Zealot (StarCraft II)

"I am Templar! I am the sword of truth!"

- Zealot

The zealot is the basic protoss infantry unit.

Game Unit
Zealots are strong against units such as immortals, zerglings, and hydralisks, and weak against hellions, roaches, and banelings. Though they do a total of sixteen damage, their attack is treated as two attacks doing eight damage each. Their charge ability is autocast by default, but this can be turned off.

Zealots are not as effective in late-game scenarios as of the introduction of the adept.

Legacy of the Void
In the single-player campaign of Legacy of the Void, the player may choose between the Aiur zealot, centurion, or sentinel variants for their zealots.

In "The Spear of Adun," the base zealots the player controls use a modified unit model where their nerve cords have been removed.

Co-op Missions
Artanis, Vorazun, Karax, and Fenix have access to zealots in Co-op Missions. When they reach Level 4, Artanis's and Vorazun's zealots are automatically replaced with the Aiur zealot and centurion, respectively, and that unit's upgrades become available for research at the twilight council. Karax and Fenix start with sentinels and legionnaires respectively at level 1.

Quotations

 * See: StarCraft II Zealot Quotations

Development
The zealots in StarCraft II received a cosmetic overhaul from their predecessors, but their animations remained the same. Fans reacted negatively to psi-blades being color-correspondant in accordance with team color, but a compromise was never reached.

Glenn Rane pitched a concept where the zealot's psi-blade count would be increased to 4. However, this didn't make it through to the final game.

During the Legacy of the Void beta, the zealot's charge ability dealt 30 damage on impact. The developers agreed with gamer feedback that this was too high. In truth, the buff was unintentional, as it was the result of an internal bug where zealots were not always dealing damage on charge. The bug was dealt with before the release of the subsequent patch, but the developers forgot to double check how this affected the game. The buff was removed soon afterwards.

Gallery

 * Concepts: