So as a player that started Darktide playing as the Zealot and had lots of fun with it, I still played for a good while with it before trying any other classes and after getting to builds I am really satisfied with for them, I’m finding myself with a Zealot (even tho I tried keeping it on par with other classes) that feel way behind in terms of efficient versatility that other classes can have.
Most of my classes can handle themselves really well against any kind of enemies, but the Zealot, to me, feels like it’s lacking in that department, I’m running crit and blazing piety with it, but it’s like it’s missing that massive damage bursts that other classes can have, even melee psyker feels more efficient now that I’ve figured out a build for it.
And since Hive Scum release, and probably even Arbites release, Zealot, to me, felt a lot underloved by the devs. It feels like it’ll either be really good to deal with trash hordes but struggles against tougher enemies, or the opposite, but cant find that comfortable position to deal with pretty much every type of enemies in a single build.
I’ve tried many variations on my builds for it and couldn’t come to something that would have that satisfaction I have with other classes builds.
So I’m interested to hear anything from peoples playing the zealot religiously (pun intended) and if there’s things I could change or improve for it.
Edit: Then maybe I’m thinking too much, the build is fine and it’s just an overall feels about Zealot position in the game lately, feeling generally weaker than everything else.
Edit2: I also wish we had more than the Flamer as exclusive ranged weapon for the Zealot…
Zealot has been balanced with a different design philosophy compared to the other classes. I think lot of players recognize that while Zealot is subjectively “weak” compared to other classes, its actually the most well balanced relative to the game. You can get through any difficulty on Zealot but you can’t really rely on things like infinite cleave, DoTs, and stagger as much as you can on other classes which forces you to actually learn melee combat, dodge dancing, kiting, positioning, map knowledge, etc. to a greater extent than other classes to get good on the class in my experience.
Unfortunately, unless you’re playing on an all Zealot or premade team comp Zealot can feel left behind regardless of how good the class is in a vacuum. It’s hard not to feel frustrated when it takes twice the effort to play the game while feeling like your teammates can contribute more for less effort just because they chose any class other than Zealot. Playtesters are basically holding Zealot hostage in hopes that Fatshark will properly nerf broken mechanics/interactions on the classes and certain weapons so we can stop buffing spawns to compensate for broken mechanics and meta builds which ruin balance for the rest of the game/builds. Multiple playtesters have basically claimed that Zealot is well balanced and should stay as is while other classes are abusing and ignoring game mechanics in ways that make reasonably balancing the game difficult to impossible.
Powercreep is a definite issue in the game, and you just have to look at the state of increasing spawns and the aftereffects of Crusher HP buffs making a ton of weapons and builds even less relevant in higher difficulties to see that refusing to nerf things that deserve them and only balancing around the highest denominator only ruins build variety. However, holding a whole class down relative to the other classes when Fatshark has repeatedly made it clear they are not going to heavily nerf things feels like fighting a losing battle. There’s really no good solution until Fatshark makes a concerted effort to be consistent with their balancing either by nerfing the things that need to be nerfed according to playtesters, ignoring playtesters and making Zealot just as broken as everyone else, or something in between with some buffs to Zealot and targeted nerfs to some aspects of the game/spawns. Right now Zealot is sort of in limbo which just sucks the fun out of the class unless you have a premade team that likes running fun builds. Right now you’re either playing the class for fun or because you like a challenge, not because you want to be the most efficient or win the most often.
I’m still astonished by how a feeble Psyker can move it’s greatsword around faster than a Zealot can with their Relic blade (excluding stuff like Inexorable Judgement and Martyrdom attack speed buff, just raw attack speed)
Using Zealot’s unique weapons is one of the few unique things left to the class, if Relic Blade, Thunder Hammer, or Eviscerator was on any other class I don’t think many players would choose Zealot aside for the attack speed buffs being fun. Force greatsword is great too, but Zealot’s unqiue melees are fun enough on their own to make me want to play the class. Crusher used to be fun on Zealot, but the Crusher buffs and giving Crusher to Arbitrator with all its stagger-based talents kind of made the weapon just flat out better on Arbitrator. The most fun build on Zealot currently if you’re not obsessed with meta and dealing the most damage is Fatmangus by a.a., you can look it up on youtube. Relic blade with stealth for boss-nuking and clutching revives, and taking the damage resistance talents with all health curios somehow makes Zealot able to eat poxbursters and overheads. You won’t be killing much in higher difficulties since Zealot is pretty starved for damage outside of martyrdom and meta weapons, but you’ll be a beast at tanking and running circles around enemies and clutching whenever your team goes down.
Piety wants weapons that already have some crit chance on them like Knife, Tac Axe, or the Shred blessing so that it adds up to a very consistent crit rate, so it isn’t all that good at all for Relic Blade. Even then I’m not a fan of Piety anyway.
Martyrdom gives Zealot that damage and attack speed that feels missing. I’ve been able to outdamage mediocre purg staff psykers just running around with Marty and Relic Blade, Evis 15 with Bloodthirsty, or Tac Axe. Rotten Armor is currently rampant so you could equip a bleed Knife or Thunderous Bloodletter Chainaxe 12 and go to town there. You won’t clear as fast as psyker, Krak Vet, or Hive Scum into Rotten Armor but it’s also a terrible modifier to begin with.
There is also a new build that I’ve become addicted to called Fatmangus.
With stealth Relic Blade, Flak damage perk, maxed Sustained Assault, and 15+ stacks of Inexorable Judgement (or the 15% damage against enemies not targeting you node), you one shot a Havoc 40 Captain with a backstab headshot. You also have great burst damage against regular bosses. Couple that with a stupid amount of health and stealth revives and it has been my favorite build to play for the past week.
Zealot really is a perfectly fine class; but if you absolutely need to speedrun Havoc 40 in like 20 minutes, then Zealot will be found lacking compared to psyker, Vet, or Scum.
I don’t play Havoc at all, as I don’t find the appeal for it.
But I’ve been playing lots of Mortis Trial lately to have a bit of renewal compared to constantly do missions without any real objectives left to do with them, the minoris/majoris effect feels fresh to me everytime.
And even then with those buffs they didnt felt really helpful for my Zealot, yea being able to double barrel spam with crit not consuming ammo and getting 100% crit nearly everytime is fun, and yet I ended up a lot in “oh f*ck” situations that I wouldnt with other classes.
So no matter what there’s a problem and Zealots are weaker, if buffing other classes and releasing new classes that ends up being so strong the only solution is to buff enemies, leaving Zealot eating the dust and that the direction of Darktide now is for classes to be strong and enemies to be tanky, then yea, Zealot is maybe balanced, but it is not on par with the state of the game anymore.
Especially if it’s only relevance now is for “fun builds”.
I’d rather have strong character and tanky enemies as in the end it would just become the exact same as dealing less damage and enemies having less health than having a class getting the short end of the stick.
Here’s the build I take. I have an alternative build that uses the crit/bleedd talents with either a puncture bolter/bolt pistol and/or the Eviscerator instead of the rightside movespeed talents. Against All Odds is basically the only cleave talent you need, and giving your teammates 10% extra crit is a lot of extra overall damage which I don’t think you should overlook. Probably just give up Grievous wounds for that tbh you don’t really need it.
Zealot has some of the best boss damage in the game though, and I’m not talking about the funny Thunderhammer stealth builds, I mean just in general. Zealot feels harder to get damage out of because you have to be a bit more purposeful with your buff management compared to Hive Scum who can just press the funny Rampage button or something.
Also run the CDR node on the charge. I’m seeing more builds where people skip that and it’s honestly silly. It goes a long way in keeping your charge buff active and with the extra utility of chain charging enemy backlines or staggering frontlines for easier clearing.
Also I main Zealot and I just want to say I think the majority of the playerbase just doesn’t use thhe class right. Ya’ll can call me whatever you want but I genuinely believe people just aren’t playing the class right. Zealot doesn’t need to speedrun through the map, nor does the class have to one shot the occasional boss spawn before effectively going AFK again. Just make a proper build, manage buffs and play to your strengths. With Holy Revenant your HP basically becomes a resource to be spent for you to go even more crazy.
See I think your issue is that Zealot is weak at range, and player ranged damage spam has basically made melee obsolete for anything except bosses. Even then Hive Scum nukes bosses with infinite ammo Needle Pistol at range so that’s another mark of good game design.
I mean, it was just one of many exemples. Veteran and Psyker are able to handle themselves pretty well in melee, maybe even better than what anyone would think, so why the Zealot couldnt be able to be good at range too ? Not saying it’s bad, its whole thing was close ranged for it, yet it got outclassed by the Hive Scum.
Current Fatshark is ignoring every playtester’s feedback and just doing whatever at this point so I don’t know. The current state of balance is 100% on them. Ogryn fluctuates between being a dumpster fire and being good.
I think they should give Blazing Piety more various buffs and Zealot would become fine, other keystone gives buff on so many aspects, where Blazing piety is just… crit… that’s it.
Also giving the zealot more unrestricted movement options so you dont end up losing all your martyrdom stacks if you end up getting somehow stuck by some bs and getting downed, that’s one of the main reasons i rarely play martyrdom because of the likelyhood of randomly getting stuck by whatever on the map during your movements.
You have no way to deal with specials. At all. Ever. That’s why you get overrun with specials
You have ranged damage on a melee build, but impact strength on the relic blade with no cleave. That’s why you can’t horde clear on a weapon that makes horde clear easy.
You have almost no extra attack speed on top of the 10% from faithful frenzy, on a slow two hander you’re relying entirely on crits for, but without the talent that gives you back cooldown on the guaranteed crit and attack speed ability that you took.
There’s no synergy here.
Try something like this instead, but it could definitely be optimised a hell of a lot more, especially the blessings and crit numbers, or using crit and cranial grounding etc:
I’m not consistent at all with knifes, and flamer is not the weapon I use all the time, when I do it’s mostly for missions with boss or monstrosities modifier, I usually just run and dash after specialist and such with my melee and it works fine, but it become a struggle when there’s everything at once.
You are also missing Thy Wrath Be Swift, which is probably why you feel like you are dying getting stuck on things. I guess I’ll just post my marty build.
This build works for bloodthirsty evis, taxe, knife, duelling sword, anything that has extra crit chance.
Relic blade and anything without Shred doesn’t really crit as often so you can move the points off Scourge and Blinded by Blood to put them somewhere else. Shield of Contempt should probably be swapped for Against the Odds but I don’t care about the cleave that much and Shield can be pretty funny when the stars align.
I’ve mostly been playing Fatmangus recently though that build is genuinely amazing.
I was saying for Martyrdom, I actually rarely die when going for Piety build, the problem i have is just the damage, like even the crits doesnt feel enough sometimes.
Zealot requires good fundamentals to perform and if you’re not good with throwing knives you’re opening yourself up to Zealot’s key weakness which is ranged damage. There’s a reason most players end up taking throwing knives eventually, there’s very few ways for Zealot to reliably 1-2 shot specials with ranged due to a lack of ranged buffs. It’s also important to have a quick thow/quickdraw weapon for specials since Zealot is locked down in melee most of the time and won’t be able to pull out a weapon with a long draw. In terms of getting stuck or overwhelmed, Zealot has very few options to deal massive damage outside of melee so you have to leverage the class’s great mobility and learn how to position. Look up how the slot system works and learn how to kite and loop, you often have to rely on map knowledge and loop enemies in the correct spots while avoiding triggers to kill elites/bosses one by one in higher difficulties. In lower difficulties it’s probably enough to learn about the slot system and just know how to kite backwards. This doesn’t sound like an issue with the class and more to do with your individual skill level and preferred playstyle.
Nah the relic blade has a triple damage modifier on headshot crits on carapace, and you don’t need extra crit talents to take advantage of it because of scourge and blinded by blood. Prep the stab by turning on weapon power and sliding, then holding a heavy, press your ulti, and your first hit takes out half a crusher’s health with no damage buffs or carapace or headshot/elite blessings. With carapace/headshot it turns into more like 75%. Then anything you hit for the next 10 seconds is dying almost instantly because you’ll build scourge and riposte stacks while upkeeping duelist, which gives you headshot and crit damage on dodge. That’s often enough to trigger blazing piety, too. You talk about not feeling burst damage, but that’s only because the synergy isn’t as clear as it is on other classes. You can make a lot of screwups on zealot, but as long as your build is solid, the damage just comes by itself from pressing F when you need to get in to combat or replenish toughness.
Check out 3:20 to see what I mean:
You don’t really need a weapon with crit blessings for blazing piety and scourge and blinded by blood. It should just have good crit modifiers. Like there’s no point in building blazing piety if your weapon’s crit damage is basically the same as its standard hit values, like the crusher is much better served with martyrdom or inexorable judgement.
Zealot only has one keystone left for havoc, martyrdom.
Piety relies on equipping a DS and using fotf to run ahead of your team, killing everything before they get there for massively inflated damage numbers, or using it as a CDR battery for chorus, while having ZERO damage output for yourself. If you wanna run around like a crackhead critting everything, there is this new kid in the town doing it far superior.
IJ is just dogshit, always have been, always will. A conditional 15% dmg increase that other classes get from minor nodes and 15% AS that is a lot less than that in reality, without even taking the fact you will literally never have 15 stacks other than the start of a fight into consideration. Yes, I know about the unlisted dodge buffs, doesn’t move the needle for me.
Which leaves us with martyrdom, which is truely unrivaled after the latest buffs, but you have to fully lean into it’s playstyle to benefit the most from it, and that is a risky proposition most new players will not be comfortable doing, and as such, will ultimately end up looking at the zealot as the weak link out.
Which is both true and very false, depending on your skill level. Zealot is still and always should be the last man to go down, with the most options available to not get bogged down by anything, giving them the highest chance to pull off clutches the easiest.
