D2 Paladin High strength zealot

[MeaningOfLife]

Hi guys,

I played original D2 and haven't played much until now (D2R.) Don't want to play the usual builds and thinking of doing a high strength classic zealot (fanatism.) Don't care about being best or later ladder or anything.

How viable is a zealot in hell (say 3 players in game on average) if you take strength to 220+? Don't have high runes or uber items so assume good but not best equipment.

I'm thinking life probably will be 1.5k (depending on how much I put in dex for blocking and items/charms/etc I can gather)

Thoughts?

 

[Redgrove]

Which stat are you going to take from, Dex or Vit? If you're still hitting max block, you might be able to move some points over to Str. But my first thought in response is that I'd rather have the extra life. Zeal is primarily a Crushing Blow delivery system, and you need survivability to use it. You do hit a point where CB's diminishing returns requires you to muscle the monster down the rest of the way with raw damage, so more Str would help there, but I'm not sure you can take enough from Dex and Vit to feel that much of a difference.

The key to Fanatic Zealot viability to me has always been positioning. If monster health is high enough that you can't just steamroll stuff, then you need to position so all your Zeal hits land on the same mob. You don't want to spread Crushing Blow around to five different mobs, you want to focus it so you can actually kill something.

So yeah, bottom line is that yes, it should be viable. Focus on Crushing Blow, survivability, and positioning, and then maybe try throwing more points into Str to see how "glass cannon" you can get while still enjoying it.

 

[MeaningOfLife]

Have you ever tried a high strength char?

Yeah, the question is do you sacrifice dex or vit. I also don't have the best items and likely won't (doing pure magic find characters is too boring so it'll be mostly what I find and mid-level trades I do.)

So far, I am sacrificing dex so my block is kind of low. Not sure how viable this will be in, say, acts 4 and 5 hell.

I am still trying to figure out if maxing holy shield and going for heavy armour can offset lower block to some degree (yes, this is suboptimal and blocking is way more impactful but if I only lose an extra 10% or something, it's not a big deal--youll die more but I don't care.) Ironically though, on top of low drop rates, unique elite heavy armour has less desirable special attributes compared to exceptional. It's almost better to upgrade unique exceptional to elite. No idea why Blizzard did this (maybe expansion team not as good and knowledgeable as original team?)

I'm also thinking and experimenting with damage reduction (including magic integer reduction) but a tradeoff with resists is required there. Probably as a final build when the game gets boring, I want to build a fendazon and hoping to learn a bit from my zealot for that. Zealots are long-distance relatives of fendazons.

 

[MeaningOfLife]

Crushing blow is important but I'm thinking that for non-standard builds like this, I think life leech might be more important (CB doesn't leech if I remember.) I'm thinking of trying to get critical strike which I believe does leech (you still need some CB of course.)

 

[Redgrove]

Have you ever tried a high strength char?

Not that I recall. I took the leap to Hardcore early on in my original D2 "career" and sacrificing survivability was generally...unwise. I'm just doing carebear this time around but I still play like it's HC. My tolerance for dying is low, lol.

I did play a HC Fanatic Zealot in Hell/Hell (pre LoD) and Act5/Hell, so that's where my comments are coming from. Possibly I'm stuck in the past a bit, pre-synergies, when Fanat was just attack speed and didn't add damage. Maybe the damage output has more potential than I'm imagining, so boosting Str might also yield more. The Fanat Zealot I'm leveling now is only 36 so I can't say yet.

I've never had the best gear either, and I agree about the item design - it still amazes me just how bad some uniques and sets are, both original and LoD. Regarding elite body armor specifically, I'm planning to make a Duress as a starting point, probably in a Great Hauberk or whatever I've got the Str for when it's time to wear it.

Defense and life steal will shine or fail depending on what you're fighting, obviously. I always hated getting nuked from range and not having anything nearby to leach from.

Anyway, since respecs are a thing now, you can always spec out of it later if you don't like how it plays. But speaking from my pre-LoD days, even with a lot less damage output a Fanatic Zealot in HC Hell/Hell was...slow and risky, but not impossible. If all you're tweaking from modern builds is to throw more into Str, I don't see why that would cease to be viable. Gotta be better than what I used to do, lol.

 

[MeaningOfLife]

Kudos to anyone playing hardcore I'm from pre-LOD days too but I never played hardcore and was more reckless in SC (trying to get back body was an adventure I enjoyed .) I only played online and Internet connection and computer wasn't great. It probably took 30 seconds to load Duriel level and no way I could have survived (even now, I play on the old Xbox one and load screens are 15sec+.) Duriel was always the hardest boss for me due to load screen.

Game item design is tough. Until the gave is played by millions, it's hard to tell how things will behave. D2 has complex underlying mechanics compared to D3 or modern games. Consider the whole frame rate aspect. I played hammerdin in classic D2 when we just discovered it did magic damage. Who could have imagined blessed hammer was so powerful?

One thing they messed up was runewords. Some of them, although hard to find the runes, are way too powerful and renders everything else almost useless. This destroyed the game--at least the online version (still hard to find singleplayer so not bad there.) You have a bunch of newbies rushing to hell and not even playing the game and then becoming superpowerful with rune items. All the trading is also to create the same few rune items.

 

[MeaningOfLife]

Duress looks good depending on what you use for other item slots. Shield is another big decision that friends on playstyle.

Have you thought about where you are going to get cannot-be-frozen? I love getting it from Rhyme runeword shield (cheap and affordable, great attributes for melee) but thinking of trying something different this time.