Is melee psyker viable?

[Robert II. Flanderský]

Some time ago i loved to run psyker melee.
With Illisi and scrier gaze it can deal with lot of things. With certain talents also brain burst spam on bosses.

But currently it seems that psyker is just too "weak" for melee. With currently scaled damage. I get downed from 10 shots. Which makes it hardly playable. As with high presence of gunners and range enemies. I just cant move.
Even though i have health, toughness curios.

It seems only viable strategy is to be premade group and have the insurance, your team will run in front of you. And youre just damage dealer popping here and there to strike in melee.
But thats not the case for random games.

any advice how to run it?
Is melee psyker dead for random runs?

[Vanta]

It can work with Scryer's Gaze. Especially with the talent that makes blocking use peril instead of stamina, and the deflection blessing on the force sword. But i'm not really sure if it would be better than a dedicated zealot build

[Sea Base]

https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9d7a7879-7df2-4c3d-bdb4-ce92610680cb/no-cap-swordsman This is what I've been running in T5 pubs while messing about with a variety of psyker builds without any problems.
For the problems you are having, ranged spam:
- +60% resistance Gunners helps a lot
- Empathic Evasion protects you a lot in melee combat
- (sucking lemons) heavily use cover, and don't feel like you have to rush
- Use revolver to take out Gunners
- push comes to shove, exploit the AI

The only place this build doesn't do well on is quickly killing monsters. It does decent damage, but you'll want your team mates about.

[Robert II. Flanderský]

Originally posted by Vanta:

It can work with Scryer's Gaze. Especially with the talent that makes blocking use peril instead of stamina, and the deflection blessing on the force sword. But i'm not really sure if it would be better than a dedicated zealot build

The deflection blessing is trade off though. If i take deflection i have to get rid of damage perk. And in that case it can lose all value.

[Tunnfisk]

Originally posted by Robert II. Flanderský:

Is melee psyker viable?

Everything is viable.

[Kar_Tavi]

yes, a glass cannon basically

[Robert II. Flanderský]

Originally posted by Tunnfisk:

Originally posted by Robert II. Flanderský:

Is melee psyker viable?

Everything is viable.

I was looking for this one. True words of wisdom

[Arani]

Very viable, but it is different.

Psykers are squishy, nothing you do will get around that. Zellies and oggies are built tough, even vets get their own buffs & tools and have VoC / stealth to get out of trouble. But as a psyker your survival always depends on not getting hit. And you don't get ults that can reset either.

So psykers need both a good build & gear and loads of skill to do it right. To list a few things:

• Empathic Evasion is a godsent and renders you immune to ranged while critting, but depends on crits. If you don't pay attention and suddenly run out of enemies to hit or waste too much time on some big heavy attack while several ranged are focusing on you, you'll get stunlocked & die in an insant.
  
• With Illisi you really need to get those Power blessings going & do headshots to manage the numbers on T5+. If you don't have Anticipation, sometimes spamming lights is preferred to keep Empathic Evasion going.
  
• Devil's Claw is an excellent alternative to Illisi. It can't match Illisi's cleave but those parries with Kinetic Deflection are insane. It's also super easy especially if you add some block efficiency on top. Just remember if the crushers / maulers hit you during the block period, they'll go right through and kill you... so you can easily tank an endless # of anything, *except* the one-shotters. With them you have to make sure you only parry 1 hit at a time.
  
• Bc of your reliance on crits and scoring tons of cleaving headshots, odds are your build will have True Aim (and Disrupt Destiny). So the gameplay tends to be very similar to Weapons Specialist vets in that you hit things until TA is stacked, then use the crit on ranged / blitz, then go back to hitting. It's a good idea to use a ranged weapon that makes good use of that crit.
  
• For blitz I recommend Assail for being easy to mix in with melee, plus it gives you Malefic Momentum.
  
• As for ults, anything goes but I recommend either the bubble for extra toughness regen & range-immunity, or Scrier's if you're above average skilled. Scrier's with Empathic Evasion basically acts as a personal moving bubble where your crit is so high you'll always be range-immune while meleeing. If you go there, I'd also recommend By Crack of Bone for peril management, and if you go there then might as well pick up Warp Splitting for some massive extra cleave for all your weapons / blitz.

Anyway melee psykers are tremendously strong and very viable but very binary in that things often go well until they don't, and then you die. Your main challenge is adaptability in the fight bc of how much depends stacking the various buffs up, so you need to play a lot safer at first. As a psyker, positioning and anticipation is always vital: Do not *ever* get caught out of position, or surprised by an errant specialist or other hit. Getting staggered even once is often a death sentence.

[Wasp]

I use a Knife Psyker regulary (to be honest more often than my Zaelot Knife build). With it I succede the new Train Mission on Auric T5 Difficulty. Its a build that relies heaviely on speed. As Blitz I prefer Smite. If there are too many enemys or big enemys I cant kill fast enouth or wehn the team is on the thersehold to get overrun its a good support Blitz.

"Scries Gaze" ist recomandet. Damage Bonus, Toughness Bonus, Crit Chance Bonus and as long as there are enemys it wont stop. I always are disappointed how small hordes are *g*. "Reality Anchor" helps to futher stretch the time of Scries Gaze. With that build you can get a lot of damage bonus, Toughness and Speed. You can outrun the most dangers if necessary, seek cover if necessary, and with Empathic Evasion in combination with the crit bonus you dodge against range enemys like a pro.

Kinetic Deflection helps if you are cornered ot simply need to gain time. Funfact the ability works even with non force weapons, like the knife.

The weaktpoint are heavy armored enemys but with the correct weapons you can finish them off.

I use the catchan Mk VI Combat Blade with "Lacerate" and "Mercy Killer" (bleeding stacks and bonus weakspot damage against enemys mit Bleed Stacks) and the Godwyn-Branx Bolt Pistol (or a Revolver). But the bleeding from hits with the Bolt Pistol matches better with this build (and headhits on range enemys are even deadly like with the revolver).

The bleeding softens up the armored enemys and if the survive long enought you got the bonus damage for "Mercy Killer" if you hit the weakspot.

At fist it was a fun build but over the time it worked realy good and it is a totaly different psyker build.

https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9d7ac934-ca41-476b-82b6-7e1b8458a65b/melee-psyker-14

As keystone I am more comfortable with Empowered Psionics to power up the Blitz (Smite). I dont know why but Disrupt Destiny simply didnt worked well for me. its a mess to kill the marked enemys when everyone simply kills averything and so I skiped it.

[v4nd4hl]

I've a funky psyker melee build, maybe you like it:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3342365064

I have no problem playing it on T5 auric and stand my ground with it.

[xDaunt]

You can do melee psyker, but it requires a lot of practice and skill. It definitely isn't the optimal way to play the class, and a melee psyker still isn't going to outperform a zealot.

[JuX]

It is viable, but it's weakest class in melee.

Easiest solution for the ranged problem is not only to get gunner damage reduction curio traits, but use force sword which can use blessing to block ranged attacks. Combined with blocking efficiency traits and talent to use peril on blocks let's you become basically a ogryn with deployed shield. You can even effortlessly tank a demonhost and not take any damage.

[Cyzxxikz]

Originally posted by v4nd4hl:

I've a funky psyker melee build, maybe you like it:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3342365064

I have no problem playing it on T5 auric and stand my ground with it.

i was just starting to experiment with this with a mk3 shock maul with thrust and dmg to electrocuted, it's pretty fun H1 over and over though

[Arani]

Btw I take back the comment about Devil's Claw. Idk if it's a bug but clearly the recent block-after-parry change no longer works. Psykers are too squishy to tank those infrequent random hits through.

[BÆRD]

Yes it is, I ran variants of the following:

Originally posted by Robert II. Flanderský:

Some time ago i loved to run psyker melee.
With Illisi and scrier gaze it can deal with lot of things. With certain talents also brain burst spam on bosses.

But currently it seems that psyker is just too "weak" for melee. With currently scaled damage. I get downed from 10 shots. Which makes it hardly playable. As with high presence of gunners and range enemies. I just cant move.
Even though i have health, toughness curios.

It seems only viable strategy is to be premade group and have the insurance, your team will run in front of you. And youre just damage dealer popping here and there to strike in melee.
But thats not the case for random games.

any advice how to run it?
Is melee psyker dead for random runs?

Yes it is, not really meta, but pretty fun,, but you have far less safety nets when compared to other classes, especially if you make a mistake.

I have been playing "melee" psyker since patch 13 drop (with the new talent trees). These days I run bolt pistol a lot, but I used to run revolvers and las pistols, partially to discourage myself from just gunning, partially because you need that mobility.

I would pick melee weapons with high crit / finese to take advantage of psyker crit related talents. You want to stay mainly on the right side of the tree, Take advantage of Mettle, Assail, Malefic Momentum, By Crack of Bone, One with the Warp, Empathic Evasion, grab the 3 TDR nodes on the way, Gaze with Endurance and Reality Anchor or Precog, Warp Rider, Kinetic Deflection and Distrup Destiny with longer uptime.

I would aim for over 200 HP and 150+ toughness. If you take Battle Meditation talent you can take 2 HP curios and 1 toughness one and end up with 250 HP and 159 toughness or something similar.

I tend to run force swords (Obscurus and Deimos), but I ran that with duelling swords also. DC and knives should also work.

No idea at what experience level you are, but in general you want to slide into shooters, with groups of them ahead of you you can open up with Assail to stagger gunners and ragers alike. Emphatic Evasion provides some protection also, thats why I tend to aim for high crit set ups. I usually have 17.5%+ crit chance before any buffs from blessings and SG apply. Dont ignore toughness damage reduction nodes and talents. At high peril they make quite a difference.

[Real_]

Scryer's Gaze is great at generating peril, so perks and mods that require peril are great like, "perilous assault" "penetration of the soul", "warp rider" and "one with the warp" work great with Scryer's Gaze, you can also use non psyker weapons and take advantage of brain ruptures "kinetic flayer" great for that type of build, Scryer's Gaze is a psykers equivalent to the zealots with shroudfield it has up times doing allot of quick damage and down times where you're trying not to get hit.

the heavy lazpistol, or an infantry autogun with a combat knife, combat axe, tactical axe or a dueling sword are great for a Scryer's Gaze build but that you cant use psy weapons like staffs or blaze swords, its just allot more risky and you don't need the peril generation.

keep in mind psykers have the highest base crit chance out of all the classes at a 7.5, ogryn's have the lowest at 2.5 if you're build crafting.