Zealot in difficulties 4 and 5

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

Right now, it feels as though in difficulties 4 and 5 the zealot is in a really weird spot. The only thing that makes it feel playable is the combination of the “Faith Restored” and “Bloodletting” skills in the first and second columns. Without those skills, it is common to get your toughness broken while trying to close the gap between the massive hordes of ranged enemies and eventually getting shot to death. With these skills you can consistently close the gap on ranged enemies and tie them up for your team (and any other nearby ranged fire) as long as you keep the critical hits coming in.

The only problem with that is that there is only 2( I believe) weapons that Zealot has access to that cause bleed reliably and therefore get those critical hits we were just talking about. The combat knife and one of the axes that specifically have the “Lacerate” weapon trait.

Other than those two weapons you can try to run the “Bloodletter” trait on the chain weapons although in my testing getting crits with these weapons is extremely inconsistent. The 1 handed chainsword for example can only pick up stacks of “Bloodletting” when using the rev-up push block attack. Both the light and heavy swings revved up do not cause you to receive any stacks of “Bloodletting,” and therefore you just don’t get any crits ever leaving you to be melted by the barrage of ranged damage that is abundant in these difficulties. Even when you do get stacks of “Bloodletting” the special attacks that cause “Bloodletter” to work and cause the bleed you need usually kill whatever you hit with it instantly.

The game seems to bottleneck zealot players into running the Catachan knife or one of the axes if they want to be useful to their teams and live more than 3 seconds in both difficulties 4 and especially 5.

I know there are bleed grenades on veteran and bleeding heavies on Ogryn but getting those to work with the small time frame zealot has to weave through enemies before disintegrating to bullets feels just as inconsistent as getting “Bloodletter” to work(at least in random lobbies)

I really enjoy all of the weapons in the game but it sucks that I know I’m gonna be a detriment to the team by running one of the more fun weapons like the eviscerator or thunder hammer :confused:

TLDR
Catachan knife or axe with lacerate crit build is the only one that feels viable in high difficulties. Maybe by adding lacerate to other weapons or some kind of skill change so that Zealot can crit consistently or run other weapons without the crit focus would make the game more fun (for me at least)

idk what yall think?

1 Like
2

I just want feats that encourage zealot’s slower weapons to shine. Maybe extra crit chance or damage with charged heavy duration, or toughness restore when dealing overkill damage (charged thunder hammer to poxwalker skull refreshes lots of toughness).

3

I have been trying the other perks minus the low health ones and need to experiment, mostly due to my preference for weapons with good cleave and lack of knowledge that knife+tactical axe were the ONLY weapons that can cause bleed. I can’t confidently talk about whether that is the only viable build, and I think the +50% toughness gain on kill and the multihit impact one might not be useless on higher difficulties?

However, hearing that other Zealots have been walking around with basically permanent 75% DR by using these weapons and feats has really got me feeling like I missed out lmao.

4

Pretty much Zealot is now locked to one build on Diff 5, the bleed crit build for which he needs either bugged Lacerate combat blade or Axe with Shred Trait. Without them he just dies on Diff 5. With them he can be ok.

But once Lacerate is patched becasue its bugged it’s only pretty much Shred. But the point is that this build is very specific. Other classes can build X or Y and just take weapons to enchance that gameplay. Zealot is locked now in certain way becaue otherwise he just can’t function.

I still think his ult should regen 100% toughness and his crit traits should be reworked to be more generic and doesn’t rely on 1 or 2 partical weapons or traits to make them work.

1 Like