Table Of Contents
Latest Updates
Special Thanks
Abbreviations and Words Used
Class Mechanics, Part 1
4.1 Kinetic Presence (Aura)
4.2 Brain Burst (Blitz)
4.3 Battle Meditation (Iconic)
4.4 Warp Siphon (Iconic)
4.5 Psykinetic's Wrath (Ability, a.k.a ult)
4.6 Peril and POW
4.7 Quelling
4.8 Channeling
Class Mechanics, Part 2
5.1 Soulblaze
Feats, Part 1
6.1 Tier 1, Level 5
6.2 Tier 2, Level 10
6.3 Tier 3, Level 15
Feats, Part 2
7.1 Tier 4, Level 20
7.2 Tier 5, Level 25
7.3 Tier 6, Level 30
Behaviour of Some Stats from Blessings
8.1 Blessings that grant +Power
8.2 Blessings that grant +Rending and Brittleness
Melee Weapon Blessings
9.1 Blazing Spirit
9.2 Decimator
9.3 Executor
9.4 Exorcist
9.5 Unstable Power
9.6 Superiority
9.7 Shred
Ranged Weapon Blessings
10.1 Blazing Spirit (Staves)
10.2 Crucian Roulette
10.3 Terrifying barrage
10.4 Warp Flurry
10.5 Warp Nexus
1. Latest Updates
Added information for Curio CDR with Quicken, thx Royale w/ Cheese
Released with testing done on patch 1.0.21
2. Special Thanks
Thank you for all the Psykers in the Official Darktide Discord #psyker-psykinetic channel, especially Pfhoenix, for discovering stuff and making good questions about what there is to find out about the class. Thank you also to Royale w/ Cheese and all their collaborators for this guide, which gave a lot of ideas for verification especially for the Psyker Feats.
There are still some open questions because not all the things can be tested as a solo player. If you are interested in doing some testing on your own and provide solid proof or are willing to join me for some testing sessions you will definitely get your name here.
3. Abbreviations And Words Used
Note that there are two things named as Psykinetic's Wrath. The class ability, as well as a feat. If not specified, Psykinetic's Wrath or PW is referring to the feat while ult is used to refer the class ability.
BB -> Brain Burst
FS -> Force Sword, more specifically the Obscurus Mk II Blaze Force Sword
LMB -> Left Mouse Buttom, primary fire
LOS -> Line of Sight
POW -> Perils of the Warp, the animation before self explosion
PW -> Psykinetic's Wrath, the feat one
RMB -> Right Mouse Button, secondary fire
4. Class Mechanics, Part 1
4.1 Kinetic Presence (Aura)
Research needed:
With multiple Psykers present, does the +10% bonus stack? If it does, then is it additive or multiplicative? Potentially additive IF it stacks.
4.2 Brain Burst (Blitz)
The base damage of BB is always 1k but it is affected by the enemy type.
LMB charging only needs LOS when acquiring the target.
You can always start to cast and finish another BB safely with LMB if you start at 97% peril or below.
Deals a fixed amount of damage regardless of difficulty or gear, affected by armour.
Always hits the enemy weak point.
After charging, the BB is cast with a 1 second animation lock before taking further actions.
RMB has a base hold cost of 9 peril/s after fully charged.
Table 1: BB base speeds and costs.
Version Charge time Charge cost peril/s Cast finish cost Total cost Total duration with cast LMB 2s 10% 25% 45% 3s RMB 3s 10% 25% 55% 4s
Table 2: BB type modifiers for enemies. Enemies not listed here are always 1 shot on Damnation except Monstrosities and Bosses.
Pox Hound, Mutant, Dreg & Scab Flamers, Bulwark, Reaper Dreg & Scab Ragers Crusher & Mauler 1 0.85 0.75
The currently known damage formula for BB is
damage = base_damage * type_mod * (1 + 0.03*warp_charges + 0.1*is_elite) * (1 + 0.15*has_cerebral)*(1 + power/100) where base_damage is always 1000, type_mod is from Table 2, warp_charges is the amount of warp charges on the caster at the time of finishing the cast, is_elite is 1 for elites and 0 for everything else and has_cerebral is 1 if the enemy has the Cererbral Lacerations debuff on them and 0 otherwise.
The formula was obtained by using BB with 0 to 6 charges on all the enemies and then using BB with 0 to 6 charges on the Mutant and Reaper with Cerebral Lacerations. Base damage and type modifiers were then solved in Julia 1.8.5 using Ipopt assuming the ui labels are always rounded up from the actual damage.
Research needed:
At times, BB rewards the warp charge even when reaching around half or more charge with LMB and someone else killing the target. What is the actual rule for this? Is it based on "would kill at this point" or charge %?
4.3 Battle Meditation
10% chance to quell 10% of max peril on any killing blow made by you.
This will take you out of POW.
4.4 Warp Siphon (Iconic)
Warp Charges have a duration of 25 seconds, duration resets upon gaining a new charge.
Warp Charges increase all damage you do by 3% per stack, including soulblaze.
All stacks are dropped when the duration runs out.
4.5 Psycinetic's Wrath (Ability, a.k.a ult)
The knockback/stagger effect scales with the amount of Warp Charges
The stagger is able to knock a dog off from a player even through most objects and walls.
Does not interrupt your actions, i.e. can be used while channeling or charging a spell.
4.6 Peril and POW The actual peril value is a floating point value under the hood while the UI is showing an integer value that is rounded up from the actual value.
Generated by BB, Staff primary & secondary attacks, FS special, FS push attack, Laspistol special
You do not immediately enter POW upon hitting 100% peril, you can "go over" without exploding depending on the source of peril.
You can exit POW by quelling during the animation. The currently available methods are ult and Battle Meditation passive for example by killing something with soulblaze during the animation.Common peril thresholds where it is still safe to cast:
BB at 97% or below
BB at 98% or below with 5 or more Warp Charges (Warp Battery) and Inner Tranquility
FS special at 99% or below (with any mediocre warp resistance on it)With staves, it's best to head out to the Psykhanium and test there as the Warp Resistance has a great effect in what is safe.
4.7 Quelling When you have not used a warp based attack for 3 seconds, you will start automatically quelling.
Non-force weapons auto quell much faster.
Automatic quelling rate depends on your peril amount, being fastest in the 50-30% peril range and slowest in the 30%-0% peril range.
Manually quelling is faster the longer it is done.
With 0 quelling speed (including BB hands and FS), a full manual quell from 100 to 0 takes 4 seconds and with 80% quelling speed it takes 3 seconds.
Staves have lesser movement speed penalty while manually quelling.Table 3: Approximate automatic quelling speeds and times
Weapon peril/s (100% to 90%) peril/s (90% to 50%) peril/s (50% to 30%) peril/s (30% to 0%) Total Quelling time Staves 2.4 2.7 3.3 1.3 48 BB hands & FS 4.1 4.4 5.5 2.3 29 Non-force weapons 8.1 13.0 14.4 7.7 10
4.8 Channeling Channeling BB is not interrupted by damage if you have toughness.
Channeling with Staves is always interrupted by damage unless you have the Focused Channeling Blessing.
Research needed:
Is BB channel interrupted by damage if damage if you have 0 toughness to begin with?
5. Class Mechanics, Part 2
5.1 Soulblaze Soulblaze lasts for 11 ticks, approximately 8.25 seconds. The tick interval is 0.75 seconds.
When expired, Soulblaze starts to wear off one stack of the time, each lower tier ticking for 1 tick.
Damage scaling is using the smoothstep (S1) function, therefore, the damage has approximately exponential scaling with low amounts of stacks, approximately linear scaling with 11 or more stacks and then approximately logarithmic scaling with 21 or more stacks.
Soulblaze damage is always calculated against the body armour, except for Reapers which count as Unyielding.
Critical hits apply double stacks with Purgatus and Blazing Spirit on FS, but not with Blazing Spirit on Void and Trauma.
The absolute maximum amount amount of soulblaze is currently extremely hard to verify, but it is potentially 31.
Soulblaze damage scales multiplicatively with the 10% from Kinetic Presence (Aura).
Soulblaze damage scales multiplicatively with the following perks: +melee damage %, +ranged damage %, +armour type damage %.
Purgatus staves can currently apply 1 stack more than what their burn % roll gives, but only if the last application is a critical hit. However, they cannot upkeep the extra stack.
Weapons cannot increase the amount of stacks on the target beyond their respective caps (excluding crit on Purgatus), however, FS with Blazing Spirit is able to refresh the duration and allow the upkeep of a greater amount of stacks they can apply.
Feats do not seem to have a cap for the amount of stacks they can apply. They are possibly limited by the max_stacks value.
For maximum damage with Purgatus using AB, you should first max out your Purgatus Soulblaze, then use your AB and continue hitting the target with Purgatus to refresh the duration of the greater stack count. This can only be useful against monstrosities and when killing mobs through crushers. Other targets die too fast for this to matter.Soulblaze has the following damage formula for base damage per tick:
max_stacks = 31 x = stacks/max_stacks base_damage = x*x*(3-2*x)*500 Reasoning:
This was hinted by the lua leak and was confirmed by using the Mutant in the Psykhanium, applying stacks from 1 to 22 and solving the max_stacks parameter from the arising non-linear problem with Julia 1.8.3 using the Ipopt solver. The calculations were done assuming the UI is always rounding up the damage values, which resulted in a perfect fit. In addition, an integer value from 0 to 31 can be perfectly represented with a 5-bit unsigned integer value without any wasted space, making it a reasonable choice due to netcode optimizations and a very likely candidate for the actual maximum stack limit for Soulblaze.
Table 4: Tick base damage per stack for Soulblaze
Stacks 1 to 5 1.53 5.97 13.14 22.83 34.83 Stacks 6 to 10 48.94 64.97 82.71 101.96 122.52 Stacks 11 to 15 144.19 166.76 190.04 213.82 237.91 Stacks 16 to 20 262.09 286.18 309.96 333.24 355.81 Stacks 21 to 25 377.48 398.04 417.29 435.03 451.06 Stacks 26 to 30 465.17 477.17 486.86 494.03 498.47 Stack 31 500 - - - -
Table 5: Very likely armour modifiers for Soulblaze
Unarmoured Infested Flak Maniac Unyielding Carapace 0.75 0.625 1 0.5 0.75 0.05
Therefore, the approximate damage formula for a soulblaze damage tick is:
max_stacks = 31 x = stacks / max_stacks base_damage = x*x*(3-2*x)*500 actual_damage = base_damage * armour_mod * (1 + 0.1*is_elite) * (1 + perk_1/100 ) * (1 + perk2/100) * (1 + 0.15*has_cerebral) * (1 + 0.03*warp_charges) * (1 + power/100) ui_label = ceil(actual_damge) where is_elite is 1 for elite enemies and 0 otherwise and has_cerebral is 1 if the target is under Cerebral Lacerations and 0 otherwise. The perk behaviour with Unyielding for +20% and +8% damages are slightly off (the calculated ui damage has a maximum error of 2 damage in the 1-12 stack range). Other than that the formula seems to check out, but it is not perfect yet. There is also a possibility that these perks are not functioning completely as they should as Mauler with +25% flak does follow the formula.
Reasoning:
The damage values obtained were assumed to be rounded up, that is, ui_tick = slack + modifier*base_damage, where slack is within [0,1], base_damage is known from the formula and the modifier was solved for the min (lower bound) and max(upper bound) assuming modifier >= 0 and fitting the data in Julia 1.8.1 using the Cbc solver. After the bounds were obtained, 'nice numbers' were picked from the available range since the values are chosen by humans and not a random event, taking into account the multiplicative scaling of the Kinetic Presence.
The ranges for the modifiers rounded to 3 decimals were, unarmoured 0.750 to 0.751, infested 0.624 to 0.628, flak 0.998 to 1.000, maniac 0.499 to 0.500, unyielding 0.750 to 0.750 and carapace 0.050 to 0.050. Currently all armour types were tested up to 12 stacks with the exception of Maniacs, Carapace & Unyielding up to 22 stacks.
The perk scaling was tested against several targets with different combinations of perks. Currently, Reapers seem to be slightly off from the formula when having a weapon with +20% unyielding and +8% elite damage perks. However, this can also be a bug related to one of these perks. The Cerebral Lacerations & Warp Charges testing were done against a Reaper and a Mutant with 1-12 stacks.
Research needed:
How does the Soulblaze from multiple sources stack? Regularly or is there another separate debuff per applier? Potentially just stacks regularly.
Further research needed for +% unyielding and +% elite damage effect on Reaper Soulblaze tick damage. It is possible that one or both of these perks has a minor bug and actually applies slightly less damage vs Reapers than they should. The formula cannot be stated as exact before unless it is a confirmed bug with a perk. The +8% elite damage is most likely the buggy one.
6. Feats, Part 1
6.1 Tier 1, Level 5
Essence Harvest
Works on gaining a Warp Charge from any source.
Does not stack but duration is refreshed.
Warp Absorption
Triggers off the following attacks:
Staff primary and secondary attacks
FS specials, push and push attacks
BBResearch needed:
Does it proc from the Heavy Laspistol push?
Quietitude
Converts half of the quelled peril by any means into toughness.
6.2 Tier 2, Level 10
Psykinetic's Wrath
Increases the damage of
Staff primary, secondary and special attacks
FS light, heavy and special attacksResearch needed:
Verify formula 5% + 0.1*current_peril
Inner Tranquility
Gives +24% peril resistance at 4 stacks.
Gives +36% peril resistance at 6 stacks with Warp Battery.
With 5 and 6 stacks, Warp Battery and Inner tranquility, BB can be safely cast 4 times and at started with LMB at 98% and below, up from 97% and below.
Wrack and Ruin
Will be triggered by Kinetic Flayer as well if it kills the elite/special.
6.3 Tier 3, Level 15
Psychic Communion
As the text states, can be triggered by any kill made by a player within your coherency, including self made kills.
Can be triggered by BB, which results in 2 Warp Charges.Research needed:
Stacking when multiple psykers are present.
Given the functionality is individual from BB, it is also very likely that this can proc together with AB on killing a Soulblazed target with BB to result in 3 Warp Charges, however, the probability of this occurring is 0.4%, therefore, the effect is quite insignificant even if it works.
Psykinetic's Aura
Works on elite and special kills despite the wording on it.
Triggers if the Psyker having the aura lands the killing blow.Research needed:
Verify that the 15% refund awarded for allies within coherency when the Psyker gets a killing blow on an elite or special.
Confirm if it stacks or not with multiple Psykers having this aura. Probably will not.
Will this feat trigger if another player makes an elite or special kill within the aura?
Cerebral Lacerations
Is triggered by the BB from Kinetic Flayer.
Will increase the damage of Kinetic Flayer BB by 15% if it procs from a BB on a fresh target.
The actual damage reduction is often less than 15% in total enemy health as you need one BB to apply the debuff in the first place. Lower HP enemies have negligible effect from this feat due to the requirement of landing a BB first.Only the following attacks are considered 'Warp' attacks for this feat and their damage is not boosted:
Trauma staff primary and secondary attacks
Voidstrike staff primary and secondary attacks
Surge staff primary attacksAny other attack not on this list will have their damage boosted.
7. Feats, Part 2
7.1 Tier 4, Level 20
Kinetic Deflection
Critical peril for this feat is 90%.
Does not stop automatic quelling, making this feat extremely strong in tanking melee hits with a non-force melee weapon.Research needed:
Verify peril cost formula: stamina_damage * 0.25 / max_stamina
Kinetic Shield
Research needed:
Verify toughness reduction from all sources instead of just ranged damage.
Verify toughness damage reduction formula: 10% + 0.23 * peril%.
Mind in Motion
Completely removes the movement speed penalty when manually quelling.
Does not allow sprinting while manually quelling.
7.2 Tier 5, Level 25
Warp Battery
Changes the maximum amount of Warp Charge stacks to 6, things that scale with warp charges work as expected.
Kinetic Overload
The wording is misleading, the behaviour is 'in addition' not 'instead'.
Can only proc when enemies are within close enough distance of the Psyker.
Will proc the correct amount of times if you get multiple Warp Charges with a single attack. Research needed:
Verify range of 15 meters.
Kinetic Flayer
Does not generate any peril.
Does not stop automatic quelling.
Critical peril for this feat is above 97%.
Can be triggered by any attack that deals direct damage.
Can trigger on BB itself, essentially resulting in double damage, but it is hard to distinguish outside of The Meat Grinder as there will be no special visual effect.
7.3 Tier 6, Level 30
Quicken
Always refunds 3.75s of cooldown per warp charge.
Refunds 15s (50% of base) of ult cooldown with 4 stacks.
Refunds 22.5s (75% of base) of ult cooldown with 6 stacks.
The amounts refunded does not get reduced if wearing curios that affect the cooldown.
Ascendant Blaze
Always consumes all currently held Warp Charges.
Applies 1/1/2/3/4/5/6 stacks of Soublaze to all targets hit when consuming 0/1/2/3/4/5/6 Warp Charges.
The target does not have to be killed by the Soulblaze tick. It is sufficient that it is under the effect of Soulblaze when killed by the Psyker.
Killing a Soulblazed target with BB will result in obtaining 2 warp charges when this procs.
Gaining a warp charge from a Soulblazed target can proc for other psykers using AB as well, which at times can result in rapid stack gains especially with multiple Purgatus staves in the party.Research needed:
Does this proc when another psyker with AB kills a target that was not soulblazed by them?
Does this proc when another class kills the soulblazed target?
Kinetic Barrage
Actually increases charge speed by approximately 66%. Cast animation speed is unaffected.
Increases cast speed for all BB that start when the buff is in effect.
Reduces cast finish cost when the buff is active but not the cost of charging.
When beginning with RMB and switching over to LMB, there is a visual bug which causes the charge meter to jump but the rest of the bar will fill even slower, resulting in no difference to holding just RMB for the charging time.Table 6: Approximate KB BB speeds and costs.
Version Charge time Charge cost peril/s Cast finish cost Total cost Total duration with cast LMB 1.2s 10% 12% 24% 2.2s RMB 1.8s 10% 12% 30% 2.8s
8. Behaviour Of Some Stats From Blessings
8.1 Blessings that grant +Power Increases all damage you deal, including BB and Soulblaze.
8.2 Blessings that grant +Rending and Brittleness Causes your damage to be a linear combination of weapon base damage and the armour target in question.
In case your weapon and attack combination deals more damage to the armour type than what the base damage is, rending will cause you to actually deal less damage.
Brittleness is like rending but a debuff on the specific target instead of a buff on the player.
NOTICE: base damage is not unarmoured damage!Damage formula with rending:
damage = base_damage*rending_%/100 + armour_type_damage*(100 - rending_%)/100
9. Melee Weapon Blessings
9.1 Blazing Spirit Currently only available on FS.
Applies double the stacks on a critical hit.
The special attack will apply 16 stacks of Soulblaze on a critical hit even with a +2 stack blessing that has a cap of 10.
The proc is able to refresh the duration of more than 16 stacks of Soulblaze.
9.2 Decimator Works similarly to Shred, except it is not retained when swapping to your ranged weapon and it does reset on push. Please, see the entry for Shred.
9.3 Executor Will be retained when swapping to your ranged weapon.
Is not reset by a push from FS.
Is not reset by FS push attack.
Is not reset by missing a FS push attack.
Kinetic Flayer BB will increase the stacks when you are doing your attack chain.
FS special sets this blessing to 3 stacks on a weakspot hit if the target does not die prematurely and 4 if Kinetic Flayer BB procs as well. However, you cannot use this to continue an attack chain or to begin a chain.
Is not reset by ranged special attacks.
Only hits made while in chain count towards the buff, so you can miss with the first swing when stacking this up.
Is reset on light attack and heavy attack swing start when not in chain and by missing a weakspot with heavies or lights.
Soulblaze ticks will increase the stacks of this blessing as long as your last hit was a weakspot hit and you have your melee weapon out. Each tick counts as 1 repeated weakspot attack.Resarch needed:
Is this reset by combat blade special attack?
Is this reset by a combat blade push?
9.4 Exorcist Does not trigger on FS weapon special.
9.5 Unstable Power The blessing will be in effect even when not having the melee weapon active.
9.6 SuperiorityResearch needed:
Is this always active as well?
Does this trigger only from elites or from specials as well?
9.7 Shred Will be retained even when swapping to your ranged weapon.
The buff is reset whenever you swing with heavy, light, special or push attack.
Perfroming only a push does not reset the buff.
Ranged weapon special attacks will not reset the buff.
You do not have to hit the same target, it is sufficient that you hit something with repeated attacks.
Soulblaze ticks will increase the stacks of this blessing as long as your last hit was a connected hit and you have your melee weapon out. Each tick on a target counts as 1 repeated attack, so having at least 5 targets blazed will get you to max stacks with a single tick.
10. Ranged Weapon Blessings
10.1 Blazing Spirit (Staves) Only available for the Void and Trauma
Does not apply double stacks on a critical hit like the FS counterpart.
10.2 Crucian Roulette Gives 1 stack of buff for each 10% of missing ammunition in the magazine.
The buff is retained even when switching to your melee weapon.
10.3 Terrifying Barrage Overlaps with Purgatus staff Cloud Radius roll %, making it a bit redundant on it.
10.4 Warp Flurry Currently only works on the Void staff.
Requires releasing secondary attacks in quick succession.
Does not actually grant faster charge but instead grants you free charge % after charging for 0.2 to 0.5 seconds.
10.5 Warp Nexus The +X% max listed is the amount at max stacks (high peril) that you will get from this blessing.
Hard to verify if this works for melee or not since the amount is so low that hundreds of hits are required to verify. Given how Unstable Power works, it's likely that this provides a minor benefit to your melee weapon as well.Research needed:
Verify this works with melee while the melee is active.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2917274959
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