Psyker REQUIRES a complete redesign

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Psyker is weak. Not particulary because it’s less effective than other classes, but because as a Psyker the player has to do more work times over what’s required for other classes. And then be mediocre at everything.

Psyker has to manage peril. It’s much better done than heat management in Vermintide 2, as it’s much harder to accidentally explode. Though the consumption of it is too quick, I’ll tell more when I get to staves.

Now fix literally everything else.

Exessive and unrewarding managment:
As well as peril Psyker also has to manage warp charges. A tiny picture with an even tinier counter down under the health bar shows the number of current warp charges and roughly how much time until expiration.
It’s impossible to keep track of this icon in combat and extremely inconvenient to switch to Brain Burst out of nessecity to keep the timer alive, instead of doing something about, well, I don’t know… THE HUGE HORDE COMING AT YOU! Good thing the Brain Burst is so slow, your Veteran already dealt with all the elites. Bad thing is that it’s so slow, you can’t get a single charge because your team keeps killing your every target.
And all this effort for what? 12% extra damage? No. To finally extract some use out of your staves.
Brain Burst isn’t even strong enough to oneshot most elites on Heresy difficulty, not only becoming an inconvenience from that point on, but also not giving a warp charge either.

Staves are underwhelming and inconvenient:
Inner Tranquility talent is a requirement in any build, featuring any force weapons, as it gives much needed up to 24% (36% with Warp Battery talent) max reduction to peril usage, depending on the amount of loathsome warp charges. Thus rendering Psykinetic’s Wrath talent (yes, it has the common name with Psyker’s ability still, even the game is too confused to switch descriptions when you hover over one and then the other) completely useless.
Side note: Wrack and Ruin talent doesn’t even look like it does something, no one can ever defend it.

STAVES! Meh…
Trauma staff obvously lacks damage zone. It doesn’t even show the real, smaller damage zone, the “epicenter”. It is the only thing that’s important for explosions, as damage beyond it is cosmetic even for ‘infested’ armor class (anything that doesn’t say ‘unarmored’ is an armor class, test armor dependant blessings - you’ll see what I mean).

Surge staff is the only one with a unique use. It is a universal support tool, that can stun multiple targets, no matter the armor. It lacks damage though. Spamming lightning has much more damage per second, more crowd control and is more peril efficient than actually charging it.

Purgatus staff is Zealot’s flamethrower, that requires more babysitting in exchange for unlimited ammo. This one is the only one I have no problems with. It is what it is and does what it says of the tin.
If it wasn’t for the management hell that are warp charges!..

Voidstrike staff is a 42-nd millenia’s slingshot. It hurls an explosive ball, that passes though small enemies, dealing “epicenter” damage to them. Hitting a big enemy or terrain creates an explosion, damaging target hit with “epicenter” damage and spit damage + medium stagger to everything in the rest of the explosion zone.
However Voidstrike staff is very inefficient, taking more peril for worse zone clear than that of Purgatus staff, yet it’s range advanage is an illusion, as the projectile is so slow, shooters will already go out of the way when it reaches them. It is only good as a horde clearing tool and it is inferor to the Flamestick™ at that.
Voidstrike also has an illegularity with other stave’s mecanics. For an unknown reason it releases the ordnance when it’s charge is interrupted by enemies, instead of losing the charge.

All staves charge very slowly while still draining peril, the charge being lost on health damage feels exrimely unfair, especially when it also drains last peril with a chance to accidentally explode, because of an attack buffered in that exact moment.

Staff-bound blazebolt is useless. It is hard to hit point-blank, not to mention it’s performance at any distance. It’s slow and weak. And peril expensive.

Force Sword is also here, because get it. It has same function as Assault Chainsword, but it’s worse in every way. It trades light and heavy attack damage, zone, cleave and stagger, stun-into-push, with push costing some extra peril, instead of push-into-attack and an added peril cost on special for a double-ish increase in special attack damage (compared to Assault Chainsword, I should remind you). Oh, and it has ulimited effective dodges, but it hardly matters as dodge doesn’t have invincibility frames. You’ll be finding yourself in a situation, where you don’t have anywhere to dodge, because you can’t kill enemies fast enough to make yourself some space, and remember: you can’t push unless you have spare extra second (you don’t) and spare peril (you’ll run out in a blink).
Spoiler alert: this trade-off isn’t worth it. It is almost useless against hordes, it’s special outclassed by Brain Burst because of It’s reach and a guarantied headshot for not-so-much-less base damage, same-ish charge time and less mobility restrictions, and no ping related whiffs.
So just use chainsword.

Talents, finally:
Warp charges have to go. And with them gone, the talents, that rely on those, have to be revamped.
Toughness talents should be triggered more reliably and separate from downtime (I’m looking at you, Quietitude…), simillar to all other classes.
Almost all talents of different levels don’t interact with each other. Other classes’ talents have indirect interactions that make players try new combinations. Everyone knows about the walking shrapnel storm that are some Veterans.

Talents that have zero use as of right now are (including warp charge ones, just in case): Level 10 - Psykinetic’s Wrath, Wrack and Ruin; Level 15 - Cerebral Lacerations; Level 20 - Kinetic Deflection; Level 25 - 1) Kinetic Overload, 2) Kinetic Flayer; Level 30 - Quicken.
They’re either outclassed by other talents (L10, L15, L25-2) or need additions to functions or replacement to compete (L20, L25-1, L30).

End note:
Psykers have been done dirty. That’re my observations and conclusion. Playing a psyker is pain and misery, It’s hard and not rewarding. They do better with regular swords and guns, than with their cool-in-lore-but-not-here armory, that consists of what? 5 pieces of gear?..
It bores and saddens me.

I hope this page is comprehensible enough. Have a nice day.

P.S. For people who would even think “GIT GUD” after my warp charge rant: Being born with better attention or reaction development limit is not your achievement. I can’t get better genes either.

edit: I also want to point out, that Psyker doesn’t have a definitive role in the team.
In Vermintide 2 my best girl Sienna Fuegonasus had THE role of horde obliterator. In Darktide this role is filled by the Ogryn.
The universal elite killer and a hordebreaker is Veteran. The berserk, that would take Khorne in melee and be back for dinner is the Zealot. What is Psyker? Not a support. Not a healer. Duct tape? Duct tape deez guts back in.

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Brilliant post. I think I agree with everything said here.

You’ve also enlightened me on a few things, so thanks a lot!

Warp charges DEFINITELY have to go… I’d say Brain Burst too… it’s completely counter intuitive, breaks up the fast paced flow of the game and SUCKS, all at the same time.

We need something FUN for the Psyker. It feels far too tedious to play considering all the points you mentioned.

My idea for a Psyker rework:
Brain Burst would be replaced with some sort of gravity sucking ability.
You lock onto a target, hurl them into the air, stunning them, whilst simultaneously sucking horde/weaker targets towards the main target, costing peril the longer you hold it.

No damage is done, but upon release, depending on how much Peril you’ve accumulated, the target is smashed into the ground and an AOE explosion is produced, similar to that of the Trauma staff, or something.

To be honest, it sounded way less overpowered in my head. But some sort of telekinetic lifting/throwing ability would be absolutely SMASHING.

Given how much effort this sort of thing would take I doubt we’ll get anything like that for the Psyker. But one can only dream.

Brain burst is just awful.

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I think warp charges are okay in concept, they just need more ways too get them other than a nearly end of leveling feat, and that slow brain burst. Warp charges also should have more actual function. The shield feat for them would be great as the actual passive for warp charges and would give the psyker some much needed survivability built around it’s class.

Also I think they should have a chance to gain warp charges on kill with warp abilities and attacks.

This isn’t actually a bad idea to be honest, a basic version should be that you pick a target and things get sucked into them and they get a dot on them. This could then be augmented in many different ways with feats and the like. Such as at the end it explodes, or lifts stuff up in the area stunning them, etc. There is a lot they could do with warp abilities aside from Brain Burst.

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I would like to point out that maintaining Warp Charges is trivially easy. You don’t even have to worry about other players “stealing” the kill. The most hands-off way involves Psychic Communion and Kinetic Flayer which you’ve already pointed out. The other way is to learn how to pre-charge your Brain Burst. Hold down right click to start pre-charging the Brain Burst, then lock a target with left click, preferably after you get to 50% charge - if your locked target suddenly dies for any reason while you’re at 50% charge or more, you’re guaranteed to get a Warp Charge, you waste less time trying to crunch someone’s brain, and you don’t eat the final perils cost to boot. You should be right-clicking to charge your BB 90% of the time unless you forsee your target leaving LOS, at which point you should left-click early or immediately so it locks.

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Psyker needs some buffs, sure. You got a decent suggestion going on about warp charges but your description of force sword and voidstrike just shows you haven’t spent that much time with them. Voidstrike doesn’t have a full-on AOE explosion damage, think of it as more of a cone. It works quite well on all difficulties already, though a small buff would help make it more fun.

As for the force sword, it fills a good role as an OK crowd-clearing weapon paired with one of the best single target stagger + damage values in the game. Plus unlimited stagger in the area in front of you is neat.

Psyker needs a good buff, I agree on that. Not on your suggested changes though.

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Yeah same.
Soulblaze should like … do something.
Weapon switching to and from brain burst should be way more reactive.
BB could use a couple of 10th of seconds shaved off and should stagger basic mobs right away maybe.
etc.

But all in all the class works great except for the non scaling part of BB.

Also I’m gonna point out something obvious a lot of these posts seem to forget :

  • when you play something else than Psyker you are gonna run around collecting those grenades and ammo boxes. And you collect A LOT of those to keep on going.
  • when you play Psyker, you just quell and have 0 worry about running around for those items.

It makes Psyker a nice break from the collecting rat race.

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The main issue for me is that tie a lot of things to on-kill conditions, but the difficulty scaling far outstrips the ability to kill in a very specific way for psykers. Like how they changed some of the level 5 talents between preorder beta and launch, they should unlink kills and bonuses.

Warp charges - gain one every 20% peril generated, and/or every successful brain burst. Warp charges increasing cast or charge speed would also be a much more meaningful bonus than flat damage, since you’re already capped by how much you can cast by perils.

Soulblaze - anything that requires an enemy to die by soulblaze (which doesn’t happen much due to the low DoT damage) instead be “dies while affected by soulblaze”

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The fundamental problem with the Psyker that I think will also infect all other Psyker classes is the decision to allow Psykers to use mundane weapons. At first glance it seems like a perfectly fine idea. Of course a Psyker can pick up a las rifle after all. But then you realize what this move actually does mechanically:

Being able to simply equip weapons that don’t use peril means that every single psyker specific mechanic has to be serviceable through just your Blitz. It’s the only “weapon” that the developers can be sure you have equipped on the character. So your peril management, tactical resource and talent synergy all have to flow through this one ability.

As long as the ability is better than any weapon the class performs beautifully, but is cut off from the reward structure and much of the customization of the game, because it can’t benefit from finding better loot or make any meaningful choices of what to equip. If the ability isn’t better than other weapons or situational you wind up with what we have now where the class makes sense internally, but while you’re actually playing you have to constantly force yourself to engage with its suboptimal mechanics unless you simply want to ignore them.

That’s how we wind up with the class as broken as it is. Brain Burst has to be spammable because it has to service the entire range of class mechanics on a Psyker with mundane weapons equipped. That then means that it can’t be powerful because it doesn’t use a limited resource. That in turn means that it doesn’t have the bite it needs as a situational power that you break out when your regular weapons aren’t enough.

The sad part is that this exact same issue is going to infect every single Psyker class down the line. The only way to fix it is to find a way to fully integrate peril cost and resource generation into ALL weapons a Psyker can use so that the Blitz can be free to be a resource consumer and appropriately powerful.

One way to maybe do it is to make it so that resource generation is based on Peril quelled, but if you are at 0 Peril you are simply treated as though you are quelling at a steady rate for the purpose of generating class resources. But even that is kind of inelegant. Ultimately there is just a problem with the fact that not every weapon interfaces with the class mechanics.

A more elegant way would be perhaps if there were two different class resources, one that is gained from generating (quelling) peril, and another that is generated from not having peril. Like, Turmoil and Tranquility or something like that. Depending on which one you have you get a different effect when you fire off your Blitz. That way a Psyker who uses mundane weapons would simply be a Tranquility build, while a Psyker going full Force weapons would be a Turmoil build.

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I like to use an autopistol or whatnot for chasing those scriptures etc in weeklies.
They are a welcome change to staff usage.

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Doubly weird is that, if intended, having a non-force weapon equipped increases the passive quell rate and speed, meaning you can quell almost as fast as active quelling without being locked out of either melee or ranged (depending on your loadout). By itself it seems like a way to make normal weapons still have benefits for the psyker, but in reality, it seems to impose a penalty for having 2 force weapons equipped as both of those either lock you out of actions while active quelling or you have to put up with a slower passive quell (both in the rate and delay).

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Yea, the decision to allow Psykers to run regular weapons in itself is not the problem. It opens up a lot of fun builds and options.

The issue is that Peril is one of the class’ core mechanic, but you can build a psyker who doesn’t generate peril with any of their weapon attacks. So they had to give Psykers a “default power”, but because the game only allows two weapons and your Blitz that meant that the Blitz had to become the default power, and that leaves the Psyker without a real Blitz that allows them to expend a rare resource to deal with dangerous situations.

That’s the main reason the class is kind of hinky. There is no real fix for it unless they figure out how to make peril management a part of all weapons somehow.

And yea, zaygr, the insane auto-quell on mundane weapons is kind of silly. It makes the force sword kind of second rate. The only thing the force sword can do that a regular melee weapon can’t do is block ranged attacks, but that’s not quite as useful as it sounds.

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I don’t know, I like Brain Burst, I feel they just need to revert the changes from open beta and have a look from there while tweaking when stagger happens if they insist on it.

Right now we really have a CC monster with surge staff. I think it’s the only thing I saw staggering a mutant (I would like to see the power mauls do that too).

We’ll see what they come up with I guess.

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Honestly I am not too hot on Psychic Communion and Kinetic Flayer as they both involve chance and are hence not particularly conducive to player agency.

Precharging your BB though has for me - so far - been either a waste of time or peril. Usually what happens, when you precharge, is that you spent more time charging up your BB, as you anticipate a target appearing (from sound cue most often), that is actually worth for your Blitz to be used on and that creates a situation in which you use way more peril than actually required.

I have made this suggestion in other threads already, but here goes:
Generate Warpstacks after generting a certain amount of peril.

example: generate 40% Peril with whatever you want and get a Warpstack for it.

This could also work with a timer, so that the game remembers, that you started generating peril and continues to count towards that threshold as long as you generate peril and resets your progress once the timer runs out, which on the other hand starts once you stop generating peril.
Maybe 10-15s or something?

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This is a pretty solid teardown of Psyker’s problems and rings true to a lot of the class’s problems I brought up before launch.

Hopefully things will be addressed before long.

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It might be reliant on chance, but that’s the cost for not having to pay nearly as much attention to maintain stacks. Personally I like it - besides, the alternative is having to manually Brain Burst something every 24 seconds or lean on Soul Flame, neither of which are particularly my thing.

You don’t have to precharge your BB when the target isn’t in sight unless you’re certain it’ll come around the corner in a reasonable amount of time. This method is merely a guarantee you get rewarded and don’t waste time and peril trying to BB something that’s at risk of getting ganked by the team before you finish.

Letting warp stacks be generated by perils kind of means you have to use one of the staves to benefit from it, and a well-rolled Force Sword doesn’t nearly generate enough Peril if you want to try to use that. One of the two builds I like to run is Force Sword and a Heavy Laspistol (yes, I’ve been told I play Psyker like a weirdo), which wouldn’t benefit from that at all. Throw in a Warp Charge for getting a kill with an activated Force Sword and that’ll cover all the bases.

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I run staff and axe on my psyker. If I have to quell but it’s a little too busy I can still contribute by casting axe over and over again until I’m cooled off enough to use my staff again.

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One of the main problems is that 95% of the time, you absolutely should not be casting brainburst. You end up actively gimping your contribution to the team because you’re trying to keep (nearly worthless) stacks alive. This equation doesn’t change just because you’re precharging and gaining a warp charge. You still did absolutely nothing, and your team killed the target, while you were stood still holding your hands out.

For as worthless as warp charges are, and how quickly they expire, they should require absolutely zero management to maintain. The talent that gives one on 4% should be at least 10%. But then it’s a must-have, it already pretty much is at 4%, which goes to show how totally effing useless most of the talent tree is.

Even the ‘good’ talents are just straight up BAD.

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I was gonna main psyker, even back in the beta, but then I remembered how much trouble Fatshark had with breaking Sienna over and over again (I still don’t think she’s balanced fine) and I elected to pick something else.
Seeing this thread makes me so “glad”, I knew they’d screw something up.

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The Psyker is in a similar spot with all the other classes that aren’t the Vet, they were clearly a late addition and as such not refined nearly as well as the Veteran was.

Psyker does currently have a uniqueness to it I very much enjoy, but the scaling of their damage is awful compared to the other three classes. Just fixing that detail would help them a lot as from that point on as many of their mechanics are more skill-based than actual mechanics themselves being bad.

A great example of this is the Voidstrike that I have heard so many people whine to no end about. If the weapon was given the proper scaling it requires to remain relevant in the later levels, it would be my top pick 10/10 times over the Purgatus, but this is purely because I have learned how to best utilise the thing, not to mention learn the animations the AI uses so I can tell where my shots are meant to go.

The staff has two advantages people often neglect. First one is that it is 100% accurate. It has 0 deviance from where you point the reticule and fire. This alone makes it immensely powerful tool to use against groups, but only if you consider its second advantage. Range. It has infinite range. Yet again, another fantastical feature people neglect a lot, or downplay significantly.

The trick of the staff is with angles. I have been able to wipe out entire patrols of Scabs by being patient about when to open up. If you line the enemy up roughly into a single line, fire away, odds are you will wipe out easily over half the patrol and drop the rest, letting you finish them off with the default attack. Another is being able to wipe out an entire horde from across the map as it approaches you, but this requires specific maps, such as the Trainyard, but if you pay enough attention, you have the single best horde clearing weapon in the game at your disposal because of its ability to fire at infinite range with 100%.

Right now, the Psyker’s Peril game isn’t too much in my eyes, again that is assuming you pay attention and learn your limits. I really don’t like the notion of reducing the Quelling speed at all from where it is right now because the infinite ammo you have is powerful, incredibly powerful, no matter which level you are on. To manually quell from 100% to 0% takes about as long as a single reload of a Boltgun without the reload buffs. That is how “slow” it is.

Beyond the Zealot, the Psyker is the second most skill demanding class in the game and I like that. To me, it is very rewarding to learn to play that class as it is something that is very different from the rest. It requires refinement, not a rework in my eyes. They do need to also bring back the old tracker for it that was far, far more clearer and easier to follow which I can easily agree on is rough right now.

As for the Force Sword, as was mentioned in another comment, the thing is a beast of war. It has a guaranteed stun on its special, and it is a brain burst that scales based on damage modifiers. Brain Burst always deals fixed damage, the Force Sword’s is affected by the weapon’s own damage of course, but also weak point hits and criticals, which is really huge. Also, as for horde cleaving, it does have some cleave and can fight through a horde, but again this requires skill to use. As much as people like to claim you can’t state “git gud” on these kinds of things, it really is just that with the Psyker. If you want easy mode, you play Veteran. If you don’t like the mechanics of the Psyker, then don’t play the Pskyer. I don’t see a reason of reworking the Psyker when all they really need to do is refine it, give it proper damage scaling and gives us our VT2 crafting system back so we can create the weapons we want, thus giving Psykers the ability to pick and choose their Force Staves instead of praying to the Emperor for a blessing in the store.

In short, the class only needs to be refined, talents improved and mechanics expanded, such as making Warp Charges less reliant on getting kills with Brain Burst alone. An entire redesign of the class wouldn’t change much, it is fine at its core, the idea is there.

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I agree really. I enjoy playing psyker although it can be frustrating.

I actually like brain burst in itself, although I wish the 25% cast time reduction from the L30 talent was baseline as that makes it feel much nicer to use. I also wish it had better/smarter targeting as having it lock onto the wrong target in a pack is frustrating with the significant immediate peril cost, and sometimes you can’t target mobs although you can clearly see them (e.g. through railings).

I think the main problems are with warp charges:

  • warp charges coming primarily through getting kills with brain burst is awkward and can be frustrating; other methods to gain them are too random
  • warp charges fall off too easily, often with no possible way to sustain them
  • given the above, the ramp time for warp charges is too long for too little impact and building warp charges often feels like the wrong play

I honestly think just an increase to the damage buff per charge, increasing the duration of charges and/or having them fall off one at a time would go a long way. A better interface for them would be nice too.

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