09-03-2003, 10:28 PM
I spent 5 hours twinking and testing this stuff a few days ago. By FAR the most powerful realistic build was zeal/holy shock with a crescent moon phase blade. Getting the Um for that would take awhile, but the build is still decent with makeshift gear and would make you strong enough that you could do countess runs for the runes to make an Um. Using holy shock capitalizes hardcore on a weapon that's already extremely powerful for taking down groups (20% chance to cast lvl 13 static field! ITD! charges of spirit wol... ITD! -35% lightning resistance!).
After maxing just holy shock and resist lightning, with zeal above lvl 4, you have a pally that kills as fast as an avenger with max vengeance, 3 maxed synergies and max convic (I gave the avenger a crescent moon berserker axe for comparative testing). But the coolest part about this build is that you have all the freedom in the world past those first ~46 skill points: you can max sacrifice, or even sacrifice + zeal for damage/leech (and AR for superuniques/bosses), max salvation for the extra light dmg, max holy shield (10K def is very attainable if you do this), max fana to kill light immunes or to leech as necessary, or you can even... be an avenger! vengeance/convic, even with only one point each if you have ~7 or so + skills, is usable even in act 5 /players8 for killing light immunes since you're casting static field, and convic + crescent moon's -35% light res allows you to do that to about anything. I didn't run into a single monster that maintained immunity. You can even go somewhat heavily into the avenger tree: vengeance will already have the resist lightning synergy, and the sacrifice synergy as well if you chose to max it.
The zeal bug is the only problem with this build. When you're hitting, you're hitting HARD, and even an impossible vengeance build--all 4 synergies maxed, vengeance maxed and convic maxed--doesn't kill as fast as shock + resist lightning + salvation. But when you don't get into position correctly you can end up missing 30 attacks in a row. How the #!@#$ did blizzard manage to UNFIX this bug?
I can't mod or mule those new rainbow facets, so I didn't even get to see what this looks like with +light skill damage and extra -light resistance, features which could help damage quite a bit, and aren't really usable for pure avengers.
After maxing just holy shock and resist lightning, with zeal above lvl 4, you have a pally that kills as fast as an avenger with max vengeance, 3 maxed synergies and max convic (I gave the avenger a crescent moon berserker axe for comparative testing). But the coolest part about this build is that you have all the freedom in the world past those first ~46 skill points: you can max sacrifice, or even sacrifice + zeal for damage/leech (and AR for superuniques/bosses), max salvation for the extra light dmg, max holy shield (10K def is very attainable if you do this), max fana to kill light immunes or to leech as necessary, or you can even... be an avenger! vengeance/convic, even with only one point each if you have ~7 or so + skills, is usable even in act 5 /players8 for killing light immunes since you're casting static field, and convic + crescent moon's -35% light res allows you to do that to about anything. I didn't run into a single monster that maintained immunity. You can even go somewhat heavily into the avenger tree: vengeance will already have the resist lightning synergy, and the sacrifice synergy as well if you chose to max it.
The zeal bug is the only problem with this build. When you're hitting, you're hitting HARD, and even an impossible vengeance build--all 4 synergies maxed, vengeance maxed and convic maxed--doesn't kill as fast as shock + resist lightning + salvation. But when you don't get into position correctly you can end up missing 30 attacks in a row. How the #!@#$ did blizzard manage to UNFIX this bug?
I can't mod or mule those new rainbow facets, so I didn't even get to see what this looks like with +light skill damage and extra -light resistance, features which could help damage quite a bit, and aren't really usable for pure avengers.