I decided to theorycraft a Psyker build that’s probably horrible in ways I’m too low-level to know. 
The gist is that it’s a build that stacks Soulblaze, rapidly builds Peril via the Pergatus Staff (which regenerates Toughness) and removes peril (Which regenerates toughness).
Brainburst & the melee weapon are for targets that the Purgatus Staff would be weak on.
Ride The Warp - Build for Darktide - Darktide WH40k
Feel free to tell me what I can improve or whatnot!
Why skip One with the Warp for regular nodes?
Going for Unlucky for Some over One with The Warp is certainly… a choice. It’s not that far off from what I’d do/use myself but it would look more like this: More brain burst oriented.
Or just more about pumping out staff damage and shrieks.
I’m not a huge fan of percentage based conditional things like In Fire Reborn but you could also go for that instead. You could also dump Essence Harvest and put it back into Wildfire if you go that route. In general I find kinetic deflection extremely hard to give up. You can also put it towards kinetic flayer as well, all of them are valid choices.
TDR nodes should not be taken over Talents One With The Warp, and Empathic Evasion.
Purgatus with Warp Nexus crits very consistently so Empathic Evasion will almost always be active while Purgatus is burning groups of enemies.
One With The Warp is 33% TDR at high Peril which you want to be at anyway to make use of Warp Rider.
You were correct about one thing at least…
The basic core of every Soulblaze focused Purgatus build is Inferno Core Talents - Build for Darktide - Darktide WH40k . There are a few fork paths where the picks are personal preference: Soulstealer/Quietude, Mettle/Warp Expenditure, Solidity/ Puppet Master, and Penetration of the Soul/Empyric Resolve. Everything else is more or less locked in though. That leaves 4 points to play around with. Popular picks are: Kinetic Resonance (if you really like Empowered Psionics, take this instead), Kinetic Flayer, Wildfire, Empathic Evasion, Kinetic Deflection, Essence Harvest, and Warp Battery. Or get both sides of those previously mentioned forks. Or dipping for any of the adjacent basic nodes is fine too, except 5% ranged damage because it doesn’t apply to your DoT damage.
If you have any questions about the build let me know, I’ll be happy to help. Build link is at the bottom.
Purgatus
Blaze Away - Has more utility than Penetrating Flame. Purgatus will already melt anything that isn’t Carapace, while Penetrating Flame is nice in certain circumstances, the increased Impact, Cleave and Damage from Blaze Away will better serve you in more situations.
Nexus is excellent on Purgatus.
Talents:
It’s easy to think of Purgatus as a “Soulblaze” weapon, when it actually provides far better utility when built as a Crit weapon. First, Crits apply two stacks of Soulblaze instead of one, also Crits proc very consistently with Nexus on Purgatus.
Mettle is a much better alternative to Warp Expenditure for this build. Mettle will be active more often than not especially with Warp Nexus while using Purgatus. +15% movement speed is massive, this can get you out of bad situations that may otherwise result in a knockdown.
Perfect Timing - essentially +15% free damage for this particular build.
Lightning Speed - 10% faster melee speed doesn’t sound like much, but over the entire length of a mission it adds up, especially on a melee weapon like Deimos.
Souldrinker - Soulblaze kills = more crits. More crits = more Purgatus kills. +5% toughness on Soulblaze kill is also nice.
Warp Splitting - More cleave = faster horde clear with Purgatus.
Empathic Evasion - the biggest FU to Gunners in the game. As long as you’re burning a decent sized group with Purgatus that has Nexus equipped, your survivability will shoot through the roof.
One With The Warp - Synergizes perfectly with Warp Rider. Anytime Warp Rider is active, you’ll be receiving Toughness damage reduction.
Kinetic Deflection - Optional, could be switched out for Solidity but Peril is manageable on Purgatus already, Solidity isn’t really needed. Besides, to make the best use of Warp Rider and Empathic Evasion you want to ride high Peril for as long as possible. Instead of quelling with the staff, in most situations you’ll get more benefit swapping to Deimos to passively cool Peril. Kinetic Deflection is one of the best defensive talents for Psyker, it can easily mean the difference between a knockdown or survival especially against rager groups and boss agro.
You did not pick the talent required for quelling via kills. Considering that the purgatus staff is great for deleting trash hordes, you might want to take that.
You wasted two points on 5% toughness dmg reduction nodes.
You picked „perilous combustion“. In case you do not know, it does not apply to any kills that were made via soulblaze. Not a bad talent. Just letting you know that it has this limitation.
You wasted one point on „wildfire“, which is a terrible talent that is never worth taking, ever.
You did not take the most powerful talent in the game (located right next to wildfire).
You wasted a point on „unlucky for some“ which is one of the worst talents in the game, instead of taking the neighboring talent, which will grant you a bunch of toughness dmg reduction.
You took the 5% ranged damage node, but did not take the „perfect timing“ talent (in the top section of the tree) , that grants you 15% warp damage.
Considering that you likely plan to only use your brain rupture against specials and elites, you might want to reconsider, which side of the Empowered Psionics keystone you pick.
Which option is better, depends on many factors, including your personal skill at applying yourself, and how you tend to deal with specialists.
You picked a soulblaze blessing on your melee, but when your melee has almost no crit chance, and you use the purgatus staff, you won‘t really get all that much value from that blessing.
You picked a melee weapon and a blitz in order to deal with targets that are not taking a lot of damage from the purgatus staff.
But you also waste a perk and a blessing on your staff, trying to improve carapace damage. That is pointless, because that only affects crushers.
Even with that brittleness blessing on your staff, your soulblaze will still only tickle crushers.
Warp nexus is not all that great of a blessing for this staff, unless you really want to guarantee the constant activation of certain talents (which you did not pick anyway).
Warp nexus is not all that great of a blessing for this staff either, unless you really want to guarantee the constant activation of certain talents (which you did not pick anyway).
I suggest you switch to flak and maniac for your staff perks.
Regarding the blessings, you probably want warp flurry in order to get a higher uptime on your flames, and blaze away in order to increase the damage output of your dot. Alternatively, you can replace one of the two with warp nexus for increased value form the „on crit“ talents, if you opt to pick some of those.
Huh?
There is of course also a good set of resources to compare against over here: The Psyker Atheneum
Not very dynamic I know for new builds, but good explanations.
So I have one person saying Warp nexus is great on Purg Staff, and one person saying it’s terrible on Purg Staff.
I also did not know Blaze Away worked on the staff, as it says ‘Magazine spent’, so I was unsure if that covered Peril generation.
I did go through the suggestions and change the build around, though!
I might be wrong on that one, looked into it more. Purgatus may have infinite cleave in which case Warp Splitting is redundant for this build.
As usual, the in-game description isn’t very helpful. It does indeed work though, if you look for the buff indicator amongst the other buffs you’ll see it pop up during secondary fire.
How’s the build working for you?
It is not terrible.
Damage wise, nexus is not a good blessing for this staff.
If you run a bunch of the „on crit …“ talents, you might want to use nexus for more reliable activation of the talents though.
Nexus grants crit chance based on current peril. You get 20% cc at 80% peril and above.
So at 80%+ peril, you will get an extra crit on around 1/5 hits. The direct damage with this staff is pretty low, so the increase to direct damage is probably negligible. As was mentioned before, critical hits with this staff will apply 2 soulblaze stacks instead of 1, so while at 80% peril, you will apply your soulblaze stacks around 20% faster, than you would without the crit blessing. But the maximum number of stacks that you can apply, does not change because of the blessing. So once your stacks are on target, the blessing does not really do anything anymore, when it comes to damage.
If you use blaze away instead, you will basically constantly deal 40% extra damage to everything. Independent of your peril level, and even if the target already has max soulblaze stacks on it.
You get 1 stack of the effect per primary attack.
You also get 1 stack per x% of your secondary attack’s charge bar spent (not when charging, but when performing the attack).
If you only partially charge your staff before each attack, the pause between attacks is short enough, that you start attacking again, before the blaze away buff wears off. So you can have it constantly active during combat (unless you have to vent).
With warp flurry stacks, you can charge your secondary attack about half way each time, without dropping your blaze away buff.
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