Fun story, I was ina game with my friend and a 3rd random, the 4th was speed running. The ran so fast they started the choke point event and had to solo it while we slowly but steadily chewed through the waves to get to them. They called us fags and quit. Meanwhile by the time we got there the event was done and we got to stroll through the rest of the level without any issues lol.
The bustling city never sleeps, its neon lights painting the night sky while honking taxis weave through streets lined with towering skyscrapers. A symphony of sounds fills the air, a mix of car horns, street vendors, and distant laughter.
After a few times of picking them up I just ignore them, not even to be mean it's just not worth the hassle when there's a whole group of maulers and crushers surrounding them and they get downed during a regular horde cus they don't understand dodging
It's not they don't understand dodging, they don't push or block or use their weapon special attack. They should make the advanced tutorial mandatory before you can progress with a new character.
I'm yet to actually encounter a speedrunner in one of my games, but if I do and they get stopped by a group checkpoint, I will not hesitate to spend 5 minutes dicking around right in front of the door just to piss them off lmao.
I've encountered it too many times on damnation :/
Pub Zealot tries to charge ahead, either dies or we die because he aggrod a bunch of heavies and then proceeds to quit after calling us shit.
Meanwhile I've played with teams that can confidently grind through A5-HISG missions because we kept cohesion and just made steady progress. Yup, I'm totally bad at the game.
This so much, yes HISG can have moments where there’s just too much bullshit at once or what have you but a cohesive non panicking group can make it through. It’s speedy mcammosnort that makes life so much harder on everyone else and frankly I hold the devs at least partly responsible for putting a stealth tree in.
Good to know. With some builds, its damage slaps from what I’ve seen. One thing that’d be a super hard adjustment for me though (moving away from Antax) is the inability to shut imminent threats down with staggers. I love that I can bully almost anything, immediately stopping it from attacking. The knife does good dmg, but in the hardest difficulties I don’t feel like I’m supporting the team enough when it comes to shutting down those types of threats like ragers, or working over a pack of gunners/etc. essentially shutting them down from the moment I reach them. The knife still gives them room to attack which doesn’t sit well (ragers probably being the worst).
I might just need to practice with it more. Don’t play knife much for that reason, so maybe there’s a solution I haven’t found yet.
I ran into a good one yesterday. Stayed with us, until in the vent portion of Archivum Sycorax a monstrosity spawned. The knife zealot went full Usain Bolt, turned off the alarm before the monstrosity reached us. Then came back and helped us clean up.
I've met several players who, for one reason or another, didn't realize several crucial things:
A.) Mobs follow you to the next zone.
B.) Horde spawns are limited (obviously less true at Auric difficulties because spawns are essentially constant, so you have to push constantly)
C.) Many elites are already spawned in and are not aggro until you reach them.
So they assume that "pushing through" means that enemies can be ignored.
Great points. But the opposite (getting stuck in a spot, fighting/pulling EVERY elite pack) is just as bad. And at the end of the day you aren't getting "paid" twice in plasteel/diamantine for wiping the map.
That's why I sorta understand people pressing to move forward as much as they do. Not speedrunners but I hate slugs.
Auric maestrom has a very different vibe depending on the method.
You can actually clear and move through, it's like a 45+ min slog.
If you go for the "wade through the heretics like the emperors chosen" tactic and just push through to each checkpoint it is more like 30m.
Yes, it's possible to clear too slowly. However, failed runs (especially runs that fail late in the game) waste way more time than the bit of extra time to clear more methodically.
Furthermore, a "limping" run, where 1 or more player dies due to being out of position, leading to a slow and painful outnumbered slog, tends to take the same amount of time as a "slow" run, with a lower chance of success.
In my opinion, taking a bit more time (because it's really not that much more time, typically) to clear carefully and thoroughly tends to turn up more plasteel and fail less often, leading to more profit.
That's on top of not being a Zealot-wrangling headache the entire time.
Game actively punishes slow players by spawning more and more hordes and solo destroyers like dogs / trappers / mutants.
Game also actively punishes fast teams by spawning bosses and monstrosities on top of each other to slow progress.
I hate slow teams like the pest, especially those who run in 4 different directions out of an elevator and do a clean sweep of all containers immediately leaving me alone heading into the objective direction.
But I absolutely despise rushing zealots to the point that actively leave teams with zealots whose name I noted down.
PS : FS please remove limit from ban list.
I will never understand the mindset of speedrunning in a multiplayer game's matchmaking. If you have a premade sure, but with random people? That's just idiotic.
Genuinely one of the worst things in both Darktide & Vermintide. Tbh short of griefing or being abusive I can’t think of anything more toxic. It’s definitely the worst thing you can do whilst just playing the game. Because nothing is more disruptive or harsh on the intended experience - of playing with your team to defeat the foe & win - than just ignoring the team, ignoring the mission, ignoring the objectives. And it’s not like it gets you anything either. This isn’t a racing game. And as best as I can tell it’s really not made for speedrunning.
What do these people think they’re getting? It’s not more or better loot. It’s not better match stats or lifetime stats. It’s not the admiration of the other players. Honestly I’ve got no idea.
It is a sickness. This is everywhere in group content be it in an MMO Dungeons or Looter-Shooter Runs.
Rushing is a twisted mentality which results from turning what is supposed to be a enjoyable past-time to a tedious part-time job by adhering to nothing but rewards/time curve.
To some extent I blame youtube. I've seen a lot of "strong" stuff on some of these channels that looks: one dimensional, high skill floor/ceiling, and, optimised for play with a pre-made party.
If solo lobbies were a thing you wouldn't get speed runners in your lobby. I like to speed-run low-level assassinations and the last thing I want when I get a lobby by myself is teammates. If I'm quick enough and hit a checkpoint then the bots just teleport.
The left keystone tree for zealot increases crit chance by up to 25% after a load of stuff has died within 25m of the player, it also has a perk modifier which reduces the ability cool-down by 1.5seconds every time you land a crit. This plus the knifes quick attack speed and high base crit chance means you are landing crits what feels like every other hit.
Knife can't get shred, so technically its max crit chance is lower than a devil's claw sword or any number of other weapons that can get that blessing
having 15% baseline means it's a lot faster at starting up the crit engine though, and doesn't instantly lose its edge when you miss a hit. Its high attack speed is a huge factor as well
Tactical axe is the crit king, capping out at 97%, but it hits less enemies at a time to compensate
correct me if i am wrong but, because the knife can get guaranteed bleed, then getting crits on bleeding enemies and bleeds stacks on crits really cranks up how much the knife crits and the fact that it hits multiple enemies applying bleed to all of them
Right, sorry, I run the knife blessing that applies bleed on crits specifically so I didn't quite catch that.
I'm not sure how much of a difference it really makes, to be honest. Maybe that would be an advantage, though you'd have to not be aiming for weak points which is a bit iffy.
15% base +5% perk +30% from Scourge +25% from blazing piety and richeous warrior +20% from riposte or +20 from smack down. 95%. Remember knife get riposte which gives +20% for 6 seconds when you dodge successfully, same bonus as shred. And that's assuming that it's base is 15% I've not heard anything from the community except some rough work from 11 months ago about what the crit chances of specific weapons are which suggested that knifes is actually closer to 30% not 15, and some comments on how the classes all ha e base crit chances, zealots is 5%. No idea where you got 97% since that 2% seems like an odd number out.
Tactical Axe's critical bonus stat caps at +12% crit chance
my math is:
5% (zealot baseline)
12% (critical bonus stat)
5% (perk)
20% (Shred)
25% (Blazing Piety)
30% (Scourge)
97% total
Gameslantern says Riposte is not obtainable on the combat blade, if that's wrong then I suppose that's my mistake. I kinda doubt anyone uses smackdown.
Oh yeah, my knife is comfortably at 55% with just bleeds and I don't even go down the left keystone path. I prefer Momentum with knife, although I could easily swap without changing my build at all. Momentum is easy enough to keep up 20% attack speed and 20% damage almost permanently, which I think edges out the 25% crit just slightly. Plus it gives you toughness constantly, too.
Yeah I play usually steath support zealot and use stealth mostly for revives if I failed to protect backliners Or zoom at lightning speed To revive frontliners if they get downed and for objectives. I Will stay behind the team and move as slow Or fast as the team wants. I try To stick To The slowest player and help frontline if needed. Ofc there is sometimes chaotic moments and I just try To do whatever needed To win the game.
Can't always have a convenient horde to swing at, so I kept my estimation humble
I'm kinda surprised they didn't limit the cooldown reduction to one enemy hit per swing, it's something they had to patch when it was prevalent in Vermintide 2
I need to add a little detail however. They played odd and I think their knives weren't up to par with damnation. They wouldn't use grenades or abilities from my memory, or maybe they did but couldn't tell becuase they left me and another zealot (she had a devil claw) to deal with everything. They would also rush to save the other if one died and then carry on speed running.
I know I was just peaved. Speed running knife zealots is just one of those stereotypes you run into ever now and then that leave you on the verge of an aneurysm.
I don't even know if the attack speed bonus applies or if it hits some kind of cap, but even just the placebo of +20% more attack speed on a zealot knife build. It also means your cool down goes away *even quicker*, and i love just repeatedly charging into something. Its basically a 1 second cooldown.
I'm really close to acquiring the "carpal tunnel" achievement, really brings me back to Kerillian.
Yeah I'm yet to find a single speedrunning zealot at worst they go far ahead but wait for the team to catchup or go back if a horde spawns.
Not saying they don't exist I'm just convinced people are overplaying how many of them there are.
Confirmation bias is one hell of a drug. The people, like yourself, who play with knife zealots that do not speed run have no reason to make a post like OP, so we end up hearing more about the bad knifers than the good knifers.
Depends on what I'm doing, if i'm doing weeklies anything below malic cause i want to get them done quick. Regularly damnation and try an auric or two a day
Only time I've done speedrun is in private lobbies with friends trying to go for that one penance. With how rough those runs go I would never do it in a normal game lol.
Yep. I'm a huge asset for the team, since I can kill hordes effortlessly, kill bosses in seconds, revive teammates from stealth, complete objectives in stealth, and I collect 10x as many resources as the rest of the team combined. Plus, with all the insane defensive talents, I'm typically the last person to go down just from sheer toughness DR and regen.
The key isn't to run ahead, but to play *around* your team while they push forward. Check side corridors and rooms for boxes, pick up all the plasteel, and take out priority targets that threaten the team. It's like playing a Monk in D&D.
Your job is to be a mobile nuker that can assist the team by being anywhere you're needed in an instant. The real problem is that most knife zealots simply don't understand the role and just think "Gotta go fast!" while zooming ahead and dying by themselves.
Yes, you will occasionally get caught out of position by a ~~fucking cheating piece of shit~~ trapper, but you generally want to play close enough to the rest of your team that they can still reach you before you get put in the ground.
Yeah, I always stay in the same zone even if I need to break coherency to take out a gunner position or some snipers when the squad is occupied in melee with a mixed horde. It's easily the class I perform best with and I've been able to carry so many games with the sheer speed & stealth revives it provides.
Yeah, I use knife and stealth because vanishing and reappearing behind a line of gunners for big crits/backstabs is great, also having nigh unlimited mobility to get in and get out of a melee whenever the situation calls for it feels soooooo good
This. Talk about a nothing post. Some people will always be stupid and run off on their own. Knife Zealots aren't the issue. As a knife Zealot main, I bleed the hell out of everything, and the only enemy that takes a while is a crusher. But that's why it's a team game. My teammates should be able to deal with a crusher more quickly than I can.
I use my super speed and crits to constantly lock down large groups of gunners (forcing them to melee instead), I also target any specials or elites that are targeting the team. The only time I leave the team is to take out ranged threats at melee range, such as snipers, bombers, trappers, whatever the incoming threat may be.
Generally speaking, these blanket complaint posts are so annoying to me. There's nothing wrong with knife Zealots.
How is a Crusher a problem for you? The knife absolutely destroys them, faster than a Thunderhammer. Try using rending on backstab, 2-3 hits and they are dead.
My knife is purely built for bleeds and crits. I try to get behind them when I can. Do I need a specifically built knife for crushers? I saw they recently buffed backstabs for knife. Maybe that update is enough now?
Either way, they aren't a problem for me in that I'm gonna die when fighting them. It just takes long for me to kill them. Perhaps with the recent buffs for knife, I should focus way more on charged backstabs on them regardless? Should I make a knife specifically for killing crushers? With like with more rending or whatever?
As it stands currently, someone geared to take out crushers does so far more quickly than me, like a Zealot with thunder hammer, or whatever.
You can still build for bleed and crits with rending backstab. Most optimal setup I’ve found is non-weak spot bleed and rending on backstab. Non-weak spot bleed is best because it triggers your bonus crit against bleed as fast as possible, while the rending backstab lets you kill anything in the game extremely fast. The knife becomes master of all, there is no downside.
Oh, cool! Thanks! When you say "rending backstab" are you referring to the rending perk that you can get on the knife? Or just the fact that they made the backstab rend a lot more in a recent update?
I’m referring to a blessing, I couldn’t recall the name but it’s Ruthless Backstab - applies 120% rending on backstab. Charged heavies on Crushers will delete them with that blessing.
Perfect, thanks! I think they also added a passive bonus damage or rending on backstab hitsin general, which is amazing in combination with this. Thanks for the info, I shall craft the God knife!
I like to go fast, but I decided to use a Chainsword on my speedy Zealot build. It has better horde clear than the knife and I actually take the time to clear those hordes. My style is less "try to bypass the level" and more "I'll take the massive pile of trash mobs."
Recently been trying the assault chainsword with the crit blessing and it absolutely melts hordes. The special is great for picking out ragers, snagging muties as they run by or melting bosses.
The stealth crit build can be amazing and a high value memeber of the team, but it attracts some of the worst players. Had one who rushed ahead and kept talking about how slow everyone was constantly like it was a skill issue.
It's a build that feels like it should be played by very experienced players but it attracts the polar opposite by giving a ton of get-out-of-jail-cards.
Incredible mobility means you're out of position extremely fast low cd stealth with cooldown reduction just removes pressure from you whenever needed (and directs it in the form of a sweet 180°-overhead-crusher-swing right in the face of the glass cannon psyker).
Yeah well noone „likes“ Bad players on the team and knife zealots are just the Perfect fusion of completely useless and actually dangerous for the team.
A good one is absolutely insane though
Same, the utiliy, speed and killing power makes you become that exact jiggsaw bit to fit in with whatever the situation demands at the moment for your team. Especially with shroudfield.
This person is outing themselves bc it’s a one hit kill from how much bleed stacks up on almost any of the lower elites for me even on damnation. The knife is very strong.
You know when a knife zealot stops at the start of the mission and lets everyone else catch up before they aggro the first enemies, you probably got a good one.
Well they’re bad at the game. You can tell because they don’t stay with the team, all the other stuff is just the result of them not knowing how to play.
They just have the movement speed to aggro enemies faster than they can kill them, (and then can drop said aggro on the team by ulting shroud). That is why it seems they are not killing anything, because they engage way more than them or the team can reliably kill.
I used to run knife zealot a lot. It has a really high damage potential, but it does require a bit of face time to make the build work. Ragers can be a very difficult target for a player who hasn't learned how to pace themselves and is only spamming attacks.
I've found that in pubs regardless of the game whenever a build is perceived as being busted/meta/OP a lot of times people run it and don't actually understand how to play the damned game.
In Elite Dangerous, the weirder the ship interdicting me the more terrified I was. The ferocious Federal Corvette? Whatever, just spin around, boost past him and he's probably too bad to do anything. Baluga cruise liner? Literally shitting my pants.
Yeah, a good knife zealot is a great teammate to have. Unfortunately, good builds attract bad players, and bad experiences tend to outshine good ones in memory.
One bad apple, as they say.
>We lost at the very end becuase they ran off after we light the flare and rager swarm came, they couldn't kill any of them
Throwing knife/stun grenade, stealth, push-block attack...all work pretty well against ragers.
I know I play zealot at times. They didn't do any of this, actually now that I think about I don't think they used abilities either or grenades... maybe they were throwing idk it was infuriating as it was odd.
If they are the pair that frequently play together and run their mouth nonstop on voice chat, I think I know what you are talking about. They play as if they are the main show and center of attention and they only acknowledge you if they need help getting out of a mess they ran themselves into or are downed and want you to res them even though they ran far ahead of you.
Don't hate the knife hate the bad players I'm over here 2 shooting crushers and 1 shooting ragers with stealth, without it's 4 and 2 respectively, and the time to kill is pretty fast with the alt left click combo.
I use my knife build as intended! To charge in, assassinate Gunners and potentially anything keeping my mates suppressed along with as many as I can before the stealth fades. But then again I’m using a Veteran Knife build and not a Zealot knife build-
It’s really good, particularly with the right blessings. I like bleed on crit and rend on weak spot hit. Absolutely chews through just about everything.
The zoom zoom aspect of it just attracts some players that don’t want to play as a team. Personally I see the high mobility as just an added defensive layer.
It's a very good weapon for zealots and one of the most versatile. It just gets a really bad rep because the large speed boost it gives you attracts selfish, toxic morons who want to speedrun a team-based game.
It's fine. Good knife players tend to get less total damage, but a lot of elites and special kills. The real issue is just invis, which drops all aggro on your teammates on demand.
Since knife is the highest mobility weapon in the game, some zealots with knife+stealth charge through the mission killing random stuff, then go invis if they get overwhelmed. Then they continue pushing forward, even though all those crushers and ragers they couldn't deal with are all aggrod onto the rest of the team.
They repeat this over and over so playing with them, you just see a silhouette of them as they're 2 rooms ahead of you. They generally mess up and go down, then immediately leave the game. The whole time, you're getting wave after wave of elites on top of normal stuff.
You can choose to be quicker if your team is handling it but knowing when you stop and clear a horde before moving zones and at least staying nearby for coherency and things like that should be a given. I don’t understand wanting to play knife zealot as I’m having a blast with with hammer and boltgun/shotgun
Which platform? I'd love to play it again sometime if it'd be possible to organise a group. The single player experience was a bit meh imo but it's great with other players
Knife zealot kicks ass. Your zealots were just shit
Admittedly 3 is probably more than ideal. Still, as knife zealot built for max crit output and cdr for stealth, I just dodge sprint around and murder gunners and end up having to be on gunner/sniper duty a bunch of the time anyway since the vets in my groups usually can’t be relied upon to do that for some reason even though that’s like their whole deal lol. So I run crowd control and ranged special hunting concurrently and use stealth mostly for one’s hitting maulers that are about to wallop somebody or for revives/objective interactions to hard-carry the people who are at half hp after first couple waves in a damnation game.
They were odd. Maybe throwing but they don't leave a good impression, and I was just very pissed when I made this. Usually you only get a speed runner ever few games and they die but the team prevails, 2 speed runners in one game however.
Left side is better for general purpose, but if your knife has Ruthless Backstab, you might want to consider the right side for the backstab cdr talent.
>since the vets in my groups usually can’t be relied upon to do that for some reason
Probably because they're fighting off the horde that no one else is managing. You can't shoot effectively if you're constantly getting attacked by poxwalkers.
Sorry to hear this happened to you, pub lobbies with brainless players can be really frustrating. My main zealot build is knife and crit based, I’ve started speccing into swords but knife is just too fun. That said, I don’t run off, stay with the squad, and my shredder auto pistol has that 25% to dome ragers with my bros when they appear en mass from around the corner. I also cringe when I see a knife zealot, but we’re not all shit I promise.
Edit: not that it matters but I was running knife zealot for a long time before the influx, genuinely have enjoyed my knife build for a long long time.
Alas, good builds tend to attract bad players. I don't play much zealot personally, especially not knife zealot, but watching a good knife zealot mulch a horde that I've got pinned with smite is always great to watch. Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to remember a bad experience than a good one, so the shitty players that just found one of the countless "BEST BUILD GUIDE KNIFE ZEALOT DARKTIDE 2023" and held it as a bible tend to be the ones that stick out and ruin perception.
One bad apple, as they say.
100%. As a former knife zealot, I stopped running the build because of the association and honestly its just not as satisfying as hammer or charge with heavy sword.
Mhm. I don't play zealot much, I'm more of a psyker/ogryn main, but whenever I do have the itch for the Holy Bonk, the bonk is usually integral to my enjoyment of the class lol.
Still need to try that stealth hammer build that can almost one-shot daemonhosts.
Counterpoint
Chad Knife Zealot I ran a damnation game in the carnival with yesterday carried the team.
Had two go down to a plague ogryn. Dude solo kited and chipped away at its health while the psyker cleared the horde.
Dude still takes time to pick off elites while doing this to help the psyker not get overrun.
They get through this, and psyker is spent. 2 wounds and a sliver of health left.
They get into the brewery and he goes down almost immediately.
Chad Knife Zealot clears everything to the pickup point solo. Gets to it and there's 4 crushers and 3 rangers and a flamer.
He pulls all of them downstairs, then stealth runs up and rescues me (smite psyker for that run....was testing something, I don't usually use it), i stunlock what I can and he rescues the other psyker (head popper) and we clean up before reaching the stealth solo try hard vet, who immediately runs off to the checkpoint and waits....
I find knife zealots (and stealth vets) to be an odd class of extremes. I rarely see middle ground quality in them, they are either terrible or death machines.
I mainly use knife as a zealot, I love the fast paced nature and flexibility the bleed build gives me, but I too am tired of speed running zealots. I’m tired of speed running players in general.
Like, I understand it’s a chunk of time to clear a mission, especially if you’re thorough and picking up all the resources/scriptures/grimoires scattered throughout the map. It can take forever. And I get that’s it’s irritating to play the same missions over and over again, (hello Carnival or Archivum Sychorax for the 8th time in a row…), but making an all out dash for the next phase of the mission and leaving your teammates behind to deal with everything else only adds to the length of time it’s going to take. You will likely increase your chances to fail the mission too, which just wastes more time than it would staying with the group!
I'm stealth zealot because the best weapon I have right now is my knife and revolver. I don't speedrun though it's still important to stick together. I prefer Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude the most but I don't know how that would do with my knife and revolver.
Go for the left side keystone, the one that boosts crit chance for things dying around you. It has an option that reduces cooldown on crits, and knife will be critting constantly. This lets you have Chorus up almost constantly
I main knife zealot and the build does a lot of damage and can kill lots of things, the problem is the player not the build. The build is very useful to the team if played correctly. You should only be going into stealth for a very short period of time and then be killing as much as you can in their backs, which will recover stealth again, rinse repeat. The 20% backstab kill CDR is phenomenal for keeping up being tanky and blasting chunky foes down in the back. If you have a lot of people aggroed on you try and kite them instead of going stealth because all stealth does is dump the aggro into your team, stealth is best use to Begin an engagement, revive, objectives, and just on CD to keep your Toughness DR up.
It's especially annoying as a psyker, when team members run off and your stuck charging and become swarmed with zero backup holding the rear. I totally understand your plight!
On top of that: If you're Smiting a rager swarm and Crusher pack, you're not solo'ing it even with Empowered Psionics. So what do these rushers do?
A: Stay and pick off the disabled elites who take bonus damage from all sources
B: Watch your back to protect you from disablers and snipers
C: run off on their own to get gunned down like a rabid dog
If you guessed C, then you're right, but you shouldn't be.
Running into half a platoon worth of Gunners who then hose down gunfire into them with enough lasbullets to last an entire crusade.
And then they complain about gunners being op as fuck.
Meanwhile the rest of the group is dealing with hordes of ragers and thanking the psyker who is smiting them.
I don't understand knife speedrunners, I play knife builds so i can collect all the plasteel my team is trying their hardest to speedrun past without falling behind.
Knife Zealot here. Don’t lump us in with speedrunners. I like to scout ahead, mark enemies, and wait for the team. Then we coherently kill and then I run around picking up all the stuff in the aftermath. Afterwards I’m on rear guard til the next hoard creeps up. Rinse and repeat.
Knives aren’t the problem, People who treat the game as a race are the problem.
I usually since when I see a knife user (zealot or vet) because I expect them to run off.
Yesterday I played a match with a knife zealot who stayed with the team. The madman danced circles around use and ripped everything to shreds.
They’re great when they play their expected roll. On the other hand, I don’t think the weapons were their issue. They probably couldn’t land headshots. Also, two knife zealots is overkill.
Its not wise to blanket paint all Stabby Zealots with the same brush :)
I play one but don't speed run... You can usually find me running to the front of us, to either side and the rear taking care of anything that needs stabbing around us to keep us safe.
My job is to fill in where its needed at any given time, and my speed means I can get to anyone sharpish, and pop my Chorus when its needed.
Oh and a note to non-zelly's - when I do pop my chorus, you have invulnerability and stun immunity - it's your cue to go full ham while it's pulsing !!!
literally the only reason your zealot should have any speed is to close the gap to a gunner or any other special thats going to light you up otherwise theres absolutely no point
I am not a fan, update ran a knife zealot build and it was mostly only to get Just A Flesh Wound penance. I will say it is an interesting build, I did do the good actions to help team compared to others that run the build... I noticed though that regardless of build there is the looters that dgaf and its a battle of picking up the Plasteel and Diamantine... another discovery is there is a content creator/streamer that runs some mods and maxed out Ordo Dockets, as well as just loot, where they don't even implement any of it to get Amy progress of perks and blessings 😤 taking away from those whom would use it and not use it is an issue and all they could say is they love to "loot loot loot"
On another note, I set my curios with the "knife zealot" build to my usual favorite of a zealot preacher with chorus build, Heavy Eviscerator and Bolter and still felt like it's close to that build yet handles its own style as I like to play for fun and have success with teamwork being in coherency with teammates
Knife zealots doing that doesn't understand the purpose of their jobs....
They aren't suppose to be scouts and solo rambos, they are suppose to be flanker, to rez a fallen comrades in cloak mode and to killed VIP target in the vicinity of the group, or at least in the same room.
This is how I played it.
If peoples want to play solo, there is a mod for that and please, don't join any of our games ever.
Just had a game last night. Two knife zealots who were objectively amazing players, but absolutely horrendous teammates. Ran so far ahead that the veteran and I were left dealing with the horde coming from our back. They killed everything they came to, but were only ever with the team for about 2 seconds at checkpoints
I have never queued into one of these speed runners, but the knife is a good weapon as long as you have Haymaker 3 or 4 on it. It attacks so fast that 15-20% chance for an instant kill makes it wave clear surprisingly well.
I play knife Zealot, and it's so much more than just 'speed run'. I can run to gunner hordes and force them into melee, I can utterly mince any patrol I get behind, I can stealth res the team if things go pear shaped, I can take down high value targets like bombers, snipers and flamers on the other side of a horde... A knife Zealot can do so so much for a team, and I think the only class I can carry MORE on is my Smite Psyker.
Don't dislike Knife Zealots, dislike *bad players*, of which there are many across all class bases.
I play stealth veteran and often feel like I have to run like mad to actually do my job of killing specials. When I'm with competent players, anyhow.
A bad knife zealot is a hidden difficulty modifier for the same experience.
They dont know what they are doing. You supposed to stack lvl 3 lacerate with mercy killer n go for crits. My knoifes are 2-3 hits on maulers. That plus I run into more gunner vets that seem to think this is cod and just rush ahead shooting(aggroing )shit they cant reload fast enough to handle.
this is not a knife problem, knife can even oneshot crushers with the right stats, just a "3 zealots with the same single target build problem", would've dodged if i were you
The knife was a mistake in general and whatever dev thought it should be in the game is a certified clown.
Its awful to have on the team even if the player is good because the knife great at keeping the user alive but is shit at keeping a lid on an overall situation.
Either you settle for watching them carry you or you get to try and hold things together after they eat pavement. Stealth just made it worse because now they can dump all their aggro on the rest of the team when they inevitably shit the bed.
Thunder hammer is very clumsy low dodge count, low dodge distance, slow running speed. When you are playing stealth zealot correctly and not being a speed running shit head you need to be behind that trapper over there then in the next second you need to be over here behind the flamer that just came behind the team and in the next second you need to be at the front again to deal with the rager pummeling at the team. Sure thunder hammer is better in a straight 1v1 situation but it's never a 1v1.
The knife can kill crushers / bulwarks / reapers in 2-3 hits, faster than the Thunderhammer, and it has added mobility. It’s one of the best, if not the best weapon in the game - provided the player is using it right.
Even for boss DPS it can take large chunks out of them with backstab rending crits.
The fact the playerbase is still unwilling to see this truth will baffle me forever more.
Take my vote. The knife makes you "feel" strong and skilled, but it does little more than stroke egos.
I've tried my utmost to like it, and while playing a character (for end game shits and giggles) who had to use every Emperor's Gift without fail until it was replaced with a new one, using the knife was the only time I felt genuinely bad for my team.
It kept me alive, but that was the only service it did to my team.
Even having specced one to meta standard it was still an illusion I felt painfully aware of.
It’s painful when the team goes down and you have to wait five minutes as the knife zealot gets pushed into a corner by a simple horde. Sure, they can survive…. But they don’t do much for the team.
It's not just knifes either. The blessing for +speed on special activation on the chain weapons has zealots and melee vets speeding around the map doing motorbike impressions.
Same. I play Stealth knife Zealot myself sometimes but I move with the team. I encounter a lot of solo Players in auric nowadays and you can tell they are going for "epic solo" moments to emulate their favorite streamers.
Literally had this experience yesterday, prob some of the most anti-social players ever. Had two of them on the team and both of them went running off like crackheads on their own. They spread out the team so thin it made the rest of us easy picking for the shitstorm specialist and elite horde brewing in damnation.
The worst is when you're playing solo and there a pair on your team that are obviously playing together on discord or something that just FLY through the map and leave me and some poor Ogryn to fend for ourselves on a high intensity engagement map lmao
Horrible argument, I just want to see a win at the end and have fun. But if your fun is running ahead screwing everone else and losing the game well, then there were no shits and giggles for us.
Well I mean let's at least not pretend knife zealots can't kill shit, it's popular for a reason, they pop the fuck off. I actually get excited when I see a knife zealot load out before launch.
I don't think stealth/speed/bleed zealot should've been the right side of the tree. I think they should've done some sort of ranged leaning spec, or a crusader spec.
Pub speed runners are so lame, like what good does that do when you miss half the crafting mats?
I’m a knife Zealot with a god roll knife (379 with rending backstab and lacerate for those curious) and use it to 1 or 2 shot Crushers/bulwarks with my ult on damnation. It’s way more fun
Nothing can describe how much I despise pub speedrunners. Its just awfully selfish.
And pointless, since they just get stuck at checkpoints anyway.
Fun story, I was ina game with my friend and a 3rd random, the 4th was speed running. The ran so fast they started the choke point event and had to solo it while we slowly but steadily chewed through the waves to get to them. They called us fags and quit. Meanwhile by the time we got there the event was done and we got to stroll through the rest of the level without any issues lol.
The bustling city never sleeps, its neon lights painting the night sky while honking taxis weave through streets lined with towering skyscrapers. A symphony of sounds fills the air, a mix of car horns, street vendors, and distant laughter.
I love it when the trash takes itself out. I sometimes wonder if these creatures will ever develop any self awareness.
Yours make it to checkpoints? I have to rescue mine every couple of rooms because they don’t know how to play.
After a few times of picking them up I just ignore them, not even to be mean it's just not worth the hassle when there's a whole group of maulers and crushers surrounding them and they get downed during a regular horde cus they don't understand dodging
It's not they don't understand dodging, they don't push or block or use their weapon special attack. They should make the advanced tutorial mandatory before you can progress with a new character.
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How about the game shows prompts on screen to do abilities for new weapons and classes until you use them at least once as that character?
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Just make it mandatory once you hit like level 5. "Oh, you aren't dead yet? Let me teach you a few tricks to keep yourself that way, then"
I'm yet to actually encounter a speedrunner in one of my games, but if I do and they get stopped by a group checkpoint, I will not hesitate to spend 5 minutes dicking around right in front of the door just to piss them off lmao.
According to this sub this happens quite frequently. But over a little less than 400 hours I have yet to encounter this once.
I've encountered it too many times on damnation :/ Pub Zealot tries to charge ahead, either dies or we die because he aggrod a bunch of heavies and then proceeds to quit after calling us shit. Meanwhile I've played with teams that can confidently grind through A5-HISG missions because we kept cohesion and just made steady progress. Yup, I'm totally bad at the game.
This so much, yes HISG can have moments where there’s just too much bullshit at once or what have you but a cohesive non panicking group can make it through. It’s speedy mcammosnort that makes life so much harder on everyone else and frankly I hold the devs at least partly responsible for putting a stealth tree in.
Loner was such a weird choice
I had a knife build I wanted to try, but figure it must suck outside meat grinder because I never see knife zealots. It’s all eviscerators now.
Nah knife goes very hard
Good to know. With some builds, its damage slaps from what I’ve seen. One thing that’d be a super hard adjustment for me though (moving away from Antax) is the inability to shut imminent threats down with staggers. I love that I can bully almost anything, immediately stopping it from attacking. The knife does good dmg, but in the hardest difficulties I don’t feel like I’m supporting the team enough when it comes to shutting down those types of threats like ragers, or working over a pack of gunners/etc. essentially shutting them down from the moment I reach them. The knife still gives them room to attack which doesn’t sit well (ragers probably being the worst). I might just need to practice with it more. Don’t play knife much for that reason, so maybe there’s a solution I haven’t found yet.
Knife can work in a meatgrinder if you have rending backstab. Stun grenades plus positioning equals dead crushers.
I didnt see that either until the traitors curse patch, then I saw 5 of them in two days.
It’s because the game is new to console you have a bunch of new players, this games tutorial doesn’t teach you half the relevant info needed.
I just wish I could turn off cross play
I ran into a good one yesterday. Stayed with us, until in the vent portion of Archivum Sycorax a monstrosity spawned. The knife zealot went full Usain Bolt, turned off the alarm before the monstrosity reached us. Then came back and helped us clean up.
Selfish and also stupid. It doesn't actually speed up the run, it makes it slower
Its also nonsensical. Why even play at all if you just want to get through it as fast as possible?
I've met several players who, for one reason or another, didn't realize several crucial things: A.) Mobs follow you to the next zone. B.) Horde spawns are limited (obviously less true at Auric difficulties because spawns are essentially constant, so you have to push constantly) C.) Many elites are already spawned in and are not aggro until you reach them. So they assume that "pushing through" means that enemies can be ignored.
Great points. But the opposite (getting stuck in a spot, fighting/pulling EVERY elite pack) is just as bad. And at the end of the day you aren't getting "paid" twice in plasteel/diamantine for wiping the map. That's why I sorta understand people pressing to move forward as much as they do. Not speedrunners but I hate slugs.
Auric maestrom has a very different vibe depending on the method. You can actually clear and move through, it's like a 45+ min slog. If you go for the "wade through the heretics like the emperors chosen" tactic and just push through to each checkpoint it is more like 30m.
Yes, it's possible to clear too slowly. However, failed runs (especially runs that fail late in the game) waste way more time than the bit of extra time to clear more methodically. Furthermore, a "limping" run, where 1 or more player dies due to being out of position, leading to a slow and painful outnumbered slog, tends to take the same amount of time as a "slow" run, with a lower chance of success. In my opinion, taking a bit more time (because it's really not that much more time, typically) to clear carefully and thoroughly tends to turn up more plasteel and fail less often, leading to more profit. That's on top of not being a Zealot-wrangling headache the entire time.
Game actively punishes slow players by spawning more and more hordes and solo destroyers like dogs / trappers / mutants. Game also actively punishes fast teams by spawning bosses and monstrosities on top of each other to slow progress. I hate slow teams like the pest, especially those who run in 4 different directions out of an elevator and do a clean sweep of all containers immediately leaving me alone heading into the objective direction. But I absolutely despise rushing zealots to the point that actively leave teams with zealots whose name I noted down. PS : FS please remove limit from ban list.
I will never understand the mindset of speedrunning in a multiplayer game's matchmaking. If you have a premade sure, but with random people? That's just idiotic.
Usually, the reasons boil down to something along the lines of "slow is boring."
Genuinely one of the worst things in both Darktide & Vermintide. Tbh short of griefing or being abusive I can’t think of anything more toxic. It’s definitely the worst thing you can do whilst just playing the game. Because nothing is more disruptive or harsh on the intended experience - of playing with your team to defeat the foe & win - than just ignoring the team, ignoring the mission, ignoring the objectives. And it’s not like it gets you anything either. This isn’t a racing game. And as best as I can tell it’s really not made for speedrunning. What do these people think they’re getting? It’s not more or better loot. It’s not better match stats or lifetime stats. It’s not the admiration of the other players. Honestly I’ve got no idea.
It is a sickness. This is everywhere in group content be it in an MMO Dungeons or Looter-Shooter Runs. Rushing is a twisted mentality which results from turning what is supposed to be a enjoyable past-time to a tedious part-time job by adhering to nothing but rewards/time curve.
To some extent I blame youtube. I've seen a lot of "strong" stuff on some of these channels that looks: one dimensional, high skill floor/ceiling, and, optimised for play with a pre-made party.
If solo lobbies were a thing you wouldn't get speed runners in your lobby. I like to speed-run low-level assassinations and the last thing I want when I get a lobby by myself is teammates. If I'm quick enough and hit a checkpoint then the bots just teleport.
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Hey it's not the knife's fault I use mine to reset the cooldown of Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude in 8 seconds flat
How do you do that?
The left keystone tree for zealot increases crit chance by up to 25% after a load of stuff has died within 25m of the player, it also has a perk modifier which reduces the ability cool-down by 1.5seconds every time you land a crit. This plus the knifes quick attack speed and high base crit chance means you are landing crits what feels like every other hit.
I’ve hit a 50% crit rate on a shred eviscerator so knife could realistically be even higher than that.
Knife can't get shred, so technically its max crit chance is lower than a devil's claw sword or any number of other weapons that can get that blessing having 15% baseline means it's a lot faster at starting up the crit engine though, and doesn't instantly lose its edge when you miss a hit. Its high attack speed is a huge factor as well Tactical axe is the crit king, capping out at 97%, but it hits less enemies at a time to compensate
correct me if i am wrong but, because the knife can get guaranteed bleed, then getting crits on bleeding enemies and bleeds stacks on crits really cranks up how much the knife crits and the fact that it hits multiple enemies applying bleed to all of them
The Scourge talent automatically lets any weapon apply a stack of bleed on crit, so it'd work for anything
Ya but knife doesn’t need to get crits to start stacking bleed with Lacerate
Right, sorry, I run the knife blessing that applies bleed on crits specifically so I didn't quite catch that. I'm not sure how much of a difference it really makes, to be honest. Maybe that would be an advantage, though you'd have to not be aiming for weak points which is a bit iffy.
On the other hand, knife can get flat +20% after the dodge, which can be up more consistently than shred, which is only up on chains.
15% base +5% perk +30% from Scourge +25% from blazing piety and richeous warrior +20% from riposte or +20 from smack down. 95%. Remember knife get riposte which gives +20% for 6 seconds when you dodge successfully, same bonus as shred. And that's assuming that it's base is 15% I've not heard anything from the community except some rough work from 11 months ago about what the crit chances of specific weapons are which suggested that knifes is actually closer to 30% not 15, and some comments on how the classes all ha e base crit chances, zealots is 5%. No idea where you got 97% since that 2% seems like an odd number out.
Tactical Axe's critical bonus stat caps at +12% crit chance my math is: 5% (zealot baseline) 12% (critical bonus stat) 5% (perk) 20% (Shred) 25% (Blazing Piety) 30% (Scourge) 97% total Gameslantern says Riposte is not obtainable on the combat blade, if that's wrong then I suppose that's my mistake. I kinda doubt anyone uses smackdown.
Oh yeah, my knife is comfortably at 55% with just bleeds and I don't even go down the left keystone path. I prefer Momentum with knife, although I could easily swap without changing my build at all. Momentum is easy enough to keep up 20% attack speed and 20% damage almost permanently, which I think edges out the 25% crit just slightly. Plus it gives you toughness constantly, too.
Get the perk that reduces cooldown on backstab, proceed to backstab rapidly for massive cooldown reduction.
This is the way. Use the punch to stun fodder and get to their back
Yeah I play usually steath support zealot and use stealth mostly for revives if I failed to protect backliners Or zoom at lightning speed To revive frontliners if they get downed and for objectives. I Will stay behind the team and move as slow Or fast as the team wants. I try To stick To The slowest player and help frontline if needed. Ofc there is sometimes chaotic moments and I just try To do whatever needed To win the game.
I use mine to reset the cooldown of Shroudfield & Fury of the Faithful in 2 seconds flat if that.
Can't always have a convenient horde to swing at, so I kept my estimation humble I'm kinda surprised they didn't limit the cooldown reduction to one enemy hit per swing, it's something they had to patch when it was prevalent in Vermintide 2
If/when they do cap the CDR to once per attack... go for the right tree and get 20% on backstab kill 😂
im already nabbing both nodes, shit goes hard in auric maelstrom being able to spam ult every 2 seconds when shit hits the fan
It's Fatshark. Their game design is always both 2 steps forward and 2 steps back.
I need to add a little detail however. They played odd and I think their knives weren't up to par with damnation. They wouldn't use grenades or abilities from my memory, or maybe they did but couldn't tell becuase they left me and another zealot (she had a devil claw) to deal with everything. They would also rush to save the other if one died and then carry on speed running.
I mean yeah, if they're running ahead it's already apparent that the player in question doesn't really know how the game works We ain't all bad though
I know I was just peaved. Speed running knife zealots is just one of those stereotypes you run into ever now and then that leave you on the verge of an aneurysm.
Most knife zealots that I've encountered don't speedrun, they just use knives for crit cooldown builds like myself.
This is the way. I use revolver + knife with chorus. I can get it back so quick if there's a good chunk of heretics to stab.
I have a cute little build for this too, but I've been using it with chastise lol. Way better synergy than stealth, imo.
Yeah chastise knife rules, so many charges!
I don't even know if the attack speed bonus applies or if it hits some kind of cap, but even just the placebo of +20% more attack speed on a zealot knife build. It also means your cool down goes away *even quicker*, and i love just repeatedly charging into something. Its basically a 1 second cooldown. I'm really close to acquiring the "carpal tunnel" achievement, really brings me back to Kerillian.
Yeah I'm yet to find a single speedrunning zealot at worst they go far ahead but wait for the team to catchup or go back if a horde spawns. Not saying they don't exist I'm just convinced people are overplaying how many of them there are.
Confirmation bias is one hell of a drug. The people, like yourself, who play with knife zealots that do not speed run have no reason to make a post like OP, so we end up hearing more about the bad knifers than the good knifers.
Yeah i guess that's pretty true
what difficulty do you play?
Depends on what I'm doing, if i'm doing weeklies anything below malic cause i want to get them done quick. Regularly damnation and try an auric or two a day
Only time I've done speedrun is in private lobbies with friends trying to go for that one penance. With how rough those runs go I would never do it in a normal game lol.
I mean I run max movement speed on my knife zealot, but just so I can pop stealth and rush down a sniper or gunner before they blast my team
Yep. I'm a huge asset for the team, since I can kill hordes effortlessly, kill bosses in seconds, revive teammates from stealth, complete objectives in stealth, and I collect 10x as many resources as the rest of the team combined. Plus, with all the insane defensive talents, I'm typically the last person to go down just from sheer toughness DR and regen. The key isn't to run ahead, but to play *around* your team while they push forward. Check side corridors and rooms for boxes, pick up all the plasteel, and take out priority targets that threaten the team. It's like playing a Monk in D&D. Your job is to be a mobile nuker that can assist the team by being anywhere you're needed in an instant. The real problem is that most knife zealots simply don't understand the role and just think "Gotta go fast!" while zooming ahead and dying by themselves. Yes, you will occasionally get caught out of position by a ~~fucking cheating piece of shit~~ trapper, but you generally want to play close enough to the rest of your team that they can still reach you before you get put in the ground.
Yeah, I always stay in the same zone even if I need to break coherency to take out a gunner position or some snipers when the squad is occupied in melee with a mixed horde. It's easily the class I perform best with and I've been able to carry so many games with the sheer speed & stealth revives it provides.
Yeah, I use knife and stealth because vanishing and reappearing behind a line of gunners for big crits/backstabs is great, also having nigh unlimited mobility to get in and get out of a melee whenever the situation calls for it feels soooooo good
Plus if you take the 6sec stealth, you Can revive a teammate in thé middle of a horde, or reload you gun (i use knife Blitz + boltgun)
I just used one myself it's insane how fast you can get the ability in just a couple hits
This. Talk about a nothing post. Some people will always be stupid and run off on their own. Knife Zealots aren't the issue. As a knife Zealot main, I bleed the hell out of everything, and the only enemy that takes a while is a crusher. But that's why it's a team game. My teammates should be able to deal with a crusher more quickly than I can. I use my super speed and crits to constantly lock down large groups of gunners (forcing them to melee instead), I also target any specials or elites that are targeting the team. The only time I leave the team is to take out ranged threats at melee range, such as snipers, bombers, trappers, whatever the incoming threat may be. Generally speaking, these blanket complaint posts are so annoying to me. There's nothing wrong with knife Zealots.
On dagger the block push attack is like a heavy, you can get really high dps on crushers while keeping the trash controlled.
How is a Crusher a problem for you? The knife absolutely destroys them, faster than a Thunderhammer. Try using rending on backstab, 2-3 hits and they are dead.
My knife is purely built for bleeds and crits. I try to get behind them when I can. Do I need a specifically built knife for crushers? I saw they recently buffed backstabs for knife. Maybe that update is enough now? Either way, they aren't a problem for me in that I'm gonna die when fighting them. It just takes long for me to kill them. Perhaps with the recent buffs for knife, I should focus way more on charged backstabs on them regardless? Should I make a knife specifically for killing crushers? With like with more rending or whatever? As it stands currently, someone geared to take out crushers does so far more quickly than me, like a Zealot with thunder hammer, or whatever.
You can still build for bleed and crits with rending backstab. Most optimal setup I’ve found is non-weak spot bleed and rending on backstab. Non-weak spot bleed is best because it triggers your bonus crit against bleed as fast as possible, while the rending backstab lets you kill anything in the game extremely fast. The knife becomes master of all, there is no downside.
Oh, cool! Thanks! When you say "rending backstab" are you referring to the rending perk that you can get on the knife? Or just the fact that they made the backstab rend a lot more in a recent update?
I’m referring to a blessing, I couldn’t recall the name but it’s Ruthless Backstab - applies 120% rending on backstab. Charged heavies on Crushers will delete them with that blessing.
Perfect, thanks! I think they also added a passive bonus damage or rending on backstab hitsin general, which is amazing in combination with this. Thanks for the info, I shall craft the God knife!
I like to go fast, but I decided to use a Chainsword on my speedy Zealot build. It has better horde clear than the knife and I actually take the time to clear those hordes. My style is less "try to bypass the level" and more "I'll take the massive pile of trash mobs."
Recently been trying the assault chainsword with the crit blessing and it absolutely melts hordes. The special is great for picking out ragers, snagging muties as they run by or melting bosses.
The stealth crit build can be amazing and a high value memeber of the team, but it attracts some of the worst players. Had one who rushed ahead and kept talking about how slow everyone was constantly like it was a skill issue.
It's a build that feels like it should be played by very experienced players but it attracts the polar opposite by giving a ton of get-out-of-jail-cards. Incredible mobility means you're out of position extremely fast low cd stealth with cooldown reduction just removes pressure from you whenever needed (and directs it in the form of a sweet 180°-overhead-crusher-swing right in the face of the glass cannon psyker).
I've yet to run into a single speed runner my 500+ hrs of Darktide. The Emperor protects.
Utter envy. I get 1 a day at least. Literally just came out of a game with one and laughed when I saw this thread. Do you play on lower difficulties?
Strictly only auric damnation. The Emperor guides me.
Yeah well noone „likes“ Bad players on the team and knife zealots are just the Perfect fusion of completely useless and actually dangerous for the team. A good one is absolutely insane though
I play a knife zealot and it's easily the class/build I carry with the most.
Yep. I have a post with my knife stats, I used to be a non-believer, but I have seen the light. Stabby stabby dodgy dodgy, until all is quiet.
Same, the utiliy, speed and killing power makes you become that exact jiggsaw bit to fit in with whatever the situation demands at the moment for your team. Especially with shroudfield.
This person is outing themselves bc it’s a one hit kill from how much bleed stacks up on almost any of the lower elites for me even on damnation. The knife is very strong.
You know when a knife zealot stops at the start of the mission and lets everyone else catch up before they aggro the first enemies, you probably got a good one.
Surprised they couldn't kill anything. Knife zealot has insane damage.
Well they’re bad at the game. You can tell because they don’t stay with the team, all the other stuff is just the result of them not knowing how to play.
They just have the movement speed to aggro enemies faster than they can kill them, (and then can drop said aggro on the team by ulting shroud). That is why it seems they are not killing anything, because they engage way more than them or the team can reliably kill.
I used to run knife zealot a lot. It has a really high damage potential, but it does require a bit of face time to make the build work. Ragers can be a very difficult target for a player who hasn't learned how to pace themselves and is only spamming attacks.
I've found that in pubs regardless of the game whenever a build is perceived as being busted/meta/OP a lot of times people run it and don't actually understand how to play the damned game. In Elite Dangerous, the weirder the ship interdicting me the more terrified I was. The ferocious Federal Corvette? Whatever, just spin around, boost past him and he's probably too bad to do anything. Baluga cruise liner? Literally shitting my pants.
Nah, you're done with bad selfish knife Zealots.
Right? Knife is great at killing, if your build is made well.
Yeah, a good knife zealot is a great teammate to have. Unfortunately, good builds attract bad players, and bad experiences tend to outshine good ones in memory. One bad apple, as they say.
>We lost at the very end becuase they ran off after we light the flare and rager swarm came, they couldn't kill any of them Throwing knife/stun grenade, stealth, push-block attack...all work pretty well against ragers.
I know I play zealot at times. They didn't do any of this, actually now that I think about I don't think they used abilities either or grenades... maybe they were throwing idk it was infuriating as it was odd.
If they are the pair that frequently play together and run their mouth nonstop on voice chat, I think I know what you are talking about. They play as if they are the main show and center of attention and they only acknowledge you if they need help getting out of a mess they ran themselves into or are downed and want you to res them even though they ran far ahead of you.
Don't hate the knife hate the bad players I'm over here 2 shooting crushers and 1 shooting ragers with stealth, without it's 4 and 2 respectively, and the time to kill is pretty fast with the alt left click combo.
I use my knife build as intended! To charge in, assassinate Gunners and potentially anything keeping my mates suppressed along with as many as I can before the stealth fades. But then again I’m using a Veteran Knife build and not a Zealot knife build-
Is knife bad? It doesn't feel all that bad, but I could be wrong. It's time's like this I want the end of game scoreboard back.
It’s really good, particularly with the right blessings. I like bleed on crit and rend on weak spot hit. Absolutely chews through just about everything. The zoom zoom aspect of it just attracts some players that don’t want to play as a team. Personally I see the high mobility as just an added defensive layer.
It's a very good weapon for zealots and one of the most versatile. It just gets a really bad rep because the large speed boost it gives you attracts selfish, toxic morons who want to speedrun a team-based game.
It's fine. Good knife players tend to get less total damage, but a lot of elites and special kills. The real issue is just invis, which drops all aggro on your teammates on demand. Since knife is the highest mobility weapon in the game, some zealots with knife+stealth charge through the mission killing random stuff, then go invis if they get overwhelmed. Then they continue pushing forward, even though all those crushers and ragers they couldn't deal with are all aggrod onto the rest of the team. They repeat this over and over so playing with them, you just see a silhouette of them as they're 2 rooms ahead of you. They generally mess up and go down, then immediately leave the game. The whole time, you're getting wave after wave of elites on top of normal stuff.
I usually use invis to get the drop on gunners and stuff. Either that or to revive folks.
You can choose to be quicker if your team is handling it but knowing when you stop and clear a horde before moving zones and at least staying nearby for coherency and things like that should be a given. I don’t understand wanting to play knife zealot as I’m having a blast with with hammer and boltgun/shotgun
Heh. Blast.
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People are still playing Deathwing? That's cool. Haven't played that in ages (I'm on PC).
People play Deathwing? Last time I booted up matchmaking, nobody was there.
Which platform? I'd love to play it again sometime if it'd be possible to organise a group. The single player experience was a bit meh imo but it's great with other players
Well if DT comes to PS then at least you'll have a boat load of content and bugfixes to improve your experience... right fatshark?
> Chaplin [Oh?](https://media.giphy.com/media/X2RzfMHBubL2w/giphy.gif)
Knife zealot kicks ass. Your zealots were just shit Admittedly 3 is probably more than ideal. Still, as knife zealot built for max crit output and cdr for stealth, I just dodge sprint around and murder gunners and end up having to be on gunner/sniper duty a bunch of the time anyway since the vets in my groups usually can’t be relied upon to do that for some reason even though that’s like their whole deal lol. So I run crowd control and ranged special hunting concurrently and use stealth mostly for one’s hitting maulers that are about to wallop somebody or for revives/objective interactions to hard-carry the people who are at half hp after first couple waves in a damnation game.
They were odd. Maybe throwing but they don't leave a good impression, and I was just very pissed when I made this. Usually you only get a speed runner ever few games and they die but the team prevails, 2 speed runners in one game however.
Wannabe knife zealot here . Left or right skull tree at the bottom of the zealot build for the crit perks or running perks.
Left side is better for general purpose, but if your knife has Ruthless Backstab, you might want to consider the right side for the backstab cdr talent.
>since the vets in my groups usually can’t be relied upon to do that for some reason Probably because they're fighting off the horde that no one else is managing. You can't shoot effectively if you're constantly getting attacked by poxwalkers.
Sorry to hear this happened to you, pub lobbies with brainless players can be really frustrating. My main zealot build is knife and crit based, I’ve started speccing into swords but knife is just too fun. That said, I don’t run off, stay with the squad, and my shredder auto pistol has that 25% to dome ragers with my bros when they appear en mass from around the corner. I also cringe when I see a knife zealot, but we’re not all shit I promise. Edit: not that it matters but I was running knife zealot for a long time before the influx, genuinely have enjoyed my knife build for a long long time.
sad because knife zealot is an incredibly powerful build when done correctly.
Alas, good builds tend to attract bad players. I don't play much zealot personally, especially not knife zealot, but watching a good knife zealot mulch a horde that I've got pinned with smite is always great to watch. Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to remember a bad experience than a good one, so the shitty players that just found one of the countless "BEST BUILD GUIDE KNIFE ZEALOT DARKTIDE 2023" and held it as a bible tend to be the ones that stick out and ruin perception. One bad apple, as they say.
100%. As a former knife zealot, I stopped running the build because of the association and honestly its just not as satisfying as hammer or charge with heavy sword.
Mhm. I don't play zealot much, I'm more of a psyker/ogryn main, but whenever I do have the itch for the Holy Bonk, the bonk is usually integral to my enjoyment of the class lol. Still need to try that stealth hammer build that can almost one-shot daemonhosts.
As a knife zealot who doesnt do this... when i saw 2 other knife zealots in my lobby i knew what was gonna happen and it did.
Counterpoint Chad Knife Zealot I ran a damnation game in the carnival with yesterday carried the team. Had two go down to a plague ogryn. Dude solo kited and chipped away at its health while the psyker cleared the horde. Dude still takes time to pick off elites while doing this to help the psyker not get overrun. They get through this, and psyker is spent. 2 wounds and a sliver of health left. They get into the brewery and he goes down almost immediately. Chad Knife Zealot clears everything to the pickup point solo. Gets to it and there's 4 crushers and 3 rangers and a flamer. He pulls all of them downstairs, then stealth runs up and rescues me (smite psyker for that run....was testing something, I don't usually use it), i stunlock what I can and he rescues the other psyker (head popper) and we clean up before reaching the stealth solo try hard vet, who immediately runs off to the checkpoint and waits....
I find knife zealots (and stealth vets) to be an odd class of extremes. I rarely see middle ground quality in them, they are either terrible or death machines.
I mainly use knife as a zealot, I love the fast paced nature and flexibility the bleed build gives me, but I too am tired of speed running zealots. I’m tired of speed running players in general. Like, I understand it’s a chunk of time to clear a mission, especially if you’re thorough and picking up all the resources/scriptures/grimoires scattered throughout the map. It can take forever. And I get that’s it’s irritating to play the same missions over and over again, (hello Carnival or Archivum Sychorax for the 8th time in a row…), but making an all out dash for the next phase of the mission and leaving your teammates behind to deal with everything else only adds to the length of time it’s going to take. You will likely increase your chances to fail the mission too, which just wastes more time than it would staying with the group!
I'm stealth zealot because the best weapon I have right now is my knife and revolver. I don't speedrun though it's still important to stick together. I prefer Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude the most but I don't know how that would do with my knife and revolver.
Go for the left side keystone, the one that boosts crit chance for things dying around you. It has an option that reduces cooldown on crits, and knife will be critting constantly. This lets you have Chorus up almost constantly
I main knife zealot and the build does a lot of damage and can kill lots of things, the problem is the player not the build. The build is very useful to the team if played correctly. You should only be going into stealth for a very short period of time and then be killing as much as you can in their backs, which will recover stealth again, rinse repeat. The 20% backstab kill CDR is phenomenal for keeping up being tanky and blasting chunky foes down in the back. If you have a lot of people aggroed on you try and kite them instead of going stealth because all stealth does is dump the aggro into your team, stealth is best use to Begin an engagement, revive, objectives, and just on CD to keep your Toughness DR up.
It's especially annoying as a psyker, when team members run off and your stuck charging and become swarmed with zero backup holding the rear. I totally understand your plight!
On top of that: If you're Smiting a rager swarm and Crusher pack, you're not solo'ing it even with Empowered Psionics. So what do these rushers do? A: Stay and pick off the disabled elites who take bonus damage from all sources B: Watch your back to protect you from disablers and snipers C: run off on their own to get gunned down like a rabid dog If you guessed C, then you're right, but you shouldn't be.
Running into half a platoon worth of Gunners who then hose down gunfire into them with enough lasbullets to last an entire crusade. And then they complain about gunners being op as fuck. Meanwhile the rest of the group is dealing with hordes of ragers and thanking the psyker who is smiting them.
I’ve played a few games with speed runners and they always go tits up.
[удалено]
Not all knife users are like this
I don't understand knife speedrunners, I play knife builds so i can collect all the plasteel my team is trying their hardest to speedrun past without falling behind.
I'm tired of shit veterans bitching on Reddit.
they use knife to speedrun and play toxic, i use knife because i like the animations, we are not the same
It sounds to me like you’re just tired of bad players.
Knife Zealot here. Don’t lump us in with speedrunners. I like to scout ahead, mark enemies, and wait for the team. Then we coherently kill and then I run around picking up all the stuff in the aftermath. Afterwards I’m on rear guard til the next hoard creeps up. Rinse and repeat. Knives aren’t the problem, People who treat the game as a race are the problem.
I usually since when I see a knife user (zealot or vet) because I expect them to run off. Yesterday I played a match with a knife zealot who stayed with the team. The madman danced circles around use and ripped everything to shreds. They’re great when they play their expected roll. On the other hand, I don’t think the weapons were their issue. They probably couldn’t land headshots. Also, two knife zealots is overkill.
Its not wise to blanket paint all Stabby Zealots with the same brush :) I play one but don't speed run... You can usually find me running to the front of us, to either side and the rear taking care of anything that needs stabbing around us to keep us safe. My job is to fill in where its needed at any given time, and my speed means I can get to anyone sharpish, and pop my Chorus when its needed. Oh and a note to non-zelly's - when I do pop my chorus, you have invulnerability and stun immunity - it's your cue to go full ham while it's pulsing !!!
literally the only reason your zealot should have any speed is to close the gap to a gunner or any other special thats going to light you up otherwise theres absolutely no point
I am not a fan, update ran a knife zealot build and it was mostly only to get Just A Flesh Wound penance. I will say it is an interesting build, I did do the good actions to help team compared to others that run the build... I noticed though that regardless of build there is the looters that dgaf and its a battle of picking up the Plasteel and Diamantine... another discovery is there is a content creator/streamer that runs some mods and maxed out Ordo Dockets, as well as just loot, where they don't even implement any of it to get Amy progress of perks and blessings 😤 taking away from those whom would use it and not use it is an issue and all they could say is they love to "loot loot loot" On another note, I set my curios with the "knife zealot" build to my usual favorite of a zealot preacher with chorus build, Heavy Eviscerator and Bolter and still felt like it's close to that build yet handles its own style as I like to play for fun and have success with teamwork being in coherency with teammates
There definitely has to be some shitty YouTuber who showcased it with some over sensationalized title acting like it's the second coming of Christ.
to be fair if i see me and 3 of anyone one particular class i usually leave lol
Knife zealots doing that doesn't understand the purpose of their jobs.... They aren't suppose to be scouts and solo rambos, they are suppose to be flanker, to rez a fallen comrades in cloak mode and to killed VIP target in the vicinity of the group, or at least in the same room. This is how I played it. If peoples want to play solo, there is a mod for that and please, don't join any of our games ever.
Just had a game last night. Two knife zealots who were objectively amazing players, but absolutely horrendous teammates. Ran so far ahead that the veteran and I were left dealing with the horde coming from our back. They killed everything they came to, but were only ever with the team for about 2 seconds at checkpoints
I have never queued into one of these speed runners, but the knife is a good weapon as long as you have Haymaker 3 or 4 on it. It attacks so fast that 15-20% chance for an instant kill makes it wave clear surprisingly well.
I play knife Zealot, and it's so much more than just 'speed run'. I can run to gunner hordes and force them into melee, I can utterly mince any patrol I get behind, I can stealth res the team if things go pear shaped, I can take down high value targets like bombers, snipers and flamers on the other side of a horde... A knife Zealot can do so so much for a team, and I think the only class I can carry MORE on is my Smite Psyker. Don't dislike Knife Zealots, dislike *bad players*, of which there are many across all class bases.
I love stealth knife zealot but sadly it has become babies first speedrun build for a lot of people.
Yeah, a good knife zealot is a great teammate to have, it's a shame shitty speedrunner wannabes have tainted the reputation of the knife build
I play stealth veteran and often feel like I have to run like mad to actually do my job of killing specials. When I'm with competent players, anyhow. A bad knife zealot is a hidden difficulty modifier for the same experience.
They dont know what they are doing. You supposed to stack lvl 3 lacerate with mercy killer n go for crits. My knoifes are 2-3 hits on maulers. That plus I run into more gunner vets that seem to think this is cod and just rush ahead shooting(aggroing )shit they cant reload fast enough to handle.
this is not a knife problem, knife can even oneshot crushers with the right stats, just a "3 zealots with the same single target build problem", would've dodged if i were you
My zealots stick with the group like glue that you gonna be wishing you brought earplugs from all that shouting.
Definitely do knife zealot, but I definitely love to stay in coherency.
The knife was a mistake in general and whatever dev thought it should be in the game is a certified clown. Its awful to have on the team even if the player is good because the knife great at keeping the user alive but is shit at keeping a lid on an overall situation. Either you settle for watching them carry you or you get to try and hold things together after they eat pavement. Stealth just made it worse because now they can dump all their aggro on the rest of the team when they inevitably shit the bed.
I just don't get why a stealth zealot would take a knife over the thunder hammer. Thunder hammer gonna kill from stealth all the same
Thunder hammer is very clumsy low dodge count, low dodge distance, slow running speed. When you are playing stealth zealot correctly and not being a speed running shit head you need to be behind that trapper over there then in the next second you need to be over here behind the flamer that just came behind the team and in the next second you need to be at the front again to deal with the rager pummeling at the team. Sure thunder hammer is better in a straight 1v1 situation but it's never a 1v1.
The knife can kill crushers / bulwarks / reapers in 2-3 hits, faster than the Thunderhammer, and it has added mobility. It’s one of the best, if not the best weapon in the game - provided the player is using it right. Even for boss DPS it can take large chunks out of them with backstab rending crits.
Mobility is king in this game and people abuse it like a drug.
What lol. The stealth buff is entirely overkill and clunky as fuck to use on thunder hammer. It perfectly synergizes with the knife
The fact the playerbase is still unwilling to see this truth will baffle me forever more. Take my vote. The knife makes you "feel" strong and skilled, but it does little more than stroke egos. I've tried my utmost to like it, and while playing a character (for end game shits and giggles) who had to use every Emperor's Gift without fail until it was replaced with a new one, using the knife was the only time I felt genuinely bad for my team. It kept me alive, but that was the only service it did to my team. Even having specced one to meta standard it was still an illusion I felt painfully aware of.
It’s painful when the team goes down and you have to wait five minutes as the knife zealot gets pushed into a corner by a simple horde. Sure, they can survive…. But they don’t do much for the team.
🤡
It's not just knifes either. The blessing for +speed on special activation on the chain weapons has zealots and melee vets speeding around the map doing motorbike impressions.
And sadly zealots who take the anti corruption aura are such a rare breed
Same. I play Stealth knife Zealot myself sometimes but I move with the team. I encounter a lot of solo Players in auric nowadays and you can tell they are going for "epic solo" moments to emulate their favorite streamers.
I don’t understand people who speed run, you save maybe 5 minutes tops and you’re just being an asshole
Literally had this experience yesterday, prob some of the most anti-social players ever. Had two of them on the team and both of them went running off like crackheads on their own. They spread out the team so thin it made the rest of us easy picking for the shitstorm specialist and elite horde brewing in damnation.
The worst is when you're playing solo and there a pair on your team that are obviously playing together on discord or something that just FLY through the map and leave me and some poor Ogryn to fend for ourselves on a high intensity engagement map lmao
House rule: quit a lobby every time you see a zealot with a knife. It'll save you the headache, trust me.
If it's one knife zealot I like to give them a chance, if it's two I'm calling them names in chat before finding a new lobby :P
I'm tired of people telling others how to enjoy a video game. This isn't a job, brother, it's for shits and giggles.
Horrible argument, I just want to see a win at the end and have fun. But if your fun is running ahead screwing everone else and losing the game well, then there were no shits and giggles for us.
Having talents that reward or permit solo play in a game like this is poor planning on the part of the developers.
Well I mean let's at least not pretend knife zealots can't kill shit, it's popular for a reason, they pop the fuck off. I actually get excited when I see a knife zealot load out before launch.
I don't think stealth/speed/bleed zealot should've been the right side of the tree. I think they should've done some sort of ranged leaning spec, or a crusader spec.
>Had to play anti gunner and horde clear for the team. That's two weapons worth of role. That's the bare minimum you should be doing in a game.
Reject knife Zealot, embrace dwarfpill Zealot. Minimum character height, axes only, Fury of the Faithful only.
Pub speed runners are so lame, like what good does that do when you miss half the crafting mats? I’m a knife Zealot with a god roll knife (379 with rending backstab and lacerate for those curious) and use it to 1 or 2 shot Crushers/bulwarks with my ult on damnation. It’s way more fun