Could use some peril decay talents specifically lessening it or even halting it so players can better manage their peril damage boosts… but I suppose some could also be added to increases for casters. Here’s some variable ideas that could be added not all.
Empyric Resolve: peril no longer decays, on toughness break vent all peril (instead of toughness reduction)
Quelltide: also removed peril decay delay (peril decays while not casting)
Scrier’s Gaze: slow peril decay by 50% after maxing
Kinetic Deflection: Blocking & Sprinting gain peril instead of stamina while below critical peril
Surety of Arms: Reload speed increased by 50%, Gain 50% Peril or up to critical Peril after reload, Peril decay is halted while reloading and for 10 seconds after.
Changed Ideas
Warp Rider: also Psyker treated as having critical peril beneifts for 10seconds after reaching zero peril from critical peril.
I’ve thought about this a few times, and I honestly think this would be nice. I’ve found I’ve only mostly run into it when playing Gyker (as they have less ways of generating easy peril so keeping it active can be difficult sometimes without Scriers), but it would be nice to have a few talents that effect the passive fall off. Not sure if Scriers should given how it functions these days, but Empyric doing so would be nice, along with maybe Surety of Aim.
Peril decay is an important part of almost every psyker build save for gunpsykers, imo these would dramatically nerf about all of them.
Warp Rider is a must-have for every build ever, changing it this way would massively sabotage & nerf all non-gunpsyker builds.
Empyric Resolve is the strongest peril reduction talent there is, that’s why it has that toughness generation cost. Making the talent that’s supposed to keep your peril down instead keep it up? That just makes no sense to me.
Perilous Assault sounds like a decent idea tho. But anything different from what it is now would be an improvement, psykers don’t even have slow-equip weapons and every switch is already almost instantaneous. It’s a waste of a talent rn imo.
Having to juggle peril is central to playing psykers. Micro-quelling or using peril actions to maintain/build it up while sliding and doing your gameplay loop well is what separates great psykers from bad ones. Passive quelling is how we recover when too much pressure and no time to quell forced us into melee or repositioning. Meanwhile balancing between peril reduction talents or not plays an important part of our class balance: More reduction means it’s a lot easier to maintain high peril without blowing over, but much harder to build up and get there. Less means very easy to build up, but a lot more work to keep it high & balanced without blowing up.
I think it would be better if they just added a new talent for slowing down decay in the future, but it would have to be balanced well. Gunpsykers are already really strong and even one talent like this would massively buff them while making them a lot easier too. It would also free up talents from peril building actions allowing the builds to become even stronger.
For most casters Psykers your primarily quelling anyway, hybrids benefit from the damage boost while they melee even if decay is slower… it also seems a crazy fast decay compared to sienna’s in Vermintide.
Empyric Resolve’s toughness negative almost makes it a neutral gain talent for such a high cost to get it should be more powerful not to mention you can get up to another 36% peril reduction Warp Syphon talents at no toughness cost.
It also reduces value in all your warp related toughness talents. Swapping the toughness negation with decay negatives/halts would actually be a double positive as you could better choose when to vent and gain your toughness as needed.
I will agree that the Warp Rider change would be a bit to much, it’s such an integral part of every build that forcing this playstyle on to it does feel a bit much. One should be making the build choices around it to allow themselves to do the playstyles you describe they want, verses having Warp Rider basically force this new ‘higher quell rate’ mechanic when it really shouldn’t.
I will say the option to play with a few of these talents in place I think isn’t a bad thought. I would focus more on keeping it a Gyker thing (primarily things like my comment about Surety of Aim/the added idea above seems pretty good, Perilous Assault doesn’t seem bad either) though. I know they are rather strong, but I know from experience that this strength mostly comes from Scriers and that’s pretty much entirely it.
Not to say that’s a bad thing, but Scriers funding you constant peril generation lets you actually function at the top end while using Gyker. With any other CA, you have to fight constantly to keep your peril up, and are routinely finding yourself with little to no peril unless you run around spamming something like smite or just hot swap to a Force Sword and shove needless warp power into it just to get back up again.
This isn’t to say this is entirely a bad thing, but having even just a few talents ‘increase time before decay starts’ would be rather nice to me. I don’t think it should likely be placed onto ‘the staples’, especially the ones clearly designed for staff Psyker (as the the back and forth as you mention is their entire balancing mechanic). But being able to play Gyker with bubble without sobbing seems like something that would be nice, or hell being able to play Gyker with Scream without getting laughed out of the room.
(and yes, I know you can do it with the Greatsword, I have great fun with such/one of my favorite builds is greatsword assail bubble Psyker with a Infantry Autogun, but that tbh is ‘a Greatsword/Assail build with a gun on it’, verses something like my Braced Autogun head pop builds that work, and feel nice largely due to the insane Toughness gen from Inspiring Barrage, but would be nice if they could be at anything other than 0-15% peril XD)
The issue (to me) isn’t stopping at 90%, that part’s easy/hell I even go to 95%+ most of the time.
The issue is mainly when your build doesn’t facilitate as many ways of gaining peril (main example is my ‘bubble braced autogun build’ above, where in the only way to gain peril is to hard cast brain burst or slap your sword a couple of times), thusly making the experience of GETting and staying at that 90% annoying.
It isn’t an issue with staffs obviously/in most build iterations, but Gyker is a playstyle that exists, and with all this freedom added to their tree in recent updates, it’s a bit sad ‘headpop gyker without scriers’ just doesn’t work as well as everything else, since you can’t reliable gain peril during your gameplay loop or at least in this case, hold onto the peril you do generate for a longer period of time. (since even if you lean in to using headpop with Empowered Psionics, that completely negates the peril cost, resulting in you not even gaining peril when using that as well and sitting at like 0-15% peril after a reload the entire match. Obviously one can just shove Assail in there and be ok with that, but adding something like this would make taking this kind of build at least a good bit more possible, verses ‘just for fun’).
Peril probably needs a redesign. It’s meant to be a limiter to how much psyker can use his staves but as of right now it’s actually just a buff and people can freely abuse the vent mechanics to skirt around highest peril. It would be nice if the mechanic had compelling risk vs reward built in like VT2, although it doesn’t have to be a carbon copy it’s odd that they designed a system where you constantly want to be a top peril because venting is free, doesn’t speed up sufficiently when you hold it down to be worth doing, and doesn’t have any other effects that may encourage you to actually ever full vent
I think it doesn’t self damage like Sienna, vents faster and decays faster to promote faster gameplay in Darktide. They also tied quelling into toughness regeneration so having that as a cost and gain doesn’t fit. Maybe could tie quelling into a health cost, corruption or stamina, but self implosion happens enough it’s probably already a risky enough scenario.
Maybe interesting to have a talent to give bonus on full vent say (on full vent Psyker gains bonus as if at 100% peril for 10 seconds)
N that’s why if I ever play psyker, I prioritize peril generation resist. I don’t go out of my way needing that last 5% of peril use. And with peril decharge being pretty fast, not pressured to eke out every percent of peril.
This is the exact opposite problem to what I brought up, and has literally nothing to do with it xD. Generation resist actively hurts the builds discussed above, in fact it’s pretty much always a bad thing on Psyker/the dump stat in general on every build, assuming you actually know what you’re doing.
The fact peril discharge is so fast is the entire point of the discussion, there’s no way currently to control it’s decay and decent, so builds that don’t generate peril as readily struggle to keep their peril high consistently/continually. Thus, the idea is to give Psyker at least a few tools that let them slow this decay should they want to.
I hope that makes sense to those that actually read this XD.
Seems as though the problem at the end of the day is the psyker needing peril for bonuses, not being able to keep it up for long (for good reason), and in turn making the player commit mistakes.
This issue though is how it’s balanced. Every single gunpsyker build I’ve made, and many staff ones too struggle with those peril gen choices. You always have to design your whole kit around it, especially with gunpsykers.
To use your build as an example: Switching BB off and picking Assail would make it easy to build up to & manage high peril, and give you Malefic Momentum & 1 more talent to boot. But then the price would be missing out on Psykinetic’s Aura (almost essential for bubble builds) and BB for that armor.
Most Scrier’s & gunpsyker builds struggle with similar issues: If you get Psykinetic’s Aura then Scrier’s has virtually no CD, but at the price of less dmg/more talents spent (Malefic Momentum), much higher ammo consumption (no Assail), and very poor peril buildup when Scrier’s isn’t up. Go the other way, you get all the things the prior path missed but now timing Scrier’s is far more critical since once it runs out, you won’t get it back up for a while.
Ofc a low Warp Resistance Illisi is always an option, but it’s no accident that it’s the one Force Sword that doesn’t counter armor well. You could ofc pick a Force Greatsword and spam that special for the peril, but then you’d be forced to weigh between wasting it for peril vs storing it for a big nuke.
All those choices, sacrifices, building and playing around them? They are the point. Imo they’ve done a great job at balancing it all out really.
Tbf, I went and looked through all of my builds (currently going about trying to go through the laborous process of getting them all up on DT lantern for the sake of having them if talents get shuffled around, and with the Psyker update I needed to basically redo all of them thanks to them losing the ‘toughness replenishment’ node). And these braced autogun builds (one with normal bubble and warp siphon for fun/maximum toughness regen, one with empowered psionic bb spam with double wall cause synergy) are the only two that actually had this issue. The rest I (for apparent reasons) naturally worked in peril generation and had little issue maintaining it in cases I wanted to, it’s just those where ‘so much synergy is there but the peril regen/holding onto it is not’.
As these builds don’t really want smite or assail, as they need long range to be covered as the braced autogun coverse mid to short range (along with a melee covering short too), and BB is just the natural choice as you got a wall to hide behind while charging it for hits against snipers and far off gunners. But this naturally leads to issues since you aren’t doing that all the time, and especially for the EP build your basically only choice in Peril gains is slapping your sword a whole bunch, despite the rest of the build just ‘slotting into place’ so perfectly.
The Warp Siphon build you can just spam charge BB and keep your peril up that way, but the EP one you basically constantly have those stacks so will just have to slap your sword, and that doesn’t feel great. But, I will concede that’s just one build out of…36 XD so while I think musing over these ideas is still something worth considering, I also will understand if they aren’t pursued.
I think the “gain perill on reload” talent could get some love. Currently it is vastly underwhelming. I would like it to not have the safeguard over 75% perill and not have the scaling mechanic with empty bullets in magazine. So every time you reload you get the full 25% perill. That would go a long way giving gunpsykers a reliable but dangerous perill generation tool. Heck the numbers could even be buffed to 30% reload speed and perill.
I don’t think that talent’s safe gaurd is 75% but 100%, will still generate peril if above 75% but reloading boost is lost above 75% as worded.
I’m sure many tooltips are worded incorrectly/unclear like this also tested Brain Burst - Kinetic Flayer’s peril notes are all wrong it gains no peril, no decay halt and can occur at critical peril.
For gun Psykers could tie a lot more into this talent for peril Maintenace up to ceasing peril decay while reloading and / or changed to 50% peril gain w/ halt of decay 10 seconds. Peril boon would be only 10% damage boost (with Warp Rider) unless they also added blessings for Psyker guns to benefit from peril @.@ Veteran has many more range boons.
Not only gun Psykers but in general would benefit from ways to slow or speed up decay per build. Maintaining peril is more of a chore than fun and most of my overloads are from accidentally switching to peril weapon and firing when attempting to maximize peril peak in the short window.
