Psyker brain burst / rupture underwhelming?

[Sountrex]

Its as the title says... I think the ability is not as good as it can be, for example the ability is the only one which consistently resets my progress from 99% to 0 and having to charge it again, only to gain more peril in doing so pretty much wasting my time and the kill I could have had.

The charging time for the ability is slow as hell, the peril it gives you only allows for what, 2 kills at most?

And on higher difficulties the ability doesn't even one shot enemies. Sometimes it doesn't even one shot gunners or any of the mediocre enemies that other abilities deal with easily or at least stun them to provide some sort of benefit.

It may be my playstyle with psyker but I really tried to use brain burst / brain rupture or whatever it is called when it is upgraded, but it just feels so bad to play as, like its not even worth running let alone when it is functioning correctly it doesn't even manage to do the one thing it should be good at doing which is picking off elite or specialist enemies.

Am I the only one with this issue? Do I have perk skill issue or something? Am I missing a secret ingredient as to why this ability feels so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful to use? Smite and Assail are still solid even after nerfs and tweaks. Yet this Brain burst ability just feels like it is a noob trap that starting psykers fall into or something like that. A skill that is just there to exist and serves no purpose in the later difficulties of the game (Heresy and up)

[Arani]

It's in a weird spot yes. I agree that either its cast time or power should be buffed. Not by much but they should. The biggest issue with BB imo is how extremely situational it is, and that it overlaps with most weapons psykers use. Patch #13 basically halved the kill times of most enemies for all classes, while making both Surge and Void significantly better against elites & specials, leaving BB too slow and weak for the niche it used to have. On top of that they added Smite and Assail which tend to be far more frequently useful, as opposed to BB which is just so extremely situational by design already.

But while I definitely thought BB useless in the first few weeks after that patch too, I have come to view things a bit differently since then. Most of it isn't because of BB itself though, but rather because of how the talents are built. Let me do another list:

• You can only get Kinetic Flayer via BB. Kinetic Flayer works great with weapons that do a lot of hits in a short time without killing enemies (Trauma with it's AoE, Purge with its rapid hits and being weak vs. elites, gunpsykers using rapid fire weapons, etc.)
  
• Psykinetic's Aura is arguably one of the best passive talents in the game. But it's only accessible via either BB or Smite. And Smite has very poor synergy with anything that already does CC & AoE damage.
  
• Assail regardless of what you think of the blitz itself, comes with the worst talent path ever. Taking Assail not only misses out on Psykinetic's Aura, but is forced into Mind in Motion if you want any other aura than crit, or if you want the Venting Shriek ult (something that pairs ridiculously well with Assail). Malefic Momentum, if you do go with the crit aura, isn't exactly a winner either. But that Mind in Motion is entirely 100% useless and a complete waste of a talent for experienced psykers, because you can quell while sliding, dodging or dodge+sliding, letting you both move faster while also doubling as defense.
  
• BB has easily the best and strongest synergy of all blitzes with Empowered Psionics, because it has the highest peril cost, highest cast time, and highest damage. And EP makes it free (letting you cast it even at 100% peril), twice as fast, and 50% stronger. EP can also be specced to guarantee stacks on elite kills, and BB with EP can kill even crushers with 2 hits, ragers with 1.
  
• While BB is extremely situational, it still addresses issues that staves can't. It can't miss, has no travel time, can lock on if the target is visible even for an instant, is effective against all enemy types, can be pre-charged to fire instantly, and you can charge it while sliding at sprinting speeds.

So all in all, right now the biggest selling point of BB for me is that you have to get some blitz anyway. So any build that 1) wants Psykinetic's Aura and doesn't need Smite, 2) needs Kinetic Flayer, or 3) doesn't need Warp Siphon (which is way more useless than before thanks to its internally conflicting design, where it requires the greatest talent point investment of all keystones by far while losing all of its bonuses every time you use your ult) or Disrupt Destiny (I'm not even gonna bother explaining my issues here)... well. They're gonna take BB anyway. So while 99.9% of the time I tend to just use my staves, ults and other options, the BB is there so I might as well use it for those rare few situations where it works. But on those builds where you both get BB and Empowered Psionics instead, on those builds BB is crazy good.

Even just getting EP itself is only 2 talents down from Warp Rider, and Warp Rider is basically mandatory for any build (its description is misleading, it adds 10-20% dmg scaling on peril, not 0-20% as it implies). It's only 4 poinst to get Charged up for 3 stacks of EP. Meanwhile even a single point into Warp Siphon is a whopping 5 points down from that Peril Resistance passive, and it's 9 points (almost a full third of all your talent picks) to get all the way down to Warp Battery. Solidity is an actually good pick so it's not this simple, but still. I seriously dislike how they changed Warp Siphon. :c

[Runic Tunic]

It's....a weird situation, Brain Burst. On one hand, it CAN do very well. It just requires a lot more prep and arguably more skill compared to the other options. But that's also kinda the crux of it. The other options for Psyker (and any other class really) are arguably more satisfying to use, and can perform as effectively with less effort. So it kinda just falls to the way side more often than not.

The playstyle is also just not everyone's cup of tea.

I've found that pairing it with Scrier's Gaze as a gun/melee psyker is a good way to change up the playstyle. It becomes more of a situational tool, but provides an excellent option when you NEED an elite/special dead asap, and grabbing Kinetic Flayer for your guns/melee drastically ups the damage potential.

[vodan]

Not only 2 kills at most - you can do this safely from 97% without going boom.(at least when i was testing this last time was 97, but i dont think that they fixed this to 99. And no, random psyker, you can't say that this is absolutely safe at 99%, cause thats only for one first time, after that you should press rest once and you will be somewhere at 95, or wait untill 97, with waiting on 99 and 98 you will go boom)
This is good for one-shoting dogs when they are going for your teammate and soon will behind wall. For boss damage - to have similar damage you should crit with voidstrike that have double-shot blessing into the weakspot, for catching any flamer which is running behind 5 bullwarks, but you got his head once, for one-shoting walking bombs, such things will not work with magic stick, sometimes you need second to rest instead of killing things with this ability, sometimes your weapon need crit or weakspot shot, so brain burst have lots of use, especially when you dont have any need(or use for) in smite or assail. And for some builds thats nice way to get armor damage. And also very lazy and save way to kill gunners and snipers.

*Redact - a mistake in all this with peril - when you BB you can't do this from 98 even first time, just now tested this. You will just go boom, but from 97 allways safe.

[Boatmurdered]

I think brainburst is fun as hell and the secret is to design around the high build up, including using the vent power on a regular basis to first get rid of the peril and then using it to rapidly reduce the cooldown of vent.

It's definetly weaker feeling at lower levels.

[The Gunsmith]

Originally posted by Arani:

It's in a weird spot yes. I agree that either its cast time or power should be buffed. Not by much but they should. The biggest issue with BB imo is how extremely situational it is, and that it overlaps with most weapons psykers use. Patch #13 basically halved the kill times of most enemies for all classes, while making both Surge and Void significantly better against elites & specials, leaving BB too slow and weak for the niche it used to have. On top of that they added Smite and Assail which tend to be far more frequently useful, as opposed to BB which is just so extremely situational by design already.

But while I definitely thought BB useless in the first few weeks after that patch too, I have come to view things a bit differently since then. Most of it isn't because of BB itself though, but rather because of how the talents are built. Let me do another list:

• You can only get Kinetic Flayer via BB. Kinetic Flayer works great with weapons that do a lot of hits in a short time without killing enemies (Trauma with it's AoE, Purge with its rapid hits and being weak vs. elites, gunpsykers using rapid fire weapons, etc.)
  
• Psykinetic's Aura is arguably one of the best passive talents in the game. But it's only accessible via either BB or Smite. And Smite has very poor synergy with anything that already does CC & AoE damage.
  
• Assail regardless of what you think of the blitz itself, comes with the worst talent path ever. Taking Assail not only misses out on Psykinetic's Aura, but is forced into Mind in Motion if you want any other aura than crit, or if you want the Venting Shriek ult (something that pairs ridiculously well with Assail). Malefic Momentum, if you do go with the crit aura, isn't exactly a winner either. But that Mind in Motion is entirely 100% useless and a complete waste of a talent for experienced psykers, because you can quell while sliding, dodging or dodge+sliding, letting you both move faster while also doubling as defense.
  
• BB has easily the best and strongest synergy of all blitzes with Empowered Psionics, because it has the highest peril cost, highest cast time, and highest damage. And EP makes it free (letting you cast it even at 100% peril), twice as fast, and 50% stronger. EP can also be specced to guarantee stacks on elite kills, and BB with EP can kill even crushers with 2 hits, ragers with 1.
  
• While BB is extremely situational, it still addresses issues that staves can't. It can't miss, has no travel time, can lock on if the target is visible even for an instant, is effective against all enemy types, can be pre-charged to fire instantly, and you can charge it while sliding at sprinting speeds.

So all in all, right now the biggest selling point of BB for me is that you have to get some blitz anyway. So any build that 1) wants Psykinetic's Aura and doesn't need Smite, 2) needs Kinetic Flayer, or 3) doesn't need Warp Siphon (which is way more useless than before thanks to its internally conflicting design, where it requires the greatest talent point investment of all keystones by far while losing all of its bonuses every time you use your ult) or Disrupt Destiny (I'm not even gonna bother explaining my issues here)... well. They're gonna take BB anyway. So while 99.9% of the time I tend to just use my staves, ults and other options, the BB is there so I might as well use it for those rare few situations where it works. But on those builds where you both get BB and don't need or can't afford Warp Siphon so you go for Empowered Psionics instead? On those builds BB is crazy good.

Even just getting EP itself is only 2 talents down from Warp Rider, and Warp Rider is basically mandatory for any build. It's only 4 poinst to get Charged up for 3 stacks of EP. Meanwhile even a single point into Warp Siphon is a whopping 5 points down from that Peril Resistance passive, and it's 9 points (almost a full third of all your talent picks) to get all the way down to Warp Battery. Solidity is an actually good pick so it's not this simple, but still. I seriously dislike how they changed Warp Siphon. :c

all i have to add to that is empowered psionics gives you the damage bonus on the brain burst triggered by flayer without consuming a stack of it.

i find that BB is most useful as a gateway to kinetic flayer meaning one doesnt need to invest in all of EPs keystone extensions as you wont be directly using BB anyway just grab the elite kill stack guarantee and you should be good on paper.

[Sunz_Up]

i play that with friends and it feels op as hell personally , i am only doing diff 4 and am not max lvl but my friends clear trash and i just 1 tap every single elites and can burst bosses very quickly.
playing with random it feels useless as hell since you need people defending you , and its even better when they ping elites

[Donut Steel]

Here's a non-exhaustive list of situations necessary, desirable or optimal to use which Blitz ability on Psyker.

Not being attacked in melee:
Brain Burst and Smite.

Not being shot at and hit:
Brain Burst and Smite.

Visibility on a target at the start of wind-up:
Brain Burst and Smite on the primary.

Visibility on a target at the end of the wind-up:
Brain Burst and Smite on the secondary.

One target that is worth focusing on for the wind-up duration:
Brain Burst, Assail.

Multiple targets that are efficient to use it on for the wind-up duration:
Smite, Assail.

If you are able to remain quite still:
Brain Burst, Smite, and Assail.

If you need to move:
Assail.

If your time-pressure is high:
Assail.

If your team has an iron ring of protection around you:
Brain Burst, Smite, and Assail.

If they're all typical players with paid-for cosmetics with under-levelled gear for the chosen difficulty: Assail.

You like horror:
Brain Burst and Assail.

You like unlimited power or a magic system that follows 'cheap special effects logic':
Smite. (and Assail)

[Forblaze]

I've played Psyker on damnation difficulty since launch and have never not liked it.

First of all, it's not a primary weapon. It's not meant to compete with a veteran's lasgun. it's meant to compete with their frag grenade. The Psyker already has a huge amount of AoE damage though, so having an AoE explosion for a grenade would be redundant the vast majority of the time.

Brain Burst is good at picking off singular high priority threats. Assail's right click is similar, Brain Burst is more flexible and more consistent. Brain burst isn't a projectile and you only need to see the enemy for a moment to kill them. This makes it more useful than Assail when you're dealing with especially distant enemies in cover, or enemies running into doors, behind cover, or around corners. There also aren't any enemies it's bad against, like Assail is against things that are armored.

Ideally, you'd never need to use Brain Burst. But realistically, there's going to be a moment where there's a couple gunners off in the distance that no one else is shooting or a trapper running off through a group of poxwalkers or a thousand other things. Brain Burst will ensure that when push comes to shove, you have a solution to deal with them.

[JustSmile]

The only time I feel it's worth casting is with empowered psionics up... and even that just barely.

[Nihil]

Brainburst was always a sh*t like hell ability.
I loved playing every class except psyher. Now after class overhaul i freaking enjoy psyher as well.
Surprise surprise: I don't use brainburst.

[Kenpachi Ramasama]

the biggest problem with brainburst is that you dont stack up stacks just by brainbursting normal mobs.

[Hex]

It has unlimited range and it locks on so you can tag something and go back behind cover. With Gaze + psionics you can do a lot of damage with it fast.

[Arani]

Originally posted by The Gunsmith:

Originally posted by Arani:

...

all i have to add to that is empowered psionics gives you the damage bonus on the brain burst triggered by flayer without consuming a stack of it.

I didn't know that! Thanks. :>

[Wulfen]

If they buffed the cast speed and refunded the Peril cost when someone else kills your target, I'd be happy enough with that

[Le Hatch]

Its a decent enough option to take to round out your build to cover for some short comings, and with venting shriek + EP you can crank out a fair few of them pretty quickly. Works decent with warp siphon if you want to run a short ranged staff to have something to hit far targets. I've run BB with warp siphon and purgatus staff and even dumping my stacks to use my ability, I tend to get the charges back immediately because the 10% chance to get a stack from killing something affected with soulblaze is funny.

I think the problem is too many people seem to think smite and assail is the best thing ever when the effects of either of those can be extremely easily replicated with a staff.