Martyrdom Zealots: A rant and a request

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Let me preface this by saying: I’m not the kind of person to try to tell other players what they can or can’t, or should or shouldn’t, play. The point of this thread isn’t for me to try to convince our local neighborhood zealots to pick up another keystone; I know this doesn’t cover ALL martyrdom players, but this is just something I’ve wanted to get off my chest for a while, and it’s also a request to help me figure out what the appeal of this particular keystone is

I’m a big fan of tackling anything you can find on the Auric mission board; I prefer Maelstrom missions, but anything on Damnation will do, really. The thing is, at least during my observations, it seems like Martyrdom zealots share my love for Auric operations, as nearly the overwhelming majority of PUG zealots seem to run this keystone (again, in my personal experience); but it seems like while we agree on our preferred stomping grounds, where we end up heavily disagreeing is our respective playstyles.

And maybe this is just bad luck on my part, but the problem isn’t that these zealots are running martyrdom (I respect the hustle, really); it’s that no small chunk of the self-sacrificial population rolls in with such toxicity that the FDA sent out an emergency update warning ogryns everywhere that these guys aren’t safe for abhuman consumption. They drop in, they expect the team to move at their pace as they speedrun their way past hordes and towards objectives, vacuuming up ammo and kits all the while. Thankfully, it seems like they by and large tend to leave the Medicae behind. Y’know, for SOME reason or another.

Some of the worst offenders are the ones that have zipped by to wait in the elevator, spamming “GO THERE!!”, watching our team handle the horde(s) they left behind, seldom doing anything to help dispatch the enemies that are just going to follow us through to the other side. Suffice to say, Adele would not be pleased with our overzealous pals.

But you know what really gets my goat? Goatnappers. Also, martyrdom zealots that immediately ragequit because they ran ahead, got swarmed by a wave of muties, hounds or poxbursters and died, primarily because they’re rolling around with nothing but around 30 hit points worth of health, a full toughness bar, hopes, dreams and a whiff of unicorn farts for – from my understanding – what amounts to a maximum potential of +48% damage, 30% toughness damage reduction, and a 24% attack speed increase on Damnation.

All of that sounds great on paper, and I HAVE seen a fair few martyrdom zealots that play the game like it’s a co-op shooter instead of acting like AGDQ has posted snipers outside their bedroom door in case they ever stop moving at the speed of a Floridian on a lethal dose of bath salts; my grievances come from those who refuse to play the team game like it’s a team game, only to pull the ever-classic “BAD TEAM” card whenever they run headfirst into death.

It’s gotten to the point that whenever a good old Martyr drops in as a PUG if my premade only has one to two of my pals in it, our reactions in voice have defaulted to a collective, “Oh boy, a martyrdom zealot. Bets on whether or not they’re toxic AF”. So what gives? Do my friends and I just have the worst luck on the planet when it comes to PUG zealots, or what is it about martyrdom that seems to attract an overwhelming amount of toxic players?

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See, it sounds like you’re running Martyrdom in a way that makes sense and doesn’t make your group wonder if you’re about to eat floor every encounter.

Having experienced the same thing as Runo, there’s very much a subset of Zealots who think the Martyrdom talent makes them the embodiment of “the best defense is a good offense,” which… isn’t usually the case in Darktide. Hell, I had a 7 wound zealot obviously running Martyrdom decide it was his time to shine and Thunder Hammer a poxburster when the team was near a ledge. We all died.

It’s not a complete blanket generalization, but I can absolutely say that the most PITA-to-play-with Zealots all seem to gravitate toward Martyrdom. And they end up being a weight on the team. It makes me wish the talent itself did something less playstyle-destructive.

Edited: accidentally a word

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Martyrdom just needs a few more team oriented buffs for wound loss imo and get a small buff to revenant to proc wound loss more often.

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I main zealot and I haven’t really found a use in my playstyle for martyrdom. Instead I’m blazing piety on both of my current builds, one to make my chain axe brrr through everything fast, and then another to make everyone else awesome like me (This is a walking buff machine build.) My friend runs martyrdom and he will run around half health usually but it is still rough for him and sometimes I do have to pick him up.

The Keystone does need a general rethink as it Blazing piety does way more for personal/team damage, or using the inexorable Judgement to be nearly untouchable. Martyrdom just genuinely does not compare from my experience with it.

I think Martyrdom could do with having it get two side trees. One where it gives you the damage reduction and damage buff but more. And another where your team gets your martyrdom buffs as well, and then Toughness regen per level of martyrdom. It would make it so there is an option of martyrdom to go with the rest of the support abilities from that whole tree it belongs to.

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It would be much easier to just add another key stone augment from the original martyrdom before the overhaul that gives all players in coherency a power boost. It used to even proc when the zealot was downed as well. Making it feel like. You are martyring yourself. The issue with martyrdom is that it has 0 synergy post overhaul.

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I play as Zealot exclusively. I only use Martyrdom builds on Auric tier five quickplay. But I stay with the team, where I’m almost invincible due to toughness regeneration.

Getting away from the team is certain suicide.

So I think you’re just unlucky with toxic players.

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Having a Keystone like that, which offers higher, but not ludicrous buffs than other alternatives that play safer, is perfectly fine.

The problem with Martyrdom is that plenty of people are simply not yet good enough to pull value from it. They run all Wounds, like they should, go low health, like they should, and get screwed by the first fire grenade, or one blast of a flamethrower, like they shouldnt.

If you cant be sure to not take health damage until “Holy Revenant” is ready to strike, or choose to play more passive until its up again, Momentum will be the better choice 100% of the time. More alive is obviously more helpful after all.

I truly think Martyrdom is fine the way it is, because Momentum exists. Too much of a bonus for high skill gameplay will screw with balancing. Those extra 28% damage you gain for the amount of survivability you leave behind is questionable, but the kind of choice you can make if you feel good enough to make that trade.

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Oh I love this idea. If Martyrdom was more about inspiring others by being in coherency, I could see that being interesting!

As it stands, I think (chorus/stun made) zealots have the highest clutch potential in the game. I play my zealot like a support/leader class. I stick close to teammates, but very often use chorus or nades to push an engagement forward and get the team out of danger.

I’ve seen some great zealots filling a role like this (even without chorus), but still I’m sad to say that I trust the average zealot less than any other class. First skipped med station at half health? I adjust my play as if that zealot is already dead.

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+1 just for the entertaining writeup.
I’ve never tried martyrdom, but I always felt like “bonus when it’s going badly” was great, but it encourages far too many people to make sure it goes bad to get the bonus.
I never got those people. Sure, some might be good enough to make it work, but what are the odds I’d ever meet one of those? I do like the potential of teambuffs, including a “share your martyrdom buffs for X seconds when you go down” or smth, but I’d also very much like a benefit that is more time-gated. As in, “lost a wound’s worth of hp? 2% dmg resistance and melee damage for everyone in coherency for 10 seconds”.

The keystone has its place, it just seems to encourage questionable choices because of how the human mind tends to work.

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What i don’t understand os why you would run martyrdom instead of inexorable if youre doing speedrunning. Also your problem doesnt seem to be with martyrdom it seems to be with speedrunning zealots.

Speedrunners are definitely ebola (real) but martyrdom itself offers limited advantages for that play style beyond some damage reduction and extra attack speed on low health. Personally i started using it on recommendations from a friend to try and make chain axe feel good again, it works btw.

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They got options or make the passive power buff you and the team would get with old augment martyrdom permanent and gain in potency the more wounds you lose with it giving the maximum boost to allies if you were to fall turning allies close to your incapacitated self into real damage dealers and sponges. This could make so you got the option to redline but if an accident were to happen or you kamikaze to create an opening you could still be really useful.

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I run Martyrdom and I predominantly just stick with flamer with CC blessings while health is good and get more melee oriented as health goes down and only really engage heavily if my revenant is up. I know what you mean with zealots just taking to much unnecessary damage or just not being good enough at redlining and staying alive.

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Fortunately, for me, I have not encountered many Martyrdom Zealots who zoom off to try and kill everything on their own. I do find they have an annoying tendency to view ammo & grenade pick-ups as first come, first served, with the squad left with whatever remnants the Zealot deigns to leave in their wake of charging into hordes and having to be rescued repeatedly. It appears big bags of ammo are their prey of choice, even if the ammo counters for the rest of the squad are showing orange. As said, I rarely encounter them, so I’m lucky, it seems.

I do currently use Martyrdom, but then my one Zealot build goes right down the middle to Choir, then heads down the three keystone trees. For now it is on Martyrdom to try and boost up my strengrth the more damage I take and is rather tasty with the Heavy Sword; next week it will probably be Blazing Piety. Then maybe I’ll go back to Martyrdom after that. Who knows?

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I have been on the fence about the heavy sword and might try it. I love my eviscerator it just isn’t the same anymore after they “fixed” it.

On first glance the heavy sword might appear weak on the cleave side but I think it has a decent move set and a respectable single damage strike.

If I can figure out how to make it’s cleave bananas I might give it a try.

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Heavy Sword has such insane cleave to the point that wrath/savage are unwanted (Perfect Strike will let you swing through carapace on crit and Death Blow can let you one shot muties without any other buffs on a god-roll with 25% maniac). Just grab a Heavy Sword VI with Headtaker and lawnmower your way through everything. Add in Rampage and you just roll over everything except Carapace because Heavy Sword has terrible penetration.

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I will give it a try.

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Agreed. The heavy sword is currently one of my favorite weapons on my Fury/Momentum zealot; I’ve been enjoying the MK6’s attack pattern over the 7 or 9, but of course YMMV.

Like Zoro mentioned, Headtaker and Rampage really are where it’s at in terms of blessings, as I feel like those capitalize on what the Turtolskys do best – quickly and efficiently cut down hordes of specials and elites. You’ll definitely want to bring a ranged weapon with the capability of prying open carapace; the revolver with Handcannon comes to mind, but you have plenty of options – including the boltgun or the Kantrael/Agripinaa combat shotties, to name a few

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i don’t choose martyrdom simply because i don’t like the idea of having to be low on health to get the most out of my build. especially with how you can get stun-locked and taken out in 2-3 hits by some low-level ass-monkey guys, i don’t see the appeal of it in the first place. if the zealot had some way of healing(other than the near-death ability), then i could see it being good, but running around with 1 bar of health, with your only insurance being on a lengthy cooldown timer, seems counter-productive to me lol

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ahh, the beauty of variety

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I probably play one of the safest zealots you could witness. And I still wouldn’t touch Martyrdoom with a 10 foot pole haha

I personally think Martyrdoom should cap at X wounds.
Also having to be hit by poxwalkers, boomed by a poxburster, or picked up 4 times for the keystone to proc is… tedious.
I’d try it if not for the all busywork :slight_smile:

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