Hitting at least 3 enemies with an attack, increases your damage by 24-36% for 3 seconds.
12-24% Rending on Enemy Weak Spot Hit for 3.5s. Stacks 5 times.
-8.5--5.5% Charge Time on Chained Secondary Attack. Stacks 3 times.
Gain between 3.5-5% and 14-20% Critical Chance based on current level of peril.
Warning: This build's foundation is the Surge Staff's secondary attack is coded as a Smite spell and benefits from relevant talents, once the interaction between it and Empowered Psionics is patched out I would look to other builds.
Mentality: As a Psyker you're a glass cannon that's easily overwhelmed, keeping your fellow rejects around is the key to your continued survival. Most of your squadmates can mulch lesser enemies with ease but quickly die to elites and specialists, your job is to prevent that from happening by killing them first.
Playstyle: You'll probably quickly notice your Surge Staff hitting a 3rd target if you have Lightning Storm, this is gravy but not what we're here for. No, instead we want big E levels of single target damage and Empowered Psionics provides that with +125% damage. This extra damage will allow you to 2-shot Crushers and 1-shot most other enemies. This is what the build centers around, and you should strive to always be in a position to benefit from this.
Fortunately, Empowered Psionics doesn't expire and isn't consumed when using your Surge Staff, so you just need to make sure you always have at least 1 stack of it to always benefit from it.
To keep yourself from running out of Empowered Psionics stacks you need to spend them wisely, here are some guidelines to get the most out of them. Cast Smite only under the following conditions:
If you have 0 stacks then you're not going to lose anything by casting Smite anyway, but the damage/peril ratio isn't great, so you should still adhere to these the best you can to get the most out of your peril.
Talents: The talents above your blitz are all pretty standard and can be swapped around but these work well in my opinion. I like taking Smite and the daughter talents because they compliment the Surge Staff's playstyle and at least Lightning Storm benefits the Surge Staff too even if It's not super high damage, I don't know if Enfeeble does too, but it's still worth taking on its own. Wildfire is great if you're taking Perilous Combustion and Creeping Flames, a good way to clear chaff while still focusing on your primary targets. Psykinetic's Aura is a great way to get lots of combat ability casts, as you should be killing plenty of elites and specialists. Any of the 3 auras work well with this build, but I've found Seer's Presence to integrate most seamlessly with my playstyle, to each their own. Of the combat abilities, only Scrier's Gaze is a bad choice, and that's simply because of how much peril you'll already be generating. Because your peril generation is in big easy to control chunks, you shouldn't be popping much, but I still like Venting Shriek with Creeping Flames just to keep enemies off of me a bit more. I could see a good argument for Telekine Shield into Telekine Dome and Sanctuary, but it just doesn't meet the needs of my playstyle, to each their own. Going down towards the keystones, I find Solidity to be great for quickly quelling all the peril I generate without slowing down my killing, but if you don't think you need it, then you could skip it in favor of defensive talents instead. Finally, for keystones, you have to go for Empowered Psionics and Charged Up to really exploit the cheese this whole build revolves around.
