for melee pally: duress or gloom?

[Kossuths Will]

having trouble deciding...cant afford the real high-end stuff, so figured these would be realistic to get.

i like the cb and 40% fhr a lot for duress. with for example a goblin toe, that gives you a total of 40% cb which isnt too bad.

gloom has no cb but does have at least a little fhr, plus dim vision. one of my main issues is i dont know how useful that is, since it wont cast unless you are already hit. having had a necro, if he cast DV on something that saw him, it still came after him. but it also has significantly better resistances as well as 5% damage to mana. which is nice if u get swarmed by mana burn and are getting wacked, cuz you will get some mana so you will still be able to use zeal. if the DV is truly useful, gloom might be the way to go.

and as a kind of side question, i have read that a problem that sometimes happens with zealots is getting your AR where it needs to be to consistently beat on monsters in hell. could there be a use for the blessed aim merc after all? ;) debating between that and a defiance merc for my tesladin...

side question #2: whats a good target for AR?

[LordC]

Question 1:
Duress and Gloom are both pretty good, but I've never found them to be exceptional in practice, particularly for their respective costs.

In normal situations (ie outside Uber-Tristram), higher quantities of crushing blow tend to plateau in effectiveness. Having 0% sucks; 25% is great, but 40% probably won't be a whole lot better. That said, damage is damage, and Duress certainly offers that.

As for Dim Vision, that's mostly useful against archers and gloams. At melee range, monsters can still see you.

Now, I don't know what gear you're using in particular, but I've never found either of these armors to be optimal for any of my melee paladin builds of late. Why? Treachery exists.

Reading through the mods on it, it doesn't seem that potent. Before its spells have fired, you get basically no resists, no defense, and well, really not much. But it won't take long for the spells to fire, and once they're cast, the armor reads:

All Resistances +60%
Damage Reduced by 15%
+305-325 Poison Damage over 0.4 sec
+45% Increased Attack Speed
+20% Faster Hit Recovery
Cold Resist +30%
50% Extra Gold From Monsters

That is some tasty goodness right there. The giant IAS ensures that you can hit fpa breakpoints that were well out of reach with other armors. The resistances are better than those of any other armors lacking HRs. The poison damage is amazingly potent if you bother to use it in nightmare mode. The 15% PDR will make up for the fact that the armor is somewhat lacking in defense numbers. And to top it all off, you can keep using the armor even after you've found something better; just throw it on, get yourself hit until fade goes off, and voila, five minutes of extra resistances and PDR. As noted, I can't guarantee this is the best armor for your character, but in all likelihood, it is.


Question 2:
From personal experience, I can attest that Tesladins have some serious AR issues. If you are level 85, have 136dex and lvl25 zeal but no +AR equipment or bonuses, you will have a total AR of ~1500, allowing you to hit Frenzytaurs about ~40% of the time. Not good.

Using a Blessed Aim merc without any +AR equipment improves your AR to ~4000, with a ~65% CtH. This still sucks, so chances are, you're going to need to invest in some AR gear of some sort. Most good weapons have some element that circumvents this problem, be it ITD, -XX% defense, +AR, or +XX% AR. Outside of that, there are some good options: IK Boots, Sander's Boots, Orphan Gloves, and Raven Frost all give some AR bonuses; Lavagout and Demon Limb give huge %AR bonuses via Enchant. And if you really want to stop screwing around, the Angelic Ammy + Ring combo gives a colossal AR bonus.

A BA merc is actually a pretty good option for a Tesladin; Might will not improve his killing speed dramatically, and HF/Defiance are only really necessary if you want to skimp on Holy Shield. A BA merc, on the other hand, will allow you to use more aggressive gear on your own character and improve your survivability due to more-consistent leeching. Only downside: other players will laugh at you.

As for a target AR: with no monster defense reductions, 5000 is an absolute minimum (~70% CtH), 8000 is a realistic target (~80%), and 16000 is possible if you use Angelics (~90%). With monster defense reductions (Eth'd Redeemer for ex.), even 4000 is good (~80%), and 8000 will get you up to the golden ~90%.

[Kossuths Will]

well for now, i made stone out of a scarab husk which gives me about 1650 defense. i have 5-6 pts in holy shield and a defiance merc. i figure even if this isnt end game armor, it will still be a great merc armor, so not a total loss.

right now my setup is:

vamp gaze
+1 pally skill ammy
ravenfrost
rare right with life leech
stone armor
string of ears
venom grip gloves
crescent moon cryptic sword
goblin toe boots

skills are max zeal, holy shock, res lightning. at this point, debating whether more pts in holy shield (prob go this route) or start pumping sacrifice to help my phys damage. also wondering what to do about dual phys and light immunes (starting to notice a LOT of light immunes in act1 hell, grrrrr...). One option is 1 pt in vengeance and conviction. the other is to find an item with amp dam, or decrep, and/or low resist charges. either way, i believe i need to hit 46% ias total with a cryp sword to get to 5 fps, so the gloves obviously need to be switched up (prob go with laying of hands).