Evaluation of my Zealer

I always liked Paladins the most in every RPG game and when D2 came out my first Char was Zealer. I don´t remember the details but I knew that I completely screwed him up (I had no guides available and therefore I had to figure out all by myself). With the help of a friend who played a Necro (imho the best choice in the first days of D2) I made it to act 4 - but I died almost instantly when I left the

Pandemonium Fortress And since there was no possibility to respec I had to start over again (this time I chose a Barb).

Therefore, after playing a Summoner Druid (I chose this char mainly to get my sons and me selffound through hell) and a Cold Sorc in D2R I had to start a Pala again This was ultimately triggered by the fact that I received a nice Grief as part of a larger trade. My Pala is now lvl 92 and I am curious in which respect I may make further improvements or maybe change some things. So far I have two setups:

One for SP farming (mostly

Travincal and

Chaos Sanctuary)
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/4g8kr05e#1

and one for DClone / Ubers.
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/4g8kr05e#2

I appreciate all advice and ideas

Btw, my Merc survives at best one or two Trav runs. Is there anything I can do to keep him alive? I don't really need him, but it would be nice if it stayed alive

I just pretend my merc doesnt exist on my barb, but maybe getting him more resistances to fire to fight off

Conviction.
Other that maybe checking if you can give him more attack speed with Treachery.
I really like your helmet, never stood out to me but its got some great stats, i might try it on other characters.

BonyM wrote: 1 month ago

I just pretend my merc doesnt exist on my barb, but maybe getting him more resistances to fire to fight off

Conviction.
Other that maybe checking if you can give him more attack speed with Treachery.
I really like your helmet, never stood out to me but its got some great stats, i might try it on other characters.

Thx for the input I think I have a Treachery in one of my mules and might try it out.

I am so glad I found a perfect

Stealskull (and I really was wondering why it is not at least mentioned in the Zealer guide on maxroll)
Just imagine how this would look with a

Shako (I never tried and never will - because what has been seen cannot be unseen )

oOKIWIOo wrote: 1 month ago

I always liked Paladins the most in every RPG game and when D2 came out my first Char was Zealer. I don´t remember the details but I knew that I completely screwed him up (I had no guides available and therefore I had to figure out all by myself). With the help of a friend who played a Necro (imho the best choice in the first days of D2) I made it to act 4 - but I died almost instantly when I left the

Pandemonium Fortress And since there was no possibility to respec I had to start over again (this time I chose a Barb).

Therefore, after playing a Summoner Druid (I chose this char mainly to get my sons and me selffound through hell) and a Cold Sorc in D2R I had to start a Pala again This was ultimately triggered by the fact that I received a nice Grief as part of a larger trade. My Pala is now lvl 92 and I am curious in which respect I may make further improvements or maybe change some things. So far I have two setups:

One for SP farming (mostly

Travincal and

Chaos Sanctuary)
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/4g8kr05e#1

and one for DClone / Ubers.
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/4g8kr05e#2

I appreciate all advice and ideas

Btw, my Merc survives at best one or two Trav runs. Is there anything I can do to keep him alive? I don't really need him, but it would be nice if it stayed alive

When farming

Travincal, a

Guardian Angel would be very nice for your merc due to increment max res all in 15%, In

Chaos Sanctuary keep Fortitude. In case for your pally if you want to increase attack rating you can use the combo ring/amulet of angelic set, as you are using steelskull, which provides mana leech, so the rare ring, in my opinion, isn't nuch necessary. I suggest try belts more suitable to melee characters, such as

Nosferatu's Coil,

Verdungo's Hearty Cord or

String of Ears, instead of

Goldwrap.

I like the

Helm idea, but I think you could play to its strengths more if you changed around leech on the rest of the build. I find that

Life Tap on a non-uber build is not necessary. Doesn't it also override

Decrepify a lot?

I think you get a lot more overall out of

String of Ears than

Goldwrap. You can make up the gf or mf on your ring slot (

Dwarf Star, nagel, or rare ring), because you don't need mana leech there--5% from your

Helm is more than enough. Chamming your

Helm can let you run both, or focus on fcr rings and hit a better

Teleport breakpoint

In you glove slot,

Laying of Hands is the obvious choice. If you don't want to use those, then you can go for crafted gloves or steelrends

Lastly, you

Sacrifice a lot of ds and cb when you run

Stealskull. You can make it up some with gore riders (and gloves), but I also understand that you want mf there. Ds is the next thing to add to the build if you want more dps

I love running physical

Zeal too, so just my experience and thoughts

Thanks for the further input, I really appreciate it! A few short notes before I have to work

• Guardian Angel seems a good idea, too and I also have one in a mule (sold an ethereal one not long ago...). Maybe I pair it with a
  Crown of Thieves and give it a try.
• I used
  Goldwrap only for MF and got this upped version for free. In SP I have no problem with survivability and therefore I did not use the other belts (although I have them all available).
• I need the rare ring mainly for the strength because when I farm annis I do this without mine in the inventory and I use Fortitude instead of Enigma (which obviously costs me a ton of strength). I should have mentioned that, sorry. But I can swap it with another ring when doing MF, of course, because then I use Enigma + I have my
  Annihilus. Good point therefore nevertheless.
• I rarely use
  Teleport (nearly only to get inside Chaos )
• I have
  Laying of Hands, too but I am a big fan of
  Dracul's Grasp resp.
  Life Tap because you can leech life on every mob in the game and I do not even need the CTA buff (and I need the STR on the gloves when I do DClones).
• The merc overriding
  Life Tap is an issue, yes. Because of that I have a perfect
  Bonehew (sadly not ethereal) to experiment in my stash too. But since I currently do mainly Trav runs without the Merc I have not yet tested it.
• I want to keep the
  Raven Frost because of the AR boost it gives. Interestingly I have not found a source with a recommendation what value one should reach on attack rating. Therefore my questions for the experts here: What amount of AR should a Zealer reach in your experience?
• In SP I have no issues to kill the Council very quickly - even with low CB (only
  Ismail Vilehand can be annoying when he is physical immune and self-healing - btw, does prevent monster heal not proc on the council members or is this maybe bugged?)

Because of my "limits" to change gear concerning strength (at least in combination with Fortitude), I consider putting some of the remaining points in there (I want to reach at least lvl 94). Survivability was at least until now never an issue (thanks to the Dracs ). But I am still undecided in this respect...

Here is my Zealer, the first character that I made. My merc doesn't have survive problems as I take care of him, giving some potions when in need. His

Helm is socketed with a jewel to compensate the -fire resist but currently is on another merc so I created in d2planner.

https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/d5a0q07r

Florian_G wrote: 1 month ago

Here is my Zealer, the first character that I made. My merc doesn't have survive problems as I take care of him, giving some potions when in need. His

Helm is socketed with a jewel to compensate the -fire resist but currently is on another merc so I created in d2planner.

https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/d5a0q07r

Thanks! If I remember correctly you only play offline/selffound, right? If yes, this is really an impressive build!
Many of my items are selffound, too; but besides the Grief I bought the shields, the CTA and a few small charms - and I still haven´t found a

Ber yet

Besides Trav and DClone/Ubers I have no probs with my merc, too. But in these situations I have to feed him potions constantly to keep him alive
It would really be nice when you could issue commands to the Merc like "stay behind" or define his behaviour in dependence of his health.

oOKIWIOo wrote: 1 month ago

If I remember correctly you only play offline/selffound, right? If yes, this is really an impressive build!

Yes, I play mostly offline and all the stuff was very hard gathered. Yesterday I just found another

Ber
At Ubers, sometimes he dies very fast, no matter what.

I have a sorc online but also there I play solo on password games. I never played with anyone or traded something. She's at 92 right now but it takes so much longer to level on P1.

I'd go for killspeed instead of more mf for sure. Also, reaper merc works best if you can position him to proc decrep where you are slapping, so I'd def go for some FCR.

either 75FCR build with 75ias merc:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/biadm05u

or 48FCR build (so you can wear LoH gloves) with 75ias merc:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/oxa4007k

With constant decrep and

Redemption aura you dont need tap at all (except for UT).

uuee wrote: 1 month ago

I'd go for killspeed instead of more mf for sure. Also, reaper merc works best if you can position him to proc decrep where you are slapping, so I'd def go for some FCR.

either 75FCR build with 75ias merc:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/biadm05u

or 48FCR build (so you can wear LoH gloves) with 75ias merc:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/oxa4007k

With constant decrep and

Redemption aura you dont need tap at all (except for UT).

Nice ideas, but I am currently lacking some gear for these setups I don´t have useful FCR rings and I need my Griffons for my Mosaic Sin. But if I find something similar I will give it a try

Hm, despite the fact I would generally NEVER use enigma on a physical build, just a few thoughts:

The best travincal runner is a horker whirlwind barb. No need for decrepify or amplify damage, immunes die by two strikes of berserk. I have a dual LW barbarian hireling, he nets a level 34 might aura from the beginning so there's no need to wait for him to activate his aura. High chance of Life Tap grants immunity for him and me. He is faster and more aggressive than the dumb desert merc, so he never falls behind.
This allows for maximizing damage on my barb: LoH, Fortitude, dual Grief, Highlords, he is able to play even in higher player counts without swapping gear. I hate swapping gear.

The biggest advantage of the barb over zealot is that find item doesn't depend on player count. In contrast to the paladin, he doesn't need the MF from enigma, with two Ali Babas he easily gets 400+ MF. Two Ist'ed Phase Blades bring another 100 MF if you can pass on the gold bonus.

The waypoint isn't far from the council, so neither zealot nor barb need to teleport. Zealot has charge, barb has high running speed and jump skills.

Since the zealot shouldn't play solo because of the bad drop chances, enigma is quite counterproductive in terms of damage and drops per minute.

Thus said, if you asked me to build a travincal zealot, I would go for maximum damage and average magic find, hunting the council in high populated split games only.

Just my 2 cents.

DasNarf wrote: 1 month ago

Hm, despite the fact I would generally NEVER use enigma on a physical build, just a few thoughts:

The best travincal runner is a horker whirlwind barb. No need for decrepify or amplify damage, immunes die by two strikes of berserk. I have a dual LW barbarian hireling, he nets a level 34 might aura from the beginning so there's no need to wait for him to activate his aura. High chance of Life Tap grants immunity for him and me. He is faster and more aggressive than the dumb desert merc, so he never falls behind.
This allows for maximizing damage on my barb: LoH, Fortitude, dual Grief, Highlords, he is able to play even in higher player counts without swapping gear. I hate swapping gear.

The biggest advantage of the barb over zealot is that find item doesn't depend on player count. In contrast to the paladin, he doesn't need the MF from enigma, with two Ali Babas he easily gets 400+ MF. Two Ist'ed Phase Blades bring another 100 MF if you can pass on the gold bonus.

The waypoint isn't far from the council, so neither zealot nor barb need to teleport. Zealot has charge, barb has high running speed and jump skills.

Since the zealot shouldn't play solo because of the bad drop chances, enigma is quite counterproductive in terms of damage and drops per minute.

Thus said, if you asked me to build a travincal zealot, I would go for maximum damage and average magic find, hunting the council in high populated split games only.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks for your input, too I know that a Horker is the best Char for Trav farming but I simply like Paladins more (maybe I make one sometime since I now have already found 4

Blade Of Ali Baba)

Frankly, I use Enigma on my Paly mainly for MF and movement speed (as I said, I rarely tele). As also mentioned, I do not really need a merc for my Trav runs. I have the Council mostly down in no time on SP - even with complete MF gear. But your mentioning of

Charge is a good point. Maybe by using it I can get there even faster (currently I use

Vigor in town and from the waypoint to the council). I farm Tav mainly for gems, charms and runes. In SP I nowhere in the game get that much charms and gems in the same time.

I absolutely respect this! I love Paladins (have four of them!) and it is very sad that the Zealot is a underused build.

But another hint:

If you want gems, charms and runes, make a Dragondin and go to the Secret Cow Level or World Stone Tower or any area with a high mob density.

Dragondin plays exactly like a Zealot but he is WAY stronger.The more monsters are on the screen, the more damage he does!

This and the Fist of Heavens Paladin are my favourite builds.

The FoH is an excellent Travi runner as well (300 MF, 125 FCR). I do the following route with him:

Start in act 4 town - waypoint to Travincal - tele to Council - kill Council - tele back to waypoint - Durance of Hate, tele to level 3 - kill Councils and Mephisto - take portal to act 4 - do Chaos Sanctuary - log out - repeat.

Very fast route, no town running, and demons and undead only.

As I said, I play the Zealer mostly for nostalgic reason - not for max. efficient farming. I simply like looking at and playing with him But if I am in the mood, maybe I will test a Dargondin or Dreamer, too (I mainly hesitate making Dream because the resistance rolls have a very wide range...)

That's great!

I am actually leveling a Zealot together with my wife's Paladin (she is doing

Holy Fire). We are at act 3 nightmare now.

At the end, I plan to make a

Zeal/

Smite-hybrid.

DasNarf wrote: 1 month ago

That's great!

I am actually leveling a Zealot together with my wife's Paladin (she is doing

Holy Fire). We are at act 3 nightmare now.

At the end, I plan to make a

Zeal/

Smite-hybrid.

Lucky you - I have given up convincing my wife to get a copy of D2R. Fortunately, I have two sons, too