Blazing Trauma CC | Brain Burst | Venting Shiek | Warp Siphon
 Psyker Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

Role Summary:

This is a warp staff centric build focusing on a supportive role. Your Stave of choice is the Trauma/Void Blast Staff. The goal of this build is to provide as much stagger to key targets and steady damage output against mixed hordes using Soulblaze and your staves secondary ability.

Burning enemies through killing elites/specialists, venting shriek, Trauma staff provides additional critical chance and toughness regen. This creates a positive feedback loop. Doing your job well (using the staff and applying Soulblaze) will also keep you alive.

Be sure to stay in close coherency with the group, as you are quite the glass cannon due to our choice of Empyric Resolve to allow more Trauma Staff secondary attacks before having to quell. The idea is that the crits and Soul Blaze should be enough to regen toughness, but when all else fails, your curios have Toughness Regen Delay giving you another layer of defense.

Try not to clutch or cause clutch situations given this build (ie. stealing melee kills from your Ogryn or Zealot).

This build does not preform well purely independently, it does have some ability to survive in a clutch, just not effectively.

Equipment:

Weapon: Trauma/Void Blast Staff (Warp Nexus) (Blazing Spirit)

• Primary means of causing havoc against your enemies.
• High stagger will disable danger for your allies.
• Crit chance based on level of peril will allow you to take advantage of your talent tree's Soul Blaze + critical hits procs for toughness regen, damage, and general damage to mixed hordes.
• While tempting DO NOT blast in front of Ogryns and Zealots. You are stealing their toughness regen. Veterans are better targets to assist in a given moment if you see them being overwhelmed.
• Generally you will use your staff to soften up hordes and disable specialists / elites.
• Is not the highest damage output weapon, you will not kill bosses don't try it. Use your Brain Burst instead.
• Also poor damage against carapace, but your ability to stagger enemies such as maulers and crushers ect make it worthwhile to still blast them if they are proving a danger.
• Stats: Your ideal dump stats are an even 70% by 70% for both Warp Resistance and Quell Speed. You desire more Warp Resistance in this build due to Empyric Resolve and in exchange for getting to high peril for buffs more quickly in your talents, you want to linger in the golden zone of high peril but not overloading. So more blasting and manageable Peril in exchange of slower "warm-up" period to reach Peril buff breakpoints. You are also less Peril reliant to restore toughness due to not taking Quietude and Warp Expenditure.

Weapon: Illisii Force Sword (Deflector) (Uncanny Strike)

• You will seldom use this as much as your staff, but a good fall back for a given situation where you need to be defensive or get caught away from the group and enemies in your face demand immediate attention that all your primary spent resources (peril, venting shriek) cannot answer.
• The block / block attack is effective if you are overwhelmed by ranged weapons and need to reposition.
• Mostly a defensive tool. You may change this weapon if you feel that you perform better with another melee option such as Dueling Blade or Combat Blade.
• Stats: Whatever you please.

Curios

• Choose what you like, but I've had the most success utilizing two Toughness  one Health curios.
• Highly recommend Toughness Regeneration Speed, works in tandem with the Puppet Master talent that increases your coherency and thereby your survivability.
• Sniper Damage reduction is good in a chaotic situation if multiple snipers are not addressed immediately and your Psyker desperately needs to tank a shot or two and stay standing.
• Optional choice: Grimoire Corruption was taken purely to minimize corruption gain on your limited wounds so you don't instantly die in a battle because someone picked an evil book. Personal choice on my part.

Talent Tree

Toughness Situation

• No Quietude and Warp Expenditure. You can enable these if you choose to remove Empyric Resolve, as it dramatically reduces both these talents efficiency to the point of uselessness. Instead we are stacking critical chance and relying on the Soulstealer and Mettle talents to regain toughness.
• Additionally, as a support build, your positioning matters a lot. We have curios that increase Toughness Regen (shortening the time before regaining toughness in coherency) which is bolstered by our Puppet Master talent.

Blitz: Brain Burst

• Our answer to dealing with carapace / boss enemies when needed.
• Mostly chosen because the latter choices are more redundant. Smite occupies too much crowd control potential that the Trauma staff already does very well. Assail also does little to help improve our damage output and fails to cover our weakness of dealing with carapace enemies.
• Not the star of the build and will be seldom used, the Blazing Trauma staff is the main bread and butter of the build.

Aura: Prescience / Seer's Presence

• Spamming ult is a valid strat for more guaranteed Soul Blazes. NOTE: If you go this route always ult BEFORE killing elites so that you will restore your Warp Charges.
• Alternatively you  can choose to stack criticals to build survivability as we forego the previously mentioned Quietude and Warp Expenditure for Empyric Resolve with Soulstealer and Mettle. Remove Warp Battery from Warp Siphon and and add the critical chance on the bottom right of the talent tree. This makes Soul Blaze more consistent, but not as consistent as ult spamming imo.

Ability: Venting Shriek

• Short cooldown time and ability to spread Soulblaze make this a safe choice for survivability. Note that you have Soulstealer, so if you are feeling overwhelmed or suddenly have a pox horde teleport behind you, it can keep you alive and healthy. A downed Psyker is a useless Psyker.

Keystone: Warp Siphon

• Your main weapon, the Blazing Trauma Staff, is extremely effective for mixed hordes on higher difficulties. You will plenty of opportunities to maintain Warp Charges which help your damage output and your Venting Shriek toughness survivability.
• Our blitz lacks an additional modifier to make Empowered Psionics an attractive choice. 
• Disrupt Destiny, while interesting, is too disruptive for our given build for little pay off.

Misc Nodes Notes

• Soulstealer - You will be using Trauma Staff primarily in this build. Each chaff killed is toughness and survivability for you.
• Perilious Combustion - Trauma Staff cuts through mixed hordes like no other. Take advantage in Soul Blaze spread and what it procs for your class in combination with your other nodes.
• Mettle - Keeps you alive for this critical centric build.
• Perfect Timing - Additional damage if you are in a heated fight and need to take down chaff more quickly.
• Wild Fire - Normally unimpressive, your reliance in causing as much fire as possible while maintaining crowd control with the stagger of the Trauma Staff makes this an important node. Note Soul Blaze kills regenerate toughness as well, crucial for your squishy Psyker.
• Psykinetic's Aura - Cool down for your ability is important as reiterated many times, Soul Blaze kills keep you alive. Shriek can be used quite liberally as you and your teammates chop down hordes. Works in conjunction with Puppet Master, and incentivizing you to stay close to your allies.
• Lightning Speed - Hit faster, leads to Souldrinker
• Souldrinker - Free toughness and critical chance for 5 seconds just doing your job with the Trauma staff and Venting Shriek.
• One With the Warp: Toughness Damage Reduction, simple as.
• Puppet Master: Emphasizes your support role. Provides you more Ability cool down with Psykinetic's Aura, and your curios to shorten Toughness Regen delay. This makes your positioning important in a team.
• Warp Rider: Free damage.
• Empyric Resolve - Normally kind of mid, but here it lets you really spam your Trauma staff very liberally. About 8 to 9 casts compared the 3 to 4 before having to vent or quell your peril. Your toughness is regenerated freely from Souldrinker from Soulblazes and Mettle from crits. This also synergizes well with your team job as stagger support and lets your stay up longer.
• Solidity - While a decent node, a Staff with high Quell Speed stat doesn't make the quell much more effective and generally less impactful to the build compared to other nodes. Not taken due to build requirements.

If you made it this far or scrolled down here, thank you for checking this build out.

May the Emperor bless you with successful missions and good allies 🙏