Psyker blade dancer build

[EvilDonut]

So, i am making a heretic pyromancer blade dancer executioner build to play in a grimdark mode playtrough, i am already set on using two swords, but then i am wondering what's the best to specialize in: chain weapons or power weapons?

[ACEsino]

Chain weapons at the start but drop them for Drukhari later

[EvilDonut]

Am i to understand that drukhari weapons are the best swords? I mean, i know a certain character drops a very good sword much later in the game, but is it worth a dedicated talent on a talent starved build, i think?

[Sin]

Pyro - Dancer -> Executioner goes lore xenos -> Drukhari weapons
You scale through dots, applying poison and bleed from decently strong weapons is godly.

It's rough to fit that into your talents, but it is worth it, given that you proc and reproc all of your dots endlessly.

Edit:
Depending on difficulty this might change but for unfair I recommend taking the survivability /HP increasing talents from blade dancer, as well as blood oath and the "when an ability costs HP you gain 3 movement points" talent.
Be very careful with this. You can endlessly chain through the enemies by clever use of blood oath but the injury / trauma threshold doesn't look at single damage instances but at how much damage you have taken that round of combat.
You will heal up with (almost) every kill, but your damage total will still be counting so you will end up traumatized and injured to hell and back. This also hits your Momentum Bar pretty hard, but can enable you to clear entire encounters turn 1 or 2, including boss fights.
When deciding on attributes keep in mind that you need something like 5 of them so you have to make descisions.
I recommend Agility > Willpower > Weaponskill, ignore toughness and spec medicae instead - executioner gets a talent to fix your hp scaling.
Strength is something for melee, but it doesn't scale for you so I would just ignore it.

Early on you got to decide if you want firestorm or the self burn combo buff to get your ignite damage on your melee attacks, take the first and remain more caster heavy for act 1, pick the second for more melee, both are good but one is obviously stronger early than the other, which might matter for unfair.

Eventually you will go with ignite self -> never stop burning in an officer buffed extra turn, than use your real or heroic turn to run in, blood oath, firestorm yourself or blade dance or death from above in what ever order you need it with the occasional regular weapon attack in between to stack more debuffs / dots assuming it is necessary, Not going to lie: Until act 3 the pyro part of your kit will likely make dot stacking seem unecessary. Once executioner kicks into gear and enemies start having 500-1000 hp however things get nutty, just carefully look at your gear choices and stack that poison / Bleed like crazy.

Speaking of stacking like crazy:
Pyromancy has a skill which increases burn damage for everyone on the battlefield while also triggering burn. If you want to use that (and paired with executioner this is insane) you will absolutly have to saveguard yourself against the damage.
Executioner has a talent for it (stacks with multiple executioners), forge world and death world both have origin talents for it too. Don't sleep on this or your self damage will burn you into the ground more than the enemies.

I am currently playing a pyro dancer paired with the new character, both executioners and am in act 4. The synergy between the two is insane despite them usually not attacking the same target (firestorm does kill her.)
Masquerade (heroic from executioner) x1 is very bad news for the enemy.
Masquerade times 2 + ends encounters at an instant assuming you spread dots around.
It takes time to scale into itself, but eventually you will be stacking so many dots turn 1 that they will kill chapter bosses at the latest turn 2. Depends on how fast you can scale your resolve / momentum - if you get 2 masquerades or 1 masquerade and one officer heroic off it's most defenitly a turn 1 boss kill.

Final notes:
Cassias castigating staff + cone attack can set large groups of enemies on fire. If you got the AP drag them together with her hostile movement skills, than castigating lidless them and they all start burning right away. Nice headstart for the executioner stacking, also decent for firestorming if you don't want to / can't reach them turn 1.

Jae is usually a character I don't like using due to her strange talent picks during her officer levels and the dual pistol thing, but once executioner gets running dual splint pistols for toxic spaming and the needle pistols on switch is .. yeah. :)

[Chapter Eleven]

What about force sword and stack psy rating?

[Balekai]

You will probably be using a Force Sword regardless of having access to Sanctic Psyker's Blade if Light talent, so you can add your Psi Rating to base damage. That said late game without Blade of Light, this might get outclassed by other weapons unless you use Heretical items/mechanics to scale Psi Rating very high.

That said honestly weapon talent specialisation is kind of a waste on Execution. The vast majority of your damage will be from the DoTs you apply rather the weapon damage itself. They're more agents of doing damage than the damage itself regardless of also being effected by say Reckless Abandon.

Bladed Weapons like the Cult ones are not Power or Chain, but have scaling buffs based on your agility characteristic I believe (might be WS).

So my suggestion is neither and use that talent space for more Psyker and Executioner DoT damage scaling. Your Psyker build will already be talent starved to begin with to focus on a certain Chain/Power weapon type general talent when there's better things to be taking.

That said out of the two Chain Weapon talent is better for just adding a flat +4 bonus to damage which will scale well with the tons of extra % increased damage you have access to. With Executioner you will likely be ignoring armour/deflection with DoTs anyways after using Carnival of Misery + Upgrade 1.

Also as others just mentioned Drukhari weapons are a huge deal because of their DoT applications.

[ACEsino]

Originally posted by EvilDonut:

Am i to understand that drukhari weapons are the best swords? I mean, i know a certain character drops a very good sword much later in the game, but is it worth a dedicated talent on a talent starved build, i think?

they have toxic damage so you can get burning, bleed and toxic DoTs wich is totally worth it

[Sin]

Originally posted by ACEsino:

Originally posted by EvilDonut:

Am i to understand that drukhari weapons are the best swords? I mean, i know a certain character drops a very good sword much later in the game, but is it worth a dedicated talent on a talent starved build, i think?

they have toxic damage so you can get burning, bleed and toxic DoTs wich is totally worth it

*Toxic and bleed options available, among them that sweet "causes a toxin cloud around the enemy" blade from act 3.

[Sin]

Originally posted by Chapter Eleven:

What about force sword and stack psy rating?

you really have to decide what you want your character to be. The moment you say pyro executioner you no longer aim for physical damage which makes chain and force weapons sort of wasteful. It doesn't hurt to deal good damage with them as well, but what you really want are the dots which you apply through an INSANE amount of attacks per turn while also using skills to apply and reapply dots on enemies around you or across the entire battlefield.

If you want the "I am dualing katanas" anime vibe than the pyro dancer executioner really isn't that great for it. You can and the self burn skill I mentioned will help you alot, but ..you could have that AND a whole other, heavily scaling and synergizing source of damage in the form of dots.
I would not recommend any of the strictly physical damage weapons or ideas for this build unless you absolutly want to. It is strong enough to support is and make you a killing machine regardless, you are just leaving a lot of potential on the table while almost going for counter synergies (Spending momentum and veil on force blade thingy instead of the blade dancers multi hit heroic action or masquerade from executioner, force blade activation instead of firestorming / igniting / increasing dot damage).
It works, but you will notice that it bites itself with the rest of the build.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by ACEsino:

Originally posted by EvilDonut:

Am i to understand that drukhari weapons are the best swords? I mean, i know a certain character drops a very good sword much later in the game, but is it worth a dedicated talent on a talent starved build, i think?

they have toxic damage so you can get burning, bleed and toxic DoTs wich is totally worth it

In addition to taking Bio and unlocking Biophysical Distortion:

"Biophysical Distortion
All the psyker's attacks, including damaging psychic powers, now poison enemies. This poison deals (4 x psy rating) damage every turn."

For further Toxin to scale up in power level/damage.

You can also look into Staff Powers for your secondary weapon that do Warp Damage like Sanctic Psyker staffs with Emperor's Wrath power (requires sanctic psyker of course though). I have never played a pyro build so I don't know whether pyro staffs do warp or energy damage. It would be a good idea to look into which staff powers do what damage type.

Anyways the reason why you want Warp damage is because of the amulet trinket from Act 1 by doing the safe puzzle (area with the mirror on Rycad Minoris below the main causeway).

"Daemon Tool
Whenever the wearer deals warp damage, the damaged character also suffers burning (3). Burning effects inflicted by the wearer have their power increased by +veil degradation."

In addition to getting a ranged psyker attack which Bladedancers need due to some mobility issues, you can also use a warp damaging type Staff to create actual burning DoTs (level 3, but scaled up with Executioner hits), unlike Orchestrate Flames ability, which adds a burning BASED weapon enchantment to melee hits rather than actual Burning DoTs. Of course you can put the Daemon Tool on another character that does Warp Damage, but I'm not sure if Execution can scale up power on non-Executioner applied DoTs. If it can go for it as I think Cassia powers do Warp damage for example. correct me if I'm wrong.


You still want Orchestrate Flames however:

"Orchestrate Flames
The target does not stop burning and no longer makes tests to stop burning.

Additionally, if the target is an ally, every melee attack that ally makes inflicts full burning damage on targets of their attack, while they themselves now only suffer half burning damage from now on."

That can be good extra damage even if not truly a burn DoT from melee weapons.

[limith]

Biophysical Distortion in theory means you don't need Drukhari for poison but it seems bugged to me in practice as it's not applying the toxin effect properly. You'll be primarily applying burn & bleed via casting and not melee so it's not worth speccing into Drukhari imho. There's pretty good daggers that do not require it which apply poison, you can also opt for pistols that apply it which also do not require Drukhari.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by limith:

Biophysical Distortion in theory means you don't need Drukhari for poison but it seems bugged to me in practice as it's not applying the toxin effect properly. You'll be primarily applying burn & bleed via casting and not melee so it's not worth speccing into Drukhari imho. There's pretty good daggers that do not require it which apply poison, you can also opt for pistols that apply it which also do not require Drukhari.

They work. I responded to your topic with some answers here: :)

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2186680/discussions/0/4840897863355521375/

I will try and test how/whether Biophysical Distortion scales correctly with Forced Repentance. Edit: It does. Forced repentance is shown in combat log of Biophysical Distortion hits adding the same base damage as others).

[limith]

Originally posted by Balekai:

Originally posted by limith:

Biophysical Distortion in theory means you don't need Drukhari for poison but it seems bugged to me in practice as it's not applying the toxin effect properly. You'll be primarily applying burn & bleed via casting and not melee so it's not worth speccing into Drukhari imho. There's pretty good daggers that do not require it which apply poison, you can also opt for pistols that apply it which also do not require Drukhari.

They work. I responded to your topic with some answers here: :)

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2186680/discussions/0/4840897863355521375/

I will try and test how/whether Biophysical Distortion scales correctly with Forced Repentance.

They aren't working properly for me, it's doing 0 damage and the toxin effect doesn't get added until after the ai gets a turn after using incinerate. Using Carnival also does not add biophysical distortion debuff either which means it's kind of pointless when the entire strategy is black ring -> cassia -> pyro carnival apply globally which then essentially wipes the map (aka enemies die before the toxin even gets added). It's a waste of two talent slots.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by limith:

Originally posted by Balekai:

They work. I responded to your topic with some answers here: :)

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2186680/discussions/0/4840897863355521375/

I will try and test how/whether Biophysical Distortion scales correctly with Forced Repentance. Edit: It does. Forced repentance is shown in combat log of Biophysical Distortion hits adding the same base damage as others).

They aren't working properly for me, it's doing 0 damage and the toxin effect doesn't get added until after the ai gets a turn after using incinerate. Using Carnival also does not add biophysical distortion debuff either which means it's kind of pointless when the entire strategy is black ring -> cassia -> pyro carnival apply globally which then essentially wipes the map (aka enemies die before the toxin even gets added). It's a waste of two talent slots.

Carnival isn't supposed to add Biophysical Distortion it I believe as it's not really an attack to begin with remember. Just a heroic ability that doesn't actually do damage even with upgrade III.

I did some more testing (although the Combat Log is a headache with all the applications, but it appears everything is working as intended when the DoTs start. They should all damage at the start of each enemy's respective turn (unless you use an Executioner ability that causes them to instantly apply a instance of DoT on your turn).

Again that appears to be the case from what i can divine from the logs (even though combat UI above an enemy head only seems to show a max of two applications of DoT like only showing Bleed and Burning or Toxin and Burning etc). Edit: To clarify not the DoTs listed under the enemy name in combat, but when the DoT damage actually does damage and you get the floaty notification. Those notifications seem to be capped at like 2. /edit

If your toxin is doing 0 damage, than you may be experiencing some sort of Deflection vs. Toxin, which can be fixed with Carnival of Misery Upgrade 1.

[Balekai]

I think I figured it out. The Carnival of Misery DoTs from Upgrade III are not getting effected by Forced Repentance level increases. So it's only good for qualifying for the All-Encompassing Agony Talent.

This is likely a bug as the game is treating Carnival of Misery DoT as not your own. This is further suggested by bleed showing two levels in enemy inspection UI in its instances. One in the dozens of level and another with only 6-8 level. The latter is likely from Carnival of Misery bleeding not being scaled.

[Sin]

Originally posted by Balekai:

I think I figured it out. The Carnival of Misery DoTs from Upgrade III are not getting effected by Forced Repentance level increases. So it's only good for qualifying for the All-Encompassing Agony Talent.

This is likely a bug as the game is treating Carnival of Misery DoT as not your own. This is further suggested by bleed showing two levels in enemy inspection UI in its instances. One in the dozens of level and another with only 6-8 level. The latter is likely from Carnival of Misery bleeding not being scaled.

Just wanted to say:
Thank you for diving into the logs, mechanics and lore when people have questions.
Much appreciated.