Psyker needs upgrade / fix badly

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
21

How the hell can you say something is better than something else if you’ve never used it before? How can you even begin to compare and analyze skills you’ve never used before? This sounds like forum warrior who isnt actually playing the game, just looking at the skills on paper without actually doing anything in terms of scientific method and testing stuff. Thats clown college material right there.

“I just know how it works” === “Just trust me bro”

Go play the game, your opinion is immaterial if you are just complaining that the nodes don’t support you on paper.

This is exactly what happened with veterans in patch 13, no one tested anything. They complained, and then after it settled and people played the specs they found things they liked and were incredibly effective. By then it was too late, and patch 14 bulldozed it down into something seemingly less viable.

All because people didn’t like how it looked on paper, because “I just know how it works”.

Half of your post makes assumptions that certain skills “just flat suck” but this is an opinion that I dont think many psykers share. I have used all 3 utility abilities to great effect, as well as all of our keystones. I’m also not a huge fan that warp charges are always consumed on blitz, but I can live with it, as i stated earlier in the thread. I wouldn’t mind this being shored up, and its interaction with scriers improved. The biggest issue, to me, is that our biolightning blitz sucks, and thats just a difference of opinion, not hard fact.

You like biolightning? Good for you! Use it then. But wait, you don’t. Nor have you ever. But you’re here arguing that its better than the abilities you use. The fact that you say kinetic flayer and brainburst is the hands down the worst node, then you go on to say that you exclusively use these nodes makes me scratch my head. If you think the other node is better, then use it and be your best self? No you can’t because you HAVE to be the melee psyker, but you don’t like the melee offering. So then go play zealot man. You might be surprised just how strong scriers gaze with illisi is after playing zealot for a good while. Its like you get a nice mix of blazing piety + inexorable judgement.

You make some good points in your post about utility and problems with certain abilities, but its all muddled with these opinions presented as facts that just scream to me “lack of experience and actual playtesting”. Psykers getting buffed would lead us to ruin. I realize that in your post, near the end, you say you just want better synergy or whatever, but in reality what you’re asking for is a buff. Let’s not sugar coat it. Even QoL changes will buff us, and thats scary to me. I think people who ask for fixes and changes need to first be able to utilize the abilities to their full potential, otherwise they arent really in a position to determine if it needs to be “brought up” or not. The fact that you feel like you cannot compete in melee as a psyker with scriers is a big red flag to me. If we had nodes that added 10% melee damage or 10% melee attack speed, I’m afraid that zealots would start coming around being like “Psykers just a better zealot”. You already get veterans complaining psykers are better veterans than vets. Which is nuts. But here we are.

My big fear here is that you get your melee nodes and we give up something far more precious in return. Getting monkey’s pawed by Fatshark is a real thing. Look at the vet tree changes in patch 14.

Oh… yes, I have to agree with this. Soulblaze is kinda crappy, especially compared to something like bleed. I’m somewhat afraid to what would happen if we did get soulblaze buffs though. Like i said, Psyker is already extremely powerful right now, I think it just lacks some of the “get out of jail” cards that other classes get. That and yeah some of our nodes are a little lackluster or we have some bad anti-synergies, but this is a problem a lot of classes have, and doesnt warrant an “upgrade”, more of QoL fix… and even then… its a buff, so…

22

If it isn’t obvious from the placement, you take Assail on Gun psyker and use that to deal with shooters suppressing you. It’s super effective.

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23

You can, but i can still control shooters with just a columnus V and scriers. I’ll concede assail is faster for a burst clear on a bunch of entrenched shooters.

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24

If you are good enough, absolutely. Assail is just easier sometimes and saves you ammo.

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25

The suppression immunity, recoil cut, confirmed kill, out for blood or exhilarating + whatever other gimmicks for kill toughness? Exe stance is for more than just shooters, and competently deals with all shooters instead of doubling down on your build and leaving you with melee alone for elites. I mean it also kinda doubles into it not being a strong loadout not contending with the entire game competently.

This is also why I would agree with you that the best use of it is being zippy and using a voidstrike and not any of this pretentious double blind builds with melee focus for elites as psyker. Like this is not an average skill loadout, or even a high performing one either. Its pretty in need of an actual boost to the variety of builds you could use with it. Suppression immunity I think would be a given if you want to actually shoot guns. Even as a modifer node, it should be there for this not fun gimmick to at least not fall apart under any pressure.

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26

There is definitely some situations you can get yourself in where you just get lit up, but if you’re utilizing the “crit makes you dodge” node paired with the “crit gives you 15% movespeed and toughness” node, you are effectively immune to suppression for that period of time, if you keep those crits going, the good times keep going too. Getting hammered from behind by a reaper can happen to any of us. Vet with exec stance included. But you’re right vet definitely gets way more tools to deal specifically with ranged shooters, but you know Psyker has a ton of toughness regen nodes at the top if you really wanna stack your tough regen, you just have to give up some of that sweet sweet dps. That said, even in melee when im in scriers, gunners just ignore me because i am always critting and im swinging so damn fast i only need to crit around 33% to maintain my defensive immunity. My build is definitely not doubling down on melee for elites (most elite kills are just faster with a gun), though you do cleave through waves of elites like butter while in scriers (very weapon dependent obviously) and can deal incredibly well with rager packs where even zealots, ogryns, and vets “fall apart under pressure”. Well, ogryn’s are pretty tough, so not always. We just don’t talk about Ogryns.

The build favours fast firing guns heavily. It makes slow firing guns not viable with scriers, I admit, but saying that this build is a gimmick is disingenuous. Its viable in auric maelstrom (well, except the no ammo one, obviously), and I have the receipts to prove it. To my mind the fact that we are squishier than most classes is balanced by the fact that we put out so much damage.

Would i be upset if we got some survivability bumps? No. Would I be opposed to it having it cast a wider net in terms of viability? Nope. But like i said, any more buffs to the psyker might lead us to a path of ruin. If you make it easier for me to do what I do on a gun psyker i can see vets complaining. Hell, they’re already complaining.

27

Kinda clickbait thread title but sharing my opinions anyway because the class is amazing

Psyker Don’t need “badly” fixes, no. ( not including gun psyker because i don’t play it, hate the concept and it mess with the skill tree with talents slots unusable on staffs )

i took a peek on someone saying soulblaze isn’t reliable and i strongly disagree. both related talents are the best offensive talents on psyker atm for all builds.

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brain burst : slight cast speed increase to avoid being constantly dependant on kinetic resonance
Kinetic flayer should not trigger on anything but Elites/specials/monster ( this was asked since launch and left over )

The only blitz i found viable because how reliable it is, little love is welcome.

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Smite very little purpose, unless you lack on CC (surge, guns) synergize well with soulblazes, left click is useless.
A big fix here should be the swapping reactivity, cancel itself when you go for you staff while holding right click a bit too early ( same with surge staff )
The smites increases talents are a waste of points at best.

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Assails should straightly be replaced, don’t like auto aim ez clear talent, thankfully it’s not as effective on hardest available content as it used too, but still, replace it, yikes.

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Kinetic shield so strong currently, beside from the visual effects kinda annoying, while the Dome should be also smaller to make it’s secondary path more appealing, the wall shield should be bigger.
A little CD nerf should be considered also.

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Scrier gaze again gun psyker denature the class tree to me, but here i think for a gunpsyker, the cd should be shortened or peril generation and the stop on kill need a good tweak.

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Disrupt destiny since weakspot are more for melee/gun, barely usable on voidstrike, well same opinion here.

Would have tested the reliability of the stacks since i think 25 meters is really short, but doesn’t work on VR or is it not fixed, so, little opinion.

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other :
peril block has no drawback, must have on psyker since the class has the lowest base stam, don’t think it should be that far in the tree.

Force weapons need the peril block built in, not unbalanced now the infinite dodge is gone and the bullet block cone is very small too, why not ?
Buff it’s damage to monsters on charged hits.

Monster damage on psyker is abyssmall with warps attacks, force weapons and Headpop is the only one option beside rapier/knife

Aura kinetic presence should be replaced, nerf to 5% add nothing, 10% was too much only because it stacks but now you NEED having it stacking to be usable.

28

Stop. Its a very strong ability. So many people come in here and say this. It works for melee and range. It has a very short cooldown. It’s buff persists for 10 seconds after the ability ends.

After they fixed DD target prioritization it is amazing and really fun to play.

29

Oh boy, what a mess.

This all comes down to how anyone plays.
Reading that Smite is useless really makes me cringe.

I agree that Scrier Gaze is bad but just because that should have been a Veteran ability, not a Psyker one.

30

If you referring to my post read again, that not what i was saying.
If not, ignore.

31

I would really just like warp charge cooldown to work for SG and for BR to get better Ogryn elite break points. Also cerebral laceration as a sub node for BR would be pretty sweet

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32

This is a team ability.
Oh boy would it be bad for everyone else, if the dome moved around with the psyker…
At least in the hands of most psyker players.

If anything, this should be optional.
Press cast to deploy bubble.
Hold cast to create small “sticky“ bubble.
Or maybe allow the psyker to pick the deployed bubble up.

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33

None of these actually force you to leave the dome.

Nothing prevents you from fighting melee enemies inside the dome. The dome actually offers plenty of space to dodge attacks, and it provides toughness regen.

You do not abandon your position for bursters.
You walk a few steps forward, then push them over and dodge backwards.

I am pretty sure that attacks of flamethrowers and bombers do not get through the bubble from outside.
If the guys get inside, they are in melee range.

Bosses (except assassination targets) are pure melee enemies.
The only non melee thing is the beast of nurgle vomit.
You can use the bubble against beast of nurgle because the bubble shields you from the vomit.
So not only can you use the bubble when fighting bosses, it is actually increidbly useful against beast of nurgle.

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34

To point out one thing, fire grenade drops at edge of the shield and fire spreads through half of the shield’s ground.

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35

Maybe that is something that should be looked at.
Imo the bubble should delete and prevent all fire on the floor.

36

The shield should bounce the grenade back to the thrower. Boing.

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37

Yeah, you’re missing the point of Smite.

Smite is not for you (the player), Smite is for the rest of the party.
You don’t use it because you “lack CC”, you use it because you stunlock a huge group giving your party the time to take out the most dangerous enemies.

Usage makes the skill.

38

Not reading.

39

I agree with some of the points, certainly, not regarding the power level, but the base design.
Scrier’s Gaze:
Yes, I’ve used it with guns, and while it was fun, and worked, it’s worse than just using a staff.
But it’s best use, to me, is with a blade. Psyker really lacks good melee build options, which is a bit sad as it has a superb arsenal built on precision and damage multipliers. >
I do agree however that it doesn’t feel good. It’s putting you on a timer, and now you have the feeling of time pressure without a lot of feeling of reward, as at the end it lasts just a scant few more seconds and any time you extend the duration delays the cooldown.

If the cooldown started the moment the ability started, and was just a bit longer, this would be less of a problem: It would work just like Executioner’s stance, while still having an effective maximum timer due to scaling Peril. It would also fix all the issues with cooldown reduction it currently has.
And with a bit longer linger duration and a longer base cooldown, the ability could feel a lot more pleasant to use. If the devs fear over-synergy, Ogryn’s “Maximum Firepower” shows that ability cooldown speed can be modified temporarily, so SG could halve cooldown progression while active, if deemed necessary.

Edit: It’s Scrier’s Gaze. Wouldn’t it be nice if it visually highlighted ranged enemies and specials that target you? Aka, the Psyker using the ability. Precognitive awareness of threats to come.

Disrupt Destiny
The biggest problem to me is that it just feels bad. The power is definitely there, and I’m ok with being incentivised to target an otherwise secondary enemy for temporary buffs.
But it ends up just feeling like a constant goose chase, even disregarding the issues with auto-tagging.
It’s not practical, but it can be necessary. A charged DD and SG can be the difference between one-shotting everything short of a crusher, and needing 3+ headshots for a dreg rager.
I think if the stacks just started falling off after the duration, with the falloff increasing in speed, it’d feel a lot less punishing to miss a hit by a fraction of a second.
Maybe even with a small base buff that is not dependent on stacks.
Meanwhile, the short term buff for killing a target could do with being twice as long, and in turn maybe toned down a little.
The end result should be that hitting a target every 5-10 seconds should grant a noticable buff, while the stacks work similar to now without the constant looming threat of losing everything, at once.

Edit2: Maybe a sub-node that gives you a bonus against the currently designnated target?
Also, if stacks start slowly falling off after a while, hitting a designated target in a weakspot could pause the falloff, even if you don’t get the kill yourself - this would feel organic and less punishing.

Edit3: Venting Shriek could do with more meaningful subnodes.
Creeping Flames has a defined use case, but Warp Rupture… Might as well not be there.
If that instead projected a sparky cloud forward for 10 meters that stunned and ‘brittled’ enemies in a line, or something similarly modifying, it would have a usecase by virtue of changing the use case.
Maybe with a third alternative that made it work a bit like a Zealot’s Relic, causing 2-3 weaker pulses in a 360° AoE.

40

Nope, you just don’t understand the skill.