Cadian Combat Medic
 Veteran Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

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Reject,
This is a Cadian Shock Trooper Combat Medic build that is a hell of a lot of fun to play and provides an interesting twist on the Veteran.

I've played all sorts of first person shooters going back decades and in games such as Battlefield I have always gravitated to being some kind of team support / medic role. I love working in coordination with my team, supporting their strengths to help everyone succeed together, and being a bit of a fall-back guy when things get sweaty.

If you're interested in only playing what is considered meta, feel free to click off and take your chances with the most up-dooted builds already available here. Good luck?? If, like me, you have played Darktide to death and are looking for something new and interesting: welcome, kindred!

This build thrives all the way up to Damnation and even beyond as an auric-ready play-tested build. It won't necessarily make you top dog on the scoreboard mod (although that's up to your own skill), but you will very often be the last man standing and picking up your team, untrapping them, and rescuing them... time and again.

1. BUILD SUMMARY AND PLAY-STYLE

As Combat Medic, you shine when you're riding shotgun alongside a front-lining zealot, Ogryn, or another vet of the right build. With one eye on the tide of battle and another on the lookout for incoming elites and specialists from the front, sides, and rear, you fend off incoming threats enabling your team to focus on wherever the battle is thickest. You dip in and out of the front-line, responding to elites and specials or head-tapping packs of heavies with your dueling sword.

When making a push, especially against ranged enemies, you're at the vanguard. You aggressively advance on entrenched enemy hard-points, immune to all incoming enemy fire, where you to force shooters into melee or scatter and suppress them until your team can catch up and finish them all off. When faced with an overwhelming wall of incoming fire, some well placed smoke grenades into the heart of the enemy gun line will render them useless... and allow you and your more aggressive companions to tear them to pieces in melee.

Thanks to your watchful eye and a build geared for support, you respond instantly when you hear that a friend has been disabled or downed and often reach them first, reviving them swiftly and securely from the safety of your camo-cloak, before your other allies can reach the troubled ally.

If an enemy specialist (such as sniper or tox bomber) is playing hard to get, your adaptability, speed, and immunity to ranged damage allows you to intentionally over-extend into a position that might easily kill one of your allies in order to assassinate the specialist and then, before the wrath of the full enemy force wipes you out, you can press your push-button-to-ignore-all-worries button (stealth) and return to the safety of your team.

2. THE WEAPONRY

I personally really love the knife, especially on the zealot, but I have to admit that the dueling sword shines at the moment. This is my acknowledgement of "the meta" in this otherwise zany build.

The blessings are perks can be modified, but these choices were made in order to keep you useful in melee against things such as Ogryn packs and are designed with swift attacks and high combat mobility in mind. I wouldn't personally switch a sword blessing to thrust as playtesting seems to suggest it isn't superior for my purposes but, really, just pick what you prefer. Heck, don't use the sword! It's optional!

The only weapon and blessing that IS mandatory for this play style as designed is the Vraks Mark V with stripped down. This synergises to make you an absolute god: when added to +stamina, sprint efficiency, and 'duck and dive', you can LITERALLY run eternally while under enemy fire.
Note: I'm skilled enough to survive reapers and gunner fire without this due to sliding and movement tech, but honestly this is a total no brainer. If I need to get OVER THERE and there is a room full of gunners, this is actually a GOOD THING as enemy gunners just become stamina generators. Sprint forever and take no damage from shooters ever? Yes please! The reason why this is powerful is because it opens up the option for people of a broader skill range to play at this level easily even if they haven't mastered the movement tech yet.

3. THE CURIOS AND STAMINA

I could talk for ages about this but I'll keep it short. I mostly don't pick anything else here. High toughness is crucial to avoid those sneaky first hits. Stamina is part of your 'Stripped Down' + 'Duck and Dive' synergy plus it enables high level play (incl. stamina regen). Combat ability regeneration is life-saving. Sprint efficiency is part of the same synergy discussed. If I wasn't doing the Stripped Down synergy such as with another Vet build or zealot, I wouldn't take sprint efficiency. I highly recommend it here. It's possible to play-test the breakpoints where you can maintain an eternal full sprint under enemy fire at different sprint efficiencies, but you won't always be shot at perpetually in normal combat and keeping your stamina high keeps 'Duck and Dive' active even during downtimes such as enemy reloads or repositioning.
 

4. DISCUSSING THE TALENT CHOICES

TOUGHNESS

Close Order Drill, Confirmed Kill, and (lower down) 2x25 and 1x15 toughness nodes really add survivability. You're not a tank, but this prevents chip damage from surprises if you avoid getting hit through skill generally speaking. Iron Will really wraps up this survival synergy with a nice bow.

GRENADES

Smoke grenades really are cooler and more tactical than I first believed and provide some fun gameplay and utility. You can smoke out a friend doing a terminal puzzle or you can literally just toss it on gunners and reapers to force them to waste their time coming out of setup stance, displacing, and needing to wait to set up again. If you're fast they'll be dead before this happens :) I added Demolition Stockpile and Demo Team. If you don't play Damnation and above, Demo Team will feel weak. It's not. With the rate of Elites and Specialists getting killed at higher levels, Demo Team produces insane results.

OPTION - if you reaaaaally hate smoke grenades, you can switch for Krak and it saves you a talent point! You could take grenade tinkerer for a super-krak! I went with smokes in this build as default to really lean in to the utility.
 

STEALTH

As well as Infiltrate, I took the keystone modifier Low Profile to really make you a super sneak. I personally prefer to use stealth to make me a useful off-sider to the squad and not just be an a$$hole who runs off and tries to speed run the map before dying to a hound. With low profile, you can get in behind enemies and pop heads with your dueling sword and the enemies will be concentrating on the angry zealot yelling a lot.
I took Catch A Breath to add to this infiltration aspect because that way when you are far behind enemy lines then you have some reliable way to regen toughness. Zealot infiltrators have Loner and I was jealous of that; this is the best Veteran alternative that I could think of for that.
 

TEAM SUPPORT AND MEDIVAC
To enable you to really support team mates who are trapped or downed, aside from Infiltrate, there are a few choices here:
Duck & Dive is essential (as it empowers Stripped Down to make it godly).
Leave No One Behind makes you very good at reaching troubled friends e.g. I played a match where an Ogryn was closer to a downed friend, the Ogryn charged, but I still reached them before he did!

For The Emperor and Covering Fire enable you to directly assist your allies. Don't forget that using your combat ability on the frontline during active combat has benefits to your squad!

SOME FINAL TALENT NOTES

Why no +10% rending? Why not choose XYZ melee talent? Well, mostly just because I was running out of points. This build does a lot. A playtest showed that, against all of the enemy Ogryns, Bring It Down alone gave me more DPS than having rending alone (with the dueling sword). If you are unhappy with my selection of melee nodes that are about effects-on-dodge, or critical, or +damage etc, feel free to tweak them to your liking. But make sure that you playtest them to confirm your ideas first. I've tried to do this and I think this is the best choice of melee talents that I could manage while still pulling off the utility of the overall build.
 

GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY HERETIC SLAYING! MAY THE EMPEROR GUIDE THEE!

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++HAT TIP: Tanner Lindberg for his Usain Bolt vet build which formed the basis of this one.++
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