Psyker
10-25% Rending vs Staggered Enemies.
Target receives 1-4 Stack(s) of 10% Damage if already Staggered. Lasts 5s.
30-60% Rending on Critical Hit.
10% Critical Chance for every 0.3-0.45 second while aiming. Stacks 10 times. Discharges all stacks upon firing.
This combo gives you a little "Where's Waldo" style minigame with the assail right click as long as you have enough distance you're not bumping elbows with heretics. Really fun stuff, although it's also strong to instead run Empowered Psionics if you just want to throw more knives.
Now assail is super fun but it doesn't do great against dudes with big helmets. What's probably more meta with assail is to bring the Mk IV Dueling Sword to poke the eyes out of all crushers and maulers, and when I do this I usually bring Bolt Pistol because it's cool as hell and I really feel like a psyker commisar when I run those two together. However that can get old sometimes so I like to instead bring the revolver with rending that can do decently against crushers and maulers. I experimented with a few other melees before deciding on the newish Agni Mk Ia Shock Maul. It's good for taking care of Muties whizzing by you and also for smashing your way out of the chaff when your knives run out or you're just too close to a horde. I also just think the animations are really fun for it. The bubble is just good for whenever. Sometimes even just for the +10 toughness/sec.
All in all, this is a fun build for me, maybe not super meta but if you can hang back a bit behind your team you can take out anything that would give them a problem, and you can also mostly solo anything, giving huge clutch potential here with all the normal ways to regen toughness by using assail to cycle peril in addition to the often crit toughness perks and the toughness from either the where's waldo game or Psychic Leeching in Empowered Psionics.
