Zealot: cooldown indicator for Until Death on HUD + thoughts on chip damage and Zealot in general

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

Currently there’s no indicator for when Until Death is available or not on the hud. It makes it really hard to know when I should play safe or if i can play like the psychopath the Emperor wants me to be.

On a side note, with the chip damage in the game the way it is, its very difficult to go for the “stay below 20% hp so you can get all your buffs” style of Zealot that some of the feats encourage.

One possibility that might be agreeable by all parties is for chip damage to reduce a character to 1hp, but never down a character without their toughness breaking first? Or even make that a special trait specifically for Zealot? Just a thought that might resolve the Zealot issue of wanting to be low HP but not feeling safe enough to do so.

5 Likes
2

Just play Veteran. It’s just a way better Preacher overall. I switched this morning and it’s just depressing to go back

3

I don’t want to play Veteran, if I wanted to play Veteran I would make a Veteran. I want to play Zealot, and Zealot as it is needs some changes.

4 Likes
4

Yeah chip damage needs a fix, its like playing V2 zealot except you can still be hit once and downed through 180 temp health, it fundamentally breaks zealot. Having it designed this way means you pretty need to take Holy Revenant at level 20. The toughness system is just not very well designed when it comes to zealot. Maybe if you couldn’t take chip damage under 10% health or something that might fix some issues.

2 Likes
5

Maybe it has been patched since but you actually do have an indication of the cooldown on the HUD.
It’s not bright and dead center of the screen, but alongside all the buff icons.

I do kind of agree on the chip damage though.
However maybe we have to stop seeing the VT2’s Zealot as a reference. THP is not a thing in Darktide. You could go for 50% health, and only when things get hairy you’ll get a powerup with that juicy 20% atk speed. That way you actually use the whole feat instead of half of it.

As a reminder, VT2’s Zealot had to get around 20 HP to get the full benefits from the stacks depending on health lost. And that’s if you took the +20% health on your necklace.
In DT, even with the increase of stacks, you need to lose 90 health in order to get the full benefit of these 6 stacks.
It’s not even 50% hp.

6

Having first done a Veteran and now working on a Zealot, it does feel rather painful to realise that you can have better basically everything as the Veteran when it comes to comparisons on many fronts.

The only thing I have found to be significantly better as the Zealot is mobility and ability to help your teammates when they go down, but in pure damage both in and out of melee, the Veteran wins due to the Power Sword. It is even more obnoxious when you consider that things like Charging gets stopped by range fire so if there is even a single Gunner around the corner you are about to use for a flank to get behind the gunline, you are going to have your Toughness broken instantly, at which point the range fire can just pick you apart while you try to cleave through more than a couple of them.

There are a few things I’d like to see changed to make the Zealot far better at its job compared to the Veteran as of right now. For starters I would remove the chip damage from melee, as that alone would make it significantly more viable to charge in and be the much needed distraction in higher levels for your ranged teammates to take out the rear guard, as right now between how easily your toughness breaks from the said ranged enemies, and the chip damage you would suffer to properly distract the melee chargers adds up rapidly. If in exchange the Zealot’s overall Toughness would have to be reduced, I wouldn’t be too annoyed by that if it means getting rid of the chip damage as the Zealot is the only class you truly feel that issue with due to his unique mechanic. The amount of times I have found myself stuck between the idea of having to run to the backline and take potshots with my Laspistol and risking taking on a dozen or so melee enemies, praying to the God-Emperor that I don’t get hit by one of the rear spawning Poxwalkers at any point really irks me.

The other alternative would be to let him heal his actual HP from fighting, even if it just Elites for example. Not by much mind you, maybe something like 1-5% per Elite kill or something, but something to help you negate at least some of that adding up chip damage.

The last thing that I would like to see addressed is the Eviscerator in that I would like to see it’s range increased a little bit. I got it and have only gotten through a single mission with it, but after doing some testing with it in the Meatgrinder, the range of it feels rather lackluster, especially when you consider that the Power Sword is faster with its heavy swings and can one-shot Poxwalkers without being hindered by bodies as it swings, allowing it easily clean a horde in the time the Eviscerator can get through half of it. The moveset obviously is partially to blame of this since unlike the Power Sword, you can’t chain heavy cleaves back to back and instead have to do a Heavy-Light combo, but I’d say that if the size of that weapon was increased to the level it is shown to be in the lore in most occasions, it would have something at least over the Power Sword which right now just feels like the Master-of-All when it comes to melee weapons.

So to summarise:
→ Remove melee chip damage, either for everyone or just the Zealot
→ Alternatively, let the Zealot heal tiny amounts with Elite Kills
→ Make Charging uninterruptable
→ Improve the Eviscerator’s range and/or Cleave ability to make it better suited for horde clearing compared to the Power Sword

5 Likes
7

That’s a cool idea, the “can’t die with toughness” idea. The problem for me is the number of fire effects which, by design, one-shot toughness.

Personally I hope zealot gets lifesteal or heal on kill up to 20%hp, so that attack speed feat still works but your buffer isn’t so narrow.

8

I like the heal on elite kill idea a lot. I said it once before, but zealot doesn’t even need to heal much, just up to 20% would be good I think, to keep that attack speed feat active.

9

Actually, you’re totally right… When grabbing holy Revenant as lvl 20 feat, the buff icon of “Until death” disappear, and comes back only if you change the feat.
It’s… hum… Sad.

10

There sometimes is an indicator of when the cheat death is active, and sometimes not. I think when I took Holy Revenant it stopped appearing, either that or higher difficulties hide it. If that’s the case, that’s really dumb since it doesn’t let me know when to use my charge to get my toughness back.