Psyker play loop optimization (QOL)

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

My Psyker is level 24 at the moment. I’ve played a decent amount of Psyker and I have a few small gripes on the psyker play loop. This is mostly a quality of life thing for me rather than balance feedback.

  • When a psyker has their ranged weapon out and they switch to brain burst using the utility button (G default), then switch back using the quick swap button (Q default), it switches to their melee weapon rather than back to their ranged weapon. If swapping back from utility swapped back to the weapon you were using before switching, that would make a big difference in psyker QOL.

  • If you right click to charge brain burst, left click to lock it in on a target, and then release left click, you lose your charge, making it difficult to lock down the right target in a crowd. You either have to commit to the wrong lock and kill the wrong target, or charge from scratch and take double the time (possibly longer if you need to quell).

  • On a similar vein, if your target dies while charging brain burst, you shouldn’t lose your charge.

  • Brain Burst should always prioritize specials over swarm mobs. It has a little bit of magnetism, but that magnetism needs to be dialed up a bit. Hitting specials in a crowd can be very difficult depending on the special.

  • Force sword special should count as brain burst for the sake of perks.

Edit: Just thought of another one.

  • Force staves don’t have explosion safety like brainburst does. If you start charging brainburst at 80% and release it, you’ll end up at 100% and you won’t explode. If you start charging your force staff at 80% and release it, there’s a decent chance you’ll explode, which feels a bit backwards. Force staves need a little bit more explosion protection.
5 Likes
2

  1. Swap to melee is intentional (and is very important). In a situation when you need to instantly block having to remember and think which weapon you had will most likely result in you being hit. With the current swap system, you can simply double-tap Q to swap back to ranged which is very useful for muscle memory (and almost everything in this game is muscle memory)

  2. If your BB charge is 50%+ and the target dies you still get the warp charge.

Everything else is quite alright.

3

My suggestions aren’t game-breaking for me. Just some small QoL improvements that not everyone will prefer. To your first point, double tapping Q does get me back to my original weapon, which isn’t a huge deal. I won’t love the game less if they don’t change it, but I feel it’s more intuitive to change back to your previous weapon in an “equip”/“unequip” fashion. G to equip your utility, any other button to unequip it and return to where you were. Double tapping Q to return to melee is just as easy as double tapping q to return to your original equipped item.

Also, if you are in melee, switch to your BB, then hit Q, you go to ranged, not melee. so your logic in point #1 is slightly flawed. If it always returned to melee, I could see it, but it doesn’t.