Psyker Talent Tree Changes/Nerf Suggestions

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
1

This topic will be broken up into 3 parts:

Part I: Path changes
Part II: Aura, Ability and Talent changes
Part III: Talent Additions

For convenience, there is a simple Yes/No poll below each suggestion, additionally feedback can be left as comments.

Part I: Path Changes

First, please get rid of these highlighted tax nodes. They limit build variety, don’t contribute meaningfully and points could be better utilized on Talents. Blue marks the suggested path, red marks the nodes to get rid of, green marks nodes that should be changed to +15 Toughness.

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  • Yes
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Part II: Aura, Ability and Talent Changes

Auras: +10% Elite Damage, +10% CDR, +10% Crit Chance

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Perilous Combustion: Elites or Specialists combust on Critical Hit Kill, damaging nearby enemies and causing lesser enemies to cower in terror. 5s cooldown. (Too strong as is, allows Soulblaze to exceed other limitations)

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Smite: Unleash a blast of Bio-Lightning - a fast, channelled attack that Locks to and Stuns an Enemy while dealing minor Damage. Charge to unleash a focused blast - consuming one charge, that deals high damage to the first enemy hit and knocks nearby enemies to the ground, applying Electrocution to all enemies affected. One charge replenishes every 60 seconds, max 3 charges held. (Too strong as is, Smite Secondary should be more strategic)

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Charged Strike: Your Melee Push Attacks electrocute enemies hit and deal 25% Impact. 3s Cooldown.

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Enfeeble: Enemies Electrocuted by you take +10% increased Base Damage from all sources for 5s. Stacks 3 times.

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Psy Aura: Decrease Stamina regen delay for you and all allies in Coherency by .25 on Elite or Specialist kill. Sprint no longer costs Stamina while active, lasts 8s. (Too strong as is, CDR should be more limited)

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Unlucky For Some: When an Ally in Coherency takes damage, all other Allies in Coherency gain 15% Toughness Regen from all sources for 8s. Triggers every 10s.

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Empathic Evasion: A melee Critical Hit makes you count as Dodging against Ranged Attacks for 1s. A ranged Critical Hit improves Dodge recovery and distance by 25% for 5s.

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Venting Shriek: Unleashes a wave of warp energy that Staggers Enemies in front of you. Quells 50% Peril. Using Shriek while Overloading from Perils of the Warp applies 20% Corruption to your current Wound.

Warp Unbound: Scrier’s Gaze now also prevents overloading from Perils of the Warp, during its lingering effect. For every percent of Peril generated over 100% during this period, 1% Corruption will be applied to your current Wound.

Note: Crystalline Will would mitigate Corruption gained from Warp Unbound and Venting Shriek by giving the player more wounds - more wounds, smaller amount of health affected by Corruption. Corruption would be capped at whatever Wound a player is on when Scrier’s Gaze is activated. Corruption would give Chaotic Embrace buffs (if taken) and could be cleansed for the completely through Blood Baptism.
(Both suggested Talents below)

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Crystalline Will: Overloading through Perils of the Warp no longer knocks you down, but you still take the appropriate Corruption Damage. Additionally, you receive +2 Wounds.

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Part III: Talent Additions

(Directly Below Crystalline Will)

Chaotic Embrace: For every Wound consumed by Corruption gain 1 stack of Heinous Frenzy, up to a maximum of three stacks. For each stack of Heinous Frenzy, gain +5% attack speed. No Health damage is taken until Toughness reaches 25% or lower.

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(Directly Below Warp Rider)

Malicious Blessings: Non Warp ranged Weakspot hits and melee Weakspot hits deal an additional 10% Weakspot Damage but apply 5% Peril per Weakspot hit. (Need meaningful ways to generate Peril outside of Scrier’s for melee Psykers and GunPsyker)

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(Between Kinetic Deflection and Tranquility Through Slaughter, like this):

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Psykinetic Flow: Gain 15% Improved Dodge Recovery. On Perfect Dodge gain +15% Critical Chance and +10% Attack Speed for 8s. (This one is to improve Psyker melee combat against Monstrosities)

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(Directly Below Psykinetic Flow)

Blood Baptism: For 5s after a push attack, your melee attacks inflict bleed on enemies. Bleed cleanses Corruption.

“From the blood of the Emperor’s enemies, thy sins shall recieve atonement, freak”

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2

Why would you want to remove 2 out of the very few damage reduction nodes, and some toughness nodes in the psyker talent tree? Peril generation nodes are trash for sure.

3

He already explained he wanted to change the green circled talents to +15 toughness talents instead. He’s also buffed prescience to (I assume) compensate for the right side +5% crit talent changing to +15 toughness. I support that move since he’s also removed some tax nodes below prescience and Kinetic Presence, and near the keystones.

I’m less convinced of the suggested changes to smite and perilous combustion, though I agree they both need changes. I feel like PC could simply get a limiter like Wildfire. So it still spreads fire to surrounding enemies, but it can’t stack to higher numbers than the dying enemy had.

I think the Psykinetic’s Aura change sounds interesting, but the effect should be added to the base coherency mechanic instead to compensate for it’s removal, with each person in coherency contributing 1% CDR on elite kill, with a 3-5 sec internal cooldown. That way coherency still helps against massed elites, but the effect is diminished with fewer team members (so you can’t exploit it soloing), can’t proc multiple times consecutively (preventing ult spamming at high elite densities).

4

Removing some operative modifiers allows for more powerful combined operative modifiers as well as more passive talents to fill spots to have same effects but better.

5

Those little +5% nodes I marked are a waste of Talent points. Consolidate them into the One With The Warp and/or Endurance, and other Talents that align with their buffs.

6

I envision smite having a charge-time similar to brainburst, and once you reach the end of the charge you send out a branching and jumping chain lightning attack which momentarily stuns the enemy (in the same way Electrostaff 2ndary “stuns” an enemy for like a second) that bifurcates once for every 20% peril or thereabouts (for a maximum of 32 hit enemies at >90% peril). Could also be 25% for 16 enemies at >90% peril or something along those lines. Make the bifurcation jump random but biased towards elites/specials, and without the ability to loop back on the same enemy.

Dmg should be strong but not absurd. Would need testing to find what is a reasonable amount of damage.

Giving it a charge-up time and making it a shoot-once when finish channeling like brainburst (or electrokinetic 2ndary) prevents the stunlock we see from current smite which you can just continously channel. And a maximum number of bifurcations prevents stunning entire walls of enemies. I’m thinking perhaps stun duration should max at 2 seconds for groaners/pox walkers, and diminish with armor class (1.5 sec unarmored, 1sec for flak, 0.5 carapace, and unyielding 0.25 sec, with monstrosities/bosses being immune to the stun).

Values would need testing of course. What ruins current smite is the complete stunlock. Already stunned enemies could get a buff/debuff that makes them increasingly resistant to the stun effect (diminishing returns on stun duration to prevent infinite kiting), but makes them take more damage from consecutive electric attacks.

7

Smite is just FUBAR. There is no way to fix it, unless the peril cost / peril gain speed is vastly increased. I would frankly remove it all together, and replaced by a blitz which doesn’t trigger epilepsy and remove gameplay from the game.

8

Good suggestion, and adding in the 3-5 sec cooldown makes it much more reasonable.

That could work too, either way the goal is to reward Elite/Spec kills with softening up the chaff passively without it snowballing into a monstrous loop of soulblaze stacks just melting Elites, who melt other Elites.

Absolutely.

That’s likely where we’ll disagree. Smite would be better served as a stronger stun ability offset by limited charges with a reasonable regeneration period to use in clutch situations. In higher difficulties, chaff is a joke already. The stagger threshold for most chaff enemies is already very low and good control against them can be achieved by a variety of weapons for Psyker. The real threats are the armored Elites with higher stagger resistance and Specialists.

A charged attack that could knock the big boys on their asses would give plenty of time for the team to either reposition or eliminate them. The 60 second regen period would punish wasteful usage in higher difficulties and make the ability more valuable reducing the likelihood of spam.

I do agree though, the stun should be most powerful at the epicenter and diminish the further out the lightning chains, so definitely an ability where target priority matters. I do also like your idea about increasing the bifurcations with Peril, turning Smite into a higher risk for higher reward use.

9

I’d like smite to be more skill shot on the fly like a more forgiving zealot knife throw chaining to subsequent targets in a chain lightning effect similar cc no channeling with cd

10

It doesn’t have to be FUBAR. If Smite was altered to where it was still strong against armored Elites with high stagger thresholds with much more limited usage, it would go from being an aneurysm inducing ability that turns off Darktide into a useful strategic option to save as a last resort for clutch moments.

11

i would like to see smite applying electrocuted debuffs without the dumb stunlock on the masses, but rather a quick stagger with a HEAVY multiplier for armored units.

right now Smite is dumb, i tried it again to unlock the pants and it feels boring. you should only be able to channel stun armored units if you are protected from chaff by a teammate.

12

Agreed. The way I would design it would make Smite Secondary feel more like Zealot’s throwing knife that can be quickly used on the fly.

It would still function as a powerful stagger tool that would knock up to Ogryn level enemies on their ass if hit by the initial bolt of lightning.

The intial target would recieve a good amount of damage, even one shotting up to Maulers with Empowered Psionics, but it wouldn’t deal that much damage to everyone affected by the chain lightning.

Tight group of Ragers, Maulers, horde? Knocked on their asses, plenty of time for teammates and Psyker to deal damage with their weapons.

Then with Empowered Psionics, a charged Secondary Attack could briefly stagger a Monstrosity if hit by the initial bolt, or knock a group of Crushers/Bulwarks on their asses with the chain lightning.

13

if secondary is a charged attack, why not make it a real bolt of lightening?
The AoE attack ui is there and snapping out a large arcing, snapping bolt that grounds near-by and fries/staggers enemies in the vicinity would be awesome and a great way to spike peril.

make the current secondary attack the result of pushing peril too high with the primary attack; a nice overcharge ability that can be made more powerful and feels like a risky ‘ride the lightening’ ability when pushing peril higher, in a tight spot.

14

It should just work from melee kills. Sorted. There is your limiter. Especially id silly stuff like DS is adjusted down.