Is there a better way to build this? (zealot)

[Ralendil]

For the first post I was running out of time, so I could not read everything in the thread.

@Jonboy

Then as an alternative; another with slight more toughness but skipping those heavy strike bonuses. Felt like Disdain might be a waste of a point.

disdain is bad, as it was said in this thread. Except if you use it with something that cleave a lot. This talent is good on the Achlys Combat axe by example.
However enemies within, enemies without is good for toughness. It is literally a permanent toughness regen
Vicious offering is also a good talent with a duelling sword, cause you often use and kill with heavy hit.

@Jonboy

I’m not sure how Good Balance’s +25% Damage Reduction aids the crit build though?

Good balance (25%) + enduring faith (50%) + Benediction (15%) is a good combo for damage reduction. However, enduring faith is toughness dmg reduction only. So better with a toughness build.
These talents together when dodging, it is really excellent. If you put agile + precognition on the duelling sword, you have a build orientated dodge.
Add duellist (+30% dmg on dodge) and second wind (+15% toughness regen on dodge) and you get a dodge build.

@supra898

you just take no damage when piety kicks in, i find it not really fun, but it’s strong
i also hate the dumb cdr reduction on crit talent, no idea how they still kept in the game

I really think that they should reword cdr nodes.
Zealot has 3 cdr nodes, and 2 of them can be used for shroudfield + dagger build
One is totally useless

I said it in an other thread

Zealot and CDR nodes

Zealot has 3 CDR nodes Pious cut-throat: restore 20% ability cooldown on a backstab kill Martyr’s purpose: 1% of damage taken is converted in ability cooldown reduction Invocation of death: +200% ability cooldown regeneration on a critic hit First, a shroudfield zealot can benefit and from Pious cut-throat and Invocation of death. This lead to the possibility to spam the use of shroudfield, and lead also to balance problems. Secondly, Martyr’s purpose is totally useless, a waste of 1 point c…

@Jonboy

Does Dance of Death not become a tax node in these builds if you’re using a revolver?

Dance of death is totally useless with a revolver. But tbh, for me, Dance of death is like one motion. Just a tax node.

@Jonboy

Is Thy Wrath worth the two points?

In my opinion thry wrath is good for slow melee weapon. However, sure a rager can stun you to death as said supra898
But good balance is really useful with a DS

@supra898

i refuse to be stunned to death by a reaper

He will take a revolver and the DS is good against them. I hate melee fight with them, but if you dance with them you can kill them. I do it with an axe, you can do it with a DS *must admit that this is the reason why I take an IAG Columnus, to stagger them until they die).

@Vodhawak

I would consider the second one a better option, since 10% toughness on heavy attack kill it’s not that useful on DS4.

It is absolutely.
The MKIV is really good on heavy hits.

@Vodhawak

I would swap Sweet Certainty and the 5% toughness dmr for Duellist and Second Wind.
You would get much more value considering you are going constantly going to dodge with this set up.

Swift certainly is not as good as it sounds when you read the description. I tested it in a ranged immunity build. My conclusion was that stripped down, or even hit and run, is far better than this one
For info, here the description with enhanced description

swift certainly

[Vodhawak]

@Ralendil

The MKIV is really good on heavy hits.

No one is saying it’s not, but it’s mainly used as single target elite kill, the toughness rigen you are going to get from it is neglectable compared to the other rigen.

@Ralendil

Swift certainly is not as good as it sounds when you read the description.

That’s why I advise to swap it for more valuable modes.

[Pirx]

thx. those are the builds i use too, slightly prefer the momentum build because it seems faster, but they’re both very effective.

as for until death & holy revenant there are people who think as them as o a luxury zealot has, because the other humans have 2 wounds without healing, and prefer spending the points on more damage nodes. but healing from death has saved so many times, at least for me it’s worth it.

the dueling sword has 8 blessings of which all seem useful. precog, risposte and shred should proc very often wih such an agile weapon.

[TrueZealot]

I’d trade Swift Certainty for Duellist especially on crit/precision weapons like duelling sword. Duellist uptime would basically be 100%. Otherwise, nice build. Classic Crit Zealot.

[Elodie]

So these are just my opinions ofc, but:

• Blazing Piety is almost always running. The last talent is a single point for a near constant +10% crit, very few talents are worth as much. You really should pick that.
• The pistol already addresses carapace, I wouldn’t focus both weapons on the same - rare - role
• Riposte is dodge-focused, if you go there you should usually consider things like the Agile blessing, Duellist talent etc. Especially given that Duellist for a Duelling sword is insane thx to its finesse bonuses. But Riposte also needs skill & experience to make use out of, Shred is usually much easier & more consistent.
• Top left talents are my least favorites. Everything past Disdain is usually just a waste of talent points, with rare exceptions that really rely on heavies, wounds, or want that stun blitz.
  • The stun nade synergizes best with slow weapons & builds that don’t deal well with carapace or cleave
  • But just zarona alone means you don’t need help with carapace, and this build is so mobile it’ll never run out of space
• Overall this build has a ton of single target carapace focus specifically, but suffers dearly for ways to cleave & deal with hordes

Per your talents & description they’re not a newbie, but also no expert, and you seemed to think they’d want that invuln from Until Death.

With this in mind, I’d suggest something like this for reasonably accessible but also decently fun & challenging:

• Duelling Sword:
  • Switch +carapace to +flak for much better hordes & specialist dmg
  • Switch Riposte to Shred, since it’s much easier more consistently stacked
  • Switch Uncanny to Agile or Rampage
    • Agile makes dodge spammable easily, you can literally just spam light attacks and your dodges will never run out, or heavies if you’re confident you’ll hit heads
    • Between +flak & Rampage your light spams will now cleave hordes & specialists like grass, and that’s something this build right now needs
• Note that a DSIV is quite strong against carapace on its own even without the perk & Uncanny. A DS even without a full carapace focus should be more than enough to deal with whatever is left after shooting at the things first.

For talents: I’d go with something like these:

1. Left for Duellist but with the rest of the survivability stuff, some compromises
2. Mid to replace Swift Certainty with Thy Wrath be Swift. This time with no Until Death, but since TWbS means you can’t be staggered by ranged at all, it adds so much to survivability that UD might not even be needed
3. Right as another compromise without UD and less TDR, but more overall dmg.

Edit: Oh forgot to emphasize but whatever you do that Duellist really adds a lot to builds like this. Even with the pistol you’re typically dodging some random ranged, or just snapshotting after a melee dodge. The +50% finesse dmg is insane for both weapons!

[Jonboy]

Just wanted to say a big “community” thank you to all the opinions and ideas shared here.
They shared this and were pretty happy with … admittedly… a bit of a hybrid of ideas here!

He reverted back to uncanny strike with shred on the sword to poke the big guys more easily, but otherwise - very pleased

Thank you all.

[Mezmorki]

I’m working on some build guides, and since there’s a good Zealot discussion going, I figure I’d crowdsource some feedback here. First is the image below, which provides an assessment of the overall value of each of the Zealot’s Talents.

The bright green ones are the generally universally useful talents, some of which are conditional on getting crits or backstabs. Curious what others think on how I’ve assessed things.

Finally, a solid “quintessential build” that stiches all the good stuff together looks like the build below. And it’s pretty consistent with the other builds shared throughout this thread and discussed in earlier threads. There are some tweaks and variations, but the basic critical path hits most of the strongest talents and synergies.

Specific Question:

If building for Crit on Zealot with Blazing Piety, the base crit change (+5%) and base blazing piety (+15%) gets you to 20%. You can get an additional +30% from Scourge (from 5x bleed stacks) during intense fighting. At 50% crit how important is the extra +10% from Righteous Warrior. I admit I don’t usually run Stalwart, but curious if Stalwart is maybe better than I think it is?

[Pirx]

nice graphics, did you draw them or is there a site where one can make these images?

i use either this one for my fury zealot, or with the points from faithful fury + sustained assault going to dance of death + thy wrath be swift.

[Ralendil]

@Mezmorki

The bright green ones are the generally universally useful talents, some of which are conditional on getting crits or backstabs. Curious what others think on how I’ve assessed things.

Martyr’s purpose should be in black… yes, totally useless. Take this node if you don’t know what to do with one point and don’t want something useful.

Enemies within, enemies without is the same color… but this is a permanent toughness regen. For me, this is the most interesting talent on the left part with bleed for the emperor
Same about blood redemption…
Did you try toughness builds?

And for ambuscade (+30% backstab damages), this is really powerful with raking fire (+40% backstab damages)…
I am not sure you can color talents like that… it depends of your weapon, your play style and also what you want to achieve. What could be in brown with a weapon, could be in bright green with an other one (see current thread).
As an example, I often take the left part for aura (like a lot of us), but also the right part (only the middle is too bad). Loner is not really good, it is useful, but not really good if you compare to benediction. However, the talents just above can change your gameplay.
Good balance is great on a dodge build (when you dodge you are close to invincible) and the ranged backstab can annihilate a beast of nurgle pretty fast.
Grievous wounds, that you have put in brown, is seriously good to fight dreg ragers… cause you can stagger them instead of them staggering you (depend of the weapon you use however).

[Mezmorki]

@Pirx

nice graphics, did you draw them or is there a site where one can make these images?

Drew them using some graphics software

[Mezmorki]

@Ralendil

I am not sure you can color talents like that… it depends of your weapon, your play style and also what you want to achieve. What could be in brown with a weapon, could be in bright green with an other one (see current thread).

Yes for sure there is more nuance … I think the intent with the coloring was to think about skills that are relatively more universally useful or strong without having to get really specific with exact weapons and playstyles.

If someone was “new” to Zealot and wanted to know what the generally strong picks are, what would you tell them? Zealot has great “on crit” effects and Blazing Piety is a solid keystone to pair it with. Good “on dodge” abilities, until death / holy revenant is huge for survivability. There’s a handful of other strong nodes to pick up along the way (Thy Wrath be Swift, Purge the Unclean, etc), again that are universally strong picks.

Of course we can dive into more specific builds where certain other talents can be really strong and useful, but you have to build something more specific to leverage that, and it might not be the best entry point for a player “new” to the class. That was the idea here anyway.

[Ralendil]

@Mezmorki

but curious if Stalwart is maybe better than I think it is?

To answer you, with a critic weapon (dagger and tactical axe, and now DS) I run sometimes critic builds (right top part) with inexorable judgment.
I would not do it with a slower weapon, but with a fast weapon, the right part can be still good if you can land a critic every 4 seconds.

EDIT: my god… read that at work and have in mind an other talent. Stalwart is totally useless.

[Elodie]

Just want to say I love the idea! But I think it’s really dangerous to grade talents & blessings out of context, given there are just so many synergies, exceptions & other variables that it rarely works like that.

But that quintessential build is precisely the stuff I tend to gravitate around too. Even if I usually go with stealth for that double crit & +100% finesse bonus along with extra utility (shotguns especially love that ).

Here’s my take on a few things there tho:

• Blazing Piety
  • Per the kuli’s steam zelly guide, Stalwart adds an additional +2% toughness regen per kill when in fury. But the initial Fury state proc & 50% toughness regen is basically just RNG, you can’t plan around that.
  • Yet the cost of getting it is:
    • ~20% relative difference in crits, depending
    • Crits are far more than just “max stack X and after that it doesn’t matter” for zellies, each one tremendously increases dmg, stagger, bleed, TDR, blessings & other effects
    • Without Fury Rising, you now depend entirely on kills to stack & (probably) maintain Fury. So you’ll reach Fury much slower, and without the kills may not be able to reach it at all! (bosses, big pack of elites after a sprint when you’re running out of time, etc)
  • Why give up all that when you just pick Blood Redemption for +2.5% per melee kill, or The Voice of Terra for +4% per ranged kill, and neither one depends on Fury to work or locks you out of the other side?
• Scourge stacks 3x, so minimum 3 hits to cap , 4 if it wasn’t already bleeding
• Regarding the reds, this is why general statements like “bad / trap” are dangerous:
  • The Voice of Terra is your only possible source of ranged toughness regen, outside of blessings. It’s most definitely not a trap. Many weapons and specifically cleaving ones like shotguns generate absolutely enormous amounts of toughness from that. It’s almost always far better than Restoring Faith if you go down that path, unless you’re using some single target weapon that’s unlikely to proc it often.
  • Desperation likewise has fantastic synergies with many weapons. Base Eviscerator, Crusher, Hammers, many weapons have variable combos with fantastic push-attacks, letting you easily switch between dumping stamina to PA’s and then doing L/H/special combos after.
    • It also synergizes with basic gameplay unless you have a ton of sprint efficiency. Zellies have both a very high out-of-stamina sprint speed, and 50% higher stamina regen/s with fast recovery delay, so odds are you’ll be entering new fights fresh out of stamina.
    • Ofc blocking becomes riskier if you dance on low stamina, but that only means managing this talent requires a bit more experience. It’s definitely not bad.
  • Unremitting’s +20% sprint efficiency likewise is big
    • It greatly balances the bad sprint efficiency on many big & clunky weapons
    • Higher efficiency means longer sprints, longer time spent above 50% stamina (which means having the passive range-evasion active), and a higher pool of available stamina once you enter the fray
    • Since Shield of Contempt procs only once per 10s for any one single teammate in coherency, it may often do nothing for you or whoever might actually need it. Hammer of Faith likewise may not add anything if your build doesn’t need it. So the left path down if you’re going through there may often be the better idea.
  • I want to add that the whole mid lane through left has some really fun possibilities
    • Sainted Gunslinger has no duration, it’ll stack & last until your next reload whenever
    • If your gun is something you don’t need to reload to full after every shot, you can really make the best of it
    • So you can for example use a revolver or a shotty and play around that last round repeatedly, to effectively constantly have +30% impact, +10% attack speed and ~30% reload speed (also buffs shotgun specials), or just use with super slow reloading guns like the bolt gun or flamer etc.

But yee I’ll stop here. Anyway I love the idea!

Been thinking about putting together a shotgun guide some day myself too.

[Gideon404]

Elegant solution but I would give this feedback on individual talents:

• Disdain - Only applies the buff to every second attack (can’t build and spend in the same swing). If you have already factored that into your evaluation then carry on.
• Bleed for the Emperor - To make this work you need lots of wounds. You would normally only have lots of wounds on a Martyrdom build but with that build you would already be on low health and get minimal benefit from this talent. I spec this on a meme wounds-tank non-martyr build that I created purely to exploit the mechanic. I would not describe this as excellent even with the conditional requirement.
• Backstabber - This is good while Purge the Unclean is excellent? I would mark this as excellent too. Backstabs are more common than unyielding enemies.
• Blood Redemption - Bit of a dilemma here. It’s not a lot of toughness but if Scourge is conditional then Blood Redemption is logically a connecting node for times those conditions are not met.
• Thy Wrath be Swift - Description is inaccurate, it also affects ranged stuns and slowdown from fire patches.
• Loner - Is not excellent, not even conditionally. It is 3.75 toughness per second out of coherency on a class with lots of active ways to restore toughness. The rumoured prevention of spawns has never been confirmed and is probably a myth. This is only good as a connecting node for Shroudfield builds.
• Stalwart - Description of its effect is incomplete.
• Martyr’s Purpose - The CDR is from health damage taken. This shouldn’t proc very often and is an especially bad deal if speccing for the adjacent Martyrdom. Seems like weak / trap to me.
• FotF and IJ also have incomplete descriptions but, especially for FotF, it would be hard to fit everything into the space available.

[Ralendil]

@Gideon404

Stalwart - Description of its effect is incomplete .

Have to test.
thanks for pointing this description.
I actually try toughness build, so I really have to test this.

@Gideon404

Martyr’s Purpose - The CDR is from health damage taken. This shouldn’t proc very often and is an especially bad deal if speccing for the adjacent Martyrdom. Seems like weak / trap to me.

This is not a trap.
This is the WORST talent you can pick. A point totally wasted. And worse if you have a martyr build.
This talent needs to be rewritten. As it is actually, this talent is absolutely useless.

[Mezmorki]

@Ralendil

Have to test.
thanks for pointing this description.
I actually try toughness build, so I really have to test this.

Yes, Stalwart’s benefit is not the toughness regen - it’s that it provides 25% TDR constantly and refreshes the duration each time an enemy dies in proximity. 25% TDR is pretty good I think. But it comes with a choice of sub-nodes for sure.

[Ralendil]

@Mezmorki

Yes, Stalwart’s benefit is not the toughness regen - it’s that it provides 25% TDR constantly and refreshes the duration each time an enemy dies in proximity. 25% TDR is pretty good I think. But it comes with a choice of sub-nodes for sure.

@Ralendil

Good balance (25%) + enduring faith (50%) + Benediction (15%) is a good combo for damage reduction.

As I said…
if you add +25 TDR, you get invincibility.

[gpkgpk]

@Jonboy

Then as an alternative; another with slight more toughness but skipping those heavy strike bonuses. Felt like Disdain might be a waste of a point.

Very similar to generic crit finesse - Build for Darktide - Darktide WH40k (swap to vicious offer)

[Vodhawak]

@Ralendil

And for ambuscade (+30% backstab damages), this is really powerful with raking fire (+40% backstab damages)…

I have a zelot build with Varks IAG, Annoint in blood, Ambuscade, Raking Fire and DumDum.
It shreds monstrosities to pieces.

[Elodie]

I’d point out however that TDR is multiplicative. In a typical build (like the blue pic) the difference from adding that 25% would be minor:

Assuming even more TDR talents, the effect of that 25% is even less. For example some of my Martyrdom builds reach 74.11% TDR, there another 25% would be just under 6.5% extra. Now ofc that TDR combined with the extra toughness regen makes up for more than that, but still… I find zellies can quite easily reach such a high TDR that the diminishing returns get so extreme you’d be better off investing in something that takes care of the problem, like crit & dmg.