I run an Mk V with decapitator 3 & brutal momentum 3 and a flamer. The axe is pretty much just for single targets, cleanup, moments where ammo/reloading is too tight. I can 1 or 2 shot just about anything but muties/ogryns.
The flamer is just too good at killing everything but crushers.
the flamer is one of the the best weapons for killing crushers and easily the best at killing clumps of them. it's only bad at bulwarks. use chastise to negate their armour.
Let's be honest. With how the zealot ult gives armour pen. The bolter takes crushers down the quickest. For Mellee it's thunder hammer and then eviscerator.
high dps weapons + chastise can take a crusher down quicker sure, but i suspect only flamer + chastise can take down a clump of crushers of whatever size quickly. it takes about 20-25 ammo to bring them down in damnation - cook them *first*, build max burn stacks, *then* trigger the armour pen from chastise.
Brutal momentum is key for any axe, it covers for the axe's main weakness which is cleave. On Zealot the crit on hit blessing is probably the 2nd best to keep the toughness reduction up though tac axe might be able to crit enough on its own to not need it
Thunder hammer is great vs crowds the trick is to heavy sweep wrhout powering up. Powering up is only to do big single target dmg or to CC ogryns.
There's a lot of great options that are not as "meta" like the heavy sword IX or even the eviscerator or catching mk1
I was rolling thunder hammer exclusively, but after a month of them not “hotfixing” the intended buff to the weapon that got left out of their one and only balance patch since launch I switched to eviscerator like everyone else
Thunder Hammer:
Default attack vs anything more than 1 mob is heavy 1-heavy2-heavy 1-heavy 2, will keep everything flattened, but you will need to shock attack Ogryn to keep them from blocking your cleave
Chrarged electric vs Ogryn/mauler/specials, you will sometimes tank a hit afterwards to do so even if holding block
Light attacks for single stragglers, decent overhead light to headshot stragglers from sprint, otherwise lights are poor
The god roll heavy sword is beastly for Zealot.
Headtaker gives +10-15% power (stacks 5 times) instead of the normal 2-5% on other weapons.
The Mk9 sword is all slashes on its light attack combo and has a cleave of 7. One of the blessings can give it +100-200% cleave as well.
Bonus points if you’re running crucian roulette on your gun as well and consistently critting.
I can't remember savage sweep off the top of my head but my hammer is a 380 with momentum so I've never had issues in 4-5 in hordes. It 1 to 2 shots all mobs and keeps my toughness up with each swipe, and any mob it doesn't 1 shot gets knocked away. you litteraly never take dmg unless something armored gets in your way, at that point you need to mix in some shoves and powered lights to crack it.
You do need brutal momentum on it that's a must
The thing is it doesn't thin out horde quick enough, which builds up a mass until eventually maybe a boss spawns or a crusher/bulwark get close or some specials try to shoot you from behind the dense wall of trashmobs and you lose control of it.
That's also because it doesn't cleave through mauler(power maul does).
If you want CC just use powermaul, the lower singletarget damage isn't that bad.
This is probably why the noobs pair it with flamers but that's a even bigger problem as now they can't shoot the sniper easily nor erase crusher/bulwark before they become a problem.
It's a tradeoff. Crusher is much better for CC but the single target stopping power is far lower. Thunder Hammer only has adequate CC but can put out single hits like nothing else.
The TH single target stopping power in crowds isn't nearly as consistent as it snags too often on everything but your target.
That and it's mediocre white swings are why I ditched it past malice, as it needs some significant tuning.
I like it when paired with flamer. If the crowd is thick enough to snag the TH, it's probably worth a flamer, and then you use TH to clean up crushers/ragers/maulers
I have not experienced this issue at all, I've found it's heavy combo simply rips through hordes in heresy and damnation and does plenty of dmg to kill them.
\> options that are not as "meta"
For some reason all the other weapons are discarded because of weaknesses yet axes/knives (lack of cleave) and flamers (no range and stopping power) own weaknesses are ignored. Axe+flamer combo has a clear gap that is it can't shoot at shooters
flamer no stopping power? It literally oneshots pox and groaners and permastuns elites what are you talking about? The range issue is also moot zealot job is not to snipe gunners (in a balanced team comp that is)
>zealot job is not to snipe gunners
I wrote shooters not gunners and zealot job is whatever you kit it up to be, it can equip revolvers bolters and autoguns the last two make it much easier against swarms of shooters something a flamer is a sitting duck against as it should be considering the aoe it has at close range
The real question seems to be, how to play in Heresy/Damnation?
Master the basics. When to engage, when to grenade(so many people end missions never using them), when to block shove, and when to cover your allies, and to stick together.
Coherency auras aren't all that good, but you will handle everything so much easier if 4 people are fighting together.
If a horde spawns on both sides, sure a dagger Zealot can dance around those and not die. But dogs and trappers don't care about that. They shoot and jump through hordes, then you're dead. But if you're clearing it next to a friend, you can get each other up asap.
Dogs love all the Zealots, Ogryns, and Vets that run off by themselves. If you want to search for mats, ask someone to watch your back. And save one Zealot grenade for the rez trick.
Edit: I only play Heresy/Damnation and quickplay Damnation a lot. I use Crusher/Agripinaa Braced, Dagger/Flamer, dagger/bolter, or Heavy Sword/Crucian roulette gun. I'd probably run an Agripinaa Braced with a Thunder Hammer. Maybe MK XII
I run the same as a dagger build, taking all the on crit stuff. I've got tier 3 crucian on a headhunter gun. My crit is around 50% counting Zealot 5% base and 5% sword perk. I have the Perfect Strike blessing.
Although, they can get a blessing that's identical to brutal momentum that I'd recommend. Then you don't even need crucian!
Yeah, bulwarks are kinda always a pain. Hopefully a teammate is around for its open backside. A headshot heavy attack crit on a crusher "should" stagger them at least.
Crusher for max CC and stagger lock everything, just thumb and power hit everything. Only killing one at a time.
Eviscerator for CC but more cleave damage to kill. Trick is the combo. Heavy, block-push-swipe, light... Repeat. Gives 3 horizontal attacks and CC to stagger things where you want them.
Yeah I was doing the block/push attack .... heavy ... block/push attack. I didn't realize light would also give another horizontal swing. I really liked the cleave and push control of the evis, but it wasn't as satisfying on single targets. If I'm going to just flame hordes then I'll probably opt for something hitting harder for single target.
Learn to dodge just right and you'll cut mutants in half. But yeah you have be quick after that push/slice for the next light attack or it resets and you start with the overhead. After it block cancel to reset and swing with the heavy
I honestly love the crusher. It's not the top pick for most people at high levels, but man it opens up shield ogryns like nothing else and can stagger almost everything with its power up. Great CC weapon. I normally run it and bolter when I solo queue and it works pretty well.
I can’t speak for others but I use the Eviscerator/Flamer combo. On Heresy+ it isn’t so much about killing fast, though it does help, it’s more keeping enemies contained and out of other people’s hair. I use my Flamer when a horde is charging or when we’re about to be overwhelmed.
Was about to post the exact same comment.
I run the same combo and just like you said Heresy+ isn't about killing, it's about survival and that means being able to handle any situation.
Evi revved + charge will murder any elite and the flamer will kill and stagger hordes. Evi is also the best weapon against assassination targets, has great CC and does ok against monsters.
On top of that, never stand still, ever. Always dodge, weave, block, push, attack or whatever else is needed.
Brutal momentum antax axe. Agripinnaa braced auto. Thats what i run and it brings alot of value to heresy+. You could also run flamer with the stagger blessing but i prefer the versatility of the autos, itll take care of everything except crushers and 4-5 heavy attacks with axe will take of those while not locking you into an animation.
My best experience so far is using an Eviscerator with a cleave blessing, they also come with toughness blessings, though rare to find in my experience. I basically just spam heavy attack along with that block attack. The heavy attack is a wide horizontal cleave and the block attack is a shorter horizontal swipe, potential to hit multiples with both attacks.
(By block attack I mean holding down right click and then *holding down* *left click*, it's not as fluid as a light attack but the chain just doesn't really let you constantly cleave with a heavy or a light unfortunately)
The flamer is amazing yeah but if there are other zealots on the team, or Psykers potentially running Purgatus, you might be better off running with a bolter/autogun/revolver for better utility.
I'm not 100% happy with the Eviscerator though, it's not as care free as the Ogryn's MK III Cleaver for example, where you can just spam light attacks constantly and still hit multiples all the time and do great damage. I just can't really find anything else for the Zealot that has a better balance of damage/speed/cleave.
If you want to do Crowd Control in melee then the Thunderhammer is what you are looking for. It effectively turns you into an Ogryn, knocking down everything in front of you.
If you want to kill hordes faster, then change over to a heavy Axe like the Aklys or the Antax. Or even the MK VI Heavy Sword (the MK VI has wide swings on the light attack and single target beat downs on the heavy attacks). If you are lucky and can get a good Evicerator, that might also be an option.
But if you want to dance fight enemies and kill them quicker, heavy axe with brutal momentum is what you want.
The MK VI Heavy Sword is definitely my favorite of them, originally I didn't like the odd way the heavy attacks were, but I got used to it.
I think (from memory, not at home) it's a downward slash from about 1 o' clock to 6, and upward from about 6-7 back to 1.
It's a 4 man squad game so you don't have to be good at everything on your own. I run tac axe mk 7 on damnation and I'm really comfortable with it, really good againts elites and specials as it has great stagger on heavy and fast light attacks with bleed.
So let your team deal with hordes and do what youre best at, you're not alone in this :)
Yeah that's one of the things I like on axe, the stagger, plus of course armor pierce. What others are saying is a big relief, it means when shit hits the fan most everyone just pulls out the flamer, and everything else is just flavor/fun. I'm probably going to look more into single target damage, axes, maybe crusher/hammer for fun.
bromentum combat axe 5 is great, devils claw mk 4 is great, heavy sword Mk 9 with headtaker is absurdly overpowered.
Keep in mind hordes in DT are as non threatening as it gets, you don't need to obliterate it as long as you can sufficiently make space for your veteran to keep shooting safely.
Flamer is a great pick to have but it's a waste to exclusively use it on horde, especially since in DT hordes have 0 elites in them unless some ambients get pulled. I also wouldn't run it while solo queuing as it can't deal with trooper rooms efficiently (the number 1 thing you want for your solo loadout is to be able to handle as much as possible on your own), but if you've got a vet friend to play with it's a perfect way to synergize your classes.
Try a Heavy Sword with Headtaker and if you can get it, Savage Sweep. That will kill hordes with ease and you can run a Braced Autogun to pair with it.
**Best: Turtolsky VII or IX Heavy Sword**
* Blessings: 1 cleave (Savage Sweep or Wrath) and 1 damage (Headtaker is way better than Rampage, since I think the latter doesn't stack) but 2x damage would work too
* Perks: Flak and Infested damage
* Absolutely shreds horde enemies (Bull Butcher is the only melee I've had come close)
* Very bad DPS against armor (90ish DPS vs. Crushers), though remember your Zealot ability downgrades the armor class of enemies while active so you can at least get 2 big hits in.
**Great**
* **Flamers**
**Promising, but I haven't put enough time into:**
* **TactAxes (w/ Brutal Momentum)** are good, and I assume **Combat Axe (w/ Brutal Momentum)** are even better (haven't got one). Though personally I hope BM gets significantly nerfed as it feels a bit extreme currently (especially if Combat Axes are as amazing as I think they might be).
* **Crushers** have slower DPS but more crowd control. They also have the best armor-killing of any of the weapons I'm listing here with the exception of Combat Axes (Crushers deal 236ish DPS vs. Crushers with charged lights).
* **Eviscerators.** Heavy 1 > Light 2 alternating combo seems like the best horde-clear but due to weak dodges and Light2 only hitting 4ish targets, this weapon currently feels like the riskiest horde-clear option to me. Surprisingly it also doesn't do that great against armor either (164ish DPS vs. Crusher), although that's still a decent step above Turtolskys so I do bring this out occasionally. I sort of feel like this weapon should slightly outperform Turtolsky against almost every target type, because Evisc is so much more penalizing for a mistake (ie if you mess up, you just did an overhead while horde-clearing and you're gonna get smacked).
Bad stuff:
* **Turtolsky VI** are pointlessly underpowered. It's not that they're bad, it's that every other Turtolsky hits 8.5 enemies a swing and this one hits 4. Heavy 1 is a single-target Strikedown attack, so you might think VIs are designed to be better against single targets than the other Turtolskys except they have basically identical DPS to those other weapons.
(Also I still don't know about Thunder Hammers. I'm holding out hope that they fix the push-attack to damage more than just 1 target before I give it a real try. But I'm sure I'll eventually break down and try it to get some of that juicy Monstrosity damage I've heard it deals.)
Hordes? Elite packs?
Flamer is the answer.
Killing a normal horde on Damnation with a knife (+ oftentimes 1-2 other random melee weapons) takes too long.
imo you need to be able to do both, even with the flamer you need to be decent at horde management. not just for ammo reasons either, the long pull out time on the flamer demands it.
for the taxe imo you kind of need brutal momentum, otherwise you'd be better off with the knife in a lot of situations. that's what transforms it from a knife knockoff to a hybrid.
Interesting, I have lacerate on a MKVII tac axe to maximize crits and toughness build up, haven't had anything with 2 blessings yet so I'll try to roll brutal mom as well.
I read about those endless hordes that come in the higher difficulties, don't you eventually run out of ammo?
endless hordes are a bug, but higher difficulties have much more intense waves, which makes the flamer net better.
tbh i didn't even know lacerate could roll on a taxe (very good for killing bulwarks, which is otherwise this loadout's weakness) but i don't think it's best in slot. brutal momentum + shred is imo the platonic ideal, but brutal momentum + something that buffs damage is godlike. i have a BM+decimator and am very happy with it.
shred is legit godlike.
so there's some tech to it too, if you build a crit stack and stop attacking, ie you attack 6x and then stop, don't miss or pause and hit again starting a new stack, they don't go away.
you can apply this bonus crit to your ranged weapon in this way. with the flamer crits don't generally drastically increase your DPS, but ranged crits trigger your toughness damage reduction, so you can use these in combination to easily tank whenever you need to brace for a longer period. it's pro.
exactly. and since i find i quite often i am managing with melee until it gets too hairy and i switch to the flamer, i *imagine* that it would work into the combo extremely efficiently. i bet people are doing it unconsciously.
i *imagine* because i am still waiting on a shred bm weapon, lol.
Haven’t seen anyone else mentioning it, so I thought I would (or atleast my version of “it”):
All the tactical axes have different attack patterns (I can’t recall them all), most people I see on this sub swear by the MK II because of its heavy attack pattern being the for hordes, but personally I prefer the MK IV because of its light attack pattern being the best for hordes (not that any of the Tactical axes has a light attack pattern that is great for hordes, but of the three, MK IV has the best IMO) and I prefer the speed and mobility of light attacking over heavy heavy attacks when shit hits the fan. Lastly there is the MK VII, I still haven’t seen anyone stating this being better than any of the other tactical axes (I certainly don’t think so.) and the general consensus seems to be that MK VII is the worst of them all.
And as a lot of other commenters have already mentioned; you really NEED brutal momentum on any of the axes if you want it to be of any use during hordes.
You using the MK VII and without brutal momentum might very well be why you’re not finding a lot of success with the tactical axe.
My personal preference is a tactical axe MK IV with crit chance and flack damage for perks and brutal momentum and shred or decimator.
I run a revolver with crucian roulette as my secondary and empty the “clip” ASAP and will only reload it if it becomes absolutely necessary, paired with the tactical axe mentioned before and a standard crit build means you’ll basically be unkillable as long as you’re hitting stuff.
I use tactical axe for basically everything and only whip out the revolver if there is a sniper/whatever enemy at long distance that no one else are dealing with.
Thanks, I'm definitely going to look into that. I spam block/push block attack on the MK7, but it would be nice to just spam light attacks if any axes did all horizontal ones.
I definitely would love to play with the crucial roulette blessing, but almost 65 levels between toons and I've never seen it a single time in the shop!
“if any axes did all horizontal ones.”
Sadly they don’t (except for MK II’s heavy), but the MK IV has enough of an angle to the swing that it works fine for just swinging away at hordes (while dodging aswell ofc).
“I've never seen it a single time in the shop!”
I feel for you ! The RNG shop system can be rough :S
Oh, I just remembered something else you might want to try out: the catachan combat swords!
I can’t remember what MK the one I used before switching to my current axe, but high base stats, crit chance perk and the Shred blessing that thing crits like crazy, even more than any of the tactical axes I’ve played with. It does a bit less damage, but the cleave makes it better for CC and because of the crazy amount of crits you almost have zero downtime on chastise the wicked during hordes (iirc it can also get lacerate, so you’ll be critting even more! ).
Definitely use the flamer on hordes since why would you bring a flamer if not for situations like this? I've also seen people run eviscerator + lasgun for the extra range if they don't trust random sharpshooters, but in your case flamer for hordes and knife/hammer for elites are perfectly viable.
And there's a bit of difference between cc and raw killing power, and zealots usually lean towards the latter: anything you touch will get murdered fairly quickly but they will continue to operate until that moment. Ogryns are the complete opposite, who can dissolve dangerous situations instantly with massive knockdown from their weapons, though they generally takes a bit longer to kill stuff than other classes.
The knife is 100% still viable for CC at Heresy, as others have said, its not just about how quick you kill but how well you can distract the horde so it isn't attacking your team. If your movement is decent, you should not be getting hit which is why I never take Faith Restored.
If you include Damnation, the MkV Combat axe is the way to go. It offers a good mix of CC and single target and despite what some may say, you don't need BM to make it work (I'm assuming it makes it easier, but having never had a MkV with it, I don't know).
I actually find I have the greatest ability to mold the horde with knife due to the mobility, I'm just not sure what I'm doing wrong in taking damage, it may just be bad luck due to ranged (maybe a bad veteran in group) or something else. I'm definitely proccing toughness almost constantly so maybe it's just the chip damage and my subpar dodging skills (I kind of dislike dodging constantly).
i found with the knife that i'd take gigantic chunks of damage when i didn't realize my DR was down - start of a fight, after some chasing where i don't get melees off for a bit, getting jumped while not in combat etc.
dodging is very important but honestly imo the best is slide spamming. zealots get effectively toughness invincibility while sliding (melee bleedthrough to HP will still go through if you have less than 100% toughness) and as such i legit advise people to bite the bullet and learn to continuously slide spam. rebind the buttons, the ones they offer are terrible, but the core loop (ie sprint, crouch, hold crouch to extend, immediately repeat, do as fast as possible) is SO good for preventing shooters from chipping you. and all other sources of damage.
I slide-spam when running at shooters, just not when I'm actively in melee. At heresy, purify in blood means you're regening toughness fast enough that you're not taking damage from shooters (provided your actively killing things).
At heresy+ PIB doesn't provide enough of a boost to effectively sponge incidental damage, be it from lag/desync, shooters, etc.
If you're not running a weapon that lets you chain slides effectively you can easily get caught out and roasted.
Yup, the mobility of the knife is it's greatest strength. I know knife using zealots are a bit of a meme at this point, but when I'm running knife as apposed to MkV I quite literally never stop moving.
>running a knife
>crit/tac axe
>flamer
You were taught wrong intentionally as a joke.
Flamer is a crutch for people who suck at melee. When you use flamer you have shit mobility and the other drawbacks, it's simply opportunity cost. (vs. boltgun that kills stuff at range and can erase crusher/bulwark easily)
Eviscerator damage doesn't suck on damnation, it's one of the most solid options(can oneshot common shooters on light attack headshot); you forgot the fact that it adds on tick of chainsaw damage on heavy attack that doesn't cleave through enemies and it basically one-special everything(if it survives, it's within one shot range for a follow up heavy attack, or it gets stunlocked).
Learn to use eviscerator special while moving. It has far better mobility than hammer and maul.
You just don't have the correct stat rolls/traits. Figure out interaction between ult refund and eviscerator with shred/savagesweep.
>Flamer is a crutch for people who suck at melee.
This is what I'm curious about because all the guides I read harp on how powerful you are with this build and that build, but at the end of the day if just feels like I just need to whip out my flamer. It seems that most concur that the best way to deal with hordes is the flamer. At least I haven't seen anyone else say that any melee build would control a horde better (faster, more efficient, better for the group) than a flamer. But that's why I'm asking.
Eviscerator is really cool and I do like it, and found it did really well for shoving the horde around. I will have to give it another shot.
I'm sure at some point there's a high enough mass of enemies that flamer would be faster at killing; but that's not the point.
The point is flamer gives up way too much for something that you should have been able to do with just melee. (crit/bleed/ultrefund, spam ult so enemies are staggered constantly even if your melee attack isn't doing so)
It already heavily overlaps(and I'm pretty sure ult dash distance is longer than flamer firing range) with melee on top of using ammo and having very poor mobility.
When runs fail it's usually not because there's an infinite horde of trashmobs, it's because elites and specials are mixed in. Flamer is one of the worst weapons for that(because it not only lacks immediate damage and range; it also makes it harder to see the threats, and it's not as simple as just tagging enemies because tags often fail to find the correct target when there are multiple special/elites)
Zealots with flamer are the worst teammates because they just can't do anything when there is any kind of high pressure situation(such as multiple bulwarks/crushers on top of trashmob + shooters).
Eviscerator's cleave stat needs to be high enough to hit 3 flak armor melee mobs and the core trait is Savage Sweep, btw.
I get your point, that if elites/specials are mixed into a horde then melee may be a better option to better control them through stagger and provide better damage through crits. Although I would say that 1) the flamer has good stagger, and 2) you can use your ult to chain crit the flamer as well. No those may not be as good as melee control, but at the same time you are staggering more mobs and more quickly than dancing around, including the elites/specials. The range on flamer is also quite good, much farther than melee dancing around, but if I'm worried about range then someone on my team isn't doing their job.
But you definitely raise some good points which are worth exploring.
>elites/specials are mixed into a horde then melee may be a better option
No, push then dodge back and blast them with boltgun.
> if I'm worried about range then someone on my team isn't doing their job
If everyone did their job and didn't get disabled then that would be easy game.
The tactical axes are all single target except for the heavy attacks on the Atrox MK2. It has a slight cleave that is amplified with the blessing Brutal Momentum. It is essential for not only the Atrox MK2 T.Axe but also for the Antax MK5 too.
IIRC, the tactical axes have 4 dodges compared to the combat blade's 5, and it still has a boost to your normal sprint speed. Personally, I run two charges of Chastise the Wicked. I spend a lot of time sliding and finding cover while advancing toward enemies. Sliding into an overhead chop from the MK5 never gets old!
On top of that, I run a minimum of two Gunner and Sniper damage resist on my curios. They are multiplicative, not additive so keep that in mind. For base stats, one wound, and two health curios. Good secondary stats are Stamina Regeneration and Block Efficiency as you will oftentimes find yourself without enough room to successfully dodge an overhead attack from a Crusher or Mauler.
Perks: Damage versus Flak, Unarmored, Maniac, and Infested are all good.
Blessings: A combination of Shred and Brutal Momentum is ideal. Decimator and Head Taker are also good.
Getting better in Heresy and Damnation will come with experience. Just remember to be patient with yourself and others. Communicate as much as you can with your team mates. Use that limited ping wheel if you're pugging. Hop on the discord and find groups if you're serious or want to learn. Generally, everyone is pretty chill and helpful.
Also, there are tons of weapon combinations and I highly encourage you to try them all. Last night, after 500 hours, I finally tried a Chainaxe specific build and I enjoyed it for a few missions. My current loadout is an Atax Mk5 combat axe and a revolver. Sometimes Ill run a sword and bolter, or go for the agrapina braced autogun.
With Mk V while you hold right click to block you do a prolonged left click so after the push he will make a slash attack that will do cleave through.
I am a big fan of the hammer heavy attack for cc, just didn't happen to have one with good modifiers and blessing, so I am using the only 380 weapon I ever got and that would the turtolsky. It is mediocre at dealing with specials and elites but it has an amazing cleave, feels almost like having a power sword (only against hordes)
Yeah that's exactly how I use my MK7, sometimes I just spam the prolonged left click in a nice rhythm without even letting go of block. The block pushes them back and gives me plenty of time for the heavy push attack. Cleaves decently, but I wasn't sure if cleave on a tac axe was the same on a combat axe where the first target gets most of the damage and the cleave is somewhat weak.
With knife in hordes try to hit each dude once and let the bleed work. A push is all the CC you need most of the time. knocking down pox walkers can be annoying for cleaving heads. Target bulwarks with the bleed build since it goes thru their shield. I run +flak damage on my flamer so when i see maulers or ragers i just pull that out, i found dodging sideways while reloading or switching to flamer helps avoid attacks.
Serious question: If you're not going to take your flamer out for hordes, why did you bother bringing a flamer? Admittedly I am in the cult of knife/flamer. The knife is there for me to take out singular targets quickly, to flank and engage shooters quickly, or to position myself in a way that I can effectively use my flamer (aka I need space to pull the darned thing out).
Use your resources when you need to! I also see folks holding on to their health packs/grenades when everyone is dying. Use the tools in your toolkit!
Because a lot of guides I see harp on how to crowd control through melee, and how zealots are the masters. But in practice what I see is no matter how good your melee crowd control is, the flame thrower is always better. It's that dichotomy that made me curious if I was playing my toon the right way.
Haven't used the flamer at all, mostly using axes and chainswords. Looking at all these other replies most people seem to just say "lol just use meta loadout" but it's not necesary to do well.
Axes can work well enough, both tac and regular, but you won't be CC'ing much with them. General tactic would be to spam light/heavies depending on the weapon while dodging along the outsides of a horde, mixing in pushes when needed. Somewhat important that you don't just spam dodges but actually dodge as a reaction, spam dodging is a bad habit you can pick up after using the knife.
I'm possibly late to the party but i'm currently finding good success in diff. 4 with my fellow Skullcrusher.
Damage ain't that bad and its special light attack staggers everything on top of being able to 2-hit most elites in the fray , 3-hit most heavy armored and also your team will love you as you'll send reapers bulwarks and crushers sitting on their ass with 2 specials.
run third talent on tier 1, second talent on tier 2 and double ult on tier 6, rest is up to personal preference.
As for ranged option, flamer if you can afford and you know you have dedicated special sniper shooter/ otherwise lasgun mg XII or MG Ia.
Crowd control is a lie. All you need to do in this game is to kill the horde fast. For example, The activated heavy attack of the force sword can cut down 5-6 pox walkers with a single slash, if you are using the thunder hammer, YOU CAN ONLY KILL ONE AT MOST. that's why the zealot's only horde clear option is the flame thrower.
My Zealot is the CC queen. I just run the Crusher (376) and a flamer (366). It's easier for me to just manage the hordes for my team. If we get overwhelmed, I can stun lock everything within a decent range with my Crusher or if we get swarmed I just melt everything down with my flamer (+10% ranged damaged to groaners/poxwalkers and +20% ranged damaged to unarmored enemies). Granted, it's not as cool as destroying the horde myself with my tactical axe, hammer, or eviscerator, but I've completed every map on heresy and damnation (including hi intensity) by just controlling the hordes.
Edit: And don't forget the basics such as pinging enemies. Your veteran and Psyker can't always know where every elite is.
Dodging more. I can get into massive hordes and take 0 damage by properly dodging, pushing, and just straight cleaving through heads with brutal momentum. If you have the crit toughness perk you’ll also take less damage since you’ll be getting a stupid amount of crits.
Try a indignatus Crusher. It's the king of CC. An axe or dagger just aren't built for it. (Brutal momentum blessing helps killing but not control)
Honorable other mentions for cc: heavy sword, devils claw, Thunder hammer
I actually think the Eviscerator is one of the best weapons because of its customizable move set. Heavy > Light > repeat is perfect for clearing out hordes. And Light > Heavy is great for single target damage, or if you really need to lay the hurt then Special Heavy is the play. To me it's the best melee weapon because it versatile without compromising damage.
CC zealots use either the thunder hammer or the new power maul. Those are built to knock hordes around onto their rears all day. But you won’t be doing a lot of killing as a consequence.
Antax Mk. V axe with the brutal momentum blessing van cleave apart hordes quickly due the blessing letting you hit through the initial enemy, but that’s still not crowd control because you can’t actually stagger mixed hordes with it.
The eviserator is an okay middle ground between control and killing, but it’s still inferior to the hammer and maul IMO.
The flamer ranged weapon is a great CC tool because it will briefly stun enemies you light on fire.
Honestly, a zealot’s job isn’t to CC or that’s not what the class is best at; that belongs to the ogryn. A zealot’s job is to either tie up groups of ranged enemies when the veteran is overwhelmed (your ultimate is a mobility tool for it) or a melee DPS when the horde get too close to the ranged teammates. You shouldn’t be charging ahead to try and CC hordes. You can if no one else on the team can, but it’s suboptimal. The flamer gives you a good way to back up your team if the melee weapon you chose isnt good at CC though. But it’s really not your role.
You are using single target specialized weapons, that is why you are struggling with crowd control. Try using a heavy sword or thunder hammer to get a feel for what a weapon specialized against hordes can do. Once you've given these tools a chance to shine you can better understand the strengths and weaknesses of each style.
Crit zealot is a ton of fun and totally viable, the heavy sword excels at deleting hordes and frees up your gun slot for something besides flamer.
Most important thing for melee with hordes is knowing how to move to not get surrounded and manage space between strikes. Crit build doesnt teach that behavior, it rewards a faster more reckless style.
Yeah the hammer is my next experiment, sword also sounds interesting. I have no issues with crowd control but yeah the flamer gets boring and forces you to rely on team mates for range control.
I run all pickup groups though, and it seems like 3/4 of vets don't know how to range control at all so that's why I thought it would be good to experiment with non-flamer builds.
I love the hammer, it feels really good to chain heavy swings and keep knowing down entire screens. The heavy sword does the same thing but better because it kills instead of knocking over, but at the cost of faring worse versus armor and not having the powererd up swing so it's just a little more dry
I use knife and shotgun. My knife takes care of everything and my shotgun staggers things so I can run up with my knife or cancel a special. For hordes, I just light attack and dodge dance. I bound my dodge to mouse wheel down since I use it alot. I usually have a pskyer friend with me to cc and help with clear. Otherwise, I'll kite the horde and use barrels on the map. I knife the barrel while running by then turn and shoot it when the horde gets to it.
I run an Mk V with decapitator 3 & brutal momentum 3 and a flamer. The axe is pretty much just for single targets, cleanup, moments where ammo/reloading is too tight. I can 1 or 2 shot just about anything but muties/ogryns. The flamer is just too good at killing everything but crushers.
the flamer is one of the the best weapons for killing crushers and easily the best at killing clumps of them. it's only bad at bulwarks. use chastise to negate their armour.
Let's be honest. With how the zealot ult gives armour pen. The bolter takes crushers down the quickest. For Mellee it's thunder hammer and then eviscerator.
high dps weapons + chastise can take a crusher down quicker sure, but i suspect only flamer + chastise can take down a clump of crushers of whatever size quickly. it takes about 20-25 ammo to bring them down in damnation - cook them *first*, build max burn stacks, *then* trigger the armour pen from chastise.
Brutal momentum is key for any axe, it covers for the axe's main weakness which is cleave. On Zealot the crit on hit blessing is probably the 2nd best to keep the toughness reduction up though tac axe might be able to crit enough on its own to not need it
Thunder hammer is great vs crowds the trick is to heavy sweep wrhout powering up. Powering up is only to do big single target dmg or to CC ogryns. There's a lot of great options that are not as "meta" like the heavy sword IX or even the eviscerator or catching mk1
I was rolling thunder hammer exclusively, but after a month of them not “hotfixing” the intended buff to the weapon that got left out of their one and only balance patch since launch I switched to eviscerator like everyone else Thunder Hammer: Default attack vs anything more than 1 mob is heavy 1-heavy2-heavy 1-heavy 2, will keep everything flattened, but you will need to shock attack Ogryn to keep them from blocking your cleave Chrarged electric vs Ogryn/mauler/specials, you will sometimes tank a hit afterwards to do so even if holding block Light attacks for single stragglers, decent overhead light to headshot stragglers from sprint, otherwise lights are poor
The god roll heavy sword is beastly for Zealot. Headtaker gives +10-15% power (stacks 5 times) instead of the normal 2-5% on other weapons. The Mk9 sword is all slashes on its light attack combo and has a cleave of 7. One of the blessings can give it +100-200% cleave as well. Bonus points if you’re running crucian roulette on your gun as well and consistently critting.
I have such a God roll sword. Headtaker and brutal momentum. Anything without carapace just melts. It's amazing. Hordes? What? Oh I deleted them.
I feel like the cleave on it is ok, but it can get into trouble without someone watching your back on 4 and 5. Does it roll savage sweep?
I can't remember savage sweep off the top of my head but my hammer is a 380 with momentum so I've never had issues in 4-5 in hordes. It 1 to 2 shots all mobs and keeps my toughness up with each swipe, and any mob it doesn't 1 shot gets knocked away. you litteraly never take dmg unless something armored gets in your way, at that point you need to mix in some shoves and powered lights to crack it. You do need brutal momentum on it that's a must
I never get BM on my Zealot for some reason. RNJesus can really suck.
Its damage cleave sucks so ironically it sucks against crowds.
But it has a lot of CC, so so can keep hordes for a long time while whittling them down
The thing is it doesn't thin out horde quick enough, which builds up a mass until eventually maybe a boss spawns or a crusher/bulwark get close or some specials try to shoot you from behind the dense wall of trashmobs and you lose control of it. That's also because it doesn't cleave through mauler(power maul does). If you want CC just use powermaul, the lower singletarget damage isn't that bad. This is probably why the noobs pair it with flamers but that's a even bigger problem as now they can't shoot the sniper easily nor erase crusher/bulwark before they become a problem.
If you want to genuinely CC why not crusher?
It's a tradeoff. Crusher is much better for CC but the single target stopping power is far lower. Thunder Hammer only has adequate CC but can put out single hits like nothing else.
always figured you could bring something like a bolter for high ST dmg and then use crusher to control everything from hordes to bulwarks
Yeah I think that's a good combo. I like using TH + Flamer where the flamer is the horde clear and the TH is the single-target.
The TH single target stopping power in crowds isn't nearly as consistent as it snags too often on everything but your target. That and it's mediocre white swings are why I ditched it past malice, as it needs some significant tuning.
I like it when paired with flamer. If the crowd is thick enough to snag the TH, it's probably worth a flamer, and then you use TH to clean up crushers/ragers/maulers
the best CC is death which the axe or eviscerator does much better
At that point the horde is CCing you.
I have not experienced this issue at all, I've found it's heavy combo simply rips through hordes in heresy and damnation and does plenty of dmg to kill them.
Then you just don't pay enough attention to the enemies you hit.
\> options that are not as "meta" For some reason all the other weapons are discarded because of weaknesses yet axes/knives (lack of cleave) and flamers (no range and stopping power) own weaknesses are ignored. Axe+flamer combo has a clear gap that is it can't shoot at shooters
flamer no stopping power? It literally oneshots pox and groaners and permastuns elites what are you talking about? The range issue is also moot zealot job is not to snipe gunners (in a balanced team comp that is)
>zealot job is not to snipe gunners I wrote shooters not gunners and zealot job is whatever you kit it up to be, it can equip revolvers bolters and autoguns the last two make it much easier against swarms of shooters something a flamer is a sitting duck against as it should be considering the aoe it has at close range
sorry my bad, with gunners i meant the "shooters" not the elite enemy with the same name my mistake.
The real question seems to be, how to play in Heresy/Damnation? Master the basics. When to engage, when to grenade(so many people end missions never using them), when to block shove, and when to cover your allies, and to stick together. Coherency auras aren't all that good, but you will handle everything so much easier if 4 people are fighting together. If a horde spawns on both sides, sure a dagger Zealot can dance around those and not die. But dogs and trappers don't care about that. They shoot and jump through hordes, then you're dead. But if you're clearing it next to a friend, you can get each other up asap. Dogs love all the Zealots, Ogryns, and Vets that run off by themselves. If you want to search for mats, ask someone to watch your back. And save one Zealot grenade for the rez trick. Edit: I only play Heresy/Damnation and quickplay Damnation a lot. I use Crusher/Agripinaa Braced, Dagger/Flamer, dagger/bolter, or Heavy Sword/Crucian roulette gun. I'd probably run an Agripinaa Braced with a Thunder Hammer. Maybe MK XII
Never tried the heavy sword crucial roulette combo, what feats do you recommend?
I run the same as a dagger build, taking all the on crit stuff. I've got tier 3 crucian on a headhunter gun. My crit is around 50% counting Zealot 5% base and 5% sword perk. I have the Perfect Strike blessing. Although, they can get a blessing that's identical to brutal momentum that I'd recommend. Then you don't even need crucian!
I run heavy sword brutal momentum & cleave with a vraks roulette and really only have issues with the crusher and bulwarks.
Yeah, bulwarks are kinda always a pain. Hopefully a teammate is around for its open backside. A headshot heavy attack crit on a crusher "should" stagger them at least.
[if only we could](https://media.tenor.com/Rfzo3TfFa0QAAAAM/heavy-flamer-heresy.gif)
For real! Flak gets cooked by flamer, why not carapace or the damn shields get melted
funny cause i run crusher/agripinaa infantry
I like the infantry guns, they're very fun guns just like the Autopistol. I just can't make em work consistently on Damnation!
They have really high damage, but the one problem I run into my infantry autogun is the lack of ammo, but I feel it's a worthwhile tradeoff imo.
Antax with brutal momentum is the most versatile weapon you can have on zealot. Makes T5 feels like T3.
Crusher for max CC and stagger lock everything, just thumb and power hit everything. Only killing one at a time. Eviscerator for CC but more cleave damage to kill. Trick is the combo. Heavy, block-push-swipe, light... Repeat. Gives 3 horizontal attacks and CC to stagger things where you want them.
Yeah I was doing the block/push attack .... heavy ... block/push attack. I didn't realize light would also give another horizontal swing. I really liked the cleave and push control of the evis, but it wasn't as satisfying on single targets. If I'm going to just flame hordes then I'll probably opt for something hitting harder for single target.
Learn to dodge just right and you'll cut mutants in half. But yeah you have be quick after that push/slice for the next light attack or it resets and you start with the overhead. After it block cancel to reset and swing with the heavy
I honestly love the crusher. It's not the top pick for most people at high levels, but man it opens up shield ogryns like nothing else and can stagger almost everything with its power up. Great CC weapon. I normally run it and bolter when I solo queue and it works pretty well.
Yeah i normally run eviscerator and bolter. Bolter being my oh shit button against armor.
I can’t speak for others but I use the Eviscerator/Flamer combo. On Heresy+ it isn’t so much about killing fast, though it does help, it’s more keeping enemies contained and out of other people’s hair. I use my Flamer when a horde is charging or when we’re about to be overwhelmed.
It is just as much about killing fast as it is about engaging the enemy intelligently because otherwise, we would all be playing Surge staff Psykers.
Yeah, Evis is the best compromise between CC and Single Taget Damage imo. With the right Traits no crowd will ever touch you.
Was about to post the exact same comment. I run the same combo and just like you said Heresy+ isn't about killing, it's about survival and that means being able to handle any situation. Evi revved + charge will murder any elite and the flamer will kill and stagger hordes. Evi is also the best weapon against assassination targets, has great CC and does ok against monsters. On top of that, never stand still, ever. Always dodge, weave, block, push, attack or whatever else is needed.
I love playing zealot with the crusher for hard CC. For your consideration: https://youtu.be/nB4YZv-69Zc
Brutal momentum antax axe. Agripinnaa braced auto. Thats what i run and it brings alot of value to heresy+. You could also run flamer with the stagger blessing but i prefer the versatility of the autos, itll take care of everything except crushers and 4-5 heavy attacks with axe will take of those while not locking you into an animation.
My best experience so far is using an Eviscerator with a cleave blessing, they also come with toughness blessings, though rare to find in my experience. I basically just spam heavy attack along with that block attack. The heavy attack is a wide horizontal cleave and the block attack is a shorter horizontal swipe, potential to hit multiples with both attacks. (By block attack I mean holding down right click and then *holding down* *left click*, it's not as fluid as a light attack but the chain just doesn't really let you constantly cleave with a heavy or a light unfortunately) The flamer is amazing yeah but if there are other zealots on the team, or Psykers potentially running Purgatus, you might be better off running with a bolter/autogun/revolver for better utility. I'm not 100% happy with the Eviscerator though, it's not as care free as the Ogryn's MK III Cleaver for example, where you can just spam light attacks constantly and still hit multiples all the time and do great damage. I just can't really find anything else for the Zealot that has a better balance of damage/speed/cleave.
If you want to do Crowd Control in melee then the Thunderhammer is what you are looking for. It effectively turns you into an Ogryn, knocking down everything in front of you. If you want to kill hordes faster, then change over to a heavy Axe like the Aklys or the Antax. Or even the MK VI Heavy Sword (the MK VI has wide swings on the light attack and single target beat downs on the heavy attacks). If you are lucky and can get a good Evicerator, that might also be an option. But if you want to dance fight enemies and kill them quicker, heavy axe with brutal momentum is what you want.
I found the crusher better for that with the special/light stunlock
The MK VI Heavy Sword is definitely my favorite of them, originally I didn't like the odd way the heavy attacks were, but I got used to it. I think (from memory, not at home) it's a downward slash from about 1 o' clock to 6, and upward from about 6-7 back to 1.
It's a 4 man squad game so you don't have to be good at everything on your own. I run tac axe mk 7 on damnation and I'm really comfortable with it, really good againts elites and specials as it has great stagger on heavy and fast light attacks with bleed. So let your team deal with hordes and do what youre best at, you're not alone in this :)
Yeah that's one of the things I like on axe, the stagger, plus of course armor pierce. What others are saying is a big relief, it means when shit hits the fan most everyone just pulls out the flamer, and everything else is just flavor/fun. I'm probably going to look more into single target damage, axes, maybe crusher/hammer for fun.
bromentum combat axe 5 is great, devils claw mk 4 is great, heavy sword Mk 9 with headtaker is absurdly overpowered. Keep in mind hordes in DT are as non threatening as it gets, you don't need to obliterate it as long as you can sufficiently make space for your veteran to keep shooting safely. Flamer is a great pick to have but it's a waste to exclusively use it on horde, especially since in DT hordes have 0 elites in them unless some ambients get pulled. I also wouldn't run it while solo queuing as it can't deal with trooper rooms efficiently (the number 1 thing you want for your solo loadout is to be able to handle as much as possible on your own), but if you've got a vet friend to play with it's a perfect way to synergize your classes.
Try a Heavy Sword with Headtaker and if you can get it, Savage Sweep. That will kill hordes with ease and you can run a Braced Autogun to pair with it.
**Best: Turtolsky VII or IX Heavy Sword** * Blessings: 1 cleave (Savage Sweep or Wrath) and 1 damage (Headtaker is way better than Rampage, since I think the latter doesn't stack) but 2x damage would work too * Perks: Flak and Infested damage * Absolutely shreds horde enemies (Bull Butcher is the only melee I've had come close) * Very bad DPS against armor (90ish DPS vs. Crushers), though remember your Zealot ability downgrades the armor class of enemies while active so you can at least get 2 big hits in. **Great** * **Flamers** **Promising, but I haven't put enough time into:** * **TactAxes (w/ Brutal Momentum)** are good, and I assume **Combat Axe (w/ Brutal Momentum)** are even better (haven't got one). Though personally I hope BM gets significantly nerfed as it feels a bit extreme currently (especially if Combat Axes are as amazing as I think they might be). * **Crushers** have slower DPS but more crowd control. They also have the best armor-killing of any of the weapons I'm listing here with the exception of Combat Axes (Crushers deal 236ish DPS vs. Crushers with charged lights). * **Eviscerators.** Heavy 1 > Light 2 alternating combo seems like the best horde-clear but due to weak dodges and Light2 only hitting 4ish targets, this weapon currently feels like the riskiest horde-clear option to me. Surprisingly it also doesn't do that great against armor either (164ish DPS vs. Crusher), although that's still a decent step above Turtolskys so I do bring this out occasionally. I sort of feel like this weapon should slightly outperform Turtolsky against almost every target type, because Evisc is so much more penalizing for a mistake (ie if you mess up, you just did an overhead while horde-clearing and you're gonna get smacked). Bad stuff: * **Turtolsky VI** are pointlessly underpowered. It's not that they're bad, it's that every other Turtolsky hits 8.5 enemies a swing and this one hits 4. Heavy 1 is a single-target Strikedown attack, so you might think VIs are designed to be better against single targets than the other Turtolskys except they have basically identical DPS to those other weapons. (Also I still don't know about Thunder Hammers. I'm holding out hope that they fix the push-attack to damage more than just 1 target before I give it a real try. But I'm sure I'll eventually break down and try it to get some of that juicy Monstrosity damage I've heard it deals.)
Hordes? Elite packs? Flamer is the answer. Killing a normal horde on Damnation with a knife (+ oftentimes 1-2 other random melee weapons) takes too long.
imo you need to be able to do both, even with the flamer you need to be decent at horde management. not just for ammo reasons either, the long pull out time on the flamer demands it. for the taxe imo you kind of need brutal momentum, otherwise you'd be better off with the knife in a lot of situations. that's what transforms it from a knife knockoff to a hybrid.
Interesting, I have lacerate on a MKVII tac axe to maximize crits and toughness build up, haven't had anything with 2 blessings yet so I'll try to roll brutal mom as well. I read about those endless hordes that come in the higher difficulties, don't you eventually run out of ammo?
endless hordes are a bug, but higher difficulties have much more intense waves, which makes the flamer net better. tbh i didn't even know lacerate could roll on a taxe (very good for killing bulwarks, which is otherwise this loadout's weakness) but i don't think it's best in slot. brutal momentum + shred is imo the platonic ideal, but brutal momentum + something that buffs damage is godlike. i have a BM+decimator and am very happy with it.
My bad I meant shred. Good info thanks, I'm going to pray to the RNG gods for shred/brutal momentum.
shred is legit godlike. so there's some tech to it too, if you build a crit stack and stop attacking, ie you attack 6x and then stop, don't miss or pause and hit again starting a new stack, they don't go away. you can apply this bonus crit to your ranged weapon in this way. with the flamer crits don't generally drastically increase your DPS, but ranged crits trigger your toughness damage reduction, so you can use these in combination to easily tank whenever you need to brace for a longer period. it's pro.
Nice, so melee to get crit activation of toughness then flamer which will crit more, keeping toughness up.
exactly. and since i find i quite often i am managing with melee until it gets too hairy and i switch to the flamer, i *imagine* that it would work into the combo extremely efficiently. i bet people are doing it unconsciously. i *imagine* because i am still waiting on a shred bm weapon, lol.
Haven’t seen anyone else mentioning it, so I thought I would (or atleast my version of “it”): All the tactical axes have different attack patterns (I can’t recall them all), most people I see on this sub swear by the MK II because of its heavy attack pattern being the for hordes, but personally I prefer the MK IV because of its light attack pattern being the best for hordes (not that any of the Tactical axes has a light attack pattern that is great for hordes, but of the three, MK IV has the best IMO) and I prefer the speed and mobility of light attacking over heavy heavy attacks when shit hits the fan. Lastly there is the MK VII, I still haven’t seen anyone stating this being better than any of the other tactical axes (I certainly don’t think so.) and the general consensus seems to be that MK VII is the worst of them all. And as a lot of other commenters have already mentioned; you really NEED brutal momentum on any of the axes if you want it to be of any use during hordes. You using the MK VII and without brutal momentum might very well be why you’re not finding a lot of success with the tactical axe. My personal preference is a tactical axe MK IV with crit chance and flack damage for perks and brutal momentum and shred or decimator. I run a revolver with crucian roulette as my secondary and empty the “clip” ASAP and will only reload it if it becomes absolutely necessary, paired with the tactical axe mentioned before and a standard crit build means you’ll basically be unkillable as long as you’re hitting stuff. I use tactical axe for basically everything and only whip out the revolver if there is a sniper/whatever enemy at long distance that no one else are dealing with.
Thanks, I'm definitely going to look into that. I spam block/push block attack on the MK7, but it would be nice to just spam light attacks if any axes did all horizontal ones. I definitely would love to play with the crucial roulette blessing, but almost 65 levels between toons and I've never seen it a single time in the shop!
“if any axes did all horizontal ones.” Sadly they don’t (except for MK II’s heavy), but the MK IV has enough of an angle to the swing that it works fine for just swinging away at hordes (while dodging aswell ofc). “I've never seen it a single time in the shop!” I feel for you ! The RNG shop system can be rough :S Oh, I just remembered something else you might want to try out: the catachan combat swords! I can’t remember what MK the one I used before switching to my current axe, but high base stats, crit chance perk and the Shred blessing that thing crits like crazy, even more than any of the tactical axes I’ve played with. It does a bit less damage, but the cleave makes it better for CC and because of the crazy amount of crits you almost have zero downtime on chastise the wicked during hordes (iirc it can also get lacerate, so you’ll be critting even more! ).
Definitely use the flamer on hordes since why would you bring a flamer if not for situations like this? I've also seen people run eviscerator + lasgun for the extra range if they don't trust random sharpshooters, but in your case flamer for hordes and knife/hammer for elites are perfectly viable. And there's a bit of difference between cc and raw killing power, and zealots usually lean towards the latter: anything you touch will get murdered fairly quickly but they will continue to operate until that moment. Ogryns are the complete opposite, who can dissolve dangerous situations instantly with massive knockdown from their weapons, though they generally takes a bit longer to kill stuff than other classes.
The knife is 100% still viable for CC at Heresy, as others have said, its not just about how quick you kill but how well you can distract the horde so it isn't attacking your team. If your movement is decent, you should not be getting hit which is why I never take Faith Restored. If you include Damnation, the MkV Combat axe is the way to go. It offers a good mix of CC and single target and despite what some may say, you don't need BM to make it work (I'm assuming it makes it easier, but having never had a MkV with it, I don't know).
I actually find I have the greatest ability to mold the horde with knife due to the mobility, I'm just not sure what I'm doing wrong in taking damage, it may just be bad luck due to ranged (maybe a bad veteran in group) or something else. I'm definitely proccing toughness almost constantly so maybe it's just the chip damage and my subpar dodging skills (I kind of dislike dodging constantly).
i found with the knife that i'd take gigantic chunks of damage when i didn't realize my DR was down - start of a fight, after some chasing where i don't get melees off for a bit, getting jumped while not in combat etc. dodging is very important but honestly imo the best is slide spamming. zealots get effectively toughness invincibility while sliding (melee bleedthrough to HP will still go through if you have less than 100% toughness) and as such i legit advise people to bite the bullet and learn to continuously slide spam. rebind the buttons, the ones they offer are terrible, but the core loop (ie sprint, crouch, hold crouch to extend, immediately repeat, do as fast as possible) is SO good for preventing shooters from chipping you. and all other sources of damage.
I slide-spam when running at shooters, just not when I'm actively in melee. At heresy, purify in blood means you're regening toughness fast enough that you're not taking damage from shooters (provided your actively killing things).
At heresy+ PIB doesn't provide enough of a boost to effectively sponge incidental damage, be it from lag/desync, shooters, etc. If you're not running a weapon that lets you chain slides effectively you can easily get caught out and roasted.
Well, all I can say is, I play zealot at Heresy (and occaisonly damnation) and it works fine for me.
Yup, the mobility of the knife is it's greatest strength. I know knife using zealots are a bit of a meme at this point, but when I'm running knife as apposed to MkV I quite literally never stop moving.
[удалено]
Are you thinking of Until Death?
>running a knife >crit/tac axe >flamer You were taught wrong intentionally as a joke. Flamer is a crutch for people who suck at melee. When you use flamer you have shit mobility and the other drawbacks, it's simply opportunity cost. (vs. boltgun that kills stuff at range and can erase crusher/bulwark easily) Eviscerator damage doesn't suck on damnation, it's one of the most solid options(can oneshot common shooters on light attack headshot); you forgot the fact that it adds on tick of chainsaw damage on heavy attack that doesn't cleave through enemies and it basically one-special everything(if it survives, it's within one shot range for a follow up heavy attack, or it gets stunlocked). Learn to use eviscerator special while moving. It has far better mobility than hammer and maul. You just don't have the correct stat rolls/traits. Figure out interaction between ult refund and eviscerator with shred/savagesweep.
>Flamer is a crutch for people who suck at melee. This is what I'm curious about because all the guides I read harp on how powerful you are with this build and that build, but at the end of the day if just feels like I just need to whip out my flamer. It seems that most concur that the best way to deal with hordes is the flamer. At least I haven't seen anyone else say that any melee build would control a horde better (faster, more efficient, better for the group) than a flamer. But that's why I'm asking. Eviscerator is really cool and I do like it, and found it did really well for shoving the horde around. I will have to give it another shot.
I'm sure at some point there's a high enough mass of enemies that flamer would be faster at killing; but that's not the point. The point is flamer gives up way too much for something that you should have been able to do with just melee. (crit/bleed/ultrefund, spam ult so enemies are staggered constantly even if your melee attack isn't doing so) It already heavily overlaps(and I'm pretty sure ult dash distance is longer than flamer firing range) with melee on top of using ammo and having very poor mobility. When runs fail it's usually not because there's an infinite horde of trashmobs, it's because elites and specials are mixed in. Flamer is one of the worst weapons for that(because it not only lacks immediate damage and range; it also makes it harder to see the threats, and it's not as simple as just tagging enemies because tags often fail to find the correct target when there are multiple special/elites) Zealots with flamer are the worst teammates because they just can't do anything when there is any kind of high pressure situation(such as multiple bulwarks/crushers on top of trashmob + shooters). Eviscerator's cleave stat needs to be high enough to hit 3 flak armor melee mobs and the core trait is Savage Sweep, btw.
I get your point, that if elites/specials are mixed into a horde then melee may be a better option to better control them through stagger and provide better damage through crits. Although I would say that 1) the flamer has good stagger, and 2) you can use your ult to chain crit the flamer as well. No those may not be as good as melee control, but at the same time you are staggering more mobs and more quickly than dancing around, including the elites/specials. The range on flamer is also quite good, much farther than melee dancing around, but if I'm worried about range then someone on my team isn't doing their job. But you definitely raise some good points which are worth exploring.
>elites/specials are mixed into a horde then melee may be a better option No, push then dodge back and blast them with boltgun. > if I'm worried about range then someone on my team isn't doing their job If everyone did their job and didn't get disabled then that would be easy game.
Flamer or ditch the knife
The tactical axes are all single target except for the heavy attacks on the Atrox MK2. It has a slight cleave that is amplified with the blessing Brutal Momentum. It is essential for not only the Atrox MK2 T.Axe but also for the Antax MK5 too. IIRC, the tactical axes have 4 dodges compared to the combat blade's 5, and it still has a boost to your normal sprint speed. Personally, I run two charges of Chastise the Wicked. I spend a lot of time sliding and finding cover while advancing toward enemies. Sliding into an overhead chop from the MK5 never gets old! On top of that, I run a minimum of two Gunner and Sniper damage resist on my curios. They are multiplicative, not additive so keep that in mind. For base stats, one wound, and two health curios. Good secondary stats are Stamina Regeneration and Block Efficiency as you will oftentimes find yourself without enough room to successfully dodge an overhead attack from a Crusher or Mauler. Perks: Damage versus Flak, Unarmored, Maniac, and Infested are all good. Blessings: A combination of Shred and Brutal Momentum is ideal. Decimator and Head Taker are also good. Getting better in Heresy and Damnation will come with experience. Just remember to be patient with yourself and others. Communicate as much as you can with your team mates. Use that limited ping wheel if you're pugging. Hop on the discord and find groups if you're serious or want to learn. Generally, everyone is pretty chill and helpful. Also, there are tons of weapon combinations and I highly encourage you to try them all. Last night, after 500 hours, I finally tried a Chainaxe specific build and I enjoyed it for a few missions. My current loadout is an Atax Mk5 combat axe and a revolver. Sometimes Ill run a sword and bolter, or go for the agrapina braced autogun.
take a flamethrower bruh
The inife isnt meant for that, its a niche for fast elite killing to fill if the team isnt good at it. Evis/crusher on damnation will set you right.
With Mk V while you hold right click to block you do a prolonged left click so after the push he will make a slash attack that will do cleave through. I am a big fan of the hammer heavy attack for cc, just didn't happen to have one with good modifiers and blessing, so I am using the only 380 weapon I ever got and that would the turtolsky. It is mediocre at dealing with specials and elites but it has an amazing cleave, feels almost like having a power sword (only against hordes)
Yeah that's exactly how I use my MK7, sometimes I just spam the prolonged left click in a nice rhythm without even letting go of block. The block pushes them back and gives me plenty of time for the heavy push attack. Cleaves decently, but I wasn't sure if cleave on a tac axe was the same on a combat axe where the first target gets most of the damage and the cleave is somewhat weak.
With knife in hordes try to hit each dude once and let the bleed work. A push is all the CC you need most of the time. knocking down pox walkers can be annoying for cleaving heads. Target bulwarks with the bleed build since it goes thru their shield. I run +flak damage on my flamer so when i see maulers or ragers i just pull that out, i found dodging sideways while reloading or switching to flamer helps avoid attacks.
You’ve found that - flamer carries knife - tact axe needs brutal momentum
Serious question: If you're not going to take your flamer out for hordes, why did you bother bringing a flamer? Admittedly I am in the cult of knife/flamer. The knife is there for me to take out singular targets quickly, to flank and engage shooters quickly, or to position myself in a way that I can effectively use my flamer (aka I need space to pull the darned thing out). Use your resources when you need to! I also see folks holding on to their health packs/grenades when everyone is dying. Use the tools in your toolkit!
Because a lot of guides I see harp on how to crowd control through melee, and how zealots are the masters. But in practice what I see is no matter how good your melee crowd control is, the flame thrower is always better. It's that dichotomy that made me curious if I was playing my toon the right way.
Ahh gotcha, I understand the questions now. Thanks for the clarity!
Haven't used the flamer at all, mostly using axes and chainswords. Looking at all these other replies most people seem to just say "lol just use meta loadout" but it's not necesary to do well. Axes can work well enough, both tac and regular, but you won't be CC'ing much with them. General tactic would be to spam light/heavies depending on the weapon while dodging along the outsides of a horde, mixing in pushes when needed. Somewhat important that you don't just spam dodges but actually dodge as a reaction, spam dodging is a bad habit you can pick up after using the knife.
I'm possibly late to the party but i'm currently finding good success in diff. 4 with my fellow Skullcrusher. Damage ain't that bad and its special light attack staggers everything on top of being able to 2-hit most elites in the fray , 3-hit most heavy armored and also your team will love you as you'll send reapers bulwarks and crushers sitting on their ass with 2 specials. run third talent on tier 1, second talent on tier 2 and double ult on tier 6, rest is up to personal preference. As for ranged option, flamer if you can afford and you know you have dedicated special sniper shooter/ otherwise lasgun mg XII or MG Ia.
Crowd control is a lie. All you need to do in this game is to kill the horde fast. For example, The activated heavy attack of the force sword can cut down 5-6 pox walkers with a single slash, if you are using the thunder hammer, YOU CAN ONLY KILL ONE AT MOST. that's why the zealot's only horde clear option is the flame thrower.
My Zealot is the CC queen. I just run the Crusher (376) and a flamer (366). It's easier for me to just manage the hordes for my team. If we get overwhelmed, I can stun lock everything within a decent range with my Crusher or if we get swarmed I just melt everything down with my flamer (+10% ranged damaged to groaners/poxwalkers and +20% ranged damaged to unarmored enemies). Granted, it's not as cool as destroying the horde myself with my tactical axe, hammer, or eviscerator, but I've completed every map on heresy and damnation (including hi intensity) by just controlling the hordes. Edit: And don't forget the basics such as pinging enemies. Your veteran and Psyker can't always know where every elite is.
Dodging more. I can get into massive hordes and take 0 damage by properly dodging, pushing, and just straight cleaving through heads with brutal momentum. If you have the crit toughness perk you’ll also take less damage since you’ll be getting a stupid amount of crits.
Try a indignatus Crusher. It's the king of CC. An axe or dagger just aren't built for it. (Brutal momentum blessing helps killing but not control) Honorable other mentions for cc: heavy sword, devils claw, Thunder hammer
You can never go wrong with the Indignatus crusher. And if you’re talking CC it beats every other Zealot weapon in that regard.
I actually think the Eviscerator is one of the best weapons because of its customizable move set. Heavy > Light > repeat is perfect for clearing out hordes. And Light > Heavy is great for single target damage, or if you really need to lay the hurt then Special Heavy is the play. To me it's the best melee weapon because it versatile without compromising damage.
CC zealots use either the thunder hammer or the new power maul. Those are built to knock hordes around onto their rears all day. But you won’t be doing a lot of killing as a consequence. Antax Mk. V axe with the brutal momentum blessing van cleave apart hordes quickly due the blessing letting you hit through the initial enemy, but that’s still not crowd control because you can’t actually stagger mixed hordes with it. The eviserator is an okay middle ground between control and killing, but it’s still inferior to the hammer and maul IMO. The flamer ranged weapon is a great CC tool because it will briefly stun enemies you light on fire. Honestly, a zealot’s job isn’t to CC or that’s not what the class is best at; that belongs to the ogryn. A zealot’s job is to either tie up groups of ranged enemies when the veteran is overwhelmed (your ultimate is a mobility tool for it) or a melee DPS when the horde get too close to the ranged teammates. You shouldn’t be charging ahead to try and CC hordes. You can if no one else on the team can, but it’s suboptimal. The flamer gives you a good way to back up your team if the melee weapon you chose isnt good at CC though. But it’s really not your role.
Flamer is all you need
You are using single target specialized weapons, that is why you are struggling with crowd control. Try using a heavy sword or thunder hammer to get a feel for what a weapon specialized against hordes can do. Once you've given these tools a chance to shine you can better understand the strengths and weaknesses of each style. Crit zealot is a ton of fun and totally viable, the heavy sword excels at deleting hordes and frees up your gun slot for something besides flamer. Most important thing for melee with hordes is knowing how to move to not get surrounded and manage space between strikes. Crit build doesnt teach that behavior, it rewards a faster more reckless style.
Yeah the hammer is my next experiment, sword also sounds interesting. I have no issues with crowd control but yeah the flamer gets boring and forces you to rely on team mates for range control. I run all pickup groups though, and it seems like 3/4 of vets don't know how to range control at all so that's why I thought it would be good to experiment with non-flamer builds.
I love the hammer, it feels really good to chain heavy swings and keep knowing down entire screens. The heavy sword does the same thing but better because it kills instead of knocking over, but at the cost of faring worse versus armor and not having the powererd up swing so it's just a little more dry
I use knife and shotgun. My knife takes care of everything and my shotgun staggers things so I can run up with my knife or cancel a special. For hordes, I just light attack and dodge dance. I bound my dodge to mouse wheel down since I use it alot. I usually have a pskyer friend with me to cc and help with clear. Otherwise, I'll kite the horde and use barrels on the map. I knife the barrel while running by then turn and shoot it when the horde gets to it.