Black, frost zealot

[Ossar]

New ladder season, new frost zealot. Thinking about the crushing blow route. Why don't I hear anything about the runeword Black? 40% CB!!

[Pisken]

The most obvious weapon for a Frostie is just the Black runeword , prefeeably in a Caduceus (the problem is to find a Caddy w. nice mods :p )

[wafer]

Because of knockback....if you can get used to it though, very good weapon.

[Ossar]

The most obvious weapon for a Frostie is just the Black runeword , prefeeably in a Caduceus (the problem is to find a Caddy w. nice mods :p )

But Black cant be put in scepters =(. A scourge would be optimal but legendary mallet looks so cool I think.

[vinsensual]

there are a lot of other good weapons other than black that include crushing blow (minus annoying KB). fleshripper, heavens light, astreons, that come with better mods and also help with your hit%. nords was my favorite on my old ladder frosty, and cb came from gores, guillaumes, and duress

[Milamber]

Slight hijack here, but what do you think is better:

Heaven's Light
or
Astreon's

This is of course for a Frost Zealot.

[Pisken]

But Black cant be put in scepters =(. A scourge would be optimal but legendary mallet looks so cool I think.

Ehhrm , my fault , i was thinking about Beast :p .... as u say a Scrouge would be optimal

[vinsensual]

i was stuck deciding between heavens light and astreons.

Astreons
pros
faster (without factoring in sockets)
higher final damage because of "adds x-y damage"
%bonus to AR
slows targets down

cons
unimportant +to combat skills
an obnoxious looking hammer in your hand

Heavens Light
pros
+2 or 3 to skills, very important to HF
-%target defense (add in eths to stack)
2-3 sockets for insane customization
a scepter that looks like a scepter
cons
slower
less overall damage (more physical though)

i tried them both out, and ended up sticking to my nords tenderizer, but if i ever got my hands on an eth heavens light, holy moly.

[Milamber]

i was stuck deciding between heavens light and astreons.

Astreons
pros
faster (without factoring in sockets)
higher final damage because of "adds x-y damage"
%bonus to AR
slows targets down

cons
unimportant +to combat skills
an obnoxious looking hammer in your hand

Heavens Light
pros
+2 or 3 to skills, very important to HF
-%target defense (add in eths to stack)
2-3 sockets for insane customization
a scepter that looks like a scepter
cons
slower
less overall damage (more physical though)

i tried them both out, and ended up sticking to my nords tenderizer, but if i ever got my hands on an eth heavens light, holy moly.
Thanks for the insight.

It is a hard decision between the two, and one I am still fussing about.

[Ossar]

there are a lot of other good weapons other than black that include crushing blow (minus annoying KB). fleshripper, heavens light, astreons, that come with better mods and also help with your hit%. nords was my favorite on my old ladder frosty, and cb came from gores, guillaumes, and duress

New ladder season = I'm poor. Black would be nice...

[kryo]

I used a stormlash on my old ladder frostie, and that worked pretty well. Of course, being able to get a high ED stromlash for 10 pgems really helped :) Still, it's another thing to consider.

[ShikYaku]

I have a zeal frost pala myself ( with cb ) but i use a 228% scheaffers hammer. Is this a good choise ? ( for finishing ) i also use fleshripper for the cb. So shall i keep continuing with the schaffers hammer or get me a other weapon. ( its for PvM btw )

thanks

[Angry]

the schaeffers is kinda slow w/out fanat, but it hits hard and the static is nice. but a frost zealot really benefits from +skills. i just picked up a heaven's light myself and its GLORIOUS!!!! haha

[jumbo_SHRIMP]

asterons > heavens light any day of the week (unless you put 3 bers in the heavens light...even then wayyyy to slow for me)imo

phelix

[vinsensual]

using shaeffers would mean dedicating a lot of attention to str, 189 right? still way too much for me, unless youre gonna use something like an uppd GA, but i also thought shaeffers, as well as fleshripper, was kinda slow too. black may be cheap, but an io would be able to get you nords tenderizer if you had another source of CB. looking at the speed of both, astreons is a -10 with a 10ias mod, while heavns light is a 0 with a 20ias mod, so i guess theyre the same speed? if i didnt know the numbers i'd swear astreons was faster

[Uhgii]

asterons > heavens light any day of the week (unless you put 3 bers in the heavens light...even then wayyyy to slow for me)imo

phelix

But Heavens Light is just so customizable...

I may throw this a little off topic, but I have a little question about Heavens Light...

If I only had 1-4 base points in zeal, and I was using a heavens light, what would I do about my AR issues while avoiding the enchant/angelic routes. Would it be best to Eth the heck out of the heavens light? Or should I ShaelJah it or ShaelShaelJah for the full ITD effect? I always loved avoiding the need of AR as a whole... would Jah definitly be the thing to do it?

[Prldmr]

i have black in a flail (scl) and it works pretty well. i know the flail is giving very low dmg (i think 52 max with black), but you can rely on frost and CB for the rest. it made a great mid lvl weapon until i picked up my LS (it's a clone killer char), but astreon's/stormlash are also great options if you can afford them. so i would say go ahead and make black out of a very fast weapon like flail/knout/scourge (or trade for mine if you're scl) until you can get one of those.

- prldmr

[Kastlefeer]

minor point, heaven's light has 1 or 2 sockets only... y'all must be thinking of gris's caddy or something ... but it's still damn versatile all the same ... I use one for my mage with lightning facet's ;D

http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/elite/uscepters.shtml

the only thing i don't like about heaven's light is it's puny range 1 reach, otherwise it'd be an ace smiting weapon,... when it comes to dueling tho range starts to count, well my mage doesn't care now does he. Not sure how pronounced range issues are with zeal, my zealot always had a stormlash equipped as long as I can remember ...

I'm going off topic, nevermind me now...

[Uhgii]

minor point, heaven's light has 1 or 2 sockets only... y'all must be thinking of gris's caddy or something ... but it's still damn versatile all the same ...

Oops... already knew that. I've just never found one/seen one in game, and I was looking at dii.net's page... not arreats. :thumbsup:

That still leaves me with my same question, though... *points above*

[Argan]

After looking for ages I finally found a scourge with 3os and used it for Black...and that same day traded a gaze for a +2 heavenslight.....bah

The scourge is awesome with CB, but I needed the +skills so now its my alt weapon getting no use.

Maybe I should trade it.

[Pisken]

After looking for ages I finally found a scourge with 3os and used it for Black...and that same day traded a gaze for a +2 heavenslight.....bah

The scourge is awesome with CB, but I needed the +skills so now its my alt weapon getting no use.

Maybe I should trade it.

What kind of dmg did the Scrouge end up with ? Im thinking about make myself CrecentMoon in a Scrouge for my Fanatic Zealer , but when looking at the stats for Black ..... it looked awesome with that 40% cb ... and Black is cheaper to make :)

[Argan]

Cant remember.
The low end was low because of the high disparity between min and max damage on flails, but between the 40 cb and the cb from goreriders and vemon gloves....

:lol:

[Pisken]

Oooups , just rememberd that i cant go for Crecent in a scrouge (sword/axe/polearm only :p ) .... but what the heck , if i find a 3 sock scrouge i go for black anyways :)

[Angry]

depending on the amount of CB with the rest of your gear, that black could come in handy for bosses if you don't have enough. switch to black and tear down most of the bosses health before switching back and letting cold dmg finish them off

[Kastlefeer]

Hmm Uughi I don't the best answer to your question but I'll throw out my thoughts. When i had a zealot i used to use ar/life and max/ar/life charms to enhance his ar and physical dmg(not so important on a frostie). I had a perfect raven frost and a +8max 7%ll 99ar 13str 13%fr ring and highlord's ... I think i got his ar up to ~9xxx with lots of charms, had a stormlash and HoZ and nothing else special for ar... it was liveable ... this was on ladder he did fine pvm ... dunno what nl is really like i guess if you can blow jahs into heaven's light more power to ya ;D ... just coming in off the ladder boat I can't reconcile the same for myself. I'd dump the first Jah i see into enigma and take a deep breath hehe...

[Uhgii]

Hmm Uughi I don't the best answer to your question but I'll throw out my thoughts. When i had a zealot i used to use ar/life and max/ar/life charms to enhance his ar and physical dmg(not so important on a frostie). I had a perfect raven frost and a +8max 7%ll 99ar 13str 13%fr ring and highlord's ... I think i got his ar up to ~9xxx with lots of charms, had a stormlash and HoZ and nothing else special for ar... it was liveable ... this was on ladder he did fine pvm ... dunno what nl is really like i guess if you can blow jahs into heaven's light more power to ya ;D ... just coming in off the ladder boat I can't reconcile the same for myself. I'd dump the first Jah i see into enigma and take a deep breath hehe...

Well you also need the Ber for the Enigma... which is also quite a feat to pull off. :uhhuh:

I guess if I ShaelEth and find more IAS gear elsewhere, and pour AR charms into my inventory (which I was kind of hoping to prevent) I could work something out. Then the -58% enemies defense would help out with AR a little bit... and I guess I could be all lame, and use the Enchant on a demon limb, and just try to get a high AR Ravenfrost. But even with this, I still see myself having AR problems later on in the game...

The only downside to this is I was kind of hoping to use Dracul's (this is completely PvM by the way...) which would instantly knock off 10-20 IAS I could have gotten from crafted gloves as well as upped bloodfists... and I didn't want to give up my rings/ammy for the angelic set, because I wanted the +skill/resistance possibilities on the amulets, and I wanted to use a raven and a good +skill/rare ring.

With my planned out gear, I'd be good to go with damage, +skills, CB, life, defense, blocking, and resistances... but I think AR is the only problem I could potentially run into. A Jah could completely solve it, but it is rather expensive to just toss into a heavens light, which already has a -33% enemies defense mod on it.

I don't know! :scratch:

*Aggrivation* :rant: