Zealot would benefit immensely from a small toughness increase

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
21

TBF it’s also pretty class relative. Zealot gets literally twice the health from the same % health bonus as toughness, and health seems to get higher rolls (highest health bonus I’ve seen is 20%, highest toughness I’ve seen is 16%). For Zealot I think there’s a good argument for health, I’m just not sure it’s clear cut that you should be going for all health curios. I’ve been running +37% health and +16% toughness with stam regen, corruption resist, gunner resistance and toughness regen perks on Heresy NOT using the crit build and it seems to be working well for me. Last match I must have gotten 5+ revives off as last or second to last person standing.

Sometimes I find I just gotta eat some burst damage to deal with a key target allies aren’t getting to and the big health bonuses from health curios on Zealot definitely seen to help there.

I would definitely like to understand better what sources of toughness are % based. Heard opposing opinions about melee kill and coherency, so it does kinda depend on those how worth +toughness is. I’ve been running the much maligned enemies within and without on tier 1 and between that and Ult the little bit of extra toughness and gunner DR does seem to give me noticeably better ability to not get chunked by ranged enemies.

22

Even on ogryn I favor toughness curios. It’s very rare for me to go down on either zealot or ogryn, and usually if it happens it’s because I skipped multiple medicae stations for the sake of teammates. (Usually after I’ve had to pluck them off of the floor)

I don’t think health curios are necessarily ‘wrong’ and a lot of it will come down to individuals, but I know for myself toughness curios are vastly increasing my survivability over health as I typically subscribe to “Avoid as much damage as possible” (A hold over from doing true solos in L4D/VT/B4B, but also just the perfectionist in me), when I do go down it’s pretty much always death by a thousand cuts, not one big moment (Though those do happen rarely! Not trying to pretend they don’t at all).

I haven’t specifically paid attention to melee kills, IIRC it is a percentage and so increasing your maximum toughness increases it (And looking at some clips seems to verify that, I’m regaining ~6-7 toughness on melee kill with my 135 max toughness on my zealot, which matches up with the expected 6.75 toughness regen), I’m not positive about coherency regen.

1 Like
23

Idk, i kida like playing with grims. The extra challenge is always appreciated on my part
Ofc i throw them if my team complain, but there are also contracts to do that make people wanna play with them. Anyway i was refering it as a side benefit, not really as the main bonus

In damnation, dogs* (made sure tio get that right this time lol) deals a buttload of dmg, probably between 5 to 8 time more than they normally do in heresy. I do’nt know why, but if someone isn’t there to stop them right away, you’ll be lucky to get ouf with anything less than 2 grims worth of corruption

Screw ups happens in games, especially in higher levels : If we never screwed up, we wouldn’t even need hp or toughness in the first place. You were talking about real play scenarios earlier, and never making any mistakes doesn’t happen to anyone

Maybe it’s because i mostly play in damnation, but losing toughness generally mean your toughness is at 0 : 3 shots and your bar is gone, one hit from an elite will leave you with barely enough toughness to notice that you still have any

I get your point, but mine is that you severely overestimate how much dmg is mitigated from the extra toughness you get. It only affect the 2nd and mayyyybe the 3rd consecutive hit you take and only if you manage to get toughness up to 100% after each dmg succession you take. It DOES correlate to more health : Just not enough to compete investing in health directly from my experience and many other on the discord

24

In damnation, dogs* (made sure tio get that right this time lol) deals a buttload of dmg, probably between 5 to 8 time more than they normally do in heresy. I do’nt know why, but if someone isn’t there to stop them right away, you’ll be lucky to get ouf with anything less than 2 grims worth of corruption

I have literally never seen that happen. Unless they’re on somebody’s face for way too long. If a dog gets off more than a tick or two of damage at most I’m not really sure what your team is doing. And trust me, I’ve had some dumb teammates. (Notice how it didn’t do jack corruption wise)

I play exclusively on damnation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

According to many ogryn is unplayable above malice without a shield so I’ll take those experiences with a massive lump of salt.

25

This is almost never a problem, I’ve nearly 100% uptime on DR when in combat due to lacerate, and zealot has a multitude of ways to handle ranged threats other that to bum rush them.

The build is silly strong in damnation, if you can’t figure it out, it’s a you problem, sorry.

26

Yeah in combat but the DR only lasts 4 seconds so it drops when you’re waiting for your last teammate to get in the damn room so the door will close and you can move onto the next area. Then when that door opens and there is a drop off like in the assassination mission where you use the interrogator yeah I can poke away at the enemies down there but any of their bursts are gonna chew through half of my toughness.

I didn’t say it wasn’t strong… just that it’s tankiness relies on being crits which are only reliable in melee range.

27

What are you on about? Only four seconds? Four seconds is HUGE, and it resets every other time you hit someone so it’s never four seconds.
You’re making it sound like a small short buff, when it’s practically the whole match if you know how to engage.

And if you do get shot at that one single ledge that seems to bother you, you have a refill toughness button with you ult, plus you have traits to regen health.
Oh, and actual immortality if you get to 1 HP.

Other than that you have a stun grenade, you can boost your ranged damage with your ult, you have access to both the bolter and the braced. Taking care of one group of shooters until you can get in melee and have uninterrupted DR again should be trivial.

28

I literally said what I’m talking about

But hey maybe if I say it again you’ll actually process it. What I’m on about is that 4 seconds while long enough in combat will never last you when you’re transitioning to the next area unless you’re fighting through a horde and there are hard breaks like elevators, the rooms with the locking doors that will ensure it ends. Yes 4 seconds is long enough while you’re in an actual fight but shortly after that fight is over your DR will be too.

Yeah the ult is nice it gives me back half my toughness and a guaranteed melee crit. If i’m not in melee then that 50% toughness will be eaten in another burst or two.

Rarely the problem outside of non-ranged enemies like maulers and crushers

Sure do.

So you agree that I won’t have my DR up when I’m fighting ranged enemies.

29

This is what you claim to be the real problem, I’m saying it’s not, because you have multiple options beside only the DR (which in reality never lasts for only four seconds unless you’re playing like apeshit).

30

Except Zealot ISNT the ‘toughness guy’. That would be Sharpshooter.

The breakdown is Toughness is meant more to balance out the enemy ranged, and since Zealot is primarily a Melee class (With an ultimate that basically instantly regens toughness…)

They are in a perfectly good spot tbh. With your ultimate you basically have 200 toughness and if you get the feat that lets you use it twice, you basically have 300 Toughness to play with.

The breakdown basically is

Ogryn - Defensive Melee
Zealot - Offensive Melee
Sharpshooter - Direct Ranged Support
Psyker - AoE Ranged Support

You’ll notice that in descending order, health goes down, and toughness goes up (Except for Psyker, cause Psyker… is kinda weird lol.)

The toughness is there as padding vs the Ranged damage in this game, its not so much meant for tanking melee hits, even though it does reduce the damage from them. As a Zealot you shouldn’t be trying to go ranged, you should always be gap closing and keeping your toughness up by engaging in glorious melee. If you’re getting hit by melee, well… you shouldn’t be, is the easiest way to say it. You shouldn’t be expecting toughness to save you in melee by taking hits for you. Blocking and Dodging, just like in Vermintide, is the way to go.

The reason why Vet has so much toughness is because he is meant to deal with ranged enemies, he actually isn’t meant to be as good as the Ogryn or Zealot in melee lol. He excels at ranged, and ranged enemies whittle through the toughness bar before doing any health damage. You’ll notice the Sharpshooter’s feats reflect replenishing toughness on his ranged kills.

Zealot’s toughness protects them from ranged attacks while engaged in melee, that’s why your feats give toughness in melee, so you can keep up the glorious carnage, without some pesky guns slowing you down, its not meant as a defense against melee.

31

A lot of the toughness issues I’ve found just comes from ranges shooting you point blank in the face. Sure it works but surely the whole point of getting into melee is to well, lock them into melee which the Zealots charge used to do.

1 Like
32

Increase base toughness to 150 and lower damage resistance from critting to 35%.

:slight_smile:

2 Likes
33

You know you can play crit/bleed builds on other weapons, Evi is great for that with +Crit chance perk and for example Shred + Booldletter Bless combo.

In general in regarding to this discussion. For me, playing Zee is about toughness upkeep.
How currently the system works you want to play close to max all the time.
Playing with thunder Hammer with Momentum is also very viable.
Not sure changes to base Toughness actually make too much of a difference.
Only useful scenario, I see for that is to be less susceptible to ranged stagger.
Seems like something that your positioning, teamwork and proper weapon selection for chosen difficulty should cover.
Just my opinion.

34

Yeah an extremely limited grenade

An ult that will barely help with ranged chaff

A slow gun or one that struggles to deal with many of the specials

It does when you’re not in melee range.

35

it’s tanky IF you get that crit.
If enemies are sitting away from you and you can’t get a crit/run out of time on the defense buff, you are dead :smiley:

36

First of all, the knife build gives you the crit, it’s not a matter of if.

Second, as we already dealt with, you can Regen health and have immortality, no other class has that kind of survivability. DR is on top of those two unique features.

The only way to fail as a knife CRIT zealot is if by disabler or playing bad, the build is that strong.

37

It’s literally the strongest grenade in the game.

The ult is superb.

Both braced and bolt are super strong, are we even playing the same game?

38

Yeah which is why it’s extremely limited… like jesus christ dude

Bruh…

An ult that will barely help with ranged chaff

It’s great for what it’s supposed to be which is getting into melee or being used while in melee range. If you’re in a gun fight it’s mid unless you’re trying to kill a crusher.

I mean I’m starting to wonder if you’re ESL

Bolter has trade offs

Braced is trash against snipers and bombers

39

Gotta agree joaquox. half the time you would confuse my zealot with a veteran the amount of carnage the Agripna MKVIII braced autogun puts out. I take autoguns over flamer because I dont like being dependent on someone else getting rid of all the nasties that reside outside of flamer range, and the MKVIII is can be very accurate with controlled fire. But if you want really precise, just use the Agripna mk1a or the lasgun mKIII…they also wreck and are pinpoint accurate

40

Yup. I stopped using the flamer bc of this. You may as well be watching your teammates stream their games on twitch until the next horde comes around.