I feel like you’re missing my point. I am a very good psyker. My point is: Psyker requires much more work from the player, than other classes, but does not reward it with more power. Actively managing multiple resources with triple the amount of actions is much more intence and tedious than reloading between encounters with ammo and grenades lying LITERALLY by your feet all the way to the next arena. Ok, Ogryn’s grenade is kind of a meme, but still - it can oneshot a mutie or a reaper. Also even Ogryn has more weapons it can effectively utilize on Damnation than Psyker, given that Ogryn has the smallest gear pool in the game.
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This is extremely common in videogames, one of my main pet peeves when it comes to bad design, and I hard agree.
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Okay? Everything you mentioned just now in this response only point to what I was saying, increase the damage scaling and the problem disappears in a flash.
The core issue with the Psyker right now is that you have too little damage output, reducing them mostly to a supportive role with the Surge Staff. However, if their Brain Burst scaled with difficulty, thus allowing them to still deal with most enemies as well as they do on the earlier levels along with their staves, they are now significantly better while still retaining the same system we have now.
Absolutely true, there is, however, one critical detail here you might be skipping over. During encounters, you can never run out of ammo as the Psyker. Never. The Veteran can. The Ogryn can. The Zealot can.
This is often the case when you have 1-2 idiots out there hogging every round of ammo they come across no matter how little they themselves have, and what role you are trying to fulfil. As my Vet, I am mainly aiming to down all ranged threats, Shooters, Gunners and Reapers, so that the melee guys can easily approach the enemy melee. This eats through ammo fast, very, very fast. Now, if I have a Zealot who absolutely must take every ammo bag and container they come across, rapidly I find myself in a situation where I am out of ammo, and now unable to assist much beyond joining into the melee.
As the Psyker, I could just… Hold left, tap space, quell, and be back in the fight in the same length of time it took my Zealot to reload the Flamer. And I could do this for several minutes, which allowed me to pull some very clutch saves as the Psyker.
So once again, there is no need for a redesign. The class and idea works. The damage output is, however, too low. A result of the CBT me thinks due to the overwhelming number of Psykers that just chain brainbursted their way through all encounters.
I mean, you’re describing the basic functionaily of the staff, here. I understand you’re trying to be helpful, but I don’t think anyone that hasn’t understood the benefits of Void would be giving meaningful input in this thread anyway. Another good thing you actually don’t mention is that the staff can proximity-kill ranged annoyances in cover. A fully charged (or near full) orb flying just above waist-cover walls will headshot anyone covering behind it, without impacting on the wall. Same works for dudes playing peekabo behind pillars, just shoot a big ball past them. It can be really helpful when the enemies are on different elevations, that you can clip them with the size of the orb. It absolutely has uses, but as you say, the damage just isn’t there to make it really good.
I’d also add that while killing an entire horde from really far away feels good and fun, it will rarely actually be meaningful to do so. It will be helpful in those very rare cases you could delete a horde before it travels through areas full of elites and pulls those along with it, to make it a mixed horde. Aside from that, a ‘pure’ horde is rarely of concequence, but of course if you can kill it at range out of melee reach, why not.
It… uh… also stuns the wielder. For a really long time. Don’t get me wrong, the force sword special has come in clutch, but it’s also not something you can use any time you want to. It’s often simply too dangerous to let yourself get locked into the animation.
It requires skill because it’s not a good weapon. The moveset isn’t great, and the base damage of light and heavies, and it’s cleave, is nothing fantastic. There’s a reason you see plenty of rapier and axe-wielding Psykers.
Giving it proper damage scaling would help. I fear the problem is that the entire class is defined only by the weapons it has access to, and there’s no way in hell those weapons are exclusive. There will be other Psyker classes that will use the same staves and the same force sword. What then? Are the psykinetic talent tree still good? Does it only require refinement?
If we put aside the weapons, and I feel we must because they are only unique right now, Psyker - psykinetic has no identity. It has brain burst which is just no damn good, and talents that rely on it. The worst part is that even if BB was good, the talent tree would still be bad. There’s nothing there that does much of anything. A few % here, a few % there. Peril-blocking feels like the most impactful, which is absurd on ostensibly a glass cannon class.
Psyker isn’t a CC class. It doesn’t have a single talent that boosts stagger or suppression or anything of the kind. We just think it is, because Psyker happens to have access to Surge.
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Congrats, you just described every other feat tree outside the Veteran just now.
Again, refinement is the name of the game here, no need to redesign it.
The class has as much identity as the Zealot as well, in that they are basically ports from VT2 to quickly pat out the 4 class they needed to add to the game once they decided to actually do classes in the first place. Note that this was not initially their plan, thus the reason why the Ogryn and the Veteran feel more defined as they have had the most development time.
As of right now, on Malice difficulty, the Psyker has great utility and is the most fun I have probably had in DT for the amount of unique things I can pull as the Psyker compared to what I can do as the Vet. This is, of course, due to the fact that Malice is the final difficulty level where the Psyker’s equipment retains its damage output to be on the level needed to be of use to your team.
Oh, I agree with that. But situations you tell about, however a common and frustrating occurance, are not a given and can be mitigated with some comunication most of the time. With difficulty level rising I meet less and less scrooges and mutes. I also can’t agree that damage buff will fix everything. When a simple balance change is made as a solution to every problem you get Warframe™. I want design changes to lower the amount of things that will inevitably break with more surface level changes.
The most powerful characters and whatnot in every game were and always will be the ones that require the least work, because they are harder to mess up and the strength and attention that could be spent on doing a multitask as the character will be spent on controlling the situation. PvP games show that better, but it’s true every time. 6,000 hours in the aforementioned Warframe™ and more in the like is an experience. Even Vermintide 2’s Grail Knight is so strong because it’s “braindead”, despite obvious weakness which is lack of any kind of range and the need to use maximum melee skill to deal with ranged threats through a horde of k-pop fans.
None of them give you an amazing spread of options, but the Zealot tree has two very distinct builds to be found within it. A critbuild or a cleavebuild, and with the right weapon you can actually do a combination of the two. Many of the rows are… not interesting / flat out bad, but it also has some very good stuff on other rows. It’s the only career that can heal itself, among other things. It certainly has an identity. Whether you agree with massive damage reduction being good or bad or OP, it’s certainly not a simple % buff.
That being said, it’s not like I’d be against refinement or damage buffs to BB and the staves. I just think they’ve made some really strange design choices with Psyker, that will never really work the way it ought to.
Like… many of their other design choices related to everything to do with progression, crafting, mission select. Sigh.
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I’ve been mainly playing psyker and I love the class overall. I’m playing on Heresy difficulty for the most part and find that the class holds its own very well. I run a deflector force sword and voidstaff.
I don’t think the class needs a “total rework.” And my worry with advocating for this is that right now I REALLY like the way the class plays, and a total rework runs the risk of ruining a good thing.
But I do think some focused, calculated tweaks can be made to make the classes abilities and functions to better focus on warp charges and support more build diversity.
Here’s my suggestions:
- Swap the “10% chance to reduce 10% peril on kill” passive with the level 25 feat where you have a 10% chance to brain burst a target when making any attacks (on a 15 second cooldown.
What does the above do? Right from the start it gives two ways to “brainburst” and hence two ways to gain warp charges for the class. This will take pressure off players feeing like they need to actively BB constantly since they’ll have another avenue for it. Between manual BBs and this feat, I pretty much always have 4 warp charges up during big fights, and barely need to think about it gaining them.
Side benefit: When running a high peril build with psykentic wrath, it would be nice to not be forced into battle meditation (reduces 10% peril on kill chance), so you can maintain higher peril for longer.
- Increase the power gain per warp charge on the passive feat slightly (from 3% to 5%)
This will help BB scale up a little better and all around provide psyker with a bit more damage when maintaining warp charges.
- DOT from soulblaze needs to have a higher base damage value but then not scale up as much. Having 2-4 stacks of soulblaze on a trash mob should be able to kill it over 5-10 seconds.
Soul blaze feats needs some tweaks along with the above base change:
- Wrack and Ruin should apply soulblaze when killing elites/specials with ANY attacks (not just BB).
- Kinetic Overload should do something like give ALL of your attacks soulblaze effects for the next 5 seconds on gaining an extra warp charge.
- Ascending Blaze: should work whenever an enemy dies with soul blaze on it (not only when it dies from soul blaze).
The above should allow the psyker to use a much greater range of gear and equipment, even entirely non-force weaponry but be able to utilize soul blaze skills and build a kit around DOT much better. With #5 and #6 they work in tandem to create a soul blaze attack loop that can be used with any weapons.
Lastly:
- Replace warp battery feat with Deflector and remove deflector from Force Swords. Have feat grant deflector to all force melee weapons (to cover eventual additions).
The above is SOOOO critical to the psyker build and identity IMHO, that tethering this to the RNG item system is awful.
The existing deflector blessing could be changed to something else like “enemies that damage you in close range are staggered by their attacks rebounding” or something like that to have that blessing still be cool. But deflector itself needs to be part of the Psykers core kit. By the time you’re level 25, you need deflector as an option IMHO.
Also, if warp stacks are buffed more, I don’t think effects need to be designed around scaling up to 6 warp charges. Just adjust effects accordingly to scale up to 4 charges.
These are my focused recommendations. A lot of the rest of feats and talents can work well within this and be viable options.
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That is the general issue with the game, yeah. Prior to launch, you could easily tell that between the two betas, there was a definitely different design idea behind some of the classes, same thing with the Penances, that lacked a function in full release. The Ogryn for example clearly had a differently working Bull Rush compared to what it has now considering how the charge Penance you need to do on Heresy+ was impossible to do as the Ogryn prior to the more recent changes.
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That is the best idea in the thead so far. My addition to this suggestion will be to swap base functionality of warp charges with Inner Tranquility talent. I’d also make it somewhat more reliable though, instead of chance based. For instance: Brainburst on heavy attack. Or on weapon special. Or either of those, but also on weak spot hit. And for ranged on repeated, lest’s say 3 in a row, weak spot hit. Or something.
Exact numbers of everything are up to devs to debate.
My implication about “total rework” is more of a conversation starter than anything else. I meant that Psyker has significant problems, that feel like it’s better to start over.
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Oh yes, it’s very clear that many, many things are last-minute additions / alterations. I couldn’t play the first beta because the game was nothing but a crashing simulator for me, but I saw the class videos from that time.
If you are doing this actively, more often than not you are hurting your experience as a psyker. I honestly don’t understand why people are so frustrated with this class, assuming your front-liners are competent enough, its the most relaxing experience I have in Darktide.
There is nothing wrong with the voidstaff…its literally a chargable railgun with splash damage.
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The one thing I agree on is that Psyker as a class is weak. I don’t believe staves are as bad as you say, they could be balanced better but they’re already in a better position than half of the weapons.
I’m not necessarily sure Warp Charges are inherently a problem as a mechanic, the issue with them is that they are awfully weak and cumbersome to manage.
Buffing Warp Charges might be the easiest and quickest way of fixing the Psyker
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If you’re getting relaxed is probably because you’re dead weight on your team.
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Flexing on the internet 
You can replace the “relaxed” with “easy experiance” when compared to lets say ogryn or preacher.
lol, if anyone was flexing it’s you…
We are talking about game balance, your comment is dismissive and betrays poor game knowledge and lack of effort. Really buffled at your very existence on this topic
Is this the reason why you continue flexing against a stranger you never played with, and you deleted your post, which even you found too embarrassing to leave public? Let’s stop embarrassing you further, but thanks for the laugh.
On the topic tho, psyker doesn’t need complete redesign, but I agree that the brain burst is underwhelming on the higher difficulties.
I just had a thought. AOE ability for psyker is cool, but might come out overpowered, whether it’d be crowd control or damage, that’s true.
And completely changing something is a lot of work, but… But if I think about it:
Zone coverage can implemented into Brain Burst itself. Second mode, instead of a simple precharge, may be used as an auto lock-on missile battery in a cone–or whatever shape. Reduced damage, just enough to oneshot poxwalkers at Damnation, and cost, but cost scaling with number of targets, that can’t exceed remaining peril in cost. Say 1-3 peril/target.
I simple reposted the same comment, I had forgotten to click the reply button. what a piece of work you are 
Getting off topic, people. Please stop.
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