Kriegs Guard | Krak Grenade | Voice of Command | Marksman's Focus | Auric Ready
Build for Darktide

Kriegs Guard 

I know, I know. I should have a shovel. But I wanted something functional. 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 III Helbore Lasgun has a long pull-out time, and the bayonet attack on it's the weakest of the three. 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. It is capable of 2-shotting Crushers with headshots, and 1-shotting Reapers with headshots. Having one member of the team that 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 Hellbore 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. And just for kicks, let's throw in Krak Grenades too. All the armour penetration!

Playstyle 

We want to try and keep our range as much as possible. C-I-VI tends to be populated by players that 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 teams limited range options. This is the role the Kriegs Guard, due to it's 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 garunteed 100% critical chance, but that's what we take Survavlist for.

Like all good Death Korps of Kreigs Guard, the Lucius Mk III Helbore Lasgun has to be pried for our cold dead hands. 

Curios

After 800+ 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. 

Questions & Answers

Question: Why do the stats/weapons/abilities in the video posted not reflect what is written in this guide?

Answer: I am constantly changing, updating and working on my builds. As patch notes come, certain weapons and abilities become more or less powerful. As my skill and knowledge increase (hopefully) and what I think is the best version of a build changes. I try to make sure there is always a video showing me completing a damnation level, Auric run as proof of concept to all my builds. Sometimes they will be outdated. I try to keep everything I do updated, but Darktide is my hobby, and I'm not always able to keep everything up to date. What I put in these guides is the most up-to-date version of my current mindset, and should be taken over whatever is posted in my videos.