Designated Marksman (Autogun)
Build for Darktide

Versatility is the name of the game for me here, this build is somewhat specialized but it should have enough tools to get you through most situations. If we treat skill as a spectrum, this build is probably somewhere in the middle when it comes to its skill floor, it takes some getting used to, but you don't need to be a pro CSGO MLG, champion with IRL firearms handling experience to make the most out of this build. It's focus is on Special hunting, you use this to hunt down grenadiers, disablers, and flamers with extreme prejudice. As a bonus you also get a flexible Counterfire + Marksman's Focus build. This build also works well with the Columnus, and the Graia Infantry Autoguns, same caveats below apply to these. The Agrip works best out of the three with the Columnus in a close, competitive second place. As for your melee weapon, the Rashad is preferred but it can be substituted by any of the others, go for Antax only if you don't have a choice, prefer it, or want better horde clear. "Why Marksman's Focus though OP, isn't it shit?" See the relevant section below Mr. Strawman, in usual FS splendor the talent tooltip doesn't tell the whole story, it's magnitudes better than what most people assume it to be.

Auric-Tested and Approved or your money back! 
-Some Sweaty Weirdo

Buyer Beware: You will need a God Roll Infantry Auto Gun (IAG) for this build. Not mandatory for your Combat Axe (CAxe), but ideal.

Desired Stat Distributions in order of Preference on the IAG:

1. 75+ Damage and Stopping Power, Non-Negotiable. Too many breakpoints depend on these. The stagger bonuses from Stopping power will help protect you from Ragers and Maulers.

2. 70+ Stability, if you're good enough you can probably make 60-70 work, but below that you're just gimping yourself. It can work, but mid to long range engagements will be rough, and will likely instill bad recoil management habits in you as you learn the weapon.

3. 70+ Ammo, the higher the better, but if you're a good shooter you can settle for 60-70 if it's on a perfect or near perfect 80-80-80 roll (DMG-StP-Stab).  

4. 60+ Mobility is ideal, the higher the better, but optional, anything above 30% is usable. But beware when practicing with treating your ranged weapon as your primary during movement, low stats here can hurt you in the survivability department as this lowers the number and range of dodges. All Veteran players should chant the following mantra every waking day of their lives even after they've stopped playing the game: "Mobility is Love, Mobility is Life, Fire and Maneuver!" Problem is though that surviving is pointless if you can't reliably aim at, and quickly kill the enemy while having enough ammo to do so. A stat needs to be the dump stat because vidya game, and this is the only one that doesn't help you put things down faster soo. . . . 

All stats are important, ideally you want them all as close to 80 as possible, but we're talking gacha game odds at that point, and you should respect your own time even if the Obese Fish, aka Fat Shark, aka the dev studio doesn't.

For your CAxe:

1. Damage + Penetration, 70+, non negotiable these keep the bad things off you, penetration, as the word suggests (no not that kind you freak), is important in making sure you can deal with carapace and flak armored threats. Don't settle for anything lower, if you can afford the expenditure to get a better roll of these stats, even if it's a 1% to 5% difference without too steep a compromise in other areas, do so.

2. Finesse, 50+ if you need to compromise, 70+ is preferred. This one influences your Weakspot DMG and Attk Speed. Both very important in a melee weapon, especially for Horde Clearing, and Elite dueling. But it should only be prioritized at the same tier as the above if this is a primary weapon in a melee build, this is a ranged build. If you need to settle for a low stat here, make sure the All or Nothing and Brutal momentum blessings are III or IV at least, their bonuses at these levels will mitigate the shortfalls in this stat by focusing your set up on burst DMG if you have one with a high First Target stat (65+) as a compromise. If you end up picking Precision Strikes over any other talent, consider replacing All or Nothing with Limb Splitter so you can can drop Ragers and Crushers a bit faster if you're forced to duel them, but you do note that you lose versatility and horde clear here.  

3. Mobility 70+, Try not to compromise here if it's an option. Contrary to popular perception, actually treating this stat as a dump stat is a good way to be that one Veteran that keeps getting dropped right in the starting portions of runs, and then ragequits at a terrible time for the team after their nth down. Especially if you're insane enough to settle for a low Mobility Power Sword. This stat affects your sprint speed, but more importantly also affects your dodge counts and distance. Why #3 then? Because you can't dodge or sprint away from the enemy forever, you will eventually need to CLOSE WITH AND DESTROY THE ENEMY. Regardless of whether its a simple Poxwalker horde or a wall of Ragers, Crushers, and Maulers supported by Bulwarks, Flamers, and Grenadiers. You will need enough DMG to take at least a few of them down to make sure the Zealot can clutch the match, or maybe you, who knows, you might be more soaked in sweat than me after all, it's a big world.

4. First Target, unless you want make a Burst DMG CAxe or are forced to settle for one this is your dump stat. It gives your first attack, light or heavy bonus DMG, Helpful for getting Brutal Momentum going, or building stacks of any of the X on Hit/Kill blessings. "But OP, what about the DMG?" Look, Strawman, what's the point of having a bit of oomph at the start of the fight if you don't have it in the places that will get you through it? Think boy, think!
 

Talent Breakdown:

Offensive
- Deadshot + Killzone or Opening Salvo + Longshot: These talents will be your baseline sources of DMG, the 0.25% Stam Regen node, and your curio Stam stats will help manage your Stam when using Deadshot, but you need to carefully manage your shots. Stick to 3 to 5 round bursts, do not mag dump unless desperate. Keep sprinting to a minimum, sprinting on 0 makes little to no difference in you move speed and prevents you from recovering stam you will need for the next fight. Infantry Autoguns have the inverse innate scaling DMG passive of the Lasguns where instead of gaining DMG the further out the target is you lose it, Longshot and Killzone will help you neutralize it and allow you to effectively engage far targets.
- Superiority Complex: let's you 1-shot Gunners and Ragers reliably, allows you to down reapers in 2 to 3 bursts (headshots), and gives you a fighting chance against crushers in a pinch.
- Tactical Awareness + Executioner's + Counterfire + Relentless + Always Prepared: This is your vanilla Counterfire core talents. Tactical awaresness increases the up time on your ult, and therefore ups your TTK in general cause more temporary DMG buffs most of the time kill faster than temporary DMG buff some of the time. Don't be afraid to spam your ult, judiciously of course, but still, be liberal with it. In low visibility stages don't hesitate to use it to anticipate ambushes or located patrols. If you hear audio cues for Special spawns, don't pop it immediately, only do so once you hear the audio of the special(s) in question approaching. The AI director seems to actually spawn specials only a few seconds after their spawn audio cue plays, (tinfoil hat on) probably to troll players and bait out Executioner's Stance (tinfoil hat off).  
- Marksman's Focus + Marksman: don't worry too much about managing stacks, contrary to most people's impressions of the keystone talent in question, the rate at which stacks drop is surprisingly generous. You can in fact move while engaging targets, provided you're not having latency issues and it's associated hit registration issues, or just straight up suck at putting rounds on foreheads even in Executioner's Stance. Nothing inherently wrong with these, no one's perfect. You don't need to bother managing stacks or even maintaining them between fights, they build quickly enough that you will always max them out pretty quickly even in short fights.

Defensive
- Confirmed Kill + Iron Will + Close Order Drill: These are core defensive talents, none of your builds should go without them even if you're Chuck Norris. These will keep you from spontaneously combusting when the director decides to play grab-ass with you with melee chaff and Ragers. They will not save you from Maulers and Crushers, nothing other than dodging, the power of God and Anime, and smart positioning can. 
- Frag Grenades + Demo Team: This is your get out of jail free card, only use it to disengage, are about to be overrun, or if you get caught out in the middle of a full reload against something you can't deal with your CAxe. Why not Krak Grenades? Death and Taxes, Vet is too poor to afford much else.
- Get Back In the Fight + Determined: These, along with the Executioner's combo above will allow you to flex into anti-ranged. These talents should be as core to any build as Iron Will + Close Order Drill, but the taxes to pay for them are too damn high so it's only viable to take with Executioner's based Marksman Veteran builds.

Utility
Lol, Lmao even. Will put something in here when FS decides to stop treating the Veteran like a Californian/New Yorker without even bothering to give him the quality services and utilities (spare points) the taxes should otherwise afford him. If the planets align and we get this, stuff like Enhanced Target Priority, Field Improvisation and/or Charismatic would actually be part of this build. But this is not the case, so those will catch dust in the bin until another major balance patch comes around. We'll see if FS resolves the problem (lol), makes it worse, or decides to troll us Vet players harder and remove Iron Will 'cause fuck strong, independent Veteran Marksmen that need-no Ogryn to take care of them.

Don't have a God Roll IAG, I gotchu fam! Here are some casino tips to get you one:

- Games as a live service are bad for you, go play something else while you still can. Unless you're here from a Gacha game or a Riot game. . . just stay away from the cosmetic shop you poor bastard, and don't go back. If you're sticking around, read on. 

- Save up 2 to 4 million credits before going to Brunt's Pachinko parlor to get your hands on your 380 Agrip/Columnus IAG. Ignore the price stickers, and treat this as the default price tag for any greys rated at 375+.

- Get the Buy Until Rating Mod on Nexus if you value your own time and set it to stop when a 380 drops in its settings, then go make yourself a sandwich, watch your favorite vtuber vods, nature docs, paint dry or whatever tickles your fancy while you wait. 

- Only bother going for a Graia if you're a contrarian hipster, or is what you have on hand already and can't afford going for one of the other two yet. If you're going for it, only go for a God Roll or at least 450+ in rating after full upgrading + blessing and perk modifications if you don't have access or want a God Roll Columnus/Agrip IAG.  

- Don't throw out useless copies below 350 rating, instead throw out ones between 350 and 377 that don't have the stat the distributions you need/want. You use the ones at 350 and below to upgrade them up to gold to farm lvl III to IV blessings. Why? Because lower rating weapons are cheaper to upgrade. 

- For farming mats run vanilla T5 quickplays if you want to have fun (Terms and Conditions Apply), the loss rate you'll accrue in Auric is not worth the quickplay bonuses there, and your time. Also, as far as I'm aware, it has identical drop rates and rewards as regular T5s(Citation Needed). Even if this isn't the case, success rates in vanilla T5 will still be enough to make up for whatever differences. Especially so if you're a twat and decide to destroy other people's playthroughs trying to speed run Hab Dreyko for da lootz. Don't be a dick, get on the Darktide discord and set up a loot crew to do these runs, it will improve your success rates, and resource gains. Also, you won't be blocked by half the game's playerbase by the time you start playing real runs. Barring that, be an adult (or a mature kid) and just ask people in the lobby if they're comfortable with focusing on farming mats, most of them are probably there for the same reason anyways if they're QPers or on vanilla T5 Hab Dreyko.

- Once you have 1 to 2 established Auric-Tested and Approved (TM) build(s) you're comfortable and proficient with, whether it's one of mine, others, or your own you won't need to do any of the min-maxing nonsense in the above point anymore. Especially once you get good enough to carry and clutch Auric T5s. Then you can just focus on enjoying the game and challenging yourself. You'll be amassing inane amounts of resources by then, and you'll have room to experiment and to continue farming blessings. Do note this will only be the case if you're not constantly hitting Brunt's Pachinko Parlor and Hadron's Slots willingly. If you are, you should get a therapist and drop the game, because you have a problem. Stop it, get help. Meanwhile, get on the FS forums to bitch about the garbage crafting with the rest of us no-life sweatlords. #BreaktheLocks

Mechanical Caveats and Tips:

- This is a headshot build, Sustained Fire and Punishing Salvo blessings are mandatory. Treat the weapon as though it was a battlerifle. The Agrip's recoil pattern is generous, and manageable enough that getting full bursts into foreheads is actually pretty easy and reliable, even against mutants, once you learn the weapon. Use 3 to 5 round bursts of disciplined fire, and avoid mag dumping as it's a waste and won't do much DPS-wise. The blessings and their effects are dependent on burst firing. You lose out on their bonuses through sustained automatic fire, but you can still proc them if you slow things down and fire the weapon as though it was a single shot semi-auto instead of bursts. Especially useful against far off snipers and shooters/gunners/reapers while in Executioner's stance. It's a given, but worth noting that its fine to go for center of mass on distant targets, most threats other than high threat melee elites will go down with 2 to 3 bursts in these cases. Maybe even 1 if you're running the Kill Zone talent and engage at the right distance.

- If you can't get used to it or don't like the Agrip IAG, consider switching over to the Columnus IAG, and changing either Demo Team or Counterfire to Precision Strikes if you're willing to lose some versatility. Same blessings as the Agrip, X on kill blessings are not worthwhile on any IAG, and will only limit your DMG potential due to proc duration rarely surviving reloads or interruptions, and going for fast reload talent pick stacking will only mean you lose out on better sources of DPS or will need to sacrifice survivability talent picks that are a must if you intend to take any build to Auric missions. The Hit and Run blessing is worthwhile even with the Get Back In the Fight + Determined talents in a build. A worthy pick if you plan on play aggressively with this build (look at-chu Mr. 8 Inches!~) but do note that your TTK, and breakpoints will suffer. Try it if you're up for the challenge, it works but it's not optimal. 

- Only stay in ADS to fire shots, go in and out of it as needed to acquire targets. Do not scan for targets while in ADS. It's harder to do outside ADS, but if you get good it'll do wonders for your situational awareness and target ID skills even if you don't use this build. When you get good enough you'll be able to even pick out grenadiers, snipers, and trappers inside hordes or in pitch black levels without even having to spam tag. Don't stop tag spamming though, it helps the team if you're not being too obnoxious about it.  

- Using your melee weapon as a primary for movement is valid, but if you're patient and your team isn't speed running it's better to treat the rifle as a primary, switch speed shouldn't be a concern even with a CAxe, and as you grow proficient your ability to react to surprise special mob spawns will be unparalleled. Ideally, as you learn maps you'll get a feel for when and where to stick to your melee or ranged weapon as a primary. 

- Learn to use the special attack with the CAxe, it will allow you to reliably duel Ragers once you learn it, alternate between special strikes and Heavies or light strikes. Pop a grenade, and mow them down (disciplined fire) if you're dealing with multiple though.

- Brutal momentum on the CAxe is mandatory, this is your defensive horde clear. It's fine to contribute when, and where needed, but with this build your job is to maintain overwatch for your team's melee specialists and bail them out from whatever clusterfuck they get themselves into. This is not a horde clear build.

- Consider running the third person and weapon customization mods, not mandatory, but they will do wonders for your situational awareness, and your teammates will accuse you of aimbotting. Meanwhile assholes will keep coming to the forums to bitch about these and other mods cause your numbers are bigger than theirs, or you stole the one trapper kill that definitely wasn't about to net them (the dipshits probably run the scoreboard mod too anyways, lol).

- On Crushers and Maulers, Take Heed Brave Veteran Player! You will not Duel Crushers and Maulers, nothing but the God Emperor's Mercy will allow you to tank a hit even if you stack all the HP and Toughness in the world. Your CAxe will allow you to survive them, if you're good enough you can kite them to death, but if you have a functional team they shouldn't be a concern. (Disclaimer, some buffs like Duty and Honor's modifier node may help you survive when stack, -ish. Don't bank on it, it's a gamble with worse odds). 

Newbie tips: 
- Learning by drowning in the deep end is perfectly valid, just make sure your teammates consent. Let them know they're fucked if they think you can hold a flank against an Auric maelstrom special wave before they have to find out the hard way. Communicate.
 
- You've probably noticed by now that the AI likes to fuck with you, especially when you're not surrounded by friendlies or have an ogryn/zealot willing to babysit you. Don't take empty rooms for granted, you ever seen the idle animations for tanks in RTS games? You know, where they keep sweeping their guns around, slowly, 180 degrees wherever they're facing? Looks and sounds goofy, but it works for situational awareness in any and all first person games. Do that shit and you'll be less likely to get shanked by a corner camping Rager. Sweep around while moving, scan the room, and take mental notes of everything, and spawn points especially. Who knows, you may be full on grenades when you firs spot them, but that grenade box you noticed may save the run when you're later forced to scramble back into the room after the rest of your squad's been annihilated, and half the map's at your heels. 

- Keep situational awareness, and don't drop overwatch guardsman. And turn around every so often! The AI director loves to spawn crap within 8m of you if you're on the edge of the team coherency,that is a flank or rear. Even if you're not the rearmost man, still turn around and make sure that the lonely sod there wasn't dragged off by something, or decided to get himself killed to forage for plasteel. 

- Unless your team is playing mario cart that run, take your time and avoid sprinting if you don't have to. Once you know maps well enough, and are playing with functional teammates or at least wholesome, fellow newbies you'll be able to breeze through stuff while rarely having to sprint around.

- Consider switching to a Shovel or a Sword if the CAxe isn't doing it for you. Do note you're sacrificing anti-Carapace/Flak/Maniac DMG for the sake of better horde clear. You'll still need to learn to use the special attacks on these too though. You need to learn to chain lights, special and heavy attacks to deal with any melee threats meaner than a pox walker, and to be able to parry Ragers with swords (it's the closest in the game to a hard counter against them). 

- This game has a lot of hidden mechanics, don't be afraid to experiment, and ask questions to fellow players in-game, or us sweatlords on social media, and the FS forums. 

- Can't emphasize this enough, so you get another paragraph, Git gud at melee! You will need to even if you don't use this build. Stop using Power Swords, and learn other melee weapons. Combat Blades make you more mobile, and therefore, survivable, remember the mantra. Swords, and shovels are more reliable for horde clear even without using Desperado and Trench Fighter Drill. CAxes are better at dropping things dead, and can flex into horde clear with the Brutal Momentum blessing. TacAxes are what happens when a knife and a CAxe love eachother very, very much and- anyways, they're not as mobile as knives, but they're more so than CAxes or Power Swords, and they may not kill or stagger things as good as CAxes but they kill better than knives and can actually stagger stuff (backstab-mercy-kill minmaxed MLG fuckery aside). Worth noting as well that their special attack, unlike Power Swords in general, will help keep you safe from the Rager that's been looking at you weird while panting suggestively from the corner of the room this entire time.

Thank you for Coming to my TedX talk. May many sexual partners of your preferred sex, gender and physical characteristics make your life more pleasurable, and meaningful for taking the time to read this. 

- Some Sweaty Weirdo