Having played a ton of the psyker class since the original beta, these most recent nerfs make the class absolutely pathetic. All of them, especially combined, makes the class worse at everything compared to every other class. It no longer has any niche, even in elite killing.
Not only does the head pop build far too much peril to begin with for the time it takes to actually employ, and doesn’t do nearly enough damage in the first place, it now builds so much peril that around 3 uses in a row without spending an extended period of time quelling will kill you. You can almost kill yourself eliminating a single large elite like a reaper or bulwark, and this is supposed to be an elite killing class.
That’s even worse combined with the fact that peril is built in huge amounts with any psyker ability or force weapon. You are expected to use these, but they build so much peril that alongside your head popping, the psyker spends the majority of the game doing nothing but quelling, or dies.
That might not even be as bad if it wasn’t for no doubt the worst nerf of all. The psykers ult doesn’t even quell all peril any more (which it still says it does in the tutorial by the way). 50%? That’s useless. You get maybe one extra head pop for that huge cooldown with what’s supposed to be your most powerful ability. If anything needs to change, it’s that.
There are more nerfs too, like the toughness recovery perks, that just push the class even further down, and even though this isn’t a change since the last beta, maintaining warp stacks is still a huge chore and makes virtually no difference.
This class was already somewhat underpowered, now it’s useless. Every other class is superior in every single way, it has no advantage or niche and the only reason I’m still playing it at all, ever, is my appreciation for the lore of psykers, which is not ideal for a game like Darktide.
Another thing to add to this: A lot of the penances for psyker are headpop related, but their difficulty wasn’t actually lowered when headpop and peril dispersal were nerfed, making them a LOT harder.
Psyker is powefull but you have to pick staffs and perks that are not related to BB. He was nerfed badly and playing focused on BB or Force sword is pointless now. Try Surge staff or Voidstrike staff if you find it in shop and before FS nerf that too ehhh.
You can vent to 97% and perform another brain blast, which allows for great dps against single tragets.
Void and flamer peril generation feels fine to me. Trauma and the jedi lighting thingy could probably use a bit less. The latter would benefit greatly from an overcharge protection similar to brainblast, since it noms into your peril greatly upon attack completion. I’ve exploded way more often with the lighting staff than with other ones, as the peril management with it simply doesn’t feel intuitive to me.
The ult’s nerf is for me the worse of them all. As a psyker, I stand behind my front line. They protect me, and I remove priority targets out of their way. Yet sometimes they fall while performing their role, and I have to revive them.
In the previous beta, I could use my ult and save them from very tricky situations. Now, it’s very difficult to near impossible to revive a teammate who fall during a high density horde + specials.
I can deal with quelling, high peril generation, dance dodging while casting, but I can’t stand that my Ult feels almost useless, or is reduced to a “oh sh*t” button when I’m too greedy with my casting.
In its current state, it doesn’t really allow us to perform the Cliffhanger penance correctly either, which only adds to the pity.
[EDIT] I realize this borders on necro posting, but these are the only posts I’ve seen discussing the Psyker nerfs sensibly.
I’ve been trying to play my Psyker for the past two days to level it and the class feels so bad in it’s current state that I’ve been playing it like a paper Veteran with a lasgun and regular sword.
I should actually want to use my staves and force sword. I should actually want to Brain Burst.
And right now compared to every other class I feel like the Psyker is just dead weight.
A Psyker can’t even survive just carrying Grimoires. It almost instantly reached the point in some Grimoire mission that I would be hunting Grimoires just so I could destroy them before someone else could pick them up.
I agree that Psyker is not bad - BB is sometimes frustrating when someone pops your target.
Forcesword being bad - at least that’s what’s being implied here - is wrong. The weapon is great even on damnation.
Great mobility thanks to infinite - albeit short - dodges and strong empowered attack damage for elites in case BB is not enough (one charged empowered h1 for a mauler compared to 2BB). Sure its horde dps is not great, but it also offers the defelctor perk, which lets you tank ranged enemies.
Exactly, but that requires people to go to the meatgrinder and experiment with the ability a bit considering it is not exactly intuitive.
Like who assumes intuitively, that an ability that usually costs roundabout 30 peril can be cast when you are at 97. At least not me until I experimented.