The Bee (Making power overload work in H40)
 Skitarii Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

The BEE build

Because while the Skitarii can't float like a butterfly, he still can sting pretty well. However like actual bees, they usually die soon after their barb penetrates. 

Everyone say thank you Ablative Wards when merely swatted away rather than squashed outright after playing with this build!

Also called The Bee, because I wanted to utilized as many "B" tier weapons and talents while still being competent. At this, I do think I succeeded.

The constant electricity going *buzz* *buzz* helps.

So let's talk how this build works, and then we'll get into the details. 

M35 Magnacore Mk III Plasma Gun is our horde clear weapon, any mixed hordes come your way, this weapon will solve it in 2 fully charged shots. The issue is getting space made for those 3 seconds to get shots downrange. Utilize Voltaic Emitter to stun and prime the group with brittleness. We get 3 shots for a full bar of heat, so use them wisely. Run unyielding to handle Reapers/Bulwarks. Monstrosities can be handled when fine on ammo, but boss killing ourself is not the goal, we buff team and debuff boss to ensure monstrosities die.

Aridin Mk I Power Falchion (either mark) is the all arounder. Powered up its a discount relic blade, great damage into all targets, 70% carapace damage on heavy AND LIGHT ATTACKS so need 4 sources of System Shock to be dealing unmitigated damage. Not that it needs it, solid B tier weapon.

Sadly I did have to use the "S++" tier blitz, we have to have a way to both manage specials and manipulate our capacitance below always using max Voltaic Emitter . 5 grenades is enough to basically use one on any non-weakened boss trigger. Just managing the hordes for your team removes so much time to kill for bosses where they have no distractions. I think most people know how to use Noospheric Command now, but it saves ammo by handling specialists instead of chasing them with melee or burning our precious non-cleaving plasma ammo. Save at least 1 charge for Voltaic Emitter before using it, if at all possible. Too much power of this build is reliant on having Voltaic Emitter ready, and a single dead sniper is rarely worth it. Remember, with Ablative Wards, we always get at least one down state. Spam Noospheric Command then, not prior. Voltaic Emitter will save you more than a silly skull ever could. Saving others, however, our silly skull can certainly do that! No room for revive curios, so save a Medicae Servo-Skull.

Voltaic Emitter is our shooter solution and panic button. Taking Voltaic Arcs allow it to proc 15% brittleness right away for a decent uplift of damage. There still are some issues with guaranteeing weapons malfunctioning, so its best to run straight through soaking up hits to go beyond the gunner line, or get on the high ground to get more reliable shooter denial before popping a double charge. You'll get your toughness back and with all enemies stunned for 2 seconds, time to get killing.

DETAILS:

Resurgence is the lowest B tier of any aura, but its a near constant trickle of toughness to the whole team. With 3x toughness regen curios the delay penalty is halved so it kicks in in under a second of last damage taken or when solo and moving back into coherency. (Bonus fact, insta gibbing enemies via explosions I believe has the faster death animations, so those pesky half charred corpses are gone pretty quick compared to other ragdolls.) Because enemy death animations can take up more time than our regen delay to kick in, this means it removes the delay entirely when the last melee slot does bother to clear.  You get the full "normal" 100% coherency regen as opposed to auras half. Ammunition Deposit is so bad, I'm sorry, it doesn't even grant any positive rounding errors when it comes to the plasma ammo pickups. The plasma's ammo reserve is half our entire ammo... any buff to our reserves miss out on the ammo in a full rifle. So middling Resurgence it is!

Aridin Mk I Power Falchion takes the damage as the dump stat because when charged up, the Power Output stat becomes our damage. Mobility sucks on the Skitarii and having any help with that is worth. We need a weapon that can handle small trickle amounts of enemies, whether that be heavy crushers, or a loose gaggle of bruisers. This weapon does this well. We have enough damage juice in our build for it to still handle Poxwalker hordes un-empowered as a last resort. Anything more than that and its time to use our M35 Magnacore Mk III Plasma Gun or a Purgator Servo-Skull. Overload gives us a moment of staggering reprieve to swap and land a charged shot without having to use our ability. Also the reason why Plasma uses Volatile as its blessing. Safety is our consideration when it comes to survival; there is enough damage already focused on later in this build guide. The stagger will stagger all non boss enemies in a 4 meter radius. If you feel unable to handle hordes, Wrath is an solid alternative choice for a blessing, especially recommended swapping when playing into Moebian 21st. Cranial Grounding buys us 25% more time in the empowered state, and the marginal weakspot improvement does carry over into the un-empowered mode. I take Mk I over the other because of the empowered H1 and H2 and H3 will stagger Ragers mid combo. Mk IIb only H2 will, albeit with more power. It can cleave a mauler on H2 with just Shockline Breach Protocol active. Mk I cannot. Try them both and take your pick. Note: activating the sword counts as blocking so feel free to do it in the middle of combat. (Be extra silly and swap in Counterattack to get a block every time you do activate your blade in combat.) The overheat has a cooldown of 13 seconds, down to 9 with Overload .

Mk I main single target attack pattern is H1, H2, then into your choice of L3, Push attack, or block cancel; all lead back into H1. PA > L3 is lightning fast and great for targets you don't care to heavy attack. Mk IIb is L1 into H2 and repeat. The push combo attack looks similar to L1, but it does not lead into H2. After any push, single target is PA/L0 > L1 > H2. This is the main reason I do not like the Mk IIb, weaving pushes for maintaining Voltaic Burst uptime screwing up my attack pattern flow.
Horde cleave is L2 into H3 for Mk I. H1 into L2 for Mk IIb, or just light spam. 13 seconds worth of charged light spam to overheat.

M35 Magnacore Mk III Plasma Gun has some unique quirks right now (read: possibly bugged; just Fatshark things). The damage is split into two parts; for the charged shot - which you should be primarily using - it's roughly 60% damage of the total direct impact hit. 40% comes from the explosion when landing a hit, HOWEVER, the explosive part is not considered a ranged attack, so even on the initial target, it cannot crit, cannot gain weakspot damage, and gains no damage scaling from +ranged damage talents. Only global damage modifiers will. The crit scaling on the weapon is bad enough that losing out isn't much. The fact that kills granted by the explosion not being considered ranged is very bad. Threat Detection Imperative, Superior Defence Engrams, Hybrid Combat Covenant, Galvanic Marking Array, only gain stacks if the initial damage, not the explosive part, of the shot hitting one single enemy will kill. If you need to gain rapid stacks, shoot trash enemies in a horde, not into the tankier foes, to ensure the ranged component is the killing blow. The Mk III has no cleave, yet has Bulwark shield & terrain penetration ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Jump shotting past the single front enemy will be a bigger payoff to maximize the explosion radius. No explosion occurs if you miss; take the clear shot rather than risking whiffing. The more bunched up a group is the better, let them cluster into a choke before loosing hell. Substantial loss of damage particularly against carapace when at ranges over 20 meters. The gun itself, and by being out of range of our debuff engine. We're fine shooting in melee ranges as long as we made space properly. Possibly even in a better position as the blast radius can clear enemies trying to flank us. Attack speed also does not increase charge time, so Voltaic Motivator is unnecessary; Celerity Stimms do. Your friends in this build are blues over red. 3 charged shots for a full overheat, with 49% thermal it ensures we get to the 55% Rising Heat breakpoint on the second shot with minimal delay.  Lower than 42 % thermal prevents a third shot, higher means giving up 4% strength. If you do not believe in Volatile and want to swap it for Blaze Away, a 55% thermal will get the third stack of Rising Heat on shot two. This is just an optimization, 60% is fine. Passive venting from 100% is 24 seconds long. One active vent lowers the passive vent time down to 16 seconds. Try to do that at least before swapping weapons. Two active ticks is 9 seconds passively onwards.

To maintain decent ranged kill talent uptime, except of Galvanic Marking Array, we must take the servo skull. When stacks are low, try to snipe low health elites with a well timed Noospheric Command, if and only if, you have capacitance to spare. You could spend several Noosph charges to get back all your Galvanic Marking Array, but it's still only a 20% damage boost, don't worry to much about it. I will reiterate, having a safety Voltaic Emitter charge is how this build survives. 

Prior to capping Static Capacitor Drain , early Ability Cooldown will suffer. Stay in coherency and you will get steady stacks. Use resources liberally to gain them as quickly as possible. Waste Stimms, ammo, and grenades to ensure a safety margin over using Voltaic Emitter and buy time to reach 24 stacks. In Havoc, the average time to get a Power Overload instance is about 18-20 seconds. 8 minutes until you get all 24.

This is a 30/70 ranged/melee build. Being able to reliably get shots off is a must. Overcharge Transfer Lattice and Voltaic Burst are small AoE stuns to all enemies and will prevent multi hits which is how you die. A quick push to proc a stun when becoming overwhelmed is perfect for a swap to shoot. They also adds a System Shock stack allowing you to effectively parry and riposte them for more damage. Veteran players know that its always the unseen poxwalker behind you that screws you over when shooting at priority targets and this get you free from them every 15 seconds. Shockline Breach Protocol gives a moderate cleave bonus allowing us to cleave through a 10 hit-mass mauler on empowered heavy attack, when staggered or Sequenced Charge is active. Target Prioritization Psalms is a tax node. Sing Psalms to the Machine God that there are only 2 in this build! Sequenced Charge pays dividends with its uptime once you are fully energized with the capacitance regen going. Using Noospheric Command to go briefly under a full charge then getting it back is an easy way to smooth out the highs and lows of this build when not utilizing Voltaic Emitter regularly. Data Sensor Protocol is another safety node, for the rest of your team this time too.  Data Sensor Protocol  combined with Invigorating Overload compliment each other very well meaning no stamina or stamina regen curios necessary. Taking a point of corruption from Ablative Wards while below 50% stamina will also grant 10% stamina back, not entirely reliable, but shove regularly to keep Shockline Breach Protocol up. Aridin Mk I Power Falchion can struggle with cleave since we are not running Wrath . Stamina recovery comes in bursts, got to get accustomed to it.

As you should see by now, we have no crit in this build, and yet... Electro-Strike Conduit. Not much to say about this. 7% chance to add a System Shock stack. Normally a top tier talent in any other build, but we just pay the tax node path to get the BESTEST B TIER talent in the tree. Ablative Wards. This allows protection from one shots and thus losing all your Static Capacitor Drain stacks we've been building so much towards. Stand in the goo, buy your team time by letting yourself get chaos spawn grabbed; no harm, no foul. Spam Noospheric Command when you inevitability do go down. Last of the blue talents to mention, Ammunition-Restoration Pod . Its free ammo, that's it — feeds your hungry Plasma gun. The Mk III is very very gungry.

Cons of this build:

• Needs early help to get online with Static Capacitor Drain . 
• Loss of all Static Capacitor Drain stacks on death.
• Loss of grenades on death.
• Can easily be an ammo hog.
• Heavily spamming Noospheric Command can leave you out to dry.
• Needs ability spam for major toughness regen.
• Balancing capacitance needed for using exactly how many stacks of Voltaic Emitter needed for the encounter.
• Low ability regen, especially early, if things stop dying.
• Low uptime of Sequenced Charge if not gaining charges quickly.
• Potential low uptime of on ranged kill talents, particularly Galvanic Marking Array .
• No aura/curio benefit if out of coherency, or if team is dead.
• No real solo potential, due to lower uptime of Power Overload .
• Finicky shooter weapon malfunctions
• Poor toughness over time regen, especially without Resurgence boosts (haha!)
• Needs close range engagements to maximize debuff radius.
• Struggles immensely with scattered basic shooters.
• Lowish solo monstrosity performance, especially if not debuffed by Critical Power Overload .

Pros:

• Extremely good mixed horde clear.
• Extremely good mixed horde control.
• Extremely good AoE debuff on enemies, thanks to mass brittleness, Power Overload damage boost, Critical Power Overload damage multiplier, and Artificer Servo-Skull damage multiplier.
• Specialist sniper with Noospheric Command .
• Mass shooter suppression at 2+ Voltaic Emitter charges
• Decent toughness team support. Power Overload 20%, Data Sensor Protocol 25%, and Resurgence tiny dribbles.
• Good passive ability regen, better when actively killing, but not the fastest.
• MEDICAE SKULLS!!! So maybe actually good clutch potential?
• Good boss damage when double debuffed. Shoot them after targeted by the servo skull.

Alternative build adjustments:

On Rotten Armour, swap from Carapace to Infested damage.

Change auras, frees up your coherency curio slots. Swap a stamina curio in for the toughness if you really need it.

Reach Artificer Servo-Skull through Power Redistribution Uplink , Last Stand Relay , and Channelled Motive Force and take Flux Conduit Build-Up for more cap regen, Electro-Strike Conduit proccs, and therefore System Shock.