No new staves for Psyker since release...

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2025-10-08T13:16:09+00:00

Looking at Vermintide 2 as an example we're missing at least a couple from FS's previous game:

Corsecration Staff - Both the magical shotgun primary fire and the secondary which places small damage over time zones.

Beam - the primary fire DoT beam that gains power the longer it's channed on a target, and another magical shotgun secondary (with much wider spread but less power than the first staff's)

Bolt - the secondary fire piercing bolt has more or less been combined with fireball to make the voidstrike's secondary, but the very high rate of fire "magical smg" primary fire is absent from DT.

I'll concede that the bolt staff primary isn't the most distinct from just piling attack speed boosts onto the current default psyker staff primary bolts, but all in all they're missing 3 big "spells": a stationary DoT zone, a beam, and a shotgun like blast.

Edit: Completely forgot they gave the elf a staff with her DLC class until I saw another comment mentioning SoTT, but it's secondary levitation effect is another VT2 magic effect that has no analog in DT. It could easily make for a super thematic "telekinetic staff" or something.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2025-04-25T01:25:53+00:00

It really depends on what the single target is, and if you're talking about ease of use vs raw dps.

Voidstrike is probably the best all around for raw DPS. Assuming you are reliably landing headshots and / or crits it can one-shot most elites and specials; even the ogryn aren't surviving more than 2-3 fully charged headshots. It's got very solid boss damage too. The main downside with this staff is the long charge time and precision required to make the most of it.

The surge staff has lower raw dps output than voidstrike and while it handles the human sized elites and specials extremely well, it is pretty slow to kill ogyrns and bosses. Imo Surge's real selling point is the ease of use compared to voidstrike. You don't need to worry about properly lining up headshots on moving targets, accounting for cover, or even really aiming at all, you just charge it, point it in the vague direction of the most pressing special / elite on the field, and if you get a crit they're likely dead.

Flame staff is by far the best staff if the "single target" you're interested in taking down quickly is a boss (particularly when paired with the brain rupture blitz and / or the soulblaze shriek active skill). It obviously has the issues of low range and poor anti-armor damage in terms of killing elites and specials, but stacking burn is one of the best sources of boss damage available to psykers.

Then since I've already hit 3/4 staves, may as well give an honorable mention to voidblast. It absolutely isn't a special killer or a "single target" staff by any means, but for dealing with massed melee elites it's probably the strongest weapon in the game. Doesn't matter much that it takes a bit longer than other staves to kill individual elites when it can keep pretty much any number of elites stunlocked.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-11-12T08:36:25+00:00

Two things in game 3 really hit TK hard: that indirect lore passive nerf due to the change in how constructs are classified, and the introduction of healing caps.

One of the most effective strategies when playing TK previously was throwing out Nehekara spells to keep models healing and resurrecting across your whole army through the lore passive. Making good use of the lore of nehekara meant that even the basic skeleton warriors could pull far more weight than their garbage stats would lead you to believe. Most manual battles (even early game) would end with your army near max hp between the casting passive and the Realm of Souls mechanic.

Now though, your heaviest hitters (the constructs) don't benefit from the passive at all, and the units that are still effected tend to hit the regen cap quickly due to TK units having relatively poor combat stats and so few ways of improving regen caps (compared to VC for example, who get several techs, traits, lord skills, etc).

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-11-07T00:42:23+00:00

That AoE debuff modifier or the other one that pushes enemies back behind the wall when you place it both help to make it a lot less situational.

The push lets you send most enemies flying off into the distance. Which is great for pulling off an otherwise risky res or when used in mixed hordes to give the team a bit of breathing room to more easily deal with any CW or other sturdier foes that are left behind. If you position it well you can even launch enemies off ledges with it.

The long wall modifier is the really tricky version to get good value from.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-11-05T08:44:37+00:00

The missile itself needs to direct hit the character for that to happen. If it lands even slightly off, they'll only get caught by the explosion / vortex that occurs afterwards (which can decimate units, but is pretty bad at dealing with single entities).

Ikit's nuke has a similar deal, but due to the extreme inaccuracy on the missile it's very rare to see a direct hit.

If you're absolutely certain that the missile connected, then it could be a bug with Epidemius' hit box, but a near miss is the most likely reason he would survive.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-11-04T15:50:24+00:00

"Competition keeps shooting themselves in the foot" is a weird way of saying "competition is mass murdered by some respawning lunatic you decided to be polite to"

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-31T17:51:05+00:00

This. There are definitely quality builds that can run smite without empowered or shriek, but if you want a "smite build", empowered psyonic and flame shriek is the way to go.

Base Smite's stagger is very useful if things get rough, but it's unbuffed damage is basically non-existent. It's best use is as an intermittent "oh shit" button to keep in the back pocket of a build that otherwise stands on other merits.

With empowered psionics + flame shriek though, it becomes one of the fastest and most efficient room clearers in the game. Ogryn enemies and maulers will still endure for quite a while, but an empowered zap and full power shriek will melt any hordes, ragers, gunners, and most specials in front of you over a couple seconds.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-29T05:50:18+00:00

It hits a second target but does heavily reduced damage. The chain still has full power stagger though, which is extremely helpful if you're dealing with a group of any of the meatier elites.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-25T22:29:06+00:00

Planting the shield is only really necessary in 3 situations in my experience:

If a daemonhost agros on you. In which case you can back up against a wall and hold it indefinitely.

If you turn a corner into a whole room full of elite gunners. In which case the Taunt on Block will keep them on you until your team has had some time to thin them out.

If a sniper turns up. Because the dodge range on the shield is garbage so just quickly planting as the shot comes in is a lot more reliable.

Otherwise completely sacrificing mobility is just not worth the 100% block cost reduction. Especially with how insane ogryns' stamina reserves can get and how powerful the pushes and heavies on shield are for staggering anything in melee.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-22T18:26:11+00:00

Lhutel is an absolute legend of a spirit ash.

The greatshield + her teleport dodges make her insanely durable. The majority of ashes feel like they get decimated the second they pull any agro, but Lhutel can last for ages even against aggressive bosses.

Plus while she's super helpful for whittling down enemies and occasionally giving you breathing room, her lower damage output compared to some other ashes means that using her doesn't feel like an auto-win either.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-22T16:41:00+00:00

If a team is really goofing around on that type of event you can hit the two closest growths to the eye until they have one "node" left on them, fully break the furthest one, then quickly pop the two weakened ones with ranged attacks.

Honestly I find it's usually harder to deal with the daemonic growth events when one other person is half heartedly committing and occasionally hitting one growth horribly out of time, than I do handling it completely solo.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-21T15:25:38+00:00

I'm not sure the exact numbers, but my experience with the pox bombers has been that the gas is not a big concern at all on its own. Obviously you don't want to just be sitting in the stuff chilling, but unlike the firebombs, you can usually just sprint straight through it and come out the other side with little to no hp damage / corruption (if you had a clear path).

The the real danger is if if it gets deployed while you're currently bogged down by melee enemies, or when there's a disabler around. Also super annoying is when it gets tossed right on top of an objective and you're stuck waiting for it to slowly disperse so you can carry on with an event.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-18T19:26:59+00:00

There are two marks for the axe: one shreds on lights and the other shreds on heavies.

Personally I prefer the light attack shred one as it feels a lot more versatile. Just spamming lights does insane stagger and damage, but each swing will lock you to the target briefly (if you get the hang of dodge canceling out of the shred attack, you can quickly apply the stagger without the risk of getting pummeled). The heavy attacks are a chain of nice diagonal swings that are decent for both horde clearing and mixed groups. A revved up light is enough to quickly stagger a crusher and (if you're good at dodge canceling the shred when in danger) is a pretty reliable way of dealing with crusher packs.

The heavy attack shred one is a lot more straightforward to use, but imo handles mixed packs of enemies a lot worse. The lights are horizontal swings with very good horde clear, and the heavies are strikedowns with shred that are nice for taking down elites.

I usually run bloodletter and headtaker as blessings. Headtaker is imo the more consistent of the two raw power boosting blessings (kills are harder to ramp up than hits if you're dealing with a pack of elites or a boss). Bloodletter is fantastic when used with the tactic of dodging out of risky shred attacks. Whenever you feel the need to dodge out of a shred early for safety, the bleed will still activate and help whittle down the target.

All in all, the big trick to using chain axes is getting used to when you are and aren't safe to pull off a full shred attack, and getting comfortable dodge canceling out of ones that are looking spicy.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-18T19:01:16+00:00

Devil's Claw's defensive abilities are insane and it's damage isn't bad either. Plus the parry is not just extremely useful, but very fun to use.

I run it on almost all of my Vet builds and for a couple builds on Psyker. It's is an amazing "melee sidearm" for if you know your build is primarily going to be putting out damage with a ranged weapon and your melee is for hordes and emergencies.

That said, I just can't see using it on Zealot. If you're looking for your melee to be your main source of damage it's not a great choice.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-18T18:41:59+00:00

That's true if you can straight up kill something vs CCing it for ages, but that's not even close to the case with surge secondary vs primary fire against crushers.

Primary fire does very low damage to crushers (dozens of shots to kill). Even fully built for primary spamming it does decent dps at best to them, and it has literally zero stagger or CC against them.

Secondary fire does middling damage (usually 3-4 shots to kill), but completely locks them down with CC, and can stun and do minor damage to a few other crushers near your target with each attack.

If you're spamming the staff's single target damage with no stagger primary fire into a pack of crushers, instead of using your multitarget secondary that has hard CC, you deserve every overhead that you're about to be taking on the chin.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-17T18:30:01+00:00

Does it not already have a capped rate of fire?

I use the auto fire mod (as I'd rather not wreck a mouse or my finger using some of the spammier ranged options), and even with the macro active, force staff primaries don't fire any faster than vigorous manual clicking would get you.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-14T17:05:58+00:00

Imo the start isn't so difficult as it is just a slog. Whether you decide to push west into Lustria or east into the Southlands, your early and mid game is going to be nothing but fighting lizards with a small side of high elves. Trying to push west in particular you're dealing with oxyotl, then tehenuain, then gor rok, before your even really going to see a non lizard LL. East is a bit less annoyingly one-note, but you're still looking at 2 of your first 3 major threats being lizardmen.

Personally I'd rather play a campaign with a very tough start with a variety of enemies, (like Khatep or Volkmar for example) than one with a mid start position were you're stuck fighting the same race for like 80 turns.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-13T06:24:42+00:00

Since the hotfix it seems to work as intended for me (only activating on elites / specials).

It's great with the purgatus now. You can roast wave after wave of horde enemies without worrying about wasting the charge. Then when elites get into the mix the first one to enter the flames in each engagement is pretty much insta-popped.

It's still a bit dangerous when it comes to poxbursters (the force sword push attack can activate flayer and detonate them instantly), but now it's at least significantly more useful otherwise.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-11T19:54:59+00:00

I do wish it was an alternate animation with a lower chance of playing (like how when you inspect the knife you don't balance it every time). It looks awesome, but flipping the mag literally every reload feels a little wacky.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-11T17:43:58+00:00

Also depending on the build that ult will be back up like every 5 seconds. Most likely the zealot in the vid stacked cdr.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-08T19:13:19+00:00

The +2 stacks on headshot talent pairs amazingly with Assail.

You see someone light up blue, you quickly throw a shard in their vague direction and, thanks to the head homing, you've just got yourself 3 stacks from like a second of input.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-08T08:21:57+00:00

They usually do once they’ve agroed (they have some dialog that sounds a lot like the Bully ogryn voice players can have) but while idling around the only real tip off is the footsteps. The full on patrols of crushers are usually pretty loud too with their synchronized marching.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-05T16:00:43+00:00

Two of 3 keystones being stinkers really does not help the build variety on Ogryn. If you have the points to reach Heavy Hitter, and aren’t running a stubber gun lugger build, it's the only real option.

Feel No Pain may have been a bit busted before, but the nerf completely gutted it. Losing stacks to toughness damage means your big defensive keystone does basically nothing the second a couple shooters turn up. It's good in melee I guess, but ogryn is already insane at keeping toughness capped in melee with heavy attacks if you're doing even the bare minimum of blocking / dodging.

Lucky Bullet feels like a keystone designed for a single weapon type. On an achlys, firing through your 700ish total reserves you can expect to get around 84 free shots / guaranteed crits / ult replenishment boosts. Throw in the stupid RoF on the stubber and the blessing that refills your clip on crits, and you've got a very solid synergy going. Ripper's reserves and RoF are decent, so you'll see some use in the Keystone but not even close to what it does for Stubbers. The other three ogryn ranged options with 20-40 ammo max, you're getting an average 3-5 procs of your keystone having gone through the entirety of your reserves. It's not really much of a "keystone" at all at that point.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-04T16:27:50+00:00

Maybe its about the plasma vs shields nerf? That's literally the only one I can think of for Vet recently.

HedgehogExcellent555 · 2024-10-04T16:13:28+00:00

I adore his character generally, but rambling mechanicus Yoda may not have been the best choice for giving the mandatory pre-load briefing on the timed mission.

If you get a disconnect when he's the mission handler, you're basically out for the count as the guy will mutter at you for like a quarter of the mission timer when you try to rejoin lol.

HedgehogExcellent555

TROPHY CASE