W40K: Inquisitor – Tech Adept Vivisectors Build Guide – Season of the Void Brethren

The Season of the Void Brethren brought with it a large overhaul to the Tech Adept where many of his constructs got revamped, his skill trees completely reworked, and a change to how construct weapons work. This build focuses around the fast hording spider constructs, Psiloi Vivisectors, and a few others to support them. It’s the build I started the season in, and the one I completed all 5 tiers of challenges with. +5 missions are easy mode for this build. It definitely can do +10s as well, you’ll have to stay back, and you’ll find the AOE damage struggling, which is something we try to fix with the modules we put in our vivisectors. The Single-target damage stays insane no matter the mission level, which has been great for killing this tier 3 boss.

Video Version of this Same Guide


This is a pure summoner build where we don’t care at all about the damage we are dealing, but it’s not at all an AFK build. This build has a really active playstyle, you’ll often be debuffing enemies with attacks, re-summoning your vivisectors to sustain health, throwing down a turret to knock enemies down, and more.

A really important requirement for a Vivisector build is the Mindlink attribute. The third mindlink milestone gives you 5 data flux on construct death, if you’re re-summoning 4 vivisectors, you get 20 data flux back, potentially making it completely free. The fifth milestone is even more important, 1% from all remaining cooldown per Data-flux spent, since we’re refunding all the flux we spend on re-summoning vivisectors, this reduces all of our cooldowns, allowing us to rapidly resummon whenever we want. This rapid spam of data-flux use then feeds into the 2nd Mindlink milestone “HP and suppression gained per Data-flux spent”, and more importantly for this build, Bionics’ first milestone “+10 Energy shield gained per Data-Flux Spent”.
I’d recommend you level with something else before you get at least 15 Mindlink, maybe even 25, and check your heroic deeds for ones that give attributes, for example you can kill 5000 rebel enemies or 100 daemonic incursion portals.
I leveled with Psiloi Combustors equipped with lasguns, but feel free to test anything that looks cool, just be careful with how you spend your tech fragments.

Weapons & Constructs

The main weapon is a Plasma Caliver Beta that has two skills and two empty construct slots. The first skill “Short Burst” simply fires 3 quick rounds with a small AOE, we almost never use that attack, but most of our time is spent channeling the other ability, “Plasma Beam” that deals continuous heat damage, designates a target for our constructs, and also boosts their damage by 50%. This plasma beam is insane for single target damage, especially when we pair it with one of our perks so each tick of it applies a physical vulnerability.

We have a seasonal “Will of the Omnissiah” Archeotech relic that applies a general vulnerability on hit with Thunderbolt of Authority. You’ll be seeing a lot of vulnerabilities in this build, each one stacks 10% increased damage taken for it’s type, up to 100. We’re activating the thunderbolt pretty often with some of our other items, so this applying general vulnerabilities, which are normally pretty hard to get, is a solid damage increase.
An alternative to that is a normal relic with the enchant “Construct HP Gained on Hit” to let your fast attacking constructs sustain their life.

Non-Season Alternative

The first four Construct slots are all Psiloi Vivisectors equipped with Chainsaws, because the attack speed is insane and synergizes well with some on hit effects we get on modules. I’ve done some testing with the Claw, I’m sure you could make a different type of build with it, but I’ve enjoyed the attack speed of the Chainsaws much more.

Construct Weapons got completely revamped this season, instead of having to loot each individual weapon, you’ll now be able to swap between them any time, and spend these “Tech Fragments” that drop at a similar rate of experience to upgrade them.
All of the enchantments that we used to get on dropped construct weapons have been moved to modules, which our constructs all still have 3 slots for. We try to get the same module set-up for all 4 vivisectors, which is full damage. The Single Target damage on these guys is more than enough, so we try to get some AOE effects with relic enchants on modules. We just get 3 offensor modules with the “Chance to create electric arcs on melee hit”, which will activate often due to their high attack speed. This seems to almost certainly stack in my testing, which is great for getting some much needed AOE damage in this build. The “enemies explode on kill” enchantments look good on paper, but re-summoning these guys resets the 10th kill counter, and the 15% chance one just has too little damage, area, and chance to be worth it.

For primary enchantments I try to go full-out offense, “damage bonus for the construct if equipped on a vivisector” is the highest increase, but any other damage works. Remember you can reroll the main damage attribute of these modules, level 90 ones can roll from 42 to 88 damage each, which is a huge difference.
The reason we go 0 defensive stats on these modules is because the Vivisectors are basically free to replace, so we don’t care about them dying. In some cases we actually want them to die, it activates their “Self destruct” skill for a bit of AOE damage, and then the newly summoned ones will use “Air Assault” to quickly get back into the fight. Something to note about self destruct is that it no longer scales off of HP, and it’s damage is laughably low, so you can pretend it’s not there.

The maximum damage with the set up comes from summoning your turret then holding down “Plasma Beam” on a high priority target, which will make your turret and all vivisectors target it, increase their damage by 50%, and apply several vulnerabilities.

The weapon in our second slot is a Plasma Caliver Alpha. It can be any weapon, we’ll never actually use it, we just need the extra construct slot to get another minion that we can summon when we switch weapons.


In the fifth construct slot we have a Tarantula Boltgun Turret. This is what turns our single-target damage into something out of this world. A new passive point let’s this boltgun shred 5% armor per hit, hits 8 times per burst, and has a bunch of attack speed from one of our perks. Heavy armor is something that the Tech Adept used to struggle with heavily, and now this turret and passive point let you shred enemies in seconds. All turrets now slam and knock down enemies on summon, which is super useful for dealing with hordes, or slowing down servoskulls.


Once again every module on here is offensive, with a lot more “damage bonus for each debuff” enchants, and life-steal. Life-steal and other defensive stats can be really important because this construct stands still, and isn’t free to resummon like the vivisectors.

Passives

Every one of Tech Adept’s passive trees got reworked, changing, moving, and adding several powerful and unique points that we try to make full use of.

Some of the most important passives that make this build work come from the “Construct Ability” passive tree. The right side has all of our vivisector skills, air assault that makes them jump towards enemies, self-destruct that makes them deal 250% base damage on death, and then a point to increase Air Assault’s damage. At the top we get “Adamantium Coating” that makes Tarantula Boltgun reduce enemy armor by 5% per hit. This Boltgun attacks with an 8 projectile burst, and is getting a ton of attack speed from one of our perks, this passive tree turns the turret into a single-target powerhouse. “Data Mining Protocols” gives you Data-flux back when your constructs kill enemies, even though our vivisectors are free, the turret isn’t, so a little bit of data-flux generation won’t hurt. The final point, “Relentless Constructs” doesn’t work at the moment, but in theory, it’s really good, letting us spam our vivisectors even more often.

Construct Offense is another really important tree that got a cool rework. The left side gives a bunch of melee damage, Hp gain on hits and kills, physical damage, and massive attack speed under half health. We path through the right side to get life and shield drain, which is so good on the tarantula turret. We don’t need the bottom point because we aren’t reserving any Data Flux, but the top point is probably the best passive for this style of horde build. 8% damage to constructs for each existing constructs, a 128% bonus with 16 Vivisectors summoned.

I usually spend points in the movement tree as soon as I can, but the Construct Ability and Construct Offense trees were just too important. The left side of this tree gives a bunch of speed to get around the map faster, and the right side let’s us spam our skills more often. Right now cooldown reduction doesn’t affect constructs, I’m not sure if this is a bug or if it’s intended, but I’ll have to wait and update this when the patch comes out. For now spend these few points in small construct offense points. We don’t take the middle point because this is an energy-shield focused build, we’re always going to be max HP and get no affect from this.

The left side of Construct Specialization is important to get less cost to Data-Flux skills to make our Vivesectors cost 20, and then refund 20 from mindlink. We spend a few points on the right side for a large damage boost to the turret, but you don’t have to get those points until later.

Construct Defense has so many amazing new and reworked points that keep our constructs alive much better than before. The Vivisectors are basically free to re-summon, but it still sucks when they get killed before they even get some hits off, so some defensive stats are still necessary for this build, especially these 3 middle points that make them immune to DoT and Knockdowns. On the left side we get a 500 energy shield on all constructs, 10% damage reduction to all, and 5% to Tarantula Turrets. We take the entire bottom portion, a percentage increase on resists is so valuable. I only spend a few points on the right side to get some passive HP regen and more HP for the turret. The final point is amazing, 25% of damage taken will be taken by constructs instead, which will definitely keep you alive through heavy hits.

Now that we have construct Defense, let’s start worrying about our own defense. I take most points in the Defense tree to help cap our resists, and pick up the strong points for dodge and damage reduction. Runic wards is necessary for energy shield efficiency, and the last point will keep us from dying every once in a while.

I spend 3 points in heat attacks to get less heat generated, because overheating always sucks.

I spend 5 points in the Debuffs Tree to get Demoralize “-2% less damage for each unique vulnerability”, since we apply both physical and warp vulnerabilities every tick, and general vulnerabilities from Thunderbolt of Authority. We also take Crowd Control at top for more effective slows and shocks, our plasma beam skill has a built in slow. Our constructs apply shocks, but I’m not sure if this passive point applies to constructs.

Finally I put the last few points in the Health Tree just to get all the flat health. We are an energy shield build, the shield cap is 200% of your max HP, 300% with a new doctrine, so getting any increase to life is a huge defensive boost.

Attributes & Perks

The first and most important perk on this build is “Mechasapient” to summon an additional Viviesctor per skill

. This gets us from 12 to 16, which is of course more damage, but further stacks our next perk “Electro-Scourge” that gives 2% attack and movement speed to your constructs for every existing construct.

That’s a 32% increase that scales our already fast attacking vivisectors and turret to insane levels.

Lastly, I have Diversive tactics, that makes enemies I hit with my weapon more resistant to heat damage, but gives them Physical and Warp Vulnerabilities per hit. This is how we stack the vulnerabilities we need so quickly for our physical damage constructs to reach maximum damage.

Mindlink

As for attributes, the most important one for this build is Mindlink, it’s almost impossible to do a build like this without at least 15. The 2nd milestone gives back health and suppression per data flux point spent, which is our main sustain. The third milestone refunds 5 data flux on construct death, whenever we resummon our vivisectors, the 4 old ones will die, refunding the 20 flux cost that the skill has. This paired with the final milestone “1% from all remaining cooldown per data flux point spent” let’s us endlessly spam vivisectors. The explode damage is too low to do anything, but we still get really good sustain and energy shield generation with this set-up.

Logic

We put the rest of our points into Logic, because it gives 1% base damage to constructs per point, which is one of the best ways to scale. The first 2 milestones are worthless, but the third and fourth are great if you’re able to get them.

bionics

I put 10 points into Bionics, which is important for our energy shield generation, 10 shield gained per data flux spent, and 25% energy shield efficiency to make that a bit stronger.

Items

Belt – Was originally a Personal Teleporter because the Tech Adept has no mobility skills, but I’ve switched it out for a Technomartyr Girdle with a construct slot so I can get another set of 4 vivisectors. I really miss my Personal Teleporter, I’m not able to move around the map as fast, but this 4 vivisectors gives such a large damage boost that we can do high difficulty hardcore void crusades with more comfort. A speed farming version of this build would keep the Personal Teleporter.

Inoculator – Is an archeotech relic with “Shield Charge Gained for every point of Data-Flux Spent”. This enchantment can roll over 5 times the amount of shield that the first bionics milestone gives, so this item is extremely important to turn this into an energy shield build that can quickly reach cap. I try to roll as much HP as I can, because the Maximum shield cap is 3 times our max HP with a new doctrine. Unfortunately, I only have 1 red module on here where I put “Coagulent” for healing, but I’d much rather a yellow module where I can put “indomitine” to easily exceed the damage reduction soft cap. Kalma would also be awesome if I had an extra red module, it not only removes all debuffs, but reduces the cooldown by 10 seconds.

Chest Armour – Is the seasonal Archeotech relic “Data-Flux Armor” that gives us a 15% chance to trigger Thunderbolt of Authority when spending Data Flux. We spend Data Flux at a rapid rate, so this triggers often, and with our weapon, will apply general vulnerabilities often.
“% damage bonus to constructs summoned from the Armour Slot” would be a solid normal relic replacement since we have the Tarantula Turret in the armor slot when weapon swapped, and one set of vivisectors in there normally.
“Hp gained on construct Death” also sounds strong, but we are focused to heavy into energy shield.

Neural Implant – Just has movement speed when suppression is protected. I’m always in protected because of Mindlink’s sustain and my purity seal, so any bonus like this is really strong. Movement speed is great, especially on the tech adept who lacks any type of mobility skill.

Non-Season Alternative

Eye Implant – Is the “Gaze of Doom” seasonal archeotech relic that adds jump range and a damage multiplier to the Thunderbolt of Authority that we often activate from our armor. The Thunderbolt’s damage is awful without any sort of investment, this item makes it better, but it’s still not good, we really only care about thunderbolt for it’s general vulnerability. I have this item on because it has the most enchantments of any eye implant I’ve found.
An archeotech relic eye implant with more movement speed when protected would be great. Remember to roll “Base damage to constructs” on this item.

Non-Season Alternative

Main Implant – Is “Spoil Warden’s Bane” Archeotech season item that gives an extra 20% chance to trigger the thunderbolt on hit when we have an energy shield. Thanks to our inoculator, we always have an energy shield, so we have a total 33% chance to activate the thunderbolt on hit when paired with two tier 5 shards. Once again, the damage of this bolt sucks, but it applies general vulnerabilties so it’s good to get a high chance to activate.
If you can’t get this, try the archeotech enchantment “1 to 2 seconds to all vulnerability effects” since we rely so heavily on them.
An important thing to note is that I try to get mindlink and logic on here, since attributes are so important for us.

Purity Seal – is the normal relic “damage taken to energy shield is gained as suppression”, which means we don’t ever have to worry about our suppression dipping down, unless we run out of shield, which we can regain very quickly by spamming our skills.

Signums – One signum is the archeotech relic “chance to add a general vulnerabilty to the target when it gets a debuff” to help with our vulnerabilty stacking. The thunderbolt applies general vulnerabilities, but it can’t keep 10 up by itself, so this signum helps keep those stacks up since we debuff with every hit. The other signum is a normal relic with “Damage taken to energy shield is reflected back to attacker”, which let’s us deal a good amount of damage to anything that breaks our shield.

Sockets & Doctrines

This season changed a lot of doctrines, we use 125% physical damage bonus to us and our constructs in the weapon, and I even had one in my armour while leveling before I switched to an energy shield one. For the last 2 sockets I throw in my highest unlocked tier of Magistrate shards to get more thunderbolts.

In the armor I have the new 4-piece set “gain 50% of your max HP as a regenerating energy shield, 2% shield HP regen per second, and +100% energy shield Hardcap”. We only care about that last part, that turns the maximum energy shield from 2 times our max hp, to three times, which is a lot more effective HP that we can keep up very easily.

In the main implant and Inoculator we have the three-piece “100% HP for constructs”. Like I said, the vivisectors are free to respawn, but it really sucks when they die before they can even get a hit in. That was happening far too often at high level missions, so I put one of these HP doctrines in my inoculator and kept an uncreator psalm with 2 fulgurite shards in my main implant. Eventually at even higher level missions, I had to give that up and slot in a 2nd HP doctrine. If you’re not planning on doing anything at 10 difficulty or above, you can afford to take one of these out, but I need it at the moment.

Lastly, in the two sockets on our belt, we have an uncreator psalm because vulnerabilities are so strong, and a Fulgurite shard for more energy shield efficiency.

Ending

That is the Tech Adept build that I started and finished the season of the Void Brethren with! I’ve been testing a lot of different things out with this build, like vanguards and robots, and I’m sure there are a lot more things to test out, a lot of other variants of this build, but I’m really happy where it is right now. Being able to do +10 missions and survive a full hardcore void crusade is good enough for me to suggest this build to anybody who wants to complete every seasonal challenge as a tech adept. The rework has been so much fun, the passive trees are all much better designed, and the turret slam always feels amazing. Thank you for watching this video, I hope it was able to help, let me know if you have any questions. Have a great day and good luck with your season adventures.

7 Comments

  1. Really enjoying the guides. I’m doing a ranged swarm build myself and really liking it. Best pet class I’ve ever played. I’ve been hunting for info on the weapon details but can’t seem to find much. For example, what’s the difference between a construct melta versus laser versus autocannon? Are they identical to the non construct versions? Is there a breakdown that you can recommend? Have a good one eh.

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    1. When you’re in your construct selection screen, the far right side when you select a construct shows their skills you can hover over. When you switch the weapons, one of the skills will change, that’s their auto attack and you can hover it to see what it does 🙂 Also there are a lot of passive points that make each weapon more unique (Boltgun applies poison)

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  2. Also following this build. At lvl 72 I’m easily doing +8 missions. I’m thinking of tweeking it a little bit to do a lazzy farming build, with alpha axe and enrage shock-induced explosions.

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  3. So what items and bots would need to change to make the a full summon build with no need for debuffs from me?

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