Shriek needs the soulblaze ticks toned down or a heavy increase to its cooldown. It often times wipes hordes back to back and with the current horde spawns being progression based instead of a timer it’s very easy to just delete the screen constantly as things spawn (especially since psyker has cdr based on elites kills, where elite kills also give more soulblaze stacks on enemies, which in turn will kill more enemies and heavily damage elites). There is no reason to choose the 200 damage over this effect as one will always outpace and snowball with huge interactions and benefits from uncanny strike or other power related blessings/perks while the other is just 200 damage on everything.
Bubbleshield is far too large and has way too much health for something that completely turns off all ranged interactions for a significant amount of time while also healing the player and buffing damage reduction. More than 1/2 of the game’s interactions are ranged based, from ranged elites like gunners and reapers to ranged specialists like trappers, snipers, and flamers. None of these can do anything while this is up and psyker already has plenty of tools that can stagger or outright kill anything firing at it, giving it not only extreme longevity but a huge boost to psyker’s damage uptime. Cut the shield’s size down, reduce how long it can stay up, and further reduce the bonuses the player’s receive from being inside it.
Wallshield is in a much better state in terms of balance, but I would prefer if it were more versatile, especially in comparison to the above. Give a boost when players cross through it, either to movement speed, attack speed, or tdr, but not all of the above. Planting it onto the ground should also emit a small radius of medium stagger to man-sized enemies and light stagger to ogryns, while monstrosities continue to ignore it. This adds a tactical layer especially to the 2 charge variant, using shield as a tool of aggression to push forward and attack, and as a disruption tool in compact mixed hordes.
Brain Rupture has too much cast time reduction tied to ability and Empowered Psionics. If it were sped up but had the cast time bonus from EP either removed or nerfed it would be in a far better state. Other than that, probably the most balanced of psyker’s blitz options.
Smite is the most boringly overpowered blits in the game and makes playing with psyker a god awful experience. It’s an ability made obsolete by psyker’s far better horde clear and special management options in the form of staves, but is often taken because it absolutely turns off all gameplay interaction on the player’s end. It actively encourages players to sit inside of corners to have the most effective visual reach of all enemies, can easily be quelled, and auto quells when you reach the self-detonation threshold. It simply should not be in the game at all in this state. Heavily reduce the amount of entities grabbed from infinity to 2, make it deal a reasonable amount of damage (less than brainburst, more than assails) and make their death explosion stagger nearby enemies, scaling based on size of enemies (a poxwalker shouldn’t stagger a rager, but a bulwark should be able to explode and knock a crusher to the ground). This leans more into the difficult nature of channeling in the middle of combat, makes it unique from assails or brainburst, and requires the player to kill things in order to reap rewards, rather than only gaining value as long as things remain alive in its effect. Furthermore, the two nodes should be changed, where one node will turn smite into a single target but heavy damage ability but can only target one enemy at a time(essentially a boss killer), while the other point would be as it is now, extending the amount of targets smite can reach by one (or buffed to two). Choosing one node will lock the other out, and can be used to further illustrate the difference between the primary fire and the secondary fire (the primary fire becomes much more useful as a quick damage/stagger burst option, while the charged attack is better for choosing which target to hit.)
Assails have far too many charges. They get an insane damage multiplier from Disrupt Destiny, can stagger and suppress gunners out of their firing stance, and when paired with things like perilous combustion delete entire hordes from the game by taking a couple elites out from a decent range. You can’t really resolve these issues with nerfs to damage, as it will still be incredibly spammable, just eventually be unviable, instead they should have their charges significantly dropped to a far more reasonable number like 3 or 4 (I’d even argue for only having 2 avaialble at a given time and plus 2 from the maelstrom modifier). This makes the blitz an option you weave in between your other ranged and melee options to maximize its benefits. This would also force spammers to use Empowered Psionics instead of Disrupt Destiny, significantly reducing damage potential (it would not be enough as EP still gives them infinite charges with no peril costs, but it would be a step in the right direction).
Peril is a very broad problem to psyker and requires a significant overhaul for it to matter. You can largely ignore it or stick to around 80% with any psyker weapon that costs peril and you will never have issues at all. It has no significant debuffs or side effects to it, just that when you build to 100% you explode after a few seconds, but if you quell, you gain toughness, and as you build it, you gain toughness, and fighting in combat using peril mechanics rewards you with toughness as well. There’s also nodes that provide tdr and damage and they are extremely cheap to acquire, with only 1 aura in the game locked out of toughness damage reduction, and requiring only 2 points of deviation from the left or right keystones to acquire a 20% damage buff. It is far too easy to quell, maintain, and gain benefits from peril compared to the singular downside of it. It requires an extensive series of changes, from removing auto quelling, to limiting the manual quell per second significantly.
When you combine all of the different possible loadouts, you get an extremely unhealthy and toxic class. Smite bubbleshield psyker turns off all gameplay interactions by disabling everything, effectively holding the lobby hostage to their demands of an extremely slow and boring game. Smiting while enemies are under the effect of soulblaze will still spread soulblaze to other targets, leading to massive snowballs from perilous combustion, making EP smite shriek an incredibly low effort but effective build that still turns off gameplay. Trauma, voidstrike, and purgatus are incredibly effective with no mechanical counter measures to stop them or significantly prevent them from steamrolling a map. This makes the game incredibly frustrating to play with a psyker as all of these tools are iconic to the class, and since there is no lobby or map selection options, you will often times find yourself waiting for one of the 3 only fun modifiers in the game, and having to leave lobby after lobby trying to find the melee only maelstrom that doesn’t have a smite psyker, a trauma staff psyker, a voidstrike psyker, or a purgatus shriek uncanny strike psyker. Going from loading screen to loading screen over and over again for these lobbies, then for people to die and leave mid mission and get instantly replaced by one of these psykers is incredibly aggravating.
