Rotten Armour Slayer - May 2026
 Hive Scum Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

Screenshot shows time to kill 4 active crushers and maulers with Havoc 40 stats, as standard in the Datatide mod, video demo link: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYpcIs-wycQ)

Build Core:

This build is specifically for Havoc with Rotten Armour. Do NOT use it for games without the Rotten Armour modifier; use Telopots' build instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuD38THdwRg

Turtolsky Mk VII Heavy Sword or Turtolsky Mk VI Heavy Sword 

Between the two, pick your poison:

• Mark VII (7) has a much better horde clear combo and can wipe grouped maulers faster when doing Special+Heavy spam, but if there is a crusher in there, your Heavy1 uppercut cleave will get cut short unless that blow happens to kill said crusher. 
  • Special Action (SA) > H1 is the primary anti armor combo. Heavy spam can do more damage on an attack to attack basis, but it's a lot slower. This can slay many maulers at once
  • The horde clear on this is slightly better as the H1>L2 combo has a fully horizontal sweep in the L2 
• Mark VI (6) can more consistently wipe out mixed crush/maul hordes owing to the when doing Special+Heavy spam. Does the most damage against Rotten Armour in the game.
  • SA>H1 is the move. Heavy Spam is worse in every way unless you are trying to cleave multiple at once. 

Perks:  +Infested and +Elite. With the new Rotten Armour changes, it shouldn't be a shock that one of the premier Infested killing weapons does amazingly. In Rotten Armour specifically, adding a +35% increase in damage makes this one of the most consistently powerful melee weapons in the game for Scum; Dual Shivs only does better when all the crits happen the way you want them to; a relatively bad streak of crits will make dual shivs worse

Even without Flak or Maniac, you do plenty fine against dregs, scab bruisers, and specials in general owing to just how good HSword is against Unarmored, Flak, Maniac, and Unyielding. Even Bosses and Ogryns die quick to HSword with weakspots

Blessings: Headtaker and Deathblow . Headtaker is always a pick on this because of how consistent it is: you will almost always have max stacks and +40% strength is insane. Deathblow's extra weakspot damage allows for 2 shot crits on Mauler weakspots.

Something not written in the game about the Heavy Sword: the heavies have increased cleave propertie. No fall off on the first 2 targets when cleaving with heavy attacks (all heavy attacks on the Mk VI & VII, the MK IX only gets the cleave on the vertical Heavy1). This is huge on Maulers and mix hordes in general. You can increase that number with Deathblow, with each subsequent weakspot hit equaling an additional no-falloff damage cleaved target, up to 7 total... which is why Deathblow is actually required on the Hsword.

You also have the special attack which has following properties:

• Increased attack speed for the follow up attack (might increase attack damage as a whole, but I'm not too sure)
• Ignores stagger resistance (Like the stagger resistance that Ragers get when they start attacking) other than Crusher overheads
• Adds 10% unique brittleness (Stacks with all other sources of brittleness only)

Rampage!: You will kill everything with this, and much less without it. No brainer. 

Adrenaline Frenzy: Heavy Sword's crit profile is good, but not nearly as good as finesse weapons like Shivs or Taxe; instead boosting the damage as much as possible is our goal. 
 

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Alternatives:

• Defensive: Can sub Jittery for Forge's Bellow. Both are good.
• Aura and Stimm modifier:  Ruffian and Long Lasting, especially with corruption-light modifiers. Ranged weapon can be whatever you want, Bolt pistol is my preferred for special sniping. This is a nearly pure melee build so pick your shots like you would with other classes.
• Stimm-lab: Finesse modifer is good too as long as you are a master at utilizing the uppercut Heavy-1
• Hyper: Hyper-Violence can be subbed in place ofHyper-Critical if your team needs better horde clear or if you go with Finesse stimm for pure weakspot damage rather than crit-chance. Both are good, but instantly wiping out a