Ulgu Psyker | Assail | Telekine Shield | Disrupt Destiny | Auric Ready
Build for Darktide

Ulgu Psyker

Psykers are inherently squishy characters. This build seeks to make up for this weakness through mobility and high critical hit chance. If you have ever seen a cracked knife zealot (one of the good kinds), running through a mission solo, then you should be aware of how important mobility is in high-tier gameplay. Whilst we cannot hit Mach 5 levels of speed, we do have a tremendous amount of agility to dance around hordes and move in and out of priority targets. I find this to be a fairly well-balanced build, able to deal with most threats the AI director can throw at us.

Assail is used to replenish toughness, snipe distance targets and deal respectable damage to mixed hordes. It is also fantastic at hitting marked targets to refresh Disrupt Destiny. Making use of the extra mobility and damage from both our keystone and Warp Rider whilst our peril is high, we dance into battle, slashing hordes and thrusting at heavily armoured targets. I opt to run a laspistol sidearm over a staff. This is to make use of the extra mobility it affords. Whenever our peril is low, we will be using assail to kill several targets and benefit from the buffs of a high peril count to do extra damage.

Playstyle

Our Assail ability is used to soften groups of enemies up at a distance before engaging in melee. There is a dance you will want to play. Using our blitz replenishes toughness when you use it, as well as when our peril is quelling passively. We gain extra damage when our peril is high. You will want to fire off a salvo or shards whenever our peril is low and use your other weapons when it is high. Peril is used only for assail and to block with Kinetic deflection. You will find it very difficult to accidentally blow even in high-stress situations as a result. Our Telekinetic Dome can help provide ranged defence and toughness regeneration to our team. It is the best support ability by far and can save your team in a pinch. 

Our Duelling sword is our bread and butter. Light attacks should be used to control hordes. The heavy attack does monstrous damage and cares little for armour. It will take a little practice, but you should always be aiming for the head with these attacks. The fact that it is a straight thrust makes accuracy not too hard to achieve. You can 1-shot a charging mutant if you get it in the head, and even crushers do not last more than a few weakspot hits. If you see them charging up an overhead, you have enough mobility and distance to dodge to the side and hit them. You actually have enough dodge distance to completely disengage from unfavourable fights.

Our laspistol is used to hit the occasional long distant targets when our Assail decides to write our name in cursive before actually killing the target. Our blitz often takes some time to hit the target, so the laspistol can deal with that threat quicker. It has an incredibly quick pullout time, accurate over long distances, and actually does surprisingly high damage. This build has high innate crit-chance, so by tacking Infernus, we can apply extra damage to the main threats we will be engaging with our gun, namely reapers and Monstrosities. Hitting a beast of Nurgle consistently in its weakspot whilst applying burn does respectable damage, something Psykers tend to lack. Our laspistol should be used sparingly, relying more on our melee and abilities. However, it has a good enough ammo economy to pull out when needed whilst rarely having to worry about ammo. 

Build Path

Soulstealer, Quietude, Warp Expenditure and Battle Meditation are our toughness regeneration nodes. Whether we are using our abilities, quelling peril or killing things, we are regenerating toughness. I find picking all of these up massively increases survivability. If you ever find yourself low on toughness, slide back and spam assail to quickly get it up again. Mettle also increases toughness regen whilst also providing a tasty speed buff. Perfect Timing is picked up as we will be hitting a lot of criticals, and increases the damage of our frequent assail barrages. Perilous Combustion is valuable when tackling higher-tier missions, but not super necessary to make this build work and can be swapped for something later down the tree such as Anticipation.

We pick up the toughness node on our way to grabbing Assail. I prefer this keystone over Brain Rupture or Smite on this kind of build for its fire-and-forget factor. Smite is a situational crowd control tool, whilst Brain Rupture is a slow, single-target ability. Assail can stun a decent number of units whilst still killing a fair chunk of them at the same time. It does not slow us down as much as the other two options and works better at hitting the awkwardly marked target in a crowd, making it much more useful Blitz on a mobility-focused build.

We will be switching between our weapons pretty regularly, so Malefic Momentum will increase our Assail spam by a cool 20%. Prescience adds yet another critical modifier to us and our team. As we have such a high crit chance already, Empathic Evasion will help us proc our weapon talents.

We pick up Telekine Shield and go for the usual Telekine Dome & Sanctuary modifiers. I maintain that this is the best ability for the psyker. Whilst we are not speccing into being able to spam the ability like a true support psyker, it is still up frequently enough to provide protection and toughness regeneration to both ourselves and our team. Given the limited number of Assail projectiles, and the fact that we are not using a staff, I find Venting Shriek unnecessary here. One thing I adore about Telekine Dome is that if you find yourself going into a particularly disabler heavy auric maelstrom (Hunting grounds & waves of mutants), we can opt instead to go for Enervating Threshold & Bolstered Shield to enjoy watching gaggles of mutants run into the shield like a cartoon., without having to remake our build from the ground up.

Kinetic Deflection can help keep us alive when we are getting swarmed. It can also be a nice way to keep peril deliberately high, by blocking an attack to stop it from quelling. True aim aids yet another critical hit boost. Disrupt Destiny is the keystone that ties everything together. You can consistently hit marked targets with any one of your weapons, and benefit from a fairly consistent uptime to that 20% speed boost. It is also going to be hitting us with additional toughness regeneration, and a whole host of damage increases. I find this build is better than the sum of its parts, and all of these talents work together.

I prefer to pick up Lingering Influence over Perfectionism to more consistently keep our stacks up. Even on auric damnation, there is going to be downtime between hordes, and I much prefer to keep 15 stacks semi-permanently, than have it fluctuate between 0 - 30. Cruel Fortune can help build our stacks up quicker in the rare instances that we do let them fade away. I tend not to pick up Purloin Providence. The only weapon we are using to generate peril is our Assail, which is limited by the number of charges. Even if we do get it to proc, it's going to be doing very little to impact how much damage we can output. The extra toughness regen we get due to its synergy with quietude is nice, but not impactful enough to justify picking it up. We round out the build by moving across and picking up Warp Rider. A 20% base damage to all sources after using our blitz is nothing to scoff at.

Maccabian Mk IV Duelling Sword

The duelling sword provides exceptional range and mobility, all things we want in this build. The heavy attack deals monstrous damage on weakspot strikes, whilst the light attack is still pretty decent at horde clear. It's possible to kite a rager backwards, jabbing away at its head until it goes down. It's a great way to deal high, consistent melee damage whilst still keeping your distance. Even crushers take huge chunks of damage with repeated hits, and will be your primary method for dispatching these foes. It also has a much higher dodge distance than other weapons, allowing you to flow through combat. When facing Crushers, you can throw a heavy attack followed by a quick special attack. This does not do much damage, but has high stagger when it hits weakspots, allowing you to break Crushers out of their overhead. It also allows you to quickly stack up Uncanny Strike.

For perks, I like to take extra damage to Flak and Carapace. This will let you 3-hit a crusher in the head if you get even one crit, something which we get fairly consistently with this build, and also Incentivizes us to aim for Mauler's heads, a foe we can also kill in 3 hits. Taking extra damage to maniacs lets us 2-shot Ragers. Whenever you are using a heavy attack, remember the words of Thanos and always aim for the head.

For blessings, we pick up Precognition & Uncanny Strike. Precognition will proc very frequently, due not only to our frequent dodges, but also thanks to Empathic Evasion. Both of these blessings combined will let you melt through even Flak and Carapace armour like butter.

Accatran MG Mk ll Heavy Laspistol

I prefer this variant over its heavier cousin, the Kantrael Mk X Heavvy Laspistol. It only consumes 2 ammo per shot instead of 3, and fires much faster. As a result, it is better at stacking Infernus. This build has a high critical chance naturally, and benefits from the increased chance of applying burn. All Psyker staffs tend to suffer in their ability to deal with boss damage. The Laspistol fills this role in situations where it is not safe to go for stabs with our sword, whilst also being better at taking out that pesky sniper that Assail is not latching on to. 'Close Range' is actually still quite a distance, and makes Dumdum rounds the best DPS increase we can opt for. I like to take increased damage to unyielding, for the extra damage and burn to monstrosities and reapers, and increased damage to maniacs as that is the most consistent ranged threat we come across. That said, increased damage to Flak is also ok if you are struggling more with those targets.

Other Choices

The Deimos Mk IV Blaze Force Sword is never a bad shout. It deals better with hordes than our Duelling sword and still has respectable heavy attacks that can often stagger larger targets. Picking up Deflector can also help us deal with ranged threats. It's a solid weapon, but has less mobility and less damage on heavy attacks, which is why I favour the duelling sword

The Columnus Mk V Infantry Autogun has objectively better DPS against monstrosities than the laspistol, whilst being effective at mowing priority targets down at close range. It is semi-accurate at longer ranges, but can suffer at extreme ranges. Again, I prefer the Laspistol for its increased accuracy, faster pull-out time and increased mobility. 

All variants of Infantry Lasguns, and Recon Lasguns can stack Infernus up to 12 stacks instead of 10. However, to achieve this, you are once again, sacrificing mobility. Also, Recon Lasguns are not in a great spot at the moment and are not overly strong.

Zarona Mk IIa Quickdraw Stub Revolver is a consistently used sidearm for many Psykers, zealots and Veterans. Its ability to quickly dispatch a priority target is unquestionable, and is why it is seen so frequently by high-level players. But Assail can deal with most of these threats. What the Psyker naturally suffers from is Monstrosity DPS, something the revolver does poorly with. In addition, the lengthy reload runs counter to the quick, run and gun style playstyle we are looking for.

Scrier's Gaze can be used for mad lads who just want to ramp up damage. This playstyle will have you in melee quite frequently anyway, so the riding peril can be used to increase your damage. It will also massively increase your damage when fighting bosses as the extra damage applies to your burn. 

Curios

I like to run 2x Toughness and 1x Stamina. The duelling sword only has 2 stamina naturally, and whilst we do have Kinetic Deflection to help make up for it, you will still be stunned if you block at 0 stamina. Since we will be running and sliding a lot, this is really bad for us. 1X Stamina Curio is sufficient to alleviate this problem provided you mix in slides. Toughness Regeneration does not really benefit us as it only applies to coherency regeneration. Most of our toughness will be coming back due in some way to our peril. Instead, I like to go straight for extra defensive perks. Resistance to gunners helps in situations where we have been caught out without our dome (and there are a lot of gunners on most auric runs). Extra toughness and health won't provide huge benefits as our pools are naturally low, but every little bit helps. 

Strengths

I like to use builds that are well-rounded and versatile for auric damnation runs, as those matches favour builds that have an answer for every situation. The Ulgu Psyker has an answer to everything. Assail lets you thin out mixed hordes, your melee choice lets you deal big damage to priority targets, whilst your laspistol can help quickly snipe out awkward specials and chunk bosses.  Mid-tier enemies are your bread and butter, and can quickly be disposed of whilst still providing a bubble shield as utility for your team. Those annoying ranged enemies all over the room that would normally pepper your team down, can be mulched by Assail, and I honestly struggled to go back to staff psykers after getting used to it. This ability alone makes it viable to go for the two-shield option instead of Telekine Dome as ranged enemies usually don't last long enough for it to be needed. Add to that the fact that you will be replenishing toughness as you fire out your shards, and even a squishy Psyker can trade blows in a firefight situation without taking damage. Your mobility is insane, and you can easily dance around hordes whilst keeping out of damage. With the recent nerfs to ragers, engaging these enemies in melee has become significantly easier to deal with. 

Weaknesses

Psykers are naturally seen as the highest skill-ceiling class and for good reason. Your DPS and ability to deal with all targets is extraordinary, but you are always going to be a squishy character. Your main damage comes from being in melee, and with little health and toughness, your mobility and dodging need to be on point to avoid taking damage. We rely on positioning and mobility to avoid damage, something which takes practice and game knowledge to achieve. Try to get in the habit of slide dodging to extend your dodge distance and get out of sticky situations. A single overhead Mauler or Crusher attack that is not dodged can put us into the dying state.