Some thoughts on the Zealot

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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A bit of an identity crisis

What the zealot is: a skirmisher who’s role is to tie up large groups of [ranged] enemies to keep the rest of the team safe.
What the zealot is not: a dedicated frontline [Ogryn] or a ranged carry [Vet/Psy]

The class itself lacks identity.
It’s a rusher that can rush if it has a cooldown available.
It’s a melee fighter that is objectively really squshy.

Here are a few problems with the zealot:
1/Low toughness: any ranged damage will punch through, leaving the red bar naked and shrinking
2/Dodgy mobility: one gap closer, that can be interrupted and that can only be used to reposition offensively
3/No interesting perks
4/Overreliance on carpal tunnel mechanics such as slide spamming

Proposal:
1/Increase the toughness
100 is clearly very very low. Especially with the class ability nerf from 100% to 50% (which… wouldn’t change the speed at which it disappears).
Remember, the lower the toughness, the more bleedthrough damage you take, so the less said toughness is useful.
If you do not have 90%+ toughness, toughness will not save you from ranged weapon fire or melee attacks.

2/Give the class an inate that helps him achieve a goal that isn’t the Ogryns
-Extra sprint speed
-Natural stamina regen
-Extra dodge range
-Lower cooldown between actions (dodge, slide, etc)
Those are the tools the zealot uses to get within crusading distance of dangerous enemies.
Class ability could also be used to target allies or cover some amount of distance if needed (repositioning).
Inate cooldown speedup on melee kills could also help the class get more mobility if need be.

3/People have gone over those many times…
But things like “give martyr bonus for 10s to your friends in coherency when you gain a stack”… Who???
Or 20% all damage stacks vs 6 stacks of martyrdoom [suicide as that means playing with 10% hp for… 30% power] vs 25% cqc ranged damage
Or 25% extra hp thanks to that passive regain of health on damage taken…
A lot of them are bland or downright bad.
None of them provide the zealot with the tools he needs to do his job.
None of them have any real identity or synergy (except crit)
We know you can do better Fatshark!

4/If you’ve been inside the game files, you’ll have had access to the Eldritch knowledge that all class do not work the same in engine. Zealot takes no damage when sliding. Which is a huge bandaid fix.
I’ve spent thousands of hours on warframe and done enough Zorencoptering to tell you: this gets old and painful fast enough while not fixing any problem.
I think a fair amount of the Zealot’s power lies in the hidden mechanics of his slide, his 0stamina sprint speed, etc. And the player has no direct agency over that power. It’s just there, take it or leave it.

At the moment, the Zealot crutch is the contentious flamer. A strong weapon that only he can access. At this current time, it’s a fine weapon with very notable strengths and less obvious drawbacks. But it could change within a heart beat.

While the Zealot is very clearly playable, the amount of work needed to get it to work doesn’t feel worth it, when a Vet with a gun can do the same work from the safety of his couch.

I am a bit tired of being questionned on the why of this class?
“Want to play melee? Ogryn does this so much better!”
“Want to play ranged? Y u no play Vet?”

*My personal saltmine: Zealot & Vet share a lot. *
DT is a game where melee enemies pose no real threat (shooty shooty makes any melee meanie go away).
Yet one class is very clearly overtuned and has varied interesting playstyles (helps having what equates to 1200+ toughness with ult).

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Slide modifier is incredibly overrated. Everyone is immune to ranged damage in slide and it’s pretty rare to even be hit by melee while dodge sliding. It does make being ultra aggressive on Plogryns easier since you can just ignore their slam with slide but it’s honestly rare that it makes any real difference.

Vet is super overtuned to be honest. I really don’t think Zealot needs to work that hard at all, and I am excluding flamer when I say that. TWBS is honestly kinda crazy strong. Base better attack speed and Rising Conviction give a fair bit of DPS. Martyrdom is a noticeable boost when you do end up on low HP. He has a few dud feats for sure, but the good options he does have work great.

I do think 150 base toughness would be reasonable. Zealot does struggle a little too regain a lot of toughness when separated from his team unless there are a lot of enemies nearby and they’re running crit cooldown reduction to spam Ult. Scattered shooters are needlessly annoying currently.

Debatable. Zealot has much better single target and balanced all rounder weapons.

Again Vet is too good at way too many things. Zealot can melt a crusher with a brauto or HH though which is a pretty nice unique thing to them with guns generally.

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So after not fixing it for 3 major patches, does that mean the Zealot class ability interaction with ranged is intended, or are they still paying off years of technical debt in trying to seperate ranged and melee damage in their code?

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I imagine because the tradeoff would be having to actually be in melee range to get the stacks…

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Yes, half of Zealot’s talents aren’t interesting and in need of change. But I have to disagree that Zealot lacks identity or strength. No class can do Zealot better than Zealot.
Zealot is pretty reliant on their weapon’s blessings and perks in order to shine (flamer being the exception), compared to Vet that can simply make anything work.

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Half of what’s amazing about Zealot isn’t even on the stat page. 150% stamina regeneration speed is god, and he has almost as much stamina as Ogryn base (Ogryn weapons just get more stamina total). I love him just for being able to run whatever melee you feel like and still carry T5.

He’s still much better overall than the rest imo, regardless of whether or not he’s in an identity crisis.

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Problem is specifically, that for the zealot to work, it needed so many bandaids under the table…
It’s like putting ductape to secure your engine parts, closing the hood, and calling it a day :rofl:

There are just way too many similarities with the Vet.
If Vet only had access to a fraction of the melee weapons… Perhaps there’d be more identity…
Alass no reason to gimp the vet to draw out a reason to play Zealot.

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Agreed. The reason to gimp Vet is that they have way way way too much survivability for their damage output. Maybe if playing Vet wasn’t baby mode (I’ve been playing Vet a lot recently and holy moly this class holds your hand with a vice grip) people would focus on bad feats individually rather than tar a whole class with that brush mistakenly.

They feel entirely different to play to me and their feat trees in no way resemble each other. I genuinely have no idea what you’re on about here.

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I meant weaponwise hahaha
Psykers has force swords and staffs
Thunderhammer, powermaul, and the Ev aren’t exactly the most popular weapon choices among zealots atm…

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Oh well that makes a little more sense I guess. Well I mean yeah a bromo combat axe feels pretty similar whether you’re using it on Zealot, Vet, or Psyker. That’s not really a Zealot issue, in general class abilities don’t alter how they use weapons in particularly meaningful ways. Zealot’s bonus impact feat does feel pretty noticeable on high cleave weapons though. And if you got low health high attack speed feat you’ll definitely notice it on most weapons.

Thunderhammer is pretty popular from what I’ve seen both on the Discord and in game. Everyone knows Crusher is S tier it’s also just extremely boring to play unfortunately. Evic is also solidly popular from what I’ve seen. Then there’s also heavy sword which is BB levels of horde melting but while also 2 shotting Damn Ragers and just generally having insanely good damage cleave.

I dunno I just don’t see it. Zealot feels very noticeably like their own thing to me.

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I don’t see enough in Damnation to have a perfect sample, I will grant you that.
Those I see all run with the axes.
Sometimes a brave autogun…

Edit and again, a lack of scoreboard sometimes makes it hard to really know one’s imapct

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Heavy swords became very popular a while ago and an evi is a great neutral weapon. TH is having a renaissance as we speak, zealot mains in DT discord are chasing BiS blessings and perks. Expect an influx of THs soon.

And now about Zealot’s identity.
A zealot is a close range combatant, his damage output goes up as his HP go down. Unlike a veteran, the closer a zealot is to his enemies the safer he is.

I still cannot get why did you call a class with 200 base hp and a huge stamina pool, highest damage resistance on all movement, possibility to get 65% damage resistance, a flat out invulnerability, 50% toughness regen on demand, and an unique ability to self heal “squishy”.

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Yeah bromo combat axe is a bit overrepresented generally. People gravitate towards safe obviously good options. At some point people will realise Zealot is amazing with a lot of weapons eg chain axe is actually cracked on Zealot in particular at the moment and the theoretical damage potential for auto pistol after the last patch is actually pretty insane.

I will say there is no other class I feel as free to use whatever melee weapon I want and get away with it. Kinda true for Ogryn too but they don’t have half as many options to begin with and need to care a lot more about what ranged weapon they pair with it.

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I still cannot get why did you call a class with 200 base hp and a huge stamina pool, highest damage resistance on all movement, possibility to get 65% damage resistance, a flat out invulnerability, 50% toughness regen on demand, and an unique ability to self heal “squishy”.

Hp is worthless if it gets chiped every time you take ranged damage
65% DR is playing with a crit build, which is RNG based (crit CHANCE), and locks out a lot of weapons
Flat out invuln, toughness on demand, and self heal are all pretty much cooldown based.

Invuln in charge is fine, but once you are done, now what? (no bad faith argument please :slight_smile: )
Toughness on demand… that’s… 50. Well that really ain’t anything.
Self heal had a 2min cd and relies on you being able to hurt something hard enough to heal up.

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Just a reminder damage reduction is multiplicative not additive. Enough people are confused about this as is let’s not spread misinformation.

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  1. Ranged damage doesn’t clip through toughness.
  2. That’s the point, if you play like a vet you’re gonna have a bad time because your toughness is 1/2 of vet’s (and that’s before counterfire and other feats). Despite having a very similar weapon pool, these classes encourage different playstyles.

It doesn’t matter. Picking any weapon and appropriate feats locks you out of other weapons and feats for that mission. There always tradeoffs, but there is a possibility to get 65% DR if someone desires to do so.

Uhh… Assuming I don’t misplay this, I’m either healed or away from the skirmish, recovering. It depends on the feat.

Yes, it does require some measure of skill and experience to use effectively. 90s cooldown is pretty generous IMO.

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it’s literally, not figuratively, two buttons. why do people seem to have such a block to this? pick any two buttons you can comfortably press in rhythm. i leave sprint where it is and put crouch on my mouse. it’s extremely not difficult.

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Cough 57.5 % DR Cough

Seriously stop spreading misinformation.

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So, dude.
Since I have not played for a long time on the Zealot, namely, since the very time as it completed absolutely all the achievements (250 missions inclusive) and pumped 3h more characters (and made almost all the achievements (which is, 250 is still not done)). So, seeing your post, I thought, really fanatic downgraded and he is now good for nothing. And went to check. (Played three missions on difficulty 5, with reduced modifier, the usual and with the increased modifier.)
Guess how many missions I passed? That’s right, all of them. Did I feel deficient? Nope, the Zealot is still a killing machine.
Yeah, I’ll admit, after Veteran, I had some discomfort as I got used to playing the first map. But then, oh miracle, it was okay.
I will not describe how to play on Zealot, I’ve done it a bunch of times in the discussion in Steam. I’m lazy. However, I will describe the gameplay of, let’s say, a typical zealot in the public and make some conclusions.

So, a huge number of players use such a great bundle as a knife/axe and flamethrower on the Zealot. Wonderful, their right, however, let’s consider the disadvantages of this build, the pluses are clear (YOU FLASH, YOU KILL hordes of garbage eh, that’s all).
So, minuses, you CANNOT hit ranged targets, you can’t kill an Ogrin with a shield, you can’t deal normal damage to a boss or monster.
You can’t normally control and kill the horde with your **ck-knife.
Hence the following, at long range you are a useless piece of meat that gets shot, after that you feel like flawed glass. In a situation where the horde comes, and in front of the horde ogryn with a shield - EEEEEEE, I clamp the attack button my flamethrower, yyyyy, which does absolutely no damage, and only prevents stun shield dude with a bolter (he needs to spend more ammo). You got separated from your team and didn’t have time to reload the flamethrower and you’re surrounded by a horde and 1 shooter on the steps that you can’t get to, whoops, you’re screwed. SNIPER, and your Veteran is dead, oh boy…
Oh, there’s a MONSTRO OGR running at you, uh, RUN, **tch, RUN!
Oh, it’s the boss, now I’m going to stab him to death with my knife! (No)
Oh, it’s a couple of shooters, let me see if I can reach them with my flamethrower. Meanwhile, the veteran standing next to you is staring at you with contemptuous, empty eye sockets, his eyes dripping out. ( Yes, you won’t believe this, but when you use your damn flamethrower there’s absolutely nothing your comrades can see, just remember that.)
You walk into a room full of shooters, mmm…See the phrase about the MONSTRO OGR.
Here are the conclusions. You use 1 weapon for the horde, okay. But your second weapon, i.e. close combat, who is it for? Just makes you FLASH. Hence all your problems.

Grab one powerful ranged weapon (like the bolter) and one powerful horde weapon (like the power hammer), tweak your build, blessings, and trinkets to suit them (hint - try crit), and voila. A little practice and you will be surprised how your gameplay has changed and you have become much more confident.
I just ask you not to take these talents in the build, ala, the less hp the more speed and blah blah blah, because the lower the hp, the more likely you are to die.

And as for the comparison with the Veteran. Where the Veteran is most likely to die, close combat, yes, no matter how cool the power sword is, close combat for the veteran is still a huge problem. And when you don’t have ammo, and you are surrounded by the Horde (yes, all sorts of Ogres, flamethrowers, etc.), well, the Veteran is most likely the end, he will not be able to escape from there and the grenades will not help here either, but the same Zealot will throw a stun grenade at his feet, swing his hammer back and forth and run away with his F ability.
The Zealot can break the distance or close it, and he can also be invulnerable for a few seconds, which is enough to survive in situations that the Veteran did not even dream of. + Zealot has an anti-stun ability, lolololo.
Oh yes, the Zealot can roll around the field on his ass, jump and run like Usain Bolt, but the Veteran cannot, because the face will break in a couple of blows. That’s it.

Oh yeah, here’s a picture for my pasta. I still laugh at her.

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