Damage scales with Staff Rating (I’m thinking about 50% at max rating, just so it stays competitive on higher difficulties)
Charge time lowered to 1.5s
Instead of fully charge to pop a head, charge until a kill is secured or fully charged (this would really help us maintain stacks a lot easier on a horde).
Brain Burst should always prioritize elites and specials in the scope that’s what it’s meant for.
Melee Weapons:
Force Sword with actual cleave and a cleave special charge that pops lots of heads.
Staffs
Surge Staff - missing its own left click attack - it should be a single lightning attack capable of stunning (for a shorter while) a single mob.
Trauma Staff should have have a left click lobbable ball similar to Sienna equivalent staff.
Traits:
A neutral trait line: Does not focus on BBing or weapons - more defensive
A weapon trait line: Focus on buffing weapons
A BB trait line: Focus on buffing BB
Currently, we have primarily just Brain Burst feats that… feel really lackluster considering its usefulness in higher difficulties and 2 feats that work off weapons and a few neutral ones that doesn’t really fit in anywhere.
Hmm. Yes, that’s all really. I don’t mind the BB, but in a fast paced game it charges far too slow, it should also scale so that it is useful on higher difficulties. Currently it feels a bit meh in terms of damage and the biggest and most useful damn change would be that it pops when a kill is secured/fully charged as well as it prioritizing elites/specials over anything else.
Stronger - yes, by having appropriate weapons. You know, how every other weapon functions?
Faster - yes, because 2 second charge time is too long.
Prioritizing Elites/Specials in its scope - yes, because that is the whole reason for brain burst in the first place something that is impossible in a horde…
I don’t know why you’re arguing that this isn’t a problem for Psykers, we all know BB is useless on Malice or higher. Even an Ogryn can kill an elite and special faster than we can - and we’re supposed to be Elite and Special killers - what part of that even remotely makes sense to you?
Psyker’s only redeeming fact is that they can lock down enemies permanently. You know what, I’d like to be able to use the entire class other than just Surging constantly.
Your suggestions seem too overkill here, the Psyker is currently still a strong pick at all difficulty levels.
On difficulty 3 you can oneshot most specials with BB which makes it a very strong tool. There are no buffs required on this difficulty.
On difficulty 4 your TTK doubles with BB, which is the source of all issues with this kit. Difficulty 4+ heavily nerfs your main tool for getting warp charges and forces you to use passive warp charge generator perks.
The way to improve psyker on difficulty 4+ is to normalize how BB works (or at the very least allow it to oneshot dogs, snipers and grenadiers on all difficulties). This buff would require other balancing changes though, since the psyker is already one of the stronger picks for difficulty 4+.
I think people come at the psyker thinking that BB is it’s signature role and ability. This would be like saying that the signature ability of the veteran is their grenade throw. We don’t expect a single grenade toss to disable every special or elite in a single toss.
I think BB could use a slight buff.
But I think the bigger issue is that IF warp charges are supposed to this psyker class’s primary “thing” it has to manipulate, I think how warp charges are gained needs to be more varied. The 4% chance on kill could be a passive ability at level 1. Kills with the force sword special attack should generate a war charge. Elite/special Kills with force staves should have a % chance to gain warp charges, etc. Things like this would take the pressure off needing to rely on BB for warp charges so much.
Again, no. The only reason why it is a strong pick is because it happens to have a staff that can stun everything not a boss type mob. That is the only reason the Psyker is currently strong and a must have on higher difficulties.
The rest of its kit which is all about killing specials and elites - is simply not functional in its current state which is just laughable when an Ogryn and Zealot kills them faster than you.
The only way to fix that is to fix BB by increasing the damage it does, reduce the charge time, have it actually prioritize elites/specials in the scope (the scope not the screen) and not have to necessarily fully charge it if that is not necessary.
You think this is all about using just brain burst… No. I can do that already if I so please. This doesn’t stop that, this just makes it do what it was supposed to do in the first place, the entire reason for it being a thing on Psyker. To dispatch the damn enemies it is supposed to dispatch without you pointlessly building peril because a Zealot decided to use a Bolter - because that’s the current reality.
Psykers is a CC bot and nothing more. There’s absolutely no reason to pretend it’s anything more than that. There’s no point in me BBing anything, 'cos the minute I do try - a Zealot or Vet will already have used their Bolter or the Ogryn wound up its minigun/nade launcher and killed it. No Psyker worth their salt spends any time using it aside from maybe keeping their stacks up while being in a low density mob area.
You can seriously see who’s actually playing Psyker and who is not, 'cos you’ll not find a single Psyker saying BBing is worth using… At all outside of maybe Monstrocities - even so a Plasma Gun is better… Hussar.
Again, your suggestion that fatshark should reduce BB charge time, increase its damage, and so-on is overkill.
If the devs implemented all of these buffs at the same time, Psyker would be hands down the strongest class in the game.
BB is weakened at difficulty 4+ because of the number of hits it takes to kill specials and elites. I think the way to balance it properly is to make it behave like it does in difficulty 3 (allow it to oneshot hounds, etc), but if you apply this straight up buff then you have to find another way to counterbalance the class.
The psyker is currently good but the kit is all wonky and you have to play the class a certain way for it to be good. Providing a straight up buff to BB would make the class too good. The tricky part is balancing the class without making BB useless at difficulty 4+
Current charge time is 2s, most of which is pointless because by the time you’re 2/3 of the way through the target is almost guaranteed dead - unless you have a very nice Vet or Zealot that doesn’t attack the blue head lighting up.
Reducing that to 1.5s would actually allow your BBs to go off.
Current damage (aside from crits) are 825 damage, or 412.5 DPS. My 400 Rating Purgatory Staff 700 → DPS to everything in range. My Surge staff does 900 to the first hit and my Voidstrike does 800 in its explosion radius. Giving it a 0 - 50% boost from staff rating does not make it overpowered, it would merely let it have 1237,5 damage and 620-something DPS on a single target, including 1.5s charge time would take that up to 825 dps - which is less than what all staff can pump out if they’re perfect and would actually let us be capable of taking out specials and elites without being overshadowed by a damn Zealot. Letting it prioritize is just QoL change so is having it pop heads sooner if they don’t need a full charge.
None of that is game breaking. It’s not going to let you kill a Mauler, Mutant, Ogryn, Rager or similar in 1 hit, it’s going to take 2-3 hit on Heresy and 3-4 on Damnation - which is still longer than a Zealot with a bolter.
Again, when you’ve actually played a Psyker on Damnation, you understand how much you are just relegated to the CC bot role. That’s all you can do, because your skill to deal with actual elites and specials - does not deal with elites and specials… It doesn’t even tickle them and it takes far too long to charge to even be remotely useful before that stuff is in your face and since you can’t take them out like a Vet can (even though that’s the entire point of that ability), if you don’t want to be absolute dead weight your only option is to use Surge staff to stun everything in sight. That is extremely stale gameplay.
I would like to be able to use the other staffs too without feeling like I drag the team down. Currently, I cannot.
Ill be honest when it comes to the force sword, my opinion on it has vastly changed. IMO its fine as is, and truth be told is probably his best weapon.
Force sword has INSANE reach, its alt fire ability can one shot maulers on malice with a power attack and deals massive damage to pretty much anything.
On top of that the force sword seems to have been excluded from the dodge nerf or im just not noticing it becuase i can dodge for days with it and its insanly good with its dodge.
On top of that its the only weapon taht can block ranged attacks aside from the shield, It does however imo need to have the stam usage to block ranged reduced, right now im sitting at 30% improved block, and one gunner can still take all my stam in a single burst.
BB’s damage feels right on diff 3, horrible on 4 and 5. So the first step would be to normalize the damage it does.
I do agree that the 2 second charge is too long, things are dead before that, or the trapper trapped you before BB pops his head. The slow charge time makes keeping up warp charges a real chore. Thats why most psykers take the auto BB and charge on kill feats.
I use the feat that grants BB charge speed on ult, and for those 10 seconds, BB doesn’t feel terrible to use and you actually feel impactful.
Maybe that feat should be integrated into warp charges, where each charge grants 5-7% charge speed.
This way you can actually feel your power ramping up as you gain charges.
BB only granting a charge on kill is a problem too, especially during bossfights. Change this to on hit.
I’m currently running surge staff, and I do enjoy being the cc tesla coil. But in the current state, thats litterally all I do, with auto charge generation. Because it’s too hard to keep charges up with BB on heresy.