Been playing veteran and zealot a lot and while the two are definitely a lot of fun, I feel like their talent trees are kinda standardized. I can’t really think of good reasons to go to various sides of the tree - like smoke grenades or C&K for Veteran, or Loner/Beacon of Purity for Zealot. The alternative options are just far too powerful to consider using if I want to have max effectiveness.
A good example of this is the Blazing Piety keystone - left Piety is almost never worth taking. 5% crit chance to teammates from a keystone is paltry, and the toughness regen on trigger is meaningless as well, considering Fury’s duration resets with every kill - compared to right Piety, which can keep itself up indefinitely, and gives another +10% crit chance, synergizing extremely well with Invocation of Death and crit related buidls.
Perhaps a better example is Veteran keystones, and these honestly confuse me - when I look at the keystones of other trees, I see passive bonuses that require no maintenance to trigger, and simply provide a powerful buff while you do the work your build is designed to do. Meanwhile, Veteran keystones require you to completely alter your playstyle to suit them, or you won’t be getting the full effect - on top of that, they’re weaker than other classes.
Marksman’s Focus is pretty bad as already discussed here, and Weapon Specialist feels too finicky to really take full advantage of - Marksman’s Focus seems to the only keystone worth taking, and even then, I don’t really like investing points into its add-ons.
From my personal meta perspective, Veteran’s other talents are simply more powerful than the keystones at the moment, and this feels wrong. Maybe the talent trees should get another look?
From my experiences & playstyle I enjoy nullifying corruption for both me and my teammates as it encourages them to stay together. It’s really a team play pick imo and is even better much more appreciated when you are doing monstrous maelstroms…Now loner on the other hand is a bad omen to see when a zealot joins with it.
Will say tho I do agree that alot of other keystones really fall off and are trivial in the grand scheme for most cases.
I think there’s only really 3 changes that need to be made:
Vet keystones need to be remade to be less fiddly and more passive-based to make them more valuable and viable compared to the other 3.
Psyker’s brain burst needs to be made more viable on higher levels, and Empowered Psionics and Warp Charges both need some tweaking.
Vet’s ults need some rebalancing numerically and node-wise so that VoC isn’t undisputed best, Infiltrate isn’t just knockoff Shroudfield, and Exec Stance isn’t garbage.
For point 2, I think you’re underselling the value of Brain Crush. It’s more useful than you may think - to me, the main problem is that Smite is over-represented, because people see a button that they can just hold to immediately and permanently stunlock a horde, which I don’t like.
I think Smite needs a tweak to turn it into what is still a panic button, but a weaker one by comparison. My idea is a max channel time of 3s, to encourage players to switch to their staves/gun and actually output damage - otherwise it forms a bad habit.
I can’t comment on Empowered Psionics and Warp Charges as I haven’t played enough Psyker to really get a bead on how they feel balance-wise, so I’ll take your work for it.
BB/BR is something I use somewhat often with a Purgatus build, so I agree it’s kinda useful…but it pales in comparison to other blitzes in the role of ‘kill things’. Or to a vet with the Plasma Gun. It’s the Thunder Hammer situation tbh. Scaling health just leaves it behind and it’s too clunky in execution for it not one-shotting things to be acceptable.
EP is really only ‘solid’ for brain burst/rupture builds, as the benefits it offers the other two are very miniscule overall (basically an extra assail knife for free or a minor damage buff to Smite).
I feel the answer is yes, did a post a while back that’s since closed that had a bunch of minor changes to the trees suggested just cause I felt they needed it, but I do feel a ‘balance pass’ is in order for a lot of things.
Vets at this point with their many passes are entirely focused within their keystones for sure. The rest of their tree is perfect to me (though I’d change a few things around here and there, like Onslaught being on the gun side verses the melee side and such);
but as you say/the thread says, Marksman’s Focus is completely unusable and not worth taking verses putting the 4 points somewhere else.
The mark I think is the most usable, 2 points for a free 32% extra damage against something is very useful especially for monstrosities, and 3 points to make that also a persistent 12% buff. I feel it could have one of it’s pips merged into it’s original effect though, so that it doesn’t take 4 points with 2 of them being something you could get a similar effect from by taking longshot/exhilarating takedown instead.
Weapon Specialist I like the theme of and usually us it as a ‘1 point keystone’ for builds like revolver/powersword just to take advantage of the dodge distance and attack speed, but it has way to many other points that just do nothing effectively (up to 33% ammo refresh after killing 10 things with a melee? woopyyyy I still have to reload 95% of weapons woooow) and could either be consolidated in the keystone or buffed heavily to make the point worth it.
Psykers I feel just need more lines. This was also brought up in a post a while ago, but the majority of their tree is really great for them, but they just literally can’t take certain combinations of things (crit aura with scream, elite aura with gaze, etc) and with everyone else having lines to prevent this this just feels like butts. Would also be nice if we didn’t need to spend 3 points on our blitz to make it usable, and instead had the quality of life stuff merged into the actual blitz and just had an upgrade for an extra point (that’s my own desire though really).
Warp Siphon needs to be less of a point hog and be tweaked to not be so diametrically opposed (either you put 2 points in it and use it as a Combat Ability staroid, or slap a woping 5 and never use your combat ability again just so you can actually feel like the point use is worth it. Which it is, but like dang). That’s about it for me since the recent Brain Burst tweaks made the dual interaction actually feel really good.
Zealot as you say largely just needs a revamp to the loner tree and just remove the left side of Blazing Piety. It’s a nub trap and nothing else, it literally has a dead pip after the first activation and 5% crit is just a Psyker aura, the heck you doing with that just make it like momentum with the 2 right side pips and call it a day. Other than that they are the most ‘balanced’ of the trees I think.
Ogryn I think just needs to be able to run soften them up with rok, and given more love to the gun side of their tree.
8 kills for 8% crit chance is like ludicrously bad and Lucky Bullet as much as I adore it when it works is such an astronomically low proc chance for having to be proced on bullet use (ignoring the current bug with it working with no ammo).
I feel Heavy Hitter could use some love too, given it’s a Zealot normal pip (Sustained Assault on Zealot is what I am refering to) but you HAVE to heavy attack to proc it for 5% more damage, and 10% attack speed just isn’t really enough to be noticable when you’re primarily heavy attacking when it’s the only attack speed the Ogryn gets, especially when it requires an extra pip and isn’t just part of the keystone.
Well, besides Indomitable, which I feel could be brought up to a 10 second timer instead of a measly 5 for it’s attack and move speed buff, or even just matching the 8 second timer for the damage boost on hit upgrade would be nice.
A good bit of small things for Ogryn though, the rest largely feels fine even if it doesn’t change the ‘playstyle’ all that much.
It doubles smite damage though doesn’t it? or have I been reading that wrong and it’s actually 25%? (if so that explains why I see so many warp siphon smite Psykers instead…), thought it gave a 125% damage bump with a faster spread time? (at least that’s what I thought I been feeling).
I will say BR does it’s job pretty well though, for the cost of a blitz it 1 taps most specials and 2 taps most armored targets. I think the change they did in the most recent patch helps my view on it too, actually properly stacking the cast times of Empowered Psionics and the upgrade that makes it faster after using your Combat Ability. For the builds I use it (mainly Trauma with Scream or Purgatus with Shield) you can mow down lines of gunners and at least help pretty effectively against lines of crushers/bulwarks/ragers (thanks to them being elites) by leaving your Psionics stacked until you see them and blowing them up with Perilous Combustion procing to help the break points.
Sure, you’re not dropping them in 1-2 quick hits like a veteran with a plasma gun, but you also don’t need to aim and aren’t blocked by a shield, and with empowered Psionics your hits are free, so at least with the builds above specifically I recognize the trade off and feel decent about it now. (even if I wouldn’t at all be mad about a base cast time increase/damage bump against unyielding threats).
You see Smite a bunch because it is in the middle and doesn’t block you from picking up the cooldown pip + Malific Malestrom or things of the like. It also happens to be effective horde stun that doesn’t have a limit like assail, so might as well if you aren’t specializing in horde clear somewhere else and want to have more freedom on your tree. It also happens to pair well with both Surge and Void depending on what you’re building into (mainly to keep access to Scream and the cooldown pip), so it naturally appears more due to that.