This patch has been really fun. I’d say it has been a success, but of course there’s gonna be bugs, and eventually they’ll have to be ironed out.
Although, there are a couple of bugs that I’m very fond of and would like to stick around in some manner by iterating on how current skills are supposed to function.
I’m currently abusing TWO major bugs with Psyker right now:
- Telekine Shield + Warp Siphon – As long as you have any Warp Charges, you can cast Telekine Shield with no cooldown cost.
- For some reason this weird interaction only works between the two (Venting Shriek and Scrier’s Gaze doesn’t work).
- This allows me to play a more active role at defending my teammates, pushing us forward through firing lines while I defend them with Dome Shields. It’s extremely rewarding whenever teammates thank me for it.
- Smite + Empowered Psionics – By consuming 1 stack of Empower, Smite does not cost peril to maintain channeling, resulting in literally unlimited power.
- One of the tradeoffs that you need to come to terms with is that by being a CC Psyker, you are forgoing a lot of offensive utility in order to enable the rest of your team. With this bug, you become more efficient with being a support with less downtime and better damage output.
Now on to suggestions, I don’t want to bore you with more rambling. I also have a few suggestions to other things that doesn’t necessarily relate to these bugs, but more of a general suggestion.
- Smite
- Allow players to be able to immediately channel with Lock-on Attack (LMB) while in the middle of a sprint
- For some reason, you can smoothly transition between sprinting and Charging an attack (RMB), but doesn’t work the same with the Lock-on attack. This feels very clunky and makes it a less feasible option to use compared to the other firing mode (although, there’s a much bigger reason why).
- Increase Lock-on attack (LMB) damage by 50% and has a 10% Critical Chance. Now only has 1 channeling beam (max, cannot spread) that can chain into 2 other enemies, dealing 100% damage to subsequent enemies.
- In its current iteration, Smite’s two firing modes are functionally the same except the Lock-on attack deals less damage and affects less enemies. This change is to distinctly set each firing mode apart from each other – Lock-on attack being more damage oriented (being able to trigger and benefit Critical bonuses), while Charge mode is purely for crowd control at the cost of low damage.
- Allow players to be able to immediately channel with Lock-on Attack (LMB) while in the middle of a sprint
- Warp Siphon
- Change – Your next Combat Ability spends all available Warp Charges to reduce the Cooldown of that Combat Ability by 7.5 → 20% per Warp Charge, to a maximum of 80% cooldown reduction.
- This is to retain some of the power that the bugged interaction between Telekine Shield and Warp Siphon has. The conjunction of Quickening, Seer’s Presence, and 4 stacks of Warp Charges multiplicatively working together, a Telekine Shield would have a cooldown of 6.6 seconds. Not as instant as before, but would still be very powerful. This also plays a lot more into the “Cooldown-centric” playstyle fantasy of Warp Siphon as a Keystone talent.
- This is also to recapture the old interaction between Warp Siphon, Warp Battery, and Quick prior to Patch 13 (which yielded 75% cooldown reduction at 6 Warp Siphon stacks).
- Put a cap of 80% cooldown reduction to make sure it doesn’t interact weird when Warp Battery is taken as a talent.
- Change – Your next Combat Ability spends all available Warp Charges to reduce the Cooldown of that Combat Ability by 7.5 → 20% per Warp Charge, to a maximum of 80% cooldown reduction.
- Empowered Psionics
- Empowered Smite : +30% Damage, -90% Peril Cost Reduction while channeling
- One thing that the bugged interaction allowed you to do is to be able to infinitely hold your Charge attack at no peril cost even if there are no enemies around. This means that you can go from room to room by dodge-sliding, all the while you still have your hand opened up and ready to connect with any enemies that show up. This change would still allow for Smite being channeled for a very long time (especially if you have Battle Meditation talent), but would still slowly rack up Peril and eventually the player would have to engage with the rest of the game normally (unless they already gained a stack, which means they can just do it all over again).
- Empowered Smite : +30% Damage, -90% Peril Cost Reduction while channeling
- Misc.
- Unlucky for Some is a weird talent that is an easy skip for a lot of players, especially when it has to contend with One With The Warp. I have no suggestions I can think of aside from reworking it entirely as something that’s either more powerful or more interactive than its current effect while keeping it in line as a support talent.
- Warp Rupture’s damage is extremely undertuned. It barely kills the smaller unarmored enemies with a full build on Heresy.
- Scrier’s Gaze – is bugged, I think? Killing enemies does not slow down peril generation at all. I don’t even know if killing enemies is supposed to either vent peril, or pause peril generation, or something. At the moment, killing enemies does nothing.
- It’s weird that Scrier’s Gaze doesn’t have any modifier nodes that relates to dodging especially when it has a couple prior to it.
- Reality Anchor rework suggestion – Dodging reduces current peril by 20%. Successfully dodging an attack counts as 1s spent in Scrier’s Gaze. This is the best I could think of especially because I don’t even know what killing enemies is supposed to do with peril.