Quote

Zeal sorcs are pretty versatile characters.  They are good at PvM and they do well versus certain classes in PvP.  In PvM with an infinity merc you can kill act bosses in seconds (though Ubering requires a different build I won’t discuss).  And you can kill just as fast in PvP.  However you will have a very hard time beating  pure melee classes, (pally zealers, barbs with shields, smiters).  You will also have a hard time beating trappers, charged strike zons, and BvCs.  However you will be able to kill most casters classes, especially the ones who don’t go block (95% of people don’t go block on casters).  So you can beat wind druids, necros, and sorcs.  You will also crush bowazons and shape shift druids.

If you want to make a pretty good zeal sorc, it comes down to the charms.  The charms are where the bulk of your life and mana will come from.  If you don’t get good charms, you will be a glass cannon.  Try to get at least 1300 life and 2500 mana after battle orders.  You can get around 1700 life and 3100 mana if you have near perfect gear.

You also want to hit
40% ias outside passion
86% fhr
37% fcr (this is enough, BvCs have this much fcr)

Item build
Helm: dream (get high fhr and resists)
Shield: dream tower shield (get high fhr and resists)
Amulet: Crafted 2 sorc 17fcr (need this for fcr breakpoint and 2 sorc is a must since you are dual tree, after that you want typical mods like mana/life/strength/resists/dex/rep life/poison length reduction)
Weapon: Passion Phase blade (get as close to 80% AR as you can.)
Armor: Jewelers Gothic Plate of the Whale (socket with 3x 15ias/15res jewels and a cham, you hit the zeal breakpoint with this armor, and you can wear sojs instead of raven frost.  You can substitute treachery/ravenfrost if you can’t get this armor)
Rings: sojs (no brainer here, you don’t go angelics since like I said before, you will lose to most melee classes, the AR from angelics is not needed versus casters)
Belt: arach (you hit the 37% fcr breakpoint with this, other mods are useful, and you can use the venom charges on it, though it sets you back ~15k in game gold for each venom charge)
Gloves: frost burns (gives massive mana, and cold damage for people without cannot be frozen)
Boots: Rares/Crafted mana boots (should have at least 30 r/w, 10fhr, 35+ mana, after that you want stats like, +dex, rep life, resists, poison length reduction)

There are other item builds, but I found this to be the best one after months of testing.

Charms
Torch, anni obviously
4-6 lightning skill charms (should get ones with life)
Enough fhr/mana charms to hit 86% fhr
Fill the rest of your inventory with life/mana charms

Here are my items(sold all of them though):
http://forums.d2jsp.org/index.php?showtopic=31613642&f=168

Stats
Strength: enough strength to wear tower shield (or dusk armor 77str if you manage to obtain one with high life)
Dex: enough dex for max block (this will put you over 300+ dex, but you will want block  versus bowazons, shapehift druids, and some melee classes who are poorly geared, 300 dex will also give you a ton of AR, which lets you use sojs instead of angelics)
Vitality: none
Energy: the rest of your points

Skill points
20 Lightning mastery
20 enchant
20 telekinesis
5-20 Energy shield (depends on if you want to prebuff, you want this at level 40)
1 Warmth
1 Fire Mastery
1 Thunderstorm

After you invest those points, you will have 15-30 skill points left depending on your level and prebuff for ES.  So you can choose to invest into thunderstorm for more damage, or warmth for more regen.  I’ve found warmth overrated for a sorc with only 3000 mana.  Each point into warmth only increases your mana regen by 4-5 mana per second, which is quite small. You have 3000+ mana, and duels are pretty short, since you deal insane burst damage in melee range, you either kill quickly or get killed quickly.  The fire damage you gain from each point in warmth is about 100 (before pvp penalties and resistances).  Plus you're not always zealing someone, you're trying to tele to catch them or kill their summons.  Thunderstorm will hit someone on your screen, unlike the warmth fire damage you have to zeal someone to damage them.