tesladin variant - pally pro input plz

[Kossuths Will]

Havent played pallys in awhile, but I wanted to try a pally that was a little different (not interested in hammerdin or smiter). Most info I read for tesladins use zeal, and i'm kind of wondering why. in order to make holy shock most effective, you need to max salvation and resist lightning, both of which are synergies to vengeance. with the cold length and synergies, why not focus on that instead? my idea for the build was to use crescent moon...i was actually thinking of using a mighty scepter, since u could get some skill adds. but cryptic sword probably is the best overall option (I'm guessing). not sure about the rest of the equip...if i remember right vengeance is pretty mana intensive, so some % damage to mana, +mana to kill, and/or mana leech would prob be needed. i could switch to zeal (prereq anyway) for the leech, with the ignore def from cresc moon, getting mana back that way shouldnt be a prob.

skills i would go as follows
20 - holy shock, res lightning, vengeance, salvation
5 - prereqs and holy shield

that takes me to 88 skil pts, and i guess after that point i'd just dump the rest into holy shield.

for the rest of equip, i was considering gloom or duress for armor. probably ancients pledge for shield...cheap, and helps with resists as well as my mana problem with the % damage to mana. i was considering a runeword for a helm, lore and radiance are cheap and decent items. belt - string of ears? the damage reduction would probably help. i think i have a ravenfrost so that'd have to be one of the rings (melee character frozen in hell = bad news), the rest of the stuff could be a lot of things i guess. the build sounds viable (and fun) to me, but i figured the pally pros would know best

[LordC]

Zeal > Vengeance for Tesladins.

Holy Shock adds a set quantity of damage to each attack, and does not depend on weapon damage. Therefore, it is best utilized with the highest-speed attack skills available, regardless of other sources of damage output.

Example: Assuming most of the setup you suggested, you'll have a Crescent Moon Cryptic Sword, maybe a Highlord's Wrath or Cat's Eye, and a Laying of Hands or Lavagout: these add to a total of 60% IAS. For the vengeance build you described, you would get +224% fire /cold damage, +424% lightning damage from vengeance, and 1-3931 from HS added to each attack.

Crescent Moon adds +180-220% damage to the sword, and Cryptic deals 5-77 damage base, for a total average of 15-231 damage per attack. Adding +224, 224, and 424 results in 131-2014 damage from vengeance. Throw in HS and you're dishing out 132-5945 damage with every attack.

Based on Cryptic Sword (base attack speed -10) with an IAS of 60%, you would be attacking every 9 frames (2.7 attacks / second). Total using vengeance: ~8200 damage/second if my calculations are correct.

For a zeal-based build (20 zeal, 20 HS, 20 Res Lightning, 20 Salvation) using the same equipment, Zeal would add +108% damage to each attack. Using previous numbers for Crescent Moon damage, this equates to 31-480 physical damage per attack. The 1-3931 damage from HS remains the same, so final damage is 32-4411 per attack.

60% IAS on a Cryptic Sword with Zeal gets you an attack every 5 frames (5 attacks per second). So total damage using zeal is ~11,000 per second. Also note that zeal will trigger the static field more often (a very good thing)

As for the equipment mentioned, use whatever keeps you alive. The main problems with Tesladins as a subclass are attack rating and life leech. The attack rating problem can be solved by using AR equipment (such as the jewelry from the Angelic set), or by using a weapon that has -XX% to monster defense (Heaven's light or anything with Eth runes). Ignore Target Defense works against normal monsters, but it's deactivated against Uniques and Bosses, so don't count on it too much.

The life leeching problem is a bit more intractable. You can get a source of lifetap (Marrowwalks, Dracs) or rely on normal life leeching gear combined with high physical damage output. To get this higher physical damage, you may want to drop the Salvation synergy in favor of Sacrifice if you're using Zeal. This will not dramatically decrease your damage output. With Vengeance, it may be wise to put those points into Holy Shield instead, or be prepared to choke down a lot of healing pots. In either case, Tesladins are not a good class for tanking groups of tough LI monsters in Hell, so use caution when confronting these.

[Kossuths Will]

good points. i figured zeal is better for them, but was just kind of thinking how well the skills/equip complemented each other and figured it might be something different that worked well.

thats good info, especially the part about ITD, because i didnt know that. better come up with a diff plan for my other pally (avenger) cuz i was gonna give him cresc moon too but if that doesnt work with uniques and bosses, hes in trouble. i figured ITD is a great workaround for having to put pts into dex to help AR, so you could have more life. thanks again, looks like its back to the drawing board LOL

[Spinns]

What about max res light, salvation, vengeance then equip dual dreams?
Don't know how effective it would be but it's something I am interested to try

[LordC]

What about max res light, salvation, vengeance then equip dual dreams?

I assume that you will be maxing conviction along with the stated skills. So, how effective would that be? Level 30 HS, fully synergized, adds 1-7005 damage per attack. Vengeance adds 224/224/424 as noted above.

If you're wealthy enough for dual dreams, you're probably also wealthy enough for a Grief Phase Blade, which I would assume to be the optimal weapon for such a build. If all my damage calculations come out right, that would come out to about ~8000 average damage per attack, at a rate of 9fpa, for ~22,000 damage per second.

Switching out Salvation for Resist Fire decreases HS damage, but increases Vengeance damage and produces a more substantial component of non-lightning damage. Total damage would be down to about ~20,000 even.

Using Zeal instead of vengeance (4pts Zeal, 18pts Sacrifice) with the same maxed synergies: 5300 damage per attack, at a rate of 4-5fpa, for 25,000-33,000 damage per second depending on whether you get enough IAS to hit the last breakpoint.

Now, conviction will increase this damage output against most enemies. I assume that the vengeance build is rather largely superior against lightning-immunes, while the zeal build is more balanced in terms of life leeching and mana issues.

Oh, and if you didn't notice, Dream is awesome.

[Bladewind]

Lvl 25 Conviction will break all Lightning immunes but I will still use a Crescent Moon Pb instead of Grief. Largely because even with Lightning immunities broken, many of the monsters are still 70 to 80%+ resist to Lightning. Grief will kill a lot faster but bleh it is too common a weapon .

[Spinns]

Grief's +dmg mod doesn't effect vengeance damage do a weapon such as botd would be better for an avenger paladin

[LordC]

I will still use a Crescent Moon Pb instead of Grief

I used Grief for comparison because it would be better with vengeance. For a Zeal-based build, Crescent Moon may be superior. And yes, Crescent Moon definitely wins more style points.

Grief's +dmg mod doesn't effect vengeance damage do a weapon such as botd would be better for an avenger paladin

From what I have read on the subject, I am almost positive that this is incorrect.

[Spinns]

Taken from various posts around the fourms

will the Damage +340-400 of Grief work with berserk unlike vengeance?

Oh, by the way, vengence does not work with grief. There's a bug/feature that make it only use the phase blade damage.

What doesn't count towards Vengeance elemental damage;

- Auras enhanced damage such as Might or Fanatism.
- Weapon added damage that reads "damage + xx" such as Grief rune word and The Redeemer. This has been tested in game to not work.

grief doesnt work before someone asks/mentions it

IIRC the only things that work with vengeance are :

1. %enhanced dmg ON WEAPON ONLY
2. %enhanced max dmg ON WEAPON ONLY (like on Messerschmidt's)
2. +X min dmg from anywhere
3. +Y max dmg from anywhere
4. +(X - Y) dmg from anywhere (like on war trav's)

Just thought I'd post these to clear any confusion up

[LordC]

This has been tested in game to not work.

Well, I guess I was wrong. Seems I've been reading the wrong subjects.