After playing Zealot to level 20 I am really really dissapointed with how Fatshark messed up. I still really really hope all of this are just bugs and unintended changes. However right now playing Zealot is like playing a handicapped Veteran. The whole flashy playstyle of dashing from squad of enemies to squad of enemies from Closed Beta being a dashing devil is just gone. If I want to sit on my cheeks and shoot stuff I will play Veteran or Psyker. The Gameplay loop for Zealot is just screwed right now. Try to play on Diff 4 and it shows immidietly:
Current Zealot is not fun and his good gameplay loop from Closed Beta is just gone:
Change (hopefully bug) to his Ult cooldown was idiotic. This class needs low cooldown on it if you expect low HP mechanics to work and us dashing around. Zealot in Close Beta had very good role of engaging in melee range enemies to prevent them from shooting/suppressing your team. With low cooldown you could sprint to enemies, let you toughness go dow, dash to them getting it back, engage in melee. By the time you were done with them you had your Ult up and you could dash back to help team if needed or engage another pririty target squad.
Currently not only you get 50% toughness back (hopefully bug) but also your cooldown is super long. What it does is I try to close distance (can’t shoot them cause suppression), I use dash to get my toughness back. Enemies still smack my 50% toughness back to 0 (in Closed Beta with 100% I would still be left with hood chunk of it) before I swing. I deal with them and my cooldown is so freaking long I have to sit duck instead of closing distance to next range enemies that’s it’s just pathethic. The nail to coffin is that some mastermind also reduced the distance of his Ult. In game with huge long corridors and long open spaces. I just can’t… It’s not fun. That’s not why you want to play Zealot. The whole fun gameplay loop is just gone from this class.
Now Zealot in Closed Beta had it’s issue but those issue were tied to being designed around low HP in game without THP vs like it was in Vermintide 2. However Fatshark instead totally ignored that part of our Feedback and instead they messed (hopefully it’s all bugs) the WHOLE LAST THING THAT MADE ZEALOT be playable like that in Darktide despite that low-hp design flow: his freaking toughness recharge was good enough to somehow off-set that mechanics that are not suited here like there were in V2.
How can you screw like that I don’t know. Or it’s all just bugs and we will get back good Zealot soon I hope. If not I have no hope for devs team to balance anything in future.