Why are we ignoring the fact that zealot has massive attack speed options that flat translate into DPS?
If you headshot oneshot build vet yes you can get very high damage values but this all comes at the cost of generally lower attack speeds and much higher melee risk profiles. Zealot thrives in melee in a way vet can’t. A big problem remains outlier weapons.
There is nothing wrong with melee vet being able to pump out similar damage if the values are arrived at through a different gameplay experience. Thats basically just balance. A good zealot can live in melee all game long through situations that kill anyone else and pump massive damage or even oneshot bosses. While vet is able to play in ranged situations zealot doesn’t thrive in. The main difference in character power IMO is regenerating grenades. Vet throws 90000000 kraks per h40 run. Zealot gets the occasional stun storm or inferno or just runs knives and kills every specialist.
Addendum 2:
Most people can’t melee out of a paper bag so their idea of what peak performance looks like is kinda skewed.
agreed with Reginald above. coming back to this topic, I can’t really say I agree with the core premise. Zealot has never felt “weak” in terms of damage, and their inherent tankiness helps keep them in the face of enemies to keep doing more DPS, and tying up enemies with the fastest melee attack speed in the game which in turn helps the rest of the team more safely do damage themselves as enemies get staggered.
likewise, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Vet putting up similar overall damage numbers to a Martyrdom Zealot, they’re supposed to be a glass cannon, alongside Psyker. they both have less health and toughness and overall survivability (yes shout is strong, but you can’t have it up all the time) and have strong offenses as a result.
I do however think Weapon Specialist Vet’s focus is a little too much on the melee side and some of the buffs mentioned above are like too easy to have up all the time/are uninteresting. all classes should have builds that let them flex outside of their core concept, but as Vet’s focus is ranged damage, even Weapon Specialist Vets should carry that through.
Otherwise, it’s kind of trampling on at least IJ Zealot’s territory as they both have mixed ranged/melee damage buffs and dodge distance/speed/regen buffs as well. at the end of the day, I’m less concerned overall with classes being too strong or weak, and instead just want more uniqueness across the board. I think FS can definitely push things further.
EDIT: I know I’m a broken record at this point regarding Inexorable Judgement’s place for Zealot (I have a few suggested changes here), it’s just the two classes and builds I play are Weapon Specialist Vet and IJ Zealot so I have strong feelings about them both. I do think when people talk about some of the above frustrations with Zealot, it’s ultimately less about strength and more about wanting more uniqueness?
I agree that Vet should be able to dish out similar or even more overall damage than Zealot. Vet is by no means more survivable than Zealot, and they should be able to dish out damage, especially ranged damage, to compensate. I also think that grenade regen on Vet and even Arbites is quite overtuned right now and contributing to a lot of undeserved power at no cost compared to Zealot or Ogryn which have to heavily conserve their big blitzes, or even Psyker who has very specific uses for each blitz.
What I don’t agree with is the fact that Vet can outcompete Zealot in terms of melee damage while having superior ranged output, grenade regen, and ammo regen. Vet can quite literally keep up with psyker in terms of damage right now. Vet’s melee talents are just plain overtuned, and they either need numeric adjustments or changed to only affect ranged damage IMO.
In terms of Zealot’s damage, I think there are fundamental issues with Zealot’s tree that are contributing to how the class feels (stringent damage talent conditions, lack of CC, very niche blitzes, lack of rending outside of ability spam, etc.) but I think other posts have done a better job than I can at explaining these ideas. Attack speed IMO is not as much of a direct translation to in game performance as people believe, breakpoints are much more important because no matter what your melee output will always be limited by how often you are forced to dodge an enemy’s attack. If you can hit a one-shot breakpoint on an enemy, you will outdo any other build that takes multiple hits and a couple dodges to kill that enemy regardless of attack speed.
I also don’t agree that Zealot should have “less damage” simply because they are more survivable. A huge tradeoff of the class is that Zealot has hardly any ranged damage buffs. This means that Zealot needs to be in melee more than any other class; avoiding melee means you run out of ammo quickly and enemies will never die unless you wait for your teammates to take care of enemies for you. Extra survivability helps offset the cost of half of your tool kit being heavily nerfed and is especially needed because melee combat is inherently much riskier and more involved than ranged combat. I don’t think melee damage needs to be worse than other classes (arguably) simply because Zealot is more survivable because of how heavily limited Zealot’s ranged buffs are.
Skirmisher shouldn’t proc from sliding only from sprinting and exploit weakness should be lowered to 10% or 15% extra damage and be changed to against staggered enemies (because I like shovel) instead 20% extra damage after crit. Demolition team should not exist.
I like demolition team very much, well at least the wording that was originally written: 4% chance to regenerate a grenade for your team on team elite kill. I would love to have that as an aura. Probably needs a bit number tweaking but would be the first vet aura to actively challenge survivalist.
Skirmisher is definitely one of the biggest offenders in terms of overtuned talents on Vet, as well as the free 10% crit and 25% finesse damage, and 20% damage on melee crits which have no conditional requirements in comparison to most of Zealot’s talents which have strict conditions and need to stack up.
Grenade regen in general needs to be heavily adjusted IMO since it is really breaking the game balance. Throwing knives and Ogryn rocks regen, but they have very specific uses against specialists/disablers and can’t be used as get out of jail/panic buttons. For how strong Vet and even Arbites blitzes are, they should not be able to regen as much as they do. I do think demo team has become part of Vet’s class identity though and it is fun to spam nades, so maybe removing it completely wouldn’t go over well. But definitely at least increasing the cooldown on demo team or decreasing how many grenades Vet can hold would be justified.
I do feel similarly about Skirmisher being a very basic/uninteresting condition with a strong buff. I thought of an update a while back that tries to make it more thematically appropriate while offering some unique utility:
So skirmishing is using hit and run tactics to disrupt enemy lines and also stop flanking
Partial rework to: Your first attack while sprinting or sliding deals +30% extra damage and staggers enemies in a 3M radius. 4s cooldown
In exchange for way less up time, this would help your alpha strike against big single targets and let you lay into groups with advantage
Since it also applies to your gun, it would have utility in terms of stopping strong disablers even hidden in mixed hordes if you aim well
Likewise as I mentioned earlier, something like these changes would make WS Vet a little more weighted towards ranged damage while keeping overall damage similar:
Back to the Zealot convo at hand, I do think changes are worth waiting to see how Hive Scum shakes out, since they have at least one build that will be playing in the hybrid close range melee/ranged space too and it will be good to see how FS makes it feel distinct. That in turn can help guide unique changes for other classes as well.
Vet has to shout, krak, or both at a bulwark wall. Zealot does not. Zealot can just keep hitting things and almost survive as long and easily as ogryn with toughness on chained hit and a one hander, but with more maneuverability and burst potential. Cant tell you the amount of times on melee vet I forgot I’m fine in hordes but I need to actually back up and throw a krak the moment there’s a clowncar because I’ve played zealot just before swapping back.
absolutely, also with better cleave and impact generally, Zealot can stand ground and even push through depending. WS Vet has to really be more careful and mostly do that while moving back
yeah vet just doesn’t have the DR and toughness regen to do all that
but on the other hand you can one shot crushers with the chaxe on vet, so you just need someone to take aggro and you can thrive
Any competent zealot needs to be using dodging and kiting to maintain their DR and damage buffs which is why in Havoc they are particularly bad at maintaining a stable frontline. Zealot goes down quickly if they try to play like Ogryn in higher difficulties, the TDR they get besides flat bonuses are tied to dodge and crit and most of Zealot’s weapons don’t have enough CC to stagger elite hordes the same way other classes might be able to.
Vet can shout to knock everything down, krak to delete everything in front, or just shoot to kill most elites from a distance. Zealot doesn’t have any options besides melee in most situations unless you’re willing to waste all your ammo which is why I usually argue that just like Vet deserves ranged buffs to compensate for their squishiness in certain situations, Zealot deserves good melee damage and survivability because they must use melee to solve most situations due to a lack of ranged damage buffs. TBH I’m jealous that Vet can hit such easy breakpoints on so many melee weapons that Zealot struggles to hit, and Vet just feels more versatile since grenades can fill a lot of gaps in your load out.
If you want frontline zealot that can hold against hordes and crusher clowncars try the crusher. With increased damage on stunned and +% impact per hit, you knock maulers to the ground in a single hit. Not even joking.
Zealot weapon options are extremely limited for havoc mainly because of the lack of rending, consisting of DS, evis (fotf only) and relic realistically speaking. Sure you can make other weapons work with fotf, but the damage will not be competitive, requiring extra effort from your team to make up for your lackluster performance.
Furthermore, even with fotf DS, most of your damage will come from being the fastest person on the field, simply resulting in killing things before others have a chance to. Having the highest overall damage on scoreboard often just means killing the quickest, and is unrelated to actual dmg output potential.
No matter the damage tho, a zealot should always be the last person to die, somewhat making up for the lack of.
Eh it honestly is kinda bad now (against carapace) since crushers got buffed
Of course if you use fotf the result is better
I was also using a crit build on second video which will help against crushers and bosses though it’s not optimal in general with these kinds of weapons, obviously marty would be better than both these examples but I don’t have mods so I can’t get footage of that.
Edit: Also why does it have less stagger than a rashad?
every damage talent sould be removed from all classes, they are the reason some weapons that shouldn’t overperform overperform
its what i didn’t like of old exe stance when i first played the game, it changed the damage i was doing with my bullets, which was kinda stupid
and sadly the curator dev crew doubled down on those to the point that blue talents are giving us bigger bonuses than the class abilities like exe stance, which is double the nonsense
but on OP’s topic, some Zealot do well in melee, this guy had relic blade
