Psyker was in a great spot after Tools of War, had builds for each different staff I liked, could specialize in brain bursting or staffs; it had good build variety.
Then Patch #7, or what I call Tools of Nerf’s was released.
They went in for the kill on the flamer and nerfed into the ground in every way possible, damage, stagger, ammo (lol). And that wasn’t enough so they nuked flame damage to flak and cut it by 50%.
This change to flak armor damage from burn not only affected burn from the flamers but also soulblaze. This changes the breakpoints needed for using ascendant blaze drastically and you lose some of the great build variety because there is no point to use it without warp battery.
Not onlysoulblaze was affected though, also infernus lol which was terrible anyway, the recon lasguns have been needing buffs since the game came out, it was one of the only blessings they had, it still sucked and now it sucks twice as much.
I’m just wondering if FS even knew this nuke to the flamer would even effect soulblaze, I’m guessing not.
I don’t care about the flamer, I had plenty of fun with it since release but screwing over psyker builds is just terrible in a game with so few synergies with builds.
good video detailing the changes to soulblaze and ascendant blaze in particular:
FS missed the mark with this one, this game needs more build variety, not less.
The nerf to burn dmg results in soulblaze builds being useless.
Also the infernus blessing for recon lasgun was the only thing making a perfect rolled recon a decent weapon as long as you didn’t use it on carapace armor.
Flamer is still really good even after nerfs, it by no means was “nuked.” As for staves, I feel the purgatus could be reigned in a little bit, especially on the stagger(or just make trauma a lot better) but soulblaze didn’t need a DoT nerf
Flamer is still very good because it is used on preacher. Burn damage shouldn’t be ruined for everyone else because preacher gets free armor penetration at the press of a button. Oddly enough, the class most nerfed by this entire balance patch is Psyker, not Vet or Preacher.
Purgatus staff is not considered any better than the Voidstrike or Trauma from what I have experienced by talking to other high-intensity damnation players. So I’d have to disagree with it deserving a nerf like you said. Lets not even get started on how this nerf gutted feats like wrack and ruin and wildfire. Which were already very non-meta picks for psyker right now.
And that’s the best version of fire damage in the entire game. Now compare it to how everything else that was hurt by this change. Flamer nerf shouldn’t hurt all the other sources of burning damage too. Infernus from the beta is crying at how pitiful it has become.
I don’t care about the state of the flamer honestly, it’s everything else that was hurt by collateral damage of this nerf.
