Scrier's Gaze feedback

The general agreement seems to be that It’s a Gun Psyker ability. However I see better results in melee with a Maccabian dueling sword for example. However I have some issues with it.
First. Thematically the name makes it sound like a tactical skill where you’d become more perceptive when It’s more of a frenzy state. Nerd rage pretty much.
Secondly. If Im playing a psyker. I don’t want to feel like a second rate sharpshooter with a gun. Or a second rate zealot in melee. It’s also very dependent on having a crowd of enemies to fight. And after building up all that power(which takes alot of time) it only lasts for 10 seconds. I rarely get to capitalize on being fully charged. And sometimes I find it underwhelming even then.
It also just feels like its not as useful for the team as the other talents.
But I have an idea. How about if it synergizes with your Blitz? Say you have brain burst. And with Scrier’s Gaze. The chance of triggering Kinetic flayer successively increases dramatically. With Smite you can have the Psyker automatically emit lightning in a field around itself that activates at a certain tier. With assail im thinking pretty much a similar effect but with the shards. I can see how that could trigger a poxburster to burst right in your face though. That could create problems. But it would make it feel like a uniquely psyker skill. I know you wouldn’t want it to be OP. But I feel like the Psyker has enough weaknesses in gunplay and close combat anyway. It’s just that it feels like an ability that very temporarily puts you on a similar level to a zealot or sharpshooter. But without weapons that are as powerful. Fully powered up. You can drop a bulwark with two stabs to the throat with a Maccabian. A zealot can drop one with two bodyshots with a powered hammer just like that. And a veteran can do as much damage in ranged combat as a powered up Psyker to a bulwark with a regular bolter just like that. With volley fire they can even zero in on special targets.
I also have another idea.
More related to the name Scrier’s gaze. What if instead of highlighting enemies like in volley fire for the veteran. The Psyker has an ability where they can temporarily track and highlight enemies that are about to fire on the Psyker? To symbolize a sort of precognition or sixth sense? Or maybe Scriers gaze could temporarily highlight enemy weakpoints?

The only real issue of Scrier’s is that it’s not good enough to compete with alternatives.

Shriek is on the weaker side by itself, but it provides amazing synergy with any peril-heavy activity. And it clears space around psyker, which is pretty great utility value.
Dome is absolutely amazing. Not only for teamwork, but even to drop it specifically for yourself. Not-dome shield still qualifies as shield while providing side-grade utility.
Scrier’s Gaze is mostly offensive (picking damage reduction subnode won’t turn you into Ogryn), works only on yourself, and has really weird timings: it’s not volley fire and you can’t drag it forever even if you keep killing, so it’ll end in some moment and you can’t really tell when. It’s also not instantaneous and take time to get to full potential. It also has very much zero utility functions.

And to top it off, there are some weird interactions between Kinetic Deflection and Scrier’s, which CAN get you explode by blocking. Which doesn’t really help its usability.

PS:

Personally I’d like it best as force sword ability. Specifically Illisi. You won’t get nearly as great as damage output as with dueling sword, but you can quell and it makes Scrier’s usage much more tolerable.

First off I believe Guns Psyker is incredibly powerful and uses the Infantry Autogun better than veterans. Second is that yoh have flexibility. Scryer buffs both of your weapons so it is useful in amy situation.

The cooldown on it is pretty short not even considering the cool down reduction talent you can get so you can have near constant uptime on it in intense situations.

This is a very bad comparison. The MK 4 dueling sword is one of the strongest melee weapons in the game right now and in everything besides boss damage makes the T Hammers look like actual jokes.

Comparing very different roles here. Gun Psyker is a shooter, specialist, and ranged elite hunter, not melee elite killing and stagger. However even than on tanky targets like reapers or Bulwarks, if there shields are opened up, if you can get headshots on them with the True Aim talent you output some ludicrous critical damage without having to spend your stamina like vet does.

Despite all of what I just said this sounds like an awesome idea. A big problem with gun psyker, or just a lot of Psyker builds in general is that the Blitzes feel out of place and dont fit with the flow of the build. Having some synergy with your ult would be awesome.

Something thay really helps that sort of theme is the Disrupt Destiny keystone, especially now that the fixed it last patch. It feels a ton better and is much easier to get stacks up and keep them up.

Scrier’s Gaze should either have a really short cooldown or allow the cooldown timer to run during the gaze. In addition you need to be able to press your ultimate ability again to end it. Before those are implemented it will forever be too clunky to use.

While being able to end it early would be a good QoL feature it does NOT need a cool down reductuon, or for it to cool down while it is in use. It is incredibly strong and there is skill involved for when and how to use it. It being just a constant spam ability is not what I want from it. You can already have very high uptime on the buff with the cdr talent in the Psyker tree, as well as the buff lasting 10 seconds after Gaze ends. They would need to nerf its damage, crit, and finesse buffs if they decided to make it more spammy which I really don’t want, and I think it would make it a less interesting ability.

I’d just like warp charge cooldown to actually work for it so I don’t feel forced into DD when running it. Honestly if blazing spirit didn’t seem to have an aggressively low stack cap I’d run it a heap with Blazing Trauma.

I think you view it differently then me atleast.

The concept for it beeing called Scrier’s Gaze is not because it’s a “Rage” ability, rather like you said, tactical, in real time, reading the flow of the enemies minds, what they will do and what move you do might work against them, and what might happen in the future, thus more easily landing critical strikes & doing more dmg.

Basically a lorefull way of portraying the psychic power besides the obvious Lightning/soulflame and all that.

Psychics in 40k most oftenly do not manifest lightning, the most common ones are navigators for ships, or tactical aids for generals, predicting enemy plans.

And yes, this basically makes the psyker rely on more convensional weapons, but using his/hers psychic abilities to utilise them better!

Also I wouldn’t say it’s a build up ability, it’s at it’s best right away when you pop it! the build up is just a bonus lingering, I rather reccomend taking the 20% less peril trait, basically having it last 20% longer and giving you more stacks that way rather then relying on only getting head hits against melee hordes.

I find it excell for me on my psyker as it is.

And ofc they want to make a build that works for gun psykers, since guns is part of the arsenal we have avaible to us, we only have 4 staffs otherwise, compared to like 20-30 ranged weapons the rest have access too.

And you deffinetly don’t become some second rate Veteran or Zealot!

Also the Scrier’s gaze is deffinetly not locked to Guns either, it works wonders with the Voidstrike staff!

Taking crit talents, crit perks, crit blessings, and the 2 strikes on critical blessing, add to that Scrier’s gaze & Disrupt Destiny, and you start to one shot everything except Monstrosities on Damnation!

And like you said, it’s awesome on duelist sword too! thats not unintentional either, it’s deffinetly not designed to ONLY be good with guns.

Guns I do like it with is for example the revovler! with Handcannon & Surgical blessings, just makes for a great weapon setup, but ammo might be tight, but if I do run gun psyker, I tend to combine it with assail, so I can use that inbetween.

I really don’t want another highlight to mannage besides Disrupt destiny, psykers have enough on their plate tbh to mannage.


(Summery: it’s fine as it is, don’t ruin a well working ability)

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Scrier’s gaze is actually one of the strongest DPS skills in the game when used with the right gun and melee weapon.

I’ve been using it for a few days now and you can, if you use it correctly, out-vet most average veterans as well as out-zealot most average zealots on auric damnation. Can keep up with kickback ogryn even.

The only trade off you have, is that it requires you to play very very aggressively with little room for mistakes. As you go down almost immediately when caught off guard.

Other than that you’re as fast as a knife zealot. Resistant to gunner shots like pre patch 13 vet and highly versatile. Very high risk very high reward.

I wouldn’t change a thing honestly. It just requires a very specific set of blessings to work properly.

Edit: one recent example for reference. Ogryn was running kickback,zealot evisc and vet plasma

And another one. This time against a void psyker for comparison:

I find Scrier’s Gaze to be of pretty little use while being a good way to kill yourself, but I don’t do gun psyker.

It’s a weird ability for sure because it’s not quite as clear when you should use it like the other two. It’s main value is its synergy with talents and blessings that proc off of crit. You can also gain absurd movement speeds when combined with its talent, mettle, and disrupt destiny.

Overall, I would use it when you need some added crit. The rest is just filler.

Scrier’s Gaze buff stays up a lot longer than 10 seconds. You can extend it with kills and then (depending on keystones) it also persists after it runs out.

This leaves you with very little time where you don’t have some buff from Scrier’s Gaze.

It also does not feel like a subpar Veteran to me. As a zealot, we are less tanky in some ways but we do have two very chonky toughness damage reductions, one from Gaze and one from One With the Warp. But we can still dish out the damage.

The only thing I would like is more tankiness in general if you have us run a melee build. As ranged, you do depend a bit from the Vet’s Ammo Aura, but that’s also the case for an Ogryn Gunlugger (Lucky Bullet is not very good, so that is not a substitute). Maybe some way to save ammo as a Psyker or maybe pick up more ammo from ammo packs.

Upon further consideration. I think Scrier’s gaze should only additionally give you the ability to see in the dark and through fog. I feel like that’s pretty balanced and moderate. Kind of like how infiltration used to work for Veterans. With a green overlay where you could see clearly through anything.

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