Being slower they gave it the survival bits everyone loves (Until Death, Benediction, Master’s Retribution)
Middle:
Support / Close Range (Annointed in Blood, Voice of Terra, Emperor’s Bullet Sainted Gunslinger, Shield of Contempt.. ect)
Attempted to define as supporting team with stagger and range attacks, falls short with many ranged elements in right tree.
Right:
Fast/Crit/Backstab/Dodge (pretty much everything)
Being so fast and defensive they intended people to skip Until Death buts its so good no one wants to and the options on its side are less in comparison.
This all falls apart at the Keystones
IE favors the mobility of right tree with toughness gains but the reward is lacking with such small percentages should boost with crit / crit damage at same percentage… or just rework the keystone.
Martyrdom completely doesn’t fit save maybe the higher damage causing more stagger, but ends up being a pure melee damage keystone to make up for branch short comings and forgets the range element.
Blazing Peity is so good every branch wants it and doesn’t seem to fit the left branch archetype specifically as slower weapon crit less, Infectious Zeal is borderline support as well as crit affecting range element.
Think they all should be fine tunned, along with weak auras.
With lack of passive choices also have great room to removed excessive operative modifiers, add a bunch of fun passives and clean up current talents to better refine tree themes…such as…
Left
DR on Weakspot hits
Wound Tree / Martyrdom
Natural Bond themed talent trickle heal to wound
“Crunch” / Rending / Big hit Talents
Middle
Taunt on melee stagger
Group Damage to melee staggered
Non-weakspot damage
Dodge Back into further Roll and Gun
Right
Running boosts towards enemies / allies theme
Shroudfield to backstab teleport or duration with extending on ally pick up
General Shroudfield confusion grace period.
…maybe a slip through dodge for lesser enemies…maybe
Part of Keystone that launches a flurry of swings
What would you add or reframe branches for different themes?
Yeah, I feel Zealot is next on the ‘rework block’ really. Not because they aren’t strong (they still very much are), but mostly due to the fact they’ve had the least done to them, and with Ogryn getting a face lift, it now REALLY shows as every class is relatively open on their choices except for them now, and all their ‘tax talents’ make it that much harder to justify grabbing various things or going particular paths. Many a ‘good zealot’ has tried to point out how you don’t need Until Death in your build, but when to forgo it means the other two trees or spending just one less point on Desperation, it’s like actually I’ll just keep my safety net thank you.
To that end though, I do think everything else you brought up makes sense. I feel a lot of the Zealots talents where created and placed due to the old selections being the bases for the left tree, then everything else just kinda filled in around it. But with things having shifted form that, I feel there’s a lot of things that could be shifted and improved, especially with the Ogryns tree in mind. To that end, how I’d go about it:
Until Death/Holy Revenant become ‘central talents’ easily accessible/maybe even required after selecting your first tree, this maybe being the +15 toughness for vet before the open Blitz choice. I feel (even if some of the top 1% disagree) these two are kinda a lot of Zealots identity, but with the rest of what Zealot can do I feel are a bit to impactful. I feel upping the ‘cooldown’ of this talent to three or even five minutes (verses it’s current two) would do enough to shift the point of it to a proper ‘safety net’ verses a thing you just have every single engagement, and depending on said cooldown maybe even baking the two together and reducing the health gain to 15-20%. The emperor sustains you, but like, you gotta keep yourself alive a little bit right? XD
As stated above, even if not with Until Death still make a node before the three blitzes so you can pick whichever one you want, everyone has this option now, Zealot should have it too. To this end, add a similar node before all the aura’s/a line of nodes so one can take what they want after deciding their other talents.
Shift the left side toward being more ‘heavy hitter’ focused. Lower Punishments requirements to like 3 hits while evening it out the percentages to keep the same effectiveness, swap it’s place with The Master’s Retribution. Change Retribution to enhance push stagger after getting hit (similar to Ogryns ‘No Pushover’), while still pushing back the attacker (because I hate dogs). As you say, move over Martyr and Martyr’s Purpose into this column, swap the toughness DR into this column while moving the Suppression into the middle, and swap places with the movement speed nodes on the left with the DR nodes on the right. Also with Until Death being moved, add in a few Rending Talents/pull over hammer of faith. And my most contentious Decision…change Fury of the Faithful into displaying the fact it gives 100% rending on that hit, increase it’s damage on that hit by 100% (no forced crit, just raw strength increase), remove the attack speed, but instead increase your weapons strength by 20-25% for 10-15 seconds. Ohh, and put Faith’s Fortitude over here to (likely in the Holy Revenant Spot), and maybe give it a secondary effect such as ‘while the zealot has 5-6 or more wounds (as in, in total), heal up to current wound 1hp/s’ (having health regen in general ‘up to wound’ on all the time seems broken to me given one can have two wounds so that’s half there HP being healed all the time, but if one committed to high wounds, healing like 30 HP out of combat doesn’t seem op to me).
Middle can stay largely the same with the changes above, gun focused support set up built around suppression and toughness regen. Place Momentum HERE, as it’s the main gun focused keystone and actually fits, make the Emperors Bullet last 10s or even just last ‘forever’/so long as your mag is empty (given that would be a detriment all on it’s own, while also letting you actually stack and hold onto Sainted Gunslinger for when you super need your gun again), and drop Unremitting for something like one motion or increased ranged crit chance or something of the like, Hammer of Faith being able to be replaced with such ideas too. Buff Voice of Tera to something like 6-10% per kill (you’re required to use bullets for it, it should be worth it) and I think the middles golden. (Invocation of Death likely moved here as well just by nature of me having no where else to put it, and it being ‘central’ in it’s current state isn’t the worst. This likely needs further thought though, maybe make it strictly occur off ranged crits?)
Right is basically already perfect, with the changes above it becomes perfect, as you no longer have to take loner and hate yourself or jump through 15 hoops to get a safety net. You also still have access to the middle tree/even better access to Invocation, and Rights identity is already ‘the most solid/broken’ right now. With the moving of the DR nod’s for movement speed ones above, it locks in it’s purpose, go fast, hit lots, and dodge around the battle field never getting hit. The only bits of the identity I feel a bit back and forth on is the fact that Blazing Piety lands here (as it should), but invocation is in the middle…maybe Backstabber and be middle and Invocation Right, but then Backstabber doesn’t make as much sense in the middle…so to that point I think it needs more ideation (or we just make it ranged only like I stated above), but beyond that I think right becomes multiple levels of perfect, with the only thing being dropping Grievous Wounds for ‘whatever the heck you want’ as impact should be the left side now and it’s doing nothing where it is anyway. (Attack speed removed from Fury can maybbbe be added to invis here? or otherwise placed into other talents, maybe located in the middle).
breaths, ok, think that’s all I got xD. Know zealot is ‘perfect’ to many people so to change it is blasphemy against the Emperor, but ‘this feels right to me’ if they ever did something similar, to it, would have to entirely see though.
I feel that Until Death and Holy Revenant are the best defense and smash em of zeolot, they are integral skills for the class even if it isn’t the main defense and you are not using it to the best potential. You always want them, since it give so much when they do put in the work.
Yah I’m been thinking Until Death and Holy Revenant should work at a lower state as new class iconic similar to Ogryn’s new barge dodge, and have a tree talent to boost them to current state, less mandatory.
The tree in general will probably get a structure rework so exact placements less important as which side things will be on and what many new talents will we want when Zealot actually gets some competitively good and numerous choices, Similar to Ogryn.
They do allow zealot to be more… zealous and reckless abandonment for the Emprar
Zealot and Veteran both have such a rigid tree design that doesn’t easily allow changing paths and they both support 16 and 19 operative nodes respectively compared to ogryns 9 now, that’s crazy build taxing. I really hope they both get a tree structure similar to ogryn in the future. I do like the themes proposed but would prefer the heavy hitter side to support more crit as well as keeping fury of the faithful the same.
I think rigidity is needed at the end of trees but the beginning should be be flexible. At least that’s the path ogryn tree took. 1-2 nodes pre and post blitz and aura would cut out a lot of taxes.
Zealot suffers most from long rigid branches and both have taxing cross nodes.
I think that they should kick these talents from the general tree and put it linked to martyrdom.
I think that there should be a path to a real gun zealot.
The only weapon that is build for it is the IAG. But the talents don’t make the zealot approaching the efficiently of a veteran.
At contrary a veteran that go melee can get close to zealot efficiently.
I think it will happen cause, as you said, this class need a tree like Ogryn and psyker. But veteran needs also same treatment.
But also, cause the Ogryn melee is so strong…
Seriously, when I play the Ogryn, all difficulties vanish immediately. A bulwark, let’s push it… 15 dreg ragers, let’s stagger them… a crusher… funny, he tried to hit me.. seriously, everything has become so easy that I take zealot just cause this is (was) my preferred class.
But as always, I will repeat that the most important point, if they keep the zealot identity, is to balance CDR nodes.
I would hate that the CDR would be restricted behind keystones. But IOD needs a nerf, Martyr’s purpose need to work differently and pious pious may be good enough.