Hey guys! Lvl 30 psyker here and I wanted to share my impressions through gameplay/testing of the different weapons. My goal isn’t to share ‘feelings’ of things but to look at what’s actually happening and take a more objective approach. Hopefully in sharing this, we’ll see what the psyker community agrees or disagrees on and we can take the class to higher heights together. I’d love to hear your thoughts as well! Also, this is not a discussion on Brain Burst! We’re focusing on the weapons here, so please keep comments to this point.
All testing done below was done in the psykhanium on difficulty 5 settings. Psyker level 30 with feats chosen for minimal variation between players (ie: not speccing into dmg or peril resistance). lvl 5: Quietitude, lvl 10: Wrack and Ruin, lvl 15: Cerebral Lacerations, lvl 20: Mind in Motion, lvl 25: Kinectic Overload, and lvl 30: Quicken.
For damage, I’ll explain as Unit - full damage - DoT. Enemy units used are the Unarmoured Yellow Gunner, Flak Armoured Yellow Melee, and the Mauler. Headshots are used on the Gunner/Melee and body shot will be used for Mauler.
I think it would be best to look at the psyker exclusive ranged weapons, so we’ll be excluding weapons that are more general such as the lasgun from this discussion. Warp weapons come in four styles - Surge(lightning), Trauma(explosion), Voidstrike(fireball), and Purgatus(flamethrower). Let’s break these down further -
Surge (lightning) (my staff is ilvl 348)-
⦁ The left click for this staff is the standard energy warp ball, which is what we see on two out of the three other staffs. Nothing special here.
⦁ Left click attack - Unarmored Gunner - roughly 266, Flak armor - 234. Mauler - 150
⦁ Right click/charge - lightning burst/channel. This ability hits four targets and channels a very minor DoT before a final hit which does the majority of the damage. I think it’s very important to note that this weapon does not hit all mobs in the cone/range. It is limited to four targets. Again, the majority of the damage is dealt on the final hit of the channel, which means you are locked into the animation and will be susceptible to melee/ranged until that cast is finished. That would be around two full seconds where dodging would be your only defense. One more thing to note is that the channeled lightning does have a very high stun factor, so reapers/bulwarks/mutants/etc do get interrupted while being hit. The only counter to this would be trying to hit those as part of your four targets while in the middle of a horde. Lightning channel can also proc Kinectic Flayer(10% on hit to brain burst).
⦁ Right click full charge - Unarmoured - roughly 150 and 6, Flak Armor - roughly 150 and 6, Mauler - roughly 566 and 7
⦁ Peril - left click builds 4~5 peril per shot, right click charge starts at 17 and goes up to 27, so we’re getting four of these full charge shots before tapping out.
⦁ I encourage testing in the psykhanium on this weapon because from what I can tell the lightning does not prioritize specials and the lightning seems to have minimal spread when shooting into a group of roughly 10 units.
Trauma (explosion) (my staff is ilvl 393)
⦁ Standard left click energy ball
⦁ Left click attack - Unarmored Gunner - roughly 233, Flak armor - 204. Mauler - 131
⦁ Right click/charge - AoE circle expands until explosion. There does not appear to be a target limit within the circle. All damage is dealt as a single hit. Explosions knock all enemies down with the one exception being Mutants. This knockdown applies to quick release and full charge attacks. As long as the target is within the circle, it will be knocked. A full charge takes roughly 2 1/2 seconds. Very important note - full damage is only dealt to enemies within the circle (full model inside, not half). Enemies outside the ring take heavily reduced damage, but do suffer a minor stagger.
⦁ Right click full charge - Unarmoured - 347, Flak armor - 347, Mauler - 382
⦁ Peril - left click builds 4 to 5 peril per shot, right click charge starts at 13 and goes up to 47 on full charge. We get two casts, the third would kill us.
Voidstrike (fireball) (my staff is ilvl 392)
⦁ Standard left click energy ball
⦁ Left click attack - Unarmored Gunner - roughly 270, Flak armor - 237. Mauler - 152
⦁ Right click/charge - Charges a warp energy ball, which shoots straight forward in a line. All damage is dealt in a single hit. The energy ball has very high pierce and range. The ball will travel through all enemies until it hits a heavily armoured enemy (Mauler, Armoured Rager, Carapace Ogryn, Reaper, and Bulwark) or map object (wall, box, etc). That means the ball will pierce through Trapper, Flamer(red and green), Bomber, Mutant, Dog, Sniper, Hotshot, Shotgunner, and Unarmoured Rager in a straight line through any and all horde. This also means the stun value is not as high as some of our stave counterparts. We are getting a minor stagger on most unarmoured specials due to the pierce, no interrupt on mutant, and a knockdown on mauler. On the big boys, we’re seeing the Bulwark shrug it off completely with shield (no pierce), while Reaper and Carapace both take a heavy stagger. Armoured and Unarmoured Ragers are both seeing a mild to heavy stagger. One final point to be made on the stun is that the ball can be shot at the ground to cause an explosion effect. This explosion deals minor area damage, but does knock down or back the surrounding enemies (same limitations as above). A full charge takes roughly two full seconds.
⦁ Right click full charge - Unarmoured - 206 (hitbox isn’t connecting with head), Flak armor - 401, Mauler - 215
⦁ Peril - left click builds 4 to 5 per shot, right click charge starts at 6 and goes up to 19. I’m able to use five full charges before I would pop on the 6th.
Purgatus (flamethrower)
⦁ (I trashed my staff when getting some quick coins, so I’ll test this more thoroughly when I get my hands on another one)
⦁ Left click attack - unique flamethrower burst. Adds Soulblaze DoT to targets (2 per tick)
⦁ Right click/charge - Builds up a flamethrower barrage that can be channeled for a sustained blast. Enemies hit by fire sustain Soulblaze DoT damage. From my testing, the DoT does not trigger Kinectic Flayer (10% on hit to brain burst). The actual flamethrower sustained blast does however.
⦁ More info to come.
For the melee side, I’d really just like to bring up the Force Sword. The Force Sword appears to now serve three major functions -
⦁ Eliminate specials - both armoured and unarmoured, when you don’t have seconds to spare. Getting a full cast from our staves can sometimes be a luxury. When things are rough and you have several ragers chasing you down the sword can be used to get some quick alt-attacks at the cost of minimal peril.
⦁ Player defense - Force Sword can come with the Trait “Deflector”. This Trait allows your block to now block both Melee and Ranged attacks. Additionally, block cost is reduced by 10%. This is great when you turn a corner and see a gunnery squad waiting for you. You can block, dodge, and reevaluate your plan of attack while taking minimal/no damage.
⦁ Group defense - the recent change to Force Sword is invaluable to your team. Being able to spam a 360 degree mild stagger on all horde and limited specials will allow your teammates to pick somebody up off the ground safely. Removing the peril cost allows us to use this block stagger as much as we want, which in my opinion makes this the best defensive weapon in the game. Combined with the alt-fire, we can get some amazing usage out of this weapon now.
This is all from my experience, but I would love to hear how things are going for you guys. Please let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see tested/brought up, and we can try to get some things validated.
My personal opinion on Psyker having gone through difficulty 4 with friends (avg party level was 15~20), and after 600 hours of VT2 melee experience (I’m a Sienna main), I think we’re in a spot that could use a little further balancing. I would love to see some adjustments to the lightning staff personally, and maybe some damage values tweaked.