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 Post subject: lets talk zeal pally
PostPosted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 5:42 pm 

Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:12 pm
Posts: 39
so... im makin a zeal pally... see some playin look nice... so i try it out...but i was looking to many three to hybrid it... or make more damage...maybe hybrid a healer...but... what gonna be usefull?...

for solo... more damage(i mean damage by up holy fire and synerg it) gonna be ok...??... or i should better seeon defence like holy shield maxed...

i better up healing three for help when its gonna be a boss time... or...

whatever three??

thanks help :)...

and... can i be able to make some boss ?... like tanking ... with a good life leech and good damage... or... you see what i mean XD!...

thanks, cheers

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 Post subject: Re: lets talk zeal pally
PostPosted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 6:08 pm 
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Don't expect to leach from bosses. Not only do they have leach resistance, they also have 100%+ physical resistance in Hell so even if you could leach them... well you get the point. To tank bosses you need to rely on damage reduction, high health, life regeneration, a healer would be nice, and rejuvs!

A zealer healer... I wouldn't recommend it only because you might get caught mid zeal and need to heal and not be able to.. I guess if you play SC its not as big of a deal.

I really like doing holy shock/freeze/light zeal... probably going to make one soon.

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 Post subject: Re: lets talk zeal pally
PostPosted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:06 pm 
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Location: Toronto, Canada
tank bosses?

box 2 windows, use 1 for a summoner druid with max oak to spam summons, use the second for your poison zon/meteor sorc, or whatever, gg any boss

oh look d2loader is op, remove that shit plz, its too good. HERPADERPA DOO

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 Post subject: Re: lets talk zeal pally
PostPosted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:49 pm 
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Just played with a Zealer who ripped up Nightmare Diablo.

With the ability to stack resists & absorbs better than any character, zealers can be very effective in the right hands. Of course, they have the same problem as all melee characters - Soulmancer's strange balance idea of making Amp Damage a required curse and no leech.

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 Post subject: Re: lets talk zeal pally
PostPosted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 1:34 am 

Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2009 9:19 pm
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Location: Reno NV
Blue I believe you are overestimating absorbs quite a bit. As long as you have maxed resists absorbs aren't even needed for any boss outside of the optional endgame bosses. There simply aren't any elemental attacks strong enough to warrant stacking absorbs. LF may be the only exception I can think of(and MAYBE blizzard in certain situations), and even then all you need is maxed resists enough to negate any LR or conviction. Fire absorbs are great for Diablo, but even without it his fire attacks are weak and easily dodged. Don't build a paladin simply for the more available absorbs. I'm not saying they aren't useful, but they are a very small part of a good tank.

As for amp it has never been required outside of endgame bosses with their high physical resists. In fact many zealers use tap all the way into the beginning hell and do just fine. Of course it's no where near as effective as amp, but it is still viable although slow. Regardless I don't see the problem with amp making or breaking a lot of melee builds endgame. It has enough sources outside of necros to allow melee to kill trash and a few of the easier sub bosses solo. What is the alternative? Adjusting physical resist for every monster and boss in hell? Sorry way off topic now.

Don't listen to Rasta, he still can't get over himself due to his barbarian not performing the way he wants. A zealer will tank just fine in any difficulty. In normal and NM he'll leech great granted you keep his gear up to speed and have a party for the harder parts. Towards Hell you'll want to scrap the leech and focus on what Slappy mentioned, high block, life, and DR%. Then you just juv through and let your party do the damage while you soak up the damage.

The problem with zealers these days is they will serve no purpose vs any late game boss with IM. Anything a zealer can do in these situations another paladin build can do better. I would not build a zealer if you have any notions of farming solo. And for party play, I believe there are much better options out there. If you have a pure tank type paladin in mind go smite. Hybrid healer and tank? Smite. Good endgame damage and tanking? Hammers. All purpose support character? Healer with maxed conviction. I also failed to mention zealer's have very few choices for deadly strike this patch, making them even less favorable than any of the above builds.

Holy auras+zeal may look like they're great for damage, but remember you must melee to deliver it(or use exploding arrows with HF, but they are quite fragile as well). With melee items incredibly hard to equip on a lower strength hybrid due to no more strength on gear, I wouldn't recommend using holy auras versus bosses at all. You simply won't be able to balance AR, tank gear, and caster gear to make him viable against bosses.


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 Post subject: Re: lets talk zeal pally
PostPosted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 2:01 am 
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As I haven't built a zealer, I can't comment on it myself. However, I will say that the zealer paladin in the NM Diablo game performed extremely well. It was a rather stale game with no one doing any significant damage to Diablo as he ran around and chased things. I was woefully unprepared with insufficient juvs and poorly planned gear. I honestly didn't expect to be facing Diablo so soon, so I was a bit overdue for a gear swap. I blew a lot of juvs on the seal bosses since the party was a bit fragmented.

After a while of no one doing any damage to Diablo (maybe 5% of his health was gone), one person switched off their character and brought in their lvl84 Zealer. He really tore in to Diablo and knocked him down to about 5% health using only ctc amp. Granted, my BO made a big impact on his viability, but he knocked him down pretty solidly with fanat. I asked him about the build and he said that the absorbs made a big difference in his performance, so I took that at face value. He was using Crown of Theives, Glassglare, Sword of Wanderer, dwarfs, and I believe HoZ.

Perhaps another character with similar gear could have done just as fine, I don't know. I do know that my barb doesn't do that sort of damage to NM Diablo at the moment and at best, he went through a belt of juvs as we weren't pumping him with them and there wasn't a healer around.

I took from it that zealers were fairly viable and commented as such.

As for resists, Paladins can get a solid +65 res shield with little to no problem which is no small feat.

As for the amp comment - without the ctc amp, there was little to no damage being done to diablo. I personally feel that is a balance short coming to REQUIRE a particular thing to be active for a build to do damage, and commented as such. I just think it is strange that Soulmancer made that choice, and pretty much always have. I find that it has made boss fights a bit tedious and repetitive by always having amp be a "must use" curse in the game. I recognize you don't need it on every boss (such as Chimera for example who fell without a problem to my melee dmg), but needing it on most every boss still seems... odd.

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 Post subject: Re: lets talk zeal pally
PostPosted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 1:23 am 
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just fyi, the 'Tank' class doesn't even exist in diablo 2 so we have no idea what you mean when you say it. If you mean summon+oak sage/BO then we understand. How can a zealot 'support' his team? How can any melee other then a Barb (who is replaced by CTA), support his team and do this mysterious tanking thing that summons do 1000 times better and don't require a healer to stay alive.

The reason melee need survivability is to stay in close quarters and not get shitblasted in 1 hit. This is nothing to do with 'tanking', it has to do with dealing damage. Distracting the boss is easy, any summon will do, although some are much better then others.

Also I agree about amp, the balance on AMP pretty fucked I really don't know why it was like that in the first place.

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 Post subject: Re: lets talk zeal pally
PostPosted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 1:34 am 
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Rasta wrote:
just fyi, the 'Tank' class doesn't even exist in diablo 2.

tank = someone who absorbs dmg and keeps the aggro on himself rather than on the party.

Its been a part of Diablo2 for years now. Always has been. Its been a key component of this mod for several years as well. To deny that is the case is simply a falsehood, so I am not sure why you keep proclaiming it as if it were some sort of fact. I certainly haven't seen you around this community as long as other people. I have played with and played tanks in this mod since at least 2006, probably longer but I am getting old and my memory fails me.

I also played with and played tanks on b.net as well. Less of a role there as few things did much damage, but it was handy against uber Diablo now and then.

Rasta wrote:
Also I agree about amp, the balance on AMP pretty fucked I really don't know why it was like that in the first place.

I know why. It was there to balance out Crushing Blow. I don't think it was a good solution though, which is why when Soulmancer let me put together a balance patch, I just balanced Crushing blow directly rather than indirectly. I know a whole bunch of things that you don't know. Its part of the benefit of seeing this mod evolve over the years.

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 Post subject: Re: lets talk zeal pally
PostPosted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 8:30 am 

Joined: Wed Feb 03, 2010 8:21 am
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Based on my experience with my lvl94 zealot, full gris 4ber caddy, ctc lvl3 amp amu. He plays fine against trash and rips up mini bosses in hell, can tank and probably take down the act bosses, but only very slowly. Took him about 20mins to take down Andy to half health, with just him and my healer in the game, passively healing.

From what ive seen of other peoples melee chars is the same pattern, they basically only struggle with hell act bosses, which can be frustrating I guess when some PvM builds can take down bosses easily.

I believe it would be good to make melee chars more viable against act bosses damage wise and at the same time reduce the tanking effectiveness of summons like blades and decoy. Maybe for fun leave one act boss phys immune (Duri?).


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 Post subject: Re: lets talk zeal pally
PostPosted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 8:42 am 
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What did you max on that zealot? 20 fanat +20 zeal I assume, but 20HS and 20 sacr or rather 20 smite? I think I will go 20 smite just for extra 20%dr on bosses.
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Took him about 20mins to take down Andy to half health, with just him and my healer in the game, passively healing.
You smited her? Problem with zeal is if 1st hit miss all miss + Andy has high block chance. Smite always hit and can't be blocked, you should try it and post your results If you don't mind.


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 Post subject: Re: lets talk zeal pally
PostPosted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:00 am 

Joined: Wed Feb 03, 2010 8:21 am
Posts: 103
I maxed Fanaticism, zeal, Sacrifice, Holy shield, Defiance and got 30%dr from items alone. Didnt know about the block and miss, Ill give her another go with smite.


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