PSYKER STUFF
I shall out myself right away: I enjoy the way Psyker is set up. It is very involved and you are always doing something. It is very busy, and I don’t find it tedious at all to be constantly switching between my weapons and BB, casting different spells, doing melee, bursting heads, releasing your shockwave. Psyker has a VERY good kit, and the Warp Charge mechanic is a very central point. While I do agree that there should be more ways to gain charges, the overall approach as a support class that focuses on eliminating priority targets in a reliable manner with the option of not consuming ammo, leaving more for your team, has been executed quite succeedly. Talent choice is alot more varied, as are playstyles, owed to the fact that you are not bound to staffs, but can also equip standard ranged weapons. You can use your peril soleley to pop heads, or your go full regalia and equip a staff, or focus on the staff and do BB on the side, or anything in between. Maintaining and managing your warp charges is an integral part of play, and I don’t mind it at all. In fact, I like the idea of trying to “ride the wave” as long as possible, and it rewards skillful play: If you have proper understanding of the games rhythm, how peril works and what the limitations of your overcharge are before you blow up, you are indeed rewarded with not only being useful, but feeling powerful while doing so.
Part of why Psyker is so engaging to play is not only their usefulness, but also because the abilities have a wide variety applications that all contribute to your role and can be interpreted in a way that benefits your own playstyle and your group composition the most. The active ability, while appearing a bit lackluster at first, opens up at level 30 and becomes a very versatile tool: It provides reasonably good crowd control, it vents your overcharge in order to free up more head pops, and the level 30 talents allow you to develope its application even further: Go full CC and have it recharge even faster, add horde clear via the surprisingly powerful sould rend debuff (especially with six stacks, it is nothing to laugh at at even 4 or 5 difficulty) and softening up bigger targets, or go for the head popper special (again, with six stacks of War Charges and 50% reduced BB peril generation, you can dial up your elilte and special hunting to the max in a jiffy, it’s super fun).
There are some things I would change, albeit only ever so slightly. Locking on with BB is sometimes a bit too fiddly, and it definitely should prioritize elites and specials. My suggestion: If it is taggable, BB should naturally gravitate towards it. Other suggestion: If it has been tagged and you move your mouse over the outline, it should ingore anything that isnt tagged. Also, there are some rather counter-intuitive barriers that deny you from locking on your BB, even though you can clearly see the target. This might be okay for glass windows and such, but if is just a large handrail on a flight of stairs and I can clearly see the enemy, I should be able to lock on to it.
As for BB not killing everything in a single hit on higher difficulties, I am fine with the larger enemies taking more hits. However, I do think that Hounds should always be a 1HKO, since hunting those Sahnic-Mofos is your job. I see no reason to artificially make this harder than it needs to be.
Let’s look at talents:
Column I
All of these have their niche, but Essence Harvest is the most reliable if you focus on BB and Warp Charges. Synergizes well with Column III Psychic Communion, since you will reliably get Charges during Hordes in melee, where you need additional toughness the most, and throwing in the occasional BB to get toughness regen, while a bit risky, should be expected from your skillset to begin with. Creating openings fore BB against priority targets is something you need to learn, anyhow, so this gives you incentive to do so. You also have the most control over your bonus regen. Warp Absorption is a tad bit more random due to requiring a kill, but if you run a staff and focus on staff spellcasting, this is a very legit choice. Same goes with Quietude: If you choose a playstyle that relies more on quelling than on passive regen, usually when you want to use BB and your staff equally often, this is a good choice. Warb Absorption and Quietude can synergize well with other talents from other columns, so while my personal playstyle favours Essence Harvest, these are all very good and viable.
Column II
Also a very good set of choicses imho. Psykinetic’s Wrath rewards a high risk playstyle, and works best with staffs with a strong chargable attack. You can usually only press out two fully charged spells (depending on how the stats on your staff are), but that extra power makes them hit hard. A very good choice if you don’t want to focus on constantly maintaining your warp charges. Together with Warp Battery and a full stack of Charges, you can do serious damage with your spells.
Inner Tranquility allows you to use your BB more often and spam your spells more reliably, and gives you incentive to keep your charges up and running.
Wrack and Ruin is a bit lackluster. It is highly situational, it requires a kill and two stacks of soulblaze in a rather small radius is nothing to write home about, especially on difficulties 4 and up. This needs some tweaking. Suggestion is either to not require a kill, or slightly increase the radius and give Soulblaze stacks equivalent to your current warp charges.
Column III
Column III is also largely in a good spot, as it offers different playstyles, and all talents have multiple good synergies. Psychic Communion if you want to have alot of Warp Charge uptime and / or regain them quickly. 4% doesnt sound like much, but in practice, during hordes, in a tightly packed team, you will reliably get your charges up/back. Pair that with Essence Harvest as said and you also get good toughness regen. Psykinetic’s Aura is a little bland, but practical, though considering it is on elite kill, 15% is a bit on the lower side. I’d say 20% if in order if you want to focus on spellslinging and CC via your ability. Cerebral Lacerations is a good support ability and something akin to “boss killing”, though arguably, again, 15% for 5 seconds is a bit on the lower side. I’d say dial up the duration to something like 7 seconds or the bonus to 20%. Otherwise, this is all very solid.
Column IV
A little bit of everything. You can boost your melee survivability with Kinetic Deflection and might also get mileage out of it if you want more peril for higher damage via Psyikentic’s Wrath. If you ride the wave of Warp Charges, Kinetic Shield is a good pick and it synergizes well with anything warp-charge related. Greatly increases your survivability. Mind in Motion is a bit lackluster. You do move alot faster, obviously, but you don’t want to quell in situations where movement speed might be an issue, anyhow. I’d suggest giving this feat also a passive bonus to quell speed of something like 20 to 25%.
Column V
Very interesting choices. Warp Battery is always nice, and having access to essentially 50% more of everything charge-related is nothing to laugh at. No matter what your build, this is a good pick. Kinetic Overload is nice in theory, but also lackluster, as you don’t have control over it, but the smart targeting seems reasonable enough. If you run a mixed build that isn’t exclusively geared towards warp charges, this is a nice choice. Kinetic Flayer is especially good in melee combat and in 1 on 1 situations where manual BB isn’t an option. I’d say the 15 seconds cooldown is a tad bit too high. 10 to 12 seconds would also be reasonable.
Column VI
This, again, is an absolute game changer. Quicken seems to be the weakest of the bunch, but if you want to be able to use your ability more often to CC and to quell your peril because of your spellslinging, it is not a bad choice. Ascendant Blaze gives Psyker some very needed close quarter horde clearing as well as the ability to severely weaken bigger enemies. Up to six stacks of Soul Blaze also gives you a reasonable expecation to kill mobs with it even on higher difficulties, so you will get some charges back, getting the train rolling again. It makes using your ability as a method of quelling a more tactical choice, since you will lose your warp charges, but the benefit is well worth it. Kinetic Barrage lets you pop heads in quick succession. Together with Warp Battery and Inner Tranquility, you can pump out BBs at very little cost very quickly. A very viable strategy if you got good CC and horde clear on your team and want to focus on hunting eliltes and specials.
As for the staffs, they all seem solid, except for the flamethrower. Even with good rolls, it doesn’t provide enough damage or CC to make up for the fact that it doesn’t have a longe range attack. The “conflag staff” (pardon me, I’m going to use VT2 terminology for the time being so we all know what I am talking about) has better horde clear and ALOT better CC when it has a good roll and charge time and explosion radius, the “fireball staff” is also not bad at this and has tremendous damage at medium range, and the “force lightning” staff is also better at this, though I find it harder to use than “conflag”.
That’s my take on Psyker. I’m having a “blast” (get it?) so far.