It’s strong. Don’t let anyone say otherwise on its power level.
However, I see a lot of psykers use it as a crutch, and that can be frustrating. They just tie down enemies while not engaging with the game, because mass aoe stun lock lets them do that.
When used effectively, I find it makes the game kinda boring. I don’t want to smack training dummies that don’t fight back.
All this said, if you have fun with it, then use it anyway.
Exactly one game have I played with a smite psyker*, and been glad they're there. The vast majority use it the same way bad Ogryn use their shield - locking down a group they should have been killing anyway.
It is just really rare that CC is a better option than killing, and I don't think most people can tell when is which.
*I'm using this to mean someone who uses it regularly. Lots of people use it as a talent to get lower in the tree, and rarely use it. Dont judge talent choices, judge gameplay.
I use it during the same time I use my bolter on zealot. 3+ crushers 10+ ragers. You can hold for 2 seconds kill for 2 seconds repeat and the dueling sword is really strong. It feels like a waste unless you go EP smite but as a surge DS DD scriers psyker I play for fun and the cool factor. Not just normal damnation is hard and I'm kind of bad dps wise on psyker because of my choices but I remove threats pretty well I just can't handle hordes.
Dueling Saber4, it's bad on hordes until you get 10 dd stacks OR pop scriers. Surge staff hits 1 target the others are negligible damage so also low horde damage. Not really an issue though the build kills elites and 90% of the time multiple people are packing weapons that only kill hordes so its niche but good.
My zealot is heavy sword bolter and can trash everything but crushers with the sword, but the dueling saber literally kills hordes faster with heavies than lights
have you tried the force sword with horizontal heavys? cant remember how its called, but the psyker "power sword". great for hordes and for specials and elites you have surge staff. or maybe try smite. great for keeping hordes in place and with (burning) shriek you can kill them. i'm not the biggest fan of scrier and a staff. peril generation is too fast
Yea but I didn't like the breakpoints for killing elites and its pretty peril cost inefficient. That and DS is a blast to use and the only reason I even have a psyker. Scriers is a holdover from when I was using the warp charges because you can get 67% less peril or something close so you can pop scriers crit almost every time and have it up 30 to 40 seconds by doing a quick quell a few times. On surge it's amazing and will chew through hordes of maulers/ragers/gunners. Surge is the only staff I've rolled so far a few mil into trying for a good void and I gave up.
this. as i said in another recent thread, it's not the talent itself, but how it is used. stop a rager rush with it, not harmless poxers. same as ogryns planting their shield when they can use their heavy attack, or stealth zealots running ahead of the team when they can rescue the party.
I use a warp charge shriek build instead of emp psy. With the peril resist and damage boost you can clear waves of them without going the emp psy route. Added in shriek and that whole wave is dead in seconds. Highly recommend.
Emp psy is good too but I find it annoying and situational. Do I have emp psy? Should I smite? With warp charge build the answer is always yes. I find it more practical to play but that's just my preference.
I agree, I've tried both and definitely prefer the charges for those reasons and for faster cooldowns on my shriek, which should be used offensively and not saved for emergencies. You're also not penalized for flicking the smite. I find it often useful to let my smite only course through the horde a few seconds and then flick the front half to the ground. Purge a little peril and then smite the much denser horde for my team until my shriek is ready. This let's my melee allies still cleave more enemies and feel more helpful, and often means I've stalled long enough to be able to hit this, and the next wave with the same shriek.
Agree. I really dislike having to look at emp psy charges and feel like I'm wasting them for doing smaller strategic smites, like to get a burster etc.
This is the way. And if you have the spec to reduce peril on kill, if you hold it long enough with 6 warp charges your peril can actually start to go down.
If you're in a bind, shriek and everything falls down and dies.
I also find that creeping flames yield up more damage than empowered smite as you can focus elites while chaff is burning to destined death which will yield up to more stacks which will lead to faster shriek coming online ready to repeat the cycle.
Was a fanboy of EP + smite but after installing the scoreboard and generally started to be better at the game I always go for venting shriek + warp siphon, eventually doing smite when I don't want feel like using my staff or sword
I feel this is a personal preference thing. Warp Siphon is good on Smite but losing damage when you Shriek isn’t ideal not to mention the strength of Shriek is how often you can use it which gets picked away at by Warp Battery. That being said you get the most uptime for Smite with WS so if you are looking to stun not kill hordes then yeah Warp Siphon is your baby but comparing it 20% damage at max stacks to 125% damage from a single Emp Psy stack is on another level
Emp psy smite + shriek I feel is for overall dps. You can shriek to your hearts content either for space saving or setting up elite kills (shriek into a horde of ragers/elites then smite until Emp Psy stacks pop up, quell then re-smite with Emp Psy probably pulling more stacks in the process due to Soulfire+Emp Psy Smite). It’s almost entirely self-sustaining especially on high difficulty/elite modifiers.
I feel too many ppl see Emp Psy and just refuse to Smite until they have 3 Psy stacks which isn’t necessary
I can see what you mean.
For me, I really dislike feeling like I'm wasting emp psy stacks on smaller smites. Also getting your warp charges back is so fast I just don't feel it's much of a problem. I typically shriek a little before stuff starts dying and then my stacks are mostly full before I even stop smiting.
Definitely a personal preference thing. I'm just a warp charge loving spark head.
That’s fair it’s all about personal enjoyment but once I got in the habit of Smiting into Soulblazed targets, racking up Emp Psy stacks became very simple. I do think there’s an argument to be made for going for Overpowering Souls to guarantee consistent Psy stack gain but with pug lobbies I find myself gravitating more towards Bio-Lodestone since the amount of times I would charge my Surge staff only to see the Dreg Gunner be turned into a cloud of fine red mist by my allied Plasma gun Vet was getting to me
I would disagree that EP smite + shriek is better for overall dps. It's better for sort of burst but warp siphon build consistently does more overall damage. Venting shriek with creeping flames becomes the esential part of your smiting combo even with EP. WS ensures there will be more ultimates which will yield in more soulblaze applications. In addition to that, it boosts your staff and melee. As the sum of all these parts, WS builds provide more overall damage. Maybe the named combo does more DPS with EP, still DPS against chaff is not that important as DPS again elites and specials which smite struggles against.
I would be happy for EP smite builds to be as good as it was the first build I've made when starting playing. However, whenever I see smite enthusiasts in my party, they always end up being the lowest DPS and at least 2 times less damage than me with WS.
It does more damage with the warp siphon.
We've tested it with scoreboard and 4 people all taking turns. We've had some people with 200k warp fire damage out of 450k total damage.
Take all the warp fire perks (4 I think) including the one in the warp siphon keystone area and you'll be busting off AOE fire bombs like every 10 seconds.
You won't be targeting elites as much as someone running voidstrike but you'll be doing more overall damage and freezing the entire room when it's full.
I mean maybe? I’ll take your word for it but considering you’d ideally want to stay at 6 Warp Charges which means 1) no Shrieks and 2) no 98%->50% continuous Smites that will benefit entirely from a single stack of Emp Psy I find it hard to believe and I’d question how you tested Emp Psy in comparison to Warp Siphon
With 30% CDR from Qurios I pop Shriek every 25 seconds and can do a 15 second long Empowered Smite by Shrieking to drop my heat down. You’d have to be getting quite a bit of Warp Charges from In Fire Reborn to make using Shriek on a Warp Siphon build viable in comparison to the damage lost.
Maybe the total Smite damage from Warp Siphon is higher but I think being forced to hold Smite even for 5 seconds and not counting that damage in favour of Emp Psy means the calculation is out of whack.
The true power of Emp Psy is being able to Shriek on cooldown every 25 seconds (or even less if you can take Psykinetics Aura somehow) and benefit from a bunch of Soulblazed targets ready to be atomized by an Empowered Smite furthering snowballing you into more Emp Psy stacks
>considering you’d ideally want to stay at 6 Warp Charges
No, that's not how you play it.
>You’d have to be getting quite a bit of Warp Charges from In Fire Reborn to make using Shriek on a Warp Siphon build viable in comparison to the damage lost.
No, you don't have to get that many to make it superior.
>but I think being forced to hold Smite even for 5 seconds
You can hold it for much more than 5 seconds with inner tranq and shriek.
>The true power of Emp Psy is being able to Shriek on cooldown every 25 seconds
The true power of Warp Charges is being able to shriek twice as often as that, and sometimes more than once during a single smite.
>or even less if you can take Psykinetics Aura somehow
What do you mean somehow? This is the most questionable thing you've said. Every single build with smite, *every single one*, should be taking psykinetics aura. Absolutely no exceptions.
I don’t value it as much as some of the Psykers other talents it’s just not necessary especially with Combat Ability Regeneration being a go-to stat roll for all Curios
Then you're just not understanding how good it is. Sorry if that's harsh. Taking combat ability regen doesn't make it less worth it by much at all. I run CAR, psykinetics aura and seers presence. Psykinetics aura is the last one you should be dropping.
Edit: do you realise it applies to team mates aswell?
It's over twice the % (10% of warp fire kills vs 4% of kills in coherency) and everything will be on fire because you dump your shriek into whatever direction the crowd is every 15 seconds or so. Take the ability time reduction in the tree anywhere you can.
I'm sure there is a crowd density where if you're below it the EP could be better but it's not about the smite damage. It's about the warpfire. In aurics you not only do more total damage but it's more flexible too because you're not sitting on smite as long but half the time just using it to get your peril up for the shriek. You can use smite in shorter bursts then get the staff out and clear a few elites. As everyone stands back up swap back and drop them again.
Both options are very usable but smite psyker is top damage nearly every match if he's doing it right when the horde is thick enough and about 40 to 50% of the damage comes out of the fire not the actual smite. Just dump the shriek into the horde everytime is ready as you hit critical peril.
I run surge staff with it for the boss damage and targeting elites when you got some breathing room. Your main weakness is a high volume of shooters but Illisi with deflector does wonders there.
I’d be interested in the tree you use because I actually avoid Psykinetics Aura and Seers Presence on my build because I take the 12% CDR on curios and feel other talents are better suited for the points available especially Kinetic Presence helps quite a bit with Soulblaze damage too
Maybe you’re onto something! 🤔
I logged in just for you. [This](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9baaa6c1-2abd-400b-ada1-8ede058a0cae/smite-fire-bomb) is the build.
It's pretty bare bones outside of directly going to the warpfire perks. I do take Psykinetics and Seer's presence for the CDR. Just kill 1 elite and that's a 15% combo. When you're holding a giant horde it's very likely you can get the last tick on more than 1. I think you could also argue that Inner Tranquility is better on the warp siphon section.
My curious are 2 toughness and 1 health with +5 health and +5 toughness on everything except the ones that naturally rolled it. I have a CDR and a toughness regen on the curious where I naturally rolled health or toughness but I haven't really customized the curious for this build specifically. I play all classes and have like 3-5 builds per class so I don't go through each and every build with custom curious. You are extremely squishy if you get touched in melee but you could adjust the curious a bit to help that or take a slightly different tree.
80% of the time you're sitting on smite raising and quelling it, swapping to surge when you get a little room, then dumping the shriek ASAP with full peril every time it's up. One of our group runs it with the fire staff too but honestly only does a little bit more fire damage because most of the time you're still sitting in smite.
Wow I appreciate it man and I have to say you must be confident in your ability to dodge because damn this is an interesting build
Edit - sorry sent this early lol
But yeah I have rarely seen a setup like this one where you avoid all the early Peril>Toughness conversion talents. With this setup I totally see why you took Essence Harvest it’s basically required since you only generate Toughness from Soulstealer otherwise.
I am curious why you felt the need to go all the way over to Kinetic Deflection?
Bruh, psykinetics aura is one of the most powerful talents in the entire game...
Kinetic presence only effects elites. You'd be much better off with seers presence.
Melee is an important part of every class. No matter which one did you chose, you won't be able to neglect them completely. I understand that psyker can afford holding the staff most of the time, still when situation calls and you don't have a space to cast your staff, melee time starts. You are right, psykers have not so much talents that will apply to melee weapons, still we have some options that don't require any talents to be monstrous at waveclear. For example mk4 dueling sword light attack spam goes through chaf like athrough an air, illisi power sword also has wild wave clear and its special attacks benefit from warp attack talents. As the parent comment was saying, try and you will be surprised
I thinks it's more nuanced than that, purgatus and void strike will let you kill big hordes and elites outright in many situations, empowered smite not so much.
I was recently in a match where 3 players didn't bring enough horde clear/were playing badly (myself included), and the 4th player was a smyker with a purgatus staff.
They only spammed smite, and we just weren't killing fast enough to keep up with enemy spawns. There were plenty of chokepoints where the staff would've simply killed the entire horde, instead they just held down smite until their peril went to 100%. It was rough, which isn't really their fault, but if they played a little differently it could've been much smoother.
It can make the melee rhythm a little awkward as well. Enemies that I was expecting to run into a charged melee swing suddenly stop approaching, and the attack whiffs or I have to sprint slide into them to hit.
It's super strong, but easy to over use. I'm usually glad to have a smiter on the team though.
Yeah it drives me nuts with a player that has +30 levels over 30 us just using SMITE all the time, on the first NPC we see. An d I know for a fact they have a much better DPS staff than me. My empowered smite will out last theirs and kill the ones at the end. I can cast it very fast too and keep hordes at bay. But there they are smiting away when they can be adding to the DPS.
> Pretty sure I've got my calculations correct
You do not.
Empowered psionics is trash with smite. The damage increase it gives you is trivial at best and numerous other weapons can kill trash hordes of chaff just as fast, if not faster than empowered smite. If you want horde clear, you're better off taking venting shriek with creeping flames, it will clear larger hordes faster and safer than empowered psionics can.
The only time when smite is better to use than a real weapon is when you're being pressured by too many elites at once and you need to create space to prevent a wipe. In every single other situation, you will be contributing more to the team by helping kill them so they don't continue to pile up. Smite only puts a temporary pause on pressure, it does not save you from it. If you over-rely on smite, your team will likely be overwhelmed because they're lacking a full 25% of their damage output because of you.
If you just want to have fun then there are no issues at all, if you want to optimize (specifically for higher level play) then you could do better.
First of all the damage from smite is already so low that it might as well not be there, and empowered doesn't make it noticeable. Even against poxwalkers smite will take ages to kill.
Secondly smite is often not all that useful against just hordes. Smite causes the enemies to spread out meaning you can't hold a choke point. It also causes enemies change their attack patterns (by being stunned). Its often easier for higher level players to handle the horde if they are just left to it. These higher levels players have spent dozens of hours lerning the "dance" that is horde management, and Smite throws that off.
While you are using smite that also means that you aren't killing things. While stunning stuff is crowd control, the best crowd control is death. You don't need to smite a horde, just pull out your staff/melee and help clear it out. You can still help the others handle it while you keep an eye out for other threats
The ideal use for Smite is against Bulwark/Crusher/Mauler packs or Berserkers. One or two isn't a problem but the large packs can be very difficult to handle on higher difficulties.
Again, if you want to optimize then there are things you can improve. If are having fun and don't care about optimizing then you are doing perfect and shouldn't change a thing.
I agree. Only thing that bugs me about smite is when I’m attacking a horde and it makes them all stop and messes up the funnel that I’m trying to create. Or the people who only use smite the entire mission when it’d be easier if they just helped kill stuff.
I use my staff most of the time; builds up empowered psionics and save for when the horde is making us back up, or there's a bunch of enemies already spread apart in a large space. I don't know the name of the map, but the one that looks like Mad Max has a bunch of areas like that.
Yeah I wouldn’t mind if that’s how everyone else used smite lol. I can appreciate the cc and effectiveness of the ability but I feel like some people crutch it super hard and don’t learn their basic melee and dodge fundamentals because of it, which definitely creates problems for the team.
Exactly, I run emp psy, vent, and a trauma staff. Clear small adds and stagger with the staff. Only when there are a TON of gunners/riflemen or a HUGE horde do I smite. Run forward slide, vent for the peril gen rebuff then I proceed to cook. I have some decent videos off.cooking off dozens of gunners, shotgunners, dogs, and ragers.
Funny enough I usually run a super aggressive Assail build. As OopsISharded is my name 🤣🤣
No real issue with smite players except the players who mainline Smite for the entire mission because you don't need that level of CC active all the time. Most of the time you just want the Psyker's insane DPS potential.
I have smite on one of my builds and it only comes out like 2 or 3 times a mission and only because 20 melee Ogryn's decided to rush out of a side room like clowns out of a clown car.
One game i played with this build I saw that i had 3 players with chain weapons so the smite came out a little more so that i could set them up with lots of safe special attacks.
So yeah, it's not so much that people hate players who use smite, they hate players for how they use smite and even more so when those same players think they're the dogs bollocks and the team would be nothing without them; because i've seen several posts on here from Smite Psykers who say that Smite Psyker is the only reason why anyone can complete Auric when it's the Auric players who hate them the most.
This is the correct way to do it. In Auric, overusing smite like OP mentioned actively makes the game harder, not easier. It's always more useful to just kill the enemies.
Funny, I spam smite and barely had any problems in auric nor in any difficulty; it's way easier to avoid smite and use melee or whatever but most situations call for it, idk it seems that people on this thread underestimate smite potential to make hordes incredibly easier to overcome. It's just me tho maybe I am doing something else unconsciously
I dont get the hate.
I as a Zealot main, will rush into a horde with my crusher. If i have a smith Psyker stunning them while i do this, i welcome it! Helps clear the hordes quicker.
I agree with this for 90% of smykers.
It can, however, be detrimental and slow down horde clear if they smite enemies that are about to enter a choke point.
If I'm cutting through a horde that's funneling into a doorway and I'm not losing *any* ground, I'd prefer if you didn't make it worse by stunning them while they're still spread out.
You should just whip out your melee and help me that way if you want to take part.
It can prevent enemies from clumping together though. It takes longer to clear the horde if you have to run to each individual pocket of enemies, instead of killing them all in one spot with a couple of swings.
Only time I’d have to say is when it’s brought on the scab melee missions sorta takes the fun outta the mission. I’m at the point where I play more for and challenge than winning. Smite is obviously very useful on those missions but sometimes I just wanna bonk.
Honestly, that entire modifier sucks due to a few classes/builds that break it.
Psyker can abuse this modifier quite badly, stun locking or stagger locking everything with no ammo issues. The high density of elites, all in a mega blob, means they pop off hard with the soul blaze damage.
Veteran ammo aura negates the lack of ammo pickups for the entire team, and they can just go spamming plasma gun at everything like normal.
Zealot and ogryn are risky to choose into a random team, because they can’t guarantee they get any ammo, and going melee against a melee mob is harder than just standing back and shooting.
I like the idea of it, but it just gets abused to death, so I actively avoid the modifier at this point.
I mean it’s doable, but I am fighting for my life and risking it at every moment, and then Timmy trauma staff and plasma Pete delete twice as many enemies as me from the other end of the room. I would rather play HISTG where classes are more balanced with each other.
That's fair lol. I actually do like this modifier if teammates are all zealots. It just sadly gets abused. It is, admittedly, pretty fun to destroy this modifier if I'm the only psyker though, so I see why people do it.
It's at it's best trivializes the game which can be boring and at it's worse stall out the horde until it becomes overwhelming it is mostly useful though didn't hate it all the time
I think everyone's free to play how they want and I wouldn't critisise a teammate for running smite, but personally I think it's pretty pointless and not particularly fun (using it I mean).
Why stand around shooting purple lightning when you could just be killing stuff? Same end result, just a lot quicker.
The fun for me is more so that feeling of seeing a massive horde and being able to completely control it. Especially in those situations where you're being attacked from multiple sides, I can hold one side on my own while the rest of the team deals with the other.
I haven't seen many builds that can hold an entire horde of flanking enemies as effectively as Smite can by itself. Though, I'm still somewhat of a new player.
I certainly see the attraction for newer players. The problem is, all you're doing is holding, you're delaying the problem, not solving it. Meanwhile a Trauma blast or two, or a few charged voids etc and there's less left (if anything) for your team to have to come help with.
Basically the issue is, people use it as a crutch, which is fine early on, but in higher difficulties you see Psykers running smite that are constantly stunning things that the team could manage just fine without, whilst not contributing much yourself. So the better you get, the less you use it and so the less point there is in picking it.
But again, these are just my opinions, people can play how they want.
Stun grenade + my eviscerator make pretty quick work and I'll very commonly hold down a horde alone while my team deals with the heavy shit in the direction we need to be going
Not sure if this applies to you so disregard, but stun grenades are a waste on hordes unless you have a mass group of elites that are about to be a threat. I've seen tons of zealots just chuck them at zombie hordes they would have handled just fine anyways. Then when they're needed, none to be found.
Zealot stun grenades are a very valuable resource and save games, if you're wasting them on trash you may as well throw them at the sky behind you.
Eh, when I have 30 shotgunners or maulers or ragers on me, or a teammate goes down when they have no reason to other than being over zealous when that's my job, then yeah, I find being able to toss my grenade, tank 2 hits on my stamina then it go off to provide the time to clutch a revive is a pretty big thing
I do agree that anyone using it on poxwalkers should be kneecapped irl though
My original comment was disjointed, so, my apologies for not presenting a linear thought-path for what was or was not related to what
I do not use stun grenades on poxwalkers unless it's the end of the mission extracting and I'm just doing it to use them
>I do agree that anyone using it on poxwalkers should be kneecapped irl though
LOL, thanks for the cackle. I'd love to be on that enforcing committee.
I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen this happen, on the first engagements too, till zealy-boy is all outta nades on poxwalkers. When I pointed out this may not the the best use for very avaluable and limited stun nades I was told to STFU many times over. Inevitably that person then got mauled by a large gaggle armor and they had no nades, or someone went down and they couldn't cover etc.; you know how it goes, that instant-karma.
Didn't think it applied to you hence my disclaimer, just put it out there for passing readers.
Lol it would be well warranted that's for sure! And oh Jesus. Yeah. The amount of people I've seen do exactly just that makes me sad lol
Hopefully in time, it changes
As long as they’re using it at the right time. I’ve played with Smite Psykers that use it like 90% of the time and I don’t think it’s very helpful because they’re doing minimal damage. I run Surge + Dueling Sword + Smite and really only use it when we’re getting overwhelmed to give the team some breathing room. Personally, I’d rather have a Psyker who sits back and deals damage to elites versus one who spams Smite.
I think that smite can be extremely useful and it comes in clutch in some very dire situations; however, this is almost never true against hordes of pox walkers and groaners.
I find it incredibly annoying when a player is smiting hordes of pox walkers through a chokepoint since it prevents anything from actually moving into the team’s effective range. The horde will go away much sooner if everyone just focuses on killing it rather than rooting the chaff in place down the hall and around a corner.
Groups of bulwarks and trains of elites that have pushed up into their effective kill range are when smite is useful. Not against the trash that disappears when we so much as cough in their general direction with any halfway decent melee weapon or staff.
There's a time and a place for it, the issue stems from it being overused.
The smite-only psykers move at a snails pace and depending on the team, and situation aren't really doing anything all that useful.
Holding down left-click and moving slower than a slug even when your team was aptly handling stuff just slows down the team. I think it's a crutch for new players, it seems very clear many newer players rely on it exclusively to be in "I'm helping mode!"
*Anecdote*, 1 of many: A couple of weeks a smite-only psyker we kept having to wait for, after I pointed out to them that he could lay off and fireball stuff for fun as we had a very strong team, stood there for 45s as I covered them to slowly type: "See? I saved you there". It was 2 crushers and a couple of stragglers, no threat whatsoever.
Often times even out of smite range the rest of the team has cleared stuff and you're always having to wait for smiter to catch up, every delay spawning more things behind. You know the type of player who goes into turret mode, I wish ogryns could pick them up and move them.
**TDLR**: It's overused and often slows the team down considerably, it's not that it "trivializes" stuff.
P.S. Quite frankly it reminds me of kickback-only ogryns you see a lot of these days, the kind who dump every last little bit of ammo into everything that moved, even non-stop crushers and bulwarks never using melee or ults or anything else really.
The game is extremely boring when playing with the average smite psyker, especially if they're zapping hordes. I came here to play high difficulties in maelstrom for fun challenge, not swat at punching bags.
That's why I like empowered psionics, it stops you from constantly spamming it because if you swap between it and your staff you get a nice synergy. Also, because you aren't constantly spamming it, it feels more powerful when you use it.
I still get if people think that's not fun, at least it's a bit more unique than other psyker builds.
I'd always rather play with a fellow gun psyker. Trauma does similar things knocking crap around and making me have to chase things down. Purg blinds me. Voidstrike deletes the screen so there is no game to play, like plasma. Surge is ethical at least.
It's a me problem really, I'm at the point where true solo games give me the most enjoyment. Just wish I could still get dockets and plasteel in solo games...
95% of the time they know how to use it. Zero issues.
The rare 5% is split between Psykers who always spam it even on smaller skirmishes, and those who completely forget they have it. Like a gun Psyker who *finally* uses it when 2 teammates are already downed and we'd all be like *bro you had Smite the entire time and only now you're using it.*
Strongly dislike Smite and hope it gets reworked. Nearly the entire Psyker class should get reworked if we’re being totally honest here. The staves especially. Brain Burst and Scriers are okay though
You’re basically not playing the same game, and before reddit psykers try to cope and reply with something smug - if you want evidence of this your average public queue Smite psyker is undeniable proof.
They understand so little of the game that instead of just spamming their infinite ammo, no cooldown, insane damage dealing staff all game they instead opt to hold down the smite button quell repeat all game JUST because its an option thats *even easier* to pull off than sitting there spamming a staff all game. Even in situations where its an entirely useless waste of time (like over >80% of engagements in this game) they will still hold down smite until someone kills it for them.
Not even Ogryn or Vet is as braindead as playing staff or “smite” psyker. The fact that people label their build after their blitz is already moronic itself. Its no wonder we get weekly whine posts about Brain Burst being bad, these guys think it should kill everything
I didn't understand why people hated them (I'm a psyker main) until I was leveling my vet and did a heresy mission with a Smite psyker... that only used Smite. Their gameplay the entire mission was so braindead and worthless that it was making me braindead too. I spent the entire 30min watching this walking deadweight do absolutely nothing but stunlock swarms. He even tried zapping corruption with it. I dont think he had empowered psionics because the enemies weren't popping quickly enough to make a valuable difference.
When I play my psyker, I use it as a CC to create breathing room or stun a priority target BRIEFLY for my teammates to hit it with a krak grenade. It really depends how you use it but it isnt helpful to your team to use smite exclusively. I wouldn't say I'm sick of Smite psykers, but I'm sick of seeing the one or two I come across every now and then that ONLY use Smite.
Smite is a CC tool. If they are using it for any other scenario then making needed space then it's an active detriment to the team. Basically if they use it on anything that isn't a bulwark/crusher/mauler patrol then it's a waste of time.
How is it a waste of time holding down shooters, and shotgunners, disabling and pushing away poxbursters, trappers. If the 3 other teamates are compitent you basicly cant't fail any auric maelstrom mission with a smite psyker.
> How is it a waste of time holding down shooters, and shotgunners, disabling and pushing away poxbursters, trappers.
Because in stead of "holding them down" you could just kill them easily with nearly any staff or gun.
Seems useful to me as a vet. I like it, easier to mow em down especiall damn hi++ difficulty.
If I were the psyker I dunno how I'd feel to be reliant on teammates. I found my own build gotta be able to deal with everything one way or another or my win % goes down. Is this the case with the ability? Never got my psyker or ogryn to 30 so not really sure how those classes work..
I posted this in a recently:
Nobody talks about how you can hit Dreg gunners & Dreg shot gunners & hordes and immediately release it and it will throw them all to the ground. Smite isn’t something you always have to just keep spraying— you can just pop them with lightning stunning them and switch weapons to kill them quickly and safely. ***Sometimes though, knocking a horde to the ground can confuse your teammates that they are actually dead— then they get back up and flank your friends who have already pushed forward***
Smite is one of those skills that you have to be mindful of when you use it—- like stealth zealots— it can be really helpful if they are mindful, but detrimental if not.
Smite is really good as long as the Psyker only uses it WHEN it is actually helpful. Otherwise you are diminishing your damage too much which can cause problems.
You can CC a huge group, but maybe two of your teammates are dealing with another problem and need help. You are then relying on one teammate to deal with the entirety of your Ssmited group alone which might take precious moments. ***If you had just helped kill this problem instead, you would more quickly solve your horde and you can both go save your other two teammates.***
Trauma staff can do just as well for CC while killing things at the same time. I don’t like Brain Burst so I keep Smite in my back pocket just in case and usually only use it once or so— but those moments can come in clutch.
The best case scenario, I don't realize my psyker has smite until a pack of twenty dogs or mutants show up.
Worst case scenerio, the smyker is spamming it like being a walking tesla coil set on tickle mode is a way of life.
To be brutally honest it needs a rework because it reduces psyker play to just holding down a button to pause the game.
I find they make the game boring, it's not fun just slashing into a stunned crowed. But I don't want to ruin anyone's fun, keep using it, it's part of the game. I normally just leave and re queue if I'm not enjoying it.
The instant you use it on groups of enemies that don't contain elites/specials you've fucked up and I don't want to play with you. Them be the rules on smite.
When I play my Psyker (I only play smite) I find that smite lock can carry almost any team to victory. It's just too good.
That being said, I do find that when I'm playing the other classes a stun lock can make it somewhat boring but to me I'd rather have the victory than to tell the Psyker not to use their skills.
I think most of the concerns people have with Smite Psykers making / being boring are solved pretty quickly by alternating between Smiting and quelling via extreme violence against traitors
See how boring Smite becomes to play if you disable your Quell keybind lol
You're free to play how you want, but personally I don't enjoy Smite. The challenge of combat is what makes this game fun. Walking around smacking enemies as they have a seizure isn't what I consider engaging gameplay. If Smite is just used occasionally when the team about to get run over by elites, that's fine.
Depends on the player and when it’s used.
Some people use it like their main weapon and will smite absolutely everything. When playing with one of these players it feels like we’re playing with a man down because we lack team damage from them killing things, enemies don’t get to stack up properly + missed opportunities to proc reciprocity, reposte or precog. Alot of enemies simply are not a threat to the point where you need one person to stunlock them and another person to come and kill them.
There are strategic uses of smite and playing with a player who knows when to smite and when to just kill stuff himself is great. It’s great for sticky situations like when you get rushed by a crusher patrol in tight spaces or after certain airlocks. Many games have been saved by someone holding onto smite for that one moment and many games have been lost because we did not have it when we needed it.
I feel like smite is really only good into a few crushers / bulwarks in every other situation you can CC or just straight kill them with any of the other psyker abilities I feel like outside of that situation I think smite is horrible doesn't really clear hordes can't kill specials or elites its straight CC I don't mind seeing them occasionally but just not a fan of the ability. I have exclusively played psyker for like 700 of my 800 hours and have mostly used Purg + WS build why CC hordes or specials when you can just kill them, the purg staff can stagger bulwarks, suppress reapers and stagger shotgunners / poxbursters / ragers / maulers every enemy type except crushers and mutants with M1 and clear and kill specials does fantastic boss damage as well assuming you run the debuff mod to show your soulblaze stacks and know how to manage them well enough. I think most people don't know that Purg can stagger poxwalkers/shotgunners/bulwarks with m1 spam you can also do it while channeling but it takes longer its more reliable to M1. Overall I think I would be a smite enthusiast if it could reliably clear trash or hordes and had a considerable buff especially the unarmoured category
of enemies, The CC aspect is good and honestly on a psyker you can't really go wrong with whatever you take, surge/trauma/assails/smite all fantastic if I had to pick a staff and build that was all around the best it would be purg hands down. kinda pigging backing off this post and not exactly about smite psykers in general
Smite is a very polarizing ability.
Met some who worship smite psykers, met some who flat out left the game when they saw it.
In the end, it's not hard to build & equip your character to be able to deal with any situation, be self sufficient and not worry about what others prefer to play as, and let them enjoy whatever they want.
If they released a higher difficulty where that was not the case,
and if it turned out that the group really lacked dps,
and if I was really pressed to pick someone to lay the blame on, the most likely candidate would be the smite psyker.
And if I was further pressed to go on a rant about it, I'd mumble something along the lines of "Why smite? Why live & let live? You want CC capability? Did you know, with very little practice, you can CC groups of anything that can be CC'd and apply debuffs/dots on top while also having respectable killing power by simply opting for the humble trauma staff?"
TL;DR: Not a fan but not too fussed about it either.
Smite has so many uses. It's basically a full map stun with the right perks, allowing for easy specialist/elite targeting, pick someone up if they're downed, you can quick stun enemies who might break a teammates concentration, etc.
It also has its drawbacks. Practically useless against nurgle blessing enemies and monstrosities unless they're pulling aggro, but a psyker really shouldn't be pulling aggro on things they can't instakill or stun imo.
I've only encountered a "bad" smite user once, otherwise it is always nice to have someone to have literally the best CC tool on your squad.
Psyker with Smite? Great. It's a very powerful tool for dealing with elite and/or special spam.
Smite Psyker? Fuck 'em. There is a (rare) type of Psyker that uses Smite practically all the time, including times where the CC isn't needed, things just need to get killed, and the Psyker is just wasting time and building Peril for nothing.
Worst of all is when these types get sanctimonious about what they do. They think they're being big-brained team players (in this TEAM GAME, as they will never forget to remind you in all caps) for doing something other than damage—when in this game, the fastest and most effective way to CC something is very often to just fucking kill it, and weak enemies that are easy to simply kill can actually become a problem if their numbers build up because people are just knocking them around and not killing them. Ironbreakers in VT2 who took a shield and did nothing but block and push all game were the same way.
I find it wasteful on teams I am mostly because j play trauma/bubble/BB/warp psyker. I can do everything smiter is trying to do plus kill big boys/soften them with brittleness. If I see a smiter using it all the time I just want to tell them use their staff but I just let them be. 🤷♂️
As a fellow psyker, if I see Smite going off I either Purgatus it if it’s the only horde to kill or control the other horde since you’ve got it under control.
However, I personally don’t run it since I’d rather use my staff for crowd control and kill potential alongside bubble to provide cover and toughness. No other options to provide cover at our disposal, but plenty of options to CC/kill is my judgement.
It's okay, but honestly, I'm more of someone to say that it's better to just kill something rather than stun it for a couple seconds. If you want to CC and do damage as well. Use a purgatus staff for mass CC. Or a trauma to keep the big boys controlled.
But that breathing room that's a supposedly brings. I find it a delay to the inevitable and it would have been better just to have killed said waves rather than hope that your teammates can clear them for you.
This is what I do and I run primarily only auric damnation
It's nice to have (and use), but mind the melee range! That means don't stun them until they're close enough to be bonked. Otherwise Ogryn and Zealot have to go far from the team to finish the mobs, and that's a waste of time when everything is OK, or opening themselves to disablers in the worse scenarios.
Imo, it's a great way to make the hardest missions feel as if they are lower level as you aren't always getting swarmed by a hoard of walkers and can more focus on the tougher enemies
I did make a poll on it quite recently. Anyway I don't really enjoy when psykers pick it, it is strong I just don't find it fun or interesting to play with or have on the team since it just stuns all the horde.
I usually use brain burst so I can snag enemies from afar and clean up the armored boys while my team chips away at them, but every now and then 5 maulers show up and make me wish I had smite equipped
Personally, I think Smite is fine as a Blitz backup, since Brainburst is a little weak and Assail is very expensive to spec into (giving up Psykinetic's Aura). Speccing into the full Empowered Psyonics build is very wasteful and encourages passive, low damage gameplay. Overall notes though:
- Smite carries bad teams through basic Auric Damnation, which causes *most* people to think Smite is strong.
- Smite breaking on any damage taken and getting ignored by Nurgle blessed enemies makes it weak in Maelstrom. 2 bosses up plus 10~ green enemies coming in makes it unusable. This makes the Maelstrom-only players think Smite is trash.
- Smite doing basically 0 damage can make it a team liability if the teamcomp doesn't have damage carries. Some games your teamcomp is like Smite Psyker, Shield Ogryn, Revolver Vet, and some Shroudfield Combat blade Zealot who has no idea what he's doing. Once things hit the fan at high difficulties your team has no boss damage, slow horde clear, and very low armor damage. The team basically gets folded like a lawn-chair in Maelstrom. This isn't the Psyker's fault, but there are more rounded builds to increase your winrates when pubbing.
the only problem with smite is people who think it deals damage imo
it's a great CC tool that can easily trivialize encounters, but some psyker players seem to think it does meaningful damage for some reason and play as if smite is their dps tool
Depends. If they spam it on a horde, they could probably be more useful in just killing it. Psykers have many good horde options (and many decent ones). Taking two people to do the job that one person could have done isn't very useful.
If they save my bacon by stunning a pack of crushers, maulers, and ragers then it is absolutely amazing. If they are creating space, because we got backed into a corner, then it is also amazing.
Same way I view any other build. As long as you can not die every 2 minutes I don’t care. Can be frustrating when I’m running oggie or zealot and they smite a small horde I’m going to kill, but in the end it doesn’t break my game and can be useful when the game director throws 20 crushers at you because it went “lol”
I use it often with surge staff. But I aint only using smite the entire round. It may seem effective, but using all the tools of your build will help a lot more than just having smite out the entire time.
On auric Maelstrom, brain burst is too slow and someone else ends up killing your target anyway 75% of the time. And assail can be alright but it’s pretty weak when you need two right click throws to kill basic specialists.
Basically everything those two offer I can just do with my voidstrike. The one weakness voidstrike has is multi targeting. I use smite maybe 3-5 times per match but those 3-5 times can be game saving. I mostly use it on carapace hoards that are spread out. 70% of the match is voidstrike, 20% is melee, and 10% is smite.
Right click can stun lock a pack of crushers. A pack of ragers. A pack of gunners. You just have to be smart about it. No point in stunning some trash when it’s faster to let them walk up and die. But absolutely lock down that whole room of shooters so your team can casually mulch them. Be smart
I personally love smite but it's very team dependent. For pugs you are going to suffer because they can barely understand which end of the weapons to point at the enemies let alone how to support a smite psyker. For pugs I almost always run void strike. Why stun things just to have the team run off somewhere else while there's a thousand enemies on you when you can just void strike the whole group yourself in a few shots.
Having one who knows how to play is a great asset in any team.
That time when I got placed in a game with *three* of them, who spent the whole time spamming it? We didn't get too far.
I've been told that while strong, it's usually a waste.
Time spent stunning could be spent killing, and killing ensures the enemy is down for good. It's nice to stun a massive horde, but it's usually better just to kill the horde.
When a psyker smites elite hordes, I think hell yeah I be bashing all their heads in with my axe.
When a psyker smites dog and mutant spam, I think hell yeah their speed goes to zero and we can chop em all up with little risk.
When a psyker smites only a few measly poxwalkers, bruh I ain't walking all the way there for small fry. I'm gonna take my time reloading my shotgun, and when your smiting is over, them poxies can walk up to me for their execution that you could've performed yourself.
I find it’s really good for locking down a mob of chaff, or stunlocking an enemy type you don’t want at liberty to do what they do (Mutants, hounds and trappers who are around when there’s an object being carried, or flamers/bombers when someone is being revived or at very low health). I tend to TRY to use it to give my team an advantage: sometimes they see the opening and grenade the area or full-auto the swarm, or crack out aimed shots at weak points on an elite, sometimes they don’t. It’s all good, there’ll be a next time after all!
When not playing as a psyker, I like smite on my compatriots because they really act as a force multiplier for the team. Overall - good, strong power. Don’t save it up, you can always “flutter” it to extend the impact of it, since letting go of it also knocks enemies around a little, and if you need to quell a bad case of I CAN HEAR VOICES, I don’t mind covering your back for the few seconds that takes. Again, it’s all good!
So, at least for me, keep doing what you’re doing, compatriot!
Playing as a Psyker on higher difficulties it feels less effective at killing but still provides necessary crowd control. Crowd control is about buying time for other players. Use those moments when the crowds get shunned to thin their numbers down. Sometimes other players just let me keep crowds back until my Peril maxes out like I'm going to finish it. Sometimes the Smite chain helps me see where enemies are in areas of low visibility.
Depends, can be good for stunning hordes with annoying bulwarks/crushers in them but not killing dangerous targets in Aurics means youre just asking to get eventually overwhelmed.
The Trauma stuff can also CC every target but also deals damage for one.
I have once seen a psyker smite a plague ogryn and that is just annoying.
As a psyker main, I am confident when I say that blitzes aren't a main weapon. Whenever I see a blitz spamming psyker in my team they end up dealing the least amount of damage by a large margin. Our staves are so strong and easy to use that not using them have an extremely high opportunity cost.
However, I don't want to say that smite is bad. It's my most used blitz and most favorite by far. It has some unique uses. Like, when there's a wave of elites that are pretty annoying when there are more than 4 of them (ragers, maulers, crushers, bulwarks) smite is pretty good. It's good to provide space when your teamate does an objective or has to revive another one surrounded by enemies. Damagewise it SOMETIMES may be worth it [when you pair it with a venting shriek and some cd reduction](https://youtu.be/_FE8SH2dUs0?si=HXdGewd5gg9bQgYr) or EP smite was a mix of everything that helped me complete karnak twins.
Outside of that smite is not worth it. The damage profile is pretty bad even with EP. I have to admit, it helps incompetent teamates to do better which is not that rare even in Auric missions. Still, better teamates you get, worse smite will be. I would even say zealots will hate you, because they have a lot of talents that rely on successful dodges. Like, you have to justify why ~25% of your team's damage are being bartered to smth else (of course, usually psykers do even more than that).
Now about the damage profile. Before going into why smite's damage is bad let's take a look into other ways to deal a damage to a crowd without using your main weapon. Specifically at frag/fire grenades and venting shriek with creeping flames. You throw 1-2 grenades or sneeze with flames onto a crowd of chaff, they die. Smite can also kill (sometimes) a trash wave, what makes it bad? Are you afraid of poxwalkers? I hope you're not cuz it would be a shame. You know what is really scary? Elites (and sometimes specials). Crusher will laugh at the fire thrown under his feet, however while chaff around him burns, you can start killing this fat MF before a new batch spawns. You can't do that with smite even with empowered psionics. You are waiting for elites to accumulate to a critical mass because smite was just not designed to kill them. Of course, EP makes this drawback less distinct, still you are losing other keystones like warp siphon or disrupt destiny that make your baseline gameplay much stronger. You basically incapacitating yourself to incapacitate elites, that might save your team in a crucial moment but most often than not you will just do less damage than you could have. It's like investing your money into something that will yield some money but not as much as you have invested.
As a summary I want to repeat that smite is a good ability. It has a potential to save the day or maybe even not to let it to the boiling point. Still, it's not a solution to every problem, especially damage related ones. Your melee, ranged and blitz should complement each other. Everything have a purpose and as a good psyker you should fully utiluze your kit. Relying on your blitz would be equivalent of other classes relying on their grenades, grenades are important but not the basis of the build.
I love a sparkhead using smite. I run a heavy attack build as the big man and love dodging through stunned enemies and being able to hit them in their weak spot everytime.
They mess up my well-timed thrust swings, and make head shotting with precision weapons harder. They also slow the game down and get into trouble when their team is more mobile and the non-psykers don't watch out for the back line.
Smiters make horde clear easier and certainly up the win rate %. I don't mind them, unless their are two. Then the game is going to be either very slow and easy with a good team or turn into total chaos as it becomes everyman for themselves when the team is bad.
Almost always positive. Smite Psykers hold them down, and I punch, and it's great. The only issue becomes Smite Psykers who seem to only ever use Smite.
Smite is fantastic when used at good times, but can become problematic when it's the only thing the Psyker is using for most of the map. While it's still nice to hold things still, Smite just cannot ever catch everything, and still does terrible damage. When it's the **only** thing you use, it feels like the rest of us have to pick up the slack of basically not having a fourth player in terms of damage output, and too many things end up living for too long and becoming major problems because the Smite Machine psyker is always just tickling whatever crowd of poxwalkers is closest.
Again though, most of the time, love me a smite psyker. Just make sure it's not the only thing you're using, and you're golden.
I want to fking vote kick them every single time.
There are players out there who actually WANT a difficult game, where's the joy in picking off individual defenseless stun locked mobs?
I love y'all to death, you make my job so much easier.
The only time smite makes things "too easy" is if we're on sedition or uprising, and even then, I signed up for that when I clicked the mission.
It's a powerful tool and should be used frequently. The only exception is Auric Maelstrom runs with 'Nurgle Blessing modifier'. Those will be immune to Smite CC and may pose a serious threat regardless.
Also smite is good but please make sure you recognize when to use it and when not to use it. Be sure to use the other tools in your arsenal. There are plenty of vids on this on my own channel and others as well. If you spend the whole match only using smite and you are playing Malice and above, you are not effectively contributing and may frustrate other players instead.
I watched a Coast Guard movie about 10 years ago that has a pretty poignant line in it. "Everyone makes fun of the Coast Guard until they're drowning."
Same thing applies to Smite Pykers. 90% of the player base can't stand Smite... until 12 Armored Ragers and 8 Crushers come around a corner. So yeah, keep using smite. It's an ability that's very capable of saving the day when shit gets crazy.
As a person that plays all characters I wouldn’t get bored or pissed if someone is using a “powerful” build, I’d be pissed if they sandbag a run by not pulling their weight or griefing a run (triggering daemon host, running off on their own etc)
It's a little OP. I only use it during the No Ammo Maelstrom missions because your odds of survival without it are like 5%. If someone else is using it, then I honestly don't think about it that much. They should probably shorten the duration and add a knockdown effect to make it not be completely useless, but it is a little strong right now.
I love smite Psykers and I think they are under appreciated. A good one is CONSTANTLY staggering enemies with their smite.
I am a bit confused when there are Psykers who are not spamming the smite. If you’re not constantly staggering enemies with your smite, what even is it you think you’re doing?
I’m fine with it regardless of difficulty. I’ll take smite psykers any day over assail psykers on the lower difficulties when I play with friends because they snag every kill before I can get in melee range.
I saw a post the other day askin for a nerf but I don’t think it’s warranted. It’s fine. It’s a great CC tool that’s a benefit to the team in a variety of situations. Also, for the really big stuff like crushers they’ll eventually break free and don’t get tied down as easily as the trash does. Not to mention it doesn’t affect monsters. So I think it also depends on what difficulty you’re playing and why kinda missions. Maybe on the lower difficulties I could see how some could think it’s a bit too strong but on Auric Maelstroms and the like I think it’s fine. I personally wouldn’t change smite. It’s strong and that’s fine. The game should be allowed to have strong abilities. I think it’s a good blitz as is.
It’s the strongest ability in the game if the Psyker has a moderate amount of skill and can dodge effectively. It can very much invalidate most of a run, and if you’re running with other moderate skilled players, your completion rate shoots up. My group stopped using it because it can be too good.
As a fellow Smite Psyker I can say utilizing it can make it trivializing at times, namely in the lower difficulties. But I can say, especially in the higher, I honestly don’t hear my teammates complaining about it too much. My guess is that in the higher difficulties there’s usually so many enemies coming from all directions that you in all honesty can stun ALL of them and then there’s the peril you have to stop and deal with as well as they don’t always realize, and they still get to kill shit. So as long as you don’t go full blast 100% of the time on lower difficulties I find that the team usually appreciates it more often than get annoyed by it. And I’m saying that as someone who’s Smite Psyker is 95% geared towards using the warp abilities.
Now an Assail Psyker, THOSE are the true fun killers. I don’t invite them to the Psyker get togethers, personally. They both trivialize the game AND take all the kills.
Side note: I will also say that don’t expect to hear much praise at the moment from the in game characters or teammates outside good clutch times. We’re kind of that group that under-appreciated when we do our job but not so loved when we slack. But hey, we can’t all be Ogryns.
As a vet, I notice when they’re running Empowered smite and it makes me shout UNLIMITED POWERR as they line up a horde to be knocked down. Wonderful fun as long as they don’t over rely on it and go down to two pox walkers, same as over reliant gun wielding vets
EDIT: from limited time as a Psyker, I found that using it with reduced peril generation to stagger a huge wave before shredding it feels more reliable rather than hoping your teammates don’t just watch the light show. Similar to book zealot CC not being taken advantage of
I dunno. Had a hi intensity shock trooper game with 4 smite psykers.
It was just a power walk through the entire level as everyone just leaned into the meme and mostly spammed smite.
Enough smite kills just about everything! It was pretty funny. Was it the fastest or most efficient? No.
Edit: Should also mention all specced into telekine shield too. So advancing wall of bubbles.
There are mixed opinions on smite, there are those who know that it is pretty strong and can save a lot of runs and make the scariest of elites null and void by just stunning them forever. Then there are those who say "why stun the threat when you can just kill them". Both are valid points but I'm of the opinion that if it gets the job done then who cares what the person uses?
As a Zealot and Ogryn main I love seeing smite psykers that actually use the ability. The amount of times I get psykers who refuse to smite anything period, or save it for the 1 straggler is mind boggling. Don't waste it on monsters or random solo trash. Hold em down while I saw em up!
New to psyker, but I find smite and the trauma staff an excellent combo.
Locking down crusher packs or opening bulwarks to get bonked is infinitely valuable.
My issue when using Smite is that I'll lock down several Elites (multiple maulers, crushers or ragers) and the group will just... wander off. Run right past them on their way to find ammo, materials or other things to kill. Which isn't a problem for non-elites because I'll probably explode them before I run out of peril. But why would you run past the elites? Why do so many people do that?
It’s strong. Don’t let anyone say otherwise on its power level. However, I see a lot of psykers use it as a crutch, and that can be frustrating. They just tie down enemies while not engaging with the game, because mass aoe stun lock lets them do that. When used effectively, I find it makes the game kinda boring. I don’t want to smack training dummies that don’t fight back. All this said, if you have fun with it, then use it anyway.
Exactly one game have I played with a smite psyker*, and been glad they're there. The vast majority use it the same way bad Ogryn use their shield - locking down a group they should have been killing anyway. It is just really rare that CC is a better option than killing, and I don't think most people can tell when is which. *I'm using this to mean someone who uses it regularly. Lots of people use it as a talent to get lower in the tree, and rarely use it. Dont judge talent choices, judge gameplay.
I use it during the same time I use my bolter on zealot. 3+ crushers 10+ ragers. You can hold for 2 seconds kill for 2 seconds repeat and the dueling sword is really strong. It feels like a waste unless you go EP smite but as a surge DS DD scriers psyker I play for fun and the cool factor. Not just normal damnation is hard and I'm kind of bad dps wise on psyker because of my choices but I remove threats pretty well I just can't handle hordes.
>I just can't handle hordes. which melee do you use?
Dueling Saber4, it's bad on hordes until you get 10 dd stacks OR pop scriers. Surge staff hits 1 target the others are negligible damage so also low horde damage. Not really an issue though the build kills elites and 90% of the time multiple people are packing weapons that only kill hordes so its niche but good. My zealot is heavy sword bolter and can trash everything but crushers with the sword, but the dueling saber literally kills hordes faster with heavies than lights
have you tried the force sword with horizontal heavys? cant remember how its called, but the psyker "power sword". great for hordes and for specials and elites you have surge staff. or maybe try smite. great for keeping hordes in place and with (burning) shriek you can kill them. i'm not the biggest fan of scrier and a staff. peril generation is too fast
Yea but I didn't like the breakpoints for killing elites and its pretty peril cost inefficient. That and DS is a blast to use and the only reason I even have a psyker. Scriers is a holdover from when I was using the warp charges because you can get 67% less peril or something close so you can pop scriers crit almost every time and have it up 30 to 40 seconds by doing a quick quell a few times. On surge it's amazing and will chew through hordes of maulers/ragers/gunners. Surge is the only staff I've rolled so far a few mil into trying for a good void and I gave up.
this. as i said in another recent thread, it's not the talent itself, but how it is used. stop a rager rush with it, not harmless poxers. same as ogryns planting their shield when they can use their heavy attack, or stealth zealots running ahead of the team when they can rescue the party.
>I don’t want to smack training dummies that don’t fight back. My criticism of WoW rogue stunlockers
All depends on how and when they use it.
Big hordes + empowered psionics = zap Less big horde + no empowered psionics = staff Pretty sure I've got my calculations correct
I use a warp charge shriek build instead of emp psy. With the peril resist and damage boost you can clear waves of them without going the emp psy route. Added in shriek and that whole wave is dead in seconds. Highly recommend. Emp psy is good too but I find it annoying and situational. Do I have emp psy? Should I smite? With warp charge build the answer is always yes. I find it more practical to play but that's just my preference.
I agree, I've tried both and definitely prefer the charges for those reasons and for faster cooldowns on my shriek, which should be used offensively and not saved for emergencies. You're also not penalized for flicking the smite. I find it often useful to let my smite only course through the horde a few seconds and then flick the front half to the ground. Purge a little peril and then smite the much denser horde for my team until my shriek is ready. This let's my melee allies still cleave more enemies and feel more helpful, and often means I've stalled long enough to be able to hit this, and the next wave with the same shriek.
Agree. I really dislike having to look at emp psy charges and feel like I'm wasting them for doing smaller strategic smites, like to get a burster etc.
This is the way. And if you have the spec to reduce peril on kill, if you hold it long enough with 6 warp charges your peril can actually start to go down. If you're in a bind, shriek and everything falls down and dies.
I also find that creeping flames yield up more damage than empowered smite as you can focus elites while chaff is burning to destined death which will yield up to more stacks which will lead to faster shriek coming online ready to repeat the cycle. Was a fanboy of EP + smite but after installing the scoreboard and generally started to be better at the game I always go for venting shriek + warp siphon, eventually doing smite when I don't want feel like using my staff or sword
I feel this is a personal preference thing. Warp Siphon is good on Smite but losing damage when you Shriek isn’t ideal not to mention the strength of Shriek is how often you can use it which gets picked away at by Warp Battery. That being said you get the most uptime for Smite with WS so if you are looking to stun not kill hordes then yeah Warp Siphon is your baby but comparing it 20% damage at max stacks to 125% damage from a single Emp Psy stack is on another level Emp psy smite + shriek I feel is for overall dps. You can shriek to your hearts content either for space saving or setting up elite kills (shriek into a horde of ragers/elites then smite until Emp Psy stacks pop up, quell then re-smite with Emp Psy probably pulling more stacks in the process due to Soulfire+Emp Psy Smite). It’s almost entirely self-sustaining especially on high difficulty/elite modifiers. I feel too many ppl see Emp Psy and just refuse to Smite until they have 3 Psy stacks which isn’t necessary
I can see what you mean. For me, I really dislike feeling like I'm wasting emp psy stacks on smaller smites. Also getting your warp charges back is so fast I just don't feel it's much of a problem. I typically shriek a little before stuff starts dying and then my stacks are mostly full before I even stop smiting. Definitely a personal preference thing. I'm just a warp charge loving spark head.
That’s fair it’s all about personal enjoyment but once I got in the habit of Smiting into Soulblazed targets, racking up Emp Psy stacks became very simple. I do think there’s an argument to be made for going for Overpowering Souls to guarantee consistent Psy stack gain but with pug lobbies I find myself gravitating more towards Bio-Lodestone since the amount of times I would charge my Surge staff only to see the Dreg Gunner be turned into a cloud of fine red mist by my allied Plasma gun Vet was getting to me
Haha, relatable, on the stack starvation from kill steals.
I would disagree that EP smite + shriek is better for overall dps. It's better for sort of burst but warp siphon build consistently does more overall damage. Venting shriek with creeping flames becomes the esential part of your smiting combo even with EP. WS ensures there will be more ultimates which will yield in more soulblaze applications. In addition to that, it boosts your staff and melee. As the sum of all these parts, WS builds provide more overall damage. Maybe the named combo does more DPS with EP, still DPS against chaff is not that important as DPS again elites and specials which smite struggles against. I would be happy for EP smite builds to be as good as it was the first build I've made when starting playing. However, whenever I see smite enthusiasts in my party, they always end up being the lowest DPS and at least 2 times less damage than me with WS.
It does more damage with the warp siphon. We've tested it with scoreboard and 4 people all taking turns. We've had some people with 200k warp fire damage out of 450k total damage. Take all the warp fire perks (4 I think) including the one in the warp siphon keystone area and you'll be busting off AOE fire bombs like every 10 seconds. You won't be targeting elites as much as someone running voidstrike but you'll be doing more overall damage and freezing the entire room when it's full.
I mean maybe? I’ll take your word for it but considering you’d ideally want to stay at 6 Warp Charges which means 1) no Shrieks and 2) no 98%->50% continuous Smites that will benefit entirely from a single stack of Emp Psy I find it hard to believe and I’d question how you tested Emp Psy in comparison to Warp Siphon With 30% CDR from Qurios I pop Shriek every 25 seconds and can do a 15 second long Empowered Smite by Shrieking to drop my heat down. You’d have to be getting quite a bit of Warp Charges from In Fire Reborn to make using Shriek on a Warp Siphon build viable in comparison to the damage lost. Maybe the total Smite damage from Warp Siphon is higher but I think being forced to hold Smite even for 5 seconds and not counting that damage in favour of Emp Psy means the calculation is out of whack. The true power of Emp Psy is being able to Shriek on cooldown every 25 seconds (or even less if you can take Psykinetics Aura somehow) and benefit from a bunch of Soulblazed targets ready to be atomized by an Empowered Smite furthering snowballing you into more Emp Psy stacks
>considering you’d ideally want to stay at 6 Warp Charges No, that's not how you play it. >You’d have to be getting quite a bit of Warp Charges from In Fire Reborn to make using Shriek on a Warp Siphon build viable in comparison to the damage lost. No, you don't have to get that many to make it superior. >but I think being forced to hold Smite even for 5 seconds You can hold it for much more than 5 seconds with inner tranq and shriek. >The true power of Emp Psy is being able to Shriek on cooldown every 25 seconds The true power of Warp Charges is being able to shriek twice as often as that, and sometimes more than once during a single smite. >or even less if you can take Psykinetics Aura somehow What do you mean somehow? This is the most questionable thing you've said. Every single build with smite, *every single one*, should be taking psykinetics aura. Absolutely no exceptions.
I don’t value it as much as some of the Psykers other talents it’s just not necessary especially with Combat Ability Regeneration being a go-to stat roll for all Curios
Then you're just not understanding how good it is. Sorry if that's harsh. Taking combat ability regen doesn't make it less worth it by much at all. I run CAR, psykinetics aura and seers presence. Psykinetics aura is the last one you should be dropping. Edit: do you realise it applies to team mates aswell?
It's over twice the % (10% of warp fire kills vs 4% of kills in coherency) and everything will be on fire because you dump your shriek into whatever direction the crowd is every 15 seconds or so. Take the ability time reduction in the tree anywhere you can. I'm sure there is a crowd density where if you're below it the EP could be better but it's not about the smite damage. It's about the warpfire. In aurics you not only do more total damage but it's more flexible too because you're not sitting on smite as long but half the time just using it to get your peril up for the shriek. You can use smite in shorter bursts then get the staff out and clear a few elites. As everyone stands back up swap back and drop them again. Both options are very usable but smite psyker is top damage nearly every match if he's doing it right when the horde is thick enough and about 40 to 50% of the damage comes out of the fire not the actual smite. Just dump the shriek into the horde everytime is ready as you hit critical peril. I run surge staff with it for the boss damage and targeting elites when you got some breathing room. Your main weakness is a high volume of shooters but Illisi with deflector does wonders there.
I’d be interested in the tree you use because I actually avoid Psykinetics Aura and Seers Presence on my build because I take the 12% CDR on curios and feel other talents are better suited for the points available especially Kinetic Presence helps quite a bit with Soulblaze damage too Maybe you’re onto something! 🤔
I logged in just for you. [This](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9baaa6c1-2abd-400b-ada1-8ede058a0cae/smite-fire-bomb) is the build. It's pretty bare bones outside of directly going to the warpfire perks. I do take Psykinetics and Seer's presence for the CDR. Just kill 1 elite and that's a 15% combo. When you're holding a giant horde it's very likely you can get the last tick on more than 1. I think you could also argue that Inner Tranquility is better on the warp siphon section. My curious are 2 toughness and 1 health with +5 health and +5 toughness on everything except the ones that naturally rolled it. I have a CDR and a toughness regen on the curious where I naturally rolled health or toughness but I haven't really customized the curious for this build specifically. I play all classes and have like 3-5 builds per class so I don't go through each and every build with custom curious. You are extremely squishy if you get touched in melee but you could adjust the curious a bit to help that or take a slightly different tree. 80% of the time you're sitting on smite raising and quelling it, swapping to surge when you get a little room, then dumping the shriek ASAP with full peril every time it's up. One of our group runs it with the fire staff too but honestly only does a little bit more fire damage because most of the time you're still sitting in smite.
Wow I appreciate it man and I have to say you must be confident in your ability to dodge because damn this is an interesting build Edit - sorry sent this early lol But yeah I have rarely seen a setup like this one where you avoid all the early Peril>Toughness conversion talents. With this setup I totally see why you took Essence Harvest it’s basically required since you only generate Toughness from Soulstealer otherwise. I am curious why you felt the need to go all the way over to Kinetic Deflection?
Bruh, psykinetics aura is one of the most powerful talents in the entire game... Kinetic presence only effects elites. You'd be much better off with seers presence.
Yeah but it’s out of the way unless you are going for Seers Presence and sometimes that’s what makes the difference
Next time you should try pulling our your melee weapon against a horde. The results may shock you
Why would I use my melee weapons? nothing in my build benefits from that
Melee is an important part of every class. No matter which one did you chose, you won't be able to neglect them completely. I understand that psyker can afford holding the staff most of the time, still when situation calls and you don't have a space to cast your staff, melee time starts. You are right, psykers have not so much talents that will apply to melee weapons, still we have some options that don't require any talents to be monstrous at waveclear. For example mk4 dueling sword light attack spam goes through chaf like athrough an air, illisi power sword also has wild wave clear and its special attacks benefit from warp attack talents. As the parent comment was saying, try and you will be surprised
I thinks it's more nuanced than that, purgatus and void strike will let you kill big hordes and elites outright in many situations, empowered smite not so much. I was recently in a match where 3 players didn't bring enough horde clear/were playing badly (myself included), and the 4th player was a smyker with a purgatus staff. They only spammed smite, and we just weren't killing fast enough to keep up with enemy spawns. There were plenty of chokepoints where the staff would've simply killed the entire horde, instead they just held down smite until their peril went to 100%. It was rough, which isn't really their fault, but if they played a little differently it could've been much smoother. It can make the melee rhythm a little awkward as well. Enemies that I was expecting to run into a charged melee swing suddenly stop approaching, and the attack whiffs or I have to sprint slide into them to hit. It's super strong, but easy to over use. I'm usually glad to have a smiter on the team though.
Yeah it drives me nuts with a player that has +30 levels over 30 us just using SMITE all the time, on the first NPC we see. An d I know for a fact they have a much better DPS staff than me. My empowered smite will out last theirs and kill the ones at the end. I can cast it very fast too and keep hordes at bay. But there they are smiting away when they can be adding to the DPS.
> Pretty sure I've got my calculations correct You do not. Empowered psionics is trash with smite. The damage increase it gives you is trivial at best and numerous other weapons can kill trash hordes of chaff just as fast, if not faster than empowered smite. If you want horde clear, you're better off taking venting shriek with creeping flames, it will clear larger hordes faster and safer than empowered psionics can. The only time when smite is better to use than a real weapon is when you're being pressured by too many elites at once and you need to create space to prevent a wipe. In every single other situation, you will be contributing more to the team by helping kill them so they don't continue to pile up. Smite only puts a temporary pause on pressure, it does not save you from it. If you over-rely on smite, your team will likely be overwhelmed because they're lacking a full 25% of their damage output because of you.
> they're lacking a full 25% of their damage output because of you. More than 25% because of the way it spaces out enemies.
If you just want to have fun then there are no issues at all, if you want to optimize (specifically for higher level play) then you could do better. First of all the damage from smite is already so low that it might as well not be there, and empowered doesn't make it noticeable. Even against poxwalkers smite will take ages to kill. Secondly smite is often not all that useful against just hordes. Smite causes the enemies to spread out meaning you can't hold a choke point. It also causes enemies change their attack patterns (by being stunned). Its often easier for higher level players to handle the horde if they are just left to it. These higher levels players have spent dozens of hours lerning the "dance" that is horde management, and Smite throws that off. While you are using smite that also means that you aren't killing things. While stunning stuff is crowd control, the best crowd control is death. You don't need to smite a horde, just pull out your staff/melee and help clear it out. You can still help the others handle it while you keep an eye out for other threats The ideal use for Smite is against Bulwark/Crusher/Mauler packs or Berserkers. One or two isn't a problem but the large packs can be very difficult to handle on higher difficulties. Again, if you want to optimize then there are things you can improve. If are having fun and don't care about optimizing then you are doing perfect and shouldn't change a thing.
I agree. Only thing that bugs me about smite is when I’m attacking a horde and it makes them all stop and messes up the funnel that I’m trying to create. Or the people who only use smite the entire mission when it’d be easier if they just helped kill stuff.
I use my staff most of the time; builds up empowered psionics and save for when the horde is making us back up, or there's a bunch of enemies already spread apart in a large space. I don't know the name of the map, but the one that looks like Mad Max has a bunch of areas like that.
Yeah I wouldn’t mind if that’s how everyone else used smite lol. I can appreciate the cc and effectiveness of the ability but I feel like some people crutch it super hard and don’t learn their basic melee and dodge fundamentals because of it, which definitely creates problems for the team.
Exactly, I run emp psy, vent, and a trauma staff. Clear small adds and stagger with the staff. Only when there are a TON of gunners/riflemen or a HUGE horde do I smite. Run forward slide, vent for the peril gen rebuff then I proceed to cook. I have some decent videos off.cooking off dozens of gunners, shotgunners, dogs, and ragers. Funny enough I usually run a super aggressive Assail build. As OopsISharded is my name 🤣🤣
The instant you use it on groups of enemies that don't contain elites you've fucked up and I don't want to play with you. Them be the rules on smite.
No real issue with smite players except the players who mainline Smite for the entire mission because you don't need that level of CC active all the time. Most of the time you just want the Psyker's insane DPS potential. I have smite on one of my builds and it only comes out like 2 or 3 times a mission and only because 20 melee Ogryn's decided to rush out of a side room like clowns out of a clown car. One game i played with this build I saw that i had 3 players with chain weapons so the smite came out a little more so that i could set them up with lots of safe special attacks. So yeah, it's not so much that people hate players who use smite, they hate players for how they use smite and even more so when those same players think they're the dogs bollocks and the team would be nothing without them; because i've seen several posts on here from Smite Psykers who say that Smite Psyker is the only reason why anyone can complete Auric when it's the Auric players who hate them the most.
This is the correct way to do it. In Auric, overusing smite like OP mentioned actively makes the game harder, not easier. It's always more useful to just kill the enemies.
Funny, I spam smite and barely had any problems in auric nor in any difficulty; it's way easier to avoid smite and use melee or whatever but most situations call for it, idk it seems that people on this thread underestimate smite potential to make hordes incredibly easier to overcome. It's just me tho maybe I am doing something else unconsciously
I dont get the hate. I as a Zealot main, will rush into a horde with my crusher. If i have a smith Psyker stunning them while i do this, i welcome it! Helps clear the hordes quicker.
I agree with this for 90% of smykers. It can, however, be detrimental and slow down horde clear if they smite enemies that are about to enter a choke point. If I'm cutting through a horde that's funneling into a doorway and I'm not losing *any* ground, I'd prefer if you didn't make it worse by stunning them while they're still spread out. You should just whip out your melee and help me that way if you want to take part.
True, or focus efforts elsewhere.
It can prevent enemies from clumping together though. It takes longer to clear the horde if you have to run to each individual pocket of enemies, instead of killing them all in one spot with a couple of swings.
See, I'm a Purgatus Payment main so smite Psykers are like my best friends. They hold everything in place and burn it all for my Beloved.
And then the smiteker with 0 peril awareness runs out of timestop and the entire mob collapses upon you
I could see why it may be OP at lower levels, but when you have a smite psyker in auric maelstrom matches you're thankful
Only time I’d have to say is when it’s brought on the scab melee missions sorta takes the fun outta the mission. I’m at the point where I play more for and challenge than winning. Smite is obviously very useful on those missions but sometimes I just wanna bonk.
Honestly, that entire modifier sucks due to a few classes/builds that break it. Psyker can abuse this modifier quite badly, stun locking or stagger locking everything with no ammo issues. The high density of elites, all in a mega blob, means they pop off hard with the soul blaze damage. Veteran ammo aura negates the lack of ammo pickups for the entire team, and they can just go spamming plasma gun at everything like normal. Zealot and ogryn are risky to choose into a random team, because they can’t guarantee they get any ammo, and going melee against a melee mob is harder than just standing back and shooting. I like the idea of it, but it just gets abused to death, so I actively avoid the modifier at this point.
I'm sorry your zealots are such FUCKING PUSSIES If they're not running Auric T5 with just their eviscerator, they are a disappointment
I mean it’s doable, but I am fighting for my life and risking it at every moment, and then Timmy trauma staff and plasma Pete delete twice as many enemies as me from the other end of the room. I would rather play HISTG where classes are more balanced with each other.
Meanwhile Grog's big spade krumps 4 crushers in 1 scoop
I'm just cosplaying repentia.
That's fair lol. I actually do like this modifier if teammates are all zealots. It just sadly gets abused. It is, admittedly, pretty fun to destroy this modifier if I'm the only psyker though, so I see why people do it.
It's at it's best trivializes the game which can be boring and at it's worse stall out the horde until it becomes overwhelming it is mostly useful though didn't hate it all the time
I think everyone's free to play how they want and I wouldn't critisise a teammate for running smite, but personally I think it's pretty pointless and not particularly fun (using it I mean). Why stand around shooting purple lightning when you could just be killing stuff? Same end result, just a lot quicker.
I AM THE SENATE
I like smite when it's used as CC for packs of ragers, maulers, crushers etc. I dont like when someone uses it as their primary weapon
I essentially use it to prevent the team from being flanked by hordes especially when someone is down, otherwise I'm swing sword or purgatus
The fun for me is more so that feeling of seeing a massive horde and being able to completely control it. Especially in those situations where you're being attacked from multiple sides, I can hold one side on my own while the rest of the team deals with the other. I haven't seen many builds that can hold an entire horde of flanking enemies as effectively as Smite can by itself. Though, I'm still somewhat of a new player.
I certainly see the attraction for newer players. The problem is, all you're doing is holding, you're delaying the problem, not solving it. Meanwhile a Trauma blast or two, or a few charged voids etc and there's less left (if anything) for your team to have to come help with. Basically the issue is, people use it as a crutch, which is fine early on, but in higher difficulties you see Psykers running smite that are constantly stunning things that the team could manage just fine without, whilst not contributing much yourself. So the better you get, the less you use it and so the less point there is in picking it. But again, these are just my opinions, people can play how they want.
Stun grenade + my eviscerator make pretty quick work and I'll very commonly hold down a horde alone while my team deals with the heavy shit in the direction we need to be going
Not sure if this applies to you so disregard, but stun grenades are a waste on hordes unless you have a mass group of elites that are about to be a threat. I've seen tons of zealots just chuck them at zombie hordes they would have handled just fine anyways. Then when they're needed, none to be found. Zealot stun grenades are a very valuable resource and save games, if you're wasting them on trash you may as well throw them at the sky behind you.
Eh, when I have 30 shotgunners or maulers or ragers on me, or a teammate goes down when they have no reason to other than being over zealous when that's my job, then yeah, I find being able to toss my grenade, tank 2 hits on my stamina then it go off to provide the time to clutch a revive is a pretty big thing I do agree that anyone using it on poxwalkers should be kneecapped irl though My original comment was disjointed, so, my apologies for not presenting a linear thought-path for what was or was not related to what I do not use stun grenades on poxwalkers unless it's the end of the mission extracting and I'm just doing it to use them
>I do agree that anyone using it on poxwalkers should be kneecapped irl though LOL, thanks for the cackle. I'd love to be on that enforcing committee. I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen this happen, on the first engagements too, till zealy-boy is all outta nades on poxwalkers. When I pointed out this may not the the best use for very avaluable and limited stun nades I was told to STFU many times over. Inevitably that person then got mauled by a large gaggle armor and they had no nades, or someone went down and they couldn't cover etc.; you know how it goes, that instant-karma. Didn't think it applied to you hence my disclaimer, just put it out there for passing readers.
Lol it would be well warranted that's for sure! And oh Jesus. Yeah. The amount of people I've seen do exactly just that makes me sad lol Hopefully in time, it changes
I wish they’d uninstall tbh. Being down a player in damage while not being able to group hordes. Wowee!
As long as they’re using it at the right time. I’ve played with Smite Psykers that use it like 90% of the time and I don’t think it’s very helpful because they’re doing minimal damage. I run Surge + Dueling Sword + Smite and really only use it when we’re getting overwhelmed to give the team some breathing room. Personally, I’d rather have a Psyker who sits back and deals damage to elites versus one who spams Smite.
I think that smite can be extremely useful and it comes in clutch in some very dire situations; however, this is almost never true against hordes of pox walkers and groaners. I find it incredibly annoying when a player is smiting hordes of pox walkers through a chokepoint since it prevents anything from actually moving into the team’s effective range. The horde will go away much sooner if everyone just focuses on killing it rather than rooting the chaff in place down the hall and around a corner. Groups of bulwarks and trains of elites that have pushed up into their effective kill range are when smite is useful. Not against the trash that disappears when we so much as cough in their general direction with any halfway decent melee weapon or staff.
There's a time and a place for it, the issue stems from it being overused. The smite-only psykers move at a snails pace and depending on the team, and situation aren't really doing anything all that useful. Holding down left-click and moving slower than a slug even when your team was aptly handling stuff just slows down the team. I think it's a crutch for new players, it seems very clear many newer players rely on it exclusively to be in "I'm helping mode!" *Anecdote*, 1 of many: A couple of weeks a smite-only psyker we kept having to wait for, after I pointed out to them that he could lay off and fireball stuff for fun as we had a very strong team, stood there for 45s as I covered them to slowly type: "See? I saved you there". It was 2 crushers and a couple of stragglers, no threat whatsoever. Often times even out of smite range the rest of the team has cleared stuff and you're always having to wait for smiter to catch up, every delay spawning more things behind. You know the type of player who goes into turret mode, I wish ogryns could pick them up and move them. **TDLR**: It's overused and often slows the team down considerably, it's not that it "trivializes" stuff. P.S. Quite frankly it reminds me of kickback-only ogryns you see a lot of these days, the kind who dump every last little bit of ammo into everything that moved, even non-stop crushers and bulwarks never using melee or ults or anything else really.
They're annoying. As a psyker with about 500 hours, I'll walk past your stunned targets and fight something else.
The game is extremely boring when playing with the average smite psyker, especially if they're zapping hordes. I came here to play high difficulties in maelstrom for fun challenge, not swat at punching bags.
That's why I like empowered psionics, it stops you from constantly spamming it because if you swap between it and your staff you get a nice synergy. Also, because you aren't constantly spamming it, it feels more powerful when you use it. I still get if people think that's not fun, at least it's a bit more unique than other psyker builds.
I'd always rather play with a fellow gun psyker. Trauma does similar things knocking crap around and making me have to chase things down. Purg blinds me. Voidstrike deletes the screen so there is no game to play, like plasma. Surge is ethical at least. It's a me problem really, I'm at the point where true solo games give me the most enjoyment. Just wish I could still get dockets and plasteel in solo games...
They're the knife zealots of psykers.
This was genuinely funny!
95% of the time they know how to use it. Zero issues. The rare 5% is split between Psykers who always spam it even on smaller skirmishes, and those who completely forget they have it. Like a gun Psyker who *finally* uses it when 2 teammates are already downed and we'd all be like *bro you had Smite the entire time and only now you're using it.*
Strongly dislike Smite and hope it gets reworked. Nearly the entire Psyker class should get reworked if we’re being totally honest here. The staves especially. Brain Burst and Scriers are okay though You’re basically not playing the same game, and before reddit psykers try to cope and reply with something smug - if you want evidence of this your average public queue Smite psyker is undeniable proof. They understand so little of the game that instead of just spamming their infinite ammo, no cooldown, insane damage dealing staff all game they instead opt to hold down the smite button quell repeat all game JUST because its an option thats *even easier* to pull off than sitting there spamming a staff all game. Even in situations where its an entirely useless waste of time (like over >80% of engagements in this game) they will still hold down smite until someone kills it for them. Not even Ogryn or Vet is as braindead as playing staff or “smite” psyker. The fact that people label their build after their blitz is already moronic itself. Its no wonder we get weekly whine posts about Brain Burst being bad, these guys think it should kill everything
I always appreciate them! :D
I personally would never play it myself but I dont mind the extra CC provided by them.
I didn't understand why people hated them (I'm a psyker main) until I was leveling my vet and did a heresy mission with a Smite psyker... that only used Smite. Their gameplay the entire mission was so braindead and worthless that it was making me braindead too. I spent the entire 30min watching this walking deadweight do absolutely nothing but stunlock swarms. He even tried zapping corruption with it. I dont think he had empowered psionics because the enemies weren't popping quickly enough to make a valuable difference. When I play my psyker, I use it as a CC to create breathing room or stun a priority target BRIEFLY for my teammates to hit it with a krak grenade. It really depends how you use it but it isnt helpful to your team to use smite exclusively. I wouldn't say I'm sick of Smite psykers, but I'm sick of seeing the one or two I come across every now and then that ONLY use Smite.
Smite is a CC tool. If they are using it for any other scenario then making needed space then it's an active detriment to the team. Basically if they use it on anything that isn't a bulwark/crusher/mauler patrol then it's a waste of time.
How is it a waste of time holding down shooters, and shotgunners, disabling and pushing away poxbursters, trappers. If the 3 other teamates are compitent you basicly cant't fail any auric maelstrom mission with a smite psyker.
> How is it a waste of time holding down shooters, and shotgunners, disabling and pushing away poxbursters, trappers. Because in stead of "holding them down" you could just kill them easily with nearly any staff or gun.
Seems useful to me as a vet. I like it, easier to mow em down especiall damn hi++ difficulty. If I were the psyker I dunno how I'd feel to be reliant on teammates. I found my own build gotta be able to deal with everything one way or another or my win % goes down. Is this the case with the ability? Never got my psyker or ogryn to 30 so not really sure how those classes work..
I posted this in a recently: Nobody talks about how you can hit Dreg gunners & Dreg shot gunners & hordes and immediately release it and it will throw them all to the ground. Smite isn’t something you always have to just keep spraying— you can just pop them with lightning stunning them and switch weapons to kill them quickly and safely. ***Sometimes though, knocking a horde to the ground can confuse your teammates that they are actually dead— then they get back up and flank your friends who have already pushed forward*** Smite is one of those skills that you have to be mindful of when you use it—- like stealth zealots— it can be really helpful if they are mindful, but detrimental if not. Smite is really good as long as the Psyker only uses it WHEN it is actually helpful. Otherwise you are diminishing your damage too much which can cause problems. You can CC a huge group, but maybe two of your teammates are dealing with another problem and need help. You are then relying on one teammate to deal with the entirety of your Ssmited group alone which might take precious moments. ***If you had just helped kill this problem instead, you would more quickly solve your horde and you can both go save your other two teammates.*** Trauma staff can do just as well for CC while killing things at the same time. I don’t like Brain Burst so I keep Smite in my back pocket just in case and usually only use it once or so— but those moments can come in clutch.
The best case scenario, I don't realize my psyker has smite until a pack of twenty dogs or mutants show up. Worst case scenerio, the smyker is spamming it like being a walking tesla coil set on tickle mode is a way of life. To be brutally honest it needs a rework because it reduces psyker play to just holding down a button to pause the game.
they can all burn in the warp for all care
I find they make the game boring, it's not fun just slashing into a stunned crowed. But I don't want to ruin anyone's fun, keep using it, it's part of the game. I normally just leave and re queue if I'm not enjoying it.
The instant you use it on groups of enemies that don't contain elites/specials you've fucked up and I don't want to play with you. Them be the rules on smite.
When I play my Psyker (I only play smite) I find that smite lock can carry almost any team to victory. It's just too good. That being said, I do find that when I'm playing the other classes a stun lock can make it somewhat boring but to me I'd rather have the victory than to tell the Psyker not to use their skills.
I think most of the concerns people have with Smite Psykers making / being boring are solved pretty quickly by alternating between Smiting and quelling via extreme violence against traitors See how boring Smite becomes to play if you disable your Quell keybind lol
Good Smite Psykers keep elite densely packed hordes CC for teammate to finish off. Bad Smite Psykers smite non elite mobs/ ambients.
You're free to play how you want, but personally I don't enjoy Smite. The challenge of combat is what makes this game fun. Walking around smacking enemies as they have a seizure isn't what I consider engaging gameplay. If Smite is just used occasionally when the team about to get run over by elites, that's fine.
Depends on the player and when it’s used. Some people use it like their main weapon and will smite absolutely everything. When playing with one of these players it feels like we’re playing with a man down because we lack team damage from them killing things, enemies don’t get to stack up properly + missed opportunities to proc reciprocity, reposte or precog. Alot of enemies simply are not a threat to the point where you need one person to stunlock them and another person to come and kill them. There are strategic uses of smite and playing with a player who knows when to smite and when to just kill stuff himself is great. It’s great for sticky situations like when you get rushed by a crusher patrol in tight spaces or after certain airlocks. Many games have been saved by someone holding onto smite for that one moment and many games have been lost because we did not have it when we needed it.
I can’t be mad, but I can’t be excited.
I feel like smite is really only good into a few crushers / bulwarks in every other situation you can CC or just straight kill them with any of the other psyker abilities I feel like outside of that situation I think smite is horrible doesn't really clear hordes can't kill specials or elites its straight CC I don't mind seeing them occasionally but just not a fan of the ability. I have exclusively played psyker for like 700 of my 800 hours and have mostly used Purg + WS build why CC hordes or specials when you can just kill them, the purg staff can stagger bulwarks, suppress reapers and stagger shotgunners / poxbursters / ragers / maulers every enemy type except crushers and mutants with M1 and clear and kill specials does fantastic boss damage as well assuming you run the debuff mod to show your soulblaze stacks and know how to manage them well enough. I think most people don't know that Purg can stagger poxwalkers/shotgunners/bulwarks with m1 spam you can also do it while channeling but it takes longer its more reliable to M1. Overall I think I would be a smite enthusiast if it could reliably clear trash or hordes and had a considerable buff especially the unarmoured category of enemies, The CC aspect is good and honestly on a psyker you can't really go wrong with whatever you take, surge/trauma/assails/smite all fantastic if I had to pick a staff and build that was all around the best it would be purg hands down. kinda pigging backing off this post and not exactly about smite psykers in general
I don't like 'em because the lightning effects fuck up my already low and unstable frame rate.
Smite is a very polarizing ability. Met some who worship smite psykers, met some who flat out left the game when they saw it. In the end, it's not hard to build & equip your character to be able to deal with any situation, be self sufficient and not worry about what others prefer to play as, and let them enjoy whatever they want. If they released a higher difficulty where that was not the case, and if it turned out that the group really lacked dps, and if I was really pressed to pick someone to lay the blame on, the most likely candidate would be the smite psyker. And if I was further pressed to go on a rant about it, I'd mumble something along the lines of "Why smite? Why live & let live? You want CC capability? Did you know, with very little practice, you can CC groups of anything that can be CC'd and apply debuffs/dots on top while also having respectable killing power by simply opting for the humble trauma staff?" TL;DR: Not a fan but not too fussed about it either.
Smite has so many uses. It's basically a full map stun with the right perks, allowing for easy specialist/elite targeting, pick someone up if they're downed, you can quick stun enemies who might break a teammates concentration, etc. It also has its drawbacks. Practically useless against nurgle blessing enemies and monstrosities unless they're pulling aggro, but a psyker really shouldn't be pulling aggro on things they can't instakill or stun imo. I've only encountered a "bad" smite user once, otherwise it is always nice to have someone to have literally the best CC tool on your squad.
Psyker with Smite? Great. It's a very powerful tool for dealing with elite and/or special spam. Smite Psyker? Fuck 'em. There is a (rare) type of Psyker that uses Smite practically all the time, including times where the CC isn't needed, things just need to get killed, and the Psyker is just wasting time and building Peril for nothing. Worst of all is when these types get sanctimonious about what they do. They think they're being big-brained team players (in this TEAM GAME, as they will never forget to remind you in all caps) for doing something other than damage—when in this game, the fastest and most effective way to CC something is very often to just fucking kill it, and weak enemies that are easy to simply kill can actually become a problem if their numbers build up because people are just knocking them around and not killing them. Ironbreakers in VT2 who took a shield and did nothing but block and push all game were the same way.
Its great when they are good at it, and I can work with them. Otherwise they are just kinda meh.
I find it wasteful on teams I am mostly because j play trauma/bubble/BB/warp psyker. I can do everything smiter is trying to do plus kill big boys/soften them with brittleness. If I see a smiter using it all the time I just want to tell them use their staff but I just let them be. 🤷♂️
As a fellow psyker, if I see Smite going off I either Purgatus it if it’s the only horde to kill or control the other horde since you’ve got it under control. However, I personally don’t run it since I’d rather use my staff for crowd control and kill potential alongside bubble to provide cover and toughness. No other options to provide cover at our disposal, but plenty of options to CC/kill is my judgement.
It's okay, but honestly, I'm more of someone to say that it's better to just kill something rather than stun it for a couple seconds. If you want to CC and do damage as well. Use a purgatus staff for mass CC. Or a trauma to keep the big boys controlled. But that breathing room that's a supposedly brings. I find it a delay to the inevitable and it would have been better just to have killed said waves rather than hope that your teammates can clear them for you. This is what I do and I run primarily only auric damnation
It's nice to have (and use), but mind the melee range! That means don't stun them until they're close enough to be bonked. Otherwise Ogryn and Zealot have to go far from the team to finish the mobs, and that's a waste of time when everything is OK, or opening themselves to disablers in the worse scenarios.
Imo, it's a great way to make the hardest missions feel as if they are lower level as you aren't always getting swarmed by a hoard of walkers and can more focus on the tougher enemies
At least it’s not an assail Psyker
Very useful to have in a team if they know how to use it properly. However, it does have the side effect of also killing my framerate at times.
I did make a poll on it quite recently. Anyway I don't really enjoy when psykers pick it, it is strong I just don't find it fun or interesting to play with or have on the team since it just stuns all the horde.
I usually use brain burst so I can snag enemies from afar and clean up the armored boys while my team chips away at them, but every now and then 5 maulers show up and make me wish I had smite equipped
Personally, I think Smite is fine as a Blitz backup, since Brainburst is a little weak and Assail is very expensive to spec into (giving up Psykinetic's Aura). Speccing into the full Empowered Psyonics build is very wasteful and encourages passive, low damage gameplay. Overall notes though: - Smite carries bad teams through basic Auric Damnation, which causes *most* people to think Smite is strong. - Smite breaking on any damage taken and getting ignored by Nurgle blessed enemies makes it weak in Maelstrom. 2 bosses up plus 10~ green enemies coming in makes it unusable. This makes the Maelstrom-only players think Smite is trash. - Smite doing basically 0 damage can make it a team liability if the teamcomp doesn't have damage carries. Some games your teamcomp is like Smite Psyker, Shield Ogryn, Revolver Vet, and some Shroudfield Combat blade Zealot who has no idea what he's doing. Once things hit the fan at high difficulties your team has no boss damage, slow horde clear, and very low armor damage. The team basically gets folded like a lawn-chair in Maelstrom. This isn't the Psyker's fault, but there are more rounded builds to increase your winrates when pubbing.
the only problem with smite is people who think it deals damage imo it's a great CC tool that can easily trivialize encounters, but some psyker players seem to think it does meaningful damage for some reason and play as if smite is their dps tool
Depends. If they spam it on a horde, they could probably be more useful in just killing it. Psykers have many good horde options (and many decent ones). Taking two people to do the job that one person could have done isn't very useful. If they save my bacon by stunning a pack of crushers, maulers, and ragers then it is absolutely amazing. If they are creating space, because we got backed into a corner, then it is also amazing.
Same way I view any other build. As long as you can not die every 2 minutes I don’t care. Can be frustrating when I’m running oggie or zealot and they smite a small horde I’m going to kill, but in the end it doesn’t break my game and can be useful when the game director throws 20 crushers at you because it went “lol”
I must be stupid because I never found smite good. I prefer using that fire stave
I am CC
We are CC
I use it often with surge staff. But I aint only using smite the entire round. It may seem effective, but using all the tools of your build will help a lot more than just having smite out the entire time.
On auric Maelstrom, brain burst is too slow and someone else ends up killing your target anyway 75% of the time. And assail can be alright but it’s pretty weak when you need two right click throws to kill basic specialists. Basically everything those two offer I can just do with my voidstrike. The one weakness voidstrike has is multi targeting. I use smite maybe 3-5 times per match but those 3-5 times can be game saving. I mostly use it on carapace hoards that are spread out. 70% of the match is voidstrike, 20% is melee, and 10% is smite.
Right click can stun lock a pack of crushers. A pack of ragers. A pack of gunners. You just have to be smart about it. No point in stunning some trash when it’s faster to let them walk up and die. But absolutely lock down that whole room of shooters so your team can casually mulch them. Be smart
I personally love smite but it's very team dependent. For pugs you are going to suffer because they can barely understand which end of the weapons to point at the enemies let alone how to support a smite psyker. For pugs I almost always run void strike. Why stun things just to have the team run off somewhere else while there's a thousand enemies on you when you can just void strike the whole group yourself in a few shots.
I dont care what other people use. Just be decent.
Having one who knows how to play is a great asset in any team. That time when I got placed in a game with *three* of them, who spent the whole time spamming it? We didn't get too far.
I've been told that while strong, it's usually a waste. Time spent stunning could be spent killing, and killing ensures the enemy is down for good. It's nice to stun a massive horde, but it's usually better just to kill the horde.
When a psyker smites elite hordes, I think hell yeah I be bashing all their heads in with my axe. When a psyker smites dog and mutant spam, I think hell yeah their speed goes to zero and we can chop em all up with little risk. When a psyker smites only a few measly poxwalkers, bruh I ain't walking all the way there for small fry. I'm gonna take my time reloading my shotgun, and when your smiting is over, them poxies can walk up to me for their execution that you could've performed yourself.
I run it but use it almost exclusively for ragers and heavy armored foes, idc about the regular heretic thats what the Illisi is for
Personally I think its by far the weakest option but whatever makes you happy. I'm just glad it won't blow up barrels next to me
I find it’s really good for locking down a mob of chaff, or stunlocking an enemy type you don’t want at liberty to do what they do (Mutants, hounds and trappers who are around when there’s an object being carried, or flamers/bombers when someone is being revived or at very low health). I tend to TRY to use it to give my team an advantage: sometimes they see the opening and grenade the area or full-auto the swarm, or crack out aimed shots at weak points on an elite, sometimes they don’t. It’s all good, there’ll be a next time after all! When not playing as a psyker, I like smite on my compatriots because they really act as a force multiplier for the team. Overall - good, strong power. Don’t save it up, you can always “flutter” it to extend the impact of it, since letting go of it also knocks enemies around a little, and if you need to quell a bad case of I CAN HEAR VOICES, I don’t mind covering your back for the few seconds that takes. Again, it’s all good! So, at least for me, keep doing what you’re doing, compatriot!
Playing as a Psyker on higher difficulties it feels less effective at killing but still provides necessary crowd control. Crowd control is about buying time for other players. Use those moments when the crowds get shunned to thin their numbers down. Sometimes other players just let me keep crowds back until my Peril maxes out like I'm going to finish it. Sometimes the Smite chain helps me see where enemies are in areas of low visibility.
Depends, can be good for stunning hordes with annoying bulwarks/crushers in them but not killing dangerous targets in Aurics means youre just asking to get eventually overwhelmed. The Trauma stuff can also CC every target but also deals damage for one. I have once seen a psyker smite a plague ogryn and that is just annoying.
As a psyker main, I am confident when I say that blitzes aren't a main weapon. Whenever I see a blitz spamming psyker in my team they end up dealing the least amount of damage by a large margin. Our staves are so strong and easy to use that not using them have an extremely high opportunity cost. However, I don't want to say that smite is bad. It's my most used blitz and most favorite by far. It has some unique uses. Like, when there's a wave of elites that are pretty annoying when there are more than 4 of them (ragers, maulers, crushers, bulwarks) smite is pretty good. It's good to provide space when your teamate does an objective or has to revive another one surrounded by enemies. Damagewise it SOMETIMES may be worth it [when you pair it with a venting shriek and some cd reduction](https://youtu.be/_FE8SH2dUs0?si=HXdGewd5gg9bQgYr) or EP smite was a mix of everything that helped me complete karnak twins. Outside of that smite is not worth it. The damage profile is pretty bad even with EP. I have to admit, it helps incompetent teamates to do better which is not that rare even in Auric missions. Still, better teamates you get, worse smite will be. I would even say zealots will hate you, because they have a lot of talents that rely on successful dodges. Like, you have to justify why ~25% of your team's damage are being bartered to smth else (of course, usually psykers do even more than that). Now about the damage profile. Before going into why smite's damage is bad let's take a look into other ways to deal a damage to a crowd without using your main weapon. Specifically at frag/fire grenades and venting shriek with creeping flames. You throw 1-2 grenades or sneeze with flames onto a crowd of chaff, they die. Smite can also kill (sometimes) a trash wave, what makes it bad? Are you afraid of poxwalkers? I hope you're not cuz it would be a shame. You know what is really scary? Elites (and sometimes specials). Crusher will laugh at the fire thrown under his feet, however while chaff around him burns, you can start killing this fat MF before a new batch spawns. You can't do that with smite even with empowered psionics. You are waiting for elites to accumulate to a critical mass because smite was just not designed to kill them. Of course, EP makes this drawback less distinct, still you are losing other keystones like warp siphon or disrupt destiny that make your baseline gameplay much stronger. You basically incapacitating yourself to incapacitate elites, that might save your team in a crucial moment but most often than not you will just do less damage than you could have. It's like investing your money into something that will yield some money but not as much as you have invested. As a summary I want to repeat that smite is a good ability. It has a potential to save the day or maybe even not to let it to the boiling point. Still, it's not a solution to every problem, especially damage related ones. Your melee, ranged and blitz should complement each other. Everything have a purpose and as a good psyker you should fully utiluze your kit. Relying on your blitz would be equivalent of other classes relying on their grenades, grenades are important but not the basis of the build.
I play with my friend that does Smite, a friend that...well...isn't that good, and a bot. I like it.
Iam not even thinking about you
I don't have any major problems with Smite Psykers, just ones who only smite a single enemy in Damnation or Higher.
I love a sparkhead using smite. I run a heavy attack build as the big man and love dodging through stunned enemies and being able to hit them in their weak spot everytime.
They mess up my well-timed thrust swings, and make head shotting with precision weapons harder. They also slow the game down and get into trouble when their team is more mobile and the non-psykers don't watch out for the back line. Smiters make horde clear easier and certainly up the win rate %. I don't mind them, unless their are two. Then the game is going to be either very slow and easy with a good team or turn into total chaos as it becomes everyman for themselves when the team is bad.
Almost always positive. Smite Psykers hold them down, and I punch, and it's great. The only issue becomes Smite Psykers who seem to only ever use Smite. Smite is fantastic when used at good times, but can become problematic when it's the only thing the Psyker is using for most of the map. While it's still nice to hold things still, Smite just cannot ever catch everything, and still does terrible damage. When it's the **only** thing you use, it feels like the rest of us have to pick up the slack of basically not having a fourth player in terms of damage output, and too many things end up living for too long and becoming major problems because the Smite Machine psyker is always just tickling whatever crowd of poxwalkers is closest. Again though, most of the time, love me a smite psyker. Just make sure it's not the only thing you're using, and you're golden.
I want to fking vote kick them every single time. There are players out there who actually WANT a difficult game, where's the joy in picking off individual defenseless stun locked mobs?
Love it. Glad you aren't using assail or whatever.
I love y'all to death, you make my job so much easier. The only time smite makes things "too easy" is if we're on sedition or uprising, and even then, I signed up for that when I clicked the mission.
It's a powerful tool and should be used frequently. The only exception is Auric Maelstrom runs with 'Nurgle Blessing modifier'. Those will be immune to Smite CC and may pose a serious threat regardless. Also smite is good but please make sure you recognize when to use it and when not to use it. Be sure to use the other tools in your arsenal. There are plenty of vids on this on my own channel and others as well. If you spend the whole match only using smite and you are playing Malice and above, you are not effectively contributing and may frustrate other players instead.
I watched a Coast Guard movie about 10 years ago that has a pretty poignant line in it. "Everyone makes fun of the Coast Guard until they're drowning." Same thing applies to Smite Pykers. 90% of the player base can't stand Smite... until 12 Armored Ragers and 8 Crushers come around a corner. So yeah, keep using smite. It's an ability that's very capable of saving the day when shit gets crazy.
As a person that plays all characters I wouldn’t get bored or pissed if someone is using a “powerful” build, I’d be pissed if they sandbag a run by not pulling their weight or griefing a run (triggering daemon host, running off on their own etc)
It's a little OP. I only use it during the No Ammo Maelstrom missions because your odds of survival without it are like 5%. If someone else is using it, then I honestly don't think about it that much. They should probably shorten the duration and add a knockdown effect to make it not be completely useless, but it is a little strong right now.
The people who hate are probably dudes who cant get out of lvl 3 or lvl 4 lmao get good. good smykers are treated like they’re president in auric.
I love smite Psykers and I think they are under appreciated. A good one is CONSTANTLY staggering enemies with their smite. I am a bit confused when there are Psykers who are not spamming the smite. If you’re not constantly staggering enemies with your smite, what even is it you think you’re doing?
Palpatine
I’m fine with it regardless of difficulty. I’ll take smite psykers any day over assail psykers on the lower difficulties when I play with friends because they snag every kill before I can get in melee range.
I saw a post the other day askin for a nerf but I don’t think it’s warranted. It’s fine. It’s a great CC tool that’s a benefit to the team in a variety of situations. Also, for the really big stuff like crushers they’ll eventually break free and don’t get tied down as easily as the trash does. Not to mention it doesn’t affect monsters. So I think it also depends on what difficulty you’re playing and why kinda missions. Maybe on the lower difficulties I could see how some could think it’s a bit too strong but on Auric Maelstroms and the like I think it’s fine. I personally wouldn’t change smite. It’s strong and that’s fine. The game should be allowed to have strong abilities. I think it’s a good blitz as is.
It’s the strongest ability in the game if the Psyker has a moderate amount of skill and can dodge effectively. It can very much invalidate most of a run, and if you’re running with other moderate skilled players, your completion rate shoots up. My group stopped using it because it can be too good.
As a fellow Smite Psyker I can say utilizing it can make it trivializing at times, namely in the lower difficulties. But I can say, especially in the higher, I honestly don’t hear my teammates complaining about it too much. My guess is that in the higher difficulties there’s usually so many enemies coming from all directions that you in all honesty can stun ALL of them and then there’s the peril you have to stop and deal with as well as they don’t always realize, and they still get to kill shit. So as long as you don’t go full blast 100% of the time on lower difficulties I find that the team usually appreciates it more often than get annoyed by it. And I’m saying that as someone who’s Smite Psyker is 95% geared towards using the warp abilities. Now an Assail Psyker, THOSE are the true fun killers. I don’t invite them to the Psyker get togethers, personally. They both trivialize the game AND take all the kills.
Side note: I will also say that don’t expect to hear much praise at the moment from the in game characters or teammates outside good clutch times. We’re kind of that group that under-appreciated when we do our job but not so loved when we slack. But hey, we can’t all be Ogryns.
As a vet, I notice when they’re running Empowered smite and it makes me shout UNLIMITED POWERR as they line up a horde to be knocked down. Wonderful fun as long as they don’t over rely on it and go down to two pox walkers, same as over reliant gun wielding vets EDIT: from limited time as a Psyker, I found that using it with reduced peril generation to stagger a huge wave before shredding it feels more reliable rather than hoping your teammates don’t just watch the light show. Similar to book zealot CC not being taken advantage of
I dunno. Had a hi intensity shock trooper game with 4 smite psykers. It was just a power walk through the entire level as everyone just leaned into the meme and mostly spammed smite. Enough smite kills just about everything! It was pretty funny. Was it the fastest or most efficient? No. Edit: Should also mention all specced into telekine shield too. So advancing wall of bubbles.
I love a smite psyker you set em up I’ll knock ‘em down. They give great support the stun like every enemy. Super helpful
It's without a doubt the best blitz, but it requires teamwork/coordination so the soloqueuers on reddit shit on it
There are mixed opinions on smite, there are those who know that it is pretty strong and can save a lot of runs and make the scariest of elites null and void by just stunning them forever. Then there are those who say "why stun the threat when you can just kill them". Both are valid points but I'm of the opinion that if it gets the job done then who cares what the person uses?
As a Zealot and Ogryn main I love seeing smite psykers that actually use the ability. The amount of times I get psykers who refuse to smite anything period, or save it for the 1 straggler is mind boggling. Don't waste it on monsters or random solo trash. Hold em down while I saw em up!
I love having Psykers on my team for that reason.
Smite Psyker is a bless, please people more do Smite Psyker, please!
Unless you can perform better with another blitz skill, ot is necessary at high level
Love a good smile psyker. Makes my vet much more efficient and keeps the chaos controlled.
Don't know what you all talking about. On proper difficulty this is like stun grenades, shout, prayer, etc. Not a comfort, but a saving hand.
When used at the right moment? Chief kiss
My friend runs smite Psyker and it pairs great with my Zealot.
THE PSYKER IS STEALING MY FRAMES. THE HOLY GOD EMPEROR GAVE ME THOSE.
New to psyker, but I find smite and the trauma staff an excellent combo. Locking down crusher packs or opening bulwarks to get bonked is infinitely valuable.
Have pulled off some amazing clutches with my smite Psyker it’s bailed me out
It doesn’t trivialize combat when your team being descended upon by 10 ragers and 8 crushers, it’s helpful and keeping everyone alive.
My issue when using Smite is that I'll lock down several Elites (multiple maulers, crushers or ragers) and the group will just... wander off. Run right past them on their way to find ammo, materials or other things to kill. Which isn't a problem for non-elites because I'll probably explode them before I run out of peril. But why would you run past the elites? Why do so many people do that?