Quirked up sniper boy, pointing n' shooting (militarum style), is he goated with the emperor's light?
 Veteran Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

The veteran sniper build made by me!

Meant to fulfill the role of a sniper, this build prioritizes using the Helbore mk. IV in order to pick off elites and specialists from afar while maximizing damage with Executioner's Stance and critical charged shots while barely using any ammo due to shock trooper. While meant to be mainly used at range, the build is still quite capable for melee thanks to the Rashad mk. III combat axe and its simple horde clear and single clear combos (more on that below). Heavier enemies are taken care of thanks to krak grenades but can also be taken out fairly easily with two or three charged helbore shots to the head.

As for my picks and some strategies I recommend:

Lucius pattern mk. III Helbore Lasgun

My beloved. I love this gun and it loves me. One of the closest things we have to a longlas as of this being written (14.12.2024) and it does that damn well. While the bayonet charge on the other two marks of the Helbore is very nice, I opted for the mk. III because of its highest charged shot damage and also having the most experience with it prior to the itemization update.

As for tips on using it:

• As with other vet weapons, range is your friend, the Helbore family is notorious for its slow swap speed and it is noticeable even with one motion. Remember to stay at arm's length with most enemies and you should be able to kill them before they kill you.
• When possible, always use ADS to get stacks of surgical and proc shock trooper to conserve ammo. That way I managed to go through entire missions barely grabbing any ammo off the grounds, especially with survivalist also being there.
• A way to draw the Helbore faster is as follows (taken from path.exe's Hammer of the Emperor vet guide): when the gun is missing ≥1 ammo & isn’t empty, press reload as it’s being drawn, then press sprint as its battery pack is about to be pulled out (Swap → Reload → Sprint).

Rashad pattern mk. III Combat Axe

The humble combat axe that lets you go absolutely monkey mode with light attacks for horde clear. While having quite low cleave, the combat axe makes up for it with cleave on the push attack that you can sneak into a horde clear combo. The heavy attack is incredible for single clear. Overall, this axe is strong against everything.

As for tips on using it:

• Like I mentioned above, the combat axe family suffers from poor cleave but this is alleviated by the high cleave on the push attack. The ideal combo for horde clear should look like this: Push attack -> Light attack -> Light attack -> Light attack and then loop back to a push attack. This is why we also took stamina regen perks on our curios.
• The heavy attack on the combat axe is an insanely good overhead swing. Not much to say other than just spam heavy attacks when you need to target just one enemy.
• You do have a fairly slow overall attack spead so it's important to be on your feet constantly when using this weapon and make sure you're aware of your openings and how to give the enemies as few of them as possible.

Krak grenades

For when you need to take care of a crusher or Beast of Nurgle. The humble krak grenade can be swapped out for a shredder frag grenade if you prefer those, they aren't a hard requirement for this build and are fairly simple to use so they don't need a dedicated list of tips.

Why 1 toughness curios and 2 health curios?

Alright, so this'll delve into base stats of the Veteran and the short gist of it is that the veteran has the highest base toughness of all four classes and thus doesn't need as many toughness curios. Base health on the other hand is a 150 and thus could use a bump up to 200 so we can survive poxburster explosions (that deal 100 dmg flat). A wound curio can be taken if you want to but as a veteran you will benefit more from not having it since thanks to how darktide calculates health recovered from stimms, you will recover more without a wound curio. The perks chosen are just generally speaking good overall as well.

My general guide on how you should play with this build

In this section I want to touch on how I play this build to make the most of the talents and weapons chosen. As a rule of thumb, you will want to take out chaff with your axe's heavy combo and smaller groups and hordes with the horde clear combo, your ranged should only really be used for taking out elites and specialists because that's what it's built towards (plus why waste blessed ammunition on a lowly heretic when there is a greater quarry like a rager?). Your kraks should be mainly used on crushers, bulwarks, maulers, scab ragers and monstrosities to either 1-shot them in the case of the elites or greatly damage them in the case of monstrosities. Overall, you'll want to stay on the backline (while still in coherency) and aid your team through picking up elites and specialists while maximizing your damage output through marking enemies with focus target and further increasing your damage by constantly using Executioner's Stance.

Generally speaking, you can also play the build however you want, this is just how I use it and how I found it to be the most comfortable. Feel free to experiment and change things around to suit your preferences.

A link to path.exe's Hammer of the Emperor veteran guide that I used to make this build:
https://onedrive.live.com/:w:/g/personal/E2A0A519389B2F30/EciPxKdXTJlPiEj2LUHKr58BbN_LckMOC4bba3qnlO8THg?resid=E2A0A519389B2F30!sa7c48fc84c574f998848f62d41caaf9f&ithint=file%2Cdocx&migratedtospo=true&redeem=aHR0cHM6Ly8xZHJ2Lm1zL3cvYy9lMmEwYTUxOTM4OWIyZjMwL0VjaVB4S2RYVEpsUGlFajJMVUhLcjU4QmJOX0xja01PQzRiYmEzcW5sTzhUSGc