Answered Best Armor for my Zealot?

I'm trying to decide on what armor I should work towards for my zealot, currently running a Treachery. He's got his Grief and Exile already. I'm leaning towards a Fortitude, but I really like the QoL from an Enigma. I know that Chains of Honor is often recommended for doing ubers, which I plan to use him for as well. Does anyone have a definitive answer as to which armor I should choose and why?

No, there is no clear-cut answer. My preference, the build guides, and content creators I follow all favor Enigma. For mobility is one reason, but I think the main reason is for controlling your merc

Decrepify from reaper's toll on your merc can be kind of inconsistent unless you are teleporting him directly into groups of monsters. And might +

Decrepify from your merc almost doubles your overall DPS on an endgame zealot build, so effective control of your merc is critical to get the most damage out of your build. Together with mobility, Enigma just gives me the best clear speed

But it looks like you might be making an all-in-one build, so maybe we have different priorities. For ubers, I run specific setups different from normal pvm, no merc, and in this case you don't need

Teleport as much. I also don't ever run Exile, which to me is a dedicated uber smiter shield

marl71 wrote: 10 months ago

No, there is no clear-cut answer. My preference, the build guides, and content creators I follow all favor Enigma. For mobility is one reason, but I think the main reason is for controlling your merc

Decrepify from reaper's toll on your merc can be kind of inconsistent unless you are teleporting him directly into groups of monsters. And might +

Decrepify from your merc almost doubles your overall DPS on an endgame zealot build, so effective control of your merc is critical to get the most damage out of your build. Together with mobility, Enigma just gives me the best clear speed

But it looks like you might be making an all-in-one build, so maybe we have different priorities. For ubers, I run specific setups different from normal pvm, no merc, and in this case you don't need

Teleport as much. I also don't ever run Exile, which to me is a dedicated uber smiter shield

No reaper's on the merc sadly. He's rocking an Obedience atm. Definitely sort of an all-rounder.

although the OP was asking about armor for his zealer, wanted to flag that changing Exile to Phoenix might also be a good option.

If you have the runes and a proper base, switching to Phoenix may boost your damage significantly as it adds +400% ED and also gives you extra sustain due to the aura.

Something to keep in mind is clear speed from movement. My bowazon kills things a lot faster than my paladin, but she walks so much slower its about a wash for overall clear speed. You could put your character into maxroll and see how much more damage you get from Fortitude.

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

trentor wrote: 10 months ago

although the OP was asking about armor for his zealer, wanted to flag that changing Exile to Phoenix might also be a good option.

If you have the runes and a proper base, switching to Phoenix may boost your damage significantly as it adds +400% ED and also gives you extra sustain due to the aura.

Love this idea. Unfortunately Phoenix is well outside my budget atm. I'm struggling to get the Wealth to aquire the

Lo for a Fortitude. And I'm not sure how much value I'd get from the damage boost as I mostly play online solo as the majority of my online friends are rarely available to play these days and I'm not a fan of joining games with random people I don't know.

Considering you're using a

Phase Blade and going to max out Fanatacism,

Fade is the only benefit to wearing a Treachery, and in my view not enough of a benefit. A cheap alternative until you can get better is a Duress. My Paly has been smiting Ubers for almost 2 years wearing one.

mhlg wrote: 10 months ago

Considering you're using a

Phase Blade and going to max out Fanatacism,

Fade is the only benefit to wearing a Treachery, and in my view not enough of a benefit. A cheap alternative until you can get better is a Duress. My Paly has been smiting Ubers for almost 2 years wearing one.

Duress aquired...

Mine is rocking Fortitude, Phoenix

Zakarum Shield,

Crown of Ages,

Steelrend and Grief. But I guess Enigma is also okay.

davme_mcreg wrote: 10 months ago

Something to keep in mind is clear speed from movement. My bowazon kills things a lot faster than my paladin, but she walks so much slower its about a wash for overall clear speed. You could put your character into maxroll and see how much more damage you get from Fortitude.

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

Well mind the fact that no other class can even compete with Paladin in the running speed department solely because of

Charge availability.

I personally wouldn't ever want to use Enigma on a Paladin since he can move around so quickly anyway... I would highly suggest to go for CoH (because you should aim for at least 300 all res in total to nullify

Uber Mephisto 's

Conviction) at the end but surely use Duress as it is probably the best budget armor you can get your hands on.

P.S. Also I thought Fortitude 's +ED doesn't apply to

Smite, only flat dmg does?

I'll be changing my uber smitter to an uber zealot and I'm definitely using Fortitude, I may leave a spare Enigma to swap in case I want to do some mf.

What I'm not sure about is if I should use Exile or

Herald Of Zakarum

PabloSL wrote: 10 months ago

What I'm not sure about is if I should use Exile or

Herald Of Zakarum

I would say if you are gonna do const. Ubers then stick with Exile, otherwise (also if you are using Dracs) take HoZ.
As a final note, if someone is desperate for

Life Tap or using budget items -- you can always shop for a simple

Life Tap

Wand and have it on swap

TheDoo wrote: 10 months ago

PabloSL wrote: 10 months ago

What I'm not sure about is if I should use Exile or

Herald Of Zakarum

I would say if you are gonna do const. Ubers then stick with Exile, otherwise (also if you are using Dracs) take HoZ.
As a final note, if someone is desperate for

Life Tap or using budget items -- you can always shop for a simple

Life Tap

Wand and have it on swap

well its gona be an all around use for this one, so I guess I'll get a nice Zakarum

TheDoo wrote: 10 months ago

P.S. Also I thought Fortitude 's +ED doesn't apply to

Smite, only flat dmg does?

According to maxroll applies

The best armor for a zealot paladin is Fortitude no doubt. Duress as a Budget option. For your merc Obedience is better than reappers' Toll to help with ubers. First Obedience has a high percentage of crushing blow (40%). Second, you are using Exile. It grants chance of

Life Tap curse. You cannot have two curses at the same time. Changing to decripify curse maybe isn't what you want.

Regards.

If you want

Life Tap, any other curse source will mess with your play...

But if you don't want/need

Life Tap...
Remember that Ubers have positive Physical resistance, so

Amplify Damage /

Decrepify will increase your Crushing Blow damage.
As most of the Ubers have 50% Physical resistance, with

Decrepify you will be doing double damage from your Crushing Blow!
Assuming that you have Crushing Blow on yourself, your Merc making your Crushing Blow deal 2x damage is probably better then your Merc having a chance of Crushing Blow on himself (even a high one)

----

https://diablo-archive.fandom.com/wiki/ ... Diablo_II)

Physical resistance does apply to Crushing Blow damage, but only if the resistance is positive. This means that

Amplify Damage and

Decrepify do not affect Crushing Blows beyond reducing the monsters physical resistance to zero.