Psyker needs a complete rework

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

Psyker needs a complete rework as it just does not work at higher difficulties. I kept on leveling it hoping that it would eventually get better but now that I am 30, it is evident that the class will remain useless in its current state. It is so bad that I honestly feel robbed of the 40 hours I’ve invested in leveling my psyker and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I started the beta with a group of friends (2 zealots and a veteran) and psyker was decent at first. But the moment we passed level 20 and started playing heresy+ difficulties, my psyker’s effectiveness just plummeted off a cliff and became nonexistent. Here are the issues I have with it.

  1. Brainburst is a TERRIBLE ability. Its slow casting time means that you’ll rarely get any elite/specials kills with it. When you are playing heresy+ difficulties with a group of lvl 25+ who know what they are doing, all the specials and elites instantly die to bolters before you can even get a single cast off. Also, because brainburst does not have any scaling, you eventually need to start hitting elites and specials 3-4 times to kill them on higher difficulties. This is just not worth the time when you consider that a single zealot or veteran with a bolter can kill a chaos ogryn in 2 seconds. Sure, one of your lvl 30 traits makes it cast faster after you use your ult (this honestly needs to be the default speed), but this just makes brainburst reliable and passably ‘okay’ only for a combined total of maybe 30 seconds an entire mission. The issue with brainburst leads to the second problem.

  2. Warp charge management is a complete joke. They decay way too quick and the quintessential psyker experience playing on malice and higher is as follows: spot an elite/special->start casting brainburst->the zealot with a bolter one taps said elite/special->generate peril but no warp charge-> spot another elite/special->begin casting brainburst-> the veteran one taps said elite/special with a bolter or plasma gun->you are now sitting at 40 peril with absolutely no warp charges->end up using brainburst on a random poxwalker to generate a warp charge because you gotta do SOMETHING. This is the core gameplay loop of the psyker at higher levels and it makes psyker the most frustrating and unrewarding class to play in not just a fatshark game, but any game i’ve played in my 30 years of being alive. I’ve played games with bad class designs, but I don’t think Ive ever played a class this dysfunctional. The only reliable way to maintain your stacks of warp charges is to pause every 5 seconds to brainburst a poxwalker and that is not my idea of fun or engaging gameplay. I don’t even bother targeting elites or specials with brainburst anymore because there’s no point.

  3. The signature weapons are terrible. Force sword has the potential to be good, but the fact that it locks you into a 2 second animation before the damage even gets conveyed means that most times, things that warrant you using your force sword special attack on will die before you even finish channeling your attack animation. You can animation cancel eviscerator and chainsword special attacks and bypass the animation of sawing through targets, dismembering them instantly the moment your sword hits targets, but you cannot do the same for the force sword. It locks you into that 2 second animation that leaves you incredibly vulnerable. Also, because its special attack has no cleave unlike the eviscerator, you ALWAYS hit some random poxwalker instead of a priority threat when you’re in the thick of it. This makes the force sword absolutely worthless as an offensive tool as its normal attacks deal little cleave and has very low damage. In fact, this is why I no longer even bother using the special ability. The only reason I still run the force sword is because the crowd control from the shoves is decent during hordes. The staves also leave a LOT to be desired which explains why I literally do not see anyone using them past malice difficulty. They simply deal too little damage to warrant the amount of peril they generate. Another big issue here is that your force sword and staves do not interact with your class kit- aka no way to generate warp charges with them.

These are the 3 major issues that to me, makes psyker incredibly unfun to play. My friends and I are VT/VT2 cata players who generally play at a higher level and my psyker has been relegated to the role of ‘ablative wound’ in tabletop terms because it doesn’t do anything other than just being there to be a warm body. The majority of my runs are spent shooting ranged enemies with a lasgun while our zealots attempt to close the gap, whacking the occasional mob that somehow makes it past 3 bolters + 2 eviscerators + a power sword, and spamming force sword shove during hordes. I don’t get to do any of the psykery shenanigans because the class’s core features simply do not work for higher difficulties with an experienced group. Most of my runs I feel like a significantly worse veteran. If something isn’t done to remedy these 3 points, nobody is going to play psyker for anything higher than malice difficulty. As a VT sienna main, I really wanted to like psyker and I spent 40 hours telling myself “surely I have to be playing this wrong. Surely there’s gotta be a way to make something work.” But at this point, it is clear that the design of the class itself is just fundamentally flawed.

15 Likes
2

I haven’t played much at Heresy+, but I’ve definitely noticed how Brain Burst not scaling is a huge issue for the class. Going from 1-shot to 2 or even 3 shots is a huge difference due to how slow the ability is.

The ability truly feels way worse at Heresy so far.

I have a feeling this criticism is a quite accurate.

However, I think you’re being a bit hyperbolic. The class doesn’t need a “complete rework”, mostly just tuning to a bunch of numbers and improving Warp Charge dissipation and bonus.

6 Likes
3

Brain Burst is a joke on 4 or 5 difficulty, Psyker is good or even great but only on two weapons (surge staff, voidstrike staff). I constantly maitain my warp charges because of 3 talents and only use BB on Crushers, Bulwarks, Snipers and Bombers, anything else is waste of time. Force sword is garbage because of peril cost, pushing should be your reflex in tide games and now it can blow you up. Trauma staff is OK but too slow and Purge staff is a joke just like flamestorm staff on anyone but BW. Playing melee Psyker without escape ability and with a low HP pool is not optimal at best.

4 Likes
4

I wholeheartedly agree with basically all of your points.

The fact that Brain Burst not only takes the same amount of time to cast and costs the same amount of Peril regardless of who is targeted, gives the same amount of Warp Charges regardless of who’s killed, does not refund any Peril if a kill is stolen from you, but further lacks any damage scaling is quite frankly ridiculous. Even a Poxhound will require 2 or so bursts to kill on higher difficulties, which makes the basic act of saving a team mate difficult.

This isn’t even considering how every other class performs way better where Psykers suffer:

  1. Zealot has way better close-quarters and tanking potential than them.
  2. Ogryns have way more crowd control and overall beefiness.
  3. And, last but not least, Veterans can straight up just make Psykers obsolete in both ranged combat and utility.

A decent Veteran player with a legendary Bolter can out-DPS a Psyker; they can kill Elites faster and never have to deal with any of the downsides Psykers have for their damage potential. Psykers, when casting Brain Burst, are slowed to a crawl—the feat ‘Mind in Motion’ does not mitigate this—and they have to juggle Peril management on top of that or risk getting automatically incapacitated. Meanwhile, Veterans only ever have to deal with brief reloads and, given ammo is everywhere, they never really have to deal with running dry.

This is all without even considering that Psyker weapons—their staffs, guns, and melee options—are all good-but-not-great at best and really not that good at worst.

Mix all of this together and you’ve created the potential for Psykers to be more detrimental than beneficial on higher difficulties (4-5), which is not a good feeling.

6 Likes
5

I am forced to agree, my Psyker is at level 29 now and even with randoms I’ve found the signature abilities and weapons to be mostly redundant. The psyker is just too slow, and the melee damage too weak.

TBH, most of the real issues could be addressed by improving the traits available to the psyker; allowing void blade damage to scale with peril to a greater extent then it currently does would be a good start, speeding the base charge rate of Brain Burst, as to the staff weapons… perhaps have them aid in passively generating Warp Charges. All of this could be done with traits.

I’d also add that the Void Blade special as it is now should activate on a Heavy Attack where as on light attacks it should apply a fixed percentage damage increase and a solid cleave for a fixed time(just use the horizontal swings).

3 Likes