Auric Maelstrom Backstabber for Rookies
 Zealot Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

I'm not a pro of this game, I have roughly 600 hours on it and not even all of them with the zealot. I'm a noob and if this build work for me, allowing me to clear the hardest stages of the game, it can work for you too.

ROLE

Even though you can easily manage every type of issue the game throw at you, your role will be hunting down main threat that your teammates are struggling with. Track them down, kill them and return in coherency. That's all.

TALENTS

This is a pretty standard backstab/crit/bleed build, heavily centered on Shroudfield and movement. Blades of Faith, thanks to its weak spot multiplier, can easily one-shot every specialist except the Mutant, which you can one-shot with a backstab from stealth. Loner is the least exciting Aura of the three, but choosing one of the other two would waste too many poits on Operative Modifiers and you don't want that. Every point of this build is important. I went with Master Crafted Shroudfield over Perfectionist since with the recent buff to the combat knife you already kill crusher and bulwark with one, well placed backstab. Moreover 6 seconds of stealth help you with everything that is not strictly combat related, like taking objective, assisting downed teammates and so on. Then I went with Inexorable Judgement over Blazing Piety for a bunch of reasons. First of all I think that having +15% attack speed and +15% damage is more reliable than have +25% chance of doing +25% damage (since crits work that way in Darktide) and more attack speed helps you with other talents that procs on crits. I also took a dip into an other branch of the tree to take Until Death, Holy Revenant and Duellist. Until Death is a must, the chance to become immune to damage instead of dying every 2 minutes is huge. Holy Revenant is mandatory with Until Death since you never want to be at 1 health, due the fact that there are attacks that bypass the thoughness. Dodging, critting and aiming to weak spots is our goal, so Duellist is an almost-permanent boost to damage. The spare points went to Second Wind, Thy Wrath Be Swift and Swift Certainty to boost general survivability/mobility (these two go hand to hand) and Faithfull Frenzy, because attack speed helps with landing crits and managing hordes.

EQUIP
If you have read up until here, it's useless to explain why you should go with the combat knife. We already know it: high crit chance, +25% damage on heavy backstabs, great attack speed and great mobility, that's everything you could ask for in this build. I recommend going with +5% crit chance perk to help with all the talents that rely on crits. I prefer the Mk III over the MK VI because, although the latter can manage hordes slightly better, the former deals a bit more damage and has a better moveset, especially regarding heavy attacks. You really want only strikedown attack chain for your heavies. The MK VI "vanguard-vanguard-strikedown" attack chain is cool, but not really what you need. If you are going for the heavy attacks, means you are going for the head and, in that case, MK III is way better. I highly recommend having Ruthless Backstab blessing on your Combat Blade since it helps a lot with triggering Pious Cut-Throat perk. More backstab kills means more Shroudfield. More Shroudfield means more passion, more energy, more footwo-I mean, it works very well with this build.  Moving on, I found the Columnus Mk V Infantry Autogun a good jack-of-all-trades weapon. You can use it to thin out a hoard before approaching it in melee, or to shoot down a sniper that is too far for a Blades of Faith. With the Raking Fire blessing and Ambuscade perk, this rifle can even do a lot of damage to the Beast of Nurgle's weak spot. Last, but not least, this weapon has a torch, which is really helpfull in the "Power Supply Interruption" missions. As for the Curios it's up to you, I prefer to go with at least 2 toughness ones, because you can only get toughness damage reduction with this build.

HOW TO PLAY IT
Easy peasy lemon squeezy, the 95% of the time you should be doing one of these 4 things: backstabbing/shooting, running, dodging, spamming stealth. Jokes aside, keeping moving is crucial for this build. When close to enemies, you want to dodge whenever possible because you don't like (no one does tbh) being hit and successful dodges trigger a bunch of your talents, improving you toughness damage reduction, refilling your toughness and boosting you damage via Inexorable Judgement and Duellist. Also, with Dance of Death, dodging a bullet can help you with some long shot kills you need in certain situations. Use Shroudfield everytime you can since it boosts your damage, your survivability and lets you go for downed teammates/objective undisturbed. Go for the heads and/or backs, run a lot, dodge even more, practice Blades of Faith headshots and you will easily be the backbone of your parties in Auric Maelstrom.