The Red Hand - Shock Maul & Double-Barrelled
 Veteran Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

THE RED HAND is a melee-focused build which utilizes the beautiful synergy between our Double-Barrelled weapon of choice and the Weapons Specialist keystone's Always Prepared node, giving us instant reloads & guaranteed crits. 

In The Red Hand's case, melee-focus refers to our desire to fight in close-quarters-combat, swapping frequently between our weapons, benefitting from Agile Engagement's +25% ranged/melee damage buff on kill and Weapons Specialist +33% crit chance per stack. 

The additional crit is particularly important as it allows us to guarantee high-damage, high-cleave shots that rend our enemies & apply 6 stacks of bleed. All whilst Always Prepared keeps our beloved shotgun warm and ready to roar. 

RECOMMENDED WEAPONS:

Melee: Shock Mauls, Shovel Mk I, Combat Knives

Ranged: Double-Barrelled Shotgun, Combat Shotguns, Bolt Pistols

This variant of The Red Hand opts for the Agni Shock Maul with Skullcrusher & Hammerblow blessings. Skullcrusher is a high value blessing, providing a significant team damage boost on staggered enemies (which also applies to DOTs). Hammerblow adds substantial stagger to our melee attacks, synergizing beautifully with Skullcrusher and providing some welcome safety in combat.

For our Crucis Double-Barrelled Shotgun, we bring Man-Stopper and Flechette for the +cleave and +bleed on crit.

Shock Maul Tip: The Shock Maul's special action taser /zzzzap effect can be used - to great effect - on Captain energy shields to tear through them rapidly. This attack shares similarities with chain weapon revv attacks on void shields. They can also flinch bulwarks, opening up their shields.

Shotgun Tip: Flechette applies 6 stacks of bleed on crit allowing us to one-shot specialists, such as snipers. This helps shore up our... close-ranged preferences :)

BLITZ: YOU CHOOSE!

All 3 of our grenade options are strong and viable, offering a variety of solutions to our team composition: Anti-armour/monsters? Kraks. Anti-ranged seeds? Smokes. Anti-hordes? Shredders. 

Tip: You probably shouldn't Krak that lone crusher... But, what if that hurts his feelings? It's almost rude not to. 

ABILITY: VOICE OF COMMAND (SHOUT/VOC)

VOC is an incredibly powerful control tool, combining on demand CC with gold toughness generation (sweet sweet gold). This ability is cracked, use it liberally. We take Duty & Honour for the +50 toughness and Only In Death for the revive, allowing us to scream so loudly, and with such gravitas, into our teammates faces that we can revive them from downed states. This opens up revives that wouldn't otherwise be possible and is an amazing clutch tool.

Tip: Your shout's effects can travel through terrain! Provided you're in range, you can give teammates toughness, and even revive them, through ceilings & walls! 

KEYSTONE: WEAPONS SPECIALIST (WS)

WS is an interesting keystone which provides a good (but not fantastic) base buff to our attack speed and dodges. WS real value can be found in the additional nodes, particularly Always Prepared, which reloads our clip based on the # of WS stacks we have (+3.3% / stack). Combined with our Double -Barrelled Shotgun's clip size of 2, we never have to reload, provided we're killing things in melee.  

ALTERNATE TALENTS: 

This talent tree is 30/30 and is my preferred way of running this build.

To free up talent point(s), I'd suggest dropping: Only In Death.

CURIOS: 

The curios listed above are my preference for this build however this is based on how I like to play. 

Use whatever best fits your playstyle - I find the most value in the set ups below, YMMV:

2 x Toughness / 1 x Stamina

2 x Toughness / 1 x HP

3 x Toughness 

(Minor node priority picks are +toughness / +gunner res / +revive speed / +stamina regen).