Zealot Berserker | Immolation Grenade | Fury of the Faithful | Blazing Piety | Auric Ready
Build for Darktide

Berserker

This has quickly become my most fun Zealot build to opt for. The crusher is arguably Zealot's best weapon overall, high damage, high wave clear with stagger that is second to none. Light attacks mulch through hordes, whilst heavy attacks and specials can stun even Crushers, whilst doing respectable damage. We want to throw ourselves into the enemy backline and just go berserk on them, knocking everything around until they are finally pummeled to death. This build offers a lot of survivability in terms of resistance, and is just a blast to button mash until things die. 

Playstyle

the Indignatus Mk IVe Crusher is one of the most versatile weapons in Darktide. It provides enough stagger that we can reliably break ragers out of their attack animations, something usually only reserved for Ogryns. Whilst it naturally is not as good at individual roles as more specialised weapons, It is capable of dealing with pretty much any threat single-handedly. Armour provides little protection, so we can still wail on carapace and flak enemies. Light attacks are quick with fantastic cleave, allowing us to throw hordes around. The special ability combined with a heavy attack allows us to stun even crushers, and control small hordes single-handedly.

With two charges of Fury of the Faithful, we can get ourselves out of the most sticky situations. If ever this ability is on cooldown, I like to play it a bit safer and use the Agripinaa Mk VIII Braced Autogun. Braced auto guns pair incredibly well with the Zealot run and gun play style. The Agripinaa has the lowest rate of fire out of all the braced auto guns. To make it up for this, it has the highest damage, highest cleave and highest accuracy. Shots will penetrate 3 unarmoured enemies, meaning it can shred through hordes to still hit priority targets in the thick of things. When fired in controlled bursts, it is surprisingly accurate even at longer ranges.

Build Path

We start off going down the right-hand side. Because we spend so much time throwing people around with our melee, we actually get access to their backs quite often, making Backstabber useful for us. Both Scourge and Enduring Faith pair together nicely to give us constant damage reduction whilst we are critting in melee. Second Wind is one of the most versatile and useful toughness replenishment nodes in the game, much less on Zealot. It has become a stable in every one of my builds to maintain toughness. Just bear in mind that it has a built-in 0.5-second cooldown, to stop you replenishing everything as we slide past a gunner. 

Going down the middle tree, we pick up the usuals. Anoint in blood and Purge the Unclean are universally useful. Even our ranged weapon we will tend to use in relatively close combat, so will benefit from a cool damage increase, and extra damage to Monstrosities, reapers and infested enemies is always welcome. Restoring Faith is kind of meh. We don't really want to be getting hit in the first place, but it is more useful than The Voice of Terra. Immolation Grenades pair extremely well with the crusher, as we can constantly stagger and hold enemies in place as they get roasted. 

We mosey on over to the left to pick up Until Death. Considering this build is all about getting into the thick of things, it is invaluable to have a second chance perk in case we get caught out in the open. Obviously, we want to avoid that situation, but even the best players will get caught out from time to time. We don't have the points to spare, so we don't pick up Holy Revenant. In all honesty, from my experience, Until Death tends to proc in situations where we get completely overwhelmed with damage in a short space of time. As a result, the healing from Restoring Faith should prove sufficient to get us up off of 1 Hitpoint in these situations anyway. Despite being an oversized club, the Crusher actually has really good hitpoint damage, and this build packs a lot of crits, so Duellist is one of the largest DPS increases you can go for. 

Rather than continuing down this path, we move down the middle, on our way to pick up every gosh darn stagger node we can. The Emperor's bullet is not all that amazing, but Shield of Contempt, provides a powerful defence against burst damage not only for you, but for your team too. Hammer of Faith is a meme of a perk in almost every build except this one. The extra stagger is what allows us to reliably stun Ragers and crushers. Since we have invested so heavily down the middle tree, Beacon of Purity to further help the team and assist in chip corruption damage. It is entirely viable to go for Holy Revenant and Benediction if you would prefer. Most of my builds do go this route, but this build I reserve this for missions when I am expecting a lot of corruption, such as with the new pox gas or if I am running for Grimoires.

Fury of the Faithful with Redoubled Zeal is what allows us to close the gap and sustain us in melee. It also massively buffs our ranged attack, allowing our Autogun to cut through Crushers like butter. Punishment further adds to our stagger, and allows us to control hordes as if we were Ogryns. Invocation of Death synergises with all of our other critical chance perks, Blazing Piety, Fury Rising, Righteous Warrior and Scourge. Our critical chance once our keystone activates is insanely high, and only amplified further as we crit enemies and start to make them bleed. Not only does this provide massive toughness damage reduction, but also quickly reduces the cooldown of our ability, allowing us to replenish toughness in a pinch in situations where Second Wind is just not cutting it. This build is the culmination of the sum of its parts, and comes together to create a melee wrecking machine.

Weapons

The Indignatus Mk IVe Crusher is all about staggering enemies. Naturally, it makes sense Skullcrusher. This perk is mandatory on the Crusher, and gives us a massive damage increase simply for doing our job. Sadly, the rest of the perks are not as exciting, so Hammerblow is the best of the bunch to... once again... increase our stagger amount. This is one of the few builds where you actually want to be engaging crushers in melee to help control them for your team, so I like to pick up the extra damage to the carapace. I take Flak second as this is the most common armour type in the game, and helps us more quickly deal with heavier customers. 

The Agripinaa Mk VIII Braced Autogun is what we use in situations where we cannot close the gap. It also gives us the bulk of our monstrosity damage, so I like to pick up the extra damage to unyielding. Many ranged enemies have the maniac armour type, so we grab that second. As for Perks, Death Spitter and Fire Freny are the only two that increase our damage, so they become natural choices for us. I know some like to run Stripped Down but I find it rather lackluster in practice. If enemies are far enough away that I am using my ranged option, I can avoid enough damage with cover and dodging proccing Second Wind. If I'm actively trying to close the gap, I will have my melee weapon out. This perk just doesn't work as well in practice it seems to be on paper.

Curios

After 500+ hours in Darktide, I have a simple rule of thumb when it comes to Curios. For melee classes (Ogryn and Zealot) Take 2x Toughness and 1x Health Curios. For ranged classes (Veteran and Psyker), take 3x Toughness curios. Veteran benefits massively from Toughness and Ogryn massively from health, with the other two classes falling somewhere in between. There are a few niche builds that might require Stamina Curios, but this is a pretty safe rule to stick to, and means that you have curios that are effective for the vast majority of your builds. Wound curios should only ever be used by Zealot Martyrdom builds. Even then, I consider Martyrdom builds a bit gimmicky and less effective than other Zealot builds, which is why I only ever run them for banter and memes.

For perks, I opt for raw stats. +20% Gunner Resistance is the most useful resistance node as it applies to Scab Gunners, Scab Shotgunners, Dreg Gunners, Dreg Shotgunners and Reapers. This is the largest collection of enemies out of any of the resistance perks. These enemies can absolutely shred you in seconds, and make up a significant portion of the enemies encountered in Auric Maelstroms. The difference between running 3 of these perks compared to running none is night and day, and arguably the single most useful perk you can apply to your curios. +5% Toughness and +5% Health provide us with raw stats that you can never go wrong with. If you have to pick between one of the two, go for Toughness. This is because the Health Curio provides 21% Health, and the Toughness Curio provides 17% Toughness, meaning that the Toughness Perk is a better value proposition. 

Strengths

Given the access to Beacon of Purity, I like to run this build into missions where I am expecting a lot of corruption, so missions where I am expecting to pick up grimoires for example, to help keep the team's corruption down. We can quite happily throw ourselves into the thick of things and come out on top, relying on dodging, mobility and our ability to keep replenishing our toughness. Ranged enemies at medium range that we can't get to in melee, can still be taken out with our ranged weapon. Access to Immolation Grenades also means you have one of the best defensive tools when facing packs of hounds.

Weaknesses

Zealots excel at melee combat, and this build is no exception. Whilst we can close the gap on ranged enemies in most situations, we will struggle to deal with distant snipers. We also do not provide as much support to our team, as say a Chorus Zealot would.