The uptime mod basically tracks time from the moment combat starts (when you attack or get attacked) until there are 5 seconds without any combat activity.
So if a 30-minute mission has around 25 minutes of actual fighting, the uptime data only reflects those 25 minutes.
As you said, it only measures buff activation, not how effectively the player uses that buff — you have to actually hit enemies after activation for it to matter!
That’s exactly why I believe buffs with low uptime inherently have low combat efficiency.
Especially for Duellist, the timer starts immediately after a dodge, and within those 3 seconds you must land many weakspot hits for it to be effective. Because of that, I focused on the fact that the buff’s uptime itself is very low — meaning “on-dodge trigger” talents are inefficient in real combat.
Since Fatshark themselves said the reason for some nerfs was “high uptime,” I think uptime percentage can serve as a fairly objective metric for evaluating these talents.
Of course, I’m not saying your point is wrong — I completely understand your reasoning.
I just think we’re looking at it from different perspectives and criteria.
Well the thing is that while Zealot is using Chorus the enemy also cannot do anything. That is the trade off. If they removed the flinch from enemy you’d have more of a cause to allow them to attack.
Just holding a book for 50% of the match is really boring though so its not as tho I want to defend it, its just there is a reason Ogryn can attack during taunt. Its because he just commanded all the enemies to attack him.
I find arbite melee weapons pretty effective vs armor? Arbites Shock Maul, using the special on the OG Shock Maul, and Shield + Shock Maul are all really strong and can handle beef no problem.
i’d greatly prefer if zealot didn’t stand around just holding his rune. he should have a golden halo for a few seconds, which blinds enemies so they flail around or shoot blindly, while he can attack at the same time. that would motivate me to play relic zealot a lot more.
Great post. The uptime mod also helped make me aware just how infrequently on-dodge activation talents work. Fully agree with your perspective on this, Taezzang.
The reputation of Duelist comes from the days before Havoc where Zealot was just running into hordes of enemies dancing around avoiding damage. Most people, myself included, assumed that since we were always dodging and never getting hit, Duelist must have insanely good uptime. Especially those who from a Vermintide background where dodging attacks was a more integral part of the game.
We were wrong. If you consider how often you’re actually dodging attacks, Duelist is pretty negligible. Most ranged enemies will never attack you in melee before they die, large enemies attack so slowly to reliably proc it (and lets be honest, you’re usually not dodging their attack during the dodge window, you’re backing away and avoiding it all together), and most other chaff is easily ignorable and likely staggered/taunted and rapidly dying to the spam of AoE abilities present in most lobbies. This really only leaves significant uptime on duelist during hordes, and is it really that helpful then? On-dodge activation really needs to be looked at. The game has changed.
Regarding scourge, while the uptime is rarely maxed, I don’t think it’s an ability that was designed to constantly have maximum uptime. 30% extra crit is a lot, and even having an average of 10% more crit over the course of a game is definitely worth a talent point, especially since it makes said crits cause bleed.
As you said, it’s also an ability heavily reliant on weapon choice and team composition. There’s a lot of commonly taken stuff in the game that causes bleed, so I don’t necessarily see this talent needing a rework. It may just not have the value many people assume it will.
I also think the criteria for what counts as a successful dodge in melee combat is extremely strict. As you mentioned, against dangerous melee enemies like Crushers, it’s much safer to back off the moment you see their attack animation rather than waiting until the last second to dodge — which often means the dodge doesn’t count as “successful.”
Because of that, I believe talents that trigger on successful dodge definitely need some adjustment.
As for Scourge, my initial concern was with its condition — you must hit a bleeding enemy to gain +10% crit chance for 3 seconds. That felt rather inconvenient, given the short duration.
However, after reading the opinions here and reflecting on my own experience, I can see that against high-HP enemies, maintaining a near-constant +30% crit chance is actually quite meaningful.
I just wanted to point out that many players seem to think Zealot always has a flat +30% crit chance active, which isn’t the case — and that nuance often gets overlooked.
Vet’s bottom right section of his talent tree alone gives more boost to melee damage then the whole zealot tree, and most if it is passive, you pick it you get it, while zealot has to work for it.
This post definitely made me think about how much easier it is to activate and keep up my talent-based buffs when playing as Arbites compared to Zealot. Just comparing my current builds, the activation conditions for Arbites seem more generous. I also can’t help but notice that the one on-dodge talent for Arbites (Arbites Revelatum) has a significantly longer duration than Zealot’s Duelist or Good Balance.
-Arbites activation conditions: hitting multiple enemies (x2), close kill, enemy stagger (x3), spending stamina, being near the dog, weak spot hit (x2), dog pouncing, dog killing something pounced, successful dodge (x1 - 5 seconds), any kill, any successful attack, killing an elite or special, killing marked enemies. Keep in mind that the dog’s kills count as your kills, and it is always killing things without any input from you. Also any weak spot hit also counts as a stagger with Concussive.
-Zealot activation conditions: hitting multiple enemies in melee, on melee attack, being very close to multiple enemies (x2), successful dodge (x3 - 3 seconds and 2.5 seconds), taking health damage (may proc on teammate and not you), taking fatal damage, on crit (x3), hitting bleeding enemy, on elite kill (not special), on push attack, on charging heavy melee attack, having low or no stamina, being near enough enemies that die.
Yeah, totally agree — you summed it up really well.
Arbites talents just flow way more naturally. A bunch of them overlap or trigger passively (thanks to the dog), so you’re constantly getting value without trying too hard.
Meanwhile Zealot’s triggers — especially the dodge-based ones or the “be near multiple enemies” stuff — can feel kinda awkward depending on the situation. Sometimes you’re doing everything right and still can’t keep the buffs going.
That’s really what I was getting at: not that Zealot needs more raw power, but that his buffs should feel smoother to activate and maintain, just like Arbites’ do.
So you found out that the damage on dodging/bleeding is up less often than the damage on sprinting. Because the former requires enemies near. But that means the higher uptime on sprint is the difference from there not being any enemies. Why does damage% during that time matter?
You can’t average damage gain via dividing it by uptime because you aren’t doing damage 100% of the time. It’s a nonsense calc.
Of course, the argument can be made that the latter benefits ranged weapons more. It IS the veteran class. The zealot class has bonuses that only work when meleeing, but are stronger. I don’t see the issue.
I installed this mod, yup, some things really bad, like disdain got on average 2 stacks, in fact sometimes it’s just 2 stacksm, dropped from all my builds. For duelist and scourge i got similar numbers, sometimes higher, sometimes lower highest i saw for duelist is 36% and people call it op.
Again, uptime isn’t the end all. 36% uptime doesn’t mean much on its own. “Up whenever you dodged an enemy” tells you all you need to know about the uptime and how effective it is. Whenever you dodge something, you’ll have something you can use that massive damage bonus on. Which means you ALWAYS have it when it matters.
Mathing out an average uptime is overthinking it hard.
I don’t really agree with that take.
The fact that sprint-based buffs are always active before engaging enemies is exactly what makes them so strong — you enter combat already buffed.
In contrast, dodge-based or bleed-based buffs only activate after you’ve already taken a risk or been surrounded.
Saying the sprint uptime only matters when no enemies are around misses the point — that constant uptime means you’re always fighting under enhanced conditions from the very first hit.
Also, having a higher average uptime isn’t meaningless. It usually means the activation condition is easier or the duration is longer, which directly affects how reliably the buff stays active during combat.
In other words, better uptime means better consistency — and that’s a valid metric when evaluating how smooth or practical a talent feels in real gameplay.
That’s a good point, but it still is unrelated to uptime% but rather to how the mechanic is actually triggered. If it’s a buff you get from dodging, you’ll have it the moment an enemy swings at you and you dodge. That’s less uptime, but is it a relevant amount of less uptime? It certainly doesn’t devalue a 20% damage buff after dodging a bunch into a 9% damage buff.
Whenever you’re actually meleeing, it’s trivial to keep up and to keep it maxed out. Average uptime or average stack count is not relevant. The metric you want to look at here is rampup speed and wether you can maintain it between seperate fights.
I also want to note that “on successful dodge” talents will trigger when being shot at by shooter enemies. So you certainly can have it fully maxed out before your first swing, too.
Did you take a look at the uptime data I posted earlier?
Using Riposte as an example — if we ignore overall uptime and only look at the distribution of stacks while the buff was active, the maximum stack (15% damage after the nerf) accounted for about 25% of that active period.
In other words, if the buff was active for roughly half of the fight, the full 15% damage bonus was actually present for around 12–13% of total combat time.
A good example of what I’d call an easy-to-maintain melee buff would be Sustained Assault — it has a simple trigger condition (“on melee hit”) and a fairly generous duration of 5 seconds, which makes it reliable even in hectic situations.
That’s exactly the kind of consistency I wish more of Zealot’s talents had.
