So I tested the new talent trees today, and for the most part I’m very pleased with them. But one issue I had before the talent trees existed still persists: The Blitz abilities and the staff basically just compete for uptime, and don’t work as a cohesive kit at all.
No matter which staff/blitz combination you use, what they bring to your character is just never different enough that switching between them feels rewarding.
This is my one big disappointment with this class overhaul. I really wanted a blitz that complements your ranged weapon, particularly your staff, that gives you an attack that is very powerful but you can’t use all the time.
Maybe you could add an optional node to Assail that makes it so you only get one crystal, and it recharges every 30 seconds, but it’ a big one that does really nasty damage. Then I would switch to the ability when it’s up, use it, and go back to my weapon instead of just having two weapons and never quite being sure which one is better.
The node for Brain Burst that gives you a chance to trigger Brain Burst on a hit every 15 seconds would be way better if it just changed your brain burst so that when you hit G the next hit you do inflicts brain burst, and this has a 10-15 second cooldown. That’s just the only way to use the ability then, but it’s now a triggerable attack that lets you unleash super hits every so often.
Something like that would go a long way to making the psyker kit feel cohesive, because right now it’s just weird. You just have two weapons and they aren’t so radically different from each other in their damage potential that you really get a big payoff from switching back an forth.
Good stuff. Honestly assail is just waaaaaaaay to strong. Should be good for hords, shooters, specials. And that’s it. But as it stands it’s pretty much good at anything.
Using a purgatus for that horde clearing and the assail for those squads is finally making the psyker feel like a menace as it should be and not some guy with a shiny head.
Overall, all classes feel more “heroic” which I hope is what they were going for. Some are less satisfactory to play than others but hopefully the approach will be to bring them up to speed with the rest instead of nerfing what is fun to play now.
I see were you are going but I think blitz complete the staff quite well, but more like a side arm than a cd ability.
assail with purgatus so you have range, BB with trauma so you have anti elite, smite or assail with surge to have anti horde, and anything with voidstrike I would say ^^
it is more about having a thing for each situation like a third weapon than having a grenade.
Agree completely. My favorite combo used to be surge/illisi with BB. Lots of opportunities to switch for different situations and it felt like the build had its strengths and weaknesses. Now it feels more like “how do you feel like doing damage at the moment?” and “would you like to CC things or just go ahead and kill them?”
I can appreciate the utility some of these new options bring to team play and I certainly don’t feel weak, I just haven’t personally found a new combo that feels as fun as it does powerful.
It’s still a great patch and huge leap in the right direction, IMO. My preferred weapon/ability synergy just feels a bit off at the moment. Just my $.02
Came back to try the psyker rework because, you know, psyker was kind of awful. I digress.
Smite doesn’t match its name. At all. You’re not smiting anything. Instead, you’re hard crowd controlling the entire world. Crushers? Crowd controlled. Mutants? Crowd controlled. Packs of dogs? Sit. Stay. Good dog. Now roll over and die.
Assail and brain burst literally cannot hold a candle to the raw power of smite. I need to try it on damnation (it lost power going from malice to heresy, but was still strong,) and I’d say Smite is absolutely insane, based off current impressions.
Frankly, the options work nicely. Brain Burst is great with an aoe staff/melee weapon of choice. Smite is absolutely insane and pairs will with long ranged weapons, including voidstrike which, now buffed, feels really strong. If only swapping off smite felt good. And assail, while I didn’t use it myself, looks like a good option for dealing with long range packs, so pair with a purgatus or surge staff, though surge is probably a bit redundant.
The biggest issue I see with the blitzes is they’re all good now, except maybe brain burst on higher difficulties because, of course. So good that I feel they can outright replace staffs as a primary ranged weapon. Which is a love it or leave it sort of issue.
And the premise of this post is just…wrong. They complement just fine, provided you build to compliment.
I’m curious to see of smite is going to be nerfed.
It sounds like you get both do and don’t get the premise of the post in acknowledging that blitzes outright replace a lot of situational uses for weapons.
Everything pairs with smite, I guess. Assail is basically its own staff, and any other staff you’d use after assailing and before swapping to melee uses the same resource.
I don’t mean to be overly-critical of the design, I can just personally relate to anyone that isn’t quite feeling the Psyker gameplay at the moment. I truly hope most people dig it.
I agree. I’m a staff psyker and feel the same way… that said empowered bio lightning with 0 peril cost is pretty funny. I use it with Voidstrike staff. Overall I like the changes, still better than what we had.
Aside from the 0 peril Smite bug making it a bit goofy, Assail seems pretty solid; a single shard won’t do much, but 2 or 3 shards can pick off a few elites as it bounces from one to the next (with good range). Unless you’re dumping all your shards into hordes (because it’s a fun thing to do), I’ve never ran short on them.
Smite’s targeting feels a bit weird - despite looking directly at a Mauler, I’ve had it target everything but the Mauler (creating a semicircle around him in the process)
Voidstrike staff
Bio lightning
Telekine shield (Sphere)
Warp charges
Yes you don’t get infinite lightning but I don’t use it that much and max (6) charges reduces the peril quite a bit, enough time to res or get away and it doesn’t take much to cool it down.
Assail is good, but I would probably only use it with trauma or infernus staff. And it’s got a lot of crit/weakpoint talents along it that staves just don’t qualify for. And if I am using void strike, it’s better than assail anyways.
I mean, having a tool that’s useful as a mainstay is fine. One build I saw used to great effect was assail + trauma + telekine dome + sword.
Assail for stragglers and distant targets, trauma for large clusters close in and bosses, dome for general purpose defense, and sword for everything else/personal defence (deimos, iirc.)
I’ve used Purgatus + brain burst + psychic shriek + force sword. Purgatus for murdering things close, psychic shriek for crowd control/fire spreading, brain burst for proc to murder elites, which spreads more fire.
Voidstrike + smite + dome (I just like the dome) + melee of choice is also solid. Void strike for heavy hits on carapace/distant targets, smite for crowd control, melee for close in and, if you need it, boss killing. Even if I sit in smite for 80% of the game, I still have other tools and use them because they, you know, complement each other.
A bad build with no complementary gameplay would be, say, staff + scrier’s gaze which…works, but seems to be missing the point. Or purgatus with smite. Sure, smite can control when purgatus can’t, but purgatus benefits more from brain burst and smite is semi-redundant in application with purgatus.
All of this circles back into, sure, you can mainstay your blitz now as psyker, but you can also complement your staff if you want.
I don’t think you’re wrong… I think your examples with purgatus/voidstrike are pretty on point. Assail/anything is still kinda wonky imo depending on how combat flows, with you pretty much always leading with assail and having built up peril by the time you would switch to another staff… right before you switch to melee. I get that it makes sense for some heavier targets, but for the average packs I think it’s easy to just skip your staff.
But TBH I think I’m mostly just raw about the way that surge feels. With it being a regular damage staff now and having better range than it had before, it’s neat and all but really feels like it competes for peril for stuff at most ranges. Can hop on the smite train I guess… just not sure what the purpose would be to use surge/smite instead of void/smite at the moment.
Personally I used void 80% of the time. When it’s a horde not in a straight line and they are coming at you in a larger radius I smite. If someone goes down with a horde around them, I smite and have someone else res.
It’s also important to know, for most enemies ending smites pushes them so I often “feather” using smites to push them around.
Smite can be a useful tool in some situations even when you’re running a staff because of the high CC potential, but overall it would still be much nicer to have something you can use once every 20-30 seconds for some extra oomph instead of just a second weapon.
Surge/Smite is a bit redundant. It’s hard to really place surge. As a staff, damage and target selection, it’s good. It’s a general purpose: “Murder some things in this direction,” staff. It’s redundant with Smite which, while not murdery, is very much “Control everything in this direction and also murder them eventually maybe.” Assail is completely redundant with surge outside of the raw range assail has, meaning surge is only better due to unlimited ammo and blessings.
Which leads the awkward position of brain burst. It’s not good. It is, straight up, still awful. It works well on one staff, purgatus, but that’s more a nice side effect than an actual intentional decision, since brain burst prioritizes elites/specials on auto-fires and can spread more fire while doing it. BB brings the option of picking ranged specials, but BB itself feels really bad, it’s simply too slow for what it does.
I hope they do something with BB, it could have half the cast speed and half the peril cost and it would still mostly be a specialty tool you brought out on occasion.