Emperor's Invisible Hand v2
Build for Darktide

With the recent buffs to common enemy shooters (Patch 1.4 Secrets of the Machine God), Smoke Grenades are more valuable than ever to defend your team, not only to prevent your team from getting their toughness shredded, but also to mess with enemies' AI and buy your team valuable time.

This build is specialized for responding to crisis. Sacrifices individual lethality for better clutch potential at any given moment. Do NOT chase after making your Scoreboard mod look good.

• Always take Grenade Tinkerer in order for Smoke Grenades to have 30-seconds of duration.
• Depending on your choice of melee weapon (if you don't want to use the Knife), Serrated Blade and keystone "Weapons Specialist" can be ignored in favour of putting those points somewhere else.
• You can replace Revive Speed from Curios with something else that has better value uptime, perhaps +Stamina or Toughness Regeneration Speed, depending on your playstyle.

Situations where using Smoke Grenade is a good idea:

• On top of your team while surrounded by shooters and gunners.
  • Shooters, Stalkers, Shotgunners, and Gunners have a very hard time tracking players inside the Smoke Grenade, which leads them to approach in melee range before executing an attack.
  • About 50% of the time, though the shooters and gunners will not approach the players inside the Smoke Grenade, they will stop firing and reposition somewhere else.
• On top of your team while being swamped with Special enemy spawns.
  • Bombers, Flamers, Hounds, and Trappers have a very hard time tracking players inside the Smoke Grenade, which leads them to approach in melee range before executing an attack.
    • Hounds in particular seem to get really confused which causes them to run around frantically inside the smoke, but be careful as they can still blindly leap into the general direction of your team and hit someone anyway.
• On top of your team while taking an objective where you have to stand your ground.
  • Works very well for any missions that has Data Interrogation hacking mini-game (Power Matrix, Refinery Delta, Chasm Logistratum, Chasm Station, etc.)
  • Works very well for any missions where you have to hunker down in one spot (Mercantile Arena, Ascension Riser, Consignment Yard, Smelter, etc.)
• On top of a downed teammate, on your way to reviving them.
  • Though it might seem redundant to throw a Smoke Grenade on top of a downed ally, the initial explosion inflicts a small amount of stagger that can stop enemies from continuing to attack your ally, buying you enough time reach them. This is really useful especially when your teammate has been downed and is being absolutely demolished by surrounding Shooters/Gunners/Reapers.
  • Upon reviving them, it also gives an additional layer of defense if you're in a position where you're forced briefly stand your ground in order to fight your way out.
• In corridors or in between crossways where enemies can pour out from multiple doors.
• On a chokepoint where ranged enemies can shoot you while fighting a Monstrosity.

Remember to not only use Infiltrate to revive. Low Profile allows you to focus on Elite and Special enemies while the rest of your team takes aggro. Your teammates having YOU on their team is a huge gamble and this is where you really need to make sure your existence pays off. When you Overwatch, use a spare charge of Infiltrate offensively whenever you can. If you're really hesitant in doing so, just hold on to a Concentration Stimm.

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I should've really made this guide when I haven't been awake for more than 24hours. I don't feel like redoing this so I'm just gonna post it now and add more to it later if I remember anything else.