You do not need the stab node, enemies die in seconds anyway.
No actually the servo skull triggers these talents very consistently. It’s a consistent buff to melee builds even if you are just using the base servo skull. It is a bit odd and kind of just taxes you if you take the other two blitzes. But I imagine those talents were designed with the idea they would do that in mind.
This is a melee build that doesn’t even take the skull upgrade:
Its very easy to get much higher uptimes for these with the skull upgrade and/or switching to plasma or arc every now and then.
I think this is a good approach: You gain the majority of your damage resistance by being proactive instead of for just existing. My only squabble its survivability is that the refector shield is not rechargeable.
But the ranged build only needs to constantly use the Arc Rifle to trigger most of these talents even without any Blitz.
That build has no blitz, just the default servo skull does that.
Just nearly rage quit whilst playing Skitarii. The way the toughness works without any good mobility is such bs and not fun at all. And with no real “cannon” to the alleged glass cannon.
You can pretty much get melted instantly by anything other than chaff. Flamer destroys you in seconds, a single hit from a crusher or burster is basically game over…not because of the hit but because of the whole “recharge half a percent of your already meagre toughness in just 3 short hours” absolute nonsense of mechanic.
That slow toughness regen should have been put on the class with the high mobility!!! Which is OBVIOUS right?!
God I want to love Skitarii but it feels so bad. There is just nothing that warrants the squishyness and I’m not bothered by ranged builds. I don’t really play ranged builds.
No power to deal with monstrosities (claw still doesn’t kill one in less than 5 strikes in auric with max crit), no mobility so you move like a snail when dodging…then toughness regen until 40k years after you’ve been hit…so you’re just left wide open in an instant.
I am beginning to hate this class. It doesn’t feel fair. There is no payoff
They literally gave every single possible boon to hive scum and left nothing for skitarii. I will not be playing Skitarii once I’ve finished penances.
Skitarii’s mosty tanky build is probably Redline+Voltaic Emitter w/ Overcharge+all CDR nodes except the hit 3 enemies one. Constant 15% TDR+low CDR to keep spamming 25%+ instant toughness and instant AoE stun. Voltaic Resto can give 20% more instant and Galvanic Coating will give perma 15% DR (total ~27% TDR). Add in Overcharge Transfer Lattice to tank the odd hit.
Arc Maul also has Confident Strikes and will constantly proc Entropic Transfer for 3/s and Auto-Repair will add 3/s more (pro-tip: spam the special+push attack to just arch everything).
Power Overload is bait for tank build because your team need at least 30 kills for few seconds of TDR and 480 for semi-perma 20% TDR. Assuming high coherency time.
TBH I would never choose PO for any build tbh lol. I detest the lack of control over its activation and uptime.
I have used ‘tanky’ builds for skit and it can ‘feel’ successful until the bits where it really matters…like in a tight corridor with an auric+ mosh pit and a monstrosity and some of your teammates are downed…then you soon realise it’s not tanky at all.
I have the same experience with skitarii no matter which build I choose…which is: it feels easy until players are truly overrun by an immense elite mob, then it doesn’t matter which build you chose…which also means it doesn’t matter which build you chose before the moshpit as it was equally as survivable until that point.
It just doesn’t feel good tbh. It doesn’t reward skill as there is very little you can do in those situations. If you really want to survive anything as skit you just have to load up a boring as heck ranged build with arc rifle but that is no fun IMO.
Paul is quite boring as I’ve played that on multiple other classes…and the cool transonic blades feel like pool noodles in an auric carapace convention.
I can’t wait to get back to my beloved Oggy after this final penance. I am definitely over the skittles which is a shame as I love their art/vibe/audio etc.
This really sounds like you are just way too used to hive scum. Skitarii is a very good class, hive scum is a very OP class even now lol. You cant just spam dodges like hive scum, you do actually need to be more careful with your dodge timing and spacing and block and push more.
Transonics are incredibly powerful weapons I have no idea how you are struggling with carapace.
I’m killing Crushers in 3 or 4ish duelist mode heavy attacks in H40? Plus it naturally ignores carapace hit-stop so it’s already better than 90% of weapons into armor balls. You want to spam H2 so H1->H2->L2->repeat H2/L2 loop.
Plus it has like 7 dodges.
Nope, it just feels bad and they made a bad design decision. Having most of the toughness regen be on timer should clearly have gone to the class with the high mobility (IE a trade off aka glass cannon). That is such an obvious design decision that I’m baffled no one else has mentioned it yet. Instead the Skitarii just gets loads of Achilles heals with no real power to compensate, whilst the scum got multiple boons.
For the record, it’s not like I’m dying constantly. Still survived most my auric and AM outings. It’s just the way the class “feels” to me. The claw is a nothing burger compared to vet regen kraks and has no gold toughness like other squishy classes.
I don’t use mods and don’t care for spreadsheets or isolated meat grinder tests…it’s just how it feels to me. I guess I detest that swapping modes via the special button too…like, really really hate it. It feels awkward and confusing in the heat of battle when you’re not sure what stance you’re in…so I’m sure that’s not helping. (Which is also why I totally avoided the cleaver and crowbar on scum…I truly hate changing move sets on special press…hate hate hate it!).
I get you love the class and defend it as you feel you must but I can only go by how it feels to me. I’ve done all penances except the 100 missions (of which I have about 20 missions left) and so have now played with all aspects a lot…and yet it just all feels wrong.
If they swapped either the toughness or mobility model with scum then both classes would have felt so much more balanced imo.
Giving a class with poor toughness amazing mobility is not making them a glass cannon its making them a “glass” cannon. Thats the story with scum, you can just spam dodge and slide all game and never take damage. They are incredibly survivable. Skitarii requires you to play smart and more cautiously with damage to compensate like a glass cannon should.
You can use a claw ever like 5 seconds, and it comes out instantly and it regens toughness. Its as good if not better then Kraks.
Its not a meatgrinder test, its a actual live AI test with 4 crushers and 4 maulers and the transonics are amongst the strongest into them.
That is definitly the main problem. 90% of the power comes from switching modes. I got used to it perfectly fine but if you cant then maybe try arc maul + VE.
I do feel like doing penances is like the opposite of fun and actively kills fun. That might be the source of half of your frustrations.
Yeah hive scum has too much toughness, also too much mobility. It is definitely the strongest class in the game, psyker only wins on technicality due to flame staff and other infinite cleave. Currently I feel like skitarii is a good power level. It has very high damage potential but is very punishing to play. I think that is good and how the other glass cannon classes should be, or at least be closer to. They definitely have made psyker too tanky, and scum is just a bit too good on mobility.
And yet they can regenerate toughness instantly too, which is my point. Scum get best of both. Skitarii gets neither. If they’d swapped some stuff between the classes then balancing would have been so much better.
A krak literally clears a mob of crushers and maulers in 1 go. It kills them all in 1 hit on a regenerating multi-stock aoe throwable blitz. How can you compare a little poke (even if it 1 shots a single elite) with that? They are incomparable IMO and some people talk as if the claw can clear a screen lol. It can’t even kill a monstrosity in auric with 5 focused weakspot strikes (not swipes). hell it doesn’t even clear half a monstrosity HP. It sometimes doesn’t even kill an elite with a focused strike…certainly not guaranteed. Compare that to the power of regenerating kraks.
Yeah could be why it feels so bad to me. At times they feel great but god I hate having that stupid switch.
I’ve long since finished the other penances though, and have been trying to find a build I like. I’ve tried maxing out crit/speed, maxing out stagger, maxing out TDR etc…and they all feel ok but soon enough they feel like they have too many weaknesses. It’s hard to put my finger on but something just doesn’t feel right.
Absolutely but really if they had swapped mobility or toughness with skitarii then both would be in a much better place IMO. That slow toughness regen would just make so much more sense on a high mobility class. Mobility is ultimate survivability in DT so having the most punishing toughness model on the highest mobility would have been perfect.
I honestly wish I was finding it fun. I don’t think I am alone in that either.
They spunked all the good mechanics on hive scum tbh. 
EDIT: I think the thing that feels wrong is exactly what you said - how unforgiving they are. You can go 3/4 of an AM without taking any damage then a single hit from somewhere and poof…you’re dead. If a silent burster or non-pushable burster jumps at you in a mosh pit then its game over. fire or tox decimates skitarii too.
Well yeah that is why scum needs nerfs. I don’t think skitarii needs any buffs, maybe like a tiny bit more toughness. Like if Binary Ballistics Protocol was just instant +10% toughness that would be enough, maybe even too much on claw builds.
No? Most you can kill is like 3 if you are very lucky and they are stacked ontop of eachother. This was true pre crusher buff but you will need to use multiple kraks on most groups.
Also you need to use slice and dice and build for more melee damage. Just look at the chart. Chordclaw combined with transonic blades is one of the fastest crusher kill time in the game. Yes a krak can instantly kill 1-3 but you can also do that with chordclaw. I really doubt you are killing more then 3 crushers with one krak grenade, and kraks have the issue of needing to pull them out, throw them, and then wait for them to explode, where as claw just instantly kills them.
I can definitely agree that it is a tough class to play. But I have been having a lot of fun with basically min-maxing melee damage along with having a mk3 plasma gun with charge speed blessings for mini kraks. You could run damage blessings on plasma but I usually just shoot one or two shots to stagger groups and blow up dense blobs, usually dont need more then two shots. Yeah rampage scum is both doing more damage and is much easier to play, but I find playing exclusively crazy OP builds pretty boring. This build is regularly doing more damage then zealot its just more squishy to compensate and I think that is a fair trade. And yeah the default servo skull is enough to keep 3+ stacks of each of the ranged blessings very easily.
If I had a dollar for all the groups of enemy ogryns/maulers that have evaporated to a vets krak the second they appeared then I would be a rich man. This is a hyper common scenario in the game, for me at least. And yes almost never leaves any alive from that particular pack (they tend to travel almost on top of each other so perfect for a krak ).
You can’t kill multiple crushers with one hit of a claw in auric. Sometimes it doesn’t even kill 1 with a direct focused strike. So I am not sure what you mean by this?
Also with claw you need to be within melee range to maybe kill 1 crusher with a stronger focused and charged strike. A vet can throw a grenade from a nice safe distance. Huge difference for a squishy class.
I’m definitely not wanting skit to become super OP and don’t want it to be scum, but it’s got confused gameplay in current state I think. It’s a bit too far in the other direction and the synergy isn’t there for me.
Just sit in duelist mode. Even in no Psyker H40 runs (so there’s now actual hyper-density) I barely find a reason to go back into cleave mode.
It always kills in auric, it needs extra damage buffs to kill in havoc 40 yeah. But point is you can instant kill 3 crushers in a row and by the time you are done killing the 3rd you could have another charge ready.
Sure to most of this, but I think you are missing the utility of claw. Its not just the damage, its how much you can use it, the high stagger, the toughness generation, and the near infinite cleave. You can dive into melee and use claw to just stagger enemies if you take a hit or anything. If you take a hit you can just use a claw to instantly regen most if not all of that damage and then also stagger everything in a massive arc in front of you, and also do really high damage.
Fair enough I will try this. The wide swings feel good for hordes but yeah this might be a better approach.
It doesn’t though. I have experienced many times where it doesn’t kill the target. It usually does but not always. There is at least 1 example of this happening in every auric+ mission for me. It shows the crit marker but the target just carries on as before, very much alive and swinging for me which isn’t great if I have just used up my dodge and all my claw strikes…whilst expecting the target to have been killed.
That can only happen if you cancel the second part of the attack. The claw strike deals damage in to parts, one when it hits and one where it pulls out and you can cancel the second part if you dodge.
I just tried a transonic blades build with a +3 stamina curio with stamina regen, sprint efficiency and combat regen and it felt quite good. Seemed to open it up a bit. Still practically get 1 shot from a feather duster but felt easier to avoid it.