Unrelenting Allrounder
 Zealot Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

Role

I call this build the Unrelenting Allrounder because it is just that. Your weapon blessings and talent choices are all geared around making you immune to interrupts, stuns, suppression and ranged damage. You do not relent and you're difficult to stop if played right. You have an answer for both melee and ranged threats.

This build has two main objectives that it is seeking to fill: 

1. For pre-mades/organised groups: Be the anchor which your team can build and specialise around, as the missions require (You also have some different weapon options to shore up team weakspots which I'll discuss at the end).
2. For solo-queue: Be the allrounder that can control a threat when it happens, as you probably aren't going to have a well balanced team/your veteran sucks (You can try the alternate weapons if you queue into a pre-game lobby and can coordinate a bit with your team, but you should quickplay queue with the Heavy Sword Mk IX and Lasgun loadout in-case you connect to a game that's already started).

Disclaimer/Requirements: You must have very good and snappy/quick aim (80% weakspot accuracy at least) to make proper use of the Lasgun and the constant ranged/melee weapon swapping you will be doing. Your head must also be on a swivel like you're on the Emprah's Own Chilli-P. If you aren't a good FPS shooter player this build will not work for you. You will also need a good grasp of the combat fundamentals for the Tide series of games. This is not a beginner's build (why are you in Difficulty 4/5 as a beginner?), but it's fine in the lower difficulties if you just want to practice the playstyle.

How it Plays

I think the easiest way to describe the playstyle is in terms of your general priorities: 

Snipers > Specials(except mutant) > Reapers = Gunners > Shotgunners > Guardsmen = Dreg Riflemen > Mutant > Horde >= Melee Elites (situational)

The above priorities are what you’re working towards, but keep in mind that they are general in nature. Adjusting priorities around this general framework depending on the specific situation is key. For instance sometimes Horde >= Melee Elites will be above > Guardsmen = Dreg Riflemen.

Are you running around not currently in combat? Well you should have the Lasgun out because the next combat is almost 100% going to start with ranged targets in it and you want to start work on picking as many of them off as possible before you’re closed in. If you can close the gap with cover/flanking quickly and without getting Last Samurai’d do this, but more often you will need to start off blasting. If you are only hitting heads and not missing you should be able to take out a lot of targets while you stand there immune to suppression and ranged damage (if you only have the suppression blessing make sure you be dodging/peeking the ranged fire). This also gets your Rising Conviction stacked up before you’re engaged in melee.

Don’t waste your ammo on melee targets. Your team will thank you for it.

OK the enemy is nearly on me now what? Get a wall or some object on at least one side of you, pull out your Mark IX and charge up the first heavy attack. This is a big overhead downward swing that is more single target orientated and has some forward momentum to it that you need to account for. Time this right so you connect but don’t get pulled too far into the horde.

The next part of the heavy attack chain is a wide sweep from right to left at head height, with the attack after being the same wide sweep just from left to right. These sweeps already hit a lot of targets on the first hit and will guarantee to start proccing your blessings if there are multiple targets. This will also get you to uninterruptable and increase your impact by a huge amount.

What makes this weapon so great is that if you keep chaining the heavy attacks it will actually repeat attacks 2 and 3 over and over (sweeping constantly left and right at normal human head height) instead of going back to attack 1. It will only go back to starting the pattern off at attack 1 if you block or don’t attack for a while.

Wouldn’t not blocking be a problem? Not really. Sure you will need to block sometimes, but the attack pattern of the weapon when combined with the cleave blessings, stun immunity and stacking impact % makes needing to block rare or a fault of your own bad dodge dancing/positioning/timing. Your cleave blessings will make the attacks hit more targets, to the point where I’m certain it can hit more things than can physically be within your melee range at one time. You are also doing obscene amounts of stagger because of those cleave increases and the 150% impact you’ve stacked up from Punishment. You want to try not reset the heavy attacks for as long as possible, but if there is a crusher or mauler you should reset to the first attack (overhead) as this is the best single target/AP and the massive stagger you have stacked up will also affect them heavily.

I thought you said you’re constantly swapping weapons, sounds more like you’re ranged until you’re in melee? Well this is where the fun begins and the more difficult aspects of the build/playstyle take off. Remember how you have stacked up +150% impact and up to 300% cleave, well now you block push those melee targets and watch them go flying creating a huge amount of space for you. You now quickly swap to your Lasgun and snap a couple heads on any ranged/priority targets that you’ve identified while scanning around during your melee window. Once the melee targets have recovered to nearly start hitting you again or it’s been nearly 5s swap back to the sword and commence cleaving once more.

You repeat this ranged/melee loop over and over, as required. Always try finish off your ranged window quick enough to not let your Punishment stacks drop, as that can be rather punishing for you (5s). Sorry bud, I said this isn't a beginner build that's your main priority.

Weaknesses

Your AP is pretty average, so that’s one area your team needs to fill in. For solo queue I think overall you generally get this covered by someone else so it isn't a big deal. Also if you're accuracy is good the Mk XII Las will still do good AP when you need it and popping your ult gives you ranged AP damage. This weakness only really shows when you are dealing with a very large group of carapace armoured targets that you can't kill before you ult drops off.

Alternate ranged weapons

Any mark of infantry lasgun will work, its just the XII is the best. I could also see the Heavy Laspistol and a decently accurate autogun working (if you like iron sights), although I’ve not tried with them. If you're not solo queue and you've got a great Veteran mate you trust I'd also rate the shotgun too as an alternate weapon. I think the shotgun would feel comfortable for some Vermintide 2 players.

Alternate melee weapons

You can also substitute the Mk IX heavy sword for a Thunder Hammer or Eviscerator, to trade off some survivability and control for more AP/elite damage. 

I think the alternatives have less control because although they’ve got better base stagger than the sword, it always feels like they hit less targets per swing. I say less survivability because you move slower and don’t dodge as good. This could get made up for with the Momentum blessing for THammer but I’ve not got one with this to test out.  Obviously the THammer will stagger better than the Evis, but the Evis will cleave better than the THammer. My favourite alternative is the Thunder Hammer.

You could also swap Wrath for Rampage on the Mk IX if you don't think you need the extra cleave.

Alternate talents

You can potentially take Bloodletting and Invocation of Death for a crit based build to have access to your alt more often. This only works if you feel you have enough crit from other stats, or you’re playing with a team where you know someone else can bring bleeds for you. It actually works better than my build, it’s just more reliant on your team setup or you getting good crit rolls on weapons at the trade-off for survivability stats (melee attack speed = survivability due to attacking and staggering more often).

Alternate curios

Not really an alternate to the Blessings. You need an extra wound for 4/5. 20 more toughness is nice, more stamina is nice for daemonhosts if you don’t have a Slabgryn. Maybe you could swap out the stamina for more toughness.

To be honest I'm not sure on the perks for the curios cause I haven't got the ones I want and people are saying all the perks shown here might not be correct. i.e no toughness damage reduction perk. I’ve just picked what I thought was right, but it’s probably got a lot of flex in it and getting the 3 perfect perks on all 3 curios is currently pretty unrealistic. The key thing is having toughness damage reduction on all 3 (if it exists[get some other toughness stat if it doesn't]), at least 1 sniper reduction and 1 gunner reduction.

Tips

You’re trying to take out a priority target but you are or think you will about to be supressed? Quickly target something you know you will hit in the weakspot if suppressed to proc your immunity and then swap back to the prio target.

You want to cleave through some close but not quite in ranged targets with your sword? Keep chaining your attacks on nothing so it doesn’t reset and dodge scoot over there.

Other general zealot shit - use your nades to revive, use your nades for cc, think about what your talents and blessings do together to revive, crouch is accuracy and crouch spam in cover is good, also slide (please Fat Shark give us 2 keybind options for buttons so I can use ctrl for stationary crouch and a side mouse button for crouch sliding).