Zealots are Warhammer 40K: Darktide’s equivalent of fantasy battle priests -- with more emphasis on the 'battle' part. A Zealot’s sole mission in life is to spread the word of the God Emperor and to defend the Imperium of Man against its many foes. In gameplay terms, this translates to burning and chopping minions of Nurgle to bits and filling party members’ heads with religious propaganda.
Like all classes, Zealot players will have multiple careers to choose from further down the road, but for now, the only available one is Preacher. This starting subclass is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, being equally competent at both ranged and melee combat, though usually favoring fighting in close quarters a bit more.
9 Burning Fervor
Zealots are fanatical by nature, and the class is -- to some extent -- built around rushing head-first into battle and delivering the Emperor’s swift justice. Among other things, Preachers get increased melee attack damage and increased melee attack speed as passive abilities, so it would make sense to spend most of your time on the front line, right? Yes, but not right off the bat.
When you’re first starting out as a Zealot, you’ll find that it’s a lot more beneficial to focus on ranged damage and only occasionally engage enemies in melee. Although Preachers are very good in melee, they don’t have the defensive capabilities of an Ogryn and are fairly squishy at low levels. In time, you’ll definitely want to focus more on close-quarters combat, but you’ll need to gain a few levels and unlock a couple of feats before you can become truly proficient at it.
8 Holy Hand Grenade
Preachers gain access to grenades as their tactical ability, and they can carry up to three of them at any one time. But, unlike the Sharpshooter’s Frag Grenades, these ones don’t do any damage. Instead, the Zealot's grenades stun enemies for a few seconds and are primarily used for crowd control. While not as impressive as a Frag Grenade that can blow up entire hordes of enemies, Stun Grenades do have their uses.
Stun Grenades have a pretty large blast radius and are best used against hordes of enemies. You can use them offensively to stun hordes before you charge in -- or defensively when you’re overwhelmed and need to create some breathing room for yourself or your allies. In addition, Stun Grenades can also be used against larger enemies to get them to drop their guard. They are especially effective against armored enemies like Bulwarks. Unfortunately, Stun Grenades won’t help you against bosses or monstrosities.
7 Chastising The Wicked
The Zealot Preacher’s class ability, Chastise the Wicked, allows you to rush at enemies in a way that’s somewhat similar to the Ogryn’s Bull Rush. However, this ability isn’t designed to knock down enemies in your path. In fact, it has minimal impact on the enemies you’re using it on, and even less impact on surrounding foes. Rather, Chastise the Wicked is mainly used as a tool to close the distance between you and your target while also allowing you to escape when things get too hairy.
Chastise the Wicked has a couple of effects that make it more versatile than Bull Rush. The ability instantly restores 50% Toughness when used -- regardless of whether you actually hit an enemy with it. Additionally, the ability increases the damage of the Zealot’s next melee attack by 25% and guarantees that it’s going to be a critical hit. For that reason, Chastise the Wicked is best used when fighting strong enemies.
6 Hardened By Faith
If you’ve been playing Warhammer 40K: Darktide for a while now, you’ve probably already noticed that characters seem to have two health bars. That’s sort of true, however, one of these bars (the blue one) is your Toughness, and it acts more as a shield rather than a typical health bar. The Toughness bar decreases faster than the health bar but also recovers a lot quicker -- especially when you’re near your allies. There are various skills and abilities that allow you to speed up the process even more, and the Preacher has some of the best ones in the game.
As already mentioned earlier, Chastise the Wicked is a fantastic way of recovering Toughness, but that’s just the beginning. Zealots have several Feats they can pick up to increase Toughness replenishment or gain Toughness damage reduction. For instance, your first skill point is obligatorily going to be spent on one of these Feats as all three choices revolve around Toughness in one way or another. The Emperor’s Will, your Aura passive ability, involves Toughness as well. Namely, it grants Preacher Zealots and nearby allies a 7% Toughness damage reduction buff.
5 Righteous Martyr
Preachers have a variety of tools at their disposal for keeping their Toughness up, but they are less concerned about doing the same with their health. In fact, they’re the only class in Warhammer 40K: Darktide that fights better when wounded. This is thanks to one of their iconic abilities known as Martyrdom, which gives them +5 damage for each 15 missing health.
As you might imagine, this is a double-edged sword. Zealots are encouraged to fight at low health as doing so increases their damage output, but it also makes them easier to take down. That said, you don’t have to be on the brink of death to get the most out of Martyrdom. The buff only stacks up to three times by default and up to six times if you pick up the Honour the Martyr perk. Even with the perk, you can keep a good chunk of your health and still benefit from the maximum amount of extra damage.
4 The Emperor Protects
Focusing too much on Martyrdom can get you killed, but fortunately, Preachers have yet another useful ability that may allow you to cheat death. Appropriately named Until Death, the iconic passive ability makes you immune to attacks that would otherwise have been fatal while also granting you invulnerability for five seconds. However, this effect can only occur once every 90 seconds.
Trying to play around Until Death isn’t a great idea since even a small miscalculation can easily get you killed. It’s best to forget you even have this ability most of the time. There aren’t any Feats that reduce Until Death’s cooldown or make you invulnerable for longer. At level 20, you can pick a Feat that increases your health based on how much damage you do during Until Death, but by that point, you should be strong enough to not have to rely on the passive at all. Still, Until Death is a nice ability to have just in case you do end up in a particularly nasty situation.
3 Burn The Heretic
Nothing says righteous zeal quite like pulling out a flamethrower and burning waves of heretics to a crisp. Preachers are the only class in Warhammer 40K: Darktide that can use flamers, and it's hard to think of a more appropriate weapon for them. Flamers are incredibly powerful weapons specifically designed to deal with large hordes of enemies. You can use them against strong enemies to inflict the burn status effect, but it’s not worth spending too much ammo on them beyond that.
Like all weapons, flamers have two firing modes. When used from the hip, flamers will shoot fire in bursts, giving you more control over the weapon and helping you conserve ammo. To unlock the flamer’s full destructive capabilities, you’ll need to aim down sights, which causes it to act like a fully automatic weapon and spew massive weaves of fire all over the place. Be careful when using either mode while playing on higher difficulties because you don't want to engulf your own allies in flames. Probably.
2 Kill The Mutant
As far as end-game melee options are concerned, there’s no better weapon in Darktide for the Preacher than the Thunder Hammer. However, chainswords are definitely a viable option as well and can be acquired much earlier on. These two weapons should be your preferred options for melee because of their destructive potential, and -- more importantly -- their special attacks.
Thunder Hammers and chainswords both have special attacks that inflict huge amounts of damage, but only for one swing. However, one swing is all you need thanks to your class ability. Prepping your weapon for a special attack before jumping in with Chastise the Wicked is a very powerful combination that can straight-up one-shot a lot of enemies and deal massive damage to the rest. As always with these types of attacks, it’s best to use them on strong enemies.
1 Purge The Unclean
Preacher Zealots are effective at fighting most types of enemies but are particularly adept at tackling armored targets in melee. Early on, you’ll probably be inclined to focus more on hordes of weak enemies since you can kill them faster than other classes in melee thanks to your passive abilities. However, as you progress and start unlocking more powerful weapons you’ll want to use the flamer for hordes while engaging big armored targets in melee instead.
When fighting strong enemies in melee it’s vital to focus on heavy attacks, especially when using Thunder Hammers. A heavy swing from your mighty hammer will wear down armored targets much faster than a bunch of light attacks. Heavy attacks tend to make you vulnerable when playing as other classes but remember that you can use Stun Grenades to daze enemies, giving you plenty of time to prepare a devastating blow.