For a melee zealer it's better to skill offensively but use defense gears.

Thankyou as always Weaj for the great information. Something I'd like to add about min damage is that with more mods like deadly strike, crit, and amp, the more inconsistent a max damage build becomes compared to a min damage build.

Excelent starting point of course, and nice concise layout.
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Some questions about defensive zealer part:

I had/have a defensive zealer I liked but it just came up short eventually. Wondering if you had similar experiences or did I just not maximize defense enough?

Granted he used holy ornate of ease 2soc and a 220def/2soc/visionary grand crown instead of better items (eth rep 2soc ornate 1200+ def, eth rep 2soc vis grim 300+ def)..... but honestly I didn't feel I was losing from items (or atleast not solely). It seemed more that the naturally lower AR/life was exacerbating the damage differential.

It was a 18sac/12zeal/12 defiance build, hitting 9k def, 4.9k ar, 950life. I rejeweled him for min/max slowly over time and had: 860-1600robo naga (5/5/5/10), 680-1300 robo 3zeal divine (5/5/5/9 & 300ar extra), 570-1350rare amp naga. Despite any changes, I never went better than winning 1:3 ratio vs equally geared (if not better) fanat zealers with defensive armor swaps. Part of this was due to how badly 1x cold charm destroyed the build (no good place for cnbf & no res). However, even wtihout any cold, Fanat pallies with defensive swap gear (7k+ ar, 4-5k def) still had a noticeable edge soley on the number of hits landing.

I even tried using a 3fanat honor instead of defiance on him (800-1750, 6.5k ar, 6.2k def), to even worse results.

Do you think the defiance build's severe AR problems make it the weaker build when 2 comprably geared pallies meet?
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Otherwise how about just some info on how you balanced keeping your zealot melee king, but keeping enough versatility to TvT effectively with a bit of muling. At frst apparance, it seems even the skills used conflict somewhat.

hehe

"ANNONCEMENT"

great guide

This post was edited by required on May 15 2010 02:20am

gg guide

Add in Shako and it is perfect.

Sickass muthafuckin guide nigga.

Really though, top notch stuff. Loving the allowance for a holy shocker section, rarely see that, and it brings back memories

I find that when going with a defiance zealot, getting as much defense as possible is a must, similar to how breakbeatz2 built his conc barb. As meitou pointed out, the fana build using defensive gear could have an edge because of the ar/dmg, they do have lower defense but the tats are more balanced.

One point i noticed i left out on the fanaticism build is that it's the most versatile build, though it could be easily noticed as such because i mentioned it for dueling casters and with all the different gear switches compared to the others.

imo its not that surprising that there are no 4fpa zeal builds cuz the weapon is so hard to find

well done