Eviscerator XV - Martyrdom
 Zealot Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

This is last updated for patch 1.5.3.

Patch: 1.4.12 -> 1.5.3 

• Swapped Blood Redemption for Duelist
  • I underestimated how good Duelist is and didn't realize that the weakspot and crit hit damage gets calculated differently from the weapon perks. Blood Redemption was a meh talent and Duelist is a great one.
• Invocation of Death got giga buffed for weapons that have a decent amount of crit. The 20% crit you get from shred is enough to let you have a nearly 100% uptime on the 20% attack speed buff for FotF. Also lets you use FotF a lot more liberally.

I am also VERY ranty but I feel like I explained all the mechanics in how Martyrdom works and my reasoning behind each talent/perk/blessing/weapon.

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Playstyle:

My playstyle is that I kill EVERYTHING in melee except for specialists. Against specialists, I'll throw knives at their heads or pull out the ranged weapon if they are out of range of the throwing knives.

Currently the Eviscerator XV is arguably the strongest melee weapon in the game for zealot. It has insane horde 

clear and it doesn't have any weaknesses because it does REALLY good damage against every enemy type.

It has a very simple melee attack pattern: Most of the time you just spam light attacks. Occasionally you have to do a special -> Heavy to kill Crushers/Bulwarks/Bosses.

In order to tank everything in melee, you should have the mentality of "ALWAYS BE HITTING". It's similar to how Ogryn need to be "ALWAYS BE HEAVY ATTACKING" to regain toughness, Zealot needs to be always hitting to get crits to proc Enduring Faith for the 50% Toughness damage reduction and toughness for killing things. If you're always chain hitting and critting, you'll be as tanky as other builds.

Chapters: 

I didn't expect to need this section but when I copied and pasted this guide into WordPad, it was a 10 page document lol. 

(Control F and search for the chapter to skip to it)

Why Martyrdom?

How Martyrdom works:

Martyrdom Misconceptions:

A Martyrdom vs Inexorable Judgement comparison:

Melee Weapon: 

Eviscerator Tech:

Range Weapon: 

Curios:

Talent Discussion:

Fury of the Faithful:

Dealing with...:

Help! This build sucks and I can't stay alive:

Some tips:

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Why Martyrdom?

• The Martyrdom keystone gives you the most stat bonus compared to the other keystones.
• With the extra Toughness Damage Reduction, you become a toughness tank. 
• Martydom is the best build when you play in PUGs.
  • With the extra wounds, you don't need to use the medicae unless you're down to your last few wounds. I can usually run through most map without touching the medicae, saving them for the rest of the team.
  • With throwing knives at higher difficulties, if you only use them against specialists, you don't have to ever pick up ammo, leaving more ammo for your teammates.
• The Tide games have always about optimizing breakpoints. With Martyrdom's extra melee damage bonus, it gives you access to the best breakpoints in the game. 

How Martyrdom works:

Martyrdom works because you have INSANE toughness damage reduction. As long as you keep your toughness up, you can charge into most situations and be invincible as long as you have stuff to kill/crit.

TDR Talents:

• 6.5% x 5 missing wounds = 25% TDR from I Shall Not Fall.
• 5% x 2 = 10% TDR from nodes
• 50% TDR from Enduring Faith whenever you crit.
• 15% TDR from Benediction

The TDR formula is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/190kdpq/a_simple_guide_to_toughness_damage_reduction/

With this specific build you get ~75.56%  TDR at almost all times. Even when you're running below ~63HP at 2 wounds, you are almost just as tanky as a full health non-Martyrdom zealot build. With Gunner resistance, you can tank gunfire for days after getting a crit.

You get to tank a free hit whenever you get hit at 100% toughness, so the idea is to be at or near 100% toughness at all time so that if you do take a stray hit, it doesn't do any health damage. With so much toughness damage reduction, you can take a stray hit and instantly top off your toughness from killing enemies + dodging and be ready to take another stray hit after 2 swings.

Martyrdom Misconceptions:

There's a lot of misconception with how Martyrdom works when I see pubs playing it.

A lot of players would start the game at 100% health and let it trickle down to 0 throughout the game and then hit the medicae the second they get low on health. A lot of them also take the Bleed for the Emperor talent (which is terrible), thinking that it will make them more tanky. 

The problem with this approach is that you never get "tanky" unless if you're low on wounds, and if you're naturally good at avoiding damage, you might not hit the 2 wound power spike until midway through the game. And if you heal at the medicae after hitting 2 wounds, you lose all the insane passive offensive and defensive bonus from Martyrdom and start from scratch again. 

A lot of players would also make the mistake of going the top left side of the talent tree because they think that the Bleed for the Emperor talent is tailor made for Martyrdom. Yes it is "made" for Martyrdom builds, but it also sucks ass. As a matter of fact, the entire top left side of the talent tree sucks ass. If you combine the whole top left side talents, I'm pretty sure it's still worse than the single Second Wind talent on the top right side.

A Martyrdom vs Inexorable Judgement comparison:

Martyrdom gives you the most stat bonus out of the 3 keystones.

I like to compare Martyrdom against Inexorable Judgement because they both give somewhat similar extra stats to make the Zealot strong. 

With Martyrdom at 5 missing wounds:

• 25% TDR
• 20% melee attack speed
• 40% melee damage

With Inexorable Judgement at 15 stacks of momentum:

• 15% melee attack speed
• 15% ranged attack speed
• 15% damage to Range and Melee
• 30% Toughness every 6 seconds

And keep in mind that this is the absolute best case scenario for Inexorable Judgement, with 15 stacks of momentum. Realistically, I find myself to usually be at 7ish stacks in games so the comparison is usually much worse.

Personally I think it's better to go Inexorable Judgement if you're using a range weapon that needs that extra bit of ranged damage to hit an important breakpoint. 

Melee Weapon: 

Note that all breakpoints are tested at 2 wounds / 5 Martyrdom stacks. This is fair because Holy Revenant gives you 1.5 worth of wounds/health back

The Eviscerator XV is one of the best weapons for a Matyrdom build.

IMO Martyrdom works best if your melee weapon has the shred blessing available. You don't NEED to have Shred, BUT it's much more consistent if you have a crit% blessing to proc Enduring Faith consistently.

Eviscerator XV

• Blessings: Shred and Rampage
  • Shred is the anchor blessing on the XV. Shred IV performs slightly worse than the Blazing Piety keystone and gives you just enough crit to proc Enduring Faith and Scourge consistently. 
    • It also procs Invocation of Death, which lets you get Fury of the Faithful back faster. Invocation of Death is still worth taking even after the nerf.
      • In my experience, I would typically get ~30-35% crit with just Blazing Piety. With Shred, I get about 25-30% crit in most games so I'd say that Shred is about 70% of Blazing Piety's crit for melee.
  • Rampage for more damage.
  • Momentum is a excellent defensive blessing for newer Martyrdom players since you almost always hit more than 3 enemies per hit. IMO it's really good if you're first learning how to play with Martyrdom and you find yourself dying a lot. Even without rampage, the XV is an A tier weapon and does a ton of damage on it's own. Just know that eventually you can ditch it for a more offensive blessing once you get used to the playstyle.
• Why not...<Insert Blessing>?
  • Savage Sweep/Wrath does not do as much for the Eviscerator XV because it's capped at 4 targets per hit.
  • Perfect Strike is bad after the invocation of death change. I wouldn't even use it in a shred + blazing piety build.
• Perks: Flak and Maniac
  • Flak is the anchor perk. It's the most common enemy armor type in the game.
  • Maniac
    • The XV has surprisingly not great maniac damage.
    • Dreg Ragers are probably the scariest enemy to deal with in melee so being able to kill them faster is important.
    • Lets you hit the breakpoint for 1 shotting Mutants with a heavy back attack, no need for special + heavy.
    • The perks on your weapon also affect throwing knives and lets you hit important breakpoints. 
      • The +Maniac damage lets you 1 shot a Dreg Rager with a headshot. It will also let you 1 shot trappers with a body shot.
• Why not...<Insert Perk>?
  • Unyielding: You already 1 shot Bulwarks and Reapers with 1 activated special so +Unyielding is really only good for more boss damage. 
  • Carapace only applies towards 1.5 enemy types, and you can 1 shot crushers with the Eviscerator tech detailed below without +Carapace damage.

Eviscerator Tech:

• There's a "Hidden" Eviscerator Tech with Fury of the Faithful where if you can do significantly more damage.
• This is particularly strong against high HP enemies like Crushers/Bosses.
• How to do it: Activate special -> heavy attack into a enemy -> activate Fury of the Faithful during mid shred.
• GIF Example of this: https://imgur.com/a/eviscerator-tech-bmrzQZz
  • Note that the GIF is with a Eviscerator II instead of an XV but it's the same concept. I used the II instead of the XV because the XV would have killed all 3 crushers with one shot and you won't be able to see the damage difference.
  • First Crusher is a regular special -> Fury of the Faithful -> heavy head attack
  • Second Crusher is with the Eviscerator Tech.
  • Special -> Heavy head attack (or body attack) -> Fury of the Faithful mid shred.
  • Third Crusher is the remnants of the guaranteed crit from the 2nd Fury of the Faithful. It should do the same damage as the first Crusher.
• So if you play it right, you can kill 4 Crushers with 2 Fury of the Faithful charges available. 
• You can also do this against bosses for extra damage with the free guaranteed crit. This does significant damage and makes XV the best melee weapon for boss damage behind the Thunder Hammer (and it doesn't have any of the clunky horde clear issues of TH).

Range Weapon: 

The best part about this build. Once you are good with the throwing knives, you can equip ANY ranged weapons  you want and make it work. Eviscerator XV is versatile enough to cover every armor type. Throwing Knives are good enough to kill specialists. 

That being said these range weapons are highlights of range weapons that I like. You can take your favorite range weapon if you want.

Throwing Knives:

• It's hands down the best Blitz ability on Zealot once you get the handle on how to use it. The best part is that it lets you take ANY ranged weapon in your build once you get good with the throwing knives.
• Knives has a massive headshot hitbox (it's similar to the revolver) and has guaranteed 1 headshot kills on every specialists/maniac in the game besides for mutants. 
• With +Maniac weapon on your active weapon, you can hit breakpoints for 1 hit body shot on Trappers and 1 headshot on Maniac Ragers.
• It's insanely satisfying to use when you start getting consistent headshots with it.
• Replenishes ammo on Elite/Specialist melee kills so you never have to pick up ammo.

Throwing Knife Tips

• Doesn't have any range drop off within ~15m. Flamers will stop and start flaming you at around 16-17m if they're at max range. Trappers will shoot the net at 10m. When they stop to shoot or when they're running straight at you, that's often the best time to throw a knife at their head.
• Specialists/elites are always slightly taller than poxwalkers/bruisers, so if you want to hit them out of a crowd, aim a bit higher to hit their heads.
• You WILL have enough throwing knives to kill every special that spawns but you WON'T have enough knives to kill every specialist + gunner so don't spam them against gunners.
• A small ammo box only gives you 2 throwing knives back, which is a horrible return rate if your range weapon is full. However if your teammates have not been killing any specialists for the entire game, don't feel too bad if you need to take them every now and then to replenish a few knives.

REMEMBER THAT ALL THESE RANGED WEAPONS ARE SUGGESTIONS. You can take your own favorite weapon as long as you're decent with the throwing knives. I don't know enough about every weapon to do a write up on them.

Zarona Revolver:

My weapon of choice for carrying pubs even if it's a somewhat redundant pick since we have throwing knives. Revolver makes a great safety net while you are still learning how to use the knives.

The Revolver has a HUGE hitbox for headshots so you should be aiming for the head whenever possible. You can kill most specialists with a crit so I like to focus on getting as much crit as possible to make it more consistent.

This gun is very ammo efficient IF you're only using them against specialists. If you're using them against lesser ranged shooters, you're wasting ammo. 

Personally I dislike using them against gunners most of the time because I can engage in melee 99% of the time. If you're going to depend on your revolver to take out every gunner, you might as well play Veteran.

• Blessing
  • Surgical is the Anchor blessing
    • It gives a lot more crit than Crucian Roulette 
  • Crucian Roulette 
    • gives me an average about ~10% extra crit at the end of each game since I tend to reload early.
  • Why not Hand Cannon?
    • IMO Hand Cannon is very overrated on a build that has a melee weapon that does good Carapace damage. It is only useful against crushers and the XV can already 1 shot crushers using the Eviscerator tech.
    • It requires you to crit for it to proc. IMO Hand Cannon makes a lot more sense in a Blazing Piety build because you get +25% to crit. This build doesn't have any talents that gives him more crit to fully take advantage of Hand Cannon. 
    • With Surgical + Hand Cannon you will need to ADS for 2-3 seconds per shot to get a guaranteed crit... and each crusher takes 3 headshots to kill and tend to travel in packs.
    • Most people who take Hand Cannon are not confident in meleeing Crushers. The only way to get better at meleeing Crushers is to just get in there, melee them, and die a bunch of times until you get good at dodging the overhead.
• Perks
  • Maniac
    • The anchor perk for a revolver. It lets you hit the 1 shot crit breakpoints on body shots for flamers
    • With anoint in Blood + Maniac, it also lets you 1 non crit headshot Dreg Ragers from ~11m or closer.
  • Crit%
    •  The revolver is almost entirely crit dependent to hit breakpoints so it helps make it crit more consistently.
  • Flak
    • I believe Flak helps hit some breakpoint against gunners. However I very rarely shoot at gunners and rather approach them in melee. Personally I get more value from Crit % more than Flak.

Accatran Las Pistol:

The best part about the Laspistol is that it ignores suppression. It's a very versatile weapon to complement the throwing knives. It also does pretty good boss damage with the Infernus Blessing.

• Blessings
  • Dumdum
    • The anchor blessing
  • Infernus
    • Good boss damage if you get max burn stacks on the boss.
    • Laspistol also has a higher crit chance than other weapons (~20% crit) so Infernus is decent even in a non Blazing Piety build.
    • The other blessings available for Las Pistols really isn't that great.
    • Cons: Burn stacks takes too long to build up and most enemies besides for bosses dies too fast for it to do any significant damage.
• Perks
  • Maniac
    • I always prioritize taking out specialists faster on range weapons. +Maniac is almost a must have for all ranged weapon.
  • Unyielding
    • Lets you do even more boss damage for Infernus
  • Flak
    • Good against gunners but remember that I don't like wasting ammos on shooting gunners.

Below are ranged weapons that I need to retest:

Bolter: 

Bolter got good again in the last patch.

• Blessings: 
  • Pinning fire is the anchor blessing
  • Puncture is great for getting bleed stacks on a boss
• Perks:
  • Carapace
  • Unyielding
• Why not?
  • Maniac doesn't help you hit break points with Flamers, even if you have puncture.
  • Shattering Impact saves you an ammo or two to kill each crusher. I think it kind of comes down to which you hate more, crushers or bosses/bulwarks. I hate Bulwarks a lot more than Carapace enemies.

Flamer:

The Flamer is currently the ultimate anti-Bulwark weapon in the game. It currently goes through the Bulwark's Shield, so when you run into a group of Bulwarks + other elites, they will all melt after getting 15 stacks of burn on them. 

I'd only recommend the flamer if you hate Bulwarks and can use throwing knives decently. If you suck with the knives, you won't have a range weapon to pick off specialists and have to depend entirely on your team.

• Blessings
  • Blaze Away is the Anchor Blessing
    • It increases the damage lot as you're going to be continuous firing anyway.
  • Need to test for the 2nd best blessing since they introduced 2 new ones.
• Perks
  • Unyielding
    • Extra boss damage is nice when you're in a situation where you can't melee them but can stack 15 burn stacks on them.
    • Extra damage against bulwark is also nice.
  • 2nd perk doesn't matter. Maybe go for Flak and reload speed, I think they're both "meh" and don't really matter. 

Curios:

Note that most of the perks for curios have diminishing returns with the exception of +Toughness% and +Health%. 

I generally hate triple stacking perks as a result because the third stack barely adds anything.

• 3x Wounds
  • It's a Martyrdom build, you're required to go triple wounds.
• Perks:
  • 5% Toughness x 3
    • When a Martyrdom Zealot loses all their toughness, they're usually dead so get all the toughness you can get.
  • Gunner Resistance
    • Really good to stack since you already have very high Toughness damage reduction.
    • 3x is inefficient but the other perks are not very good. 
    • There's diminishing return when you stack 3x resistance. You can go x2 Gunner resist and switch one of them with something else if you want.
  • The "meh" perks - There really isn't that much other good perks for Martyrdom. These perks are not set in stone, you can mix and match them as you like.
    • Combat Ability Regeneration
      • 2x Combat Ability Regeneration shaves off about 3-4 second off of Fury of the Faithful cooldown.
      • It doesn't matter as much after they buffed Invocation of Death. 
    • Stamina Regeneration
      • It's nice to regen stam faster in sticky situations. 
  • The "eugh" perks - Perks that people like that I dislike
    • Toughness Regeneration
      • This one affects the toughness regen you get from staying in coherency 
      • I think that this perk is overrated by most players, it's especially bad in this build since you're almost always going to be in the thick of battle. If you're playing it properly, there's rarely a break in battle for the toughness regen to kick in.
    • Revive Speed
      • I don't take it because I'm a greedy solo queue player. 
      • IMO Martyrdom Zealots should be one of the last person to go for a risky revive since taking a stray hit may just outright kill you.
  • The perks I hate
    • 5% Health
      • I REALLY don't like Health perks on curios for Martyrdom.
      • 3 x 5% health perks is an additional 33HP. When you are playing as Martyrdom, you're constantly playing with 2 wounds left since Death Do us Part gives you ~2 wounds of health back. At 2 wounds, it ends up being something like 63HP vs 72HP with Triple HP% perks. IMO a 9HP increase for 3 curio perks is NOT worth it.
    • Sniper Resist
      • Sniper shots pierces through toughness.
      • You're running around on 33 HP most of the time. If you get hit with a sniper shot, it will either trigger Until Death or you'll be dead.
    • Corruption resist
      • Its a waste of a perk if you don't die from corruption. If you die 1 in 20 games from corruption, then Corruption resist is only useful in 1 every 20 games.
      • I very rarely get full corruption even though I often go through full games without having to use the medicae a single time. 
    • The others
      • The ones not listed are terrible perks and shouldn't be taken in most builds.

Talent Discussion:

IMO this is the best build for Martyrdom. It hits all the REALLY good must have/OP Zealot talents with 1 free point to spare.

You get the best Blitz in the tree (Throwing Knives), the best Aura (Benediction), the best ability (Fury of the Faithful), and the Martyrdom keystone gives you the best raw stats bonus in the game (~40% melee damage, ~25% toughness damage reduction, ~20% attack speed).

Invocation of Death give you a perma 20% attack speed buff since you get FotF back within 10 seconds if you have a horde to hit.

Fury of the Faithful

FotF is the best ability option for Zealot because it's the most versatile. 

You get a instant 50% toughness, +20% attack speed for 10 seconds and a very important guaranteed crit to proc Enduring Faith (50% toughness damage reduction). You also get a guaranteed mini stun/stagger of all the enemies surrounding you.

If you are new to the build, you should ration and save ALL FotF charges for emergencies. You should fully think of FotF as a defensive ability, when you get better at the build, you can start using FotF more offensively. 

• Good situations to use Fury of the Faithful:
  • When your toughness is at 50% or below
  • The instant your toughness breaks/hits 0, you need to use FotF immediately. As Martyrdom zealot, the second you lose all your toughness, you're a sitting duck. You can use FotF to immediately regain toughness even if you have to waste the dash and dash against a wall when you're pinned down.
  • When you're under heavy gun fire and NEED the guaranteed crit to proc Enduring Faith's +50% toughness damage reduction.
  • When you're stuck sitting in fire/gas and need to get out ASAP.
  • Against Dreg Ragers to stagger/stun them and to interrupt their attack chains.
  • Against Crushers and using the Eviscerator + Fury of the Faithful tech to kill 2 crushers per charge. Same with bosses, you can do insane damage if you can get 2 activated heavy crit attacks in.
  • Against a big pack of shotgunners/gunners that just spawned and you want to get into melee range before they set up.

Eventually you can start using FotF for offensive purposes for the 20% attack speed buff. Like if you have a thick horde in front of you and there's no crusher/ragers/boss in sight? You can PROBABLY get away with using FotF to stat pad on some hordes. Eventually you can also try to min-max the 20% attack speed buff and have it up at most times while still always having one FotF charge in your back pocket for emergencies.

Dealing with...:

• Dreg Ragers
  • Spam light attacks, save your Fury of the Faithful to interrupt/stagger the Dreg Ragers when you've taken 1 or 2 hits from them.
  • Fury of the Faithful will stagger all the ragers/enemies in your immediate vicinity. During that stagger, you will be able to spam light attack so fast that the ragers will often be perma staggered from your light attacks. Try to aim for their head for max stagger/damage. 
  • If one of them breaks through the stagger, wait to take a hit or two from ragers before using FotF again. Usually you should be able to kill most/all of them at this point.
  • If it's a big group of ragers, they are almost guaranteed to proc your Until Death/Holy Revenant. If it procs, take advantage of the 5 second of invulnerability, keep swinging, and save FotF until after it ends.
  • Throwing Knives will also 1 shot them on headshots. I usually do this if Until Death is on cool down and I don't want to risk getting downed from a errant swing by a rager.
• Mutants
  • Side step the charge and one shot them with a heavy attack in the back
  • You SHOULD be able to 1 shot a full health mutant with just a heavy attack so no need to waste actions doing a special->heavy + Maniac perk. It may vary depending on your weapon stats.
• Maulers
  • If it's a mixed horde, spam light attacks and dodge. Using a heavy attack during a heavy horde is too dangerous as the other stuff can hit you.
  • You can also do the Eviscerator tech on it to 1 shot it, but I feel like it's a waste of FotF as Maulers are very slow and are not very threatening.
• Crushers
  • Do the hidden tech with the Eviscerator that I mentioned earlier. 
  • You can kill 2 crushers with 1 charge of Fury of the Faithful usually.
• Bulwarks
  • Special -> dodge left when they swing -> heavy attack. Special + heavy attack kills them in 1 hit even without a headshot.
  • Flamer + dodging backwards. The flamer will apply burn stacks through the shield.

Help! You're wrong, this build sucks and I can't stay alive:

If you are new to Martyrdom and can't stay alive with this build, try to start out with a more defensive oriented build. 

Maybe something like: 

https://darktide.gameslantern.com/build-editor?id=9cc5dfaf-c5b7-4db1-b9f1-86d1669d739d

Basically swapped Rampage for Momentum for more toughness regeneration. 

Also ditched 3 points from Punishment and Innovation of death for Thy Wrath be Swift and Good Balance. Good Balance applies to both toughness and health damage so your toughness damage reduction will be even more insane. The bad part about this build is that you will have to be much more conservative with your FotF because you don't have the crit cool down reduction from Invocation of Death.

Instead of playing at -5 wounds right from the start, you can also try dropping down to -3 or -4 wounds until you get better. I don't THINK (as in I haven't tested) there's a big breakpoint difference from -4 to -5 wounds but you do lose attack speed and toughness damage reduction.

Eventually you want to work towards playing at -5 wounds at all times. I would slowly change the defensive talents to offensive ones as you get more and more comfortable with Martyrdom. 

Some tips:

• Barrels are the best way to lower your health without taking toughness damage.
  • Fire Barrels are your best friend for lower your health to the desired level. You can sit in the fire and it will only damage your health and you won't risk taking a stray hit with your toughness down.
  • Explosion Barrels can do 1-2 wounds worth of damage to yourself without taking toughness damage.
  • I would advise against trying to lower your health against enemies because if you take an extra stray hit while you're at 0 toughness/low health, you'll waste Until Death.
• Play more defensively whenever Until Death is on cooldown. Go balls to the walls whenever it's up so you can limit test what situations you can dive into.
• If you are REALLY low on health (less than 10HP) AND Until Death is on cooldown, you can down yourself on purpose with a barrel or let a random enemy hit you when the situation is pretty clear for your teammate to easily rez you. This will give you more HP to work with. When Until Death comes back up, you can find the next fire barrel to lower your health back down.