Bastion Secours Knights (Veteran Tank/Support Carry - Power Sword & Plasma Gun)
 Veteran Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

Synopsis:

• Achlys Mk VI Power Sword & M35 Magnacore Mk II Plasma Gun - Become a Knight that rushes to save teammates, while looping energy between your weapons!
• Uses Agile Engagement Exploit Weakness Weapons Specialist by getting kills with the Power Sword to charge the Plasma Gun and vice versa. 
• Uses Voice of Command with Duty and Honour to help sustain your team and create that Tank feeling!
• Smoke Grenade to give cover from gunner fire, or to give you a quick escape during a melee!

Lore:

The Bastion Secours Knights are a sanction-scarred regiment whose wargear borders on tech-heresy, yet has earned the quiet approval of the Munitorum for one simple reason: they win where all others break. 

Each Knight bears a power sword and plasma gun bound together by Mechanicus thermal-reclamation channels - crude, dangerous conduits that siphon the murderous heat of battle into a continuous cycle of sanctioned destruction. Every slash from the sword bleeds kinetic blows into a weapon-core manifold, force-feeding the plasma gun with overpressure charge; every plasma discharge in turn floods the blade’s induction coils with heat from the recoil, sharpening the blade to a shimmering white-hot edge that can shear through Carapace like parchment. 

This brutal circuit of slaughter allows the Bastion Secours Knights to “reload” without pause, their weapons never cooling, never ceasing, growing hotter and deadlier with every foe reduced to slag or ash. When warzones falter, command posts burn, and entire regiments scream for salvation that will not come, it is the Bastion Secours who emerge from the wreckage: armored silhouettes wreathed in the haze of their vents, advancing with weapons incandescent. Finishing the mission in the Emperor’s name, even if no one is left alive to thank them.

Breakdown of Curios:

- Run 2 +16%-17% Toughness Curios  to get tankier - Toughness is king in Darktide

- I recommend running a +16%-17% Toughness Curio in the final slot, however you can swap this with +2-3 Stamina instead if you find it's not enough.

Breakdown of Weapons:

- Achlys Mk VI Power Sword:  While this weapon has received some noticeable nerfs, there still is some got some great parts about it. It's "Charged" mode gives it great cleave, and we also get a nice ramp of damage to help us deal with heavier Flak armored enemies, all while giving us that "knight" identity. 

The point of this weapon is to be used on Chaff/Horde clear, so we can empower our M35 Magnacore Mk II Plasma Gun with our buffs from Talents, to take down bosses and heavier armored targets. 

• 25% Damage to Flak and 25% Damage to Maniacs gives us higher damage output from the Power Sword into armored targets and Maniacs, which help us take those targets out faster once they get on us, as we want to be clearing flak/unarmored targets as fast as possible with the sword, so we can use our Plasma gun on the rest. 
• Slaughterer: Good Blessing for allowing us to get some ramping damage on hordes to help us clear faster and do more into heavier targets as well.
• Power Cycler: Almost mandatory, allows you to get up to 2-3 extra swings before needing to "Charge" the weapon again.

- M35 Magnacore Mk II Plasma Gun: This weapon is awesome, and gives us the heavy firepower we need to cut through heavier targets and bosses. Everything in our build specs around increasing this weaopn's potential, while feeding back into the Powersword as well.  Spamming hipfire shots around head height is the way you want to use this weapon, however charged shots can also be an effective way to deal damage to slightly armored targets in a single shot. 

• +10% Damage (Elites) and +25% Damage (Unyielding Enemies) help this weapon clear up the things Power Sword just can't handle, like larger tankier enemies.
• Rising Heat & Gets Hot! both are used together to help the weapon ramp its damage up the longer we use it - spamming hipfire shots around head height is the way to go. 

Breakdown of build path:

Your Choice of Point:

- Out for Blood On Your Toes: I bounce this point between these two perks: 

• Out for Blood:Since we get 5% toughness on every kill, including sources we normally wouldn't, so we take this Talent on builds that specifically specialize in getting lots of kills outside of precision headshots, or melee. In this case, it's using Plasma Gun into a crowd of enemies to quickly get Toughness back. 
• On Your Toes: Gives 20% Toughness regen every 3 seconds when you swap weapons, giving 40% immediately if done in sync. 

Rest of the Tree:

- Confirmed Kill: Meta on every build, always take

- One Motion: Since we will be swapping between our Plasma Gun and Power Sword constantly, I prefer the 50% swap speed from this. However, you can get another free 10%-25% Ranged Damage if you instead would like to go Longshot.

- Smoke Grenade (Blitz): I like bringing smokes on this build so I can press up on groups of gunners when I don't want to use Plasma Gun ammo to do so. This also creates cover for you to res teammates. You can also use this video here for tips on how to the "Safe Spot" in smoke grenades to create pressure while fighting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QowjoujyRaQ&t=330s

-  Iron Will: Incredibly strong, essentially buffs your effective toughness by a ton once you are over 75% total toughness, making it harder to fall below 75% toughness. META pick for every build. 

- Field Improvisation: Good support passive, cleansing corruption for all teammates and giving yourself grenades on crate. We take this to reinforce the support archetype of the build while going down the tree. 

- Survivalist (Aura): This is the only thing in the entire game that passively regenerates ammo for you and your entire team. This is in a category of it's own, run this on every single Vet build unless another Vet is (inevitably) running it. If so, bring Fire Team, 

- Demolition Stockpile: 1 grenade every 60 seconds is awesome, every minute is a grenade. META pick for every build.  

- Voice of Command (Ability): Great support skill, reinforces the team, can give the coveted "golden toughness" for aggressive play. We take this to reinforce that Tank/Support identity.  

• Duty and Honour is just flat out better than Only In Death Does Duty End, as giving "golden toughness" is one of the best things you can do in the game. Turns VoC into an actually good ability, so always take this if you take VoC.

- Precision Strikes: +30% Weak Spot Damage is great, always try to go for weakspot hits if you can. This leads into Fully Loaded, which is the main reason we are bringing it on our Plasma Gun build. 

- Leave No One Behind/Demolition Team: In nearly every other build, I would take Demolition Team, as this will generate way more grenades. However, since we are going Smokes, we can be a bit more passive with our grenade use, allowing us to lean even further into our support identity with LNOB, which is genuinely a really great support Talent. 

- Tactical Awareness: This Talent is one of the main ways you will generate Ability CD on every Vet build. META pick for every build. 

- Bring it Down!: +20% Damage into Ogryns and mosntrosities is fantastic, and it's right after a +25 toughness node. I almost always try to get this if I can spare the 2 points. 

- Reciprocity: Stacks up to 25% Critical Hit Chance by simply dodging, which you will always be doing. Amazing Talent, take if you are running crit builds and can afford it. 

- Agile Engagement: One of the biggest parts of the build, loops a +25% Damage buff between the Power Sword and Plasma Gun every time you swap weapons after getting a kill with the last. Clear hordes with Power Sword, then swap to Plasma to clear the heavies.

- Exploit Weakness: You will be proccing this occasionally, giving you yet another 20% damage buff to all sources when you land crits

- Weapons Specialist (Keystone): Gives nice passive buffs while we do our swaps between Power Sword and Plasma Gun, but we mainly want the next two nodes. 

• Always Prepared: Reloads a portion of our Plasma Gun every time we swap to it after getting kills with the Power Sword, allowing us to shoot longer without having to reload.