Player psyker shockingly weak in the *EARLY GAME*

[BoogieMan]

I tried a few different psykers types, but my character's offensive potential is extremely low. His starter psyker attacks are weaker than the basic pistol you start with (although it has yet to miss) and the melee character that joins you early can hit 3 guys for 20. Where psyker attacks do about 4 on average to a single target.

Stacking up willpower doesn't seem to do much if anything, and the psyker talents that actually boost your damage can only be chosen at milestone levels, starting at level 10. From level 1-9 you'll be doing more or less the same damage while the other classes continue to grow through upgrades and abilities. And they don't potentially have the determent of summon enemies and such as a side effect of using their abilities. So you get to waste 5 picks to bridge the difference, 5 picks that other classes get to put towards more interesting choices that largely aren't absolutely mandatory.

Early on, the presentation and experience of the player as a Psyker sucks. You're weaker than all your companions, including your companion Psyker who gets free bonuses. It's weird that your signature attacks are weaker than using a sword without supporting skills or just shooting the basic pistol you can start with.

[Zartanyen]

Was going psyker myself till I seen this. I guess you could go workshop and get bag of trick's to help balance it out. I just hate to go mods on first play through though. Guess I will go priest over my heretic ways starting out.

[Limz]

Originally posted by Sage:

Originally posted by DreXav:

Okay, seems the Tide of Excellence does not work at all and Tactical Knowledge won't work under some circumstances.

ive noticed quite afew talents not working.... im in the process of making a list...but some of these bugs go back to the beta so goood luck

Well, actually there are a few hilarious bugs in FAVOR of the Operative. Continual Analysis triggers every turn including extra turns, I think that's also messing with Passive Learning. So you can get 30 exploits within one turn. You then cast Tactical Knowledge and hope it works and you end up with like 90% total armor and +30 damage.

Also, the pyro staff "hits" so you can do Precise Attack + Informed Hit to auto crit with the staff blast. What else can you do with this? Well, you can tech into assassin and hitting openings with the pyro staff with a burst attack means all 7 of your fireballs gain +15% max wounds as extra damage. Normally that's like 7-10 but if you face a boss with 900 HP that's +135 for each hit. By that point and abusing exploits with tac knowledge you should be able to hit 2k total in one round.

[GrugIsRock]

Originally posted by Limz:

Originally posted by Sage:

ive noticed quite afew talents not working.... im in the process of making a list...but some of these bugs go back to the beta so goood luck

Well, actually there are a few hilarious bugs in FAVOR of the Operative. Continual Analysis triggers every turn including extra turns, I think that's also messing with Passive Learning. So you can get 30 exploits within one turn. You then cast Tactical Knowledge and hope it works and you end up with like 90% total armor and +30 damage.

Also, the pyro staff "hits" so you can do Precise Attack + Informed Hit to auto crit with the staff blast. What else can you do with this? Well, you can tech into assassin and hitting openings with the pyro staff with a burst attack means all 7 of your fireballs gain +15% max wounds as extra damage. Normally that's like 7-10 but if you face a boss with 900 HP that's +135 for each hit. By that point and abusing exploits with tac knowledge you should be able to hit 2k total in one round.

Operative chads, we won.

Originally posted by Limz:

Originally posted by Sage:

ive noticed quite afew talents not working.... im in the process of making a list...but some of these bugs go back to the beta so goood luck

Well, actually there are a few hilarious bugs in FAVOR of the Operative. Continual Analysis triggers every turn including extra turns, I think that's also messing with Passive Learning. So you can get 30 exploits within one turn. You then cast Tactical Knowledge and hope it works and you end up with like 90% total armor and +30 damage.

Also, the pyro staff "hits" so you can do Precise Attack + Informed Hit to auto crit with the staff blast. What else can you do with this? Well, you can tech into assassin and hitting openings with the pyro staff with a burst attack means all 7 of your fireballs gain +15% max wounds as extra damage. Normally that's like 7-10 but if you face a boss with 900 HP that's +135 for each hit. By that point and abusing exploits with tac knowledge you should be able to hit 2k total in one round.

I have found a crime lord operative sniper super broken so far. I one shot everything, and do insane damage if I decide to have Cassia buff me. Perfect cover, stacks of sure fire plan with the boost to damage, crazy stacks of exploit weakness, Cassia buffing you with Focus, steady and you really are the best boss killer. Plus since your a sniper you don't have to worry about really taking damage since your frontliners will be doing that for you.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3108280515
here is my stats at only level 7 after Cassia buffs me.

[NomadGMZ]

Originally posted by Limz:

Originally posted by Sage:

ive noticed quite afew talents not working.... im in the process of making a list...but some of these bugs go back to the beta so goood luck

Well, actually there are a few hilarious bugs in FAVOR of the Operative. Continual Analysis triggers every turn including extra turns, I think that's also messing with Passive Learning. So you can get 30 exploits within one turn. You then cast Tactical Knowledge and hope it works and you end up with like 90% total armor and +30 damage.

Also, the pyro staff "hits" so you can do Precise Attack + Informed Hit to auto crit with the staff blast. What else can you do with this? Well, you can tech into assassin and hitting openings with the pyro staff with a burst attack means all 7 of your fireballs gain +15% max wounds as extra damage. Normally that's like 7-10 but if you face a boss with 900 HP that's +135 for each hit. By that point and abusing exploits with tac knowledge you should be able to hit 2k total in one round.

@Limz That sounds amazing and I would love to try it, but I am so new and inexperienced in this game that I have no idea how to put it together. You wouldn't happen to have a link to this build you are talking about so I could just follow step by step? Or if you are feeling generous, perhaps you could just copy and paste a standard pyro psyker guide here and just change some of it's talents around to make what you talked about possible?

Aside from my eternal gratitude I will also award your post with lots of steam points :)

If anyone else feels like they can help me out, please do so. Thank you in advance.

[yaguero]

Hello. There is something to say about psykers. It is probably one most difficult classes to play. I'm playin on difficult, not unfair, but I'll try to help you.
I'm going support, so biomancer officer and GS.
If you want to go damage you should go operative. Indira is psi 1, and you start as 0. Usually dmg is exponencial to psi level, so until lvl 10 when you pick 1 it's bad. At 2 goes crazy if you have been investing in WIL.
I took veil degradation reduction to avoid deadly crazy thing whe you spam abilities.
A pay operative with instant exposure improved and a couple of talents that allows to add dmg with int and WP will start to kick really hard by the time you face the space marine.
Hope it helps. Check werglia videos if you will, the gay knows the game

[Rainnd]

I would not recommend playing non melee psyker main character as both Idira and Cassia (especialy Cassia) will be better at it than you.

[Fennel]

What sucks is not their damage, it's the fact that all of the difficult battles begin with massively damaged veil, forcing you to roll for manifestations every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time you use a psyker ability, my "psyker" primarily uses a sniper becuase of this.

[Kazeck]

Originally posted by BoogieMan:

People getting freaked about psykers like they are so dangerous, I just want to say but have you tried a sharp piece of metal? Scratch that, those prisoners over their KICKED my tank for more damage AND knocked him down.. lol.

Unfortunately the PC begins at rating 0, so barely a psyker at all. In the tabletop rogue trader PC's begin at Psy Rating 2, but also you start as an arch militant for example as a combatant, so this game skews the balance abit by starting everyone off at the weaker end of the spectrum, psykers, sanctioned especially, got hit abit hard by that balance choice.

By late game due to the scaling of abilities you will pick up a good bit, also some talents such as the biomancers poison can be extremely effective even early on.

I do think a bump to psy rating 1 at chargen would be absolutely the correct decision though balance wise.

[Batailleuse]

Originally posted by BoogieMan:

I chose this, and put my initial points in intelligence and willpower.

I'm still early, but my character's offensive potential is extemely low. His starter psyker attack is weaker than the basic pistol you start with (although it has yet to miss) and the melee character that joins you early on is doing like 90% of the damage in combat.

What about the other psykers?

Edit: it wasn't just my choice in psyker. They all do absolutely abysmal damage. Stacking up willpower doesn't seem to do much, and the psyker talents can only be chosen at milestone levels, starting at level 10.

Leveling up doesn't help until you dump talents into raising your psyker rank.

So far psyker just do very, very low damage and are forced to pay the talent taxes as they level which just raise a number and don't actually do anything else interesting.

I really don't get the deal with this.Granted I'm still early on, but my psyker at level 5 doesn't do any more damage than he did at level 1. In fact, actually less! Enemies outside of the intro are taking less damage. Even with only base strength, weapon skills, and no supporting talents, he can do way more damage with a basic melee weapon or pistol.

It seems right now at level 10 you have to start picking abilities like "Less ♥♥♥♥ damage rank 1" then "Less ♥♥♥♥ damage rank 2" and so on, while other classes aren't as hit by feat taxes and can spend those points on something more interesting that can affect how you play and spice things up.

I hope this gets better. It's not fun being useless dead weight in combat.

People getting freaked about psykers like they are so dangerous, I just want to say but have you tried a sharp piece of metal? Scratch that, those prisoners over their KICKED my tank for more damage AND knocked him down.. lol.

it's mostly about what archetype you paired it with and which psyker specilization you picked.

Some spec start mostly with buffs and a meh staff (biomancer/diviner)

Mental is fine ... probably the strongest burst by far because of aftershock and all the debuff the class has.

Pyro is relatively weak overall, only decent passive to be more tanky and inflict melee area pure damage.

Sanctic is a bit on the weak side early, but scales pretty well and is good at everything (heal/tank/damage/buff) because most his power scales from Resolve, which he gives himself and to all the team based off his psy power, but you can reach 100% crit and godlike burst with him. also scales psy power based off how many people used their ultimate...up to +6 total ... so nuff said he can become a literal god later.


if you picked

Marksman/soldier you can rely on your weapon but those 2 give very little to your psyker after that.

Operative is the go-to massive damage dealer from start to finish (applying and consuming Exploits)

Leader + tactician will deal damage much faster end game compared to an Operative (unless you stack 4-5 operative... that doable tho), because power can give Resolve, resolve > faster charge up time of the Tactician resource, and basically under 3 turns you can reach 400% damage output on your psyker spells (all of them)

a single psyker in the team is meh, Cassia will often outshine any psyker you may have beause with her "hold my gaze" she can achieve the same thing, provided you have another leader able to give her turn when she is buffed she can delete everything.

[Batailleuse]

Originally posted by (-STAR-) GrugIsRock:

I have found a crime lord operative sniper super broken so far. I one shot everything, and do insane damage if I decide to have Cassia buff me. Perfect cover, stacks of sure fire plan with the boost to damage, crazy stacks of exploit weakness, Cassia buffing you with Focus, steady and you really are the best boss killer. Plus since your a sniper you don't have to worry about really taking damage since your frontliners will be doing that for you.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3108280515
here is my stats at only level 7 after Cassia buffs me.

what difficulty tho ? normal ? core ? hard ?

difficulty matter when you say you have a build that "one shot everything"

i'm also one shotting the whole map, in 3 turn ... in hard with cassia.

just abusing 3 leader "give turn" to cassia to give her tactician ressource, get +400% ish damage.

aoe gaze everything into oblivion, or just trigger an ultimate "give turn" with one of the leader with basically infinite 1AP hold my gave doing 500 damage a hit.

But operative stacking could work well enough, when you reach 200% armor nothing even damages you anyways, and the faster you reach it the better. you just need to survive the first turn ...

and by broken i really mean it.

100 resolve on 2 character by end of turn 2, both of them with 400% more damage for all theirs psyker skills, 4 ultimates already used.

Cassia already at 200Will

by the end of the fight, even heinrix which has no "% or flat scaling in his build" other than resolve was doing crit at 500 with his base sanctic skill (he had over 150 resolve which means 100% crit)

if heinrix use a skill now

[BoogieMan]

@Batailleuse

You should put your text after the end of the quote. You're disrupting it so even when someone quotes your quote, it attributes the post to your quote.

Anyway, this thread is more about the player as a psyker, not the followers or other characters.

Starting the player at psyker level 0 was a poor choice, and among other things makes them quite unsatisfying and underpowered early on.

It's not solved by a specific combo or exploiting a certain mechanic, either.

[Blackdragon]

One thing that really bugs me, is that Psyker powers don't have visual effects. Like, no fireball effect for Firestorm, or heat beam effect for Molten Beam. It's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lame, doesn't even feel like I'm playing a "fire mage". Might as well use a flamer or melta, at least those have visuals.

[BoogieMan]

Originally posted by Blackdragon:

One thing that really bugs me, is that Psyker powers don't have visual effects. Like, no fireball effect for Firestorm, or heat beam effect for Molten Beam. It's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lame, doesn't even feel like I'm playing a "fire mage". Might as well use a flamer or melta, at least those have visuals.

Indeed, as someone who tends to play mage type characters it's very unsatisfying on all levels of play. Visually and mechanically.

[Batailleuse]

Originally posted by BoogieMan:

@Batailleuse

You should put your text after the end of the quote. You're disrupting it so even when someone quotes your quote, it attributes the post to your quote.

Anyway, this thread is more about the player as a psyker, not the followers or other characters.

Starting the player at psyker level 0 was a poor choice, and among other things makes them quite unsatisfying and underpowered early on.

It's not solved by a specific combo or exploiting a certain mechanic, either.

actually it is ... because for instance.

Tactician has a very very good scaling for damage, except it NEVER get removed if you use a psyker power, it only get removed if you attack with weapon/melee/staff power.

so you can just rush to 99 stacks of 4% damage to get ~396% damage on all your psyker skills.

trust me it fixes the psyker like no other archetype can.

and since Tactician also can scale Resolve like no other, just roll a mental/Sanctic psyker, and laugh. it possibly quite the most broken combo you can do as a psyker.

if you do a Psyker X anything else its power will vary quite a lot.

Operative stacking will work, if anything better than even using a weapon because just staff lightning in the fray and there's no one left to talk.

Psyker Soldier or Psyker Marksman just arent nearly as good as every other combo you can possibly do with a psyker.

Early,

Buff provided by Biomancer/Diviner are good on their own, so are some of their passives
Mental is the only decent when it comes to damage and some of their passive are good too.

Sanctic is a bit more like a support role (for resolve stacking) until you get either of the upgrades at 10 at wich point he can help with team dps (hammer) or heal, and later on he really is just a melee Paladin Psyker with a massive ass 2 hander of psy force that obliterate everything,

Pyro is the worst choice by far.

[HuffingJenkem]

One of the reasons PC psykers seem underpowered compared to Idira and Heinvir is that they both get a free discipline and power compared to the player,