With the excellent changes to the Psyker’s skill tree and the well intentioned changes to the Ogryn’s I believe it is the Zealot’s turn.
Whilst it’s no Veteran talent tree, the Zealot’s is still very good and the issues it suffers from aren’t unique.
Mandatory nodes, point taxes and lacking horizontal movement.
Duelist, Until Death/Holy Revenant and Thy Wrath Be Swift are all extremely good nodes that every Zealot build tries to fit. However they are all locked behind a point tax.
I.e from left to right. +5% movement speed, The Emperor’s Bullet and Dance of Death.
These are all fairly terrible and demand a talent point before you can access the much better nodes.
I propose scrapping all three of them and instead allowing immediate access to each of the two choices behind them from the minor node above.
The only other point taxes worthy of note are Anoint in Blood at the very top of the tree which blocks access to Purge the Unclean and Banishing Light directly below Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude.
Anoint in Blood is a good talent however it should switch places with Purge the Unclean because the Zealot is primarily a melee and character and little about their talent tree supports extensive ranged gameplay outside of the usual dealing with specialists. (Especially after the nerfs to Fury of The Faithful.)
For the Banishing Light node it should be built into Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude by default. It’s mandatory to take anyways on it’s tree and it’s confusing that the Chorus wouldn’t do Stagger and Suppression by default.
The lack of horizontal movement is only an issue on the first and second tier of the Zealots talent tree. However, I believe that the extra available points gained by removing the three bad nodes mentioned previously as well as the switching of Anoint in Blood’s and Purge the Unclean’s position will resolve this.
Overall these changes will significantly increase build variety for Zealots and would even lead to less popular options being taken.