But yes, I agree with the OP that Vet has way easier buffs to maintain.
Some of the nerfs weren’t needed, too.
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Damn. Just as I was about to start leveling the Zealot class, thinking he was the strongest melee fighter — turns out he’s not.
Thank you for making such a well thought out post. I think you’ve voiced a lot of the frustration people who have enjoyed Zealot since launch have been feeling. Ever since patch 13, zealot has been increasingly nerfed and left behind the other classes. A lot of the issues you brought up like a lack of reliable talent uptimes, difficult conditionals, and a lack of utility like rending/brittleness for a class that needs it the most for melee variety were things people have brought up before. As a zealot fan, I think most people were hoping the talent rework would address these issues and bring zealot up to par with the other classes. Unfortunately, while the rework addressed build flexibility and brought up some underperforming talents, zealot’s core issues were never addressed. The recent patch notes have confirmed that Fatshark is using unreliable metrics and spreadsheets rather than player feedback and gameplay experience to dictate their contradictory balancing decisions. For example, Ogryns got a ton of survivability with a few talent points, so the devs decided to buff Ogryn’s other defensive talents even more. In contrast, Zealots were using one CDR node too often and instead of bringing other CDR talents up they nerfed the best one and nerfed a damage talent just for good measure. My hope is that someone on the dev team sees your post and takes to heart the problems and potential solutions you have brought up. Great work Taezzang!
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I don’t think Zealot is strictly worse than other classes overall.
They have unique and powerful utilities such as stun immunity from Thy Wrath Be Swift and 5 seconds of invulnerability from Revenant, which allow them to keep high attack speed and fight aggressively in a very stylish way.
However, when we take a closer look at their melee utility, some inconveniences do become noticeable.
Many of the buffs that are supposed to boost their melee combat power are tied to strict activation conditions, which often feel more like restrictions than rewarding enhancements.
On top of that, lacking reliable debuffs like guaranteed Bleed or Rending on hit makes their close-combat performance feel inconsistent compared to other classes.
So personally, I’d like to see the activation conditions for these skills loosened a bit—even if that means slightly adjusting the numbers to keep things balanced 
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This. Before the rework besides the “1 build” memes, one “joke” that would come often is how absurdly conditional some talents were for bizarre gains. The latter hasn’t been properly addressed by the rework.
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Very true, Zealot has a lot going for it. There’s a reason so many people still enjoy Zealot despite some frustration with a couple issues. Zealot has always felt fun as an aggressive frontliner rushing into the fight, the issue is just that in terms of damage and utility like crowd control/debuffs it has become outclassed. I hope melee weapon variety can be improved and the stale meta can be addressed as well.
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sure thing….
but nope, every havoc 40 so far was with pure randos and without uttering a single word via voice.
neither did I care much for what they were doing in terms of loadout nor was I running “meta” stuff (used full health ogryn, even in 1.0 when he was considered to suck)
there was book and bubble for sure but then again picking randos one has little say in the matter.
but when just wanting to “get it done” for the season, beggars can’t be choosers.
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Excellent post. One other thing I’d like to mention is that the Zealot rework actually made it even better… at a version of the game which no longer exists. Zealot’s original role when the game launched was to dive the enemy backline and kill squishy elites and trash mobs, while leaving the heavy armor to Ogryn and Vet. If the Zealot wanted to handle armor, they’d have to bring a THammer - which means they lost their ability to clear hordes efficiently. There was an actual choice to be made.
Fast forward to 2025, and every class has a way to handle every situation - except Zealot. Diving a backline is highly risky in regular Auric, and downright suicidal in Havoc 40. This is made worse by Havoc’s “Emperor’s Fading Light” condition, which removes the grace period when your toughness breaks. Zealot and Ogryn were designed around this mechanic to survive heavy gunfire while performing their melee duties. Ogryns suffered from this until their tree rework, which includes heaps of damage resistance (you still have to play very carefully in Havoc as an Ogryn, but now you have tools to shrug off chip damage). Zealot received plenty of toughness regen buffs with the recent update, which lets it perform its role of diving backlines a bit easier than before. The problem now is that, without a single brittleness talent on its tree or a rending talent outside of a single hit from FotF, Zealot can’t even trade with elites while under fire because you can’t handle armor. You will still melt faster than grox turds under the Atoman sun. The current Havoc modifiers further exacerbate this issue because they all favor anti-armor (Rotten Armor) or being able to burn down blue stimmed maulers and ragers before they tear you apart.
Because of all these problems, Zealot is often forced into being a Chorus bot in Havoc matches. FotF and Shroudfield being able to nuke a monster with a hammer is nice, of course. But it means you give up a cornucopia of buffs that Chorus could have provided. Chorus gives your entire team invulnerability, gold toughness, a pulsing stagger, the ability to ledge elites and monsters, and a 30% damage buff if you take the appropriate sub-talent (the damage reduction node is fun but rarely taken). Killing an extra elite or two every ult simply can’t compare, especially when Veterans can delete 5-6 Crushers or Maulers with a single Krak toss while passively providing all of the other utility on Vet’s tree. Because Zealot’s ability to provide value by actually killing things is lower than that of other classes, taking Chorus is the obvious choice every time. It shores up the weaknesses of mediocre players, and it makes gameplay a breeze for skilled players. Even in well-coordinated pubs and premades, bringing FotF is seen as a “can I get away with this?” pick. Some of the best players will even run x4 FotF comps as a meme! It’s similar to the Bubble dilemma for Psyker, except that Psyker is so strong right now that you can get away with using Shriek or Gaze so long as the rest of your team covers the gaps (smoke grenades, gold toughness, Nuncio, etc.).
Your other role as a Zealot is to bring Beacon of Purity to Pox Gas and Blighted missions. This is a whole ‘nother can of worms, but I’ll just say that this is a very boring, binary decision that sucks the fun out of building a team.
Sure, you could say that the game shouldn’t be balanced around Havoc. And I’m inclined to agree. The problem here is that the game is already being balanced around Havoc, if Arbites’ damage numbers and the recent Vet, Ogryn, and Psyker tree reworks are any indication. Many of Darktide’s testers who provide feedback are Havoc regulars, and the most popular content creators make their judgments based on Havoc performance. And even non-Havoc gameplay is being shifted toward Havoc-style difficulty, judging by the recent additions of Captains to regular Auric matches and various other changes. Zealot suffers as a result, partly due to its talent design. It’s also partly due to the game shifting away from its original design, where Zealot roamed around and murdered soft targets while Vet killed the priority specials, Ogryn bashed the armored elites, and Psyker cleaned up the hordes. Now, it’s all about managing massive walls of health and armor no matter your class.
My credentials: I play Havoc 40 pubs almost every night on NA servers, have climbed to H40 multiple times, have True Survivor, etc. etc. etc. It shouldn’t matter, because these issues apply to lower difficulties as well.
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ye i reckon zealot is the worst class for havoc as of recently, to the point i’ve started refusing them on party finder
(i still refuse veterans aswell btw)
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Me and the boys seeing a massive post backed up with dense empirical evidence
In the words of the male Loose Cannon OP:
BEAUTIFUL!!!
really brings a tear to the eye…
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Zealot still superior in melee in term of QoL imo, the stun immunity, remove slow down while charging heavy and ability that combo well with melee(FotF/Shroudfield)
Stun immunity especially is quite huge, I certainly wouldn’t go toe to toe gainst multiple Ragers with melee Vet because they’ll constantly interupt my combo while when playing Zealot I can shrug most of it and swing away.
Other than that I can agree with most stuff I guess.
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I’m not entirely sold on the suggested reworks, but I do agree on every single point. Zealot does have the best movement and very good survivability (if you invest enough points in it), but he’s definitely been power-crept in terms of cleave, debuffs, and stagger potential, which does limit build diversity in high difficulties.
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Generally agree, I just have to say a few words about crit and bleed. Scourge has a very high synergy with FotF (that’s where it came from), you are supposed to apply that first bleed with your ability and then whack away. Similarly, swords for hordes which hit a lot of enemies at once but not kill them beautifully stack crit and bleeding with it. But the balance shifted (obviously) to weapons which one shot horde enemies and elites alike denying the stacking of scourge.
Tldr; try scourge with cat or turtolsky for high uptime. But why would you, as these are not competitive.
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Yep lol. Ironically, the best “off-meta” weapons to take advantage of Scourge are Chainswords with Shred, I’ve found (not counting Tac Axes because carpal tunnel syndrome). And unlike swords, they’re not completely useless against Carapace anymore.
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I’ve cleaned up some comments in here, let’s keep it civil <3
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Julia spotted doing the lord’s work once again.
Anyway;
For the post itself, regardless of whether or not people personally agree with the OP to any degree or not, a lot of effort clearly went into this post and gathering the evidence, and I for one am happy to see things like this on the forums.
I can see where a lot of the gripes are (in my opinion, quite understandably) coming from, even though I might not fully agree with some of the suggestions for future balancing, and the fact that further discussions regarding it are here in the replies is great!
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I’ve always said vet was, and now still IS better melee class than Zealot, for basically everything you’ve said
Vet needs considerable melee nerfs but a lot more ranged buffs
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This.
I still haven’t decided if I agree with every single point in the OP. I do not think zealots are weak.
I do agree that just like IOD uptime, scourge uptime is (slightly) overestimated by the community. Which is why PCT was often better than IOD.
I’m just really happy to see real data used in posts like this, rather than pure emotional whining about nerfs.
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I need to add, it feels silly that vet gets so many melee buffs for doing things you’re gonna do anyways
Kill enemy with ranged, Hit weakspots and Slide
Meanwhile Zealot needs to dodge and backstab
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Eh, is melee Vet really that stong it needed a nerf?
That’s one way to make Zealot better than melee Vet I guess, but there’re also melee Psyker, melee Ogryn and melee Arbites out there.