Zealot - Fiery Devil's Claw Martyrdom (DotD Update)
 Zealot Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

This is a fun little Zealot Dclaw build that I've been having a ton of fun with. I've only used this in Auric Maelstrom, so I'll point out where I'd imagine changes could be made for Havoc at the bottom of this whole thing.

Basic Idea:

Devil's Claw is cool because it's kinda bad but in a way that makes it fun. Trying to make it work as your primary damage dealer is a whale of a time, especially when Zealot lacks talents that stack brittleness/rending. Parrying is awesome and very satisfying and it does a huge amount of damage. Can be lifesaving but it is not without its big risks. I would avoid "fishing" for parries, considering they are a purely-reactive tool. Fury of the Faithful is the tool you'll be using to both stay alive and do your consistent damage to armored targets/high HP, not parrying.

This build uses Fury of the Faithful (and both of its modifiers), Zealous Pilgrim, Fire and Fury, Scourge, Blinded by Blood, and Invocation of Death to stack Bleed and Burn stacks and Crit Chance. Burn is great against unyielding enemies. Bleed is just nice additional damage.

I use Martyrdom because it's fun and the extra on-demand 50% damage and 30% attack speed is very nice. It's definitely viable to bring Blazing Piety or Inexorable Judgement instead. With Blazing Piety, you'll have more talents to spend on talents like Against the Odds, Punish Impiety, or whatever you want. You'll definitely be struggling for talent points with an Inexorable Judgement build.

DON'T bring Holy Tools. It does not work with Devil's Claw or Duelling Sword parry (as cool as that would be). It only works on weapons with "rev" or "charge" mechanics, like chain weapons, relic blade, thammer, crusher)

Gameplay:

Use the very short cooldown on FotF to make use of it very often. You need it to do decent damage against Crushers and Maulers. 3x 4% CDR curio perks reduce base cooldown to 26.8s. Unrelenting Fury takes six seconds off your CD immediately. You can maintain very high uptime on Invocation of Death considering how often you will be landing crits with both FotF and all of the other crit stacking we're doing.

This build is very not good on armor seeds. While you can reasonably handle 1-3 crushers alone, as you start adding more meat or carapace armor into that pile, you are less likely to get an elite or specialist kill off of FotF, which will therefore make your cooldown longer, which will reduce your DPS AND make you more vulnerable to overheads without Zealous Pilgrim granting you Unkillable.

Weapon Explanation:

Bolt Pistol is very solid extra special/gunner sniping tool. Also can be used to proc bleed stacks which synergizes with Scourge.

DClaw Mk7 is the best mark on account of having access to a relatively-good single target combo (light-heavy-light-light-heavy-light-light->etc) as well as a push attack that does great damage vs Flak armor.

• Shred is the "mandatory" blessing here. Crits are very important and you want more
• Rampage is the better blessing between itself and Wrath, because Rampage is actually a Power (melee strength) increase, so it increases damage, impact, and cleave.
• Unyielding is very important because reapers are deadly, and this weapon actually does quite well vs bosses when stacking burn stacks and parrying.
• Carapace can be swapped for Flak. It's fine to bring Carapace on Auric, but it probably isn't worth it on Havoc.

Notes for Havoc:

• Probably replace Carapace with Flak for more consistent horde clear.
• Probably replace Purifying Hatred and either Vicious Offering or Enemies Within, Enemies Without for Providence and Against the Odds (for access to Beacon of Purity as well as the extra 50% cleave from Against the Odds.)
• Probably try to find something to replace in favor of Wait in Line (since curio Gunner damage reduction does not impact standard shooters, while Wait in Line does)
• Probably replace Stamina with Toughness or Health or something.