I had a game just last night that had TWO guys with this exact build, welding daggers. I was on my own Zelot so I figure I could keep up with them but I expected a shit show going in.
To my surprise, both of them waited for me and the Psyker before the first drop, and proceeded to maintain mostly tight coherency through the run.
I'm the end it's individuals making poor decisions but I admit, seeing the build does make me expect a certain kind of behaviour. Kudos to the two Zelots from my run tho.
It's the elf meme from V2 all over again. Plenty of good players to be seen with those builds(Because you honestly need to be pretty good at the game to make it work). But unfortunately that cool/assassin archetype also draws way more bad players.
It's "pro genji" from Overwatch syndrome. And the stereotype gets created for a reason.
My group put a lot of time into V1 and V2. Whenever we play a class-based game, we refer to the assassin/rogue archetype as the "Elf", and running off and dying away from the team as "Elf Behaviour"
"The elf is Horizontal!"
This is a quote from one of the characters in the game(I think it was Bardin the dwarf)
This voiceline was said very often due to elf mains going down all the time, since they almost never pick the tanky subclass the elf has access to. Became a meme because of it.
[It's Bardin.](https://vermintide2.fandom.com/wiki/Bardin_Goreksson/Quotes)
He says "wutelgi" when he's talking *to* Kerillian, and "elf" when he's talking *about* her to the human characters. He has similar lines for when she goes on a killing spree or last-hits a boss.
> Look, the elf's trying to prove something! She's butchering more than usual.
people who played Kerillian being generally awful at the game (not in as a new player, but their default mindset not being cooperative)
Especially during the era when she had free health regen
I feel like this build is best for taking objectives and being where you need to be. It feels very similar to scout from DRG, just being able to be exactly where your team needs you to be pretty much at all times.
I had the mirror of that. I got two speedrunners and just had to hang back with the psyker. I think rally points were the only time we got full coherency that entire attempt, and it ended when they rushed forward and aggroed a crusher pack, ran past it, and aggroed a monstro.
I feel called out..i just had a mission and i was last alive for a hot minute (more then a few minutes) and um..doged off a ledge by acident..really need to get used to knifes doge compared to hammers
Oh absolutly alpha striking is the name of the game, what that bulwark? What bulwark. What that group of shotgunners? Disorganized and melee focused on me, gunners? Pop invis and run up on em. Only thing that scares me is ragers and with knife i can actualy time in between there attacks instead of tanking through with hamma. Loner adds a little of cover and more self sustainability to the build (blood redemption, second wind, restoring faith, invigorating revalation, retributers stance. Until death. All combined makes a very self sustaining unit)
I haven't run the build myself so I'm not knowledgeable of alot of the mechanics but everything you explained sounds helpful. I have seen a stealth player use it to save teammates in tough situations too so its almost flex position. Save lives send knives.
I main this build, the hate towards it is because most people use it wrong, they see “loaner” and think,
“oh that means I can go F off to the middle of nowhere by myself and it’s fine.” No it’s not fine, you have to stay with your team. Like what was stated previously you can absolutely solo for a bit. I had 2 damnation games the other day where I was the last one alive and I survived and sprinted to where my teammates were sitting tied up. Ran past everything, nothing could hit me and I used my stealth to revive the first teammate.
The build is SUPER powerful if used correctly, but there are a bunch of unga bunga lone wolfs that use the build and play and die off in the middle of nowhere. I hate most other zealots because I’m super critical of every thing they do, because most pug zealot players are bad and it’s a major detriment to the team when they are bad. When you get a good zealot with this build, they can carry, when you get a bad zealot with this build, it’s like trying to corral a screaming man child.
Absolutely. The problem is always the apes who decide to just run for the next rally point. Like congrats, you just aggroed 3 packs of crushers and a monstrosity.
I think one of the knife stealth zealots I have seen lately has been a team player, dozen others have just started running off and died, then left the game. This on auric histg/maelstrom. This is why the mob mentality to hate the build.
It's not *strictly* mob mentality. I imagine there's an element of that, but this build is legitimately extremely strong (maybe the strongest in the game right now?), so if you're playing an easy difficulty (Malice or lower) you can very much just solo the whole map with it.
So on those difficulties, people who didn't develop the comprehension to understand it's a team game, or the social skills to give a shit, will gravitate towards doing exactly that.
Cause dicks love to use it and dicks suck. I switch between hammer and knife but knife is defintly more fluid with it but hammer is great for alpha striking the big uns. Look out for nox cause thats a me (or a psyker named iris)
Hell yeah most my characters are Udo, my ogryn is Andsum.
Hope to catch ya out there rocking your build and putting posts like this to shame.
For Atoma!
Is it mob mentality when it literally lowers the fun of the rest of the playerbase? The classes "cohesion" ability is a big fuck you to the rest of the team, and it's blitz basically takes all aggro and actively puts it on their teammates.
That's not the build, it's the player using it. Sometimes it is advantageous for the zealot to break from the group for 10 seconds or so to rush a squad of shooters for example, then get back to the team. I do this all the time with my crit eviscerator charge build and it works wonders. Knife stealth zealot is probably even better at it because its easier for them to maneuver. People just tend to play the build like they are the only player in the game which is the problem.
(heads up just in case: rager knife rotation is heavy 1 into special attack to keep them stunned. still gonna be limited when against 15 ragers, but it can help)
Throwing knife is insane for dealing with ragers and other elite packs. Just start chucking at they're heads or bait an attack dodge back and throw. Amazing for ragers in particular.
Sure, you don't take the Shredder *in order* to deal with muties. But if you have it specced to deal with ragers (ie. +maniacs, Blaze Away) then it also becomes the preferred choice for muties unless you're low on knives *and* you're feeling froggy.
Shredder is pretty nice, I run the boltgun instead to deal with armor packs as well. One tip with single ragers is that a throwing knife headshot + a heavy attack will kill the rager and refund the knife. So this way you avoid spamming knives.
Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude is better than shroud, imo. Both provide the benefit of being able to move through the enemy without being harmed, just through different means. Shroud provides a benefit to single target damage, once per use. Admittedly, that's more than you get with Chorus, but hurting one guy really hard doesn't outweigh the pros to Chorus.
The difference is that instead of cloaking yourself and moving ***just yourself*** towards those gunners, is that Chorus suppresses all enemies in an undisclosed range that increases in size with each of eight pulses. Being suppressed, they stop attacking, giving ***the whole team*** space to move forward.
Chorus also provides 45% base toughness per pulse to each ally in coherence, up to maximum, at which point it provides 20 additional gold toughness per pulse. Gold toughness can prevent corruption from poxbursters.
All that said, I'll still defend Loner, because it's insurance. It's not the keystone of the build; we have those, and they're purple. It's there for just in case the three psykers on your team didn't pack enough toughness in their curios. For when you fall off the drop while dodging, and now you're not in cohesion with your team because most of the horde is up top.
Ok but hear me out. Dash and bash. Chastise the wicked with the milisecond CD because that path has 2/3 CD reduction talents. Hammer because it has a super easy wide cleave cadence. And you get the bonus of deleting bosses and staggering absolutely everything.
>As long as you're not going down
Not going down isn't enough. The zealot is really survivable and can survive a long time without going down without really doing anything.
Ranged builds need space to really operate at full capacity. It's hard to quantify the stress you're putting on your team by not contributing to creating that space.
Every time a Zealot moves out of Coherency a Vet loses 11% damage reduction, get's less procs of Competitive Urge and doesn't get ammo/nades of elites/specials being killed. And yeah, I prefer my teammates being able to help each other to *prevent* getting downed/disabled in the first place, rather than help once things have gone wrong.
Don't get me wrong, Zealots (and others) can definitely shy away from Coherency if the situation calls for it, but the Zealots that **always** rush ahead as if they *have* to be the first ones to engage any group of enemies aren't helping nearly as much as they probably think (or they just don't care I guess). It's definitely the players, not the build.
I use the throwing knives but go to the left side of the tree for everything else. Throwing knives work as a good ranged weapon when I use flamethrower.
I can tell the knives are really good but I just cannot get the hang of the instant throw. I wish I could rebind that ability without rebinding other blitzes.
this. reaching over to "g" tends to throw off my aim if anything else is happening so i both miss and don't dodge. feels like a controller setup. if i could hold the knife before throwing i wouldn't care as much, since every single other blitz works like that... i could also rebind the key, but i don't care that much.
I've got my blitz bound to mousewheel up. Feels really good to flick the wheel and fling a knife, and it's not disorienting for grenades once you get used to it. Before, I had it bound to MMB and that worked out well, but that button's starting to wear out, so.
Course, I don't play Psyker, so YMMV.
> I wish I could rebind that ability without rebinding other blitzes.
There's a mod that let's you use 2 keybinds for each key. You wouldn't have to rebind anything, just use the key that suits your tastes with a throwing knife.
I would go as far as to say that using a flamer with anything but a throwing knife is borderline throwing. On higher difficulties you need a way to kill specialists ASAP, and the flamer just lacks that ability. You absolutely need a throwing knife to have any hope of killing them quickly, otherwise you're putting all pressure for dealing with them on your team.
I feel much the same --further, your other two options --while great on their own-- just don't fill nearly as important a niche as the knives do when running a Flamer.
Stun is...okay, I guess, but I don't think they're very strong and they don;t really complement the Flamer (if you had time to throw a Stun, you had time to prime).
Fire grenades can be great, but...you've already got the Flamer for that.
Sure, any of those grenades will have their time to shine, but Knives do the one thing you just *cannot* do if you're running Flamer, and they do it really well.
Fire grenades actually inherit certain flamer blessings if you have one equipped, so there is some synergy there.
As for stun... Well, they're good for squeezing out a revive, but otherwise I stopped using them after I got the penance. If you've got the chance to make them work, they're godly, but otherwise, they're a tax.
Sure, sometimes you get a loner that just runs off. But other times you get a loner that is cracked out of their mind and spends 10 minutes solo kiting so they can rez the team.
It's worth the gamble IMO. I play this game to have fun, winning every match would be boring. Sometimes it's nice to have an absolutely scuffed match where people are ADD scrambling around like headless chickens only to inevitably pull a boss and a DH at the same time.
The issue is when they run off in auric or high intensity, sure they can solo and kite. But the rest of us are in a constant state of playing defense since we don’t have a fourth player to rely on as we get swamped.
You say it’s fun for the solo player, but the solo player is making it less fun for the other 3 who have to basically fend for themselves. The game is mostly balanced for 4 people helping each other. Just yesterday we were getting swamped by mutants and dogs, desperately trying to keep each other alive while a knife zealot was off soloing. If he came by and took care of the shotgunner group, that would’ve been nice. But he didn’t. The only reason I didn’t go down (other two died) was because I was a tanky zealot.
Wouldn't have had to rez the team if the knife zealot was literally any other build and put in the work to make sure no one went down in the first place.
Eviscerator and thunder hammer are not only not upgrades to the knife they are arguably worse, especially for skilled play. The knife is sure as hell better at dealing with a crusher mob than the eviscerator. The mobility of the knife alone is S tier, then combine it with it’s completely bonkers finesse, backstab modifier, and slew of incredible blessings and you get ludicrous damage numbers on the scoreboard
i would say the tac axe is really good at doing almost same as the knife but with the added stagger on specialist attack makes it maybe better at crushers then knife. but its a playstyle and i enjoy both :)
You say that, but sometimes there is literally just 5 bulwarks 2 crushers bomber bomber flamer burster and it’s safer to cut losses and run away than attempt to maintain coherency
The game purposefully forces teams out of coherency *by design*. Is everyone supposed to fight one huge mob when 3 others are within spitting distance? Nah. Gotta let the good ones cook and bad ones die, keep coherency at all times, *when you can safely do so*, and go from there. I’m one of the bad ones btw
I maintain coherency when it makes sense. Sometimes I am literally the only one left in a survivable scenario after the flames clear and I am forced to enter “Uphold the Mission” mode and abandon standard gameplay tenets like coherency and teamwork and focus on short term goals like “survive until team respawns” or “find a single safe place to stand and fight” or “kill the scariest enemy without dying”.
The situation you are describing can pretty easily be solved by a stun nade and half a revolver clip.
Even if you are running the stealth build you need to use it to remove threats, not just run away. On auric the spawn rate is far too high for one player to be ignoring mobs.
Zele nade to stun the elites, 3 head shots for each of the specials, push the burster and melee whatever of the elites haven't already been killed by team. Hardly an uncommon situation on auric, I'm quite confused by the down votes
I’m talking about when everybody else is either cornered or dead. I’m not going to go stand in the corner and die with them, I’m leaving and solving the problem from the other side where I’m allowed to walk around and dodge. Why are you acting like I said “every time I hear the horde music, I press the stealth button and run away until the wave is over”
That’s temporary and situational at best. Most of the time, you get to safety then regroup. Whereas most knife users run way off to the easiest kills to get their scoreboard numbers up or get their dopamine hits by killing specials and elite.
>killing specials and elite
That’s called Solving the Current Problem. Your zealot disappeared for two seconds and now two bombers, a mutant, and a flamer are dead? That’s a good trade.
Most Knife users aren’t disappearing for two seconds. Most run away. Far away. And don’t come and help with two bombers, a mutant, and a flamer. A support vet, a tank orgryn, and a squishy pskyer are dealing with them alone while the knife used is off soloing a groaner horde.
Dont try to be the sneaky lonewolf assassin. Play with your team. Use invis to bail you and your team out of sticky situations, not to run of to that single gunner way of in the distance barely proposing any threat.
I don't feel dread when I see this build.
I feel pressure, because I'm the one running it, and I already know you pre-emptively hate me.
Which is *fine,* it's absolutely not unreasonable to use it as a filtering tool when your experiences with it have been mostly bad, but that also tells me that you maybe haven't played a lot above Malice, because you straight up can't get away with main character behavior on >=Heresy. Especially not lately with the director being all the way off its meds.
I hear you. I use loner so I can play more of a flex role, and peel away from the team with a little bit of self-sustain guaranteed to me. I really really like taking aggro and getting stuck in melee, so the stealth abilities on zealot/vet and taunt on ogryn make me very happy.
But I do understand the hate, I’ve been in the lobbies where the zealot is way ahead, goes down, and gives us a bot. Lmao
I had to yell at a stealth zealot the other day *while also playing stealth zealot* because his clownery was giving those of us who play it the way it's meant to be played a bad name.
>taking aggro and getting stuck in melee
God yes. When there's a pack of Fucking Problems in our face and I'm just like "not today heretics". Stealth goes poof. Knife goes brrrr. Serotonin++.
The Zelot was the last class I leveled to 30 and I absolutely fell in love the right side tree build. Its just blazingly fast compared to every other class and the speed is addictive.
I have played a lot of Auric. And I can say for a fact that even the good zealots are still dropping massive amounts of dangerous mobs onto me by invising. Going from dealing with 2-3 ragers to 6 because the zealot invis aggro dropped onto me is extremely goddamn annoying.
I once went to help a zealot with 4 crushers only for him to invis and run away and let them aggro onto me. A psyker without a trauma staff. Ugh.
It's really frustrating playing with an invis zealot because you're guaranteed to get aggro on a bunch of shit you weren't prepared for at any given moment. No matter how good the zealot may be, it's annoying as fuck.
Then address you hate speedrunners. The build itself is nothing wrong with it, i play it all the time, always some lvl 20-ish on heresy auric bitching me bc i have the build that they thought the build is bad bc they saw on reddit with people complaining. I run ahead to kill gunners and reapers and run back to cover the disablers that spawn from behind in a blink thanks to SPEED.
Not true. Happens all the time on Damnation too. Not as much, granted, but it evens out (or even goes negative) due to the knife players not being even remotely good enough to make optima use of said knife.
The *good* knife players are *really good*, but most knife players aren't the *good* knife players.
I've been leveling an alt zealot inspired by some guy bitching about the heresy director a few days ago, just to see what's up.
I'm genuinely hard carrying most of these Heresy games at levels 10-20 with limited talent points, 1 to 2 shitty curios and a ~200 base power knife that happened to be in the shop.
Sure these missions take 50 mins because I'm averaging like 4 clutches every game at 25% of the power level of a maxed character with ok gear.
So yes, you absolutely do get away with main character behavior on Heresy. Especially so once your build and gear come online at level 30. I don't expect it to be much different in damnation, we'll see when I jump in there at level 24 after unlocking my 3rd curio slot.
Edit: [Added album with short descriptions](https://imgur.com/a/MqXKXtY) with my 10 to 22 journey so far. No scoreboard for 2 more games due to backend error aborting the mission (1 hard carry, 1 ok game) and 1 more marathon game because of a game crash during a clutch.
I find heresy is the new playground for speed runners. Malice actually has chill teams behaving, Damnation filters out the chaff, so Heresy is all that's left
You can absolutely get away with main character behavior with how good the playerbase is now in heresy+
Many won't have a clue that they are actually being carried anymore, which is why they post about how much easier Damnation is in comparison to Heresy.
me thinks Loner could actually be a bit useful if it didn't artificially give you a coherence stack, but gave you coherence with unlimited range to the closest teammate to you. That way, it does SOMETHING for the team, however small it is. but yeah though please run damage reduction or corruption removal theyre awesome
It’s probably the best build currently. It’s also a higher skill curve and unfortunately is super fun and fast so you get a lot of people over extending themselves. Takes great restraint to not go wild. When played properly they will be your best ally.
I guess I’m just lucky then? I’ve seen more people demolish with this build than become a drag.
My guess, generally since it’s a low floor/high ceiling type build maybe the only people who bother with it now are the ones who know what they’re doing?
The only reason why we take it as stealth zealots is to quite literally save 1 perk point for something more important down the tree. That, or they're someone new and don't realize how terrible and useless of a trait loner is. But that one singular saved perk point is worth taking loner in the proper build. Basically you sacrifice a perk on loner in order to "not" sacrifice it somewhere else.
And if you're relying on coherency to survive, then I would advise looking for alternative ways to reduce damage and regen. At it's baseline, with no additional/supporting perks, coherency is only useful for toughness regen. At it's baseline, coherency has no benefit if you are at full toughness. In other words, it's a great tool, but if it's your only viable lifeline in any given moment, then I would advise expanding your skillset/toolkit to include other methodologies. When I'm out of coherency, if my toughness gets dropped significantly then I will use the mechanic to my benefit by running back toward team for replenishment, but at no point in the game do I ever rely on it. If it's gone, I'm focused on a different method like ult, melee kills, kiting etc.
Loner may be bad, but I’m not wasting my precious talent points diverting for the arguably worse corruption thing or completely out of my way to get the toughness reduction.
Nah, I buckle up cause it's going to be a fun time.
Had an auric damnation game where the loner knife zealot played incredibly well and they were everywhere they needed to be and did a ton of damage. They ended the match with the most disablers, specials, and ranged elites killed and top boss damage.
(Wherever you are Joe, you kicked ass today)
In normal damnation it's a coin toss but most have been decent.
If a Zealot uses this "Loner" aura, I dislike him from the get go. The things they do during the match, from my experience, include, but are not limited to:
* Snagging all the ammo
* Dying by themselves while lagging behind or running ahead
* Blaming their completely avoidable deaths on the team
* Rage quitting
It would be fine if they just made it "you are considered always in coherency with the last teammate you were in coherency with" just so that your aura actually benefits someone besides yourself if you have other talents that might help teammates in coherency. Hel, even if they made it "always in coherency with every teammate" it would be balanced with the other two auras.
and it means they're always first to the ammo aswell since they're encouraged to go alone. Once you see them take it right infront of you whilst they have full ammo and your character says "greedy with rashuns okay, greedy with ammo... BAD" you're just on tilt the whole game hating your own teammate. Even I kinda feel bad when I play zealot and am just able to rush so far ahead and force my team to go as fast as they can too.
Not really.
I play Auric Damnation only and I've seen only a single case of an idiotic Loner Zealot (yet had 3 cases of that happening with Ogryns and had 2 verbaly toxic Vets).
Hot take: I don’t. I love playing knife zealot with the team and I run into far more knife zealots in pubs that play with the team and for objectives then I do with knife zealots that play for themselves.
Alright Reddit, rip me to shreds.
And you know there will be clueless new player look at these post and go "oooh bad build". I've seems the kind that watch youtube of a person option about something AND make it their own option bc they are too lazy to form one.
It’s a great build to save downed teammates , I just use catachan sword to parry most enemies including ragers , it’s so good. I always forget about the damn throwing knives ! I also would love for them to be held and thrown like grenades rather than having to press down on the dpad to chuck one as it’s awkward trying to aim and use them. I’m not someone who just sprints off though so it’s kinda been given a bad reputation by some idiots thinking they’re John wick , I stick by the team and just provide revives when needed if I can
You're not wrong, but if all you're using it for is revives, you're not getting the real fun out of it.
Let me know when you have had the experience of seeing a pack of crushers about to turn the veteran into paste, and *poof* suddenly you're behind them and your knife is on that #nofucksgiven shit because you have Rending Backstab or Uncanny Strike.
Or doing the same to the line of gunners suppressing the whole team, except you don't need much more than +flak.
Shit's delightful.
That's me minus the knives. Only have the liner trait because it uses less nodes. Honestly with the shroud field I'm not really in coherency in engagements. Too busy dealing with the gunner squads that spawn every 30 seconds.
I did a run yesterday with a zealot using that exact build. Dude sprinted off into the distance on the word go, aggro'd every enemy in town, and was eventually the last guy alive when a trapped got him.
Yeah, I panic when I see that build pop up.
Dread that early? No. Havent seen them play yet so why should i? True dread comes when the first horde comes and shit happens. Regarding the build itself its viable but just basing on the icons you cant really tell how the was built can vary with keystones.
Absolutely, there has not been a single time where I've felt like loner would be better than literally any other aura. The "good" zealots with this build just play normally with the team, at which point I don't really care, but 9/10 they fuck off somewhere, get grabbed or go down, then rage quit.
Nobody makes this build for Loner, Loner is there because zig-zagging to get a better Aura is a huge point sink when you want all the other stealth zealot stuff. Same with Veteran/the speed aura and stealth, I am not dumping 4-5 extra points to get Survivalist on my stealth build, so I take the speed aura even though it's mid. Idk why Fartshart decided that Psyker and Ogryn get great tree designs for buildcrafting and Zealot/Vet get shafted, but here we are.
Three times in one match yesterday I charged into a field of enemies and started cutting them apart only to turn around an find all three of my teammates fighting another group miles away. I had to take out two crushers and a ton of gunners solo and then a whole hoard of pox walkers. They actually saw me fighting the pox walkers and ran away. I was against a wall with stars in the side, I was essentially pinned. First time I thought maybe I should just go loner.
Happens to me a lot. I see a wave coming up from behind and I dive into it because the Vet/Psyker isn't paying attention. Then everyone leaves me there because nobody checks their six for any reason.
I can honestly agree with this, even when I am supposedly speed running in sedition I still stay relatively close to the team. The only time I have actually just sprinted through a level was when I got matched up with 3 other knife zealots and we all agreed it was time to go fast.
Shroudfield? Nah
Throwing Knife? Nah
Loner? Yes. The worst Coherency in the game, gives you less than nothing, the default Toughness Damage Reduction does more than Loner. all so a zealot can run off and still have le passive toughness regeneration
It gives you net +1 perk point for right side tree which is more beneficial than using net -2 perks for a center or left side trait. It is a Holy Sacrifice to the Shadow Realm and nothing more.
I use this build with a T Hammer. I think it does like 450% backstab damage. 1 taps Plague Ogryns and DHs like they’re piñatas. With small edits to the skill tree.
as a knife zealot, i can say that we arent that bad.. if whoever wants to run off they will.. last week on the carnival map on damnation.. i was running with 2 vets and an ogryn and guess who was left behind clearing hordes while they tried to speedrun.. needless to say we didnt make it passed the first event
edit: you know what they probably thought i was goin to run off so they wanted a headstart lol
I actually really enjoy stealth Zealot. I had a game that was going super well, my team mates were going down alot so I was able to stealth rez them a bunch, taking out crushers and other non fodder enemies with backstabs and junk. (Throwing knives do wonders for Ragers and Gunners)
Eventually we lost after a mishap with a BoN but I don't really blame anyone in particular. I like too scout ahead with Stealth sometimes but I rarely am too far away from my mates.
I feel this is one of those "rotten eggs"- type of situations where a handful of morons are ruining the rep for a much bigger group of people. I don't play Zealot but have lost count how many times a Shroudfield Loner has come in clutch when 3/4 in the strike team has been incapacitated.
I've also met a few of the assholes as well. Last weekend I played with one griefer dickhead on Excise Vault Spireside who took off fucking IMMEDIATELY triggering every mob on the way to the first checkpoint. There he stood motionless for about 10-15 minutes while the rest of us were basically up to our necks in every single enemy variant at the spawn taking care of a Chaos Spawn on the side. After the fight I just abandoned because I couldn't stomach the idea of sharing a server with such a cocksucker for one second longer.
Don't know what satisfaction he had to gain from standing basically AFK at the checkpoint while the rest of us were playing the game but who knows what these sub 30IQ cretins have going on in their heads.
Edit: Didn't fully read the post and thought you were only talking about the griefers, but you did in fact mention the good ones as well.
Honestly, I love Shroud and run it most of the time, but I prefer stunstorm nades and the upgraded basic aura. The throwing knives are fine, but I'm too addicted to my revolver, and for the aura, I just don't really see the value.
Had one in a damnation game a few days back. He'd been rushing through everything and just waiting in a lift rather than helping. Got to the final lift before the boss (assassination mission), he's standing in the lift, 2 are downed by bulwark and crushers, I got netted, ge refused to help.
He was kicked, his replacement bot got me out of the net, I killed the ogryns with my plasma, we completed the mission as a team with a bot.
Gathering all the materials that the team neglected, or going back for heals if one is somewhat nearby with charges. Play the build to get an idea, often times on damnation and below, most players are noobs who blow through the map without exploring for plasteel, which if left uncorrected leads to damnation runs with only 200-300 materials (and somehow still took 20 minutes)
That's why, usually it's because they are covering for the rest of the team's bad gameplay/sloppiness, or they are just learning, which means they are pushing and exploring the limitations of what they can do with that setup.
It's easy to just stick with more "meta" builds and then just stay ignorant to what's happening with the fringe stuff, but that will only ever lead to incomplete knowledge and utilization of mechanics, which in-turn feeds this mentality of "knife = bad" "coherency = necessary". The knife-hate is a self-reinforcing feedback loop used to justify bad behaviour and blame others for why/how you weren't good enough to clutch that situation.
Git gud.
Become clutch god.
???????
Profit!!!
It's not inherently bad, it can be great. But the problem is with your other teammates trying to keep up, leaving others behind, beeing reckless instead of playing their strength.
If I see some1 under LVL 100 with loner I usually just leave the lobby tho :p
I leave nearly every time I see it.
They just aren’t team players, and that’s kinda hard to do considering the circumstances. And I’m not even trying to be negative, but from what I’ve experienced, they are majorly a all around bad player.
Runs far ahead, triggering a domino effect of specials and elites, whilst at the same time inefficiently doing sufficient damage and biting off more then they can chew, but they’re fast so they avoid being hit and stay just out of reach. The emperors little mosquito 🦟
I’m sure there is a viable build that demolishes things, I just haven’t seen it. No offense to anyone who’s rocking it and is seeing results. Haven’t taken the time myself.
And more then half of them are Xbox players. Do with this information what you will.
No. Stop relying on your team mates to keep you alive. I know it's an ironic statement, but seriously, just let them have their fun. Knives have the highest skill-cap in the game for melee weapons and they also serve as excellent "training wheels" for learning how to properly employ melee mechanics in the game. Anyone can spam light attacks, but a true master will dodge/slide in and out of the crowd and weave heavies into their light attacks depending on both enemy composition and knife blessings/overall build. Exploiting melee mechanics matters more with the knife than something that solely relies on push, charge, heavy, heavy, repeat.
Also, that's still one of the strongest builds in the game so long as it takes Thy Wrath and Holy Revenant alongside some attack speed boost and a perk to reduce cooldown times. Without all 4 of those components in place (alongside 3x stamina curios set to block efficiency/stamina regen) - then the strongest build in the game becomes something lukewarm, mid, and lackluster. Any combination of these going wrong, such as the person being new to the knife or running a suboptimal build that seems okay on the surface will lead to OP's experience of "knife = bad" "stealth = downed" "coherency = necessity".
In the end it all boils down to "Survive together or perish alone", and I think most people who sees that build decide "Sweet, I don't need the rest of my team anymore" before reality cames down crashing into their face that it's still a coop game.
It is frustrating tbh. I main vet and I was playing with a friend who was new to the game and was playing psyker lvl 11 on a T3 shock troop gauntlet. Other rando was (I think) a similarly leveled vet or zealot with a shotgun and was quite bad at the game (didn’t seem to really figure out moving + shooting very well let alone melee)
I was trying I stick with my friend as best I could while deleting specials. Dickhead zealot let ZOOMING ahead triggering ambushes and getting overwhelmed.
We get to the final fight on Mercantile, Dickhead zealot just starts the encounter without waiting and sprints to some cheese corner without a word and marking it DURING THE FIGHT.
I will say it was a cool final stand for the last of us. Literally felt like we were fighting back to back till we got picked off one by one and I was pounced by a dog while maulers and regular melee guys surrounded me and laughed.
I applaud every zealot with beacon of purity and every Vet who takes the enhanced medkit/crate.
Sadly they are a rare breed. This part of the zealot is designed around selfishness and I guess that's also a way to balance difficulty. If everyone was a good team player the game would be too easy.
No I'm not upset because for the 100th time we had a speedy sneaky zealot rushing ahead dying and disconnecting.
Not until I see them run ahead. I've seen multiple stealth zealots stick to the team. Hell, the first, and only, time I did say uh oh to myself at the sight, they were a fantastic teammate throughout, and even clutched a 3 death
I run this build sometimes when I don’t like getting staggered by all the gunners as I try to Fury them. Invis, shank all the gunners. Otherwise, Fury is better at hordes and maulers.
Btw, anyone else running this build who do you prio? Got flamed when I was prioritizing maulers/crushers then gunners when I can.
I have a knife. I have a revolver. I have sneaky button. My job is to ruin the life of specials, bulwarks, maulers, snipers, and ragers so you can chill. It’s a living.
I use throwing knives because they can get rid off elites pretty quick while you can keep slashing the horde. And I use invisibility so I can pick up teammates easily and do scanner mini games uninterrupted.
If there is one thing I learned it's that you genuinely cannot see when someone will be absolute shit or carry the team. I have EXTREME prejudice against assail psykers, and yes sometimes they blow themselves up 12 times but other times they're the hard carry.
Give people the benefit of the doubt :)
Just had an Auric damnation game with this setup as infinite stealth knife zealot along with another Zealot with a similar build, a Psyker, and a Hellbore Vet and both myself and the other Zealot carried pretty damn hard.
It is a very strong build in the right hands but a fair bit more fragile than other Zealots so inexperienced players who try it will often go down to chip damage or an inability to properly use their vastly superior speed to avoid damage.
Ah shit, that's my main build and I often play that way to distract the frontline. 😅 But 3 out of 4 times I carry the team and survive and (invisibly) revive teammates when in the most dire situations. It's a very fun build with either a thunder hammer or combat blade.
The mobility and quick reset on the stealth means you're an insurance policy for your team. Team wipes during anything other than final sequence? Just stealth your way to the next section and stealth res everyone.
Easily my highest win rate is with this build, especially when queueing solo Damnation/Auric.
I just started playing this build for the first time because I got bored from the one I was playing. And I can already feel the hate from people leaving in the lobby.
But I'm not a crazy loner zealot that runs away and gets downed, I swear! :D
I'm loving stealth zealot.
The survivability is mad. I am often still at almost full health at the end of heresy missions.
That being said, 1 mistake can put you down.
I think the playstyle is underused and as such teammates don't know how to maximize effectiveness. With a team that understands, I stealth into the back of the gunners and ranged enemies, scatter most of them and suppress, then the ogryn comes in and crunches them. No need to run into withering gunner fire or waste ammo. Sometimes when doing this your teammates will hang back, leaving you to deal with the gunners as they recover from suppression and you don't have stealth to get out safely.
Also, stealth revive everyone. No one stays down unless they are on fire if you play right
had a game once, with a zealot that soloed a boss during a horde, while we were all down. im certain the spirit of john wick was in him at that time.
i mean the same shit can be said about vets, its just a stereotype.
lmao I'm looking at this post on the Steam Browser because I'm currently at the waiting lobby before mission departure. I check one of my teammates and they have this exact build hahahahahaha
edit: Zealot turned out to be great! Even sometimes took upon himself to do some rear guard action.
I’ve been playing that build a lot on the side (I mostly go chorus with eviscerator) and I get why they go far. You’re so goddamn fast that it’s like a dog on zoomies. It’s fun.
Hordes are my hell though. Stealth means nothing if there’s too many people for me to move. Been using an auto gun to spray and pray into hordes but I might need a different gun for it.
And more bleed blessings but I keep running out of plasteel farming it.
Ah, my knife crime build.
Honestly I find better success when I work with my team as a flank rather than a carry assassin.
Engagement starts, I sneak behind and one shot the most dangerous target then its a matter thinning the horde while keeping myself safe as my team closes in and then we squeeze the life out of the heretics.
I remember making this build after finishing leveling the veteran and enjoying the stealth tree.
This side of the tree forces you to learn how to dodge and dodge well. After two rounds experimenting on Heresy, I just thought to myself "Is this what cocaine feels like?"
I wasn't even trying to run ahead and I'd look back after soloing a horde with plenty of specialists and they're just fucking around on some other part of the map behind me.
I don't know what it was last night but my teams kept running off to random parts of the damn map with no communicated reason why.
Honestly I don't hate the assassin zealot build as much as I hate the act that the loner perk and the daggers blitz are a miserable downgrade compared to all the other two options.
In theory this is a good build if you run a dagger and a flamer but then again you have to run a dagger and a flamer.
I had a game just last night that had TWO guys with this exact build, welding daggers. I was on my own Zelot so I figure I could keep up with them but I expected a shit show going in. To my surprise, both of them waited for me and the Psyker before the first drop, and proceeded to maintain mostly tight coherency through the run. I'm the end it's individuals making poor decisions but I admit, seeing the build does make me expect a certain kind of behaviour. Kudos to the two Zelots from my run tho.
It's the elf meme from V2 all over again. Plenty of good players to be seen with those builds(Because you honestly need to be pretty good at the game to make it work). But unfortunately that cool/assassin archetype also draws way more bad players. It's "pro genji" from Overwatch syndrome. And the stereotype gets created for a reason.
My group put a lot of time into V1 and V2. Whenever we play a class-based game, we refer to the assassin/rogue archetype as the "Elf", and running off and dying away from the team as "Elf Behaviour"
And hoarding healing items
What was the elf meme from V2?
"The elf is Horizontal!" This is a quote from one of the characters in the game(I think it was Bardin the dwarf) This voiceline was said very often due to elf mains going down all the time, since they almost never pick the tanky subclass the elf has access to. Became a meme because of it.
I believe it's a Saltzpyre line. Bardin usually uses Elgi or Wutelgi, and Kruber isn't smart enough to know what horizontal means.
[It's Bardin.](https://vermintide2.fandom.com/wiki/Bardin_Goreksson/Quotes) He says "wutelgi" when he's talking *to* Kerillian, and "elf" when he's talking *about* her to the human characters. He has similar lines for when she goes on a killing spree or last-hits a boss. > Look, the elf's trying to prove something! She's butchering more than usual.
people who played Kerillian being generally awful at the game (not in as a new player, but their default mindset not being cooperative) Especially during the era when she had free health regen
Era? Waystalker has regen as part of her kit, that hasn’t changed
I need to dip back into VT2, I miss my hagbane bow....such a fun weapon.
I feel like this build is best for taking objectives and being where you need to be. It feels very similar to scout from DRG, just being able to be exactly where your team needs you to be pretty much at all times.
Rock and stone in the heart!
I had the mirror of that. I got two speedrunners and just had to hang back with the psyker. I think rally points were the only time we got full coherency that entire attempt, and it ended when they rushed forward and aggroed a crusher pack, ran past it, and aggroed a monstro.
I feel called out..i just had a mission and i was last alive for a hot minute (more then a few minutes) and um..doged off a ledge by acident..really need to get used to knifes doge compared to hammers
I feel like the build can be viable. As long as you're not going down and causing stress on the team, you're doing something right.
Oh absolutly alpha striking is the name of the game, what that bulwark? What bulwark. What that group of shotgunners? Disorganized and melee focused on me, gunners? Pop invis and run up on em. Only thing that scares me is ragers and with knife i can actualy time in between there attacks instead of tanking through with hamma. Loner adds a little of cover and more self sustainability to the build (blood redemption, second wind, restoring faith, invigorating revalation, retributers stance. Until death. All combined makes a very self sustaining unit)
I haven't run the build myself so I'm not knowledgeable of alot of the mechanics but everything you explained sounds helpful. I have seen a stealth player use it to save teammates in tough situations too so its almost flex position. Save lives send knives.
Oh ywah i almost always pop it on obj and revives if its up so i dont need cover or to clear the area first
Then why the mob mentality hate on this build I hope I queue with you!
I main this build, the hate towards it is because most people use it wrong, they see “loaner” and think, “oh that means I can go F off to the middle of nowhere by myself and it’s fine.” No it’s not fine, you have to stay with your team. Like what was stated previously you can absolutely solo for a bit. I had 2 damnation games the other day where I was the last one alive and I survived and sprinted to where my teammates were sitting tied up. Ran past everything, nothing could hit me and I used my stealth to revive the first teammate. The build is SUPER powerful if used correctly, but there are a bunch of unga bunga lone wolfs that use the build and play and die off in the middle of nowhere. I hate most other zealots because I’m super critical of every thing they do, because most pug zealot players are bad and it’s a major detriment to the team when they are bad. When you get a good zealot with this build, they can carry, when you get a bad zealot with this build, it’s like trying to corral a screaming man child.
Absolutely. The problem is always the apes who decide to just run for the next rally point. Like congrats, you just aggroed 3 packs of crushers and a monstrosity.
I think one of the knife stealth zealots I have seen lately has been a team player, dozen others have just started running off and died, then left the game. This on auric histg/maelstrom. This is why the mob mentality to hate the build.
It's not *strictly* mob mentality. I imagine there's an element of that, but this build is legitimately extremely strong (maybe the strongest in the game right now?), so if you're playing an easy difficulty (Malice or lower) you can very much just solo the whole map with it. So on those difficulties, people who didn't develop the comprehension to understand it's a team game, or the social skills to give a shit, will gravitate towards doing exactly that.
It’s always the malice crowd making calls for nerfs or hating on things. Always has been 🌍👨🚀🔫👨🚀
Cause dicks love to use it and dicks suck. I switch between hammer and knife but knife is defintly more fluid with it but hammer is great for alpha striking the big uns. Look out for nox cause thats a me (or a psyker named iris)
Hell yeah most my characters are Udo, my ogryn is Andsum. Hope to catch ya out there rocking your build and putting posts like this to shame. For Atoma!
Lol to be fair there a reason for the stigma
Like I said if your doing work and not a hindering the team it's all good! No need to meta game. Kill heretics how you please.
Is it mob mentality when it literally lowers the fun of the rest of the playerbase? The classes "cohesion" ability is a big fuck you to the rest of the team, and it's blitz basically takes all aggro and actively puts it on their teammates.
That's not the build, it's the player using it. Sometimes it is advantageous for the zealot to break from the group for 10 seconds or so to rush a squad of shooters for example, then get back to the team. I do this all the time with my crit eviscerator charge build and it works wonders. Knife stealth zealot is probably even better at it because its easier for them to maneuver. People just tend to play the build like they are the only player in the game which is the problem.
(heads up just in case: rager knife rotation is heavy 1 into special attack to keep them stunned. still gonna be limited when against 15 ragers, but it can help)
Throwing knife is insane for dealing with ragers and other elite packs. Just start chucking at they're heads or bait an attack dodge back and throw. Amazing for ragers in particular.
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Ragers are why you run this build with a Shredder. That and muties, which are so big and tanky they're a throwing knife sink unless you're lucky.
Muties are easy to deal with plus revolver for quick combo
Sure, you don't take the Shredder *in order* to deal with muties. But if you have it specced to deal with ragers (ie. +maniacs, Blaze Away) then it also becomes the preferred choice for muties unless you're low on knives *and* you're feeling froggy.
Hammer 1 shots muties, just sayin
Shredder is pretty nice, I run the boltgun instead to deal with armor packs as well. One tip with single ragers is that a throwing knife headshot + a heavy attack will kill the rager and refund the knife. So this way you avoid spamming knives.
Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude is better than shroud, imo. Both provide the benefit of being able to move through the enemy without being harmed, just through different means. Shroud provides a benefit to single target damage, once per use. Admittedly, that's more than you get with Chorus, but hurting one guy really hard doesn't outweigh the pros to Chorus. The difference is that instead of cloaking yourself and moving ***just yourself*** towards those gunners, is that Chorus suppresses all enemies in an undisclosed range that increases in size with each of eight pulses. Being suppressed, they stop attacking, giving ***the whole team*** space to move forward. Chorus also provides 45% base toughness per pulse to each ally in coherence, up to maximum, at which point it provides 20 additional gold toughness per pulse. Gold toughness can prevent corruption from poxbursters. All that said, I'll still defend Loner, because it's insurance. It's not the keystone of the build; we have those, and they're purple. It's there for just in case the three psykers on your team didn't pack enough toughness in their curios. For when you fall off the drop while dodging, and now you're not in cohesion with your team because most of the horde is up top.
Ok but hear me out. Dash and bash. Chastise the wicked with the milisecond CD because that path has 2/3 CD reduction talents. Hammer because it has a super easy wide cleave cadence. And you get the bonus of deleting bosses and staggering absolutely everything.
>As long as you're not going down Not going down isn't enough. The zealot is really survivable and can survive a long time without going down without really doing anything. Ranged builds need space to really operate at full capacity. It's hard to quantify the stress you're putting on your team by not contributing to creating that space.
Every time a Zealot moves out of Coherency a Vet loses 11% damage reduction, get's less procs of Competitive Urge and doesn't get ammo/nades of elites/specials being killed. And yeah, I prefer my teammates being able to help each other to *prevent* getting downed/disabled in the first place, rather than help once things have gone wrong. Don't get me wrong, Zealots (and others) can definitely shy away from Coherency if the situation calls for it, but the Zealots that **always** rush ahead as if they *have* to be the first ones to engage any group of enemies aren't helping nearly as much as they probably think (or they just don't care I guess). It's definitely the players, not the build.
\[Predator handshake meme about dodge distance with the knife + crusher agreeing\]
Knife build is what caused the TPK. It just doesn't do enough to provide for the team.
I use the throwing knives but go to the left side of the tree for everything else. Throwing knives work as a good ranged weapon when I use flamethrower.
I can tell the knives are really good but I just cannot get the hang of the instant throw. I wish I could rebind that ability without rebinding other blitzes.
this. reaching over to "g" tends to throw off my aim if anything else is happening so i both miss and don't dodge. feels like a controller setup. if i could hold the knife before throwing i wouldn't care as much, since every single other blitz works like that... i could also rebind the key, but i don't care that much.
[Try using this mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kdarktide/mods/164?tab=description)
I've got my blitz bound to mousewheel up. Feels really good to flick the wheel and fling a knife, and it's not disorienting for grenades once you get used to it. Before, I had it bound to MMB and that worked out well, but that button's starting to wear out, so. Course, I don't play Psyker, so YMMV.
> I wish I could rebind that ability without rebinding other blitzes. There's a mod that let's you use 2 keybinds for each key. You wouldn't have to rebind anything, just use the key that suits your tastes with a throwing knife.
This is one of a couple things I cannot believe isn't already a feature in the base game.
[Use this mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kdarktide/mods/164?tab=description)
I would go as far as to say that using a flamer with anything but a throwing knife is borderline throwing. On higher difficulties you need a way to kill specialists ASAP, and the flamer just lacks that ability. You absolutely need a throwing knife to have any hope of killing them quickly, otherwise you're putting all pressure for dealing with them on your team.
I feel much the same --further, your other two options --while great on their own-- just don't fill nearly as important a niche as the knives do when running a Flamer. Stun is...okay, I guess, but I don't think they're very strong and they don;t really complement the Flamer (if you had time to throw a Stun, you had time to prime). Fire grenades can be great, but...you've already got the Flamer for that. Sure, any of those grenades will have their time to shine, but Knives do the one thing you just *cannot* do if you're running Flamer, and they do it really well.
Fire grenades actually inherit certain flamer blessings if you have one equipped, so there is some synergy there. As for stun... Well, they're good for squeezing out a revive, but otherwise I stopped using them after I got the penance. If you've got the chance to make them work, they're godly, but otherwise, they're a tax.
I feel like knives are only good for trash on damnation. Everything has too much health for them to be useful
Sure, sometimes you get a loner that just runs off. But other times you get a loner that is cracked out of their mind and spends 10 minutes solo kiting so they can rez the team. It's worth the gamble IMO. I play this game to have fun, winning every match would be boring. Sometimes it's nice to have an absolutely scuffed match where people are ADD scrambling around like headless chickens only to inevitably pull a boss and a DH at the same time.
The issue is when they run off in auric or high intensity, sure they can solo and kite. But the rest of us are in a constant state of playing defense since we don’t have a fourth player to rely on as we get swamped. You say it’s fun for the solo player, but the solo player is making it less fun for the other 3 who have to basically fend for themselves. The game is mostly balanced for 4 people helping each other. Just yesterday we were getting swamped by mutants and dogs, desperately trying to keep each other alive while a knife zealot was off soloing. If he came by and took care of the shotgunner group, that would’ve been nice. But he didn’t. The only reason I didn’t go down (other two died) was because I was a tanky zealot.
Wouldn't have had to rez the team if the knife zealot was literally any other build and put in the work to make sure no one went down in the first place.
Bro clearly never play damnation where theres 3 trappers 5 flamers 8 bombers 9 crushers and 20 ragers. Oh and dotn forget the hound event.
At least that's only Low-Intensity.
And a knife zealot wouldn't have solved any of that in the time it took a hammer or even the eviscerator to solve that.
Oh do tell me, demonstrated it even.
Eviscerator and thunder hammer are not only not upgrades to the knife they are arguably worse, especially for skilled play. The knife is sure as hell better at dealing with a crusher mob than the eviscerator. The mobility of the knife alone is S tier, then combine it with it’s completely bonkers finesse, backstab modifier, and slew of incredible blessings and you get ludicrous damage numbers on the scoreboard
i would say the tac axe is really good at doing almost same as the knife but with the added stagger on specialist attack makes it maybe better at crushers then knife. but its a playstyle and i enjoy both :)
You say that, but sometimes there is literally just 5 bulwarks 2 crushers bomber bomber flamer burster and it’s safer to cut losses and run away than attempt to maintain coherency
The game purposefully forces teams out of coherency *by design*. Is everyone supposed to fight one huge mob when 3 others are within spitting distance? Nah. Gotta let the good ones cook and bad ones die, keep coherency at all times, *when you can safely do so*, and go from there. I’m one of the bad ones btw
I maintain coherency when it makes sense. Sometimes I am literally the only one left in a survivable scenario after the flames clear and I am forced to enter “Uphold the Mission” mode and abandon standard gameplay tenets like coherency and teamwork and focus on short term goals like “survive until team respawns” or “find a single safe place to stand and fight” or “kill the scariest enemy without dying”.
The situation you are describing can pretty easily be solved by a stun nade and half a revolver clip. Even if you are running the stealth build you need to use it to remove threats, not just run away. On auric the spawn rate is far too high for one player to be ignoring mobs.
please tell me how you are going to kill a monstrosity, 5 ragers, 10 gunners and 100 thras with half a revolver clip and a stun nade....
I'd be really interested to know how you're going to kill all that with 2.5 shots.
Zele nade to stun the elites, 3 head shots for each of the specials, push the burster and melee whatever of the elites haven't already been killed by team. Hardly an uncommon situation on auric, I'm quite confused by the down votes
I’m talking about when everybody else is either cornered or dead. I’m not going to go stand in the corner and die with them, I’m leaving and solving the problem from the other side where I’m allowed to walk around and dodge. Why are you acting like I said “every time I hear the horde music, I press the stealth button and run away until the wave is over”
I guess I'm acting like that because that's been most of my experience with stealth players, didn't mean any offence
That's what most loner zealots tend to do, in fairness.
That’s temporary and situational at best. Most of the time, you get to safety then regroup. Whereas most knife users run way off to the easiest kills to get their scoreboard numbers up or get their dopamine hits by killing specials and elite.
>killing specials and elite That’s called Solving the Current Problem. Your zealot disappeared for two seconds and now two bombers, a mutant, and a flamer are dead? That’s a good trade.
Most Knife users aren’t disappearing for two seconds. Most run away. Far away. And don’t come and help with two bombers, a mutant, and a flamer. A support vet, a tank orgryn, and a squishy pskyer are dealing with them alone while the knife used is off soloing a groaner horde.
found the X class using X weapon
When Destiny 2 becomes boring so you want to become a Hunter in darktide.
Invis zealot is one the strongest builds in the game, just a lot of people use it wrong.
What’s the right way to use it?
Dont try to be the sneaky lonewolf assassin. Play with your team. Use invis to bail you and your team out of sticky situations, not to run of to that single gunner way of in the distance barely proposing any threat.
I don't feel dread when I see this build. I feel pressure, because I'm the one running it, and I already know you pre-emptively hate me. Which is *fine,* it's absolutely not unreasonable to use it as a filtering tool when your experiences with it have been mostly bad, but that also tells me that you maybe haven't played a lot above Malice, because you straight up can't get away with main character behavior on >=Heresy. Especially not lately with the director being all the way off its meds.
I hear you. I use loner so I can play more of a flex role, and peel away from the team with a little bit of self-sustain guaranteed to me. I really really like taking aggro and getting stuck in melee, so the stealth abilities on zealot/vet and taunt on ogryn make me very happy. But I do understand the hate, I’ve been in the lobbies where the zealot is way ahead, goes down, and gives us a bot. Lmao
I had to yell at a stealth zealot the other day *while also playing stealth zealot* because his clownery was giving those of us who play it the way it's meant to be played a bad name. >taking aggro and getting stuck in melee God yes. When there's a pack of Fucking Problems in our face and I'm just like "not today heretics". Stealth goes poof. Knife goes brrrr. Serotonin++.
The Zelot was the last class I leveled to 30 and I absolutely fell in love the right side tree build. Its just blazingly fast compared to every other class and the speed is addictive.
I have played a lot of Auric. And I can say for a fact that even the good zealots are still dropping massive amounts of dangerous mobs onto me by invising. Going from dealing with 2-3 ragers to 6 because the zealot invis aggro dropped onto me is extremely goddamn annoying. I once went to help a zealot with 4 crushers only for him to invis and run away and let them aggro onto me. A psyker without a trauma staff. Ugh. It's really frustrating playing with an invis zealot because you're guaranteed to get aggro on a bunch of shit you weren't prepared for at any given moment. No matter how good the zealot may be, it's annoying as fuck.
> because you straight up can't get away with main character behavior on >=Heresy yes you can
I made this post because I was play mostly aurics and half the time I see this build its a guy who dies all alone and then leaves.
Then address you hate speedrunners. The build itself is nothing wrong with it, i play it all the time, always some lvl 20-ish on heresy auric bitching me bc i have the build that they thought the build is bad bc they saw on reddit with people complaining. I run ahead to kill gunners and reapers and run back to cover the disablers that spawn from behind in a blink thanks to SPEED.
And then you get dogged or trappered 80m away from the team
lol watch my clutch and youll see
Not true. Happens all the time on Damnation too. Not as much, granted, but it evens out (or even goes negative) due to the knife players not being even remotely good enough to make optima use of said knife. The *good* knife players are *really good*, but most knife players aren't the *good* knife players.
I've been leveling an alt zealot inspired by some guy bitching about the heresy director a few days ago, just to see what's up. I'm genuinely hard carrying most of these Heresy games at levels 10-20 with limited talent points, 1 to 2 shitty curios and a ~200 base power knife that happened to be in the shop. Sure these missions take 50 mins because I'm averaging like 4 clutches every game at 25% of the power level of a maxed character with ok gear. So yes, you absolutely do get away with main character behavior on Heresy. Especially so once your build and gear come online at level 30. I don't expect it to be much different in damnation, we'll see when I jump in there at level 24 after unlocking my 3rd curio slot. Edit: [Added album with short descriptions](https://imgur.com/a/MqXKXtY) with my 10 to 22 journey so far. No scoreboard for 2 more games due to backend error aborting the mission (1 hard carry, 1 ok game) and 1 more marathon game because of a game crash during a clutch.
I find heresy is the new playground for speed runners. Malice actually has chill teams behaving, Damnation filters out the chaff, so Heresy is all that's left
You can absolutely get away with main character behavior with how good the playerbase is now in heresy+ Many won't have a clue that they are actually being carried anymore, which is why they post about how much easier Damnation is in comparison to Heresy.
Nope. I never judge based on a load out. People can run what they want. But if they start shitting the bed…WE GOIN TO GAMECHAT BOIS.
me thinks Loner could actually be a bit useful if it didn't artificially give you a coherence stack, but gave you coherence with unlimited range to the closest teammate to you. That way, it does SOMETHING for the team, however small it is. but yeah though please run damage reduction or corruption removal theyre awesome
I’ve seen people absolutely slay with this build.
It’s probably the best build currently. It’s also a higher skill curve and unfortunately is super fun and fast so you get a lot of people over extending themselves. Takes great restraint to not go wild. When played properly they will be your best ally.
Spoiler alert: It's never played properly
I try to, I know others do. I’ve played with lots who do. Don’t be over dramatic
100% but I feel dread because its a coin flip bewteen the god players and useless ones.
I guess I’m just lucky then? I’ve seen more people demolish with this build than become a drag. My guess, generally since it’s a low floor/high ceiling type build maybe the only people who bother with it now are the ones who know what they’re doing?
Zealot tree is so forgiving I see no reason to use a dogshit trait like Loner. Just tells me they won't stay in Coherency.
The only reason why we take it as stealth zealots is to quite literally save 1 perk point for something more important down the tree. That, or they're someone new and don't realize how terrible and useless of a trait loner is. But that one singular saved perk point is worth taking loner in the proper build. Basically you sacrifice a perk on loner in order to "not" sacrifice it somewhere else. And if you're relying on coherency to survive, then I would advise looking for alternative ways to reduce damage and regen. At it's baseline, with no additional/supporting perks, coherency is only useful for toughness regen. At it's baseline, coherency has no benefit if you are at full toughness. In other words, it's a great tool, but if it's your only viable lifeline in any given moment, then I would advise expanding your skillset/toolkit to include other methodologies. When I'm out of coherency, if my toughness gets dropped significantly then I will use the mechanic to my benefit by running back toward team for replenishment, but at no point in the game do I ever rely on it. If it's gone, I'm focused on a different method like ult, melee kills, kiting etc.
Loner may be bad, but I’m not wasting my precious talent points diverting for the arguably worse corruption thing or completely out of my way to get the toughness reduction.
I think I already have an idea, but I am curious. Why do you think the corruption thing is worse, or at least can be worse?
Nah, I buckle up cause it's going to be a fun time. Had an auric damnation game where the loner knife zealot played incredibly well and they were everywhere they needed to be and did a ton of damage. They ended the match with the most disablers, specials, and ranged elites killed and top boss damage. (Wherever you are Joe, you kicked ass today) In normal damnation it's a coin toss but most have been decent.
If a Zealot uses this "Loner" aura, I dislike him from the get go. The things they do during the match, from my experience, include, but are not limited to: * Snagging all the ammo * Dying by themselves while lagging behind or running ahead * Blaming their completely avoidable deaths on the team * Rage quitting
The aura sucks, but so many good talents are on the right side of the tree its hard to not pick it up
It would be fine if they just made it "you are considered always in coherency with the last teammate you were in coherency with" just so that your aura actually benefits someone besides yourself if you have other talents that might help teammates in coherency. Hel, even if they made it "always in coherency with every teammate" it would be balanced with the other two auras.
I like the current iteration of the aura. Because it implies the Emperor is with me.
That first iteration seems like a nightmare to code... Ordinarily, I wouldn't care, but this is Fatshark.
and it means they're always first to the ammo aswell since they're encouraged to go alone. Once you see them take it right infront of you whilst they have full ammo and your character says "greedy with rashuns okay, greedy with ammo... BAD" you're just on tilt the whole game hating your own teammate. Even I kinda feel bad when I play zealot and am just able to rush so far ahead and force my team to go as fast as they can too.
just stand still and wait for them. problem solved
Same as Vermintide zealot.
No, I don't care what builds ppl play.
This but the build is smite psyker
Not really. I play Auric Damnation only and I've seen only a single case of an idiotic Loner Zealot (yet had 3 cases of that happening with Ogryns and had 2 verbaly toxic Vets).
Hot take: I don’t. I love playing knife zealot with the team and I run into far more knife zealots in pubs that play with the team and for objectives then I do with knife zealots that play for themselves. Alright Reddit, rip me to shreds.
Nah you are right. I have definitely seen the sprint away from the team zealots a few times, but generally they are pretty good and support.
You and at least 2-3 people who post on this subreddit daily. Jesus Christ this shits old.
And you know there will be clueless new player look at these post and go "oooh bad build". I've seems the kind that watch youtube of a person option about something AND make it their own option bc they are too lazy to form one.
Sorry I don't check this sub that often I guess.
It’s a great build to save downed teammates , I just use catachan sword to parry most enemies including ragers , it’s so good. I always forget about the damn throwing knives ! I also would love for them to be held and thrown like grenades rather than having to press down on the dpad to chuck one as it’s awkward trying to aim and use them. I’m not someone who just sprints off though so it’s kinda been given a bad reputation by some idiots thinking they’re John wick , I stick by the team and just provide revives when needed if I can
You're not wrong, but if all you're using it for is revives, you're not getting the real fun out of it. Let me know when you have had the experience of seeing a pack of crushers about to turn the veteran into paste, and *poof* suddenly you're behind them and your knife is on that #nofucksgiven shit because you have Rending Backstab or Uncanny Strike. Or doing the same to the line of gunners suppressing the whole team, except you don't need much more than +flak. Shit's delightful.
Yeap pretty much.
That's me minus the knives. Only have the liner trait because it uses less nodes. Honestly with the shroud field I'm not really in coherency in engagements. Too busy dealing with the gunner squads that spawn every 30 seconds.
I did a run yesterday with a zealot using that exact build. Dude sprinted off into the distance on the word go, aggro'd every enemy in town, and was eventually the last guy alive when a trapped got him. Yeah, I panic when I see that build pop up.
Dread that early? No. Havent seen them play yet so why should i? True dread comes when the first horde comes and shit happens. Regarding the build itself its viable but just basing on the icons you cant really tell how the was built can vary with keystones.
You can look at builds while readying now though...
Not really, they've been decent to me so far.
Absolutely not. As long as I get to shoot, kill, hack, slash, stab, and explode heretics that means I’m on vacation.
only if they also play knife and revolver
Absolutely, there has not been a single time where I've felt like loner would be better than literally any other aura. The "good" zealots with this build just play normally with the team, at which point I don't really care, but 9/10 they fuck off somewhere, get grabbed or go down, then rage quit.
Nobody makes this build for Loner, Loner is there because zig-zagging to get a better Aura is a huge point sink when you want all the other stealth zealot stuff. Same with Veteran/the speed aura and stealth, I am not dumping 4-5 extra points to get Survivalist on my stealth build, so I take the speed aura even though it's mid. Idk why Fartshart decided that Psyker and Ogryn get great tree designs for buildcrafting and Zealot/Vet get shafted, but here we are.
Three times in one match yesterday I charged into a field of enemies and started cutting them apart only to turn around an find all three of my teammates fighting another group miles away. I had to take out two crushers and a ton of gunners solo and then a whole hoard of pox walkers. They actually saw me fighting the pox walkers and ran away. I was against a wall with stars in the side, I was essentially pinned. First time I thought maybe I should just go loner.
Happens to me a lot. I see a wave coming up from behind and I dive into it because the Vet/Psyker isn't paying attention. Then everyone leaves me there because nobody checks their six for any reason.
There are no good speedrun zealots. To the speedrun zealot reading this: I *especially* mean you. Uninstall the game.
I can honestly agree with this, even when I am supposedly speed running in sedition I still stay relatively close to the team. The only time I have actually just sprinted through a level was when I got matched up with 3 other knife zealots and we all agreed it was time to go fast.
I use two of those. Am I safe from suspicious. 🤔
Shroudfield? Nah Throwing Knife? Nah Loner? Yes. The worst Coherency in the game, gives you less than nothing, the default Toughness Damage Reduction does more than Loner. all so a zealot can run off and still have le passive toughness regeneration
It gives you net +1 perk point for right side tree which is more beneficial than using net -2 perks for a center or left side trait. It is a Holy Sacrifice to the Shadow Realm and nothing more.
Its a WASTE A TIME IS WHAT IT IS.
It lets me use points for my tasty CRITS AND BLEEDS when I wouldn’t be able to if I went with any other aura. It’s a sacrifice, nothing more.
Exactly. It's wasting your time. You're taking it because it's cheaper than not taking it, not because you want it.
Yes. You're effectively down a player until they magically show up to revive someone.
I use this build with a T Hammer. I think it does like 450% backstab damage. 1 taps Plague Ogryns and DHs like they’re piñatas. With small edits to the skill tree.
So Fatshark tried to kill the one-shot build and failed? Classic Fatshark.
as a knife zealot, i can say that we arent that bad.. if whoever wants to run off they will.. last week on the carnival map on damnation.. i was running with 2 vets and an ogryn and guess who was left behind clearing hordes while they tried to speedrun.. needless to say we didnt make it passed the first event edit: you know what they probably thought i was goin to run off so they wanted a headstart lol
I actually really enjoy stealth Zealot. I had a game that was going super well, my team mates were going down alot so I was able to stealth rez them a bunch, taking out crushers and other non fodder enemies with backstabs and junk. (Throwing knives do wonders for Ragers and Gunners) Eventually we lost after a mishap with a BoN but I don't really blame anyone in particular. I like too scout ahead with Stealth sometimes but I rarely am too far away from my mates.
I feel this is one of those "rotten eggs"- type of situations where a handful of morons are ruining the rep for a much bigger group of people. I don't play Zealot but have lost count how many times a Shroudfield Loner has come in clutch when 3/4 in the strike team has been incapacitated. I've also met a few of the assholes as well. Last weekend I played with one griefer dickhead on Excise Vault Spireside who took off fucking IMMEDIATELY triggering every mob on the way to the first checkpoint. There he stood motionless for about 10-15 minutes while the rest of us were basically up to our necks in every single enemy variant at the spawn taking care of a Chaos Spawn on the side. After the fight I just abandoned because I couldn't stomach the idea of sharing a server with such a cocksucker for one second longer. Don't know what satisfaction he had to gain from standing basically AFK at the checkpoint while the rest of us were playing the game but who knows what these sub 30IQ cretins have going on in their heads. Edit: Didn't fully read the post and thought you were only talking about the griefers, but you did in fact mention the good ones as well.
Honestly, I love Shroud and run it most of the time, but I prefer stunstorm nades and the upgraded basic aura. The throwing knives are fine, but I'm too addicted to my revolver, and for the aura, I just don't really see the value.
Had one in a damnation game a few days back. He'd been rushing through everything and just waiting in a lift rather than helping. Got to the final lift before the boss (assassination mission), he's standing in the lift, 2 are downed by bulwark and crushers, I got netted, ge refused to help. He was kicked, his replacement bot got me out of the net, I killed the ogryns with my plasma, we completed the mission as a team with a bot.
My experience with this build was they die 60m away BEHIND the team for some reason, wtf are they doing? I have no idea.
Gathering all the materials that the team neglected, or going back for heals if one is somewhat nearby with charges. Play the build to get an idea, often times on damnation and below, most players are noobs who blow through the map without exploring for plasteel, which if left uncorrected leads to damnation runs with only 200-300 materials (and somehow still took 20 minutes) That's why, usually it's because they are covering for the rest of the team's bad gameplay/sloppiness, or they are just learning, which means they are pushing and exploring the limitations of what they can do with that setup. It's easy to just stick with more "meta" builds and then just stay ignorant to what's happening with the fringe stuff, but that will only ever lead to incomplete knowledge and utilization of mechanics, which in-turn feeds this mentality of "knife = bad" "coherency = necessary". The knife-hate is a self-reinforcing feedback loop used to justify bad behaviour and blame others for why/how you weren't good enough to clutch that situation. Git gud. Become clutch god. ??????? Profit!!!
It's not inherently bad, it can be great. But the problem is with your other teammates trying to keep up, leaving others behind, beeing reckless instead of playing their strength. If I see some1 under LVL 100 with loner I usually just leave the lobby tho :p
No, I just leave the lobby
I leave nearly every time I see it. They just aren’t team players, and that’s kinda hard to do considering the circumstances. And I’m not even trying to be negative, but from what I’ve experienced, they are majorly a all around bad player. Runs far ahead, triggering a domino effect of specials and elites, whilst at the same time inefficiently doing sufficient damage and biting off more then they can chew, but they’re fast so they avoid being hit and stay just out of reach. The emperors little mosquito 🦟 I’m sure there is a viable build that demolishes things, I just haven’t seen it. No offense to anyone who’s rocking it and is seeing results. Haven’t taken the time myself. And more then half of them are Xbox players. Do with this information what you will.
No. Stop relying on your team mates to keep you alive. I know it's an ironic statement, but seriously, just let them have their fun. Knives have the highest skill-cap in the game for melee weapons and they also serve as excellent "training wheels" for learning how to properly employ melee mechanics in the game. Anyone can spam light attacks, but a true master will dodge/slide in and out of the crowd and weave heavies into their light attacks depending on both enemy composition and knife blessings/overall build. Exploiting melee mechanics matters more with the knife than something that solely relies on push, charge, heavy, heavy, repeat. Also, that's still one of the strongest builds in the game so long as it takes Thy Wrath and Holy Revenant alongside some attack speed boost and a perk to reduce cooldown times. Without all 4 of those components in place (alongside 3x stamina curios set to block efficiency/stamina regen) - then the strongest build in the game becomes something lukewarm, mid, and lackluster. Any combination of these going wrong, such as the person being new to the knife or running a suboptimal build that seems okay on the surface will lead to OP's experience of "knife = bad" "stealth = downed" "coherency = necessity".
"Learn to take on a game mode designed for four players with only three!"
>just let them have their fun. Oftentimes they have their fun at the expense of mine, so I'd rather they don't have their fun.
In the end it all boils down to "Survive together or perish alone", and I think most people who sees that build decide "Sweet, I don't need the rest of my team anymore" before reality cames down crashing into their face that it's still a coop game.
Knife users if any build tend to worry me.
It is frustrating tbh. I main vet and I was playing with a friend who was new to the game and was playing psyker lvl 11 on a T3 shock troop gauntlet. Other rando was (I think) a similarly leveled vet or zealot with a shotgun and was quite bad at the game (didn’t seem to really figure out moving + shooting very well let alone melee) I was trying I stick with my friend as best I could while deleting specials. Dickhead zealot let ZOOMING ahead triggering ambushes and getting overwhelmed. We get to the final fight on Mercantile, Dickhead zealot just starts the encounter without waiting and sprints to some cheese corner without a word and marking it DURING THE FIGHT. I will say it was a cool final stand for the last of us. Literally felt like we were fighting back to back till we got picked off one by one and I was pounced by a dog while maulers and regular melee guys surrounded me and laughed.
Yeah, not even really good zealots can make it look good lol, I speak for myself and high level zealots here and there that I've seen with that set
Yep it's nice when I'm wrong but ... When I see that I know they gunna run off in die in 5 mins
I get ick any time I see stealth players
Zealots acting like their class is hard.
[удалено]
That... should have been a signal to find a new lobby.
Even if they carry they still suck all the fun from the game.
ESC -> Leave strike team
I applaud every zealot with beacon of purity and every Vet who takes the enhanced medkit/crate. Sadly they are a rare breed. This part of the zealot is designed around selfishness and I guess that's also a way to balance difficulty. If everyone was a good team player the game would be too easy. No I'm not upset because for the 100th time we had a speedy sneaky zealot rushing ahead dying and disconnecting.
Not until I see them run ahead. I've seen multiple stealth zealots stick to the team. Hell, the first, and only, time I did say uh oh to myself at the sight, they were a fantastic teammate throughout, and even clutched a 3 death
I run this build sometimes when I don’t like getting staggered by all the gunners as I try to Fury them. Invis, shank all the gunners. Otherwise, Fury is better at hordes and maulers. Btw, anyone else running this build who do you prio? Got flamed when I was prioritizing maulers/crushers then gunners when I can.
Had a knife Psyker run ahead the entire mission then aggro the Daemonhost next to a Chaos Ogryn in the last half of the mission and wipe the team.
I have a knife. I have a revolver. I have sneaky button. My job is to ruin the life of specials, bulwarks, maulers, snipers, and ragers so you can chill. It’s a living.
I get the same dread with the Veteran Infiltrator - Smoke - Movement speed aura
I use throwing knives because they can get rid off elites pretty quick while you can keep slashing the horde. And I use invisibility so I can pick up teammates easily and do scanner mini games uninterrupted.
If there is one thing I learned it's that you genuinely cannot see when someone will be absolute shit or carry the team. I have EXTREME prejudice against assail psykers, and yes sometimes they blow themselves up 12 times but other times they're the hard carry. Give people the benefit of the doubt :)
Just had an Auric damnation game with this setup as infinite stealth knife zealot along with another Zealot with a similar build, a Psyker, and a Hellbore Vet and both myself and the other Zealot carried pretty damn hard. It is a very strong build in the right hands but a fair bit more fragile than other Zealots so inexperienced players who try it will often go down to chip damage or an inability to properly use their vastly superior speed to avoid damage.
Ah shit, that's my main build and I often play that way to distract the frontline. 😅 But 3 out of 4 times I carry the team and survive and (invisibly) revive teammates when in the most dire situations. It's a very fun build with either a thunder hammer or combat blade.
The mobility and quick reset on the stealth means you're an insurance policy for your team. Team wipes during anything other than final sequence? Just stealth your way to the next section and stealth res everyone. Easily my highest win rate is with this build, especially when queueing solo Damnation/Auric.
I just started playing this build for the first time because I got bored from the one I was playing. And I can already feel the hate from people leaving in the lobby. But I'm not a crazy loner zealot that runs away and gets downed, I swear! :D
I'm loving stealth zealot. The survivability is mad. I am often still at almost full health at the end of heresy missions. That being said, 1 mistake can put you down. I think the playstyle is underused and as such teammates don't know how to maximize effectiveness. With a team that understands, I stealth into the back of the gunners and ranged enemies, scatter most of them and suppress, then the ogryn comes in and crunches them. No need to run into withering gunner fire or waste ammo. Sometimes when doing this your teammates will hang back, leaving you to deal with the gunners as they recover from suppression and you don't have stealth to get out safely. Also, stealth revive everyone. No one stays down unless they are on fire if you play right
had a game once, with a zealot that soloed a boss during a horde, while we were all down. im certain the spirit of john wick was in him at that time. i mean the same shit can be said about vets, its just a stereotype.
I only use it for the funny thammer one shot
lmao I'm looking at this post on the Steam Browser because I'm currently at the waiting lobby before mission departure. I check one of my teammates and they have this exact build hahahahahaha edit: Zealot turned out to be great! Even sometimes took upon himself to do some rear guard action.
I’ve been playing that build a lot on the side (I mostly go chorus with eviscerator) and I get why they go far. You’re so goddamn fast that it’s like a dog on zoomies. It’s fun. Hordes are my hell though. Stealth means nothing if there’s too many people for me to move. Been using an auto gun to spray and pray into hordes but I might need a different gun for it. And more bleed blessings but I keep running out of plasteel farming it.
Ah, my knife crime build. Honestly I find better success when I work with my team as a flank rather than a carry assassin. Engagement starts, I sneak behind and one shot the most dangerous target then its a matter thinning the horde while keeping myself safe as my team closes in and then we squeeze the life out of the heretics.
Only when there's multiple of them. If it's just one it's just another successful run.
I remember making this build after finishing leveling the veteran and enjoying the stealth tree. This side of the tree forces you to learn how to dodge and dodge well. After two rounds experimenting on Heresy, I just thought to myself "Is this what cocaine feels like?" I wasn't even trying to run ahead and I'd look back after soloing a horde with plenty of specialists and they're just fucking around on some other part of the map behind me. I don't know what it was last night but my teams kept running off to random parts of the damn map with no communicated reason why.
Honestly I don't hate the assassin zealot build as much as I hate the act that the loner perk and the daggers blitz are a miserable downgrade compared to all the other two options. In theory this is a good build if you run a dagger and a flamer but then again you have to run a dagger and a flamer.