Viability of Elemental Pally?

[CmdrKikass]

Viability of Elemental Pally?

Hi all, in season 1 I had a nice standard zealadin with Maxes Fanat/Zeal/Sac/Demption and he tore pretty much everything up with stormlash.

However, the ONE thing that consistently killed him was IM, and being locked in zeal never helped.

I was considering using a pally with Zeal for his primary attack (fully synergized) with Conviction as his aura.

Will this be viable in hell?

I am assuming that I WILL NOT need Attack Rating because of Conviction hosing their defense, is this a correct assumption? With maxed Zeal and Conviction will I hit with EVERY swing? (95% of the time)

Next, I am filling my inventory with cold/fire/lightning charms instead of sharp charms because they add SO MUCH more damage. Why add 3 phys damage when you can add 27 lightning damage? Will Conviction and Zealing with an inventory full of charms and a weapon like B-Star, Nord's, or Demon Limb do enough damage?

I was also considering a specialized variant wearing most of IK set and using IK maul; any comments on that?

It seems that Zeal will attack plenty fast enough with the right gear without Fanat, and I don't have to worry about 50% physical resistance. I know Conviction can remove elemental immunities; I forget if it removes physical immunity; does it? In addition, does it remove or lessen the global 50% physical resistance in hell?

Comboing this with open wounds and crushing blow appears to deal far more damage than any physical set up and would leave me MUCH less vulnerable to dying via IM.

Has anyone ever tried this?

 

[prion]

50% global physical resistance was removed...monster now have extra hp to make up for it.

 

[Soepgroente]

It's an elemental zealot. An excellent weapon is a "Famine" War spike for example (hits 4fpa with 145% IAS, steep, but i wouldn't go for less). A good other option is azurewrath or lightsabre, doing less dmg but requiring less IAS. On top of that lightsabre is a few gems at most to get. I think baranar's etc are too slow to hit 4fpa so those are second options.

On the exception of the ancients who actually get a %enhanced defense modifier from shout, you will not need attack rating because conviction will lower it, correct assumption.

27 lightning damage on a small charm is really hard to get. On avarage that is. +3 max is more than 3 max, because it also adds attack rating and gets multiplied by %ed, so if you have fanaticism/zeal/sacrifice maxed and have some strength, you're looking at 30 damage, 60 after deadly strike.

 

[CmdrKikass]

This is for pvm so 4fps isn't exactly "necessary".

I know one can pvm with practically anything, but I do want something that as similarly effective as something that's been done to death, i.e. zeal+fanat.

I see your point on fanat+zeal+sacrifice+str modified ed...it does max +3 charms go up quite a bit. I knew this already but what I did not know was that physical resistance was removed from hell difficulty...it's still listed on arreat (i KNOW they have many old/incorrect listings) and I've never seen anything to the contrary so can you back this up with any proof whatsoever?

Also, more physical damage=instant Iron Maiden death, something I specifically pointed out I wanted to avoid.

Famine? Seems like a really expensive rune-word for my purposes. I don't get any benefit from ITD. However, looks good. Would a Famine war spike compete with other zeal/fanat pallys in terms of killing power?

No one has commented on the viability of it, but I guess no one is saying it wouldn't work. Thanks.

 

[RealityThreek]

The physical resistance was talked about a ton when the patch was still in beta. I wish I could find some place authoritive that said it. I know I've read it somewhere. Unfortunately, the only thing I can find that alludes to it in the patch changelog is where it says that monster stats were improved, including life.

But anyway, as far as I know, what he said was correct.

 

[BlackWinterDay]

This is for pvm so 4fps isn't exactly "necessary".

I know one can pvm with practically anything, but I do want something that as similarly effective as something that's been done to death, i.e. zeal+fanat.

I see your point on fanat+zeal+sacrifice+str modified ed...it does max +3 charms go up quite a bit. I knew this already but what I did not know was that physical resistance was removed from hell difficulty...it's still listed on arreat (i KNOW they have many old/incorrect listings) and I've never seen anything to the contrary so can you back this up with any proof whatsoever?

Also, more physical damage=instant Iron Maiden death, something I specifically pointed out I wanted to avoid.

Famine? Seems like a really expensive rune-word for my purposes. I don't get any benefit from ITD. However, looks good. Would a Famine war spike compete with other zeal/fanat pallys in terms of killing power?

No one has commented on the viability of it, but I guess no one is saying it wouldn't work. Thanks.

My Tesladin used lvl 10 Conviction + elemental damage from Baranar's Star, Tiamat's Rebuke and a few other things for dealing with LI's, and he got by okay. I would try and beef it up a little if that's your main attack, but I am sure it's do-able...

 

[prion]

nope I don't have proof...

 

[Vesio]

if i am not mistaken two handed zeal can only hit 5 fpa. I might be wrong but i think that i am correct. Any way i would go with b-star or some other high elemental damage weapon. use tiamats rebuke or the always popular herald. and then like you said fill up on elemental damage charms and you should be good to go, you really shouldn't have any problems killing, but then i haven't ever tried this so i can't really say.

 

[kfowler]

I believe your basically talking about a Vengence Pally. Except using Vengence instaed of zeal. Are they viable??? Yes according to editor but thry work a heck of a lot better in porties. Especially with sorcs. Will this solve your IM problem? No. I currently have a 75 avenger on scl and he still has trouble with IM. Your best solution is a weapon switch to Gimmers. Lots of elemental damage and you can keep your distance.

Your going to want 95/95/95/90 res and 50% pdr to be viable.

With a decent weapon, you can get close to 10k dam per hit. OUCH!

Word of note: I'm finding that draculs may be a better fit than IAS gloves for this build.

 

[CmdrKikass]

No, I'm NOT talking about a Vengeance pally. I'm talking about a zealadin with tons of elemental damage instead of physical damage.

As I've said before, I found it excessively annoying that while rushing someone through NORMAL difficulty, Iron Maiden could kill me. Then in NM, IM could kill me. And in Hell Baal runs, IM could kill me and make me lose a TON of exp. There's NO WAY to avoid IM if there are OK at the throne. You could be in zeal lock, not know there are OK's and get IM'd and lose millions of exp. I find this quite annoying.

So instead of Zeal+Fanat OR Vengeance + Convict, I wanted to try Zeal+Conviction, because it seems to me, that filled up with elemental damage charms, your killing speed would be no smaller, but the chance of dying to random IM's goes down signficantly. Zeal attacks faster than Vengeance and doesn't have the same mana problems Vengeance does.

In addition, both of those builds have been done to DEATH. And Conviction is MUCH more party friendly than fanat; fanat helps casters NOT AT ALL and gives less party benefit, whereas conviction helps casters AND melee. Definately the better party aura.

And yes, 50% global physical resistance is what I'm basing some calculations on, because I haven't seen anything to the contrary yet. If someone had something concrete they could point me to, I would be willing to accept it.