The Zelot is broken now

I feel like the Zealot has become a totally broken class with the combination of abilities and equipment in the game right now. The way you can get things to stack has turned him into a catch all character that really has no weakness.

The Current Build I’m using is as follows.

Duel wield with 20% crit power and 5% crit chance and 20% Attack speed on crit

Pistols with 20% crit power and 5% crit chance and Barrage

Necklace had 20% health and 30% block cost reduction with 30% healing effects

Charm is 20% crit power, 10% vs armored and 50% longer potion effects

Trinket is 5% crit power and 33% Curse resistance and chance not to consume Nades.

Talents consist of

Health on Kill, 20% attack speed buff when below 20% health, Smiter, 15% health gain per stack of fiery faith, either 10% damage reduction or if I really wanna go ham 30% movement on taking damage, with Zeal to get me 50% cooldown on my CS when I use it.

What you end up with is 120% health on kill, 65% haste, +40% damage or +50% damage vs most targets, +80% damage or +90% damage crits, power attacks that can’t be interrupted, the ability to get your CS back as it’s effect ends, a CS that allows you to revive in almost any situation if you use it to dodge away from the enemy while you are picking some one up, it can be used to close the gap on the enemy, reposition to assist a ally in a bad spot, run from the enemy, dodge to reposition to deploy your pistols as well as jump gaps that chars with no dash could.

All of this adds up to a broken class by it self, but then when you throw in the Brace of pistols you now have all of that stuff with your ranged attacks with a ranged weapon that’s pretty much hit scan. Even with the damage fall off at sniper ranges it still blows holes though just about everything but the most armored of targets, and with a Str pot you melt bosses with them like a shade.

So in the end you end up with a class that had no weakness, can control hordes, has amazing Damage vs Hordes, has amazing damage vs Elites and Specials, has a ton of Utility, has amazing Boss and Monster damage, has amazing ranged damage, and has off the charts sustain in combat. Theirs no job he can’t do extremely well.

And when you look at a class like the Slayer, what should our class him based on the lore, at least as a Melee fighter he just totally outclasses him, when you throw in the fact that Slayer only had 3 slow rate of fire throwing axes and how much more damage Salts can do with his ranged attacks and how much less skill it takes to connect with the ranged attacks and how quickly you can deploy your pistols to shoot a special even in the middle of a crazy melee it’s just not even a contest in Char abilities.

I feel like for one, the bonus damage and attack speed he gets from his talents should not be applied to his ranged attacks, he’s a melee focused DPS class. For two 120% increased healing effects is just much. And no class should just be able to pretty much use their CS endlessly the way he can right now.

I love the Zealot, he’s a ton of fun to play with and always has been. But when I’m playing with both my high skilled friends or PUgs I’m constantly killing 90-95% of the specials and 80-85% of the elites and ending the round with 16k+ damage and more kills than the other 3 players combined. That doesn’t sound like much fun for the other people even if it’s a ton of fun for me to Rekt stuff like that.

Please for the love of Sigmar bring him back in line with the other hero’s and their classes.

10 Likes

Well he got buffed he was way to good for his own now he is even better. But looking at WHC and BH well WHC still is way better option for good team

Honestly, in this situation, nerf a career is the last thing that I would think…

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Normally I’d have to say something along the lines of “you can’t compare” etc etc. But given I’m not 100% with where Slayer is, compare away my friend.

Generally, I’d be on the same page. I want more careers to feel strong and unique in lieu of chopping down the ones that currently feel good. That said, I do agree with OP that Zealot is a little bit too all-enompassing.

WHC brings incredible damage for melee and range with a couple of great party buffs, but he relies on headshots to get the most out of his kit. BH can pump out really consistent ranged kills but suffers for attack speed and melee prowess. Zealot just has it all: great damage, great survivability, good utility, strong clutch potential. I personally feel like he was pretty over-tuned even before the patch. The defining part of his design, which is taking damage and going low on HP, has no real drawback. His ability to generate temporary HP is so strong that he doesn’t need to worry about dropping HP or taking occasional hits. Would like to see more risk/reward in his design, personally.

4 Likes

;-; I’m so salty about Slayer’s current state.

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I agree, the point he’s at now has gone beyond the risk reward of taking a few hits now and then and being able to fight though the pain, to full on hulk mode where it simply almost doesn’t matter if I’m getting hit or not. I block only so I can counter attack swing. I’ll just face tank and trade hits all day long and only really work to avoid a hit that can drop me in a single attack like a over hand from a Chaos Knight if my Resit death is on cool down. I feel like theirs simply very little to no risk in his game play anymore.

I guess I don’t really think of it a nerf, he was powerful from launch, and he’s just been constantly buffed with the over all
Changes they have made, as well as his class specific Changes, and this Last DLC re-work just put him well over the top of the other chars IMO. He simply does everything really well, it’s not that he’s the best In class at everything, it’s that he has zero weaknesses and some of the stuff he can do is just over the top broken. As a total package I feel like it all adds up to a totally broken class at this point. It’s less of a nerf and more of a bringing him back in line with the rest of the classes after the rework in the DLC.

Pointless to go 33% curse for Cata runs. 33% curse is only good in Hysh purge weaves.

Also your i see you lack % chaos % shaven in your build, maybe replace this crit power with that., because if you dont have % enemy, you will have feeling like you hit terminator from Arnold movie.

1 Like

Why should they ever nerf something in a PvE co op game? It’s not like you have to take a zealot because the other team will… I just dont get this mentality. Bring other careers up; don’t bring some down

If you think it’s OP, don’t play it? From my experience on legend QP, people could use some more OP characters because we are getting destroyed on a regular basis.

8 Likes

This question is a lot more egregious in a game where every change they’ve made in 2.0 has been done in the sake of balance. Why balance the game? Because balanced is better.

3 Likes

I think the idea is to keep the game
Challenging, And to keep the game balanced across all chars. I think that it takes away from other people’s fun when one class can do both his Role as DPS as well as the jobs of other classes who give up their DOS for another role like crowd control or tanking or other utility.

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The builds focus is on stagger and then crit damage. When one in 5 attacks is a crit and that crit hits twice as hard as normal vs most targets it just lays stuff out. I attack so fast that I’m throwing a crit once every 1.5 secs

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If you buffed everybody up to be as powerful as Zealot the game would be too easy, and having seen this sort of thing in other games someone would inevitably end up more powerful than the rest so you have to keep patching and tweaking and powering up characters to match the new peak. Enemies as well, because once the game gets too easy for a majority of the characters there’s no challenge and thus no point, so it becomes this juggling act of balancing enemies and classes against one another, costing a ton of dev time…

…or you could just reign Zealot in, because he’s been a terribly designed class since the game launched, and save a ton of headaches in the process. It’s not really a matter of ‘just don’t use it’ - other people are more than happy to stomp haphazardly through your games with him. Bounty Hunter ended up becoming one of my mains almost exclusively to prevent Zealots from joining my games. I feel like it doesn’t really need much more elaboration than that.

(On the flipside, i’ve actually loved playing BH, so it wasn’t a total loss.)

5 Likes

I may agree that Zealot is kinda strong now, but he is surely weaker than before. Previous talent that reduced damage by 50% was too strong, and I even made posts about it before. You had 360 effective hp and big hp regen.

Right now, it’s still possible to be bursted down, if you are not playing carefully. I think it’s interesting concept, where character can be bursted down, but gets a lot by staying in fight and killing. It’s very “Zealot-ish”, you may say.

It becomes more clear in “on the edge” situation, where you have 1 total hp, and several stormvermins/chaos warriors are chasing you. The best option is usually to go in and try and kill one and get rewarded for that. It’s thrilling and satisfying moment to get that big chunk of hp. But since you are still in the risk and going “all in”, you are still in the risk of being killed.

But I may say, that passive working by green hp only - is still bad idea. Green hp doesn’t have that much value compared to white hp, there is no risk involved in having 149 white hp and 1 green, because you have plenty of enemies on high difficulties and weaves. I believe passive should be working by total hp, not green one. Maybe buffed a bit to compensate.

1 Like

Hes weaker than before because he misses a real good damage reduction talent now. Hes a good class to carry a weak team and average for a strong team (WHC simply is better then). So I would say hes strong, but not too strong.
Just try and play him.

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Only defensively, and this is in strict comparison from a mathematical focus. If we then compare him to the state of the game as it is right now? Hmm. Anyways, right now, though I’m loathe to do this, simply draw comparisons to Slayer. Who does a bit more damage but can just flat out fold in half if a stray wind breezes his cheek.

It’s unfair to compare anyone to Slayer, because he is most questionable career atm, and suffers most from dodge changes. But I think every other class has something OP in their arsenal, which makes them fun. I do believe, that Zealot’s increased health gain - should be his core identity, but he should get much power while having lots of white health, because “there is no risk involved, and Zealot is all about being reckless and getting in risky situation”.

Talking about “something OP”, I’ll list OP features of other classes:
1).Merc has lots of offensive and defensive power. Healing team is still straight up busted, and he is commonly picked in high level teams.
2).Huntsman got 2 talents, that cover his 2 weaknesses from the past - ammo sustain (that is not based on aim) and defensive options in ult. He can now generate ammo from killing specials and stay invisible during ult, which is HUGE improvement compare to his old gameplay.
3).FK while less meta, has lots of utility, and is on handmaiden level of survivability, capable of stunlocking hordes with shield, being straight up tanky, and still have some offensive options, if one wishes so.
4).Waystalker spams ult while generating ammo. Like good old ranged meta. J_sat managed to get like 47k damage done with hagbane on Cataclysm Horn of Magnus. Also piercing shot for memes.
5).Handmaiden got a bit weaker, but she is still best career to survive anything. Dodge changes don’t affect her much. The only reasonable nerf - you can’t cheese enemies with invisibility and bleeding, but that’s okay.
6).Shade still does lots of damage. Slightly weaker than before, but capability of generating ammo and staying invisible for most of the time awards backstabbing, and she is still generally picked in high level teams.
7).Ranger veteran is interesting. Because of having much better ammo sustain, he still can run grudgeraker, even with crit-melee ammo generating being fixed, and shotguns are great since hordes actually matter now. Lots of utility stuff as well.
8).Ironbreaker. Good as ever, and flamethrower is nuts.
9).Slayer is questionable, as I said. Compared to anyone else, he needs much more skill to play in melee to avoid getting hit, but numbers-wise, he is still a beast.
10).WHC has two new talents that can guarantee crits. If you can consistently headshot, your damage skyrockets in high difficulties.
11).BH is good old ranged meta. More capabilities of bursting bosses, while being capable of generating ammo.
12).BW is straight up broken with all her AOE.
13).Can’t say much about pyro, but from my experience, good as ever.
14).Unchained’s new AOE heal is total nuts, and in general pretty good from my observation, even though I didn’t play her much.

Comparing to Slayer may be right in the terms of “How these two are making themselves OP”, and answer in both scenarios is “I gain huge melee buffs and do lots of damage that way”.

Slayer doesn’t promote getting hurt, while Zealot does. But if passive works on green hp only, basically Zealot is just tankier, while having the same damage buffs. Which is the problem and what makes him somehow superior to Slayer.

I think the right way would be nerfing passive to work on total hp only, but buff talent that grants damage reduction damage based on your passive.

2 Likes

I had a long post planned out but upon revision I don’t think all of that is necessary. Every bit of your post is listing the one thing that a job is supposed to excel at. With the exception of RV. I don’t think anybody in this dimension is going to say that RV is OP. And while you mentioned Huntsman having ammo parity you forgot to mention that the loss of his reload talent limits two weapons that were dependent entirely on it.

Zealot promotes getting hurt but generates enough temp to completely circumvent it. Has access to brace which also are great while circumventing the entire stagger system, has great wave clear, can take more risks, and does great damage at all ranges. That was OPs point. All strengths. No drawbacks.

His suggestion is to create parity by reducing survivability bringing it more in line with the other careers. I think I agree with that.
Lastly you should probably check the damage output numbers again.

Ultimately I’m not as invested to see the job remain as strong as it is. So I think I’m actually done with this debate in general.

1 Like

Talking about hunstsman, it kinda sucks to not have reliable reload speed on blunderbuss, but blunderbuss is strong in general, so idk. I had big success with it since WoM dropped.

Getting back to the topic - I still agree with OP’s and your points. We are all up to nerfing Zealot though, so it’s about of the way, how to do it.

My point is about keeping his health sustain at low health (because gameplay is exciting when stakes are high), while nerfing his passive at full health, because that’s main point why he is that strong right now, and it would better contribute to career’s identity or “a job is supposed to excel at”.