Aqshy Psyker | Brain Rupture | Telekine Shield | Warp Siphon
 Psyker Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

Aqshy Psyker

So I have gone back and forth on this build a lot. Specifically trying to figure out if is better to go down the Warp Siphon route to reduce our ability cooldown and spam out bubbles as much as possible. Or if it is better to go down the Empowered Psionics route and have access to a rapid-fire, long-range special popping ability. After EXTENSIVE testing, I think the former playstyle works better overall.

Playstyle

You should use your Deimos Mk IV Blaze Force Sword for most of the match to quickly dispatch odd enemies and elites. Save your Rifthaven Mk II Inferno Force Staff specifically for hordes to deal with crowd control. The primary attack button will only generate 4% peril and has great stagger, allowing you to herd ragers and the like away from your team. When a monstrosity appears, hit it with fire until you reach 85% peril, then use Venting Shriek to add more stacks (and likely kill most of the chaff around it). Switch to Brain Rupture and start firing, benefiting from reduced peril generation and quicker firing time of Kinetic Resonance. The first 3 shots will come out very fast and deal monstrous damage thanks to Empowered Psionics. With this combo, you can take out more than half a monstrosity's health on Damnation solo.

In ranged fights, I like to stand in front of enemies blocking, using Deflector on our sword. Once your peril is up to 85%, use Venting Shriek. Six stacks of Soulblaze are sufficient to kill Dreg Stalkers, Scab Shooters, and Scab Snipers from full health. This ability can go through walls and cover, allowing you to clear out an entrenched group of enemies from a safe distance. Anything left standing can quickly be dispatched thanks to Kinetic Resonance. 

Build Path

Most of our toughness will come back from Soulstealer as we cook hordes of Nurgle Worshippers. However, I like to take Quietude to benefit from a large chunk of toughness whenever we use our ability. Perilous Combustion gains more value the higher the difficulty. It's a great node on most Psyker builds, but here especially it allows more Soulblaze stacks to quickly ramp up, massively increasing your damage. Mettle procs frequently due to the flames we are spreading, giving us both movement speed and toughness back.

Brain Rupture is our Blitz of choice, allowing us to grab Wildfire down the line. I find Smite has too much overlap with the crowd control we already offer. Wildfire is a natural choice for this build, combined with Perilous Combustion to quickly spread more Soulblaze dots among mixed hordes. Our build relies heavily on cooldown reduction, so we pick up Psykinetic's Aura and Seer's Presence. These are two of the strongest nodes in the game and provide a massive boon to our team. One with the Warp increases our survivability, as our peril will naturally hover on the higher side for most of a run.

Kinetic Deflection is a node I honestly struggle to go without anymore. Its ability to tank absurd levels of damage while blocking or trying to rescue an ally makes you almost as tanky as an Ogryn in these scenarios. It can also be used for a 'back against the wall' strategy. If you find yourself surrounded or being shot to pieces by ranged enemies, you can block until your peril goes above 85%, and then shout to clear enemies and create space (potentially killing many of them in the process). 

Weapons

Charging up our staff does not increase its damage but simply makes the stream of fire last longer. As such, it's not super necessary to charge it up, making Warp Flurry unnecessary. The most important things to bring are a way to reduce armour (as Soulblaze struggles with Carapace and to a lesser extent flak), and critical chance as critical hits apply two-dot stacks. For these reasons, the optimal blessings to pick up are Penetrating Flame and Warp Nexus.  The most important stat for our Rifthaven Mk II Inferno Force Staff is burn, due to the nature of how dots work. The maximum number of soul-blaze stacks you can achieve with this staff is 15, with a burn value of 76. Anything less than 76 burn is not worth running. It might not seem like a lot, but because of the exponential nature of dots, that one less dot stack results in significantly less damage. Hitting a critical hit applies two stacks of soul-blaze, which is why critical chance is so important for our damage potential. Low levels of soul-blaze do very little damage, so we need to stack it up quickly. We take extra critical chance to apply more stacks quicker. The other blessing is up to you. I often switch between Unyielding and Flak depending on what I want to focus on. 

The main weakness of the Rifthaven Mk II Inferno Force Staff is its ability to deal with Carapace. Everything else gets incinerated, but Carapace only takes about 5% damage from Soul Blaze, so we need something to address this. The duelling swords are the best for this, but using them puts us at risk of ranged attacks, especially since we are not picking up Telekine Shield. Therefore, I prefer to grab the next best thing, the Deimos Mk IV Blaze Force Sword. It has access to Deflector, which can help if we get caught out in the open. Heavy attacks are straight lunges, and the second one has an insane stagger value attached to it, allowing you to knock Maulers and Crushers on their backs almost at will.

The Deimos Mk IV Blaze Force Sword is arguably the Psyker's most versatile weapon. It has pretty good horde clear, and the Heavy-2 attack has absurd stagger, able to bring Crushers and Maulers to the ground if you land a weak spot hit. By running Deflector along with Kinetic Deflection, we can stay safe from ranged combat even without Telekine Shield. As Carapace is the biggest weakness of this build, we take extra damage to these threats to deal with them more effectively. The other choice is honestly dealer's preference. I pick up Maniac specifically to deal with Mutants who run into our backlines more quickly. Uncanny Strike let's us more easily deal with carapace enemies that get in our face, although Slaughterer is a perfectly fine side-grade.

Curios

After 1,000+ hours in Darktide, I have a few simple rules when it comes to Curios. Melee classes (Ogryns and Zealots) should take 2x Toughness and 1x Health Curios to provide a good mix of defensive stats. Veterans should take 3 Toughness Curios, as they benefit more from Toughness than other classes due to their larger toughness pools and skills such as Iron Will. Psykers should run 2x Toughness and 1x Stamina Curio to make up for low base stamina and to benefit from their faster stamina regeneration. Obviously, there are some caveats to that. A melee-centric Veteran might want to run 1x Health Curio, and certain knife and stealth builds might want to run a Stamina Curio. But for the most part, I find this a good rule to stick to in order to ensure you have Curios that are effective for the vast majority of your builds, especially when starting out when it is difficult to find any Curios, much less good ones. Oh, and Wound Curios should only ever be used on Zealot Martyrdom builds. Having Wound Curios actually means that health stims will heal you less. I know some people like to take a Wound Curio 'just in case they go down,' but in higher difficulties, there is no guarantee your team can pick you up. It's far better to invest in defensive abilities that prevent downs as much as possible.

For perks, always take Extra Toughness and Gunner Resistance. Gunner Resistance is the most useful resistance node as it applies to Scab Gunners, Scab Shotgunners, Dreg Gunners, Dreg Shotgunners, and Reapers. This is the largest collection of enemies out of any of the resistance perks. These enemies can absolutely shred you in seconds and make up a significant portion of the enemies encountered in Auric Maelstroms. The ability is multiplicative, so it does have some diminishing returns. 0.80 × 0.80 × 0.80 = 0.512, meaning that we end up with a total gunner resistance of 0.488, just below 50%. I can certainly see the argument for only running two Gunner Resistance Curios (with an overall damage resistance of 36%) and opting for something else (potentially Sniper or Flamer), but I still value that extra 12.8%. The one exception is Ogryns. For these, I like to take extra Sniper resistance instead of health on the Health Curios.

For the final perk, it depends on your build. If you are using a build that relies heavily on your ability, then run Cooldown Reduction to more frequently make use of said ability. I find this to be especially powerful on builds that make use of Voice of Command, for instance. If your build is not too heavily reliant on your ability, then go for Extra Health. Again, you can tweak this to suit individual playstyles (and the mercy of the RNG gods as Hadron bricks yet another piece of equipment), but this is a pretty good rule to aim for. As this build benefits from Cooldown Reduction (and Psykers naturally have low health), we naturally go for Cooldown Reduction.

Strengths

The Aqshy Psyker is surprisingly well-rounded, having tools to deal with most situations. Horde control is our biggest strength. Primary attacks from our staff have great stagger, and can be used to stun ragers out of their combos. When you have some breathing space, we can charge our attacks up to quickly stack soul-blaze to a large number of targets. Ranged enemies can blocked with Deflector and subsequently dealt with by using Venting Shriek, applying enough Soulblaze to kill snipers. Monstrosities can take serious damage thanks to a combination of Soulblaze stacks and Kinetic Flayer to deal heavy damage in a short amount of time. 

Weaknesses

Carapace, Carapace, Carapace. Between our Deimos Mk IV Blaze Force Sword and Brain Rupture we have means of dealing with these threats, but they require us to change up our playstyle to deal with them effectively. The addition of the new blessing Penetrating Flame allows us to melt that armour, but it's still not the fastest takedown on these big guys. The biggest issue is when you have a group in your face, as Crushers are not staggered by spurting flames at them, making them a major threat to you if they can close the distance. Also whilst we can protect ourselves from ranged engagements, without Telekine Shield, we cannot protect our allies.

Questions & Answers

Question: Why do the stats, weapons, and abilities in the video not match what's written in this guide?

Answer: I am constantly evolving and refining my builds. As patch notes are released, certain weapons and abilities may change in effectiveness. Additionally, as my skills and knowledge grow, my preferred builds can shift. I aim to provide videos demonstrating the effectiveness of my builds in a Damnation level Auric run as proof of concept. However, these videos may sometimes be outdated. While I strive to keep everything current, Darktide is my hobby, and I may not always have the latest updates in the videos. The information in these guides reflects my most recent thinking and should be considered more accurate than what is shown in the videos.