Honestly, I didn’t expect ‘you shouldn’t be able to rely on your blitz to handle 80-90% of all enemies for entire maps’ would be such a hot take or deserving of such aggro. That’s what assail does right now, what smykers actively try to do, and is also exactly the sort of thing that got brain burst nerfed. Let me just quote Aqshy herself from last year. (Emphasis mine.)
I certainly didn’t expect being accused of lying and malevolently scheming to nerf the class. Well, at least not by you @Flawless . I just find current psyker to be really bloody boring due to the lack of build variety and I want to see it increased. Something that extends beyond assail, smyker, warpfire spam, voidstrike, utility shield boy, and laspistol/IAG gunker.
Not what you said at all, and not what i argued against.
Stop lying.
On diff 1-2 maybe.
That could easily be “fixed”, by having blitz abilities in general, scale with difficulty.
That citation has absolutely nothing to do with what you said.
“we slightly increased the peril generation of the ability, so that you can not completely ignore the peril mechanic” is not quite the same as “we nerfed it in order to prevent you from casting it a lot”.
Well I tried to be polite. But you’re clearly only interested in trying to shut down the suggestion that something you’re emotionally invested in should be improved and not interested in having any sort of dialogue or conversation.
Funny that you say this, but did not actually address anything that i said.
You did claim that spammable blitzes are clearly against the design of the game (yet psyker blitz has always been spamable).
You did claim that FS clearly do not want any blitz to be spammed (yet the new psyker blitzes can also be spammed).
You were not polite. You lied and misrepresented and tried to present your own emotionally invested idea as the solution to a problem that you made up.
You dislike people spamming assail, so you want all spamable abilities gone. You present this under the guise of “it is clearly not intended to be this way”.
So pelase enlighten me.
Where did i get it wrong, and what did i falsely accuse you of?
Sure, but that was in the context of changing assail to be more of a considered resource, since it is currently something that is still better than the alternatives on offer. This change, the “long” time for assail to begin to regain uses would be in line with the devs wanting assail to be more of a better way to implement their wishes said here: "Dev Note: Assail has been very powerful and has acted like a third weapon in many cases. We’re increasing the time it takes for them to recharge to incentivise switching back to your Primary or Secondary Weapons after using it, instead of wholly relying on them in most Combat situations. " from patch notes of Patch #15
The change from 2 sec to 3 did not much change how assail was used in my view, as quick shards takes quite alot of the mmph of the nerf away. Plus they did not touch Ethereal Shards at all, in fact their change in Patch #14, where they made the secondary fire mode of assail deal more damage than before kinda defeated the point of the later Patch #15 nerf to regain speed, since 1 assail dart with the right keystone can easily now 1 shot 3 shooters with one charged throw, or even 3 gunners/shotgunners with a crit, at least this is based on my auric damnation experience. This means that you do not even need to regain shards, since the heavy throw option does the job of what multiple darts previously did. So when the psyker would nowadays suffer from the increased cooldown, they can just switch to throwing heavy shards and not experience any tangible impact on their effectiveness, at least with a thought out build and good playing.
Also, the “same idea” for other blitzes that I talked about was assail uses and cooldown functionality, with a first instance of a “longer” cooldown term. This would allow the abilities to be more powerful when used, changing Brain Rupture away from “The worse revolver” or “the slower assail” into something new.
The only difference between assail and brain rupture is Brain Ruptures capability to defeat carapace, but as I said earlier, it does not even do that well. Then Brain Rupture does monster damage, but the psyker has options for equal or better monster damage than brain rupture, which does not cost them the ability to use assail. Also carapace can be defeated with any force sword or dueling sword, assuming the player takes uncanny strike which I do think are the most common picks for psyker.
Of course, considering that there seems to be a score of people who really enjoy spamming abilities and consider it an iconic part of the fantasy of a space mage, there are solutions to making the blitzes feel more satisfying and impactful and requiring-of-thought to others, whilst also keeping the other party happy, such as: a node that does these changes that increase usage impact but require thoughtful use.
I think my chief failure in my communication was assuming that people do not like repeat the use of a single ludeme in a hybrid combat system. I certainly don’t.
That all being said, I still think that assail should be further made on par with the others, either via making it stagger enemies less/deal less damage/pierce less enemies or by it taking a longer time for it to recharge. An alternative is to make the other blitzes better, increasing the wholesale power of the psyker class.
But this discussion on assail is, I think, rather done now, since it was not at all the only topic at hand.
Far superior unyielding dmg (Try to kill a few ogryn elites, or a boss by spamming assail at them. Lol)
Far superior single target elite dmg
Unlimited range
Unlimited uptime
Guaranteed hits (No wonky flight path, causing half of your shards to hit nothing sometimes. No issues with the flight path of your shard being blocked by other enemies stepping in the way, or the target moving behind cover.)
Guaranteed full dmg with no rng
Ability to move and look anywhere you want, once you are locked on
Of BB do not exist then.
Seems like more than 1 difference to me, though.
Try comparing assail to a weak (semi)auto gun with long reloads and bad hipfire accuracy.
That would be more appropriate.
Btw your suggestion to give assail a 30 sec delay before it starts recharging, is completely nuts and would hurt moderate users with a brain more, than it would hurt brainless spammers.
You are a thinking person who swaps weapons when ever appropriate, and uses assail against ranged units and certain specials and elites?
That is more than 1 use every 30seconds. Can‘t do it anymore. You will run out of shards, the first 2 minutes into a mission, then you will never regenerate more than a few (unless you are on the slowest trash team).
You are a bad player and usually forget that your blitz even exists?
Just spam all of your shards into a horde and forget about it until the next horde.
Nothing changes.
-First point. Brain Rupture is not needed to succeed in good unyielding damage, there are many options that deal good unyielding damage, such as the autoguns, lasguns, revolvers, voidstrike, even autopistol
surge staff, trauma staff do not do as hot damage as the others but they do stagger them enough to make the defeating of them a nonissue when using them.
-Second point. Brain Rupture is quite slow for it to be “good” at unyielding damage.
Single target elites, I find that brain rupture requires you to take psionics for it to properly function against ragers. Other than that I myself find that assail far out-speeds non-ogryn elite killing.
-Third point. I have never found myself in a situation where a secondary fire assail would not hit its intended target in a long range engagement which merited for it to happen. Sure, this is partially true, but this is not enough to make brain rupture worth picking, since, again, autoguns, lasguns, revolvers, voidstrike, autopistol, trauma, surge exist. All can do long range.
-Fourth point. I found assail to have unlimited uptime, since when I go to low shard counts, I just start using secondary attack and presto, no issues with that. I kill elites when at 1 shards as fast as with brain rupture, since 2 heavy darts can kill 3 elites. Assail also does not need to take psionics to be a fast casting ability.
-Fifth point. I guess there is the possibility that “wonky flight paths” can sometimes hinder assail, but I myself find that assail gets to the intended target often better, since I know how to utilize the mid-air control assail gives me over the darts, by looking at the target enemies in succession, so I regularly can kill the exact enemies I wanted. Additionally, Brain Ruptures own wonky targeting more often hinders me than assails flight paths. Plus Ethereal shards allows you to almost always get to your primary #1 target, the scenario where your shard is blocked by enough targets to actually blod the attack is a rare one, plus you already got another throw, and the 3 enemies blocking are most likely dead. Plus assail flight paths are often very direct when using the secondary fire.
Plus, I myself work around the random variance of the flight path with choosing my ground such that I get the results I need.
To reiterate, I would not call brain rupture hits at all guaranteed, with the ability being WORSE at cleaving through unintended targets, since it can very easily just target to a shooter or zombie that was not the intended target when precharging, or when trying to lock on it can 1 to 2 attempts to lock on to the main target, the time it takes being such that you could have sent 1 secondary fire shard to already kill the target +2 extra shooters, not to mention the second heavy dart going in.
Sixth points. Sure, this is a benefit, but only because the ability itself creates the situation where it is valuable. Brain Rupture makes you vulnerable, since you most likely want the target you are going for dead for a reason, so you cannot stop the cast without penalty, but your movement and dodging is hobbled, as well as your ability to block or stagger other enemies. So the brain ruptures ability to provide an opportunity for awareness is only helpful because it creates the problem in the first place. Assail, comparatively, has the option for you to guide your shards, but the secondary attack always goes for the target it was set to, which buys you the same option as brain rupture, you can look around as your spell finishes to completion and kills the target, only difference is that you have full movement, ability to vent, switch to melee, switch to ranged, throw more shards etc.
To add some other musings to why Brain Rupture would need some improvements: The ability, in my experience, wastes a lot of time, when I choose a high importance enemy to kill with it, it usually dies before I finish my cast, due to teammates also drawing the same conclusion about the importance of the enemy. This leads to the psyker wasting their time and the teammate their ammo. This is of course avoided with assail, since a shard sent to a target that is killed before contact can still do damage to a target you select, with the control that assail gives you over the shards trajectory.
And more about the psionics and brain rupture. Using Brain Rupture and not using psionics is very difficult to argue for, since without the extra cast speed and damage the psionics gives, the ability feels flaccid. This of course is contrasted with Assail, which really needs no keystone, but it is a really good combination with disrupt destiny, the keystone that also increases your melee and ranged performance. Brain Rupture struggles for the aforementioned targeting troubles and finishing-the-kill issues with Disrupt Destiny, I find. It also does not gain nearly as much mmph from the keystone, since brain rupture cannot critically hit even as it is counted as a ranged attack and even when the game has an ability that gives ranged attacks quaranteed critical hits.
So this means the psyker is heavily guided to taking psionics with brain rupture, which makes it a more expensive option, and even then, the arguments for brain rupture are not enough for it to beat assail, given the previous discussion about the actual necessity/effectiveness of Brain Rupture in the areas it excels in, such as ogryn damage.
Plus, for Bulwarks, I have some 90% success rate in a maneuver that is the throwing of a secondary fire shard over a bulwarks shield, and as the shield is gone past, I look at the Bulwark, affecting assails trajectory so that the bulwark is hit in the head, staggering it so that the shield opens.
Similarily, The current iteration of assail, with an uncanny strike Illisi, allows me to reach 1000+ dps against a crusher by using the illisi to get 5 stacks of uncanny strike and then throwing 2 darts, switching to my illisi and then, because assail inherits the properites of the weapons you hold, you gain assail shards that have rending and that refresh the duration of the uncanny strike. Repeat this with 1 Heavy strike (unbuffed for speed) at the head, until crusher is dead.
Assail also gains the benefits of blessings such as Ghost and Between the eyes. This of course not being psyker specific, since the zealots Crusher with Skullcrusher and the Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude work together to cause the staggered enemies to take 40% more damage at tier 4, and uncanny strike from the zealots dagger applying to the throwing knives of zealot. Plus same with grenades on guardsman, such as the bleed of the frag grenade intensifying when the character gets damage buffs.
Also, Similar to Brain Ruptures issues with potency without taking Psionics, Smite also soft-requires psionics, unless you want to use it as a niche stagger tool, when you could just kill the horde/shooters you stagger with your melee/ranged weapon/assail. I’ve found that smite is only good with psionics, serving as an easy low pressure way to clear some horde/shooters but even that has its limitations.
Also, Assail has more neat tricks in its pocket, such as staggering ragers for you to melee/shoot them, staggering gunners similarily. I already pointed these out in the original writing. Also, Assail can set up instant death traps, if you calculate a specialists approach based on their sound and some map knowledge, you can throw assails at a door so that the special is right next to them when they turn the corner, where when you look at them the shards will instantly heat seek to them and promptly kill them. This kinda taking the uniqueness of ready casting brain rupture away, since brain rupture makes you unable to do other things, and in the case you mistime precast with brain rupture, you may need to vent to not explode when it triggers, this problem which the assail does not have, since you can throw the shards and vent the peril, and begin to regain new shards.
Furthermore, to add to the part of awareness with brain rupture, whilst I (assume that I) agree with you that it is a nice additional part to the ability, to be able to look about you when locked on, it is nearly not as useful to me, since I have a pretty good comprehension of enemy presence based on their breathing/laughing/barking/shooting sounds and or footsteps. I can also understand in what state they are in, such as the flamers giving a sound cue when they first prepare an attack, the trapper reloading her net, the whimper of a hound as it retreats from a failed pounce, the aggressive snarling of a hound about to jump, the walking of a sniper and when they stop, allowing me to get a rough idea as to where they are without looking. Similar to gunners, and their reload sounds. Mutants give obvious sound indicators as well. Same for normal shooters with their tactical barks to eachother. This all to say that the amount of awareness brain rupture actually gives you, in the end, is not that high. Your mileage may vary, however, so I cannot say that this is a hard and fast and clear cut win for assail.
But to finish with a positive note, Brain Rupture, out of all psyker blitzes, deals the best monster damage. Even though psyker easily gets other options to deal better-than-BR damage, the ability does have that for it.
I just would like the devs to add more competition between the abilities, and this post was suggestions to that end. Although first and foremost it was to point attention to the missing functionality in scrier’s gaze and the ultimate-cooldown reduction abilities and the tooltips not giving proper information about their core functionality. (Example being that Disrupt Destiny does not actuall mark a random enemy, but it having curious limitations to it that I already mentioned.)
I do concede that this is true, 30 seconds is far too much. And maybe the whole idea of a longer initiating recharge being that extreme was a poor throw, but I would be okay with something to that effect, since I already know how to do alot with a few shards.
Maybe indeed just further increasing the recharge would be reasonable, if we want to keep assail as a good stagger tool that clears out elites and specialist with the speed it does.
I noticed that you said a lot of things, some of them being wrong, and most of them being irrelevant in regard to the argument i made.
You claimed that there is only one difference between the two abilities.
I pointed out many more differences.
I am not interested in a longer discussion on this topic, or to further argue about all of the things that you said, in detail.
I appreciate the effort that went into your long post, but i will not make an even bigger effort in order to respond to everything you said.
Although i will address this:
This is a good intention and it is nice of you to do that.
But the suggestions regarding assail (which is what i entered the discussion for), were honestly just very bad and sounded like an attempt to delete the ability from existence.
It would be reasonable to leave the damn thing the hell alone.
People keep bitching about it, but with every argument they make, they forget that it is a psyker blitz, not a damn grenade.
Hyperbole for rhetorical effect. (I will accept that it may not be tasteful for some.)
Although later in the same paragraph I wrote that Brain Rupture also does Monster damage.
But also the statement does portray my honest thoughts about the “viability space” of the ability, and I do not think it is inconsiderate or poor of judgement for me to say that concerning brain rupture.
This is all written in the “use what is intelligent to” type of deal, I say that assail, currently, outperforms in effectiveness the things brain rupture can achieve, with the marked difference of carapace and monster damage, but those things are not selling points to pick brain rupture for, since you lose all the superiority of assail, and psyker has other tools for those two purposes, which come to very little opportunity cost compared to the loss of assail. I hope this is clear enough.
The many differences mentioned, I find, are irrelevant or give no grounds for reasonable competition. Yes they are differences, but I hope I illustrated my thinking in the previous paragraph as to why I discard them.
I do now agree that the exact amount given may have been too much, yes, but I myself consider it so that I would still be able to utilize assail very effectively, even with the limitations set by my own message.
This however may not be ideal for other users. I myself like using assail, I have nothing against it, I only speak what I do from a place of principle (of having equally viable options for ludemes in games), and everything I wrote would be something I would be willing to play with. I do not intend this to be such that I try to take away fun from other people, who use assail, as if I did not use assail. I instead like using the ability and pushing it, which currently I find too easy to push to its limits whilst the others have not much room to push. This thought continued in the next paragraph:
Sure, granted. If the others get boosted to an equal level of effectiveness. The same level of “tech” and such is a nice bonus, which I would place on the foreground, but actually making the others on par numerically first would be nice.
Perhaps psyker should have blitzes on that power level, the one of assail, but assail is the outlier, and as such if we are to set the outlier to the mean, we nerf assail. But if we instead want to keep the outlier, we set the mean to the outlier, this to me seems to be your view. I myself am not invested in keeping assail as good as it is, so I could see it nerfed, but I would never mind a buff for the other two options. My thinking comes from a weighing of outlier-to-mean prioritization. If 1 out of 3 would be weaker than the rest, I would advocate the buff of the 1 to the level of 3. I however can understand that in this scenario one would want to set the mean to the highest outlier.
But, I sense a certain torpor for this topic, based on your latest response, I do not expect this angle of discussion to continue further. As such, I thank you for the counterpoints and active participation on the topic.
