Scrier's Gaze melee?

[Anne Flank]

Advice for Melee build for a Scrier's Gaze gun-melee psyker?

[varicose 'vascular' vinny]

Combat knife or Mk2/4 duelling sword. I've tried the taxe because it does have huge finesse on paper but you take like 15 hits to kill a Crusher vs 2 stabs to the face. The force swords aren't bad either, but they have a lot less mobility which is not why I want to use Scrier's. I gotta go fast.

[Arani]

Originally posted by Lord Inquisitor ==:

Advice for Melee build for a Scrier's Gaze gun-melee psyker?

There's a few ways to do it but generally you want the typical talents like Empathic Evasion & Anticipation, Scirer's with the finesse booster and Disrupt Destiny. Most then go with Duelling Sword IV, but honestly outside of crushers I find it's simply not good enough.

I recommend an Illisi with Shred & Exorcist. Your usual combo is heavy > light > repeat at head height. Light spam if you need speed (like stacking Shred faster & increase the odds of proccing Empathic Evasion vs. ranged, especially if your targets are weak). You can also put a special + heavy in if you can afford it to really cleave, stagger and dmg some group in particular, making for a good occasional opener if too many specials or elites are about to join the fray.

Illisi ofc. isn't as good as a Duelling Sword for stamina efficiency or against crushers specifically, but it's not bad there either. Meanwhile its massive cleave buffed by Scier's & DD makes it insane against groups of anything else, but it also has the Force Sword tools like its ultra wide push, and that push-attack to interrupt or push down almost anything from a 9m range. The special also serves as a tool to keep your peril up for Warp Rider if you need the dmg when Scrier's is on CD.

Note that Exorcist requires *repeated* weakspot combo hits, you lose the buff if your swing doesn't hit heads or if you do anything else (like block-cancel or using special). But using it right will both stack and then keep Scrier's capped & running for a very long time while constantly powering your talents. Once Shred is stacked that Illisi will have a ~60% crit chance, enough to reliably keep you immune against ranged while doing the heavy > light combo. So you can just cleave through enemies like grass and very little can touch you.

Note however that even a melee psyker is still a psyker. The moment you lose that momentum or get staggered and lose the protection of Empathic Evasion, you'll go straight down like a wet bag if anything is still focusing on you. It's a very high risk way to play.

[FireMarshallBill]

Originally posted by Lord Inquisitor ==:

Advice for Melee build for a Scrier's Gaze gun-melee psyker?

combat knife or alissi sword. get ready to own.

[J.P.]

mk IV ftw uncanny strike and shred

[Quxudais]

Originally posted by Lord Inquisitor ==:

Advice for Melee build for a Scrier's Gaze gun-melee psyker?

MK4 Dueling sword is your best friend. Download the monster spawner mod and practice in the holodeck with it and get used to using it's special which taps the target on the head with the point and staggers almost anything. You can even chain stagger if you wanted. that and the heavy attack thrust head shots will take most things down quickly while the rapid slices and dodge makes hordes fairly trivial. Prioritize move speed in your talents, you can zip between targets fast once you get going. Biggest challenge is there is no real dump stat on this weapon so for it to truly shine you need a damn good roll.

Combine that with a columnus or revolver, and if you are comfortable with your meter management add in assail and you have the tools to take on everything solo except some of the mini-bosses.

But you have to be good at dodging because you have the endurance of wet tissue paper if anything actually hits you.

[BÆRD]

Originally posted by Lord Inquisitor ==:

Advice for Melee build for a Scrier's Gaze gun-melee psyker?

Funny you asked, I play "melee" psyker at all times. You are likely become more a skirmisher, hybrid between melee and range anyway, as most of your weapons lack cleave and the class itself doesn't make for a "meta" frontliner. You can make it work tho, and that for me is more satisfying than running the most powerful zealot, ogryn or melee centric vet builds. A match stat break down for me is usually 50/50 between melee and ranged kills.

This is a variant of what I have been consistently running on my psyker for 6+ months now. I rotate it between Deimos and Obscurus. Why force swords instead of dueling swords? A personal preference, because force push is funny and because especially with Deimos you don't miss much over something so OP / broken as the DS MK IV heavy spam. Also the attack speed is less punishing on your hands.

You could also easily build around the Devil's Claw with Shred and Rampage. DC's parry does good damage vs Crushers / bosses attacks. Few other melee weapons should be also decent, I just like the psyker's unique weapons more.

Build along these lines:
https://darktide.gameslantern.com/build-editor?id=9c8611f1-3f09-4b2a-bec7-dbc74d201292

I feel the key talents are: Mettle, One with the Warp, Emphatic Evasion (hence Riposte / Shred, Riposte SEEMS to offer better crit rate on average), Warp Rider, Kinetic Evasion. Perilous Combustion can also help out when faced by a group of rushing elites. High crits allow you to regen toughness, avoid ranged fire, get movement speed boost and slight Assail damage boost. Assail is mainly there for stacking peril / emergency toughness regen and dealing with shooters, some lighter elites. Similarly to duelling swords, force swords, revolvers, las / bolt pistols all benefit a lot from crits, so this all fits nicely.

You can swap Assail for Brain Rapture + Empowered Psionics. You should have higher Scier's Gaze uptime thanks to Psykinetic Aura. With guaranteed EP charge refund on elite kill you eat light elite waves for breakfast as you can chain kills on light elite gunners and ragers, however at the cost of being able to quickly build up toughness / peril for melee.

With force swords, Warp Resistance is your dump stat, in fact you want it low, especially if you want to top up your toughness / boost damage on the run. Uncanny Strike can be swapped around with stuff like Slaughterer, Unstoppable Power, Shred, Deflector even Blazing Spirit. All offer you something, well maybe except Blazing Spirit, its a discounted bleed. Deimos is easier, due to higher dps, higher armour damage, far better dodge distance and crowd control on heavy 2.

Agri revolver can be swapped for Zarona, las/bolt pistol. You can also run any other gun, but where is the fun in that?

[Pitviper]

I've recently swapped to using the Indignatus MK III Shock Maul for my Psyker. Heavy - Light - Heavy is repeating sweeps and with Disrupt Destiny and Scrier's Gaze both running (especially the keystone for Disrupt Destiny granting 2 stacks on weakspot kills) you can pretty easily mulch hordes. Running Flak/Maniac and Skullcrusher / High Voltage. Also does solid damage to crushers if you use the weapon special then just heavy attack spam, since they're all overhead strikes. Also can break Bulwark's guard and stun them if you use weapon special against them, very helpful

Don't get me wrong, I like the force swords. The Illisi is great for Hordes and the Deimos is a monster in single target destruction, but I always felt like I was missing something when I used those weapons. I also didn't like accidentally blowing myself up with a shove-push with the force swords since Scrier's sets you to 100. Plus blocking with Peril first, it just created a recipe for disaster waiting to happen.

[Artan]

I do it like this:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1361210/discussions/0/4352247346366583126/

Originally posted by Artan:

Psyker (Dueling Sword and Columnus - Scrier's Gaze / Disrupt Destiny
https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9c58da28-f274-4818-90c0-b533aa2a18f5/artan-psyker-2

[v4nd4hl]

I find Illisi Sword with Shred/Blazing Spirit blessing combo both fun (to watch) and effective. Force swords are super versatile in general, and this one makes for an unique fiery build, I enjoy alot. Force swords also have the advantage, that you can vent peril inbetween striking enemies - makes your Scrier's Gaze stack up more stacks and last longer.

A weapon that hasn't been mentioned here which I think is heavily overlooked: The Antax MK V combat axe with Shred/Headtaker blessing. Needs a bit more dodge dancing / push attack skills on the player's side but... holy son of an emperor, that thing is an actual beast if used right on a Scrier's Gaze Psyker.

In my humble opinion, Scrier's Gaze can and will make (almost) any melee weapon worthwile - as long as you Hawk-Thua that Shred blessing on that thing, you know what I mean.

[3arpbl3y]

Originally posted by J.P.:

mk IV ftw uncanny strike and shred

this ^, top melee solo target dmg

[Arani]

Originally posted by v4nd4hl:

...

First I want to apologize and my following post isn't meant to be confrontational. Rather educating. <3 But with respect, from a T5+ PoV Blazing Spirit makes no sense here.

On Damnation you need 6 stacks of Soulblaze to kill most horde within about 10 seconds. You also need Warp Rider and to keep your peril above ~50% (depending on buffs) to kill *all* horde including snipers. 6 SB does +125% more dmg than 4. So even over its entire duration of ~14 seconds, 4 SB will barely reach 50% dmg to the weakest trash in the game. 8 SB of course would, but at that point you've scored a minimum of 2 critical hits (and with ~40-60% crit rate likely as many regular hits too) so whatever you were hitting is going to be long dead by then anyway.

Of course SB has plenty of talent interactions that can make it fantastic, but it typically needs multiple sources of SB from weapons, blessings and talents to really come together. A crit & finesse build simply can't afford them, nor does it need them since its overwhelming dmg is going to kill everything before those DoT's would anyway. They are opposing, not complementary builds.

Also quelling with a sword is extremely slow, doubly because you won't have Solidity. Even staves & Solidity for max ~+73% quelling and peril talents on top can't keep up with Scrier's for long in higher stacks. Hence the Exorcist. Exorcist passively quells 5% peril per hit and synergizes perfectly with Precognition & Disrupt Destiny, they're pretty much a match made in heaven.

[v4nd4hl]

All good, no offense taken. I know its not the best approach but its whats the most fun to me an I can still hold my ground with it on Auric T5 regardless.

[Steinar]

Arani singlehandedly made me want to play Scryer again. :P I can feel I've neglected a unique playstyle too much.

[Arani]

Btw spurred by this I realized I'd never tested the Illisi special, since we can't see its dmg tables. While I had a feeling from the game that there was something wonky with the special heavies and special + light spam was surprisingly effective, I had nothing concrete.

But to summarize, the special gives a disproportionate, massive buff to light attack power:

• Special + lights get around + ~330 / ~440 / ~500 dmg to body / crit-or-WS / critWS dmg
  
• Special + heavies get around + ~300 / ~200 / ~150 dmg, respectively
  
• In percentages that's +330% / +182% / +151% for lights, and +115%, +34%, +17% for heavies. With an exceptional bonus dmg for unyielding at +300% / +270% / +230% for lights (didn't test heavies beyond confirming their bonus dmg was again smaller at this point)
  
• Special lights also do significantly (+30-50%) more dmg against carapace than regular heavies, but special heavies are only +15-25% stronger than special lights here

Considering how much faster lights are this actually explains a lot. While I couldn't/didn't test cleave & stagger, spamming that special with lights seems by far the optimal choice.

I'm playing around with a Bloodthirsty & Exorcist build idea. Bloodthirsty would enable extreme burst DPS while guarantee stacking for Perfect Timing, Malefic Momentum and Empathic Evasion among others. Exorcist then would keep the peril under control. Ofc its reliance on repeated comboed weakspots is a bit limiting but it can be played around with various combos. Considering how weighted that special is towards lights and finesse hits, this should be an insane match for a Scrier's & DD build.

Edit - Some tips btw:
Only heavy 1 and light 2 are perfect horizontal moves. You can combo into L2 from push or H1. Fastest Bloodthirsty & Exorcist combo then would be special > L1 > L2 > repeat, where the special costs ~13.5% peril (high Warp Resistance) and Exorcist pulls it down to +8.5% if you hit a head on both. If you have time you can combo H1 into the end to push the peril further into just +3.5% per combo.

Since Force Sword pushes & push-attacks are something fantastic, you can also just do special > push/PA > L2 > H1 to lead with some CC followed by 2 fantastically powerful cleaves.

And ofc. if you just do special > L1/H1 > repeat, you won't be proccing Exorcist at all but every strike will now be a critical special.

[v4nd4hl]

Originally posted by Steinar:

Arani singlehandedly made me want to play Scryer again. :P I can feel I've neglected a unique playstyle too much.

He's one of this Game's Steam Forum Top tier mvp anyways. Maybe I start collecting his posts / responses and write a guide....

"Arani's Almanach" oder.... "The teachings of Arani", haven't decided on the name yet!