[Polls] Zealot Talents

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

I’m just left scratching my head at Zealot talent tree mayhem maybe it;s some intricate design 4d chess or just a few good bits that make them super powerful but wish it was cleaned up… here’s my first attempt at it. New talents just placeholders for better ideas… make Zealot more OP? probably, probably need to do some weapon down tuning at same time besides some other talent down tuning for the number experts.

Top Tree Section:

Enemies within, Enemies without: Replenish 1% per second while within 5 meters of at least 1 enemy or psyker player, stacks up to 3x for each.

Currently replenishes 2.5% while 3 enemies are withing 5 meters

This just give the talent more versatility and higher max replenishment also fun to include reason to get close to pskyers the zealots primary antagonist and possible heretic.

Would you approve of this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Hammer of Faith: 20% impact strength and 10% damage to staggered enemies.

Currently a one choice tree branch after 1st pick on left side this would be alternative choice to Enemies within, Enemies without while also freeing up Hammer of faith for a new alternative talent option in middle of tree, giving Zealots decent reason to stagger more or value their staggering allies.

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Voice of Terra: Replenish 30% toughness on elite or special range kill.

Currently replenishes 4% toughness on any range kill

This alternative would expand the range options from rapid fires weapons to all range weapons and mimics the current blessing of 30% toughness regen on elite kills, but could be tuned down.

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Scourge: Melee Critical hits apply Bleed, causing damage over time. Melee Hits on Bleeding enemies grant 10% critical hit chance and critical damage for 5 seconds. (No stacks)

Currently Scourge gains 10% Critical hit chance on bleeding targets for 3 seconds stacking 3 times

This provides a slight nerf to critical chance knife zealots while expanding it to less speedy crit builds with an additional 10% critical damage bonus and longer duration. Also blends well with later suggested 5% crit node replacing suppression node… which I’m not sure why a Zealot needs.

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Blades of Faith: Stays as is quick shot + alternate hold options, hold option to highlight enemies and throw 2 knives, hold longer to fully highlight throwing 3 knives with seeking behavior.

Not changing original, but adding alternative releases that consume more knives for added cost of highlighting then seeking behavior.

In this case Zealot knife grenade option isn’t as iconic as its own others or any other class, this adds another faith based element to Zealots kit besides making it easier to aim for console players and those not used to aiming while in melee. It will consume more knives for this advantage at less damage than individually thrown.

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Middle Tree Section:

Middle Left:

(Left Mid, 5% movement replace with) Grievous wounds: 50% Stagger on Melee Weakspot hits

This is the only node in zealot tree with a flat node to node connection, I’d like it to tie in with new hammer of faith position on left tree, while being a pretty mediocre talent to free up a stronger pick in its old position to the right

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Desperation: 10% Melee Damage for 5 seconds when stamina or dodges are depleted.

Currently this does not trigger on dodge exhaustion and triggers 20% melee damage for 5 seconds

Stamina exhaustion is extremely rare besides forceable push spamming or non-stop sprinting, this would encourage less Zealot sprinting / outpacing of team along with loss of 5% movement speed above. Reduced damage as per suggestion.

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Middle Middle: Major Swaps between mid and right of this section, consolidating middle as range / support

-Dance of Death
splits left to The Emperor’s Bullet then Sainted Gunslinger
splits right to Shield of Contempt then new talent

Cleanse the Heretic: Non-taggable enemies burn with range attacks, active burning enemies grant 2% rending stacking up to 5 times.

Middle Right: Consolidating as mobility and backstab
Good Balance
Splits left to Thy Wrath be Swift then Unremitting
Splits right to new talent then ambuscade

Sucker Punch: +20% damage with Non-weakspot melee hits.

Bottom:

Beacon of Purity: Heals 2 Corruption, gain equivalent extra health and toughness from current wound for you and allies in coherency per second.

Currently heals 1.5 corruption per second no health or toughness gains besides removing corruption.

This suggestion is an attempt to make it competitive with the super powerful DR aura while not changing its core design.

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

(Loner Aura-Rework) Emperor Within: Always in coherency, +1 to Zealot’s coherency value (5 value when grouped & for group) and increases dodge distance by 5% for you and allies in coherency.

Loner currently treats Zealot as always in 2 coherency unless in group of 3+, it does not give Zealot a 5 coherency regen…sadly.

Loner seems almost a relic of forced coherency toughness regen prior pre toughness gain talents although it was added at same time launch of toughness talents, This change retains its core while adding a new peak coherency regen of 5 while also adding iconic zealot increased dodge to team and self. If dodge on its own is too viable can remove loner element altogether.

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Banishing Light removed added to baseline Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude. (its the only Ability in game with mandatory pick… silly, saves 1 talent point, for something that could be otherwise skipped)

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Shroudfield longer duration default, 5 seconds

(Master Crafted Shroudfield) Shadow Hunter: highlight elites, specials, & ogryns for self and allies in coherency for 5 seconds, increasing movement speed by 10% and extending duration on elite kill for 2 seconds.

Master Crafted Shroudfield extends duration to 5 seconds which is neccessary as enemy de-aggros on use

Catching up to an enemy who suddenly de-aggro’s and changes course requires more time by default while also adding a replacement talent with more flavor to Zealot stealth by stealing the Veteran’s highlight with a bit extra speed boost and team utility… extra fair since Veteran stole Zealot stealth with higher duration and regen.

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Invigorating Revelation: (move to left side as single branch form Shroudfield)

Currently requires investment in other enhancers to reach regen talent.

Simply gives players more build variety if they only want extra toughness regen and DR

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Supression Boost replaced with Critical Chance Boost: +5% Critical Chance. (Left Bottom of Tree)

Currently Zealot has a suppression boost talent point late left tree, perhaps there is melee suppression that I am mis-comprehending, otherwise all range options are middle or right and Zealot is melee focused.

This will restore some of the nerfed Scourge crit while also being a more generally useful stat to an aggressive melee class.

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

The Master’s Retribution: Knock back attack and deal taken damage to attacker on taking melee hit. 15s Cooldown.

Currently knocks back attacker after melee hit, 10 second cooldown.

This is an otherwise skipped talent with very low interest at least to me, attempt at making it interesting.

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

I Shall Not Fall: Martyrdom grants 5% toughness & toughness damage reduction per missing wound.

Currently grants 6.5% toughness damage reduction per missing wound.

As is you will either gain very little safety for the boons of Martyrdom but makes other keystones far more desirable. Or you will pick wound curios and sacrifice 51% toughness to gain 3 more wounds at max you’ll get 6 wound bonus with this build 39% toughness DR which isn’t a straight additive DR and some attacks will penetrate no matter how high. reducing it to 30% Toughness DR and 30% toughness gain may counteract the curio loss to make it more appealing.

Would you approve this change?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Well here goes nothing, probably too much for 1 post but whatever if it flops it flops. Also more fun with polls.

PS only voted on 1st for testing purposes.

2

I don’t understand your topic, and at all.
I don’t see what the poll is about… I don’t see what opinion you collect… I don’t see the questions…

Let’s summarize…

Except martyr’s purpose that has a big problem, I consider the entire talent tree as the best of Darktide. They should not change it.

5 Likes
3

I believe the talents are reworked to be different from the original (would be good to place the original talent description above the proposed change @CopperBack1 and rationale for why you want the change).

And I believe the “Yes\no” is whether you would like that change or not.

Could be wrong :stuck_out_tongue:

4 Likes
4

Scourge: A good start would be to make scourge actually activate consistently. I’m not sure if it’s a known bug or not but killing bleeding enemies doesn’t activate scourge at all, and just generally hitting bleeding enemies in general doesn’t seem to activate it at least half the time. Its current implementation is fine if it just actually worked.

Enemies within, enemies without: Needs a significant buff and that doesn’t seem that big of a buff. That left hand path is just bad when you consider the insane stacking of blood redemption, second wind, and enduring faith.

Voice of Terra: I don’t think its a great idea to buff zealot’s ranged attacks. Zealot already has insane toughness regeneration, giving a +30% toughness back for hitting a single blades of faith is insane.

Blades of Faith: Already amazing no reason to buff it more.

The +5% movement speed: Its a tax for getting until death and holy revenant, I think its balanced enough.

Desperation: I like the idea sorta. But too powerful, 10% would be enough if it activated on dodge depletion. Basically at will +20% melee damage for pressing the space bar 4/5 times is a bit much.

2 Likes
5

Could you specify and explain what it IS thats left you scratching your head? :slightly_smiling_face:

3 Likes
6

Correct I’ll highlight the changes later today to be more clear. Yes/no simple if you’d approve change or think no stay as is.

1 Like
7

The initial trees are very elongated and narrow to reaching your blitz where as the other 3 classes are very forgiving an varied. No other class combines your toughness regen talents with blitz choice to the same degree.

Left tree branch off the start doesn’t give split option, on top of the 2nd then double flat talent point after stun grenade. The book ability with forced additional node. just a lot of abnormal features unique to zealots tree compared to other classes.

1 Like
8

As someone who hasn’t touched zealot in over a year, or 2, not sure what talents are changing from and your thoughts behind why…

9

First of all, thanks for clarifying :slight_smile:

I dont feel that way. The vet also takes 5 points to get to the blitz while the ogryn and psyker take 4. I think the Zealot also has some of the best early nodes.
In fact, Iv build powerful zealots without going all the way to the keystones which, imo, are strong but uninspiring.

The vets early options have some good ones but others that require good aim to make use of (as they should)

The psykers early options all feel a bit underwhelming to me but thats fine as the class is really quite powerful if you know how to use them.

The Ogryns feel limited imo and heavy hitter seems like a must, its a shame there are no nodes to help with light attacks here.

All just my opinion ofc, just how I feel.

The left tree is powerful and you instantly feel its use if you take it. The double node is a tax because its already powerful. Tax nodes are, imo, always frustrating. Im not sure it needs a rework though as the Zealot is powerful no matter which branch you take.

That does annoy me, but I think, again, its because the Zealot is powerful already and its a tax node, which again feels frustrating although perhaps necessary with how the tree is.

Im ok with that.

Overall I dont agree that the Zealot tree is in any desperate need of a rework.

I think the Ogryn needs some love although I like how his tree is laid out. He just has issues the other three dont, maybe thats by design but Id still like to see the bigboy get a taunt rework and get some light attack love.

I think the vet could do with a shuffle, I dont like his tree as much, its all over the place imo and feels messy, but he still works well and is powerful.

I also think the psykers tree is a bit all over the place but its got identity and they are just powerful enough already.

I feel like you will have a hard time convincing people the most powerful class in the game needs any extra love right now. I appreciate the post though :grin:

1 Like
10

Yeah I still question it as the most powerful class in game, definitely the most survivable due to its mobility, weapons, (hidden immunity during slide), invulnerability talent and toughness DRs. I think they might need some tuning as well but didn’t want to go for a direct assault off the bat.

Good test on how to add comments and multiple polls initially was going to separate polls with quotation box but that disabled them. So hopefully new comments, current works and thin line make things more obvious.

Thanks for participation! very surprised on some results especially Suppression talent is it for some kind of melee suppression or do zealots find that range boost necessary?

11

Bro no way that misinfo is STILL going.

A) every class is immune to ranged damage during slide
B) What Zealot got was 100% TDR to melee damage, very different in practice to immunity
C) The was removed all the way back in PATCH 13

Much more likely people are rejecting it because they don’t want an already very powerful class power crept further.

I think you really ought to at least go away and read Kuli’s guide before further balance comments.

2 Likes
12

I mean, overall, Zealot has by far the best survivability requiring the lowest skill ceiling, amazing burst dps with an array of weapons, even better burst dps with FotF, amazing group survivability (yellow health) + amazing group stun + dps or toughness dmg mitigation for whole team with an extra point in chorus.

There are likely other things, but the skill ceiling for the class is very low on almost ANY metric and no other class boasts quite that amount of useability with a low skill requrement, AND in the hands of a top tier player is actually broken as all kark.

I just dont think the Zealot needs any love right now :slight_smile:

2 Likes
13

Well, guess I didn’t keep up on the hidden stats, So everyone has slide immunity now? weird. Always found slide kind of a gimmicky movement to look cool with built in damage reducers.

From the back and forths on Steam I thought 100% Toughness DR was impossible some kind of diminishing stacking feature and in practice can stack a lot of toughness DR even on Veteran without reaching immunity.

Nah trial by fire is fastest learning curve.

14

Pretty sure sliding just counts as dodging? Not immunity.

15

Sliding/Sprinting with stamina and Dodging with ‘dodge charges left’ all puts you into the dodge state, not sure if that’s changed from before, but while in that state you are immune to ranged fire, and get a ‘whizing’ sound every time a bullet would have hit you but instead passes through you. (Psykers can do it with crits thanks to Empathic Evasion as well).

Each class has their own modifiers when it comes to getting melee struck while doing the above actions though, with Zealots being the most forgiving. You can see their multipliers on Dartide Lantern (going into the ‘classes’ section), but Zealots take half damage while doing all the actions above. Psykers take half damage while dodging and sliding, but not sprinting (they take full damage there). Veterans only get the half damage while sliding but take full damage while dodging and sprinting, and Ogryns just take full damage all the time always (because they need more reasons to get their big butts blasted in this game…I guess).

Toughness DR does also work on a multiplicative system with most buffs minus the ‘5-10% toughness DR’ nodes on each character (those all add together, then get multiplied by buffs and such). This isn’t to say ‘more DR more better’ isn’t still true (as Enduring Faith + Martyr is still dropping all damage to your toughness by around 70% at the top end, going even higher when adding in other stuff) but it’s the reason why a good Iron Will Veteran can feel largely like a Zealot most of the time even if their 50% is only the top 25% of their toughness, since with a lot of the top end Veteran builds you end up both working with similar amounts of toughness’ under DR’ so to speak.

But…yeah, to actually respond to the post as a ‘closer’, I will agree that I feel Zealot is ‘mostly fine’, I’ll be it a little stifling. They have a LOT of insanely good talents that can all work reallllly good together, but they also have a lot of tax nodes and things that are actively just worthless that make going particular directions feel terrible. The impact related nodes, on top of Loner feel the most egregious to me (of which I gave a thumbs up/yes to your ideas above for them), and I wish Disdain ‘refreshed itself’ instead of only procing every other hit. But outside of that their build variety feels decent enough, and the only things I’d personally like the most is that Loner change so that going down that path for talent reasons doesn’t feel like absolute grief to my team, and a few edits to the middle tree as trying to get to beacon of purity feels ‘overly taxing’ for it’s outside of havoc mediocre effect. (If it got your change above though, all the tax in that tree would suddenly make total sense though). Also the ‘suppression boost’ is yet another tax node but that one makes sense because IoD is absolutely bonkers and while I think putting 5% crit there would be quite fun, it would make that side even more broken than it already is.

2 Likes
16

I know people would like to see this talent improved, I’m just pointing out 20% impact strength is nothing. Stagger thresholds are completely bonkers and need an entire rework.

Ex: IndyCrusher needs hammer blow, 125% impact strength in order to properly stagger all elites. Meanwhile the special attacks of DS, Taxe, Caxe, Chaxe, and Shock Maul need 0% boost in anything to stagger all elites.

So, yes I want that talent changed, no i don’t want impact strength or low low damage boosts.

2 Likes
17

What would you change it to?

18

Edit: sorry for the tangent.

All impact talents can be replaced with push cost reduction or stamina management talents which would be universal and provide more utility

19

For me, Zealot talent tree is the best.

Psyker talent tree after rework is really great. I must say that I hate Destiny and that empowered psionics feel not needed for me.

Ogryn, I really like the tree. However, FnP seems a little useless and melee build (heavy hitter) seems too good compared to others (I feel that the right part is pretty good, the left a little too good, and middle is not worth to go for it).

Final, the veteran. No surprise. I hate it. This is linked to the fact I hate the 3 keystones. I never use them and as a result, I feel that this talent tree is bad. This does not mean that the class is weak, far from that. This is just my feeling that the talent tree is bad. Especially after the last change. I still hate the tax node “One motion” and don’t understand why they replaced something that had an utility by somehing not even noticeable and that is clearly a tax node.

2 Likes
20

Funny enough, the Vet has one of my fave keystones “Weapon Specialist” paired with “Always Prepared” which returns ammo to your clip.

Its incredibly good on guns with low clip size and/or slow reload, so the boltguns and shotguns. I especially love it on the double barrel shotty where swapping to melee, killing a few guys and back to ranged is rewarded with a full clip. edit: but on most other guns, it feels kinda naff tbh.

I also like Empowered Psionics paired with Brain Burst and Warp Syphon paired with a Soulfire build.

But overall, most "key"stones are just a bit meh sounding to me, although if used effectively they are powerful. I have builds on every class that dont use keystones and they work well enough.

2 Likes