Honestly, I think Skitarii underperforms in Havoc – the weapons are just too weak for it.
Skittles is the best jack of all, master of none class in the game, capable of dealing with anything without being the best at it.
Crit seems like an odd choice at first for mace + arc rifle, but flensing and its surrounding nodes are by far the best for meleeing, while you’ll quickly learn to appreciate electro strike conduit, trying to keep the angry purple men in check (somewhat). Pick whichever aura the inevitable skittles in your team doesn’t have, neither makes a diff really.
anything arc rifle based is pretty easy to use and very strong mathematically. class also has access to skullcrusher and synergizes well with the weapon that has skullcrusher, but i’m not expecting anyone to pay for new weapons then use old ones.
With the right build skitarii can deal with everything on h40 
with servo skull you can kill ranged without switching weapon, and you can revive teammates, with voltatic emitter you can dmg and disable enemies, dual transonic blades for horde clear, arc rifle for ranged enemies also good vs crushers and bosses with safe distance.
noospheric is so easily forgotten but is absolutely a busted op talent on the level of pickpocket. i’m walking out of missions with 500k damage done by servo skull alone, no cost, automatically.
you can couple this with having it proc the best talents skitarii has on a melee build and you save points by not investing in an ability since you’re 0% capacitance from spamming it anyway, so you can pick up every single useful talent on the tree for it
Class exclusive melees being arguably worse than existing ones is a painpoint indeed, altho in general they are on the balanced side. Hey, at least you have 3 usable ones unlike scum.
Shock maul gets access to skullcrusher, while arc maul decimates mixed hordes with enhanced voltaic jump. Skits power sword is bugged and will be more than fine once the finesse multipliers get fixed, whereas the power falchion is prolly the best workhorse option not having to waste a blessing on cleave like with vet. Trans blades is just okay, but people are allergic to using combos, and you can leftspam this the easiest.
Skitarii does not underperform in the realms of damage I can promise you that. I feel like I keep needing to point this out but Arc Rife + ACD is the highest elite/heavy (group) dps in the entire game outside of blitzs.
This probably isn’t exactly the most consistent build to run but it is definitely the highest damage overall (VE is close as well). There is of course reginald’s build that is a very solid damage and team focused build, also min maxed chord claw that is pretty good. Really the class does not struggle with damage unless your bar for good damage is psyker/hive scum, and in that case… Well the min-maxed damage builds aren’t far off or are actually better at times.
What? Dueling sword level carapace damage, plus great cleave, plus great combos, plus good maneuverability is “okay”?
Despite what everyone keeps telling me, arc rifle does not have the ammo econ to keep shooting all H40 long unless you vacuum every single ammo brick on the map, which I am physically incapable of doing.
Its not a ranged exclusive build. Play it like weapons specialist veteran. You should be doing melee like %80+ of the time, you shoot the arc rifle into dense blobs to nuke them. If you try shooting plasma on vet all game long you will have the same problem.
Yes. It has OK damage and no stagger whatsoever.
Your build have no staying power. Once your pugs start dying, you’ll be forced to be on the retreat shooting. It’s a win-more build, and not being able to frontline is tragedy in the making in my experience pugging.
- Tank applying brittleness and stagger (electro build)
- Elite and captain killer (chordclaw)
- Anti-ranged unit (ranged ultimate)
Can quickly remove rituals with 2 arc grenade or 1 grenade and some ranged/melee help.
I played in double skitarii team a few days ago and we won every game (like, 5-6 Havoc 40 games in a row with 1 loss somewhere in the middle in the early stages of level).
Same can be said for most psyker builds.
I feel like this is something people say a bit too often. Win more is not neccisarily a bad thing. If you win hard enough that there is never a chance for you to get into a bad position, then you dont get into a bad position lol.
Yes not having safety nets is a problem, it means if you mess up you probably lose. But that is something your team can provide, and also just sitting on chorus + shout + bubble every game is lame as hell.
It can frontline fine, transonics insane attack speed with electro strike is actually pretty solid for locking down a front line, at least enough to keep you safe. Its no ogryn, zealot or arbitrator but it can hold its own dam well just spamming light attacks.
Look. No its not a clutch build, no its not a all rounder build, its a glass cannon DPS build and its dam good at it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s a bad build. I myself get frustrated if I lose pugging because I wasn’t able to frontline proper is all.
A mindset thing, independent from build viability.
My take on the subject, mostly similar to yours.
Since Arc Rifle’s critical hit and weak spot damage bonuses are very low, it is actually not well-suited for ACD (or rather, only the attack speed provided by the ACD branch is useful). Voltaic Emitter is better suited for the Arc Rifle. When dealing with the same group of enemies, it doesn’t even require much dodging, and the first shot after activating the skill can already make the arc jump.
I have tested this extensively and this is the fastest clear time on that test group. It is also the highest consistent DPS for a few reasons. (Also the weakspot damage does help a little but yeah its not a big deal, the auto aim is also pretty helpful for clearing out shooter groups, you just rake your fire across their general direction and end up killing all of them)
- Crit damage is actually pretty good on the arc rifle. 1.6x this is a lot when your crit chance is 55-60%.
- +30% fire rate is a massive boost.
- +25% damage is also a very good boost and quick to build.
Yes on the surface arc rifle does not seem to work well with ACD but it does I promise you. This is the best build for maxing overall damage on the arc rifle.
A few reasons why VE doesnt work out very well:
- One and done, you spend all 3 stacks at once, where as ACD can be toggled on for only a few seconds spending tiny amounts of capacitance for a pretty good boost. This saves you from running much capacitance talents.
- The 3rd stack on VE is useless for arc rifle so every time you activate VE on 3 stacks your just wasting a stack.
- VE is short range and isnt a active effect. You activate it and only the enemies near you are effected. If there are many enemy groups coming in you will end up with no bonuses at all and only +15% fire rate. Meaning it just rapidly drops off compared to ACD if you have a large amount of enemies coming in.
Arc rifle also only arcs 3 times. If you just rake your fire across a group you electrify all of them and get your full arcs after only 4 shots. So even with bad luck and no random arcs happening off the start, your really not getting much extra from VE (Really just a buff to your first 4 shots). Really the biggest boost from VE is the direct damage it can deal, but that get rapidly out paced from the much longer ACD boost.
Overall VE is better with arc maul and a more melee + ability spam focused build. ACD works out better for min-maxing damage with the arc rifle.
VE is a good ability, just not better for arc rifle.
Extremely clutch besides stealth or being an ogryn, but horrendous to things that chip their over time regen (so tox gas) and a lot of cool class weapons are on a meter, which is cool concept but without relic blade tier stength pretty gimmicky. Servo skull objectives for teams that will probably lose if they struggle on interrogation objectives.
Shocking knife on grenade save skulls and either arc or plasma are really stupidly good though. Volt or chord the other one is too unreliable. But falchion and shock maul are quite usable here with extra safety. And their exclusive maul while dull is almost safe like arbites one. Chainsword is still not redeemed by this character.
id rather have zealots in team, especially when theres blight. both arbiter n scum r better than skitarii to me
Besides switching every 3 attacks for meme frequency, what combos are there for it? I’ve been just throwing out heavies in whatever stance the situation calls for if I have space otherwise it’s light spam.
That’s what I’m saying yes, trans blades is the most popular because it has no combos, you either lightspam slayer or heavy spam duelist, with the occasional PA for CC.
Players are allergic to using combos in general, not this specific case.