Diablo II: Frost Zealot Skill Layout

A Frost Zealot is a Paladin that utilizes the Holy Freeze aura to deal cold damage to his enemies. A side effect of this aura is that it slows down 90% of the monsters movement rate as well. This type of character has a few different avenues for skill placement available, for my purposes I am dealing with only the pure cold damage variation that has minimal backup skills. As a result the mercenary is relied upon to help out against any Cold Immune monsters encountered. The skill setup is as follows:

Might - 1
Sacrifice - 1
Smite - 1
Holy Fire - 1
Holy Bolt - 1

At level six the character has a single point Holy Fire aura active that adds additional fire damage to all attacks. Might is also available and depending on the equipment found Might may be more damaging than Holy Fire. Either one will allow the character to deal decent damage to the monsters encountered and progress should be fairly smooth.

Zeal - 1
Charge - 1

At level twelve one of the character's main skills becomes available, Zeal. With Zeal the character is now attacking multiple targets at a time and dealing out damage faster than before. It does require mana, so if any mana steal equipment can be found this would be very helpful. However Zeal requires so little mana that such equipment isn't absolutely necessary and the character could simply drink a mana potion from time to time instead.

Holy Freeze - 1
Zeal - 4
Resist Cold - 1

At level eighteen the main damaging skill is now available, Holy Freeze. This will add increasing amounts of cold damage to all attacks as well as slow down any monster's movement within a certain radius. Along with this Zeal has been increased to the point where the maximum number of attacks per cycle is achieved at five. This allows the character to attack many targets at once, or a single target multiple times faster than using the normal attack. Thus increasing his killing ability and speeding up progress through the acts.

Holy Freeze - 20

The first thing that is done is the main skill, Holy Freeze, is maxed out. This is achieved at level thirty-four. At this time the character is dealing significant damage to enemies and they are all slowed by by at least 54%. This significantly increases the character's survivability as monsters don't hit him as often while he is hitting back rather hard.

Blessed Hammer - 1
Holy Shield - 5
Resist Cold - 20

The next thing to do is to max the main synergy for Holy Freeze, Resist Cold, and this is accomplished by level fifty-two. Maxing this synergy boosts the damage done by the character even more and allows his progress through the acts to remain steady as the hit points of the monsters encountered increases accordingly. Up to this point blocking has not been an issue, but moving forward through the end of Normal and into Nightmare it becomes a necessity. As such Holy Shield is given enough points so that a single cast lasts a respectable amount of time and it won't fade in the middle of a heated battle.

Holy Shield - 10
Salvation - 20

By level seventy-six Holy Shield is given enough points so that the duration is significant, as is the bonus to blocking percentage. It isn't require to max this skill as the character still won't be able to boost defense into the ten thousand range and this build is rather tight when it comes to skill points. But level 10, along with any plus skills from equipment, is sufficient to protect the character. As this build is going for pure cold damage, Salvation is the next Holy Freeze synergy to be maxed. While it doesn't provide as much of a bonus as Resist Cold, it's contribution is significant enough that maxing it is desired.

At this point all of the main skills have the hard points they need to make the build viable before entering Hell difficulty. Everything from here onward is simply gravy. To that end I suggest putting points into Zeal. The character is relying purely on cold damage to deal with monsters, and there are plenty of CIs in Hell. Against them the character is depending on the mercenary to handle those types of monsters, however some help against them would be welcome. To that end Zeal is given all additional skill points to increase the character's physical damage, as well as increase the attack rating of the character to ensure a decent hit percentage. The damage done by the character physically won't be massive, but every bit will help when encountering CIs. Simply understand that fights against those types of monsters will take a little longer than against non-CIs.