""Incredibly spicy"" Psyker balancing takes

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Hello! I’m a guy who plays Psyker! More than half of that playtime is gun Psyker, and I can certainly hold my own on Maelstrom missions. That isn’t to say I don’t play normal Psyker, far from it, I just have more enjoyment with Gunker, being a rootin’ tootin’ magic boy, so prepare for bias. Anyways,

Most of these are gonna be my opinion on how to make Psyker less oppressive and encourage a bit more build variety. Without further ado, let’s address the elephant in the room:

  • Smite

“She isn’t stealing my kills, she’s stealing my fun”
An actual quote by a player named Faraday, after experiencing a game with a competent (not like that’s saying much about them) Smite Psyker

Some of you love it, some of you hate it, I hate it, so here’s a proposal for it.
Make it stun only armored enemies! Technically other enemies too, just keep reading. This includes the non-elites, so it’ll still affect scab melee (excluding dreg), as well as scab shooters! All specialists, excluding bomber, are not affected by it. To compensate for unarmored/maniac enemies, and to not make it literally useless against them, it will still do damage to non-armored enemies, but will only stun upon cancellation of the right click smite attack, the stun is also less potent. Armored enemies will also not be constantly stunlocked, they’ll instead be able to periodically move around and maybe get a quick cheeky hit in before getting stunned again. However, all enemies will be stunlocked like normal if you use the left click at the cost of only chaining around half a dozen enemies, it will prioritize elites and the likes above trash enemies. Finally, it’s no longer just a worse right click!
The lightning storm blitz modifier should also be changed… I mean, did you even notice a difference with it on? The blitz modifier, instead of giving you a frankly stupid “+1” to your lightning chain jumps, will give you rending instead. Rename it to “Crackling lightning” or something idk I’m not good at labeling things.
And finally, you can now blow yourself up with smite! However, your character sometimes catches themself from exploding, like how the plasma gun does it.
These changes should slow down any nasty enemies – while weakening them in the process – before they get to your teammates, allowing your team if caught in a bad situation to kill any groaners and poxwalkers without needing to fret about the big bads for the time being.

  • Staffs

God, I’m going to be crucified for this…
This is to try & make gun psyker a slightly more tasteful option without attempting to make the staffs useless or make the guns inexplicably better. Also, can you tell that I miss Vermintide’s varied primary staff attacks?

For the Surge staff, the primary fire could be like the Vermintide bolt staff, in turn allowing the staff to get the Dumdum blessing… Yeah, that’s it. This is just because I just think it would look cool with the game’s talented first-person animators animating it. Nah, I’m kidding, these new bolts also will not be pin-point accurate, this is to make the surge staff less oppressive at all ranges and less of a solution to all your problems, speaking of which…
The Voidstrike staff could have a nerf to it’s charged ball, giving it damage falloff, signified by the ball of energy getting smaller until the size & damage matches that of the normal left click ball (The cleave and explosion of the charged ball will stay the same regardless of distance). You should only really feel this change when trying to instakill snipers from across the entire battlefield.
Trauma staff could also be given a shotgun-like effect for it’s primary fire, but it could stay as-is without any problems, now that the other weapons were knocked down a peg.
Purgatus staff is unchanged, but on the topic of fire:

  • Warp Rupture

Y’know, that one ability modifier that absolutely nobody uses for Venting Shriek?

Warp Rupture could have it transform from a cone of effect of Venting Shriek into a area of effect around the player (think V2 Unchained ability, but probably about double the AOE of a fully charged Trauma staff attack.) It will also increase the max damage to 375.

  • Misc

We’re at the home stretch, you’re almost done with my incredibly bad takes.

Malefic Momentum can also work vice versa, meaning using warp attacks will give you increased damage to your non-warp attacks. Inspiration for this was Veteran’s passive: “Agile Engagement”
Perfect Timing could not only increase warp damage, but increase ranged damage too, these do not stack with each other, so you won’t be doing 6% damage a stack with your staff/blitz.
Telekine Dome should no longer stun mutants inside it if you dodge them, I think this is less gameplay feedback and more bug report, but whatever.
Give Psyker more unique special ranged weapon attacks, would love to see a force push for the revolver pistol whip, like with the laspistol. Maybe also could supercharge the flashlight on the lasguns/autoguns by holding the special attack key down to blind poxwalkers?

  • That’s it, hope you enjoyed the ride

These balance takes aren’t set in stone/to be all used in tandem (big surprise there) especially since a few of these reworks may not blend well with other ones I thought up of. I also tried to avoid using many numbers when describing balance changes because 1: I’m stupid, and 2: I’ll let actually talented people do that, I’m just throwing crap at a wall and seeing what sticks. I’m planning on doing 1 of these for each class since I think all of them need tidying, can’t wait for all of these to be in vain!

Edited so the smite part is less confusing.

2nd edit changed the Venting Shriek part to have better balance.

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Cut the brain burst cast time in half, before applying any of the talent points. No, I’m not joking.

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Bad idea.

The only reason why creeping flames is kinda useful right now (and it‘s equivalent has been useful before the talent tree rework), is because it enables you to apply soulblaze to a lot of enemies from a decent range, allowing those enemies to burn for a while (and actually take some damage) before they enter melee range.

6 stacks are the minimum amount required to kill anything on damnation. The enemies that do get killed by 6 stacks, die to the last few ticks after around 10 seconds (assuming they did not get minced by something else by then).
If anything, the max stack of soulblaze applied by creeping flames, should be buffed.

A smaller aoe around the player would not go well with soulblaze and should be given to warp rupture instead.
The smaller, circular aoe could get a stagger that is strong enough to knock any enemy on their butt and allow players to escape from being surrounded.
(The regular venting shriek could also do with a small buff to stagger)

This would leave us with

  • Creeping Flames as more proactive and offensive option for players who keep the enemies in front of them.
  • Warp Rupture as more reactive and defensive option for players who get surrounded and need a way to escape.
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I always thought of Venting Shriek as a utility option, psyker’s designated “instant reload” ability, which is why I thought to reduce the viability of Creeping Flames while buffing Warp Rupture, I did this change so a Warp Siphon build with creeping flames isn’t super busted.
I will concede on the nerf to the soulblaze stacks, it’s a bit too harsh accompanied by the new AOE, however, I wanted to make Creeping Flames less like a longer range Purgatus staff and more of a really solid tool when you’re swarmed.

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Unless you give it like 14 stacks, it can never be that.

Still, why take away the useful thing it does and essentially remove a playstyle, instead of simply repurposing the currently useless alternative to fullfill the function that you want?

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What? So you want it to be a death machine, is that it? alr. 6 stacks is enough to kill poxwalkers and groaners. Venting Shriek shouldn’t be anything more than that.

The problem with creeping flames is that it has way more synergy with skills than warp rupture, so it’s way more difficult to balance the two without creeping flames consistently reining supreme when going full left skills with it.

Edited in the third sentence

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Please try to respond to what i actually say, instead of things that i did not say.

I explained why creeping flames is useful as it is (because it has long range), but would be bad if it had short range (which is a change that you suggested).
If you want it to apply dot within close range around you, and actually be useful, you need many stacks of the dot, so that it does not take 10 seconds to even kill a poxwalker.

There is no issue with creeping flames.
The issue is, that warp rupture is complete trash in its current state.

The solution is to make warp rupture useful for something else (like a strong stagger around the player and stronger venting), not to turn the currently useful thing into garbage, so that both options are equally trash.

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Hmm. You know what, I’ve been convinced, warp rupture can have the AOE instead, however for it, I would buff the max damage to 375 so it can kill poxwalkers if you’re going to blow up.
Honestly, the AOE might work as a seperate skill that the two can get. Gaining full peril reduction and stronger stagger.

My original philosophy for warp rupture was to have a on-demand emergency finishing off option at relatively respectable ranges, but I realize that Soulblaze is already kinda like that.

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Soulblaze is the opposite of that. Because it takes time.

My suggestion would be to keep creeping flames as is. Maybe add 1 max stack. Maybe add a bit of stagger.
This would keep the use that it has always had. However, a bunch of enemies got buffed, so 1 extra stack and slightly improved stagger would compensate for that.

Warp rupture is currently worthless and can be completely changed.
It can get a 360° aoe with massive stagger and enough damage at high peril, so that it can instant kill horde trash within a reasonable radius, but it should barely scratch other enemies (aside from knocking them to their ass).
Maybe give it improved venting, too.

This way, both options would be useful and not compete for the same thing.

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Would agree with this.

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Oh God, please nope

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At first I disagreed, but then I had Vietnam flashbacks of last night on my zealot dropping flame grenades to deal with mixed hordes and watching in horror as a smite wizard held everything safely outside of my flames and consistently outside of bopping distance all game.

But a blitz that only works on half of the enemies that might not even spawn would just push people into using Assail. Would rather FS toy with Smite’s damage, stagger power, peril generation, left click attack, and the possibility of controlling cast time with a cooldown on charged attacks before just making it useless against all horde and dreg enemies.

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Smite is fine. It does exactly what it is meant to do and does it well.

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Yeah, like I said, nothing’s set in stone here, for example, it only working on some enemies could be changed to work on all enemies but they aren’t constantly stunned. I still stand by my left click suggestions tho

In it’s current form, it’s way too easy to completely shut down anything that isn’t a boss. However, smite should, IMO, basically be the opposite of assail, great against shutting down armored elites, bad, but not terrible against hordes. Instead of great against… Y’know, stopping everything that isn’t a boss.

If you want to deal with hordes more effectively, you have to play to your weaknesses, for example, Assail Psykers will usually run more damage penetrative weapons, like Voidstrike staff or force swords. Brain burst Psykers will run Purgatus or Trauma staffs, etc. With smite, you can run whatever the hell you want, since most staff options for smite psykers are completely fine. Obviously, you shouldn’t be forced to play to your weaknesses.

Isn’t assail also useless in certain scenarios? Like, for example, a crusher/bulwark, assail isn’t gonna do jack, or with maulers, either… Scab ragers you may also have a problem with.

I feel like you may be missing the part where I say that dreg, maniac, and horde enemies can still be stunlocked and damaged by left click and just damaged on right click. I tried to edit the page to remove some confusion.

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Assail can be finessed to hit behind bulwarks and stagger them.

But I get what you mean. Krak is good against only 2 enemies and bosses. Add in a grenade regen talent and you basically have an equivalent slot comparable to psyker magic. My knees were quite jerky when i made that comment.

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True, forgot about bulwark’s laughably low tolerance to any stagger, that’s on me. Still, it’s recommended to use bigger weapons for bigger enemies like bulwarks, reapers, and whatnot, nobody wants to waste like a minute of their life plinking at an unyielding enemy with 10 assail daggers before they finally drop dead.

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