I see where you coming from, and I’ve seen players who smite all game long without doing anything else and even smite bosses, but in my opinion it’s not that different from other classes who play selfishly or don’t do their jobs.
At the same time I’ve seen smite psykers who smite at the right time and help clear nasty elite packs, even in Havoc 40 I’ve recently had a very good Psyker who used smite at all the right times.
You read forums and people want to remove stealth on both zealot and vet, voc, smite, this and that. Like, at this point it’s just laughable. People get upset over a noob psyker stunning a single mutant, is it really life or death situation? Help them kill stuff or don’t, it’s your choice.
Also it’s kinda silly there are some weapons, talents and blessings people decide to ignore, because it’s not the headline of the week, but for smite lets reiterate the same thing for years at this point.
I volunteer you to start that thread. My time is such that there are weapons, talents and blessings I have actually never touched so I ain’t got the insight for them all.
As a non-smite player I don’t recognize it as a problem, and think that this whole thing is a weird crusade to eradicate every single thing from the game that forum people consider easy and/or effective to use. It feels like one of those “mandatory opinions” that you absolutely need to have to fit in with other “high skill” players.
One of my favorite teamwork things in missions is keeping a red stim to buff purgatus or smite Psyker, so they can obliterate everything in a pinch, since they’re the class that benefit the most from the stim, especially when they recognize you buffed them and spam thank you’s right after.
I play Thunder Hammer too, both marks, and sometimes you get Smyker on your team, and sometimes you don’t. Two different games, who cares if in one of the games you’ll hit stationary targets more. I mean, you can fight 5 Bulwarks with their shield in place, but is it that more fun to interract with their wonky shield hitbox? Killing Bulwarks in one hit with thunder hammer, one after the other, while Smite psyker stuns them is pretty fun to me, I don’t feel like Psykers “take away my fun” here.
When you get 4 good players on Damnation, the game will be easy no matter which builds they’re running, so is it really Smite that is a problem?
Because there’s not enough time in game unless you’ve got a mic. Typing anything during the mission puts a player at risk of specialist ambush, because the other players likely aren’t going to wait. Airlock and elevators there’s a bit of time to chat, but not much for typing.
At the end of the mission sure, but most people just “gg” and leave right away.
Besides, most of the times it’s rare to get the same players again consistently (in my experience at least) so there’s no point, unless it’s something awful like a Vet blasting every poxburster he sees a teammate pushing and constantly demanding ammo.
You keep setting up the strawman where people act like the issue with smite is that it’s strong and makes the game easy. Read again what peoples complaints are, you are borderline arguing against a fantasy person that only exists in your head
The issue everyone mentions is how it turns enemies off. Wether or not that makes the game easy doesn’t even enter consideration, the issue is that one person is allowed to turn the games AI off with high uptime and aoe and 0 skill invested.
I can see the similarities, but other classes playing selfishly or not doing their jobs don’t quite have the ability to force others to play drastically different or are over-represented like smite turrets are.
Even the aforementioned and dreaded speedy knife zealot isn’t nearly as prevalent as the smite turret.
So these “I’ve seen X” arguments sound good in your ear (like Max Power), but they are rather meaningless because numbers/representation matter.
It’s a given you’ve seen some “good X”, X being smyker in this case, we all have.
But %wise how many? Seems like the overwhelming majority are not the good ones.
Furthermore there seems to be a higher number of perma-smyker turrets that are consolers.
In the totality of players and platforms, smite turrets stick out like a sore thumb in the “bad” bucket.
I’ll repeat myself here to emphasize the distinction as there are 2 overlapping camps to the complaints, and more often than not people only single out and address this camp.
Ignore this and focus on the the other camp :
The vast majority of perma-smykers are a liability in that they don’t move and corner themselves, sacrifice all damage for some CC, overuse it making many if not most situations worse, complain at the team when thing inevitably go south for them etc.
You’re focusing on the “easy” part, which is minuscule compared to the far more common “makes everything harder” part.
Ages ago I suggested Smite is changed to work more as a force whip. It would be a cone attack, which does a bit of damage, staggers all but immune enemies and builds up a lot of Peril. They could even introduce a number of uses as with it is Assail. That would one way to have a CC ability which doesn’t allow you to keep all fun as your hostage.
A lazy fix, which wouldn’t require GW blessing would probably be:
1-2 Smite usage counter
faster Smite spread
far faster Peril build which cannot be managed through Peril build resistance, so you have to release it in a matter of a second or 2
This way you would be able to knock some enemies down and that’s it.
It’s insane that Smite can keep Ogryn type enemies stunned, they should be immune at the very minimum.
A longer charge time, Ogryn enemy immunity (possibly Mauler and Rager as well) and it having a lower chain range maybe? It would still be by far the best ability.
Although it’s melee node could do with major improvements, it’s an actual joke of a DoT.
On the topic of Psyker abilities, Brain burst needs buffs because it’s still completely worthless currently. It uses the exact same resource as staffs but isn’t competitive in the slightest unless you warp your entire build around it for a mediocre performance.
empowered lights open up bulwarks very easily with thammers smite really just removes the fun out of any engagement in auric and doesnt even function in havoc because of the stagger resist
that already exists with surge i think smite shouldnt be reworked, we should get an entirely new ability
theres a lot of options they can draw inspiration from maybe a targeted debuff or a revealing enemies for the team like exi stance or literally that is more interactive for the psyker and the team.
i havent used it since i did the penance it would be nice to actually have a third blitz for psyker
Smite: Channel a bolt of lightning that deals damage and 1.5s stun to primary target, after 1s smite chains to nearby enemies with the same effect, enemies cannot be chained to while stunned. The longer you charge the more smite jumps and the more targets it jumps to. (Cannot recast while smite is currently jumping)
Lightning Storm: Jumps 1 additional time and to more targets regardless of charge time, last jump will not block recasting.
Should force players to do something else while lightning is jumping /chaining and leave a window for zealot duelist reproccing. Providing team buff but not completely ruining other player’s game.
I think the Void Ball Staff does this basically just less lightningly, the Surge is a nice smite replacement usually around 4 targets from my experience and surprising range and satisfying crunchs.
it’s my favorite psyker staff. the lightning bolt hits the target i place my crosshairs on pretty accurately, and the one next to it. iirc target 1 took 85% of the damage and target 2 the other 15%, or so it was about 1 years ago.
i’d like it if the plasma balls were replaced by a quake lightning gun mode that actually requires one to keep the crosshairs on target.
This is why Khorne is so powerful, and the fundamental reason Smite must be changed. The gibbet explosion you can get pretty quickly with Empowered Smite is ok … But that’s all.
It isn’t enough to feed a chaos god. Not nearly enough.
