Zeus Quick Fire Build - Critique Please?

Hi all - I have been having success with this build, but I would love feedback on it, and whether or not I should swap any items.

Build
Shoes of Magi
Telkhines Ring
Hastened Fatalis
Demonic Grip
Witch Stone
Rod of Tahuti

As I was saying, I am pretty happy with the results, I find after I get demonic grip,I can pretty much 1 v 1 most of the players I come up against, and take a lot of players by suprise because of hastened fatalis.

Still, I don't see Telkhines ring, or Witch stone around on other Zeus builds, so perhaps there's something better. I was considering swapping the ring out for gem of binding. Comments?

witch stone is a bad choice unless you are facing lots of physical enemies, and even then, Breastplate of Valor beats it. telekhines ring is good only for early game, and it's not good for Zeus as he doesn't have his old 1/1/.5/.5 swing chain.
I'd suggest you avoid something like Hastened Fatalis because while you do get attack speed, you lose magical power. The attack speed only donates for your auto attacks, but does not contribute to your skills, and your general goal is to get as much burst as you can with 3 charges + Detonate Charge.

Demonic Grip, IMO, is the only attack speed item that you should get on him. I think that Gem of Iso/Bind is better than fatalis/hastened, and CDR is better than pure attack speed items without magical power.

Bancroft's Talon is a good item for overall more damage, and Focused Void Stone against lots of magical enemies, plus the penetration is nice.

I think the build you suggested is centered around 1v1. But in team fights, you'll lose a lot of your effectiveness. It's like building Fatalis on Chronos - if you do that, you'll get the best 1v1, but you'll lose your decrease your overall burst & sustained damage and reduce your team fight presence and effectiveness.
Needless to say, Zeus already has insane 1v1 potential. Focus more around team fights.

Thanks for your response. I forgot to mention that I play almost exclusively arena. I am not sure if that matters? I just find that a lot of time I am pretty much alone even when speaking with the team over skype. Besides the occasional Hades/Ares type grouping, I tryto destroy people when I see the opportunity and the CDR build I used to use left me feeling slow and not dangerous.

Thanks again for your response though, I will try subbing out some things and see how it works.

That's a lot of attack speed and a lot of magical power lost. You could argue that you get the 3rd charge faster on the poor enemy and thus that 30% extra damage might make up for the loss of magical power.

You should consider CDR. I find it a must on Zeus, having Detonate charge available before it goes off the enemy and especially for your ultimate, which is a weapon of mass destruction in arena. Choose between BoV and Chronos pendant, but I think BoV is better, much better.. except you are up against a full magical team that is.

As Jordenito said, the only attack speed worth getting is Demonic Grip. Ring is fine, but in Arena "early game" ends so fast that you barely get anything out of it. And Fatalis is not really needed when you can finish a squishy in a matter of seconds anyway.

I always bought Polynomicon too, as 4th item, maybe 5th if I felt the need for Gem of Isolation earlier. Poly rocks so bad, it will make killing much easier, just 1 + basic attacks and you'll get them easier in the Detonate Charge's range of death. You should consider this item too.

As for Gem of isolation vs Gem of binding, I think Isolation has more use, you can slow more than one enemy with lightning bolt. Besides, most Zeus players initiate with lightning bolt, so before the slow expires the poor enemy will already have 3 charges in him. Not to mention the huge use Gem of Isolation can have on his ultimate.

I prefer a CDR hybrid build.
It goes something like
Shoes of Focus
Breastplate of Valor
Rod of Tahuti
Polynomicon / Bancroft's Talon (choose at this point whether to go mage or AA mage)
Demonic Grip // Obsidian Shard based on above
Gem of Binding // Gem of Isolation

Thanks! I am going to try and listen and put some CDR in my build. However I am going to keep hastened fatalis as I really have been successful with it, and can't seem to get the hang of it when I remove it. Perhaps, I am new to gaming, and I dont have the movement/positioning down yet, and this makes up for it? I find I move a lot, sometimes I go forward and I am like "damn I should have went backwards, now I am trapped", hastened fatalis helps me move to where I want to be. Plus it speeds you up when you are chasing people, I find that extra speed and shot speed is what gets the third ring around the target.

So, since I want to work on hurting with basic attack/detonate, how about something like:

Shoes of Focus
Breastplate of Valor
Hastened Fatalis
Rod of Tahuti
Polynomicon
Gem of Binding

Basically I swapped out demonic for hastened. Or maybe I should just throw back demonic grip and try and farm the speed buff as much as possible until I learn how to move slowly :)

A good replacement for Hastened fatalis is Sprint. No movement penalty when attacking and has a short colddown. And wont waste an item slot. :)

Sprint eh? lol.....

I have considered all actives a waste of gold, and only buy them when I am feeling the need (e.g. see ares, turn off autobuy and get beads). But then again it's only 600 gold at max rank and perhaps getting used to using it would replace my fatalis crutch which is considerably more expensive and uses up a valuable slot. Thanks for the tip :)

the only active that is a waste of glod is meditation. the rest are all the money worth. some are situational though

Updating.

I switched out fatalis and went with:

Shoes of Focus
Breastplate of Valor
Rod of Tahuti
Polynomicon
Bancroft's Talon
Obsidian Shard


I played with this long enough to lose my need for fatalis, and even began thinking for about a week that it was better. Then I switched back while I was tinkering, and I think I have to report I get many many more kills with fatalis. My current build has it in slot 2 and also has max CDR. So something like

Shoes of Focus
Hastened Fatalis
Breastplate of Valor (or chronos depending)
Obsidian Shard
Rod of Tahuti
Polynomicon
Bancroft's Talon


Perhaps it is the role with the teams that I have, but hastened lets me chase people down, lets me apply charges quick to get that detonate off, and makes me less reliant on the ult which people always seem to find a way to counter. Just posting this here in case anyone else is in the same position.

I am now level 10 with Zeus, and I think I am pretty good the matches I am paired up against. I can often always 1v1 lone enemies and win, but I can also report that it seems my success is highly dependent on the team dynamics. If we have pullers (ares, fenrir, arachne, hades) who can help isolate an enemy then I can perform quite well with zeus, they pull the enemy, I help blow him to smithereens, repeat. If on the other hand we have an odd team with no tank or puller, I find I can do quite bad with Zeus as I often will get people "close" to death but they run away. I have started switching to Vulcan if the team is not to my liking, I find Vulcan can perform well regardless of the team dynamics compared to Zeus, just my thoughts.