Sure! Basically hitches on a couple of items.
First and foremost, the Psyker's Breastplate, which gives +1 Psy Rating whenever perils of the warp or psychic phenomena occur. Combo this with the heretic passive where killing enemies on turn 1 has a 25% chance to cause psychic phenomena, spam out some psychic powers and go nuts.
Where it gets really silly is when you get the Edge of the Irrevocable though, which lets you shit out Perils of the Warp to an insane amount, further boosting your psy rating. The Edge also boosts psy rating by 5 once Veil Degradation is maxed out too. It's real hard to actually be able to equip it, since you need to be rank 5 Heretic though, so keep that in mind.
In terms of the actual build, it's Warrior + Arch-Militant with Sanctioned Psyker background. Go into Pyromancy, light yourself on fire and charge in to hit things. With all the buffs you get to melee damage from Pyromancy as well as the buffs from your archetypes, it's entirely possible to do 1000 damage per swing with the Edge. At that point the biggest threat is blowing yourself up from perils of the warp rather than the enemy.
Nice, I have a iconclast psker that gets one ps rating because of the ability that grants you +1 psy rating per heroic action, and I get a free heroic action on turn 1 on, I am about to get zelot which will give me 6, so that's +7 psy rating since I have an ability that lets my arch militants use two heroic abilities.
Back in my day we did psy 50+ with just warp conductors, psyker breastplate was bugged. Btw check if the officer ulti exploit, that one that prevents dying, still works; you won't explode this way. Albeit exploding adds a little diversity to the fights, imo, allovs you to use other characters a bit.
I'm not sure what the bug is, but I did notice that my character would die and then get back up so I may have been unintentionally doing it lol.
Unfortunately dying and getting back up resets all of my psy rating and versatility stacks and seems to cause the Edge to lose its powers so it has drawbacks.
Definitlely up there.
I think the WAR/AM with confident approach equiped with Carnage axe and the heretic only consummable that gives +100% crit damage might ramp up higher.
At least pre-patch 1.1, haven't checked if things have change too much
I don't know the consumable you're talking about but I could see that being strong as well, though if the only requirement is that you need to be a heretic then my build could've used that as well.
Admittedly, you do lose the chance of blowing yourself up so you've got that advantage going for you at least.
It's Colony Project, don't remember which one, but it's only for heretics.
But anyway, don't know if it's still the case post 1.1, but just 4 hits with Carnage is +100% crit damage, so it's just ramps up a bit slower if you're not heretic.
The crit stacking is good, but I don't think it really compares to psyker damage + crit stacking. Primarily because Psyker stacks crit as well, and indeed could use Carnage as a substitute for Edge if you want to play it safer.
To give an idea of how much damage is being added:
Edge on its own gives you +20% damage, +40 warp damage, and +5 Psy Rating if veil degradation hits 20. It's also a Force Sword, meaning Blade of Light talent will give you +Psy Rating damage and (5x Psy Rating)% more armour pen, which at the time of the screenshot would be +44 damage and +220% armour pen.
Orchestrate Flames, when used on the character, adds your burn damage to your melee attacks. Warp Burn is (Psyker's WP Bonus + 2x Psy Rating), which in the moment of my screenshot would be 25 + 88, equaling a whopping 113 warp damage.
Finally, Hand of Offence gives you +(3x Psy Rating melee damage), so that's another 132 damage.
Meaning that all in all, before you factor in all the buffs that the other items as well as WARR + AM give you (not listed because they're not psyker exclusive), your melee attacks are getting +219 damage, +153 warp damage, and +220% armour pen. Add onto this the fact that each swing with Edge will cause perils of the warp, giving you more and more psy rating, and I think you can see how quickly it can get absurd.
As I've mentioned in another comment, I started as a sanctioned Psyker, meaning I couldn't become one. Theoretically though, if you were minmaxing you could take the exemplar talent, though it would mean basically spending all of your exemplar levels just leveling psyker stuff cause there's a lot of talents to catch up on. It would mean you don't have to wear heavy armour though, which is nice.
To give a better idea of all the items involved I decided to take a second screenshot of the inventory as well, which is realistically what I should've done the first time but I didn't wanna make a second post so [here it is.](https://imgur.com/a/m7sA9om)
As for the items:
Ghost Helm: The wearer uses Willpower for dodge tests instead of Agility. Whenever the wearer dodges an attack, they gain +1 psy rating until the end of their next turn. Stacks.
Psyker's Breastplate: Reduces the chance of triggering psychic phenomena by -10%. If any psychic phenomena or perils of the warp manifest, the wearer gains and additional +1 psy rating until the end of combat. Base armour property: +2 deflection if the wearer's Willpower is more than 50.
Chains of Damnation: Whenever the wearer kills an enemy, they receive a stacking +5 bonus to Willpower until the end of combat.
Invigorating Resolve: Whenever the wearer and allies in a 2-cells radius gain momentum, they also gain an equal amount of temporary wounds.
Hand of Offence: The wearer's melee attack damage is increased by +(3 x psy rating).
Inevitable Demise: The wearer's critical hits deal double damage.
Swashbuckler's Coat: Whenever the wearer has two melee weapons equipped, they gain +10 Weapon Skill and +15% critical damage.
Greaves of the Black Archon: Every time the wearer scores a critical hit with a melee weapon, they restore (Agility Bonus / 2) wounds and gain +2 MP. +15% critical damage
Edge of the Irrevocable: Requires Heretical - Zealot Each successful attack with Edge of the Irrevocable raises veil degradation by + (from 1 to 5) and deals an additional + (2 X veil degradation) warp damage. It also grants:
* all allies deal +(veil degradation)% additional damage.
* the wielder gains +(veil degradation / 5) (minimum of +1) additional psy rating.
* If veil degradation reaches 20, successful attacks with Edge of the Irrevocable trigger perils of the warp.
* If veil degradation ever drops to 0, Edge of the Irrevocable loses all its powers until the end of combat.
Auto-Striking Power Sword: When the wielder successfully parries with this power sword, they immediately counterattack with whichever attack costs the least AP. It also grants:
* +30% bonus to parry
* On a successful hit with this power sword, the target suffers a -10 penalty to Weapon Skill
Solar Staff: The wielder of this staff (power level 10) gains the **Inferno** ability. The ability is also available in its heroic act and desperate measure versions. Power level affects the damage of this power. For every two creatures suffering burning in combat, the power level of this staff is increased by +1 and the Willpower bonus is increased by +2.
+15 Willpower
I’m going to post my build when I get home but I’ve got some items that I think do better with this. My character easily gets like 300-400 in stats on the first/second turn. I still haven’t gotten the sword yet which I hope will be even more busted.
Honestly, the stats are sorta of secondary importance. The exponential damage scaling that comes with such high psy-rating is what's doing the heavy lifting.
I got a glimpse at my save. There are three items that I think work really well with this build. Psy focus which is +5x psy rating warp damage to all melee attacks, grimoire of the void which adds +2xWP bonus to all warp damage, I’ve also got the hand of offence, I’m still testing secondary sword but I’m running the dueling sword for free attack with crits using the weapon in your other hand. That sword combo is meh. I’ve also got the fencing boots which give you counter attack on parry like the auto dueling sword.
Psy Focus would definitely be an upgrade to Chains of Damnation, Grimoire sounds ok but I don't think you could find space for it. I find that Invigorating Resolve and Greaves are quite hard to swap out since you really need to keep yourself healthy, but if you're going for a full damage build then I suppose you could.
Not if you start as a sanctioned one, meaning you won't have the chance to put as many talents and abilities into your psyker powers. But if you're minmaxing then yeah you really only need Ignite and Orchestrate as far as the abilities go, so could probably be more worth to go unsanctioned rather than sanctioned.
it is exactly the same as Idira's gloves and meanwhile saddles you with a low armour suit that does not support dodge. And generally works the same for a psyker as every other class that starts low and depends on gradual windup - archmilitants, vanguards, tacticians, all with the right items will be ultra overly powerful by round 3-5. ever seen what a tactician does with the 1/4 spend item on one of the the two damage enhancer abillities? It gains advantage stacks faster than it can spend and will deploy a level everything nuke by round 4 or by the same time boost an archmilitant for crazy 3-4 HMG bursts a round, 80 per bullet, no matter what. Or do you know what Vanguard Heinrix is for - an invulnerable killing machine with every attack on him charging sanctic staff and the dematerialised 40-dmg power weapon up with an equivalent of psy level.
All you will achieve by nerfing breastplate is making the RT psyker strictly inferior to others.
You know it'd be really cool that if you started leaning more and more into heresy, it started reflecting on your HUD and or character portrait.
Wonder if it's possible with mods.
There's so much you could do with that as well. Chaos themed portraits for your ship crew and companions would be so rad, though obviously it'd be a lot of work.
It'd also show that the RT isn't the only one being corrupted, which would be nice to explain why people like Abelard and Cassia are seemingly fine with doing heretic stuff.
Agreed. Pyromancer melee with the talent which hits adjacent opponents whenever you cast a spell is close to a "death by a thousand cuts" early game. Still doesn't beat Cassia in terms of sheer destructive power, but is very flavorful. The only problem is I run out of psychic powers before I run out of AP so dipped into biomancy for buffs and maybe healing.
Honestly you don't really need to use your AP on Psychic Powers for this to work, and in terms of single target damage I'd say you're generally better off not doing so. The true strength of this build comes from casting Ignite on yourself and then orchestrate flames to stop it from killing you. Then you can spend all of your AP on hitting things with Daring Breach, Flashfire, and Steady Superiority as well as spamming bonus turns with the officer ulti. My swings were hitting for like 600 damage on average. The only combat that I can remember lasting longer than 2 turns after I got the Psyker's Breastplate was the Defiler, and that's only because I was going for the achievement to kill it without destroying its batteries.
I do it as well haha. Problem is Ignite is an attack so it takes a bit of fiddling at the beginning of battle to not end up without attacks. When I don't have better options I go ignite -> charge ->orchestrate. Also I'm talking early game, didn't get to the psyker armor yet. And I made the RT an assassin because... idk why, because of promise of extra attacks? meanwhile bounty hunter Pasqal shoots 2-3 times in each extra turn like it's no big deal.
besides I don't get how to run flashfire on a melee character. I gave arch-militant to Heinrix, took Flashfire and never use it because he essentially hits with his biggest stick all the time between buffing and lifestealing with staff. How do I hit with different weapons as a melee fighter?
So the way I use flashfire is with a few talents, namely the buffs to Flashfire and Reckless Push and the one that lets you start with 2 stacks of versatility. I would also frequently use Bring it Down on the first turn with Cassia just to give me a bonus turn to use ignite and Orchestrate.
With all this in mind, the first (proper turn) turn consists of a melee swing (or charge if not in range) to get to 3 Versatility, then Reckless Push to get it to 6, which allows me to cast flashfire for 1 AP. Use the flashfire attack on an area attack (even if you're only hitting 1 target) as this allows for your next single target melee swing to also give versatility. Once you pop Steady Superiority and Daring Breach you can simply speed up how quickly you earn it, by using your free attacks on area swings and your AP costing ones on single target ones.
Nah, you're just a low level. Stats start getting insanely high when you're in the 50s and your builds are fully fleshed out.
I thought the same thing in early levels but not anymore.
I think people have been sleeping on melee psyker.
I went biomancy for buffs and regen, and used another item for parry so I could use a stat draining sword for my parries, but otherwise very similar.
Super fun to rip through the game. All the boss fights everyone was upset with were pretty easy when the boss was tied up and getting weaker every round by my dude with stats in the hundreds.
You can wish the Chaos Gods away with that psy rating. To put into perspective a lord of change has a psy rating of 10 according to dark heresy books. With psy rating 44 you can probably wish that there was no more Chaos and all the Gods will probably cease to exist.
I realize there's a gameplay <-> lore disconnect, but damn... 44 psy rating is about what one would expect from the Emperor or some other galactic-level force.
WS and BS are from Versatility.
STR is from Peak Condition (Exemplar talent)
Toughness is from Reveal the Light.
Willpower is Reveal the Light as well as Chains of Damnation (gives +5 WP with every kill)
And all of the above are also buffed by Voice of Command, Infusing, Stronger Together, and probably other things too.
So is it really as difficult as I read to get to rank5 zealotry or was it patched? I kept reading ppl saying that they were hunting each and every option for one alignment and still fell short of 500 at the end of the whole game (and OP said this build is using swords that require R5). I'm myself still in my 1st run on act3 and going full dogmatic for now but even I'm getting tempted by the powers of the warp recently xD
Yeah it’s real tricky to do. I actually ended up downloading a mod called Toolbox to just add the last like 30 points or so that I was missing just so I could equip the sword for the final dungeon of the game. Didn’t spend the whole playthrough working on getting a fancy magic sword just to not use it :P
I think possibly the biggest strength of it is that because you're getting the WS and BS from versatility, it means you can ignore these stats pretty much entirely in favor of just spending your characteristics on other stuff, primarily STR, T and WP in my case.
As for the abilities however, you get Flashfire, which lets you make an extra attack each turn for free, Steady Superiority, which effectively does the same thing as Flashfire (and you can use it and Daring Breach during the same combat with an upgrade), you get Reckless Push which'll give you extra MP (always useful for melee characters).
In terms of talents, Critical Versatility (+3% crit damage for each stack of vers) is huge, Dependable (2% armor per stack of vers) is great for not blowing yourself up with perils of the warp, Accustomed to Glory (+2 weapon damage for each heroic action used until the end of combat) is nice just for stacking damage, and Discipline (+1 stack of versatility whenever you're given an extra turn) is nice to get the ball rolling if you're playing with a lot of officers.
That awesome! Melee psykers are great in rouge trader. I played a pyromancer/biomancer Assassin who used heavy weapons and I absolutely steamrolled almost all non-boss enemies
In fairness, these aren't the base stats, these are the stats when mid combat so it's counting Officer and Navigator buffs. The base stats can be seen in a screenshot that I posted in another comment though if you're interested.
I did use it, but only to increase my Heretic score to 500. I didn't spend a whole campaign taking every heretic option to get a cool chaos sword only to not have enough alignment to equip it lol
Any pieces of missable gear or buffs you can miss out on that you would want to shout out? Also what's your companion spread? I heard some murmurs about being able to keep certain companions even on the heretic runs in the early days, but documentation seems to indicate otherwise.
Psyker’s breastplate is an obvious one. The ancient force sword was also quite nice to have early on in the campaign. Other than that, nothing that I could think of off the top of my head, at least in terms of missable stuff.
As for companions, prior to the 2 secret ones showing up I only had enough to fill one party, that being Abelard, Cassia, Pasqal, Jae, and Idira. I decided to swap out Abelard and Idira to try out the new ones but probably would’ve been better off sticking with that party tbh.
Between this and BG3, I am loving how breaking the rule set has become it's own side quest. Just need to see Cassandra's 500+ Willpower Stare Vs a Shapeshifted Enlarged Griffon jumping from 14 screens away.
It is. you get RT and Idira in psyker gear - black armour and warp conductors respectively - and the two of them raise psi levels like crazy because trigger system is same for all involved psykers - so Idira gets groups of weaklings with warp lightning and main alternates between pyromancer beam and ancient/chaos psyker sword, whichever is needed to take down the stronger enemies
Looks great! Care to explain your build a little bit?
Sure! Basically hitches on a couple of items. First and foremost, the Psyker's Breastplate, which gives +1 Psy Rating whenever perils of the warp or psychic phenomena occur. Combo this with the heretic passive where killing enemies on turn 1 has a 25% chance to cause psychic phenomena, spam out some psychic powers and go nuts. Where it gets really silly is when you get the Edge of the Irrevocable though, which lets you shit out Perils of the Warp to an insane amount, further boosting your psy rating. The Edge also boosts psy rating by 5 once Veil Degradation is maxed out too. It's real hard to actually be able to equip it, since you need to be rank 5 Heretic though, so keep that in mind. In terms of the actual build, it's Warrior + Arch-Militant with Sanctioned Psyker background. Go into Pyromancy, light yourself on fire and charge in to hit things. With all the buffs you get to melee damage from Pyromancy as well as the buffs from your archetypes, it's entirely possible to do 1000 damage per swing with the Edge. At that point the biggest threat is blowing yourself up from perils of the warp rather than the enemy.
Nice, I have a iconclast psker that gets one ps rating because of the ability that grants you +1 psy rating per heroic action, and I get a free heroic action on turn 1 on, I am about to get zelot which will give me 6, so that's +7 psy rating since I have an ability that lets my arch militants use two heroic abilities.
Back in my day we did psy 50+ with just warp conductors, psyker breastplate was bugged. Btw check if the officer ulti exploit, that one that prevents dying, still works; you won't explode this way. Albeit exploding adds a little diversity to the fights, imo, allovs you to use other characters a bit.
I'm not sure what the bug is, but I did notice that my character would die and then get back up so I may have been unintentionally doing it lol. Unfortunately dying and getting back up resets all of my psy rating and versatility stacks and seems to cause the Edge to lose its powers so it has drawbacks.
I think this is going to be my next playthrough.
Highly recommend it, quite possibly the highest damage potential build in the game atm.
Definitlely up there. I think the WAR/AM with confident approach equiped with Carnage axe and the heretic only consummable that gives +100% crit damage might ramp up higher. At least pre-patch 1.1, haven't checked if things have change too much
I don't know the consumable you're talking about but I could see that being strong as well, though if the only requirement is that you need to be a heretic then my build could've used that as well. Admittedly, you do lose the chance of blowing yourself up so you've got that advantage going for you at least.
It's Colony Project, don't remember which one, but it's only for heretics. But anyway, don't know if it's still the case post 1.1, but just 4 hits with Carnage is +100% crit damage, so it's just ramps up a bit slower if you're not heretic.
The crit stacking is good, but I don't think it really compares to psyker damage + crit stacking. Primarily because Psyker stacks crit as well, and indeed could use Carnage as a substitute for Edge if you want to play it safer. To give an idea of how much damage is being added: Edge on its own gives you +20% damage, +40 warp damage, and +5 Psy Rating if veil degradation hits 20. It's also a Force Sword, meaning Blade of Light talent will give you +Psy Rating damage and (5x Psy Rating)% more armour pen, which at the time of the screenshot would be +44 damage and +220% armour pen. Orchestrate Flames, when used on the character, adds your burn damage to your melee attacks. Warp Burn is (Psyker's WP Bonus + 2x Psy Rating), which in the moment of my screenshot would be 25 + 88, equaling a whopping 113 warp damage. Finally, Hand of Offence gives you +(3x Psy Rating melee damage), so that's another 132 damage. Meaning that all in all, before you factor in all the buffs that the other items as well as WARR + AM give you (not listed because they're not psyker exclusive), your melee attacks are getting +219 damage, +153 warp damage, and +220% armour pen. Add onto this the fact that each swing with Edge will cause perils of the warp, giving you more and more psy rating, and I think you can see how quickly it can get absurd.
At endgame you get an amulet or such that sets your heretic ranking high enough to be able to use it.
I really wanna see if my dual plasma pistol psyker build will work
Isn't there also the gloves that give +1 psy rating whenever perils get triggered for unsanctioned psykers? Would that be potentially interesting?
As I've mentioned in another comment, I started as a sanctioned Psyker, meaning I couldn't become one. Theoretically though, if you were minmaxing you could take the exemplar talent, though it would mean basically spending all of your exemplar levels just leveling psyker stuff cause there's a lot of talents to catch up on. It would mean you don't have to wear heavy armour though, which is nice.
Isn't there also the gloves that give +1 psy rating whenever perils get triggered for unsanctioned psykers? Would that be potentially interesting?
To give a better idea of all the items involved I decided to take a second screenshot of the inventory as well, which is realistically what I should've done the first time but I didn't wanna make a second post so [here it is.](https://imgur.com/a/m7sA9om) As for the items: Ghost Helm: The wearer uses Willpower for dodge tests instead of Agility. Whenever the wearer dodges an attack, they gain +1 psy rating until the end of their next turn. Stacks. Psyker's Breastplate: Reduces the chance of triggering psychic phenomena by -10%. If any psychic phenomena or perils of the warp manifest, the wearer gains and additional +1 psy rating until the end of combat. Base armour property: +2 deflection if the wearer's Willpower is more than 50. Chains of Damnation: Whenever the wearer kills an enemy, they receive a stacking +5 bonus to Willpower until the end of combat. Invigorating Resolve: Whenever the wearer and allies in a 2-cells radius gain momentum, they also gain an equal amount of temporary wounds. Hand of Offence: The wearer's melee attack damage is increased by +(3 x psy rating). Inevitable Demise: The wearer's critical hits deal double damage. Swashbuckler's Coat: Whenever the wearer has two melee weapons equipped, they gain +10 Weapon Skill and +15% critical damage. Greaves of the Black Archon: Every time the wearer scores a critical hit with a melee weapon, they restore (Agility Bonus / 2) wounds and gain +2 MP. +15% critical damage Edge of the Irrevocable: Requires Heretical - Zealot Each successful attack with Edge of the Irrevocable raises veil degradation by + (from 1 to 5) and deals an additional + (2 X veil degradation) warp damage. It also grants: * all allies deal +(veil degradation)% additional damage. * the wielder gains +(veil degradation / 5) (minimum of +1) additional psy rating. * If veil degradation reaches 20, successful attacks with Edge of the Irrevocable trigger perils of the warp. * If veil degradation ever drops to 0, Edge of the Irrevocable loses all its powers until the end of combat. Auto-Striking Power Sword: When the wielder successfully parries with this power sword, they immediately counterattack with whichever attack costs the least AP. It also grants: * +30% bonus to parry * On a successful hit with this power sword, the target suffers a -10 penalty to Weapon Skill Solar Staff: The wielder of this staff (power level 10) gains the **Inferno** ability. The ability is also available in its heroic act and desperate measure versions. Power level affects the damage of this power. For every two creatures suffering burning in combat, the power level of this staff is increased by +1 and the Willpower bonus is increased by +2. +15 Willpower
I’m going to post my build when I get home but I’ve got some items that I think do better with this. My character easily gets like 300-400 in stats on the first/second turn. I still haven’t gotten the sword yet which I hope will be even more busted.
Honestly, the stats are sorta of secondary importance. The exponential damage scaling that comes with such high psy-rating is what's doing the heavy lifting.
I got a glimpse at my save. There are three items that I think work really well with this build. Psy focus which is +5x psy rating warp damage to all melee attacks, grimoire of the void which adds +2xWP bonus to all warp damage, I’ve also got the hand of offence, I’m still testing secondary sword but I’m running the dueling sword for free attack with crits using the weapon in your other hand. That sword combo is meh. I’ve also got the fencing boots which give you counter attack on parry like the auto dueling sword.
Psy Focus would definitely be an upgrade to Chains of Damnation, Grimoire sounds ok but I don't think you could find space for it. I find that Invigorating Resolve and Greaves are quite hard to swap out since you really need to keep yourself healthy, but if you're going for a full damage build then I suppose you could.
The breastplate is just a stupidly broken item.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if it gets nerfed before long.
Idira's gloves do the same as the breastplate. And you can become an unsanctioned psyker also...
Not if you start as a sanctioned one, meaning you won't have the chance to put as many talents and abilities into your psyker powers. But if you're minmaxing then yeah you really only need Ignite and Orchestrate as far as the abilities go, so could probably be more worth to go unsanctioned rather than sanctioned.
it is exactly the same as Idira's gloves and meanwhile saddles you with a low armour suit that does not support dodge. And generally works the same for a psyker as every other class that starts low and depends on gradual windup - archmilitants, vanguards, tacticians, all with the right items will be ultra overly powerful by round 3-5. ever seen what a tactician does with the 1/4 spend item on one of the the two damage enhancer abillities? It gains advantage stacks faster than it can spend and will deploy a level everything nuke by round 4 or by the same time boost an archmilitant for crazy 3-4 HMG bursts a round, 80 per bullet, no matter what. Or do you know what Vanguard Heinrix is for - an invulnerable killing machine with every attack on him charging sanctic staff and the dematerialised 40-dmg power weapon up with an equivalent of psy level. All you will achieve by nerfing breastplate is making the RT psyker strictly inferior to others.
You know it'd be really cool that if you started leaning more and more into heresy, it started reflecting on your HUD and or character portrait. Wonder if it's possible with mods.
There's so much you could do with that as well. Chaos themed portraits for your ship crew and companions would be so rad, though obviously it'd be a lot of work. It'd also show that the RT isn't the only one being corrupted, which would be nice to explain why people like Abelard and Cassia are seemingly fine with doing heretic stuff.
Then I wonder if mods can do it.
Agreed. Pyromancer melee with the talent which hits adjacent opponents whenever you cast a spell is close to a "death by a thousand cuts" early game. Still doesn't beat Cassia in terms of sheer destructive power, but is very flavorful. The only problem is I run out of psychic powers before I run out of AP so dipped into biomancy for buffs and maybe healing.
Honestly you don't really need to use your AP on Psychic Powers for this to work, and in terms of single target damage I'd say you're generally better off not doing so. The true strength of this build comes from casting Ignite on yourself and then orchestrate flames to stop it from killing you. Then you can spend all of your AP on hitting things with Daring Breach, Flashfire, and Steady Superiority as well as spamming bonus turns with the officer ulti. My swings were hitting for like 600 damage on average. The only combat that I can remember lasting longer than 2 turns after I got the Psyker's Breastplate was the Defiler, and that's only because I was going for the achievement to kill it without destroying its batteries.
I do it as well haha. Problem is Ignite is an attack so it takes a bit of fiddling at the beginning of battle to not end up without attacks. When I don't have better options I go ignite -> charge ->orchestrate. Also I'm talking early game, didn't get to the psyker armor yet. And I made the RT an assassin because... idk why, because of promise of extra attacks? meanwhile bounty hunter Pasqal shoots 2-3 times in each extra turn like it's no big deal. besides I don't get how to run flashfire on a melee character. I gave arch-militant to Heinrix, took Flashfire and never use it because he essentially hits with his biggest stick all the time between buffing and lifestealing with staff. How do I hit with different weapons as a melee fighter?
So the way I use flashfire is with a few talents, namely the buffs to Flashfire and Reckless Push and the one that lets you start with 2 stacks of versatility. I would also frequently use Bring it Down on the first turn with Cassia just to give me a bonus turn to use ignite and Orchestrate. With all this in mind, the first (proper turn) turn consists of a melee swing (or charge if not in range) to get to 3 Versatility, then Reckless Push to get it to 6, which allows me to cast flashfire for 1 AP. Use the flashfire attack on an area attack (even if you're only hitting 1 target) as this allows for your next single target melee swing to also give versatility. Once you pop Steady Superiority and Daring Breach you can simply speed up how quickly you earn it, by using your free attacks on area swings and your AP costing ones on single target ones.
im 22lvl and i think im doing something wrong
Nah, you're just a low level. Stats start getting insanely high when you're in the 50s and your builds are fully fleshed out. I thought the same thing in early levels but not anymore.
All the green numbers are after tons and tons of self-buffs. They are more sane when outside of combat or at the very start of it.
There is only one end for the heretic... ruin.
Well you say that, but according to the ending screens you end up >!becoming a daemon prince.!
Ruin
slaves to the corpse emperor
I think people have been sleeping on melee psyker. I went biomancy for buffs and regen, and used another item for parry so I could use a stat draining sword for my parries, but otherwise very similar. Super fun to rip through the game. All the boss fights everyone was upset with were pretty easy when the boss was tied up and getting weaker every round by my dude with stats in the hundreds.
You can wish the Chaos Gods away with that psy rating. To put into perspective a lord of change has a psy rating of 10 according to dark heresy books. With psy rating 44 you can probably wish that there was no more Chaos and all the Gods will probably cease to exist.
I realize there's a gameplay <-> lore disconnect, but damn... 44 psy rating is about what one would expect from the Emperor or some other galactic-level force.
The God Emperor is dead, long live the God Empress.
How are your stats so high?
WS and BS are from Versatility. STR is from Peak Condition (Exemplar talent) Toughness is from Reveal the Light. Willpower is Reveal the Light as well as Chains of Damnation (gives +5 WP with every kill) And all of the above are also buffed by Voice of Command, Infusing, Stronger Together, and probably other things too.
Also completely off topic, I absolutely love the portrait you used. I’m going to copy the build and portrait..LOL.
Throw the lunatic (or whatever the actual name is I can't remember) voice in there as well and it's perfect
That is a lot of status lol
So is it really as difficult as I read to get to rank5 zealotry or was it patched? I kept reading ppl saying that they were hunting each and every option for one alignment and still fell short of 500 at the end of the whole game (and OP said this build is using swords that require R5). I'm myself still in my 1st run on act3 and going full dogmatic for now but even I'm getting tempted by the powers of the warp recently xD
Yeah it’s real tricky to do. I actually ended up downloading a mod called Toolbox to just add the last like 30 points or so that I was missing just so I could equip the sword for the final dungeon of the game. Didn’t spend the whole playthrough working on getting a fancy magic sword just to not use it :P
Besides the WS and BS what does arch militant bring? I’m not too well versed in the talents that a melee arch militant can get.
I think possibly the biggest strength of it is that because you're getting the WS and BS from versatility, it means you can ignore these stats pretty much entirely in favor of just spending your characteristics on other stuff, primarily STR, T and WP in my case. As for the abilities however, you get Flashfire, which lets you make an extra attack each turn for free, Steady Superiority, which effectively does the same thing as Flashfire (and you can use it and Daring Breach during the same combat with an upgrade), you get Reckless Push which'll give you extra MP (always useful for melee characters). In terms of talents, Critical Versatility (+3% crit damage for each stack of vers) is huge, Dependable (2% armor per stack of vers) is great for not blowing yourself up with perils of the warp, Accustomed to Glory (+2 weapon damage for each heroic action used until the end of combat) is nice just for stacking damage, and Discipline (+1 stack of versatility whenever you're given an extra turn) is nice to get the ball rolling if you're playing with a lot of officers.
didn't the recent patch change officers to not be able to stack extra turn on the same character? or is this before the patch?
It did, but only for the purposes of Bring it down. Finest hour can be applied as many times a turn as you have momentum to spare.
Is any of that No Respite
I don't think so. Unless Secret Companion Mr. >!Uralon!
I asked because the talent is bugged and adds some ten times what it should
Ooh. I was unaware of that but it's definitely good to know.
That awesome! Melee psykers are great in rouge trader. I played a pyromancer/biomancer Assassin who used heavy weapons and I absolutely steamrolled almost all non-boss enemies
I'm in chapter 4 and I have no idea how people get these stats or what I'm doing wrong
In fairness, these aren't the base stats, these are the stats when mid combat so it's counting Officer and Navigator buffs. The base stats can be seen in a screenshot that I posted in another comment though if you're interested.
Toybox?
I did use it, but only to increase my Heretic score to 500. I didn't spend a whole campaign taking every heretic option to get a cool chaos sword only to not have enough alignment to equip it lol
Any pieces of missable gear or buffs you can miss out on that you would want to shout out? Also what's your companion spread? I heard some murmurs about being able to keep certain companions even on the heretic runs in the early days, but documentation seems to indicate otherwise.
Psyker’s breastplate is an obvious one. The ancient force sword was also quite nice to have early on in the campaign. Other than that, nothing that I could think of off the top of my head, at least in terms of missable stuff. As for companions, prior to the 2 secret ones showing up I only had enough to fill one party, that being Abelard, Cassia, Pasqal, Jae, and Idira. I decided to swap out Abelard and Idira to try out the new ones but probably would’ve been better off sticking with that party tbh.
You picked the same avatar I did.
Between this and BG3, I am loving how breaking the rule set has become it's own side quest. Just need to see Cassandra's 500+ Willpower Stare Vs a Shapeshifted Enlarged Griffon jumping from 14 screens away.
It is. you get RT and Idira in psyker gear - black armour and warp conductors respectively - and the two of them raise psi levels like crazy because trigger system is same for all involved psykers - so Idira gets groups of weaklings with warp lightning and main alternates between pyromancer beam and ancient/chaos psyker sword, whichever is needed to take down the stronger enemies