Shield - Sniveler Stomper
Build for Darktide

"I 'ate snivelers, sah. What? No I don't EAT em, not anymores at least."

Basics: 

• Shield + Ripper with Can Opener is a very powerful and flexible combo. 
• Shield deals with trash. With Heavy Hitter stacks and +Flak the first heavy can 1-shot bruisers. 
• Brutal Momentum ensures that more enemies get hit by each heavy attack, causing more bleeding
• Shield synergizes surprisingly well with attack speed increases from Heavy Hitter and Bullrush. It has long attack animations and fairly short delays and windups between heavy attacks. 
• Ripper with Can Opener and +Maniac easily deals with Muties, Crushers, and armor. Also helps to debuff monstrosities. 

Why should you run this with Shield rather than Feel No Pain and Loyal Protector?

• Taunt doesn't add all that much with Shield. Most of the time the enemies you taunt were already attacking you anyway, and you sacrifice a lot of offensive power for a small defensive boost. Taunt's main use is opening up Bulwarks and temporarily staggering enemies. The attack speed, longer stagger, repositioning and bleed from Indomitable adds way more utility for Shield. 
• Shield plays well with Bleed, and Heavy Hitter helps get bleed stacks up fast enough to actually be relevant. 

Ripper

Damage > Range > Stability = Ammo > > > Collateral

Ripper V is the best because it has the highest Minimum Pellet Count for its unbraced attack. This means that as long as a single pellet hits an enemy, it will do damage as if 5 pellets hit. If using the Ripper II or VI, you will generally use more braced attacks but both variants are perfectly usable and definitely better than non-rippers for this build. If you don't want to use a Ripper, then Rumbler and Gauntlet are both decent options. If you want to use kickback or a stubber you should switch to rocks. Just know that without Can Opener you'll take a bit to handle armor. 

Blessing/Perk Priorities:

1. Can Opener 3+
2. Maniac 20+
3. Flak/Unyielding/Carapace 20+
4. Blaze Away/Flechette

Flechette (II) is good in place of Blaze Away if you know you're playing with either a Zealot or Psyker that's boosting your crit. Blaze Away affects bleed damage while its active. So it can be quite effective to brace (for slower attack speed) and empty a mag after getting a monstrosity to max stacks with heavies. But Blaze Away's main use is for when you need to spray down a bunch of Elites surrounding a teammate or a bunch of specialists hiding in a horde. 

Slab Shield

Damage = Crowd Control > Penetration > Cleave Damage > Defenses

You can either spam heavy attacks or block cancel after the first heavy and just do Heavy 1 over and over. The benefit for doing so is mostly only when there's dreg brutes, as it's hard to build a shield good enough to 1-shot them with Heavy 2. 

Blessing/Perk Priorities

1. Skullcrusher 3+
2. Brutal Momentum 1+
3. Flak
4. Block Efficiency/Maniac/Unyielding/Stamina

Maniac is still useful on the Shield, but most of the time you will fare better by whipping out your Ripper to deal with specialists and dreg ragers. The level of Brutal Momentum barely matters because the Shield's weakspot damage is barely higher than its regular damage. So a 15% increase in weakspot damage boosts your damage from ~122 to ~125. Grutting tiny. 

You can use Bonebreaker's Aura instead of Stay Close if you need it. I use Stay Close instead because my shield hits all the important breakpoints without needing Bonebreaker's, and because Stay Close is quite underrated in its team utility. But if your Heavy 1 can't 1-shot brutes, you should use Bonebreaker's Aura instead.