Punisher's 'Havoc Forceful Wall of the Lex' Stance Sup Shield
 Arbites Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

A build crafted with the main idea being similar to most of my other Havoc Builds, 'Survival is top priority'. I got plenty of other 'greedy' Arbite builds (that will get put on here eventually) but this one's meant to say 'yeah, I just strictly will not die'. Just finished 'testing' it in high havoc, got True Survivor with a random group on rank 38, and said 'ok, I can now say this build is good'. 

The main thing that one will have to get used to is you are not the damage carry, you are peeling for them. You CAN still do lots of damage thanks to Arbite being Arbite and basically trip over everything in sight, but you won't drop a crusher in 3 hits for instance or require a few hits to drop specials/maniacs depending. But, all of that is made up for by having a fully upgraded pooch. As soon as they leap through the wave to hit something, everything dies anyway from your continued hits along with the bleed/ electrocution, and brittleness, thus you can safely smack away and just wait for your dog to finish off anything that survives your onslaught of hits in front of you. 

To that end, I also decided I'd truly live 'the wall life', and took a Suppression Shield + Rapid Movement. This allows you to functionally 'AFK' behind the shield if ever you feel overwhelmed, and your dog will passively feed you stamina while you generate charge to stun the wave and get back to smacking yourself back to full toughness. That plus Man and Cyber-Mastiff + Will of the Lex feeding you constant toughness as you go, and you will never feel threatened even at the highest levels of Havoc. And if you somehow miss something like a sniper or an overhead from a Crusher/Mauler? True Grit makes sure you always got two do overs anyway, as you run around with 130 HP, just enough to tank two HEAVY hits without going down while still taking chip here and there. This on top of all the DR I grabbed means I rarely saw myself dropping bellow 130 toughness (175 in total with this set up) and only saw myself drop below half HP once, even when getting separated completely from the team on a few occasions and having to flail in the middle of a wave against a captain or monstrosity, hiding behind the shield when required. The fact the 'suppression shield slam' doesn't cost stamina to use is insane, and incredibly potent on top of being able to Remote Detonation while blocking, allowing you t o wait for your dog to be in position, then wipe everything and get away with speedy slides.

And if all of the above fails you, if you find your toughness shattered, if you think you're on the brink?

Castigator Stance. 10 seconds of full invulnerability (with it's DR on top of all the other sources given), allowing for risky maneuvers or potent clutch plays. I don't even take any upgrade points in it, as while they are all pretty useful, I don't value incidental damage while it's active over constant always active skills for this set up, but one can swap things around for some upgrades if they want. It just does everything you need it to do out of the tin, with a low enough CD (so long as you aren't spamming it unless you think you really need it) that it's always there for you when you need it. 

It worked surprisingly well, given I've been running around with super damage for most of my other 'Auric' builds. But turns out, the Arbite can easily get it done with just the bare minimum and ALL the DR available, and that feels pretty nice. 

Confident Strike is taken to make up for not having any other toughness regen talent beyond the passive regen ones, VERY useful and effective and allows for this 'later tree' DR point expenditure, one can take Opportunist instead if they feel like it though, but I think you'll see a drastic drop off in effectiveness personally for marginal damage gains (and any other blessing is just kinda poo, so I make do quite well with High Voltage alone). I use the XI for varieties sake as I use the VI on a seperate build, but either are basically the same/will work. Main combo is light light heavy light (repeat), push into the previous combo or just heavy light off rip (but you're almost always pushing for the bonus cleave due to how dense things can get). 

Judicious Efficiency is taken because the Boltgun feels not nearly as good without it, this weapon is your boss killer and helps you and your team just melt them with high amounts of bleed stacks and even FURTHER brittle from Shattering Impact. Getting 1-2 clips off against a boss almost always guarantees it's downfall (and the DoT with Electricity procs from the dog can even kill Captains through their shield with heavy ticks). Ammo Belt also heavily helps you not be a burden on the ammo, allowing 1 charge per crate to often keep you through the rest of the mission. Liberal use of Remote Detonation is useful too, though keeping at least 1 charge to stun monstrosities with is very useful and advised (the added DoT helps against them too, as mentioned with the bleed). I take Judicious Force as the radius is actually pretty big and it's stagger effect is rather useful. I can see one swapping off of it for something like Weight of the Lex if they want, but given I'm a 'full tank' I figured I'd lean into the supportive roll and just stun everything even more. 

And that's it I think, the first of my builds to make it to this site, more soon to follow. Just hard for me to put the other one's up atm since Auric is in such a bad state/not very difficult at all so it's hard to tell if my builds are good or Auric is just easy. But I'll put them up for now, think after seeing the performance of this one the others will perform 'just fine' even if they fix Auric being not Auric. But if not, I'll edit them at that point! But either way, this is insanely potent, especially for anyone that 'doesn't want to be the one that goes down' in a True Survivor run while still being very useful to the team. Bleed good, Dog good, be an impenetrable wall of the Lex.