The Psyker is perhaps one of the more in-depth classes and playstyles in Rogue Trader, offering players supportive, offensive, and super late-game builds that only improve the class as you get extremely powerful items. While there are battle mage, support, and other playstyles out there, we are here to recommend a Pyromancer Psyker Build for Rogue Trader, allowing you to play the role of a very long range firemage burning enemies, and also whithering enemy armor down, offering your team a very unique armor shredding support playstyle. Due to its uniqueness, you’ll find some of the challenging fights with enemies that possess slots of armor suddenly become a lot easier, not to mention the steady, yet solid damage you’ll begin to do from the mid-game onwards.

Without further ado, here’s a closer look at our Rogue Trader Psyker Build for the Pyromancer subclass.

Character Creation¶

If you’re following this build right from the get-go, we recommend building your character like this. This will impact and reflect the way we recommend taking talents and skills for the coming Archetypes. If you’re part way through your own Pyromancer build, you may need to adjust some talents to keep up with some of the item and talent recommendations we suggest later on in the playstyle.

• Homeworld: Fortress World - You want the Combat Addict Talent and the + 5 to Perception and Willpower. Never Stop Shooting is also nice for more bonus attacks, especially when you finally get one of the recommended accessories we mention later on in the guide.
• Origin: Sanctioned Psyker - Pyromancer
• Triumph: Apex of Brilliance
• Darkest Hour: Grim Portents
• Archetype: Soldier
• Characteristics:
  • Weapon Skill - 30
  • Ballistic Skill - 30
  • Strength - 40
  • Toughness - 40
  • Agility - 30
  • Intelligence - 30
  • Perception - 40
  • Willpower - 50
  • Fellowship - 25

We also recommend a quick read-up on Veil Degredation and Perils of the Warp.

Soldier Build¶

The premise of the soldier build is about getting your character’s background set up for when you easily ramp up damage later on in the game. You’ll be taking key soldier talents like Fired-Up and Rack and Ruin for damage boosts, followed by your key DoT-themed fire enhancements. The crit will prove useful as you continue through the game, alongside the other armor shredding, which is important for future Bounty Hunter and Exemplar talents. You also grab your key defensive stats early so you can go all in on your magic spells, enhancements, and Bounty Hunter talents later on.

Bounty Hunter Build¶

The general premise of the Bounty Hunter is that you’re looking for ways to largely strip away your enemy’s armor and enhance your crit. Cull the Bold is the main tool for this, with it granting a large amount of armor reduction when you’re a few turns in, and your fire has spread and triggered the Melting Armour talent, you can strip even more armor away to improve your damage, ally damage, and potentially even dodge if you get it to below 20%, which you should be able to for many enemies. Reducing dodge is very handy since it is by far the strongest defensive stat in Chapters 2 and 3, thanks to the Aeladri and Drukhari enemies. Consequently, you can now nuke armor even more than you once could, using Molten Beam as the crème de la crème of the build.

Once you start getting Psy Rating, you’ll find the Sparks of the Great Flame will begin to crit often, taking advantage of Heightened Concentration for more armor penetration synergy in your build. You also naturally gain more and more crit through Bounty hunter kills, either through Share the Spoils or getting the kill yourself. Being able to ramp your damage against well-armored targets and enemies with little armor will greatly benefit your ever-growing damage and ever-growing burning stacks for even more damage.

Essentially, you’re ramping up your own damage and power through Chapters 2 and 3 using this build. At the same time, your allies also get some benefits from attack-reduced armor targets and potentially even dodge-reduced targets.

Recommended Accessories, Armor & Weapons¶

At a minimum, these are the accessories you want to build your character around, with a recommended flamer staff weapon. For the most part, you’ll be getting the low rep value items in Chapter 2 by managing cargo, doing colony projects, and then some items you acquire via pickups in Chapter 2, 3, and 4.

The idea behind the build is you want to be able to ramp up as many stacks of burning on your enemies as possible. The more enemies you ignite using the Staff of Endless Flame, the more damage you deal. When you take into account your talents, like Sparks of the Greater Flame for criting enemies while they burn, this will deal a lot of damage around the mid-game. This then gains more crit from the Blazing Inferno talent, and then its damage is increased from the skills like Inflames, Molten Beam, etc. You’ll also be freely stripping enemies’ armor down easily due to spreading burning for the Melting Armour talent.

Another key feature of Psykers is improving your Psy Rating. You want to find ways to increase it, since many of the Psyker talents scale from it to deal more damage or make an effect stronger. So, it is why we recommend Ghost Helm and Psyker’s Breastplate to increase it. You also get some accessories to increase burning effects, gain more crit, Willpower, and a better dodge increase from the likes of the boots and helmet. All in all, it is a mixture of DoT empowering, build enhancing, and survivability all mixed together.

We recommend reading up on reputation tips for the Kasballica and the Explorators since these possess your main items to purchase from vendors.

Exemplar Build¶

We won’t go into too much detail here, largely since you already have all the core Pyromancer Psyker talents, armor reduction, and damage increasing tools. However, you’ll still be collecting characteristics, so make sure to continue to increase your Willpower for damage scaling from your Inferno spell casts and your Molten Beam, and Perception to negate high dodge. You can also consider Toughness if you need some more Wounds.

When it comes to Exemplar Talents, we recommend the following options:

• Critical Velocity - Better crit chance and damage scaling
• Puncture - More crit chance since you’ll likely have more armor penetration than enemy armor once your Melting Armor and Cull the Bold effects stack up.
• Cataclysm - You want to attack more unique enemies anyway for Staff of Endless Flame, so this offers good synergy with its increasing damage.

Oh, and you want to grab Incinerate when you can, too, to round out your Pyromancer spells, along with grabbing Psy Rating 4 when you get to level 40 or as soon as you can select Psy Rating 4 after hitting that level in Chapter 4 and beyond.