Some Idiots Crit-Zealot Havoc 40 (Relic Blade) [Piety]
 Zealot Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

Ok so I've already written guides for builds I personally think are better than this and I encourage people to check my profile for those, however I also felt like it would be a decent idea to post something for people who don't currently feel comfortable with Martyrdom builds. Not everyone feels comfortable playing at 25% hp and that's understandable, so this is something that's a bit worse but a lot safer for most people to run. I highly encourage people to move beyond this however, as currently Havoc 40 is heavily weighted towards encouraging Martyrdom on Zealot due to Crusher HP buffs and Rotten Armour. Crit Relic Blade Zealot was fine last season and is what I personally ran, but its raw numbers just aren't quite there this season. If Rotten Armour gets taken out of rotation or Crusher HP/Armour ratios are touched to be more favourable then this build will be just fine, it's just a bit underperforming now.

Onto the build itself, this is just a generic Charge Zealot with Relic Blade as its base for the most part. You can actually swap this very easily around to be a Book build, and doing so will give you a spare point you can put into Anoint in Blood for its +25% bonus to Flamer DoT's, Good Balance for extra resistances or Enemies Within/Without for constant regen. 

Your main role as Zealot this season is pure damage for the most part. If you're not matching or exceeding your Psyker in damage than your team would have rather brought a second Veteran or an Arbitrator who both provide far more team utility than you can. You're a melee Psyker basically. Your job is to make sure anything that's alive that shouldn't be is in the dirt as quickly as possible, moving to different angles your team currently needs you at. It's a build for people with ADHD basically. 

Something of note is that Scourge is a bit weird with Relic Blade. Thinking about Scourge as "30% crit chance" like some people do is just wrong, as that 30% gets extremely inconsistent the quicker to kill your melee weapon is. If it's something like a Relic Blade that will usually kill whatever it crits, you're not going to be getting many if any stacks of Scourge since the targets that should be bleeding for you to hit them again are... dead. Because of this, Scourge is mostly something we're taking for pathing reasons but it also gives us access to Blinded by Blood and will boost our DPS against more durable targets like Monstrosities/Ogryns or if our team has a Bleed Vet/Ogryn to get the bleeds started for us easier to stack off of.

Blinded by Blood is a bit finicky due to some nonsense with how the game handles DoT's. Put simply, Blinded by Blood will only take effect on an enemy if YOU were the one who inflicted the bleed. If a teammate applies the bleed first and you apply bleed through scourge afterwards while their bleed was still active, you won't actually apply Blinded by Blood. This means that if your Vet is throwing Shredders/hitting enemies with Serrated Blade or your Ogryn is touching them with Batter you won't be able to make use of this talent full stop. If your team is running either of these builds, I encourage you to switch to Prime Target for consistency. It's not that great of a node, but having a node that's actually working is better than having a node that isn't.

This build also lacks some damage resist choices you'd normally expect, but that's mostly cause current Zealot needs to stack as much damage as they can get especially on a Piety build where you're lacking the base damage that a Martyrdom build would normally get. Your damage resists are mostly coming from the 25% TDR (Toughness Damage Reduction) given by Stalwart and the 15% DR (Generic DR that applies to both HP and Toughness) from Hubris. As much as I would love to take Good Balance or Enduring Faith, current Zealot needs to stack damage to not be useless.

As far as your weapons go, Relic/Flamer is what I personally recommend currently but Eviscerator, Chain Axe, Bolter, Bolt Pistol etc... are all good options.

For our Relic Blade we're taking Rampage/Cranial mostly due to the absence of Rampaging Enemies and Moebian 21st in the current rotation. The 50% cleave provided by Against the Odds helps balance out the lack of cleave from not taking Wrath sufficiently for it to still be usable without it, and the extra Weakspot damage provided by Cranial helps deal with things like Blue stimmed enemies and Rotten Armour by allowing us to both punch harder and keep our empowered state active for longer.

As for using relic blade here are the main combo's

Horde Clear Fast: Heavy > Heavy > Light > Heavy > Light > Heavy etc... (Access it from the 2nd heavy then loop that 2nd heavy into lights.

Horde Clear w/ Stagger and better energized economy: Heavy > Heavy > Light > Push Attack > Repeat (Can also start from push attack)

Single Target for Basic Elites (stacked Shotgunners, gunners etc... that die quick): Light > Light > Block Cancel > Repeat

Single Target Main: Light > Heavy > Heavy > Loop Heavies (Uppercut does marginally more damage for some reason. Needs to be aimed slightly for consistent headshots)

Switch between these as necessary. Your highest single damage attack is your sprinting stab which you don't actually have to be fully sprinting to activate. If you briefly hold sprint and forwards while looking slightly down to an angle while holding heavy attack you'll immediately enter a stab attack without having to commit to sprinting forwards, allowing you to prepare it immediately for hitting something durable in a weakpoint. You can block cancel after it to immediately be able to do it again. You can also use this attack to hit a BoN's weak point from the front if you align the attack right, giving you high damage without having to flank behind the boss that'd put you out of position and in the range of its AoE attacks.

As for moving around with the Relic Blade you can move-tech by holding the Sprinting Stab attack, letting go for the thrust, switching quickly to ranged then back to the sword, then going into another Sprinting stab, repeat. The move gives you some additional speed compared to just sprinting with it out normally so it's usually always worth doing when you remember to.

Use the Flamer for situations where melee with the Relic Blade is too risky, multiple stacked up bosses, being a replacement for your Psyker if they go down or can't keep their Purgatus staff going etc... can also be used as effective suppression against gunners/reapers.

Bolter is your main alternative in this build and you'd take Pinning Fire/Cavalcade. Its main purpose is to mag-dump bosses while also giving you a more reliable sniping tool for things like Reapers/Gunners in bad positions and your vet is asleep at the wheel/dead.

You might also wonder why we're not taking Ds4 and that's mostly cause that weapon is boring. It also just doesn't cover as many roles as other options can and puts more of your playstyle on your Flamer since you lack any semblance of proper horde clear by comparison. The Ds4 also got hit harder by the HP buffs to Crushers than other weapons, mostly cause the bonuses given by Duelist got nerfed so much in the Zealot rework. It's still a great weapon but it's not the "god among weapons" choice it used to be so I encourage people to try and break out of that bubble as much as they can.