Psyker Sienna Fuegonasus-lite.

[Prototypo]

I played a lot of Vermintide 2 and loved playing Sienna. I was excited for Darktide. I pre-ordered it and played Ogryn and Psyker to level 30 pretty quickly. I've enjoyed the addition of the skill trees but Psyker doesn't feel good still. When I left after the first 2 months-ish it was more effective to use a Gun as a Psyker than a staff and it still feels like that's the case.

Crowd Control? Everything dies too fast to make Smite or the flame staff useful. Long Range Sniping with Brain Burst? Veterans do it better. I was okay with the Infinite Smite, but they've nerfed that, which is good because it trivialized most content. However completely removing the Peril gain from 100% reduction to 0%, despite the damage increase, was a bit too far.

I keep feeling like Psyker fits the same role as Sienna did in Vermintide but falls short in so many ways. Headseaker Skull is better than Assail and Brain Burst, as it's basically both combined to greater effect. It could clear 10 small enemies or 1 shot an elite. Assail does the first, but over multiple shots. Brain Burst doesn't even do the second on Damnation difficulty.

Not going to just complain though, there are fixes.

Smite - Either up the damage even more, or bring back the peril gain reduction to even it out more. IMO it should kill an elite, save Ogryn in 1 full charge. It still takes more time than Veterans just shooting them, but at least it's just as efficient.

Brain Burst - Make it prioritize elites in a 15 yard/meter area of where you are targeting so it works better as an elite sniping ability.

Assail - 1 Shard should kill 1 dreg at any difficulty as a baseline, maybe 3 for less armored/beefy elites. Up the recharge speed.

The staves still need some love, but the class abilities are the bigger issue at hand.

Edited because I miss spelled Psyker.

[Mosey]

Void staff makes any gun you can possibly choose irrelevant.

Also I have 1500+ hours of VT2, a lot of which was spent on Sienna if not most of it. I don't know why that would be relevant, but you brought it up so...

[???]

picked the game up during the sale last week and I've gotten a zealot to level 30 and started working on a psycher.
Overall I feel like all of the classes are just less interesting versions of their VT2 counterparts that feel much less distinct. I think the way they've homogenized all of the classes into being mostly about one aura, one grenade and one active ability with tons of passives that barely impact you on an individual level is a big contributor.

On the psycher class itself, while I can't speak for all the abilities and on higher difficulties, I can definitely say that even at the lower end when you are killing things quickly it just doesn't feel as impactful or explosive as it should.
watered down Sienna feels about right. The saves definitely lack the variety of Sienna's.
It's been hard for me to pinpoint the exact problems this game has on a deeper level but I think most things just don't feel as good as in VT2. It's still a fun game but in most ways it's a downgrade to VT2.

[Ishan451]

What's a psycher?

[???]

Originally posted by Ishan451:

What's a psycher?

reading is cringe
remembering the correct spelling is cringe