Hitting at least 3 enemies with an attack, increases your damage by 24-36% for 3 seconds.
Hitting at least 3 enemies with an attack, increases your cleave by 140-200% for 2 seconds.
-8.5--5.5% Charge Time on Chained Secondary Attack. Stacks 3 times.
Gain between 3.5-5% and 14-20% Critical Chance based on current level of peril.
The Equinox Mk IV Voidstrike Force Staff sits as the king of staffs for many players. It is very much the jack of all trades staff, able to deal with almost every threat single-handedly. This build seeks to bring the most out of this humble force bowling ball generator, and is what we will be using for 90% of our runs. We become a human artillery machine, hurling balls of lightning down the lane. We can also chose to play this build in two ways. The first is to rarely use our ability, keeping or Warp Siphon stacks high to increase our overall DPS. The second is to spec fully into being a support force, spamming Telekine Shield as frequently as possible. With brutal gunners are in the new Havoc mode, I find this to be a fantastic support centred build, with still enough Damage to keep up with your teamates.
The Equinox Mk IV Voidstrike Force Staff allows skill expression in a way that the other staffs do not, as it is the only staff that benefits from hitting weak spots. It's the jack of all trades staff, able to deal with every situation. Add to this the travel time of the projectile itself, and getting the most of of this staff requires some ability. That said, the weapon is so strong that even without being able to aim like Legolas, things have a habit of falling over and dying when in range. The secondary fire projectiles travel in a penetrating line, meaning that each shot is able to penetrate multiple ranks of Nurgle worshippers, hitting elites and specials mixed in the crowd. These projectiles travel through your teammates, so you can fire off salvoes even whilst behind large associates. Most of the time, you will want to hold off on using your ability, so your staff can be buffed up as much as possible from our Warp Siphon keystone and its associated modifiers. The only real area of weakness with the Equinox is its monstrosity damage. For these targets, I like to use Telekine Shield along with Kinetic Resonance, and spam off as many rapid-fire Brain Ruptures as I can in that 10-second window.
We specialise in ranged combat, which also means we struggle if enemies get close to us. As such, we require a defensive weapon to help keep things off our backs if they get too close. To my mind, there are two weapons that can fulfil this role. The shock mauls can help stun targets, and the Catachan blades can instead parry. Given that we have access to Kinetic Deflection as a Psyker, I find the parry to be most effective. We can turtle up if things get too heated, relying on our blocking until the perfect window the line up a parry and take that Rager head clean off. Whilst I would normally recommend a force sword with Deflector, as we are already running Telekine Shield, ranged threats can be dealt with, leaving us something to help defend against unrelenting hordes instead.
I like to pick up Soulstealer, Quietude & Warp Expenditure. Any interaction with peril will replenish our toughness, helping us avoid chip damage from ranged enemies. Perfect Timing has the opportunity to add an additional 15% damage to our staff's attacks providing we are hitting critical frequently, something we can buff by taking the right blessings. Perilous Combustion is a node that gains more value the higher the difficulty. If you are playing on malice threat, for example, this might seem useless. However, in Auric Maelstroms, the density of elites and specials is so high that this will be proccing left, right and centre.
As our staff will be doing the heavy lifting, Brain Rupture is taken for two reasons. The first is for Kinetic Flayer to add to our overall DPS. Realistically this is not the greatest Perk, as it only proccs every 15 seconds and has a nasty habit of proccing on trash mobs. It's fun when it does work, but feel free to swap this for a toughness node if you would prefer. Kinetic Resonance on the other hand is very useful. When a monstrosity shows up to play, you can drop your shield and spam Brain Rupture for 10 seconds to deal some serious damage to the threat.
Pskinetic's Aura is an obvious pick-up as it provides so much benefit to our team, and we will not be making use of soul-blaze in this build. One with the Warp can give us a big damage reduction, something that helps our squishy little psyker stay alive when things get a bit too close for comfort. We take Telekine Shield as this build does not benefit much from the other choices. Scrier's Gaze works better in a gun psyker build where the peril generation is not competing with our staff and Venting Shriek works better in a build that makes use of soulblaze. What I love about Telekine Shield is that you can freely swap to either the dome or the double stun wall variant based on what Maelstrom you are running. Ordinarily, I would go for the dome as default. However, I have found that when you have those annoying Maelstrom modifiers with waves of mutants, Poxbursters and Pox hounds, the double wall can be absolutely pivotal in shutting down these disablers.
Moving down, Warp Rider is good on any Psyker build to give us a nice little damage buff. We take the left tree version from here. Puppet Master is meh, as you shouldn't really be straying too far off from your team anyway, but can help keep coherency if you have one teammate that is either going for a knife zealot build, or sniffing glue and not paying attention. Solidity provides a big buff to peril quelling and increases the uptime of firing out bolts of energy. For our Keystone, take Warp Siphon, Inner Tranquility, Empryean Empowerment, Psychic Vampire & Warp Battery. The key to this build is to use our ability sparingly so we keep our warp stacks high. At 6 stacks we benefit from a 24% increase in damage and a -36% warp peril generation. There is a reason this is the preferred keystone for staff users as these buffs are bonkers and allow us to bowel charges of 'go fuck yourself' energy down the lane all mission long.
Any of the Catachan Swords can work, but the Catachan Mk IV "Devil's Claw" Sword is my favourite of the bunch. The Mk4 balances between simple sweeping attacks for horde clear & intuitive strike-down hits to quickly dispatch priority targets. It is the most versatile of the weapons, able to deal with hordes by alternating between Light-1 and Heavy-2 combos, whilst still being able to deliver devastating single-target damage with Heavy-1 attacks. Flak and Maniac are reliable damage increases to opt for. As we mostly pull this thing out when there are hordes present, I like to focus on its ability to deal with these threats as well as increase its damage. As such, for blessings, Rampage & Savage Sweep are my go-to's.
The Equinox Mk IV Voidstrike Force Staff is what this build is focused around. It is affectionately known as the 'anti-everything' staff. There is a big debate going on about what blessings are best to take. The two options are either Warp Flurry with Warp Nexus or Surge with Warp Nexus. Personally, I'm not a big fan of Surge, as it is unreliable in how often it proccs and usually results in overkill when it does. If it were available on the Nomanus surge staff, it would be fantastic as this staff has a naturally much higher base critical chance. However, in practice, Warp Flurry is able to more consistently increase our DPS. When one charged shot can kill most mid-tier elites, you want to fire off more bolts, not overkill something already dead. For additional damage, I pick up Flak and Carapace, but Maniac is also a good alternative.
After 1,000+ hours in Darktide, I have a few simple rules when it comes to Curios. Melee classes (Ogryns and Zealots) should take 2x Toughness and 1x Health Curios to provide a good mix of defensive stats. Veterans should take 3 Toughness Curios, as they benefit more from Toughness than other classes due to their larger toughness pools and skills such as Iron Will. Psykers should run 2x Toughness and 1x Stamina Curio to make up for low base stamina and to benefit from their faster stamina regeneration. Obviously, there are some caveats to that. A melee-centric Veteran might want to run 1x Health Curio, and certain knife and stealth builds might want to run a Stamina Curio. But for the most part, I find this a good rule to stick to in order to ensure you have Curios that are effective for the vast majority of your builds, especially when starting out when it is difficult to find any Curios, much less good ones. Oh, and Wound Curios should only ever be used on Zealot Martyrdom builds. Having Wound Curios actually means that health stims will heal you less. I know some people like to take a Wound Curio 'just in case they go down,' but in higher difficulties, there is no guarantee your team can pick you up. It's far better to invest in defensive abilities that prevent downs as much as possible.
For perks, always take Extra Toughness and Gunner Resistance. Gunner Resistance is the most useful resistance node as it applies to Scab Gunners, Scab Shotgunners, Dreg Gunners, Dreg Shotgunners, and Reapers. This is the largest collection of enemies out of any of the resistance perks. These enemies can absolutely shred you in seconds and make up a significant portion of the enemies encountered in Auric Maelstroms. The ability is multiplicative, so it does have some diminishing returns. 0.80 × 0.80 × 0.80 = 0.512, meaning that we end up with a total gunner resistance of 0.488, just below 50%. I can certainly see the argument for only running two Gunner Resistance Curios (with an overall damage resistance of 36%) and opting for something else (potentially Sniper or Flamer), but I still value that extra 12.8%. The one exception is Ogryns. For these, I like to take extra Sniper resistance instead of health on the Health Curios.
For the final perk, it depends on your build. If you are using a build that relies heavily on your ability, then run Cooldown Reduction to more frequently make use of said ability. I find this to be especially powerful on builds that make use of Voice of Command, for instance. If your build is not too heavily reliant on your ability, then go for Extra Health. Again, you can tweak this to suit individual playstyles (and the mercy of the RNG gods as Hadron bricks yet another piece of equipment), but this is a pretty good rule to aim for. As this build benefits from Cooldown Reduction (and Psykers naturally have low health), we naturally go for Cooldown Reduction.
Unlimited high-damage range attacks that can cleave multiple targets. You are the king of ranged fights, and the Equinox Mk IV Voidstrike Force Staff has enough stagger that whatever it doesn't kill, it usually knocks over to the side. Hordes of enemies get cleaved by our shots as they travel on their way to their intended Elite or specialist destination. If we ever need to pop our Telekine shield, we can rapid-fire our Brain burst to deal with damage. This can help with targets that are hard to hit and help us get our stacks of Warp Siphon back. It can really chunk down Monstrosities, even if they are hopping across the map and doing everything in their power to avoid our shots (Hey Chaos Spawn).
You are a human artillery piece through and through. Without a front line to enable your playstyle, your ability to deal DPS suffers. You're not hopeless in melee by any stretch of the imagination, but it is not your strength. Also, the Voidstrike staff has a bit of a lengthy time charging, especially on the first attack before Warp Flurry kicks in, so doesn't react to threats as quickly as guns or say the Nomanus surge staff does. You need to aim your shots to get the most out of them, as it is the only staff which benefits from landing headshots. Given the slow travel time of the projectile and the large area it takes up, you sometimes need to actually aim slightly above an enemy's head to actually register a headshot, something which will take practice to achieve.
Question: Why do the stats, weapons, and abilities in the video not match what's written in this guide?
Answer: I am constantly evolving and refining my builds. As patch notes are released, certain weapons and abilities may change in effectiveness. Additionally, as my skills and knowledge grow, my preferred builds can shift. I aim to provide videos demonstrating the effectiveness of my builds in a Damnation level Auric run as proof of concept. However, these videos may sometimes be outdated. While I strive to keep everything current, Darktide is my hobby, and I may not always have the latest updates in the videos. The information in these guides reflects my most recent thinking and should be considered more accurate than what is shown in the videos.
