Frostdin

[evmeatwad22]

OK, I have a friend that did a frostdin awhile back(1-2 months) and he pretty much...owned...
However that friend moved away and i cant get ahold of him and was wondering
Is the frostdin really the way to go?
And if so, whats a good talent tree way to go, and stats. thanks

[Hammerskjold]

>Is the frostdin really the way to go?

There's probably more powerful and efficient builds that will 'pwnz', but I personally had fun playing a few frost zealots. They're not invincible, especially against cold immunes or monsters that cannot be slowed via Holy Freeze, but they're not exactly pushovers either.



>And if so, whats a good talent tree way to go, and stats. thanks

There's a few guides you can find through google, but for me this is one of the better guides that I've read.

http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=542

Even though I'm not interested in the ladder part, it's still fairly applicable. And it doesn't have the usual 'you must get a BotD and Enigma and Infinity etc etc' type of shopping\wish list.

If you really want to get the absolute bare bones of the build, iirc it's something like:

-4 Zeal
-20 Holy Freeze
-20 Resist Cold

Where the rest of the points goes depends on your preference, and can be pretty flexible.

[Dirsch]

Greetings and Salutations evmeatwad22,

The usual way that one would build a frostdin is to max holy freeze and its accompanying synergies in order to maximize cold damage. But may I suggest a more unconventional approach, why not try making a Durieldin instead. Given its namesake, you could already guess that a Durieldin would have something to do with Duriel and you would be absolutely right.

Why Duriel, well, when I was playing with a friend a long time ago who had substantial troubles with Duriel, he asked me about him, so I said, simply think of Duriel as the embodiment of the biggest and baddest paladin you have ever seen. How is Duriel the biggest and baddest paladin you might ask. Well nearly all of Duriel's skills are based on a paladin, namely - holy freeze, smite, and charge; with one exception jab.

So keeping this in mind I thought why not really make a paladin that is like the badass that Duriel is and see just how well it works. I did and the results were quite satisfying.

I started a paladin that had a major in holy freeze for its unfair slowdown and range but not for its damage. Since cold is the least potent of the three holy elements. Then choose to specialize in smite for its stun length and then charge for its outrageous damage. As for jab, zeal could justifiably be a suitable substitute.

Your specialty here would be like Duriels one hit kills with your physical not cold damage. For a weapon, choose one with as big a damage as you could find, speed is unimportant, but keep the range to a minimum. A massive maul would be ideal. But you ask how could you use a maul while wearing a shield, I say weapon switches. First stun them, and their recovery rate is so slow its like watching instant replay. Then switch to your big hamma and lay the smackdown on top of 'em heads. Or you could just slice and dice them with your zeal.

In hell, no amount of skillz alone will let you owned", neither this build nor any other build is likely to do that unless you first owned some mad 3lite gearz.

Any half decent player can get thru normal and nightmare with the tree based skills alone, but be sure to have lots of decent equipment before venturing forth into hell, this is especially important since this paladin is very dependent on items for its killing and survival.

[Zingydex]

Any half decent player can get thru normal and nightmare with the tree based skills alone, but be sure to have lots of decent equipment before venturing forth into hell, this is especially important since this paladin is very dependent on items for its killing and survival.

Decent? "Decent" gear won't get you to the end of Nightmare, let alone make progress in Hell.

[Assur]

Decent? "Decent" gear won't get you to the end of Nightmare, let alone make progress in Hell.

What do you mean by decent? I took a pure FrostZealot through Normal and Nightmare without problems. The only items he got twinked were a Lore helmet and a few perfect diamonds for his shield, otherwise he used items found by himself including a rare flail which he got in Act 2 Normal!

OK, OK so he did find a Skin of the Viper Magi and a Kuko for his Fire RogueB)

Hell on the other hand <brrr>

[Nerobellum]

In order to make a frostdin, I'd imagine you would be a stacked Auradin with max points into the "Holy Freeze" aura (in the Offensive tree, I believe).

Other than that, you can get yourself some Life Leech gear, a nice high damage weapon (Like an Ethereal Breath of the Dying zerker axe) and some cleglaw's gloves for slow. After this your going to want to get Zeal, or a primary attack, and proceed to attack people. And enigma might be nice, for the teleport, or a Chains of Honor for the resistance.

**Note: I have never made an Auradin or a Frostdin in particular, this is just my 2 cents on what I would do if I had one.

[Hammerskjold]

>Other than that, you can get yourself some Life Leech gear, a nice high damage weapon (Like an Ethereal Breath of the Dying zerker axe) and some cleglaw's gloves for slow. After this your going to want to get Zeal, or a primary attack, and proceed to attack people. And enigma might be nice, for the teleport, or a Chains of Honor for the resistance.

>**Note: I have never made an Auradin or a Frostdin in particular, this is just my 2 cents on what I would do if I had one.


Almost all of those items are quite high end (exception being Cleglaws), and unfortunately have a high chance of being not 'kosher'.

While it's true that when it comes to H\Hell almost any character that uses melee range attacks will need some decent gear, decent is still pretty far from Ethereal BotDs and Enigma armor etc. The Crescent Moon runeword is probably a much more affordable and realistic end game weapon to aim for, at least compared to an E-BoTD.

Unless of course, you're talking about pvp on open battlenet, or some sort of test condition where you just want to experiment on super gears.

** Note: I have made some Auradins and Frostadins, and this is just my 2 cents on what I have done, when I had them.

[Chaerophon]

OK, I have a friend that did a frostdin awhile back(1-2 months) and he pretty much...owned...
However that friend moved away and i cant get ahold of him and was wondering
Is the frostdin really the way to go?
And if so, whats a good talent tree way to go, and stats. thanks

Just thought I'd engage in a little thread necromancy to mention the frost zealot I've recently built (since getting back into D2 after 4+ years off). I was inspired by the links and discussion from this thread.

Anyways, just finished Hell Baal, and can confirm the strong hell viability (and fun) of this build.

Skills:
Max zeal
17 sacrifice
Max holy freeze
Max resist cold
1 in holy shield
10 in sanctuary

Equipment included:
Guillaume's (UM)
Guardian Angel (UM)
Soul Drainers
Nosferatu's Coil
Herald of Zakarum (PD)
Heaven's Light (2x Shael)
Gore Riders
Raven Frost
Rare AR ring with poison resist, low cold resist
Mara's

With some crappy resistance charms, I have max resists, max block, well over 3000 damage per hit on a 5-frame zeal (70%ias) 14%ll, 7%ml, 10% slow (in tandem with hf, this is great), 30%ds, 83%cb and over 1500 life. I received Heaven's Light and Mara's as well as one of the UMs from a friend; the rest of the gear I've collected through casual play with this character since the new ladder season began, trading runes and PG's (many dozens, though it's surprising what "desperate" people are willing to part with for 15-20 or so pgems if you're patient in the "new economy") and running nm baal for quite a while.

In sum, this was a fun build for someone who is no longer a "hardcore gamer". Thanks for the info.

[Archon_Wing]

You found an HOZ? Nice. Are you on ladder/west?

And yea, frost zealots are one of the great budget melee builds, they don't necessarily need a great weapon to do well.

[Chaerophon]

You found an HOZ? Nice. Are you on ladder/west?

And yea, frost zealots are one of the great budget melee builds, they don't necessarily need a great weapon to do well.

Yup, I'm on ladder/west. We should play some time (though I'm severely restricted in how much I can play these days - a comprehensive exam in less than 2 weeks plus various other stressful school-related things). Someone traded me a low-defense HoZ straight up for 15 pgems and an Oculus I found on a free for all clickfest NM Baal run. Based on what I can tell, I think I did pretty good on that deal. Seems as though HoZ is more coveted than I remember. Did the drop rate change at some point? Maybe it was duped and I didn't know about it back in the old days.

Anyways, I started doing this thing where I leave games open with "x 4ur y" and run bloody foothills or rof/chaos sanctuary looking for flawless gems, waiting for people to show up. It worked out on several occasions. I also traded a bunch of low-level set stuff for pgems using the same tactic. I ended up trading 7 pgems for my (less than perfect) ravenfrost, 20 for nosferatu's and 18 for soul drainers (or the other way around).

I couldn't afford to get too wrapped up in the game at this point due to past history with getting "carried away", so I restricted myself to only one character - no MF specific builds, etc. Turned out to be a lot of fun getting to know the game again, and "gem-hunting" can be done in a lot of interesting places you don't ever see when mfing. It's definitely a whole 'nother world compared with the 1.09 days.

As for the build; I agree, you don't need high-end weaponry to make it work in hell. However, it certainly helps. I didn't get the stuff off my friend until a couple of weeks ago. Until then, I was doing alright (not great, just alright) with an Atlantean someone gave me for free. The extra frame zeal and additional damage make a pretty significant difference.

[Archon_Wing]

Someone traded me a low-defense HoZ straight up for 15 pgems and an Oculus I found on a free for all clickfest NM Baal run. Based on what I can tell, I think I did pretty good on that deal. Seems as though HoZ is more coveted than I remember.

What's your screen name; If you ever have the time to get on. =p Mine is just Archon_Wing

That's pretty nuts;)Typically HOZ is Ist+, and occulus may be something less than um. I have no idea why, since occulus is rather good, Item values seem kinda busted. But that may be a 2-3x benefit for you, of course not everyone knows about or cares about item values that sometimes make no sense. Personally I usually trade off stuff I don't use, so I really don't care about getting the "right" prices. It could be a doop, but then again such fools would be interested more about greed and ask for the world on any item. I personally use diii.net's forums to trade, as it lets me bypass some of battle.net's uhh... more unscrupulous and rude "personalities"

That being said, I think gems serve their role as currency very well, being widely available via legit means but still being in high demand since crafting items and rerolling charms burns them up fast. Much more effective then duped SOJs

And yea, gear always helps. Some would argue in d2, it matters a bit too much. But your standard melee build has quite a bit of trouble in hell and they have to worry about health and resistances. Even elite weapons like lightsabre don't really cut it. On the other hand, an elemental zealot needs two things for offense: weapon speed and crushing blow. Crushing blow helps a lot with immunes and bosses. So your merc can take care of those. Easy runewords like strength and black flails are pretty awesome. Heaven's light is great for the same reason. Actually black flail may be a nice switch for areas with iron madien as crushing blow damage doesn't get reflected through iron madien. Or perhaps just punching them works.

[Taem]

OK, I have a friend that did a frostdin awhile back(1-2 months) and he pretty much...owned...
However that friend moved away and i cant get ahold of him and was wondering
Is the frostdin really the way to go?
And if so, whats a good talent tree way to go, and stats. thanks

I never bothered responding too you because five posts down from the top of the list in Atma's Tavern is a little topic called: Anyone Played A Frost Zealot? Apparently nobody else saw it either, lol. I have a relatively nice guide in there, and King linked a guide also: LINK