God Sentry
 Veteran Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

Introduction

This is the build that I have had the most success with in Damnation difficulty. I am writing this build out because I'm interested in the discussion around min-maxing the Sharpshooter class in different ways and I have been disappointed to see that most of the videos and builds are being made by people who have barely played the game, let alone played this class at the highest difficulty. I have cleared High Intensity and Low Visibility Damnation difficulty mission types with it as well, have almost 160 hours in this game since the last week of the Open Beta, and feel confident enough with it to not need to tinker with the skills anymore. This same build can be ran with a Kentral XII Lasgun with some minor tweeks that I will mention on the S2 (Skill 2) and S5 skill choices.

Skills Explained

S1 > Confirmed Kill: The other 2 skills are OK but the reason this one shines above them is the "…and a further 25% toughness over time. This lets you get a little greedy for the final shot on an elite kill before switching to your sword and dealing with a horde that's near you.

S2/S5 > Demolition Stockpile/Frag Storm: The former gives you more grenades and the latter buffs your grenades. The Boltgun should 1 shot ranged enemies and 1-3 shot specials depending on if you hit a headshot or how many Pinning Strike stacks you have so the increased damage from the Sniper skill is good but not necessary and grenades fill up a big weakness that the Sharpshooter has in being able to deal AoE damage and stun which allows for opportunities for you to be able to resurrect a teamate that is down or help a teamate out of a bad situation. The Boltgun does not crit so Deadshot gives you the 60% reduced sway but it is not worth having less grenades even though I do not value stamina highly. Also, I do not value the reload speed skills because about half of the time spent reloading is pulling your Boltgun up, pulling the lever back, and positioning it in your hand. The actual reload animation is really not that bad so I think it is better to just get used to being in a safe location when reloading and making every shot count.

Lasgun S2/S5 > If you are running a Lasgun, Sniper/Deadshot are ideal for these 2 skills because they may allow you to kill a ranged enemy or unarmored elite in 1-3 less shots.

S3 > Bio-Optic Targeting: Having your allies see where all of the ranged enemies are is massive boon in Damnation. Your Zealot or Ogryn teamate has the option of charging in and forcing an assault squad into melee for an easy cleanup or it lets them know where to take cover while you deal with them. Covering Fire is terrible, your teamates will have plenty of toughness if they are in melee range of a horde or group of specials, they do not need more. Demolition team is not great because ideally you do not want to be in Coherency range with your team (explained in the next skill).

S4 > Camo Expert: This skill is the bees tits. Enemies will mostly ignore you while you are easily killing priority targets. When approaching a new area with your team, you should activate Volley Fire, make a quick note of the targets, POSITION AGGRESSIVELY, stop moving, shoot 1 glowing ranged enemy to refresh your Volley Fire, and then start looking to headshot priority targets. You will make each engagement 10x easier for your team doing this and from their perspective sometimes it just looks like you're suicidal and wasting all your ammo shooting a horde. The more you play with Camo Expert, the more you will notice when melee enemies will aggro to you or not. If your teamates are close enough to you, the melee enemies will walk through you to get to your teamate even if you are standing inside them hitting them with your Power Sword. Pay attention to the sound that enemies make when they drop below you and the sound they make right when they start taking a swing at you. Do not panic if you have just a small wave of enemies on you in this situation, stand still, and use your Power Sword to block, push back, energize, and kill them. Make sure you kill all of them before switching back to your weapon to kill enemy shooters and elites.

S6 > Counterfire: If you're not running this one you're trolling. I was going to leave it at that but it goes against the spirit of this post so I will explain that Sustained Fire is not good because you want to use your Volley Fire when the fight starts otherwise there are way too many things that could go wrong in Damnation which you could have avoided by letting your team see priority targets. The Bigger they Are … is especially bad because 1. Ogryns are very easy to see and target manually so they glow red and 2. Killing an Ogryn will refresh your Volley Fire even if you do not take this skill making them priority targets. Enemy shooters are the easiest way to lose in Damnation so Counterfire is a must.

Weapon Perks

Power Sword: Unlike other melee weapons, you do not want Cleave because the energised attack already has as much Cleave as you need so you should priority damage. You will mostly be killing hordes with this so I think Attack Speed and bonus damage on unarmored enemies is ideal. When it comes to Blessings, there is another one called Slaughter (+12.% Power for 3.5s on Kill. Stacks 5 times.) which this website does not include as an option but you can have both Slaughterer and Rampage on the same power sword.

Boltgun: The biggest benefit to the Boltgun instead of Lasgun with this build is being able to kill carapaced enemies like Crushers and Maulers because you should already be killing the shooters with 1 shot each. Pinning Fire is a must have right now because the Boltgun staggers enemies with every shot (almost) so you can always 100>0 a Crusher by holding left click to shoot your entire magazine into the Crusher. Also, after the first shot into a crowd of elites, you will likely stagger multiple enemies and hit the maximum +75% Power with your remaining 14 shots.

Curios

You will want just 1 Wound, going for more than 1 will be overkill and mean that you will be missing out on a lot of other stats instead. The Curios I listed are ideal which is incredibly rare to get right now so just settle for having the 1 main perk, and 1 of the 3 subperks. I prioritize the combat ability because ideally you want to be spam using Volley Fire to scout for enemies spawning behind you or around corners, you may even make the difference between a run failing or not by getting an extra Volley Fire off in a fight. I think health is a better stat to have than toughness but the Sharpshooters high base Toughness also makes it good to get increased Toughness from Curios so if your Curios main perk is Toughness instead of health and it has 1 other subperk, it is still good to use.

Some Tips For Clearing Damnation

Playing well as a team is king in this game, it can even make up for having weak weapons or team composition (one of my best runs was 4 Sharpshooters) but here are some things that you can improve on on your own to be a better teammate yourself.

1. Mark enemy elites as much as you can. Even if you have a group of 4, all of you are on coms, and you can tell them where the enemies are you need to be marking them. Don't tell your team “there's a sniper over there!” just click your middle mouse button while looking at the sniper, make him glow red, and just watch it get killed before you can reload and peak to kill it yourself.

2. Help the player in the back catch up to the group. At this point, everyone knows to stay close together, but not everyone knows that if there's a small horde of enemies all attacking 1 player, the player HAS to kill the horde before trying to run away to get to the group. The horde will always catch up to your teammate and land attacks on your teammate which heavily damage and SLOW them. Too many damnation runs are lost because 1-3 players try to run ahead to an elevator while their teammates are still fighting enemies. If your team is attacking an enemy and you are not also attacking an enemy or providing support somehow, you sabotaging your run.

3. Recognize what your team is lacking on and fill the role. For example, if your team gets hit by an obvious Poxbuster early on, then try to hang back and be the one responsible for killing of knocking back Poxbusters the rest of the run. You can hold your melee weapons right click, and then left click to shove the Poxbuster when it gets close to you  to knock it backwards, and then dodge back to avoid the explosion. If you find yourself on a team with 1 or 2 other Sharpshooters that are heavily prioritizing shooters/specials then you should be saving your ammo and completely unloading it on enemy Crushers, Bulwarks, Reapers, and Maulers.

4. Do not shoot into a horde. Your team will have good horde clear, you are better off looking for elites within the horde or whip out your Power Sword and swing at the horde until your Volley Fire is available, then use it to spot and kill priority targets through the horde.

5. The Power Sword range is longer than it seems. You can dodge backwards or sideways while swinging to still get the hit and put distance between yourself and the horde. I think the ideal combo is Energize > Left click > Dodge left/right > Left click > Dodge left/right > Left click (optional if you have energy left) > Dodge back > Energize > Dodge forward > Left click. You can mix in blocks/shoves in this but ideally you are near a teammate and covering the spots in the horde that they are missing while not getting hit since you are vulnerable to 1-2 trash enemies appearing behind you so always be dodging and swinging.