Mained zealot to level 27. Have to agree with many parts of this post. I’m going to go down the list of why Zealot feels bad to play. Most of this is talents, since the base kit all I can say is “wow, you gave me selfish abilities in a co-op game, where as other classes have ones that help or do a lot more useful things.”
Many talents in comparison to the Ogryn feel outright useless. My friend keeps looking at me and says “You’re just an Ogryn but worst.” And I have to agree with them.
Toughness reduction talents going from a combined 30% (10% coherency, 20% talent) to 22% is really dumb. It barely does anything now, and considering your toughness breaks on difficulty 3+ if a stray lasgun hits you, I have no idea why this was nerfed.
I really enjoyed toughness on kill. The other perks in the tree are useless in comparison to me. 50% tougness damage reduction if I crit? Yeah, where’s my crit chance? Oh right, locked behind RNG. Restore tougness used to be 7% per second instead of 5%. It’s as useless now as it was then. Instead of 15 seconds to restore to full toughness, it is now 20 seconds. Considering just about every enemy eats through that immediately, I see no reason to pick anything but toughness on kill. And if the game works like Warframe’s shieldgating where you just juggle toughness to avoid damage, that’s already a problem.
I hate the level 10 talents with a passion. I keep switching between them because they all feel so useless. 10% crit chance on a bleeding enemy is anti-synergistic unless you have a melee with crit and bleed on it, which I haven’t seen. Cut through 3 enemies for a 5 second buff you can extend by killing more enemies, and 2 buffs I don’t know what they do. I can guess, but I shouldn’t have to guess, the game should tell me. More attack speed the more injured you are. As of right now, there is no reason to be injured on Zealot. There’s not enough benefit to threading the needle. I typically switch these up and feel none of them have an impact.
Level 15 talents are okay, but only two are readily available. Holy fervor is useless, with Martyrdom proccing every 50 HP and no reliable way to heal yourself, you can’t juggle to keep this passive active. Nor would I want to, since 20% power means nothing to me. Benediction is what I typically go with, since it’s something I don’t have to think about. You can make an argument for this or Inspiring Excoriation, but given how long the CD is of the ability, I feel like the toughness reduction will just be more applicable more often.
20 is where I thought finally this class will make sense. It didn’t. I don’t know what’s wrong with Holy Revenant or what, but it heals like nothing. I have been in the middle of a horde on difficulty 3 and healed 40 hp after constantly slashing with an Eviscerator. If I have to use a flamethrower on a horde of 50 just to get a significant amount of HP back, then this will never be useful. Thy Wrath Be Swift is if you want to be a discount Ogryn, which ranged enemies can hit you through objects so it’s still useless. Faith Restores all is the only option here since it effectively gives you 25% more hp.
25 is yet another talent tree that has only 2 options. Emperor’s Executioner would only be picked if you are going for a penance. You’re a melee focused class, you have no reason to pick this. Rising Conviction is my set it and forget it talent. However, currently due to the way Martyrdom works, you only have the second option right now anyways. 20% more damage feels like it does more than each stack of Martyr giving 5. Not only that, but I can’t tell if it does anything, since Meat Grinder doesn’t let you have stacks of Rising Conviction. For all I know the icon is coming up in combat, but not actually doing anything.
30 Another talent tree that looks like it has multiple options like before, but only has 1. I haven’t seen a weapon good enough to pick Invocation of Death. Fury of the Faithful is useless considering how long you have to wait for your ability to come up. Purge the Wicked is the only choice since you have an oh gee wilickers button to get out of a bad engagement, and bursting down priority targets. This lets you become a special/boss killing machine.
In nerfing the Zealot you have just made them even more one dimensional and unfun to play. If I didn’t like the sound design, I would have switched to Ogryn sooner.
On top of this, the whole reason I played Zealot was to get the thunder hammer. Not only do I use the eviscerator on top of it, I feel cheated and honestly like I wasted my time. If I want to kill specials, I have to learn how to do a specific playstyle of pushing before hitting because the grunts will eat my hammer attack. Why is it easier to use a chainsword than a god damn hammer? Why does this not have cleave/damage/penetration as the god damn capstone weapon? I should be batting hordes aside, not tossing them around playfully while unable to kill the target I was going after.
And the reason why most melee feels unfun to play with right now is because of the stupid stagger mechanics from ALL ranged weaponry. Vermintide 2 only had a gatling gunner pushing you back. Why the hell does every single ranged enemy in Darktide push you back? No wonder I never see any high levels in this class. I personally only like the flamer (because of horde clearing) and bolter (because of special killing) but god damn, if I go flamer/melee I feel useless half the time because you spawn 50 ranged enemies on higher difficulties and the veterans are the only ones allowed to play the game. Please give the Zealot some love, or at the very least change the ignore melee stagger to ignore ranged stagger. Up some numbers, change some feats again, just anything to make the class fun instead of “Balanced”