It's no fun playing Psyker anymore

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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(Rant incoming. Sorry in advance.)
The Veteran can stand still and shoot, and enemies literally forget they’re here. Power sword just mows minions down no problem.
The Preacher gets to go in melee, deal actually good damage, and not immediately die in 3 hits.
The Ogryn can just go ham most of the time without having to worry too much and mostly has to watch out for disablers.

The Psyker gets to stand almost still for 3 seconds and delete between half and a quarter of an elite or a special’s HP. Wow, riveting gameplay. I can use my ability to speed up the process a little. For more risk but similar reward, I get to do the same thing with the Force Sword. Which has unlimited dodging. Great, but dodging still sucks because it’s unreliable as all hell and stamina doesn’t regen.

I can go melee but the risk just isn’t worth the reward. No feats to help me there. If too many enemies get close, just ask your Ogryn or Preacher for a hug as you try to assist them.

Nothing to help me close the gap with gunners behind cover without being melted. If it’s too risky, just bat your eyelashes at your Veterans, and BrainBurst gunners to pretend you’re helping while they take care of it. And thank all the gods that there is no scoreboard yet.

Occasionally, I get to take out my staff to become an almost immobile turret that staggers stuff but isn’t very good at killing anything in comparison to the melee or ranged specialists.

So, once you get to the difficulties where BrainBurst stops being a delete button, what does the Psyker have ? What does the Psyker do better than the other classes ? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

I don’t even want them to make BrainBurst scale with the difficulty. Because it’s a boring-ass mechanic and I’ve had enough of it for the last 80 hours ! I try hard, I play sweaty, all my gear is orange, and yet I still feel like any other class would have more impact than me.

For god’s sake, Sienna didn’t need to be babysat by the Uberskreik 4. She was a glass-canon with the firepower to match, in both melee and ranged combat. With an ability that can have serious impact.
And what does the Psyker have to show for his base 100 toughness and 150 HP ? Good stamina regen and, once in a blue moon, a +12%/+18% damage bonus that completely fails to overcome any damage thresholds ?

I feel like the devs have barely played Psyker on Heresy. I’m tired. I’ve gotten a Psyker to lv30, geared up and all, so now I get to do that all over again with another class that’s actually fun, or wait 6 months for the Psyker to get redesigned.

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I haven’t put in enough time on psyker to 100% confirm it, but at the moment I agree with the general sentiment here. Psyker, in my experience, simply doesn’t have enough damage or enough utility. As someone who played Sienna the most out of the Ubersreik 5, it’s definitely been disappointing so far playing psyker (though that’s not an actual argument to be clear, just mentioning it).

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Full agreement, though I guess I’ve written and said that often enough already.
Staves are the only argument for playing a Psyker at the moment.
And the first one you get is subpar. If I could get staves on any other class, I certainly would.
The base design is unengaging and repetitive, you get to heroically stare at a wall for three seconds and ponder your life choices - like why you picked this class. I do suppose there’s one or two gimmicks to got around, but they are just that.
I hope that, once the most egregious technical difficulties have been overcome, they look at this class and at least feel mildly ashamed of themselves. Or fix it, but let’s lot foster unrealistic hopes. :man_shrugging:

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I think they are probably working on some bigger balance changes to Psyker because they haven’t touched the class at all despite it being probably the most broken one right now.

It’s definitely true that the Psyker is a kind of disappointing experience compared to playing Sienna, because the firepower just isn’t there. Brainburst as well as charged staff attacks simply come out too slowly for the amount of damage they deal to be relevant. Most targets are dead before you can shoot, and the things that aren’t dead don’t take any serious damage.

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Psyker is primarily defined by strategic play. What I mean by that is, you have to try to find a way to maximize your staff use, as the class is defined almost exclusively by using the staff. The feats and the passives are defined by brain burst, but playing it is defined by the staff. Your goal is to maximize this.

Voidstrike is fantastic for general versatility. Can stagger many enemies well, can snipe enemies at range, can completely demolish hordes in a straight line. A good all-round staff. Get a quelling on weakspot trait and just machinegun your voidstrike fire-bolt staff for maximum carnage.

Surge is fantastic at rapid crowd control up to midrange, as well as its ability to stop specials, especially Mutants at a high enough secondary charge level. Rapid fire it and be careful around demonhosts.

Purgatus is fantastic at being showy, feels fun, but gives up a lot of versatility for somewhat better sustained damage than a Voidstrike at short to mid-range. BY FIRE BE PURGED! Also works well with weakspot quelling. Remember the primary attack is very high stagger and rapid fire.

Trauma is fantastic at being terrible. Bring it out every so often to remind yourself of why you never bring it out.

Excluding the toughness bug murdering Veteran, Psyker is squarely the worst class. Primarily because the feats, passives, and brain burst do not mesh with Psyker’s core gameplay, which is, again, staff play. You basically are pigeon-holed into the 4% chance to warp charge perk, and even then. I personally run quelling, peril resistance, 4% warp charge, toughness mit against ranged attacks, 10% chance to brain burst, and more brain bursting on ult use. You won’t primarily use your ult for it, but it’s nice for boss burst/in a pinch.

With that build, if you have a quelling staff like Voidstrike, then you get toughness from headshotting enemies. You can run your peril up, quell it down and get toughness on demand. If an enemy threatens you, swap to your favored weapon (Chainsword/Force Sword are my recommended) and as your peril more rapidly decreases, you get toughness back. It’s consistent to how the class is played.

With this, you brain burst only if you need to, such as if something high value is running away or running in. You stick to your staff 80% of the time and swap off explicitly if an enemy is about to threaten you. Keep your head on a swivel take out ranged units if you can, control melee/ranged if you can, and try to reduce pressure on the rest of your team.

After this, well, the class is a hot mess. You either love the staves or you leave them. If you’re not in love with any of the staves and occasionally brain bursting, just shelve the class and play something better. Right now, it’s the best ranged option because Veteran is bugged and takes way too much damage. Despite this, there’s fun to be had on psyker, but it is emphatically not in a good spot.

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If you mean the bug of toughness not working properly above 100 toughness, that was supposedly patched earlier today in a hotfix.

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Was it now? I didn’t remember reading it, and most vets I saw still took all of the damage.

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First line, it’s possible Fatshark bungled it and it’s still bugged, but it’s supposed to be fixed now.

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Sienna is a Monster of a melee mage character. So we know Fatshark can make melee mage characters.

Let Psyker be powerful, the rest of the career’s don’t mind. because they are powerful for now, and we can look closer at their needs after.

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I think too that fatshark building psyker around BB meant that they decided that psyker didn’t need any sniper/anti-armor staves so you’re pigeon holed into relying on BB for single target at mid to long range. Surge does decent but not crazy armor damage and voidstrike and purgatus are meh to useless against carapace. But that also means that your melee choices are limited because if you’re engaged in melee you NEED a weapon that can murder serious threats instantly which means force sword is king. Really we just need more force weapon options so we can have any variety at all. I’ve had more fun as psyker running force sword, recon las then I have with staves half the time because staves (except for surge kinda) are terrible for dealing with groups of ranged enemies.

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I thoroughly enjoy running the Voidstrike staff. It’s like you’re taking an old timey pirate cannon into battle, looking for opportunities to blast it into crowds of enemies.

The thing is, even though I’m enjoying myself playing the character, in the back of my mind I am always aware that in boss fights I’m a drain on the team, and when it comes to quickly downing elites I’m not even close to the best person at it.

My role is to delete clustered poxwalkers in hallways, and I can’t help but feel like if I wasn’t there to do that the team would be just fine.

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I’ve been trying to make the Purgatus staff work for some time now, because I’m already very familiar with the other staves. So I’m just adding to my pain for the sake of variety :smiling_face_with_tear:

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This is true up until you get your hands on a good recon lasgun, which has far more value to a squad then a staff, particularly when you have the 10% BB feat. I’ve found myself far more effective as a squad member running a recon las and a Deflector Force Sword then any staff… though I’m having to play as a support/ranged tank which seems strange for a ‘glass cannon’.

I know the staves have their nifty gimmicks, but they’re a pale reflection of the abilities and tools of other classes.

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Force sword deletes bosses, staff is good horde clear. I often have psykers stealing special kills from me as a zealot. I have a level 20 psyker and they’re pretty good imo. I wish the stacking buff was like brain burst and feats for it. But this is also the problem of balancing around weapons instead of a class. People play a class until 30 and feel like they’re playing it for the weapons, and not the class. I often feel useless as the zealot if I don’t have a knife out.

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Preach

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Psykers scale poorly, because brainburst doesn’t scale for higher difficulties. They’re the flimsiest class, and middling for damage.

Relative to other classes, psykers appear to have two things going for them: 1) They can fish for that hard-to-target distant sniper, and 2) Lightning staff will lock down elite packs, unless they are surrounded by trash mobs. I suppose you could add decent horde control with flame staff, if there’s no zealot with a flamer.

I played my psyker to 30, got frustrated and switched to veteran. I really enjoy playing veteran. It’s a great class. Feels good, feels effective, lotsa fun. So that was my solution to the psyker issue :wink:

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Cannot agree with that, staffs are excellent horde clear and can get nice long range shots with primary (or secondary on void). Palpatine seems to be great for stagger as well, you can knock out dogos or bursters with it easily. Palpi + Zealot flamer make short work of any horde. For Random groups I tend to play Voidstrike as most versatile. I agree that traumaforce and flame one needs some love, but no lasgun can do what staffs do.

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To think they replaced the closed beta psyker for what ?

Just bring back closed beta psyker and work with it as a base.

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I’ve been playing psyker in tier 4/5 and the staves are just underwhelming; the CC resist on the enemy is too strong for the staves to be reliable, and Zealot nades do that job when it’s required anyway. Far better to have someone who can tank range and reliable rez under fire.

Edit: Far FAR better to just have another Vet instead of a Psyker as the class sucks a bit past tier 3

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I just want them to have a description of what a charged stave does.

The first one unlocked is terrible, I think I have the second one that channels Palpatine…for equal damage. I’ve seen others with a flamestaff, but it’s a guessing game with the current names.

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