Saltzpyre All Base Game Careers Mechanic Guide

No light attack block cost from frontal attacks. If the attack base stamina damage is below 2 and land within weapon's inner block angle, reduce the stamina damage to 0.

Critical hit headshots instantly slay man-sized enemies. Only triggered by landing a critical headshot, neckshot doesn't count.
Can be triggered by both melee attacks and range attacks. Works with attack's damage cleave and stagger cleave.
Man-sized enemies include all enemies without health bar except Chaos Warrior, Chaos Warrior with Shield and Wargor.

The career skill hitbox is a sphere centred at Saltzpyre, can go through walls and floors.
Stagger all enemies within 10 units. Provide 25% crit chance to all allies within 10 units for 6 seconds, including Saltzpyre.
Does not interrupt or prevent any player actions, including attack/switch/use item/interact/revive/rescue/interact/movement.
Holding the career skill key(default key: F) will show you the stagger radius of the career skill.

Require Saltzpyre to be either alive or waiting for revive for this effect to work. Waiting to respawn or waiting for rescue will disable this effect.
The effect boosts all damage taken. Lasts 15 seconds(same duration as Tag itself) and benefit the whole team for the duration.
Does not stack with Huntsman Make 'Em Bleed/Bounty Hunter Open Wounds/melee trait Off Balance.
Tag from allies also provide this effect.

Fanatic/Slave Rat

All attacks

Ungor Archer

Arrow

Ungor/Ungor Archer/Gor
Marauder/Marauder with Shield
Clan Rat/Clan Rat with Shield
Ethereal Skeleton with Shield

All attacks
Except their Stand Still Attack on Cataclysm 3,
and Gor Headbutt/Punch on all difficulties

Stormvermin with Shield

1st,2nd,4th attacks of the Combo Attack

Plague Monk

All attacks
Except for 4th attack of the Combo Attack
and last hit of the Combo Attack

Savage

All attacks
Except for the last hit of the Combo Attack

Skarrik Spinemanglr

Dual Lunge
Running Attack[halberd]

Can only be triggered on the first target the attack connects to. Dual wield attacks can trigger twice. Should only be used with Rapier/Axe/Axe and Falchion when you have extremely high headshot rate and have high melee uptime at the same time.

Provide 1 THP when hitting one unit.
First 5 units you hit grants 1 THP per unit per hit. Next 5 units grants 0.5 THP per unit per hit. Caps out at 10 unit per hit/7.5 THP per swing. Dual wield attacks can trigger twice. Should be used most of the time.

Can be triggered multiple times per attack. Does not include melee explosion kills or melee DoT kills. Should only be used if your build focuses on killing elites and there are no other careers competing for elites kill.

Situational damage/utility that requires good excution and play on high difficulty
After triggering a Timed Block, increase your crit chance by 100% for the next 2 seconds, or when you land an attack.
A Timed Block is triggered by blocking an enemy attack within 0.5 sec after certain Block Action is activated.
All actions benefit from the 100% crit chance, including melee attacks/range attacks/push.
Landing the melee/range attack will remove the buff, while push will keep the buff and still being a critical push, increasing its stagger power. Thanks to Killing Shot, one successful timed block with Riposte can allow you to instantly kill a common elite. You can also combine it with Scrounger range weapon to have a powerful and ammo-free shot, and depends on the range weapon you use this can also mean a free elite kill with crossbow/brace of pistols or deleting a chunk of the horde with Griffon-Foot pistols. The ceiling of this talent is really high, especially on higher difficulties where there are more enemies attacking you to trigger Riposte, and higher HP means higher value from Killing Shot.
However, its trigger condition is fairly tricky, and even if you mastered the timing, depends on the difficulty/settings you are playing, you might not be able to capitalize the guaranteed crit because of too few or too many enemies. Lastly, a timed block into a critical attack is not the most efficient method of dealing damage a lot of the time. In most situations, keeps swinging your melee while dodging attacks is more effective, and the other two talents on this row help this playstyle more.

Super Armour/Monster Focus for specific weapons
Increases extra damage you deal when landing a headshot, not total headshot damage.
Works for both melee and range attacks.
Stack additively with the built-in headshot bonus damage, to a total of 75%. On paper, it sounds amazing and synergize greatly with reset of Witch Hunter Captain's toolkit. However, since it's a headshot damage bonus, its effectiveness is directly based on the attack's built in headshot coefficient and player's headshot rate. As a result, more than half of Witch Hunter Captain's weapons actually benefit more from Flense even for single target damage with good headshot rate, unless when fighting Super Armour units. Besides that, this talent also has certain amount of anti-synergy with Killing Shot, as crit headshot instantly kill any man-sized enemies, which makes boosting headshot damage pointless in this instance.
Overall, should only be used when the player has good headshot rate with Rapier/Axe and Falchion/Billhook, and are willing to sacrifice a good amount of horde clear ability for some single target damage improvement. Or use it with Axe if you are willing to sacrifice consistency on all other units for a boost on Super Armour damage.

High consistency universal DPS boost
The bleed last 2 sec, can stack up to 3 times, has a base tickrate of per 0.75 sec(average tickrate).
Does not work with Griffon-Foot pistols alternative attack.

The overall highest DPS boost in this row, regardless of the choice of weapon, as Bleed DoT is highly effective against Infantry enemies and decent on Armour enemies, and combined together they contribute the highest portion of total enemy health pool.
Because of the nature of this talent, both high attack speed or high cleave weapons will benefit from it greatly, as you will either stack the bleed faster or apply the bleed to multiple enemies at a time. This including all Saltzpyre beside Axe. However, Axe has built in high crit chance and low headshot modifier, which makes the value of the other two talents on this row lower than usual, so Flense is still the go-to choice unless all you want to do is boost Axe's Super Armour damage.
Overall, the default choice on this row for all Saltzpyre weapons. Provide high and consistent vale in all situations beside Super Armour damage department.

Increases your horde clear DPS. However, Witch Hunter Captain already has decent horde boost from other talents/career skill, and all targets that benefits from Mainstay, Witch Hunter Captain can already instant kill them with Killing Shot.
Should be avoided most of the time.

Increase your melee single target DPS and a bit horde clear. Good synergy with Witch Hunter Captain high crit chance, and it's the best talent on this row to help with targets that you cannot instantly kill with Killing Shot.
Should be picked most of the time.

Increases power level by 7.5%.
As a power boost, it increases your damage/stagger/cleave. Increase both your melee and range damage. Does not benefit a melee focus career as much as other talents.
Should be avoided.

High maintenance low uptime team-wide buff
Witch Hunt now causes enemies to take 25% more damage for 5 second, and then 20% for another 10 seconds.
Tag again will reset both duration. Basically, a ~4% boost on taggable enemies if anyone in the team remember to reapply tag every 5 seconds instead of every 15 seconds, unless the enemy die under 5 seconds. Consider the cooldown of tag itself is 2 seconds, it is a fairly tedious process, with a fairly low reward, as when comparing to Wild Fervour, it falls behind at dealing with mixing horde/patrol, and most likely has a very low uptime in comparison when playing on higher difficulties.

Consistent high value personal buff
Require Witch Hunter Captain to tag the enemy.
The attack speed boost only works for Witch Hunter Captain himself. For Witch Hunter Captain himself, this talent provides the highest DPS on this row. And since it's an attack speed buff, it goes extremely well with slower weapons like Greatsword and Flail, and has good synergy with all lvl5 talents and Flense. Also, even on fairly low difficulty, this talent can still have close to 100% uptime thanks to its long duration.
When choosing between Heretic Sighted and Wild Fervour, it mostly comes down to personal preference. If the Witch Hunter player is an aggressive player that's eager to deal damage with high melee uptime, Heretic Sighted is usually the better choice.

Consistent good uptime team-wide buff
When anyone in the team kills any taggable enemy(including ungor archer), all party member receive 5% critical hit chance for 5 seconds, regardless of their position.

The overall better team-wide buff talent on this row. When compared to Templar's Knowledge, its uptime is completely depending on the difficulty you play, has very little to do with player agency while providing a meaningful amount of DPS increase. And since it's a critical chance buff, it has some more synergy with multiple Witch Hunter talents/perks like Killing Shot/Sting/Assassin.
When choosing between Wild Fervour and Heretic Sighted, it mostly comes down to personal preference. If the Witch Hunter player has a more passive playstyle and is playing on higher difficulty with abundance of elites/specials, or often forget to tag to maintain the attack speed buff, Wild Fervour is usually the better choice.

Pure defensive utility
Increases both dodge distance and speed by 20%. Best defensive talent on this row for weapons/playstyle that don't use a lot of push attack, especially for heavy weapons like Greatsword/Flail.

All-around utility for certain weapons
Landing a push on enemies provide you stamina regen.
Only melee weapons push can trigger this effect. Decent boost to your defence capability if your weapons like to use stamina for crowd control purpose, like Axe. And for weapons that uses push attack as part of their horde clear combo, like Billhook/Axe and Falchion, this talent also gives you a decent amount of DPS boost as you can use optimal combos more often now.

Low use case utility talent
The increased ammo capacity works with all ammo related Traits. Since Witch Hunter Captain is a melee focus career with no innate ammo regen talents/mechanics, he should only use range weapons to help with special snipe. Usually running Conservative Shooter or Scrounger is enough to cover those usages plus the existence of ammo crate on the map, especially with proper build all Witch Hunter Captain sniping options have good breakpoints. This talent can still help when the player is still in the process of riding off the over shooting habit, but you should strive to fix this habit instead of selecting an underwhelming talent with high opportunity cost.

Niche damage boost
Animosity now also applies Witch Hunt to all enemy units within 10 units, regardless if they are taggable.
Does not tag(highlight) the enemies, only applies damage taken debuff.
Enemies take 20% more damage for 15 seconds.
If Templar's Knowledge is also selected, enemies take 25% more damage for 5 seconds, and then 20% more damage for 10 seconds. Since you can just tag regular taggable enemies manually, this talent is basically a horde clear boost, although the base 25% crit chance Animosity provides is more than enough. It might be useful too when fighting a huge group of elites, but for most builds/team comps it's more common to deal with those situations by killing one small portion of them at a time, in which you would be able to tag most of the elites in that portion anyway.
Overall, the least valuable option on this row.

High value personal burst damage
Animosity now only provides 100% crit chance for 6 seconds for Witch Hunter Captain's melee attacks, including push/Griffon-foot Pistol alternative attack, excluding Rapier special attack.
Range attacks and teammates no longer receive any critical strike chance bonus. Thanks to Killing Shot and Assassin, Fervency can increase Witch Hunter Captain's DPS to an insane level during that 6 seconds, especially when combined with high finesse weapons like Rapier/Billhook/Axe and Falchion. And if you use Sting, this talent also provides a burst amount of THP.
When choosing between Fervency and The Unending Hunt, it comes down to player skill level, playstyle and choice of weapon. If the Witch Hunter player is using Rapier/Billhook/Axe and Falchion and/or is confident with their headshot rate and dodge game, Fervency can provide an amazing boss/Chaos patrol damage boost, and let the Witch Hunter solo clear Skaven/Beastman patrol.

Crowd control and team-wide buff
If there are 10 or more enemies within 10 units of Witch Hunter Captain when he activates his career skill, refunds 36 seconds/40% of max Cooldown.

The huge 40% CDR allows the player to use Animosity more often. On higher difficulty, you will most likely be able to use it twice during horde or Chaos patrol fight, depends on the team composition. Provide higher total team-wide buff value and more crowd control.
When choosing between The Unending Hunt and Fervency, it comes down to player skill level, playstyle and choice of weapon. If the Witch Hunter player prefer to more crowd control/overall buff to them team, especially when using low finesse weapons like Greatsword and Flail, The Unending Hunt will provide more consistent value overall.

Increases ammo capacity by 50%. Increases the ammo capacity along with ammo related Traits/Talents.
Rounded to the closest integer.

Increased reload speed by 20%.[/u]

Shoots out 1 Sniper Bullet and 10 Shotgun Pellets.
Create a small AoE no-damage explosion that's the same as outer radius shield bash, applies moderate amount of stagger to enemies within 2.5 units in front of the Bounty Hunter.
The Sniper Bullet is a projectile attack, deal heavy single target damage.
The Shotgun Pellets are hitscan attacks, deal good damage and cleave Infantry/Berserker targets.
Both the Sniper Bullet and the Shotgun Pellet can stagger all enemies.

Applies to and consumed by all range weapon attacks(except Griffon-foot Pistols alternative attack), Locked and Loaded, Rapier special attack, and bombs throw.
For Locked and Loaded /Volley Crossbow alternative attack/all shotgun attacks, all projectiles and pellets will crit at the same time.
Bomb explosion cannot crit, only the contact damage can crit.

8.95

8.95

Has Linesman as Effective Mass Modifier
Damage Through Shield
Bypass Shield Enemies Cleave Resistance in Cleave calculation

8.95

8.95

Has Linesman as Effective Mass Modifier
Damage Through Shield
Bypass Shield Enemies Cleave Resistance in Cleave calculation

Can only be triggered on the first target the attack connects to. Dual wield attacks can trigger twice. Should only be used with Rapier/Axe/Axe and Falchion when you have extremely high headshot rate and have high melee uptime at the same time.

Can be triggered multiple times per attack. Does not include melee explosion kills or melee DoT kills. Should only be used if you are using a melee focus build while focuses on melee killing elites and there are no other careers competing for elites kill.

Provide 1 THP when hitting one unit.
First 5 units you hit grants 1 THP per unit per hit. Next 5 units grants 0.5 THP per unit per hit. Caps out at 10 unit per hit/7.5 THP per swing. Dual wield attacks can trigger twice. Should be used most of the time.

Consistent DPS and breakpoints
Can be triggered by both melee and range attacks. Cleaving multiple enemies with the critical attack will apply this debuff to all those enemies.
The critical attack itself also benefit from the damage increase, except shotgun attacks where only center pellet can trigger and benefit from the effect.
The effect boots all damage taken. Lasts 15 seconds and benefit the whole team for the duration.
Does not stack with Huntsman Make 'Em Bleed/Witch Hunter Captain Witch-Hunt/melee trait Off Balance. Because of Blessed Shots, this is a very consistent DPS boost and help you reach a lot of crit oneshot breakpoints, especially when combined with other level 20 talents that reduces Blessed Shots cooldown in some way.
Default option for range focused Crossbow/Griffon-foot Pistols/Repeater Pistols builds.

Melee focus build
Upon firing the last ammo in the range weapon magazine, gain a 10 seconds buff.
Grants 15% melee power and 15% melee attack speed.
As a melee power boost, it in creases melee weapon damage/cleave/stagger. Has no effect on range weapons/DoT/Items. Since it only boots your melee aspect, should only be used on a melee focus hybrid build. And because it requires the player to be able to empty the magazine on demand, it is recommended to only pair this talent with Crossbow or Repeater Pistol.
When using a hybrid build like this, you should play like a melee career with a lot of ammo sustain. Most of the time, your range weapon should only be used on specials, or proc Steel Crescendo/Hunter when Blessed Shots is ready.

Consistent DPS and breakpoints for certain weapons
Increase range power depends on the size of the range weapon magazine, not range weapon total ammo or current available ammo in the magazine.
As a range power boost, it in creases range weapon damage/stagger, and Bounty Hunter's career skill. Has no effect on melee weapons/DoT/Items/Rapier special attack.

Because of its mechanic, this talent is useless on Crossbow and provides very low value on Griffon-foot Pistols/Repeater Pistol. However, for Volley Crossbows/Brace of Pistols, it gives a very decent damage boost regardless if you crit or not, which is very important consider these two weapons have a lot of multi-shot breakpoints. And even when you land a crit it doesn't fall too behind compare to Open Wounds.
Default option for range focused Volley Crossbows/Brace of Pistols builds.

Increase your melee single target DPS. Good synergy with Blessed Combat and Salvaged Ammunition as it can help you to get that melee kill faster.
Should only be used when your build doesn't require Enhanced Power for range breakpoints, and when you don't have very high headshot rate.

Increase your melee single target DPS and a bit horde clear. Good synergy with Blessed Combat and Salvaged Ammunition as it can help you to get that melee kill faster.
Should only be used when your build doesn't require Enhanced Power for range breakpoints, and when you have decent headshot rate.

Increases power level by 7.5%.
As a power boost, it increases your damage/stagger/cleave. Increase both your melee and range damage. Does not benefit a melee focus career as much as other talents.
For Bounty Hunter, since you have both regular breakpoints and crit breakpoints to worry about, Enhanced Power can usually provide a couple of them. When it is not required, should use Smiter/Assassin instead to boost your melee damage against important targets.

Hybrid style crit boost
Hitting enemies with a range attack grants you a stack of buff that provides 15% melee power for the next melee weapon hit, up to 6 times. Hitting enemies with a melee weapon consumes one of this stack.
Hitting enemies with a melee attack grants you a stack of buff that provides 15% range power for the next range weapon hit, up to 6 times. Hitting enemies with a range weapon consumes one of this stack.
Melee power affects melee weapon damage/cleave/stagger, range power affects range weapon and career skill damage/stagger.
Melee attack kills reset the cooldown for Blessed Shots. Good synergy with Smiter/Assassin and Salvaged Ammunition, allowing you to reload and refresh crit with one melee kill.
The amount of guaranteed crit this talent can provide is totally up to your melee kill speed and uptime, thus it is only recommended for hybrid/melee focus playstyle, or you are willing to aggressively chasing a melee kill before a quick range oneshot take down.
The power bonus is nice to have for general damage purpose, but usually not reliable enough to be considered when calculating breakpoints.

High range uptime crit boost
Provide the highest amount of guaranteed crit if your playstyle is focusing on shooting without doing much melee. Good for high range uptime playstyle to get more easy oneshot kills.

High range uptime ammo sustain
If the shot is affected by Blessed Shots, firing the shot does not remove ammo from the magazine nor the total ammo.

Compare to Cruel Fortune, this talent provides a better ammo sustain mathematically. At the same time, it is pretty much essential when playing Repeater Pistol, as its alternative attack consume 8 ammos per shot and only regenerate 3 with Scrounger. It is also very useful for Crossbow, as it allows you to fire 2 arrows in a row when Blessed Shots.

High player agency defensive utility
Landing a critical hit with career skill or range weapon grants 10% movement speed to all allies within 40 units for 10 seconds, including Saltzpyre. Since Blessed Shots has a base cooldown of 10 seconds, this talent basically grants the whole team 10% movement speed the whole time.
Movement speed gives you an easier time at evading enemy attacks, as you can move out of their hitbox. And more importantly for a backline career, it allows you to move to a more favorable fighting position easier where you can use your range weapon safely. However, all its value comes from the player actively utilizing this tool. Plus numeric value wise, this talent doesn't provide much, it is usually better to pick other options for either better sustain/damage or a more consistent passive defence tool.

Ammo or reload hungry weapon/hybrid style
Scrounger and Conservative Shooter trigger before this talent's ammo regen effect. So to trigger the ammo regen effect with the last ammo you need to not trigger these two traits.
Any elite kill when out of ammo can trigger the ammo regen effect.
Each melee weapon kills reload 1 ammo into the magazine if there is ammo left, no matter the magazine size. An amazing talent for hybrid playstyle. Good synergy with Smiter/Assassin and Blessed Combat, allowing you to reload and refresh crit with one melee kill.
It also helps with weapons that have long reload/long total reload time(e.g Volley Crossbow), or require extra boost to their ammo economy with certain playstyles(e.g Brace of Pistols).

Low player agency defensive utility
Killing a special/elite gains one stack of damage reduction. Does not need to be a range kill.
Each stack provides additive damage reduction to each other, up to 30%.
Knock down does not remove stacks, only complete death that results in respawn can remove all stacks. A fairly consistent defence talent without any downside, especially when playing on higher difficulties where there are tons of elites and specials. In those situations, you can usually get full stacks before first trigger. The only inconvenience is that it kinda relies on player skill level, and more importantly, the difficulty they are playing. On lower difficulties, it can be extremely hard/take an extremely long time to get enough damage reduction from this talent to make it worth awhile.

All around option
Cooldown refund effect can be triggered by all range weapon attacks(except Griffon-foot Pistols alternative attack), Locked and Loaded, Rapier special attack, and bombs throw.
Refund 14 seconds/20% of max Cooldown each time. You can proc this talent at most 3 times before the next one is ready, which is equal to 60% cooldown reduction. If Locked and Loaded itself is a critical hit, you can fairly consistently reduce the effective cooldown to around 30 seconds.
For single target, Just Reward only outperforms Double-shotted when you can't get headshot refund often and without potions. But for horde clear, unless playing on Tzeentchian Twins modifiers, Just Reward is usually more advantageous due to lower cooldown, since that 10 Shotgun Pellets is usually enough to delete most of the horde already.
Overall, it is the best horde clear options for most difficulties, and the best single target option in certain situations.

Single target/Chaos Warrior/Boss burst
Career skill now fires two Sniper Bullets instead.
Refund 42 seconds/60% of max Cooldown each time.
Cooldown is refunded from hitting either the head or the neck of an enemy. But only hitting the head deals proper headshot damage. This talent is usually combined with 10% cooldown reduction on the trinket to get to 70% cooldown reduction when landing a head/neckshot.
Provide the best way to delete Chaos Warrior/Chaos Warrior with Shield, does not rely on headshot/crit unlike other versions. And offers good Boss damage to any Bounty Hunter build. With consistent headshot, and Decanter Concentration potion or Concotion with any potion, you are able to solo kill most Bosses on Legend and below, or heavily damage them on Cataclysm.
Although you need to headshot to make the most out of this talent, its bodyshot Boss DPS is still on par with Just Reward and much better than Indiscriminate Blast. And with Decanter Concentration potion, you can still do a decent chunk of damage and stagger Boss with only bodyshots.

Extremely high density horde/Nurgloth fight
Reduce Cooldown by 17.5 seconds/25%.
Career skill now only fires Shotgun Pellets. Fires 20 pellets at least.
Each kill with the career skill gain 1 stack of buff, up to 20 stacks. Each buff will add 1 more Shotgun Pellet to the next career skill usage.
With 20 buff stacks, career skill will fire 40 Shotgun Pellets.
Landing the career skill on any amount of enemies will consume the buff. Completely missing the career skill will keep the buff stacks.

On paper should be the best horde clear option on this row. However, the amount of Shotgun Pellets this talent provides is overkill even on Cataclysm, which makes Just Reward better at the job in most situations. Only with high difficulty with Tzeentchian Twins modifiers or Nurgloth fight can this talent be the best in slot option, as the former difficulty can provide extremely high density horde, and Nurgloth is Berserker armour which makes him to take little damage from the Sniper Bullet of other Locked and Loaded version.

Charged attacks can't be interrupted by damage. Only immune to damage interruption. Stun/disable/push from enemies can still interrupt you.

Resist death on taking lethal damage. Upon taking lethal damage, Zealot become invincible for 5 seconds, can no longer take any damage.
Has a cooldown of 120 seconds. Cooldown starts when the buff wears off.

Can be initiated from midair.
During this career skill, you can switch weapons/items, attack/charge with melee weapons, fire/charge/reload range weapons, use items.
Use this career skill will not interrupt interactions, including reviving teammates. However, most of the objective interactions on the map have distance limit.
Can be canceled mid-charge by pressing block(default key: Mouse 2).
The player is not invincible during this career skill. To help to avoid taking damage, hold block(default key: Mouse 2) before starting the career skill to keep blocking during this. You can still cancel your career skill by releasing and pressing block again.
Holding the career skill key(default key: F) will show you the patching and destination of the career skill.
Holy Fervour has a width of 1.5 units. Can only charge through total enemy mass of 17.9 with 650 Hero Power before any other buff, and instantly stopped by Armoured/Monster units.
While charging, Saltzpyre applies a small amount of stagger and damage to all enemy units within the width of his charge.
When Holy Fervour is finished/interrupted/cancelled, Saltzpyre triggers an explosion in front of him with a radius of 3 units, applies a small amount of stagger and damage to all enemy units within.
After activating the career skill, during the next 5 seconds, Saltzpyre gains 25% attack speed. Saltzpyre can move through enemies during these 5 seconds, but this effect does not apply to Holy Fervour itself.

Maxing out at 30% power when missing 150 permanent health. Require Health buff to reach the 6th stack.
Temporary health does not count towards missing health. Curse debuff does count towards missing health.
As a power boost, it increases your damage/stagger/cleave.

Provide 1 THP when hitting one unit.
First 5 units you hit grants 1 THP per unit per hit. Next 5 units grants 0.5 THP per unit per hit. Caps out at 10 unit per hit/7.5 THP per swing. Dual wield attacks can trigger twice. The overall most consistent option for Zealot.
Should be used most of the time.

Can be triggered multiple times per attack. Does not include melee explosion kills or melee DoT kills. Should only be used if your build focus on killing elites.

Melee attack grants 0.25/1/2 THP per unit. Push grants 0.5/1 THP per unit. Both can only be triggered on 5 units. Dual wield attacks can trigger twice.
Melee killing blows grant 0.25 per unit without limit. Should mostly be used with Bill Hook and/or Griffon-Foot pistols. Both Bill Hook special attack and Griffon-Foot pistols alternative attack can farm THP extremely quickly with this talent on horde.

Consistent high damage boost
Increases attack speed by 10%/20% when Zealot has less than 50%/20% permanent health.
Temporary health does not count towards missing health. Curse debuff does count towards missing health. Because of the passive Fiery Faith and all his lvl 20 talents, Zealot usually prefer to play with extremely low permanent health, which plays perfectly into this talent. 20% attack speed is also an amazing effect for melee focused builds.
Should be the default option for most Zealot builds.

Volley Crossbow build
Generate one stack of colorless buff when landing a hit on an enemy with either melee or range attack.
The attack doesn't have to deal damage to count, but cannot be blocked by shield. Cleaving multiple enemies still only provide one stack.
Upon reaching 5 stacks of colorless buff, you will gain one colored buff. With the colored buff, your next action will be a guaranteed critical hit. This critical hit can also generate a colorless buff if it hits the enemy.
Melee/range attacks will consume the colored buff no matter if the attack hits an enemy or not. Push will not consume the colored buff while still being guaranteed critical hit, increasing its stagger potential. For regular build, this talent basically changes your critical hit chance to 20% if you land all your attacks, and let you get 10% cooldown reduction and 5% attack speed since you can give up crit chance on your gear property now. Also allows you to choose which attack to be critical, helpful for deleteing one elite here and there since you can save a powerful hit for them, or conserve your range weapon ammo by using Scrounger and only shoot when you have the crit stack. So in the end a bunch of small boosted putted together to be a mediocre option.
However, for Volley Crossbow build with Scrounger, this talent provides amazing damage and infinite ammo sustain. The alternative attack of Volley Crossbow will grant Zealot 3 stacks of colorless buff per shot, and when it crits all 3 arrows will crit. This effectively makes alternative attack 33.3% crit chance and ammo positive, making it an amazing tool for deleting horde and the best monsters damage Zealot has access to.
Overall, this talent is only really worth using when building around Volley Crossbow and Scrounger for a more range focused Zealot build.

Consistent low damage boost
As a power boost, it increases your damage/stagger/cleave.

Although consistent, the damage increase you get from this talent is one of the lowest in the game.
Should be avoided as long as you can use other two talents semi consistently.

Increases your single target DPS. Should be picked most of the time.

Increases your horde clear DPS. However, Zealot already has enough horde clear capability from his weapons and passive but lacks single target burst. Should avoid most of the time.

Increases power level by 7.5%.
As a power boost, it increases your damage/stagger/cleave. Increase both your melee and range damage. Does not benefit a melee focus career as much as other talents. Even for Volley Crossbow build, you still need your melee weapon to help with armoured/super armoured units.
Should be avoided.

Niche utility
Provide up to 30% extra movement speed. Movement speed gives you an easier time at evading enemy attacks, as you can move out of their hitbox or move to a more favourable fighting position easier. For Zealot, it also provides higher melee uptime since now you can chase enemies down.
However, up to 30% constant movement speed is overkill in most of the difficulties/game mode outside speedrun. It can bring the side effect of being out of position/far away from your team too easily when there are no horde fights. And unlike other defensive status, movement speed is a high player agency buff, meaning it requires the player to successfully execute actions to avoid damage taken, otherwise this talent does nothing. The other two options on the same row provide a much more consistent boost to your defence and without the downside of high movement speed playstyle, making Crusade an overall very niche choice.

Consistent defence
Increase both temporary and permanent health healing effect.
Stack additive with similar effect.
Provide up to 90% extra healing effect. A 1.9x modifier to your THP with max stacks.
When comparing Holy Fortitude with Armour of Faith, Holy Fortitude is usually the one provides more tankiness to Zealot, as it's a higher effective health modifier. Especially when paired with Carve and Barkskin, so you can consistently farm large amount of THP in all situations and still has decent damage reduction against a lot of hard-to-avoid damage.

Consistent defence
Provide up to 30% damage reduction.
Stack multiplicatively with other sources of damage reduction.

A 1.43x modifier to your THP with max stacks.
When comparing Armour of Faith and Holy Fortitude, Armour of Faith is only better when the player can't consistently farm back their THP. This usually means the player tends to take a huge amount of damage in a short period of time, E.g. multiple failed dodge/block on Plague Monk/Savage or during a patrol fight. Or in few situations where player's playstyle is not aggressive enough for high melee uptime.

High player agency defensive utility
Taking damage from enemy direct hit and gas/bile grants movement speed.
The slow-down effect from getting hit by enemies is removed, but other slow down debuff like water/bile still persist. The movement speed combine with no damage slowdown is extremely useful to prevent Zealot from being surrounded, especially when combined with career skill so that you can walk through enemies. It's also just a great tool for kiting when using weapons with low dodge status or no move tech. The only downside is due to the nature of this talent, it requires the player to actively capitalize on this talent, otherwise the passive effect is pretty low impact.
Overall, should be paired with weapons like Greatsword/Flail that don't push a lot and have low dodge status, or if your playstyle focuses on positioning and evading enemy attacks.

All-around utility
Taking damage from enemy direct hit and gas/bile restores full stamina. Offensive wise, a lot of Zealot weapons need to use push attack for optimal horde clear combo. This talent can increase your DPS by allowing you to use the better combo more often with little downside, consider how tanky Zealot can be.
For defensive purpose, this talent mostly only comes into play during some extremely risky situations where you will still take damage after guard broken. Additionally, for Bill hook, the extra stamina let you use special attack more to help you control high stagger resistance units like Chaos Warrior; and for Axe, where regular push is your main crowd control tool.
Overall, should be paired with weapons like Axe and Falchion/Bill hook/Falchion/Skull-Splitter Hammer that use push attack as part of their optimal horde clear combo, or for Axe when you want more pushes for crowd control.

Low value consistent defence
Stack multiplicatively with other sources of damage reduction. Damage reduction is beneficial for almost all builds on Zealot. However, the numeric value of this talent is extremely low, especially consider it stacks multiplicatively with other damage reductions, and Zealot will run either Barkskin or Armour of Faith most of the time. Which means, when all used properly with synergistic builds, the other two options on this row will outperform Calloused Without and Within almost certainly. Still, a completely passive stats boost is useful, especially when the player is still trying to figure out the preferred playstyle.

Situational DPS
Hitting enemies during Holy Fervour grants 1 new stack of buff and refreshes all stacks duration.
Hitting multiple enemies with one attack grants multiple stacks.
Can have maximum of 10 stacks.
All stacks last 5 seconds.
As a power boost, it increases your damage/stagger/cleave. Basically increases your power level by 20% for 10 seconds.
For melee build, compare to Flagellant's Zeal, this is usually a lot less DPS on most difficulties, since you get overall more DPS from the higher attack speed buff uptime of the other talent.
However, if you are playing on some difficulty with extremely high density horde, e.g Send in the next wave!/Tzeentchian Twins, when combined with a high cleave weapon, you can actually get cooldown back very fast with just Zealot's amazing Cooldown On Hit effect. And for Smite Volley Crossbow build, this talent provides much higher boss burst DPS compare to other options on the row.
Overall, should only be picked for Send in the next wave!/Tzeentchian Twins modifiers with high cleave weapons, or be paired with Smite Volley Crossbow build if you want more boss burst damage.

Situational defence
After activating Holy Fervour, Zealot gain a buff that lasts 5 seconds.
During this buff, Zealot's health cannot drop below 1, and lethal damage does not trigger Heart of Iron.
Zealot can still take damage even at 1 health during this buff, trigger all other damage taken related effect.
The buff duration cannot be refreshed by using career skill again before previous buff expire. The most obvious usage of this talent is using it as a panic button. This is not that effective most of the time though, as after utilizing its effect this way will leave you at 1HP most likely, and you have to farm your HP back up afterwords. It's better to use it to dash away for better position.
However, when fighting patrol, or playing on difficulties where enemies deal enormous amount of damage(Weave/HBFS deed), or there are tons of elites enemies/bosses(twitch mode/Vanguard), Zealot can essentially stay unkillable with this talent. This is because you can still trigger Cooldown on damage taken effect during Feel Nothing, which means if you can take ~275 damage during these 5 seconds, you would be able to get your cooldown back again, and use career skill again right after the Feel Nothing buff expires.
When using this strategy, keep in mind that you cannot refresh Feel Nothing buff duration, so use career skill prematurely will result in you wasting your cooldown. Hold your block when the buff expires so you can keep yourself safe before you can activate career skill again. Do not use any damage reduction buff, as it will reduce the amount of cooldown you get back. Focus on DoT specials(gas/blight/gun rat/fire rat) as their attacks will go through your block when you don't have your Feel Nothing buff. Aggressively charge into enemies to make sure you take enough damage during that 5 seconds.

Consistent DPS and utility
Hitting enemies during Holy Fervour grants 1 new stack of buff and refreshes all stacks duration.
Hitting multiple enemies with one attack grants multiple stacks.
Can have maximum of 10 stacks.
All stacks last 5 seconds.
After 5 seconds, refund cooldown depends on the amount of stacks Zealot have.
Refund 3 seconds/5% of max Cooldown each stack each time, up to 30 seconds/50%.

Provide the highest melee DPS most of the time, as you have higher attack speed buff uptime. The lowered cooldown also allows you to reposition more easily.
Should be the default choice for most builds.

90

0.5

0.5

90

0.3

0.4

30

0.25

0.5

60

0.25

0.25

120

0.3

0.3

120

0.25

0.5

40

0.5

0.1

60/90

0

0

80

0.35

0.3

20

0.25

0.5

70

0.5

0.2

40

0.3

0.4

90

0.5

0.2

70

0.25

0.3

60

0.5

0.2

70

0.25

0.25

50

0.25

0.5

50

0.25

0.3

120

0.25

0.5

110

0.25

0.25

Skaven Slave

1

Clan Rat/Explosive Loot Rat

2

Storm Vermin/Plague Monk/Skaven Specials/Loot Rat

8

Fanatic/Ungor

1.5

Marauder/Gor/Ethereal Skeleton (Shield)

3

Life Leech/Blight Stormer

10

Mauler/Savage/Bestigor/Wargor/Ethereal Skeleton (Hammer)

15

Chaos Warrior

30

Chaos Warrior with Shield

35

Boss/Lord

50