What You Need to Know about the Four Darktide Classes

Now that Darktide has been out for a good few weeks, we've had some time to get familiar with all four of the playable classes and identify some weapons and talents that you'll definitely want to try out. 

In this article we'll look at some of the most powerful options that each class has available. You can explore all of the abilities and weapons available to each class here. 

The Veteran Sharpshooter is a very powerful class, and is probably the most likely to receive a couple of nerfs in the near future. For the time being though it's pretty much unchanged since launch, capable of dealing massive amounts of damage from a distance, and also being decent in melee. 

In terms of weapon choices, we recommend trying out the Power Sword and the Kantrael MG XII Infantry Lasgun. The horizontal heavy attack of the Power Sword offers you very impressive horde clearing ability, which can be further augmented by charging up the sword's special attack for extra damage. 

The Kantrael MG XII Infantry Lasgun simply does brilliant ranged damage, and it's worth giving it a try as soon as you find one with decent stat rolls.

As for talents, an early one that's proven quite popular and effective is Demolition Stockpile, which adds a free grenade to your inventory every 60 seconds. This luxury gives the Sharpshooter some extra versatility and allows you to reliably disrupt enemies and do decent AOE damage by throwing grenades into clusters of dangerous foes. 

For your level 30 talent, you get a choice between a couple of good options. You could go with Sustained Fire, which reloads your weapon and replenishes 60% of your toughness when you use it - this is highly suited to more aggressive playstyles and gives you more options in tricky situations. However you might instead want to take Counterfire which allows you to see all enemy Scab Gunners in a large radius through cover - great for revealing one of the most annoying enemies in the game so you can deal with them before they become a problem. 

While not a particularly impressive class in terms of its damage output, the Zealot Preacher boasts unmatched mobility and very good staying power, able to take punishment that would put any other class out of action. 

In skilled hands and with the correct setup, the Preacher can quickly dash into enemy formations to deal with dangerous targets that would otherwise be out of reach, sustain themselves while under heavy attack and then escape from the situation if it starts to get dicey. So how do you go about doing this?

The Zealot class ability, Chastise the Wicked, lets you quickly charge to a distant enemy, replenishing 50% of your toughness. This in combination with the passive ability Until Death, which gives you 5 seconds of death resistance every 90 seconds, already gives the Zealot a good package for death-defying antics, but there are several options for further augmenting this with Talents as you level up. 

For example you can take Holy Revenant which will heal you from dealing damage during the 5 second period that Until Death lasts for. Alternatively you can try Thy Wrath Be Swift, which prevents you from getting interrupted by melee attacks and gives you a speed boost when you do take damage.

At level 30, you might want to consider taking Purge the Wicked, which will give you a second charge of Chastise the Wicked, allowing you to charge into a dangerous position to take out a high priority enemy, and be confident of getting back out again. 

As for weapons, the Zealot can also make use of the Kantrael MG XII Infantry Lasgun, but you can also try the Purgation Flamer, a flamethrower which is great for clearing groups of enemies, but lacks range and quick single target damage. 

For melee the Zealot can make use of a multitude of different swords, all of which feel good to use. The Catachan Mk VII "Devil's Claw" Sword is a great weapon for dealing with waves of unarmored enemies and is unlocked at level 8. Later on you can get access to the Thunder Hammer, which has very impressive stagger potential and can dish out crazy single target damage with its special charged heavy attack - perfect for dealing with elites and monstrosities. 

In spite of his massive size and strength, the Skullbreaker isn't that great at dishing out damage, although he does have some options in this department. The way I've tended to play him is as a sort of support tank, using his brute strength to stagger and disrupt enemies and using his class ability to help the team out. 

For weapons, I highly recommend the Slab Shield for your melee weapon - the heavy attack from this weapon is huge and can reliably stagger anything apart from monstrosities, making you a very useful melee frontline for your team. The special ability of this weapon will plant your shield into the ground, allowing you to block with no stamina cost. This renders you immobile and prevents you from attacking, so it's of niche effectiveness but it's a useful option to have. 

In the ranged department you may want to try out the Grenadier Gauntlet, a versatile weapon which can either fire grenades at distant enemies or be used as a second melee weapon (able to fire grenades into the body of enemies at point blank range for decent damage output). I recommend trying out the Heavy Stubber at some point too - this is basically a huge heavy machine gun that absolutely devastates hordes of enemies, but it's inaccurate at long range and takes some awareness and positioning skill to use effectively due to its slow and cumbersome nature. It's extremely fun though. 

For talents, the Best Form of Defence talent works really well with the slab shield - you can get back tonnes of Toughness with your heavy attacks, allowing you to stay standing in situations where you'd almost certainly die otherwise. 

Bombs Away is pretty much a must try - throwing your grenade box at armoured enemies causes a cluster of explosions which unleashes total carnage among the enemy ranks. You can run the talents Hard as Nails and Unstoppable in combination with one another to become especially adept at saving your team from bad situations, getting crazy high damage resistance when your team mates are down and able to Bull Rush through almost anything to rescue your friends, disrupt enemies or beeline your way towards the next rescue point if you're the last one alive. 

Finally we come to the Psyker, which in my opinion is the most fun class out of all four options. It's the squishiest class and having a decent skill at dodging, kiting and spatial awareness is pretty much required to survive tough situations on the higher difficulties. But that doesn't mean the class is weak by any means, you have plenty of choices to build the Psyker to specialize in the area you want, more so than any other class. 

For your melee weapon I recommend trying out the Force Sword - in my experience it takes a long time to find one with good stats, but the weapon helps to make up for the Psyker's low durability by giving you a decent ability to stagger enemies, and you can also use the special heavy attack to dish out pretty strong damage to elites in melee range. 

As for the ranged weapon, you will definitely want to try out all of the available staves to find which ones you like the most. I personally prefer the Voidstrike Force Staff the most, which allows you to charge up and shoot an explosive projectile that's great for horde clearing and does a decent job of disrupting larger enemies too. However I've seen other players get great results from the Purgatus Force Staff (which basically acts as a flamethrower) and the Surge Force Staff (which shoots lightning at your enemies, stunning many of them). 

Whichever weapons you decide to go with, you'll probably feel pretty weak early on - the Psyker is probably more affected by not having access to its Talents than any other class, and you won't unlock the true potential of the Brain Burst ability until level 30. 

When you get to level 20, you start to unlock the Psyker's most powerful talents, and I personally recommend grabbing Mind in Motion (gives you much greater mobility when quelling Peril), Kinetic Flayer (allows you to passively brain burst an enemy with normal attacks, once per 15 seconds) and Kinetic Barrage (using your career ability will allow you to charge Brain Burst quickly and cheaply for 10 seconds). 

I've found that this combination of talents provides me with a strong package for dealing with tough situations, provided you have a little bit of space to move around in. 

We hope you enjoyed this article about the four classes in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.