Psyker Feedback after 200 hours

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

Just for some context on where this feedback is coming from, I’ve got 276 hours total, mainly on Heresy but also plenty on Damnation. Psyker is my most played class, but I’ve also played alot of Zealot and some time on Vet too.

General Feel / Playstyle

This is really good. I enjoy that Psyker is a fast-paced class that is constantly having to switch between multiple tools, has to move around alot and rapidly adjust. I enjoy that its squishy and if you mess up then you die fast, but that to compensate it has a highly varied toolset that allows it to deal with nearly any situation. The only quibble here is that while it would appear to have been intended as a “glass-cannon” (having the lowest defensive stats of all classes), right now its mostly “glass” with not much “cannon”. All other classes can kill just as fast, while also being much more forgiving in how many hits they can take. In general, I hope that any changes going forward are to add to the “cannon” and not to remove the “glass”.

Brainburst & Warp Charges

This is the main topic that gets brought up around Psyker. In my opinion, in a vacuum Brainburst as an ability is fine. Great, infact. As a utility/grenade skill it is perfectly good as compared to the grenades on other classes. If you consider the grenades to be something that you occasionally use in specific niche scenarios, it does that job just fine, with a clear use-case for tackling bombers, bulwarks, snipers, shotgunners.

The problem, is that many of the other Psyker mechanics/feats don’t treat BB as a niche utility for occasional use - they treat it like it’s a primary weapon that you should be using every few seconds.

This disconnect needs to be resolved. Either the design intention here is for BB to be a niche utility, in which case warp-charges and feats should not be so dependent on it and BB should not be treated as such a core aspect of Psyker. Or the design intention is for BB to be a frequently used primary weapon, in which case the ability as it currently stands is not fit for purpose and needs to be reworked.

The reason why BB generates alot of flak is that it is really quite fun to use at low difficulties, 1-shot headpopping things is very satisfying. However, at higher difficulties, once you start having to use it 3+ times in a row just to generate one kill (and one warp-charge) it becomes incredibly UNsatisfying and frustrating. It is incredibly tedious watching it charge up over and over and over, and having to waste time quelling afterwards. The quick and easy fix here would be to reduce the charge-time and peril-cost, but I’m not sure that really fixes the core issue. Perhaps scale the charge-time according to target health, and tie warp-charge/feats to on-BB-use rather than on-BB-kill. Either that, or as already said just redesign the feats to decouple them from BB.

Warp Charges - the damage boost is too negligible to be worth worrying about, so most people just ignore them. Conceptually, as a resource you build in combat to then expend through Psykinetic Wrath is fine, but having them primarily tied to on-BB-kill makes them just too frustating to engage with. There needs to be alternative ways to generate them other than on-BB-kill or passive-feats.

Weapons

These all feel good to use, with the exception of the Trauma staff.

Surge and Purgatus are both fine as is. They have a clear useful role within a team, clear strengths and weaknesses. Voidstrike is mostly fine, it’s very satisfying to pinball heads with, but it could probably use a slight damage-buff to make it competitive and to give it a clearer role as the “sniper staff”. Considering its slow-cast-time, difficult aiming and peril-cost, it really shouldn’t take 3+ hits to kill a basic shooter.
Trauma staff… it just feels wonky. Particularly the targeting is very awkward. If you want to target medium/far distance, the target-reticule rises up above the circle-marker, meaning you have to almost look up into the sky. Just keep the target-reticule centred on the circle-marker please. Other than that, it just needs some numerical tweaks. The damage/stagger on it are fine, but the circle-radius is too small, and the peril-cost is way way too high.

Force-sword and Duelling-sword both feel great, no changes needed. Not an issue that I’ve experienced, but I’ve seen alot of people very frustrated that they haven’t been able to access the Deflector blessing because its never shown up in the shop for them. I guess this isn’t a psyker-specific issue, but it does hurt having such a key build-item unavailable due to RNG. If you aren’t going to make blessings more available and customisable, then maybe consider making Deflector just a baseline ability of Force-sword.

Feats

These are all really very under-whelming compared to other classes. As discussed above, too many are tied to BB and warp-charges. That might not be such an issue if BB wasn’t so unsatisfying and time-consuming to use. For the most part the “concept” or “functionality” of the feats is fine, but the numbers on them are pretty weak. Just compare Psykinetic Wrath (5-15% damage) to the damage-boosting traits on other classes. You could literally double that, and it still wouldn’t make Psyker be particularly strong. Another example, Kinetic Shield (10-33% toughness damage reduction) is nowhere near as strong as the damage-reduction feats on other classes (which would be fiiiiiiine if Psyker was actually a glass-cannon and not just glass).

7 Likes
2

I stopped playing as Psyker at level 11 and you’ve basically explained why :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

Similar to your suggestions, I thought they could instead scale up the amount of damage it does on higher difficulties so it still remains a useful tool on Heresy and Damnation. Just as someone would take higher rated weapons into Heresy and Damnation, the damage should scale up for the brainburst in line with enemy health increases. I think your suggestions here could definitely be the solution too.

I agree. There are some blessings for staffs and force swords that have chance to gain a warp charge on kill. This sort of thing could be a feat instead.

2 Likes
4

I think BB is fine as it is
You can quell to for example 97 peril and cast a bb,quell again,without the risky of being overloaded.
You one shot some vital spéciales which can spawn in tricky direction for vet to shot,boombers and snipers for example.And you are not meaned to snipe reapers afar and fast anyway.BB is not our main dmg source,it is an utility and thats all.
People being too acustombred with low dif are the problem why they complain about bbs.They are being acustombred with the unintended role of psyker in low difs being I win bottom psíquico sniper, which is wrong

1 Like
5

Thats not warp charge but soul blaze stacks

6

I almost agree with suggestion that psyker can deal with any threat. But this is one NO.

Psyker lacks of persistent dmg. Dps is very low.

Bossfight alone on damnation? No way because u have not only boss, y have spawn of gunners there, poxwalkers, mutants, dogs and others come faster then u can actually kill plagyeogryn or beast.

7

This scenario is so out of the norm that many players could not handle this regardless of what class they are piloting.

8

No its actually not, its common in Heresy and higher level games especially the high intensity. You don’t see it in Malice or lower, but anything higher its actually common.

So you have to be able to deal with it. Psycher just doesn’t handle it very well at all. its not strong enough. The other classes do.

9

Its really not, you got an absolute deadweight team if you are expected to solo boss and x amount of enemies every single game.
Also psyker deals with it perfectly fine with his infinite dodge mobility. I’ve done it enough times to know its possible.
I still would not use this scenario as some sort of justification that x class is bad or Y good.

4 Likes
10

No I’m telling you its really true. You will get spammed by a crapton of enemies. and just as often as not they’re going to be selecting you as the target whether you want to be or not, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

Its the nature of higher difficulty level play.

11

You are still seemingly implying i don’t play damnation at all and you just simply know better? Simply put i disagree.

12

Here go again, more obsession with what Brain Burst can and cannot do, Warp Charges stacks and buffs these provide.

On Heresy and Damnation with BB you can reliably one shot: snipers, bombers, trappers, shotgunners and gunners. I believe maulers, dogs and bursters are two shot. Everything else (except Monsters ofc) is three shot and staggers them, opening them to your attacks. Two shot and three shot info is a bit hazy for me, because guess what? Unless you have to, you don’t focus on killing those targets. Dogs are push overs unless they fly at you through enemy textures and you are the best person to staggers them when they are mixed in waves of enemies. Bursters, again you push or stagger with few shots at a safe distance. You are not supposed to be good at everything, you still serve a purpose. Know your role or find a new one.

Warp charges are easy to get and maintain through passives and you frankly care about them only if you recharge toughness on gaining a Warp Charge OR you are going for the final ascendant blaze talent. In which case you swim in Warp Charges WHEN it matters (high enemy density) through active and passive means. If you absolutely HAVE to maintain the Warp Charges stack at the maximum, just pop a random trash mob every 25 seconds. It doesn’t matter if you lose them from time to time.

Sure, veteran is faster at sniping specific specials and elites with the correct gear. This doesn’t have to be your primary role. You are there mainly to slaughter massive waves of soft targets, whilst slowing down and suppressing virtually EVERYTHING. All without worrying about ammo. You can still be a special/elite killing asset against those enemies which run (like bombers) and can be hard to hit like dogs, snipers and gunners. Being able to suppress and stagger heavy elites is also useful.

3 Likes
13

Low dps? In what scenario? Definitely not all. Vet might be quicker to kill specific enemy types, all depending on his gear. Preacher might be quicker at killing a horde in your face as long he has ammo in his flamer. However a psyker is not low dps at what they excel at. Not to mention it removes half of its utility from that argument, which is stagger, stun and suppression.

Regarding the marginal scenario where you are required to solo a monster, thanks to mobility and ability to look for other threats whilst you are charging BB or even your voidstaff, you are better positioned to survive that than you think. Clutch is difficult in general in Darktide due to health attrition and I can think of a couple of builds on Ogryn and Preacher which can be designed for that specific purpose.

14

The only thing the Psyker can do better than any other class is crowd control elites/specials with the Surge staff, and even then one could argue that bringing more DPS would be more useful.

The problem with the Psyker is not that it’s a terrible class. It’s not. The problem is that it’s severely underwhelming compared to every other class. A zealot with the flamethrower outperforms the purgatus staff by a mile and a half. The Voidstrike staff is a Plasma Gun that does half the damage. The Trauma staff is a meme, and the surge staff pidgeonholes you into being the team’s water bottle carrier. The Pysker also gets access to a boatload of guns, but none of these synergize with the Psyker’s feats and you sacrifice your class identity by choosing to use a gun (incidentally, the overload of guns also clogs up your hourly shops, so finding an actually decent staff becomes quite the lottery).

Someone could argue that the Psyker sacrifices effectiveness for being ammo independant, but the game throws so much ammo at your team that ammo rarely seems to be an issue. Besides, the Psyker has to deal with the Peril system, which results in a similar downtime and even brings the risk of incapacitating/killing the player if not managed properly.

People are entirely correct in their assessment that the Psyker is a glass cannon without the cannon part.

15

Boss+horde+mutant.

Can deal with it like a preacher (need flamer)

Cant deal with it like a psyker. Just because i need more time to kill everything. U may think - ok, i can deal with it, but salt of the situation in that u kill thing that long - u may meet another horde, or double dog spawn, or anyother massive threat.

16

No psycher really is low DPS in comparison to all the others.

Brain Burst seems to vary a great deal. Its 2-3 for Bulworks, 3-4 for Crushers, 2 for most other things, and in truth none of the Staves are very good against Specials. Only Surge works on them and its only stunlock, not really great damage.

I can Bolter down a group of Elites with specials in there or Flamer them down very quickly on the other classes. Void and Purgatus work decent enough in Hordes, but once you get Elites and Specials in there they fall apart quickly. And a single Bulwork instantly shuts that down in a hurry.

At least on Zealot you’re looking at Thunder Hammer that will make short work of a Bulwork, so you can go right back to Flamer. Of if on Eviscerator you just cleave right through the whole mess. You’re not going to survive that on Psycher once you get stalemated like that.

1 Like
17

See again, this turns into silly scenerios game which totally removes the player from this and assumes that somehow that doesn’t matter. You can fail or succed this scenerio as any class with any build.

Duelist Mk V + Voidstaff. You get enough mobility to avoid the boss, suppression and firepower to kill the horde, and burst damage with Mk V to kill the mutant after it charges at you.

18

Stagger, stun and suppression is absolutely useless. At some point you have to actually kill things. There’s a reason you don’t see all Zealots running around with the crusher. It has all the stagger you could ever want, but it doesn’t kill anything. Killing things is 100% better than just staggering things. Stuff that’s dead also don’t do any damage to you.

Anyone trying to argue that Psyker has even remotely comparable DPS to the other classes either doesn’t understand the game or the other classes, or is being disingenious. When you have plenty of playtime on all the classes, and plenty of decent gear on all of them, the difference in output is staggering.

This isn’t a skill issue. Psyker is just glass, there’s no cannon. It’s glass while doing less than the other classes.

2 Likes
19

Was this in response to the original post? Because you’re either re-iterating stuff I already said, or rebutting stuff that I never said.

To quote myself:
Brainburst as an ability is fine. Great, infact. As a utility/grenade skill it is perfectly good as compared to the grenades on other classes. If you consider the grenades to be something that you occasionally use in specific niche scenarios, it does that job just fine, with a clear use-case for tackling bombers, bulwarks, snipers, shotgunners.

1 Like
20

Nope, it isn’t as you can clearly see on the forum interface. This is my general response to the selection of my fav “opinions” also present in this topic: “psyker bad”, “staves so bad, I use guns on psyker” and “I stopped playing psyker at level 1, because weak”.