Voice of Skimmand
 Skitarii Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

Pretend you're veteran that can shout twice in a row. Press F for mass stun, brittleness, and huge toughness regen for your team. As built, this setup 1) maximizes toughness regen to make the most of Power Overflow and Resurgence 2) prioritizes frequent, powerful voltaic bursts to proc Voltaic Restoration and Voltaic Overcharge and make your bursts into super shouts.

Variations

• Keystone: Redline Capacitors can be swapped for Power Overload + Static Capacitor Drain (and I would further highly recommend Critical Power Overload). Being able to burst twice in very rapid succession is very powerful and very entertaining, but the extra TDR and consistent flat damage bonuses (both for you and your team) can pay dividends. It's the better choice if you rarely end up with more than three capacitance charges.
• Suggested Flex Nodes: Capacitory Limit Override and Voltaic Motivator
  • Capacitory Limit Override is probably the least essential node as built. Advanced Power Management is tempting since this build wants to be pressing F very frequently, but in practice my uptime with it felt pretty low even on Havoc 40s (~20% max combat uptime with average of ~2.5 stacks). The nearly constant rending increase against salient targets seems more consistent and helpful.
  • Voltaic Motivator is fun and is particularly helpful for boosting arc rifle damage against bosses or helping compensate for subpar maul crit chance, but it's not essential. Other nodes will likely have higher useful uptime.
  • Threat Detection Imperative is probably the single most accessible node for improving survivability on this build. 
• Ranged Weapon: No Respite is a decent alternative to Dumdum on the Arc Rifle if you find yourself being the team's primary specialist killer and want a way to boost your damage against distant squishies.
• Melee Weapon: 
  • Shock Maul: Excellent synergy with electrocution talents - always applies electrocution when staggering enemies, along with applying Skullcrusher! Pressing F or shooting a big guy with 1-2 arc rifle shots then switching to shock maul for rapid murder is is tons of fun, and the special action is also exceptionally good at deleting Scab Captain shields.
    • Hammerblow improves horde performance, which is particularly helpful since the shock maul suffers a bit with cleave. Pairs well with Skullcrusher since the higher impact means you'll hit stagger thresholds on anything that isn't a boss very quickly. As an added bonus you'll end up applying electrocution and therefore proccing Entropic Transfer etc. much more often. Uniquely, the blessing allows the weapon to stagger crushers without crits or the special action, which means you can apply Skullcrusher on them, too.
    • High Voltage seems like the natural choice on this build, but I've had mixed success with it. In my experience, Hammerblow is more effective in hordes compared to High Voltage thanks to the former's absurd knockback, and on harder targets the faster skullcrusher procs lead to greater damage output. If you already have consistent sources of Skullcrusher in your comp (e.g. an Achlys Mk I Power Maul ogryn that's constantly applying max stacks to everything), this is a good substitute for it though.
    • Adaptive Combat Calibration or Shockline Breach Protocol may be worth taking if you want better horde performance but like everything else about the weapon.
  • Branx Mk III Arc Maul can be taken instead of shock maul if you want even more AoE CC or already have another source of Skullcrusher in your comp. Has lower attack speed, and while unempowered has identical cleave and lower single-target damage relative to the shock maul.
  • Branx Mk VI Mechanicus Power Sword with Sunder provides unique utility - a fully charged H3 can skip Scab Captain phases. This is particularly helpful for quickly dealing with captains on The Final Toll missions.
    • I recommend Chained Deathblow as the second blessing to help proc crit talents. (Bloodthirsty is an alternative, but I think the potential for multiple crits and while preserving charges is better).
    • Electro-Strike Conduit might be worth taking instead of Binary Ballistics Protocol with the MPS, since it lacks the mauls' inherent shock traits. With the talent, you can continue to proc Entropic Transfer / Weakness Analysis Doctrine / Retribution Conduit purely with melee attacks. BBP has pretty low combat uptime in my experience (<20%) even in the extremely elite-dense realm of Havoc 40s, so you likely won't be sacrificing much regen capacity.

• If you find yourself wanting more capacitance generation:  Swap two nodes for Ammo-Cell Augury and Reactor Coil Recharge 
  • Good synergy with a Chained Deathblow MPS - proc crit talents / capacitance regen while chopping heads

  • As an added bonus, the improved ammo pickup efficiency for the arc rifle from Ammo-Cell Augury is noticeable in Havoc's ammo economy. You don't need capacitance-hungry Noospheric Command to be the team's most efficient specialist remover :) See appendix for more details.

     

• Toughness Regen: Servo-Core Recharge Engine,Kinetic Energy Distributors ,Surge-Extension , and Omnissian Recharge Litany are  the only toughness regen nodes unselected as built - personally I would rate their salience in that order. If you want to truly maximize toughness regen, you can swap something for one of these, but they're hard sells versus any other single node imo. 

  • Even with Enhanced Voltaic Arcs on the arc rifle the three-simultaneous-hits condition procs for Omnissian Recharge Litany less than you might expect, although Arc Maul may help with that in melee.

     

• Crits vs Weakspots: I like building towards Flux Conduit Build-Up for capacitance generation and synergy with Power Redistribution Uplink , especially on a team with a Prescience psyker,  Anarchist scum or Infectious Zeal zealot. However, you can path away from crits in exchange for weakspot damage and toughness/capacitance generation.
  • Example: Swap three nodes (e.g. Last Stand Relay , Flux Conduit Build-Up , Voltaic Motivator ) in exchange for Servo-Core Recharge Engine , Sureshot Cogitator Sync  and Reactor Coil Recharge . 
  • If you go this route, suggest swapping the +Crit chance perk on the arc rifle for +Elite

Appendix: Arc Rifle Ammunition

• The Arc Rifle is an extremely ammo efficient weapon. The tl;dr of this section is that its deep reserve scales well into havoc's ammo economy and it doesn't disproportionately benefit from ammo regen talents / auras. Ammo-Cell Augury doesn't really change that equation, but it makes stashes and crates tastier.
• Ammo capacities
  • Base reserve: 172
  • Ammo-Cell Augury (Aug) reserve: 215
• Regen Effects (Use floor value, but remainders added to subsequent calculations)
  • Survivalist - 0.5% ammo on elite/special kill by anyone in coherency. 5s CD
    • Base: 0.86 -> 0. Recovers 1 every 2nd-7th cycle
    • Aug: 1.075 -> 1. Recovers 2 every 14 cycles
  • Ammunition-Restoration Pod : 1% every 15s.
    • Base: 1.72 -> 1. Recovers 2 every second and third cycle
    • Aug: 2.15 -> 2. Recovers 3 every seventh cycle.
• Pickups on H40 (all pickups use ceiling value)
  • Tin: 6%
    • Base: 10.32 -> 11
    • Aug: 12.9 -> 13
  • Stash: 20%
    • Base: 34.4 -> 35
    • Aug: 43.0
  • Crate: 40%
    • Base: 68.8 -> 70
    • Aug: 86.0