bananas zappy psyker
 Psyker Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

Some people were asking for my psyker build, so I figured I'd post it here to share easier. The main goal is to spam surge as much as possible.

First, the melee weapon:

Knife is currently the safest and fastest weapon. You can use whatever you want for the most part but this one lets you keep up with faster classes and is very good at escaping and making space so you can surge more.

Ranged weapon:

This is the bread and butter of the build, most of the talent picks revolve around it. You want to be popping specials and elites with ease for 80% of the mission. You want every stat on this thing with peril resist and quell speed being the lowest, as close to 380 stats as possible. Even crit is very useful, as crit is the difference between one hit and two on a lot of specials and elites. You need both blessings as they really push your dps, The maniac is good for letting you kill flamers in one charged surge with all your other damage buffs on, but it's not necessary. The crit is vital, there are so many things that die in one crit or two normal hits and that improves kill speed by a lot if you are surrounded.

Curios:

Just defensive stuff to attempt to not die. I find that very often with this build, you'll be in one of two states: full health or dead. The choices here increase the chances of there being an in-between by any amount we can. If you have a preference for something else, feel free to slot that in instead.

Blitz:

We go for smite for its insane ability to lock an entire horde down, even with elites mixed in, assail can't do that, even if it can clear faster. With our talent picks, you can channel this thing for ages, sometimes even an entire horde, in just one cast! I dont take the extra nodes as you just dont need them, this thing chains like crazy as standard, and that lets us pick up other stuff we want.

Ability:

We go for the shriek, nothing fancy here, we want to not use our ability at all really so you can pick any if you want, but this lets us not die if we accidentally go a bit too crazy with the lightning. We also don't need any of its nodes, as we will hopefully not need to cast it for the whole mission.

Keystone:

But why would we not want to cast our ability you ask? Well, obviously, because this keystone is crazy. As long as you don't use your ability you get these stacks up for the whole mission basically. Unlike just about everything else in the game, for some reason they only drop off one by one, so even if theres a bit of downtime, you can just kill one elite and they are back to full. What do they do, though? Oh, you know, not much; just give you 24% increased damage and 36% reduced peril generation. thats kinda crazy. Lets you hit some good breakpoints so you can oneshot a few things with just a single charged surge bolt and cast it way more till you need to vent. The only downside is that you lose all these stacks if you use an ability, so we just opt to not do that.

Other skill tree nodes one by one:

Quietude, warp expenditure, and soul stealer:

These are our toughness generators. Soul stealer gets you a decent chunk of toughness after every kill. If you wanted to drop something from here to move elsewhere, I would pick that. Quietude is pretty great and probably the best toughness generator psyker has, you are always quelling, and it vents extremely quickly. Warp expenditure is kind of a middle ground, for bosses or when using smite it this gives you a decent trickle of toughness, which can sometimes save your life.

Perfect timing:

This is just free damage, surge crits like crazy, and this gives you more damage, lets you kill a few things with a half charge instead of full if you have max stacks, and also kills ragers in one less charge. Also, unlike most stacking skills, this just triggers whenever you crit, the crit doesn't even have to connect with anything, so just shoot off random left clicks with surge whenever there's downtime to keep them up easily.

Battle meditation:

This is key for smite, it lets you channel it for an insane amount of time, combined with all the peril reduction, into a horde, as they will start popping eventually and triggering this. You can use a single smite to clear an entire horde in one channel if you are lucky, while also locking down any other stuff that got mixed in with it, like those pesky trappers and ragers.

Psykinetics aura:

Ok this is kinda useless for you as you don't want to use your ability, but it is super good for your allies. It is one of the best cooldown reductions in the game and keeps all your veterans shouts or zealots slealths topped up for any situation. If you really don't want to help others, you can go to the other side of the tree and take mind in motion, but it's really just kinda meh, you can already dodge while quelling, so the movement reduction is negligible, but hey, up to you.

Seers presence:

Ok I forgot to talk about the aura earlier, whatever, it's also useless to you. Read the previous paragraph as to what makes it good, but this time you have no selfish alternative as you want both the nodes below it and even if it does nothing they are so good it's worth it.

One with the warp:

This is your best damage reduction on the tree, and it lets you trade just about any ranged fight with ease, even if there's no cover in some cases. If you want to march towards the gunners instead of away, you need this beast.

Empathic evasion:

Same as the last one, you are basically impossible to pin down as long as you are surging, everything just losing tracking on you is so damn good, works on snipers and trappers too, so you can, in some situations, just completely ignore the three snipers targeting you to kill some gunners. Just remember, you have to keep critting, so if you are wondering why you are suddenly taking damage, it's because you haven't been hitting stuff or you don't have enough crit chance.

Puppet master:

You need to take this for your keystone. It's ok, it helps you give your allies that sweet cooldown from further away, but you won't really feel its impact.

Solidity:

This is awesome. It's a huge amount of quell speed, and you'll be doing that a lot. You are forced to take it for the keystone, but you'd take it regardless. It really helps with quietude to give you fast toughness regen and keep the dps going.

Warp rider:

More free damage, you'll be on high peril a lot, and it helps you kill a couple things faster (especially if you have no perfect timing stacks).

Kinetic deflection:

This is a must take, it basically gives you infinite block. Some people see that and go, "I'm a psyker; I dont need to block." I slap those people and remind them all the times they've sprinted up to someone and tried to revive them only to get hit once and cancel the revive then die. It's just so useful in any situation where you get overwhelmed. You can push as much as you want, and you don't have to worry about running out of stamina. You can sprint right into things and block without worry; it's also super useful if you get boss agro, even letting you block demonhosts long enough for people to save your ass. Please take it.

Small nodes:

+45 toughness worth:

One of these you might be tempted to drop for something that looks more fun, but you really need it in any drawn-out gunner fight. Highly recommend.

-15% peril generations worth:

Lets you spam even more surge or smite, very nice. You will lose one of these if you go the selfish route and drop psykenetics aura.

10% toughness replenishment:

Forced to take, nothing interesting but nice to have

10% health:

Same as above.

5% toughness damage reduction:

Only other toughness reduction after one with the warp. Always useful, and I wish there was more in here.

5% crit chance:

Must take, even if you hate free blocking (you heathen) you'll take this.

Some popular talents I didn't take:

Perilous combustion:

Now this one is pretty good; you can play around with it instead of one of the toughness generators if you want. I find the extra damage a little inconsistent for me, as I don't know when it changes how many hits I need for any enemies. If you have the health bar mod or extreme awareness, this might be better, but I have neither of those, and the few bits of extra horde it kills is quite negligible.

True aim:

Only useful for melee or surge left click, as both types of lightning cannot hit weakspots.

Lightning storm/enfeeble:

You really don't need them. The extra chain only works on the left click and you always want to charge it anyway and aside from bosses, the extra dmg isn't noticeable. 

Becalming eruption/creeping flames:

Using your ability is bad, so there is no point in enhancing it. In a perfect game, you will not use it once. Not even the peril reduction is good, as you get more peril reduction from your warp stacks, which you'll lose when you activate it. The fire stacks are very nice to clear a horde, and you do have enough cooldown to spam it, but you just lose so much damage/peril reduction for a few minutes that it's not worth it. Just smite them hordes like the crazy lightning person you are.

Damn, that was a lot of typing. I guess I'll talk about playstyle now. Should this have gone at the top? Eh whatever

So for playstyle, you want surge out to deal with most things, assuming you have max warp stacks, you'll kill most things in a single charged crit or a charged normal followed by an uncharged hit. You can tell if it's critting as the sound of the lightning is more intense, you'll get used to it. Once you get your stacks from warp flurry, you'll charge up insanely fast. Try to maintain those stacks for any fight, only quelling a little bit as needed, just enough to keep them going between quells.

For stuff that's far away, like snipers, bombers, or far gunners, you can just spam left click. Surge has the best left click of all the staves, as it comes with crazy crit chance, pinpoint accuracy, and long range. The projectiles travel really slowly, so it can be very hard to hit moving stuff, but most things you'll be shooting that far away will be standing still. It also has great suppression, so if you are hitting a reaper from across the map, he'll stop shooting after a few hits, relieving any closer allies.

For quelling I would also highly recommend rebinding it to a mouse button. you want to be able to dodge in any direction while doing so and having it on R can get in the way of that and get you killed.

Some other tips for surge if you didnt know is you can slide/sprint while charging so you can close gaps while charged to deal with stuff quicker. Another useful tip is once the lightning has connected to someone the damage will always go off, so if you switch weapon or something stuns you it still goes through with full dps, you can use that to you advantage sometimes.

Now, for the annoying stuff you can't just surge away, that's what the rest of the kit is for. Mutants take way too many surges to deal with, and you often have other stuff you want to deal with, so that's why we bring the chainsword. With a single shreds bleed, it kills them quickly and easily.

For any horde thats on you, you can smite it away easily or use melee if you need it gone faster. If there is stuff mixed in, like crushers or ragers, then smite it until all the horde is dead, make some space, and surge the remaining elites with ease.

For bosses, you just kind of hope they don't go for you. You do pretty good damage with your bleed from the chainsword (you can just shred and then instantly dodge to build up stacks quickly), but dealing with bosses means you aren't killing other stuff, and if you are alone, that is a problem.

For poxbursters, you can surge them, but they die in a crit or two non-crits, like a lot of stuff. This is an issue if allies are nearby, as you might blow up someone. Just use smite to connect the lightning quick and release to push it, exploding it. As long as it falls over, it will blow, even if it doesn't play the detonate sound.