Zealot the worst performer compared to gear ?.

Been working on a

Holy Shock zealot and my current gear is pretty good, containing pieces like

Stormshield,

Guardian Angel,

String of Ears,

Heaven's Light. My

Holy Shock ,

Zeal and sacrifise are all maxed which means all my damage is pretty much as good as it gets. Despite all this, i've been sorely introduced to the worst part of the paladin, the utterly broken skills that were never fixed.

Holy Shield. This is handsdown the most "pointless" skill, that never requires more than 1 single skillpoint into... due to the most broken skill of the paladin -

Zeal - which is still in dire need of fixing , but since no more development is done, we're sadly stuck with it.
The reason for

Zeal being broken is it's extremely lacking addition to AR and overall damage. At level 77 against equal lvl mobs , my

Zeal's hitrate is approaching as long numbers as 60% to hit, yet i have enough dexterity to achieve 75% block with only 4 points into

Holy Shield.

This means that a paladin must spam points heavily into dex , even with skills like

Zeal which is suppose to boost AR by almost 300%, and being melee, very few points into vitality . This means that any points into

Holy Shield more than 1 is just a waste of points - which brings us to the other hidden problem.
The lack of viable skills . Even a zealot that uses

Fanaticism runs into this problem. About 60 skillpoints are used efficiently for combat, into skills that in some form directly contributes to damage or survival in ways that makes putting points actually meaningfull.

As a Holyshock zealot, i'm pretty much maxed with 20sac, 20zeal, 20holyshock.... that's where my damage increase and hitrating stops, i could use 2p angelic to boost AR significantly, but then survivial goes down the drain with 2 slots not contributing to resists . I've looked at guides and they're all showing off runeworded items like Enigma, Bear and other runewords that's almost impossible to get, unless you have a farmer to feed your pala.

And even if you get all those immortal items, the performance is still sub-par when compared to even less geared classes and builds, for example Javazons that can clear 8 player cowlevel naked with blue javelins ... Even with extreme gear, a Zealot's clearspeed is non-existant and damage in groups is a joke.

Imo,

Zeal should've been given a much higher buff to AR and damage, and the class as a whole should've been thoroughly rebalanced to
be able to perform as well as other classes, with the same quality of items such as runeworded, sets or uniques.

It feels to me that zealots are a meme build that serves to purpose than waste hours farming items, and yet still performs like crap.

Feel free to correct me if i'm wrong, but with reasoning and logic.

To start with, you aren't playing a standard endgame build, so you are kind of half-invested in two different forms of damage. The standard endgame

Zeal build puts everything into physical damage, including

Fanaticism as you mention, and an inventory full of max damage + attack rating charms. https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/zeal-paladin

You run reapers toll or Lawbringer on your merc, which greatly boosts your damage. You also typically run Grief, which has ignore target defense, and with lots of crushing blow from your other gear you can just use

Smite on bosses, which always hits, even through blocks. With proper gear, you can run p8 in certain areas, which is pretty decent at least for physical builds in this game

The endgame

Holy Shock build is dual Dream, which you can either run mixed with physical damage (Grief again), or with a focus on lightning damage. See an example here: https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/dream-paladin

A few other hidden mechanics you may not be aware of. Unlike

Smite,

Zeal can be blocked, and a lot of monsters have a chance to block, which looks like a miss. Second, the chance to hit on the character screen is known to be bugged and incorrect. It doesn't take into account the -33% monster defense on your

Heaven's Light, for example. So the number you see is a significant underestimate of your actual chance to hit

marl71 wrote: 1 month ago

To start with, you aren't playing a standard endgame build, so you are kind of half-invested in two different forms of damage. The standard endgame

Zeal build puts everything into physical damage, including

Fanaticism as you mention, and an inventory full of max damage + attack rating charms. https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/zeal-paladin

I agree with everything you said but I think it should also be mentioned that according to the gear that Maxroll lists (perfect Grief, perfect Phoenix, the rings and all the 3/20/20 SCs) this char is maybe the most "expensive" one in the game (even without perfect items the price / performance ratio of Zealers is not very good. I still play one because I simply like it and he can clear every content in the game )

Edit: Best advice to solve the AR problem is imho to give your Merc an Infinity

marl71 wrote: 1 month ago

*snip*

That's exactly my point. Zealots - any builds - requires extremely hard-to-get specialized gear and items to be even remotely effective,
and the performance drops drastically in higher player games . I'm not sure why blizztard never saw this, and didn't fix it.

Even my geared FoH paladin stops performing at 2+ player games , dual Spirit , Vipermagi etc etc - but atleast he can clear entire rooms
almost instantly in solo games and doesn't really require "endgame" gear to do it.

Death is pretty cheap and almost as strong as Grief. If that's still too expensive, ethereal Oath is also very strong and very obtainable. Gface, Lawbringer,

String of Ears, and

Laying of Hands are cheap and/or easy to find. With that gear, you can easily clear hell. The next step is highlords, gore riders, hoz. For armor, you can start with Duress, progress to fort eventually. You can run p8 pits with two

Lo runes, an

Ohm for CTA of course, and a handful of

Ist invested, which is pretty good for an endgame build

Edit: @oOKIWIOo the maxroll builds are not realistic. The "standard"

Zeal build is deeply weird. Any maxroll build would be ultra expensive to get perfect charms, perfect rolls on weapons, crafted ammys and rings....it's meant to be an illustrative example

You're just not playing zealot with the appropriate gear/skills.

Like many physical builds, you have to focus on attack rating.
If you don't, just don't play that build but reroll to

Smite.

Your build is called telsadin, but again without the appropriate gear.

Zeal is very special to me, because the first character I got to the endgame stage in the original LOD was a pure zealer.

The fact of the matter is that this game is simply not as well balanced as modern RPGs. Not all classes and skills are created equal. It was still ahead of its time though.

I know

Zeal (and also most melee in this game) well enough to admit that it kind of sucks outside of its niches.

Zeal is fun if you like fast melee combat, but it helps to rely on a party to get through certain challenges. I remember the exploding dolls in particular being really hard to fight with a zealer's low hp.

Zeal is one of the most expensive skills to build around, because you're competing with hammerdins, possibly the strongest and most popular archetype, for a lot of the same gear.

marl71 wrote: 1 month ago

Edit: @oOKIWIOo the maxroll builds are not realistic. The "standard"

Zeal build is deeply weird. Any maxroll build would be ultra expensive to get perfect charms, perfect rolls on weapons, crafted ammys and rings....it's meant to be an illustrative example

Sure, I know But I think the "recommendations" are especially absurd with the Zealer (mainly because 3/20/20 or 7 SCs are among the most expensive items in the game and the recommended rings are, if you get something close to those stats, worth many 3/20/20, too). In comparison a Cold Sorc with BIS items is worth nothing

Btw, my first Char when I started playing D2 on launch day was a Zealer, too and I skilled him up so badly that he didn't even make it to hell This is maybe the main reason I am still playing this Char

There's no build that NEEDS those expensive charms or whatever exaggerated guides do recommend. Those are made for luring people into buying stuff with real money at those shady item shops, because you will never find all that stuff when playing self found... so better use those guides as an orientation rather than considering them mandatory.

Thus said, the threadstarter is right: All melee builds are inferior to AoE builds.

20 years ago, before we had Sunder Charms and all that shiny new runewords, BotD

Frenzy Barbs or Zealots really rocked and elemental classes had a hard time. But then Blizzard increased monster HP, introduced synergies, which gave all elemental builds a huge boost and didn't adapt melee damage to it.

-->Melee attacks are single target attacks while most ranged or elemental attacks are area-of-effect. This is the main reason melee sucks. You can wind up your damage/attack rating as much as you want, you will never come close to AoE builds. Period. Any Strafezon, Throw Barb or Bladesin wipes the floor with a Zealot, not to mention Hammerdins, Javazons, Sorceresses or Necromancers, which are playing in a tier of their own.

I have around 20 heroes, all of them geared with high-end stuff, all of them are level 92-96, and I would rank my Zealot at one of the lowest spots on my list in terms of power and fun to play.

My Zealot has one job where he excels: Killing Ubers. One point into

Smite is enough for this. That's it. Doing anything else is downright masochistic.

IF you want to play a melee-like Paladin, just make an Auradin: Tesladin, Dragondin or Omnidin. It's the same gameplay like a pure physical Zealot, but with much more "oomph". My personal favorite being the Dragondin (it's the build having the most powerful damaging aura), who can easily play P8 games.

IF you want to stay with the Zealot, have as many sources of

Amplify Damage and/or

Decrepify as you can. Fill up your backpack with +AR/maxdam charms and get a weapon with Ignore Targets Defense.

Regards

DasNarf wrote: 1 month ago

My Zealot has one job where he excels: Killing Ubers. One point into

Smite is enough for this. That's it. Doing anything else is downright masochistic.

I wouldn´t go that far but if you focus on killspeed the Zealer is probably not the right Char for you
Btw, in my experience Infinity is far more effective than

The Reaper's Toll because it need not to proc and takes down the defense of every mob (and it is nearly impossible to reach an attack rating compared to e. g. a Barb). Especially elite packs go down much faster than when relying on

Decrepify. When killing DClone I suspect I only need ca. 75% of the time (maybe even less) compared to when my Merc had

The Reaper's Toll.

oOKIWIOo wrote: 1 month ago

DasNarf wrote: 1 month ago

My Zealot has one job where he excels: Killing Ubers. One point into

Smite is enough for this. That's it. Doing anything else is downright masochistic.

I wouldn´t go that far but if you focus on killspeed the Zealer is probably not the right Char for you
Btw, in my experience Infinity is far more effective than

The Reaper's Toll because it need not to proc and takes down the defense of every mob (and it is nearly impossible to reach an attack rating compared to e. g. a Barb). Especially elite packs go down much faster than when relying on

Decrepify. When killing DClone I suspect I only need ca. 75% of the time (maybe even less) compared to when my Merc had

The Reaper's Toll.

Hm, let me put it this way:

If you want to be best prepared for any encounter,

The Reaper's Toll is unrivaled. Without it, you will have a hard time when physical immune monsters show up. A Zealot just doesn't have much options otherwise, due to his lack of elemental damage. Immunes are the most dangerous enemies, because you can't leech them. If you run into World Stone Keep and there are Wraiths or Succubi mixed up with other enemies, you better press ESC immediately.

Infinity is useless against all mobs except champions, uniques and bosses if you are wielding a weapon with ITD. Against these monsters you got plenty of other useful stuff: Open wounds, Crushing Blow and Leech, the latter making you nearly invincible. Maybe you need a tad longer to kill them, but they won't pose a threat to you.

On a melee fighter, it's safety first, because you always go toe to toe with enemies. Just my 2 cents.

DasNarf wrote: 1 month ago

oOKIWIOo wrote: 1 month ago

DasNarf wrote: 1 month ago

My Zealot has one job where he excels: Killing Ubers. One point into

Smite is enough for this. That's it. Doing anything else is downright masochistic.

I wouldn´t go that far but if you focus on killspeed the Zealer is probably not the right Char for you
Btw, in my experience Infinity is far more effective than

The Reaper's Toll because it need not to proc and takes down the defense of every mob (and it is nearly impossible to reach an attack rating compared to e. g. a Barb). Especially elite packs go down much faster than when relying on

Decrepify. When killing DClone I suspect I only need ca. 75% of the time (maybe even less) compared to when my Merc had

The Reaper's Toll.

Infinity is useless against all mobs except champions, uniques and bosses if you are wielding a weapon with ITD. Against these monsters you got plenty of other useful stuff: Open wounds, Crushing Blow and Leech, the latter making you nearly invincible. Maybe you need a tad longer to kill them, but they won't pose a threat to you.

True, but it is especially with these mobs that a Zealer has problems. I have a

Bone Break, Grief and

Dracul's Grasp and therefore no problem killing White trash mobs - even when they have physical immunities (and there are not that many, too - For me only Succubi in combination with

Lilith pose sometimes a real problem ). It is the champions, uniques and bosses for which I need an above-average amount of time (and on which I focus when I am farming) and here the difference / killspeed is, at least in my experience, really noticeable.

Dreez wrote: 1 month ago

Been working on a

Holy Shock zealot and my current gear is pretty good, containing pieces like

Stormshield,

Guardian Angel,

String of Ears,

Heaven's Light. My

Holy Shock ,

Zeal and sacrifise are all maxed which means all my damage is pretty much as good as it gets. Despite all this, i've been sorely introduced to the worst part of the paladin, the utterly broken skills that were never fixed.

Holy Shield. This is handsdown the most "pointless" skill, that never requires more than 1 single skillpoint into... due to the most broken skill of the paladin -

Zeal - which is still in dire need of fixing , but since no more development is done, we're sadly stuck with it.
The reason for

Zeal being broken is it's extremely lacking addition to AR and overall damage. At level 77 against equal lvl mobs , my

Zeal's hitrate is approaching as long numbers as 60% to hit, yet i have enough dexterity to achieve 75% block with only 4 points into

Holy Shield.

This means that a paladin must spam points heavily into dex , even with skills like

Zeal which is suppose to boost AR by almost 300%, and being melee, very few points into vitality . This means that any points into

Holy Shield more than 1 is just a waste of points - which brings us to the other hidden problem.
The lack of viable skills . Even a zealot that uses

Fanaticism runs into this problem. About 60 skillpoints are used efficiently for combat, into skills that in some form directly contributes to damage or survival in ways that makes putting points actually meaningfull.

As a Holyshock zealot, i'm pretty much maxed with 20sac, 20zeal, 20holyshock.... that's where my damage increase and hitrating stops, i could use 2p angelic to boost AR significantly, but then survivial goes down the drain with 2 slots not contributing to resists . I've looked at guides and they're all showing off runeworded items like Enigma, Bear and other runewords that's almost impossible to get, unless you have a farmer to feed your pala.

And even if you get all those immortal items, the performance is still sub-par when compared to even less geared classes and builds, for example Javazons that can clear 8 player cowlevel naked with blue javelins ... Even with extreme gear, a Zealot's clearspeed is non-existant and damage in groups is a joke.

Imo,

Zeal should've been given a much higher buff to AR and damage, and the class as a whole should've been thoroughly rebalanced to
be able to perform as well as other classes, with the same quality of items such as runeworded, sets or uniques.

It feels to me that zealots are a meme build that serves to purpose than waste hours farming items, and yet still performs like crap.

Feel free to correct me if i'm wrong, but with reasoning and logic.

You are wrong. Especially about "Even a zealot that uses

Fanaticism runs into this problem". Yeah no they don't unless they're geared very wrong or doing something wrong.

Your points into

Holy Shock are nearly useless for an endgame build in this particular instance, should be in

Fanaticism for starters.

Holy Shock would work wonderfully for a Dream paladin if you had those pieces.

Ive had at least 4 Zealer/Smiter builds - current one on HCL, previously on offline SP, SCNL, and SCL - and they pretty much all had maxed

Fanaticism,

Zeal,

Sacrifice, and

Holy Shield, with 1 point wonders into defensive auras and the remaining handful of points into

Smite (you also seem to be ignoring the damage synergy with

Holy Shield+

Smite).

2 of those had Grief (not as hard to get as some make it out to be),

Guardian Angel,

Blood Belt,

Blood Gloves and either

Gore Rider or War Travs, and some yellow rings and amulet with dual leech and AR. Last one on ladder I used Death in a

Phase Blade and a Sanctuary shield. Every single one of those builds cleared Ubers and

Baal runs without much difficulty.

Do they clear cows as fast as my Lightning sorc or Javazon or

Poison Nova necro? Fuck no and they're not meant to. Ive said this a million times, not every build in the game is meant to do everything well. I wouldnt use that pally build for cows just like I wouldn't use a

Fireball

Meteor sorc for Trav runs or

Poison Nova Necro for Ubers.

In LOD 1.10 days I ran a Zealer with a two-handed hammer. IK

Boots, gloves, and

Belt, Stone armor and a rare

Helm with the +% AR bonus per character level that was a real lucky find. I cleared the game just fine with this and didn't need Reaper's or Infinity (which wasn't even available to SP at that time.)

If you have AR problems, grab an Act 2 merc with

Blessed Aim. That will help be a big help. You can mess around in Maxroll and in a lot of cases, the

Blessed Aim aura will increase your DPS more than merc Might.

Sean wrote: 1 month ago

I know

Zeal (and also most melee in this game) well enough to admit that it kind of sucks outside of its niches.

Zeal is fun if you like fast melee combat, but it helps to rely on a party to get through certain challenges. I remember the exploding dolls in particular being really hard to fight with a zealer's low hp.

Get a Lawbringer for the dolls and just stand back and let your merc do the work, or get a Lawbringer and just don't even engage with them. Low HP is easily countered with

Wand of

Life Tap in this and other scenarios too. Yes, they do suck at certain things, just like other builds do also.

Btw, this is my current build:

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

SP MFing: https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/4g8kr05e#1

Always open for suggestions to improve (but I will NOT wear a

Harlequin Crest )

marl71 wrote: 1 month ago

Death is pretty cheap and almost as strong as Grief. If that's still too expensive, ethereal Oath is also very strong and very obtainable. Gface, Lawbringer,

String of Ears, and

Laying of Hands are cheap and/or easy to find. With that gear, you can easily clear hell. The next step is highlords, gore riders, hoz. For armor, you can start with Duress, progress to fort eventually. You can run p8 pits with two

Lo runes, an

Ohm for CTA of course, and a handful of

Ist invested, which is pretty good for an endgame build

100% this. I dont even use CTA on the last 3 paladins ive had on HCL and SCL,

Wand of

Life Tap for tough/dangerous mobs and bosses.

BigD wrote: 1 month ago

Do they clear cows as fast as my Lightning sorc or Javazon or

Poison Nova necro? Fuck no and they're not meant to. Ive said this a million times, not every build in the game is meant to do everything well. I wouldnt use that pally build for cows just like I wouldn't use a

Fireball

Meteor sorc for Trav runs or

Poison Nova Necro for Ubers.

Thank you.

oOKIWIOo wrote: 1 month ago

Btw, this is my current build:

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

SP MFing: https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/4g8kr05e#1

Always open for suggestions to improve (but I will NOT wear a

Harlequin Crest )

Outside of ubers:

You have more than enough mf, I'd never drop GFace. Also I'd run a 75 ias reaper merc and more FCR to position him (48FCR main, 75FCR CTA side), sg like this (nn to worry about losing tap or some DR and leech,

Decrepify makes up for it):

https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/mna3o0al

uuee wrote: 1 month ago

oOKIWIOo wrote: 1 month ago

Btw, this is my current build:

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

SP MFing: https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/4g8kr05e#1

Always open for suggestions to improve (but I will NOT wear a

Harlequin Crest )

Outside of ubers:

You have more than enough mf, I'd never drop GFace. Also I'd run a 75 ias reaper merc and more FCR to position him (48FCR main, 75FCR CTA side), sg like this (nn to worry about losing tap or some DR and leech,

Decrepify makes up for it):

https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/mna3o0al

Thx for the suggestions! I will check it out. But I think to get something close to this rare ring will not be easy... (I suspect 20+

Jah)

EDIT: There is one further big advantage, especially for me, by running Infinity on the Merc which I had not mentioned: I am color blind and the

Conviction aura helps me a lot quickly spotting out mobs in low contrast areas.