Am I missing something? 7dps/stack and only 3 ways to apply it (all talents):
Wreck and Ruin (10): Killing an Elite or Specialist with Brain Bust applies two stacks of Soulblaze to all enemies within 3 meters of the target
Kinetic Overload (25): While you have maximum Warp Charges, gaining a Warp Charge instead applies four stacks of Soulblaze to a nearby enemy, prioritizing Elite enemies.
Ascendent Blaze (30!): Psykinetic’s Wrath expends all Warp Charges and Applies Stacks of Soulblaze to enemies hit based on the number of Warp Charges expended (max 4 because you took Kinetic Overload at 25)
So like, lets be realistic, you probably can get at most 6-8 stacks on a given thing with immense focus, but lets exaggerate to 10 for comic effect. That’s 70 damage a second! Considering most melee elites have HP in the range of 1000 at Heresy+ (and by now you are 30, so this is the relevant difficulty tier), you’re looking at 10+ seconds to kill something with Soulblaze alone.
That’s awful. Really awful. So basically one of the “interesting” ways to play the Psyker is terrible. Cool. Add that to the fact that brain burst doesn’t scale into high difficulty and the class gets weaker and weaker for everything in the late game. Not a big deal for anyone who plays to 30 and then stops, but a big deal for the longevity of the class.
Unfortunately “Is X supposed to be a joke?” seems to be an issue with a number of weapons/abilities. Game would’ve been better received if it had started a bit too easy and rebalanced in the other direction over time. Between this and the low level requirement to jump on higher difficulties, this could be a rough launch week.
Im hoping its a bug because the first iteration of bleed stacks were doing 1 dps and they seem to have adjusted it a bit? still needs tweaking for sure but hopefully they just havent looked into fixing soulblaze yet as yeah 7dps is clearly broken
There’s a lot of balance issues right now coming into release. A lot of issues in general, but balance is one of the bigger ones.
Soulblaze is definitely really weak in 4 and 5 considering how difficult it is to apply. So is brainburst. Warp charges are clunky, offer tiny benefits (12% damage at max stacks, 18% with the talent??? lol), and maintaining them is usually worse than just wading in with regular melee or ranged. As a consequence, every feat involving Warp charges or soulblaze or brainburst range from barely usable to worthless. Psyker definitely needs a big boost and/or some kind of redesign, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Actually, Soul Blaze is strong, but it requires a very specific setup to get it right.
Namely Purgatus Staff coupled with +2 Soul Blaze per critical hit coupled with 9% ranged critical chance on top of 4-16% critical chance depending on your peril in which case it can easily reach very high amount of stacks and will utterly wreck a boss type monster, but yes…
Relying on soul blaze through talents is just… lol useless.
Psyker is probably the strongest class in the late game, but if you’re just running around and using brain burst then no, you’re playing it wrong. You should be using Surge Staff and immediately fire off the Palpatine lightning, that can and will kill most elites and specials in 2-3 hits and it is instant 40% charge. It is very strong and whatever is left standing is stunned for 2s which is long enough for your party to mob it up.
Then have a force sword with block projectiles and block efficiency and curios with health primary, block efficiency, health and toughness and you’re pretty damn set (you should have a total of 65% block efficiency which makes your stamina bar last twice as long) and on the flip side it lets you push through gun fire and the stun the suckers so your team can move in safely. You should play… Very aggressive even if you’re technically not supposed to.
I find that my team usually dies well before me and I’m supposed to be a squishy class…
If it’s necessary to entirely ignore a class’s inherent ability (or two inherent abilities, if you count Warp Stacks separately from Brain Burst) and most of its unique items in favor of running a very specific build, I would hesitate to say that makes Psyker “the strongest class”. The strongest build? Yes. But this only provides further evidence that, as a class, when taking into account every mechanic they’re designed around, the Psyker is overall very flawed.
Sorry if this seems pedantic, and don’t get me wrong, I think it’s cool you found a really effective way to play Psyker in the late game! But the class still needs a lot of work.
Thanks for saying it first. Psyker can be good, with very specific builds that ignore all their class abilities and rely on equally specific gearing. I argue that that’s not so much a reflection on a class’ performance, but rather the ingenuity of a player in getting something to work efficiently.
If you look at everything the Psyker has as a class, it’s underwhelming.
Staves are fun, but only two of them are viable for any tier past 3.
Brain Burst doesn’t scale and without peril management will kill you after 2-1/2 uses.
Soulfire is an anemic joke which requires almost max stacks to kill anything.
Warp Charge benefit is lackluster, considering the hassle to build.
Warp Charges are annoying to build and maintain as they:
Fixing SoulBlaze (and other DOTs) to scale better with difficulty and with elites isn’t that complicated : the damage dealt needs to have a flat component, plus another related to the foe’s max HP.
For example, and I’m just spitballing here:
Damage of 1 stack of Soulblaze per tick = 3 + 2.5% of target’s max HP
Instead of just a flat 7.
Of course, monstrosities and assassination targets would have a different formula.
People elsewhere on the forum claim that it’s currently impossible to crit with staff AOE attacks. Is this warpfire stacking something you’ve tested yourself?
As it is now, yes. The killing blow has to be from soulblaze’s tick of damage. They should either make soulblaze stronger, or have the feat apply when an enemy affected by soulblaze dies.
Well, I said it was the strongest, that doesn’t mean that I think Psyker doesn’t need a rework as it, currently, pigeon-hole you into one specific thing and that is all you can do - which gets really stale.
I’ve continuously said that
Brain Burst needs to have its damage scale off staff rating.
Brain Burst charge needs to be reduces by 1.5s
Brain Burst needs to target elites and specials before anything else.
Warp Charges should be increased to at the very least 40s, preferably 1 minute.
There should a unique attack for each staff.
Trauma should lob a ball similar to the staff that Sienna has which do the same secondary attack.
Surge staff should fire of a single bolt of lightning at a longer distance.
There should be three types of feats:
A neutral line that focus more on general things such as defensiveness, mobility and stack management.
A weapon line that focus on feats that buffs your weapons.
A Brain Burst line that focus on improving BB
At the moment we have an odd amount that mostly works off BB, which feels like Psyker was very different once upon a time and then it has been hit with the nerf bat - continuously over the period of testings, to the point where most skills are utterly redundant.