Shotsword Veteran
 Veteran Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

SHOTSWORD VETERAN BUILD

This build revolves around using the Aridin Mk I Power Falchion as your main damage dealer for most of the mission. You want to use it to build to at least 3 stacks of Weapons Specialist's Ranged stacks, then switch to your Crucis Mk XI Double-Barrelled Shotgun and fire one shot at a specialist, elite, or horde. This nets you the Melee stack for a few seconds, letting you switch back to your falchion with more attack speed.

• You want to be in Infiltrate before you fire your shotgun, as it gives a juicy 30% damage buff on top of having 100% crit chance (thanks to Weapons Specialist)
  • If you critically hit with your falchion at any time before now, you'll enjoy another 20% damage buff. Stacking this with the 20% buff from Bring it Down! lets you do some serious damage to ogryn and monstrosities. Attacking from behind will get you even more damage with Covert Operative, so consider positioning.
    • If you don't like Covert Operative, you can always take Ranged Damage Boost instead. It's not as good but it is more generalist and I prefer it.
• As long as you have 1 Ranged stack, you will reload a shell into your shotgun when you switch to it. Use this to quickly swap, fire a shot into someone of import, then swap back to your melee weapon.

You can swap Duck and Dive for Reciprocity if you want your falchion to crit more consistently, but i find it to be unnecessary and enjoy the extra stamina.

GENERAL NOTES

Don't bother with reload speed in any capacity, you won't be doing that (Weapons Specialist will do the reloading for you, thanks to Always Prepared reloading 1 shell no matter how many Ranged stacks you have). Weakspot Damage is alright, I don't tend to aim too much before pulling the trigger. I also don't aim, so who knows maybe you'll get more juice out of it with that.

Use your falchion against carapace armored enemies in power mode, and hordes in any mode (the thing cleaves through everything so its nice). Use your shotgun to either chunk down monstrosities or deal with anything in that general direction that is annoying you. There are a lot of pellets in each shell so even at mid-long range you can get a kill or two. You're always going to crit with the shotgun, which lets you kind of just point at a group and let it do its thing (the bleed helps finish off specials that get clipped and the cleave means you're flying through hordes to hit a special off in the distance).

You don't really care about the buffs from Ranged Specialist, just swap to shotgun, fire once, and swap back to melee until you need to remove a threat again. Your melee always inflicts a bleed via Serrated Blade, so you can leave some specials to bleed out after a bit. You can feel free to swap grenades to whatever, I like using Shredder Frag Grenade for extra bleed vs hordes, but Smoke Grenade is nice to secure revives and Krak Grenade is krak (you're probably going to take krak and I don't blame you, just swap Grenadier for Grenade Tinkerer so you get more damage out of it).

The furthest I've taken this build is Auric Maelstroms, works pretty well vs waves of specialists, hunting grounds, and nurgle's blessing. Struggles a little bit vs monstrous specials but that's mostly an issue of monstrosities having dumb health pools.