Zealot is a very strong career. If someone tells you otherwise they are mad. The only things that keeps people from playing him substantially more are the annoyances associated with keeping his passive running… and the fact that there are plenty of other very strong careers like say, WHC and BH.
I find it difficult to justify to myself needing to nerf zealot’s ranged power bonus due to that second part. Does it make zero thematic sense and feel kinda wrong to get ranged power on a career that feels so melee oriented? Yes, absolutely. Do I think that removing the minor annoyances associated with healing would make zealot the new BW or release Sister? No. He’d still be behind GK and slayer when it comes to being a melee blender and wouldn’t have the team utility of WHC.
Imo the only way ranged zealot becomes problematic is when he has infinite ammo for the duckfeet. With that caveat he totally overshadows BH in it’s own niche. That would be a bad thing, but right now that really only occurs when he is attached at the hip to an RV or playing in one of those awful bomb rat weeklies. Maybe if the volley bow was in a better spot I would have an issue with his ranged power, but as it stands volley zealot is a complete meme build.
I just think he shouldn’t also have easy ranged breakpoints, don’t care about the meme volley build either. He just shouldn’t be so good at relieving special pressure with BoP or crossbow to my mind. He’s a jack of all trades but too good at everything. It’s not a major nerf but it does make him a touch less self sufficient, which I think is good and fair. He still wouldn’t be a bad special sniper by any stretch.
I’m also not super convinced of this:
He probably is a little worse overall as a melee blender, but to my mind he’s pretty close while being extremely durable, still pretty mobile, and obviously gets a ranged weapon. It’s all just a little too much to my mind.
Fatshark should rework the Zealot to not be the only career disadvantaged by a game mechanic that gives an advantage to all the other careers.
There have been multiple suggestions over the years, such as allowing “self-flagellation”, converting all gained green HP to temp HP, allowing opt-out from health regen mechanics, or rework the Zealot to not be buffed only at low health, etc. Pretty much any of those is better than the current system.
Sorry I missed this. I don’t see it as a balance check mechanic.
I always bring up balance when Zealot’s true HP problems are brought up, because in my mind, they should address how OP he is as a priority over rarely suffering from gaining true health.
He’s OP all of the time outside of the few missions someone joins as WS with AoE regen, where he becomes slightly awkward, and after the match is over you just switch.
The traits he’s offered in CW are a simple way of fixing this.
Yeah, I honestly wish there was more to him than getting overheaded once and then spamming Lights for the entire match.
It feels like the idea was that you would get hit more often, but getting hit can be extremely inconsistent- especially when allies are close to you, because all of the enemies get staggered.
rarely is such an understatement, like every second lobby has a grailknight in it ngl.
and talking about balance, i can see why you’d want to nerf him,
but then again is he a top tier pick? not really
other careers are way more potent to bring a team through a map, like BW and Merc, even if they might not hog all the green circles…
soo how would you nerf him in legend and below without significantly reducing his value in cata+? idk how to accomplish that really, maybe take some of his selfish buffs and replace them with some utility? hmm
I’ve barely noticed it in Cata QP. Most of the times I have, I’m joining someone’s game as Zealot and can insta leave and rejoin as WHC or WPOS until the end of the match.
If you’re on VOIP with people it should never be a problem.
I completely disagree. The amount of THP he generates allows him to play near solo, even on Cata and Cata+. If you have a THP support character in the group it’s even more absurd. He’s also unneccesarily versatile.
Without SoTT, he’s still S, bordering S+, and with SoTT, he’s one of the best Careers in the game, on-par with BW.
On top of how much damage he does, he also does it in a really easy way, so there’s no real trade off. You literally get overheaded at the start of the match, and spam Career Skill on CD with Lights and GG. There’s barely any thought whatsoever.
His playstyle also benefits from playing solo, and running into Hordes. It genuinly makes you do the most damage because of uptime, and barely ever having to go defensive. Your team doesn’t gain any benefits from you doing this, but it doesn’t even matter, because the amount of damage you put out makes it worth it.
He’s extremely low skill-high reward and benefits from a playstyle that doesn’t fit in a co-op game, where 95% of the other Careers rely on teammates.
In his current state I wouldn’t even play him in Legend now. Legend balance is broken and he doesn’t work if one person is running a Ranged Career. He’s more useless than Slayer and GK on Legend (WPoS can shield Boss killers ).
He needs to get a rework so that taking damage is actually an issue for him, and he doesn’t randomly get passive Power(which also gives him Stagger)/AS/Ranged Power/and a mobility Career Skill.
ATM, he’s built as a melee only Career, but randomly gets huge benefits to his Ranged Weapons.
here are 2 content creators takes on class potency mind you both play mostly cata+
first jtcLive 1year old list
FuPlayz also about 1 year old (taken from his discord)
sure some things changes (sister primarily) but nonetheless both these cata+ players put him in the lowest category, i of course can’t verify that they meant gameimpact only, and not also personell fun
but still its quite clear that he isnt as broken as you make him out to be.
he currently is at 8700 hours and honestly i don’t really watch V2 content but as far as i know he plays cata twitch and modded
so no his lists are definitely not about legend
because? your own opinion says so?
all your points are just listing some of his strengths without any context so theres no real reason to dispute them as balance is always in context of all careers and specific to difficulty.
the fact a career can do some things really good doesn’t mean that a team with that career wins more, a career needs to do things good that are helping said team to win,
wich is in cata+ utility>dmg, zealot is a powerhouse that can solo stuff certainly, but all the things hes good at can be fulfilled by other careers sometimes in combination while simultaneously giving a team more utility. after all he takes up an entire slot 1/4 of a team and only provides dmg and lackluster Frontline
Still need more context then, because some of those choices don’t make sense.
I mean, I can go into it but we’re talking about Zealot. I didn’t realise disputing year old tier lists with no context was so important to this argument.
I’ve given a pretty decent example of how he’s strong and under what conditions, and even with what build, if you don’t believe me you could just play him under those conditions.
My argument is that he doesn’t need to have those things to provide value. And the fact other people in your team can enables him when he needs it.
Please respond to my original post. The tier list discussion has derailed.
i claimed he isnt with backup opinions of two large names in the community,
but that is apparently derailing because they lists are a year old even tho zealot didnt got changed in that time, ah ok
then i provided the context to value of a career wich in my opinion is how often the career will end up finishing a map, you may go by a different context such as green circles or whatever…
all you did was stating combinations of careers and appointing them letters based on their Performance based on? personal bias? who knows
good for you i guess? but how does that solve hosting as zealot when a gk joins? should i ask him to leave? should i leave? should i ignore the concept of my career? that can’t be the answer and yea sure a total overhaul of zealot would be welcome but that isn’t realistic sienna’s 4career is in development for ages and just pumping out a totally new zealot, i don’t see it…
95% of 24careers so a quarter of zealot does not rely on teammates ok got it.
jokes aside there are other careers that don’t rely on teammates and don’t have Gameplay that insensitive Teamplay, and even if zealot was the only one i don’t get why that would justify him being handicapped by allies? i don’t see any correlation
quite hyperbolic, legend is the place where many differently skilled players are merging and as such the skill of the individual will always be more impactful over whatever career they choose to play.
and while were at it please nerf thp of dual hammers and flamesword ty
Which was completely irrelevant and not useful in any way, since it was missing so much context.
And appeals to authority don’t mean anything.
We’re having a discussion between me and you and you essentially said “These two popular people potentially disagree, it isn’t really clear because there’s no context at all in what I’m providing as their opinion”.
Dunno how to respond to this. It’s not even a point.
Giving my own opinion on a forum? Crazy, I know.
Also, you brought up tier lists and now you’re trying to discredit the same mechanism for grading how strong people think Careers are. ???
Yeah, I’m here giving my opinion, not 5% of someone elses who can’t be asked about it.
Ask them not to pick up Grim if they have the quest
If they’re WS, ask them to leave and rejoin without the Talent
Deal with it for one match, people play with Regen on Zealot anyway, it’s not optimal, but is doable
Kick them if they’re stubborn or ignorant
If they rework anything on him it will probably be on an overhaul, which he should get anyway. It’s just whether or not it happens.
I disagree. His entire design is based around having as much melee uptime as possible to maintain THP, which decays.
Legend has:
Fewer enemies
Lower Health Pools (less hits = less THP generation)
Ranged breakpoints that completely break the game, meaning even less enemies
It’s possible to complete maps with no issues as 4 ranged Careers, and sometimes even more optimal on Legend. Whereas on Cata, where health pools are bigger and enemies are more dangerous, it’s much more difficult and a more balanced team is required.
Melee only Careers can struggle to even reach an enemy on some of the larger maps.
“every career has strenghts over others therefore all careers are s+”
citing strenghs of a career doesnt mean anything without context, you need a
common denominator to judge all careers by equally, and if you just pickout DMG and ease sure zealot is broken, but as a result of this common denominator other careers would be uterly trash
because they are harder to play and deal less dmg, wich is not the case therefore using this
common denominator is unsensible, i picked the consistency at wich they can finish/help finish a map
and in that regard i don’t think zealot provides enough to be considered S++ tier.
in don’t want to ask him to sacrafice part of his kit so i can use part of my kit.
thats the only choice really but still it shouldnt be a problem in the first place
this is literally taking a inconvenience a antisynergy in career kit and results in players kicking each other. that can’t be reasonable
the thing is everything needed to implement this QoL change is already in the game and presumably takes little effort to implement while a rework needs a decent amount of developer time they, by their own account, don’t have to spare.
http://puu.sh/JcC6b/5a5983fc09.png
so even a extremly good player will be useless as zealot, on legend, because his hp is decaying? but you claimed his thp generation is so extreme that he can faceroll in cata? due to lack of enemies even tho legend has lots of new players who just got into legend he still is less valuble than those? but also at the same time has too powerful ranged power wich is also useless because as a melee career he needs to be in melee? ehhh pls rephrase what you meant i don’t think im following…
All of this was mentioned, on top of the fact that he can play alone and it’s more beneficial for him to do so.
All of these are well worth judging how good he is compared to others.
It being easy for him to do more than the majority of other Careers is the icing on the cake of how boring his design is.
Get overheaded once, spam Lights, spam Career Skill on CD, and randomly have 30% Power on your Ranged Weapon.
You essentially stay near invincible in the middle of Hordes alone and top out on damage and kills because of it.
I don’t understand how anyone could play him with a SoTT in the or with RV’s ammo in the group and come to that conclusion.
Yeah, so they should do a complete rework of how he works. The suggestions I gave work for me just fine. There’s literally nothing more you can do. They already know about his health mechanic being broken.
It’s got nothing to do with skill. He’s just not fun to play on Legend because of the difficulty and the way his THP/Power works. The same as other Melee only Careers.
You can play any Ranged Career and get a 1 shot breakpoint bodyshot on SV with a 60 round weapon and kill everything from 500 ft away.
My comment wasn’t a justification for the true health gain problems.
I gave my opinion on both, but I don’t see a way they could fix one without the other. In my experience the true health issue is only temporary outside of Chaos Wastes and rarely ever has a big impact, whereas his balance effects every single game he’s in. So I think it takes priority.
His mechanics need an overhaul in general, and they usually do that as a big update, so I can’t see them changing one without the other.
Also the discussion on True Health kind of ends after everyone agrees and aknowledges that Fatshark already know about it.
Depends.
As I said, the true health problems outside of CW are temporary and rare, but he’s OP in every match.
In a co-op PVE game, I see no need for one Career to be not only stronger and more versatile than others but promote a playstyle that doesn’t depend on teamplay.
It’s not just balance either, I think his entire mechanics need a rethink, more than any of the other Careers that have been changed, which is intertwined with both his health mechanic and balance, so it’s unavoidable to discuss both.
If there hasn’t already been a fast bandaid fix to his true health, it won’t happen, but a rework eventually might.
i wish we could have ONE singular thread on this topic without it devolving into a balance discussion.
we can all agree that removing an annoyance would not affect his balance and isnt an intentional balancing mechanic, so how about we just agree to remove an annoyance and then make a -different- thread on balance.
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