Some Preacher talents could use some love, so they can be more competitive and provide new build options. Before someone gets upset: these are suggestions, not demands, also I’m not hunged up on the specifics, I just want move some of the dead talents into - “this a decent alternative for X based build” area.
Retribution - Currently: 10% attack speed below 50% health. Bonus is doubled below 20% health. Note: The buff icon doesn’t display, and I’m not convinced the attack speed buff applies to heavy attacks. Suggestion: 10% attack speed below 66% health. Bonus is doubled below 33% health. Alternative: 10% attack speed for 3 seconds after hitting 3 enemies with an attack . Bonus is doubled after hitting 6 enemies with an attack. Intention: make it more attractive option for 2 h weapons.
Holy Fervour - Currently: +20% Power to allies in Coherency for 5 seconds. On gaining a stack of Martyrdom. Suggestion: A stacking +5% Power buff for every 20% of the Preachers health missing. Probably NOT affecting the Preacher themselves. Intention: the current bonus is extremely situational and weak, this should change
Inspiring Excoriation - Currently: Using Chastise The Wicked replenishes 20% Toughness to allies in Coherency. Suggestion: Using Chastise The Wicked replenishes 75% Toughness to allies in Coherency. Intention: the current bonus is extremely situational and weak, this should change
Fury Of The Faithful - Currently: +20% attack speed for 5 seconds on using Chastise The Wicked. Suggestion: +20% attack speed for 15/20 seconds. Intention: the current bonus is just too short, to compete against the other talents in that column.
Ah yes, I forgot:
Honour The Martyr - On the tin it offers more damage vs Rising Conviction, but if you combine Rising Conviction with the Martyrdom passive damage boost, Honour of The Martyr actually offers you lower damage output at the higher risk (as you have no HP. Whilst RC requires you to continue hitting things…you are always hitting them so its extremely easy to maitain the stacks.
It’s not about not wanting to give bonus to the team, the bonus is just pathetic. 20% toughness is nothing in the world where one trash shooter can take 50%+ of it in one second, and you can give your team 20% back every 30 seconds.
Fury Of The Faithful a 5 second attack speed boost every 30 seconds vs the alternatives which give you 2 ulti use or lowering the ulti cooldown ona crit build isn’t a great alternative, even if you trying to build around a slow swinging, low crit weapon. I would not call it a competitor.
I agree that it can seems bad… but a +75% is an OP bonus. And 20% is really good.
There’s two feat that permit you to chain the chastise the wicked. There’s one that give you the possibility to use it 2 times, the second is stronger as it permits you to lower the duration of the cooldown by 1.5 seconds at each critic. It can permits you to use more the ult (cooldown is 30 seconds).
so I think your proposition could give us problem in term of difficulty.
and even then Benediction - 15% Toughness damage reduction (Allies in Coherency) - remains a superior always on pick. Also because it offers some protection from toughness break stagger effect.
Would need to look into it if there are more, but just retweaking them doesn´t make them much better or yes kinda broken like your 75% suggestion especially if it can be cheesed with permaresets.
I disliked such feats in V2 already. Highly situational and also just numbers on top, even if they somehow rely on Zealots kit. It might have worked there since it lasted in braindead LMB smashing with temphealth for the majority. But this game is different.
Some seems good if you push, but your team have to push with you, which is normally not the case. And even if you´re a god-like Zealot being able to get like 0 damage per run, i´m not a fan of hurting myself just to make the feats work, especially only for a couple of seconds?!
It´s ok to have the passive stacks, but feats should act the normal way, otherwise you only cut yourself by choosing them and they´re not even worth the risk / reward.
Not to mention that all ultimate-feats are kinda worthless gameplay-wise. Zealot might be strong, but the whole tree offers nothing really interesting next to the self-leech or high mobility.
Yeah, but similarly with my “Certain Psyker Talents…” thread, these are intended as “cheap” band-aids. Some of these band-aids surprisingly were implemented with the psyker, so who knows. I’m sure like with VT2 we will end up with a major balancing pass in …few years time
I don’t know what you use, but I use Retribution and Fury Of The Faithful every days.
I agree for Holy fervour cause it should maybe give a constant bonus… cause 5 seconds bonus 3 or 6 times… it is really a bad feat. Especially cause a zealot often skip the medic station to let the charge to someone else.
Inspiring Excoriation can be good. But JanZamoysky got a point when he points that Benediction is better.
the bonuses preacher gets at low health are built on concepts from their previous game where you had two different types of health to play with. That concept utterly fails in darktide though, because there’s really no good way to play around having low health as an active decision (even in the previous game there were issues surrounding its implementation that were never addressed). The way toughness works interacts poorly with the concept due to melee damage passthrough. If zealot had a talent that made toughness not pass through melee damage, then there might be something to build off of.
?? With the feats that the OP wants to change, you have a solid template to play at low HP.
I must say that, when I am close to the death, I am more efficient. Thanks to Honour the martyr and Retribution… and if you add Fury the faithful… your combat axe can be as fast as is a combat blade when until the death starts and so you can get back your HPs with Holy revenant…
I often skip the medic stations as zealot on damnation difficulty (like a lot of zealot players, nothing special here). And at low HP you can be efficient cause of these feats and kill faster than you can get killed.
It’s fine if you like and use it, but i wouldnt call it a good design in general.
Having a passive that makes you stronger while losing health is fine. It’s something i consider nice to have and is a decent trade for losing health while having the balls to push / playimg the frontline.
Same counts for the lifeleech-feat. Maybe you don’t need it, might happen. But it’s there and helps to push / allows players to take more risks or actually to practice “how to” without dying immediately. (Even if it might need some tweaks.)
But in general a bunch of feats shouldn’t rely on low health or being completely cutted behind some seconds, while offering nothing else but percentages anyway.
Having permanent buffs are always better unless you’re confident in playing with low health. But if you’re confident doing so, it’s ridiculous that you’ve to sacrifize your own life for those buffs on purpose.
And the only way to let such feats shine over permanent ones, is to make them outstanding strong and reduce the needed circumstances. But such changes would make them probably broken in the end.
It’s too hard to balance properly and relies to heavy on different players and all the circumstances the game is throwing on you to call it a good design.
As i’ve said, it works in V2 since you run grimoires permanently and Zealot works as a braindead lmb-smasher with millions of temporary health anyway. But it doesn’t fit DT where thp is thankfully not a thing and grimoires MAYBE available on 3/16 maps.
that’s not really control over your health status though. In vt2 you could bring your health down and keep it at the same point if you managed your temp health well enough; you can’t do that in darktide. That’s what I was talking about.
If you pick Honour The Martyr, you build towards maximum of extra 30% of damage at max stacks, which leaves you at 10% of your HP pool.
If you pick Rising Conviction, after 5 hits, you can be at 20% + 15% = 35% of damage with 3 Martydom stacks at 55% of your HP pool.
I really want to justify existence of the Honour The Martyr, but atm its a dead talent.
If by combat axe you mean Antax (I don’t use much the others), I don’t think you need Fury the faithful to heal up to full either. Again, a really situational level 30 talent which gives you 5 seconds of higher attacks speed. I find it hard to justify as a good pick over Invocation Of Death or Purge The Wicked. It just doesn’t add up.
Also please remember:
