Hey there! Psyker main here with around ~300 hours of gameplay. I mostly play Auric damnation. I only call out that I play auric damnation to note the density of specialists and elites, which will be relevant later in the post.
I think Warp Siphon needs some love. Specifically the second half of the talent where, when you use your combat ability, you lose all of your warp charges in exchange for reducing the cooldown of your combat ability. I feel this part of the ability should be an optional talent node. I would suggest switching its place with Inner Tranquility (6% peril reduction per warp charge).
Before patch 13, we had three options for our level 30 talent:
- The soulfire talent that burned all soulfire charges in exchange for a 10% chance to generate charges upon a soulfire kill
- The ability cooldown talent that we have now that also burned warp charges but additionally doubled warp charge generation from all sources,
- The third option didn’t burn warp charges at all and enhanced our brain burst. I used this third option almost exclusively, even when playing a soulfire build.
I’d like to get an option back that lets us use a warp charge build without it being mandatory for us to blow our warp charges when we use our combat ability. Designing it in this way creates a negative experience where, when I use my combat ability, I am immediately weaker for having used it. Because of this design, I usually save my combat ability for situations where the situation is in dire need of a shriek or a shield, and that feels bad. I would like to be able to use my ability more often without feeling punished and weakened for using it.
The counterargument against my point above might be that warp charges are “easier” to get now that we get them passively through special and elite kills. To that I respond: definitely not. Charges are inarguably more passive to get now and it feels great to get them without swapping to brain burst, but they are much less reliable to generate. I play in auric damnation a lot (lots of elites and specials), and when I use my combat ability often, I have significantly fewer average warp charges than I did when they were guaranteed from Brain Bursting any target. We just can’t guarantee that we’ll get the last hit on any given special, especially not in the most common use case for our combat ability: a clutch moment when everything is going to hell and we’ve burned our combat ability for some breathing room and now we’re significantly weaker for doing it.
TLDR; Designing Warp Siphon in this way where it’s mandatory to spend warp charges when using my combat ability feels bad. Functionally, it makes me hold my combat ability until there’s a dire situation where we would lose the run if I don’t use it. When I hit those situations, it feels bad to use my ability because I’m weaker after I use it. This design feels bad.