Psyker
12-24% Rending on Enemy Weak Spot Hit for 3.5s. Stacks 5 times.
45-60% Finesse Damage for 2s on successful Dodge.
-8.5--5.5% Charge Time on Chained Secondary Attack. Stacks 3 times.
Target receives up to 2-8 Stacks of 2.5% Brittleness, scaling with charge time of Secondary Attack. Debuff lasts for 5 seconds and can have a maximum of 16 stacks.
Squeak! (Rat strongly believes that actions speak louder than words and has faith that the gameplay at the bottom of this guide speaks for itself. Rat would also highly recommend watching Rat's gameplay on Twitch at TheRatOCE for more scurries which may help you learn this playstyle faster! Rat is not nearly as active on Twitch and Youtube due to Rat's commitments, however still responds to comments and is happy to answer any questions!) :D
With this build, you will be able to handle anything from Auric to Havoc 40. It is difficult to learn how to use the Trauma Staff in tandem with the duelling sword at it's full potential. But if you have mastered it, then you will be able to singlehandedly carry any game in any situation.
The Trauma Staff is the single best weapon in the game. It is ranged with no ammo, has incredible stagger, and when paired with animation cancelling and rat-like move tech, allows you to deal with every threat, short of bosses, that the game can throw at you. Your impact on the battlefield is wide and far reaching thanks to the staff's range. You can stagger and suppress specials, elites and ranged enemies. You can support frens being overrun by ragers from a distance. You can stop a hoard of crushers dead with the staff's stagger. You can push through a hoard of elites or out of a corner by moving forward and trauma blasting at your feet. You can even use the staff as utility, popping all 3 corruptor growths to reveal the Daemonic Corruptor in under 3 seconds, making it so that you can strike out on your own on events like the end of smelter complex and singlehandedly clear 1 or 2 Corruptors by yourself.
Rat cannot overstate how powerful the Trauma Staff is.
Rat's build emphasises the Trauma Staff as the main weapon with the duelling sword as a supporting weapon to kill/finish priority enemies.
If you were to play Trauma Psyker traditionally, the main drawbacks of the staff is its long recharge time after each secondary attack and how slow you move while using the staff. Luckily, both these shortcomings can be solved with rat tech. To scurry like Rat with this build, by far the most important skills are to learn animation cancelling with the staff which allows you to spam secondary attacks, and eventually incorporate slides and peril quells into the animation cancel input rotation to regain your mobility and manage peril.
In the most basic form, the animation cancel inputs are:
Rat does this when movement and dodging isnt necessary or when holding a position from a safe vantage.
A more complex input rotation is:
Rat incorporates 'R' into the majority of input cycles as it is key for sustaining the sheer amount of attacks Rat spams.
Finally once you have mastered that, it is time to incorporate sliding into your rotation. This can be done by:
This rat tech is by far the hardest to learn, but is THE MOST IMPORTANT and commonly used by Rat. Sliding does multiple things:
Notes and Tips:
The second most important skill with the Trauma Psyker is good movement. You can stagger everything by spamming secondary attacks but enemies will still advance on you, and walking backwards simply won't cut it. This is were it gets more difficult and more traditional skills such as aiming, positioning and your ability to react on the fly will be tested.
In short, the best way to kite is to slide away after every secondary attack, similar to the aformentioned Advanced Rat Tech. However the key difference is that instead of sliding forward, you must turn 180 degrees before sliding away from the enemies. It will sound something like this:
There is plenty of resources online regarding this so Rat will stick to move tech for this build specifically.
A major skill which players usually neglect is learning how to chain slides properly with the duelling sword. The heavy attack on the duelling sword gives a short burst of speed. This can be used when chaining slides to significantly increase your speed and maintain momentum during slide chains. The inputs are as follows:
Note:
Dodging to the side off a height allows you to maintain your dodge momentum until you hit the ground. This skill is extremely important and helps you maintain even more distance when kiting, or scurry faster to save your frens during a clutch situation. Again there is a lot of info online about this which explains it better, but practice this skill wherever you can and you will truly scurry like a rat. ;D
The duelling sword is NEVER USED TO CLEAR HOARDS as it pales in comparison to the staff. Instead, it should only be used for its strength which is poking heads. :3
There is not much to be said for the duelling sword apart from the fact that it finishes off enemies, acts as your primary source of damage against bosses and serves as a medium for faster movement due to its high mobility stat. How you incorporate the duelling sword into your trauma psyker playstyle comes down to individual preference but Rat can give some tips on some things which Rat usually does.
Form follows function. The importance of quick Trauma secondaries dictated the direction of the skill tree. Three -5% peril generation modifiers, Battle Meditation (10% chance to quell 10% peril on kill), Solidity (Increases quell speed by 30%) and Inner Tranquility (-6% peril generation for each Warp Charge) all facilitate Rat's spammy Trauma playstyle.
Going top to bottom from the skill tree:
Notes:
Don't be afraid to experiment with different builds! Rat's guide should serve as a guideline and example, not the law. Although Rat has found great success with this setup, other frens may do better with a slighty different build. People often get lost in the weeds of theoretical damage numbers when optimising their build, but remember, we are not robots!
True optimisation is maximising the amount of fun you have first and foremost, before personalising a build to your own skillset and preferences to bring out the best of your own abilities!
Rat sincerely thanks you for reading this guide and hopes that it has helped in some way.
All the best in your scurries and may our paths cross one day!
Squeak! :D