Mechanicus Arc Vangurd [Havoc Ready]
 Skitarii Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

PRIMER IN PROGRESS!!!

Havoc 40 modifier -> Total Toughness = 104|| Total Health  = 127

Defense: B (Good survivability)

[2 sources of constant toughness generation + 3 ancillary toughness sources]

[Good melee crowd control between the combat ability, talents and melee weapon]

[On demand survivability through the ability usage makes this build simple in nature]

[Consistent 15% - 30% TDR] [30% back up DR on toughness break]

Offense: A-  (Good coverage between Range and Melee engagements)

[Has good horde clear capabilities as well as good killing pressure on Elites and Specials] 

[Brittleness via Electrocuting helps scale damage helping with Havoc HP bloat]

[6 sources of global damage making it easy to deal damage at both range and melee]

[Ammo gen and passive reload helps with aggression across the runtime of missions]

Difficulty: B (Fairly easy to use)

[Can treat charges like an EX bar from other games or just spam at will while killing]

[Servo Skull usage requires some micro attention to get big value]

[Less strain for on map resources due to needing less ammo and no grenades]

   The goal of this build is to give players a decent starting point for Havoc-ready builds that have decent survivability and damage. The choices made for the talents chosen are specifically made with Defense and Utility in mind first. Because of this a majority of the damage actually comes from debuffing enemies to get increased damage against them. The entire team can benefit from the output of this build and it is designed to be more of a supportive core to the team. 

    The Blitz of choice is Artificer Servo Skull with the  GOATED Noospheric Command upgrade. Noospheric Command helps to stack a few of the talents on the tree while also dealing with threats at a decent pace on the side. The Servo Skull can handle Chaff without input or can be ordered to burn down Specials and Elites all while hacking and slashing away at waves of enemies. The main thing the Servo Skull can do now is tag all enemies that it hits with a debuff having the 'take 15% increased damage' tag. When getting kills, the Servo Skull will also obtain us stacks of Galvanic Marking Array increasing global damage by up to 20% for the build. Noospheric Command also nets the build +2 stacks of Flensing Protocol when it picks up a kill.

   The focus of this build is Voltaic Emitter. I am leveraging this combat ability specifically to give safety and power throughout mission runs as it is the main enabler to this build. Because it is the focus the ability is fully fleshed out with it's upgrade helping the build deal with being spread about in stats and utility. This gives the build Voltaic Arcs that can be throw into crowds of enemies netting some safety via stagger and damage which will either remove enemies or stop them in their tracks. Voltaic Motivator is a beefy Attack Speed steroid for 15 seconds that helps the core the damage output immensely. Lastly, Voltaic Overcharge give toughness generation for survival. This is an instant 25% toughness plus an additional 1% for every enemy hit with no maximum attached to it. With the Keystone that is chosen, it should be really easy to at minimum spam Voltaic Emitter for toughness generation.

   Since I was looking to make a spam build that could put out damage in Havocs without using the bugged Chord Claw, I chose the Keystone that would best fit a spamming playstyle, Flensing Protocols. At full stack this gives +15% increased damage and toughness damage resistance as well as 15% toughness gained on Special or Elite kills. The main reason we take the Keystone is for the first recommended talent upgrade, which is Higher Purpose. This Keystone modifier nets the build +5% capacitance on every Special or Elite kill we get. This specific talent point is the single most important one for taking this Keystone. When it comes to spamming abilities in higher difficulties no other Keystone even comes close to this modifiers output. Getting what we need to spam helps circumvent the Noospheric Command cost and in general boosts the capacitance gain due to it stacking with the 4% that is passively gained from killing Specials and Elites (each kill is now 9% capacitance gained). The other reason why you really want Higher Purpose is to take advantage of Sequenced Charge. The Sequenced Charge talent nets the build 12.5% strength any time a full charge is obtained -- this is something that can be abused easily to have a high uptime on it. Between Noospheric Command and Higher Purpose coupled along with the capacitance modifiers it is very easy to just spend 25% capacitance on Noospheric Command and regain all 25% to reach full charge for an ability usage stack. This will always proc Sequenced Charge and will allow for 12.5% damage, cleave and stagger as long as the talent is active.

   Enhanced Capacitance Protocol is just taken to keep our stacks on Flensing Protocols while eating the random hits we may accumulate as the stacks fall off from any damage taken. Some people prefer Honed Dissector, but in my opinion the 2 extra stacks do very little for what this build is about. I heavily value the instant reset on the damage and resistance values.

   Now to talk about melee attack speed, this stat is absolutely necessary to have at a minimum or close to 10% because of enemy speed and lethality increases in havoc. Servo-Sinew Surge is my only non-combat ability attack speed source of which hits the baseline recommendation. A bit of attack speed goes a long way in this difficulty as it is a sure-fire way to increase the damage output your weapons which helps deal with HP bloat in the higher difficulties but also specifically helps to gain capacitance faster in kit. 

   The Arc Maul specifically needs all the attack speed that it can get due to how it's charge mechanic works. Each hit of the Arc Maul nets you a bit of its special charge that also generates over time. These special charges will allow us to do a few things: First the charges allow the use a an AOE flash that both has high stagger on it as well as applies the electrocuted status that primes targets for Arc Lightning when activated, the second is that when activated our strikes now produce Arc Lightning and have more stagger applied to them. Priming crowds is an amazing way to start deleting enemies as the Blessing will increase the amount of targets we hit with the Arc Lightning by 2 more up to a total of 3. This is important because of an ability modifier called Capacitor Reclamation Loop. Normally this is the weakest out of the capacitance upgrades, but specifically for Arc weapons it is very good. With enough attack speed we can start to amp up capacitance charge by up to 2-3% more per second just by swing sweeps into a crowd with the special active. The attack speed from Flensing Protocols and Voltaic Motivator total to just under 25% which helps farming charges for the Arc Maul Special and in turn heavily benefits hoard-clear and capacitance generation. Shockline Breach Protocol just fits in nicely for shove sweep loops and the flash special attack. The extra cleave makes it easier to farm capacitance especially through pox gas buffed enemies.

   A core part of the damage in this build comes from System Shock which when electrocuted will cause enemies to be brittled by 10% each time they are shocked up to 40%. This can be stacked extremely fast between the Combat Ability, Lightning Arcs and both weapons just attacking enemies. Because we are always electrocuting enemies and producing capacitance charges/stacks, Retribution Conduit will constantly be providing the build with +10%-25% increased damage -- the latter total is only really possible by holding onto charges and on average you will be sitting at mostly +10%-15%. The other core part of our damage is AMMO!!! Given all the global damage modifiers that will be stacking in this build, there is no need to commit to actual ranged damage. Instead I chose to go for resource utility, increasing total ammo pool, reload speed and ammo economy as a whole since the build will be generating ammo via Ammunition Restoration Pod. Given the length of Havoc runs, Ammunition Restoration Pod will more than double the ammo capacity for each run making it easier for ammo to be spread across the team, since this build needs less of it. To address the reload speed, Arc Rifle has an abysmal reload time. There are 4 distinct points at where you can animation cancel the reload on the weapon in the events that you want more ammo to shoot during an engagement, or you can just put away the weapon and have it reload itself over time with Gunsmith. There is no reason to stop and reload when there are enemies in your face, just swap back to melee and wait. It is a completely valid option to forgo the auto reload specifically for a Medicae Servo Skull instead and to take Revive Speed Curio Perks instead of Stamina Regeneration to be helpful for the team. Gunsmith just allows for more aggression, and in turn safety as you do not have to spend time slowly reloading the gun.

   The focus on both weapons boils down to what I consider the biggest threats to teams in Havoc aside from gunners. Crushers, Maulers, Dreg Ragers, Scab Ragers, and Mutants

    The last bit of this build is the actual survivability. There is 1 source of active toughness damage reduction that reduces 1  stack per second of taking damage, this is the Keystone. Then there is Galvanized Coating. This talent is really good with Flensing Protocol because you can also circumvent the cost easily while building up capacitance due to Higher Purpose. The damage reduction that it gives applies to Health damage as well and the drain only applies to melee hits taken. Lastly Galvanized Coating gives Stun Immunity which is extremely good for survivability. The last line of defense on the build is Adaptive Combat Engram, this is a 15 cooldown talent that cut all damage taken by 30% on toughness break netting much needed seconds or even fractions of a second to refill toughness via kills and ability use. I decided that this talent would just be good as a whole given the reduction in grace period for damage taken on toughness break being non existent.

   There are 3 ways that this build will be constantly generating toughness aside from kills and all 3 of them are a trickle that will pad out any damage we take to health. Binary Ballistics is simple, and will give 5% toughness per second for 3 seconds on an Elite Kill. The 2nd is Auto-Repair Doctrines. This talent is not that impactful at this difficulty given the lower totals in toughness, but it stacks very nicely with other constant streams of toughness generation. On average this will generate you 3%-4% toughness per second which is roughly just 3-4 flat toughness per second, which doesn't sound like much until added up with our aura. Resurgence is a very unique aura in that it makes use of a mechanic that no one really cares for anymore, coherency toughness regeneration. Taking half of the toughness generation you would have from coherency gen and applying it mid combat pads damage a lot more than one would think as every bit of toughness still does matter for damage that will hit health. Because of this unique interaction we take toughness regen speed on curios to 60% increase. This will net us roughly 6 flat toughness per second on top of the toughness generated by Auto-repair Doctrines. Together you might as well consider the combination between the two as 9%-10% toughness generation per second when at full coherency for yourself. For allies this total is still just 3 flat toughness per second unless they also take the regen perk on curios. Gunners are one of the biggest threats in Havoc, so I implore players to always have at least 20% Gunner Resistance.