Warhammer: Vermintide 2 On the Topic of Witch Hunter Captain and Zealot – Corrected.

This guide has undergone some changes.

 
I have striked through the incorrect information in this guide and added a corrections section. 
 
 

Context

 
There is a guide on the Vermintide 2 community forum that claims Zealot is the equivalent to playing in the kid’s pool. 
The major claim in this guide is that the damage sucks and the only reason why people play him is because of high health and the resist death, while WHC (Witch Hunter Captain) is miles better damage wise and does not rely on crutches. 
This guide does however does not give readers the full picture. 
There are some errors in the guide that sway the reader towards WHC being the superior option compared to Zealot. 

• The author assumed that WHC’s Fervency stacks with Animosity when in fact it replaces it, meaning that your allies do not get a boosted 25% crit chance for 6 seconds. 
• The author assumed that WHC’s Fervency still gave Saltzpyre critical chance bonus on ranged attacks, making WHC great with ammo management via scrounger. 
• The author assumed Frontal Guard to mean that WHC’s guard is unbreakable when attacked from the front which isn’t entirely the case. It is only the case when the attack has a cost that is less than two stamina, meaning that a greater than two stamina attack will require stamina to block. 
• The author claims WHC to have 30% more ammo even though the 30% more ammo requires the player to take a talent (Always Prepared) that is considered by many to be worse than the other two (Cast Away, Charmed Life) as Cast Away allows Saltzpyre to keep up a stagger barrier and Charmed Life allows Saltzpyre to have an easier time dodge dancing. 
• The author thought that WHC has an instant kill on a critical headshot, which is only half true. A crit headshot from WHC will only kill if the enemy is mansized, meaning that it mostly applies to trash infantry. The only exceptions to this are Stormvermin, Bestigors, Maulers, and Berzerkers. This is an issue as most trash infantry would die from a normal headshot, making the kill on crit headshot only useful in specific situations. 
• The author assumed that Zealot was this tank even though his job is to dance between life and death at low health as that his how the career was designed. Since most if not all of Zealot’s health is THP, it decays quick when there aren’t enemies around. Due to this, the invulnerability isn’t to give players a crutch, but rather to give a career that is designed to be on low health a little breathing room between hordes.

Math

 
Using https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/cojve1/damage_calculator/ (Updated for Patch 4.2), I have come up with the following numbers. 
Before I list them, I must first disclose the perks that factor into the damage numbers. 
 
I am assuming the following: 

• WHC is not running Fervency as it takes away from him being a team player, which was the point of the other mod author’s guide and his main critique of Zealot. Even if I did take it into consideration, it would unfair to judge one career’s burst damage to another’s sustained damage. 
• WHC is using Deathknell to increase headshot damage as most would agree it is the superior of the 3 options. Flense only really sees use on targets with higher health such as monsters since most trash dies in one or two hits anyway. 
• Zealot is on all 6 stacks of Fiery Faith like he should, but isn’t using Faith’s Flurry, as again, it is unfair to judge one career’s burst damage to another’s sustained damage. 
• The damage numbers are taken from a target who cannot be tagged as we are looking for consistency rather than burst damage. There are infinitely more untaggable enemies on a given map than taggable ones. 
• Both are running 20% vs. Chaos (10% on weapon and 10% on ring) and 10% vs. Skaven (10% on ring) as both are trash management focused. 
• Both are running Axe and Falchion for consistency as it is easy to explain the different attack stages. I will be measuring the body shot and head shot values for the light 1 and heavy 1 attacks. 
• Both are running their best level 15 talent regarding damage, which is Assassin for WHC and Smiter for Zealot.

Here are the numbers: 

• On body shot, WHC with the first light attack does 22.5 damage to a marauder, while Zealot does 36.25 damage. This means that on body shot, Zealot does about 38.0% more damage on a body shot with his light attacks. 
• On head shot, WHC with the first light attack does 58.75 damage to a marauder, while Zealot does 54.50 damage. This means that on body shot, Zealot does about 7.2% less damage on a head shot with his light attacks. 
• On body shot, WHC with the first heavy attack does 40.50 damage to a marauder, while Zealot does 65.50 damage. This means that on body shot, Zealot does about 38.2% more damage on a body shot with his light attacks. 
• On head shot, WHC with the first heavy attack does 135.50 damage to a marauder, while Zealot does 117.50 damage. This means that on body shot, Zealot does about 13.3% less damage on a head shot with his heavy attacks.

Considering the marauder’s health on Cataclysm which is 72: 

• It would take WHC about 4 light body shots or 2 light head shots to kill a marauder. 
• It would take WHC 2 heavy body shots or 1 heavy head shot to kill a marauder. 
• It would take Zealot about 2 light body shots or 2 light head shots to kill a marauder. 
• It would take Zealot about 2 heavy body shots or 1 heavy head shot to kill a marauder.

Conclusion

 
So judging by the numbers, Zealot is a straight upgrade from WHC damage wise as the decreased damage on head shot is so small that it hardly makes a difference. However, do not be mistaken. It is clear that WHC is designed to be a high burst damage career with anti-elite capabilities while Zealot is designed to be a high sustained damage career with anti-horde capabilities. 
 
Even though Zealot has better damage compared to WHC on trash infantry, the damage falls off when it comes to most elites and specials, which is where WHC thrives. 
 
Both careers have their uses and one is not really better than the other provided that they are in the environment that enables them to thrive. 
 
 

Corrections and Explanations

 
When I wrote this guide, I had a few assumptions of WHC that were outdated. I assumed that Deathknell was better than Flense because of a nerf last year, which turned out to be a devtrackers.gg – https://devtrackers.gg/vermintide2/p/960e3627-whc-flense-bleed-doesn-t-stack-anymore. 
The problem with discussing WHC currently (with working Flense) and Fervency is that it takes this anti-elite career with some anti-horde abilities and makes him become an anti-everything career. The crit on headshot insta-kill with Fervency allows WHC to just walk into Stormvermin Patrols and M1 them to death. Meanwhile with Zealot, you would have to dash in and dodge dance the Stormvermin while spamming heavies. It takes Zealot a lot longer due since he cannot obviously one shot them like WHC, and in higher difficulties, time is not on your side. 
This would be okay enough as Stormvermin are elites, but WHC is also great at horde clearing. 
With Flense, WHC can hold his own against a horde because even with bodyshots, there would be about a free 10.5 (5.25 x 2) damage for every enemy in WHC’s cleave. Then considering that it is 10.5 damage extra per swing, WHC’s damage exponentially increases to the point where there are few classes that can keep up. This isn’t even counting that Fervency can crit boost Flense, meaning that WHC would do a free 13 (6.5 x 2) damage per swing to everything in his cleave. 
 
Ultimate Abilities are also a thing to consider. Zealot’s dash is simply inferior to WHC’s AOE. The dash can stagger, but it can only stagger light trash infantry (ex: Skavenslaves). Dashing into a Stormvermin Patrol will not stagger them and will only end in your death (unless you do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcHj20jiXCg but WHC will still have an easier time). WHC’s AOE staggers everything around him, which makes it invaluable in clutch moments like reviving teammates. AOE ultimates are the best in the game, which makes WHC, which is already overtuned, even moreso. 
 
Is Zealot a bad career? No, it’s just that WHC is better and is up there with the likes of Shade. If you are a good WHC, you will have no problem playing Zealot and getting those green circles and having a fun time. Zealot has good damage, cleave, and stagger because of his increased power stacks, but WHC is just in a league of his own. 
 

Here we come to an end for Warhammer: Vermintide 2 On the Topic of Witch Hunter Captain and Zealot – Corrected. hope you enjoy it. If you think we forget something to include or we should make an update to the post let us know via comment, and we will fix it asap! Thanks and have a great day!