Smite is in such a weird spot right now. The uncharged version is nearly useless compared to the charge. An instant room stunning aoe at the cost of only 5% peril which hardly ever matters compared to the return you get from it.
But its also strange how compared to other Blitz abilities, theres no real player decision or thinking when using it. Assail has options. A slow, sniping option to manually aim it or spam it for quick, uncontrollable shards.
Brain Burst lets you pre-emptively charge it to kill a special the moment it shows its face.
Smite has no real options in its use. I would prefer if the right click charge was a single target, high-damage, no-stun alternative, while left click remains the same. Which in of itself makes me wonder if the ability overall needs a slight rework because doing this would have it tread on the toes of other Blitz abilities.
BB still takes too much time for me to enjoy it. I just rather do something else that stand there charging it. There are few combos which make it occasionally useful like EP and faster charging on ability use, but even then I can clearly see I’m doing less dmg/kill wise during games when I pick it.
Smite just should be replaced by an ability which doesn’t switch off horde AI because someone presses a button.
Assail is fun, and the easiest to weave in with whatever else you are doing as a psyker.
Disagree. Using Empowered Psionics with Overpowering Souls and Kinetic Resonance + Bolstered Shield gives you multiple ways to machinegun BB.
Groups of heavy gunners and shotgunners? As long as you have a single charge of Empowered Psi, you can chain them back to back to back.
Room full of small gunners in cover? Drop a wall and you can kill 8~10 in a row.
The real issue with BB is its weakness vs Ragers, and people being baited into thinking Kinetic Flayer is good.
In my opinion, smite is the worst ability in the game. It slows down the pacing entirely, it’s slow to charge up peril - and near impossible to “overheat” with. It has nearly no damage to speak of, and just turns matches into a snoozefest.
It needs a rework because it’s just not fun for anyone involved. I will never use it again unless it is changed, or gets some annoying penance that I want to unlock.
Assasil feels fine as it is, but I’ll always prefer brain burst.
Even if I think Brain Burst’s “charge up” is really bad, because it builds peril way too fast, and if you’re using Empowered Psionics, it becomes completely “pointless”.
Plus the only thing you can possibly stop and want to pre-empt BB with is probably the dogs, which you can stop with a gun or some left click spam on a staff anyway, or just push and stab at the right time. It felt more relevant when Darktide was more fresh, but in current days? Feels completely worthless.
The problem with ALL the Psyker grenades is how they force you to play the Grenade. Every other class just gets to throw out a grenade, get an effect. Keep using their guns, swords, to dodge around.
Psyker grenades all directly compete with your weapons. It’s not “I’ll use my power in this situation to supplement my melee or range!” it’s “Is this a situation in which my Grenade power is better than either of my other weapons?”
This is especially bad when put up against the staves. Every Psyker grenade power currently has two “use methods” but BOTH fall into the trap of taking over for your weapons.
It should always have been Pskyer powers have a quick-use and a focused use. An instant G press Brain Burst, instant G press stunning lightning bolt (spreads through a few targets, stunning them for a second or two), instant Assail shard to pierce through a few targets.
And then the no weapons, hands out “focused” use of the power. The big room filling lightning, the storm of Assail shards. Brain Bursts that AoE or something.
Currently my “best” use of Smite is alongside the Surge Staff, where my threshold for using Smite is if there are more targets than my Surge Staff can handle before they get to me, if I have a spot I can stand without enemies spawning behind me to instantly cancel it, and my team is around.
If I run Smite alongside any of the other Staves, I basically never use it because it’s never better.
I find smite boring too but I see the “competing with weapons” thing differently. I see it as having an extra weapon or tool in my loadout.
For example, one of my many loadouts uses voidstrike, dclaw, assail and vent. I effectively have four weapons and I can have super-specific use cases. The voidstrike is for heavies, dclaw for turtling, assail for soft targets while sprinting/dodging and vent clears mass zombies or extends my burst.
Having accepted the specific use cases thing I also find BB as an acceptable, if very clunky, tool for picking off hard to reach targets.
I see where you’re coming from but I don’t fully agree with the idea of the player being “forced” to use the Psyker nades over their other options. There’s a time and a place to spam Assail and BB and overuse can either kill the Psyker in some way or in some way soft-cap their ability to contribute to big fights. Smite is so versatile, so easy to use and so unlimited – the only limit being whether the Psyker can quell for a brief moment or not – that newer pubs will use it for every little problem and there is no mechanic in the game to punish using it as a crutch so pubs will get stuck in a loop of playing Smite as their main weapon. So Smite is by far the largest offender for unlimited use and makes many of the hardest situations in the game drastically easier unlike the other two abilities.
Personally, I feel like Smite should have a duration of some kind and a cooldown attached to it, but I’m starting to get the feeling that it exists in its current untouched state as a concession to Console players. I feel exactly the same about Ogryn’s shield special which I also consider to have a “Smite loop” going on with it, both of which make pubs insufferable sometimes.
I’m not saying Psykers should never have the option to “play the grenade”. Neither did I want to imply you’re forced to only play the grenade. I mean that unlike other classes, you can’t just use your “grenade” alongside your weapons.
It’s why my suggestions to is keep the current or similar gameplay of the powers with Right Click, but make a sort of “quick” grenade version that can be woven into normal combat.
For Smite especially being able to just shoot a single shot lightning bolt that’ll bounce between a few targets and stun em for a second or two would be amazing. Especially as a foil for gun psyker.
How is rendering everything in the entire field AFK, disabling shields & setting them up for the easiest headshots in the world “nearly useless”? Nvm scenarios like a big mass of crushers & bulwarks in the front while you can hear a bunch of bursters, dogs or a trapper (lol, but let’s pretend their sounds worked for the sake of an example), and you can just ignore all of it at the press of a button.
Smite also does have other components. Stopping mid-charge before reaching 100% applies a massive stagger, in many cases it’s best used for just that. EP buffs not just dmg but spread too, letting you do that stagger way faster. Also it’s specifically the primary which is barely useful, since the secondary adds more targets & faster spread.
But tbh I rather like your suggestion!
In a team with good players smite is ridiculously OP right now. And EP & Vent psykers don’t even need the team since the thing will easily CC & burn everything but the toughest elites all at once. Imo it needs a massive nerf to its AoE.
If they removed the secondary altogether so the only AoE CC version would be primary, and then replaced the secondary with a stronger single target variant instead, that could definitely be pog! It would both severely nerf its AoE and give it more fun alternative uses too.
that’s the issue with smite, it has the effect of zealot’s stun grenade, but it’s easy to spam. smite 6 seconds, quell 1-2, repeat. a smyker gets very much out of just standing there and holding a key. smite becomes a panic button players can fall back on instead of being competent in melee. i have 1 or 2 very effective smite builds but haven’t used them in a long time for this reason, i suddenly don’t feel confident with my sword any more when i can just freeze things in place. reworking smite into something less obnoxious is quite simple, just have it build peril so fast that you can cast it only for 1 second, throwing them all on their asses, followed by a cooldown, if it should remain a cc tool. or make it an obliterating single target attack. but this “let’s play afk with them” is the cheapest option, smite away and don’t even watch your peril.
I’ve found that the best use of smite is in conjunction with a gun Psyker build and scriers gaze. While scrier and smite doesn’t have any useful synergy, it fills a good crowd control gap. When a huge pack of ragers comes at you, smite can be used to knock them all down and makes it fun to poke away at them with your other weapons. Outside of that combo, I’d never use Smite.
BB is the best blitz IMHO because of the utility it provides. It’s a decent backup alongside a void strike build letting you snipe elusive specialist. Or use it conjunction with purgatus or Trauma staff as a sniper weapon to make up for those weapons relatively close range, non-precise nature.
I don’t personally like assail that much either. Everytime I use assail i think that using my main weapons would be the better move.
Yea. But imagine if you had the option to tap G for a quick single assail shard to pierce through a few targets or tag one further out. Then it would be usable in basically any build.
When you see a big patrol of Elites, then you pull it out and cast as it currently works. This is what the powers are missing.
Smite is problematic as it allows you disable way too many enemies, too frequently. When I join missions I want to interact with enemies, and not feel like I just spent 30 minutes in the Psykhanium.
Smite could have been literally ANYTHING else:
A force push with some knockback, knockdown, with a decent peril cost, even an internal cooldown like Assail. There is your CC option.
A force whip with some cool moveset, aim mechanics.
A force javelin, with shorter range than BB, but able to pierce few enemies, unless it hits carapace.
A short lived force field which gives you a protection from ranged fire at the cost of peril and doesn’t slow you down.
A time based buff which gives you burst of movement speed and melee attack speed.
Literally anything which doesn’t break the experience for other players in your team.