45-60% Finesse Damage for 2s on successful Dodge.
12.5-20% Critical Chance for 6s on successful Dodge.
1-4% Toughness for every 10% of magazine spent during continuous fire. Stacks 5 times.
5-6.5% Strength for 3.5s on Close Range Kill.
Post patch, I’ve not been vibing particularly hard with the zealot, but have finally found something that works for me.
I’m not a sweat, and I’m a pretty average player so I’m hoping this is quite accessible to most playing the zealot.
I’ve used this regularly on Auric Damnation Shock Troop Hi-intensity with great success and positive impact to the team.
It’s primarily built around the availability of the dueling sword, which seems quite overpowered in the hands of vets and zealots rn.
I never got along with knife due to its meager range and RSI inducing light attacks on hordes, but the dually sword has nicer slashing width, a longer poke and near equal mobility.
My primary purpose and role in the fire team;-
- use mobility to move towards greatest threat and neutralize it with big stabs. - watch your teams backs to identify the threats to them.
- You should be orbiting the team and maintaining coherency.
- Be comfortable moving from the frontline to the backing and vice versa. (See a Psyker struggling to break free of trailing mobs? Go free them up to rejoin the group, then side your butt back into coherency)
Build notes:-
If you’ve played zealot for a little while, you’ll know that there’s a few mandatory talents spread diametrically opposite on the tree, so when you’re building a regular pleb build there isn’t much to play with choice wise.
I’ll focus on the non cookie cutter choices here:-
1) immolation grenades vs. knife : well placed immo. grenades will do impressive damage and you already have a decent mid range secondary weapon to deal with specialists etc. The immo grenade will benefit a closer coherency fireteam vs knives imo. (Unless you’re John Wick or something)
2) desperation vs. holy revenant :
- we have restoring faith, which will likely proc a similar amount of recovery when triggering ‘until death’, so we’re not left at risk of 1hp chip damage.
- desperation and duelling sword, we only have 4 stamina with no stam curios. So I have a decent amount of uptime when starting engagements, where I’ll have the first hits before my first dodge procs
- it’s not game changing either way, so choose whichever you prefer
3) no redoubled zeal: I need that last point for 20% damage from sustained assault. Our crit rate is high enough to make FotF CD reliably 10s long. I can’t say I’ve ever ‘felt’ like I needed two charges while playing. 4) stalwart vs. fury rising:
- With only two points in the key stone, both provide the same amount of crit, but stalwart provides regular toughness top ups and the newly added ‘25% toughness damage reduction’ for the duration
- the uptime is still going to be 100% due to the sheer amount of enemies in auric, even more likely if you’re good for sticking in coherency
- while it might not proc on long boss fights, you’ll only lose about 15% crit, but the bleeds should be freely ticking to keep you +30% from there
5) Blazing Piety vs Inexorable Judgement Keystones:-
- I prefer the crit CD reduction on dueling sword, as I’m not as good as getting the back stab cd reduction here (definitely possible if you’re better at dodge and backstab kills mid horde)
- the additional crit rate makes horde clear more reliable (see section on light attacks on the flak)
Melee : MK4 dueling sword
As mentioned above, it’s just a nicer knife in my eyes.
Choice 1: Why the MK4? (Vs MK II)Single target:- it’s damaging pokes are easier to hit than MKII (my preferred on vet, mk4 preferred on Psyker and Zealot)
- the heavy pokes are quicker to fire out, back to back, vs MKII (which needs a special attack chain interruption to avoid the vanguard second heavy)
Choice 2: Maniac & Carapace:-
For me, the single target pokes are primarily for these two sets of enemies.
1) carapace : maulers and crushers
- if I’m running this build, my expectation is that I am the one primarily dealing with these threats for the team
2) Maniacs : mutants and dreg ragers
- dreg ragers are likely the greatest danger to zealots, so always want to kill those quickly
- mutants I always want to be 1-shotting as much as possible, preventing disabling / avoidable damage and loss of position for you and your team mates.
Carapace is the primary job here, up to you if you want to put maniac modifier into something else however. (Unyielding likely next best choice)
Choice 3: Precognition and Riposte Blessings
Single Target(cont):
- more crit, 60% finesse buff, stacking with ‘duelist’. This will be as close to a one shot crusher you’ll get
Horde Clear:
- in the hands of the zealot, you can easily have 70% crit after a dodge and a couple swings with this build
- finesse blessing on dodge, and ‘duellist’ talent means your crits and weak points hits will be modified greatly
- I’ve chosen finesse on dodge vs. rending here because the rending only really helps out on flak: (here’s why)
- HEAVY attacks (the ones you utilize on carapace) are 85% effective already, very little for rending to do here. (Additional rending past 100% applies a damage buff equal to 1/4 of rending. So about 25% on carapace, which is nothing to be sniffed at if you want to go this route)
- with the high crit rate, and extra finesse/duellist, LIGHT crits on flak are much closer to regular unarmored damage vs. regular hits (where you’d need the rending, as light regular and light weak spot hits are not very effective on flak). So we don’t need to rely on rending here to clear flak trash with light swings, due to crit and finesse bonuses.
Note: time your dodges better in hordes! If you’re not triggering the ‘on dodge’ effects by dodging too early, you’re negating nearly 1/2 your total damage output. You’ll struggle with hordes if you’re just hitting them with regular slashing attacks.
You can switch to rending vs. precog if uptime from dodge timing is a problem, but you’re losing access to a lot of damage. Suggest just muscling thru it with practice until it clicks.
Effective dodge timing on zealot is super critical to utilizing the class.
(Toughness regen on dodge, weak spot/crit on dodge, damage reduction on dodge, yada yada)
Braced Autogun - Agripinaa Mk 8 (name changed, but the piercing one)
- Best in slot, not recommending anything else
- see blessings for its advantage over other auto guns
- has functional mid range for sniping specialists despite being a braced gun
- pierces and staggers better than any weapon (mowing down a mixed horde, hitting empire and specialist targets thru it)
Blessings:
choice 1 - default mandatory - inspiring barrage
- it’s toughness regen is phenomenal and not something zealots have easy access to
- you can pretty much face tank dreg rangers who get up in your business (this is where I normally capitulate tbh, if I’m getting mugged in a back alley by 5/6 dreg ragers, being able to panic fire a gun and it be 100% effective os perfect for a noob like me) choice 1 - player preference - Deathspitter
- I do deathspitter because I’m a coward. The bonus to strength increases piercing/cleave and stagger. This weapon is a crutch for digging me out of bad situations (see above) and the more stagger/cleave, the better.
- The other alternatives are your usual damage buffs OR reload speed on kill , based on your play style
- there’s no need for ranged immunity if you’re blasting away regenerating inordinate amounts of toughness
Player choice, I went boring.
Health, due to interaction with restoring faith. AND the high mobility /dodging on this build means you shouldn’t be taking a lot of damage…. Until you do and it will blow through your toughness anyway.
I also skip over sniper and gunner dmg reduction, again, due to mobility. I can slide 100 meters fast than Usain Bolt.
Toughness regen speed, as of I’m not getting hit, it’ll recover quickly mid fight. A little bonus on top of toughness regen on dodge.
All in all though, players choices on what you need.
