So with the recent change (nerf) to Psyker peril quell for non-force-weapons, I think gun Psykers went from being a ‘non-optimal niche’ thing to being objectively bad. I reserve the right to be wrong since I’m not the sweatiest Darktide player, unfortunately.
My Psyker’s shop inventories are still filled with a majority of guns on average (as far as ranged weapons go). It seems like it’d be fair to either make Psyker shop inventories heavily favor staffs for ranged weapons or find a way to buff gun Psykers. Or both. Thoughts?
I dunno how the fix actually effect Gun-Psykers at all. It takes longer to passiv-quell BB, maybe Forcesword if you use it, but that´s it?!
Forcesword can be charged often enough in general and BB… i mean, you´ve a gun.
Overall the whole classtree from Psyker doesn´t rely much on the weapon-choice besides 1, maybe 2 talents. So far i clearly don´t get why so many poeple call “staff = meta” and “guns = useless”.
Dunno about your build, but i run Gun-Psyker since beginning as my main choice and it´s easier to clear damnation with it than with staves. Might rely on my playstyle, but staves limit you and aren´t as versatile as the most guns are. And the latest patch actually buffed my SMG with the blessings so…
About the shop… I mean, you can buy whatever you want now at Brunts shop. Just buy the staff you want and upgrade it if it has good modifier-rolls. No need to change something.
By coincidence I started running Gun Psyker more over the past couple of weeks (and especially with the big crafting patch). I’m kicking myself for not trying it earlier because it feels very effective and capable to me. I feel even stronger running a gun now than running a staff to be honest.
My build is this:
GEAR
Force Sword with Slaughter + Deflector
Vraks MkVII Headhunter Autogun with Ghost + Stagger Blessing
Two +3 stamina curious, one +HP curio. All with combinations of block cost efficiency, sniper resist, +HP, stamina regen, toughness regen
FEATS
Lvl5 Essence Harvest
Lvl10 Psykinetic Wrath
Lvl15 Cerebral Lacerations
Lvl20 Kintetic Deflection
Lvl25 Kinetic Flayer
Lvl30 Kinetic Barrage
I REALLY don’t understand what people’s hold up is with peril management on a gun psyker. You can easily fire off 3-4 BB’s, especially if using your ult, to kill or soften up hard targets (bulwarks, reapers, crushers, maulers, etc.) and get your peril up high and get 4x warp charges.
At that point, depending on the situation you can either dive into melee or swap to the autogun. If going melee, your force sword gets up to +15% damage for being at high peril. and you can use kinetic deflection to block ranged or melee attacks to also keep your peril up higher, and keep the damage bonus maxed. With slaughter you are a horde blender. If any elites or hard targets are mixed in, you can force push them over and special attack kill them. It’s amazing.
Alternatively, if you swap to the autogun, when coupled wit ghost you can chain headshots together and be near invulnerable. If you WC stacks drop or other hard targets show up, you can switch to BB and/or use the ult to drop them down quickly.
I’m KRAKKING LOVING IT. I’m having a blast with this build. Kinetic Flayer is just icing on the cake to not only keep peril up but when it procs when you one-tap an elite or special with the autogun and you blow their off in a psychic burst it’s amazingly satisfying and effective.
Honestly, I don’t understand why people have such a problem managing peril. Or why people seem to resist actively quelling if they need to? You know you can actively quell and still dodge to keep yourself safe? And you only need to quell to 96% or below and you can BB again without blowing up. I really don’t get this criticism about it. And frankly peril management is much LESS of an issue with Gun Psyker anyway, so it’s strange to frame it like these changes have made it even worse for them when their ranged attacks don’t even use peril.
Now think about it the other way around, where your ranged uptime is completely dependent on peril, and where playing actively, that is going into melee with your non-force barely quells anything at all, so that when you’re back to your staff, you can barely get off one blast before you’re either forced to melee, or forced to quell. Quelling isn’t uptime.
I can’t speak for gunpsykers, but psykers who ran anything but Purgatus and liked being actively engaged in melee were hit with a massive nerf. Not just to their output, but to their entire playstyle. Not only making it less effective, but it making it 200% less fun and 300% more clunky.
Does that sound right to you? Even if it was somehow overtuned, which it wasn’t, is that how you fix it? By making it clunky and unfun?
Trauma staff is already doing about 200 less damage than it should for its charge time and peril cost, and now if you want to use it, you’re stuck quelling the whole effing mission. Same with Surge, where it’s now better to just stay on the staff most of the time, rather than dynamically swapping between staff and melee.
Options have been removed for no reason whatsoever, and FatShark can’t even be bothered to justify it, and least of all rectify it.
Just out of curiosity, what difficulty level are you running this build on? Also, what do you see yourself bringing to the table that a Veteran doesn’t do better? I ask because I feel like it was easier to understand the previous ‘tank with force sword, quell with gun’ role.
It’s one thing if I’m wrong about gun Psykers and they’re awesome (I mean I never see them but perhaps most people are sleeping on them). Lets say that hypothetically staffs were better for Psykers though–in that case I’d be concerned about what the other shops are filled with since they are still a good source of useful things like blessings (not to mention the occasional high item level weapon nowadays).
I was always against the idea of a “gun” psyker, but actually slower passive quell means you can use your peril to boost damage of your ranged weapons for longer, and try to hit some breakspoints.
I still feel the “gun” psyker a curiosity / “I’m bored let me try something different” situation. You are just a weaker veteran. You give up quite a bit by not using staves.
Now if Warp Unleashed talent (1st talent in the second column - they renamed it recently) applied to non-forced weapons also and Kinectic Shield talent provided higher (lets say 50%) damage reduction from ALL source of damage including melee, we could get some basis for poor’s man Unchained builds. Lets say Force Sword + Las Pistol for high movement speed (granting they ever buff it) with Run and Gun, or Revolver.
Quite a few Psyker talents are just really weak on higher difficulties. I’m looking at you Warp Unleashed, Wreck and Ruin, Kinectic Shield etc.
What makes this one comfortable is the utility against everything. In case of the level 10 talents, you could also pick the first… but if i run Axe, i don´t sit on high peril. And i use the loaded forcesword only for elites aswell so…
Overall this build allows me to clear waves comfortable. 4 stacks on Ascendent Blaze is enough to kill a horde of normal heretics. Poxwalker need about 6 stacks, but it doesn´t really matter since a Forcesword has a decent waveclear and shines with its dodge.
The SMG allows me to burst some elites (Rager, Mauler) away. The stopping power also does a lot to keep them away and the high hits per minute will trigger Kinetic flayer pretty fast. You can also use it + the ultimate to push forward pretty easily.
And at the end you still have BB to take care for range-elites and specials.
All in all it´s just highly versatile and i don´t even run blessings like “range-blocks” or something. Yes, a Vet can go pewpew and kill stuff often faster. Why? Because Vet is overscaled anyway and some weapons are just too strong imo.
But in any case… Psyker brings more CC and this build have everything up for any situation you might get into. Even if you pick an axe, you still have the SMG and the dot-ultimate to get ride of waves pretty easily, while the axe will deal with any elites out there. The only annoying enemy is probably a bulwark, but hey… you´re Psyker, use BB!
Dunno what you give up but CC. Guns are better on range and have mostly a better damage output since you actually have to load on staves. The purgatus might be strong, but the range is highly limited.
And all what you lose in the worst case is 15% damage from the high peril trait. The rest of the feats is mostly about BB and the ultimate anyway.
Right now staves limit Psyker pretty much and that even without taking the bugfix into account. Being comfortable with melee while having a gun in the bag does a better job in my eyes.
I want to highlight that +15% damage is only at like 97%+ peril. Also peril thresholds are bugged right now and 2 of them lie above 97%. This feat, most of the time, is giving less than a 10% damage bonus to staves and force swords. It’s actually a really terrible feat. Take the Warp resistance.
They keep fixing bugs that help the psyker, but the ones that hurt our bottom line have been left alone for a long time.
I play Heresy 95% of the time. I admit I have not stumbled into Damnation yet, so my conclusions might be misplaced with respect to Darnation.
I ran a few games with the new scoreboard mod, which was really illuminating. Last game was me, another psyker, and two vets. One of the vets got more kills across the board than me, but I wasn’t far behind in 2nd place. The other vet and other psyker weren’t dishing it out as hard. No surprises, but it provided some validation for how effective I felt during the game.
As far as direct comparisons to Vets - I think regardless of what weapons psyker brings to the table, their BB is a unique ability that retains utility. Being able to kill Bulwarks at range by ignoring their shield is hugely beneficial, as is BB pox hounds, bombers, trappers, etc. that run out of line of sight before they can get shot. BB is pretty forgiving locking onto a target and keeping those threats from popping back up.
Also, Psyker’s ult shouldn’t be underestimated for its ability to stager groups of ranged enemies and make space for your team to engage. Being able to stagger everything in a cone out for 50m range is strong if you use it proactively in that way. Psyker’s wit deflector can be pretty tanky. i really with you could use deflector during revives still.
As far as raw DPS, I don’t think anything outclasses a Vet, so from that standpoit you could ask the same question of nearly every other build.
I’m inclined to agree that Psyker’s BB is in a really good place. In fact I feel like it was before the patch too. BB is a pretty nice grenade ability. Just wish it wasnt tied to so many of our core class features.
The warp resistance feat ends up netting you a lot more, especially when you’re talking about using kinetic barrage. That whole feat tier needs help. I feel like psyker’s main weakness right now is the fact that a lot of their feats do next to nothing and are really unattractive. There are some really good feats too, don’t get me wrong, but things like “You can move and quell at full speed” and “Applies soulblaze to nearby enemies (what range?)” feats are largely useless. I even tried to do a full soulblaze build and the generic staff build was far better.
There are too many dead feats and bad synergies in our tree. Also our toughness regeneration options compared to other classes suck, period.
I think this was probably the biggest issue for me to wrap my head around–and you’re right, it’s more of a feat/Psyker problem. The idea of using BB (on things other than Bulwarks or elusive specials) to regen toughness now and then while juggling my gun seems clunky. That all just hinges on me being too dependent on Quietitude I suppose.
I feel like I’ve learned a lot in this thread from better Psykers
Dunno if you’re familiar with autopistol but that thing’s a monster, mine is not even amazing, i’m currently spending my resources on getting a better one
All three curios are the same just with more or less toughness regen speed
In summary you’re going to have a lot of boosted BB uptime, Blitz that refreshes extremely fast if you’re doing your job correctly with the added benefit of also reducing your teammates cooldowns, Autopistol annihilates anything that’s not carapace armor no matter their number, Catachan MKI (for double cleave heavy attack moveset) when you just need to swing through trash without spending resources
You get largely enough block with just stamina and block efficiency, basically you just want to be able to block some really heavy hits like an Ogryn charge without immediately exploding
Mind in Motion is pointless with a Staff, but since you will be quelling with your hands you need to keep your mobility
Only thing you will miss is Deflector + Kinetic Deflection get out of jail free card, if you get caught with your pants down in the open and a gang of gunners gets the drop on you
Have you taken THAT to high-intensity Damnation and were happy with results?
I don’t know, maybe it’s just down to the fact that if I wanted to play with guns I would play veteran instead. Staves offer some unique gameplay not available on other classes . I’m not a fan of purge staff, or trauma, surge is too much about CC for my liking, but voidstaff just clicks right with me in terms of damage and CC alike.
. I’m not a fan of purge staff, or trauma, surge is too much about CC for my liking, but voidstaff just clicks right with me in terms of damage and CC alike.