I love the idea of this weapon, but it faces some serious issues.
First and foremost, the push costing peril. This stops your passive quelling, which is an extremely high cost since it interrupts your Brain Bursting cycle, which is a huge part of the power of the Psyker. Additionally, it means you can’t push at max peril without exploding, which is also quite harsh. While the push has its upsides, I think it would legitimately be better with just a normal push.
The special doesn’t do anything that Brain Burst can’t do, but safer. Due to the long animation, it’s risky to use in any situation that isn’t a 1v1, while costing the same amount of peril as Brain Burst, doing less damage than Brain Burst, having worse range than Brain Burst, and having a highly limited time window to use after activating (as opposed to Brain Burst which doesn’t cost 40% unless you charged it fully). Honestly, the special feels a bit pointless right now. It would have been nice if Brain Burst didn’t exist.
The attack strings aren’t great. If the push, push attack, and special made up for this, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but because they are not great and even detrimental, this serves to hold this weapon back even further.
I truly tried to make this weapon work, but due to the above, I kept feeling like I was just nerfing myself by using it instead of a normal Catachan Sword.
I love what you’ve done with the game Fatshark, and I think you’ve nailed a lot of things, but the Force Sword definitely needs some tuning.
EDIT:
Ever since the Psyker changes and more play with the special, I have somewhat changed my opinions (detailed in a later comment of mine). I now only think that the push needs to not consume peril, and then the weapon would be fine.
Agreed. If the regular push didn’t cost peril I’d be fine with it but as it is they’ve made what was a cool weapon pretty obselete and counterproductive the rest of the psyker kit.
Heya lads, commenting purely for balanced feedback and maybe a tip! I’m playing the psyker at lvl10 currently and running the force sword force staff combo and I think it’s working pretty great for me. I used to play Sienna in Vermintide 1 and 2 as my main so I’m very used to the peril style mechanic, but it did definitely take some practice to get used to. In fact it’s much more forgiving in this game, since you can hit 100% with an ability and not die, it’s the next ability that you use that will kill you. Huge quality of life improvement! I’ve found that saving my Psykinetics Wrath ability purely for when my perils is high helps significantly.
I do love the Catachan Sword more for much better crowd control, which is how I played Sienna, but the ability to one shot or severely cripple a melee elite in my grill without using the long wind up of Brain Burst is sick. It looks like a long animation, but you don’t have to wait for it to finish! You can press special attack and the sword is charged at the start of the animation, then you can immediately do a fast slash attack. I think this makes it more worth running the Force Sword over the Catachan Sword for me xD
Have to hard disagree with all the feedback of the original poster.
The push and push attack is amazing. It has a much wider AOE and disruption than most pushes in the game, able to full on knockdown droves of enemies. It costs a tiny bit of peril (4% then 4%) but it’s not hard to avoid exploding. Normal push from other weapons is only a stagger.
I would agree that it would be better of only the push-attack used peril, though, as the push isn’t that much stronger than a regular push. But the push attack is the best part of using the force sword, outside of being able to manually Quell while using it.
The special is really great. Sure it does only about 2/3 of the damage of brain burst (but can crit unlike brain burst), but it costs a lot less peril, and the swords warp resistance lowers it more. My current sword is 23% peril per cast, which is a lot less than 40% of brain burst. It’s also MUCH faster than brain burst and much safer to use, as you can always switch back to fighting with that sword rather than needing to swap weapons.
Since it does 2/3 of the damage, it’ll kill most enemies even faster than brain burst, as brain burst requires a charge up time and you can easily get 2-3 specials off in the time it takes to do a single non-30 brainburst. It definitely kills Marauders faster as at least up to difficulty three, two specials OR two brainbursts will kill one.
The attack strings are alright, especially if you go Light → Heavy → Block. you then get two cleaving hits. If you go Light->Light-> Light or Light-> Light → Heavy then you get some good head shot attacks instead.
To me this makes the attack string really solidly versatile.
Frankly I think the force sword is the best psyker weapon and other than dropping off the peril on the push it doesn’t need any changes. It’s definitely my personal favourite.
As Ashgore said, peril is a lot more forgiving too, you can use the special when at 99% peril, so it’s far safer to use than brain burst too. You can quell while using it, so you can hit R for 1 second and be able to use the special again even from 100%.
the push and push attack need to not cost perils, also the push attack seems… very very short range and a narrow cone and dosent do damage? im not sure what the point of it is, i could see paying perils for it if it caused soulblaze or something.
Thank you for your feedback. Ever since the Psyker changes, I have somewhat changed my opinion.
I don’t think the push is ‘amazing’, it’s barely better than a regular push. I agree the push attack is strong but quite situational.
The special is a lot better than I thought. Apparently, when you don’t hit a mauler in the head with it, you do a lot more damage than a Brain Burst, to the point of one-shotting them. This has completely changed my view of the special. It’s great. Being able to use the special on 99% peril is also quite huge. And yes, it is quicker than a Brain Burst.
That is the exact attack string I use. Alright is right. It’s not great like the Catachan’s Sword wide horizontal sweeps for hordes, for instance.
Overall, I’d say it mostly needs to not use peril on the push, and it would be in a good place.
I’d agree with you that the push is alright and shouldn’t have peril. The push attack is amazing though; even if it doesn’t do damage. I was originally reading your proposal as effecting both the push and push attack, and just changing the push attack to a regular sword swing. And that’d have been a real shame.
If the push is going to do peril it should be as strong as the push attack; and then the push attack should deal damage.
The push and push attacks aren’t anywhere NEAR strong enough to justify costing peril. It works on the easy modes, but falls apart on serious difficulties.
After testing a good bit. My biggest issue is the push is extremely inconsistent on the force sword. Go try it in the training room.
Most of the time you end up pushing maybe 2 or 3 out of 10 enemies while at other times you’ll randomly push all 10. If you’re too close you also won’t push them at all.
I disagree on the push attack. You can knock down almost any enemy in the game with it. It’s very powerful. The push needs the peril cost removed for sure, though.
No, not really. Active quell down to 97 and you’re back into brain burst chaining.
Additionally, it means you can’t push at max peril without exploding, which is also quite harsh.
The peril vent class ability can save you after you start exploding. If you’re in close combat, reserve that ability to use in case you go over the peril limit. The cooldown is really quite quick, so as long as you know that it can save you there’s very little risk to using warp abilities as much as you want. Frankly I feel as though if you’re exploding regularly then you just need to practice more.
The special doesn’t do anything that Brain Burst can’t do, but safer.
It comes out much quicker than brain burst and thus is way safer to use in close combat against an elite, especially as it stuns whatever you’ve hit it with for the duration of the effect. Plus, you don’t have to switch back to melee to block after you use it.
The attack strings aren’t great
Hard, hard disagree. It’s actually one of the only melee weapons I’ve found in Darktide that has the same kind of complexity as my favorite Vermintide 2 weapons.
The force sword is, IMO, in a fine spot and meshes really well with the gameplay of the psyker.
I feel like they had to do something to make the push a little less silly, because in the closed beta I was locking down entire hordes by just pushing over and over with the force sword, like I could literally just get into a corner and keep an entire horde from moving on me forever.
With the push costing peril however I do feel like it should do more, like maybe put a stack of soulfire on the enemies or something.
Im seeing a lot of people make arugments about how the force sword is good because of its push. Let me tell you something, none of that matters when you stack it up against the saber.
Saber VASTLY out compete the force sword simply because you can dodge into the next dimension, so pushing is pointless any way. Plus even if you do need to push the stam regen on the saber is so insanely quick. you can do 2 light attacks and fully recharge a 2 stam.
Part of that is that developing brain burst stacks is extremely tedious, and doesn’t reward you for using force weapons at all. Honestly a ton of people if you look around the feedback forum you’ll see people saying that Brain burst gives very little reward for what it gives you. Even with the later talent perks it’s very impotent.
Well yea, the bizarre circular synergy they built around brain burst makes the whole class suck. It’s not like with the Veteran where the blitz is one build option you can focus on. Brain burst is this giant wet blanket on the whole class that drags down force weapon builds.
The fundamental issue with the psyker, even as a whole archetype, is that because you can equip weapons that don’t generate peril you would be able to make a psyker that does not use any of their class mechanics unless they give you a default psyker power that generates peril, and then force you to constantly use it instead of your weapons.
Unless they nip this in the bud right now and figure out a better way to have a psyker with mundane weapons who still interfaces with their primary class mechanic the next psyker class will have the same issue. Because it’s not just a problem of force weapons playing second fiddle to brain burst, it’s every weapon.
I’ve unlocked the lightning staff, and while I love its stunlock I can’t figure out ‘exactly’ how it works. But If you want to use those weapons you just can’t use brainburst except sparingly to target an individual ‘before’ you fight them. Specifically. Sure, brainburst does really good damage to bosses but I agree it’s part of the problem too. It’s just not enough for what it gives you.
Notice I made this post before the Psyker buffs. I’ve since had more time with the weapon and turned around on it quite a bit. I love it except for the push costing peril which I still think sucks (though it’s no longer as big of a deal as before when active quelling barely did anything).
Definitely agree on the move-set’s complexity being a lot of fun. I still think the weapon isn’t great for hordes, though.