Speedy Sliding Stabbing Shiv Scum
 Hive Scum Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

Troubled by the Terrible Things Treading on Tertium? Trying to Turn the Tables on these Tremendous Terrors? 

Try This Terrific Toxin Tank Today!

I'm pretty sure this is about as good as it gets for melee Hive Scum. Fast attacks and high crit chance allows Coated Weaponry to apply lots of Chem Toxin stacks to enemies. This, combined with Toxin Mania, makes for some pretty decent damage all around, and Toxic Renewal gives this build lots of staying power. The Hive Scum has some serious squishiness issues, but this setup is probably the best toughness gain and damage reduction you're gonna get out of the class.

Playstyle:

Slide around the map, kill stuff. Use Rampage! on cooldown, and use your Stimm as soon as Rampage ends. Get up in gunners' faces to take pressure off your team. Heavy attacks deal with specials and gunners pretty damn well, but light spam also works for everything. Light spam for hordes. Always aim for heads/weakspots to get value from The Sweet Spot. Use the Branx MkVIII Dual Stub Pistols special attack to snipe distant specials, and normal shots for any and all specials you need to deal with in midrange. Make sure to get three stacks of Chemical Dependency ASAP, and keep them there. In other words, don't forget to use your Stimm! Chem Grenade is ridiculously strong; use it to get out of sticky situations, to Exterminatus a chokepoint, or to facilitate revives.

Pros:

• Very mobile; beelining gunner packs is no biggie with dagger movement tech spamsliding.
• Deals with (almost) all enemy types without issue. Surprisingly decent Carapace damage.
• Get out of jail cheap card in the form of Chem Grenade.
• Probably the best toughness gain you're gonna get as Hive Scum.

Cons:

• Bulwarks are very hard to deal with, especially in groups. Picking Blackout can alleviate this somewhat, but the Chem Grenade is way too busted to pass up on. If you do decide on taking Blackout anyway, swap Extra Pouches for Pocket Toxin.
• Ragers are scary. Dodge them, shoot them, do whatever you have to do to prevent them from getting hits off on you.
• Boss damage is lackluster, but not horrible.
• Needs to hit stuff in melee to sustain itself.

Comments/thoughts/ramblings:

• On Adrenaline Frenzy: Decent keystone since you should almost always be meleeing. However, I feel like the uptime is too low and too inconsistent to justify picking it over Chemical Dependency.
• On Chemical Dependency: More crit, more CDR, more toughness damage reduction. Everything you want, packed neatly into one keystone.
• On the Stimm: Cooldown reduction is BIS - Rampage! uptime is everything. Attack speed and crit are cool, but both suffer from diminishing returns. Strength is probably pretty good. The Stimm is mostly used to provide Chemical Dependency stacks and reduce cooldown on Rampage!. As such, any other bonuses than cooldown reduction aren't worth the increased Stimm cooldown.
• On movement tech: More testing is needed, but the Duelling Sword heavy slide tech seems to work fine (charge heavy attack while sliding, sprint, let heavy attack go, slide, repeat). Sprint > light attack > slide seems usable too.
• On shivs:
  • Mk I Shivs are superior to Mk III due to the stabbing heavy attacks. The versatility more than makes up for the slightly better horde clear.
  • Perks: Up for debate; but stamina and crit chance are the tankiest choices since they feed into Toxic Renewal. Also, the usefulness of flak/carapace/unyielding is diminished since more crits = more Chem Toxin stacks (which deal decent damage against those armor types too).
  • Blessings: Uncanny Strike helps with the not super-great Carapace damage, and is still good despite the localized nerf. Flesh Tearer adds quite a bit of damage, but makes it less likely that you will get killing blows with your melee attacks, slightly diminishing the value of Toxic Renewal. Both Precognition and Riposte are very good options.
  • Dump stat: This build lives and dies with its mobility, so I chose to dump First Target. I have not tested whether this affects any meaningful breakpoints, but I doubt it.
• On other melee options:
  • The Catachan Mk III Combat Blade is a very solid option. Better movement speed at the cost of coolness factor and novelty, mostly. Dump stat: damage. Perks: crit chance + stamina or carapace. Blessings: Uncanny Strike + Riposte / Precognition / Flesh Tearer.
• On ranged weapons:
  • Weapon choice is purely preference; I like the Branx MkVIII Dual Stub Pistols due to their versatility. My blessing choices are debatable; I use Run 'n' Gun for the spread reduction and Sustained Fire for making the odd kill here and there take one less shot. Do what you want, I'm not even your real dad.
  • Both Bolt Pistols are solid choices. Add perks and blessings to taste; I prefer the Godwyn-Branx Mk VI Bolt Pistol with Flak + Maniac and Surgical + Puncture.
  • I've dabbled with the Needle Pistols, but in my opinion a large part of their appeal is Stripped Down, which isn't really needed in this build due to the Shivs being mobile enough to make gunners a non-issue. The Needle Pistols also lack the "kill that thing right now" energy that the Stub and Bolt Pistols bring. 
• On testing: I haven't taken this build into Havoc yet, but it is perfectly viable in Aurics. I doubt that any Hive Scum build will do well enough in higher Havocs to justify the opportunity cost, but if I had to play the class in Havoc 40, I would bring this build. Please note that no Psykhanium dummies were hurt in the making of this build.

Enjoy! 

If you have any feedback, questions, breakpoint data, or troubling philosophical dilemmas, feel free to add me on Discord: inte_phisk