Psyker Thoughts

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I’ve been thinking a decent bit about Psyker since I started with this game. I’ve gotten to the point where (at least to me) I feel decently effective with them even in higher levels. It’s taken some doing and a lot of experimentation but I’ve gotten there. But through all this thought, I came to a few realizations.

One that’s already been discussed since me being on here is the general lack of variety/stiffing skill tree they have that has no real movement capabilities, so there’s no mixing and matching you can do you kinda just have to pick a direction and go. As stated that was thrown up in a forum post already so I’ll just say ‘I’d still like that reworked, it would be nice’.

But on top of that, I still had the feeling that ‘Psykers feel generally less capable’ than other classes. Originally, my main thought behind it is the ‘ebb and flow’ of Psyker gameplay, where in everything you do is stacked off crits or kills, making you either ‘fully stacked’ and feeling like a god, or you’re trying to get their and feeling completely worthless. No other class really has that issue, and I thought that was largely what made them feel ‘worse’ besides the fact they are made of tissue paper and a 5 stack of poxwalkers ends you in less than a second.

But, I noticed one other thing that is the reason I ended up writing this up (despite it just getting tossed into the warp with the rest of the ‘this should change’ stuff). Psyker has to spend a LOT of points on just ‘becoming a class’, way more than the other classes. Main example that suddenly hit me yesterday was the fact we have to spend 2 additional points on our blitz’s to make them usable. Every other class spends 1 point on their blitz, with an argument that vet spends 2-3 but they get the same power as the rest of the casts blitzs.

But the Psyker spends 3 full stop with the ‘base skill’ of any ability being near unusable before getting the upgrades/compared to their upgrades. And this combined with their respective ‘quality of life’ upgrades that feel like they should just be baked in really (Solidity, Mind in Motion (I end up not taking this one and just function off dodging/CC but it’s there), and argument can be made for Kinetic Deflection), makes it feel like you’re always at a relatively large point deficit compared to other classes.

This combined with their lack of any real modularity makes it always feel like you’re making compromises vastly more than the other classes, instead of saying ‘ohh I’m going to go down this tree for a build and not do this’ they are so often saying ‘well I mean I guess I can forgo having this so that I can take this?’. Every build feels like it’s a couple points off of feeling ‘complete’, and while every class can say they’d always like more points, Psyker actively hemorrhages theirs and REALly feels it near constantly.

  • Main Point: I feel it wouldn’t be bad if half of the ‘upgrades’ for each blitz just got merged into them, Kinetic Resonance, Lightning Storm, and Quick Shards Namely. Just give the blitz a single ‘empowerment’ off shoot pip and let the quality of life pips just be part of the blitz itself. Getting Solidity as just ‘the base quell rate’ and shortening that tree would be real nice too (especially considering how many points Warp Siphon can eat up), I’d argue for Mind in Motion but I can see an argument for or against that one.

But yeah, just something I noticed and figured I’d place here for DISCussion. Have at thee.

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Don’t buff assail.

It REALLY doesn’t need it. At all.

BB could be fine.

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I think the devs are trying to cover far too wide a play style space with Psykers. The tree accommodates a wide range of potential playstyles, but for whichever one you actually want to play it becomes very restrictive because the rest of the tree is clearly intended for the other playstyles. I think of this in contrast to the Zealot tree in particular, which imo is very well done, where the potential play style space is far narrower (robust melee) allowing the potential to tweak any given loadout in many directions. So whereas the Psyker’s build is determined by picking a playstyle, the Zealot’s build is determined by tweaking interesting variations on the playstyle (with the play style being determined when they signed up for Zealot).

I’m not really sure how I would address this as a dev, beyond adding a third, forth and maybe fifth column to the tree. Or just remove gun psyker and let that shooting focused style be covered by vets.

The thing that most disappointed me with our rework was that the devs seem not to have understood peril as our central interesting mechanic, as none of the new options tie into managing it in interesting ways or encourage us to push living at the edge of madness for advantage.

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True, one of the only talents that really interacted with high perils is Warp Rider and that got nerfed/fixed.

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It was part of the old tree, maybe they renamed it, but it isn’t new.

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I didn’t say it was new, just that it changed from giving +10-20% power scaling with peril to +0-20%.

I agree that they should have taken the opportunity to add more perils interactions in the talent tree.

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The Psyker class and the Psyker talent tree is comfortably 500% worse than the others in the game. Not just because of how railroady and limited the talent tree is, but also because it’s completely uninspired and full of incredibly underwhelming options.

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Personal preference, but I don’t want to play a gun psyker. I’ve other classes doing guns. I want to use staves and be a “magic” guy when I play psyker. That makes many skills, and chunks of that right-hand-side tree redundant for me.

Great that people can do this btw. I’m not saying it shouldn’t exist, but you gotta feel that should be a class spin off. And I know other classes have that weird rhs thing too (melee vet, gun-ogryn, stealth zealot) but they’re at least partially in keeping with the class caste.

@op I don’t think Psykers are crazy weak, but they have become a high effort class imo. Lots of movement, sliding, positioning. And mainly, I just miss the old surge staff :frowning:

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This issue does not exist unless you specifically build for it.

And regarding a few other comments here…
Not sure if i am blinded by liking the psyker class and the gameplay so much, but it does not seem to me at all, that the psyker is weaker than the other classes, or that the options are uninspired or underwhelming.

I think the psyker simply has a higher skill floor than the other classes.
Maybe a higher skill ceiling, too.

And lots of weapon swapping and blitz using.
Probably one of the reasons for players to think that the class is weak.
They just do not play it well.
Look at many zealot/vet/ogryn players (even in the auric playlist), who basically do not know of the existence of their blitz ability.
They do not use it in moments of need, and when they at some point do remember that they have a blitz, they just spam it and forget about it again.
It would not surprise me at all, if those people were also unable to play the psyker.

You can get a great performance as ogryn, if you just spam your kickback at everything.
You can get a great performance as zealot if you melee everything.
You can get a pretty good performance as vet, if you shoot everything.

As psyker, you have to quell peril if you want to constantly use your staff.
But you probably want to use your melee or blitz for certain enemies.

And the psyker is less tanky than the others and does not have an abiltiy that grants you over toughness. So you actually have to dodge.

Overall, that is like 3-4 extra buttons to press!

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I’ve been rocking Trauma/Purgatus psykers, and the only real annoyance I will state is that you don’t really have a good ‘anti-boss’ weapon at any point. Even Crit Hand Cannon Revolver Psyker will not do much in the way of good DPS against a boss.

This kinda overlaps with the lack of solid anti-armor - Trauma takes a lot of hits even with Rending Shockwave and Brain Burst is way too slow and weak on Damnation.

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Firstly: I thought you’d gone. :slight_smile:
Secondly: I think (>?) we’re in agreement? Many FPS players want to play characters like this: crouch,ADS, shoot and manage recoil. It’s the 1999 CounterStrike muscle memory, and embedded in games for another 20 years since. And it works well still with the vet, which is why I think it’s the most popular class.
Suddenly you’ve a “shooter” game that makes all that redundant. VT2 wasn’t a shooter. But you’ve got here an audience that look at the game like a mixed shooter, and their primary move set doesn’t work.

Which, well, I don’t know, but I think is why we’ve this backlash. Mages in games don’t have to move a lot. They just rotate cast streams to manage aggro. And now the Psyker has moved away from that niche.

Psyker I think is now a top-skill class. And by that, I mean that to get the most out of it, you’ve got to be well tuned in. But to do equal effect on other classes, you can still do that old “stand and deliver” macro LMB and close your eyes.

I’m not criticising that. I have a LMB macro for the knife etc. But the Psyker in October became harder-than-the-average to play.

All …IMHO

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Yeah, I’ll largely just nod at Jonboy’s response, but like as I said above, I do believe I’ve gotten to the point of feeling ‘good’ on Psyker, but feel there could be some tweaks (like above) to make them feel a bit less ‘ohh only after 100+ hours of tree experimentation and getting the exact perfect staff you need to function will you find the exact right playstyle that doesn’t just make you feel bad for you!’.

Not to say I think having a class that has a high skill floor is bad, but it feels weird to have such a high skill floor that also doesn’t at any point reach higher than the other classes base level in terms of effectiveness. Sure yeah, as a Psyker that now ‘knows the way’, I’m incredible utility and pretty dang effective resource-less wave clear. But outside of a higher susceptibility to trappers Zealots do all that just by existing, their tree’s skills functioning entirely off hits so they just walk into the wave and beat up everything with a moderately good melee weapon and the will of the emperor. They also get massive tankiness for breathing on top of it. (Vet literally just gets ‘I will do more damage than everything’ passives that don’t require any set up at all, and Ogryns either function off hits or by reloading their weapon/getting hit, with a small bump for kills with two pips that can be ignored).

That’s mainly the difference I feel could help being ‘smoothed’. I like Psyker, now that I got staffs and builds that work with them I feel good on them, and as you say it feels rewarding and satisfying pulling out that dueling sword and becoming an unhittable menace while also hot swapping between staff and blitz to keep waves managed and deal with larger threats.

But every class gets to be largely as effective as Psyker is (minus smites stun potential) with half if not lower the effort, so having all the things mentioned above on top of that really just makes them feel that much more like they are needlessly ‘gimped’, even if I adore running around with them. Say what you will, but the psykers ‘stun the entire wave’ button press requires an entire build to make it useful and has to spam their entire kit. My Zealot has to click ult once, walk at the enemy, and gets 100 overshields and DR/Damage for 10 seconds while becoming invulnerable, making everyone in a massive radius invulnerable, AND stunning things all the way up to most monstrosities (shakes fist at beast of nurgle). And that is one button press, before going back to 1-2 button presses by just spamming their melee on the stunned enemies (the other button press being reving their chain weapons).

I’m not saying Psyker needs to get to that level of ‘unneeded skill’, just that it would be nice to feel rewarded for pressing all my buttons with greater effectiveness/at least more optionality, verses spamming every key and feeling ‘about on par’ with the rest of the cast until the monstrosity spawns and I go ‘ok I’m useless good byyyyyye’.

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