Zealous Focus or Zealous Endurance?

[Gary1986]

My party consists of the in game characters. I dont create NPCs. What is more useful overall out of these two auras?

[AndreaColombo]

You're gonna hate this answer, but it depends XD

 

There will be battles where you want Zealous Focus and battles where you want Zealous Endurance: You can pick both and switch depending on your needs.

[Gary1986]

You're gonna hate this answer, but it depends XD

 

There will be battles where you want Zealous Focus and battles where you want Zealous Endurance: You can pick both and switch depending on your needs.

 

Cheers.

 

I might just take Zealous Endurance, as the extra survivability is always helpful i guess. 

[Nobear]

My party consists of the in game characters. I dont create NPCs. What is more useful overall out of these two auras?

 

I also say it depends, though not in terms of which is more useful, but on whether you can cover your entire formation with your aura or not. Disregarding a certain bug I will explain below, it seems to take about 22 Int to cover my entire custom formation. That sounds like a lot, but you can get it with 14 base Int by Defiance Bay with one item, a resting bonus and an infinitely available buff. I would consider Zealous Focus if you have at least 14 base Int and/or care to depend on those bonuses I mentioned, as it's really useful especially to your casters and ranged. However, if you have lower Int, it may not be enough to cover your entire party anyway, and the ones who would benefit most from Zealous Focus would be the first to drop out of range. In this case, Zealous Endurance could at least cover your front line, which are usually the only ones who need it (situational exceptions aside).

 

Now about the bug currently in place: I'm not 100% sure on the numbers, but this is my educated guess based on experience playing with various Int values on a paladin. When I have had Int over 10, my aura size has grown over time, sometimes until it is literally larger than the whole map. Attempting to capitalize on this, I played with dumped Int, and found that my aura size instead shrunk until I literally had to stand on top of someone else to cover him. Our selection circles could overlap without the ally being covered. So my educated guess is that the magic value is 10. If I'm correct, playing with a constant 10 Int would mean your aura would currently stay the same size, but it's the total Int value that counts for this, not just the base.

 

In summary, in the current latest hotfixed patch of 1.0.6, if you have at least moderate Int (above 10 total Int, it seems), your aura size will continuously grow and you won't have to worry about it. If you turn it off and on, the growth will reset, but it will come back. However, this is a bug and will probably be fixed, so be forewarned if you are planning to build to take advantage of it.

 

You're gonna hate this answer, but it depends XD

 

There will be battles where you want Zealous Focus and battles where you want Zealous Endurance: You can pick both and switch depending on your needs.

 

 

I find, in practice, the hard fights tend to be hard on both survivability and accuracy/DPS, so where I'd really "need" one I'd "need" the other just as much. I personally would rather stick with one and spend that ability point elsewhere.

 

Back to the OP: Gary, do you have Durance in your party? Because then it will make very little difference which one you pick, as there is a level 1 priest spell for each of the two auras you don't have. You should also know these don't stack. If you take Zealous Endurance, casting Armor of Faith would be next to useless as it would only bump your DR from 3 to 4 (the highest active effect suppresses others of the same type), but Blessing would be very worthwhile to cast, and vice versa if you take Zealous Focus. The Inspiring Radiance talent is a special snowflake which stacks with other accuracy spells, making it a great talent to boost your accuracy at the beginning of every fight.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Nobear

[Luckmann]

Zealous Focus.

 

The best defence is a good offence, which might sound like a cop-out, but never has there been a game where it's more true than in PoE. Zealous Endurance adds survivability, yes, but the relatively small effect will never determine the outcome of a fight. An extra critical, another dead enemy dead faster, might.

 

Also, Zealous Focus gives you that nice extra Talent that lets it also increase Criticals. I don't think Zealous Endurance has a booster Talent.

[GoldenAnkh]

Watch my post get approved right after the thread is moot, like the other posts I've had lately. I can't wait for the delay to be lifted.

 

 

I recommend Zealous Charge -- for the humor factor. Get your party into combat ASAP, then watch as they are slaughtered more quickly/kill more slowly without a decent paladin buff! Like WWII cavalry charges into Panzers!

 

 

ZFocus reduces miss chance by 6% and increases hit/crit by 6%. A nice but not staggering DPS difference for most characters, BUT it also means you can land CC and other effects more reliably. And for your high-Accuracy characters who never miss anyway, it's adding +6% crit, and those characters are probably already optimized around critting, so that's gravy.

 

However, no matter what happens, your party will take AOE damage and adds/teleporters will get to your squishies. ZEndurance can mitigate these problems to some degree and give you a better chance of swigging potions/getting a healing spell out. And of course it keeps your front-liners alive longer. But it does nothing to stop cc/statuses from screwing you.

 

For an in-game set of companions, excluding your PC from considerations, who will you have in your party?

• Your melee combatants are Pelligrino [i can't stop calling her that], Eder, Sagani's pet, Kana, and/or if you go temporarily insane and use wildshape Hiverash [another bad naming habit]
• Your ranged options are Grieving Mother, Aloth, Durance, Sagani herself, and/or a casting Hiverash

If you have four melee combatants (including Sagani's pet) and/or two tanks (one of whom is not a fighter), then ZEndurance could be the better choice. However, ZFocus's effectiveness rises geometrically based on the number of DPSers/CCers you have. I usually have 3-4 DPS/CC-focused characters (usually GM, Durance, and Aloth, plus Sagani when I decide to turn my brain off), Eder-tank, Pelligrino, and one (sometimes two) off-tank/melee utility players (Kana and/or a monk/rogue/barb), so ZFocus is almost always the much better choice with this composition. (And Eder's DPS is meh, but hitting with knockdowns is key to mitigating damage; now that I think about it, three prones during a battle may reduce incoming damage -- and definitely incoming CC -- more than ZEndurance does in total.)

 

I thought Zealous Endurance had a talent, but if it does I can't remember it right now.

[MalVeauX]

My party consists of the in game characters. I dont create NPCs. What is more useful overall out of these two auras?

 

Heya,

 

There are more defensive buffs available (scrolls, potions) than accuracy buffs. I'd go focus.

 

But you can get both and use one or the other based on needs.

 

Very best,

[Aea]

Actually, both of the auras got buffed in the last patch so that's not entirely correct, GoldenAnkh. Zealous Endurance now converts 15% of enemy hits to Grazes, which does offer a limited amount of protection against hostile CC, since the grazes are a lot easier to recover from, so if that's your priority Endurance has the marginal advantage. 

 

With regard to the choice though, I'd say go with the bonus you would rather have on at the start of battle. For me, that's accuracy since I place a high value on landing my opening shots and the start of battle is also the time when my party members are the most likely to be clustered up enough to all benefit from the aura. If you're more concerned about what your enemies will do to you, though, then by all means go with Zealous Endurance. Both are solid bonuses in their own right but both are also outperformed by level 1 priest buffs, so in the end their unique contribution to most fights will likely boil down to either 15% of enemy hits converted to graze (Endurance) or 15% of your grazes converted to hit and possibly 5% of your hits converted to crit (Focus). Pick whichever one appeals to you more; neither one is going to make or break you I'd think.

[Luckmann]

While I would not take Zealous Charge as my first pick, if you have two (or more) Paladins in the group, it's actually not that bad of a pick. 90% of combat in PoE is pre-combat positioning, and while Zealous Charge only kicks in when combat starts, due to the ridiculous "Combat Only" restrictions, added speed to your tank(s) is of amazing use.

In my paladin game, I have Zealous Focus myself, with Pallegina using Zealous Charge, boosting her speed and Edèr's.

 

...it could really use a talent that increases attack speed or something, though.

[Tennisgolfboll]

Both

 

Main paladin with focus. Pallegina with endurance.

 

If i have to chose i say focus. When pe adds accuracy next patch ill probably say endurance

[gkathellar]

Zealous Focus is generally better, in my experience.

 

In a party, ZE really only helps your tanks, while ZF helps everyone. That seems like a clear win for Focus.

 

In solo ... honestly, DR only helps you so much when your paladin's defenses make most attacks miss or graze. ZF helps you kill the enemy before the RNG murders you horribly on a whim.