Praise the Omnissiah, the Adeptus Mechanicus got in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. The Skitarii are ruthless, efficient cybernetic warriors who rely on their superior weapons and technology to defeat their enemies.
Perhaps the most customizable and versatile class in all of Darktide, Skitaria boasts a massive skill tree that allows players a level of customization unlike any other character. Because of this, it can be overwhelming to know what to build in because there are so many options available.
Due to how adaptable the Skitarii class is, there really isn't one build that is objectively better than the others. It really depends on what role you want to fill in the team, as Skitarii are fantastic for ranged, melee and even support roles.
The best Skitarii Chordclaw build
For those who prefer to be fit, Chordclaw is a surprisingly powerful ability that deals both high damage on a single target and can cut through a whole wave of normal enemies. In this build, we will rely on handling up to five charges of Chordclaw strike to increase our damage and survive.
Before we get into how the build works and general playstyle, here's a list of all the talents we'll be using.
|
Talent name |
Talent description |
Type of talent |
|---|---|---|
|
Autocorrect doctrines |
Replenish +3% toughness per second. Increased by +0.5% per current charge. |
Passive |
|
Binary Ballistic Protocol |
Elite Kills restore 15% resistance over 3s. |
Passive |
|
Servo-Core Recharge Engine |
Weakspot Kills restores 5% toughness. |
Passive |
|
Uplink Power Redistribution |
Critical hits restore 7.5% toughness and provide 15% toughness damage reduction over 3s. |
Passive |
|
Moebian Conductor |
Take +15% damage for 10s when using abilities. |
Passive |
|
Ammo-Cell Augury |
+25% ammo reserve |
Passive |
|
Recharging the reactor coil |
Killing weak spots generates 2% capacity. |
Ability Modifier |
|
Sureshot Cogitator Sync |
+25% weak spot damage. |
Passive |
|
Progressive plating matrix |
Hits grant +2.5% resistance damage reduction for 5s. Stacks 6 times. Maximum of one per attack. |
Passive |
|
Adaptive Combat Calibration |
Gain +30% Melee Cleave when above 50% Toughness and +30% Melee Impact when below. |
Passive |
|
Uncovered interceptor |
Successful melee attacks grant +2.5% melee attack speed for 3s. Stacks 5 times. |
Passive |
|
Enemy rendering of Creed |
Gain +25 toughness. You and allies in Coherency gain +15% Cleave and +7.5% Rending. |
Aura |
|
Residual current buffer |
Gain +10% resistance damage reduction, increased by +2.5% per current charge. |
Passive |
|
Last Stand Relay |
Gain +6% crit chance, increased to +10% at 0 charges. |
Passive |
|
Directed Motive Force |
Spending 1 stamina grants +15% damage for 4s. |
Passive |
|
Voltaic restoration |
Restore 20% toughness to you and allies in coherence when using abilities. |
Passive |
|
Chordclaw Strike |
Make a powerful heavy melee attack with Chordclaw. The attack is a guaranteed critical strike and has +50% Rending. |
Ability |
|
Slices and cubes |
Using Chordclaw Ability increases the damage dealt by Chordclaw by 20% for 5s. Stacking 3 times. |
Ability Modifier |
|
Axial slash |
Your Chordclaw now performs a Horizontal Sweep attack. |
Ability Modifier |
|
Sequential charging |
Gain +12.5% Strength when gaining charge. Lasts 10s. |
Passive |
|
Energy overflow |
At full Toughness, 25% of the excess Toughness Replenished is distributed to each ally in Coherency. |
Passive |
|
Artificer Servo-Skull |
You are accompanied by a servo-skull that you can order by double-tapping your tag. You can order him to shoot at nearby enemies. You can also order it to complete a data query. Activated bonuses from the base ability Servo-Skill Blitz are now permanent. |
Blitz |
|
Purgatory Servo-Skull |
You have another Servo-Skill equipped with Flamer. Target an area and spread it out. Use your primary action to switch between scattered or concentrated fire mode. |
Blitz |
|
Medicae Servo-Skull |
You have another servo-skull equipped with adapted Medicae syringes. Target a Struck Down, Hogtied, or Netted Ally and inject them. The injection revives them and also gives them +75% toughness damage reduction and 20% toughness per second. Lasts 5s. |
Blitz |
|
Data Sensor Protocol |
When you or an ally in Coherency takes Toughness damage, it restores 25% Stamina. 15s Cooldown. When you or an ally in Coherency takes health damage, it restores 25% resistance. 15s. Cooldown. |
Passive |
|
Redline capacitors |
Spending or gaining a charge grants +5% resistance damage reduction and +5% capacity generation for 12 seconds. Stacking 4 times. The piles are decomposed one by one. Additionally, you have +1 maximum ability charges. |
Keystone |
|
Canticles resource optimization |
+1 Max Ability Charges and +1 Redline Capacitors Max Stacks. |
Keystone modifier |
|
Capacity limit override |
+15% Stamina with 3 stacks of Redline Capacitors or more. |
Keystone modifier |
|
Advanced power management |
When using the ability, gain 5% power for each charge you used for 10 seconds. |
Keystone modifier |
|
Surge-Extension |
Obtaining a stack of Redline Capacitors replenishes 25% toughness over 5s. |
Keystone modifier |
The heart of this set are the Chordclaw Strike and Redline capacitors. The former is a powerful ability that allows us to deal a surprising amount of burst damage. This is due not only to the fact that the base damage is quite high, but also due to the skills Slice and Dice and Moebian Conductor, which improve the damage of abilities when used.
Since we'll have a maximum of five Chordclaw charges available at any time, this will allow us to deal tons of burst damage to tanker targets like bosses, ramparts, and crushers. Where it gets really crazy is when we unlock Axial Slash, which makes Chordclaw swing in front of us. This drastically increases our kill potential as we can kill multiple elite level units like Ragers or Maulers in one go.
Related to this is the Redline Capacitors Keystone, which gives us stacks that improve our Toughness and Capacitance regeneration every time we either use or gain an ability charge. We can further enhance these benefits with Keystone modifiers such as Surge-Extension for better survivability, Advanced Power Management to increase our damage and Capacity Limit Override which gives us 15% Rending if we have three or more stacks.
As for our Blitz, this is a bit of a flexible spot as you can use Arc Grenades or Integrated Refraction Emitter if you want, but I've had the most success with the Artificer Servo-Skull. While the base damage from the floating servo is nothing to write home about, we want access to the Medicae and Purgator servo skulls.
The former allows us to pick up downed or captured teammates, giving us a nice boost when fights get hectic. The Purgator variant can spew flames in a circle or in a straight line, allowing for better crowd control or just thinning out enemies if you're overwhelmed. Plus, being able to use the Servo-Skull to bypass the entire hacking minigame is a nice bonus — especially on higher difficulties where you can't afford to distract the entire player.
Rounding out our build is a nice collection of useful and survival skills. Some perks include Sureshot Cogitator Sync, which improves our Weakspot damage by 25%, and Reactor Coil Recharge, which gives us 2% Weakspot skill capacity. Since most Skitarii unique weapons are pretty accurate, this just rewards us for using them on a regular basis.
Ammo-Cell Augury isn't absolutely necessary, but both the Phosphor Blast Pistol and Galvanic Rifle don't have a ton of ammo supply, so it can help alleviate this pain point. Foe-Render Creed's Cleave and Rend bonuses work well with our melee weapon, plus we get an extra 25 Toughness, which is always handy.

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Skitaria builds weapons
Speaking of weapons, this design is flexible enough that you can really use whatever you want. I personally prefer Phosphor Blast Pistol and Paired Transonic Blades for their general utility and damage. The Phosphor Blast Pistol can easily wipe out most Specialist enemies, which can be further enhanced by equipping it with the Ranged Weakspot (Specialist) and Ranged Weak Spot Damage perks.
When it comes to blessings, there are some solid options, but I like that Gloryhunter gives us even more survivability and a Man-Stopper to make the most of every round we fire from the weapon. Surgical and Hand-Cannon are solid alternate boons if you want to lean more on critical hits when using this gun.
For your melee weapon, I really can't recommend Paired Transonic Blades enough. Offering both great slashing potential and single target damage, these swords are extremely versatile. This comes from their unique ability to alternate the direction of the master sword's vibrations. If you see blue lines going up, you'll be swinging your blade horizontally, which is great for groups or unarmed enemies. Activating the special ability reverses the direction of the lines, giving her an overhead attack pattern that crushes armored heretics.
When I blessed this weapon, I picked up Rampage to further increase our damage when we chop three or more enemies and Shred, which increases our chance to crit the more we chain attacks. Both reward us for using these blades to cut through hordes of enemies as we can rely heavily on our Chordclaw Strike to deal with any heavily armored Elites or Specialists.
Skitarii Build Curios
Finally, we're not looking for anything out of the ordinary for our Curios. Prioritize increasing damage and overall durability to ensure higher survivability in tougher content. Blessings are largely vendor choice but I like to focus on fighting ability regeneration and better stamina regeneration on all threeas it leads directly to our focus on constantly using and earning ability fees.
There's also an argument for even more durability and better resistance against ranged enemies that will be harder to kill with the Chordclaw, such as Snipers or Gunners. Again, a lot of this is largely down to your personal preferences outside of the main Blessing, as the main priority should be to increase damage and our Tenacity.

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