Zeolot buffs

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I’ve played a lot of zeolot and there are certain things I want for em. I understand that zeolot is in a really good place right not and want a bit more to play styles that I think need more.

Martydom: I play martydom the most so I have decent enough experiance with it. The main troubles with Martydom is that it is slow to start as you need low health to utilize it and it is far riskier to survive once you are at noticable stacks as compared to the others.
So I present and new node that connects to I shall not fall and maniac.

Faith over Fortitude: Reserve 70% health and return it as toughness.

If anyone is familiar to the Front Loader or Deathless from BL3, it works like that.
It takes a portion of health and adds it to toughness as well as prevents health going past the 30% threshold. It helps with martydom being slow to start and that toughness being a major portion of survival. It also makes health curios more valid to use, since the extra health would partialy go to the toughness.

The Emperor’s Bullet: The buffs you get are pretty good but I think that The buffs should be active while your gun is empty. That way, you choose whether you get the buffs or you are ready to use your gun. And still works with the idea of emptying your gun and charging into battle.

The Master’s Retribution: I’ve never seen anyone even consider this skill. If your getting this far into the left, your getting Invocation of death.
I wager that: taking toughness or health damage gives a retribution stack. Each stack give 5% critical hit damage up to 25% lasting until you crit. Hopefully this can be picked along side Invocation.

Fortitude in Fellowship: This is The Master’s Retribution 2.0. People just pick Purge the unclean if going down the tree.
I think that : Give you and allies 5% toughness damage reduction for every person in coherency. Thats giving everyone in coherency 15% toughness damage reduction and can work with Benediction.

Unremitting: This is a rank 4 sprint efficienccy on a skill and between emperor’s bullet and sainted gunslinger while being about sprinting.
I suggest that : Reloading gives 20% sprint efficienccy and counts as dodging against range atacks for 3 seconds. Now, emperor’s bullet, unremitting and sainted gunslinger now work in tandum. You can empty your gun, go into melee, and reload and reposition faster.

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Yeah zealot tree is kinda boring, most builds go top right, left to holy revenant, then pick your ability and keystone cuz the rest of the talents are weak in comparison. The “ranged” talents are too impractical. What I’d like to see is a path that favors slow hard hitting weapons.

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Reasonable suggestions. My additions:

Buff EWEW. Back to original value at bare minimum to feel vaguely worthwhile. Maybe more than that honestly. Maybe make it like 1.5% toughness regen per second per enemy near you up to 5 stacks max. Someone can probably come up with a better suggestion than that but it’s the biggest lemon on that early left path IMO.

Martyr’s Purpose rework to give +x% cooldown regen speed per y% of health missing. It’s a dead talent currently.

Nerf IoD. Nerf Duelist. Just lower values down to +100% for IoD or +150% if you want to be conservative. Around 20-30% for duelist seems more reasonable. Don’t need to do anything crazy to them they’re mechanically fine. Maybe nerf second wind too, I dunno I’ve heard people say it’s crazy but I don’t run early right path much because I think it’s cringe so take my opinion on that with a grain of salt.

Bring Punishment back up a bit, +25% impact at max stacks is lame and bad. Maybe also consider putting it somewhere else in the tree more thematic, don’t really know why it’s down near crit stuff. Also don’t know if they ever fixed the bug where it doesn’t count an enemy as “hit” if they die from the hit. If not fix that.

Annoint in Blood is pretty great. Sainted Gunslinger is a pretty great reload speed bonus it just suffers hard from location. DoD is amazing for certain guns.

Voice of Terra and Emp’s Bullet are unequivocally awful for sure though.

That’s all I can think to add for now :saluting_face:

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Disdain is pretty bad too and the left side where it’s at is lacking options. I would be happy to take vicious offering on a lot of weapons but it’s just in a bad spot. A bunch of talents just give extra stagger when they compete with damage bonuses and they’re never worth it.

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If you remove the +2 wounds, it would impact badly lot of builds.
When I run martyrdom, I don’t put 3 wounds curios. But I can do it cause of this talent.

I want something easy to implement. Give a bonus linked to the health lost.
By example, if the CDR is up to 100%, if you have lost 33% you get a permanent CDR of 33%.

Works great with IAG and brauto.

I agree, but it has to come with similar nerf for veteran (precision strike) or psykers (solidity, warp rider)
There are talents so strong that they have been made mandatory. And that’s really a bad move.

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I think that’s a pretty bad take. Precision Strikes is less bonus and only headshots. Duelist is crits AND headshots and a significantly bigger bonus. Precision strikes is equally accessible in theory but Vet feels much thinner for points so is practically a bit less accessible.

I don’t really see a big issue with Warp Rider either. Yeah it’s good but not out of line as far as I can see. Solidity seems frankly overkill for how easy and how many methods there are to manage peril. I very rarely take it.

If you’d said “but also nerf Psykinetic Aura” I think that’d make a lot more sense in this context.

My dude you really need to double check yourself before posting. In both those above cases you’re referring to completely different talents to what OP is:

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Games Lantern is right there it ain’t hard to check talent names.

Was gonna ask why then checked Kuli’s guide. Only applies every second swing is pretty oof yeah. Probably too good if it applied every swing though? Could nerf it down to 3 stacks max then let it apply every attack and that seems like it’d be pretty nice.

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Probably shouldn’t have a talent that encourages taking damage outside of the Martyrdom branch. Should be something like:

The Master’s Retribution: performing a perfect block knocks down surrounding enemies. 10s cooldown.

The Master’s Retribution: performing a perfect block heavily staggers surronding enemies and your next attack ignores hit mass (including carapce), is a critical strike, and damages all enemies hit. 15s cooldown.

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Yes, totally, That’s what I did. But obviously, I have read incorrectly.
Did that a little too fast.

Forgot this one…

I suppose you take keystones. If you don’t, precision strike is something you will obviously pick in 95% of the builds.
And yes, it is so strong, that, yes, I compare it to duellist.

This is not really against warp rider or solidity. But so strong bonus push you to pick these talents. That’s my problem with them.
And duellist (to return on zelaot) is clearly one of them.

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I think this is the nature of any consistent damage bonus. If it’s accessible everyone is gonna wanna to have it because everyone loves more damage. If you make the bonus so small it’s largely inconsequential outside specific breakpoints it just kinda feels bad. It’s fine that there are substantial damage increases available, and I’d prefer some of them are in accessible places to avoid unbalancing the different branches further. Naturally where your line is on what is too much bonus damage will differ, Duelist crosses it for me, while Precision Strikes and Warp Rider do not (Warp Rider condition does at least mean you’re usually not getting 100% of the bonus. You’ll get a lot of it on average unless you’re running all non warp weapons but not all of it).

Ok but I gave you two good reasons it’s clearly not as strong.

  1. It’s a significantly smaller bonus
  2. It only applies to headshots, while Duelist applies to crits as well, which you can build a huge amount of on Zealot.

Yes Duelist does have a condition while Precision Strikes is fully passive, but let’s be real it’s a pretty trivial condition and you’re basically bound to have it up when you need/want it.

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Not really
Precision strike is efficient on all veteran builds
Duellist is not efficient on all zealot builds. By example, I actually don’t use it with the relic sword. As I don’t need to dodge with it, and also cause dodge is not the more efficient way to defend yourself with this specific weapon (i prefer blocking with it), duellist is something that is not worth taking in this build.
However, precision strike gives you +30 % damage on weakspot hit… And I really think that we are all trying to land weakspot hits, in melee and also with ranged weapons.

My opinion is that both should be halved. +25% for duellist and +15% for precision strike. Even with these values, I would pick precision strike for sure.

I agree about this. However, and that’s why I placed the quote after my last comment, +25% for duellist and +15% for precision strike would not make these talents bad.

As I said, my opinion is if a weapon, blessing or talent is used by the majority cause it is so strong that you should pick it, then there is a balance problem.

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I disagree. If we take DS MK IV heavies, which I think are close to best case for weak spot bonus scaling, +15% weak spot damage takes the base damage on a Dreg Rager from 820 → 893. A little under a +9% actual damage increases. Keep in mind that the vast majority of other weapons scale with weak spot bonuses worse than this so would get even less real damage increase.

I think that’s pretty bad, and would probably not be worth the point for all but the highest finesse weapons.

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I don’t think Martyrdom needs buffs at all, especially not extremely severe ones like what is essentially a +140 toughness node like you suggest. I do agree it could use a fun mechanic for lowering your own HP though, like self flagellation or something. Power wise it’s fine though. It’s the strongest keystone in the game as it stands, if you can deal with the activation criteria but it’s really not that risky because zealot has a low cooldown death resist and very high toughness DR with martyrdom.

As for the Invocation of Death thing, that’s just always gonna be picked because of how OP it is. Doesn’t matter much what’s next to it.

Other boring talents could use a rework for sure though

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Ok. I adhere to this. You convinced me.

Agree. 200% is too strong
But, Martyr’s purpose needs a rework at same time.

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I agree but I do think your total toughness pool feels kinda bad giving up your curios, which isn’t necessarily a big issue in isolation but it can heavily push you into trying to force IoD and some crit stuff/right tree into your build since Ult spamming, Enduring Faith, Second Wind etc will be your most consistent methods of survivability at high Martyrdom stacks.

I don’t love that but I also don’t know exactly how to address that without potentially overtuning Martyrdom. Having a not trash cooldown option replace Martyr’s Purpose would at least help I feel.

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so the zealot tree does need a rework, but zealot itself does not need a buff in any way

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Yes, zealot rather needs some minor nerfs on duelist/crit stuff

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Martyr’s purpose has to be changed to something useful. As it stands, this talent is a waste of points.
But yes, IoD needs a nerf. Duellist also (slight nerf, not a nerf that would make the talent useless).

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I felt I should also put in there an agreement for ‘fluffing up’ the Zealot, but not overly buffing them. They are the strongest and simplest class to get to work, but by nature it leads to them feeling ‘solved’ as a lot of things are just ‘must have’, resulting in about two build ‘variants’ (crit with ‘right left whatever below it here’ or gun/survivability where you take more points in the middle/grab immolation grenade at the cost of later points). You can force other variants without Holy Revenant but it usually ends up costing way more than you gain, especially with all the nods/aura around it being ‘universally good’ while all the stuff in the other tree’s are ‘niche at best’ and downright terrible at worse.

To that end, I’ll say in agreement it seems with the discussion that happened here, that:

  • Duellist should probably be nerfed, likely to 30 or even 25% for each category of damage type. I love the amount of damage it gives, but especially with them gaining access to the Dueling sword it kinda just breaks them. But I don’t exactly want it to become unusable, and you do still need to proc it/have damage come toward you first before it starts helping you, so I think 'Precision Strikes but for both finesse types after a dodge) would continue to make sense. Making it a straight finesse bonus along those vaines might help to? (idk how that might all work xD).

  • Invocation of Death I think is like…fine? But I feel I should explain that viewpoint. I feel IoD’s main issue is that it is fully designed around Fury of the Faithful. The two basically feel required together in the same build, which isn’t bad. But it I think is creating the issue where in IoD’s strength bleeds over into the other two ability’s a bit to much, resulting in it constantly being in a ‘bad spot’. Because I remember it being nerfed to 150%, and outcry was had all round to the point it got put back to 200%. And I can tell you at least for me, it was strictly because I felt bad about the fact that with anything less than 200% regeneration, Fury of the Faithful no longer ‘cycles cleanly’ with it’s attack speed buff, and that makes how it feels just tank into the ground. So, if it is to be re-nerfed, I’d say ‘bite the bullet’ and also lower Fury of the Faithful’s cooldown, to say 20’s? (in the case it gets nerfed to 100%, otherwise maybe 25 would work if it’s 150%?), just to make sure that ability still cycles the way ‘it’s intended’ to with good upkeep, but the rest of the abilities don’t stay as their ‘extremely easily spammable because of this’ states.

other than that, I feel as was stated, reorganizing the tree I think would do wonders (perhaps making Until Death/Holy Revenant a focus, and then allowing one to ‘branch from there’ using the other nodes, instead of just ‘melee damage, move speed, 15% DR for my team AND 15 toughness? well how can I say no to that!’), and that should probably be the main thing that’s done. In the event buffs for lack luster talents are also worth looking into:

  • As has been stated, Martyr’s Purpose giving regen rate per missing wound sounds quite worth doing, especially if IoD gets looked at.

  • The Masters Retribution being a ‘pulse’ around the zealot for a small amount of knockback (basically enough to shove back walkers and that’s primarily it) on top of the mega push to the melee attacker would be nice. I’m one of the ones that actually like it (it shoves off dogs and that’s enough for me) but it’s only a select few builds where I can feel a point can be spared to use it, so I think that would help ‘make up the difference’ a bit.

  • EWEW scaling off number of nearby enemies I honestly think is just a good idea, instead of ‘you get this barely noticable effect when surrounded’. Probably cap it at 4, to cap it at 10% per second, but I think ‘Psyker bubble at home’ levels of regen while sitting next to a crowd would be rather nice, and actually compete with ‘15% per bullet that wizes by my head’.

  • Make Disdain able to proc itself, lower it to 20% damage or something to if you have to it just makes me sad only seeing that number come up every other hit instead of every hit after the first. I know it doesn’t ‘fall off’ but like come on, it already resets based on enemies hit (so I can’t like 25% damage increase a monstrosity more than once regardless) so just let us wail on a wavvve.

  • Buff Emperor’s Bullet to 10s duration, or, make the duration start once you fully swap to your melee weapon and actually swing it. I feel this is meant to be paired with Sainted Gunslinger, but that lasting forever until reload but The Emperor’s Bullet needing an immediate hot swap usually losing a second if not more just doesn’t feel great. Would be cool if you could use a previously gained Sainted Gunslinger proc, swap to one’s melee weapon THEN get the bonus, then get another Sainted up for the next time you need it, verses ‘must dump mag, must fumble with weapons to desperately swing melee for 3-4 ish seconds, go back to gun and reload, probably go back to melee unless I need gun again’. Don’t think there should be a talent that encourages wasting bullets in that way.

  • Hammer of Faith and Grievous Wounds, these should be replaced. Punishment exists, why do I care about staggering something with anything that can’t proc it? If one really wants a just static impact talent that badly, keep Hammer of Faith, but drop Grievous Wounds for like, literally anything. Why is the knife/dueling sword getting a stagger bonus, I don’t want that, I want the enemy dead not on the ground making it harder to hit after my first swing.

  • Unremitting same as above, but different reasoning. One has a SPRINT stamina cost reduction…on the class that already only loses 25% of it’s speed instead of half when it runs out of stamina, has a talent that literally gives damage when stamina depletes, AND has ANOTHER talent that still lets you dodge bullets when you don’t have stamina. This, is the taxiest of tax nodes, for Sainted, Gunslinger of all things. And Beacon of Purity, which is also like whyyyy?!? since everyone’s just going to go the other way to grab that anyway. This should also even more fervently than the previous to, be axed. Maybe something to go even further along with Emperor’s Bullet like ‘X% Melee damage after getting a ranged kill’. I know this steps on ‘weapon specialist veteran’ slightly, but maybe make it a big melee bonus to compensate? Maybe make it specifically for killing and Elite/Specialist with a ranged weapon to compensate for a larger bonus? Either way, this is just fully unneeded here.

  • And a rework to Loner would be great, but I got that idea in the loner topic xD

But yeah…as always I wrote a lot more than I should have/probably needed to, buttt hope that ‘threw everything together’ and felt useful!

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Specifically for a duellist rework, a common theme in this thread is comparing it to only precision strikes, but there are multiple talents in the vet tree that it can be compared to, and they can all be used as part of any ideas for changes.

For the constant flat bonuses, there is the aforementioned precision strikes,

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as well as desperado, which is another constant buff that hasn’t been mentioned (and includes a large amount of flat crit chance, but that’s another topic).

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However, with regards to overall balance, the proc condition could also be looked at, using something like reciprocity and its mechanic as a baseline idea.

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Now, avoiding going down the rabbit hole of how perfectly reciprocity would blend into the zealot kit and leading into another conversation of “why can melee vet be a better zealot” and a vet balance discussion thread can of worms, what could this mean for duellist?

An option would be to break duellist down into multiple stacks, say 3 or 4, that last around ~5-6 seconds, with a value of ~10-15%, with one stack granted per successful dodge. That way, if the 50% really is too much on the majority of weapons outside of the incredibly strong outliers like the duelling sword, then the folks calling for nerfs to the total value would be happy, but the compromise would be that with the buff taking multiple times longer to now stack up, the nerfs don’t need to be anywhere near as severe. Obviously, numbers used in this example can be tweaked.

TL;DR: Duellist now stacks 3/4 times to a max of ~40% weakspot + crit damage, stacks last ~5 seconds, +1 stack gained on dodge.

(or just nerf problem weapons first)

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Unremitting is pairing with gunslinger and is a lot useful on brauto or IAG that would use stripping down.
This is not a tax node if you take advantage of it.

Also, stamina is pretty important in the game. And this with several melee weapons where you should use push / push attacks.

Where I agree is that the middle of the tree is not really interesting in regular/auric (but close to mandatory in havoc).

Interesting idea.
I like it.

Agree (and I often pick it)

I disagree. My opinion is that it has to be scaled on the % of health missing.
Martyr’s purpose works with health actually. If you make it relying on wounds, this would interact only for Martyrdom builds. But other CDR are not restrictive.
By example, I take IoD with martydom, cause IoD works with everything.
Martyr’s purpose has also to work with everything. This gives freedom to the player. They could pick it… if they spend enough points for this.
And the limited talent points is what would balance that. You could choose to go for it, but you would have to choose what you sacrifice for this (as you won’t be able to pick everything, that’s the beauty of talents tree, you have to choose).