Ghyran Psyker
 Psyker Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

 ── AT A GLANCE ──

 

Horde Clear: [3/5]
Crowd Control: [3/5]
Elite Killing: [3/5]
Special Killing: [3/5] 
Monster Damage: [3/5] 
Survivability: [3/5] 
Team Utility: [5/5] 
Peril Management:  [Moderate]
Skill Floor: [Moderate]

Strengths

Weaknesses

Ghyran Psyker

There was a time when the Equinox Mk IV Voidstrike Force Staff was the king of staffs. Alas, times have changed, and as the density has increased in high Havoc, the Equinox Mk IV Voidstrike Force Staff has fallen behind its peers. This is by no means a 'meta' build, but I value build diversity, and the Ghyran psyker seeks to bring the most out of this humble force bowling ball generator. This build focuses on defence, both for ourself and our teamates. Whilst the cooldown reduction is not as consistent as a flame based build, you can still enjoy very high uptime of Telekine Dome. 

Playstyle

The Equinox Mk IV Voidstrike Force Staff allows skill expression in a way that the other staffs do not, as it is the only staff that benefits from hitting weak spots. It's the jack of all trades staff, able to deal with every situation. Add to this the travel time of the projectile itself, and getting the most of of this staff requires some ability. That said, the weapon is so strong that even without being able to aim like Legolas, things have a habit of falling over and dying when in range. The secondary fire projectiles travel in a penetrating line, meaning that each shot is able to penetrate multiple ranks of Nurgle worshippers, hitting elites and specials mixed in the crowd. These projectiles travel through your teammates, so you can fire off salvoes even whilst behind large associates. Most of the time, you will want to hold off on using your ability, so your staff can be buffed up as much as possible from our Warp Siphon keystone and its associated modifiers. The only real area of weakness with the Equinox is its monstrosity damage. For these targets, I like to use Telekine Shield along with Kinetic Resonance, and spam off as many rapid-fire Brain Ruptures as I can in that 10-second window.

We specialise in ranged combat, which also means we struggle if enemies get close to us. As such, we require a defensive weapon to help keep things off our backs if they get too close. To my mind, there are two weapons that can fulfil this role. The shock mauls can help stun targets, and the Catachan blades can instead parry. Given that we have access to Kinetic Deflection as a Psyker, I find the parry to be most effective. We can turtle up if things get too heated, relying on our blocking until the perfect window the line up a parry and take that Rager head clean off. Whilst I would normally recommend a force sword with Deflector, as we are already running Telekine Shield, ranged threats can be dealt with, leaving us something to help defend against unrelenting hordes instead. 

Build Path

I like to pick up Soulstealer, Quietude & Warp Expenditure. Any interaction with peril will replenish our toughness, helping us avoid chip damage from ranged enemies. Perfect Timing has the opportunity to add an additional 15% damage to our staff's attacks providing we are hitting critical frequently, something we can buff by taking the right blessings. Perilous Combustion is a node that gains more value the higher the difficulty. If you are playing on malice threat, for example, this might seem useless. However, in Auric Maelstroms, the density of elites and specials is so high that this will be proccing left, right and centre. 

As our staff will be doing the heavy lifting, Brain Rupture is taken for two reasons. The first is for Kinetic Flayer to add to our overall DPS. Realistically this is not the greatest Perk, as it only proccs every 15 seconds and has a nasty habit of proccing on trash mobs. It's fun when it does work, but feel free to swap this for a toughness node if you would prefer. Kinetic Resonance on the other hand is very useful. When a monstrosity shows up to play, you can drop your shield and spam Brain Rupture for 10 seconds to deal some serious damage to the threat. 

Pskinetic's Aura is an obvious pick-up as it provides so much benefit to our team, and we will not be making use of soul-blaze in this build. One with the Warp can give us a big damage reduction, something that helps our squishy little psyker stay alive when things get a bit too close for comfort. We take Telekine Shield as this build does not benefit much from the other choices. Scrier's Gaze works better in a gun psyker build where the peril generation is not competing with our staff and Venting Shriek works better in a build that makes use of soulblaze. What I love about Telekine Shield is that you can freely swap to either the dome or the double stun wall variant based on what Maelstrom you are running. Ordinarily, I would go for the dome as default. However, I have found that when you have those annoying Maelstrom modifiers with waves of mutants, Poxbursters and Pox hounds, the double wall can be absolutely pivotal in shutting down these disablers. 

Moving down, Warp Rider is good on any Psyker build to give us a nice little damage buff. We take the left tree version from here. Puppet Master is meh, as you shouldn't really be straying too far off from your team anyway, but can help keep coherency if you have one teammate that is either going for a knife zealot build, or sniffing glue and not paying attention. Solidity provides a big buff to peril quelling and increases the uptime of firing out bolts of energy. For our Keystone, take Warp Siphon, Inner Tranquility, Empryean Empowerment, Psychic Vampire & Warp Battery. The key to this build is to use our ability sparingly so we keep our warp stacks high. At 6 stacks we benefit from a 24% increase in damage and a -36% warp peril generation. There is a reason this is the preferred keystone for staff users as these buffs are bonkers and allow us to bowel charges of 'go fuck yourself' energy down the lane all mission long.

Weapons

Any of the Catachan Swords can work, but the Catachan Mk IV "Devil's Claw" Sword is my favourite of the bunch. The Mk4 balances between simple sweeping attacks for horde clear & intuitive strike-down hits to quickly dispatch priority targets. It is the most versatile of the weapons, able to deal with hordes by alternating between Light-1 and Heavy-2 combos, whilst still being able to deliver devastating single-target damage with Heavy-1 attacks. Flak and Maniac are reliable damage increases to opt for. As we mostly pull this thing out when there are hordes present, I like to focus on its ability to deal with these threats as well as increase its damage. As such, for blessings, Rampage & Savage Sweep are my go-to's.

The Equinox Mk IV Voidstrike Force Staff is what this build is focused around. It is affectionately known as the 'anti-everything' staff. There is a big debate going on about what blessings are best to take. The two options are either Warp Flurry with Warp Nexus or Surge with Warp Nexus. Personally, I'm not a big fan of Surge, as it is unreliable in how often it proccs and usually results in overkill when it does. If it were available on the Nomanus surge staff, it would be fantastic as this staff has a naturally much higher base critical chance. However, in practice, Warp Flurry is able to more consistently increase our DPS. When one charged shot can kill most mid-tier elites, you want to fire off more bolts, not overkill something already dead. For additional damage, I pick up Flak and Carapace, but Maniac is also a good alternative.

Curios

• 2 x toughness curio
• 1 x health curio
• 3x ability cooldown
• 3x revive speed
• 2x gunner resistance
• 1x toughness perk

Whilst you can make adjustments based on individual builds, I find this to be a pretty good mix of stats for most psyker builds, and is a good starting point to aim for, as I know how tedious it can be to find those +17 toughness and +21 health curios. Block efficiency and stamina regeneration can also be useful depending on what you are looking for, and you can adjust your loadout to what you need. In general, if you are looking for more toughness or health, it is more efficient to pick up toughness perks and a health curio, as a curio gives you +21% health compared to +17% toughness, whereas both versions of the perk only give +5% health. 

Whilst the psykers innate health is low, and at high Havoc we will still get 1-shot by crushers and maulers, I have found the extra health useful in mitigating the myriad forms of corruption present.  Cooldown reduction lets use our abilities more frequently. Abilities are some of the most powerful tools any budding varlet has, and should be prioritised in the majority of cases. Whilst everyone should be working hard to avoid dying, there will inevitability be times when we need to make a quick pick-up. Kinetic Deflection makes this possible, provided there are no heavy hitters in the mix, and extra revive speed can help make the difference to losing a teamate or not. 
 

Gunner Resistance is the most useful resistance node as it applies to Dreg Gunner, Dreg Shotgunner, Scab Gunner, Scab Plasma Gunner, Scab Shotgunner, and Reaper. Please note, this reduction does not apply to basic gunner type enemies, and these previously unassuming enemies will become some of the biggest threats in high havoc. This is the largest collection of enemies out of any of the resistance perks. These enemies can absolutely shred you in seconds, and it's not uncommon to see teammates seemingly insta-die when faced with a firing squad of them, especially with toughness grace period being removed.  The ability is multiplicative, so it does have some diminishing returns. 0.80×0.80×0.80=0.512 
 

3x Gunner resistance = 48.8% damage reduction
 

2x Gunner resistance = 36% damage reduction
 

It's up to you whether you choose to take all 3, or use that last slot as a flex pick. I personally like to pick up block efficiency because of its synergy with Kinetic Deflection. Since Kinetic Deflection converts a blocked attack's Stamina cost into Peril at a fixed rate, anything that lowers the underlying Stamina cost of a block also lowers the Peril you take on for absorbing it.

Peril gained = Blocked attack's Stamina cost × 0.25

Extra block efficiency therefore compounds twice over: you're spending less Stamina per block in the rare cases you do dip into it, and you're generating less Peril from every block that Kinetic Deflection converts.

Strengths

Unlimited high-damage range attacks that can cleave multiple targets. You are the king of ranged fights, and the Equinox Mk IV Voidstrike Force Staff has enough stagger that whatever it doesn't kill, it usually knocks over to the side. Hordes of enemies get cleaved by our shots as they travel on their way to their intended Elite or specialist destination. If we ever need to pop our Telekine shield, we can rapid-fire our Brain burst to deal with damage. This can help with targets that are hard to hit and help us get our stacks of Warp Siphon back. It can really chunk down Monstrosities, even if they are hopping across the map and doing everything in their power to avoid our shots (Hey Chaos Spawn). 

Weaknesses

You are a human artillery piece through and through. Without a front line to enable your playstyle, your ability to deal DPS suffers. You're not hopeless in melee by any stretch of the imagination, but it is not your strength. Also, the Voidstrike staff has a bit of a lengthy time charging, especially on the first attack before Warp Flurry kicks in, so doesn't react to threats as quickly as guns or say the Nomanus surge staff does. You need to aim your shots to get the most out of them, as it is the only staff which benefits from landing headshots. Given the slow travel time of the projectile and the large area it takes up, you sometimes need to actually aim slightly above an enemy's head to actually register a headshot, something which will take practice to achieve. 

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.