Eversor Assassin | Blades of Faith | Shroudfield | Inoxerable Judgment | Auric Ready
Build for Darktide

Eversor Assassin

I don't understand how the combat knife has remained this overturned for this long. It's good on the veteran, but on the Zealot, it is downright broken. I see a lot of players hesitant to try a stealth Zealot build because it looks too difficult to master. I'm here to tell you, it really isn't. It's absurdly strong and with even a basic understanding of Darktide's mechanics, can have you sprinting around, slaying everything in sight. Just don't be one of those knife zealots that tries to speedrun the game and leave your team behind. Those are the reason this playstyle gets a bad reputation. 

Playstyle

STAY WITH YOUR TEAM! I see far too many Knife zealots run ahead and abandon their team like Rambo. Dropping aggro with Shroud field means that those threats will now attack your teammates. I see far too many players try to speedrun the mission, rushing ahead and dropping aggro if they get overwhelmed. In a normal mission, all this does is send everything towards your team who now has to deal with your slack. The only time you want to be playing like this is if you are speed-running in a premade team, not with randomers who don't know what you are doing. 

With that PSA out of the way, the playstyle focuses heavily on speed and mobility. With the Catachan Mk VI Combat Blade, holding on to heavy attack will allow you to move faster 30% as you are lunging. This can help you close the gap on ranged enemies. You will also have better mobility overall, allowing you to dodge-slide and get insane distance, allowing you to weave in and out of combat to avoid damage. It's surprisingly easy to engage with Monstrosities and dodge their attacks whilst keeping their aggro. The knife does heavy damage on weakspot hits and backstabs hits. Backstab hits technically do not count as a weakspot hit, so will proc Lacerate automatically from the back. If you are fighting an Ogryn or monstrosity, hit them once quickly in the body to gain a bleed stack before going for heavies on the head to benefit from Mercy Killer. 

If you are not able to close the gap, or if you need to take a specialist from a distance, you have two options. Blades of Faith & Zarona Mk IIa Quickdraw Stub Revolver. Knives are are quick to use and do not require you to change weapons. However, they struggle against armour, especially carapace. So I like to use Knives to respond to quick threats immediately (Trappers, Poxhounds and sometimes Dreg Ragers), and the revolver for tougher enemies (Maulers, Dreg Ragers, Crushers).

Build Path

We move down the right tree, picking up Backstabber. Should be obvious, but we want to be going for backstabs so an increase in backstab damage is incredibly helpful to us. You will be inflicting bleed on most enemies you attack, so Scourge just increases your chance of a critical hit, and dealing more damage, as well as stacking bleed stacks faster. This synergises well with Enduring Faith as you will be hitting crits frequently enough to have a semi-permanent 50% Toughness reduction up. Second Wind is a great node on any Zealot build and one I never go without. Being able to replenish toughness every time you dodge (something you will constantly be doing) with only a 0.5-second internal cooldown is one of the best toughness replenishment nodes in the game, and especially for Zealot. It works on ranged attacks, not just melee, so dodge frequently to keep your toughness up. 

We mosey on over to the left to pick up Duelist. You will be dodging a lot, so proccing this throughout the game.  Whilst we are here, we might as well pick up Until Death. Getting a free second life when things go pear-shaped is invaluable, and I've become so accustomed to this on my Zealot builds that I feel naked without it. Ideally, you don't want to ever use it, but it can be handy to stop yourself instantly going down if you fail to avoid that Crusher overhead. Sadly we don't have the points to spare to pick up Holy Revenant, So you will have to be extra careful if you find yourself in a situation where you are fighting with just one Hit point. 

Down the right key, we pay the price to pick up Dance of Death, which does very little for us as the Revolver is already extremely accurate. This is to pick up Thy Wrath be Swift. This is an excellent node that stops you from getting stunned and is so freaking strong. It is hard to articulate just how impactful this node is, but the ability not to have your movement interrupted in a build that focuses on mobility for survivability, it is simply invaluable, and well worth the investment. Grievous Wounds can assist in stun-locking bigger threats, Like Ragers and Ogeryns, although it is not something to be relied upon given the knives' low stagger values. Loner is... trash sadly, and desperately needs to be either reworked, or changed completely. It is a terrible node that promotes a terrible playstyle. However, we need to pick it to carry on for the point economy. 

Shroudfield is your, 'I don't want to play the game' button. Popping it drops all aggro on you, allowing you breathing room and to get into a better position. It also provides a huge Finesse and backstab bonus, allowing us to absolutely chunk down Monstrosities once we are in a good position. This 3-second window is increased to 6 seconds with Master-Crafted Shroudfield allowing you more time to get into the correct position. Invigorating Revealtion allows our ability to serve as defensive utility, in addition to offensive burst damage. It is not an instant Toughness replenishment like the Veteran's ability, but can still provide decent defensive utility. 

Sustained Assault increases our damage in situations where we are constantly attacking the same target.