I think most agree something need to happen with melee focused classes and ranged enemies. I don’t bother playing Ogyrn and Zealot on high difficulty for this reason. Mobs and melee aren’t nearly as dangerous as the ranged enemies.
not to be condescending or anything but i would diagnose that as you not fully engaging with the available damage mitigation techniques (which are poorly explained if at all ingame, tbf). it’s easy to fix:
zealots get a kind of invincibility most of the time when sliding - effectively their toughness is not reduced when hit. so ranged attacks deal no damage so long as you have 1 toughness, melee attacks deal no toughness damage (HP bleedthrough still happens so your percent toughness matters). this is VERY important for approaching enemy guns (!). if you are getting knocked out of it try Thy Wraith Be Swift which applies to ranged and melee, although it’s currently bugged and turns off your DR toughness coherency bonus so evaluate it carefully.
understanding suppression (particularly with the flamer) and putting on the right defensive curios (+ gunner resistance applies to both kind of gunners and reapers fyi) can help but imo sliding is the best zealot defensive ability. rebind both crouch and sprint to something easier to press in rhythm and learn how to do it and feel practically invincible by comparison.
There’s some resource management to maximize potential, but Zealot is easy mode. Just keep zipping, sliding and swinging. Basically never stop moving in a fight. You’re not going to have the advantage during ranged T5 encounters that Sharpshooters have though.
I play zealot a lot and have no problems with gunners. the more the better. only spread out reapers with their hillarious gunknockback are a slight problem which is usually solved with pinging and teammates or repositioning to a place where I can savely clear the rest first.
charge into gunners, get your guaranteed crithit to proc your dmgred, dodgeslide to the next ones, even if prior ones are still alive. gather them. bind elite gunners asap, focuskill shotgunners, be always surrounded by enemies to keep your dmgred online. When teammates dont help it’s even easier to survive most of the time.
use your 90cd immortality to heal up. use your charge midfight (when youre not expecting disabler) to reach and bind more enemies (look in the air so you dont target the enemy in front of you) or to get better position to solve your only problem: disablers. Using it now and then to just recharge toughness is also fine.
depending on your weapon, manage your dodges and stamina - short-dodges kill you when a disablers comes, so be ready in advance. mix runslides into your pattern to recharge dodges.
fight new gunners with pushes, so they get interrupted (especially elite gunners) and look for a new target (you!). even while in a horde: look around for gunners - meleeing trash is not your job, tunnel thru to the gunners or charge while looking in the air - your ult should be rdy all the time when the enemy density is high due to crit(-cleave)s. the gunners mostly dont shoot when their targets are surrounded by a horde, use that time to kill them and ignore the horde, because when the horde is gone, your team’s meatshield is gone.
imho, the zealot is the best counter to ranged enemies. with a psyker friend who ults a dog off you now and then he’s unstopable. we recently true duoed our first high intensity map with that comp.
a good sharpshooter can help a lot with the gunner problem, but for my taste just takes too long for them. with a zealot, this game isnt a row of cover-shootrooms.
Zealot is definitely strong on damnation. Sometimes you’re caught out in an unfortunate spot and just get deleted, but that can happen to anyone. Dodge and slide are incredibly important on damnation, and doubly so for the zealot.
EDIT: Oh dammit, I just noticed this was a massive necro. Why do people do this.
Not if you jump them in melee immediately. Tell your veterans to stop shooting everything the literal nanosecond it pops into view. They’re doing more harm than good many times. This goes quadruply so if you’re the one doing it.
If an enemy ranged group isn’t aggroed yet and you’re not making it your mission to get as close as possible so you can force them into melee then you need to change tactics.
Any shot flying your way is almost garantee to pierce your shield, making any “trade” a disfavorable one.
So shoot at enemies not aiming at you. And/or stop trying to fight range with range as the melee class. (Depending on situation, this is an overall generalization)
The number of times I outright couldn’t contribute to my team because of the lack of toughness and that’s using some toughness boosting trinkets
Were you using momentum? What feats? Toughness reduction or toughness regen focused?
Toughness curios are fantastic in conjunction with a crit build.
Please no. This game is too easy right now. Dont complain about damnation when in actuality the game needs more difficult content asap. I can run you through back to back damnations to prove how easy it is to you if you dont belive me.
In fact i was just recently in discord searching for people who are either new to the game or struggling on damnation. Perhaps you are the kind of person i need to queue with to add that slight challenge this game severely needs.
Low int. Very easy. Normal t5 also easy. Y can die and fail on any diff. But hi int. T5 is just crazy as hell. Horde, another horde, 2 bosses at once, 2-3 dogs + mutie…
I play psyker and t5 hi int. Very hard for me. Only 1 time im carried the team (i think its pure luck) that died.
If u stay alive by yourself on damnation hi int. Psyker - 99% u will be dead.
As someone who exclusively plays damnation I second this. Gun enemies are a pain and playing without a vet with a proper gun (lasgun mk12) you feel a huge difference in clear efficiency. Very often when a horde spawns it makes the server lag so that you can’t switch weapons for a few seconds. Sometimes it’s so bad that it wipes the team.
Really gives me the vibes that the game is mostly tested and scaled for Malice.
T5 is supposed to be challenging,it is what they should have been
Perhaps you are not prepared well yet,because there are people that,can already run through T5 without death or anything messy, even with a group filled with psykers, even with map modification like high int and dogs
If you are doing bad but there are people doing well,perhaps you should have a more open mind to consider at least once,that maybe you are the problem
Oh don’t get me wrong. I’ve around 400 games completed on damnation and clear high intensity without problems and the same with 2 grim damnation runs. The balance around gun enemies feels ok on Malice but feels off on damnation.
T5 isn’t extremely hard, but some aspects of it aren’t exactly balanced.
Issue then becomes than anything not “meta” becomes incredibly unrewarding and underwhelming
