Yeah I know threads like this already exist but the opinion is voiced repeatedly its more likely to be listened to.
Zealot should have team healing disabled as part of his kit, full stop, not an option you unlock and have to pick over other talents, a built in perk. Either convert it to temp like how natural bond affects healing items, or disable incoming healing entirely it hardly matters. The easy answer is “just get hurt again” but good luck if you get healed to half and still have half a bar of temp to work through. If payday 2 can bundle healing disabling into their low health perks while their game runs on an ancient racing engine it cannot possibly be a limitation. Hell, if you’re feeling spicy why not just have his ult exchange green for white health. etc etc etc etc.
I don’t think that’s a bad idea, but Fiery Faith would have to change because then the 30% power bonus is always active. I’m thinking something like this:
25% bonus power
50% slower temp health drain
All health is converted to temp health
Cannot bleed out from temp health drain
… or for those who want lost health to give a power increase:
I can’t take you seriously now; 30% power to 25% isn’t half the damage bonus, and neither is 15% +2% for every 15 temp health missing. Let’s be real here.
I’ve softened on this topic somewhat with time, especially since playing with the Icelator class rebalance mod. I’d just go with what they did with him. Ult converts green health to temp health by default, all forms of green health healing are disabled, but for me the non negotiable accompaniment to this is fiery faith should no longer affect ranged weapons (the mod also wisely made that change). You get better quality of life but you no longer have the easy peasy ranged weapon breakpoints that Zealot has no business having in the first place with how strong the rest of his kit is.
That’s overall a fair trade that makes him play much nicer with other classes while focusing him more on being a melee powerhouse, rather than the incredibly strong do everything class he currently is. I don’t think we’re seeing a proper rework of the class at this point so I really think that’s about the best compromise we could hope for with him.
The mod also modified castigate conditions so you just get +10% AS from being on low health and actually need to proc the other +10% through kills. That’s fairly unimportant compared to the rest of the changes but would still be a nice accompaniment to the other changes so you actually feel the loss of momentum from down time between engagements more.
that reminds me of the time i made a thread proposing the same thing, the backlash i got was phenomenal, even tho i explicitly said that its not about balance but about how his intended playstyle is not in synergy of what other careers and talents do…
but people even questioned that “intended playstyle” is only my interpretation, referring to low green hp playstyle.
I don’t think this division between quality of life and balance is quite as clear cut as you both make it out to be. Making it easier to maintain Zealot’s bonuses (and that is essentially what is being suggested in these threads and similar) is a buff overall regardless of how you might want to try and distinguish it from a balance change. Is it really surprising that people might be opposed to any change the constitutes buffing a class many consider to be very high up the power scale as is?
At this point I’d rather see something that might constitute a buff overall over continuing with a system that encourages Zealot players to be toxic to anyone bringing regen. I just think such an adjustment may as well come with changes to reign him in a bit at the same time. It makes it much more palatable to the Zealot haters and is more likely to reach some semblance of consensus.
Surely the other side of this argument isn’t so hard for you both to see? From my earlier post you can presumably see I’m not personally against these “QoL” changes myself, though I sit somewhere in the middle of the divide at this point, but I think it’s more healthy if we can all see eye to eye a bit more here, so I hope I’ve been clear with this response.
In my original post i acknowledged the fact that a change to his health mechanic is a buff,
and even proposed that they could bring some nerfs along with those changes as he surely deserves some, infact i proposed the same treatment you just mentioned removing any power increase to his ranged arsenal.
i just didnt want to go into detail of what nerfs exactly would make most sense because the aim of the change wasnt to shift his position in terms of power(especially not increase it) but just to make it more comfortable to play the career regardless of other players choices
However i stand firmly by, that no career should be hindered by the choices of other careers, regardless of their rank/meta position, and if the career is deemed too powerful they should get adressed acordingly of course.
and yes in the grand scheme of things it would be buff, however, its not like his maximum potential gets any higher, and would be totally unchanged.
its only when another player NOT an enemy influences his hp his maximum potential gets reduced that makes him a massive outliner (regardless if hes massively overpowered or super weak)
the only time where a 2 players can negatively impact each other is friendly fire, for witch the players who are doing it are directly responsable as its their action/decision
but in zealots case he gets punished for being in the same lobby as other careers.
well among the player base that is playing the hardest difficulties he is considered to about low average, and other careers have much higher value, obviously there is a contradiction there about the perception of lower difficulty and higher difficulties, but its quite easily understood as in cata+ individual power/selfish play-styles plummet and utility team oriented play-styles skyrocket in value.
honestly i think people actually don’t want to talk about zealots problems because he is, at his core a extremely selfish career, and has many tools to solo carry, and as such attracts exactly those kinds of players no one wants to play with.
There are players who love running natural bond on zealot, so a talent or more should contain the healing issue, because talents can be chosen by the player.
The changes you mentioned on this are what I think needs to go live. Ranged Power + Shotguns is something I warned against being OP, and it is. We avoid playing it in our group because of that.
I’d argue some some melee nerf needs to happen too. The amount of THP he generates gives him way too much damage uptime. This does not address other DMGR and speed increase builds too.
I’d also argue that he’s in a weird place of having awkward THP when regen/ChaosWastes Boons are in effect, but in normal gameplay at Cata and Cata+, with enough enemies, he becomes extremely strong and has near unlimited THP.
He can maintain his THP without support (Merc Ult/SoTT Passive/etc).
He’s either really bad due to awkwardness or brokenly good.
You can run this Career with no BCR/Stamina/Stamina Regen and outkill everything on Cata and Cata+.
If you have SoTT and another THP support in your group change your Career Skill to Faith’s Flurry and face tank for Ult CDR.
I’ve never really understood the Regen on Zealot thing. The only bonus I can see to it is not getting true health from using heals, but then your health ticks up anyway.
Due to being in melee almost constantly as Zealot Barkskin/Boon are always better. Boon especially, makes the game stupidly easy, due to how much THP you generate.
On a general note to end, I’d be happy if people making complaints about his THP would specify which build they’re using, so it’s easier to understand how they’ve come to the conclusions. E.g. DMGR Talent and Barkskin Zealots sitting on 10% HP for the entire match.
I like the changes in the mod, never tried it before, but I can imagine. It’s an easy way to have Zealot benefit from Fiery Faith while also being able to benefit from regen by having the Ultimate turn his health into temp health.
In terms of strictly “QoL”, I don’t think that there’s an easy way around this change fundamentally changing how powerful the career is, but the closes thing to that would simply be to make the ult turn health into temp health. However, I still like the idea that you can’t throw 30% power bonus Griffon Foot pistols on him anymore. I can talk about balance alongside QoL without “my eyes glazing over”.
Yes it would technically be “easier to maintain the bonus” if you simply removed team healing for him, but if you seriously think that having your ability crippled just because a kerillian joined your game is any way a good or even intended balancing mechanic and not an annoying oversight that is simply not correct
your bonus should be hampered by enemies not a random with a healing item. i seriously cannot understand how people look at that and think its a staple to the characters design and an intentional balancing mechanic.
the saddest part to this for me is that i got back into vermintide because of darktide hype but such a bizarre and long lasting bit of design has been a bit of a warning sign and hype killer for me, like some character in darktide is going to have some stranger oversight like losing their power if a teammate reloads a weapon from empty or something equally nonsensical and that bug would be defended as keeping them from being overpowered
@alsozara never said that those are intentional balance mechanics at all, he just defended the notion that many people think of zealot as quite strong, and giving him more power is atleast questionable.
while i disagree with him that giving him this QoL would be a significant buff, its atleast a reasonable consideration
I mean. if they think adding basic comfort would make the character too strong (note: i also suggested just turning the healing off, no temp gain, an option i prefer) then they are also saying that the discomfort is keeping them in check, a balance mechanic.
yea no i agree a discomfort produced as an byproduct of other allies shouldnt be taken into consideration, exept friendly fire as its a universal rule where every career is beholden to, if we talk about balance
That may well be the case, I’ve never played modded difficulties, though I presume we’d both agree that how classes perform in modded, or even the likes of Cata Twitch, is not really a balancing consideration. In base Cata his selfishness doesn’t matter since he’ll just solo most of the map for his team. Easiest Cata duo of my life was me as Zealot + my mate as Sister shortly after she came out, and it was ridiculously easier than anything else we’d tried. Yes I know old Sister was very strong but my mate had basically no experience with her and was massively outdamaged/outkilled by my Zealot, so it wasn’t just old sister carrying. My point with this rambling is just that I won’t be convinced he isn’t an extremely strong class for base game.
I think you’ve misunderstood here. His ult converts his starting health to thp. He simply wouldn’t receive regen at all. At least I think that’s how it worked in the mod.
That’s correct, thank you for helping to clarify my point.
Yes but the leap of logic you’re making here is suggesting anyone thinks it’s an intended balance mechanic. It’s not good but there are plenty here who would prefer SOMETHING to keep him in check over nothing. To circle back to my original post here, that’s exactly why I referred to the mod changes as a fair trade. He gets his QoL changes and in turn has his power level brought down is a less awkward anti team manner than currently. However you may dislike that wording, it is an exchange of sorts.
The passive I want to see most of all is blessed combat back on BH, they should have never taken it away and just put a seperate cooldown on prize bounty. But yeah something for Zealot would be nice. Agree with making his buffs fall along the lines of Unchaineds’ bonus to melee damage only.
And I have a hard time with the concept of it being ‘harder’ to maintain the buffs with teammates, it’s just annoying to have to get your ass beat for like 4k damage in a round on a long map just to have buffs for half of that time. Like to the point I don’t really bother playing for them if I’m stuck with GK or elf healing, it’s just not fun. So my team gets a horrible WHC with no support or extra damage instead of a teammate that can at least put out high damage. Terrible design.