Evening all.
Nothing special, I’m just looking to try out a playstyle I don’t have a whole lot of experience with. I have a gun Psyker build that I’m pretty fond of, but in this case I figured it might be better to build from the ground up with melee focus in mind.
If anyone has any recommendations or suggestions to point me in the right direction I’d be grateful!
I have a few melee builds on Psyker for funsies, the one’s I’m going to highlight here though are the two flavors of Greatsword enjoyer:
(I got a couple more but these are the main two I tend to gravitate toward, made an edit to the weapon of the second one for varieties sake and actually enjoy it a good amount),
and your typical ‘I super like playing the game guys I swear’ Duelling Sword set up:
(with a deliberately gimped Duelling sword on this one because I like feeling alive, max out pen/lower Cleave Damage and swap Riposte for Uncanny Strike if you want to just ‘win’).
Obvious edits can be made as desired/based on skill level, but I have great fun with these whenever I want to ‘live dangerously’.
Force Greatsword build I’ve been using lately.
Someone on here said give By Crack of Bone a chance and goddamn, yeah. Basically get to use SG forever.
Thanks guys! I really appreciate it 
Solid build, that’s basically the same one I run except swap Warp Speed for Kinetic Flayer. Flayer proccs very consistently and really helps to knock out Elites.
Yeah, kinda didn’t realize I didn’t put up a ‘by crack of bone’ set up, but I got one of those too and it is REALLy good. Infinite Scriers is nice. only reason I don’t use it on my Assail set up is I’m a weenie that needs 200 toughness or I cry, so I make up for not having it (ish) with Murderous Tranquility and Battle Meditation instead.
but if one doesn’t value toughness that much, drop that extra node I have for by crack of bone and throw on your choice of other blessing and become that much stronger.
One other thing to mention, Psyker is gifted with the shortest stamina regeneration delay of all 4 classes at .5 whereas Zealot is .75 and Vet is 1s. While that doesn’t seem like a big difference on paper, in game it makes a pretty noticeable difference.
I’d recommend taking a +3 Stam Curio and 2x +16% Toughness Curios, with +4% CDR, +12% Stam Regen and +5% Toughness as perks on all Curios unless you aren’t running Kinetic Deflection for some reason. If so, then take +12% Block Efficiency as perks on two curios instead of +12% Stamina Regen.
The extra stamina does wonders for mobility, especially on the Great Sword. By spamming crouch slide with that Curio setup, you can effectively move quickly and still have nearly full stamina when you get close enough to engage the enemy.
With that Curio setup and Kinetic Deflection, you can usually tank rager packs in a clutch situation long enough to reposition into a choke point. Anyway, have fun, melee Psyker is very hard to give up once you’ve had a taste of what a strong melee build can do.
The emperor gifted my psyker with a +3, 17% tuff, 21% hp curio setup. One day I may get an extra 17% curio.
I may drop one point from DD to take kinetic flayer, it’s been a while since I’ve used it.
For range, I’m either using a trauma staff or a bolt pistol for the judge dredd cosplay. I know I’m supposed to take the recon las, but FGS is already so good, taking both feels dirty lol.
I couldn’t say what the best blessings are because I’ve been using shred/blazing spirit on a whim after using wrath/unstable power and precog. I need to actually try murderous tranquility, was avoiding it trying to maximize damage output from peril, but now it just sounds like even more scriers guage to me.
Yeah, been doing this a while and got very into it a good bit back, so would spend any free day I had checking the shop every hour/two hours to get the curios I wanted…three 17% toughness called to me as on the Psyker it properly rounds their toughness values to some nice even numbers, so feels very good for my brain.
I like Kinetic Flayer a bunch, getting just free kills feels nice and I never usually have an issue with DD stacks, so would recommend if you wanna give it a shot!
I just use the Revolver as the only ‘weakness’ the sword has is heavy armor (and even then it can still dispatch it pretty quick with the push attack into heavy thrust), so I just have it for dropping those targets quickly with the many Rending Crits or dropping a gunner/special in one quick shot to the dom. The fact it also gives pretty good move speed is the main reason I placed it on a ‘melee focused’ build, since with stuff like Trauma or Recon Las you’ll just be ‘using that ranged for a while, then using the sword for a while, then the ranged for a while’ and there’s no ‘back and forth’ or focus on melee there. So for a ‘melee build’ I prefered to keep the focus on just pulling the gun out for speed or pot shots (as the Greatsword made it’s way onto like 70% of the rest of my Psyker builds anyway, so can us staffs and such with them instead at that point XD).
When it comes to blessings, I’ve pretty much come to this formula:
Empathic Evasion/Bubble? Yes? Riposte/Shred, No? Deflector (especially with Kinetic Deflector)
Warp Splitting? No? Wrath, Yes? See Below
By Crack of Bone? No? Murderous Tranquility, Yes? Keep going down
And now, you can just pick whatever your last blessing is, if you haven’t filled up with two already. Max out crit with Shred + Riposte? why not. Grab Precognition to lean into the dodge = more damage? go right ahead, or Blazing Spirit to lean into the crit = more damage. Grab unstable power for consistencies sake? Sure, or even go back up and grab anything from the above if you still feel like you want it. This just tends to be my guide for ‘making up’ not having particular talents on various builds, it’s up to the one deciding from here!
Ragers are the only real weakness of the FGS. Recently, I’ve been pairing it with the autopistol as ragers are that gun’s only real strength.
So far, so good.
Huh. It looks like, not long after the FGS came out, I didn’t so much find “a” psyker melee build I liked, but rather found what may be “the” psyker melee build: FGS anchored by DD and SG - not neglecting Lightening Speed and one or two connected talents.
I use Infantry Autogun because I don’t use it anywhere else, and because it adds a lot of anti-monster capability. It offers good running speed and can be whipped out pretty quickly to deal with distant targets.
I take Assail because I take Brain Rupture with almost every other psyker build. I try to use it in the 10 second max-Peril window to take full advantage of Warp Splitter. You can down a horde in one direction with the FGS special, then another in the opposite direction with Assail.
I also have a lot of melee fun with my Voidstrike-centric SG+DD build. When cooling off after serving as light artillery I’ll dart-forward, hopped-up on DD and Mettle, and flail around with an Illisi.
psyker has a lot of options and, as i just said before in another threads, builds have to fit the player first and foremost, rather than being “optimal” in a theoretical sense.
for example, i quite like warp speed on my gun psyker build because it allows me to move faster and thus avoid damage and choose when to engage.
as for ragers, a stab to the face with DS, knife or deimos at high peril makes them stfu, but generally i prefer the indy jones solution: align them when they’re coming at me and gun them down with vraks (columnus) or shredder while they’re flailing around. i prefer prolonging gaze with by crack of bone. kinetic flayer is more random and i like consistency.
I love greatsword psyker it’s been my favourite build since the greatswords have been added
I apologize for the delayed response, I’ve been unexpectedly busy for the past few days, but I wanted to thank everyone for the insights! You’ve given me a lot to go with and I’m grateful
Tanners gun psyker + moonlight sword.
Most people recommend the Mk VIII fgs, and while it’s exceptional for hordeclear with it’s wide cleave swings I want to give an honorable mention to the Mk VI for this simple reason:
Though the Mk VIII is better for it, the Mk VI still has great horde clear when you chain lights. However, the 2nd heavy is an absolute annihilator strike. Incredible damage values can be achieved with it.
I actually use the VI a lot more on all my none melee centric builds for this reason, usually as an armor killer, because it’s downward chops are a bit easier to get into a chain and as you say, you can actually do a very nice ad clear combo with it going ‘light light light heavy’ and stringing that together continually, one of the few weapons out now where the heavy isn’t the first or second thing you do for your combo string but something you pull in as the fourth hit to keep your diagonals going. It’s pretty neat, and about the only thing that keeps me using the VIII over it in dedicated melee builds is the push attack poke is just so good, so if you’re having the weapon out more often/most of the time having access to that just feels better to me (verses pulling out the VI, chopping down something in front of you, and then swapping away from it again for instance). But either are entirely usable depending on preference.
Have you tried using an uncharged push attack into light attack? It does a horizontal attack perfect for hitting heads, then the follow up heavy is the diagonal slash starting from the upper left. Good opener for hordes to get a bunch staggered and ready for a brutal heavy finisher.
