this is actually annoyingly true. Doing a good high peril brain burst build is gimped from the start
Exactly. I think the psyker talent tree has itâs flaws, but in a way i feel like psyker is brilliantly designed as a glass cannon class with massive potential that relies a lot on player discipline and focus at Havoc +30.
In a way this mirrors psyker lore and the burden psykers are under, that with careful management the psyker can define the entire battle.
It puts a lot of pressure on the psyker player, who has to walk a knifeâs edge at high peril, having absolute situational awareness using constant repositioning to avoid damage and maximize dps, and avoiding getting caught in alleys with no way out (like when the witch hunters come).
Its all about player discipline. Staying focused and not get greedy (with peril, positioning, pushing ahead), sticking with team mates, thinking ahead (always only ever fight in places you can escape from in 2 or more directions), always be near cover. If you can do all that at a high level you can totally dominate the game.
Yeah⌠OkayâŚ
What?
So no psykic powers then?
Not to mention the auto aim BS, that is pure frustration at best.
DD is great for BB builds, coz of the massive weak and crit damage bonuses.
Problem is, the auto aim means you end up spending most of the time hit targets you donât want.
I had a run a few days ago, had 5 attempts to target the the actual target I wanted, but the BS auto aim with zero enemy prioritisation decided the that the Roger running towards me glowing blue from DD, was what I was aiming for, but the 4 pox walkers a mile behind were.
And the BS, canât target through railings and some see through fences that you can shoot through etc.
They really need to sort BB out. Itâs slow, not enough damage for peril cost and frustrating to you use.
This is just objectively false, and Iâve lost count of the number of times Iâve streamed fire at high peril and presumably >60% crit (I even ran a Prescience with Souldrinker and Anticipation build, deliberately nerfing myuself just to test it out, at one point and still Iâd take ranged hits occasionally), into large numbers of tightly clustered enemies, and shots are still getting through in between empathic evasion procs.
It isnât 100% uptime even when you flame non-stop (though you can get close on shorter timespans), and you canât flame non-stop anyway.
Itâs very good, but the belief that youâre ranged immune just because youâre continously pushing fire at >75% peril will get you killed surprisingly often on Havoc +30. It simply isnât true.
Have you tried it with warp Nexus + flurry with a mostly right tree build including warp unleashed? I find it a very good compliment to a melee heavy playstyle in that build. The ability to rapid fire secondaries with max flurry for ten seconds after SG can be pretty effective and despite not head shotting the high crit rate means it still benefits a good bit from all the finesse bonuses.
Not suggesting itâs like high havoc competitive but you can certainly crush auric maels with it very comfortably.
Are you playing Scrierâs Gaze?
No, sadly most random Havoc teams demand a bubble.
Then you would already be immune to gunfire, bringing us back to my previous point. Also Anticipation is an increase to the duration of dodge linger against melee swings and has no effect on Empathic.
When the bubble is up and youâre not forced to move out of it, sure. In the same way if youâve got enough stamina and block up, youâre âimmuneâ to melee swings in your face. Itâs just, you donât always have that.
But your previous point was about purgatus and empathic evasion, and itâs not true. Even with crierâs gaze.
It gets you more procs, giving you more uptime, but itâs still not 100% uptime even when channeling fire at high peril and scriers active, and you do of course frequently have to take breaks to move, quell, or charge the next attack.
Itâs not like you can just walk around the map holding down an infinite stream of 2ndary fire without ever having to do anything else.
Ah okay, fair enough. Tooltip doesnât say that so I guess itâs just another one of those Fatshark-nothing-is-explained-things you have to find out by testing. Never payed that close attention to the duration of the proc with the talent compared to without tbh.
I completely spaced on responding to this point as well (just focused on the room wiping potential yesterday) but yes, this is actually completely true, due to how Darktides Crit system works.
Essentially, when you crit, you get X amount of crits guaranteed after the first one, but then X amount of hits after that one that are guaranteed not to crit (this being specific to ranged weapons, melees donât have this feature, which is why 100% crit on Zealot with a knife is still very VERY strong). This being why even low relative crit chances can feel like you hit them decently often, as you only need to hit the 10-20% once and youâll get a string of crits. (this is also specific to automatic weapons I should also point out, so Recon Lasgun, Braced Autogun, Infantry Autogun, Auto Pistol, Twin-Linked Stubbers, and, to round it all out, Inferno Staff).
One can find the whole list (or ask for it, I got it saved) if they care about it, but for said Inferno Staff, itâs cound is 3. So With high crit, your first 3 ticks (more often than not) will crit, while your next 3 ticks most assuredly will not crit, and it will cycle back and forth as you hit your high crit chance (this can be circumvented with forced crits like True Aim, this is simply a modifier that works with the random crit chance that exists).
Granted, given how fast ticks can happen, you can still have pretty high uptime on Empathic, but this is the main reason why most of my Inferno Builds (besides the one that in fact uses Scriers Gaze) donât use it/trade it out for a Deflector Shield instead. If youâre getting beamed in the head by a gunner damage WILL slip through, and you canât really afford that. This also being why I focus on using Bubble for Havoc as well, and spamming them as much as possible with âIn Fire Rebornâ Warp Siphon, verses relying on crit (itâs also more helpful for the team too).
This is also why I value Wildfire on none-Scriers Inferno Staff set ups, as getting 4 free soul blaze to start things off every kill after the first on top of Perilous is super helpful during the down time of the crit ticks, and keeps the âkill cascadeâ going until EVERYThing is dead. But Iâm in the minority for that one, but feel I get good use out of it!
Itâs a class which is able of the highest damage potential in Havoc (if that is a metric), thanks to how broken the unlimited cleave weapons are in Havoc, but yes itâs the weakest class in terms of survivability. You can afford far less mistakes on psyker than on any other class, including veteran.
From perspective of survivability psyker has probably the highest skill ceiling. From perspective of damage dealing, with certain âmetaâ builds, the lowest.
Does it make psyker weak overall? No, but I donât like what happens to it in high level Havoc. All you see is a Inferno staff bubble huggers. Occasionally you might run into a Trauma staff user. This is so established that the one time I run a force great sword, trauma and SG, our random ogryn called us out for âall running selfish buildsâ and quit after we completed the mission.
Personally I would prefer if the class did not have access to the Inferno staff and Smite at all, and Shriek also no longer being an unlimited cleave ability. Itâs just silly and bad for the build variety. Also I absolutely despise what Inferno staff does to visibility.
This is how I felt too. Having to track 3-4 things or die, while you can just Dodge about spamming Lights as other Classes is a bit weird, balance-wise.
Especially now that other Classes do SO much damage while being so tanky. It kind of makes a mockery of the âglass cannonâ part of Psyker.
Human beings are also remarkably poor at understanding randomness. Ask people to identify a sequence generated by random coinflips with a fair coin, and their intuition is âit should go back and forth a lotâ. But in actual fact, you often get long repeats with a 50:50 chance.
Generate a random 1000-letter sequence of 50:50 by just picking C for crit and - for non-crit:
You get this:
C---C-CCCCC--C-------------CCCC-C-C-CC-CCC-CC--C-CC-C-C--CC---CC-C-CC----C-C-CC--C-C--CC-CC-C-
CCCC-CCC---C--C---C-C-CC-CC-CC--CC--CC----C-C--C-C-CC--CC--CCC--C-C-CCCCC-CCCCCC---CCC----C---
CC-CC-CC--C--C-C------CC--C--C--CC-CC-CCCCC-CC-CC--C--C------CC---C-------C-CCC-----C-C-CCCC----C-CC-
CCCCC-C-CC-CC---CCCCC--C-CCCCC-C-C-----CCC-CC--CC-C------C----C---CC---C--CC-CCCCC--C--C-CCC-
C-----C-C-C----CCC-CC----C-CC----CC-C--C-C--C----CC-C--C----CCCCC-----CC-C-C---C---CCC---C-C----C-C---
C----C--CCCCC--CCCCCC--CCCCC-----C-C-C-C-CC------C---CCC--CCC-C-----CCCCCCC--C---CCC---CCCCCCC-
CC--CCCCC---CC-C----C---CC-C-CC--CCCC-C--CCC-CC--C---CC-CC--CCCCCC--C---CCCCC------CC-C-CC---
CC-CC-C---CCC---C-C-------C--CC-C-CC-CC-CC-C----C-CC-CCCC--------C--C----CC-CCC--C--CCCC-C--C-CC--C-
C---CC-CCCCCCCCCC-CC-C----CC--C--C--CCCCCC-----C--CCCCC-CC-CC-C--C-CCC---CCC---CCCC-CCC--CC-
CC-C---CCC-----C---C--C--CC-CCC--CC------CC---C--CCCC--C-C--C-----C-C-CCCC-CC--C-C-C--CC-----C---C-C-
CCC-C--CCCCCC-CC--C--CC-C----CC--C- There are several instances of nine consecutive repeats in that sequence, and a thirteen-repeats in there too. Thatâs a lot of ârollsâ with no crits, at 50% crit. This just is how randomness works. It averages to 50% over large numbers of rolls, but for shorter sequences you can get considerable stretches of âIâm getting no crits wtf? It must be buggedâ.
Sub node for Scrierâs Gaze that lets you cast infinitely for ten seconds after the ability ends.
Once my Psyker finally gets their hands on a Beam Staff, theyâll be a force to be reckoned with! 
Itâs turning out that playing a class that expects cooperation from strangers is hard.
The problem I found with Psyker is that heâs heavily dependent on teammates to soak up damage and attention. All other classes have the ability to toughen up and get out of a bad situation except Psyker. In fact, if you donât pick up those skills in high havocs, you will get bogged down. This becomes even more bothersome when a mutant throws you off from the team, and your team is moving away from you. The psyker staff also has its own problem of being unable to perform hit-and-run, so a lot of the time, if the other players arenât tanking for you, you will unknowingly get downed by enemies from your back.
Making psyker more survivable (not necessarily the way you are suggesting) would have to come at a massive drawback elsewhere. So for example really bad peril management, no access to staves like Inferno / infinite cleave ranged weapons with insane damage output etc.
I think this is the part the neo-ogryn and arbites trees are missing. They have power, tankiness, boss damage, insane toughness regen, but no drawbacks. Fatshark has delivered build flexibility with those new trees, which we were asking for. Sadly there is no limitations how you can mix and match these new options, so you can stack a lot of good stuff into insane combos.
Itâs pretty fun to make broken builds, but hell if I envy Fatshark combat designers the ungrateful task of trying to balance it all out 
yes, it is the hardest class to play.
No, it is not weak the skill ceiling is just space. Tbh I think Psyker is arguably better than both Ogryn and Zealot, its just the number of people capable of playing it at that level is tiny. That said, I watched a friend do a Havoc 40 solo somewhat recently on a psyker and uh⌠idk man, was just absurd really.
Sweeping dueling sword nerfs will probably hurt Psyker quite a bit tho.