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Hi, I did search but didn't find a similar thread.
I was wondering what psychic powers people liked and what interesting synergies have you found?
I was going to use divination for my DAS RW army
Appreciate your input!

Divination: Prescience in a 50 man IG blob.

/game

Have you been finding the psychic powers having much of an impact?

Biomancy: This is the big one for Tyranids and Daemon Princes. It gives your Monstrous Creatures eternal warrior if you roll well on it, as well as increased toughness. This is a big deal. Note that the Endurance power can heal vehicles, and the Enfeeble power can cause S6 weapons to insta-gib MEQ. Hemmorhage is terrible and Life Leech is unreliable, however; rolling on Biomancy has its risks.

Divination is godly. You can do crazy stuff with it: deny cover saves against your high AP weapons, full BS overwatch melta heavy squads, twin-linked the weapons on your tanks, it's a defensive discipline but the possibilities are endless.

Pyromancy makes stuff go boom, I guess it works if you need a kill spell, but I don't know if its all that great compared to the others.

Telekinesis is weird, and you might not get the power that you want: you might instead get something really bad that you have no use for. Objuration Mechanicum can zap flyers in a pinch, mind you. And Gate to Infinity is pretty good in certain builds.

Telepathy has Psychic Shriek, which you can spam to kill units. Preferably combo'd with one of the Imperial Guard only powers to reduce their Leadership to 2, force the test, and autokill them. Most of the random powers suck, though. Except Invisibility and Hallucination, if you have a high enough mastery level to use them.

So divination seems like the best choice for a RW army

canadianguy wrote:
So divination seems like the best choice for a RW army

I'm not sure about that. Remember that with a pure Ravenwing Army pretty much everything is TL already (except for the grenade Launcher and the weapons upgrades on bikers) so Prescience isn't really as much of a boon to them as to other armies. I'm also not sure how well the random powers play with Ravenwing, Scrier's Gaze and Precognition aren't that good, Perfect Timing is somewhat aided by the biker's ability to maneuver around cover, Forewarning is negated by the biker's natural jink save, and you generally want to be charging rather than being shot then charged with ravenwing, so Foreboding isn't that great either. From Pyromancy, it does a decent job of augmenting your offensive capabilities, but its not something worth taking a Librarian for. That leaves Telekinesis and Telepathy. Telekinesis has more consistant random powers, but a worse primaris power. Telepathy has a better Primaris Power and some amazing random powers (if you have Mastery Level 2) but also some utterly horrible ones. I think it's something you'll have to experiment with if you are running pure Ravenwing (if you are running dual-wing or Power Armoured elements, however, Divination gets better since you can stick the Div librarian with an infantry unit, like devastators.

I personally like the combo of Prescience and Misfortune on the divination table, it's a great way to thin out units that you kill with volume of fire/attacks.

Let's just go through them shall we?

Biomancy:

Smite is pretty bad -- the ap 2 isn't enough to save it from being a subpar attack. Sure you might kill one terminator, but then again, you're wounding about 1.5 times at best against marines, so it's not really worth it.

Iron Arm, Endurance, Warp Speed: These have almost singlehandedly (exaggerating for effect) made Tyranids highly competitive again -- the sheer number of combat psychic MCs that Tyranids have is astounding, and any one of these powers (warp speed a little less so) makes any TMC hell to fight against. Iron Armed flyrants are not to be messed with. Daemon princes also get awesome with these, if you're willing to shell out like a third of your points to make him a psyker, alongside the required wings. He then becomes an overpriced hive tyrant, although with the black mace he's potentially better in CC than a flyrant with 2 TL devourers.

Enfeeble: Good for anyone at all. -1 S and T is money against basically anything in the game.

Life Leech, Haemorrhage: Better than Smite at least. I'm not sold on these, and I don't think tyranids can use them, but for some they'll be okay.

Thus, Biomancy is money in the bank for tyranids or any psyker that wants to see close combat.


Divination:

Prescience: You ever wanted guide? Here it is! It's technically even better than guide, as it affects CC attacks too. This is probably the biggest reason why Divination is great, because any psyker that can take divination will basically always have this power.

The other thing to notice is that every power except for misfortune is a blessing -- guess what can't be stopped by the nerfed psychic hoods now? Precognition is kind of out of place (you want it on a combat psyker), but the rest of the blessings are fine, apart from Scrier's gaze, which is a bit too situational. Misfortune is great too, basically a slightly different Doom. Cast it on Terminators and watch them weep.

Divination is generally seen as the best discipline, mostly for Prescience and the abundance of hard-to-stop blessings.

Pyromancy:

Stop. Drop and Roll. Other people have covered why Pyromancy (and basically all witchfire powers) are worse than just using normal special weapons, so I won't do that here. There are two interesting blessings, but with 4 attack powers it's probably not worth it unless you want to have the pyro flavor to your psyker, which is pretty gnarly nonetheless.

Telekinesis:

A grab bag of powers, mostly stolen from the vanilla SM codex (at least the famous ones).

Assail has got the weird strikedown rule, , but with assault 1 and no AP, I don't see anyone really taking this.

Three attack powers, so also a large potential for badness, and again the primaris is an attack, so you generally don't want to switch. Gate of Infinity is great when you get it, but you can't rely on it anymore, so you can't really build a psyker to get it and warp a unit across the board, unless you're C:SM.

I consider telekinesis to be not much better than pyromancy -- the few good powers you're not likely enough to get to make it be worth taking. I don't know any psykers who would take telekinesis over other disciplines.

Telepathy:

A primaris that doesn't suck, yet is an attack power! Yes, Psychic Shriek is actually an attack that isn't terrible -- primarily because it doesn't roll to hit, auto wounds regardless of toughness (providing they fail a Doom of Mal'antai leadership check), and prevents any armor and cover saves. In fact, looking at the Doom's entry, this basically is a targeted version of the Doom's effect, which people happily pay for.

Dominate:

Not bad, the unit will fail a leadership check eventually if they make enough of them, and one fail will mess up your opponent's plans for that unit.

Mental Fortitude:

Situational, but a nice blessing. I'd generally exchange for Shriek.

Puppet Master:

Also situational, but funny when it takes control of something with a big weapon. Still exchange for Shriek.

Terrify:

Oddly, this can affect Fearless models, but not models with ATSKNF. Yet another instance where Space Marines are just better (lol it will scare Deathwing Terminators but not Dark Angels Tactical Squads). I'd still change it for Shriek, as my meta is very power-armor heavy.

Invisibility:

I know a lot of people have gotten massive wins from this one spell -- it's a little unfair that it's so quality while many of the other non-primaris powers are situational. Makes any CC unit get into combat and slaughter things. If you get it, go crazy with it. Chaos Sorcerers like it, as they are generally strong enough to cast it, Telepathy is competing with biomancy for best sorcerer discipline, and CSM have a lot of units that have trouble getting into combat.

Hallucination:

Reminds me of psykotroke grenades on GK, with basically the same random application of silly effects that can cripple a squad if you roll right. Unreliable but funny.

Overall, Telepathy is a fine discipline -- the primaris is worthwhile, and there are some money powers here.


Conclusions:
Chaos Sorcerers aren't bad if they take any combination of Biomancy (don't exchange), and Telepathy (exchange if not invisibility or hallucination). There's a case to be made that this is just better than marking them at all, although MoN is good for T and MoS has some nice powers.
If you can take Divination, take it, take Prescience, enjoy your twin-linking(unless you already have it, like RegalPhantom suggests). SW Rune Priests may pass, simply because Jaws and Living Lightning are still probably better on the whole.
Tyranids want Biomancy like Doomrider wants cocaine.