Babysitter Psyker
 Psyker Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

Overview – Like it reads on the tin, this “babysitter” build offers outstanding support utility via mass crowd control with smite with protective bubble shields that help keep the rest of your team alive.  However, what makes this build unique compared to many others I’ve tried is that it ALSO deals excellent damage and has great survivability.  With over 1000 hours into Darktide (with psyker as my main) this is my comfort build that I consistently achieve the highest win rate for damnation quickplay normal and auric missions.

 

Playstyle & Tips –  The core gameplay loop involves farming elite kills with your staff and dueling sword to build empowered psionics charges, then tactically unleashing devastating warp-storms of damage and crowd control with smite.  You have excellent mobility and should actively be making good use of it to get in positions where your forward-cone-facing smite can get the best coverage.  Your smite’s crowd-control acts as a force-multiplier to the other members of your team, helping them safely and quickly dispatch other foes; but that doesn’t mean you can’t still can’t wreak psychic devastation all on your own.

In many other builds, the optimal use of smite involves short-channels to send everything to the floor.  However, for this build, optimal usage involves long channels where you’re often smiting 5-10 seconds at a time to optimize the use of your empowered psionics charges (which triple your smite damage and make it jump around faster) to lay-waste to large swathes of mixed hordes.   Dodge while channeling to get into position.  Note that your smite begins dropping targets if they’re outside a roughly 120-degree frontal cone, so be mindful of your facing.  Also, while you should tend to favor long-channels, note that going over 90% peril removes the effect that sends enemies to the floor on ending the channel, so consider occasionally ending your channel just before 90% to finish with improved CC. 

Ideally, your long-channel smites will earn you more charges.  Making sure you’re saving your smite to use on either large groups where the native 7.5% proc rate on kill is likely to earn you a charge or two, and/or use it on small/medium packs of weaker elites like gunners, shotgunners, and ragers which you can burn-down in about 4-5 seconds.  

 

The biggest challenge that takes practice with this build involves learning how to position yourself to keep your smite channels up and establish maximum coverage without getting interrupted.  The first time you play this build, you’ll probably find one-off mobs frequently hitting you from behind and breaking your channels.  You need to be hyper-aware of enemy spawn points, especially the overhead ones where enemies drop down, and try to make sure none of them are behind you.  You don’t really need to focus on aiming with this build, so all your attention should instead be focused on your surroundings. 

I will also recommend something which is a TERRIBLE idea on most other classes & builds; wedge yourself into corners.  If you find a 90-degree corner and wedge yourself into the back of it, you can ensure full smite coverage with nothing that can harass you from behind.  If there’s still pressure on you as your smite channel is nearing max peril, be sure to take a few steps forward so you can block, push, quell, dodge back, then get back to smiting.  Walls are fine too in a pinch, just be very mindful of spawn doors and overhead spawn drop points.

One final thing to be aware of when using the build is the “babysitter effect”.  When playing with PUGs (which typically don’t use much voice or text communication) some of your tools tend to naturally encourage the group to stay together, leading to more successful runs.  If you drop a bubble in the right spot, parties tend to huddle beneath it.  If you smite a mixed-horde, your other party members tend to descend upon it to feast on the easy kills.  Like an old English sheepdog, use your abilities to herd the less experiences players in your party together.  

On a related note, you should always play support to objectives.  If someone else is fiddling around with a console, you should be standing back and guarding them with smite and bubble.  This build is especially effective at helping push objectives.

Build Review – The core of the build centers on taking x3 peril reduction nodes (15% peril reduction), plus empyric resolve (40% peril reduction), and empowered psionics which triples the strength of smite for a given channel.  However, empyric resolve also reduces all forms of toughness regen by 30%, so the secondary focus is entirely on shoring up your toughness economy so you’re not a glass cannon. 

The meta right now is usually to take x2 17% toughness curios and x1 +3 stamina curio; and in-general I agree with using this on most builds.  However, for this build, since we took empyric resolve with its 30% penalty to your toughness economy, we are looking for creative ways of squeezing-out more toughness and survivability.  To this end, I have found success in trading what normally would be a 25% carapace dmg bonus on the dueling sword for +2 stamina, then swapping the +3 stamina curio for a third 17% toughness one.  You don’t really need the carapace dmg on your sword since both your electrokinetic staff and smite ability have a native dmg bonus vs carapace armored units so you have other ways of dealing with them.

If you really like this build, I’d recommend making a similar but slightly altered talent build trading your kinetic presence aura for seer’s presence.  If running with another psyker, its nice having both options at your fingertips so you don’t double-up on auras, and it’s a relatively light alteration. 

If you’re looking to make more personal tweaks to the build, allow me to offer some suggestions to get started.  Warp expenditure and psychic leaching are what I’d consider to be the most fungible talents and easy to remove should you wish to earn a few points to slot-in somewhere else.  Occasionally I use these two points to sprint for kinetic deflection, or snag perilous combustion and wildfire.  If you lean more into melee, charged strike is a nice pickup as well. 

For equipment alterations, the Bolt Pistol and Deimos force sword are my preferred backups.   The bolt pistol gives you snappy elite-killing power to farm empowered psionics charges and you can use it immediately after capping peril on a smite.  The Deimos force sword is also a great sword and I take it so I can grab the deflector blessing.  The voidstrike & voidblast staves are fine as well if you find them

Limitations – While I love this and highly recommend it to achieve optimally high win rates in normal quickplay queues, I would NOT recommend it as openly for Havoc 30+ content.  For this, I would instead recommend the tanner havoc 40 flame/purgatis staff build you can find info on here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDh8vCgUBdQ&t=1093s).  While I have successfully completed havoc 40 with my babysitter build multiple times, I find it works best as a secondary option if you’re already running with another competent psyker filling the role of purgatis/flame build.

While this build is pretty well-rounded and capable of dealing with most any situation effectively, it primary weakness is in dealing boss damage.  You can safely chip away at bosses with your electrokinetic staff or, if you’re more confident, get in its face with your dueling sword to tear it down.  Just know that you’re direct DPS against bosses isn’t going to be spectacular.  In most cases with bosses, its best to focus on dealing with all the other mobs so the other 3 members of your team tear down the boss itself.

As a “babysitter” build, the build tends to be MORE effective the less experienced your team is and/or when things begin to get out of control.  This build shines brightest and does the most heavy-lifting in moments of overwhelm and crisis, so when playing with newer or less experienced players (where crisis seem to happen all the time) you feel like a GOD and top the damage charts.  However, if you happen to be grouped with a team of high-skilled players who know what they’re doing and keep the run smooth and under-control, you’ll find it tricker to build empowered psionics charges and you’re overall DPS will drop dramatically.  This is fine, because if the rest of your team is making the run go smoothly, you don’t NEED to do as much heavy lifting.  In these situations, be stingier with your smite charges and be more alert for managing the moments of crisis.

Finally, I want to make a comment related to skill advancement.  While I advocate strongly for this build as HIGHLY effective, I will be the first to say that THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE ONLY BUILD YOU USE IF YOU WANT TO BECOME A STRONGER PLAYER.  With this build, smite becomes such a one-size-fits-all solution to so most survivability problems that it can stunt growth in core survivability skills (like dodging, sliding, pushing, blocking, positioning, etc).  Even with this build, there are times when smite cannot solve your crisis and you need to default to well-practiced core survival skills to stay alive…. However you don’t get as much practice at actually using these skills if you can successfully smite 95% of the time.  If you want to become a stronger player, I highly recommend rolling a zealot or vet and learning how to keep yourself alive without using smite…. Then once you’ve mastered the essentials of survival, come back to this build and you will be neigh untouchable.