Psyker build to kill bosses?

When it comes to monstrosities I find that all my psyker builds are lacking in damage (except gun psyker, eh) against bosses, kinda forcing me to take a support role whenever one spawns, keeping elites and specials away while the rest of the party does the job.

The other 3 classes have way more options when it comes to specialization, so I want some feedback on psyker.
I want to know if anyone has any builds/ideas on how to deal enough dmg to monstrosities to make it worth it. Meaning, dps at least kinda similar to stealth TH zealot, rumbler ogryn and bolter vet.

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I have a Rupture, Prescience , Scriers and Columbus Build that shreds Fatboys, Fastboys, Shirts and Skins and Super Big Boy and the Mega Doggo. struggles on Shields, Warp Spawn, and ESPECIALLY if you cant get consistent Ammo.

Soulblaze does respectable damage to bosses. Pair it with a mk4 dueling sword and you’re killing bossess pretty well.

Gun Psyker is the only way you’re approaching other class’ boss damage. It’s just not really Psyker’s strong suit. Assuming Col IAG is probably gonna be one of your best boss DPS option. Not sure about melee boss DPS, Deimos and DS are probably ok for it.

Asking for stealth TH levels of boss damage is absurd though that setup sacrifices almost everything for boss damage and even for the insane boss damage it does it’s questionably worth it. Nothing SHOULD come close to that boss damage.

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They are, specially DS. Still it’s insane that the best available tools the psyker has to kill monstrosities are “normal” weapons. Psyker roleplaying as vet.

As I’ve said, if not gun psyker, all the other builds end up being crowd control (crowd of everything)

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Yes boss damage is Psyker’s main weakness which I think is kind of ok since they’re very good at everything else and supremely versatile otherwise.

Personally I think the loss of cerebral lacerations for BR post patch 13 is a shame and that really helped. Also nerfing all explosive damage against monsters across the board was a mistake IMO taking trauma from at least ok Burgle DPS to pretty bad.

Probably rather than buff boss damage of too many existing options I’d like to see a staff introduced that’s somewhat akin to VT2 beam staff that can do good boss damage if you can create space to channel for a while with ramping single target as you focus it on something (I mean I’m just describing beam staff but for those that aren’t familiar).

Could also maybe buff obscurus special attack unyielding damage a bunch. That weapon is crying out for some kind of niche.

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scriers gaze gaze /Disrupt Destiny keystone with Columnus mkV -

You do the most damage in the game, using combat stim you deal 75% of a bosses HP in one clip while under the influence of scriers/combat stim.

Weakness: beyond squishy as #%$&

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That’s the one thing that psykers don’t really have anything for. You can still do it ofc but it’s a bit finnicky. None match a hammer or an oggy / vet with a dedicated boss killer ofc. But here’s a few ways I know of to still get pretty good results:

While it prolly qualifies as a gunpsyker, your basic right side crit, Scrier’s & Disrupt Destiny build with Laspistol does really seriously good weakspot dmg on anything. So unless it’s a Chaosspawn (bc good luck getting headshots on that thing unless someone keeps staggering it) I can usually get ~30k+ dmg in per boss if there aren’t any actual bosskillers like hammer zellies around.

Next best thing would prolly be a crit Voidstrike with Surge and Nexus, perked for +unyielding ofc and again aiming for those headshots. While this has lower dmg than the one above, if you have your buffs stacked and/or get Surge procs especially if your team participates, you can keep staggering the bosses. The main trick besides headshots here is to not waste those True Aim procs when the boss is still recovering from the previous stagger, but wait for it to recover and then stagger it again. If you pull it off, you can keep them staggered indefinitely. Ofc waiting for the recovery means there’s always a chance the boss will just instantly turn around to chase someone else instead, and bye bye headshots & stagger.

Purge is surprisingly good if you have BB, especially with Vent. While you won’t be doing big bursts, the Soulblaze does deceivingly respectable dmg and you won’t depend on weakspots for it either:

  1. Cap the SB DoT on it
  2. Use the next 10s before SB starts decaying to BB or melee. While Deimos / Duelling Sword heavy headshots are likely better, BB always hits weakspots and has range. Regardless, you still need to use BB to keep your peril up for Warp Rider, which benefits all of your dmg including the DoT.
  3. Switch to Purge to puff it within 10s to refresh the DoT, and repeat these as needed.
  4. Vent with Creeping Flames at 80%+ peril adds another 6 stacks of SB on top for 10s and refreshes the DoT, increasing the DoT dmg further by around 33% while ofc letting you do more BB. It also doubles as a horde & sniper killer, making it easier to focus on the boss. But remember that Purge can’t refresh stacks above its own cap, so after 10s the SB stacks will fall back down to 15.
  5. Ofc there’s some more layers to this if you really wanna minmax, what with keeping Perfect Timing running for that +15% warp damage too.
  6. Remember that Purge is a crit staff because crits apply 2 stacks of SB and SB has a logarithmic dmg curve (each stack doubles its dmg in the start, tapering down the higher those stacks go). So you want at least Nexus on it. Also remember that SB uses your equipped weapon’s stats so +unyielding on purge won’t do you much good if most of the time you’re using a melee weapon with no such perk.
  7. When I tested this in psykhanium with a full build but without Perfect Timing (bc the reaper died too quickly if I had it), 15 SB stacks did ~300 dmg/s, where after Vent’s 21 SB that went to ~400/s. Because of the way dmg is calculated Perfect Timing actually added more than 15% to that and even at 15 stacks it did around 380 dmg/s iirc. So if we average this at 400/s, that’s 12 000 in 30 seconds passively from the DoT alone that you barely even have to bother with, otherwise doing your normal dmg on top.
  8. In practice on T5+ pubs, you don’t always get to fight a boss alone since there’s enemies everywhere. Similarly, your team might be short a few members or is struggling with other enemies instead of being able to focus on the boss. While Purge can effortlessly burn bosses and adds all at the same time, that DoT is going to matter more the longer that fight takes. So if the fight takes a minute while you’re focusing on burning adds or even just kiting and surviving, SB on its own will now have done around half its total hp in dmg (iirc they have around 45-50k hp on T5 now, at least according to Scoreboard).

Purge in general is very underappreciated and extremely strong if built and used right. But I think I’ve blabbed enough about Purge. :sweat_smile:

Finally your typical Trauma with +25% unyielding, Flurry and for example Nexus again (the latter blessing doesn’t make much of a diff tbh, Rending Shockwave is better for the team ofc) does a LOT of damage against the slug boss. So any typical trauma build which tbh is best with +flak & +unyielding and Flurry anyway, is surprisingly good against that one. It’s decent against the other bosses too but nothing remarkable.

Edit: While I said finally, I forgot one thing. The staff primary fire is surprisingly strong esp on weakspots and has that fire > quell > fire trick that can be macroed, and seriously increases its rate of fire. So theoretically if you had a great staff with Transfer Peril & either crit or Surge / Blazing Spirit (for the DoT again) with True Aim, a really good aim, and tons of luck, you could keep blasting rapid fire shots into a bosses’ face indefinitely and it would probably do quite a bit dmg.

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Pretty much spot on here.

Only way you do good boss damage as Psyker is as a scrier’s MK V columnus build.

That being said it’s very good boss damage. 100% crit rate with the finesse bonus and the 20% generic damage from being at max peril is incredibly good.

Staff builds doing good boss damage is not happening though.

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I’ve tried purge + vent as you said and I got around 40k damage, it’s not great but now I know that staff can be used way better than I thought. I didn’t know the dots of both would stack, thanks!

Trauma I need to some testing, I’ll try to get one with the things you said.

Voidstrike I’ve tried and I find it underwhelming in terms of damage, though I have been able to keep some monstrosities staggered, which is always fun!

I think i’ts bad design tbh. If I’m going to have a class that is good at being versatile (doing a bit of everything), what’s the point of a skill tree? Psyker role always feel the same, while the other classes get to be specialized at doing different things.

Yeah, Sienna had different roles, and not only depending on the staves but also on her careers. Dot, melee dmg, crits… and now lastly, the necromancer career.

Here even making a melee focused psyker is annoying, you’ll be spamming illisi’s special all the time and that’s it.

Combat blade with lacerate, /thread.

Nothing in the psyker’s kit can provide meaningful monster dmg.

That’s the thing you don’t
Psykers have dodo single target damage weapons

Like psyker specific weapons, or just the ones they have access to?

Because if you mean psyker specific weapons ie the staves then sure you got a point. None of them are particularly high single target, but if you really want a boss killer build then MK V gun psyker certainly does the trick even if you are kind of pulling a whole circle in a square hole situation.

*Against monsters. Ain’t nobody gonna tell me DS Mk IV crusher kill speed isn’t exceptional.

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Been playing with this build recently. It’s true. It’s a combo of total power fantasy and also being the weakest person on your team

Void staff is the only way psykers have to be able to stun bosses. It requires headshots though.

Not that squishy tbh. The chain crits means while you have ammo you have toughness. Still more hp than vet as well (at least through talents).

No keystones needed outside the brain burst ones, BB fast on Ult, when it slows, full charged Surge should easily get 10-20k per boss in a match if on them consistently. Pretty damn fast too for psyker.

Problem is that 10-20k is normal damage, not good enough for a dedicated build.
As others have pointed out, the best way to kill a boss with psyker is using a gun. No exlusive psyker weapon or skill will do much except maybe purge, and only if there are no other players with a boss killer build.

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