I think with scum being released plenty of people think the zealot’s identity got watered down a bit. I thought I’d share some some ideas and hopefully inspire some other interesting thoughts from the community.
It seems to me FS doesn’t really have an idea of what needs to be done to revitalize it’s class identity.
I was thinking about it, and the zealot has a bunch of slow swinging 2h melee weapons, and a flamer as his unique class feature.
The first idea was to take the unfaltering talent and make it a class feature. That would give the impression of a character uniquely suited to swinging around big melee weapons.
The next idea I had was to change scourge. Scourge would now apply burn stacks on heavy attacks so that it’s not so dependent on fast weapons. Successive hits could retain it’s function, but the stacks should persist for longer than 3 seconds or the stacks should fall off one at a time. It would also give the zealot more synergy with his fire grenade and his flamer.
Last idea I’ll share: Thy wrath be swift I think should be moved to the first node that follows the aura selection. It’s been a mandatory pick forever so it might as well be baked in to the class identity as a mandatory pick on the way down the tree.
I’d definitely love to hear more ideas from the community.
Zealot main here. Zealot still rocks, still is the emperor’s biggest D worshipper. The second I am bored of trying around and want to force a win in havoc I whip out me zealot…If you really want to tinker on it, I would suggest stuff like making the immolation grenade actually apply burning, giving it something for a ranged play style or remove shroudfield. Look at its icon it could be changed to some dual wield ability. That is something everyone is asking for!
What if the immolation grenade was something you threw at targets that exploded on impact and burned applied brittleness to an area? Think some idea like that would warrant it being used occasionally?
People have already suggested giving the Zealot something like an option to bring in two melee weapons but have no ranged weapons (aside from grenades) to make the class more unique and interesting.
It could be like the Lone Wolf keystone but for the Zealot.
I don’t think FS is willing to go back much on the original design class skills were made with, unless they’d meant to do a complete overhaul of those. I wouldn’t expect massive changes on that merit.
Also, indirectly buffing flamer, which is already solid/very good, is not a good idea. Also, immolation grenade deals damage that’s entirely outside of Burn as a DoT and it uses a unique burn DoT profile instead, which doesn’t stack. With this in mind…
I like the Lingering flames suggestion, but the DoT stacking isn’t happening due to the above. Fatshark seems unwilling to revisiting 3-year-old ideas and doing reworks.
I generally wish the grenades had more going for them - they aren’t replenishable bar grenade pickups, and offer decent effects, but due to that remain low on the “general” grenade pickup priority list, alongside having measly 3 for their quantity.
Here’s what I would consider reasonable changes to make them slightly more to be excited about:
Stunstorms - make them grant a unique Brittleness debuff on anything they hit (8 stacks of 2.5% Brittleness (max 8 stacks - so it doesn’t stack with itself); indefinite duration, i.e., until the target dies),
Immolation - if Vror’s idea wouldn’t pass, my second-in-order would be to debuff anything in the fire area with -% stagger reduction/+% impact received, so any enemies within can be more easily thrown off balance; say to keep things in the area for longer.
I’d also consider giving both the quantity of 4 instead of 3.
Yeah this was a cool feature in VT2 when weapons actually had noticeable upsides and downsides. I kinda fail to see the point of two melee weapons when everything is becoming a jack of all trades anyway.
Very true. Flamer is already pretty solid. Just trying to imagine ways to lean in to a class identity. Holy fire sounds right to me. Kind of like the psyker and his warp/soulblaze or the scum and his toxin. Doesn’t need to be that strong. Theres a lot of blaze and toxin in their tree.
Would you see it as a change to original design to do something like the heavy melee speed reduction/uninterruptible heavy melee charging being a class feature?
To me zealot seems very patchwork identity wise compared to the other classes. Heavy 2h melees and… stealth haha. Not a single node to increase heavy melee attack damage. Flame nade and flamers and not a single talent to boost flame damage.
These are all really solid ideas that IMO might warrant taking a something other than knives. I’m so sick of taking knives lol.
I’d also like knives to be chargeable. At least to a point where they can reliably kill a standard shooter trash mob on a body shot every time lol. I like the quick throw, but if I could click and hold and get a subtle consecration animation after 1s or something that would be dope.
1500 hours exclusively on Zealot. I love the fantasy of playing with Space Marine weapons like the Thunder Hammer, Boltgun, Eviscerator and Flamer.
But above all, I love the character. He is armored in faith, and faith is his weapon. So his blitz abilities ought to be faith related.
I say take away his 2 grenades and replace them by Chaplain-like gear such as a Rosarius that generates a momentary void shield like the Captains. And a Crozius that burns the very soul of heretics in narrow cone in front of him.
Yeah like the thought of quick swapping between a DS and Relic Blade is pretty funny at first but then I’m like wait… Would I ever actually forego a ranged weapon for that???
Now would I give up a ranged weapon to dual wield a chaxe + chord? ABSOLUTELY.
I can’t say I don’t like the sound of just ditching the grenades he does have for some new abilities! The shield idea and the Crozius sound pretty awesome, ngl. They’d be a lot more thematic.
