I’m really enjoying the Voidstrike staff. It’s extremely fun to play with, just absolutely bombarding enemies with explosions.
There are two things I think would make it even better though:
The size of the explosion should be a lot bigger when its fully charged. Right now there isn’t much of a reason to charge the staff, because while it does more damage on a charged blast, two quick blasts beat one charged blast in basically every way. Maybe if there was a weapon trait that worked like VT2’s Volcanic Force where fully charging gives you an additional bonus to damage there would be more of an incentive to do so. I know there is a trait that adds rending to charged attacks, I don’t know if that’s enough.
The basic staff attack is completely redundant on this staff. The only advantage of it is that it can get weak spot hits, but an uncharged blast does just slightly less damage than a headshot with the default attack, so there is really no reason to ever use it. So generally speaking I think it would be good if the uncharged secondary damage was adjusted down, but the fully charged secondary damage was adjusted up. That way using the default attack for quick attacks against single target enemies would have a point. The uncharged secondary would still be good for staggering multiple enemies, but hammering home those fully charged big attacks would be the best the staff can do.
The Surge staff has a similar problem with it being way too efficient to just spam uncharged attacks, with no real incentive to fully charge the staff. I think charging should have a big payoff because it’s harder to do than spamming, and it would give those staves a higher skill ceiling.
After playing with the Voidstrike Staff some more, I really do enjoy this weapon. it’s probably the most fun thing to use for me in the game, but when you get to the higher difficulties it becomes very obvious that the damage on this is just bad.
It’s good for clearing hordes, but shooting at specials with it is just sad, and when a monstrosity attacks you basically have nothing that can even hurt it between how pathetic brain burst gets at high difficulty and how little damage this staff does even at full charge.
I feel like it needs to do a lot more damage to targets it can’t pierce through, so that firing a fully charged blast into them actually matters. Right now it kind of feels like Psykers are getting pigeonholed into using a Surge Staff because if you can’t kill things quickly it’s better to have crowd control capabilities than just doing nothing at all. Even the Surge Staff is bad against monstrosities.
It’s kind of silly because the Psyker is supposed to be particularly good against strong enemies, but in actuality, it’s the weakest out of all the classes at killing anything that has a lot of health. All Psyker abilities depend on that one-hit kill to be impressive, any on the higher difficulties you simply don’t get that.
Is Rending Shockwave not available as a blessing on this staff? Because all the info I’ve seen now seems to say that it isn’t. Why is this blessing not available on the staff? It’s the one that I would have most liked to have on there, because I want anything that scales with charge level to encourage slow powerful attacks.
Also I would really like it if enemies that are gigantic like the beast of nurgle could have some kind of modifier to the way they take damage where weapons that would easily go through ten humanoids do more damage to them because there is simply more meat to go through. Then the staff wouldn’t be so completely awful in boss fights.
The charge attack needs a 2x headshot multiplier onstead of 1.2 and also they need a large first target damage bonus. That way you can use it to snipe enemies and deal monster damage.
That would be a nice step in the right direction, yea. I don’t think the charge attack can get weak spot hits actually though.
It really sucks that they don’t allow Rending Shockwave on the Voidstrike staff, because that would actually give it some meaningful support capability in boss fights at least.
Rending is a bandaid that I wouldnt want on voidstrike personally. Rending would also make it hilarious against armor lol. Also it does get weakspot hits its just a very low multiplier.
Trauma havjng rending shockwave atleast gives it some purpose.
I want voidstrike to be a general purpose weapon good at hordes in a line and decent vs single targets/bosses.
I will never pick up a weapon that just isn’t fun to use just because they refuse to put good blessings on weapons that are actually fun.
I feel like if it had the option for rending it would be more viable against stronger single targets. But yea, I agree, it should be a general purpose damage dealing staff that’s at least OK against everything.
I actually like Trauma lol. It should have rending by default. It just needs some number changes and it’ll be good. Its very good against groups of heavier enemies, compared to void.
All the staves need number adjustments tbh. Theyre all too weak, just like BB.
Yea, maybe they need to dial back the quell speed a bit again, because it’s so fast now that it almost feels like there is no risk in running up your peril. It never leaves you unable to drop bombs for long.
I know the Trauma staff is in many situations better than the void staff, I just find it so awkward to use that I don’t enjoy it.
Personally after playing with the voidstrike staff a bit, a charged shot needs to explode in a large diameter. or the Radius of the charged shot needs to get larger in front of you. Either would allow for a more efficient crowd clear and assist with long ranged snipe shots since we lack any type of magnification that a scope allows for.
I don’t know, I kind of like that the shot clears enemies in a long cylinder. This weapon is basically like firing a cannonball that just bowls through enemies. If it exploded in a cone I feel like it couldn’t have the same range.
It would be nice if it made a bigger explosion when it hits level geometry. Maybe that could be a blessing for it. I really want the Voidstrike staff to have a good “Scales with charge” blessing. So something that gives it a huge final explosion when it hits something it can’t pass through would be awesome.
I actually find the voidstaff to be one of the best weapons for sniper clearing. We don’t have any zoom, but it has no recoil or dispersion, it fires exactly where you point it. Since the projectile has travel time it’s less accurate against moving targets, but against snipers that just sit there it’s very good.
Exactly, also I think you undervalue here the suppression effect you can use to control the horde and the stagger. If I only got $1 for every time I saved someone (or mine) azz by staggering a hound eating someone’s face, and all other specials and elites about to pound someone into the ground.
I personally have no complaints about the staff, you can defo snipe the most annoying units out of cover and with a free brainburst on hit, you end up with some hilarious looking killfeed from time to time.
It is a pretty good and fun to use weapon. My biggest gripe at this point is that it doesn’t have any really good blessings. Especially scale on charge rate or activate on full charge blessings would be awesome to have on all staves.
I think it could use a bit more damage against bosses, because it’s sad that the psyker is easily the worst class against bosses.
Voidstrike absolutely needs a significant damage buff to a fully charged attack. The headshot multiplier also needs to be a lot bigger. And/or the weapon needs to have actually good blessings. Quelling on headshots is nice and all, but it doesn’t actually help with the awful damage of the weapon. It just makes it have higher uptime.
Edit: Psyker is the worst against most things. Arguably Psyker is the best at bulwarks, if they’re mixed in a dangerous group so others can’t circle it, and if you’re far enough at the back, and if your team is keeping said group busy so you can safely spend 10 seconds with your hands out.
Psyker is good against bosses in melee and can tank quite well, and if you take Quickening and your warp charges are fully stacked he can do a lot of damage.
The left-clicks on his staff are useful for staggering enemies quickly, and if you have warp charges, one headshot is enough to kill ranged trash.
However, generally speaking, I do agree the psyker is currently the weakest class at the moment when it comes to elite units. But he’s a very good horde clearer with Purgatus, great CC with Surge, and Voidstrike is a very good all-rounder with long range.
The left click on the staves is awful. There’s a delay before it fires, and the travel time of the projectile is also bad. Not to mention you have to stand completely still if you want even a chance of the projectile going anywhere in the direction you want it to go. (A combination of terrible accuracy and terrible servers, which will sometimes aim 2 seconds ago.)
Aside from purgatus staff there’s also no way to actually keep those warp charges for the measly damage increase they give. Unless you want to completely gimp yourself by using BB on trash all the time to try to maintain them, warp charges are best ignored. Whatever you get passively is whatever you have at any time, and there’s no point spending any time or effort on checking how many you have, and certainly not on keeping them up. It’s so awfully designed it’s not even funny.
The psyker was my first character and the voidstrike was initially my favorite, but now that I’m getting into the higher difficulties I struggle to use it. It’s not good enough at either clearing hordes or killing elites. Even if it’s meant to be a middle ground, it’s still not good enough at either role.
Kind of expecting voidstrike to eventually get a boost against monster armor equivalent (unyielding? infested?). It’s very much like fireball staff only it fires like a rail gun and feels just very good.
Agreed. There isn’t enough payoff to charging it instead of just spamming it.
I would like it if they added Rending Shockwave as a blessing to the Voidstrike Staff, and maybe a blessing that makes it so when it hits level geometry that it can’t pass through it gets a bigger explosion scaling with charge level.
Yeah, though giving it a rending blessing would make that blessing mandatory. Not that other weapons don’t also have blessings that are near mandatory, but it’s not exactly peak design in my opinion.
Another problem with the Voidstrike is that you will get blue hits a lot of the time, doing only half damage. On charged attacks that are supposed to pass through enemies, the giant ball ends up hitting an arm/weapon in front of the torso half the time. It’s not a problem in hordes where you just headshot them all, but when trying to kill ranged mobs with elevation difference, it’s incredibly annoying. I’ve specced my void with 25% increase to unarmoured so I know for sure a fully charged blast will kill a ranged mob - but half the time it won’t, because the giant ball that PASSES THROUGH the enemy ends up doing limb damage because, shockingly, ranged mobs hold their gun in front of their torso.