Hey folks!
First and foremost, the art and music team did an incredible job on this game. I’m a huge 40k fan and damn, did they nail the ambiance and cutscenes. I was super psyched (pun not intended but my brain hurts anyway) to roll up a Psyker and give it a go.
Having played for a couple of days, I am genuinely confused as to what exactly I’m supposed to be doing as a Psyker. Popping heads is hilarious, but insanely inefficient when facing down hordes of mobs. So, I figured I would specialize in killing the big guys - except everyone else is just as good if not better at that, as well. I thought perhaps I’m supposed to wade into melee using my Force Sword ability, but that’s even harder than trying to pull off a solid head pop or two before exploding. Then I thought perhaps I should concentrate on CC, except my pushback (can’t remember the name) ability takes too long to recharge to be used as a consistent tool and doesn’t even hurt the mobs, and my Push ability actually costs me precious peril so I can’t even spam that.
I’m not trying to rant, but am truly confused - all the other classes seem to excel at specific things, and have a great ‘flow’ to them. I feel like I’m constantly stumbling over my own fingers trying to frantically swap between weapons and powers, and am incredibly disappointed at how infrequently I can even use said powers before becoming a hazard to myself. After one or two pops (which may or may not even kill anything), I run around trying desperately not to get run over while I wait for my peril to drop.
Help me, vets - what am I doing wrong and how do I improve my psyker experience?
Hey bud, I got to level 20 psyker in the first beta so I think I have a pretty good idea, but everyone plays different. I did actually feel like brain burst is an outstanding elite killer, but there are some tips you may want to best utilize it. On the easier difficulties, it will one shot elites! Two and up to three on 5 sstar missions. Brain burst has unlimited range, and once you lock on to an enemy you can channel it without keeping line of sight. In a big room, find some cover, lock on to an elite or armored enemy, and duck back behind cover. Rinse and repeat, and use your warp skill to cleanse your peril. The ability charges really fast, and I almost always used it just to cleanse my warp instead of trying to push back enemies (still useful in horde rooms). The flow for me is four brain bursts, skill, four more brain burst, meditate, and by that time your skill should be ready for your next peril cleanse. The best way to use this is not be too engaged with grunts, but stay ready for the elites that come in from the flank with an audio cue (howling hounds, clicky flamers, pin drop bombers, roaring mutants, etc.). These will make an audio cue when they are about to appear, and disengage with brain burst ready so you can zap them from afar before theye even get to your team. Otheer people have trouble especially with mutants and hounds because they move so fast, but as long as you get the lock on them brain burst can’t miss. This is how I chose to play Psyker, let me know if this was hopeful! For the Emperor, good sir!
Pysker was hilariously overnerfed between the october beta and the presently live client. Right now I’d say that he’s good at killing snipers that are in different time zones.
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Thanks so much for the reply, Ginja! Just out of curiosity, how are you managing 4 bursts in between the vents? I can only do two or three before I have to let the peril come down.
He gave you tips from the october beta where what he described was possible. It’s not possible now.
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Hey Armchair, appreciate the response. Yeah, I saw they got nerfed but I never played the earlier version of the psyker so I wasn’t sure if this was just a L2P issue on my end.
Pysker is very painful right now. They made essentially every one of his powers run hotter, gutted his ability to manage heat, and added additional heat sources to assorted other actions. Most egregious of which was adding heat to pushes with the force sword, which makes the weapon a non-starter on any serious difficulty.
Pskyer’s main strength is that his brain burst ability can hit targets while you hide behind cover. That means that it is great at killing snipers since you only need to expose yourself long enough to initiate the popping process before returning to cover. The brain burst also does good damage to armored targets. The armored targetse probably have enough raw HP to survive it though, and in his current state psyker struggles to utilize consecutive uses of his brain burst or his staves.
I’m still unlocking talents and looking for gear that might alleviate his problems, but IMO the main nice things is that you are really good at killing snipers and specials. You can pre-charge brain burst to kill dogs when they enter view, which can be nice if you predict the timing right.
I haven’t played him in this build but each burst is 33% peril. As long as your peril isn’t at 100%, you can still use a burst without dying. So even at 99% peril you can still use one more.
I believe it’s 45% now, but apparently a hotfix is either on the way or already landed. Really appreciate the feedback; I want to like this class so much, just having a rough go of it feeling like a slightly gimped version of everyone else that can occasionally use powers. Hopefully the fix will help!
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The “you’re safe at 99% peril” thing isn’t true anymore either. If you overflow too deeply, then you still explode. I’m unsure what the new safe threshold is. I want to say that someone told me 87% to avoid exploding, but I am not confident with that number.
Maybe I was wrong about the 99% thing. It seems to maybe be true again in the test range? During my play sessions I was careful to keep heat down. I’m not sure if someone simply gave me bad information or if the update today adjusted things.
edit:
nevermind the behavior in the training room. In a real match I just died from a headpop at 98%. So there is an overflow danger threshold.
Thanks for the feedback, folks. I’ve decided to park my psyker for now until it gets some tweaks or I get better. I love the idea of the psyker on paper, but in practice it’s like trying to bring a scalpel into a moshpit. I don’t feel like I’m contributing much at all unless it’s a special or a boss, and outside of those handful of instances I’m just flailing around with a melee weapon trying not to kill myself by shoving. I rolled up a Zealot and couldn’t believe how much more engaging and fun it was; maybe that changes in the higher levels, but for now it seems Psyker just isn’t for me.
Fyi, the Psyker got hotfixed buffed. Right now the play pattern is brainbursts to kill specials, staff charge attacks to help deal with hordes (you are very good at this), and swap to sword if you need higher defensive capabilities. I imagine at the highest difficulty level currently, a well coordinated team would still have a psyker just because nobody else can deal with ranged that safely.
For brainbursts, you can quell to 96% and burst again now, it won’t kill your character. Both force and shock staffs are very strong as well. Force staff is better at dealing with melee hordes, shock staff better at dealing with ranged.
Psyker gets better with levels and higher difficulty.
They balanced the class on a endgame power and mission difficulty.
Brainburst is terrible at low level, but when you start facing armored enemies with big shields, psyker is the only class that can safely and quickly kill them.
When you start facing snipers that can take out all your shields and half your health in one hit, peaking to start a brainburst and then channeling it behind cover to kill the sniper is a godsend to your team.
Ogryn heavy gunners are another target that brainburst is the best option to kill.
Psyker’s force sword is extremely good on assassination missions, just hit his shield with a gun until shields are down and you can get 2 force weapon powered attacks in before he gets back up, much more damage than anything I’ve seen.
Psyker is basically underpowered until he gets halfway through his talent tree.
Im parroting what other people have said here, but my advice would be to not go too crazy building Peril until you get the means to do so through talents and weapons (some weapons like staves have Quell rate and Peril build up increases and reductions). Im level 21 and with the force staff i am a Elite and large group killing machine. With the Lightning staff i am a king of CCing large packs. It gets easier and easier as you learn how to manage your abilities and Peril build up / venting.
A nice trick is to pop heads until you get 100% Peril, use Meditate for like 1 second to reduce to 97%, then you can head pop again. Save your Push ultimate for when you make a booboo and need to save yourself for self destruction. Eventually you get talents that reduce your Peril build up, so keeping those Warp stacks at 4 (or 6 if you have the talent) is imperitive.
Well, you guys talked me into giving it another go - the more I play (when I’m not crashing), the more I find the groove of balancing peril and power. The first staff (force staff?) finally gave me the tools to deal with packs so I don’t feel utterly useless in that regard, but especially once those scoreboards come into play it’s going to be hard not feeling like deadweight with the small kill numbers.
If I were to give any newbie feedback it would be that Psyker could probably use some early level love - it seems we don’t come online until much later, and it’s a frustrating grind to get there.
Yep, I don’t know what level you got to, but I’m at 11 and I’m starting to enjoy it.
I use force sword and lasgun, I use the force sword for horde control and to kill specials that sneak past my ogryn.
The force sword’s special attack powers it up for like 4-5 seconds, if you make contact with an enemy they are temporarily stunned until the attack finishes and many specials die in one hit so you can use it against a dog or the charging mutant while sidestepping their charge to instantly kill them.
The lasgun is for whenever my overheat is high bc it works reasonably well on everything that isn’t armored.