- Disdain: Cleave through 5 enemies to get that 25% dmg which only lasts for 1 hit; limits their enemy options and weapon options if they want to maximize this talent
- Sustained Assault: Great talent, no argument here
- Duelist: Requires a successful dodge just for 3 seconds of finesse damage
- Desperation: Scaling damage buff for the class with the highest base stam regen and 2nd highest base stamina, maximizing this actually lessens your damage potential as you are taking the time to keep your stamina low (i.e pushing, sprinting, etc)
- Two Melee Damage nodes (10% each): Vet can get 15% melee damage with 1 node
- Abolish Blasphemers: Great talent, however it’s not as accessible as Vet’s version
- Scourge: Great when it works
- Blazing Piety: Great, but why don’t we get better crit damage talents?
- Martyrdom: Great, but requires wound curios and low health
- Inexorable Judgement: Doesn’t apply on first hit, have to buff it to ten seconds (compared to vet base 10 seconds)
- Far more survivability: Every other class has an easier time generating toughness
- Revenant: Great talent
- Less condition dependent damage resistance and toughness damage resistance: Vet gets TDR for being in coherency (33%), Vet gets TDR for being above 75% toughess (50%)
- Easier Toughness Regen: See above, Zealot has to kill a target (everyone trying to kill makes this an issue) or gets 7.5% a second (Vet has 5% as a required node, Arby has a 5% node with dog)
- Better Mobility: This comes down to weapon selection
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This right here, it’s not that zealot doesn’t have the ability to mitigate damage, it’s that they take more chip damage because they don’t have the toughness regen that the other melee classes do.
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Yeah. The Zealot’s tree and some talent activation conditions don’t really hold up compared to the Veteran’s.
Abolish Blasphemers is really badly placed because both Thy Wrath be swift and Sustained assault are better choices than Holy Revenant.
Vet can easily get +30% weakspot damage just… all the time, when the Zealot has to dodge to get a boost for 3 seconds.
Desperado is also insanely good for a single talent point.
All zealots wish they had Exploit Weakness. I mean, +20% to ALL damage for 6 seconds just for a melee crit ? Crazy good.
And +3% (+15%) damage on dodge doesn’t compare with +5% (+25%) crit on dodge, considering how important crits are for both classes (Infernus on lasguns, for example).
With little investment, the Veteran easily catches up to the Zealot in terms of raw damage potential.
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This is assertion is not actually proven.
Lets look at some evidence to the contrary.
Chip damage definition: Damage to health through toughness.
For the sake of our arguement we should include damage taken when toughness is broken since the leading driver for this would be toughness generation itself.
Qualitative; things I’ve seen
- The average scoreboard in high havoc has most zealots i see with the lowest damage taken.
- The scoreboards I see of my own gameplay and those high level players I am familiar with echo this pattern pretty consistently
- Zealots frequently have the lowest downs and deaths (confounding factor; chip damage is only a contributing factor not the sole driver)
Quantitative:
- TDR on this class is much higher than most classes. It is possible to take a hit on toughness that would do, for example, 40 toughness damage but only take like 20 or even less on zealot. A single dodge with second wind can fully recover that whereas other classes have better regen but less DR and thus the math actually results in their toughness replenishment to 100% being slower.
Situational:
- Zealot has superior dodge, sprint, slide and stamina to other classes allowing active mitigation of incoming damage
- Zealot has numerous high cleave high range melee weapon options allowing plant your feet stagger capacity into low hitmass groups.
- Zealot can heal with Holy Revenant
- Zealot can heal some chip damage taken with Restoring Faith
- Zealot abilities all regen toughness allowing immediate rescue from situations where generation isn’t fast enough.
Theres a lot of other ways we can assess things but just saying you take more chip damage because you don’t have as good of generation choices doesn’t track when you look at active avoidance approaches. Not getting hit is way easier on zealot than ogryn. Its similar to Arbites but hits taken by zealot typically have significantly improved resistance allowing recovery before taking a second hit except in extremely exposed (face tanking) scenarios. All zealot abilities also significantly regenerate toughness.
No one actually believes Holy Revenant isn’t a must take right? That’s just people trolling…right?
8 Likes
Why would you build for failure when you could avoid taking damage in the first place ? And just circumvent an entire game mechanic with Thy Wrath be swift ?
We don’t have infinite talents points to spend. Choices must be made. I’d rather invest in TDR and toughness regen than a Hail-Mary talent that might come into play maybe one in 10 games (e.g. if you eat an overhead, or get disabled and not rescued quickly).
Zealot has insane survivabilty now. Imo better than arbites, a tad harder to gain toughness, yes, but much higher damage reduction. Don’t sleep on shield of contempt it is the anti-havoc-shooter skill.
Yes I would as well like some easier to maintain melee damage nodes, it really cracks me up to have to do five unnecessary hits after casting chorus to get the buffs back up. Talk about anti-synergy.
So all in all I consider him quite balanced now. Vet and psyker are in much worse states, fully dependent on some wacky skills mechanics and crappy without.
I dont see increasing your survivability as building for failure. I am aware 1 or 2 youtubers used to express this opinion, along with “the top 1% do blah blah”. If you take it to the extreme you would go with just a grey weapon and no trinkets…
Holy Revenant lets you do things in extreme situations you shouldnt normally be able to do, like facetank a crusher overhead while getting someone up.
Most deaths for me happen if Im webbed or blown off a ledge.
Honestly I feel like I take more damage from other players hitting barrels than enemies, but maybe thats me.
3 Likes
You’re right actually. Vet shout is worthless, just don’t get hit bro. Psyker bubble is worthless, just dodge slide bro. As a human being you are a flawless creature that never makes a mistake in a 45 minute game and singular mistakes are never exactly what whipes games. Chorus is stupid you can just not get hit. Chip damage should literally never happen either, so why are we in a thread talking about it?
Reliably healing 50hp every 2 minutes is amazing. Having full death immunity every 2 minutes on a melee class that allows you to play extremely recklessly on purpose and thus forcibly change the landscape of the battlefield is good actually. Holy Revenant can even be triggered on purpose to allow other players to use healing instead of you. In real terms it’s identical in function to gold toughness hence the sarcasm above.
6 Likes
I get it. But in practice for me, having 50 HP instead of 5 HP after activating Until Death doesn’t make a huge difference. I’d rather get good toughness regen to avoid chip HP damage at all.
The reason you see zealots with lowest damage taken in high havocs is because they’ve had to learn how to avoid hits far more than any other class or, I hope not, they are chorus bots. I’m assuming your familiar zealots are the first version, so just ask them and as long as they’ve played other classes they might agree with having to learn how to avoid hits on the zealot far more.
Edit: Every class can adapt to their shortcomings, it sorta just feels like Zealot has to do it a lot more than other classes.
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Bro chill. I just said I’d rather not rely on Until Death and Revenant by instead getting better TDR and Toughness regen. Don’t treat me like a stupid elitist who spits on everyone who hasn’t cleared Havoc 40 or something.
2 Likes
Appologies, I meant to come across as humorously hyperbolic not annoying.
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Name one talent which I should take instead of Holy Revenant?
I see no point of going over your lack of counter arguments or actual arguments regarding specific talents. Just shortly: you get crit damage from Duellist, which you surely know. You are likely to pick that keystone on weapons which have great innate crit power anyway.
There was no need to respond with comments about talents which you know are great. On other hand a lot of your “criticism” of zealot talents is questionable. “doesn’t apply on the first hit”? You are there in the thick of it swinging. Yes Martyrdom requires low HP and it isn’t as effective as with temp HP in VT2, but HP in Havoc is mostly irrelevant on zealot. Abolish Blasphemers hard to reach? It is just there, if you don’t take Providence are we even playing the same game?
Veteran has multiple conditional talents also, just like any other class.
Yes you can play vet in melee, yes you can put out a lot damage, but it is at a cost. You are nowhere as survivable as zealot in melee, one of your best melee weapons have terrible mobility. I honestly rather run a Relic blade. Main sources of vets TDR is tied 2 conditional talents and ability usage.
Anyway compering talents like to like or expecting exactly the same characteristics from similar talent on another class is pointless, unless we want to end up with one talent tree and no classes.
I share people frustrations with weapon balance (melee and ranged actually) in higher difficulties, but I don’t lack damage on zealot assuming I use a time worthy weapon, and this is a VERY short list in Havoc these days. I like the recent talent tree changes (mostly), but difficulty balancing made the weapon balance worse. I used to enjoy Crusher a lot in Havoc, not anymore. I might give it a try again with Thunderous but that weapon is a broken mess thanks to the best blessings being tied to a need for Stagger etc.
Still running a Relic Blade zealot is the safest experience I can get from any classes in Havoc, and damage is good too, even if you cannot compere to infinite cleave psykers.
2 Likes
Let me clarify I want melee vet nerfed but ranged vet buffed, with that said tho
Nah that’s just crazy LOL
You’re only getting that against horde. This talent is only taken in most builds because it saves points lol
Yeah, actual good Disdain
It is a great Talent and I think it’s fine, but Desperado is still superior because while it’s only 25% Finesse instead of 50%, it’s permanently passive AND gives you a 10% crit chance
Requires not having stamina for that dmg, a lot of risk
2 points for what vet gets 70% of it in just 1 point
Good talent yes
Still OP
You’re nearly ever fully proccing Inexorable
Martyrdom requires a lot more risk
Meanwhile Vet has either 1.34x free dmg against the Target he desires, and he can regen that quickly so basically nearly full uptime
Or win another huge melee attack speed boost and Dodge distance for just killing someone with ranged
In which 1 of them vet has too
And the other one is good yes
Yes, Zealot has better mobility and toughness regen
Vet however still has shout, 50% TDR for just breathing, passive regen for breathing, 33% DR for just breathing near teammates, and even more regen for killing anything that isn’t trash
Vet literally has a lot LESS condition dependant dr than Zealot idk where you getting this from
I never said he was a disaster, I said that veteran outmelees Zealot when Finesse weapons mainly
Veteran gets huge finesse bonuses, and free damage increases by literally 0 condition or something that can be activated on a whim without requirement (Slide, kill trash) meanwhile Zealot has to Dodge, backstab, drain his stamina, hit many enemies consecutively. See my issues here? Only easy dmg node Zealot has is Sustained Assault, everything else has too little time active or has a non consistent proc
Vet Knife > Zealot Knife
This was my point, comparing both on even fields, and vet is gonna end up doing more
Zealot is forced to inspect into shroudfield or charge to do Best with this setup, leaving nothing for the team
Meanwhile Vet can deal similar damage with knife than the previous mentioned Zealot, while still able to run shout
This is why melee vet needs nerfing
I want to clarify I main Zealot btw
4 Likes
Reginald has a point. UD and HR provide you with a safety net on a 120 second cooldown. No TDR or toughness reduction is going to save you from damage bursts the game can throw at you. You can literally say no to death, which in a game like Darktide with all the classic Tide bullshittery is one of the core reasons which make zealot the most reliable frontliner.
It’s easily one of the most powerful talent combos in the game, next to something like Empathic Evasion.
5 Likes
Interferes greatly with Zealot charge and stealth, if Zealot can’t use keystone with abilities unless it’s after activation of keystone it’s not really good is it?
Compare this to the Vet 15% elite dmg talent; Vet has 3 paths to access this node and unless they are getting smoke grenade and melee attack speed only, this is very easily attainable. And Providence isn’t a bad ability, but it’s not a good one either, you can get 12% revive speed on a curio. Which, if you don’t have Revive speed on a curio, are we even playing the same game?
2 Likes
Like you need that extra damage on FotF or Shroudfield hit. What else do you want to one shot? Full HP monsters and bosses?
Again, apples and oranges. Also yes 25% revive speed for 1 talent point on the way to another good talent or taking multiple multiplicative revive speed upgrades on Curios. Also why not both? There is nothing bad about having options. One can only wonder who is more reliable as a frontliner zealot or a melee vet?
What happened to those “Why does Fatshark hate veteran so much?” topics. I suppose we can only blame the social media “influencers”.
I’m leaving this comment because the discussion here seems to be getting a bit heated, and I’d like to steer things back to the main topic.
First off, I want to make it clear that I’m not saying Zealot is bad. As I mentioned in earlier comments, Zealot has some very strong utility tools for melee combat, and with the recent rework, gained quite a few damage-boosting talents that made him much stronger offensively.
That’s simply a fact.
Now, returning to the main point of my original post:
my concern is that many nodes still have overly demanding activation conditions, making them unreliable or underperforming during actual melee combat.
I used examples like Duellist, Punishment, Against the Odds, and Riposte, but this also applies to talents like Disdain or Desperation, which rarely reach their full stated values.
For instance, Desperation requires you to intentionally drain all of your stamina (such as by repeated pushes) just to get the 20% damage bonus.
My suggestion is to relax the activation conditions for these damage-boosting talents.
Of course, simply making them easier to trigger would make Zealot too strong, so I believe a fair approach would be to slightly lower their buff values while easing the activation requirements — allowing more weapon setups and playstyles to make effective use of them.
Let’s keep it constructive — I really enjoy hearing everyone’s takes on this.
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I might be missing something here, but saying apples and oranges means they aren’t suitable for comparison. Are you saying that Providence is a better talent than Iron Will? Or that 3 paths to a good node isn’t comparable to 1 path to a good node? I don’t understand your use of the phrase.
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zealot dude literally saved our havoc 40 run and my sanity for not having to go through multiple attempts.
in my defense I went down second last 
anyways, that was a season done in one run, peace of mind for 3 months to follow 
thx to zealot clutch 
3 Likes