I always found interesting the sentiment of the statement that Zealot is the weakest class
It is true, on one hand your ability to deal damage is inferior to many other classes, as well as your utility not being as good as the other classes, and boss busting being more of a “Meme” since the game is so powercrept now that every class can deal good dmg to it without needing to invest unlike Zealot
But… Zealot has Shroudfield
Shroudfield is the most OP ability in the entire game (this is not news, it has been said many times), essentially allowing Zealot to clutch ANYTHING as long as they don’t get cornered
I started playing Havoc 40 solo since I was really curious, and oh my god, I get SO MUCH FURTHER with Shroudfield than any other class in any other combination
I even ended up completing my first solo BECAUSE of Shroudfield
Which begs the question I baited you all into reading this thread… Why do people constantly reject Shroudfield Zealots in H40??? I’ve seen so many people say “useless zealot should run book instead”
Grinding the pro trader penance in a gamemode that is close to being dead has driven me insane, I finally gave in and started playing rat shroudfield zealot with knife and flamer and it’s just silly the sh*t you can survive with that setup.
Very easy to answer. If you have a stealth zealot who is not able to solo a havoc 40 you will loose. And at that point people prefer not to gamble but rather be relevant for the success of the mission themselves.
With a stealth zealot you get random aggro spikes akin to playing solo but less predictable. So you need to play extra safe or be extra good to not die. If you are able to do that why not just play without the player (or solo). If you are not able to do that you have to hope your zealot is able to ress you, hence the success of the mission is not in your hands. Kinda sucks to not be relevant… So either way there is no way a stealth zealot adds to the joy of playing the game. And I am one who allows all loadout in my games.
bud, 99% of players cant even play meta builds correctly, so i will never take those players into my lobby. had a stealth zealot in a lobby i joined a couple of days ago (1st time i joined other ppls lobby in a long time). the guy was absolutely worthless, aggro dumping and mag dumping his flamer, took literally all ammo, snagged an ammo crate and took all 4 charges to flame. i just pressed alt f4 after, because otherwise i would have gotten a perma ban
Think the problem is that Shroudfield is a bit of a selfish playstyle (And I love it). When I run stealth zealot in havoc some of the calculations that I make comes at the determent of my teammates. I can see a train wreck coming (mostly a situation that the team stumbles in) and I’m unable to stop it. Me repositioning leaves the door open to clutch the situation but the whole team dies and has to watch me clutch the game. Robbing them of their playtime. And depending on the map, event and the player respawn triggers it’s sometimes a hard one to recover from. Even if you get back to all your team mates. Endless hordes with a boss or 2 push you to the res as you are not progressing in time (h40 mainly). You can spend 10+ minutes killing all the bosses while the hordes and specials keep coming. Or it turns into 5 bosses by the time you res your team.
That being said. If your team is fine with all that then power to you. For me it’s a ace up the sleave to secure a win. I run stealth zealot as my main and switch to other builds or classes if the team doesn’t like that. I can see why it’s hated. That’s why I make friends that either don’t mind, understands that mindset(You are your own savior) or play it themselves
As for OP vs UP. I think the Zealot is in a good spot. I enjoy it. It’s not like you don’t have to work for it. The damage dished out is not the best for my build. I use the dueling sword mk2 with agile and thrust to 1 shot captains. My build uses no keystones. With that config I can say the dueling sword doesn’t feel overpowered. I literally only use the dueling sword on this class and build for the backstab damage and dodges.
People generally speaking just suck at the game. Being a havoc 40 player doesn’t mean anything, havoc only really pushes which mechanics you prefer to abuse over others. A lot of people don’t like stealth because that abuse is only for one player in the game. Meanwhile, a psyker with bubble shield and flamethrower, or a zealot with chorus, is abuse that everyone gets to experience and have fun with.
I personally didn’t accept stealthlots because I don’t want the game to be a guaranteed win if they’re good and I don’t want to play with just 2 other players if they’re bad. Stealth in this game doesn’t reward team-based coordination, it just wins.
Take away shroudfield and zealot is just a mid-tier class compared to everyone else. You’re not damage pumping as much as psyker or scum, and you’re not keeping the team alive like ogryn or vet or voc, and you’re not getting bps with chastise, and not as frequent or as devastating as vet’s infinite nade pool. I think the only reason why people prefer chorus is because it’s flashy and therefore people think it does something good, but a single voc vet replaces that ability entirely. Chastise is still better since you’re at least killing things.
Because in that case you need to be a Shroudfield Zealot who can clutch. Yesterday I tried to clear H25 with such a zealot — he was the last to go down, about five minutes after the second-to-last player died. But what’s the point if he never made it to the respawn point? Notably, the Ogryn, who had about half as much playtime, dealt twice as much damage as he did
Yeah its strong at surviving but terrible at damage and support. Everyone has known stealth is broken since VT2 though, there’s a reason why solo weave clears basically have BW/Shade categories only. And it has been well documented cheese in this game…are you sure you haven’t just been living in a bubble?
This seasons we climbed the ladder to 40 with ogryn, 2 zealots (FotF and Shroudfield) and a vet. Shroud boss busting builds are pretty useful. It was a far more enjoyable than the classic class distro with an inferno psyker in the mix. I could actually SEE and had mixed horde to feed my survivability on.
In my eyes, the core issue with stealth abilities is that it INSTANTLY dumps aggro of mobs on your team mates, and adds more unpredictability to already chaotic game, and extra pressure in moments you might be simply not ready for it. What should probably happen is for sake of other players, going invisible should apply medium or heavy stagger (to simulate “surprise” state) to all enemies who were targeting now invisible player.]
Also, not to kick your sand castle, but kiting through a map with a stealth “class” isn’t really a true solo
it’s a pointless and petty semantics-based argument, but there isn’t any rules regarding true solos beyond whatever people feel is challenging as an accomplishment. Stealth truesolos aren’t interesting or exactly an impressive feat, but it’s not like any other kind of truesolo in this game is all that impressive, they’re just about 10 times longer with 100 times the risk. Honestly you could probably do this map way faster than this just with psyker by running straight into the mid event, breaking spawns, kiting everything into the unreachable corner and then sifting both objectives in about 5 minutes, then running straight into the end event by the 6 minute mark, and wait out the timer and kill everything by the 12 minute mark.
Personally, I don’t even want to encourage people or make it a community standard that if you don’t upload a 2 hour relay station run where you got good enough rng to make it through the early section with minimal issues it’s not a remarkable true solo. I rather these were just fun and engaging runs that were pushed via people’s enjoyment of the game’s mechanics rather than just pure bragging rights that abide by a series of fake ethics and code.
I don’t play H40 (and never will) so I can’t comment on it but my main issue with Shroudfield is that I favor consistency over burst. While Shroudfield nukes things I often find myself better served with a more consistent buff like FotF attack speed boost or Chorus shutting literally everything on the mapdown.
It’s also just not as fun to poke a single crusher in the back over tearing up a horde of trash with a relic blade. Stealth promotes a very passive playstyle, and I’m a very aggressive player.
As for why everyone rejects stealth users in lobbies? Probably because Shroudfield isn’t a team buff and the stigma around stealth zealot leaving everyone to die and just running to the objective is real. It’s not really that fun to spend half the game dead (src: got carried through H40 for achievement purposes and the two stealth zealots just told us to kill ourselves and let them handle it)
I’m not really here to put anyone down, also he is a pretty good player as evidenced multiple times, but a Havoc match is “slightly” longer than that, especially when doing a True Solo. You are looking at 120+ minutes, easy.
You can do both. You can absolutely be aggressive with Shroud, even in Havoc. I think they also fixed the cooldown reduction node on it now. One of other sub-talents synergises with HP / damage reduction centric builds, and its very easy to access other talent nodes to build around it. Relic blade works with Shroud, and very respectable poke damage on it. Still I’m with you on FotF
As said zealot is just has a boring talent tree compared to hive scum.
Fatshark have literally described zealot as an aggressive melee class and then most of their talents reward playing defensively. Melee hive scum is just a significantly more interesting aggressive melee class.
These days Zealot is only good in the hands of good player, like you.
For most people playing the game, they are very limited in what they can do and they require more inputs and more thought put into their gameplay than some other classes and builds.
It’s the class that has the least options to deal with crazy number of enemies at once, in a quick manner. And for a class that’s supposed to have greater single target melee damage than other classes, I’d say they underperform in grand scheme of balancing.
I really like playing shroudfield Zealot, but I got gaslit by the community that it’s toxic to play, so I feel reluctant to play it nowadays, and just stick to Chorus in Havoc.
Nobody plays Stealth Zealot nowadays in Havoc, because despite the “safeness” of this playstyle, it only shines if you actually push enemies and dive deep inside the horde to hit the backs of Crushers, Bulwarks, Reapers, etc before your team gets to them. If you play like a frontline or play in the middle of the team, this playstyle is kinda pointless and is basically an aggro-drop with some extra damage.
I have a game recorded where I performed well in H40 with shroudfield, and the only reason we lost at the end is because people died, the ones left alive refused to go back, and when the last person went down, I went to save them without Shroudfield and got bonked by a Crusher.
The whole point of Stealth Zealot, since day 1 of this playstyle’s existing, is to farm key targets to chain stealth cooldowns as much as possible.
In the past there were “double hit” mechanics/exploits where you could hit twice with a single use of Stealth, if you time your button press in the middle of attack animation, which made it really good against many enmies.
There is also “weaving” where you can use Stealth to passively gain increased damage reduction without trying to setup backstab oneshots. You basically tap stealth in the middle of fighting a large group of enemies or bosses, simply to gain the buffs, and keep hitting them to reset the ability. That extra damage for oneshot is not that great anyways, and does nothing for most weapons that don’t have high base damage.
If anything, Stealth is only good if played aggresively.
