Kriegs Guard | Krak Grenade | Voice of Command | Focus Target! | Auric Ready
Build for Darktide

Kriegs Guard 

The humble lasgun was used to conquer the galaxy for the Imperium of man. In an age where humans inhabit thousands of planets, and billions fight for the emperor, having a reliable weapon capable of recharging shots from sunlight became an absolute necessity in a world of shoddy supply lines. This build takes that ethos and pushes it to the limited. Now, I know, I know. I should have a shovel if I wanted to go for a full authentic driptide. But I wanted something more effective for the runs we will be using this for. I like to take this build specifically into Auric Maelstrom C-I-VI (Waves of Specialist Enemies. Only Scab faction. Mostly melee enemies. No Ammo Pickups). The Lucius Mk II Helbore Lasgun has a long pull-out time. To make up for it, it hits like an absolute truck. The advantage it has over the plasma gun is its insane ammo economy, making use of Survivalist, Shock Tropper & Surgical.

Having one member of the team who is capable of ranged combat in no ammo run is invaluable. You tend to come across packs of Crushers and Maulers, which are an absolute brick wall to progress, and move as fast as them too. This is the perfect situation where the pull-out time of the Hellebore can be mitigated. If all else fails, we bring a melee capable of answering armour and stunning enemies in the form of the Indignatus Mk III Shock Maul. The special attack of this thing can stun a Crusher out of their overhead swing, making it fantastic for dealing with the lone Crusher or a duo of Maulers that get in your face. It's an amazingly versatile weapon, able to horde clear and deal with armour. Krak Grenades can be used to thin out a group, by picking off a high-priority target. Whilst they lack the AOE of Shredder Frag Grenades, they can still usually kill 2-3 enemy elites if they are packed in tight enough. For the most part, I save them for Taking out Bulwarks, chunking down Monstrosities, and for use in 'oh shit' moments when I don't have time to set up my ranged option, and there are too many enemies to safely engage in melee. 

Playstyle 

We want to try and keep our range as much as possible, supporting our team with shields from our ability, and buffs from our keystone. C-I-VI tends to be populated by players who specialise in melee combat. This is quite understandable due to the lack of ammo pickups. Whilst most enemies are melee, there are still a large number of ranged enemies that if anything, are an ever greater threat due to your team's limited range options. This is the role of the Kriegs Guard, due to its absurd ammo economy. By pairing Surgical with Shock Trooper, it's possible to fire indefinitely without ever using up ammunition. Realistically of course, we will be using some ammunition as we will be firing faster than Surgical has time to build up to a guaranteed 100% critical chance, but that's what we take Survavlist for. This build is completely self-sufficient, and will never run out of ammunition if played right. 

Like all good Death Korps of Kreigs Guard, the Lucius Mk II Helbore Lasgun has to be pried for our cold dead hands. You provide the most support by being the back lines, supporting your team at range with buffs and tagging. Don't sit too far back on Overwatch, however. You want to be close enough to give your team a Coherency buff and to save them with Voice of Command if things get too dicey. Voice of Command is useful not just for the shield it provides, but also for staggering enemies. If enemies get too close, or if you see a Crusher about to land an overhead on you or your team, you can knock them back without coming out of aiming down sights, and having to deal with the pull-out time again. When things get a bit too hairy, The Indignatus Mk III Shock Maul can be used to stun individual targets before delivering heavy blows to take them out. Taking out a single crusher in melee is complete child play with this weapon. 

Weapons

The Lucius Mk I Helbore Lasgun is the middle of the pack in terms of Helbores, balancing Charge rate with fire rate, and is my preferred weapon of the three. The Mark 2 is the fast-firing cousin, with less damage. I'm not the biggest fan of this as with Weight of Fire, the charge time of the Mark 1 is already very quick. We sometimes actually want to pace our shots to give more time for Surgical to stack. So the Mark 1 is able to do significantly more damage than the Mark 2, whilst firing only marginally slower. This comes at the cost of ammo consumption. Mark 2 (Weak) uses 4 ammo. Mark 1 (Medium) uses 6 ammo and Mark 3 (Strong) Uses 8 ammo per charged shot. In theory, this should mean the weakest version is the most ammo efficient but as I have said, due to Surgical, you want a balance between charge rate and ammo use to get the greatest chance of a free shot. In addition, it misses key breakpoints on enemies, meaning that its actual time to kill is lower than the alternatives on key specialist enemies. The main reason why are taking a veteran into a no-ammo run is precisely so we have a means of taking out specialist enemies, and missing that breakpoint is a big detriment to our effectiveness.

The Mark 3 is the heavy hitter of the bunch, and can take out a crusher in 3 Headshots. This comes with the downside of having quite a noticeably bad charge rate. Also, I don't know if it is in my head, but it feels like it takes longer than the other 2 to equip. Maybe it's just the animation but feels unresponsive, even by Helbore standards. Add to that the fact it has the absolute worst bayonet attack, and it starts to become a very unattractive option. Yes, it is the best for killing Crushers and doing big damage, but at the cost of clunkiness and slower response time when taking out specialists. Whilst the Mark 2 sacrifices a noticeable amount of damage, the Mark 1 only deals about 20% less damage than the heavy variant, whilst having a better bayonet attack and a quicker charge time. Overall, I find the Mark 1 to strike the best balance to get the most out of it. oh, and we take extra damage to Flak and Carapace for obvious reasons.

The Indignatus Mk III Shock Maul is quickly becoming one of my favourite new additions to the game (tied with the Ogryn Pickaxe). It has great weave clear by alternating Heavy-1 Light-2 attacks and repeated heavy attacks are strikedowns that deal effectively with armour. The special ability can stun an enemy place, cancelling them out of overheard strikes (Great for Maulers and Crusher), and does quite damage whilst stunning them for a second, allowing you to wail on their skull until it caves in. For this build, we are going to double dip into Flak and Carapace as it is by far, the most common armour types you will face in these missions. I'm still testing out different blessing combinations, but so far I have favoured Skullcrusher and High Voltage. Stunned enemies end up taking a hell of a lot of extra damage and even crushers can be taken down with only a few swings.

Curious

After 1,000+ hours in Darktide, I have a few simple rules when it comes to Curios. Melee classes (Ogryns and Zealot) should take 2x Toughness and 1x Health Curios to give a good mix of defensive stats. Veterans should take 3 Toughness Curios, as they benefit more from Toughness than other classes, owing 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 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 Martydom builds. Having Wound Curios actually means that health stims will now heal less on you. 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 which 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 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 to 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%. 

For the final perk, it depends on your build. If you are using a build which 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 which make use of Voice of Command for instance. If your build is not too heavily reliant on your ability, then run for extra health. Again you can tweak this to suit individual playstyle (and the mercy of the RNG-gods as Hadrons bricks yet another piece of equipment), but this is a pretty good rule to aim for.  

As Voice of Command is your immortality button, and the overshield lasts for 15 seconds. With a 30-second cooldown, let's crunch the math. 12% cooldown reduction leads to our ability being off cooldown in 26.4 seconds. This means that between consecutive shouts, there are now only 11.4 seconds where you are 'vulnerable' and not benefiting from the overshield. Bear in mind that overshield counts as you being above 75% toughness. Toughness reduction stacks in a multiplicative Iron Will combined with Close Order Drill means that your actual toughness reduction is a 33% increase of 50%, giving us a value of 0.67. So that's a 67% damage reduction, effectively giving that 50 toughness overheal 150 toughness in actuality, not accounting for any additional toughness damage reduction from teammate shields. Technically it's slightly higher because of the extra 5% damage reduction (68.175%) but you get the idea. You're virtually unkillable whilst this is up, so having this god-mode up more often is far more impactful not just to you, but to your team's survivability than the extra 15% health on the Veteran's quite pitiful base health pool. 

Strengths

Infinite ammo, grenades and armour penetration. Never having to pick up ammo means that if you do decide to bring this into another mission type, you are completely self-sufficient and can leave these resources for your allies. The biggest weakness from our loadout is probably monstrosity damage, which we make up for with Krak Grenades. I had a rather impassioned debate with a fellow player who kept saying that Grenade Tinkerer is was useless on Krak Grenades as they already 1-shot Crushers. After a lengthy debate and hearing his argument, I concluded that he was wrong. Scab Runs are difficult, and the appearance of a Monstrosity mixed in with Crushers and Maulers can be the additional spike in difficulty to end a run. Even if it comes up only once per mission, that reduced time to take out the Monstrosity can be the difference between a win and a wipe. At the end of the day it's only a single talent point, and given the most likely alternatives you would pick up instead, (Demolition Team or Close order Drill), I think that reduced time to kill is more than enough to justify it's inclusion. 

Weaknesses 

This is a highly Specialised build specifically made for tackling No ammo, scab-only Auric Maelstroms. Ammo is not a massive detriment in many other matches, and the amount we invested in becoming self-sustainable would likely be better spent in other areas in more traditional matches. Whilst it can certainly see success in any Auric mission, it would not be the most efficient at these. With faster enemies, the long pull-out time of the Hellbore may be just long enough to put you in a bad situation, where you would have much preferred a plasma gun for instance.

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.