My full Psykinetic redesign

Well, we’ve talked about the Psyker being broken long enough, I might as well just go ahead and write down how I would design the class if I was redesigning it.

The idea here is to redesign the Psykinetic to have three distinct build lines, similar to how the Sharpshooter allows you to make a Grenadier, a Sniper or a Fire Support specialist. I’m going to try and give the Psykinetic a talent line that creates a Psyker who mostly fights with mundane weapons, a Brain Burst assassin type who can use it often and to great effect, and a psyker who specializes on raw peril management for maximum force weapon mayhem. Brain Burst also works differently so it can be a limited use extremely powerful boss killer for people who only want to break it out for that, but also be a much faster general use ability that can be the centerpiece of a build. So here we go:

General changes

Quelling peril does not reduce your movement speed. This game is too chaotic to stand still.

Blitz

Brain Burst
Brain Burst can be charged like a staff. It activates even when not fully charged, inflicting less damage. When the ability is fully charged it consumes one warp charge if available. A Brain Burst that is empowered by a warp charge inflicts additional percentile damage, 90% of the enemy’s health against hordes and elites, 50% against specials, 10% against monstrosities.

Aura

Psykinetic’s Aura
15% combat ability cooldown reduction on Elite kill (Allies in Coherency)

Ability

Psykinetic’s Wrath
No Changes
(Quell 50% Peril & Stagger enemies in front of you.)

Iconics

Warp Siphon
Quelling a cumulative 200 peril (by any method) earns a Warp Charge. Each Warp Charge grants 3% damage Warp Charges do not decay. You can store up to 5 Warp Charges.

Battle Meditation
No Changes
(10% Chance to Quell 10% Peril on Kill.)

Talents, Level 5

Essence Harvest
Changes: Replenish 10% toughness when you kill an enemy with non-Warp damage.

Quietitude
No Changes
(Replenish 5% Toughness for each 10% of Peril quelled.)

Warp Absorption
No Changes
(Replenish 10% Toughness when you kill an enemy with a Warp attack.)

Talents, Level 10

Inner Tranquility
No Changes
(+6% Peril Resistance per Warp Charge.)

Tides of the Warp
Gain 5 to 15% damage with non-Force attacks depending on your current peril.

Wrack and Ruin
Brain Burst applies 1-3 stacks of Soulblaze to all targets within 3 meters, depending on its charge level

Talents, Level 15

Cerebral Lacerations
Damaging an enemy with your Brain Burst ability causes them to take 15% more damage from all sources for 5 seconds.

Psychic Communion
While at Maximum Warp Charges gaining a Warp Charge will grant 10% damage to allies in coherency for 5 seconds.

Overcharged
Fully charged staff secondary attacks gain 20% damage.

Talents, Level 20

Kinetic Deflection
No Changes
(While below critical Peril, blocking an attack causes you to gain Peril instead of losing Stamina.)

Kinetic Shield
Each warp charge reduces incoming Toughness damage from ranged attacks by 10%.

Mind in Motion
Sprinting while stamina is available will quell 10% peril per second. Dodging an attack will quell 10% peril.

Talents, Level 25

Kinetic Flayer
Hitting an enemy with a fully charged brain burst ability decreases the charge time and peril cost of Brain Burst by 10% for the next 5 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times.

Kinetic Overload
*While at Maximum Warp Charges gaining a Warp Charge will cause your next force weapon attack to apply 3 stacks of Soulblaze to all enemies hit. *

Infused Ammunition
While aiming down sights gain 3% peril per second. Projectiles have increased crit chance and ability to stagger enemies.

Talents, Level 30

Ascendant Blaze
No Changes
(Psykinetic’s Wrath expends all Warp Charges and applies stacks of Soulblaze to enemies hit based on the number of Warp Charges expended. Enemies killed by your Soulblaze effects (from any source) have a 10% chance to grant you a Warp Charge.)

Kinetic Barrage
No Changes
(For 10 seconds after using Psykinetic’s Wrath, your Brain Burst charges 25% faster and consumes 50% less Peril.)

Quicken
Psykinetic Wrath gains an additional charge, but using the second charge reduces Warp Charges to zero

And that’s it. I just had to get that off my chest, because I’ve been talking about it a bunch on here, and when I have a lot of ideas and thoughts on something at some point I just have to write them all down.

24 Likes

There are some great ideas here. Good job!

3 Likes

This system would definitely work better than what we have right now

4 Likes

10/10
If I could,
Would like again.

Honestly this re-imagining of the Psyker would make the class not only fun, but way more interesting to play.

4 Likes

This is actually really good, however the Infused Ammunition and Overcharged feats are overpowered.

20% is far too much of a bonus, and the ammunition feat would perhaps do better as a Force Sword buff?

2 Likes

The Infused Ammo feat might be made “less” OP if it generated Perils per shot. That way it could keep the stagger but it would build Perils much faster.

As for the Overcharged feat, 20% is pretty reasonable. Especially when you start getting into Heresy/Damnation territory. For argument’s sake, if we brought it down to 15%, it would be in line with other feats.

1 Like

I just don’t see infused ammo working… we have more weapons coming and I’d really want to see how bolt and plasma pistols shape up before tying a feat to on-hit stagger.

Perhaps something more simple like Force Sword damage gaining x% damage per Warp Charge? The other aspect of this is it only impacts weapons specific to Psykers and so wil not have to be considered in wider balance changes.

1 Like

Here are my suggestions. The goals are to increase build variety so that you can choose any direction you want for your gear (brain bursting, regular weapons, force weapons, staves), improving redundant features and buffing existing mechanics so that they are actually useful and fun to use.

GENERAL

Brain Burst must scale in power or difficulty
Either with the average power lvl of the character or with the difficulty playing. The end result must be that on Difficulty 5 and geared to teeth, human sized enemies instantly die, ogryn sized and mutants get half their health reduced and always interrupted/staggered on hit.

Soulblaze must scale in power or difficulty
Same thing, Soulblaze needs scaling or needs to apply stagger. The current damage it does is abysmal. This is a horde game, if it doesn’t kill or it doesn’t control it’s not even there.

Different staff special attacks
The current special on staves is made obsolete by the fact that you can switch to melee and get an attack out faster than the staff special can even hit. On top of this the staff special has no cleave.

The staves should have a special attack randomly chosen at the time of creation from a list such as:

  • Brain Burst (left click version), provide a direct access to Brain Burst while wielding the staff
  • Psykinetic Wave, strike horizontally and send enemies flying in front of you with a psykinetic wave at a cost of peril (re-use current special chain 2nd attack animation and just add some particle effects)
  • Psykinetic Barrier, create a psykinetic barrier in front of you absorbing ranged attacks at a cost of peril, upon release push enemies back using the energy of the absorbed shots

The Purgatus (flame) staff should instead have this pool for the special attack:

  • Brain Burst (left click version), provide a direct access to Brain Burst while wielding the staff
  • Blaze Dash, dash forward a short distance applying a stack of Soulblaze to enemies hit at a cost of peril
  • Blaze Ball, charge and throw a fiery ball of Soulblaze creating a bigger explosion and applying more stacks the longer you charge at a cost of peril

Notice, allowing the access to Brain Burst on the weapon special allows the caster to utilize the quelling speed of the weapon and to seamlessly switch between Brain Bursting and the staff spells without the need to swap weapons. However, it does not provide access for pre-charging the Brain Burst.

ABILITIES

Quelling
Like in the post above, quelling peril should not reduce your movement speed. It’s so essential that it needs to be bulit in to the class. Not being able to sprint while quelling is slow enough for this fast paced game.

Warp Siphon
In addition to gaining a Warp Charge on a Brain Burst kill, killing an enemy with a warp based attack that is not Brain Burst while at critical peril (97% and above) earns a Warp Charge. However, this is limited to one charge per cast.

TALENTS

Tier 1 - Level 5 (toughness regeneration)

Essence Harvest
Replenish 6% Toughness per second whenever there is an enemy taking damage from your Soulblaze effect.

Warp Absorption
Replenish 5% Toughness when you kill an enemy with a Warp attack. In addition, replenish 20% Toughness over 4s on gaining a Warp Charge

Quietitude
No Changes
(Replenish 5% Thoughness for each 10% of Peril Quelled.)

Tier 2 - Level 10 (first damage boosts)

Psykinetic’s Wrath
(for some reason this shares a name with the class ability?? but the top one anyways)
No changes
(Gain between 5% and 15% damage with Force Weapon attacks, based on your current Peril)

Infused Armaments (was Inner Tranquility)
Your non-warp attacks have a chance of applying a stack of Soulblaze on enemies hit. High peril, slow attack speed and your critical hit chance increases the chances of the effect.

Wrack and Ruin
Brain Burst applies 2 stacks of Soulblaze to all enemies within 3 meters of the target.

Tier 3 - Level 15 (team oriented buffs)

Psychic Communion
Allies in Coherency gain +2% damage for each Warp Charge on you. Multiple Psychic Communions that are present do not stack with each other.

Psykinetic’s Aura
Replenish 20% of Combat Ability Cooldown when an Elite or Special that you have damaged dies. This also applies to Allies in Coherency.*

Cerebral Lacerations
No Changes
(Damaging an Enemy with your Brain Burst ability causes them to take +15% Damage from all non-Warp sources for 5s.

Tier 4 - Level 20 (defensive talents)

Kinetic Defelection
While below critical Peril, Blocking an attack causes you to gain Peril instead of losing Stamina. While at critical peril (97% or above) and having a Warp Charge, your push will consume a Warp Charge sending out a shockwave that knocks enemies down in a short radius around you.

Kinetic Shield
Your Warp Charges reduce Toughness damage from Ranged Attacks by 8/16/24/32/40/48%

Mind in Motion
Charging a Warp based attack or aiming down your sights will not reduce your movement speed.

Tier 5 - Level 25 (second damage boosts)

Warp Battery
No changes
(Can store up to 6 Warp Charges)

Kinetic Overload
While you have maximum Warp Charges, gaining a Warp Charge instead applies stagger and 2 Stacks of Soulblaze to all enemies within 3 meters.

Kinetic Flayer
Your next hit against an enemy will instantly Brain Burst the target. This cannot occur while at critical Peril and has a cooldown of 15 seconds.

Tier 6 - Level 30 (class ability modifiers)

Quicken
Killing an enemy will reduce the cooldown of Psykinetic’s Wrath by 2%, killing an Elite or Special will instead reduce the cooldown by 10%.

Ascendant Blaze
Psykinetic’s Wrath expends all Warp Charges and applies 2 Stacks of Soulblaze to Enemies Hit for each Warp Charge expended. Enemies that die while under the effects of your Soulblaze (from any source) have a 10% chance to grant you a Warp Charge.

Kinetic Barrage
No changes
(for 10s after using Pykinetic Wrath, your Brain Burst charges 25% faster and consume 50% less Peril.

4 Likes

20% wouldnt break the game at all. It wouldnt be even close to overpowered with the weapona Psyker currently has access to.

1 Like

TTK on BB would still be really bad if the charge time remains the same. Even if it did more damage to work in higher difficulties. I’d like to see warp charges cut the cast time significantly, down to less than a second.

Warp charges could also be generated instead by just holding weapon special with brain burst equipped.

The idea is you’re basically precasting brainburst for when you need it. Popping heads in quick succession with your charges, or dumping charges into a boss for an initial burst of damage.

Feats that incentivize staying at high warp charges for gameplay outside of saving them for brain burst could make for some neat resource management, like we already have with perils resistance.

Something like infused ammunition increasing damage by 5% per warp charge instead of the crit increase, and the stagger on hit being there regardless of the amount of charges you have stocked up.

1 Like

Thanks for all the replies guys!

There is definitely some balancing that still has to go into this.

With Infused Ammunition I’m taking cues from the Veteran’s Deadshot tree, which gives a whopping 25% critical chance, but I guess you can only keep that one up for 10 seconds tops. The Infused Ammunition would be a lot less crit chance, like 5-10%.

You will be able to brainburst things very rapidly by just letting it go with low charge. It just won’t do full damage, so you’ll be able to pop horde enemies pretty quickly if you want to. The point of the brain burst redesign is not getting in the way of people who want to brain burst all the time, while making it a useful tool for people who want to only use it when there is a big juicy target.

You can generate warp charges by brain bursting, you get peril from brain burst, and you just have to quell enough peril and you get a charge. As long as you never fully charge a brain burst you don’t lose charges to empowered brain bursts.

2 Likes

Giving this a “bump” to keep it relevant. Because it’s necessary.

2 Likes

I really love this redesign of Psyker, especially the brain burst change. Using warp charges as a resource rather than a buff that falls off constantly seems like it’d feel way better.

2 Likes

Yea, it would allow the brain burst to be a lot more powerful, like a grenade. Being able to spam it all the time made it really strong in the closed beta, but then kind of became its downfall after the first balance pass.

3 Likes

I think one more thing that could be a general change would be: Drastically improve the falloff range for the push strength of Psykinetic’s Wrath. The ability is basically a large cylinder, and it has very substantial range, similar to a Skyrim Fus Roh Dah. But the pushing power of it falls off so quickly that unless you’re running Ascendant Blaze you don’t even realize just how far away it is hitting people. Only the ones within maybe five meters of you get pushed. The ones who are 20, 30 meters away barely flinch.

3 Likes

Its push strength is directly proportional to your peril quelled. At 100 peril it bowls most enemies over, even at further ranges.

1 Like

This looks really great and I can tell you’ve been playing a psyker because i find myself wishing for much of what you put in your list. They’re even well balanced with the numbers you’ve chosen IMO.

3 Likes

So, a few things, I’d change a couple things. First of all:

Warp Charge Generation.

You now generate warp charges passively. The rate of warp charge generation scales with your current peril. At 0 peril, you generate 10 ‘warp charge progress’ per second, a new charge at 60 seconds (6s cooldown). At 100 peril, you generate 1 progress per second, a new warp charge at 60.

Reason: Your solution would create stupidly annoying gameplay (Ima firin mah staff! Oh no, Ima quellin mah staff! Look at all the enemies I’m not attacking!) This gives an interesting solution that scales with both physical and warp damage sources, prevents tedious maintenance, and also can do some other, exciting things.

Brain Burst.

Consuming a warp charge reduces peril cost by 75% and increases cast speed by 50% innately. Can one shot all enemies smaller than a Mauler at all difficulties. Possible exceptions for specific specialists like Mutant. Peril cost is now 80% per charge.

Reasoning: Quicken is a bad level 30 talent and a bad way to buff brain burst, and most of brain burst’s utility is in one-shotting things. Speed is a factor, so warp charges is for killing things fast. But if you absolutely need to kill something without this warp charge, you can do it at a heavy cost.

Level 5 Talents.

Essence Harvest: Unchanged, provided infused ammunition doesn’t break it.

Warp Absorption: Add force sword and future force melee weapons into approved weapons to proc it.

Quietude: Reworked: On any specialist or elite kill made by an ally in coherency, every ally in coherency gets 5-20% toughness.

Reasoning: Essence Harvest is very clearly designed around a gun+not-force-sword build, so leaning into that some more. Warp Absorption is built around a force-weapon build, so allowing melee force weapons can benefit from it. Not-Quietude is the hybrid option. It will work with any combination of physical and warp weapons and offers some ways for this class to support the team. Given it’s also more limited in what can proc it, it’s also more powerful.

Level 10 talents.

Wrack and Ruin: Double the number of soulblaze generated.

Reason: Remember, soulblaze is exponential and 3 stacks barely tickles even hordes.

Level 15 talents.

Cerebral Lacerations: 6-10 second timer, duration stacks with repeated strikes.

Psychic Communion: 3-15 second timer per warp charge spent. Duration stacks. Brain Burst gives double the duration if a charge is spent.

Reason: 5 second timers are just not fun as is. Incentivizing spending warp charges to buff allies or debuff enemies is more interesting, especially if we’re talking nearly 30 seconds of buffing.

Level 20 talents.

Mind in Motion: Reduces sprint stamina cost based on current quelling level as additional effect.

Reason: Your version wasn’t very interesting for the sprint half of it.

Level 25 talents.

Kinetic Flayer: 15-20 second duration. Increases warp cost reduction to 20% per stack (given higher brain burst stack count).

Kinetic Overload: Enemies hit by the next force weapon attack after gaining a warp charge get 6-10 stacks of soulblaze added. If an enemy is killed by the force attack, the nearest enemy not in the staff’s area of attack gets 4 stacks of soulblaze.

Infused Ammunition: Reworked: Infused weapon. Increased crit chance/stagger for all non-force weapons. 2% for light attacks, 4% per second for ranged weapons (normalized to rate of fire), 10% per heavy attack. If below 80% peril, effects doubled. You no longer overheat when going above 100% peril, but cannot use force weapons (Force sword special/any staff) above 80% peril.

Reasons: Kinetic Flayer just needs a longer duration to be worthwhile, and with a higher peril cost to non-charged brain bursts, this is to enable chain brain burst spamming goodness. Kinetic Overload needs to do a lot more to be worthwhile, and shifting it to simply gaining a charge, not overcapping, will let it be more consistently interesting. Infused ammunition changing to infusing weapons would enable a very different playstyle by empowering a physical psyker to exist and effectively not care about peril.

For infused weapon specifically, could even make it so that enables those weapons to be counted as “warp weapons” for the purposes of the toughness talent as well, though I’m not sure this is strictly necessary.

Level 30 talents.

Ascendant Blaze: Consumes all warp charges. Generates 2-4 soulblaze on every enemy hit, + 2 for each warp charge consumed. If 5 are consumed, will create 2 additional stacks (16 total if the initial hit is 4). Reduces peril by an additional 10% (additive) for each warp charge consumed, reduces cooldown by 5% for each warp charge consumed. Reduces time to generate a warp charge by 25-50%. No longer knocks enemies back, light stagger.

Quicken: You can consume 1 warp charge to fire an extra Psykinetic’s Wrath. 5-10 second cooldown on repeat strikes. Increases stagger force and knockback by 30% for all activations. Reduces quell to 15% if a warp charge was spent.

Kinetic Barrage: Consumes all warp charges. No longer a wide cone, now a narrow (doorway) cylinder. Extends minimum range by 100-300% (longer range before dropoff). Reduces falloff. Increases stagger and knockback force by 20% per charge consumed. At 3 charges or more, will now deal increasing damage. 3 stacks will 1 shot a single wave of enemies. 4 stacks will damage flak armor/ragers decently well. 5 stacks will threaten ogryn well. Increases cooldown by 50-100%. For each warp charge spent, increases the time taken to generate a new warp charge by 50-100% for 15 seconds, generates 50%+10% (additive) per warp charge peril, does not force an overheat.

Reason for Ascendant Blaze: So, Ascendant Blaze needs real soulblaze stacks to be threatening, as soulblaze is exponential. This turns the ability into a DPS ult equivalent to, say, Battle Wizard’s kaboom. This is intended for a slightly more active way to spend down more commonly available warp charges while simultaneously taking away its utility as a knockback ult. The go-to option for people who want to simply kill things. Animation would be a giant wave of fire cast in front of the Psyker.

Reason for Quicken: I don’t like how you’d spend down all warp charges for an extra utility ult. So I’d take away some power from the baseline ult, give it some passive buffs, and then also buff some of its utility. This is the ult you’d choose if you just want to idle at maximum warp charges at most times while still having an option to spend down. Emphasis on its utility more than anything else.

Reason for Kinetic Barrage: Its baseline ability is just bad. Spend your ult to brain burst more? No. That’s terrible. So that ability is rolled into Brain Burst as an advantage for spending down charges, especially since brain burst is, well, bad as an anti-anything with literally any veteran marksman. So this is taking that ability, removing something kind of terrible, and once more sculpting this ability. In this case, this one is something you use once in any given horde. It is big, bombastic, incredibly powerful, but much narrower in application. Basically, it’s putting the barrage in kinetic barrage while, once more, having more ways to interact with warp charges. This is for people who want to throw everything and the kitchen sink. It’s big, powerful, and has a very long cooldown on top. Animation changed to something akin to a cylinder/expanding floor wave of warp/lightning.

The idea behind what you’re doing seems good. A way to play psyker that is more physical (gun) oriented, more magical (warp) oriented, and trying to find ways to make other things viable. I just feel a lot more of the class should see changes, including making the ultimate actually useful for something other than quelling, though leaving that option in if desired.

Final thoughts.

I know soulblaze is exponential, but I don’t actually know what value would be fair. I just know that even 4 stacks of soulblaze is kind of completely awful, so it needs more oomph than, simply, that. I am not looking to change your suggestions to make Psyker overpowered, but rather to more properly define it in different directions with an ult that actually changes how you play the class, just like the best VT2 ults. Likewise, trying to find a way to offer it more support options, if that is what is wanted, while leaving non-support options as powerful and effective.

For example, giving everyone toughness on killing a special/elite is pretty good, but not every horde has specials/elites in it, and you can mow down a hell of a lot more hordes in melee/range for personal toughness than you ever could elites/specials groupwide.

Seeing your examples for a physical psyker, it’s more or less pushing psyker into 1 of 3 directions: Warp mage, battlemage, and something more akin to a support than anything. While I’m sure my numbers/ideas aren’t quite where they’d need to be, I am certain that the general idea should at least be interesting.

I don’t understand what you mean here. It’s peril quelled by any mechanism, whether you quell it with your staff or just wait for it to drop off naturally.
Also how is using your staff and then quelling stupidly annoying? Isn’t that how you fight with a staff?

Basically you’re incentivizing people to attack wildly when there’s nothing to attack, just to quell it to get more charges. It’s an annoying and tedious gameplay loop between combat.