A balanced melee-range Psyker build, Explanations for beginners, Auric Maëstrom ready, Free yourself from Fire staff & Smite !
 Psyker Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

For Psyker's sake : A guide to a balanced all-rounder build

Ahoy

First of all, you'll have to forgive me for the inevitable language mistakes I will make, i'm not native. Now, if you have been looking for a beefy jack-of-all-trades psyker build that doesn't make you feel like if your body was made of wet noodle and allows you to go into melee range like any of our filthy zealot fellows, then here you are ! There will ( indeed ) but quite a lot of stuff going on that need explanation, so grab a coffee, lay back, scratch your genitals if you really need to and let's get into it.

Weapons ( first, because y'all obsessed with guns, lie me not ) :

Covenant Mk VIII Blaze Force Greatsword : 

The Covenant Mk VIII Blaze Force Greatsword will be our weapon of choice, for the absolute heretic-eraser it is ; amazing horde clear, insane finesse heavy damage, ridiculous range ( try the sprint-crouch heavy, you'll litteraly dash for 5 meters ) and an excessively cool alt-ability that directly injects dopamine into your veins ( and these numbers prove it ! : 5, 78, 272 ! )

Perks are straighforward, 25% vs carapace to get the 2-tap breakpoint on crushers, and 5% crit chance to help maintain Blazing Spirit , Mettle , Souldrinker , Perfect Timing and Empathic Evasion .

For Blessings, we will choose Shred over Riposte , for it is easier, in my opinion, to stack it in general ( more about it later ) ; nonetheless, I do believe riposte is a solid choice too, as we will be running Anticipation  ; second blessing will, surprisingly be Blazing Spirit , which, despite beeing seemingly worst than things like Deflector or Precognition , helps a lot into our toughness regen and our overall crits, due to Souldrinker . Wrath would have been a choice too, but Warp Splitting , in my opinion, compensates for it's absence. Also, you'll already have tons of overkill damage with this setup, so precog feels a bit unnecessary.

Bit of tips & tricks about the sword : the light attack spam works well into hordes, as long as you pay attention to audio cue for incoming attack ; remind to block & left click ( without the second push animation playing ) for these moments.

For crushers, the push attack into heavy-heavy is most of the time enough to kill them ( as long as you have Disrupt Destiny stacked around 10-12 ) not to mention the stagger that will save you more surely than these new-year resolution you never hold ; sadly, the push-attack seems often bugged against bullwark for some reason, but it breaks their guard when it is not, so enjoy. Also, forcesword push has an 9m range, making it the safest melee weapon to push back the world bosses that are pox bombers.

For the warp-slice attack, the actual gauge is 20 "lesser" kills to be full, which is quite easy to get to. Stronger ennemies, like specialist, count as 2, where elite such as crushers count as 4. Bosses will be 10. Each stack stays 8 seconds, so that will be 160 seconds to go from full charged sword to an empty one.

The warp-splitting wave itself, when fully stacked, has as far as i can tell infinite punchthrough, but an hefty amount of damage fall-off, so don't expect to one-tap anything more than 10-12m away. Also, because it goes though wall, you can save an ally from getting eaten alive by a dog, plus that will look extremely fancy from their PoV plus you will get a +1 to charisma for the rest of the run when doing so. Your mate may then praise you but gratitude is a rare quality these days, so don't expect that too much. Last note : you have little less than 3 seconds to launch the warp slice attack, and charging an heavy attack doesn't add damage, so just charge, and spam left click until it goes. DO NOT FORGET that getting hit during the charging animation will result in loosing all the charge, so be careful when trying to do so with your everlasting fanbase overwhelming you. 

And last but not least : Warp resistance on the weapon must be as low as possible. My personnal sword has 33%, at lvl 450 ; everything else is at 80%, but finesse that is 79%. The whole thing about this is to stack Warp Rider as much as possible when using the alt-ability, to maximise damage. For this build, it gives me 49% peril when charging sword, which is a free 10% damage. You can also charge it, swap to range, swap back to sword, charge again, and you're now at 98% peril, for 20% damage bonus ( plus One with the Warp ). Don't do it if you have stacks on the sword though, as you'll loose the charge ( this is only to get high peril really quickly, when opening a fight, for example ). Remember that as long as you are below 100% peril when charging the sword, you will not blow from it, but that push attack builds peril, so careful when using it.

In case you want to know how to get a low warp resistance weapon ( works on staves too ) : you'll have to buy the weapon from shop untill you get a 60% max warp resist, AND that this stat is really low on the unrefined weapon ( like, 10-12% when you get it ). This very stat will then be the last one to be enhanced due to game mechanics when visiting craftstation, so you will have upgrade your weapon untill you get everything else at 80% ( or, like mine, all 80 but finesse that is 79 ), and stop upgrading at this moment. Your weapon will most likely be around 420-450, with something between 25 to 40 warp resist. The lower the better. Good rolls can take quite a lot of time to get, so be patient and good luck ! 

Accatran Mk XII Recon Lasgun :

The Accatran Mk XII Recon Lasgun is my personal favorite, as it is an extremely consistant, ammo-efficient weapon as long as you're not magdumping into hordes ( which is not the purpose of the weapon, btw ). 

Infernus needs no explanation, Dumdum over Headhunter does, though. The reason is quite simple : headhunters overlaps with True Aim , and adds little to no benefit for the weapon overall damage. Really quick testing will show that DumDum has around 25-30% more damage than Headhunter, especially because of DumDum buffing the Infernus DoT ( from 251 to...326 ! ). From testing, the " close range " mentionned is up to ~22m, with linear scaling relative to distance.

For Perks, we go with 25% vs Unyielding to further increase boss damage, and 5% crit chance for the same reasons as the sword, insane synergy with all our skilltree nodes. 

One thing I feel necessary to enlight is the absurd amount of toughness back you'll get with this weapon. Because of Mettle , True Aim , the 15% base crit chance bonus from build & the insane Rate of Fire this gun has, emptying something as little as 30-40 bullets on a weakspot will get you from 0 toughness to full ; a little more ammo will be needed with body shot for True Aim wouldn't proc, but this gun's toughness regen is more consistent than your yearly workout, so have fun using it.

General tips : Do not use the gun vs hordes, it sucks at it in term of ammo efficiency, plus your main damage with it will be the insane burn damage it does ; you do not want to shot untill a target is killed, you want to shoot, and let it roast to death while you're already aiming at an other threat. And by threat, i mean things like specialists, berserks, incapacitors, etc. 

This gun also sucks vs carapace, due to the lack of both britleness & uncanny strike to enhance DoTs, so just don't magdump into crushers, that won't do any damage AND  you won't hear the sneaky one coming from behind, raising his mace and with the objective desire of turning you into a pancake.

I feel like if I wrote half a novel already, but let's get into the

TALENT TREE :

So yes, basically, where the Vet only needs Out for Blood , the Ogryn to hold either right or left click & the Zealot to spam dodge like a epileptic child under acid to get toughness back, we, as Psykers, will need to make efforts ( or almost, actually, but it's about pointing out we're better at the game ).

Soulstealer allows both our warp-slice from sword and our Assail to turn dead things into shield ; Quietude works just perfect for chip melee damage, as it provides some "passive" regen ( not really passive as you need to build peril, but you'll often do that, so almost ). Mettle as mentioned before has absurd synergy with all our kit, let it be from Lasgun crits, sword crits, assail crits ( it does crit yes, because it does proc True Aim :D ) .. Not to mention the bonus movement speed, which is completely unnecessary but that Fatshark gave us for some reason ( i love it ). Souldrinker Is a little bit extra regen when in melee and not being able to build easily peril ( no time to charge warp slice / to throw assail ), as crits from Blazing Spirit proc it. Oh, and about it : The description of Souldrinker is clunky as fuck, it actually gives you toughness & crits when an ennemy affected by it dies WITH it, not FROM it. Meaning that, as long as it's soulburning, no matter how it dies, you'll get the 5% toughness & crit. Little extra : if it dies from the soulblaze itself, Soulstealer will actually proc, for a beautiful 12.5% toughness back ! 

Assail Will be our blitz, for couple of reasons. First, it allows to relatively quickly build peril, when throwing a couple of these lovely flying shivs. As they will hit or kill things, you'll proc Soulstealer , True Aim Mettle and most important, Malefic Momentum , for a beautiful 20% damage increase on non-warp attacks on top of Warp Rider ; and guess what, you have twenty pounds of steel that ask nothing more than removing these miserables heretics forever from their terrestrial problems.

For Assail itself, I tried out alternately with Ethereal Shards and Quick Shards , and even with both . The two of them provide, in a way, 30% more efficiency for you blitz ; Ethereal because it hits one to two extra target, and Quick because you get to spam it more. Nonetheless, they both feel little superfluous, at last in the way you'll be using Assail with this build. It is either a good suppression tool, either a quick self-buffer, either a peril builder ; it will help you through hordes ( especially when you see them coming from afar ) and to snipe some isolated specialist with the alt-fire ( usually two shots ). Assail feels just fine to go by itself, so the one or two points spared from not enhancing it are welcome.

Disclaimer before we go further in, no, there's no Psykinetic's Aura in this build, as you saw. The thing is that I love assail, don't like meta builds ( that are most likely unnecessary before havoc 20+ ) and don't want play either Brain Rupture or cosplaying Palpatine with Smite . So malefic momentum, be it ! 

Lightning Speed feels way too good on the 2h Forcesword, futhermore that you'll use it a lot ; Souldrinker , as said 4232 times, because it synergies well with everything else. Warp Splitting is a little plus to circumvent the absence of Wrath , especially when you'll get used to charge peril with assail in-between light attacks, and manage to keep it around 80-90% throughout a fight ( don't missunderstand me though, it is not as easy as it seems as we will not use Scrier's Gaze )

Prescience is there for the extra crits we need in the entire build. Current meta, I know, is all about CooldownReduction on ultimate, with triple CdR curios, Psykinetic's Aura and Seer's Presence . But the 10s uptime for the bubble is definitely not a must before REALLY high levels of havoc, so I just take crits :D Feel free not to, indeed. 

One with the Warp provides some much needed beefyness in melee, scaling with peril ( and therefore with Kinetic Deflection, when you have no choice but to parry to survive ). Empathic Evasion is one of the most broken perk in the game, with an entire ONE ( 1 ! ) second of range damage invulnerability on crits ; we talked about the truckloads of crits you get when using the Recon Lasgun, add to this the consistent crits while swinging your sword and you'll get an absurd amount of invulnerability for these wicked, depraved & ugly gunners that love nothing but crack your shield from afar. If you wanted a comparison, 1 second if 5 TIMES MORE than what your dodge provides by default ( 0.2 of Invulnerability frames )

Anticipation  ( and the 5% ranged damage node next to it ) are our " modular" perks. I didn't yet test it a lot, but anticipation feels quite good, going from 0.2s of Invulnerability Frame on dodging to 0.3s IFrame, plus the extra dodge count that is the cherry on the soup. For no, " Dodge Duration" in the perk description DOES NOT refer to the lenght of your " visible " dodge, nor does it change animation in any way. You'll just get this juicy +50% IFrame, and if you've ever played a dark-souls game or alike, you know how much of a difference it can make between stayin' alive or getting PTSD from the " You Died " screen.

Yet again, remember that these 2 nodes are the one to be removed if you absolutely want to pick something else, but give it a try if you've never had ! 

As of Ability, we will choose Telekine Dome instead of Scrier's Gaze , for I can't count the number of times it saved the day. Even if the shield has health ( unsure of how it's calculated though ), it will NEVER break before 6,5 seconds, minimum ( I can't find back where I've read this, pretty sure that was from a patch note or what ; but I did try in the psykanium, and between 6 to 7 seconds is definitely the thing ), so it's 6 seconds to get your team safe from any range threat, get 60% toughness back and 50% toughness damage reduction for 5 seconds for everyone, thanks to Sanctuary .

For a damage-dealer oriented build, you may expect Scrier's Gaze to be chosen, but I do believe the bubble is more reliable overall, as scrier's gaze is, I assume, more for hardcore players that need every single bit of damage they may have ( where, with this build, and for up to Auric Maëlstrom, you'll still be most of the time ahead in damage, and having around 40% of your damage as overkill, so worry not about not being strong enough. Even had a game where an other Psyker was running scrier's gaze with the same weapons than me, and i still got ahead - from very little, but still ).

Keeping our way down on the skill tree, Warp Rider is self-explanatory ; the more peril you have, the more damage you do. Kinetic Deflection is way stronger than you believe, as you can parry forever against anything ( even daemonhost if you manage to quell in-between attacks ). We sadly have no room for Deflector , but as we run the bubble shield, that's forgivable. Also, a usefull tip about Kinetic Deflection : it helps you build peril. Just parry an plague ogryn charge, or some ragers for a couple of seconds, and you'll get high peril quite fast. 

Also, remember that Kinetic Deflection scales with your endurance relative cost, so the more endurance you have ( through Curios, for example ) the less peril will be generated from a blocked attack.

Note that the perk DOES NOT work vs : Grabs ( chaos spawn, trappers, dogs, mutants etc ), guard breakers ( Crushers/maulers overhead attacks ), and snipers. Yes, I dreamed about blocking sniper shots with Deflector & Kinetic Deflection for an unaware teammate, but it just ended up me loosing me entrails on the ground and my fellow friend wondering how bad i was.

True Aim Is incredible, for it works for the Recon Lasgun as a third free Blessing, procs from Assail , and stacks with weakspots hits. But you all know that already, now.

Finally, Disrupt Destiny with a single node, Lingering Influence , to keep max stacks easily ; remember that EACH stack has an independant cooldown, so if you're at 12 stacks and that the 10 seconds runs out, you'll just get to 11 with the timer reseting. Easy to maintain, absurd damage bonus ( at 15 stacks, we talk about 15% flat damage bonus, 30% crit damage and 37.5% weakspot damage ), 10% toughness regen when killing a marked target, and 20% MoveSpeed for 2.5s for the same reason. Add a one or two stacks from Mettle and you'll be the fastest psyker of the Outer Rim. Or the 41th millenia, as you wish.

In use, i feel a bit the absence of Cruel Fortune , that I gave up for Anticipation  ; but nothing too bad, both work, so do at your own convenience.

I also need to point out a - I think - graphic only bug, where you won't, ingame, see your correct number of stacks displayed from Disrupt Destiny, in your actives buffs icons ; from testing, i do believe it is solely the HUD trolling us a bit, as the damage boosts seems to be there still.

CURIOS :

The more I play, the more I believe that most of Curios blessing are less efficient than we think, in the way that if you're good at the game, they'll just facilitate your win, but never will bring you to victory by themselves ( if that makes any sense ).

I used to run 3x stamina regen, 3x Ability CdR and 3x Toughness, with 2 curios 17% toughness and 1x 3 endurance ; then I tried DamageReduction vs Gunners x3, but the game mechanics makes stacking these having disminishing returns, so that's not as useful as we may believe. Same for any damage reduction perk, by the way.

I ended up with this set, triple toughness curios ( and no stamina one, despite the peril reduction it may offer to Kinetic Deflection , and even because of this ; for I want to build peril as fast as possible when using block, to further enhance retaliation ), 3x Toughness ( the more toughness total, the more you get back from regen, as it is % regen and not flat ), 3x stamina regen ( way too important, especially because of how strong is the push-block on Forceswords ) and a bit of tankyness vs gunners & snipers. 

I'm honnestly not sure of how usefull is the corruption one, but it seems to provide a decent help to prevent chip damage turning your hp bar into a betroot limonade.

IMPORTANT ABOUT CURIOS : and in case you didn't know ( how could you, it's bloody stated no where ) DO NOT TAKE the % toughness regen speed, it's a terrible bait.

The wait it works, is not as you'd believe giving you more toughness back from any source, but ONLY from passive coherency regen... Coherency regen that has - per default - an 8 meter radius centered around the player, and this considered broken if there is a single ennemy inside it... Meaning that in the chaos of a horde, whether or not your allies are close by, you will NOT get any benefit from coherency toughness regen. 

I got baited when I first played the game, so don't do so !

Boss fight :

Not worth an entire paragraph, but didn't really know where to put that, so here we are ; for boss fights, you will have really decent DamagePerSecond thanks to Infernus & Blazing Spirit  ; the whole thing being to manage to stack infernus DoT, swap to melee, stack Blazing Spirit, and try to keep peril in-between these as high as possible, with the use of Assail and Kinetic Deflection. With proper kite, you'll eventually manage to get any boss down in an honorable time, but expect not to hit like a stealth Zealot ( filthy ! ptoo ptoo ! ), an honorable Vet with a Holy Bolter nor a kind Ogryn with his 12.7caliber rounds machine guns spitting FIRE. You're a psyker, and you don't play Metah, so be kind with yourself.

Bit of a conclusion : 

Overall, this build is the best all-rounder setup I found so far ; really good damage, insane survivability, can deal with every threat in a way that doesn't feel clunky ( I'm looking at you, Brain Rupture, don't hide ) , still have the mighty party-saver bubble to use when needed, but without the urge to spam it every 10 seconds, takes boss down in decent time, and is fun to play. Works for Auric Maëlstrom, but I have no idea if it would for Havoc 40, as I never did it.

Hope you enjoyed it, and that it will prove usefull for your runs !

Ps : If you wondered how I know about total damage / overkill damage, or managed to test toughness regen in psykhanium, I installed a couple of vanilla-friendly mods like Scoreboard or Creature Spawner from the beautiful NexusMod.com ; look at a tutorial before installing any, it's quite simple but a couple of things are to be known still :D

And remember, " For the Emperor ! "... I'm sure !

SPECIAL THANKS to Tanner Lindberg, for all the content he posted on youtube, especially the hours-long videos where he explains step-by-step a lot of weirdly ambiguous perks & description the game provides, when it does provide any.