Psykin - the most powerful class in Darktide (actually too powerful)

Because of how powerful class is - none even dare to discuss it. Any other class seems meaningful (even Ogryn) and that is why people want to balance every other class around psykin.

Why psykin so awesome? It comes in standard pack of two, some would call it all-in-one: psykin host and tzeentch deamon. The power of warp (presumably deamon) allows it to channel unlimited energy from immaterium.

Why is it so fun to play? Because while other classes have to shoot endless hordes with their weapons or just counter zerg hordes with cleaving weapons and brightly engineered power weapons - almighty psykin can use unlimited instruments of devastation.

Always busy: Efficient psykin always balancing peril level. No other class requires you to constantly positioning and quelling. That is most tacticool gameplay.

Puny zealot using flamethrower and psykin can bring more efficient version - purgation staff. Poor zealot will never see enemies under his kneels, while almighty psykin can demonstrate his staff to all enemies around, they will also can demonstrate their weapons in psykin face - that is fair and fancy trade.

While ogryn have slab shield, which is actually limiting his line of sight, psykin can simply bring force sword and consume incoming fire with warp energy. That makes him attacker, apex predator, not puny coward ogryn-like. The only big downside of force sword is psykins dedication. Special attack of force sword can deliver warp energy (presumably deamonic source) into the single enemy he attack. Psykin can oneshot enemy with such attack, while ogryns slab shield special just makes him coward behind the bunker door.

Veterans special ability boosting damage and helps him to easily pick specific enemies, player dedicated. Psykin is above such weakness. Why you have to wait until ability recharges, when you can simply boost weapons with deamonic powers. All you need to do is just collect some warp charges. Constant 16-24% boost to weapons damage. Not much efforts required. Even more to it: you can delegate warp charges collection to your puny allies with “psychic communion” feat, so they will do this job for you.

Ever seen those fancy veteran grenades? Those are limited by 4 and with some luck he can respawn 1 per minute (probably Khorn worshiper). Great psykin have dedicated tools for such job: Voidstrike staff and Trauma staff. As bonus - warpfireballs as light attack. Tons of AoE damage, crazy amount of stagger and also visible impact on the battlefield, unlike puny grenade from some weakling like veteran.

Some people believe that short knife from Catachan regiments can do alot of harm? Well, psykin can use it too, but why limit yourself with some puny knife? Psykin have exclusive access to Maccabian Duelling Sword. Best in line, dedicated fast and deadly attacks. And of course with exclusive blessings, such as riposte. For constant crit. chance boost on dodge.

Amount of exclusive equipment can only be compared with Ogryn’s pull, but we don’t have to compare godlike class with simpleton abhuman.

Blitz action. Brainburst. This is just another league.
Other classes have limited pull of charges, while Psykin can use it whenever he wish and limited only by current peril level. Also you can use this action on the brink of critical peril level without risk of self warp explosion. Precast of BB also allows psykin to kill incoming threats. Also feat Cerebral laceration can boost damage from non-warp energy sources. Which makes Psykin ultimate support.

But there is more: while other classes gain some benefits from new blessing transfer mechanics, devastating weapons of psykin now shine like never before.

That is why everyone so jealous and that is just another reason to nerf psykin even further.

Lowest quality bait possible, thought so in the other thread from your account name

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Psyker is the weakest class in the game if that’s what you mean. It is not really worth playing.

Only reason to play Psyker right now is to have the funny but endearing German male, African male or French female accent.
Gameplay wise the class is inferior to every other. It’s weak and squishy, and it has no meaningful utility or damage to make up for it.

Everything a Psyker can do, you can replace with a single item or weapon on another class.
Psyker needs hard buffs ASAP.

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No.

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Yes.

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The best part of Psyker is charging way longer than any Vet weapon to drop out a spell that still does horrible damage but I guess CCs more. How was this supposed to compare to the other 3. Even Ogryn can put out more ranged damage than psyker, unless you’re a crackshot with X12 or something. In which case you’re still meme’ing anyway.

I say this having played Psyker the second most so far (ogryn is best), I really only keep coming back for the duelling sword (its too swag). The entire kit is garbage and I have an amazing voidstrike/force sword. It is basically a higher difficulty mode.

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For real no. Psyker is absolutely fine. They’re my second most played class and I find Zealot, Ogryn and Psyker pretty comparative for win rate they just fill kinda different roles.

I don’t like the passive quell fix but realistically it wasn’t a big effectiveness drop at all, mostly just makes some builds more annoying.

DS + Trauma has possibly had my most consistent solo clutch rate out of any class I’ve played. It’s a bit slow but it has incredibly versatile tools.

Void is worst staff by a good margin IMO. Competes too directly with guns and with warp siphon and BB Psyker can be pretty versatile and effective when an MG XII our Vraks HH. Heck my mate’s been running laspistol Psyker since before the buffs and they seem to be doing fine on Heresy and Damn.

Well summarized. Here, this is you…

What you wrote sorta falls under the “A pro can make it work” category.
Yes, I believe you that your mates are running meme pistol with no issues or that you can make a specific setup work for you.
The problem is simply that Psyker is so horridly ineffective that his presence is not felt on the battlefield.
By the time the Psyker is done with his mystery magic, any of the other three classes would have killed at least twice as many enemies while having to hide far less.
If there are Veterans on the Team, you will often be interrupted halfway with your Brainburst because the enemy you targetted is dead.
If there are Zealots on the Team, they’re already on that enemy special you are targeting.
If there are Ogryn on the team, they’re already done with that enemy, too.

Brainburst as MarxistDictator said is just too slow AND too weak.
The Trauma staff and the Surge staff are good for CC, but that’s where it really ends.
Voidstrike is not as horrible as you claim, but it still doesn’t deal enough damage fully charged on the higher difficulties to be of significance.

Then there is the Psyker kit just not meshing well. A lot of meh talents.
Going full Soul Blaze is pointless. On one hand, 10% chance to gain warp charges from Soul Blaze kills is really low. It also happens very rarely to begin with because the tick damage is not very high.
The Brainburst upgrade that causes Soulblaze to be applied on all enemies in a 3m radius when hitting a special / elite is unimpressive too and not nearly as useful as the other talents in that row.

Other builds simiarly suffer from “Meh” syndrome. You have the talent equipped and it feels like there is no real difference from not having it.
That leaves you with one specific build, namely the one where you have 6 warp charges instead of 4 and using Psykinetic Wrath boosting brainburst speed / Warp Resistance.
Overall it’s just a completely underwhelming affair.

It’s all clearly a result from overnerfing the class. It was amazing in closet beta and stood out too much, so they got the nerf hammer out and smashed it hard. But Fatshark went too overboard and now the class feels like dead weight.

Consider that Psyker is also the squishiest of all 4. Whether I’m on Heresy or Damnation, it’s typically the Psyker that goes down first and the Psyker who is the least useful.
The occasional Surge Staff expert is the exception, but I think it’s very obvious that the Psyker is in a bad spot right now.

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I just don’t agree with basically any of that. It’s not the opinion of the vast majority of Damnation Psykers I’ve talked to and in general is an opinion I only see repeatedly in whinge echo chambers like here and Reddit.

It’s very tedious to try and have a balanced discussion on an entire class through this format. I would strongly recommend dropping into the Psyker discord and chatting to people about how they find Psyker for high level content compared to the other classes.

I don’t think I’ll convince you here and there is an absolutely zero% chance you convinced me Psyker is too weak. I’ve spent too long with them at this point. It’s overwhelming apparent from actually playing them that they’re extremely competent across multiple builds.

Here you just show you’re mechanically ignorant. The soul blaze doesn’t have to kill the target to get the warp charge. The enemy just has to be killed by a Psyker (any Psyker no less) by any means while on fire. Tag a horde with soul blaze then run in with melee and you’re getting stacks galore.

I’m frankly used to people here talking out their ass about Psyker with very little actual knowledge of how the class functions. If you don’t actually have very much knowledge at least drop the authoritative tone.

@Mayson I hope you at least attempt to educate yourself on the class further before deciding it’s not worth your time.

Agree to disagree then.
I’m sure I won’t make you budge on your opinion one single cm, either.

The experience I have as someone who has all four at level 30 and plays each sporadically:
Veteran > Zealot / Ogryn > Psyker

And when you have a full 4-man stack of a singular class, I see the all Veteran team rushing through the level. Ogryn would make second place for the sheer unkillability of that setup.
Zealot comes thereafter. And Psyker could have a real chance of losing hard, if they get overwhelmed. I just see them not being flexible enough when the chips are down.

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I sort of agree with how you rank them there. I just don’t think super unbalanced team comps is a metric that tells you a heap frankly. What I enjoy most about Psyker is being very flexible to fill whatever roll my QP team is short on. Having 4 flex classes at once obviously isn’t going to be the quickest win, though I do think it’s a pretty damn reliable win when everyone knows what they’re doing.

Especially with the way AB is procced by other Psykers kills set up right a 4 Psyker team could do some pretty incredible screen wiping. Hope I get to try that out some time.

This is also me. Personally I put Vet in “badly needs nerfing” tier and the other 3 on pretty much the same level, with different strengths and weaknesses and all giving very valuable contributions to a team when played competently.

Psyker is a little harder than the other two I guess. Not by much frankly but you do need to swap between different elements of your kit to get the most out of it. I personally enjoy that element, it makes the class feel the most dynamic and satisfying to play for me.

And so, the Huntsman of DarkTide was born.

Buff Huntsman btw tbh.

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It surprisingly is. Think it over for a second.
If you have ever more of the same thing and nothing to balance it out, then don’t you have all the strengths and weaknesses of the original thing amplified severely?
By having a one-sided team compilation, all the characteristics of the character we talk about are exposed.

I just don’t like how Squishy they are in higher difficulties. Some enemies can three-tap a full health + shield psyker on Damnation.

On thing is for sure - If all the Psykers fire their staves off at once, you’ll get a diashow in terms of frames. :smiley:

The best part about this thread is that I will henceforth be calling the psyker a “psykin” instead. LMAO.

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Again yes and no. It also doesn’t tell you much about how different classes can complement each other. I do actually think 4 Psykers that actually coordinated their builds well would be a very powerful team. Obviously if you end up in QP with 4 surge Psykers you’re in for a painfully slow game.

I’ll expand a little on my point that a coordinated Psyker group can be very good. 2 Purge Psykers generate an absurd amount of warp charges for every Psyker on the team running AB, allowing the other 2 to run cerebral and Psykinetic aura, both of which benefit the whole team to a significant degree. All the ABs going off basically all the time at that point will do a lot of the shooter work on its own, as well as mulching all the horde and most of the elites. A single Psyker with KB or a gun should be able to comfortably clear up whatever ranged threats aren’t dealt with by the continuous stream of ABs. Honestly it’s a team combo that scales insanely well with enemy density.

Psyker actually compliments Psyker quite well, as Jsat points out in one is their true duo runs. They all want to keep a tight group for coherency more than most classes so their general game plan is pretty synergistic with each other.

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Does it mean I’m here too often if I know the OP is a troll because I also read his other post today?

I think I need to go outside…

No, i’ve been playing on psykin for week or so, no other classes. I have some arguments, how to tweak psykin further, because playing disabled freak is really not so fun.

But as you yet may know: God-Emperor, Imperium of mankind and developers hate psyker kinetic so much, so shall we all.

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Problem with psyker is the only thing they bring to the table are their force staffs.
None of their feats have any real impact on the character or the team, and when you’re surrounded by enemies and the sh*t hits the fan, every other class has a way to get out of it, psyker just dies in one hit on heresy.
The moment you try to deviate from the meta force staff build that they need as a crutch to even work, they just stop working.
Gun psykers used to be somewhat effective & fun due to the passive peril quell but now that’s gone, they got nothing.
If psyker was fine, it wouldn’t the the single class that’s a topic of debate since the game released.
This isn’t just a niche opinion.
They desperately need better ways of regenerating toughness so they don’t keep trying pitifully in ridiculous situations.
You can be a god at blocking and dodging, but it’s only a matter of time before some pox walker hits you in the back and takes you out without warning.

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No it doesn´t. Psyker just needs a minimum of more input that Zealot / Vet, and that only because both sit on the most broken weapons and are overstated in different ways.

Also it´s nothing wrong to have some classes that are easy to play and others that need a bit more than just 2 left hands.

That´s just not true. Any Psyker who brings no value to the team is just not good at the game perhaps.

Already both of it shows me, that you either haven´t played Psyker much or haven´t engaged with.

BB is fine. It´s the grenade-ability with unlimited ressources to kill range-elites / specials easily across the whole map. What can an Ogryn do? Kill 2 elites and search for more? Or a Zealot who mostly saves them for rezzes?
BB is a very strong tool, it´s just that poeple rely way too much on it and don´t see it as the tool it actually is.

Also soulblaze is insane. It´s easily to get atleast 4 stacks for ascendant blaze. Then you throw your ultimate into a wave and if it´s a normal horde they´ll burn out and you get your stacks back immediately. If it´s a horde with poxwalkers then they´ll be left as onehits for pretty much everything and normally yes, you get your stacks back immediately while slaying through them anyway.

It´s just one button for huge cc AND damage across a whole room. Not even the broken flamethrower has such a huge range and needs ressources anyway.

Just bs seriously. Sounds definately like a git-gut issue. There are also Zealots rushing in and die, Ogryns who lose 80% of their health to the first 3 range-elites etc… Vet is often the only class not getting hard hits and why? Again because it´s overstated… 200 toughness and you can get it back while killing stuff. Or you play the casual-stealthperk so your team will get fk´d.

TLDR: Think what ever you want, i´m not here to convince you. But it´s obvious to me that you miss a lot of experience and doom stuff without getting used to it. And yes, maybe it´s a just a skill-issue since a lot of poeple who´re fine with Vet / Zealot, still just rely on the big stats they bring to the table. Stats which are NOT needed and even too much for damnation.