Hello! I have come on here (besides to post my rant about Trappers) to go about posting a litany of improvements and thoughts that I had pertaining to the game. As an individual who’s put about 500 hours into the current state of the game, and tends to run around on Auric and Damnation, I hope my thoughts are at least something worth looking at. But without further ado.
Psyker
Psyker feels the most ‘underwhelming’ to me atm when it comes to the classes. They can be strong, but they tend to fall into the area of utility class and that’s about it. You’re either knocking things over with a Trauma staff, stunning things with fire or electricity, or generally just doing a lot of ok AOE to everything on the battlefield so your team can do clean up. I don’t think that’s a bad spot to be for the Psyker, but I do feel there are a couple of things that could improve their quality of life immensely, or just generally make them feel more effective.
- Psyker is currently actually the LEAST TINKERABLE class this, the Psyker tree is so stiffing to build variety it’s insane, and I feel is a large proponent to why they feel underpowered. You can never just, go for what you want, you have to compromise, and it feels terrible compared to the other classes.
- Wildfire does not need two restrictions for it’s spread, either cap the spread to the amount the target has when they died, OR cap it to only up to 4 stacks on death. It having both makes the thing completely worthless as anything other than a ‘ohh look the whole wave is blue’ skill point usage, but will literally never do anything to actually help unless you’re on the blackout condition on Auric.
- Warp Siphon needs…just something. It’s such a ‘everything you do is wrong’ keystone. Like, it’s super potent, but ‘consume all stacks to reduce main ability cooldown’ just feels terrible. You either build into having warp stacks and NEVER use your combat ability because as soon as you do you drop your effectiveness by such a considerable margin you just can’t function for a good bit of time, or you just basically ignore the keystone all together and just use it as some free cooldown on said combat ability. You either feel like you are wasting points by putting pips into it to get to Psychic Vampire so you can actually have stack gain, or actively ignoring one of your most potent abilities so those pips aren’t wasted. I just feel it needs to either stack less but provide ALL the benefits based on stacks (including the cooldown reduction without the consumption), or just remove the cooldown from it and it so one never has to worry about dropping their stacks without just not having enemies to kill. Or some other change to make it not so diametrically opposed with itself.
- Brainburst, it feels like it can never keep up with what it’s niche is supposed to accomplish, and on Damnation+ it doesn’t even kill mutants in 1 shot so it REALLY can’t do what it’s supposed to do. I feel splitting it into a proper two effect ability like the others seems important. For example, the left click is a ‘quick pop’ style ability that takes whatever it is in front of you and does a specials worth of damage to it after like a half second charge, where as the charge effect on right click takes the current duration but will 1 shot a Mutant/Reaper and do HEAVY damage if not just one shot a Crusher. That feels appropriate to me. That, or keeping it as is but making the left click single target, where as the right click spends time marking enemies at the cost of further peril expenditure, allowing you to say, 1 shot a whole special line (minus the ones killed along the way of the charge) but like completely tap yourself out by doing so. Either or feels like a good evolution of the ability to me that lets it get back in it’s niche without feeling ‘broken’.
- Make Disrupt Destiny's Charges Degrade like Warp Charges! and this, this too I beg.
Those are largely all my main feedback points for Psyker, they are the ones that I feel need the most help. When it comes to the other classes though, I do have a few tweeks, but not to nearly as much of a degree.
Ogryn
Ogryn honestly feels pretty good to me in most situations, especially once you get the right weaponry to work with. Just got a few pointers below.
- Make it so I can run Big Friendly Rock and Soften them up, I do quite enough impact I want to make me and my team do more damage but I also want Rock let me do both please big man sadddd!
- This is largely just due to my hatred of Trappers and their especially lack of counter play on Ogryns, but some sort of pip or upgrade that lets you break out of nets and shove dogs off? Something like ‘on active ability, break out of incapacitated state’ or something. Just feels bad being a big man and then a tiny trap that hardly even fits you just, makes you incapable of hitting things…and dogs/mutants aren’t even the size of your model yet I can’t just bat them away after they get a few bites/hits in? just feels bad.
That’s about it for the big man, now on to,
Veteran
Literally I think this is as close to perfect as a class can be, after the reworked skill tree they just feel fantastic and so varied in what they can do. My literal only point to make is:
- Let Executioner’s Stance Refresh toughness. It’s a small thing, but heck it makes that skill feel that much worse when I activate it to try and ‘go ham’ on some specials and I just fall over and go ‘ohh yeah, I still had only 10 toughness, woops’. Both other abilities have added effects on top of a toughness refresh, I don’t understand why Executioner’s Stance can’t have it too. (that, or if on the backside ‘Relentless’ just constantly re-procs the ability again and that’s why it can’t do this, just give use like 10% toughness on kill or something with that perk selected. Just gimmie something man).
Other than that honestly nit pick Vets are golden to me, and that just leaves,
Zealot
Who I feel are honestly fine and feel largely ok, most of their issues come from their weapon choice (the Hammer just being so unhelpful compared to the evisorator, and knife zealots not having any wave clear weapon on and wondering why they get overwhelmed and die). If I could ask for anything though.
- make it so the grenades aren’t a part of trees/located at the end of long lines of pips. I’d like to throw knives as a martydom zealot but that’s literally impossible unless you just really want to make the build bad and not have bleed for the emperor. And same goes for wanting some stuff in the knife tree but maybe wanting to cleanse the corruption in flame? Would be nice!
- Along a similar vein, can I have a line of pips before the auras too? I mean, it’s really hard not to pick Benediction already, but it becomes literally impossible when I have to choose not only between Benediction and everything else, but ALSO Holy Revenant + Duelist and everything else. Like why would you EVER pick anything in the other trees over that? Like shield of contempt and thy wrath be swift are cool but like come on!
- The comments have shown me the light about Blazing Piety and pairing it with a Shred Heavy Eviscerator and dashing at large waves of enemies for instant refunds on said dashes. I don’t think it’s THAT terrible anymore, but I still think baking the ‘50% toughness refresh’ on activation into the ability as just ‘crit kills give bonus toughness’ or whatever and just kinda removing the left side seems like a good idea. You should just NEVER take the left side like EVER and it’s crazy how much you shouldn’t.
And there you go, a massive post with very many changes. Those are basically all I can think of after my play time so far about specific improvements. I’ll leave weapons alone since the balance there is pretty decent, at least for the class specific ones which are clearly meant to be the best (besides the hammer already mentioned above). Hope any of this was an interesting read for those that did so!
