Loner Zealot
 Zealot Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

TLDR

This is a stealth reset build, aiming to crit and backstab as much as possible to spam stealth.

Shotgun suppresses gunners and knocks anything to their feet to make room.

Switch Blazing Piety Keystone with Inexorable Judgment based on preference

Mercy Killer or Flesh Tearer

Gameplay Loop

You are the emperor's rabid dog, running at any enemy outlined in red or yellow.

Your job is to handle the greatest threats to your team's survival at any particular moment, filling the gaps in your team's weaknesses. Try to prioritize your targets instead of just focusing on the riff-raff.

With backstab and crits, you can reset your stealth in a quarter of the time, so spam it for the toughness dmg reduction, regen, and damage. Shove trash mobs and dodge around them to farm backstab resets.

You are the best asset in the team for revives and objectives. Your stealth and inability to be stunned combined can make the bleakest situations seem recoverable. For teammates getting their downed body overheaded on repeat, make sure to shoot or slice to drag aggro before you go for the revive. Be the first to scan or play the phone game, because it's nigh impossible to get stopped during it.

Use your shotgun to clear hordes, suppress gunners, stagger melee elites, and kill far away specials.

TALENTS

Toughness regen on dodge and stealth.

Damage reduction from dodging, stealth, and criting.

Thy Wrath Be Swift grants stun and slow immunity in all forms (Toughness break still inteinterupts actions)

• Run through flames and ranged fire
• Do objectives and revive through hits

Loner Aura guarantees toughness regen over time (1 sec delay, 10% per second)

If you swing and activate stealth right before it lands, the swing retains the damage bonus from stealthing but doesn’t break stealth (essentially an extra stealth backstab). This is great for Boss damage.

Grevious Wounds (50% stagger on melee weakspot) makes the knife able to stagger shooting gunners, non-swinging ragers, and handle hordes better, especially with the buffed special attack.

Blazing Piety stacks to 25 from crits or kills in coherency, then refreshes itself once stacked. If low on stacks, shoot into crowds with the shotgun as the spread and cleave can easily bring it back up.

Pious Cutthroat gives 20% ability cooldown on backstab kill (6 sec) 

Invocation of Death gives 1.5 sec ability cooldown on melee crit hits per unit hit

• Backstab kill off stealth brings ability cooldown to 22.5 sec
• Effectively around 4 backstab kills for a reset

KNIFE

I bring Flesh Tearer (bleed on crit) and Uncanny Strike (stacking rending on headshots) to make the knife capable of killing anything. You can switch out Flesh Tearer for another blessing of your preference

• Mercy Killer (60% weakspot dmg on bleeding targets) pairs very well with Flechette, allowing you to prep tanky targets ahead of time with bleed. If you are good at headshots, it's great.
• Lacerate (bleed on non-weakspot hit) is kind of a noob trap, but I can see it being ran if you use a different keystone just for more consistency on building crit. Bodyshots with knives are really weak, but if you are very proficient at just the single body shot into headshots then it's okay.
• Riposte (20% crit on successful dodge) can be okay if you want to run another keystone
• Executor (6-30% stacking weakspot dmg on repeated weakspot hit) is side grade to Mercy Killer

The rending buff on knives applies to your bleed damage and your throwing knives, allowing you to take down crusher and mauler packs while kitting.

Knives are not the best against berserkers, so shoot them before they get to you. If you're locked into melee with them, you can use throwing knives in between their attacks.

Against Monstrosities, try to keep the bleed stacks at 16 by swiping a couple of times at minimum. 

Knife Tech

• Spam max held heavy attacks while sprinting to go faster and save stamina
• The push attack and attack after special attack have the same damage as heavy attacks
• The special attack punch has decent stagger and counts towards building rending stacks/ applying bleed
• This makes the highest dps combo being weaving one attack and one special attack together to the head 
• Has innate 20% backstab bonus

SHOTGUN

Covers the knife’s lack of wave clear and crowd control. I take Flechette(bleed on crit) and Scattershot (more crit chance with more enemies hit) to be a DoT machine. 

The special round applies fire and the blessings apply bleed. Alongside the almost infinite cleave, it will kill or soften hordes within the reticle.

Weaving in a special shot when Uncanny Strike stacks are up gives the bleed and fire the rending bonus as long as your knife stays out.

It also has very decent monstrosity damage between bleed stacks and fire stacks. Shoot two special rounds to cap out the fire.

Main weapon against rager hordes, aim for the head to kill in 2-4 shots.

Can sometimes stagger crushers/maulers mid-swing as a last resort.

Shotgun Info

• Has innate suppression immunity
• Has huge stagger, even against ragers, maulers, crushers
• (Special) shots applies high suppression, making gunners cower in 1 shot
• When spam loading the special shot, aiming in or quick switch canceling right when the shot is loaded saves time
• The special shot can apply burn through their shields

NUMBERS

CRIT

Knife 20%

Scourge 0-30%
Blazing piety 25%
Melee Total 75%
 

Shotgun 5%
Blessing 12-60%
Blazing Piety 25%

Ranged Total 90%

Each knife crit gives 10 bleed stacks, two crits for 16 max stacks

Each shotgun shot special gives 5 burn stacks, two shots for 10 max stacks

TOUGHNESS

5% x 3 toughness dmg reduc nodes

50% toughness dmg reduc on crits

25% dmg reduc on dodge

20% dmg reduc after stealth

Total 74% toughness damage reduc

Total 40% dmg reduc

Succesful Dodge 15% toughness

Stealth 40% toughness over 5 seconds (8% per second)

Loner Aura plus stacking toughness regen

1 sec delay, 10% toughness per second