The Zealot is the religious maniac class, charging in with pure love for the Emperor and all that jazz. The result is a pious powerhouse, swinging with lots of bonus attack speed and damage to match. If the idea of being a melee heavy class, with charges, damage buff and other goodies for making melee fun, then the Zealot is a great class to play.

In this guide, we will show you the basic so the Darktide Zealot Preacher build, featuring two potential builds you can play. We will also offer tips, recommended weapons and curios, offer playstyle advice, and general overviews to give you a more concrete idea of what the class and Zealot build is all about.

Darktide Zealot Build Overview¶

Before we can go into the overall build and playstyle suggestion, you must first know what the class does.

Ability: The main feature of the class is the charge in and get a crit. This makes the Zealot an assassin of sorts able to close gaps to key targets and burst like no other class in the game with its guaranteed crit. You can also use it headfirst into packs and go crazy if you want to.

Blitz: Zealots come with a stun grenade, which stuns enemies in its radius for several seconds.

Aura: The Zealot at its base level grants 7% toughness damage reduction to allies in Coherency.

The Zealot has three Iconics: Swift Exorcism, granting 10% melee attack speed. Until Death, which grants cheat death every 90 seconds for a five-second period to avoid dying or going down. You also have Martyrdom, which grants +5 damage for each 15 missing health. Stacks three times.

Overall, this class is all about getting into the fray, doing lots of damage, and being okay with taking damage too. It makes for an interesting berserker-like playstyle, and a great off-tank too.

Zealot Feats for the Build¶

There are two major builds in this class: the low HP but high buff retribution build. Alternatively, you can grab some DPS buffs, and still play more like an off-tank and charge-in without worries. We have tried to reflect the builds by marking the feat ranges where you can pivot the build slightly based on your own personal preference, map and game mode options, and to some extent conditions too.

The main thing you need to know about this Darktide Zealot build is that there are largely two build pivot points. The main decision of this is at Level 10, when you can choose Retribution. This changes your playstyle to the 20% total HP remaining pivot point. Optimally playing this playstyle will require you to always be low health (20% HP left). Syncing this with six stacks of Martydom feat means you get 30 extra damage per hit, and you get 30% attack speed. All in all, you will slay lots of things in a very efficient manner. You will then get buffs to your Marytdom and go absolute maniac mode with lots of attack speed and damage increase to dish out damage with horde clear and boss destruction.

This also changes your playstyle. You are now required to play more sensibly with your toughness, managing health and switching to range when your cheat death is down. We advise not running this build until level 20, thanks to the cheat death heal making the playstyle more forgiving, which can be said at level 25 and then again at 30. Until then, run other feats.

If you want a safer option, avoid Retribution in the level 10, and go for another option, and then the other recommended option in the level 20 and 25 feat options. That way, you have a more healthier build with slightly less buffs, which favors those still learning their playstyle and class, or fancy playing more of an off-tank type role.

On another note, the level 30 talent should be Purge the Wicked 99% of the time. No mater your preferred playstyle, this feat provides so many situational plays you can make, such as deep engages, retreat options, and toughness regeneration. These are not restricted you either feat build, and you will find its incredibly useful no matter the situation when you need to use two charges in short succession of each other, or keep a stack spare in case of emergencies, whether thats to charge to a trapped ally, downed teammate, or to even save your own hide from certain death. All in all, this feat is too valuable to not pick something else unless its under a stage pre-made comp-related experimentation.

The Zealot Build’s Weapons¶

In terms of your weapon build, you kinda have lots of choice for the playstyle. The three melee weapons your want to look at are the

• Achlys Axe
• Eviscerator
• Thunder Hammer

These three weapons are fairly viable, offering some more preferential flavors. To start, the Achlys Axe has built-in anti-armour, allowing players can enjoy this particularly well against Scab themes enemies. It also deals solid damage against armored specialists, and even Carapace enemies, too. You have a nice melee weapon that can shred most enemies with its light attack.

On the other hand, Eviscerator is great cleave weapon, and its special revved-up chain belt comes in to make cleaving and shredding through armor even better. It’s a nice middle option, especially when you lack horde control or weave clear on your team.

Finally, the other melee weapon you may want to consider is the Thunder Hammer. This weapon is the anti-specialist, armor and elite killer. It does lots of burst damage, especially with its special thunder modifier added to deal pretty big damage Combine it with the Chastise the Wicked, and you have some of the heaviest burst in the game. You also get some cleave too, thanks to the sideswipes of the hammer, which largely turns into crowd control.

Preferred Zealot Ranged Weapons¶

The weapon you want to use is a largely personal choice, and for those enjoying the harder content, based on your role in the team. You probably don’t need crowd control if you have a Ogryn and Psyker with a Purgator or Surge Staff, or even another Zealot with a Flamer. (You can also be that Zealot with a Flamer). If any of these are the case, you probably don’t need crowd control melee weapon. This is just an example of how your party can influence your build.

As for your ranged weapons, you have three choices:

• Braced Autogun
• Bolter
• Flamer

The Braced Autoguin is a well-rounded weapon. It has decent range, accuracy, and damage, especially the higher-level ones. The result is you have an all-around weapon capable of unloading a mag into a big armored lad to do some damage, and you have horde control to. Your weapon even can fight shooter and gunners too, which is very handy for a well-rounded off weapon.

Meanwhile, you have the Bolter. This low magazine size weapon can shred through hordes with its explosive rounds, and even take out specialists without much thinking involved. Monstrosities? Yeah, they die in a mag or two of a Boltgun, especially if they hit Weak Points on them too. Overall, the Bolt Gun is another well-rounded weapon, albeit its sway, accuracy and magazine count do restrict it slightly.

If you want a weapon that will bring lots of crowd control and horde firepower, then the Flamer is your choice. This is especially great for Zealots on Endless Horde condition levels, and even those levels you have to wait around and clear areas out before continuing. However, if there’s a Psyker in your party with a Purgator or Surge staff, then it’s not a priority to use one, unless you either don’t know they use one because it is a matchmade game, or want to anyway.

Zealot Curios¶

Curios are rather interesting or the Zealot. These are largely just personal preference, and getting the perfect roll for Curios are rather hard, especially with the lack of the full crafting feature (at the time of writing.) So, Curios are largely what yu can get your hands on.

However, the stats you want to at least get your hands on are as follows:

• +1 Wound
• Toughness regeneration speed or max Toughness increase
• Health increase
• Stamina increase or stamina regen.

+1 wound is a nice shout, especially since a wound counts as one extra life bar in the game. This is handy for better managing corruption for grimoires so that a grimoire will take a wound from you.Likewise, your class faces the greatest risk of going down, especially when playing with your lower HP equals more DPS passive feats. The result is that you are more likely to die. Having that extra wound to play around with is a nice addition to your overall enjoyment of the class.

The other good shout is Toughness and toughness regeneration. Toughness is the shield stat that reduces the damage you take from melee attacks and negates ranged damage while it is active. This is good, as the Zealot needs to manage its Toughness properly. Moreso, there are Feats and your active ability grants Toughness regeneration, so getting more Toughness naturally scales with these aspects of your class. You will notice how much more tanky you get with strong toughness improvements.

The other one you want to look at is health increase. A Zealot’s lower HP feats and passives work through percentage health. Therefore, the higher your percentage HP, the more actual numerical health you can have. A baseZealot running all low HP DPS buffs will need to have 30 HP remaining from its base of 150 HP before it all kicks in. Meanwhile. A Zealot with 20% more max HP will have 36 HP instead. The six extra health may look almost negligible, but you can take a few extra melee attacks with Toughness active. That goes a long way in comparison.

The other aspect you want to consider is Stamina and stamina regen. Stamina is the resource you’re going to use in battle a lot. You will likely need to shove with your melee weapon, which consumes stamina. Having more stamina, or better stamina regen means more pushes in a space of time. This is a difference maker when you’re being swarmed and need to reduce the risk of getting your health or toughness gobbled up.

Darktide Zealot Tips¶

Here are a few Darktide Zealtot tips worth knowing for this build, as well as the general playstyle of the Zealot.

• Chastise the Wicked into ranged enemies when possible: Charging into a pack of ranged enemies means that those ranged enemies will switch from their gun to the melee weapon. This is handy, since ranged enemies are toughness destroyers.
• Chastise the Wicked elites and specialists: The crit amplification on the next auto attack after Chastise the Wicked means you can do some incredible burst damage against those big armored boys.
• Toughness regen: Chastise the Wicked grants 50% Toughness wherever activated. Use these to escape the fight to refill you toughness bar when necessary.
• Strumm’s stuns: Stun grenades help buy time for you or you team. Throw it at those annoying ranged gunners, or the horde closing in that your Ogryn are flame thrower allies can no longer handle for more breathing room. You can even use it on a pack of mobs kicking a downed player so you can get in there and revive them when timed correctly.
• Toughness Curios: Zealots ability and certain feats grant toughness regeneration, so if you have toughness-improving Curios, you naturally get to replenish more from these aspects of your class.
• Remember to shove: Pushing as a Zealot is key to crowd control; otherwise, you’ll find that pack so enemies can unintentionally beat your toughness down and start bleeding through your toughness to deal damage anyway.
• Toughness and low HP: The devs are playing with the idea that melee attacks can deal a portion of their damage despite your toughness. If you’re at low HP, consider being wary of melee attacks that can kill you, despite your toughness.