Zealot Charms

Do I want to get combat skiller or aura skiller? Looks like fana levels do more than Zeal levels and Holy Shield only increases def above 28~ - also aura skillers seem to be much much more affordable.

I go with mostly Max Dmg / AR / Life (g)charms for my Zealot.

And maybe a couple 12% FHR / 130 AR to get up to the next FHR breakpoint.

I think Max Dmg and Attack Rating gcharms are better than skillers for him.

ah good to know - do you experience hit recovery a lot?

Neither. Max damage charms give you more overall damage. On top of that, they give you a big attack rating boost

In both cases, it's because you are boosting base damage and base attack rating, which then gets multiplied by your skills. In comparison, +1 to a skill is a smaller increase, the way the game was designed

Is that true for all phys damage chars? Druids, pala, barb? And skills only good for casters like hammerdin, summoners etc?

For what characters are the elemental damage types on charms - similar question for poison I guess.

For shapeshifting druids you could consider skillers, since they boost Lycanthropy and your wereform skill too, but for other melee chars i d go surely with max dmg/attack rating/whatever you need grand charms

xigua wrote: 2 years ago

Is that true for all phys damage chars? Druids, pala, barb? And skills only good for casters like hammerdin, summoners etc?
..

No.
As with pretty much everything in the game, it depends on your exact build and your other gear choices.

(Very) Generally speaking, the more ED you already have as compared to +dmg, the relatively more you will benefit from +dmg. Equally, if you have hardly any ED, ED becomes relatively more valuable. The simplest "depends on your gear" shift example there is switching from Fortitude to Enigma or vice versa. With fort, you have an extra 300ED (almost..minus whatever ED you get from the skills on fort) which is a ton and may well be enough to make max dmg more valuable than skillers even for a build that would've preferred skillers before. At the same time, others will prefer max/ar even without things like fort.

There's usually a cutoff somewhere.

Plus it obviously depends on just what you get out of a skiller.
Zeal for example is looking at 10% ar and a measly 6% dmg per point in Zeal or 5% ar and 17% dmg if you go the aura route for fana instead.
A Fury druid on the other hand is looking at 15% ar from Werewolf, 10% ar and 5% dmg on rage and another 10% ar and 17% dmg on Fury, all from the same skiller. So that's a massively larger boost than a zealot gets from a single skill charm.
(Not saying they're always the best choice for a druid mind you, just pointing out how much of a difference there is between builds - also ignoring other bits like IAS and defensive gains here as that should be handled either way)

For a zealot specifically, it also depends on 'purity'. Are you really using Zeal for everything or are you using Zeal to clear packs but smiting bosses? In the latter case, it is worth noting that +max doesn't work with Smite (as is true for some other phys skills as well) and AR has no effect as it always hits anyways, making max/ar charms a complete waste on bosses in return. And since bosses tend to be the stuff that actually slows you down, the priorities would shift away from max/ar.
That's why my Smite-zealer for example uses skiller grand charms but max/ar small charms. Maxes out Smite as much as possible and then just adds a bit of extra performance to the Zeal that frankly, given Grief, is already usually quite overkill anyways.