Most people complaining about zealot are bad

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Some solutions imo would be offloading the talents for damage into the feat tree and make the passives about keeping the Zealot alive. The ability should lose its crit and damage bonus, and instead gain immunity to ranged stagger and some amount of DR for the 5 seconds. This gives zealot a tool to get into the thick of things without being immediately a detriment. 50% toughness in this case doesn’t need to change since you are gaining temporary bonuses to help you live. I do good damage even without the melee crit from the ability, so I don’t mind it being lost for me. If that’s too drastic of a change, could remove the toughness for those benefits instead while keeping the damage and crit.

If they keep the bleed through damage, replacing the 10% attack speed passive with a doesn’t take melee bleed through damage would help survivability there. I think we can agree that 10% attack speed doesn’t factor too much into damage calculations, and you’re less likely to go down from a stray melee attack (also making the other two options in that tree worth it, to some degree.)

The attack speed talent could instead gain the 10% attack speed bonus with its other percentages, and the 20% should be bumped up to 25% to make sense with the passive.

Martydom similarly should go up to 7 stacks (4 from the talent, 3 from the passive) to compete with the feat that gives 20% damage. Risk reward of being low HP for always having more damage vs. building up stacks and keeping up more hp.

Ignoring melee ranged stagger as a talent shouldn’t even be something, since if you’re surrounded enough to be stunlocked by melee, you are probably dead anyways. It could be reworked to ignore ranged stagger for 2 seconds with the speed boost, then have a CD. Could be 10 second cooldown. Gives the Zealot enough time to get to cover without being a crutch to get to ranged enemies.

I think this would be the best way to at the very least make those feats more attractive and zealot easier to play without completely nuking the identity.

What about my difficulty means I can’t say what feels bad and what I’d never pick? I know the reasons I have issues with the higher difficulties. You’re offering just as little advice and just saying mine is useless because I’m on a lower difficulty. I’m happy that you’re using a different build than crit dagger, but that doesn’t exactly tell me how I’d do better in higher difficulties against packs of 50 ranged units.

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22

Those ideas you proposed were similar to ideas i wanted to see in the closed beta when i didnt have very much mastery over the way this zealot should be played. The zealot feels so good in this game and the main problem was just thinking it should be anything like vermintides zealot.

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Since you’re having such an easy time with zealot, can you give me a run down of your playstyle then? How are you playing differently than you were in the CBT? That might help me understand your angle better for why you think Zealot is in a better spot right now. Granted, my argument is more the class feels like less of a class and more I have weapons that are locked to this one that are special to me. But I guess when you make a class focused around damage, that tends to be what some people will think.

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One big thing i do that most people dont is i use an axe . Pretty much any axe will do. they have high damage and good crit and the attack after a push is a cleaving attack on all the axes so it clears hordes and 2 shots specials on damnation if you crit. The most important thing with zealot is to play around your heal when your low sometimes you can even let it happen of your in a good spot with unarmored or unyielding enemies (you heal way more from them). In theory if you dont get netted or pounced on then you should never run out of health. The dogs are very easy to deal with if you just block push them and the trappers have a distinct sound when they charge up (just side dodge) other then that you should be sliding and dodging and charging around the map constantly. I hardly use my ranged weapon unless its to kill a sniper or a bunch of ragers but i can melee ragers very easy with the axe and the zealot can trade hits with them if you have health to spare.

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That makes sense. I usually was in a bad situation when my HP went down with Holy Revenant active. It’s why I preferred the other two feats at the time. I haven’t made use of canceling my attacks like people did in VT, but the push on the axe being a cleave is good to hear. I previously used the axe before I got my bleed dagger, so I might give the axe a shot to see how good it does.

What ranged weapon do you use for snipers and etc.? I was using the bolter before, but the switch to speed is slow.

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I highly doubt most people complaining things are too hard came from cata 3 dwons in vermintide 2

Irrelevant elitist nonsense. It is completely beyond me to guess why on earth you would want the balance of a niche masochistic offshoot of Vermintide 2, to be the baseline for this new 40k experience where you would hope to establish a thriving, wide player base.

Do you think most people who pick up Darktide - 40k fans / FPS players and people who enjoyed VT/VT2 - played cata 3 dwons? Do you think they have even heard of it? Or care?

You don’t even need to buff their overall power - but Zealots should feel good to play regardless, at all difficulties, and you shouldn’t have to play an unofficial version of an entirely different game to be able to have a good time.

Some perspective, please.

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Yea i tried the bolter and didnt like it. I use a shotgun and the shotgun in this game actually has really long range and high damage plus stagger so i find it better in pinches then the bolter

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People who branched out to cata 3 mods had a very strong grasp on the vermintide mechanics that happen the be the same base mechanics in this game minus sprint sliding. So i only want to hear gameplay feedback from people who already have that kind of mastery and not people who cant beat malice. Mastering the base mechanics is more important then anything in any of the classes and without it there is no credibility to asking for gameplay changes

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Thats just a cringe take and ill leave it at that

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30

My viable replacement would be to nerf the healing you receive, perhaps curve it so it’s easy to heal a little but difficult to fully heal, while also not making toughness damage able to kill you. I don’t personally find it that fun either and would like to take advantage of the other talents, like the one that gives you stun immunity and a speed buff on damage.

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People who branched out to cata 3 mods had a very strong grasp on the vermintide mechanics that happen the be the same base mechanics in this game minus sprint sliding. So i only want to hear gameplay feedback from people who already have that kind of mastery…

So, elitist nonsense it is then. Nobody’s feedback has any value about how the class plays, if they didn’t play a similar but entirely separate game, and a masochistically modded version at that.

I can beat Heresy with my 25 Zealot and randoms, no problem, before you ask. I’d try Damnation but it is hard to find randoms for that. I have a 30 SS too for comparison. The only reason I wanted the Zealot is for the flamer.

I spend 75% of my time running horde control at chokepoints using the flamer and about 25% in melee - not because it is more optimal, but because it’s more fun. Zealot melee simply does not feel good where it is. The core mechanics of the game undercut the class. Most people don’t play this game because they want to play the most efficient meta. They want to have fun with their favourite weapons from a cool fiction.

Nobody really cares about your VT2 cata 3 circle jerk. They want to play satisfying well-rounded classes in Darktide, which have varied options in how to play them, rather than a single ‘go to 1 hp then heal up’ gimmick over and over.

…and not people who cant beat malice.

Well, unfortunately this game doesn’t just exist for you, and for the narrow meta the Damnation players will play. If there are significant numbers of players who find a class unintuitive or unsatisfying at the medium difficulty levels, that is a game design issue, and it is feedback worth the developer having.

6 Likes
32

I like the idea of zealot not being able to take lethal damage through toughness but it should be strict in a way that you can still die if the enemies melee damage breaks your bar completely even if its absorbed. otherwise you can just regen a tiny bit and be immortal by blocking hits with a tiny bit of toughness. I still dont think any big changes are needed but it wouldnt be the worst thing they could do

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well yeah obviously if it completely breaks your bar you would take the rest

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The problem is everyone should be getting better as time goes on and most people currently have no idea what they are talking about when they say something is too hard or unbalanced. The game needs way more time to give all these new players to the tide genre time to improve so they can fully understand the game mechanics and how the classes play. Once a vast majority of people reach that point and damnation lobbies are not hard to find anymore then its probably time to take most of the feedback seriously. As of now its just a horrible idea to make big changes to gameplay mechanics that most of the playerbase hasnt fully figured out how to utilize at a good enough level to offer serious feedback.

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I think Zealot is potentially fine once they fix the broken skills (looking at you, Martyrdom) and balance the game’s weapons overall. There’s still a ton of weapon balancing that needs doing, not just on Zealot but across the entire game. So, it’d be wiser to wait to see how all that influences his gameplay before they go buffing him further, considering he already has better dodges and stamina regen speed than other characters.

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I don’t think you understand where the value of this feedback actually comes from.

Fatshark get the feedback, and they analyse it. They will see these threads about the Zealot, or the Psyker, or whatever else, and what happens next is not that they just throw everything out the window and make sweeping changes to the class - unless something is very clearly inadquate.

Even if most the suggestions in the feedback come from a lack of understanding, they get valuable insight into how their players are perceiving the mechanics. What are people intuitively understanding? What are players finding confusing? What key mechanics are people not noticing or learning easily?

This is the real value of the feedback forum. You are basing your derisive attitute towards ‘bad’ zealot players’ feedback on the notion that Fatshark will just take these suggestions and run with them. If they were so incompetent as to not scrutinise these ideas, we clearly wouldn’t be at the quite technically impressive point we are at with the game.

I also think that if you’re going to couch your entire position around the fact that everyone is just starting out learning the game, calling people bad players for not finding a class intuitive/enjoyable is a pretty poor attitude.

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Half of the time this valuable feedback you speak of is someone raging cus they died and coming on here asking for buffs rather then taking the time to improve themselves. You have clearly never been part of a game that changed for the worse because people raged and died enough that the developers caved in and made it easier. Its best to counter things like that before they take root and thats why i made this post in the first place. There are many people raging about zealot right now and few who seem to have a strong grasp of its true potential.

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I’m in agreement with Astro here. You’re argument here is basically “this game should be by default balanced around a difficulty I had to mod in to the last game” You are an anomaly and half the reason I have an account on here is to try and combat stuff like this. It’s ok for you to vouch for the style of game play you want but you really should be making arguments like this in favor of retaining mod support.

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Half of the time this valuable feedback you speak of is someone raging cus they died and coming on here asking for buffs

I would also take issue with people with such a lousy attitude… your lousy attitude is however not the antidote. Also you have, in making this post, generalised most people to be like those people, which is clearly wrong.

And if you had understood my post, you would have understood that even people asking for buffs on the forums out of ignorance of mechanics is useful game design data for Fatshark. They know people aren’t understanding certain elements of the game, and they can improve tutorials or UI, or whatever is appropriate.

Balance does not need to be touched for player experience and understanding to improve.

You have clearly never been part of a game that changed for the worse because people raged and died enough that the developers caved in and made it easier.

Wow it’s like, bad assumptions are your super power! I’ve been heavily into gaming for 25 years. I don’t feel the need to justify my ability to reason on this topic to you, but let’s just say I’ve played a lot of games, and I’ve seen some go downhill for the sake of placating the larger slice of the playerbase.

It was almost exclusively a thing that happened in MMOs or games heavily featuring PvP. It is usually a purely financial move by the business, they are chasing the biggest return. It happened in EvE when they made it a pay to win game.

I can’t think of an example of it happening in a cooperative online game I’ve played - and I love coop games. Nobody is taking Damnation away from you. FS is not going to make the zealot brokenly powerful just because a few people threw their toys out of the pram on the forum. People will almost certainly create a mod like cata 3 for Darktide. Your fear is unjustified.

Its best to counter things like that before they take root and thats why i made this post in the first place.

With its inflammatory title, I suspect all this thread will achieve is to entrench people further into their positions, and sour people’s attitude to the game and its community, if it’s going to come across to them as populated by elitist sweaty gamers.

There are many people raging about zealot right now

Most people I see just don’t like the way the class feels to play. ‘Raging’ seems a bit melodramatic.

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Man just reading this argument is actually gives me second hand cringe. Its actually generating an image of Dorito Fingers rapid one finger typing on keyboard “I only accept the valid criticism of elite high tier gamers like myself that play my niche hardcore modded version of the game”. “True gamers here only pushes glasses”

Astro and bat don’t even bother arguing with this guy its a complete waste of time. There is not a single dev with a braincell that would even listen to his ideas if they even read what he writes as his justification in this thread. Sure he has brings some fair points I won’t deny that from him, but he ruins it with his elitest mindset that it really just ruins his argument.

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