Does Trauma Secondary fire staggering enemies mess up your buffs?
I’ve recently tried Trauma again and my new favorite strategy is to keep the epicenter of the explosion as close to teammates engaging in melee as I can, so Trauma effectively shields them from melee attacks.
That is done provided I have the breathing room and there’s not a door or hallway to funnel hordes into.
So is it a nuisance that ruins fun, or is it the Emperor’s Divine protection denying the heretics a chance to corrupt His most fervant of believers?
No one really builds so that they’re on dependent on Duellist (or other dodge-based blessings) to hit breakpoints. The only annoying thing is Trauma knocking things out of range or the Trauma player killing chaff I planned on using for toughness regen.
I’ll keep that in mind and try to focus elsewhere if I see a Zealot chopping up hordes. I do try and prioritize ranged elites with BB if there happens to be no melee elites bearing down on my team.
Entirely depends on context. If its a pretty good zealot using a relic blade and spacing out enemies to stagger and work through them with accurate headshot heavy slashes. You are probably hurting more then helping. If its something like a dueling sword zealot that is falling back while slowly cutting through a mobian hoard with light attacks, then yeah probably a good idea to blow up that hoard to save them some time and stop them from backing up into a corner.
In the opposite scenario where you see a relic blade zealot slowly chewing through crushers, staggering them with a well placed blast will let the zealot get some breathing room and finish them off. Where as if you do the same thing to crushers on a dueling sword zealot your probably just annoying them by making it harder for them to poke those headshots as fast.
TLDR: Pay attention to what your team is good at and help out when they need it. Otherwise do your own thing.
No passable Zealot needs you to protect them from things they’re already engaged with in melee (unless it’s like a heap of ragers and/or crushers). Makes a lot more sense to stem the flow of heretics that are streaming in behind the ones your Zealot is already slapping around.
Generally speaking having what you’re trying to melee attack rag dolled around is also just annoying unless you’re completely overwhelmed.
Edit: pretty much just a worse version of what @JDLS said I see now a I’ve read the rest of the thread but eh will leave this up.
If its just a horde, then its probably better to try and attack other enemies than ones a Zealot already has in melee. Much in the same way I wish folks would leave my Brain Burst targets alone. There’s plenty to go around.
That said, feel free to do this to teammates in the process of shooting specialists and gunners and the like. Few things more annoying when you’re trying to take out a high priority target than some trash enemy smackin’ ye. Veterans usually, the odd gunlugger, anyone focused on shooting over slashing.
There’s also a case to be made about targeting elites like ragers to open them up for the zealot but if your Zealot’s running a DS build they probably don’t need help. Bulwarks are also good targets to try and “Crack” open if you are able.
That’s certainly one of my favorite things to do using Trauma, it’s excellent for locking choke points down when the horde music starts up (or doesn’t at all ). Anyway, surprise hordes = Trauma lockdown so teammates can focus on the Elites ahead.
That’s… fine I guess? Pretty harmless but can also just be ineffective since you get less damage and stagger depending on the distance with how small the epicentre actually is, I think it’d be better or more helpful to focus the center of the explosion in front of the enemy’s position rather than your teammate’s, you’ll get some more consistent damage & stagger still without pushing the enemies behind your zealot. Alternatively you can put the epicentre on the enemy when there’s a dense pack of elites to maximize damage & stagger. Like the others said, it’s very much context dependent on whether or not this tactic is helpful, it could be inconsequential, it could afford the zealot more safety or could screw over their kill/toughness upkeep.
Anyways, if a (decent) zealot is low on toughness or getting shot by shooters/gunners and they’re also simultaneously engaging horde enemies in melee then that is the moment where you let the Zealot do their thing because it keeps them alive, in that situation it’d better for you to deal with the shooters whatever else that could threaten the team.
Am I misunderstanding others? Do people NOT like brittle debuffs?
I feel like there are plenty of targets so you don’t HAVE to keep the explosion centered on trash or stuff that’s being handled fine and whatnot, but large packs of armored elites get their armor turned to paper as they stoop down to tie their shoelaces. Though I guess it’s always paper armor if you’re running knife or DS.
And don’t you get more juicy backstabs?
I think perhaps the poll needs more nuanced options as it may be shoehorning some towards #1. No simple answer I guess.
P.S. For funsies, spawn some bots with live heavily armored mobs in psykanium, brittle trauma them and watch the bots chew them up like pirahnas w/ devil claws.
You’re actively taking away toughness regeneration through dodges and kills if you stagger everything away to the floor.
This can be extremely dangerous and lead to downs on higher havocs with lots of gunners present due to lack of regen.
My favorite is vets and psykers attacking/killing the range elite a fotf zealot is charging, effectively sabotaging up his gunner line disruption.
If a zealot is charging into something, especially ranged units, attack the opposite end of the enemy group. That would actually help.
Regular auric maelstrom doesn’t have the armor density required to warrant enemy brittleness debuffs and no sane zealot will solo charge a h40 armor wave.
This tactics is good only as supportive option. U can save your teammate from death (hello silent crushers), but main reason trauma is good is brittleness, precision crowd control and, most importantly, your own surviveability).
If u want to go highter difficulties then regular damnation - u need to know that your own defence is top priority (and trauma is really good because u not only staggerin heretics, but knocks them down… its buying time for u and others) .
Really good psyker is not who help team, but who help team and not need in help by others.
So the consensus is, let Zealots do their thing and step in when a Crusher/Rager/Mauler cabal is about to overwhelm them unless they are running a DS build.
Until then, focusing on other choke points and suppressing/eliminating ranged threats like gunner groups with M1 or BB is the priority.
Not a zeolot main (I do play all classes though) but a ogryn main and all have to say is don’t blow up thing ogryns are engaging with in melee, hitting things is how we stay alive.
The protocol is to wait for the zealot to kill a few elites you’re brain bursting, and then begin staggering everything they melee. That’s how you build a mutual grudge.
You’ll know you’re a master when you can stagger-dodge targets out of the way of the Vet’s plasma blasts.
Not actually answering your exact question, but I feel like this is as good a thread as any in which to say:
As a catachan sword zealot who loves shaping an entire build around parrying, there is nothing more annoying than an AoE-spamming psyker keeping every enemy in a horde stunned/staggered/knocked flat and turning my parries from an all-slaughtering blender into anemic sword-wiggling.
It’s not messing with buffs. Just sometimes a little bit annoying when you charge for a target or when you got a group and you swing at them, the fly in a whole different direction. But it is nothing that is a big problem. It’s a form of crowd control and when you have brittleness blessing on it, its kinda nice.
It really depends on team mechanics. As many have said, knocking enemies have positives and negatives. Personally, the only time it’s detrimental to knock enemies is when knocking bulwarks. Sure it leaves them open, but only at a certain side, forcing the player to reposition at weird angles or to prioritize spacing and handle other things while the Psyker is blasting the bulwark to death, but even then the Psyker usually doesn’t focus kill whatever theyre blasting. Long story short, knockback/stagger is the most useless perk because it doesnt maximize killing potential. You’re just bopping enemies around and forcing your teammates to look downwards when there would still be enemies hitting eye level.
So major cons to stagger/knock via trauma are outright staff damage, lowering own kill potential, forcing teammates into alternative/bad angles, indirectly messing with teammates aim, lowering team dps. Also possible hardware performance hit due to staff vfx that could also lead to poor player performance.
Major pros are being able to cc with better damage than blitz lighting/slowing down most enemies except bosses, and giving “buffs” to team.
Best case scenario, you slow down enemy’s advance and kill chaff.
Worst case senario, you run out of breathing room.
). Anyway, surprise hordes = Trauma lockdown so teammates can focus on the Elites ahead.