Currently Zealot has two build: Crit/Bleed build and Cleave Build. It’s not bad to have two different builds, so I think this is good ground to start from. There are however a lot of talents to are simply garbage/fillers and have no synergy with anything or are straight up useless/too conditional/punishing to play with. And talents that rely on low HP need to be changed as they have no place in Darktide with chip damage system.
So I will go through every talent that is currently totally useless and needs rework or talents/passives that need to be tweaked a little or nerf even so we open up more options. One by one, talk what the issue is and what balance changes I would propose to make more choices viable for more build variety.
First of All:
I would like to ask Fatshark deve who changed this from 10% passive to 7% from Closed Beta? Why 7%? What were your calculations that led you to not 6%, not 8%, but exact 7% from 10%. This change was bizzare and hideous. Not only it made Tier 3 talent MANDATORY now but also it doesn’t make sense. Lets say we have 100 toughness. One lasgunner lets say deals 25 damage to our toughness. 10% reduction would reduce that to 22,5. That means we could take extra shot to not get toughness to 0. But let’s now go with that 7%, which would reduce that damage to 23,25. Still the same result. I want to know what breakpoints calculations showed that 7% is the right move. So far it’s low bonus enough that it doesn’t matter.
My Proposition: Hear me out. Change it to 15%, but at the same time nerf this talent:
to 10% instead of 15%. Then you would have better base (15% vs 7%) that would make more options at tier 3 attractive as there would be less need to bump that at least for Diff 1-4. Also by nerfing this talent to 10% now max you get is 25% (15+10) vs 22% now (7 + 15). So not that much difference but since base is higher, then it opens more options to take instead of pigeon holed Zealot into taking talent that increase Emperor’s Will since 7% is just no high enough.
Next talent is Tier 1 talent:
This talent is just straight up worse than 2 others from same Tier.
My Proposition: is to make it “Get 10% toughness on Power Attack hit”.
This would give Zealot option for more slow weapon that use power attacks more (Evis, Chainsword, Chainaxe, Thunderhammer etc.) and work also when he is in 1v1 (boss) or 1v2 (2 Crushers for example). It’s less Toughness per second than EW,EW talent but it works when that one is not while working slower in horde mode since power attacks are quite slow.
Next talent:
This just sucks becaue with your design of chip damage nobody wants to run on low HP. So this is way too conditional. Worked in V2, doesn’t work here. Instead:
My Proposition: “Gain 5% attack speed for 5 seconds when dodging. Stacks up to 3 times”. A good competetive talent to other 2 which are very good already.
Next talent:
Garbage talent. Too conditional. If it was permanent bonus for Martyrdom stack then it would be better as you try to NOT get those stacks in Darktide due to chip damage so when you get it somewhere god knows where your team has 5 seconds of buff in the middle of nowhere if enemies were just killed? No.
My Proposition: “+20% Power to allies in Coherency for 5 seconds on Elite Enemy kill”. Works simillar to “Wild Fervour” of which hunter captain from V2. It’s nice bonus, usually in the middle of fight with a lots of elites, very competetive now.
Next talent:
Yeah… just no. This tier is for getting your Health back. Nobody would take that over chance to make his Until Death useful as without heal with chip damage the Invul on 1 HP is useless as next melee from pox wolker will kill you anyway (not to mention fire).
My Proposition to keep it in line with other talent: “When Until Death ends you regenerate up to 20% of your HP in speed of 2 HP/second”.
That would make it less good in clutch when you need to get HP fast but it would be more sustainable in situations where you don’t expect solo clutch and you have time to wait between next combat to get HP back. Competetive but different. Less potential for heal than Holy Revenant, but more sustainable. So something for something.
Next talent:
This is ok, but it needs to be higher to be good. Again it’s not bad, but it should be 35-40% to be competetive. Its more risky when Until Death hits becasue it depends how much damage hit you to get you to 1, but gives better effective HP during match if you don’t get Until Death. Small buff should be ok here.
Next talent:
Just no. Low HP as long as your chip damage exist just won’t work. And everytime you are so low in HP (90%!) to get benefit of it you want to heal up ASAP.
My proposition: “Each Martyrdom stack also gives 10% damage reduction”. This gives us nice defensive choice over 2 other strong offensive choices in this tier. So we can actually play a risky game of running at lower HP for 15% more damage from stacks but with 30% damage reduction to offset that a little. Opens up nice more defensive build.
Next talent:
Again, bad. Ult has waaay too long cooldown now for it to be good. However we could make it less selfish and more co-op friendly. Something like:
My Proposition: “+10% Attacks speed and +10% crit chance for 10 seconds for allies in Coherency after using Chastice the Wicked”. A nice buff worth of level 30 for everyone in team. Co-Op friendly, good competetive option vs other 2 that are more self-centred.
That’s how I would do it, though not every idea might be best but I hope someone can take something from it.