Zealot Crusader
The Turtolsky Mk VII Heavy Sword is so damn good at what it does. It deals insane damage whilst maintaining fantastic mobility, allowing you to glide through combat, dodging attacks left and right whilst cutting enemies to ribbons. However, this insane strength comes at a cost, namely its inability to deal with armour and only mediocre monstrosity damage. By pairing the heavy sword with the Locke Mk IIb Spearhead Boltgun, we eliminate these two problems. We take knives to kill specials without having to deal with the lengthy pullout time of our bolter, creating a zealot that will stop at nothing in their crusade to spread the word of the Emperor.
Playstyle
We will be spending most of our time in melee, so the Turtolsky Mk VII Heavy Sword is our bread and butter. The actual hitbox on this weapon seems to veer slightly to the sides. I love being able to dodge to the side, proc Duellist, and one-shot Mutants or other elites. Fury of the Faithful allows us to close the gap and top our toughness, so even ranged enemies are not safe from us. We will be sliding around a lot and so proccing Second Wind every time it comes off the inbuilt 0.5-second cooldown (thanks Fatshark for letting that be apparent). For the occasional distant targets or snipers we can't close the gap on, we have Knives.
The Locke Mk IIb Spearhead Boltgun is our 'Oh sh*t' weapon, and should be used sparingly given how low its ammo pool is. Despite its already good armour penetration, this is only increased further with our ability, allowing us to rip through several crushers in about 2 seconds. It does tremendous damage against monstrosities, and their hitbox is so large, that we do not need to worry about the weapon's intense recoil. I use this weapon only to deal with Crushers and Monstrosities. We won't be aiming down sights to take down distant targets, so only use on large enemies, otherwise, the recoil can make it hard to the hit the broad side of a barn door.
Build Path
Down the main Tree, we pick up Annoint in Blood & Purge the Unclean. Both of these are fantastic nodes that I end up picking up in basically every Zealot build. We are going to be using our Bolter at close range, so this adds an almost permanent 25% damage increase to our weapon, whilst the latter adds a solid 20% damage increase to Monstrosities. Down the right path, Backstabber doesn't come up too often, as we kill most things without the extra damage, but can come in useful if you are struggling to take out a reaper or Bulwark. Blood Redemption increases our survivability in our melee. Second Wind is one of the best nodes in the entire zealot tree and is what allows us to flow through combat virtually unscathed. If you are struggling with Zealot, I highly recommend getting into the habit of Dodge sliding to help you close the gap and to proc this more often. Blades of Faith help shore up our weaknesses. The bolter takes a long time to pull out, so we need something to quickly respond to priority targets. It also has the added benefit of meaning we no longer need grenades, so can share this precious resource with our team instead.
Moving across, Duellist will be proceed semi-permantently. We want to be aiming for headshots whenever we can, and this is what allows us to one-shot things like mutants so easily. Until Death & Holy Revenant is the zealots proverbial guardian angel and second chance combo. It allows us to play hyper aggressively knowing that if sh*t hits the fan, we have a free out every 2 minutes. Benediction is a fantastic defensive node that benefits both you and your team. Fury of the Faithful along with Redoubled Zeal is what we will be using to close the gap. It also causes our ranged attacks to ignore armour for a short time. This in combination with our bolter can kill several Crushers with one clip.
Moving down, Faithful Frenzy provides a flat damage increase to help us clear through hordes quickly. Sustained Assault does not come up all that often, as we will be killing most things in one hit, but again, is a node we need to progress. We will be dancing around often, so we can frequently get some massive ability reduction with Pious Cut-Throat. Swift Cetainty allows us to more easily close the gap, and synergises with Duellist to keep our weakspot damage high. Inoxerable judgment, Inebriates Poise & Retributors Stance work so well as they reward us with buffs for just playing the game naturally. We don't need to consciously think about, and all the while we are receiving toughness, attack speed and damage. Unless you are focusing on a build that is all about maximising crit chance, or a Martydome build, it's the best node to opt for.
Weapons
The Turtolsky Mk VII Heavy Sword is one of the best melee weapons in the game. It can slice through hordes and elites like butter. The special attack does more damage against heavily armoured targets, so can be used to deal with Maulers in situations where our ability is on cooldown. Deathblow helps us to reach absurd levels of cleave, whilst Headtaker can quite easily buff our overall damage by up to an additional 40%. This allows us to kill unarmoured enemies without needing to take additional damage bonuses against them. As such, I like to run Flak as it is the most common armour type in the game, and Maniac so that we can reliably one-shot mutants.
The Locke Mk IIb Spearhead Boltgun shores up the heavy sword's weaknesses, Armour and Monstrosities. It is an acquired taste due to the lengthy pull-out time, but against these targets, there is nothing else in the Zealot's arsenal that comes close. Logically, therefore, the two best damage upgrades are for carapace and unyielding. We won't be using them to snipe as a veteran does, instead, we will be using them to mag-dump these targets when they come up. Cavalcade is therefore a natural choice to increase our damage further. For our second blessing, we have two options. Pinning Fire is a bit of a weird one as the main targets we are engaging don't stagger all that easily. However, the AOE of the shots is great enough that any lesser enemies around our priority target will usually get hit, increasing the damage potentially up to an additional 25%. If you want more survivability then Inspiring Barrage is another option to quickly top up our toughness. The other options I don't think we really benefit us all that much.
Curios
After 500+ hours in Darktide, I have a simple rule of thumb when it comes to Curios. For melee classes (Ogryn and Zealot) Take 2x Toughness and 1x Health Curios. For ranged classes (Veteran and Psyker), take 3x Toughness curios. Veteran benefits massively from Toughness and Ogryn massively from health, with the other two classes falling somewhere in between. There are a few niche builds that might require Stamina Curios, but this is a pretty safe rule to stick to, and means that you have curios that are effective for the vast majority of your builds. Wound curios should only ever be used by Zealot Martyrdom builds. Even then, I consider Martyrdom builds a bit gimmicky and less effective than other Zealot builds, which is why I only ever run them for banter and memes.
For perks, I opt for raw stats. +20% Gunner Resistance is the most useful resistance node as it applies to Scab Gunners, Scab Shotgunners, Dreg Gunners, Dreg Shotgunners and Reapers. This is the largest collection of enemies out of any of the resistance perks. These enemies can absolutely shred you in seconds, and make up a significant portion of the enemies encountered in Auric Maelstroms. The difference between running 3 of these perks compared to running none is night and day, and arguably the single most useful perk you can apply to your curios. +5% Toughness and +5% Health provide us with raw stats that you can never go wrong with. If you have to pick between one of the two, go for Toughness. This is because the Health Curio provides 21% Health, and the Toughness Curio provides 17% Toughness, meaning that the Toughness Perk is a better value proposition.
Strengths
The Zealot crusader can honestly do it all. It is a very versatile build with fantastic mobility, horde clear and boss damage. Heavy attacks can take out elites in one or two swings and sliding into battle will replenish some of our toughness due to dodging ranged attacks. It's unbelievably fun to dance through combat like a samurai and cut enemies in half with our ability. Specialists can be quickly sniped out by our knives without interrupting the flow of our combat. When things can be a bit hairy, we can retreat easily thanks to our increased movement speed, pull out our bolter, and obliterate any obstacle in our path.
Weaknesses
This playstyle is quite intensive on the hands, and requires good game knowledge and understanding to bring out the best in. Knives can be difficult to use at first and will require practice. If you struggle with knowing when to dodge or how to slide dodge, you are not going to be using all of the components to their fullest. As such, I would not recommend this build if you are just starting out in the game, or if you are new to Zealot, as there are other builds that can contribute without being nearly as intensive. Also, if we ever run low on ammo, our ability to deal with armour falls off massively.
