some AOE stagger or Stagger WITH soulblaze too. we do have a skill that do soublaze AOE once an elite is killed by warp kill tho.

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Sure, but that works for any warp skill, in the case of BB it would simply add additional stacks, and only for elites.

My idea was to have the AoE wildfire work on any kill, a way to give BB some kind of AoE value to be able to use it against hordes.

2 Likes
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Yes the soulfire AOE was what I said in the last reply. from the last sentence. I also did mention that BB has stagger. it staggers gunners when at half charge. that could open up some potential and Fatshark has laid some groundwork

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I dont think that would be a good design choice. BB was always distinct in its design to pick out priority targets such as specials and elites. Changing its identity by giving it AoE horde clear, would only put it in the same corner as Assail.

Also for balance reasons you cant throw around Soulblaze like that. Soulblaze has the biggest dmg increase per stack so it stacking/appliying on every kill would create the same issue we just had with Assail. It would trivialize things and would be overbearing.

What BB needs is a way for it to excel at picking and killing priority targets. It either needs vastly improved charge time, or be changed from single target to multi target to justify the current charge time.

The multi target would work well with my previous suggestion of it being able to target and prioritize tagged enemies through walls. Make it so you can always BB tagged enemies and (maybe) change the right click to target all currently tagged enemies, but always put you at 100% peril, regardless of the number of targets.

1 Like
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i’ve always just wanted bb to be an insta cast. the other 2 blitz abilities can be used in a pinch and do what they do extremely well; basically having an immediate impact. it’s also been basically forever that bb has been known to not really be worth the cast time anyways, even before the class rework.

increase the base damage for insta cast use, and allow charging for increased damage and an aoe explosion. that would be increderiffic.

1 Like
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I really don’t care what it was meant to be. It’s bad at doing what it’s supposed to do and it needs changing.

Not to mention that there are no “priority targets” in this game, it’s too frenetic: you have to kill as much as you can as soon as you can.
You can’t stand in the middle of damage to choose the single enemy you want to spend 5 seconds to kill.

3 Likes
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If my psyker can kill Damnation Cursher 3-3,5 times faster with Zarona Revolver than BB something went wrong… (3-4 shots and he’s down).

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Brain Burst is one of those abilities in games that needs to be able to kill the enemy you’re targeting in one attempt, no matter the difficulty. With exceptions, of course. I don’t mind Monstrosities taking more than one to kill but everything else should be fair game.

You’re investing so much time into constantly charging it up, and quelling cause it generates so much peril, on top of no aoe at all… you need to be rewarded for fully using it.

3 Likes
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  1. Why do you want a solution to a problem that is already solved?
    Psyker already gets Assail and Smite which each handle a horde in a different way, why do you want a 3rd option that does the same but different? Wouldnt it be much better to offer a different play style than the 2 you already have on your plate?

  2. There certainly are priority targets. Thats why its possible to tag them, because they can screw you up rally bad if you dont get rid of them as soon as possible.
    Let that be a sniper you dont get rid of that takes out 60%+ of your hp bar with one shot, nuking your whole toughness,
    be that a bomber that denies you a choke point, forcing you either in a bad position by retreating or advancing,
    be that a mutie that locks you in place for 2 seconds while groaners, poxwalkers wail away at you while youre unable to do anything, or god forbid throwing you to some ledge youre hanging from now,
    be that a trapper you cant dodge because theres either a horde surrounding you, or even just no space(maybe because a bomber/flamer covered everything else with fire maybe), netting you and causing you to die because the horde is right on top of your head or a gunner is just out to ruin your day,
    and the list goes on.
    Theres a reason we can tag them, because theyre priority targets. Period.

  3. Youre also not supposed to kill as much as you can as soon as you can. Youre supposed to take care of the enemies and play as a team. I would welcome a bullgryn any day just planting down his shield to draw the room full of shooters into melee, instead of 4 of us sweating to get to them in order to kill them, possibly risking huge amounts of damage to ourselfes. Taking care of smth doesnt necessarily mean killing it. Locking it down so it doesnt pose a threat to your team is in some cases more important. Example: a mixed horde is approaching, together with a monstrosity. By your logic everyone would/should focus on mowing down the horde and ignoring the monster, which is also a priority target btw) because that would not be kill/time efficient. Meanwhile its better to either try to kill the monster asap, or have someone lock it down, while the rest handles the horde.

  4. Youre not supposed to stand in damage, you never are. Thats why its so important that BB get less charge time. On every other character you can create enough space/time to whip something out to deal with a ranged/priority threat. BB doesnt allow that because of its long charge time, which is a huge problem. And its mostly so, because Damnation(Auric even more so) requires you to be that flexible and take care of that one guy or otherwise risk losing the run

Reading your comment has proven to me that you have no clue about both the game and the balance of it. The first proven by your most recent comment, the other by your “Idea” with Soulblaze, even though Obese Fish just nerfed Soulblaze on Elite Kills, because it was too strong, yet you want it to apply on every kill

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Sure, as long as you believe in all the nonsense you wrote, it’s ok.

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Explain to me why its nonsense then. Im confident in my assessment of the game, reaching almost 500 hours with my most played difficulty being Damnation before Damnation+ or Auric was a thing and now exclusively playing Auric Damnation.

Im open to learn since im only human after all not a perfect being, so please, enlighten me on how what I wrote is nonsense so I can correct my twisted, and apparently wrong, view of the game.

Im honestly trying to learn here