Best Warhammer 40K: Darktide Hive Scum build
The best Darktide Hive Scum build for my money isn’t about melee at all. Just like the Arbites before it, the Hive Scum class can be extremely strong in close-quarters, bashing enemies with his Crowbar or chem-laced Bone Saw to apply DoT effects. But does it feel different? Not really. Where the Hive Scum truly shines is as a dual-wielding gunslinger.
This is all thanks to one of the strongest abilities I’ve seen in Darktide—Enhanced Desperado. It was so strong in fact, that Fatshark nerfed it while it was still in early access, but it’s decent even now. This state makes you immune to ranged attacks and gives you infinite bullets. Why yes, that is rather good for the first class to get dual-wield ranged weapons in the game.
The best Darktide Hive Scum build
As mentioned, it’s easy to put together a super strong Hive Scum melee build, but is that interesting? Not really. My favorite build for the Hive Scum and the one that’s most enjoyable, turns them into a John Wick-esque gunslinger with infinite ammo and strong dodge-based survivability.
This build centres around Enhanced Desperado—a strong combat ability that lets you enter a state with infinite ammo, immunity to ranged attacks, and faster sprint. This has a short-ish cooldown (that you can make even shorter with your stim) and you can prolong it for a while simply by killing highlighted enemies.
The rest of this build focuses on enhancing your ranged attacks and damage, getting you an additional charge for your RPG blitz ability (which also does massive damage), and I’ve also recommended my favorite Hive Scum melee weapon you can fall back on if you do somehow find yourself out of bullets.
Best Hive Scum weapons and relics
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These are the weapons, blessings, perks I recommend for Hive Scum, but you can, of course, use whatever you enjoy while leveling to unlock these. I’ve also included my recommended Stimm Lab setup for the Hive Scum (this being the consumable stim they can take to grant buffs).
- Melee weapon: Crowbar
- Blessing 1: Limbsplitter (+X% strength on your first attack every 4 seconds)
- Blessing 2: Unstoppable Force (Fully charged heavy attacks ignore enemy hit mass and have +X% damage)
- Perks: Melee crit chance, melee crit damage
While the Bone Saw is also a very good weapon (especially if you want something that can instantly apply DoT chem toxin to enemies), the Crowbar feels a lot more reliable damage-wise. It’s quite similar to the shock maul, i.e. a fast-hitting club that can easily deal with most enemies in melee. If you use its special action, you’ll spin it around, swapping to a single-target moveset where you embed the pointy end in enemies and wrench it out.
In this build, the crowbar is really your last-ditch backup, so I suggest Limbsplitter and Unstoppable Force, ensuring your fully charged attacks will kill just about anything as long as you whack it in the head in special attack mode. Especially as The Sweet Spot will give you +15% weakspot damage on top of this.
For perks, crit chance and crit damage will still be useful, as Hyper-Critical instantly kills human-sized enemies if their current health is less than two times the amount of damage of the critical strike, but as mentioned, you’ll mainly be using your guns in this build.
- Ranged weapon: Dual Stub Pistols
- Blessing 1: Speedload (+X% reload speed for two seconds after a close kill. Stacks five times)
- Blessing 2: Sustained Fire (+X% damage on second, third, and fourth shots in salvo)
- Perks: +X% damage (Carapace Armoured Enemies), ranged critical hit chance
Having played around with the Hive Scum’s ranged weapons, the Dual Stub Pistols are definitely where it’s at, both in terms of performance and style, letting you blast away to get a lot of close-range kills while you stack various modifiers. Since you’ll be burning through bullets (and reloading grants you bonuses with Unload), Speedload is an obvious pick for more bullets per second.
While you could take Terrifying Barrage to suppress enemies on a close-ranged kill, I much prefer Sustained Fire. This gives you a bit more DPS on the higher difficulties when dealing with tougher targets. You might also consider Hit & Run, which gives you immunity to attacks on close-ranged kills, but I’d point out that Enhanced Desperado already gives you immunity to ranged attacks, Vulture’s Dodge gives you immunity on ranged crits, and you also have melee immunity while sliding thanks to Slippery Customer.
For perks, you could take reload speed, but honestly, +X% damage against Carapace Armoured Enemies makes a world of difference. The only enemies your Dual Stub Pistols will struggle to kill are Crushers and Maulers, due to their armour. The Weakpoints in the Armor skill will give you 15% rending (armour-piercing) while in Enhanced Desperado, and this additional damage (plus Sustained Fire) will let you more reliably gun them down if you repeatedly hit ’em in the head.
You’ll also want ranged crit chance, since procc-ing ranged crits has a variety of bonuses in this build, most notably, Vulture’s Dodge, which gives you immunity to all attacks for one second when you land one.
In terms of relic bonuses, besides the usual health, toughness, and wounds, I recommend combat ability generation on all three for more frequent Enhanced Desperado uses, and sprint efficiency, so you can be even more mobile while gun-fu-ing your way around enemies.
For this build, I recommend the lower right path in the Stimm Lab, going Kalma I, II, III, IV, and then V, each of which give you cooldown regeneration when you consume your stim. This will give you 50% increased cooldown regeneration when active, which added to the 12% combat ability regeneration on your relics, makes 62%, letting you use Enhanced Desperado more frequently.
Best Hive Scum talent and keystone levelling path
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Here are the talents I recommend picking up for the Hive Scum, though you may want to vary the order slightly when you get to those last three trees.
|
Talent |
Description |
|
In Your Face |
+25% ranged damage against targets within 12.5 meters, scaling down to a minimum of 10% at 30 meters and beyond. |
|
Speedloader |
+15% reload speed for 8s on close-ranged kill. |
|
Voice of Tertium |
Replenish +5% toughness on ranged kill. Elites and specials instead replenish +10% toughness. |
|
Moving Target |
Gain +1 effective dodges while wielding your ranged weapon. |
|
Toughness Boost |
+25 toughness. |
|
Boom Bringer |
High-powered missile launcher. 3 max missiles. |
|
Gang Tough |
+10% ranged damage and +10% damage reduction. |
|
Nimble |
Dodges are extended by +25%, and time considered dodging by +50%. |
|
Slippery Customer |
While sliding, gain melee attack immunity. |
|
Cheap Shots |
+15% damage against enemies that are fully staggered. |
|
Anarchist |
+5 critical chance for you and allies in coherency. |
|
Toughness Boost |
+25 toughness. |
|
Enhanced Desperado |
Swaps to and reloads your ranged weapon, entering enhanced desperado for 10s. For the duration, you become impossible to hit by ranged attacks and sprinting costs no stamina, as well as gaining +30% sprint speed. While the ability is active, reloading your weapon does not reduce your ammo reserve. Additionally, enemies within close range become highlighted. Killing highlighted enemies with your ranged weapon extends the duration by 3s. After 20, the extending becomes diminished. Based cooldown 30 seconds. |
|
Weakpoints in the Armor |
Gain +15% rending for your ranged attacks while enhanced desperado is active. Additionally, killing highlighted enemies grants +3% ranged damage, stacking 5 times. |
|
Focused Resolve |
Killing enemies restores 0.5s ability cooldown. Elite and special kills instead restores 1s. 5s max cooldown restored. |
|
Critical Chance Boost |
+5% critical hit chance. |
|
Melee Damage Boost |
+10% melee damage. |
|
Punching Above One’s Weight |
+15% damage against elites and monsters. |
|
Potent Tox |
+10% toxin strength. |
|
Extra Pouches |
+1 blitz charges. |
|
Quick and Deadly |
+15% close-ranged damage for 2s after a successful dodge. |
|
Ammo Jack |
+15% clip size, rounded up. |
|
Pickpocket |
Killing an elite or special enemy while ammo reserve is below +20% will fill it back up to +20%. |
|
Hyper-Critical |
Critical hits instantly kill human-sized enemies if their current health is less than 2 times the amount of damage of the critical strike. |
|
The Sweet Spot |
+15% weakspot damage. |
|
Unload |
Reloading your ranged weapon grants +2% ranged damage for 5s. Each 10% of magazine spent during the duration grants +2% additional ranged damage. |
|
Vulture’s Mark |
Killing a special or elite enemy with a ranged weapon grants you a stack of vulture’s mark for 8s (stacks 3 times). Each stack grants +5% ranged damage, ranged critical hit strike chance, and movement speed. While at max stacks, special and elite ranged kills restore 15% toughness to you and allies in coherency. |
|
Vulture’s Push |
Killing elite or special enemies with ranged attacks knocks all enemies around you backwards. |
|
Vulture’s Dodge |
Ranged critical strikes grants immunity to all attacks for 1s. |
|
Patient Hunter |
Duration of vulture’s mark is extended to 12s. |
Hive Scum build playstyle
Now you’ve got the build above, here are my tips for playing both it and the Hive Scum in general:
- Enhanced Desperado is strong
This ability is really the core of the build. Infinite ammo and complete immunity to ranged attacks let you come in clutch in most situations, whether it’s reviving downed teammates, assaulting a bunch of Reaper Ogryns, or even using its enhanced sprint speed to quickly carry an objective.
While the Dual Stub Pistols have a big ammo reserve, you’ll want to use this ability to mitigate the massive amount of bullets you’ll be pumping out. Thankfully, if you get low, you’ll always have Pickpocket to refill your ammo reserves up to 20%, which should be around 50 bullets for the Dual Stub Pistols.
- Dodging is key
This isn’t a build about blocking or pushing; instead you’ll want to dodge lots. Thanks to Nimble, your dodges are extended by 25% and time dodging by 50% which also makes you very survivable in melee. You also get an additional dodge when you have a ranged weapon out, thanks to Moving Target, and you get melee immunity while sliding thanks to Slippery Customer. All this makes movement your primary means of survival.
If you’re in a sticky situation and Enhanced Desperado has run out, simply keep dodging, sprinting, and sliding till its cooldown is over.
- Use the Crowbar’s special weapon action
As mentioned, I don’t actually use my melee weapon much in this build, but when I do, I use the special weapon action to flip the Crowbar around and bury a fully charged attack in the head of whatever’s coming at me. With the setup above, it’ll deal a big chunk of damage. If you’re just dealing with regular enemies, then regular bashing will be enough.
- The Dual Stub Pistols’ special weapon action is for long-range
This is especially useful against snipers. The special weapon action on the Dual Stun Pistol spins each gun, shrinking the crosshair as it does. If you fire when the crosshair is at its smallest, you can hit enemies that are very far away, such as snipers or other elites and specialists.
