Good question… 
Man, I gotta be doin something wrong. Any time I try the surge staff, I get 3.5 full charges out of it before I explode, with max warp resist, and taking a bunch of peril reduction nodes. The only way I can get it to work for me is non-stop quell sliding.
Yet I watch gf play it, and she just casually strolls through lightning bolting everything like she’s playing an eldritch blast build in dnd 
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I love how the dodge slide mechanic works with surge, and can spend a match doing a thousand M2s without ever standing still…
Then I can pick up the inferno staff and get twice the kills. If anything surge needs a buff, such as giving it the blaze away blessing.
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Yeah, I’ll just echo the sentiments already in here, things perfectly fine/a bit underpowered tbh. I adore it to bits and run around with it a decent amount, As sparking things for decently chunky damage with the right set up is rather fun.
But Trauma nocks everything over, Voidstrike actually plays into true aim with it’s secondary fire, and Inferno drops entire hordes now that it’s got Blaze Away powering it.
So I think as ‘a funny little taser stick that drops things decently quickly while holding them still’ it does it’s job just fine/isn’t really broken. (especially using it in Auric+…lottts of arc dodging backward XD).
If you plan on going that route, why not just do something like this instead? :
You really don’t need Assail with a primary spam Surge & Vent, you got plenty of anti-mixed horde clear. Especially when the cost is missing out on Psykinetic’s Aura. Channeled Force & Empyric Shock are ridiculously powerful for any primary spam builds and especially if it’s Surge & TA. You’ll be naturally mixing in those charged secondaries for armor & CC anyway so this is basically a constant +30-60% dmg.
But I mean, I’ve done plenty of builds like these since the new talents and Surge getting… Surge (
), and I’ve also used the animation cancel trick for that 3-4x faster firing speed since forever. Even then, I’d hardly call this too strong. Your basic Voidstrike does something very similar except it’s far better against numbers thanks to its cleave & True Aim proccing on that cleave (which Surge doesn’t have). Even where Surge is the better single target weapon, especially with those left talents, real T5+ tends to have so much stuff in it that hardly ever matters since you’ll almost always going to want to cleave through a ton of stuff to get there.
Btw, imma take this opportunity to advertise Empyric Shock for BB! One of my Trauma & BB build variants uses that, EP and Kinetic Resonance and it’s really effective against bosses! One of the very few bosskiller builds for psykers that isn’t a gunpsyker. 
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Purgatus is way more stronger, in many cases it’s trivializing encounters.
I don’t even mind for staves to be a bit too strong if there were some mechanics involved - high skill high reward type of weapon. But that spam/vent loop is braindead boring. Perill management is a joke.
And staves need some massive rework, primary and secondary attacks should be unique for every staff just like in V2.
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Because I enjoy melee fights and wanted to take a more versatile approach with my build.
I use the benefits of Malefic Momentum for all my weapons and use Asssail to clear hordes frequently. +10% melee attack speed means more potential knife crits, Warp Splitting affects Assail and primary fire of Electrokinetic staff.
I’ll give this build a try though, may need to switch up my melee weapon for more horde clear cleave.
Can you elaborate more on Empyric Shock? The talent description doesn’t explain it very well.
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Can you share that build too? I’ve been looking for more effective BB builds
I didn’t say it was trash or that it was a bad loadout, only that its bad designed because surge staff is still garbage on M2. And there’s a lot of enemies it doesn’t deal with well, which just saying ‘but I scoreboarded’ doesn’t fix. I’m positive the elites you get are not ogryns, or the majority of maulers. Not when people are wiping them out in like 1-2 hits with their meta choices. Nor does counting crits show anything…and that Psyker with the other 3 staves is basically invincible anyway, so having the best surge loadout be this and still require a ton of footgame is totally fine to me. Well, the aspect of surge M2 being actual gambling and mostly bad is still needing a rework, but at least its more effective against the lower tier enemies and can screen clear them well.
It’s not the community. It’s a vocal minority of people with too many hours in game who live and die by the post mission damage summary. Devs should disregard their opinion entirely. They don’t represent the actual playerbase.
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Yup, these are good reasons. 
It increases all Warp Dmg vs the target by up to 30%. The fire → quell → fire trick stacks it very fast, and since it at least should be a debuff, that +30% is a multiplier after all your other dmg buffs (tbh I haven’t specifically confirmed the debuff part yet). It’s worth far more than just another +30% base / warp dmg which would be additive.
Anyway, take it for a spin and see what happens. I’ve been on a small break but when I last played with it I remember getting some ~20k+ boss dmg mostly within that 10s window of Kinetic Resonance, which coincidentally is the same duration as that +30% dmg buff. It also meets several breakpoints like EP BB 1-shotting Reapers etc. Since Trauma & Surge both love mixing primaries in with secondaries, it’s a great match for either staff.
Would be for Purge too, if it worked for it (it doesn’t). 
Oh btw! Regarding horde cleave melee if you haven’t tried Devil’s Claw I really must recommend it! Shred & Rampage gives you that Empathic Evasion buff and plays into DD & crits, it definitely loves Warp Splitting if you’re going that way, and with Kinetic Deflection that buffed DClaw parry is borderline cheese on psykers.
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By this logic your perspective on balance is based on your inexperience. This is a useful perspective to be aware of but, logically, it will change as you get more experience and start to understand how weapons and talents work.
It is not a good idea to make significant balance decisions based on such a temporary level of understanding.
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He’s saying the same thing since release or something i dunno, like i remember he was complaining in old Power Sword discussions when it was broken OP. And recently he created several threads about dump stats, means he barely played this game, or it’s not realy a temprorary level for him, but heavily prolonged in time.
For some people it’s hard to understand the concept of being unexpirienced doesn’t work like a validation, but reversed.
Complains based on pure emotional biased and theoretical situations, instead of rational thinking and expirience.
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Thanks for your great suggestions! I’ve considered them and created this build:
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Warp Siphon has a talent that decreases peril generation by 6% per stack - if you get that and the 6 stack talent, you can get 36% less peril generation which helps a ton
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It seems like a really boring but effective playstyle if you build for it and use it manually, and like a completely OP oversight if you spam it with macros.
Fatshark has got to stop making singlefire weapons. Just make them all full auto if you hold the button, and balance the ROF about it. It’s NEVER a good mechanic to have “manual fire as fast as you can click” gun in games, unless it’s a six shooter, and even then people would be lame and macro it.
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Too bad the majority (if it can be called such) here has no spine and won’t deal with these “my way or the highway” types until they’ve gotten their way by harassing away any dissenting voices. At which point its too late. Like for Darktide when you realize that most of their “community testers” consist of exactly these sweaty try-hard esport wannabes.
PS.
Ah right on time. More shills, white knights, etc showing up to tell the players who dare voice discontent with the game and their sweaty overlords to “shut up and git gud”. Almost as if they have nothing else to do with their days…
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Crazy angle considering the last patch buffed pretty much every weapon. The bolter is straight up better than the plasmagun now, and the plasmagun nerf was accidental and reversed.
Try being a bit less hysterical.
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Nice edit but I wasn’t telling you to get gud. I was telling you that you’re wrong, they aren’t listening to the “nerf everything” crowd. There is no weapon in the game that has been made unusable by nerfs or anything, and the latest patches have been defined by how they buffed everything.
The idea that there’s a couple of playtesters/vocal minority who ruin the game for you is just in your head, you are being hysterical.
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The only ones being hysterical are people with 3000 hours in game running every day to the forums screeching for nerfs saying stuff like “look at my Auric Damnation damage numbers” bro for the tenth time, touch grass.
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