I agree it’s just a function of attack speed now and that sucks, but I really don’t think hammers ever had any place running this skill in the first place. They make way more sense with a martyrdom of IJ build.
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While I don’t agree that just because you don’t have a good answer to carapace you automatically become a liability, I’m with you when you say that this change dosen’t benefit build diversity.
tbh I disagree with the premise that Zealot lacks anti-carapace without FOTF on ranged and/or invocation spam
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They don’t but if you like to run eg heavy sword or d claw as melee your effective options to help with crushers just got cut down dramatically. No more pairing with a brauto, shotty or vraks III, hooray more encouragement to use revolver instead.
Yeah it is NOT a net positive effect on build diversity, and again mostly another slap to the face of weapons that were mid to begin with, which seems to be FS’s way.
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You’re right, that the min maxxed hammer is on marty, but the ability to charge into a pack, sweep a ton of guys and nearly que up another instance of fury really smoothed out the experience of using the hammer for me.
My experience with the hammer was that it was always great at horde management, but not kill time. Speccing into crit with it meant 1/4 hits cleared hordes respectably. It was my preferred TH spec.
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It dosen’t lack options compleatly but it’s much more limted compred to the other characthers.
If I’m not forgetting something count only 3, all of them heavly relying on specific blessing to be actually specific in doing so.
I’m not really having much flexibility if i want to go D claw or H sword.
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Punishment nerf was so other blessings and talents could be relevant. This change is healthy for the game.
Fury of the Faithful giving 100% rending to range has been silly since zealot is melee focused. This reinforces that. This also will help with the future balancing of automatic weapons. Hard to balance when one class gets 100% rending. This change is healthy for the game.
Cooldown reduction on ults is really strong. Spamming ults without a stim makes them less thoughtful and is a crazy player power spike, upsetting game balance. I wouldn’t be surprised to see vet get a similar change soon. This change is healthy for the game.
Zealot is fine and fun. They’re just molding its identity and reducing some obnoxious power spikes.
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On one hand, I appreciate a nerf – the CDR was just too strong. However I would have expected something similar to Veteran ammo aura; an ability proc cooldown. The way they’ve done it hamstrings heavy weapons which had a surprising synergy that I think worked quite well.
The ranged weapon rending ‘feature’ always read more to me like a bug so I don’t mind seeing it patched. Now… bring a bolter?
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I guarantee you people still won’t use those, they’re just highly out competed in most cases.
TL;DR in practice mostly hurts less competitive options. Revolver eating real good.
Altogether good sensible nerfs for the first 3 seconds you think about them. Pretty mishandled and poorly implemented upon any further examination and thought of consequences.
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Seems to be like a case of emergent gameplay on the back of an unintented (assuming 100% rend on ranged was not the intention of the initial design) feature. It feels bad to have the toys taken away for sure, but I’m not convinced it’s a terrible idea in the grand scale of things.
I do think you should struggle against carapace-armoured enemies if you don’t have the right toolkit.
Unfortunately yes this means the revolver is even more coveted due to effective armour-piercing AND special takedown, and should be looked at more closely – ideally providing us with compelling alternatives (armour piercing AR when?). Perhaps the bolt pistol was meant to compensate, not sure as I haven’t examined it closely yet.
As for CDR, I do think a nerf was warranted but the way they did it was unfortunate imo. Looks like they want to favour fast crit weapons, when it worked really well for cleave weapons. Guess this means I’ll go back to Martyrdom as a heavy weapons enjoyer! TBH I’m not that disappointed, I always preferred Marty but couldn’t resist the allure of all that CDR.
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I just strongly disagree the interaction was ever an issue. It’s a very short period you can take advantage of it. With perfect conditions you’ll kill maybe 2 crushers in the duration. FS even said back in the flamethrower nerf patch they wanted to keep the interaction so this feels like a rug pull.
It’s also not 100% rending, it’s not rending at all, it’s an armour downgrade, so carapace uses your flak modifier when it’s active. This already requires your weapon is good against flak to get good value.
The reality of the change is that maybe what, 1 genuinely meta gun suffers (IAG). Meanwhile HH literally lost its entire reason to exist on Zealot, which is its good flak mod turning it into a good crusher killer with FotF. Shotties also a harder sell now.
So a bunch of the nuance to building Zealot as well as general build diversity just had both its knee caps shot out, and for what? What genuinely egregious weapon or build was brought in line by this change?
So no I don’t accept that this is in any way a positive move, even assuming there was decent follow up later (there if no guarantee of this). It’s literally just a giant L for building Zealot and cripples your gun choices.
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Oof. I think I remember that, even.
Hey was the CDR on crit change even in the patch notes? I don’t remember reading it there and can’t find any references to the ability.
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The boltgun desperately needs buffs but this interaction was a key issue in balancing the weapon and the flamer. Its totally fair to be frustrated with this change but personally i never used this interaction and never liked it. I never saw it as quintessential to the zealot’s kit. I’d like to see the bolter buffed.
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It always felt like an unintended effect, despite a dev mentioning the interaction once. But yes, Fatshark have a bad habit of not going back to changes that were done because of factors external to the things being changed even after the external factor itself was changed.
Well, if the Boltgun would do the same damage to Carapace as it does to Flak, Maniac and Unyielding, then everything would be fine.
Nerfing Fury quite literally killed the Zealot class as far as I’m concerned. I’m very close to dropping the game.
Making builds totally incapable of dealing with certain kinds of enemies in a reasonable time frame is the worst possible balancing move Fatshark could have possibly made. The number of viable high tier builds on Zealot was just cut by 75%. Good job, guys.
Fatshark can continue pushing incomplete builds that force mandatory team play for all 12 people still playing the game. I won’t be one of them.
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Definitely. Scourge mechanics favor fast crit weapons as well. A bit sad to see the zealot exclusive weapons see so little support in the skill tree.
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All I can really say seeing the responses to the zealot changes is welcome to how veterans feel with the entire left side of their talent tree.
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I don’t particularly like to say things that encourage or imply folks should drop the game, but if that (as it seems to do,) implies you’re a Zealot player who ignores the team and rushes off to play hero? I welcome you playing Elden Ring instead.
There are a great many problems with balancing right now, but having team play be more important to success is NOT one of the issues that needs addressing.
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I firmly believe every class should be able to kill every enemy type in a reasonable time frame with at least a good portion of their available builds.
I’m not even a Zealot main. Veteran is my most played class. But I do enjoy some good Zealot gameplay.
Nerfing Fury killed nearly all the enjoyment I got from playing Zealot. Most of my builds have enemies that now take an eternity to kill, and that will never be fun for me, ever.
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