Psyker Assail patch 14 nerf

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I got the game after patch 13 and I leveled up a psyker as my first character, I absolutely agree that the skill is an extreme outlier.

The nerf brought by patch 14 is not a good change IMHO, though, because spamming it is still the best way to use it and it is still mostly oneshotting everything in lower difficulties.

I think the skill should move more towards a grenade-type functionality, by having 2 or 3 charges with a 30(?) seconds regen time, and using one charge shoots 4-5 enemy-seeking shards.

This way the skill can be sparingly used during the run or be completely drained against a horde.

No more spamming.

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Yawn. Nope.

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Thanks for the input

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That’s probably how I would have changed it, more or less. Like any other blitz, something that you swap to situationally rather than sit on more often than not. I definitely don’t care enough to assail some of the passionate defense of this ability though :slight_smile:

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delusional* defense

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I haven’t used it yet (too busy BONKing with the Crusher), but I never felt like the damage adjustment was a good way to address the problem - it doesn’t stop you from spamming almost continuously, it’s just not as effective at doing so.

Delaying the start of replenishment (similar to how passive quelling works) makes the most sense to me; the cooldown/shard remains the same and you can still dump all 10 shards if you want, but if you try to continue throwing as soon as shards are ready, you drastically reduce your rate of fire and are encouraged to wait for a few shards to be replenished before unloading again. I think it’s a fairly common mechanic in other games where weapons have “infinite” ammo and are governed by a heat mechanic - the heat only starts dropping a moment after you stop shooting. You could go as far as punishing players with having an extended cooldown if they reach zero… but I don’t think that’d be a great fit here.

If you’re empty, it might take an extra 1 - 1.5sec to fully replenish 10 shards (throw + delay + 10x cooldown), but if you’re throwing shards as soon as available, then it’ll take an extra 1 - 1.5sec per shard (throw + delay + cooldown + throw + delay + cooldown + …)

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Assail is fine on damnation.
Let the damage scale down for lower difficulties. Problem solved.

Suggestions to give assail a cooldown like a grenade, are pure insanity.

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Assail isn’t even good in maelstrom, or relatively useless, why does it need nerf?

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It’s still too spammable for the left-click even on Damnation, there’s really nothing else that can drop into a room to face huge group of shotgunners, and make them disappear in a couple of seconds just spamming left click willy nilly without needing to aim, and do it again 14 seconds later. If there’s a gantry full of shooters, screw bringing a Vet to highlight and blap them all, Assail will clear them out faster and more reliably. Nothing trivializes a pack of Pox Hounds like Assail does still. Likewise, no other weapon/ability/item in the game has such wild power distortion such that it would require a difficulty-specific adjustment.

That said, I could definitely notice that it’s not quite as effective just spamming left click last night, the difference is real, which I also think speaks to how overtuned it was before. It also doesn’t help that one of the two alternatives, Smite, just isn’t very good on its own.

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Hey fellow rejects and team FS!

My 2 cents here as a psyker main since the beta: the last patch didn’t really change anything concerning Assail. In fact, lowering damage just means you may require more shards to achieve the same goal as before, and thus spam them even more.

The only way to make them less “spammy” would be to lower their regeneration speed, which might induce making them inflict slightly more damage.

Increasing the secondary attack’s damage also made Assail compete even more with Brain Rupture:
After Patch 13, I honestly saw very little interest in using BR over Assail. Sure, you have to stay a bit longer on target (though you can still duck in and out of cover pretty smoothly) and you can’t deal with crushers and maulers but you got other tools in your arsenal for those anyway.
With Patch 14 this is even more true.

For all the rest, you do exactly the same than BR but much faster, and for far less Peril. Then you have left click to clear whatever other threat you want to delete in a pinch.

That being said, in my opinion Assail isn’t really the issue. How some player use it, is.
Either to kill everything on sight at lower difficulties (were like it’s been said, damage output is over the top), or by killing the exact same enemies a melee class is getting their toughness back on instead of the shooters / specials about to bring them down.
Used in a way that actively benefits your team solves those issues and bad comments about the brain magic daggers.

On the other side when it comes to Psyker’s Blitz, you have BR that is too slow and still too low on damage or AoE stagger to really compete and Smite that is only good now with Empowered Psionics.

My suggestion for my siblings out there, try to play Assail in a way that actually benefits your team and watch their back :wink:
There’s always something coming from behind :smiling_imp:

And for our sharky creators, some ideas regarding the psyker’s Blitz:

Make BR able to OS everything except monstrosities and bosses. When pared with Empowered Psionics, make it able to deal a whole bunch of damage to monstrosities and bosses similar to the Thunder Hammer. Slow, high Peril generation, deadly at any range and against anything.

Scale down Assail’s damage in lower difficulties and maybe slow down its regeneration rate. Shards could inflict less damage on Flak armors and maniacs. Fast, devastating against trash and unarmoured specials / shooters, able to snipe, but useless against maniacs and armor.

As for Smite, I’d increase its base damage or increased damage from other sources and buff the other with EP if you want to take that road. Or with EP allow it to stagger even monstrosities and mutants for a short period per charge, just long enough to save a team mate from being bashed, eaten, or puked on.
Since it’s more support oriented, it could also make sense for smite to be able to fuel a kinetic shield or dome, but that’s a whole different road.

Finally if you comited to read this far, I’m not here to convince anybody that I’m right and they’re wrong, nor to tell FS what to do. Just sharing my thoughts :slight_smile:

May thy be as deadly as thy are rightful in your purge!

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I started on damnation and hardly notice the assailers. The lower difficulties are where it is a plague, and I have no idea why they didn’t weaken it for new player enjoyment.

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Most people I have talked to on the subject have agreed that a powerful but slowly recharging ability is the way to go. You retain the power fantasy of all the shards of death shredding hordes, shooters, and low health elites and specials, but is not overly oppressive to your rest of the team and the game in general.

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Apparently, most assail users do not agree.

No.
It would be a completely different thing.

It already is not.

Assail already was basically useless against bosses, ogryn elites and maulers.
Since patch 14, it is pretty bad against both berserkers as well.
Regarding elites, it is only actually useful against shotgunners and gunners now.

Assail’s special clear never was very good, unless they come running in a small group, closely packed.

On top of that, patch 14 removed a bunch of assail’s 1 shot breakpoints against horde minions and non elite shooters.

At the same time, a bunch of melee options as well as guns got substantial buffs.
With some auto guns, a vet can spam about as much as a psyker can spam assail, except the auto gun deals much more special/elite damage and never has a downtime of more than ~2 seconds before putting out full dps again.

If people still complain about how strong assail is on low difficulties, it should be possible to simply scale down the ability’s damage for lower difficulties.

Regarding damnation+…
Assail never was anywhere near as oppressive or strong, as some people like to claim.
With patch 14, the absolute and relative power of the ability have been massively reduced.
If you spam it at regular enemies, you usually need 2x the shards to achieve the same thing as before.
Maybe people should shut up for a month or two, until they actually managed to read the patchnotes and tried using a few of the great options that the other 3 classes have.

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I like the suggestion to changeit to more limited charges and long regen, with more(?) projectiles. I don’t play Psyker (yet) so I don’t know exactly how it works currently, but I’ve seen it in action more than enough times to know it’s still a bit on the ridiculous side. With the reduced charges and regen, its damage per projectile could probably stand to be re-buffed.

Now how about the emperor palpatine lightning? That sh*t’s wack, makes me want to leave the match because it trivialises every combat sequence even more than assail ever did.

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That’s the point. “Different” =! “bad”. If in its current overall form, it’s either under- or overpowered, then changing it to be (not quite) “completely” different might help find that happy middle ground.

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I did not say that different equals bad.

I highlighted a part of his statement.
My response was regarding that statement.

The suggested change might create a different power fantasy, but the power fantasy of doing these things (listed by the guy) would absolutely not be retained.
That is what i said.
No idea why you would respond to that in such a way.
Or why the guy would try to get away with such an obviously false claim.

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If this was the case it would become useless on damnation. For it to be viable you would have to scale the damage up to such a ludicrous degree. 3 charges 5 enemies each is 15 in total. That wouldn’t even graze a mixed horde in damnation.

Smite imo was underwhelming before and it is underwhelming now, doing anything like this to assail will just make more people choose BB.

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3 charges / 5 shards, each shard hits 2 (or 3) times so it’s 10 to 45 hits depending on the build and the charges used.
I’d also make them change their behaviour to seek the closest enemy when LMB spammed, or seek specials/monstrosities on a RMB discharge.

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Wait what, so a charge has 5 shards? And you’re proposing we get 3 charges of 5 shards? Isn’t that 5 more shards than we already have? Wouldn’t that not make the problem you think is in the game even worse?

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The problem is the spamminess, not the power of the shards.