I’m glad they changed the stacks to tick down one by one. It was a change we’ve been asking for since the first beta, and now it actually seems doable to keep up the stacks. I haven’t reached lvl 30 yet so I don’t know how that interacts with the other feats and so on, but this change alone feels Psyker a bit better to play.
1 Like
1 Like
The final change needed to really fix Warp Charges is for them to generate on BB hitting a target instead of killing the target.
Would make the damage buff fall in line with other classes stacking damage buffs generally applying on hits rather than kills.
1 Like
What? No. That’s so unnecessary, it’s already pretty brainless to keep stacks now, to the point kinetic flayer probably barely has a use case anymore. If you’re still not happy with the amount of stack micro you have to do then take Psychic Communion, that’s what that feat exists for.
I don’t think literally any of the other classes have a global damage buff. 24% (with warp battery) is already a lot for a damage buff that applies to every single attack in your arsenal. The only other damage buff I can think of that applies to both melee and ranged is Ogryn’s heavy weight, but that is specifically against Ogryn enemies, so is deserving of the value it has considering the restricted enemy pool it applies to.
Zealot has a Rising Conviction but that only applies to melee. Martyrdom also only applies to melee and has a far less generous condition than warp siphon.
I don’t believe Vet gets any bonuses that apply to melee.
So nah, the amount of work you put in now is very reasonable for a 16-24% global damage increase that can also be used as a horde nuke with AB.
1 Like
No, Other classes don’t generally have global damage buffs.
Instead, They get many feats dedicated to their primary role (Zealots for melee, Veterens for Ranged) and boosting their damage significantly through that.
We get a max damage boost of 16-24%. If you want to try using PW on T2, You’ll rarely, if ever, utilize the full 15% of its range.
The recent buff to BB helped it to one shot more targets, But encountering anything in T4/5 that can withstand multiple BBs means you can’t scale up the damage progressively if you didnt happen to begin the encounter with max charges.
Thats the problem.
While it is significantly easier now to maintain high stacks, they haven’t fixed the default experience of gaining the stacks in the first place.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: We should not have to take Feats to fix passives.
By requiring BB kills to generate the charges, we suffer an inverse effect as we scale difficulty. BB will reliably grant you a charge every time its used up to T3 (Ogryns excepted) but as soon as you step into Heresy and above, that stops being true.
Meanwhile, Zealots and Veterens continue to generate their own brand of damage buffs consistently no matter the difficulty.
Likewise on boss encounters. Many times i have fought Plague Ogryns and Beasts of Nurgle without being able to generate WCs at all because anything i could BB for charges is killed via team cleave.
This is especially an issue when getting the Malleus Monstronum Penance. You’re forced to BB the Monstrosity with no WCs because the team is working to keep anything else from getting close enough to interfere with what you’re doing.
BB getting you Charges on hits lets you scale your damage up on singular spongy targets like bosses in the same way a Veteren or Zealot would be able to increase their own brand of damage on that same target.
tldr;
Warp Charges are better off generating on hits.
1 Like
I don’t think that is a problem though. Snipers, bombers, gunners, shotgunners, trappers, and of course any shooter or trash mob generally can all be one shot on Damnation with 0 warp charges. If you’re not taking psychic communion the other two choices are Psykinetic aura, which will give you pretty high kinetic barrage uptime making even building a few stacks on trash if there’s nothing else around very quick and painless, or cerebral laceration, which is probably the most micro intensive but opens up more BB 2 and 3 shots fit heftier elites and specials.
This is the one sticking point I do agree with. I wouldn’t mind hitting bosses specifically building warp charges, I think that would be pretty reasonable. In every other situation in Heresy and above you shouldn’t struggle to find targets to build your initial charges on, and once you’ve got them there won’t be many instances in a map where they have a chance to fall off significantly. Naturally if you choose not to take Psychic Communion or Kinetic flayer you are committing to BB being an active and important part of your playstyle. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. Kinetic Barrage on its own makes building stacks pretty effortless and again foregoing automatic warp charge feat means you are making the decision to have a more micro heavy playstyle in exchange for significant bonuses (making everyone get Ult back real quick when killing elites, having an extra two warp charges, big damage buff on bulky targets for your team etc). Make it much easier than it is in circumstances outside of bosses and Psychic Communion doesn’t have much reason to exist at all. Kinetic flayer has already been made an extremely questionable choice after these buffs.
What I found terrible about the instantly disappearing charges was that I felt it negated any kind of advantage gained by the Feats. Anything I tried to theorycraft seemed to just do nothing. Now I look at the feat tree and see at least a few options like @alsozara mentioned.
I agree on the boss mechanics though. I think a boss hit should be counted as a Warp Charge, otherwise you become pretty useless during boss fights. And let’s face it, the way Psyker is presented (high single target damage ability, extra damage feats etc.), everyone kind of expects it to be the “boss killer” class like Shade was in VT2. Right now it’s not really fulfilling that role.
Experienced this last night. Got to the Elevator with 6 WC’s. By the time the Elevator gets down one floor, just ONE, I’m down to 4, and as the fights gets started the WC’s are slowly dropping. If BB gained a stack with a Boss hit it would have been maintainable, but I got weaker and weaker as the fight progressed. Luckily the two Boss fights in this game are a joke and we beat his ass in no time, like always.
1 Like
Gaining warp charge on BB hit would massivly buff the incredibly lackluster toughness-on-charge talent, which really only works with one specific staff.
Essence Harvest is already awesome, great synergy with Psychic Communion