Hysh Psyker | Brain Rupture | Telekine Shield | Warp Siphon | Auric Ready
Build for Darktide

Hysh Psyker

The Equinox Mk IV Voidstrike Force Staff sits as the king of staffs for many players. It is very much the jack of all trades staff, able to deal with almost every threat single-handedly. This build seeks to bring the most out of this humble force bowling ball generator, and is what we will be using for 90% of our runs. We become a human artillery machine, hurling balls of lightning down the lane. 

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 drop my ability, and spam off as many rapid-fire Brain Ruptures as I can in that 10-second window, before joining combat in glorious melee. 

To this end, we pick up the Deimos Mk IV Blaze Force Sword, arguably the Psyker's most well-rounded weapon, something that naturally pairs with the Psykers most well-rounded staff. Whilst it has less mobility and slightly less damage than the Duelling swords, it makes up for this by being able to bring Deflector, better deal with hordes and having a hefty stagger on its heavy attack, enough to drop even a Crusher in a weakspot hit. It's actually quite a bizarre interaction, seeing a Crusher knocked to its arse by a tiny psyker poking them in the face. I suppose all things are possible with the powers of the warp. 

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. Next is the controversial pick of grabbing Kinetic Presence over Seer's Presence. I call this controversial because the extra cooldown reduction to you and your team is one of the best auras in the game, second only to the Veterans Survivalist. However, due to the warp siphon nature of this build, we don't need the cooldown. I like to opt for the extra damage for elites, but it can certainly be argued that providing our team extra cooldown reduction is more beneficial overall. Either option is good, but I did finally settle on Kinetic Presence. It does not help us achieve any breakpoints but the ability to deal extra damage to targets that we can't one-tap is nice. 

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 to 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

The Deimos Mk IV Blaze Force Sword is a versatile weapon. You don't want to use the special ability very often, as it locks you in place too long for most situations. Heavy attacks aimed at the head of Crushers and Maulers can often knock them on their arse. It has a long straight thrust, making hitting weakspots quite easy, which is why we opt for Crapace damage over Flak damage. For the secondary option, I like to take maniac to better deal with ragers and mutants that get up and personal. Deflector can help mitigate some chip damage as we slide into cover. Some players like to take a +3 stamina curio to double how much we can block, but I personally prefer simply stacking toughness to help out more in ranged fights. It's a preference thing, and there's nothing wrong with grabbing a stamina curio on Psykers as their stamina tends to be quite low. Uncanny Strike lets us deal with armour better, but Slaughterer is a perfectly fine alternative.

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

After 500+ hours in Darktide, I have a simple rule of thumb when it comes to Curios. For melee classes (Ogryn and Zealot) Take 2x Toughness and 1x Health Curios. For ranged classes (Veteran and Psyker), take 3x Toughness curios. Veteran benefits massively from Toughness and Ogryn massively from health, with the other two classes falling somewhere in between. There are a few niche builds that might require Stamina Curios, but this is a pretty safe rule to stick to, and means that you have curios that are effective for the vast majority of your builds. Wound curios should only ever be used by Zealot Martyrdom builds. Even then, I consider Martyrdom builds a bit gimmicky and less effective than other Zealot builds, which is why I only ever run them for banter and memes.

For perks, I opt for raw stats. +20% 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 difference between running 3 of these perks compared to running none is night and day, and arguably the single most useful perk you can apply to your curios. +5% Toughness and +5% Health provide us with raw stats that you can never go wrong with. If you have to pick between one of the two, go for Toughness. This is because the Health Curio provides 21% Health, and the Toughness Curio provides 17% Toughness, meaning that the Toughness Perk is a better value proposition. 

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. Monstrosities get chunked down by our Brain Rupture before being finished off in melee by our Deimos Mk IV Blaze Force Sword. Crushers can be knocked down by well-placed shots, so not only are we providing great damage, but also a decent level of crowd control. It's an incredibly versatile build that has an answer to most situations. 

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. Also, 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.