personally i LOVE the shock maul and i LOVE LOVE LOVE that its on psyker now with the only downside is it doesnt have deflect/ more importnantly if you ask me, the cool factor of the force swords which get the pysker shield with the las pistol for example on psyker gets a unqiue mini shockwave blast instead of a normal push so really i guess especially since its all electricty based like one of the 3 biggest psyker archtypes that it would be really cool if it could at least get the shield decal if not also deflector 
Honestly psyker’s should get deflector effect into the talent that allows for peril to be used to block. Or it could be an offshoot node from that, being balanced by the cost of 1 talent point.
Deflector the blessing would still be the absolute best for psychic blocking, but then force sword blessing build diversity would increase in addition to psyker melee weapon build diversity. It could also be that the talent gives additional block cost reduction if you have Deflector the blessing.
The code for it is easy as well, since you can just have the animation of force sword blocking be used for all the other psyker weapons, which are one handed.
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YES. Deflector should not be a weapon blessing because it’s not a skill that depends on weapons really. Same as the force push.
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The new Smite talent interaction with Shock maul’s High Voltage blessing is funny for sure, but on psyker I have fallen into the force sword hole almost 2 years ago now. I don’t seem to want to escape it 
I gave the heavier SM a try on Psyker few days back, but its dodges just feel pretty bad, especially on psyker. I would imagine the lighter variant might be better.
Honestly that talent is useless, I do not think it ever is worth 1 talent point.
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It sets the Electrocuted status on heavy attack, its basically higher uptime for the High Voltage damage buff:
Attacks with the Shock maul already apply the effect that has enemies be counted as electrocuted, even if it does not damage the enemies. However I would suggest you test this yourself since this may not be true. This is just from last I remembered.
Even so, I still do not think that the blessing of High Voltage is good if it requires you to use a talent point which is not worth it in the first place to take. Also High Voltage is easy to activate with the Shock Mauls Weapon Special.
You could take Quick Shards, Mettle, Kinetic Deflection, Warp Rider, Kinetic Resonance or many more with that 1 talent point you use for the current implementation of Charged Strike.
Plus if you wanted to play with the shock maul, you should play a class other than psyker, since psyker’s melee glory is largely based on illisi, and with that psyker is a beast. The other force swords are horrible due to you being stuck during a warp enhanced attack with those and their movesets being sub-par.
Yes and no. If you play around on the training ground you can see that the passive Electrocuted status isn’t easily applied to Ogryn enemies. It seems to apply at the same time as Skullcrusher effect. No idea if there is a correlation to enemy stagger resistance, but it looks like it. So Charged Attack talent allows you to trigger it on the first heavy hit, without relying on that passive for big boys or using the active ability. It’s hardly a massive win, and I’m also slightly surprised how little damage that effect does by itself and how weapon dependent it is if you want to take the full advantage of that effect.
Heh, I wish the game was tracking weapon EXP / levels / time spent with a weapon. I tried out shock mauls simply to see if I like them on psyker with these new talent changes. Otherwise I almost exclusively run force swords. Illisi special is far more flexible to use, we agree there. As a massive enjoyer of the “horrible” force sword variety, namely Obsurus, I would like to see the special attacks on Obscurus and Deimos redesigned, to work as a quick peril empowered stab without locking you to an enemy. Some sort of cleaving attack combo would be nice on all them, but atm the single target dmg potential can carry you even in melee. Illisi is far easier to use to dance between physical and warp damage attacks, but then you can abuse Assail for that. Which is fairly sad, as Illisi has the most boring moveset from all 3 force swords.
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Obscurus and Deimos do not have enough “single target damage potential” for me to sacrifice the superiority of illisi in every other facet for.
I understand the want to experiment, but I would just ask for a rework of the Charged Strike to be something more active, such as when holding Smite, you use Weapon Special to start an effect which causes all of your attacks and non-warp ranged attacks to electrocute enemies, but this effect causes you 10-15% peril per second to build up and it ends at 100% Peril.
This way it is way more interesting and requires active thought of use and peril management, and gives more utility whilst being balanced.
Also, a minute thing: it isn’t abuse if it’s use. Assail is perfectly intended to be able to be weaved into other weapon use.
Sure, I get that, we are just motivated by different things.
I would very much like to hear your motivation/reasoning to run deimos and obscurus.
From my experimentation with them, their warp enhanced attack is only good in situations where you are 1v1 against a crusher, rager, mauler, mutant. Those situations are already very easily dealt with, so I cannot justify their use there.
Against monsters they may do better damage, but them making you stuck with warp attack cause you to most likely lose health or forfeit the attack, which means that this is either not good for long term/hitless runs or the attack deals less damage than illisi. This is based on a 1v1 setting, since monsters are quite easy to deal with with any weapons if the monster is against multiple players.
If you use the unwarped attacks against monsters I am asking why havent you slotted something like an accatran with infernus, brain rupture or the slamfire revolver as your monster damage option, since I do not think their melee attacks beat those in reliability. That is how I view it.
Now to make it clearer: I do not question your choice here, and I do not want to sound attacking. This is my judgement towards me using the non-illisi choices, and my rationale as to why I think they are not a good choice when (deflector+uncanny strike+2 stamina+block cost reduction+3 block cost reduction trinkets) illisi exists.
I don’t particularly care about “meta” options or feel I have to use x over y, because its objectively better at something. Deimos and Obscurus do respectable damage in prolonged melee, even without proper cleave attacks. Sure it isn’t a Eviscerator, or Brutal Momentum combat axe. but I manage. It’s a nice personal challenge I suppose?
I’m not a fan of how monotonous Illisi is with its overreliance on the special attack. I have used it occasionally, but I keep coming back to Obscurus. Its Heavy1 even before the buffs did great damage vs elites. Deimos has its moments also, its H2 just bullies elites, and obviously it has the best dodges from all 3. I also love the force push on all 3, its a pretty nice utility.
I don’t really use the special attack on Deimos and Obscurus, its virtually useless, unless for whatever reason you need to top up your toughness this way. Fatshark should redesign it into something practical and with an actual purpose, so you can use it without exposing yourself. Just like Illisi allows you to.
I really like force swords thematically as you can guess. I can play with other melee weapons on other classes, and this is an option unique for psyker. In general I feel people sleep on the force swords a bit. Yes I have run the Agripina fan revolver quite a bit until they added the bolt pistol.
This is not a way I would run any force swords for sure, too defensive for my liking. I would find it hard to trade extra HP or toughness for +3 stamina, especially on a class with the best stamina regen in the game. Kinetic Deflection is a must on all my builds, and you are basically forced to take it on the way to DD. When it comes to perks I tend to run it safe flak + maniac, even if I could make an argument for swapping one for something like extra crit maybe even carapace. Blessings I tend to run Slaughterer + Riposte or Precog or Uncanny, but I prefer Riposte from those 3, it also seems to have better crit uptime than Shred, at least in my experience. Force swords have great crits and with all those crit and finesse talents/keystones and few synergies, it feels like a natural choice.
I do not care about the meta either. if we mean meta as the “collective opinion of what is good”.
I only care for m.e.t.a. most effective tactic available, but only so far as it gives me a way to make an optimized concept of a character. Such as, I want a psyker who can block bullets, but I want to make it so that it is as good as it can within that primary prerequisite.
I myself do not use illisi buffstate too often in combat, it is a thing I sometimes mix in and use when entering melee range or when I want to do a breakpoint attack instead of two attacks.
Cool beans
I do not use +3 stamina trinkets, my sword has stamina and bcr.
Kinetic Deflection stacks prodigiously with block cost reduction stacking
Kinetic Deflection with bcr stacking and stamina on the sword with deflector allows you to block a gunner empty of shots or multiple ones if you dodge slightly. And you can do some really insane rescues, but that is more niche. I use the defensive set up because the force sword is a survival self defense tool for me, since my staff or gun or my blitz is the main damage dealing implement, so I find best value in the sword being a defensively optimized universal answer, hence the uncanny strike.
I would never sacrifice +17 toughness for 3 stamina, especially since stamina in this game is so poorly designed. I view increasing stamina to be a negative, since the system of regen and certain costs are so that you regen slowly in % and you lose %, so low stamina lets you regen % faster.
As for enemy-type-specific perks I dislike them wholesale, I always gravitate to global buffs such as bcr, scr, reload speed, headshot, crit rate, crit damage, elites or specialists.
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