Help Needed – Zeal Paladin halfway through NM

Hello people of r/diablo2, I come looking for some advice.

As the title reads, I’m playing Paladin on my very first NM run; I’m also pretty new to runes and runewords, but I’m trying to catch up.

As of for now, I’m level 47 on my Paladin, preparing for Act III:

13 on Sacrifice

4 on Zeal (I preferred the + damage over the + damage/+ ar, considering I run Fanaticism)

18 in Fanaticism

9 in Holy Shield

1 in Salvation

My gear isn’t great. I’ve recently switched from Malice (which accompanied me through all of Normal mode) to Black, figured it would be pretty good having something with crushing blow, and even though Io took a while to get with NM Countess, I’m pretty happy with it.

I recently found a decent “Peasant Crown War Hat” with 108 defence, 1 to all skills, 20 to Vitality, 20 to energy and 15% run walk.

My big problem right now are Resistances, I can handle phys damage well with my block chance thanks to Holy Shield, but elemental damage can make it go south very quickly. As with the gear I have right now it’s looking 24-12-21-51, and the reason to that is that my Boots and Belt suck, my Cap has no resistances and I’m still stuck with a Stealth Armor, not having found anything better. The last piece of equipment I have is a Rhyme shield which is looking really nice (mainly for the cannot be frozen effect). Oh and my ammy gives +1 to all skills and my rings aren’t great but give me some leech and a wee bit of resistances

There’s to be said that I do have Salvation, and I use it quite often when there’s some elemental damage monsters nearby. Doing that, however, removes the big amount of my damage that comes from Fanaticism…

I’m a bit scared of facing Mephisto with those Resistances…

Now. What would you recommend me doing?

I’ve thought about a couple things:

• Get a Lum Rune and craft a Smoke Armor

• Put a socket on my Cap (with the Act V quest) and put a diamond in it to help out a bit

• Look for a Better Cap or Better Boots (hopefully something I can find with not-so-high MF)

• Don’t care too much about it and rely more on Salvation to shield elemental damage

Any feedback is appreciated, thanks for your attention.