Warhammer 40,000: Darktide – Assail Build Tips

There’s quite a few things you can do with it really. Imma list a few things about Assail in general.

General Tips for Assail

The fire-quell-fire trick works on Assail too, letting you fire the shards much faster.

Even the primary fire procs tons of headshots, meaning synergy with stuff like True Aim and Disrupt Destiny, which ofc means lots of crits and synergy with those too

Disrupt Destiny ofc benefits from headshots and the targets can be tricky to get sometimes, and Assail works fantastically for both. Since Assail does so many headshots & crits, as long as DD is stacked you won’t even miss Empowered Psionics.

It’s really good for staggering dogs etc. in general, and supports a highly mobile style where you can dodge & slide around while easily taking down priority targets

That mobility and speed makes it fantastic with Warp Rider (max +20% dmg scaling on peril), since you can mix a few shards here and there into your basic melee in the space you get from just dodging back for a moment, and then go back to melee

With gunpsykers in general it adds a ton of ammo efficiency, and both Warp Rider and Malefic Momentum (max 20% dmg to warp attacks after non-warp kills) constantly and significantly buff your dmg

And ofc, that secondary fire is fantastic for sniping, making the best use of each shard when low on shards, and a cost-effective way to push your peril up while doing something useful

Finally, remember that Venting Shriek’s Creeping Flames needs 80%+ peril for the 6-stack Soulblaze, which goes through the map covering a massive area and does enough dmg to kill all horde & snipers it hits. So you can spam Assail on specials / elites, point Vent to the biggest horde behind you, and you just took care of both in seconds (ofc the horde behind will take a few seconds to burn but still).

With all of that out of the way, Assail is particularly good for gunpsykers and/or DD builds.

For gunpsykers the Columnus rifle, Revolver or Laspistol are all great picks and work well with all 3 ults, depending on what you want to emphasize. I want to point out however that Vent / shield isn’t the only way to play safe, since going with the crit aura also gives you access to Empathic Evasion & Anticipation, which with Columnus, Laspistol and any fast crit melee weapon literally makes you immune to ranged as long as you keep hitting something.

Also Surge being a crit staff with a high peril usage, it pairs fantastically with Assail, Vent & DD. Between them they all buff each other and cover all their weaknesses.