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 Arbites Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

You're picking this build because you want to stagger the hell out of crushers and be tough enough to get stuck in and not worry about things like "how's my toughness bar", "oh no a rager swarm", and "wow that's a lot of enemies".

This build is designed around aggressive play, going straight for either high melee threats (crushers, mailers, bulwarks, ragers) or absolutely thrashing through hordes in choke points. There is a degree of risk/reward play here - it is assumed you have your dodge/block/push skills dialed in or you'll go down hard & fast if you get it in over your head.

Your weapons are designed to take advantage of the heavy impact this build relies on and boost damage (+55% impact on your first attack between Fist of the Emperor and the +25% node, on top of shock maul's high stagger rating). Your shock maul will be your bread and butter, and it's designed to deal with the tough carapace enemies and take advantage of your stagger and electrocution debuffs going off. It also synergizes nicely with the various electrical debuffs other classes such as the skitarri have in addition to your dog and the inherent electric attack of the maul. Your shotgun can be used close quarters for a quick kill OR reach out and deal with a troublesome specialist. If the first round doesn't kill, it will almost certainly stagger. The next round will finish it. 

Castigator's is equal part your insurance that a lot of someones are dying today, stopping a rush of ragers dead in their tracks, and your emergency button when you need it. Remote Detonation can wipe entire squads of specialists, and given the lack of reliance on grenade refills, you can pop two in quick succession to either kill everything or weaken them enough where it is a quick mop up operation.

The Exterminator Shotgun is designed for troublesome ranged specialist deletion. Most of your talents are designed around melee because this mark does a heavy amount of single target damage where one well placed shot will end most threats. Snipers, bombers, flamers, and trappers will all crumble pretty quickly. You can snipe gunners, reapers, and shotgunners as needed very well, but utilizing Castigator's and closing the distance with ranged would be your go to in dealing with those threats.

Your dog should be utilized to the hilt, either dealing with troublesome specialists or being the lead to jump into a group of specialists before exploding. It will also be your contribution to dealing with monstrosities with the DOT and stunning effect of remote detonation. Rebreather is a slept on talent - it turns tox gas from a life or death threat to a minor annoyance and provides a nice corruption resistance. When the tox bomber drops a gas cloud in a chokepoint, your toughness won't budge as long as you're killing. You can also rush in and rescue a downed teammate with little worry about the tox gas.

As stated before, you're going to be generating an wild amount of toughness regeneration, damage bonus, and stagger on your kills, especially elite/specialist kills. To make the most of this, you need to be playing the vanguard role to the hilt and make those initial kills to fire up your buff chain so it can build on itself and you max out your stacked buffs. Execution Order especially helps with this, between highlighting priority targets and giving solid buffs with each kill that roll into each other. I chose EO over Forceful because, at the end of the day, damage is what kills enemies and EO gives a significant boost to damage that hangs around.

An extra wound is picked over another toughness curio because things happen. You can pass up a med station without worrying if your next wound drops you because you went down once, which your fellow players would likely appreciate. I know this goes against the conventional wisdom , but considering how you're already at almost +50% toughness here, the extra bonus another curio would add is overkill compared to the utility of being able to go down twice if necessary.

The one friction point you will have here is with monstrosities, but that's a general weak spot for the arbites. Your best course of action is to either snipe with your shotgun's special rounds (they will take chunks out of the life bar, especially on a weak spot hit) and stun with the dog, or to hold aggro and go full defense. 

I hope you enjoy the build and see my logic in the decisions. Remember - get your story straight on what happened BEFORE reporting to Rannick about the mission.