Zealot Still Has Major Structural Weaknesses in High Difficulty (Auric/Havoc)

[Taezzang]

I actually agree with most of what you said — especially the part about how classes don’t need to get any stronger right now. That’s absolutely true. Power inflation has already happened as a result of the recent reworks, so I don’t think we need more raw power at all.

However, I feel like your reply misses the main point of what I was saying.
At no point did I ever say “Zealot needs to be stronger.”
What I meant was that, compared to other classes, Zealot’s conditional damage buffs are simply harder to activate or maintain in real combat situations.
So I’m suggesting loosening the activation requirements — even if that means slightly lowering the overall buff values to keep balance.

Also, earlier you listed things like:

Disdain +25%, Duellist +50% finesse, Desperation +20%, etc.

But listing every conditional buff at its maximum value doesn’t really reflect how those skills perform in actual gameplay.
The issue isn’t about “needing more damage.”
It’s about how difficult it is to maintain those buffs consistently, especially compared to other classes whose power spikes are much easier to trigger or sustain.

[Lokkjim]

@Taezzang

You mentioned “macro play” and skill expression, but Darktide is a team-based game.
You can plan your rotation perfectly, but if a teammate kills or staggers the enemy you’re setting up on, your entire buff chain collapses.
That’s not lack of skill — that’s the system punishing coordinated play.

And sure, you can claim “that’s part of the nuance,” but it doesn’t change the fact that Zealot’s conditional uptime relies more on luck and enemy behavior than actual decision-making.
I don’t think wanting a class to reward consistency instead of randomness makes someone a “spreadsheet player.”

I align with this so well, I wish I could give more than 1 heart or an award or something

I want to outline how the current game state and team interactions interfere with Zealot’s optimization:

Zealot’s output and survivability are disproportionately tied to successful dodges. In actual play, stagger, knockdown, taunts, ranged interruption, and teammates killing or displacing targets all break dodge timing. That means Zealot’s uptime is constantly affected by factors outside the player’s control. Zealot has 6 talents that explicitly trigger on successful dodge.

For comparison:

• Arbites has 1 talent tied to dodge and a talent that gives them dodge buffs
• Veteran has 1.5 talents tied to dodge; Duck and Dive which procs off sprint/slide as well
• Psyker has no talents tied to successful dodge but gets a dodge buff talent
• Ogryn has .5 talents tied to dodge; Payback Time procs off being hit as well

Zealot has far more of its kit tied to successful dodge execution than any other class. Zealot’s survivability and sustained output depend on a repeatable input (successful dodges). If the game state or teammates frequently remove or interrupt those inputs, Zealot’s resource chain stumbles — you don’t just lose a bonus, you lose the class’s primary loop for staying alive and dealing damage. For Zealot, dodge isn’t a bonus—it’s the primary trigger for both survivability and sustained output.

[Hrupo]

Havoc 40 | Martyrdom Zealot (loss)

Havoc 40 | Darktide Martyrdom Zealot

Here’s recording of havoc 40. I think I had a bigger impact on the first game despite it being a loss. Also I disagree with that comment from Lokkjim, dodges are a big damage increase but Zealot isn’t as reliant as it looks like. Nobody is taking all 6 dodge talents (my build only uses 1 which is duelist).

Also I hope you can see why I think Zealot melee is fine and isn’t as bad as Veteran. Zealot mobility and DR and attack speed lets you get away with a lot more than numbers can show.

[Lokkjim]

@Hrupo

Also I disagree with that comment from Lokkjim, dodges are a big damage increase but Zealot isn’t as reliant as it looks like. Nobody is taking all 6 dodge talents (my build only uses 1 which is duelist).

What you’re missing is how this interferes with Zealot’s build variability.

Zealot has 6 dodge-triggered talents and 9 on-kill talents. That’s 15 total talents whose uptime is directly disrupted by teammates killing, staggering, taunting, or knocking down targets before you can interact with them. Out of 81 total talents, that means roughly 1 in 5 Zealot talents are vulnerable to team interference. This constrains viable builds more than it appears on paper.

For comparison (not counting keystone-scaling kill triggers or team-shared kill procs):

• Arbites: 10 on-kill, 1 on-dodge (out of 87) → ~1/8 affected

• Ogryn: 9 on-kill, 0.5 on-dodge (out of 94) → ~1/10 affected

• Psyker: 9 on-kill, 0 on-dodge (out of 86) → ~1/10 affected

• Veteran: 9 on-kill, 1.5 on-dodge (out of 83) → ~1/8 affected

Even if you only run something like Duelist, your damage cadence still peaks when your dodge rhythm is uninterrupted. When stagger, team killing, taunt, or knockdown interrupt that cadence, Zealot’s loop drops harder than Arbites, Vet, Ogryn, or Psyker when their triggers break. The issue isn’t “needing dodge”—it’s how harshly the class falls off when that timing is disrupted.

[Hrupo]

If you watch the video I posted you can see it isn’t a big deal. Duelist was rightfully nerfed from 200% damage to effective 100% damage because so much of Zealots damage potential was locked behind it. Now Zealot has more easy to access damage from things outside of just dodging. Build variety is way better post rework. You can directly compare the talents in a vacuum all you want but it’s not a problem to be fixed when you put it into practice.

[Taezzang]

Great Zealot gameplay video — thank you for sharing it!
I was genuinely impressed by your skill and decision-making (really, great play).
And I completely understand what you mean about Zealot’s melee performance being solid. I also don’t think Zealot is weak — the recent rework definitely made him stronger through improved node paths and multiple new damage-boosting talents.

However, after watching your video carefully, I noticed that there was very little of the “macro play” you mentioned earlier.
In particular, talents like Disdain and Against the Odds, which you said are within the player’s control, seemed to operate mostly at low stacks except when clearing large hordes.

For example, around 20:30 in the second video, you engage a massive enemy group but start the fight without properly stacking Cranial.
Duellist doesn’t activate until about 20 seconds into the fight, and even then, it wasn’t very impactful because the weak spot hits didn’t land consistently.
Although Duellist triggered a few more times afterward, most activations didn’t line up with actual elite weakspot hits and thus provided little benefit.
Meanwhile, Disdain rarely reached more than 1–2 stacks during boss or elite encounters.
Up to about 22:15, Sustained Assault was practically the only buff providing consistent performance.

Later, around 24:00, you had a great moment — stacking Cranial well and activating Duellist while taking down several Carapace enemies.
But even there, the Duellist activation relied on a shooter attacking you — not melee enemies. You didn’t trigger it by dodging elite attacks, since your teammates were already holding aggro and supporting you.
If a Veteran had brought a smoke grenade instead, Duellist might not have activated at all.
For instance, around 27:00, when you fought a large wave of Carapace enemies, the Ogryn’s taunt and grenade CC completely prevented Duellist from activating even once during that 40-second fight.

Can we really call that a skill issue?
I don’t think so — you played optimally, but the activation conditions themselves are too situational and dependent on the flow of combat.

To summarize: I fully agree that Zealot’s mobility, attack speed, and stun resistance make him one of the most comfortable melee classes to play.
However, many of his key damage-boosting buffs — while powerful on paper — are hard to trigger or maintain consistently due to how situational they are.
That’s why I’d love to see those activation conditions eased slightly, so Zealot can maintain more stable combat performance regardless of team composition or encounter flow.

[Lokkjim]

The issue isn’t the amount of damage Zealot gets from Duelist—it’s that Finesse damage in crit builds is directly tied to maintaining Duelist, and the uptime is too short and often disrupted by current crowd control. You’re using one keystone, but the other two Zealot keystones also lean on dodge rhythm (Crit builds for Finesse → Duelist dodges; IJ stacks scale fastest when dodge timing stays active). On paper Zealot has alternative lines, but in practice the strongest sustained loops all depend on uninterrupted dodge cadence, which is the part the live game environment most aggressively interferes with. That’s the constraint we’re pointing at—not raw damage numbers.

[Hrupo]

I actually remember myself thinking that I didn’t do a much of a good job at the 20:30 mark while playing lol. It’s important to consciously keep these things in mind if I want to perform well.

I won’t speak on the specific up-times here, but I think not having my buffs up optimally at all time is a good thing. It just means I can consistently play and get better which is where the enjoyment comes from for me. Arbitrator is my second most played class at this point so I do enjoy it, but I don’t feel the satisfaction and skill expression I do as Zealot.

I can agree the on dodge could use a tweak. Fatshark has been doing a lot of the whole ‘stacks fall off one at a time’ thing. Having duelist act similiar to riposte and it stacking by 10% up to 5 times for 10 seconds, falling off one stack at a time could be a good change. But I’m just speaking off the top of my head here.

[Index]

@Hrupo

It just means I can consistently play and get better which is where the enjoyment comes from for me.

and that’s how the game should be structured around instead of having to rely on arbitrary numbers.

after all I want darktide to remain a fast paced, skill based fps not some rpg that plays the character for you

[Lokkjim]

@Hrupo

I can agree the on dodge could use a tweak. Fatshark has been doing a lot of the whole ‘stacks fall off one at a time’ thing. Having duelist act similiar to riposte and it stacking by 10% up to 5 times for 10 seconds, falling off one stack at a time could be a good change. But I’m just speaking off the top of my head here.

I’m also of the mindset that I enjoy the game because I feel like I’m always learning and improving and as much as I’d love to see duelist with all of that, it might be a little overtuned. Personally, I lean more towards falling off one stack at a time with the uptime being around 6 seconds. Because with 10 seconds, this is just theorycrafting, but I almost feel like it’d hardly ever be below 5 stacks. Ogryn Taunt (15 seconds) would be the only big hurdle, but that’d only shave off 1.5 stacks with a 10 second uptime, and 2.5 stacks with a 6 second uptime. Anyways, I’d love to hear more ideas on improving this talent if anyone has any, I only recently started getting into the science of builds so my ideas might be a little too short-sighted.

[Trauma]

From one Zealot player to another, Thank you for putting the time and effort into creating this post.

[Reginald]

@Lokkjim

So yes, Zealot can be very survivable. The point is that their durability is conditional on consistent execution, not on passive bulk. The class works, but the skill tax to sustain that survivability is higher than for frontliners who tank by absorbing damage rather than avoiding it.

And this is a good thing that provides gameplay diversity. If every class has the same chonk toughness then every class feels and plays the same. Zealot IS one of the tankiest classes in the game. He just gets there differently.

As to true grit: 49 HP is a lot of HP. But true grit has no effect on it. True crit is incredibly strong but it absolutely won’t save you when the chips are down and you’re a single mistake from death. Likewise gunfire does lots of small ticks of damage so getting glassed by a reaper when caught in a bad spot is just a reality for arbites the same as most classes. Though he has better mitigation than most there.

[JanZamoysky]

@Hrupo

Also I hope you can see why I think Zealot melee is fine and isn’t as bad as Veteran. Zealot mobility and DR and attack speed lets you get away with a lot more than numbers can show.

I don’t record whole matches, usually just mistakes or broken game situations, but yes, zealot melee damage output is more than fine, if you build correctly around specific weapons. Zealot’s survivability and mobility are superb. Weapon balance not so much, but this is true for all classes.

All Havoc 40 games, BOTH with Chorus, so not even optimal for pure dps, and I’m far from some extremely twitchy kid fuelled by energy drinks. If I was playing the backline, I would rather have a good zealot in the front of me than equally skilled veteran

[Leebee]

@Hrupo

Also I disagree with that comment from Lokkjim, dodges are a big damage increase but Zealot isn’t as reliant as it looks like. Nobody is taking all 6 dodge talents (my build only uses 1 which is duelist).

Going to try to synthesize some things but to me the question of all of the dodge talents is less effectiveness and more a lack of adding anything interesting to the play style. I want to be clear, I am a huge fan of bespoke/nuanced/hard conditional requirements with interesting, extraordinary effects to justify them.

But Duelist and its ilk are not those things. Dodging an attack in this game is extremely easy to do and if you are even somewhat competent, is going to happen so many times each match. Likewise, just slapping on a +50% Finesse Damage after is certainly effective, but a very boring kind of buff. As a result, Duelist is extremely volatile talent where a lot of the time you proc it and end up majorly overkilling a handful of groaners (I’d argue the majority of the time it’s this), and then a lot less often times you use it on a big HP enemy and it helps you annihilate them. In either scenario, I don’t really have control over where that effectiveness gets placed, and not only that, I’m not changing my play style or thought process at all. Why should we settle for such boring talents?

I am not just looking for blanket non-interactive buffs for Zealot. I will disagree with Lokkjim and say I think she is tanky and effective enough. What I would like is more interesting design choices.

I do appreciate Lokkjim laying out the giant emphasis of successful dodge talents for Zealot, because it gets at what I feel is a disconnect with what the purported design/fantasy of the Zealot as the fast, melee frontliner. All of those dodge talents are inherently reactive, as in, they do nothing until you use them in response to something else. For a someone who is supposed to be charging in, alpha striking, being proactive, I would expect a few more talents to proc off of sprinting and sliding, because currently she only has 1 real one.

In that respect, I think Zealot and Vet should swap 2 talents each, sprint and sliding talents for Vet and dodging talents for Zealot. Of course the effects and numbers wouldn’t be direct ports, but the speedy aspect of Zealot is still left wanting, and would synergize nicely with IJ builds. Even with 2 talents swapped each, Zealot would still have the most dodge-related talents so that can still be supported for those who prefer that kind of reactive play style.

[JanZamoysky]

@Leebee

I do appreciate Lokkjim laying out the giant emphasis of successful dodge talents for Zealot, because it gets at what I feel is a disconnect with what the purported design/fantasy of the Zealot as the fast, melee frontliner. All of those dodge talents are inherently reactive, as in, they do nothing until you use them in response to something else. For a someone who is supposed to be charging in, alpha striking, being proactive, I would expect a few more talents to proc off of sprinting and sliding, because currently she only has 1 real one.

We keep discussing a moot point. Fatshark isn’t going to suddenly redesign the class, because it doesn’t meet your expectations of the class fantasy.

I will keep repeating myself, every class has talents which have conditional triggers. Some on zealot are build around dodging, and I personally like that theme. A melee frontliner which isn’t just a dumb meatshield which hits things until they stop moving. Oh, apologies big man I didn’t see you there.

Zealot might or might not have more conditional talents than other classes, I personally find some recent veteran additions as eyebrow raising as some of the psyker changes. This doesn’t change the fact with a well build zealot 1/3rd of my kills end up being 1 shots. All making those talents less “random” would achieve is throw more damage at a class which doesn’t needs it anyway.

[Lokkjim]

@Reginald

And this is a good thing that provides gameplay diversity. If every class has the same chonk toughness then every class feels and plays the same. Zealot IS one of the tankiest classes in the game. He just gets there differently.

As to true grit: 49 HP is a lot of HP. But true grit has no effect on it. True crit is incredibly strong but it absolutely won’t save you when the chips are down and you’re a single mistake from death. Likewise gunfire does lots of small ticks of damage so getting glassed by a reaper when caught in a bad spot is just a reality for arbites the same as most classes. Though he has better mitigation than most there.

Arbites has some of the best and most varied toughness sustain in the game. If you are one mistake away from death with the True Grit talent, that’s not a single mistake—that’s a chain of mistakes (builds being potential mistakes themselves), because Arbites has multiple preventative toughness feeds that stop chip damage from ever stacking.

• Arbites has access to a pretty good weapon in the shield and maul, which blocks gunfire and overheads, it also has a special (huge frontal cone of stagger)
• Arbites regens toughness from killing (5% on close kill), staggering (10%), spending stamina (10% over 3 seconds), regular blocking (15% over 3 seconds), being within 8m of dog (5% per second), elite or special kill (10% instant, plus 10% over 4 seconds)

Because these sources overlap, Arbites doesn’t rely on maintaining a precise rhythm to stay alive. Zealot, by contrast, has one consistent sustain source outside of abilities/keystones: Enemies Within, Enemies Without. The rest depends on maintaining uninterrupted dodge/kill cadence. When that cadence breaks (as happens frequently in high-intensity team play), Zealot’s sustain falls off sharply.