Figured I would write this for D2:R since I'm having fun with this char. It was one of my goals for D2:R to try and make it viable.

Why Frost Zealot?
If you have played non-whirlwind melee, then you know the most annoying thing about it is having to click everysinglemob. With a good level of Holy Freeze, it will clear an entire screen of weaker enemies like archers, skeletons, doom knights, wraiths etc for you in 1 or 2 pulses. It gives you a strong, legitimate hybrid damage dealer that doesn't really worry about immunes (although Stone Skin Cold Immunes can be slow). Holy Freeze has huge defensive benefit by slowing most mobs (except act bosses, certain frenzytaurs and a few others) tremendously. And style points. Mainly style points.

Can't I do this with Dream paladin?
Yes, but it doesn't have the defense of Holy Freeze and the damage is lower. Although a native Tesladin (using your own Holy Shock) will do about 50% more damage, so it's something to consider.

Some Holy Freeze Mechanics Details

1) Holy Freeze damage goes up incredibly with skill points. That's why Doom's Freeze tickles and a native Holy Freeze with good gear will wipe the screen and take down Diablo in one Zeal.

2) Holy Freeze double counts facets and other sources of +Cold % damage like Nightwing's. It adds the damage to your attack, then sees you are dealing a source of cold melee damage and adds it again. That means a facet is technically +10.25% damage, before you even count the resistance reduction. Nightwing's is +44%. So to really max out Holy Freeze this build aims for heavy facet stack.

3) Holy Freeze stacks with cold damage slow, Decrepify slow, and Hit Slows Target. Mobs have maximum amounts they can be slowed, and some are immune. Check Amazon Basin for full nerd deep dive into the mechanics.

Why don't you use Doom? Every guide says Doom
For one, I refuse to use a non-Indestructible melee weapon in PvM. But mainly because Doom sucks. The Holy Freeze aura doesn't stack with our own Freeze, and is too low to be viable for damage on its own. The cold res reduction will frequently be useless combined with an Infinity and our Facets (monsters already at -100). It lacks useful mods that help our melee side like crushing blow and good melee base damage.

Nice AR, noob!
Infinity/Conviction is broken.

Build
Ok this isn't breaking any new ground. Max Freeze and Synergies, get 1 pt in Conviction, Vigor, Redemption for utility. Max Sacrifice, then spare points in Zeal or Holy Shield depending on whether you're offense or defense oriented. Str for gear, Dex for Block, rest Vita.

Gear
Here is the meat and potatoes of this guide and optimizing your freeze.

Weapon
Grief Phase Blade. Aim for 32+ IAS. Indestructible, matches our blue freezyboi vibe, tons of hybrid melee damage to help us leech and kill cold immunes. Hits max Zeal without Fanat, with 72IAS total, letting you deliver super fast cold boosted hits. This increases your damage the most, period.

------But Gwala, there's no Grief in your screenshot. Yup, for style points I personally I use...

Heaven's Light Mine is ethereal Zod with Facet, but you can use a two facet non-eth. It has +Skills for our aura, IAS, nice base damage, good crushing blow, and sockets for our facets. Can hit 5 frame zeal with a Nosferatu's Coil.

Griswold's Caduceus Griswold Set is actually super viable for this build due to all the room for facets, it does the second best damage behind Grief. I just think full set is nerdy.

Insane Rare +2 Pally skills Scepter with fools jewelers of swiftness ethereal self repair socketed with facets and +3 Holy Freeze staffmod. Style points for days but never gonna drop and still worse than Grief by a mile, sadly.

Shield
JSTOD if you're screwing around in single player or have 50kfg to blow on a Holy Freeze, a jeweler's pally shield with facets and +res is going to be your best in slot. But no one will ever use this, leading us to...

Griswold's Shield slightly less damage, infinitely cheaper. Has res and block chance for us, and 3 sockets for facets.

Herald of Zakarum way less damage due to loss of 2 facets, but it's an option.

Helm
Nightwing's Veil +44% damage to our melee with a cold facet. Dex for block, absorb, and +skills. Blue style points. Awesome.

Griswold's Helm Again, Gris set is very strong for this build. +2 to our Holy Freeze and room for 2 facets.

Chest
Jeweler's Again, facets. Jeweler's with life or FHR will do well here and is BIS.

Ormus +15 Cold and room for a facet. Cheaper than Jeweler's, less survivability than other options.

Arkaine's Valor +2 skills boosts our aura and a facet slot. Works fine. But it's red, so..

Tyrael's Might No +skills, but has CBF which saves us a ring or socket slot, so really +1 skill/facet value. And you can facet it. And it's blue. One of the few legit uses for Tyrael's. Style points!

Griswold's Chest Probably the weakest item in the set, but with room for 3 facets it's still pretty strong.

CoH/Fort These do decent damage, but less than amping up our freeze, and start to turn you into a crappy phys pally. I thought you're here to use Holy Freeze?

Amulet
Highlord's Wrath This is still your best bet despite our cold damage build. +skill increases our Freeze damage, Deadly increases our overall damage a lot, and the IAS helps us hit breakpoints without Fanat.

Mara's/Pally Stat Rare/Seraphs Hymn You lose too much damage compared to Highlord's.

Rings
Raven Frost You need this if you aren't running Tyrael's, otherwise..

BK Ring Some life leech and +skill for our Holy Freeze. Biggest damage boost we can get in a ring slot.

Dual Leech Personally I don't feel the need for mana leech with the occasional Redemption flash, potions, and 2 mana cost Zeal. But you may want one.

Belt
Nosferatu's Coil Slow helps reduce mobs to a crawl even further, the attack speed can help you hit breakpoints, life leech and str. If you don't need the attack speed, consider other options.

Arachnid's Mesh The skill actually boosts our damage the most if you don't need attack speed, and slow helps again.

String/Tgods/crafted These are more survivability oriented options, personally with Holy Freeze I don't feel that I need them so I prefer to use my belt slot for more damage. But they are perfectly viable.

Snowclash I appreciate your commitment to the theme, but no.

Gloves
Laying of Hands These are just the best for pvm, period. Huge res, attack speed we need without Fanatacism, and massive +350% damage to demons.

Crafted CB Gloves Another option, but generally will lose to Laying of Hands

Boots
Gore Rider There is nothing amazing in this slot to boost our cold damage, so we take a much needed bump to our physical side instead.

Charms
Besides the obvious Torch and Annihilus, you really need Offensive Skillers to get this build to do real damage. Luckily they are very affordable. Big benefit compared to a melee or Dream pally, our charms are a fraction of the cost. If you have no FHR on your gear try to get to get 48 breakpoint with your charms. Besides those, you can try to build up your res with charms, this build can be lowish depending on your gear due to all the offensive oriented items.

Budgetboi Build
Let's say it's early ladder, or you just don't want to sink a bunch of value into a Holy Freeze build. You can do just fine with stuff like Nord's Tenderizer, Stormlash, Azurewrath, non-eth Heaven's Light. For armor, Black Hades or Griswold with non-perfect facets, or a Duress/Treachery. Blackhorn's Face would be cool for slowmemes. It's more forgiving than a low budget physical Zealer, but you do need hefty +skills and facets to start really getting your damage into comfortable end-game levels.

Mercenary
Get a Might merc to increase our physical damage and help with cold immunes. Luckily, our Holy Freeze provides huge protection for him, so he will be very very tough even without optimal gear.

Infinity NOT necessary to clear hell at all, but it speeds you up. The huge hit to enemy defense basically trivializes our Attack Rating, solving a big weakness of the build. Typically will not break cold immunes, but will hugely bump our damage to non immunes.

Reaper's Toll A much cheaper, legitimate option that helps us with Stone Skin cold immunes and bumps our survivability even further. Decrepified enemys under the effect of Holy Freeze can barely move.

Andy's, Fort, Eth Glad Bane, Vamp Gaze, etc etc you guys know how to gear mercs.

Gameplay
Nothing revolutionary here. Enjoy the safety of a 33+ yard massive screen-wide slow. Run around meleeing high-hp targets and uniques while your Holy Freeze blasts the crap out of lesser monsters. Often you'll finish with one pack with Zeal and the rest of the screen will be dead from your aura ticks. Pop Redemption to heal up and restore mana. Before you get Infinity you can swap between Holy Freeze and your own Conviction to get a few hits on highly resistant mobs since Conviction lingers for a few seconds after changing your aura. If you run into a truly cold resistant pack, it's often better to change auras to Conviction/Fanat to help smack them down. Watch out for the rare mobs that are immune to our Holy Freeze slow, like Frenzytaurs.

Optimized DPS


Optimized Dreamer Comparison w/much more expensive gear and Decrepify up


This post was edited by Gwala on Nov 1 2021 07:34pm

Is the damage loss from not using the griswold that crazy bad? Want to try this in hc with stormshield for extra safety.

This post was edited by projectz on Jan 30 2022 06:12pm

it's fairly significant due to double dipping (32% + -15 enemy resist). Since almost everything is slowed to hell you really don't need the DR%.

Thanks! Now I know my next build

Wow. a zealer that is worse than zeal+ fanaticism

Gj

you are losing some damage for huge safety and strong AOE screen clear utility. Obv a physical build has higher peak damage but you have to zeal every single mob down.

2H Death Eth Colossus Sword for real mens and Zealots. Only pussyes use shield.

Seems like a fun build

Nevermind.

This post was edited by Hamm on Feb 1 2022 03:37am

this is really bad

elemental damage = trash damage

the devs are trying to make d2 easier by adding more elemental damage to pretty much everything so no skill newgens can play and feel nostalgia and actually get threw teh game once.

what you should focus on is physical damage, this build is going to be total trash in full games clearing chaos or baal or trav and will fail badly in pk. also a zealer is really bad at pvm and worse a pk so it has no real use unless you only want to dual other zealers.


newgens are like "lets reinvent the wheel"

d2 is 21 years old zealers + holy freeze are not new and they are extremely ineffective thats why no one uses them.