Overview
This guide helps you build a Psyker which is somewhat different in playstyle than most Heat-builds which are based upon the Witchfire-Firestorm combo. The Aether blade lets you move faster than any assasin, and even while staying mostly in melee range, this build will let you evade all and any damage throughout your runs. Altought perfectly viable in solo, the build is most fun while playing in coop with a friend, having great synergies with any high-dmg character, shocking and stunning all mob-blobs in entire fights, while being able to tank all damage incoming. Note: The Guide got updated for the latest seasonal patch, you can find the added content at the end, separated.
Itemization
Your must-have weapon and the pillar of this build is the Aether Blade. it lets you get in range to use your Bio-Lightning to maximum effect, and fly through maps in high speed. It’s cooldown is almost non-existent, although it’s damage is quite low too, it’s attack is mainly used to lower warp-heat.
For a second item, using Warp Rod is advised, but you can use any other one-handed rod according to your preference. I’m using Warp Rod for it’s higher range, AOE dmg, low animation speed, and the almighty Shock effect.
The other two items are not exactly essential, you can use other items and methods according to you preferred playstyle or to variate gameplay through ought your grinds, but I found these two to be most effective in keeping me safe in higher difficulties.
Warpbound Armor– best if it’s got some +HP with a Shard, and the +100% Warp damage Psalm-Code, but those are not essential on lower levels. You will use the additional spellslot provided to use Precognition.
Rosarius Force Field– Provides additional safety, another layer of invulnerability over Precognition. Other shielding items or a Stun Grenade can be effective too for this slot.
In general, you’re going to want Warp damage, Suppression damage and Critical bonuses (+bonus damage for Biomancy powers) for enchants to your items.
Psychic Powers
This is the second pillar of this build. With the help of the Warpbound Armour’s extra spell slot, 3 powers can be used besides your weapons’ basic skills.
Constrict- does incredible damage to targets without suppression. Your build will help you melt down the suppression of your high-HP enemies, this skill will let you finish them with a single blow after they’re softened by your Bio-lightning. Use Enhanced Effect, Exploit Weakness and Reduced Cooldown masteries on it.
Bio-lightning– Essential power in this build, can be equipped with masteries most spells can’t use. Use Temporal Stasis, Phase Through and Dismantle masteries.
Precognition- An other essential skill to use. With the arrival of new patches, now it gives complete damage immunity to you if it stays active. Remember- increasing it’s duration helps it soak up great amounts of damage, that’s why using the Psychic Boon Perk is a must. Use Extra Duration, Reduced Cost, and Reduced Cooldown masteries on it.
Passives
The character I’m using as an example is at level 68, on higher levels more points are going to be available for you, I’m advising you spend them on the Debuffs and Movement trees.
In this character the main focus is on Critical hits, and Defense trees.
I’m focusing and maxing the Defense tree to maximize safety. You might get in situations where your Precognition and other shields wear down in high-level battles, but you don’t want to retreat, or die from a single blow of a Voidripper. Maxing out this tree provides a third layer of safety to your character, making you almost unkillable, even in the toughest fights.
The Debuffs tree has the Transfer Strain and Castigation skills, the others are going to help you deal higher suppression damage and capitalize on the debufffs you’re going to apply with your spells and Warp rod.
In the Psychic Combat tree take Exploit Weakness and Dismantle.
From Psychic Debuffs take Phase Through, Vulnerability and Temporal Stasis.
Taking Field Surgery from the Health tree is another essential skill every character should have.
Attributes, Perks
I’m mostly spending my attribute points on the Force bar to maximize damage, simple as that.
For Perks, I’m using Psychic Boon to double the effectiveness of my Precognition shield. This is the only perk I consider essential to this build.
The other two perks are Cull the Weak and Warp Heat Dissipation, as I found them to synergize well with everything else in this build.
Updates and variants for patch v2.3.0
With the latest patch, and new season, I started a new psyker with a variant of this build which capitalizes on the updated contents and balance. As I mentioned in the comments, Critical hits are not an essential tree among the passives and Precognition in general is not a must-have anymore for this build. Two basic pillars however are still in the build- the Warp Rod and Aether blade as weapons.
As illustration, I’m going to use my level 53 seasonal psyker, you should be able to reach a comparable power level with a few hours of play (or at least within 20 hours).
Note that this build is not yet optimized for 8+ difficulty missions, don’t expect extreme lategame synergies, it’s meant to be easily achievable and hopefully fun.
On this character I use Psy-Enhance Warfare, Close Quarters Gunnery and Retrograde Psychic Dominion. These 3 are most effective if you are orderly in switching your Bio-Lightning and Warp Rods attacks regularly, to stay at a relative low warp heat and capitalize on the bonus dmg these give to your weapon.
You can use any other Perk too if you have your own favourites, Cull The Weak, or Psychic Escalation works fine too.
After level 45 I ran a few Tarot-missions to gear up with a few relic items, but I’m still not entirely finished with the main missions. I don’t like to base guides upon itemization as you might not be able to farm out the same items as me, but you can get a general picture of where your itemization should be heading.
The type of your Armour is up to your taste, I mainly use this Aetherwalker for it’s Damage Reflect enchants. I tried to targetfarm psalms (with Tarot) and put Energy Shield Charge or Stun duration Psalms in most of my items. Note that unlike Shards, Psalm effects do not stack inside a single item, but with multiple items socketed with the same Psalm, they do.
So basically you use Shield Charge gained on Hit, or on Kill psalms on every item you can.
To be able to do this, it’s nice to have the ‘Fusion” and “Socket Extraction” powers on the Tech tree of your forge, you should be able to get these with the fate you accumulate during story missions.
If you like to maintain a safe and steady shield instead of using your shield when the situation gets dire, I recommend using Personal Void Shield instead of Deflector Field after a while.
The last main element is not necessarily easy to acquire- The Godlike enchant- “Gain X shield charge for every point of Warp heat spent” can be rolled to belt items or Purity seals. If you have this, you should be able to maintain a constant Energy shield in almost every situation, without using Precognition or any Defensive spell.
This is it in general, I still use Fiery Form and Bio-Lighning as spells, Bio-Lighting should have Stun rune and Suppression damage rune applied to it. Any other source of suppression damage bonus you can acquire is good, try to accumulate more and more of those.
Note to Energy shields: A great way to optimize this build further is gaining Energy Shield Efficiency from Fulgurite Shards socketed in your “other” items. this takes away slots from possible Psalm-codes, but can be worth experimenting with.