Zealot would benefit immensely from a small toughness increase

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Hi people

I don’t know about you, but i noticed that a lot of Zealot’s players (including me) told me that HP curios were generally better for him, making him harder to kill overall and more effective. But reading Zealot’s feats, he’s kind of supposed to be the toughness guy : Yet he doesn’t perform super well in very high difficulties with Toughness curios

And i think that it’s simply because he only have a 100 base toughness. Getting 2 +20% toughness curios (16+4) will only bring you to 140… And 40 that’s jsut not enough to make a significant difference

When you have 100 toughness, you can tank one hit in melee for free (with no bleedthrough), then the next hits will massively hurt you. With 140 toughness, the same thing will happen, except that the second hit you’ll take will deal less dmg than if you had 100 : It’s something, but it’s way less effective than getting ~ +100hp from 2 +24% hp curios (20+4).

It does the same thing in the end, but more reliable. You can tank 50% more hits period, no need for your toughness to be up and it gives additional benefits (more room for corruption, more HP after being wounded, and if you manage your toughness well, you will not lose much more hp than if you had 140)

So, for me it’s essential that Zealot get more base toughness than 100. Not 200 like the Vet, it would be obviously way too good with Zealot’s ult and many bonuses related to Toughness, but something like 130 would be a smart decision. It would greatly improve the effectiveness of +Toughness curios, and it would allow Zealot to build so he can tank 2 hits in a row with no bleedthrough bcecause you could potentially reach values up to ~190 (with curios), and make it a very effective option even compared to HP stack

It would also make sense since Vet have Tougness x2 compared to other classes, Ogryn have HP x2, and Zealot have +30% hp. Him getting +30% toughness too wouldn’t seem inappropriate at all

Hope it wasn’t too long, i’d like to have your opinions about that

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There’s a lot of bad advice in general for this game. Many people saw a Reddit post claiming to have mathed out the ‘optimal’ survivability curios for each class and took that as word of law, despite it being largely irrelevant in an actual real world scenario.

I use two toughness and a health curio. (Mostly because I don’t have a great toughness curio on my zealot honestly, even the health one has toughness as a secondary stat) Toughness curios scale fantastically with a crit build as it will greatly reduce health chip damage by keeping your damage reduction higher. I completely disagree on saying 140 toughness isn’t as impactful as higher toughness. Unless you’re not actively regenerating toughness in some manner and soaking way more hits than you should, on average having higher toughness is going to significantly reduce the overall damage you take.

It also depends on your choice for your level 20 feat. With holy revenant I’m pretty much always sitting between 50 and 150 health or so. With a crit build and making sure to always try to sit at 75%+ toughness I become functionally immortal the majority of the time.

Higher base toughness would honestly probably make the class incredibly broken.

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The toughness total isn’t the problem for me, the problem is when I gap close and lose SOME toughness to ranged the mobs I gap closed on get killed by ranged and I regain no toughness for doing my job.

This also leads to other situations where you just can’t go in on higher difficulties vs large groups of range that are spread out because you will get constantly shot while in melee range of other ranged forcing you to wait around for the people with actual range weapons to do their job while you pat your flamer wishing you could participate in the game.

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Zealot is ridiculously tanky with a crit/bleed build and toughness damage reduction.

If fatshark were to bump toughness on shouty, they’d have to break the combat knife build in some way, because it has the highest survivability in the game.

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The crit build is stupidly OP, but that’s another problem on it’s own imo

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It’s just permanent immortality, hardly OP! Look at that flashy power sword, surely that needs nerfing first!

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I do’nt play with the crit build, feels cheap and single target weapons are boring AF to me

Without this build that jsut tops everything in the gaùe, Zealot’s toughness build simply don’t provide much benefit compared to health. The difference in overall felt tankyness is massive past Malice from a HP build to a Toughness build

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Crit builds are just god-tier OP, they just make the game stupid easy no matter what your build is and should be nerfed a LOT imo. They make toughness build work indeed, but you could run into heresy difficulty with no curios and still win with no hard struggle (i did exactly that a few time to show how broken it was to some friends)

sure it keeps your dmg red higher, i said it was the case in my first post : But i don’t think it’s enough to compete with the bonus health (which have higher %bonus and a higher base value and added utility)

Higher base toughness would make the class broken with the current crit build, but if it’s nerfed, it should be perfectly fine. The crit build is the issue imo, not the hypothetical base toughness up

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I disagree in that regard as well, momentum eviscerator also works very well, as well as just… not taking damage in the first place. I do think the two toughness regen feats need some tweaking to be less situational (EG: The 5/s regen should be in range of 3 enemies OR one elite+ enemy) and more universally appealing, as that’s part of why the crit build feels so much better as you’re less reliant on underwhelming feats. Part of what makes veteran feel better in terms of toughness is how much less obnoxious their toughness regen feats are to get, not their overall toughness pool. A flat toughness pool increase wouldn’t make it feel better to play on the whole, simply enable the crit build to be even stronger. I’m not entirely certain how they could nerf the crit build without ruining the one use of the knife, and the crit build already has the problem of being weak in horde scenarios without team support versus almost every other melee option zealot has.

I don’t think the crit build is the issue, I think it’s a combination of poor options for toughness regeneration combined with ranged enemies needing some tweaking. (Particularly shotgunners and regular shooters)

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Yeah but that’s only if they’ve got a crit within the past 4 seconds which means you’re probably already in melee range so you’re not taking as much toughness damage.

The real problem is when you get to one of those point of no returns where there is a drop off or the doors close behind you and there’s a dozen ranged guys just waiting to remove all your toughness in 1-2 bursts.

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I don’t think that’s how bleed through works? I’m pretty sure you take bleed through when not at 100 % toughness. It’s hard to test but it definitely felt that way on my vet and when running +toughness curios on Zealot.

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It is % based. I didn’t catch that when I read through the post the first time. Whelp.

That’s part of what makes the toughness curios more effective along with the toughness damage reduction, you’re increasing your average time at higher damage reduction values.

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It’s % based but they made so that every toughness above 100 give 100% bleed through protection

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No. It does not. Perfect example at exactly 100 toughness. It’s percentage based.

I try to hold my tongue with topics like this but please at least understand how mechanics like this work before calling for major changes like increasing the baseline toughness.

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Indeed I was wrong, toughness doesn’t give you 100% bleed through red above 100 of you don’t have 100% toughness up…

…But it makes my point even more valid : Why the hell is it so bad ? Why literaly more than half of Zealot’s feats focus on toughness even though it doesn’t help him much ?

It means that if you come back from 0 toughness up to 100% you’ll end up taking DMG if your max was 140, while you’d have taken 0 if your max is 100 : It’s so bizarre

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Because it literally does? Big difference between taking a hit at 50% toughness and 75% toughness. You take literally twice the health damage in the first case compared to the second.

I think that % is a typo there but anyway, as Zealot both your Ult and your regen feat are % based so do scale with max toughness. Gives you more room for error with gunners and more DR from chip damage on average.

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Of course it does help, but it doesn’t help a lot

Getting +50% toughness will not mean you can take 50% additional DMG, it might be a lot less depending on the context, especially if you fight a lot in melee.

On the other hand, getting +50% HP will always let you get away with 50% additional DMG taken that’s why I think toughness bonuses don’t provide enough benefit. It’s not that i say they don’t provide ANY, i say they don’t provide ENOUGH

Not every toughness Regen source seems % scaled, and if some aren’t, that’s a potential issue

Does melee kills give % toughness back ? Does coherency give % toughness back ? If not, investing in toughness can sometimes actively make you take more DMG because you’d get back less % than if you had less max toughness

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This is exactly what I was referring to when I commented on the Reddit post about optimal mathing out, as it’s just flat out wrong when applied to real world scenarios unless you’re just playing badly.

On average, higher toughness will make you take less damage unless you’re already soaking more hits than you should/prior to regenning toughness (Which you shouldn’t). If your entire toughness is depleted you should be backing off/playing it safe for a bit to regenerate it, not suiciding in and then claiming your health is what kept you alive.

All I can think of is the zealots and ogryn I see that suicide charge into a pack of enemies, make no attempt to dodge, then lose all of their health in one pack. Sure, higher health might help them in that situation, but to be blunt they’re absolute idiots.

If my health is low and I don’t have holy revenant available I make it top priority to reach 100% toughness again the vast majority of the time.

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“I disagree with you, therefore you must be bad”

Why litteraly every discussions about game mechanics comes down to this shitty argument ?
I play damnation fairly regularly with most of them ending up in a win, and i don’t bother taking extra wounds. I wouldn’t say that’s bad but if you need to project me as a kamikazing monkey who dash into hordes and die, feel free to do so

Like i already said during half of my previous post, more toughness DOES provide benefits. My point was that it provides LESS benefit than extra hp, which is more reliable and provide extra benefits (against corruption, notably). There are plenty of scenarios where you don’t have control over your toughness : Getting pinned down by a god or a net, getting submerged by a horde (which happens), getting flamed (which litteraly melt toughness to 0 in one hit)

In addition of that, your example of this perfect scenario work the same weither you have 100 toughness or 150 : Investing in toughness give you nothing if you manage to take one hit at a time and get back to 100% between each. Additional toughness is only a plus when you take several hits in a row, and it will only help aginst a few of them

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I said absolutely nothing about you personally. I was purely referring to comparing health and toughness, as in the only time health will come out ahead of toughness is if you take entirely too much damage while not regenerating any toughness whatsoever. Calm thyself.

I will still address some of what you said though, keep in mind when I’m saying “You” it’s not specifically you, just general statements:

My point was that it provides LESS benefit than extra hp, which is more reliable and provide extra benefits (against corruption, notably).

Corruption is almost entirely avoidable outside of grimoires, which are awful and a trap anyway. You’ll gradually accrue a very small amount but unless you’re soaking way too many hits from corruption generating enemies then it should never be an issue.

Getting pinned down by a god or a net

By a… god? In terms of dogs they do little to no damage. Ideally you’d avoid the dogs but the servers are screwy right now so shrug Trappers you should generally avoid though I still have to force myself to remember that they can 360 no scope you no matter what you do, and that they have a bizarrely high stagger resistance even if you smack them in the face. (Also their wind up sound always sounds like the net is already firing to my knee jerk brain so I have bad tendency to dodge too early)

getting submerged by a horde (which happens), getting flamed (which litteraly melt toughness to 0 in one hit)

Both of those are huge personal screw ups. Flames are generally super predictable and you should basically never get hit by them. Getting surrounded by a horde means you weren’t managing it properly in the first place nor watching your back.

You’re just proving my point further with your examples.

In addition of that, your example of this perfect scenario work the same weither you have 100 toughness or 150 : Investing in toughness give you nothing if you manage to take one hit at a time and get back to 100% between each. Additional toughness is only a plus when you take several hits in a row, and it will only help aginst a few of them

What? I said if I’m low health and don’t have my passive/heal up. Ideally yes, you’d always have 100% toughness. In the real world you’re going to get shot, you’re going to get slapped by that common you didn’t notice, you’re going to have to soak a hit to deal with something more dangerous. Higher toughness directly correlates to losing less health in those situations. I’m not sure how you’re not getting this. Unless you’re somehow losing 100% of your toughness in a single hit, which pretty much only happens from snipers (I think crusher/mauler overheads do too? I can’t remember the last time I got hit by one of those), more toughness will directly correlate to more health.

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