Edit Notice: This post is being periodically edited and revised for improvement. If comment and quotes do not match the OP then that is why. There’s no such thing as perfect.
Edit: Except for The Emperor!
Hello fellow zealot enjoyers. I’m making this post to raise discussion and put out ideas and changes to the zealot talent tree in the hopes that Fatshark sees this and takes inspiration to add polish. Even if the devs wouldn’t agree with every idea it would still be refreshing to see balance patches come out in the future.
Overall the trend for the following ideas and changes are balance, accessibility and viability. I’m going to recommend buffing, nerfing and moving talents with an intended outcome where nothing feels useless and nothing feels mandatory. Some talents will always be more niche than others though and that’s ok.
Right out of the gate is a talent that is overly awkward. The other two starting damage talents are simple and direct while Disdain is lopsided in that it only applies on every other hit and is basically a clunkier version of an ogryn talent… Somehow. I suggest changing the effect to grant +10% melee damage for 2s on consecutive melee hits. Simple and reliable.
Look closely. Every branch at the start lets you chose between a toughness talent and a damage talent except for the left side. One should be added adjacent to Enemies Within, Enemies Without. I recommend a new talent named Violent Nurture that grants +10% or 15% melee damage while withing 5m of at least 3 enemies. This would match the vanguard thematic of the left side of the talent tree.
This passive could use more reliability in different combat scenarios. I propose changing the effect to replenish 1% toughness per seconds per enemy withing 5m up to 3%. Adding more flexibility without immediately giving the full power in smaller fights seems like the way to go.
Increase The Voice of Terra’s value to at least 5% toughness. This passive is just a little on the weak side while also having to compare with the universally useful adjacent passive Restoring Faith and it could really use the boost.
This passive could use a simple buff increasing it to +100% toughness. The value is just very weak in its current state.
Second Wind is very powerful, even on its own. It becomes even more powerful when combined with high mobility weapons and/or the passive Swift Certainty. I recommend nerfing it down to 10% or 12.5% toughness.
This passive is absurdly over-powered from a numerical standpoint; however, at the same time it’s severely held back by the activation requirement and duration. I recommend a simultaneous nerf and minor buff. Reduce the value to 40% toughness DR, but increase the duration to 5 or 6 seconds.
The entire structure of the talent tree starting from the taxing blitz choice all the way through the aura talents is brutal and leaves a lot of build options dead in the water. I am going to recommend some structural changes that remedy this and enable more flexibility.
The minimum talent points required to allocate a keystone before and after these changes will stay at 17 points, but the options in between to branch out to other talents will be less taxing.
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Let’s start by alleviating the pain of selecting a blitz. I suggest adding a new row of 2 connected adjacent small stat passives between the blitz abilities and the 6 talents above them that you can travel between. Make Bleed for the Emperor, Viscous Offering & The Voice of Terra lead into a 5% toughness DR passive that can then chose between Stunstorm Grenade and Immolation Grenade. On the right side have Restoring Faith, Second Wind & Enduring Faith lead into a 5% movement speed passive that can chose between Immolation Grenade and Blades of Faith. If you want to chose a different blitz ability you will now be able to spend 1 single point on either new stat passive to travel to it.
Traveling anywhere in this area is brutal, because on top of spending points on the stat passives you are subsequently forced to spend a point on the 5% movement speed, The Emperor’s Bullet & Dance of Death talents before you actually get to make a branching choice. I heavily suggest moving away the later talents and letting players directly access the branches from stat passives. I shall continue on to elaborate how things could be restructured.
Have the 5% melee damage, 15 toughness & 5% toughness DR stat passives directly split into the below branches. Furthermore add a 3rd branch after each stat passive so that players will have a choice of 3 branches of 2 talents before each aura. This would also mean there would be more talents to chose from so I’m not just moving things around, but also adding new options.
The Benediction branches A B C:
Branch A: Has Desperation followed by Duelist. Duelist is the more powerful of the two and should therefor be second due to the easier access.
Branch B: Has Until Death followed by Holy Revenant. I also recommend nerfing **Until Death to a 150s cooldown since it’s already powerful and would now be more accessible.
Branch C: Has Hammer of Faith followed by a new talent called Gavel of Certitude that causes the player to Deal up to +20% damage to enemies, scaling with stagger.
The Beacon of Purity branches D E F:
Branch D: Has Sainted Gunslinger followed by The Emperor’s Bullet. Also, change The Emperor’s Bullet to instead trigger when hitting enemies with a ranged weapon so that it has more synergies.
Branch E: Has a new talent named Under His Light that grants +50% coherency radius followed by Shield of Contempt.
Branch F: Has a new talent named Devotion and Disgust that grants +50% corruption resistance followed by a new talent named Hatred Unleashed that causes you to explode in a burst of holy wrath when downed or killed. This would be both cool and have some synergy with wound builds. Explosion coding could be recycled from other effects for easy implementation.
The Loner branches G H I:
Branch G: Has Unremitting followed by Thy Wrath be Swift. Fast and furious.
Branch H: Has Dance of Death followed by Ambuscade.
Branch I: Has Good Balance followed by either Grievous Wounds or a new talent named Righteous Reflex that increases the number of dodges before dodges start becoming ineffective by 1.
Hey look it’s everyone’s’ favorite aura… Jokes aside I actually have a way to salvage this aura thematic and turn it into a fun and engaging mechanic that doesn’t punish your team. Replace the effect of the aura with Coherency lingers for 15 seconds after you leave the radius. This would enable you to go on short ‘hunting trips’ without you or allies losing the benefits of coherency.
This ability is immensely overpowered and has some strangeness in that it’s the only ability in the game with a mandatory upgrade passive. I highly recommend making Banishing Light an optional upgrade, but cause it to increase the cooldown of Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude by 25%=15 seconds as a downside. _____
These two passives should have their locations swapped. Suppression is more relevant in the center of the tree and doesn’t fit the melee bruiser thematic of the left side as well as toughness DR.
This passive is extremely powerful and is coveted on almost every loadout due to the raw power it brings. Reducing the effect to +150% ability cooldown regeneration cool help pull this one into line. Let’s be honest it would still be really strong even after this nerf.
This talent isn’t fundamentally bad; it just needs more impact. It also has to compare with the powerful and desired adjacent passive Invocation of Death. Increasing the stagger applied to the melee attacker could make this more much relevant. Perhaps even increasing the impact to the point it can knock mutants off of the zealot.
This talent is good, but due to its percentage nature has way better returns with Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude than it has any right to. Enemies staggered and suppressed by Banishing Light are also extremely easy to backstab. I recommend changing it to instead restore 6 seconds of ability cooldown on backstab kills. This way Shroudfield and Fury of the Faithful with their 30 second cooldowns would not be nerfed in the crossfire.
THE DISCRIPTION FOR THIS TALENT HAS BEEN WRONG SINCE IT WAS RELEASED! The actual effect is that it restores 1% ability cooldown for every 1 point of health lost. This is actually a useful emergency effect, but it doesn’t synergies with the matching keystone since you are de-incentivized to restore your health with Martyrdom once it has been lost. I recommend changing the effect to +1% ability cooldown regeneration for every 1% missing health. This would allow synergy with the Martydom keystone while still being useful without needing to equip maximum wounds.
Despite the majority of ranged talents being allocated in the middle of the talent tree Martyrdom, the central keystone, only increases melee damage. I suggest altering the keystone to increase all types of damage by +6% damage per missing wound. While melee weapons would see a minor loss, every other source of damage such as ranged weapons, blitz abilities and damage over time effects would now have access to synergy with Martyrdom. Also, more maximum wounds might end up being acquirable in the future as you will read below.
I want to talk a little bit about Wound Curios since Martyrdom was brought up.
Right now curios can only give +1 wound(s) each for a maximum total of +3. Curios along with weapons currently are not available at their maximum item levels yet. At maximum item level curios would give 25% health and 20% toughness. I hypothesize that maximum level wound curios will give +2 wound(s) each for a maximum total of +6. This would obviously be a massive viability buff to Martyrdom, should it happen. This is one of the reasons why I don’t recommend more changes to the currently awkward keystone. If I am wrong about this hypothesis then I heavily recommend this curio change be implemented in the future anyways.
Thanks for taking an interest! If anyone reading this has any input on this post and/or related zealot topics feel free to comment. I may end up making refinements like I did with a very similar ogryn post I made.
