The Exorcist blessing is a must have for it IMO, but you can also just quell during Scrier’s - while you may lose some time from being able to use the ability while it’s active, you will stack up the power of the lingering 10sec buff afterwards.
Just, uh… don’t blow up 
It’s more like monsters need to be a bit more resistant to big burst of damage, like having a cap on how much damage they can take in a single instance.
One thing in general that i don’t like is that the choice of blitz is not disconnected from the tree and i think it should be.
I really don’t know how void and assail went through 450hrs of testing and still ended up as they are
I may be an outlier but i really miss brain burst builds. Really not much reason to take it while you delete everything with knives
Inner Tranquility and Essence Harvest. And the fact that you can’t go across the skill tree to get the passives on the other side at the Inspiring Presence node (seemingly all other classes get this flexibility).
It’s anyone’s guess. Voidstrike with a Surge proc can one-shot a Crusher to the head (or do about 95% damage to the torso, 1500 damage per projectile to be specific on my staff), and True Aim lets you guarantee crits on every second shot if you line up headshots so…
Maybe people were sitting on feedback for their preferred weapon, or some weapons just got much less feedback overall - I think Voidstrike has a relatively small following compared to other staves. Could spend all day guessing, really - hopefully things will become a little less lopsided in the coming weeks.
they don’t. one of the vets core traits (not a feat), increased ammo, is buried 18 points deep in one of their branches.
The ogryn doesn’t, after their combat ability. If you take Bull Rush or Point-Blank Barrage, the opposite side of the tree is unavailable until after the Aura nodes.
I don’t mind the mutual exclusivity in general – you’re being asked to make a tradeoff, no big deal IMO – but doing it for the big-ticket nodes (i.e. blitz, aura, combat ability and keystone) is annoying. As far as I know, the only sections of the trees where this occurs are Aura → Combat Ability (psyker) and Combat Ability → Aura (ogryn).
No. No it isn’t.
What do you mean?
BB can 1 shot all specials except mutants, and all man sized elites except maulers.
It can also 2-3 shot all ogryn elites.
And you get 5% ult recharge for everyone on every special/elite kill.
It still has unlimited range and still only requires a tiny moment of los to lock onto the target.
If you pick the middle keystone, you can spam BB at elites without even building up any peril.
TTK of BB is shorter than assail against almost everything (specials/elites, not trash).
Assail does nothing to ogryn elites, maulers and bosses.
You can still have kinetic barrage and you get ascendant blaze on top of that.
Veterans skilltree is the worst per point for sure and it’s not even close.
And as the poll shows, you’re simply wrong my guy 
In the case of Assail, it does very well at picking off a cluster; I think each shard will hit 3 enemies. One shard won’t do much, but 3 shards should kill 3 human-sized elites/specialists pretty quickly; Empowered Psionics guaranteed proc specifically requires an elite kill AFAIK, so you can’t rapid-fire BB against specialists.
Anything that Assail doesn’t kill, the Voidstrike will (and probably cleave through it). I don’t think BB is useless (I should’ve clarified that I don’t agree with the “completely useless” statement), but I think those specific changes (and, to an extent, the novelty of the changes) have pushed BB out of the spotlight for a while.
BB, like all direct-damage blitzes, desperately needs to either be reworked to handle enemy health scaling, or just straight up be a guaranteed kill on anything save monstrosities.
True, it only procs on elite kills, but the stacks stay on you until you use BB on what ever you want. Even without Psionics stacks, you can still spam down specials pretty quickly with kinetic barrage.
I agree with this.
I think it is not bad at all, but it got moved out of the spotlight for now.
BB is not a new and shiny ability and on top of that, Voidstrike and Surge staff got changed, enabling them to do a job that is similar to the BB.
BB requires more awareness than assail, since you precisely pick a single target to delete. Preferably as soon as line of sight is established.
People are generally not very good at doing that.
BB also comes with the issue that bad teammates will focus down your BB targets, resulting in you having wasted your time on a useless cast.
BB definitely is not bad and does many things far better than Assail.
It is just not the only option for the job anymore. Although BB still can kill priority targets before anyone else can even reliably hit them with anything.
The other options are new, which might make them more interesting for now (at least until the novelty wears off).
In Scab only, melee only, Assail is pretty bad, but BB is amazing.
In Scab only, ranged only, Assail has the perfect playground, but BB is pretty bad.
In regular missions, both have their place.
I feel like an ability with no long-term cost (unlike, say Krak Grenades or Frag Bombs) probably shouldn’t one shot everything. With Brain Rupture alone, I think you can kill gunners/shotgunners and non-mutant specialists; add in Empowered Psionics or Kinetic Barrage and you can add Ragers and possibly Maulers to the list, and should be at 2-shot territory for Crushers - I’m not sure exactly where it lies w/r/t Bulwarks and Reapers. Other sources of damage will ease the breakpoints as well; there’s the 20% damage based on Peril node leading to Empowered Psionics, and crits → warp damage at the top of the tree as well.
I think that’s the biggest “feels off” issue for me regarding BB. Even if it’s say 20% more effective situationally it just doesn’t feel worth speccing for or swapping to when you can just keep brrrrr’ing with your staff. It’s certainly not like the way Surge used to feel completely worthless on horde for example.
BB, Surge, and Void now all explode most things at range and Void is just the best at it.
Assail is currently incredibly overtuned though. It’s at the levels of pre nerf flamer where you don’t really need your other three teammates. Now as with flamer people will say ‘’ but i cant kill crushers as fast and my team is there to help’’
With flamer it was snipers your team had to take care while you deleted entire maps of everything else. There was a guy who posted in this or other thread and said he had 1000 kills while his teammates had 200 each while he was running assail and i can confirm the same thing. If i or my teammates run this build other teammates are redundant. While BB might not be weak it cant compare to assail. I really don’t know why people cling to op stuff so much even while they hinder enjoyment of the game for their teammates
It is nowhere near that.
You can not compare BB and Assail like this.
BB is a single target ability that allows you to delete enemies before anyone else can even hit them with anything.
BB can kill any type of target and allows to easily deal with ogryn elites, like a plasma gun.
Assail works more similar to an auto gun. You get a lot of kills on soft targets, but you could have easily killed those with any melee or ranged weapon.
If you use both abilities to try and deal as much damage with them as possible, of course assail will beat BB and come out on top.
Just like an auto gun would beat a plasma gun, when just comparing overall dmg and kills.
But although they might deal more dmg and get more kills overall, they both have a clear weakness and are absolute crap against some enemies.
BB is a safe pick and allows you to take any combination of melee and ranged weapon. You always have BB to deal with hard targets.
Assail does not do that. You need something else to deal with ogryn elites, or you have to rely on your teammates.
And ogryn elites are plentiful.
I am currently using Assail and i have already lost a few clutch situations because i chose to bring nothing to deal with ogryn elites (especially crushers).
TTK of BB vs assail wasn’t really my point. It’s the TTK of BB vs any weapon you might bring. The infinite range is really it’s only selling point (which some weapons and staves match) and not needing los.
If you have a Surge, Trauma or Void, or basically any ranged weapon, you’d be hard pressed to find a situation where using BB is the right move. Even against snipers it would be WAY quicker to just M1 with any staff that isn’t Purg.
It is nowhere near that.
Its close. It does some things worse but is a lot faster to switch to and deletes specials faster which is more important in current missions anyway.
Flamer was better vs multiple elites and hordes but in the pre nerf flamer era we didnt have maelstorms so hardest part of runs were those mixed rooms
You can not compare BB and Assail like this.
BB is a single target ability that allows you to delete enemies before anyone else can even hit them with anything.
BB can kill any type of target and allows to easily deal with ogryn elites, like a plasma gun.
Assail works more similar to an auto gun.
Assail deletes single targets faster though. You just throw 3 knives at groups of 3 specials and all of them die. You need to charge brain burst three times each to kill them
You are right that BB is superior to armored elites but i dont really think they matter as most wipes are from specials mixed in with hordes that assail just deletes. Again if it cant delete ogryns in few seconds while it does that to everything else it doesnt mean its balanced. You are arguing in ‘‘flamer is bad vs snipers’’ style
I am currently using Assail
Well makes sense. I mean only people dissatisfied with flamer nerfs were the ones using it too
Vet.
I feel like Vet had (Still has, I don’t think they have closed the door on future tree branches) a lot of potential to give, mainly in the ability department. But on the strength/weakness part I don’t think it’s really weak or anything.
Blitz example:
Ability example: