The main issue for me with Psyker is that its gameplay loop feels clunky and exhausting.
When you get into combat, your peril will hit 100% very rapidly. Not out of greed, but just because absolutely everything you do as Psyker drives it up, very quickly. Once you’re at 100%, every action turns into switching to your staff, pressing reload to quell, performing one or two actions, then switching back to staff to quell again. This repeats constantly and is incredibly off-putting and tiring.
I understand the thematics of quelling for psyker, but it doesn’t feel like you’re pushing the limits of your connection to the warp; it’s more like a constant nuisance. For that feeling to be truly present, quelling would need to be something you do much more rarely, and hopefully something you don’t really need to do in a fight because it puts you in danger. To that end, there should be more natural ways of reducing your peril that don’t involve this behavior. Killing several enemies at once is one way, yes, but obviously not enough to prevent this from being a constant issue.
Brain Bursting is another issue, but has much the same issues with its awkwardness being tied to how often it requires quelling and also being tied to gaining warp stacks. Using BB lowers your overall damage compared to just attacking; gaining warp stacks to raise your damage accomplishes nothing in this regard since you end up losing more than you had gained. Adding a 25s timer on top of this means using BB to gain stacks is especially stupid since you’re in a constant panic to kill at least one unimportant enemy to retain the bonus you aren’t even really benefiting from. BBing should be something you use on important enemies, not on garbage fodder just because a timer is running out. This was a poorly conceived system.
These things considered, I think Psyker-Kin should have several changes to its mechanics.
- Gain warp stacks primarily from doing its job, with less emphasis on Brain Burst. The Psy-Kin’s intended job is CC with occasional elite sniping, from what I can gather. I’d recommend changing the bonus from warp stacks to a smaller number and increasing the amount of stacks.
Make gaining stacks something fundamental to CC behaviors: for every enemy above 4 you hit with one attack, or something similar. Not kills. Only effect. You place too much emphasis on stealing kills. Then BB can gain one stack. This way, your crowd control behaviors are what you’re primarily using to circumvent your lack of basic damage by ramping up your damage through controlling hoards. Warp Stacks can then be lost somewhat quickly over time. Using BB shouldn’t reduce them at all, as you don’t want to discourage players from doing their job.
(The Penance involving warp stacks is toxic, and should just be removed. Penances in this game are another issue entirely.)
- Peril gain should be a longer term issue as opposed to the constant reload mechanic it is now. In the same way I’d like warp stacks to gain from doing your job, peril loss should also be tied to your job and not just reloading. Battle Meditation has a minor affect on this now but its random nature doesn’t solidify the Psy-Kin’s job.
More to the point: peril is a punishment mechanic, and right now it doesn’t punish anything besides basic gameplay. What do you not want the Psyker to do in combat? Get hit. Wade into melee. Be directly near elites. They’re mage style, ranged support units. Peril building should come from using your powers near enemies or being hit by enemies while using your powers.
So, my suggestion for Peril and Quelling is to have using your abilities generate almost no peril whatsoever unless enemies are nearby, or if you’re hit while using them. Conversely, peril should automatically quell in small increments from the same thing you gain warp stacks from: CCing enemies and killing elites. Your peril should build up slowly over a longer period of time, and once you approach 100%, it should be a much bigger concern than it is now. To that end…
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Psykinetic’s Wrath should be your most valuable tool for getting rid of peril, with these changes, but reduce it the most when hitting a lot of enemies. When you use it on nothing, it should be far less effective. It should also have difficulty recharging outside of combat, although right now most of this comes down to feat selection instead of being a basic feature. A lot of this should be baked into how the class works. This is an ongoing problem with the design of most classes, but most feats don’t do much of anything and the ones that do should should often just be core mechanics. Veteran is a better example of this.
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Staff quelling is the biggest antagonist to smooth a psyker gameplay loop. You have to get away from this constant pester mechanic. I’d recommend (again, not on its own but in this scenario of my other suggestions) to make staff quelling take longer (and again being far less needed and frequent) but exchange some of your peril for a buff that hampers its gain. But also to make this process interruptable by enemy attacks to again discourage front line use. In this way, again, more emphasis is placed on doing your job well over a longer time as opposed to just sitting at 100%, indefinitely quell-reloading every 10 seconds.
Hopefully these thoughts at least paint a clearer picture of why the class feels the way it does, and what is needed to get away from these problems.