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. What it lacks in straight-up damage from more armour-piercing weapons like axes, it makes up for it with fantastic stagger, allowing you to throw enemies around. 

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 from 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. The Voice of Terra is usually pretty meh, but our ranged weapon is great at cutting down hordes, so can be a good way to quickly replenish some toughness. Immolation Grenades pair extremely well with the crusher, as we can constantly stagger and hold enemies in place as they get roasted. 

Moving to the right we pick up Dance of Death. Ordinarily this is somewhat of a tax node, but here it allows you to turn your Braced autogun into a death laser. But the real reason we move this way is to grab up Thy Wrath be Swift. Although it states that it prevents you from being stunned by melee attacks, it seems to work (at least on the current patch), with ranged attacks too. Given that we will be charging into melee and dodging into combat, not getting lit up by massed gunners is invaluable.

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. Holy Revenant pairs naturally with this to pick you up from having 1 hp. We want to try and avoid taking damage if we can, but it's a nice backup for when things get a bit hairy. Benediction is one of the best auras the zealot has available. Extra tackiness applies to both you and your team, and is a natural progression down the tree. 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. 

Fury of the Faithful with Redoubled Zeal is what allows us to close the gap and sustain us in melee.  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. With the Unlocked and Loaded patch, we now have access to Thuderous, giving us some much-needed additional rendering to help deal with Crushers. What I love so much about this, that it allows us to go full Jojo and go full Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora! We stack rending quicker by using light attacks than heavy ones, so we are actually awarded by switching our brain off, fully entering the flow state and just spamming light attacks. 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 1,000+ hours in Darktide, I have a few simple rules when it comes to Curios. Melee classes (Ogryns and Zealot) should take 2x Toughness and 1x Health Curios to give a good mix of defensive stats. Veterans should take 3 Toughness Curios, as they benefit more from Toughness than other classes, owing to their larger toughness pools and skills such as Iron Will. Psykers should run 2x Toughness and 1x Stamina curio to make up for low Base stamina, and to benefit from their faster stamina regeneration. Obviously, there are some caveats to that. A melee centric Veteran might want to run 1x Health Curio and certain knife and stealth builds might want to run a stamina curio. But for the most part, I find this a good rule to stick to to ensure you have curios that are effective for the vast majority of your builds, especially when starting out when it is difficult to find any curios, much less good ones. Oh and Wound Curios should only ever be used on Zealot Martydom builds. Having Wound Curios actually means that health stims will now heal less on you. I know some people like to take a wound curio 'just in case they go down', but in higher difficulties, there is no guarantee your team can pick you up. It's far better to invest in defensive abilities which prevent downs as much as possible. 

For Perks, Always take Extra toughness and gunner resistance. 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 ability is multiplicative, so does have some diminishing returns. 0.80×0.80×0.80=0.512 meaning that we end up with a total gunner resistance of 0.488, just below 50%. I can certainly see the argument to only running two gunner resistance curios (with an overall damage resistance of 36 %) and opting for something else (potentially sniper OR Flamer), but I still value that extra 12.8%. 

For the final perk, it depends on your build. If you are using a build which relies heavily on your ability, then run cooldown reduction to more frequently make use of said ability. I find this to be especially powerful on builds which make use of Voice of Command for instance. If your build is not too heavily reliant on your ability, then run for extra health. Again you can tweak this to suit individual playstyle (and the mercy of the RNG-gods as Hadrons bricks yet another piece of equipment), but this is a pretty good rule to aim for. 

Strengths

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

With the recent nerfs to Fury of the Faithful, we no longer have a way of dealing with Armour at range, forcing on us to rely on melee when facing Crushers to take them out. Doable, but difficult without good game knowledge. We also have quite limited ranged combat abilities, opting instead to charge in melee. Thankfully the subsequent patch addressed this somewhat, and Crushers actually fall quite quickly to sustained assaults in melee. 

Questions & Answers

Question: Why do the stats, weapons, and abilities in the video not match what's written in this guide?

Answer: I am constantly evolving and refining my builds. As patch notes are released, certain weapons and abilities may change in effectiveness. Additionally, as my skills and knowledge grow, my preferred builds can shift. I aim to provide videos demonstrating the effectiveness of my builds in a Damnation level Auric run as proof of concept. However, these videos may sometimes be outdated. While I strive to keep everything current, Darktide is my hobby, and I may not always have the latest updates in the videos. The information in these guides reflects my most recent thinking and should be considered more accurate than what is shown in the videos.