Overview
This is a guide for Aoe/molten beam survival psyker in preparations for the warzone.
Strategy
With patch 1.0.5 Psykers took a bit of a power hit. Now Psykers are more in line with other classes but are still the most powerful class in the game. In this guide I will be showing you the perks, skills, inoculator choices, spells, and gear affixes we should be looking for. We will also be covering the theorycraft and strategy of the build so you can get into the action once you have enough points.
STRATEGY:
This build uses the psyker effectively in two ways to ensure nothing lives. By utilizing both Firestorm and Witchfire the Psyker is able to reduce most groups down to 1-3 minions and easily finish them off with either Molten Beam for those annoying armored targets, or Biolightning to keep the pace going and always stay moving. This build also has several sustain features that allow it to generate a decent amount of constant HP by using warp heat abilities and getting critical. When combined with other heal on hit or kill this build is starts getting close to self-sustaining. One of the core aspects of this build is its ability to cast aoe’s pretty fast while negating a ton of the warp heat build-up to always ensure you are getting the best possible damage boost from perks.
Spells and Perks
SPELLS AND RUNES:
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Witchfire, molten beam, and firestorm are crucial to the build. Biolightning is a preferred choice because sometimes you just need a shotgun like effect to keep the flow of battle moving quickly while you have cooldowns on your aoe’s. Firebolt is not needed but you will need rods to get the most out of this build.
As biolightning is a personal choice it becomes flexible. Other options you can choose that can do some amazing things are as follows.
Telekinetic dome: this can add 30% damage mitigation from range attacks and allow you to have a great bit of survival from range. Melee will, however, cause you problems.
Divine Shot: for 30 seconds the first hit on each target deals 100% more damage. This will make your AOE’s extremely more destructive. Sadly there is a bug when it comes to this skill and increases the duration of an ability rune. It should be noted that in this build the time between the ability ending and being able to be reapplied is only 4 seconds due to runes and skill choices in the build.
Precognitive Dodge: This one shares the same cooldown time, cost, and, reapply time that Divine shot has but increases your chance to dodge by 25%. While not great if you have any dodge/deflect on your gear you will easily see yourself taking less damage.
To put it in the simplest of terms. 1 gives you a big damage boost on that first attack with a spell. 2. helps reduce heat generated by subtracting 1 per kill. 3 makes armored and stronger enemies more susceptible to damage. It should be noted you can play around with 2 and 3 but they have performed extremely well for me.
Skills
SKILLS:
AREA OF EFFECTS TREE
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This tree is simply for increasing size of the blast radius of the 2 aoe’s this build will use. Optimal Dispersion while weaker then before still has a much greater damage potential then any single skill you can get.
PSYCHIC DEBUFFS TREE:
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This tree holds 2 runes that this build needs to completely destroy anything with armor. Phase through and Vulnerability. With these two runes, you are able to ensure full damage on all your psyker spells as well as making Molten Beam into the end all be all for killing bosses/elites.
MOVEMENT TREE:
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This tree is the most important tree. The right side of this tree is for reducing the cooldown on your Psyker Spells and weapon attacks. In short Firestorm and Witchfire come down to 4.5seconds. When you use firestorm followed by witchfire to get two groups you will reduce the cooldown on firestorm another 10% or bring it to about 4 seconds. It should be known that we are using Psychic prod for a consistent 10% as per our playstyle, but if you were to forgo this slot for Cerebel Feedback you could reduce these cooldown values even more.
DEBUFF TREE:
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Many would consider this the most important tree and in many ways they are correct. This tree holds the keys to the most destructive increase of damage for 1 Psyker Spell. Molten beam. With the top and bottom left sides of the tree, you are able to turn Molten beam into a continuous beam of death that will melt everything. One of the other aspects of this tree relates back to the Psychic Debuff rune Phase through. Because of this rune, you can easily add an extra 12% damage while negating armor. This only applies to spells and thus Witchfire does not get this benefit. This build does not need the dirty fighting skill point as it pretty much kills everything in record time already and those 2 points are better suited elsewhere.
CRITICALS TREE:
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This tree opens up the damage for the Psyker Even more. By increasing the chance and the bonus damage applied Psychers are able to get some pretty amazing big burst that can nuke even a Hellbrute. Another thing to note about the tree is Bezerker’s Rage. This skill makes each Crit into a heal for your Psyker. The hp regened is not a lot, but when combined with other heal effect triggers like heal on hit and heal on kill it can add up and is a great way to sustain the massive incoming fire.
SUPPORT AND HIT POINTS TREE:
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Hit points should be pretty self-explanatory so I will focus on the support tree. As a psyker you will generate Heat with each attack. Being able to convert this heat into a heal will help sustain this build through some of the roughest engagements. It should be noted the generate warp heat gets 5% cd reduction is not working at this time and tbh is probably gonna be replaced. SImply put you could get a 45% cooldown reduction on firestorm + another 10% or more if it did. This would result in a Firestorm having a cd of 3.3-2.7second cooldown or even less.
LAST 7 Points:
HEAT TREE:
4 of the abilities this psycher uses are fire based(we are using forcerods so both firebolts and witchfire count) By taking the middle path only and using 6 points you can gain 7.5% more damage. With the 7th point you can take Witchfire Symbiotics for an additional 8% giving you a grand total of 15.5% more damage.
RADICAL TREE:
TBH this option is pretty subpar as not much really hepls you right now, however, later on, this tree could be amazing.
PURITAN TREE: somewhat better then the Radical tree at this time, but only gives you +5% to most enemies in the game and some interesting deffensive triggers that are less then ideal.
RANGE COMBAT TREE: This tree has the potential of adding 16% damage for only 5 points giving you 2 more points you can spend on other trees.
SUGGESTIONS:
If you find that you are having an issue in surviving then I would take those extra points and invest in Hitpoint tree top half so you can have 450 more life and some situational triggers to make you more survivable.
If you are able to survive fine then suggest going for Range tree for 16% damage and heat tree for another 3 giving you 19% increased damage.
Attributes
Much like skills attribute points are very important for any build. Each point into an attribute can raise values that are important to any class.
For this build we have focused on only two attributes. Psy Focus and Force
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We prioritized Psy Focus so that we could minimize warp heat while giving us a greater warp heat pool and increasing our crit strength to allow us to have a greater impact in our crits.
Our secondary focus is Force. Each level in this attribute gives bonus damage. As there is no description of the type of bonus it is assumed this is all damage which does not suffer from any resist values, however, this has not been confirmed.
moving forward with new levels and gear we are probably gonna get more attribute points and those that are locked by bugged heroic deeds will become unlocked. So looking at the t4 reward for Psy focus you will see a 10% cd reduction on all psyker skills. This will mean more aoes raining destruction but also and increase in warp heat from the extra bit of boom. On the Force tree we see even greater amounts of damage but many aspects of our build will make the final reward almost useless.
Gear and Affixes
Gear above all else is the most important part of any build. As you begin collecting usable relics you will need to start looking at the stats a bit more in order to get the most out of your character or to just survive the warzone. Weapons, Armor, and Shields come with special relic enchantments that are pretty damn powerful. In many cases a build may have to be adjusted in order to take full advantage of these enchants.
GEAR
ARMOR
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WEAPONS
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It is important that you make sure that Relic enchantments are suitable for your build. You dont want an enchant that favors melee on a range character.
AFFIXES
Affixes are the bonus stats on your gear. All affixes can be broken down into 4 categories. Offensive, Defensive, Utility, and Tag.
Offensive affixes normally consist of crit hit, crit str, increase dam/crit on (knockdown, stun, shocked, etc, and all damage. of these heat damage, range damage, Crit hit, crit str, and all damage are the best to look for in this build
Defensive. Affixes normally consist of Damage reduction, Damage resist, dodge/ deflect, deflect range, deflect melee, and all resist. In this build Damage reduction, range deflection, deflection physical resist, heat resist, and all resist are the preferred and in that order. It should be noted while all resist cover all 3 categories it does it at a reduced rate and the majority of damage in this game is physical and heat based so focusing on those two individual can have a greater impact, however, when dark eldar come into the game this may change a bit.
Utility. This segment is sort of a catch all for a wide array of affixes that dont increase damage or defense in a specific way. In fact most of these affixes will affect the survival aspect of your character sheet. The best ones to look for in this build. Life on hit, life on heal, attribute points (for primary to hit a tier reward or secondary to hit a tier reward , and movement speed, +Hp regen, +hp. Any thing that says suppression is not needed at all and should be re rolled. It is important to note that utility affixes tend to also occupy parts of gear where both offense, defense, and tag affixes also appear. Chose carefully and always look over your character sheet as to many utilities can mean less damage or less defense.
Tags. These affixes are some of the most annoying ones to get as they tend to be very specific to what they affect and a majority of the time its something you dont use like bleed or fleshbane. However as our main clearing of minions are the 2 aoes we have we can easily use this as our prefered tags to make life simpler. AOE damage, medium damage, and knock back damage will be the only ones really looking into. Channel stuff is not needed as Molten beam in this build is broken AF.
Video
VIDEO
TLDR;
Perks: Follow the screenshots
Spells: Firestorm, Molten beam
skills: follow the screenshots
the other 7 points: either range and heat trees, hit point tree, or a combination of range and hit point.
Gear: Have 2x rods and get gear with stats that support your build.
Affixes: Range damage, heat damage, crit hit, life on hit, deflection, range deflection, life on kill, aoe damage, more damage to mediums.
Start all engagements with firestorm then drop witchfire to clean up the rest and lower cooldown on Firestorm. Clean up CSM, champions, and engines with molten beam. Rinse repeat.