THE META HAVOC 40 ZEALOT
 Zealot Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

PRAISE BE! THE META HAVOC 40 ZEALOT. According to me. Some personal choices were made but this is as good as it gets. An excellent blueprint for your own builds.

Tree and build:

• Beacon of Purity is more effective than Benediction in most high havoc levels, and can especially keep your squad from becoming corrupted little gremlins on The Blight Spreads or pox levels. If there's another Zealot in your squad it's likely they're using Benediction, and coherency buffs don't stack! 
• Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude with coherency protection only rivaled by vet Voice of Command. Support abilities are key in high havoc.
• Until Death is a tool for the "oh shit" moments until you can find healing. The small amount of health Holy Revenant gives isn't worth it since you should be able to avoid chip damage with a good team. Save a medstim for when this triggers!
• Blazing Piety with Duellist will give you massive damage with the dueling sword and will be active nearly all the time.
• Dance of Death and the talents below are overrated! These points are better spent on heavy-hitters like Ecclesiarch's Call and Sustained Assault for maximum melee damage. It is worth prioritizing attack over defense here since this build assumes you and your squad mates are decent players. You can only survive if you kill faster than heretics spawn!

The health boost from just one curio is noticeable, especially when trying to prevent Until Death from triggering. I believe it is more effective to:

• Use a DS perk on +2 stamina 
• Save a talent point on Holy Revenant 
• 2 Tough Curios + 1 Health Curio

Than to:

• Use a DS perk on damage (ex. +25% carapace)
• Use Holy Revenant, sacrifice Righteous Warrior , Ecclesiarch's Call or another key talent
• 2 Tough Curios + 1 Stamina Curio

Maybe you can mix some of these options but the first is what is shown in this build. Even when using Holy Revenant I find the health curio a huge boost. Without the talent switch, with this build you're essentially sacrificing a (for example) +25% carapace damage buff on the DS for +21% health. And, of course, 1 stamina, but I find in practice this feels negligible. With all the talent investments into damage, this is a small sacrifice for huge value. 

Tips:

• For some reason I rarely see anyone do this but you can side-slide-dodge while booking to travel furthest!
• Spam book rather than saving it, Invocation of Death should keep it recharging fast enough for the next wave of enemies.
• You can save a talent point on Piety by opting for Stalwart. If you feel generous Infectious Zeal is a great choice with a good squad! You can also save a talent point by removing Until Death if you're insane.
• Consider swapping Ecclesiarch's Call for Faithful Frenzy or Anoint in Blood, which seems to work well with the flamer.
• Dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge.

There isn't much to be said about the weapon choices and they should be first picks for any zealot running high level havoc. You can definitely choose many other melee weapons, but Dueling Sword remains an uncontested best. Flamer offers massive horde clearing and is only rivaled by boltgun. Interestingly damage is the dumpstat for flamer, it only affects the initial hit by a whole ~2 damage!

I definitely lean on the toughness side of the toughness/health curio debate, especially considering how little you get in havoc. I also think +5% health/toughness perks are worth it, every bit of health matters. It's not worth stacking more than two of most perks since the buffs multiply rather than add together. (ex. Adding a third Gunner damage resistance perk would only grant an additional ~10% resistance) 

happy to take any feedback @randomspicy on discord

For the Emperor!