Crit Eviscerator Zealot
 Zealot Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

This build is designed around a quirk of the Tigrus Mk III Heavy Eviscerator: its sweeping heavy attack can damage as many enemies as you have cleave mass for, while its light and push attacks (and all attacks on the Tigrus Mk XV Heavy Eviscerator) are limited to damaging 4 targets per swing. With 80% Cleave Targets stat on the weapon, this heavy attack has 9.5 cleave mass, which is quite nice compared to most weapons. However, it gets a lot better when you add Perfect Strike, which reduces enemy hit mass by 75% on crits and allows it to cleave carapace armor. You could damage up to 26 poxwalkers, 4 scab ragers/maulers, or even 3 crushers in one crit heavy attack.

Note that the special-activated mode will latch onto the first elite, specialist, or boss/monstrosity it hits regardless of your cleave mass, so you'll want to save the special-action for single targets and use the standard heavy attack for cleaving groups of enemies.

The eviscerator gets up to 80% crit chance in this build, although that relies heavily on combat buffs. It has 5% base crit, up to 20% from Shred blessing (which loses all stacks if you miss an attack or don't hit for 3.5 seconds), 25% from Blazing Piety + Righteous Warrior, and up to 30% from Scourge. You can maintain this 80% crit chance indefinitely in combat when enemy density is high, but it takes a little while to ramp after downtime.

I like the Accatran MG Mk II Heavy Laspistol with this build because it has good DPS into unyielding enemies, which includes reapers, bulwarks, and monstrosities. Reapers in particular are very dangerous and high-priority to kill. Other elite and specialist enemies are easily killed with melee or Blades of Faith, which is why I chose +5% crit chance perk instead of another +25% damage vs armor type; if you have difficulty landing throwing knife headshots on gunners, you could take +25% damage vs flak instead of crit chance. Laspistol has high crit damage scaling as well, which pairs nicely with Blazing Piety. Finally, the laspistol has excellent sprint speed and serves as a great mobility tool to offset the eviscerator's slow movement. You should swap to the pistol anytime you need to reposition while not melee attacking or blocking.

If you don't like throwing knives, you could take Stunstorm Grenade instead. Immolation Grenade would be mostly redundant with the eviscerator's cleave. If using the grenade, you may also want to use the Godwyn-Branx Mk IV Bolt Pistol for better specialist sniping; I recommend dumping Reload Speed instead of Mobility on the bolt pistol because you only lose 5% actual reload speed and you want maximum sprint speed for repositioning. I would take Puncture and Run 'n' Gun blessings with perks +25% damage vs maniac and unyielding on it.

Any of the auras be used with the build. Benediction tends to be the default choice. Beacon of Purity is good with specific mission modifiers like The Blight Spreads and Pox Gas, and not bad for general use. Zealous is most useful with builds that want to spam push-attacks, but it's helpful with any build and is a bit underrated. I swap the aura around based on the mission and how I'm feeling at the time; Zealous is probably my favorite aura for general use, but I recommend Benediction as a baseline.

Fury of the Faithful is the only ability I recommend because the eviscerator really benefits from the attack speed buff it provides. It could also work with Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude I suppose, but you'd be giving up a lot of offensive power. Shroudfield would cost too many points and doesn't have much synergy with the build.

If you don't care about Infectious Zeal to buff teammates' crit chance, that point can be moved to Anoint in Blood, Prime Target, Vicious Offering, or whatever you want.

The +3 stamina curio is optional since you'd already have 6 stamina without it, but I find it useful to have some extra. I often mix push-attacks into the cleave combo. Having more stamina also helps for reviving/assisting with enemies nearby. This can be swapped for toughness or health if you prefer.

As for attack combos, you'll want to focus on the sweeping heavy attack to take advantage of its insane cleave with Perfect Strike. The other attacks are capped at damaging 4 enemies per swing, so those will mostly be used for single-target damage or for transitioning back to heavy 1.

SUGGESTED COMBOS

• Cleave: heavy > light > repeat OR push-attack > heavy > light > repeat
• Single target (without special-action): light > heavy > light x2 > repeat
  OR light > heavy > block-cancel > repeat
  OR spam light attacks
• Single target (crusher): Activate special-action and heavy attack the head. Kills an Auric crusher in 3 hits without crits, 2 hits with at least 1 crit, or 1 hit with Fury of the Faithful.
• Single target (mauler): Activate special-action and heavy attack the torso. Kills an Auric mauler in 2 hits without crits, or 1 crit hit.
• Single target (mutant): Activate special-action as the mutant charges, start holding a heavy attack when it gets close, then dodge to the side and hit it with the heavy. The shredder animation will continue to damage it even while it runs away, and will one-shot it.
• Single target (other elites/specialists): Activate special-action and light attack the head. Kills everything except bulwarks in 1 hit on Auric (although the bulwark barely survives, and will die to a crit or when Duellist is active). Scab and dreg vanguards also die in 1 hit without crit.
• Boss/monstrosity: If you don't have aggro, spam special-action into heavy attack. When you have aggro, you'll want to use the generic single-target combo most of the time to avoid taking hits during the shredder animation or losing stamina from dodging out of the animation. Shredder does a lot of damage to captain/twin voidshields, so you'll still want to use it against them when you get the opportunity regardless of aggro.