Some Zealot penances encourage self destructive teamplay

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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I’m currently doing the penances for zealot that I was missing and several seem entirely counter intuitive to the gameplay loop as well as encouraging destructive teamplay.

The backstab penances encourage you to break off from squad coherency and get riddled with bullets and die isolated, or pinned by a special, most if not all combat is head on and when you’re on your own in CQC enemies will continuously rotate to face you making it take longer to kill as you have to circle dance to reach their back. That’s also not addressing the fact that special/ elite enemies will rightfully be prioritized and killed by your team before you can pull off a backstab the majority of the time which encourages you to break off greater distances making rescue for your team even more difficult.

To be fair there is a perk to give partial coherency at all times, but why would you want to break off from your squad like that in the first place?

Additionally, the 15 stacks penance is another self destructive challenge which encourages you to run in circles chasing your own tail to build stacks instead of assisting your team with ongoing combat.

These penances are not impossible, but you’re essentially tasked with jumping through a bunch of hoops, while actively sabotaging yourself and your team to kill an enemy in an oddly specific way when you could simply just kill them and move on.

The design philosophy surrounding what the penances task you with doing is really bizarre with the behavior they encourage. Penances should be actual challenges, or encourage viable strategy.

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watch fatshark not even fix the penance/backstab rules but instead just make it private.

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most zealot gameplay encourages self-destructive teamplay. it’s kind of the game they play with zealot, make you learn to balance “playing good” with “play well with your team”.

not that most zealots can do or even understand this.

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The Loner Aura is just a mistake, completely counter to everything in this video game, and the fact the penance reflects this I feel is just another terrible pile of garbo.

I literally cried hallula and insta left the game I was in to immediately swap off of it the moment I got that penance done, nothing about it’s design is fun unless you like being a griefer that leaves your team 1 aura down and 1 coherency member short.

It’s just bad, full stop. At least the 15 stacks one you can kinda do pretty evenly/passively do in the background by grabbing the ‘get 3 stacks by dodging’ upgrade and running between hordes, but the Loner Penance literally demands you to grief, the aura itself demands you to grief, and I don’t understand encouraging that, both in function and in an in game ‘challenge’.

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Running ahead for a moment, when you encounter ranged units, is encouraged.
Getting riddled with bullets, dying isolated and being pinned by a special, are not encouraged at all. Those are just things that can generally happen to bad players. Especially when they go too far away and do it for too long.

Coherency range is not all that large.
You do not have to run far away from your team.

If you simply rush ranged units when you encouner them, you will already be out of coherency, unless a teammate does the same.
Using your mobility to do that is reasonable and useful for the team, so it should be encouraged.
The only issue that i have with this penance, is that it requires backstab kills. This aspect of the penance has been rightfully criticized since it was released.

In order to engage ranged units in melee. To clear them and to prevent them from shooting and locking down your team.

And that is just what the penance asks you to do.

This is a bad take, that can only be defended by players who have no awareness.
Temporarily running ahead of the team to engage and clear ranged units in melee combat, is the opposite of griefing.

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The more I think about it the more I realize that zealot penances (specifically Unseen Assassin, Blessed be Thine Aim, Behind Enemy Lines) are very well designed, albeit unintentionally.
They push people to learn boundaries of the class.

Zealot can just say no to the bullets. They can’t pin you down you without your consent because sliding and dodging and Thy Wrath Be Swift exist. The tooltip on TWBS is wrong, it is actually total stun immunity and you can’t be pushed back by bullets if you get hit.

Don’t ignore specials then. Zealots have access to Zarona revolver and Blades of Faith that solve that pesky problem.

That’s what Shroudfield is for.

If the team enters a room and there’s a firing squad of 8 shooters and 5 gunners waiting for you across the hallway, it’s your job to walk up to them and say hello. You are the best at that. Get close to them so they stop shooting your teammates. The Loner aura also prevents the game from spawning specials to hunt you specifically if you break away from your team.

This is lunatic behavior and you understand it.

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Dodge and build those stacks. You should be dodging a lot, that’s what it tries to teach you.

These penances teach you how to play the game as a Zealot. The things you learn stay with you even after you complete them. All of these skills are crucial for harder difficulties if you don’t want to feel absolutely miserable. You should be comfortable dodging attacks, engaging multiple gunners in melee combat, keeping track of specialists, being on your own.

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I think that you point the loner penance (behind the lines)? If yes, it trains you to be able to face any situation alone.
This is a great way to learn how to play your role.

If it is unseen assassin, this one is pretty easy and you don’t even need to break coherency.

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What’s with newer players and their fear of leaving Coherency? Most Coherency aura buffs are relatively minor and don’t make much of a difference and Coherency Regen mostly only kicks in during downtime. Hell, on AM most players basically screw off to do their own thing and really only meet up when the map forces the players to or the director decides to go off the deep end. No one leaving Coherency is how you get stuck in a single location for 10 minutes fighting off a stream of special spawns because everyone is afraid to push forward.

A Zealot off in the distance is stopping that pack of gunners from shooting so your Vet can shoot. They’re holding the attention of chaff shooters so they doesn’t rip apart the team. They’re intercepting elites/specials/hordes from that direction so it’s one less flank to worry about /free shooting for ranged teamates.

Zealots also have the most tools to survive by their lonesome. Thy Wrath be Swift makes Zealots stun immune, making minor mistakes easy to get out of and melee extremely easy. Until Death+Holy Revanent is life #2. Second Wind is basically free toughness. Loner gives you immediate Coherency Toughness Regen upon entering stealth. Shroudfield is a free get out of jail card. FotF is an interrupt on demand, gives you immunity to ranged, and is great mobility. And Zealot’s CD talents means you pretty much always have them ready when you need them if you’re doing what it wants you to do.

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thread about how zealot is terrible at teamplay
zealot mains come in about how playing zealot is learning to always ignore your team for YOUR needs

every time, dudes ,we should get full FF damage on zealots so we an burst them down and leave them.

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You know, the last rusher I have met (and was kicked on a proposition of an other teammates) was an Ogryn…

Trying to get a medikit when all your team ignore all chests can save the team… and sadly, loner is good for this as the players seems to ignore 50% to 75% of the chests.
This is even worse when you see a guy that cry cause he has reached 0% ammo and that you tagged multiple times ammos everywhere… but he has never took 15 seconds to go back and pick these ammunitions.

The problem is not the loner zealot, the problem is rushers. And on this, there are rushers that play every classes.

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I personally think the backstab penance is a great teaching moment. It teaches zealots that they have so much mobility that they can rush shooters, kill them, then circle back to the team when things get more intense. Engaging shooters in melee and killing them asap is a huge help for the whole team.

I know actual rushers exist, but let’s not pretend that someone who runs at shooters in the same room outside of coherency is somehow a toxic rusher or something.

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I agree. This, is not what I define as a rusher.

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I don’t think there’s anything wrong with backstabbing and leave the aura to kill range enemies, it’s easy to do, and it’s not poisonous.

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you are blocking my shots while you run up there to slap them with your mallet, it’s much faster for most vets to deal with shooters than you are.

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Try playing the game before posting on these forums, shots don’t get blocked by players and you should be glad they’re targetting someone else. Try shooting something that isn’t already getting melee’d, also. It’s not like histg has a shortage of targets to pick

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I agree with every words you have written

For the sake of your teammates, veterans should stop killing things that a zealot engage in melee.
I will add that this also applies to a veteran in melee (I have a true melee veteran, so this applies also) or an ogryn.
I tend to think it applies also to a psyker… but I play really a lot less the psyker ;).

For the fact a veteran can deal with shooter faster… not wrong. However, when a zealot charge, the shooters stop… shooting. And that’s exactly the role of the zealot.

Then maybe you don’t need a team…

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These penances are all about flanking. You have all the tools needed to do so effectively. Speed, invisibility, guns, loner aura. You post like everyone just lays down and dies if they leave coherency. If you’re getting lit up on your approach to a firing squad, try sliding or going invis. It’ll help a lot! :wink:

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The fact that FS hasn’t changed any of the penances since they were released is dissapointing to say the least.

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Zealot is a gambler. The dealer is the Emperor. The chips are his health and the odds are usually against them. But seriously though, it’s just really easy to get carried away with Zealot. Sorry.

They have modified some penances. But ye naw, disappointed.

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Yeah, cause that’s totally happening, and not your vet dropping them in .2 seconds after shouting your entire team to full toughness, while you just sped your way out of the buff and dropped to a horde you just activated because you ran ahead instead of staying with your team.

Knives also solve this problem infinitely better too, and it’s literally on that part of the tree already. I get you want to feel useful, and you think this is helping, but sprinting yards ahead of your team to deal with a couple of gunners isn’t nearly as useful as you know, staying with them, knifing them/dropping them BEFORE they start shooting up your allies, and being able to help your team clear their way TO the gunner line verses sprinting up to them, trying to kill them, then dying yourself as half the horde turns to destroy you and your team is quite obviously nowhere near able to assist you.

I feel this could be changed if Zealots got the ‘90% aggro reduction’ on their invis like Veteran have, THEY can actually do this without being full greifers because of that, because they can deal with the threat in front of them and still have plenty of time with their aggro reduction to circle back to their team. But the zealot just runs up, beats them up, and if their team isn’t instantly able to close the gap they just made, fall over dead because their’s an ENTIRE WAVE between them and their team, and unlike with the Vet, half of them just turned to beat the crap out of you.

I’m glad you like this playstyle and think it’s functional, but on any higher difficulties (especially in pubs), 15% toughness DR to your entire team while you stand close enough to them to provide it is INFINITELY better for both you AND them than ‘I gain 1 toughness regen per second and can sprint at the shooters without causing a dog/trapper to spawn maybe’, something you can do JUST FINE without the grief aura, and keep your team AND YOURSELF alive drastically more while doing so by keeping them in your ring of holy protection.

Verses instead, not having that, and having an aura that if you play the way you say you play (and aren’t just saying that to copium yourself into thinking you aren’t just drastically lowering the total effectiveness of your team) only gives YOU a benifit like, 30% of the time when you are in the gunner line before circling back to your team. Verses you know, the two other auras, that give you 100% effectiveness AND HELP YOUR TEAM, LIKE AN AURA IS SUPPOSED TO DO AND ENCOURAGE.