and I’m not the only one. I don’t understand the decision to make Ability Cooldown the base component of the Warp Siphon keystone. It was originally the warp damage increase, which I feel is a lot better as a base function. It also used to be tied to killing enemies with brain burst, and I wish that would come back too. Blitz kills (or a chance on Blitz kill perhaps since Smite and Assail can kill a a lot quicker than Brain Burst) being the primary source of warp charges was more fun because it meant there was a specific thing the player needed to do in order to maintain them that they may not otherwise do. Back then, you could be faced with a situation like “I want to blast all these guys, but my warp charges are about to run out, so should I spend extra time and peril trying to brain burst these regular enemies, or wait until a better opportunity arises?” It was a small tactical choice to make now and again. There was an element of managing your warp charges effectively to keep yourself in the best condition.
On Elite Kill doesn’t have that tactical decision making advantage because, like, you’re always going to try to kill an elite when you see one. Under the current system, warp charges just kind of happen without the player needing to care.
Instead, now Warp Siphon has a much more negative tactical decision to make: Am I going to be okay if I blow all my warp charges on using my ability? This is a bad thing, because now the player is incentivized to not use one of the tools in their arsenal. The decision of when to use your Ability is now coupled with the cost of losing your bonus damage/peril generation reduction. I don’t want to have to lose all that stuff to toss up a shield, because tossing up shields is fun and interesting.
This also doesn’t synergize at all with Scrier’s Gaze. Gaze is a damage boost and can also reduce peril generation, which would go great with the damage boost and reduced peril generation granted by warp siphon, but activating Scrier’s Gaze uses up all your warp charges.
So I think there are two ways this could go, barring of course a complete rework to make Warp Siphon do something totally new.
Option 1: Get rid of the cooldown thing.
Warp charges could be changed to be primarily about something besides allowing you to cast abilities more often. The base Warp Siphon skill would do something else, probably the damage bonus, and the mechanic of using up charges would be removed. Instead, each warp charge could passively reduce ability cooldown, or the node could be made to do something else entirely, like faster staff charge time.
Option 2: Make it all about the cooldown thing.
The conflict is from having a benefit to keeping your warp charges, and also a benefit from using them all up. So, if spending warp charges is to be the thing that warp charges are all about, then the bonus damage and peril generation reduction should be made into buffs you get for a duration after spending your warp charges instead of a passive bonus you get while you have warp charges. This way, the player is encouraged to use their warp charges often, and encouraged to use their ability often, instead of encouraged to never use their ability at all. It would also make it synergize with Scrier’s Gaze and Telekine Shield better. Having the damage and peril buffs happen for a duration after activating the ability would motivate players to really charge in when they switch on gaze, or really lay down some fire after putting up their shield.
Personally, I would prefer Option 1, but it would depend on what build each Keystone talent is part of is going for. Judging by everything else in the rightmost tree, the Psykinetic build is about sniping elites, soul burning, and sustained warp attacks (seeing as it has all the peril reduction, including venting shriek and faster quelling). In other words, the Psykinetic is something of a force staff machine gunner; capable of dishing out damage for longer than the other two skill trees, with both their blitz and ability being more situational and less useful in general combat. In that case, option 2 might be more fitting; rewarding repeated quick bursts of damage to build up charges and then immediately use them as a sort of quick reload.
To that end, changing the means of acquiring warp charges would be a good idea. Like I said earlier, changing it to be based on Blitz kill might be better, to go with the quick bursts of staff attacks concept described above. Better yet, it could be based on any warp attack, or on amount of warp damage dealt.