My Zealot's Damage Calculation is Broken?

Hello dear paladins, confused zealot here. I had a lvl67 Holy Fire Zealot and my main weapon was Zakarum's Hand. This weapon's max base damage is 72. My strength is 160. With lvl21 Zeal And lvl21 Holy Fire (boosted by lvl21 Resist Fire), I was dealing about 1800 damage max.

As I have proceeded to Hell difficulty, I got my ass kicked even by ordinary zombies if they attack in groups. So I've decided to change the build. As Holy Fire's massive aura doesn't do anything to even weakest enemies at Hell difficulty, I thought I could use those stats for a better defense. As a former Barb, I still love melee gameplay so Zeal is pretty cool for me. I completed the first quest and reset my skills. Maxed Zeal, Fanaticism and Holy Shield. I'm very satisfied by Holy Shield's defense boost but now my damage dealt by Zeal + Fanaticism is no more than 608. I'm really confused because right now my basic attack has max 230dmg. If I know right, the +%210 from Zeal and +%390 from Fanaticism should take my max damage to somewhere between 1.800 and 2.000. Did I terribly misunderstood something or is it bugged? I'm very disappointed and my day is ruined.

Good news is I had taken a copy of my save game before the skill reset. So I can start over again but I was actually excited about this build and it seems like a fiasco. Any ideas please?

p.s. I've tried a few things in advance. I've travelled around and killed some enemies. Changed auras and attack types. Exited and re-entered game. Every time it was stuck at 608. My mind is full of f***.

Well, for starters, unfortunately the LCS (lying character sheet) does an awful job calculating damage successfully. So that's certainly part of the issue here.

However, it's going to be true anyway that with this weapon, you are going to do poor damage as a zealot on hell difficulty.

At a casual glance, 72 max damage multiplied by your sources of enhanced damage off-weapon (160% strength, 210% from Zeal, 390% from fatantacism) should be giving you somewhere around 620 max damage. A bit more than you're showing here, but I'm also not paying super close attention to the formula. This is close enough for our purposes.

Facing against this, a Wendigo in hell has 6597-12740 health! Even at the minimum value there, you'd need 11 or so hits to kill one, before its physical resistance is even factored. Realistically, you'd be looking more at 22 or more, especially if you don't have any crushing blow, deadly strike, etc. That's pretty tragic.

Meanwhile, if you got your weapon's base damage up, you would benefit much more from all your +ed. For example, using a Heaven's Light Mighty Scepter--which still isn't a great weapon--would get your damage above 1,500 not even counting the +skills, benefit of crushing blow, or etc.

TL:DR, you need a different weapon to have all that enhanced damage mean anything on hell difficulty.

I don't have anything to add to your question, but I do have a Heaven's Light you can have for free if you want to do some testing. Message me if you would like it.

On the build side of things, have you maxed Sacrifice, the synergy for Zeal? Sacrifice gives you twice as much Enhanced Damage per point than Zeal itself does. I normally leave Zeal at 1 point I've maxed both Sacrifice and Fanaticsm.

To echo what the others have said - get a faster/hurtier weapon. Use the IAS calculator to see how fast you're attacking. Ideally, you want to get to 4/8 Frames for your Zeal attack as more hits per second = more dps.

Honor in a Phase Blade would work really well, and the highest rune it needs is Sol. If you were online, one of us would be able to donate a better weapon that will help you on your journey.

At the end of the day though, pure melee builds are very gear dependent. Let me know if you're interested in a hybrid Zealot build that mitigates the gear dependency and lack of AoE without sacrificing melee ability.

Hey guys thanks you all for your kind responses. I was AFK for two days, I can only answer now.

I'm still unable to find the calculation formula but also I'm pretty sure that given these attributes, I should deal much more dmg. With 160 strength and 72 base dmg from the weapon, I deal max 230dmg with my normal attack. So lvl21 Zeal should at least triple the outcome but it's only 315, which is aboslute nonsense. I will just give up some exp and start over from the reset point. I'll also update this thread if I find some useful info.

@Lanceor: I'll try maxing Sacrifice as well, thanks for the advise.

@davme_mcreg: You sir are very generous, thanks a lot. I've sent a PM.

edit: Tried 160 strength with max Sacrifice, Zeal and Fanaticism (60 skill points ffs!) and the result is absolutely disappointing:

So, let's break down the formula a bit more. Just a bit, though, since it can be a bit more complicated when you add off weapon +min/max, situational +%ed, etc.

For the current purpose, I'll give this formula:

(Weapon base damage x weapon enhanced damage%) x off-weapon enhanced damage%. This has to be calculated separately for min and max damage. This formula is missing off weapon +min/max damage, +flat damage (like from Grief) and such because I don't have those values for you and I want to simplify the equation.

Applying that to your situation here, weapon base damage is 13-24 on a Rune Scepter. Your weapon enhanced damage% is 202%. Your off-weapon enhanced damage% is Strength + Zeal + Zeal synergy + Fanaticism + theoretically items like jewels, Fortitude, etc.



So, running the formula for your char with basic attack without Zeal or Fanaticism equipped, we see--

MIN: (13 x 202%) x 160% = 39.26 x 160% = 102
MAX: (24 x 202%) x 160% = 72.48 x 160% = 189.

This implies that either you have some +damage somewhere on your charms/gear that I can't see, or ALREADY the character sheet is lying to you.



Running this formula once again with level 21 Zeal, level 1 Sacrifice, and level 21 Fanaticism values (based on what you told us earlier):

MIN: (13 x 202%) x (160% STR + 390% Fanaticism + 114% Zeal) = 39.26 x 664% = 300
MAX: (24 x 202%) x (160% STR + 390% Fanaticism + 114% Zeal) = 72.48 x 664% = 553.7

Now, again, there's an implication here that there's some +damage on your charms/gear that I can't see.



Finally, running this formula for the synergized Zeal, 21 Zeal, 20 Sacrifice, and 21 Fanaticism values:

MIN: (13 x 202%) x (160% STR + 390% Fanaticism + 342% Zeal) = 39.26 x 892% = 389
MAX: (24 x 202%) x (160% STR + 390% Fanaticism + 342% Zeal) = 72.48 x 892% = 719.
Again, missing a bit of extra damage from a charm or two.


Now, let's pretend for a moment that you were to up your weapon to a Mighty Scepter instead of a Rune Scepter. This is a relatively minor change, and largely insufficient, but just to show the difference:
MIN: (40 x 202%) x (160% STR + 390% Fanaticism + 342% Zeal) = 120.8 x 892% = 1198
MAX: (52 x 202%) x (160% STR + 390% Fanaticism + 342% Zeal) = 157 x 892% = 1558

I mean, wow! That's not even that great of a weapon! Go with Oath in an Eth base or something like that and you're really starting to do damage! Even a poorly rolled Oath in an Elite base would change the whole game for this character.


TL;DR
Point is, even with the synergies and stuff added, your weapon base damage is awful for hell difficulty, and the only way to change that is to get a better weapon.

I've also tried maxing my defense and gave all to Holy Shield and Defiance while also giving more points to Vitality. Basic idea here is to lower my need to use potions during combat and avoid sudden Death while dealing low but continous damage with Zeal.

My base defense from gear is 975 and Defiance took it to 3607. Holy Shield alone takes it to 7068. But combined I have 9701. So I'm absolutely convinced that giving even a single stat point to Defiance is simply wasting it. Yeah, max your Holy Shield and cast once before combat (it lasts for almost 9 minutes) and then switch to an offensive aura.

One problem I had while maxing my melee damage was the Immune to Physical enemies. When I was a Berseker Barb, I had no problem with those enemies since Berserk inflicts magical damage. Now I find it really hard to balance my Pally's skills because there is always a big catch and I think I've become very gear dependent.

p.s. Conversion could be effective if it also could convert superior enemies like champions or elites. Or, it could convert the lesser enemies but without a time limit. I'm not sure if a maxed Conversion can make a difference.

@Winterkill: Wow, man you have actually resolved everything there, thanks a bunch. Now I can vividly see that gear indeed makes a huge difference while usig those skills. So, first of all, I have to find a better weapon for sure. Then I will:

- Max Holy Shield
- Max Zeal
- Max whatever skill is best for dealing with physical immunity (I'm yet to run some test and find the best option)
- Allocate the rest to Sacrifice or Fanaticism.

Max Fanaticism and Sacrifice in that order, leaving Zeal last. On my maxed-out Pally, there is only a 4% damage difference between 10 points and 20 points in Zeal! Likewise, you can leave Holy Shield at 1 point until you have nowhere else to spend the points.

I actually wrote a guide back in 1.11b about ways for Zealots to deal with Physical Immunes. In short, Azurewrath and the Rift runeword are two of the best choices for adding non-Physical damage to Zeal.

Depending on your weapon (which is currently very bad), you might also find the 1 point you invested in Vengeance to be sufficient.

Since D2R, the Act 1 Merc seems to have become very capable of dealing with Physical immunes; I haven't tested her at around level 60-70 with budget gear though.

Holy Bolt/FoH is also very strong nowadays and ignores the immunities of Undead / Demons, though it needs a 20 skill-point investment - this is the Hybrid that I mentioned earlier. Probably better off starting as an FoHer before investing heavily into Zeal and its synergies.

About physicall immunes I just let mercenary do the job. Act 2 merc with The Reaper's Toll or act 5 Frenzy merc with Lawbringer in one hand work fine for me. Though sometimes you need to wait a bit for Decrepify to proc.

It has been said already that Zeal dmg is highly dependant on your weapon. I'll just add that I finished hell with Lightsabre - a nice budget option. But when I switched to Grief the improvment was enormous.