Psyker
12.5-20% Critical Chance for 6s on successful Dodge.
25-40% Cleave on Hit. Stacks 5 times.
2 Shots on Critical Hit. 2-5% Ranged Crit Chance.
Gain between 3.5-5% and 14-20% Critical Chance based on current level of peril.
Hello there, to preface, this is my first build and i'm not by any means a pro/great player at darktide (mostly casual who really enjoys it).
This build came up to be becasue i love the 2hand force sword (i really get bored with the duelling sword, and already used too much the onehanded force sword). The current "meta" or prefered builds with psyker seem to be Purgatus for horde clear (and elites, and beign op, etc...). this didn't really allow me to get into melee and enjoy the 2h sword. So i tinkered and scrapped several builds into this.
The 2hand sword is mainly to use when peril is high and we won't be able to use our staff or bombardment (also to make ourselves some room from nearby enemies). Thanks to malefic momentum we should have extra damage at melee from killing some mobs from ranged attacks (+20% total). You can stack the souls to keep at melee or swap when you have room to shoot and are not under critical peril.
For the staff option i wanted a good ranged one (i hate depending on the veteran or zealot/ogryn to deal with long range enemies. This is pugs btw, so yeah comunication seems hard for some people). I first tried the Nomanus (electric one) but when i tried havoc it kinda falls off. So i went with Voidstrike as it has the big void hit with the charged attack to kill packs of gunners/snipers/etc. Having Surge as a blessing allows for Double charged balls shot (o.o, yeah i saw on reddit some dude tested it and it worked). With the build stats you should usually sit at 40%+ crit chance (i think 48% is the max¿?) which allows for really satisfying volleys of continous doomballs to kill annoying incoming hordes or gunners sitting shooting like maniacs. This style of gameplay really benefits from choke points shooting at heads of incoming hordes and proccing double charged shots. Also, charged shots stagger (momentarilly) Crushers/Bulwarks/maulers, etc.. so good idea to help get those down and get easy head shots while at it.
Another thing to take into account is the use of Assail (i used to run Smite, but through searching and testing i saw Assail can stagger too o.o - tanner lindberg), so when chaff mobs comes into you forcing melee just spam some assails to get some peril (and hopefully some kills) to renew your malefic momentum and chop them quickly with the 2hand sword. Another helping bit is when being overwhelmed with ragers those assails staggers and random rager kills get you off some of the main reasons ppl get downed in games (in my experience).
For the abilities shield is simply really good, i think a version of this build is easily run with Scrier's gaze, but in that case might as well run gun psyker. For the Keystone i never used Disrupt Destiny but with the high income of enemies you really can keep up those stacks and boosts your damage.
As a final disclaimer i've used this in auric missions (which benefits the use of assail) and imo seems to work great (obviously not as op as the purgatus, but that is the point not to use it). On Havoc i really only got to 24 Havoc, so yeah everything seems to be okay on that level, i'll see/update whenever i get to higher levels. Damage wise won't be as effective as meta builds, but really gets a good punch (700-800k aprox is the max i've managed untill now). Last but not least, the talent points to be changed around are "Quick Shards" and "Anticipation", i got these because it helps my playstyle but feel free to move things around on your own. Hopefully someone finds this interesting and thank you for reading, feedback is welcome but don't be too harsh on me, its my first try at it ^^.
