[Psyker Feats] Talents have little to no synergy

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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So… You WANT us to gain warp charges to maximize our combat potential, but only give us one real way to gain warp charges…

Yeah, there’s something wrong here.

As such, I have a proposal. The level 15 Perk tree.

This needs overhauled to be more useful. Something like this:
1.Psychic Communion:
Whenever you gain a warp charge, you and allies in cohesion gain 5% damage resistance for the duration of the warp charge, refreshing upon stack. (stacks 4/6 times, cannot stack with more than one Psyker)
Reasoning: This makes a Psyker FAR more valuable in a squad as a defensive specialist. Not only are you tougher to put down, but your nearby allies benefit as well and you can turtle together, becoming far more likely to survive hordes at higher difficulty levels. Not to mention that allies who leave cohesion lose the buff. So, best to work as a team and stick together, yeah?

As for the 2nd and 3rd feats, move these to more appropriate tiers (removing 2 less worthwhile feats in their place) and swap the level 15 ones with something akin to these:
2. Warp Sensitive
5% chance to gain a warp charge on any warp attack hit. Charges gained at maximum stacks grant Attunement (max 2 stacks). Attunement increase the chance to reduce Perils on Brain Bust kill by 5% (maximum of 10%, totaling 20% overall)
Reasoning: This gives more synergy to a Psyker’s kit, seeing as force swords and staffs are uniquely designed to use warp skills almost exclusively. It is especially useful against things like bosses. Otherwise, the entire reason for Warp Charge functionality to exist is moot. Why give Psykers something that they can never use when it counts? Bosses have an IMMENSE amount of health, and when they spawn, there’s never anything around to kill for the boosted damage. This feat suggestion fixed that and provides a more aggressive playstyle for those who wish to abuse the warp for their benefit. Also, 5% is a nice rounded number that makes sense and won’t trigger all the time. I’d say it’s pretty balanced, all things considered.

3. Warp Link
Brain Burst now chains to nearby targets within 3 meters (minimum 1). Hits one additional target for each stack of Warp Charge. Only one chain of brain bursts can occur every 10s. (chained kills do not generate Warp Charges. Only initial target kills) Brain Burst generates 20% more Perils
Reasoning: Crowds are part of the game. You’re always going to be overwhelmed. ESPECIALLY by the insanely overtuned amount of ranged enemies. This provides a counter to that problem by allowing for a way to put down a few of them at a time without needing to SEE them. The trade-off is generating way more Perils, bringing the total BBs in a row down to 2 from the patched 3 and the fact that you’d need to wait on the next chain’s timer. BUT, every BB kill brings you more charges, which brings you that much closer to chain bursting a bunch of irritating enemies. Once again, makes a Psyker far more of a valuable teammate.

Now, do I think the devs will even remotely pay attention to this? No. But they should. Psykers only having one way to make use of Brain Burst or gain Warp Charges effectively feels like they were overnerfed. At least this way, you’ll have several different Psykers. A defender, a boss buster and an assaulter at any given time. Way more useful than the 3 level 15 perks as they are now. Also, as it is, the current Psychic Communion is just… it lacks flair.

Additional Edit: Warp Siphon
Needs to be redesigned to allow us to gain Warp Charges in a passive manner. Making it so it is only off of kills CRIPPLES a Psyker’s late-game effectiveness (ie: higher difficulties, boss fights). It is unreliable as it is now. Please retool.

TL;DR
We need a more reliable way to generate Warp Charges that don’t involve ONLY kills, otherwise you leave a significant portion of the Psyker’s kit feeling worthless during Monstrosity battles (Which are SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult when you can’t gain any additional damage).

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Very much agree with this. Giving us better and more reliable ways to get warp charges would be very nice cause otherwise you gotta spam brainburst which usually isn’t actually a good idea. Its slow and single target. Most of the time, I’d rather use my staff to AoE groups down. Only when theres a tanky elite or such will I bring out the brain burst.

It just seems counter productive to be using brain burst often enough to keep your warp charges high simply for the sake of having high warp charges.

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I think the way psychic communion is now is to work with kinetic flayer to let you build warp charges on a warp weapon (not pure BB) build so I’m hesitant to ask for it changed until that playstyle is tested more. It would be nice to have a clear option to main warp weapons and still use your warp charge passive mechanic.

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While I agree with the sentiment, you’re missing the problem a bit. What is the problem?

The class is hopelessly dependent on brain burst (which you recognize), but it’s dependent to such a degree that the class is functionally complete trash. If you’re not brain bursting practically on cooldown, you’re not generating warp charges. If you are brain bursting, your team won’t notice you being there because who gives a crap?

Psyker has no real melee weapon that isn’t just “Marksman or Zealot, but worse.” Its toughness regeneration is trash tier, even with an ogryn pumping the numbers by 100%, it still basically doesn’t regenerate toughness passively. If it’s not constantly bursting brains, it loses a critical class resource. The only way to get it is a 4% chance, which is likewise awful because you can go 30 seconds without a single proc in a horde, only to get 4 charges in about 4 seconds.

To put it another way, psyker doesn’t influence combat meaningfully, its entire feat tree synergizes so unbelievably poorly that even your changes would barely affect anything, because all of them would still be hopelessly dependent on brain bursting, nevermind that you literally got rid of the only feat that gives you warp charge generation in any meaningful quantity to allow you to not brain burst every 2 seconds.

Psyker needs a complete rework, it’s that bad.

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Yeah I am also not feeling the Psykers talents, I think the reliance on brain bursting to generate warp charges needs a rethink. Maybe warp attacks in general should generate warp charges, not just kills with brain burst. So whenever you brain burst, use a force weapon, use a staff etc it should generate warp stacks.

The warp charges should also stay around for way longer, like up to 2 minutes because there’s a lot of time where not much is happening sometimes.

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2 minutes may be a tidbit too much. But 25s is far too little. I think a good middle ground would be 45-60 seconds. ESPECIALLY because they do not decay 1 stack at a time like Sienna’s “Heat Stacks”. They decay together, which I think is a terrible design choice.

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Psyker is quite easy to fix IMO.

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The one point I agree with most here is about warp charges, having them easier to generate would be fantastic.
As it truly feels like they should be easier to earn/spend for the duration of fights.
And the one thing that feels like would help the most is if they fall of 1 by 1 instead of just falling off all at once

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I completely agree with you on that point Jartgo.

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Psyker definitely needs better ways to generate warp charge, because right now the class basically just forces you into playing with brain burst as your main attack.

The 25 and 30 talents are awful.

At 25 you get:

  • Stack up to 6 warp charges.
  • Set things on fire every time you gain a warp charge past 4 charges
  • 10% chance on attacks to brain burst an enemy

None of that has any meaningful synergy with a force sword or force staff heavy build. You don’t generate charges, so the first two talents are worthless, and brain bursting random enemies is neither reliable nor desirable really.

The idea of a perk that lets you add some psychic spice to mundane attacks is great, but the execution sucks.

The other two perks would also be great, if every psyker was generating warp charges at a good rate, but only people who brain burst non stop get them.

The top tier is also just bad.

  • Consume all warp charges to gain faster cooldown
  • Consume all warp charges to set enemies on fire
  • Get faster, cheaper brain bursts

If you don’t use brain burst non stop you don’t have enough warp charges to just dump them all on your ability. You’ll be lucky to ever even see a stack of 4, let alone 6. The one capstone talent that doesn’t burn your warp charges is the one that helps you spam brain burst, which is what you need to do to gain warp charges.

The idea of building around fire is cool. Maybe when you have a fire staff that will actually make a cool soul fire build, because it gains a passive ability to gain charges from enemies killed by soul fire. The awesomeness of this talent entirely hinges on whether or not psykinetics get better ways to gain warp charges than to spam the most boring ability in the game.

The cooldown reduction on burning charges is great in theory, but kind of crap in practice. If you play a character who generates heaps of peril you really want to not touch your F at all, because if you’re about to blow you can save yourself if it’s off cooldown. The talent is infinitely more useful as a last chance to stop yourself from exploding than as a 50% peril dump and lackluster knockback. So what you really need is a talent that gives Psykinetic Wrath an extra charge, but maybe a longer cooldown per charge to compensate. That would allow you to keep a charge in reserve for emergencies and still actually use the ability.

Just my thoughts. I really like using the staff on the psyker, and it annoys me to no end that the class doesn’t acknowledge that play style at all. Why can’t Psykinetic be more like Veteran, where there is a solid build around brain bursting a lot, but there is also a solid path for force weapons and mundane weapons?

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