Is Assail Any Good?

[Mango]

I like how assail is, but like, is it worth it? I'm using Assail and Voidstrike. Is it a bad tossup?

[靐]

Just think about worst case situations. Pack of crushers/bulwarks/horde and a boss come from nowhere, will assail and voidstrike do anything for your team?

[Mango]

Idk though lol. I'm kinda new.

Originally posted by 💀:

Just think about worst case situations. Pack of crushers/bulwarks/horde and a boss come from nowhere, will assail and voidstrike do anything for your team?

[靐]

Assail is okay at lower difficulties, at higher difficulties it can work okay with melee crit gaze build. But still, I would stick with the smite. Smite can just stun everything but bosses, while your team deal with them. Also empowered smite have okay damage and can kill stuff. Add on top of that soulblaze on elite kill, wildifre and you can deal some great damage at higher havoc / damnation maelstroms AND stunning stuff forever. Yes, also shriek with soulblaze for even more damage.

Empowered assail can delete patrols, but does nothing vs armored. Voidstrike takes some time to charge and kinda annoying to deal with tons of stuff near you.

[Mango]

Originally posted by 💀:

Assail is okay at lower difficulties, at higher difficulties it can work okay with melee crit gaze build. But still, I would stick with the smite. Smite can just stun everything but bosses, while your team deal with them. Also empowered smite have okay damage and can kill stuff. Add on top of that soulblaze on elite kill, wildifre and you can deal some great damage at higher havoc / damnation maelstroms AND stunning stuff forever. Yes, also shriek with soulblaze for even more damage.

Empowered assail can delete patrols, but does nothing vs armored. Voidstrike takes some time to charge and kinda annoying to deal with tons of stuff near you.

I see... Tips on a staff?

[36]

sadly they nerfed it into the ground so now its just "ok"

[minecraftshep]

Assail is really only good at high difficulties if you abuse the psyker talent malefic momentum. That talent increases your non warp damage on a warp kill. Since you don't have to aim the shards, you can throw a few out, get kills and increase your damage while you attack with a sword, or you can get kills with a sword and throw assail out to have your assail do a lot more damage.

Also make sure you take Ethereal Shards, it increases your DPS tremendously and basically gets you more effect with less assail shards - and quick shards as well if you intend to use it a lot, it's worth it. Also the Empowered Psionics Keystone will give you extra assail uses for free, with extra damage. The keystone also has a modifier to give you and your team toughness when you use an empowered psionics charge, which is helpful.

I will say if you're going to use assail, it's best to make sure at least one of your weapons is good for armor penetration. The dueling sword is really good, but until you get comfortable in melee, the electrokinetic staff or the voidstrike staff can do a ton of damage to crushers - these are also the best staves to pair with assail.

One tip I can give to make the voidstrike even better, is to focus on Crit, and use the surge blessing with warp nexus. Your DPS will go up insanely, especially if you use the psyker talent True aim, which guarantees a crit after 5 headshots. A voidstrike can get 5 headshots in 1 shot since it goes through a bunch of enemies, so it's great for that staff.

If you do focus on crit, the psyker has a few talents that give you toughness and movespeed on crit. It might not seem that good since getting crits isn't that consistent, but in actuality, the psyker crits almost every time they attack, so it's such a big benefit.

[minecraftshep]

Originally posted by Mango:

Originally posted by 💀:

Assail is okay at lower difficulties, at higher difficulties it can work okay with melee crit gaze build. But still, I would stick with the smite. Smite can just stun everything but bosses, while your team deal with them. Also empowered smite have okay damage and can kill stuff. Add on top of that soulblaze on elite kill, wildifre and you can deal some great damage at higher havoc / damnation maelstroms AND stunning stuff forever. Yes, also shriek with soulblaze for even more damage.

Empowered assail can delete patrols, but does nothing vs armored. Voidstrike takes some time to charge and kinda annoying to deal with tons of stuff near you.

I see... Tips on a staff?

Also don't stick with smite lmao, most people hate smite since it lowers everyone's dps on the team. It might seem good since the enemies don't move, but actually most classes gain crit or extra damage on a dodge, and when enemies aren't moving everyone loses their extra damage. Plus you aren't doing damage if you're smiting, so not only is everyone else doing like half as much damage, but you're not doing anything.

Smite is there to make the game easier, but a lot of people don't know a lot of times it's easier without people spamming smite and taking away everyone's buffs along with taking yourself out of the fight as well - since you're just standing there holding left click doing basically 0 damage.

Smite is best used extremely situationally, when a pack of crushers spawns right in front of you. It would save your team to freeze a bunch of crushers that cornered everyone for example.

[XIX Victorious Aut Mortis]

Interms of Staffs all staffs have a role, but if it depends on what you are running in your team,

a two-handed force sword or a Normal force sword can be used to Stuff over Most Chaff, while the Combat Knife and Sabre are more Focused on Elites and specialists.
if your running a the Later then Running the Inferno staff is recommended,
while VoidStrike or Blast are Good for Elites with Blast is the middle ground,
Smite staff is okay, but it has issue on focusing on targets that you actually want since it auto hit's

ig your running a Anti-chaff build then probable Crush or Assail for Range threats like Snipers' Trapper and the Like.
another choice if you are going to spec into dots with Perilous Combustion, Wildfire and Soul Drinker

[靐]

Originally posted by Mango:

Originally posted by 💀:

Assail is okay at lower difficulties, at higher difficulties it can work okay with melee crit gaze build. But still, I would stick with the smite. Smite can just stun everything but bosses, while your team deal with them. Also empowered smite have okay damage and can kill stuff. Add on top of that soulblaze on elite kill, wildifre and you can deal some great damage at higher havoc / damnation maelstroms AND stunning stuff forever. Yes, also shriek with soulblaze for even more damage.

Empowered assail can delete patrols, but does nothing vs armored. Voidstrike takes some time to charge and kinda annoying to deal with tons of stuff near you.

I see... Tips on a staff?

Every staff is nice. I would just swap assail into smite if I was playing on higher difficulties (except for inferno, it is great with brain burst). Just pick the one that clicks for you.

[Mysterious Sir Knight]

Assail is the only psyker blitz that has an ammo capacity. I think this is done intentionally to create a 'hotswapper' playstyle where it'll perform best if you use them to fill downtime where you'd normally just be closing in on enemies or otherwise unable to deal damage with other means.

[minecraftshep]

Originally posted by Mysterious Sir Knight:

Assail is the only psyker blitz that has an ammo capacity. I think this is done intentionally to create a 'hotswapper' playstyle where it'll perform best if you use them to fill downtime where you'd normally just be closing in on enemies or otherwise unable to deal damage with other means.

This is true, it's another reason why the talent malefic momentum is so good on assail psyker. Another thing you can do, which might technically be a glitch, is weave your assail in between melee attacks. There's tutorials for this on youtube, basically you throw assails after attacking without a cooldown, and you can keep going back to attacking.

[Mango]

Thanks to all the replies! I think I'll try stuff out and just see what works. I'll definitely keep everyone's ideas in mind :) Game seems fun so far

[Arani]

Originally posted by Mango:

I like how assail is, but like, is it worth it? I'm using Assail and Voidstrike. Is it a bad tossup?

There is no one blitz or ult or staff that's just "best". They're all good but depend on your build and what it is you're trying to do (ie, what mods & enemies you're up against). A typical build needs to deal with hordes, single targets (specials/elites, armor), and mixed. Typically BB is single-target, smite is CC, assail is hordes & specialists and passes for a sniper with secondary. Assail is definitely strong in endgame and strongly favored by gun- & meleepsykers, as well as buílds which need more Aoe / horde clear.

The problem with pairing assail with Void is that they do mostly the same thing, except Void just does it better. Void doesn't need AoE & cleave (assail), nor single-target dmg (BB), but what it does occasionally need is horizontal control. That and a way to deal with specialists like bursters, dogs & trappers, even through oggies. Which is why I typically pair it with smite.

Overall assail tends to work great with Surge & guns, passably with Trauma & Purge (Voidblast & Inferno), and especially if you also get Vent & Creeping Flames since they really help with the horde clear. But all of the above are just general matchups, in reality DT has so much build complexity that ultimately it can depend on a thousand different things.

[Tunnfisk]

Originally posted by Mango:

I like how assail is, but like, is it worth it? I'm using Assail and Voidstrike. Is it a bad tossup?

It's good as a Peril dump Vs. trash horde and certain lower type of elites/specials. Can also be used to snipe every now and again. But mainly, I use it as a damage dump. Takes a few seconds to launch 10+ Assails for a lot of free damage.

Everything in the game is useful, it's only a matter of taste and playstyle. Try it out and see what's what.

[Mini]

Yeah it’s fine. Pairs well with a Voidstrike Staff and a melee that doesn’t deal with crowds well like the Deimos or Dueling Sword. I like to work in the darts between my sword swings a lot of the time.