Psykers need help: Somewhat a rant -Vet main

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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So we all have a fundamental understanding of the main role each class takes on

Ogryn can handle hordes effectively with sweeping cc, get people up easily, shield teammates, and disrupt elites with his charge

Zealot can deal heavy melee damage, effectively take on and cull hordes, keep themself going through toughness, nade for revives, and maul the captain with their hammer.

Vet can easily locate specials for himself and teamates as well as quickly and safely kill them for his melee teammates, while also having the potential for regenerating bleed nades to help his teamates with hordes while at the same time getting rid of priorty targets

The psyker… also priortizes killing specials, but does it slower then vet while also not highlighting them, they can um… stagger and cc hordes with push?(you never use it for this, dont lie), they can CC hordes with staffs(but to a lesser degree then either the zealot or the ogryn, not to mention they clearly arent in the best spot when you look at stuff like the force weapon feat, doesnt even properly apply itself if your using surge staff), and chunk bosses with BB(Still slower then vet, hell maybe slower then zealot too at least for captains), all this compounded by the fact that your psyker either has to spend time idle quelling peril or pop like a balloon.

At first it sounds like the psyker is just more spread out then specialized, and that doesnt sound like a problem on paper, after all zealot and ogryn both overlap in what they do. The problem is coming from the fact that unlike those 2, psyker doesnt simply have some overlap with vet, its just objectively less effective overall in 99% of situations.

Say your on heresy, 4 ragers are ganging up on the ogryn, normal day, so the vet either throws a bleed nade for the ogryn or activates his ability and guns down all 4 within seconds, maybe even both

In the time that the vet had to nade for stagger and horde clearing, and gun down the ragers, the psyker MAYBE was able to get off 2 BBs, which likely only killed 1 or didnt even hit the ragers cuz it instead hit a poxwalker blocking vision to them, and i pray for you if you try relying on the staff to reliably stop a rager during his swings, even more so 4 of them

So vet beats psyker in elite killing, what about CC and horde clearing? Well considering regen+bleed nades, power sword, and torrent/collateral guns, the vet can also do this if he needs to while still being able to accomplish his role as elite killer (not to mention if you pick psyker purely to CC enemies for teammates, just go play ogryn or zealot)

So the psyker is outclassed almost entirely in his main role, matched or worse then others when it comes to what else he can bring to the table, and might just detonate mid match because he forgot his ability is on cooldown

Give my mans some help, and no dont tear down everyone else so psyker can feel on par, then nobody wins, just raise psyker up to the same standard

Few ideas to help remedy without a full on overhaul

*Consistency with detonating: very unpredictable when 100 peril will actually lead to death or just go down, even more so that sometimes you instantly start blowing up and other times you get a grace period to quell before you do (only consistency ive noticed with it is that reaching 100 with surge will instantly start detonating you)
*Feats being fixed, improved, or explained properly: again, the feat for force weapons gaining bonus damage based on peril doesnt even apply consistently, where the special for the sword gets a boost, but special for surge doesnt, touch on all cases like this
*Stop pretending: stop pretending psyker is fine, people have said since the start of pre order, and even thought about it since closed, that the psyker just loses to vet, yet at launch the problem remains, acknowledge it and fix it
*Weapon variety: Other classes, mainly vets, have various weapons that can handle multiple problems while also fully playing into their feats and abilities, the psyker has staff and a sword, where they either A. Do AOE CC. or B. Hit 1 enemy while building peril (vet can use long, close, mid range guns, snipe or blast point blank, horde cleave and nade, many different ways to handle problems all while still actively playing into his abilities)
*Buffs: granted yeah thats vague and you could technically say everything above could be summed up with just “Buff psyker” but this one refers to straight number buffs, like say faster BB or less peril build on a failed BB, perhaps speeding up natural peril drain (as a vet ill confirm my psykers probably fail 80% of their bursts while still building tedious amounts of peril, despite me trying my best to not shoot their targets)

Anyways uhhhhhhh
TLDR: cease stupidity and just help psyker, i know i know yall wanted to priortize aquilas shop over every other thing in the game but fix the core problems first and actually get fundamentals like crafting in the game, then you can haggle for nickles

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Since this is the umpteenth thread about this, I can only hope that Fat Carnivorous Fish finally takes the hint.

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It would not surprise me in the slightest if rather than fixing our current psyker they just release a better subclass later down the line and say the problem is solved

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I’d appreciate some buffs to the warp homies.

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I agree that Psykers are under powered. However, the role of a Psyker is not damage, but damage mitigation. I use the lightning staff and more or less play the role of preventing my team from taking unnecessary damage, while also controlling the crowd when they start to get overwhelmed. This works well with teams that have relatively high damage, however I start to have issues in 5’s when things get so bullet spongy that I’d have to release peril 2 times to kill some things with lightning.

I’d say my damage is “medium” but it’s so on all targets, and lightning staves have a huge advantage over all other weapons for killing ranged attackers in cover. So, is the Psyker good? I’d say yes, but only so in the hands of someone who’s okay with being support and a team that’s higher on the damage scale.

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You are missing the part where Psyker can take down armored stuff more easily BB, and can use Voidstrike Staff to horde-clear wayyyy better than a Vet can (also Flame, Trauma, Shock)

Out of curiosity OP: How are you building your Vet? Because if you’re speccing for bleed+regen grenades, then you’re leaving yourself out of key damage-perks like Lv10 Sniper and Lv25 Deadshot. Which is fine, but you’re trading off +20% damage and +25% crit chance for abilities that are sub-par horde clears and have rather slow time-to-kill.

I love the grenade-spam build, but it is worse at CC and horde-clear than the Psyker. All of Psyker’s staves point toward CC that’s on a super-low cooldown, compared to Vet’s one-grenade-per-60-seconds. I hate to boil so much of the argument down to grenades, but I really believe those are a stop-gap in the event that a Psyker is not present, and that’s mainly what you’re arguing if I understand correctly.

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as a vet main myself I’d rather have a psyker than a second vet on my team. as others have allready noted, it’s great for making the game a bit more easy and dont get hit nearly as much. ofc you can argue that with enough skill this wouldnt be an issue, and i’d agree with that, but it’s much easier and more relaxed with a psyker on the team.

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Been swapping on n off the bleed but regen always stays due to how often i find myself using nades for swarmed friends and hordes, and it lets me save boxes for teammates (also have an ogryn player in the group so he appreciates the bleed)

As for armored stuff it heavily depends what the vet does, id agree the BB is the better choice to handle armor, but then i look at my bolter again

Should probably have been clearer but i never meant to imply BB itself was bad at damage, but to indicate that it is outclassed in the majority of situations, hounds and crushers would definitely have me saying BB over vet (tho all it takes is good aim for hound and volley n then bolter spam for crusher)

Level 29 guardsman for additional context, east coast outage didnt let me get to 30

And i agree on the staves being good cc, my point for that was, again, while it can serve the purpose, its another moment where psyker feels outclassed and unsatisfying to use in comparison to other classes, vet nades came to mind cause the psyker lacks nades at all

(Btw please confirm im not losing my mind, why does the peril damage boost for force weapons not apply to the surge staff’s lightning but to its left click?)

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And thats mainly why it feels unsatisfying for me and i assume plenty of others, as well as just ends up being outclassed

I shoulda been clearer so solid mb, but psyker isnt useless, or even horrifyingly bad, just that when you compare it to the other classes then take into account its problems, it feels underwhelming to use and gets overshadowed by the others in multiple instances

Your completely right on damage mitigation, the CC from the staves can be insanely useful for swarmed teamates, but as i joked, we have big man ogryn right there doing numbers
Medium damage would also be fine, if not for the fact that the kit feels like it should be doing high priorty target damage effectively, or at least closely competing with the other elite killer

The kit for a person starting immediately points the player towards the concept that they are meant to be a single target priorty killer, encouraged by warp stacks existing, not having the staves on start, and the feats pointing you towards damage early on

To say psyker is useless is wrong, but to say it is in a good place is also wrong, cause currently the feats feel all over the place and often dont flow together like other classes, part of the kit gets overshadowed in practice by teamates, and most players generally agree the kit feels bad to play more often then not (which i am sorry to every psyker ive ruined with shooting BB targets)

Sorry if i didnt explain it well

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Id mainly prefer it due to ammo, but it can be pretty chill depending on what psyker you get lmao

And yeah ur right, if u have for say a surge psyker hes definetly keeping you safer more often then a vet failing to shoot the lone poxwalker point blank, just that some of my other replies highlight that the way the kit appears and plays feels like it should be capable of more then what it is, and should definetly feel better to use without having to yell at teammates to NOT shoot the glowing blue heads

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A step in the right direction that’s probably not very time consuming is making all Staff M2’s and also Brain Burst ignore Armor. Yes, ignore it. The game won’t be broken by a Psyker not having his Soulblaze or Purgatus staff damage mitigated by Carapace Armor, it won’t be broken by the Psyker being able to land fully charged Voidstrike potshots on a Crusher for a whopping 450 damage. It won’t be broken if the Psyker 3-4shots a Crusher on Heresy and Damnation difficulties with Brain Burst. Perils of the Warp already limit the amount of damage the psyker can deal.

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I think a big part of the problem is half his talents don’t even work properly. Purgatis staff doesn’t count as warp or soulblaze, lightning doesn’t count as a warp attack, etc.

They need to fix the talents and make BB at least faster at charging. Half the time i charge BB just to have my teammate kill the mob and stop me from gaining charges. Basically increasing my peril and providing no damage or benefit.

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Psykers never use Psykinetic’s Wrath to stagger hordes because it doesn’t really do a whole lot to enemies, and it’s the only thing we have to keep us from exploding if we accidentally go too hard on perils. Using it to mildly annoy some enemies just isn’t worth it. Keeping it handy to cancel an automatic death is way better.

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thats not true, you want to stagger hordes with it if you have ascendant blaze.

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As a psyker main (huge purge staff + force sword fan) that very much enjoys the class… what you said. 10000%. It’s not even close. I have tons of fun on psyker and wouldn’t trade it for any other class, but there’s absolutely no denying a well-played vet is far more optimal pick for dealing with virtually anything other than a bunch of tightly-packed poxwalkers, and that’s only because my sub-par zealot flamer wannabe has infinite ammo.

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If you don’t build around generating warp charges ascendant blaze does nothing for you. Even if you have Ascendant blaze you don’t use that to stagger the horde, but to set it on fire.

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Psyker main here.

I want to keep some perspective here. I understand the complaints about Psyker, but there are some very powerful upsides:

With Warp weapon setup (Staff / Sword), you don’t need ammo.
Brain Burst lets you cull ranged enemies with just a peek to lock onto them then get back into cover. That can be very powerful against swarms of shooters.
Staff stagger damage is IMMENSE. You can stop almost anything in its tracks.
Force Sword “push” can ground literally anything, even an Ogryn.

Here’s something else to be clear on: No other class scales as well as a Psyker. Once you get weapons that give great Peril resist, faster Peril quell, and faster Charge speed, along with talents designed to keep you shooting, the Psyker becomes an absolute terror with a staff. It’s a case of “Linear Fighter (Veteran), Quadratic Wizard (Psyker)” like what you see in roleplaying games where the casters start out weak but once they get gear and higher-level spells they start doing things that the martial classes just can’t keep up with.

I have literally ONE complaint about this class after playing it in both the Stress Test beta and the Early Access / Live Release: Brain Burst NEEDS to scale in both damage and cast speed with gear. The Staff should have a passive attribute that increases Brain Burst damage, and the Force Sword should have a passive attribute that increases Brain Burst casting speed. At high levels, Brain Burst is really only useful against Snipers, Flamers, Bombers and Gunners; almost EVERYTHING else is better handled with a Staff or Sword because the cast is too slow and the damage doesn’t scale.

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No issues with warp charges, the talent tree in general, or soulblaze damage? It’s difficult to take this opinion seriously since the vast majority of psykers discussing it in discord have the opposite view.

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As someone who runs Dif 4 and 5, I must tell you that in 100+ games I’ve only seen around 5 psyker playing extremely well. Out of these 5, only 3 felt useful and only One of them felt like it was better he is a psyker instead of another class.

That last one had Kinetic Barrage and was popping every elite and special on damnation targeting them with lightning speed even in the thickest groups. He was running purgatus staff btw only using it on hordes.

Apart from the Psykinetic’s Aura being kinda ridiculous (for the Veteran Ult at least) with Damnation’s elite numbers, I can’t see in what way a psyker is better than running anything else with the same skill level.

Psyker really deserves a buff.

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Yes, the class is difficult to play optimally.

You need to keep your Brain Burst stacks up, you need to manage Peril, you need to find and pop elites, you need to use the Force Sword’s push to ground certain enemies at the right time, you need to kill ranged enemies with charged Staff shots or Brain Burst (if you are using a close-range staff), and you are the squishiest class in the game.

I do agree that Psyker is VERY difficult to play, and playing it optimally puts you only a very little bit ahead of an other class that has a much easier time playing optimally.

Having said that, a great Psyker is a terror on the battlefield and your teammates may not even recognize the impact that you are having except for those times when you pop an Ogryn. The rest of the time you are clearing trash (especially shooters) and using your knockback abilities to keep swarms off your teammates.