Solutions to Zealot's "Healing Issues"

If zealot is to be compared to other melee careers i find it quite lacking overall. He is not the most survivable nor the most damage dealing and brings close to 0 utlity to the team that’s why whc is usually preferred at higher dificulties. That said i still think is a solid pick if all the other teamates are ranged careers. His skill floor may be low as it’s easy to not drag down your team but skill celing very high because to reach the same potential of most other careers it requires much more effort. Regardless of his position in the careers tier list it has a very fun playstyle in a game where evry other charachter is played in a way where you should always avoid damage is very refreshing to have one where you are incentivated in doing it.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that zealot is lacking overall, he’s still an incredibly strong career. Being overshadowed by WHC isn’t really saying much, WHC is absurdly strong in terms of personal DPS and support.

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But is not overshadowed only by whc, compared to all the other melee careers only Unchained falls short. Maybe you can argue that Slayer is there contending the spot since it can’t special snipe like a zealot would even if throwing axes remove at least part of the justification why he is so strong in melee and not to forget Slayer brings decent utility with his spammable ult crowd control. Other than that GK,FK, MERC, IB and HM compleatly outclass him and while it may not be fair to compare her to zealot SHADE steps over him. I’m not saying he’s garbage he has his niche, but he’s not by far this overperforming monster that you all make it look like.

In what world do HM or FK outclass him? IB and FK are just tanks so not really comparable. GK and zealot are on similar footing (with zealot being much tankier and having ranged while GK does better single target damage). HM is just kind of there, she doesn’t have enough bonuses to compete with either, and generally doesn’t have enough control to be useful as a tank.

Shade is shade and is in her own tier.

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HM has outstanding utility with her aura alone, plus sniping specials is a joke thanks to her invis. Or you can trade the invis with +25% crit chance constant during horde, and regardless can easly reach + 50% attack speed increase, her mobility is superior to zealot and can get in and get out of a sticky situation like zealot just in much cleaner way thanks to talent to dodge through enemies ( dodge distance even increased by 15% ) and ability to reach 90% block cost reduction. You think she can’t control? Her control is much better than zealot: she can with very minor investment stagger any monk attack with just pushing ( action that is basically free if you have plus 130% stamina rigen ) still keeping her 90% BCR on a shield that has 20% dodge distance in fact. I can’t go that much in detail for the other careers as it’s alredy too much off topic if you are interested in keeping the discussion we can create a specific topic. I will just say that IB and FK have special sniping ability ant elite breakpoinst basically on par with zealot ( can be that zealot has a little bit of an advantage but barley ) they really lose only in the raw dps output in the horde ( basically the clear horde slower ) but compensate it with insane control and utility that all the team can benefit. And how can’t they be compared to zealot? is not zealot a tank? What is it then in your opinion?

None of these things make her better than zealot lol. Running away and blocking a lot doesn’t make a good career, she has less damage than zealot that is much more inconsistent than his, she has the same peak attack speed as him (which requires losing your extra damage), can’t deal damage under extreme pressure in the same way he does, and can’t come close to handling elites the way he can. HM is a great career for cheesing content, and has niches she’s very good in, but she’s not an overall better melee combatant than zealot at all.

Invis is generally a liability to your team, barely any HM players know how to use it without dumping aggro like morons. Even good HMs it’s an issue with, the situations you need to invis in you generally have a good amount of aggro, which you’re dumping on your team by dashing.

Not on higher difficulties afaik, and it’s still worse than zealots control, who can interrupt any non-boss attack with zero investment by running billhook.

There’s not really a vermintide specific term for it I don’t believe, but a bruiser type career. He does a lot of damage, takes a lot of damage, and can handle aggro very well, but doesn’t have the same overarching control as a pure tank. FK and IB are just staggerbots most of the time. They lose significantly in DPS vs everything. The careers just don’t really fill the same niche, you’re never going to be stuck unsure whether you should run a FK or a zealot.

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Maybe “Feel Nothing” could be enhanced to also convert all green HP into THP.

So people could opt in. Taking that talent implies not planning with much green Health anyway.

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Sorry to evryone this is an off topic discussion really that should probabably have his own topic but since i’m lazy and for now anyway is just me and @Lord_Giggles interest in this i’m using this thread.
You can just avoid my entire post.
Thanks for understaning.

Running away and blocking lol, like that is only thing you do when you have infinite pushes and can’t get stuck in the middle of the horde lol. Actually HM has higher peak attack speed than zealot and only need to sacrifice 5% power wich is useful only if you go for ranged breakpoints on longbow and is less consistent overall.

She can deal under extreme pressure as you are borderline untoachable and has one of the most clutch potential of the game, zealot is good too in this circustance but the ability to elude disablers so much better for HM. Deals with elites just fine especially now that moon fire bow is here lol but even with melee. True that zealot overall can mantain more dps but green circles farmed on trash mobs mean nothing. They are both good at going out of position to snipe some pesky special or elite or help some unluky teamate ( even if HM has slight advantage ) zealot has some dps advantage but the utility of handmaiden makes her much more useful for the team than a zealot can be.

Nope it works on cata and you can stagger even CW on cata ecxept the overhead but in contrast billhok can stagger only one enemy at a time i would rather have a weapon that keeps a whole pack of monks or storvermin patrol in check that one that can stop a very easly dodgable and telegrafed attack.

That can be true if the HM player is bad and i agree there are a lot of them is just a question of skill though HM has very high skill floor compared to zealot that even if you play bad at least you are not doing it much worse for the team, but this is a good think for a game is important to have both the charachters one for beginners and one for more experienced player. With HM you can get aggro of patrol attract them away and pop invis, you can get breathing room to aim at specials and elites during ambush, you can compleatly isolate a monster during a horde so the rest of the team can ignore it until whave is over, just to make some examples. Of course if you are just going to play vermintide like press M1 simulator better pick zealot.

Lot of damage yes but he’s not the only one that can, takes a lot of damage yes but if you are good at vermintide you don’t need to take it, the point of the incredible sustain of zealot is not to just play sloppy anyway i get my temp health back but to allow you to trigger the buffs like movement speed, stamina rigen, get back ult charge. Handle aggro well but again not the best at it. He dosen’t suck at anything but doesn’t excel at anythig either is the classic well rouded character.
FK with 2hh is a staggerbot that can delite elites throw on the ground multiple CW with one charge creating space for him and all the team to easly feast on them, free any ally in his charge range from grabs ( even CS that billhok zealot can’t ) give damage reduction to allies and even block cost reduction if you chose to sacrifice useful stagger breakpoints. Sure loses some dps on the trash mobs i’m sure my teamates will gladly make up for that considering how much easier their life is.
IB with drakefire pistols doese’t lose in horde dps against zealot or anyone else and is still surprisingly decent against special at short medium range but i give the edge on special sniping to zealot undoubtly but again that weakness can very easly be covered by team considering how much control he has over the crowd to let your elf aim safley, 2hh and cogh give him elite killinkg potential on par with zealot and even axe and shield is a very versatile weapon both for crowds and elite, he is virtually immune from disablers evry 20 seconds, gets 30% damage reduction for free, can force aggrow of all enemies on him basically evry minute or less.
With this i don’t want to say that zealot is a trash career, as i said it has low skill floor since anyone can pick it and not be a burden but high skill ceiling because if you are creative and know how to use it you can do pretty amazing stuff just lacks that exyra edge that other careers have to be more useful, if you want to play solo or duo is certanly a better pick that those careers since their utility loses value the less human players are in the lobby.

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Moonfire is super boring. Walk back and shoot. Not even going to count it because it’s op and dull. There’s a big thread about it. Zealot with AnF has much better control against elite packs in melee.

They both can. Zealot kills quicker, Handmaiden is more defensive. Both have the tools and abilities to deal with pressure very well. Zealot is better at recovery and at taking risks on purpose, Handmaiden is better at support and raw mobility.

Zealot’s sustained dps on all single targets is higher.

Debatable if Zealot has Flagellant’s Zeal. Unlike Handmaiden’s ult, Zealot’s has a small amount of stagger and more importantly allows Zealot to phase through enemies for its duration. Add in BoP having a faster kill time than Moonfire at close range, less friendly fire and being better at quickly killing a few elites, or Griffon-foot for massed shield breaking which is something Handmaiden can’t do, nor can FK do without running out of ammo.

Frankly Billhook Zealot isn’t good on base Cata relative to other options (it’s still good but on base Cata AnF is better imo). It scales well to modded but is complete overkill on horde dps for Zealot on base Cata, +its attacks don’t scale well with Zealot’s power except for the overhead. AnF Zealot has very good stagger locking vs elites with L1 > Block Cancel and can handle massed elites relatively safely this way.

I agree that Handmaiden has better control though than Zealot.

As far as attack patterns and optimisation goes, Zealot also has a fairly high skill ceiling. Low floor too, but that just means the career is accessible with high potential. There’s a big difference between an AnF Zealot spamming lights vs everything and one doing 3x Light > Block Cancel vs hordes and 2x Heavy > 2x Light for single targets. To contrast this, WHC with AnF relies a lot more on spamming the full light chain of AnF because WHC doesn’t make it cleave well enough to make some of these chains worth doing, so Zealot does bring something unique to the weapon.

Something Zealot does well is guaranteeing things, like landing a charged attack on a Packmaster without having to worry about the consequences of getting hit during that. Even Slayer would still have to worry about it. All of the things you’ve mentioned are important as well, but what’s also important is how being able to recover this quickly leads to a very high dps uptime when under pressure.

Being able to take more damage helps a bad player. However, it also helps a good player do more things that on a different career they would be unable to do without dying.

Yep, but the same FK with the 2HH has one of the lowest horde dps values in the game, has two dodges and 1.0 dodge range. The dps difference is massive between the two. It’s not just 30% power, it’s also Smiter. It’s not just some dps, it’s “I can’t handle a Skaven horde because I can’t kill the trash and my heavies push the elites so far back into the horde I can’t reach them, while Plague Monks which I don’t stagger are killing me, so I have to abuse climbing animations or rely on others to do a lot for me.”. FK has Valiant Charge but is much more susceptible to attrition damage than Zealot is.

Zealot with a Flail and Flagellant’s Zeal is a better 2h Hammer FK in most cases.


None of this points to Zealot being lacking compared to other careers. There are examples of setups with niches but none of the ones I’m reading here have the same raw dps Zealot has or the same flexibility.

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Thats up to preferences, even if you don’t choose it’s still is an option.

I agree but extra utility feels more useful than just raw dps, also lots of things that zealot can do tanking risks are much less danguerous for HM.

Compleatly agree i prefer AnF and Flail on Zealot tecnically greatsword is good choice too but i refuse to play it because of how boring it is so i can’t really rate it.

Again very true and it can clutch some games but can’t be compared to the consistency of double stamina regeneration or a FK charge.

What you say doesn’t make sense to me, true about the dodges and DPS i guess more dodge distance on a weapon that can stagger so well would be too OP in fatshrk eyes ( except if in then hands of an elf of course :sweat_smile: ), smiter is the worse talent vs hordes. How can you not handle a skaven horde? They melt like butter, elites pushed far back? maybe a little but very easy to reach and a horde is much safer when elite are rendered powerless if is not me that takes care of them they are easy pickings for the Slayer/Shade/ BW… whatever is there that don’t have to worry as much to risk getting hit. And i can stagger monks so easly that it can barley be called an investment ( with heavy investment a FK can stagger CW hoverhead ). Abusing the climbing animation with 2hh is stupid because enmies are stagger immune during it and you don’t get the advantages of the stagger talents don’t do it with a 2hh. Also good positioning, experience, and 25% damage reduction+ bareskin make attrition damage a non iussue, for zealot you can say that you can recover much easier if you mess up and for example eat an overhead, i have seen people in this forum calling it OP and i strongly disagree because without this feature Zealot would really be irrilevant.

Disagree: only better in pure horde without elites, where you just want raw dps, first thing if you want the flail zelot to fit in the control role you have to give up to a good chunk of DPS opting for opportunist instead of SS, and you are alredy wasting part if the best tools that zealot have. Second the heavy swipe that has lesser stagger cleave than 2hh ( and i belive lesser whide sweap but i may be wrong ) and is the only attack that can cancel monks, savages and SV overhead, goes only from one direction meaning you are most likley not going to hit the ones on your left not giving the same control and safety of a 2hh. So you get pretty average DPS with decent control if compare to a pure DPS build but bad compared to pure control build and good suvivability and none of the FK utility. Seems a downgrade to me.

Maybe lacking is not the appropriate word for it to be more accurate lets say in a team enviroment doesn’t bring as much to the table as the other melee careers, he’s flexible but master of none. If it gets nerfed either in his suvivability or his damage output he would very easly fall in the useless category.

The stagger breakpoint for monks’ flurry attack with 2h Hammer heavy/push attack is opportunist + staggering force + EP/Tag team. I wouldn’t call your weapon trait + 2 talents “barely an investment” personally. Especially since with stagger cleave dropoff that breakpoint will pretty much only work for the first monk you hit. I really wish 2h Hammer staggered plague monks easier than it does (it ought to honestly), but the current reality is that it takes pretty heavy investment for not a lot of impact.

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This is not true. HM gets 30% extra for two strikes after pushing with asrai alacrity, giving up consistent 15% power to do so. She also gets an extra 15% from willow stance, for a max without SS of 45%. Zealot gets 20% from castigate, and an extra 25% from his ult, which is a max of 45% without SS.

He also gives up no power to do this, unlike HM who is only getting 10% for two swings after a shove, reducing her peak DPS by a fairly large amount.

“deal damage” not “deal”.

Being untouchable is great for clutching, but she can’t just straight up ignore incoming damage the way zealot can while putting out pretty high DPS. Zealot does higher DPS vs everything than her, by a fairly large amount.

It’s not about the skill of the HM, it’s just a given with invis that you’re dumping aggro when you use it. Weird niche situations where you get a whole patrol to run away with you and then lose their aggro somehow is really not disproving that, nor is dashing in an ambush lol. The situations you need invis to snipe in are generally very high pressure, and ditching aggro on your team is always a factor there.

Invis doesn’t help you isolate a monster at all, it just makes the monster drop aggro on you and go for someone else. It’s probably the worst tool in the game for this purpose.

???

FK with 2hh can’t really handle mixed hordes at all, you barely ever see it ran because of that. He’s a stagger bot, the only time you’re ever running him is because you need to stagger a heap of stuff. That has value, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not competing with zealot or any other dps focused career.

This is even more the case in live content, where you effectively never need that much control. FK is completely outclassed in overall value in live content by other kruber careers.

If you’re good at vermintide you know the value of being able to take damage. Being able to hit trade without any real worries is huge. Willingly choosing to take damage to accomplish something is not playing sloppy.

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You can trade EP/ tag team with a 10% on charm or you can go all in, keep tag team, AP, charm staggering force and you can stagger them even with lights. Also would you really call an investment for talents when there is barley any competiton? Only pity is to chose EP if you want to go all in. Would you really put SS on hammer? I feel more of a waste to use 2 proroprieties to get the hammer reach the 15% crits to make SS proc barley consistnly. Also pretty sure you can get at least 2 in most situation

Being committed to staggering force in row 2 kinda sucks. Giving up mainstay also sucks since it provides a lot of our damage. Properties are very valuable for attack speed. When Bull of Island isn’t up I tend to find I need +10% attack speed base, so giving up any properties for power hurts.

I agree with that. SS definitely isn’t great with FK and 2h Hammer. That said, if you were maxing out attack speed with Bull of Ostland + Crowd Clearer you could get some pretty decent SS uptime and 2h Hammer really really benefits from attack speed, so giving any up hurts honestly.

And yes you can go all in to reach the light attack stagger breakpoint but at that point you’ve given up basically all of your damage and you still can’t effectivenely control more than 1 or 2 monks at once effectively. So at that point honestly why not just take Hammer + shield instead?

I’ve run pretty much the exact build you’re talking about a lot, in fact it’s my main FK build, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t vastly less effective than most other builds in the game. The best thing about it is being able to knock most elites back with a push. Otherwise just a few shield dudes will sadly ruin your CC. Shield SV in a dense horde especially just kill your control and make you regret your class/weapon choices.

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Counted wrong you are right on that.

Is not like zealot can absorb infinite amount of damage hitting back like you make it sound.

I was just listing some situation where the utility of HM kit results more valuabile than just dps and did not mean to highlight the invis with the monster but the BCR. Also i’m tired of this droppin aggro is a liability for your team, is plain not true if you play with a little brain.

He handles them just fine keeping them well contolled while the rest of the team dumps them with dps, never said that that Fk compete for dps but zealot can’t compete with FK in utility and as the game is right now there is no lack of dps so i feel utility as more value than just dps. Being able to clean a horde a little bit earlier has value as you can cover more ground before the next one but grinding rats is also part of the fun in playing vermintide and i’m not sure how much ratxmeter you really gain if that make sense. Also i never said that FK is the best kruber. I somewhat agree while i don’t think tha FK is bad.

Yeah kinda (about the huge part ) is it fun for sure.

Funny you should say that…

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He can.

(edited out first vid because it was already posted)

Also at around 17m in this vid

Any career can isolate a monster and handle it if there’s enough space, HM being tanky is cool and she’s very good at kiting, but it’s not really more useful than a career that can just face tank hits if needed while still fighting back in most content. Like I said, she has a niche, but it’s really just a niche, she’s not going to consistently outperform zealot outside high weaves or some maps where you have her go off solo and complete an objective while the rest of the team kites and fights stuff.

Dropping aggro will always be a liability, some careers can make that not an issue by bringing a heap of value when they have to dump aggro, or by using invis early when they don’t have that much aggro on them, but the dash invis is something you really only use when you need to get out of a super high pressure situation. That always is going to involve dumping aggro on your team to some degree, it’s not like an RV ulting early and deleting a wave, or a shade ulting and deleting half a patrol in 3s.

Utility is valuable, but FK brings nothing but control, and a degree of control that’s completely overkill on official realm difficulties (maybe outside high weaves, I don’t know). Zealot can completely hard carry official content fairly easily just because he puts out such insane DPS without needing to really worry that much about taking some hits.

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I think is about playstyle preferences i get the 10% attack speed from propreties and i don’t feel the need of crowd clear and also too stamina hungry and have a thee just achives nothing in the buld so staggering force is barley a choice. Giving up mainstay sucks so i agree i rarerly go all in.

Then again if you want dps and attack speed you can run greatsword, bret, even exe feels kinda a waste to use a hammer at this point.
Hammer shield also a viable option just lacking in armor and superarmor dps so usually i opt for it if in the team i have a bounty hunter or a shade to take care of that. Sure the build has his weakness but not so much that you can’t work around it for that pesky shield storvermin i keep handgun ready and there is always valiant charge when in a pinch. Can there be some more effective builds? Maybe but it being vastly less effective is too much.

I’d agree it can be effective, it’s just much more team reliant than most effective builds. If your team knows what you can and can’t do and play around that I’d agree that it works rather well. As I said it’s probably my favourite FK builds, but it’s one of the weaker builds for QP for sure, since your DPS really does suck against infantry something fierce. I’ll certainly say it’s very satisfying to Ult a CW then beat him to death before he can even stand back up, which I’d say is its main advantage over a shield build. I’d say it loses in too many other regards to compete with using FK as a straight stagger bot with a shield though.

I know about the video but thatit doesent mean much, the player is obwiusly very skilled one little mistep when ult is not available and you are done and also in normal play you don’t need all that.

Any career can isolate a moster for a while but at most only IB can tank it for the entire duration of horde. I refuse to give extra comment on the dump aggro think as it has be a problem in my gameplay barley 1% of the time and even then we laughed about it, keep thingking whatever you want what can i say?

Nah i feel reverse on official i barle see the need of so much dps.