Off meta zealot

I'm thinking of making a zealot for the next ladder, but trying something kind of weird. So I started looking at some of the 2h weapon options, and I found a little info on builds with BOTD

War Pike, or Death CS. I have a few questions and need some input, though

1. Do spears actually negatively affect FHR on paladins? I see this in some but not all sources for FHR breakpoints
2. What do I do with my extra points from

Holy Shield? I put them into

Charge for testing. Is it worth synergizing

Charge?
3. What weapons do you recommend? I am mostly considering BOTD, Death, and Fury druid weapons right now (reapers, etc)

This is for playing mostly p1 online. I am also still open to going the 1h weapon route if someone has a fun build suggestion

2handed axes maces and polearms are capped at 6 frame

Zeal, according to my calculator; swords and spears 5 frame.
botd in an

Eth warpike w. maxed

Zeal,

Sacrifice

Fanaticism, should = crazy damage...someone should maxroll it...

Thanks, yeah I have been doing some building on maxroll with their standard zealot build. Death

Colossus Sword has the same calculated DPS as Grief + Phoenix, so that is very nice damage. eBOTD WP is almost as strong, about 10% less DPS overall

https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/jb010odn

I was also thinking an ethereal reaper's toll would be worth testing, but I am worried about that 6 frame

Cap being too slow

In case anyone cares, I settled on an ethereal arioc’s needle for my build.

Some reasons:
DPS is very good—calculated to be equivalent to ebotd in a

Ghost Spear. I like that the ias requirements are extremely flexible compared to ebotd warpike and especially Death—this means you can wear whatever gear you want, or if needed overstack ias to mitigate effects of

Decrepify and

Holy Freeze. The secondary mods are also mostly useful, and the design as held by a paladin looks pretty cool—even if the

Spear

Zeal animation is kind of ridiculous

I’m still not sure about

Spear-specific fhr, so I guess I’ll test it myself. And the skill allocations I’ll figure out and test as I go

Have you kept playing this build? I recently leveled a zealer who's using an ebotd

Berserker Axe (I don't want to use Grief) and HoZ, but I find it lacks range. I tried out an ebotd GPA at the best attack speed with Fanat, but it still felt kind of slow. Interested in knowing about your experience!

How about

Eth

Tomb Reaver with 3os?

basicnecromancy wrote: 3 months ago

How about

Eth

Tomb Reaver with 3os?

I'd love to try that. Just need to find one and socket it properly, haha.

Maldoror wrote: 3 months ago

Have you kept playing this build? I recently leveled a zealer who's using an ebotd

Berserker Axe (I don't want to use Grief) and HoZ, but I find it lacks range. I tried out an ebotd GPA at the best attack speed with Fanat, but it still felt kind of slow. Interested in knowing about your experience!

Hey, sorry I missed your post! I had a great ladder. Started sorc for the first time in a long time, and farmed some fun leveling weapons. I leveled my pally

Holy Fire with

Kinemil's Awl--tons of fun if you haven't tried, and on theme with a 2h zealot. I switched to

Fanaticism halfway through nightmare with a

Kelpie Snare. For hell, I made the worst rolled Oath of my life, in a

Balrog Blade--still got me through hell easily

After that I built enough Wealth for an

Eth

Arioc's Needle and a

Zod, I started my initial build that I had plannned. From there I went through kind of a slow period messing around with different gloves, amulets, belts,

Boots. Eventually I broke down and bought a highlords, and that finished my initial build. During this period, I discovered that my build is really weak to archers (no shield) and really struggles with resists (again, no shield)

My next major goal was to make Chains of Honor and Breath of the Dying. This second build was much stronger and much tankier. With verdungo's, I had 22% DR, which gave me enough time to bull rush any archer packs I came across in the pits. And I capped my res pretty easily, at least fire and light

But I craved more damage, so that led to build three: Death. I chose a

Colossus Sword base, and my first roll was eh--ok. So I traded up for another set of runes and decided to splurge a little for a 13 ED base. The first roll on this base was 388 ED! From there on, I pretty much stuck to Death for a while. After a while I got restless and I tried an alternate variant build using a CoA with two IAS jewels,

Laying of Hands, and

Metalgrid. This variant hits the slightly slower 5/11

Zeal breakpoint, but has exceptional survivability, chance to hit, and still excellent all-around damage, more than enough for p1

From there, I focused more on building a semi-budget lightning sorc. Then I found a perfect

Raven Frost, which I traded for 6

Ber. With those runes, I spent a bunch of time making a max damage singer build, which is another story entirely

I ended the season with enough Wealth to circle back to my zealot and make a Pride merc and Fortitude. After this I was tired of trading and felt like returning to single player. My ending build is:

Eth

Arioc's Needle (3/226), gface, highlords, LoH, fort, gore riders, string, dual leech ring,

Raven Frost, assorted damage charms, Pride merc

But my favorite build was definitely

Eth Death CS (388), gface (IAS jewel), highlords, LoH, Chains of Honor, verdungo's/string, dual leech ring,

Raven Frost, assorted damage charms, reaper's merc

Edit: forgot to add my skills. It’s standard

Zeal and

Fanaticism, but I also maxed

Charge and

Vigor as a synergy.

Charge is very important for mobility, which you need for archer packs. Offense is your best defense here. It’s also just a lot of fun to one shot bulky monsters

Highly recommended, hope you all give it a try!

Hi. newcomer here

sir freezalot with Doom? or not off-meta enough?

I just wonder if

Archon Staff eBotD would be a good option, too.

Pecassoo wrote: 3 months ago

Hi. newcomer here

Glad to be here.

marl71 wrote: 8 months ago

1. Do spears actually negatively affect FHR on paladins? I see this in some but not all sources for FHR breakpoints

Yes, see this table here under the "Hit Recovery" section. You'll see paladins have a separate table for hit recovery with 2ht (spears) and stf (staves, polearms, 2h axes, 2h hammers) type weapons and they're slower than their hit recovery with other weapon types. It's translated from German so there might be a few spots with confusing grammar, it's good for the most part though.

http://www.mannm.org/d2library/faqtoids ... b_eng.html

xigua wrote: 3 months ago

sir freezalot with Doom? or not off-meta enough?

I considered this, but the fastest

Zeal breakpoint with 2h axes is unfortunately capped at 6 frames. I also wasn't impressed by the damage calculations--if a weapon is not ethereal (or Grief) the physical damage is just sad for an endgame build

basicnecromancy wrote: 3 months ago

I just wonder if

Archon Staff eBotD would be a good option, too.

This was one of my original ideas, something I wanted to try. But

Zeal is capped at 6 frames for staff class weapons. Probably a good weapon for a pure charger, though

Similar response, for a previous comment on

Eth tombreaver.

Zeal is too slow with polearms--I tested

Eth reaper's toll and didn't like the feel of it

Pecassoo wrote: 3 months ago

Pecassoo wrote: 3 months ago

Hi. newcomer here

Glad to be here.

Welcome!

marl71 wrote: 3 months ago

xigua wrote: 3 months ago

sir freezalot with Doom? or not off-meta enough?

I considered this, but the fastest

Zeal breakpoint with 2h axes is unfortunately capped at 6 frames. I also wasn't impressed by the damage calculations--if a weapon is not ethereal (or Grief) the physical damage is just sad for an endgame build

well - if you want the pinnacle of power you will have to play Mosaic

I think the idea is to play Doom in a BA, Exile, fana aura and

Zeal - you can get to 4 frames (4)+8 and would need 54 IAS (fana 36) and 45 of that will come from Doom already - so highloards and you are good to go to pick whatever else you want.
But yea - the damage is probably not super duper I guess.

If you roll it well you can get to base of 223.5 dmg that will be multiplied by 664 from fana, 300 if you chose forti, 390 if Phoenix - but people say no because fire storm interrupts

Zeal (?) - 565 from Pride might merc, 55 Steel rend... so without Phoenix you would end up at 3600 dmg per hit - not world classe but you get a lot of hits and also some added cold damage and a lot of safety - in addition we will have all the auras.

xigua wrote: 3 months ago

I think the idea is to play Doom in a BA...But yea - the damage is probably not super duper I guess.

This post is about a 2h zealot build. But I considered making a Doom BA offline, in part to use on my zealot

I tend to measure damage in reference to Oath. A perfectly rolled Doom BA is about equivalent DPS to a mid-rolled Oath. Not bad DPS, just not what I consider endgame personally. Here is the calc: https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/642mo03i

...Phoenix - but people say no because fire storm interrupts

Zeal (?)

This is no longer the case in D2R, which is great, because it's a useful item for experimenting with different build ideas

would you use a 64ed Exile or a 450 ed Phoenix? I will try them both I guess - I just bought both in a moment of impulse

after testing Doom I can't agree more: it's not optimal for pala

xigua wrote: 3 months ago

would you use a 64ed Exile or a 450 ed Phoenix?

450 ED Phoenix is a great roll, I would use that over anything! I think Exile mostly makes sense as a dedicated uber smiter shield. I don't see the appeal for general pvm

Zeal use, except maybe hardcore, which I don't play. But I have never tested one before, so maybe I'm just missing out