Pysker Assail Problematic - Videos

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Psyker assail is too much

Thought I’d record some gameplay. High-intensity shock damnation from across two pub games. Forgot to ask them if I could record, so only clips that don’t have other players in frame. There were still plenty to choose from. Thank you to that squads for putting up with me, I was playing super greedily to prove the point.

Seven shotgunners in ~4 seconds, with 2 veterans on the team.

All of the following are the same match. First one is demonstrating hoard clear, and it can be seen I’m using a trauma staff not voidstrike. Though I use assail as my primary hoard killer, and I’m not eschewing the trauma staff either, assail is just genuinely better than it at killing trash. Better than the trauma staff. With less peril generation to boot.

5 gunners and 1 shotgunner in ~4 seconds.

Full health mutant, gunner mobs, and three shotgunners I didn’t even see were there.

Finale area. 4 shotgunners and a gunner in ~3 seconds, stolen right out from under two zealots and a veteran.

This was indicative of the entire match. And you can see for yourself how quickly the shards recharge, so I was grabbing all the ambient trash mobs along the way, 100% uptime essentially. Very annoying for the other players I’m sure. And that’s ignoring the fact I had a trauma staff, which is excellent in its own right. Bring the busted voidstrike instead? No one else is going to be doing much but clean up.

Pysker Blitz’s should be spammable, with more utility then other classes. But you shouldn’t be able to just blow away 7 shotgunners in 4 seconds, every 10 seconds. The ogryn grenade is the only blitz that could beat that speed, and with only a single charge before needing to find a pickup. An automatic primary weapon with volley fire/point blank barrage could maybe do it, if they’re packed tightly. But that is a primary slot being boosted by a career skill. This is just your blitz. You have your whole primary arsenal and career skill on top of it. It needs tweaking.

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Sorry, but I can’t agree. I think that’s perfectly in line, if you want to take on T5 Auric Hi Int Shocktroop.

With the right Zealot build you can also rush in and one-strike kill every elite, decimating the Horde of Dreg Elites in a very similiar timeframe.

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I just hope they won’t nerf it to “crap-state” like Power Sword.

Because it seems like nerf is unavoidable.

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They just need to slow down the regeneration of the shards. The problem is not that the shards are strong, it’s the fact that you can mindlessly spam them whenever you want and essentially use them as your primary weapon.

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They just need to slow down the regeneration of the shards. The problem is not that the shards are strong, it’s the fact that you can mindlessly spam them whenever you want and essentially use them as your primary weapon.

This ! I wasnt playing Psyker before but with this new skill tree i tried with the aimbot shards in auric levels… God, its really effective ! I used dem as primary weapons and dont use (nearly never) melee or pistol… The regeneration of shards should be divide by 4 ! it’s a blitz not a primary weapon !
Damage feel ok if we cant spam dem

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Does your entire personal identity revolve around being a contrarian? At first i gave the benefit of the doubt, but this is just indefensible lmao.

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A few tightly packed gunner elites. Exactly, what assail is good for.

2 veterans being on the team, means absolutely nothing, if they do not shoot anything, which they apparently did not.
Those shotgunners came from the side of the room that is opposite to where the objective is (and where all of the players usually are).
The fact that you and the shotgunners had the time to walk through half of the room and meet in the middle for a close range fight, before the veterans took out basically any of them, should tell you enough.

In this clip, you can see how incredibly lucky you got with rng.
You constantly re proc empowered shards on trash mobs, allowing you to essentially have infinite ammo and generate no peril, while also dealing 50% increased damage.
This is far from normal and you got off about 2x the number of shards that you usually would.

Same thing as first clip.
You had time to get within a few meters of these gunners and then used assail in the one way that it shines.
The veterans (unless they are far back and/or have no awareness) could have shot a bunch of those before you closed in on them.

Again, perfect scenario where you have a bunch of shooter elites closely packed, allowing you to refrhesh your empowered shards and spam down the mutant.

Again, the perfect small group of gunner elites that you had time to get within a few meters of.
Like in the first scenario, these shotgunners came from the opposite side of the room. Your veteran teammates could have killed those guys about 15 seconds ago, but did not.

All except one of these situations were a few tightly packed gunner elites, which is exactly what assail is good at.
Most of your performances in these situations were only possible due your teammates being slow and not killing anything themselves, before you walked up to the enemies, to kill them just outside of melee range.

The one situation where you got a bunch of kills that were not elite gunners, you got insanely lucky with the rng and got constant free shard procs from the trashmobs you spammed at.
You might as well show a clip of an ogryn throwing 3 ogryn sized grenades in a row, because the veteran’s grenade refill happened to proc a few times within such a short time frame.

None of these situations are indicators of actual issues with the ability. They mostly just show the perfect use scenario for the ability, with teammates that do not interfere by actually killing something or generally playing aggressively.
You are showing one ability of one class doing well in very specific situations, thanks to no interference of your slow teammates.
The psyker does not exist in a vacuum and showing clips of assail being a tool that deals well with packs of elite gunners, does not show that it is overpowered.

Other players could show very similar situations, playing other classes.
If i recorded my gameplay, i could show you clips of myself with my ogryn, doing a similar thing. Not only with gunner elites, but also with groups of maulers and ogryn elites.
Ever tried pulling the entire final bridge on enclavum baross, in “scab only, melee only”? Let me see, how you use assail to deal with that big blob of ~20 maulers and ogryn elites all by yourself.

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12.5% chance per kill are very favorable odds to get the proc – especially considering every shard is capable of multi-kills.

Assail currently just covers too many situations, and it’s extreme efficiency enables it to dominate those areas (hordes, elite/specialist packs).

It’s honestly just a bit unfun to be playing with an assail psyker atm, even in damnation+. And ignoring players who play on lower difficulties (where assail is even more imbalanced) is disingenuous – those players/difficulties should not be entirely ignored.

I agree with OP in that something needs to be addressed. Lowering charges / recharge rate is my own vote.

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I agree that it is too strong on low difficulties. Definitely not on damnation+.
So the best solution would be to not touch it on damnation, but have the damage scaled down for lower difficulties.

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This is the key issue. Doing this once every 30-40 seconds? Strong, but in-line with smite and brainburst. Having a full volley every 10 seconds, and so many options to eliminate charge cost or guarantee crits? This is what we get.

Comparisons keep getting made of how assail is comparable to class X using career ability Y to buff their primary melee or ranged weapon. That can not be the baseline for a blitz skill. A blitz skill is supplementary.

This feels really disingenuous. Record a video to show me the blitz ability on any other class that can do this every 10 seconds. The benchmark is 4-8 elites, or an entire hoard, every 10 seconds. I feel like there’s usually less than 10 grenade pickup across an entire level for the whole team. As for the scenario you mention, what tool that I have in these videos might be the perfect counter to that? Trauma staff would stunlock and destroy the entire group, and has 100% uptime. That’s the problem, people look at assail and think its reasonable for a primary weapon. It’s a blitz.

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It’s wild someone would go to this length to defend something that’s obviously broken.

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Because Fatshark nerfs break things in the opposite way.

If you have seen it once won’t like it ever again.

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This is my suggestion too. Blitz actions should really have a damage scaling, it wasn’t really a big deal with all the original actions the game shipped with. Krak Grenades feel underwhelming on 60k HP bosses. Box of Hurt doesn’t kill much except on Malice. Etc etc.

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It is wild someone would just eat up the “it is overpowered” message and not apply any critical thinking, or think about what other classes can do.

Or that you would say this, instead of trying to argue with what i said (it is very simple: you can’t).

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Guessing we are not just focusing on blitz then and are now opening up what other classes are capable of with abilities, talents and with weapons, which either are in melee range or will require ammunition to function? If so, I can confirm most things are crazy good right now.

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It would not make sense to point to one blitz ability and complain about what it does.
It is part of the kit of a class.

Other classes have different kits with different weighting regarding the value of their weapons, blitzes and class abilities.

Ogryn has great survivability and can melee everything to death with ease.
There is not a single enemy in the game (except bosses) that an ogryn can not 2 shot with his melee.
Should any psyker main be complaining about that? No.

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Sorry, I was not meaning to come off as sarcastic. As I said, most things are crazy good right now and if you look at each class as a whole they all seem to be about the same… as everyone has something that is strong to bring to the table.

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I don’t see the issue with that. You can have a smite only build right now, too, and go unlimited power with it. Brainburst is the only outlier because it cannot take on hordes, but you can kill tough enemies much faster with it so that’s fine.

No, not class ability X. I mean a simple charged attack unreliant on any active ability. As a Zealot you can kill every non-ogryn elite in one strike at the moment, wielding a combat axe or a heavy sword or a chain weapon.
And who said a Blitz skill has to be supplementary?
That distinction was never made anywhere. See, that’s the thing. Most players come into this game and then try to project their ideas onto the game. Then they put their theory to the test in Uprising and Malice, think they have a point and then come into the high level missions where they promptly fail.
Not that I hold it against anyone, we all had similiar experiences going into the game when it first launched.
On Malice the Dagger used to be overkill for instance. Come into Hi-Int Shocktroop T5 and it’s one of the weaker options even with your entire build centered around it.
The same is true for Assail here. It seems incredibly strong now, but it’s only on the surface. When you get deeper into it, you notice it is not as viable as a proper Psyker build. This is why I don’t want to see it nerfed or not much at least. I’m glad there is finally more options to build classes than previously.

It isn’t disingenuous, though. Flawless is totally on point including his suggestion to “fix it”. Assail simply needs to scale with difficulty a little.
You haven’t even shown was what difficulty you recorded this on.
But regardless, there is no need for highly circumstancial video material. You just have to crunch the numbers. 100-150 dmg a pop, 10 available, although as you fire it will be 12. They have a tendency to hit weakspots, but sometimes they totally miss, too. They are unreliable. And they build 10 peril each throw. Targetted 25. You cannot maintain that forever, no matter your claims.
In your videos, you conveniently end the clip after using your Venting Shriek. Clearly because after another set of Assail throws you’d be at max peril and have to stop.

And again, I fail to see how it being a Blitz means it has to be a weakish support thingie in the first place. Sure it doesn’t compare to some of the grenades, but then you’re also the Psyker. You have peril to manage. It’s not the same thing.
You can by the way build a grenadier build as a Veteran right now and also throw well over 50 grenades a match. Darktide gives you this freedom.

I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t even know who you are.
And the reason I argue in Assail’s favor is because I have a magic crystal ball. I can see the future.
In the future I see a lot of “WHY DID THEY NERF MY ASSAIL :cry: - IT’S UNUSABLE, FU FATSHARK” threads.
@ me in 2 months when I’m right. :3

I think it’s rather enjoyable that you can actually get several interesting interactions between the talents going. And it’s not like the game is too easy. I mean I thought so at first, but after playing a few days I noticed the AI is also way more cranky with spawns. Sure you can kill a group of elites with Assail quickly.
Doesn’t matter when 3 more groups are spawned in seconds after…

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It is always funny when the horde comes in the front and a sneaky pack of shotgunners attacks from behind. That said, the total amount of spawned enemies seems to be all over the place, not even coming over ~2000 enemies overall even if you have a time close to 30 mins.

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Imo the problem is the interaction with Empowered Psionics. One shard can kill multiple enemies, with a 12.5% chance of granting a stack. Already have a stack? Throw two shards for the price of one. Each one killed 3 enemies? Well then you just rolled that 12.5% 6 times for the cost of 1. Kill 3 enemies with one shard and now you’ve got 37.5% chance of a stack. Already have one stack? Well you can throw two shards for the price of one! 75% chance of getting that stack back if each shard killed 3 enemies! (bad chance calc math). I think the damage is fine, it’s how frequently you can use it that I think is the problem. Limit the stack grant chance to only roll once on a shard kill and it’ll be much more in line imo. Or just remove the “consumes stacks instead of shards” part of the buff tbh. It already removes the peril cost, gives you a 50% damage bonus, and regens 15% of yours and your allies toughness on use.

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