Ended up having an uptick of games with Smytkers in my games the last few days, for the past while honestly didn’t see them around hardly at all, but had like a string of games with them in them and yeah, like…I get it, but it’s just not it.
Didn’t help I was running around trying to test out a few ‘crit veterans’ the whole while, and each time I loaded in it was smytker, and suddenly it’s like ‘welp, I’m never getting reciprocity above like x2 if I’m lucky this game’. It just feels awful, made worse often by the Psyker themselves being insanely terrible as they leveled all the way up using just it, and have no idea how to actually play the game but think they are helping/capable just because they can hold a key down against the entire crowd (see Harridas’ post for context on that).
It got really ‘fun’ when I entered a game with what I had to assume was a duo of a Smytger and a Inferno Staff Psyker. Inferno is already not great/steals kills and just wipes entire rooms by itself making the game rather easy, but I’m at least still playing the game with that staff in play and they can only ever point it in one direction. With this combo, the game was ‘solved’, nothing moved, everything died. High Intensity Auric Damnation made into a Sedation as we walked through the entire thing hitting training dummies that died in cascading plumes of fire.
Now, was that entertaining to watch and quite the power fantasy for the both of them? I’m sure the answer is yes. But we are rejects, what the heck are we doing with a radial ‘instant win’ button that stuns the entire field? With the ability to stack further ad clear on top of that with a friend and just never play the game again?
Though, I do realize that Fatshark is in a tough spot. They ‘let the genie out of the bottle’, and now if they remove smite/change it, a decent part of their player base that ‘enjoys the palpatine unlimited power’ gameplay will be insanely upset, but leaving it as is makes it so certain Psykers literally become dead weight with no brain cells, on the class that’s supposed to have the biggest brain. Assail is also just, right there too, doing the same thing Smite does infinity better, now especially with all the buffs they gave it. Had a Psyker with assail to just melt waves with it almost like a primary due to the number of gunners and ragers that spawned in the game, and I didn’t feel NEARLY as bored because while they completely nuked the wave, it still existed and tried to hit me as they did so, making the funny knives at least feel ‘entertaining to watch’ as I also killed things, verses ‘ohh cool I’m done playing the game now I guess/my build just turned off, good night’.
So, I feel ‘the bandaid’ does need to be ripped off, especially at this point. As a ‘seasoned Psyker’ I actually find myself hardly using smite, or only taking it as a ‘force push’ option I often forget I have just to save points on not needing to upgrade the blitz so I can spend them somewhere else. My ‘smite builds’ have sat collecting dust because they just aren’t really fun past the first few games of ‘feeling unlimited power’, and I’d rather something be done with it so more can actually have fun with the game verses thinking they are enjoying themselves only to be ruining 3 other playes time. I’m not entirely sure what a solution would be though that would ‘satisfy everyone’ though…I kinda like the idea of it being a ‘charge system’ though. As stated ‘the genie has been let out’, so outright changing it (while it would be for the best) seems unlikely.
But say, add a ‘100 count’ charge onto it that functions as it’s own peril meter, that goes down at about the same rate one cast to full peril does now (or make it even faster, like the rate it goes down without Empiric Resolve maybe). Once it hit’s 0, you can’t right click anymore until you have charges again, and even then you probably want to hold off until it’s maxed out once more. Empowered can then maybe slow this decay rate on top of it’s other effects, but you only ever get ‘one charge’ before you have to wait for it to regen, and there’s no upgrade that makes that regen faster.
AS such, smite becomes a proper ‘panic mode’ ability, something the psyker pulls out in the final moments where things feel like they have gotten overwhelming, stunning the whole wave as blood trickles out of their nose just long enough for the group to rally and stabilize before they HAVE to stop and pull themselves together again. That feels a lot more like the proper ‘fantasy’ it should be going for, verses ‘hehe the games a slide show now yeyyyy’, the way it currently is. And it leaves left click alone, which is completely fine/a nice wave management tool on it’s own with its’ force push. And maybe Pyskers will actually learn that if they have to actually use it XD.
