right now, for most of the character trees you can spec into a role and pick talents out to supplement that role. Generally speaking, support, tank and either range damage or melee damage. some of the characters are capable of speccing more precisely based on what they want out of things, for example my veterans “Sniper” build which is utility oriented rather than just raw damage or any such.
Psyker however does not spec into roles the way its tree is set up, it instead specs into abilities. everything you do revolves around the abilities you have and you get little to no flexibility in the way those abilities are utilized. I can understand /why/ the focus would be on its abilities, but if thats the focus i think some flexibility should be built into them to compensate
You basically are forced into a damage dealing role, with very little support or even defensive options outside of their actives. hell they dont get really any options at all towards anything except their abilities. the closest they get is very minor generic buffs like toughness damage reduction 5% which is rare enough, or stuff built around Peril. which highlights the rather limited scope of builds available.
im still playing my psyker and experimenting quite a bit to get it to work the way i want it to (melee focus, either high enough speed to be a consistent frontline or tanky enough to not care and let the front line come to me) but my… wish list thus far is
Sciers Gaze - seems to be largely oriented towards a gun build with the ability to marginally retool towards melee via the modifiers, namely the 20% damage reduction and speed buffs.
it has no real synergy however with the Warp Charge perks however because it doesnt initiate cooldown immediately. Maybe when it consumes warp charges it slows down the skills peril rate instead?
Telekine’s Shield - Instead of dropping a fixed arena, I would love to see an upgrade that allows it to be used as an aura of sorts. namely, the shield (perhaps reduced in size) is fixed to the psyker rather than a specific location.
Disrupt Destiny - this is a decent node set for gunners specifically because of the 25m radius which doesnt sound like a ton… until your in the middle of a horde and get a sniper marked out. its got a little bit of everything but because of that radius (which is greater than a room) its not nearly as useful for any psyker /not/ using a gun. which in my experience is most of them. my wish list on this one tailors it to melee and staff use by heavily reducing the radius at which distrupt destiny can mark targets.
as things stand, the utility of most of the abilities is close enough that theres very little variance in potential builds.
for a blitz, if you want damage, you take assail. if you want utility, you take smite. this is because assail is useful as an area clear and a targeted ability to snipe with both. in return for ease of use its damage is lower than rupture… but so? the lowered damage is way more than a fair trade for not having to charge the ability for 2-3 seconds before being allowed to use it. smite on the other hand fulfills the same functions as purgatus and surge staves. only thing it doesnt do is scale off soulfire perks.
for abilities… im not sure theres an actual reason to take anything but venting shriek honestly. from a defensive standpoint having the ability to clear out the area immediately around you is godsend, coupled with the instant quell…? the alternatives are the shield which does have some use as a support ability for the team, but scriers gaze? unlike venting shriek it builds peril, it doesnt dispel it… the only way i can see for it to work is to take the other “scales with peril” nodes making it super niche.
for keystones if you want to focus on your blitz, you get empowered psionics. if you want a general buff, you get warp charge. dont see much of any reason at all to get disrupt destiny unless you get scriers gaze and that only because its bugged and the two dont work together at all. otherwise… from a pure math perspective
Warp Charge gives these benefits for something like 90% of the mission.
36% slower peril gen overall /or/ hefty toughness regen on new charge
24% bonus damage to everything
or disrupt destiny at full strength gives…
10% toughness regen on precision kill
20% movement speed for 2.5 seconds on precision kill
20% chance to quell 15% peril on precision kill
and finally
up to 15% or 30% damage
up to 30% or 60% critical damage
up to 37.5% or 75% weakspot
for 30 seconds or 15 seconds respective to the proper column.
and a fair chunk of the mission will be spent below those values since they expire wholly if you dont kill a targeted unit at minimum once every 15 or 30 seconds depending on your perks.
theres a bunch of things to fix with disrupt destiny…
increase the 20% chance to quell to 100%, even if you have to lower the amount quelled.
match the movement speed buff to the duration of the actual ability, not an arbitrary 2.5 seconds.
either give us a node to reduce the range disrupt destiny marks enemies within, or as a probably poor second put a priority filter to mostly mark enemies that are closest to the psyker, not equal distribution across the entire horde.
i dont know what would be useful to make the abilities more versatile in general, but theres my analysis and suggestions specifically for melee.