psykers, is soulblaze good now?

[🐰bunnywhole🐰]

hey, havn't used it much since new class update. i didn't like it before. is it better now? and does soulblaze count as something else, different from the purgatus staff.

[Nights]

No. imo perks and abilities that just boost damage and just outright kill rather than apply DoT damage are just better overall

[🐰bunnywhole🐰]

yeah i'm trying to experiment with it, and it's not just working right, even with a 540 fire staff

[Nights]

Originally posted by ToRy GraceVT:

yeah i'm trying to experiment with it, and it's not just working right, even with a 540 fire staff

Surge is good from what ive seen if you dont want to go straight to absolute destruction of the voidstrike staff

[Donut Steel]

I tried, but if it's not good while I'm still levelling, then there's no chance of it being good after that.

And I *want* it to be good, but only the staff itself is okay, and the perks have built-in caps that limit how they improve it.

[Nahmy]

A lot of stuff is functionally broken (not-working) as well.

The perk on the sword that adds stacks of Soulblaze on crit will not add stacks if the crit kills your enemy and in most cases it does kill them. This means no Soulblaze to spread with other perks, you just have a dead body and a wasted Blessing.

These kinds of horrible interactions and lack of quality control in testing means in most cases you're just shooting yourself in the foot trying to go that route.

[Ethical Lune]

Soulblaze has always been great and has only gotten better this update, it also gets more effective the higher the difficulty you're on since you can melt entire hordes and groups of elites regardless of numbers.

[BurningTofu]

It depends on your build. If you have it on wildfire to spread and Venting Shriek to spend all 6 stacks of warp, you can pretty much clear the horde. Plus, if you kill Elites among it, your Venting Shriek cooldown will be reduce. You can pretty much spam them at certain situation. But as it is lacking for a single target unyielding.
You could also add it with smite and you'll have extra DOTs on the horde helping you to clear things faster as well.
Right now, I'm having fun with Gun Psyker with near infinite shielding. Pskyers are fun to mess around now.

[Gabriel Greybeard]

Originally posted by Ethical Lune:

Soulblaze has always been great and has only gotten better this update, it also gets more effective the higher the difficulty you're on since you can melt entire hordes and groups of elites regardless of numbers.

Blatantly wrong, lesser enemies should die far faster than Soulblaze DoTs and larger enemies take incredibly minor damage from Soulblaze.

[🐰bunnywhole🐰]

Originally posted by BurningTofu:

It depends on your build. If you have it on wildfire to spread and Venting Shriek to spend all 6 stacks of warp, you can pretty much clear the horde. Plus, if you kill Elites among it, your Venting Shriek cooldown will be reduce. You can pretty much spam them at certain situation. But as it is lacking for a single target unyielding.
You could also add it with smite and you'll have extra DOTs on the horde helping you to clear things faster as well.
Right now, I'm having fun with Gun Psyker with near infinite shielding. Pskyers are fun to mess around now.

YOU ACTUALLY MIGHT BE ONTO SOMETHING WITH THE VENTING SHRIEK PART TO FINISH OFF.

i have not used that perk yet, becuase i felt it was a waste of a talent, but you might be right.

[Ethical Lune]

Originally posted by Gabriel Greybeard:

Originally posted by Ethical Lune:

Soulblaze has always been great and has only gotten better this update, it also gets more effective the higher the difficulty you're on since you can melt entire hordes and groups of elites regardless of numbers.

Blatantly wrong, lesser enemies should die far faster than Soulblaze DoTs and larger enemies take incredibly minor damage from Soulblaze.

My guy, I've played countless T5's and T5 Gauntlets with psyker and ogryn, I know what I'm talking about.

[BigJ]

Soulblaze is great for most unarmored threats and can be compensated with bb.
Soulblaze giving perks suck, soulblaze synergy perks, like warp tokens for it are good.

COnclusion, avoid soublaze from most sources outside of f and purgatus, take all synergetic talents and go crazy, always has worked, always will work.

PS. Update gave it more boss and armored damage, not great but it's a good dot on bosses to have as you bb/axe them.

[Qua2ar]

Soulblaze is a great SUPPORT tool, not a main damage source.

[Turkish Hair Graft]

Tried it, respecced out of it for more useful things.

I can already pulp 20 dudes at a time with lightning/fire/force/magic bees, i do not require an AOE dot, much less one that requires 2-3 points to get the most out of.

[xDaunt]

Here's how you should think about Soulblaze: it is basically free damage that often let's you kill things in one or two less hits than you otherwise would. When you think about it that way, it's quite useful.

[Arani]

Originally posted by ToRy GraceVT:

hey, havn't used it much since new class update. i didn't like it before. is it better now? and does soulblaze count as something else, different from the purgatus staff.

It's always been good. Now however you can easily build into it on the side, which can be amazing. Perilous Combustion that used to apply Soulblaze on an AoE when hitting a special+ with BB was reworked back into its old version where you need a kill instead, but now now works with any kill, not just BB or even warp damage. Wildfire is still there too. And the old ult was reworked to one where you can now apply a modified Ascendant Blaze effect (Soulblaze on all enemies in ult range) but it scales on peril, so from 1 stack at 0 peril to 6 at 90%+ peril. Since it no longer depends on Warp Charges it's much more accessible than before.

Since 4 stacks isn't enough to kill anything on T5 on its own, Wildfire is rather unremarkable but being just a single talent point investment I think it's a good thing for balance. Perilous Combustion on the other hand depends on your weapon. If you can kill multiple specials+ the following 8-stack will almost certainly kill anything else nearby. And as before, 6 stacks is enough to burn hordes, some specials and severely wound most anything else so the ult is definitely good.

The main issue however since the patch is that all classes have such completely overpowered builds that DoTs don't always have enough time to matter. The Pinning Fire nerf likewise hurt Shredder's interaction with with the Ascendant Blaze ult. And because BB was significantly nerfed from before (the description with +50% damage than before is completely wrong, it's closer to -20%, plus losing even more due to the changed talents), there isn't really a good way to combine the the ult's Soulblaze horde clear with another ability that does high single target damage. Smite is good but it's purely CC, and Assail basically does the same job as Soulblaze and is similarly useless against biggies. None of the staves pair very well with Soulblaze either, since Purge no longer needs Soulblaze interactions from talents, and Trauma and Void don't need more horde clear. In the case of Trauma and Void, even that bit about applying Soulblaze on special+ kill is mostly pointless because you're already going to kill anything that near with the staff anyway.

The sole exception is the Surge staff, or something like a Revolver really.

That said, I've had a lot of fun with some builds that combine Smite with the Soulblaze ult and Warp Charge keystone. Basically you CC everything and keep them there buffered while the enemies behind them catch up to them, then when peril gets to 100% you burn everything and CC them again to make sure they stay there while they burn. Warp Charge keystone makes your ult recharge 1/3:rd to 1/2 as fast and buffs the damage, so you can keep repeating this regularly. But while this build is fun, it's a fraction of as effective as just spamming Voidstrike would be.