I’ve played Psyker the most of any class - HOWEVER - I haven’t played much of it all since the latest major patch with the reworks and additions to the tree. So some of the below assessment is speculation. As always curious to get the discussion going and will roll the feedback here into revisions. Take a peek!
And, as is par for the course, below is a build using many of the key talents and focusing on Crits. Would typically take a voidstrike staff in this build for the headshots and crit synergies. Is also a bit of a beast in melee.
I don’t have strong feelings on psyker. Build looks good to me, though I tend to prefer warp charges for more ability cooldown and the damage boost for brain rupture, but I don’t think it’s a big deal.
Just want to say I appreciate you making these posts, and I want to recognize the effort that goes into the images. I hope we get some good discussion out of this!
This really highlights just how many of Psyker’s nodes are good. I have so much trouble deciding which nodes to take.
I will say the left/right wings above the auras don’t feel worth it most of the time. I also agree with the idea that while dome shield is generally superior to wall shield, it’s still 100% viable (and I think it’s the chad move).
For your build, I wouldn’t take Souldrinker unless you are specifically planning on using Purgatus staff. Solidity and Empyric Resolve are also two nodes worth taking compared to their counterparts IMO.
For all of your blitzes that you’ve had, I’ve had builds (separately) that sleep on all three of the augments to those blitzes. Done it for smite, burst and assail all. Most often, I find that I can’t pass on the crit aura unless I’m doing something that requires peril quelling and a lot of it, then I go for CDR aura with venting shriek (which I’ve slept on those augments too) and then whatever else. So basically, I build around my secondary and/or blitz function. I’ve built around BB. I’ve built around Smite. Assail you can’t really build around in my experience, though I suppose you could technically with Empowered Psionics. Diminishing returns feel too small though.
After I build the staff, then I spend the talent points to maximize efficiency of the staff moreso than the blitz or the combat ability itself. I think that unless you’re using a gun or a purgatus staff, empyric resolve is a must. More peril resistance = more uptime. For trauma and surge, I use Warp Siphon, for surge bolts and voidstrike, I use Disrupt Destiny.
Venting shriek needs 84% peril to apply 6 stacks of soulblaze to enemies.
A force sword generates 21% peril per activation, when at 60 warp resist stat.
Seems perfect. 4x21=84 so 4 special activations should quickly get you to the threshold.
But if you take venting shriek, the unavoidable talent right below is a 5% peril resist node and now you need one additional action to quickly get from 0 to 84%.
If you still want to get to 84% in 4 activations, you now need a force sword with 58 or less warp resist.
The new Warp Unbound (Scrier’s) talent is one of the more exciting changes. It opens up a lot of new builds. Staff-Scrier’s as well as a very aggressive Assail weaving gunpsyker. Still feeling out the ramifications but it is big.
Struggling to evaluate the Charged Strike (Smite) node. Base damage of 8 but some kind of cascading effect with hit mass? So far it seems rubbish in testing but I am hoping it somehow changes my mind.
is it actually that good ?
i found myself only ever using it with the dumb surge m1 spam then got bored after 1 game
but other than that, why waste a point when you could just press R for a second ?
It allows you to sustain very long bursts with maxed out buffs from peril and scrier’s. It’s still early days so I’m not going to pretend to be an expert but so far I’ve tried:
The surge M1 spam, which can usually keep the scrier’s downtime to 1-2 seconds with CDR on a difficulty that feeds you enough elites.
Alternating powered and unpowered force sword attacks for Malific Momentum (and other buffs) without self owning.
An assail maxing spec that has 100% cleave, damage buffs and max crit rates.
A gunpsyker setup where you stretch out the Scrier’s build phase with the vent on crit procs then conserve ammo and preserve max peril by throwing all your shards (again with 100% cleave).
I can see it working with voidstrike M2 as well but I haven’t tried it yet.
Still too early to decide what is best and what is not but these are definitely new approaches that either didn’t exist or would have been suicidal before. Just pay attention to buffs. The rapid switch between safe casting at 100% peril and unsafe at 100% can kill you.
I haven’t played around with them much - I feel like maybe he Souldrinker can be good with a lot of use of venting shriek still? Killing elites also spreads soul blaze reliably too.
BUT - this might be too niche of an application for a “quintessential” build and reinvesting those 3 points elsewhere might be the better move.
Sounds like you just aren’t a fan of the voidstrike - which is totally fine - but it is very strong and capable. It can deal massive damage at range and has a ton of built-in cleave. Surge blessing on it is incredibly strong.
i think most experienced psykers would say that voidstrike is one of the stronger options across a range of situations.
Psykinetic Aura gives you more than enough CDR, skip Seer’s Presence for Prescience to gain additional guaranteed 5% crit
You’re fully rellying on Venting Shriek for Peril Quelling and heavily focus on toughness regen. Which you have an abundance of (Souldrinker, Quietude, Soulstealer, Mettle. I’d sacrifice Souldrinker, since the crit boost is too conditional and the toughnes regen is nothing really and get Battle Meditation instead. You shouldn’t be getting hit that often to require that much toughness regen. This way you can get more shots off.
You now have the same potential crit bonus, but with a guaranteed constant 5% crit rate through Prescience and a 10% chance to quell 10% peril on kill, which can come in clutch when you need that one extra void shot, once cornered. More killing = less things that could drain your toughness.
I understand the idea behind your EP build, but the only real advantage BB has over your Void staffe is tracking specials/disablers that run away, or hitting a far off special. All of these can be mostly achieved by your Void staff’s left click. You’re sacrificing too much just to pump BB imo.
Empored Psionics is honestly just a matter of preference, I’d go disrupt destiny instead. It synergises better with your crit/void kit and you’ve got just enough points to hit the Lingering Influence node.
With disrupt destiny + mettle and say a knife, you’ve got extreme mobility to never be caught in a bad spot and always create enough distance to comfortably demolish things with void.
Alternatively you can go foir Kinetic Presence, in case it helps you reach some juicy breakpoints. It depends on preference and personal performance in a match though. Tough to decide.
No. Not matter how u imagine power of voidstrike - its not that powerful as trauma in terms of survivability.
Power of any weapon relies not only on pure dmg, but all aspects of battle.
Can u run fast? Can u cover others? Can u kill or disable bunch of enemies aroun fallen brother? Can u kill monstrosity or daemonhost? Can u survive clutch?
The answers with voidstrike is “probably” because in any of this situations u will rely on other weapons.
Especially with the fire → quell → fire animation cancel trick, this node is actually extremely strong. If only it didn’t need the complete waste of a talent that is Perilous Assault
Kinetic Presence (aura)
It can be a fantastic pick for any build that doesn’t need the marginal CD buff from Seer’s Presence (Psykinetic’s Aura’s -5% CD counts after Seer’s Presence, curios, and Warp Siphon… so this aura may have almost no effect depending on your build & specialist+ kills)… or can’t afford to go to Prescience
That +7.5% specialist+ dmg can actually meet very nice breakpoints on builds that would otherwise require 2 extra Warp Charge stacks, or way more Disrupt Destiny stacks to function well
Scrier’s & Warp Unbound
It’s a single talent investment to get total peril immunity for 10s after Scrier’s caps
Basically any build at all that can still build peril at 100% (Assail, staves, Force Swords if they use warp attacks) will absolutely want Warp Unbound
Smite
Odd choice of marking it as “weak/trap” and conditionally excellent?
Smite can branch to both paths, and is an ideal support skill for all builds that don’t need BB or Assail, even with no subtalents
Either way it’s by far the strongest blitz in the game and can disable everything in the screen for a very long time. Conditional definitely, but never a bad choice. Its biggest issue is that it’s far too strong.
But most importantly:
Solidity
+30% quell speed is huge
Basically everything about psykers wants to both dance at high peril, and minimize quelling time to keep it all stacked. Not to mention the shorter the gap between quelling & firing, the better you’ll be able to handle high pressure.
Puppet Master is the worse choice here by far almost every single time
Empyric Resolve
+40% Peril Efficiency is massive, and again means that much more time to keep blasting and dealing damage. It’s only downside is 30% less toughness regen.
Penetration of the Soul doesn’t even work right and several warp dmg sources & attacks get nothing from it. Even if it did, +10% rending is such a miniscule and affects such a small number of enemies it’s not even comparable to how strong Empyric Resolve is.
To mark Empyric Resolve as “neutral” while then marking Inner Tranquility as good/excellent, when IT is much weaker, highly conditional, and needs an extra point as opposed to being just a pathing choice, is really odd
