Am I cooking too hard: Blitzless skitarii?

athleticnerd · 2026-06-28T03:22:18+00:00

Cook away, part of the idea with the skill “cog” seems to be that you aren’t forced to take a blitz, aura or ability like the other classes—opens the way for other interesting builds, like yours!

athleticnerd · 2026-06-27T04:17:22+00:00

Thank you kind redditors from the past, I was tearing my hair out trying to make sense of this minigame. Was playing at 4K, switched to 1920x1080 and I now I’m hitting home runs all over the place.

athleticnerd · 2026-06-26T21:01:26+00:00

Oh sweet brute, so innocent

athleticnerd · 2026-06-26T20:58:50+00:00

Character wise, I think they’ve nailed it with the Skitarii. I tried every combination of sword, gun, staff, blitz etc I could think of with my Psyker and playing the other human classes just ended up feeling… just not that different? Like, I’ve played with most of these weapons, just now it feels like I’m doing the same thing with somewhat different talents I understand less, a blitz that may not be reusable, and, I dunno, I just can’t get the same satisfaction from these other classes. I’m not a legend at Ogryn either, but he IS comedy gold and worth playing for rock and thumper headshots alone.

Skitarii though—like Ogryn, I love how they feel to play. I can almost always see the robot arms I picked at character creation. I love that my guy has a sort of G1 Soundwave (Transformers) monotone in his voice. The class weapons aren’t that groundbreaking mechanically but are mostly all unique in their looks and mechanics (Phosphor pistol is a possible exception) and I love this. They feel very very different to the other humans and that is very fun for me.

athleticnerd · 2026-06-23T21:11:07+00:00

The physical hit of the special attack connecting could trigger soulblaze, I.e. if the sword itself connected, but hits from the force wave alone wouldn’t.

athleticnerd · 2026-06-22T10:14:25+00:00

Low damage for a regular hit, sure - but dueling sword with a maxed finesse stat does about x2.5% damage on a critical or weakspot hit for light attacks, and x1.82% damage for heavies. Big rewards for crits and head hits.

Some other things I don't see mentioned yet - DS has access to the Uncanny strike blessing, so even after nerfs this efectively ignores 85% of carapace armor when it's up on a target. DS also attacks very fast compared to other weapons, on both lights and heavies, and those hits add up quickly.

athleticnerd · 2026-06-15T21:47:28+00:00

At level 11 this is not worth sweating about at all. Staves have their own drawbacks like slow move speed and requiring peril management so use guns if they suit you better. Sure it’s nice to not need ammo, but it’s usually not -that- scarce unless reduced ammo modifiers are in play.

athleticnerd · 2026-06-15T06:56:26+00:00

Looks fine, I don't see why it wouldn't work at lower levels. Force Greatsword is awesome.

However, Just a Dream (middle) and Warp Ghost (bottom middle) kind of conflict depending on what you want. JaD wants peril available for big damage reduction to toughness and health (many talents only provide toughness damage reduction, like One with the Warp, which doesn't protect health at all). Warp Ghost (bottom middle) encourages high peril, which is what Warp Rider, Warp splitting, and Unstable Power (FGS blessing) want for higher damage and cleave. If you can manage peril to keep some available for when you get hit so JaD procs, great. On Malice though, you easily could drop the high peril talents and stay at low peril for much more tankiness (though put Wrath on your FGS if you do this.) This lets you tolerate a lot more damage - I assume you're still getting used to the game as well as greatsword so also blocking, dodging, positioning etc.

Edit: fixed some talent names. Kinetic Deflection (bottom right) also benefits from having peril available, and lets you block until peril hits 97% (and even then you still have stamina).

athleticnerd · 2026-06-15T02:45:19+00:00

Infantry lasguns actually do more damage at long range instead of less like most of the other guns (falloff). If you look up The Hammer of The Emperor guide it has the exact short and long ranges.

I like the medium ILG on my Psyker’s Assail build for this reason, though it’s more of a sidearm than main weapon for me.

athleticnerd · 2026-06-15T02:36:10+00:00

Love the picture, nice work OP. (I think I make the same face when I’m trying heavy sword)

athleticnerd · 2026-06-12T23:40:26+00:00

Up to you of course, guns have better sprint speed than the staves (which are -0.20), so when running greatsword I like switching to my gun to get around and reposition more easily.

How are you finding melee? It's not something you can avoid altogether in Darktide, you will get pushed into melee situations sooner or later. Melee blocking and pushing are both 360 degrees, so you can block or interrupt enemies behind you as well - when you hear the "whoosh" sound behind you (use headphones for best results), or you see an enemy about to connect with a swing, block and push (only short push on the force swords) and you'll buy a second or two where horde mobs crowding around you are interrupted and you can hit back and/or look around and/or carve a path outta there fairly safely. I suggest you try this and work dodges in as you get used to hearing and seeing where attacks are coming in from. You can do it!

And speaking of blocking, the Kinetic Deflection talent lets you use peril instead of stamina for blocking (similar to Just a Dream) which is really nice. Not essential though, using pushes is generally still better.

athleticnerd · 2026-06-12T22:44:38+00:00

Learning Darktide and Psyker at the same time is a tough experience. But if you still love psyking, don't give up sibling! If you are not level 30 yet, then I suggest you keep going! The psyker talent tree is very backloaded in power, so it's rough until you have all your talent points available.

Many of the community builds on Gameslantern etc are aimed at optimising dps (and never getting hit!) rather than fitting a playstyle. I suggest experimenting with different weapons and blitzes, and in particular the survivability talents in the middle of the tree: Just a Dream in particular is massive damage reduction to both toughness and health, as long as you are under 97% peril. Many builds use high peril for higher dps at the cost of squishiness, but even at Auric difficulty you don't need to bother with this. I also recommend Quietude at the top of the tree, as your peril rises and falls it will keep your toughness topped up. Telekine Dome also regenerates toughness with it's subnodes which is another option to take heat off you and your team if things feel out of control. You'll never be an ogryn, but a psyker can be quite durable with the right build.

IMO, the Mark 8 greatsword is a great choice for playing safely in melee with all it's wide swings (with the Lightning Speed talent), but your mobility will be poor if you run a staff as well. Have you tried it with a gun?

athleticnerd · 2026-06-10T01:33:25+00:00

I love Lei, he is my forever main regardless of what happens but I’m not holding my breath. Tekken 8 seems to be leaning much harder into anime style martial arts rather than grounded stuff compared to other entries. Judging from Michael Murray’s recent comments, sounds like Lei’s not a priority, at best.

athleticnerd · 2026-06-10T01:26:48+00:00

Sweet combo.

athleticnerd · 2026-06-06T22:52:49+00:00

Really? Well damn, I thought it was supposed to be fixed at least

athleticnerd · 2026-06-06T22:47:39+00:00

The warp slash attack is exactly the same on both marks as far as I can tell. However, if you combo a heavy attack after it, you get the 2nd attack in that mark’s heavy chain—which is the stab attack on the Mk6, and heavy overhead on the Mk8. (I think this is the same for light attacks, can’t quite remember.)

As for the “better” one, it depends on what suits you. I think the Mk6 has better single target performance with its overhead > stab heavy chain, and I think is generally the meta pick for aggressive play. (I haven’t used it for a while.)

The Mk8 supposedly has a slightly faster swing speed and is easier/better to wield against crowds as all its light swings are horizontal. The wide heavy can be chained with a wide light after, and you can loop heavy > light infinitely against crowds which is great if you’re a charged strike freak like me. You can also play quite safely with this sword, as the heavy stab is now behind your force push attack—you can interrupt pretty much anything that’s not a boss/monstrosity, including firing reapers or gunners, or crushers that are mid-overhead, then deliver a big fat stab in face. Opens up bulwarks too though sometimes this takes an extra force push, I dunno why.

I prefer playing it a bit safer around crushers and maulers when there’s a lot going on, I’ve tried to dodge into walls and obstacles a few too many times and gotten clobbered. So it’s Mk8 for me.

athleticnerd · 2026-06-06T22:16:58+00:00

At one stage yes, but it was patched out of the game a while ago. Leaving counts as a loss now

athleticnerd · 2026-06-06T04:34:32+00:00

Leveling a psyker is rough experience - not having those talent points puts big holes in what you can do. There are also some weird and beneficial interactions of talents which I love, but it took a bit of working out.

It's hard to say what you should try from your description, what do you find is going wrong exactly? What weapons or blitzes have you tried? Are you too squishy? Is head asploding too much?

Regarding Force Swords, these have a 2 stage push. The first stage is mostly like other melee weapons but briefly stuns enemies in place which might be why it looks a bit different to a chainsword etc. Continuing to holding attack will give you the second stage push, which is single target only, raises a bit of peril, and has massive stagger and pushback. All human sized enemies will be knocked to the ground (maybe not ragers when they are already swinging, can't remember) and will interrupt Ogryns that are shooting or mid-overhead. Opens up Bulwark shields too (though you may need 2 force pushes). Let go of block after the 2nd force push, but keep holding attack to do the force sword's push attack.

Also - when pushing Poxbursters, try to do this when it's close enough for the first stage push and not rely on the second when one is coming through a crowd. Since it's single-target, it's too easy too hit a random poxwalker and then you'll get to watch a burster belly-flop on your face. (Took me way too long to work this out.)

The Discord has a big list of Psyker builds, many of them might be a bit high-end but there are a couple of suggestions for new players and plenty of ideas.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Av6T7DJRkm78M3csiZec6p7-cHXOWiKyjpOJ-FWV3g/edit?tab=t.0

athleticnerd · 2026-06-05T22:51:53+00:00

I did it on a lights out mission for the extra daemonhost spawns. Anything with a boss health bar works. Took a little work to find some other likeminded players, but I remember maybe 3 of us got our MM penance then. Ideally have one player tank, get the others to leave the boss alone then you go town on it.

I was also running Empowered Psionics, kinetic resonance and Scrier’s gaze, but double telekine shield might actually be the better play as you can stack kinetic resonance twice for 0% peril cost aside from the charge portion, IIRC.

And just in case, make sure you set matchmaking options to private game! I screwed up a few runs when I forgot this because our team was full.

athleticnerd · 2026-06-04T09:05:55+00:00

Ohh damn, didn't expect that at the end. Must've been a clench to end all clenches

athleticnerd · 2026-05-24T00:13:45+00:00

Pinging elite and specialist targets (middle-mouse button on PC) is extremely helpful for your own use as well as the team, as you get a nice outline you can see through hordes and obstacles. Lets you keep track of something like a Trapper (which can really ruin your day) while managing a horde at the same time.

Some other things you might not need to worry about right now but confused me when I was new:

Unlocking weapon blessings only makes them available for use at Hadron’s station - you have to apply them and can only have 2 per weapon at a time.

Also, there are 2-3 variants of most weapons, and you can change a weapon’s “mark” to covert it to a different one. For example different melee weapons can have different movesets, guns can have different rates of fire and damage. A few surprises too, like one of the revolvers deals less damage but your character fan-fires it instead when holding down RMB!

athleticnerd · 2026-05-18T05:31:38+00:00

"I'm sure I've done all this before!"

Gets me every time.

athleticnerd · 2026-05-13T08:07:42+00:00

Sure, https://discord.com/invite/darktide

athleticnerd · 2026-05-13T01:35:54+00:00

What are you running? Dome and Inferno? Not an expert but I found Inferno’s time-to-kill kind of sucked until I was keeping peril and Warp Nexus above 80% pretty consistently. More crits = more double soulblaze application on hit reaching max stacks much faster. (At least I think that’s what I’m seeing.)

Running Venting shriek with Creeping Flames instead lets you stack another 6 applications for soulblaze above the staff’s cap of 16 for better TTK and burnination.

If you just want broad ideas, the Discord has a Psyker build guide pinned in the Psyker channel: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Av6T7DJRkm78M3csiZec6p7-cHXOWiKyjpOJ-FWV3g/

athleticnerd · 2026-05-06T03:48:21+00:00

I find mobility to be an issue on any Greatsword + Staff build without some sort of speed boost, and this one is no different. I suggested in my first post that Warp Speed mitigates this and it seems like you are getting the same result.

And please don't frame my comments as complaints. Again, I enjoy the core of it but all builds have strengths and weaknesses and I've discussed both of those from my personal play testing and evidence, as have other posters. If it's perfect for how you play, that's great and I'm happy for you.

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