my current crus build has gobs of all resistance .....

so some of my gear aren't perfect, got everything but all resistance. so i'm testing with the new modifiers like increase fist of heaven damage 10-15% etc..... since there is room to have this even though the piece doesn't have allres.

Worse case scenario i can always re-enchant to add ares if the situation changes.

But i'm keeping in mind the perma enchant slot, as well as the increase in gold price everytime you enchant the same piece, as well as my limited stock pile of ros brims X_X:

I think eventually i will be weaning down all resistance for strength gems, once i get better gear. I'm keeping track that all resistance is matching the armor defense value to make me be able to dps in torment 1 and above without dying, now that life steal has been removed.


I'm also contemplating a high end strategy for using a crit hit chance shield for higher torments whether that would be feasible, or whether a thorn defensive build is the way to go.

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Mar 29 2014, 07:42 PM

i'm testing a viable way to reach the 75% block cap.

30 is 4 or more creeps within 8 yard range. 29 from my shield, another 11 from shield extra stat. the remove dodge but gain 15 block.

in total i got 44% block static. 74% when fighting groups of mobs (4 or more)

The other method is to use the provoke with rune hit me. Problem with that though, it has a 20 second cooldown .... so unless there is an item that can reduce that to somethin within 5 seconds, i wouldn't recommend using this route.



the justice lantern has block, but it's not trifecta (attack speed, crit hit chance, crit hit damage + main stat aka strength + maybe 1 defensive skill either vit or all res). So i'm not convinced it's worth using justice lantern for block, because you are sacrificing too much.

Helm of command may also have block. Yet again, you won't be able to use mempo's twilight that has attack speed and possibly even crit hit chance. That is another miss opportunity for some damage dealing stats wasted on something else.

So maybe my method i first mentioned seems the only viable route atm that i can see, unless there is a good item out there that can do better


PS: i had to replace my holy cause passive to fit in the block passives. Not too happy about that, because it impacts negatively for my heavens fury build, to move toward a more block oriented build. Gonna have to see whether it's worth it or not.

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Mar 29 2014, 08:45 PM

bobo, your toughness is nice but you're low on damage.

i'm roughly 8.6m toughness with 805k damage (unbuffed, not taking into account the damage i do from 3 beams of heaven's fury using my "fate of the fell legendary ability". that seems more balanced in terms of offensive and defensive.

But as alleune has highlighted, toughness can be deceiving. If your ares is low, then physical is pointless if you'll just be killed by molten, poison etc....

you need to see your physical reduction (from armor and strength), and make sure spell damage reduction (from all resistance) is also almost equally matching that.

I have




1235 all resistance which is 77.92% dmg reduction against spells in torment 1.

my armor is 13,066 which is 78.87% dmg reduction against physical attacks in torment 1.

387k healthpoints.

AND FURTHERMORE, my block chance can reach up to 74% which you make my shields legendary ability kick in "You take 56% less damage from blocked attacks"


So you see, you need to see the finer print to build a good defensive stat that properly works. So although my toughness is less than yours, i feel that i can tank better than you can :}


PS: i'm using some bad rings for exp farming paragorn. So my dps can go even further by just using the trifecta rings i keep on my barbarian Gutz


This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Mar 29 2014, 08:49 PM

my updated lv 70 gear...

-shoulder (stats)
-chest (stats)
-pants (yellow non legend) (stats)
- shield (stats and damage mitigator legendary skill)
- 2 hand weapon (has str and vit 900+, a sock with chd, and it's legendary skill is the main driver my whole build revolves around for damage dealing)
- amulet (not trifecta but the clones are nice for added damage)
-boots (doesn't have all res, but i notice i still have 1200 ares even without it, so i use these boots for the stats. it also boosts damage for my fist of the heaven lightning attacks)
- helm ( mempo ros has 3 less attack speed than legacy. But other than that has more strength. I could re roll socket for chc, but i want the socket for ruby to farm exp)


lv60 legacy gear
- gloves (trifecta)
- witching hour (crit hit damage)
- leoric signet (exp ring)
- uber ring (exp ring)


my rings aren't serious ones for dpsing. their just for me to farm exp as i play.

other possible jewelry candidates


This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Mar 30 2014, 09:29 PM

updated pics.

When i use my dps rings, some of my stats dropped like the chc, and ares. i think ares is still fine for t1-t2 so i don't i need to add in all resistance to my boots just yet.

chc and attack speed is not quite near what i need them to be. attack speed i probably can get more from paragorn points once i farm up to lv 600. as for chc, either i enchant mempo's to add it in, or i find a lacuni's with 6 chc, and try get my other gear to perf chc to get it to 45-55 chc if possible.

Anyway with my current build and items, i'm doing 1-3 million regular damage. for crits i get roughly 4-5 million crit dmg. This tested in torment 1. As for heaven's fury, it's multiplied by 1680% for each beam for enemies caught in it, and i can spam this spell every 15 seconds with hardly any cost. You do the math.

as for that 38.8 % dmg increase to elites, that is coming from stone of jordan and unity rings. That probably makes up for the fact that they aren't trifecta, i hope.

As for why i am not using ruby gems to pump strength, well i am using all resistance gems to match up my spell damage reduction to be roughly the same as my armor physical damage reduction. Once this was achieved, then i focused on upping my strength. This is the approach i took, because we don't have life steal to depend on, where damage = life regen. So we need to ensure we are perfectly capable of surviving first, then add in damage. And as i find better gear, i may wean this down by replacing an ares gem and adding in a ruby strength gem when the situation allows.

But for now most of my strength comes from
1. paragorn skill
2. gear stats
3. passive (strength for each socket on your gear)





Paragorn skill point tree



Dps rings i have, and will only use for ubers, or when i really have to (probably torment 3-6 and ubers)



How does my build work

I nick named it the shock and awe build. Because it revolves around heaven's fury - ascendency which i dub the ion cannon to be my heavy damage nuke which i cast every 15 seconds when fighting elites, or whenever i am swarmed by many creeps. This build is only possible because of the weapon "fate's of the fell" which gives me 3 instead of just 1 beam.

fist of the heaven is my wrath spammer. I did try the shield charge, but i still like foth. I'm not sure if it's the best, but it works for me.

Steed charge endurance is just for getting around places. it's not really mean't to do much damage, it's just to make myself more mobile.

slash zeal is my regular attacks. I tend to fight bunchs of creeps at the same time, also since i am using a slow 2 handed weapon, i felt that a zealadin build to increase my attack speed was needed.

laws of valor - frozen in terror, is to increase attack speed passive. but the active skill is for 100% chance to stun to make my Shako amulet spawn 2 clones of myself to help deal damage. I'm not sure exactly how much damage they do each, but it works for me.

Akarat's champion replaced my ironhide for defensive. Ironhide is good and be cast more often, but i liked akarat's because i can reduce my heaven's fury timer for a quicker recast, also if i take a death critical blow, it will restore my health full life instead. It's more offensive oriented compared to thick hide.


Holy cause for increase damage. it also heals you when using holy spells, in my case heaven's fury.

insurmountable increases my block by 30 whenever 4 or more mobs swarm me. I find that i tend to need blocks kickin in when there are a huge group of mobs which are 4+ in number, so this works quite often in the situations where i need block to work.

finery gives me strength for each socket i have in my gear. Yes please.

heavenly strength allows me to wield a 2handed weapon in 1 hand, so that i may use a shield as well. This is very important to have. But it sucks that your movement speed is reduced by 15% as a consequence.



There some items that could patch up my build such as....

1. a shield to reduce the cooldown of heaven's fury by as much as 50%
2. a shield to remove the 15% ms nerf from using heavenly strength passive.
3. a shield that restores my life and my allies life based on a percentage of damage i successfully block. this probably would work nicely with unity ring (assuming that the damage i take from team mates via unity can be blocked).


Issues with the build
1. i use 2 handed so my slow swing means less wrath i regen. This causes issues for spamming fist of the heaven. It also doesn't help that my wrath passive regen is also low. The result is that foth isn't spammed as much as it ideally should.
2. my block isn't close to capping 75% I only can get up to 29% (reliably) or 59% if swarmed by 4 or more creeps. So that is 16% block i am missing to cap. Where to get this ? honestly not sure. The justice lantern ring is rather sad to even contemplate.
3. my gear stats is lacking the necessary chc and attack speed to make it better. also seeing as heaven's fury is the goal of my build, this means i should also be hoarding as much chd as i can (assuming that this spell can crit dmg, which i hope it does).

i want to aim for

2 attack speed minimum, 45-55 minimum chc, chd 450+ and the skys the limit.



Other unanswered dilemmas regarding gear

how am i going to swap out lacunis (movement speed, attack speed, crit hit chance, main stat str) bracers, and witching hour (main stat str, all ares, and more importantly crit hit damage) ???



damage mitigation and life regen in the build from the gear, how does it work ?
When i block an attack successfully, my damage blocks the damage but also take 56% less damage. this is why it's important to cap my block to the max 75% .... still a work in progress.

armor and all resistance must be high enough tor the torment level you are doing.

for life regen it's a combination of
1. life per second
2. life per hit.

LPS is self explanatory. But for life per hit, for every enemy i hit, i heal that amount. So if i am slashing hitting 4 targets, then i heal x4 my lph (so i hope... not sure if that is true).

Also holy cause passive, whenever you deal holy damage (in this case heavens fury), heal for 1% of your total health.

My shoulders has a chance to prevent critical death blow from killing me, but instead healing me back to 25% of my total hp. I'm not sure how reliable this is.....

my chest will heal me back to 100% health if i get a survival bonus (i think that is if i get as low as 5% of my hp, and stay below that for 3-5 seconds, before it works)

Also to work with my chest, i got the boots that increases my movement speed by 30% as my life gets low. So i can horse to un-ice myself, to run away, while waiting for my chest to heal me back to full health.

A combination of damage mitigation, high health pool, life per sec, life per hit....... special legendary affixes, is what helps me to survive the onslaught now that life steal is pretty much obsolete.



Summary
I slash attack and spam foth whenever i got wrath to spare, or spread it out over time when needed.

And every 15 seconds i will use the heaven's fury if i am over whelmed, or when fighting elites. I probably save akarats for elites or bad situations, because although the cooldown isn't that long, i like to only use it when i really have to.

So you could call this a zealadin + foth + heavens fury build lulz...

It probably is a bad idea to mix zealadin with HF, because one depends on fast hits (attack speed+ chc, chd), while the other depends on hard hits (CHD, CHC). But while i am waiting for the 15second cooldown, i got to be dealing damage right ? I didn't find it acceptable swining slowly, so that is why i decided on this approach, even though it's problematic getting all trifecta stats near to where i want them to be.


PS: there are alternative builds revolving around my weapon and heaven's fury, which you can view here and elsewhere
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/12296459667?page=1

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Mar 31 2014, 09:25 AM

attack speed alarmingly LOW !! FIX ASAP!

chc seems alrite not too urgent. but always if you can cram in more chc to hit 50 or 55, then nice.

CHD kinda low ....


ur chest and pants should have sockets.... 3 on chest, 2 on pants. Best stats is strength, vit, ares, and the sockets..... a nice white armor is also good. extras after that e.g armor, special legendary is just icing on the cake.

anyway once u socket use the diamond gems to get your ares up. you should be able to then hit 1100-1200 ares easy.

your armor seems fine.

block chance 12 is very low .... a good shield block is normall 29 and above. with the +11 block as well.


533k hp is good but maybe you are sacrificing too much dps potential for unecessarily high hp. i'm 380 hp and doing fine.




This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Mar 31 2014, 02:28 AM

i did t1-t3 with my build fine haha..

The heaven's fury nuke would work even in a higher torment i suspect because of the dps. but as for my other skills like hotl, and probably some of the others, maybe something different is required for something like torment 6, but i'm not sure what yet.

Gear wise, i built it from the ground up to scale well for the higher torment. So in terms of defensive i think it's pretty solid. The only things to improve it is to find better gear with more stats to hoard.Offensive abilities also isn't a slouch either because i also pay attention to that. But the higher the torment you go, i'm a bit worried that offensive power may not be able to be maxed out, cause you'll be neck deep trying to not die in say torment 6. Before we could just go full dps using barb and just use life steal to support such a high dps build. But without ls, we rely heavily on damage mitigation, and the other less reliable healing methods. So it will be a few months before people figure out what sort of build works in t6, but i suspect a more role oriented game style like 4 player team, the crus acts as a tank maybe using provoke, then being relied on as a tank, while the other 3 are the main dps most part.



Oh by the way, my build i switched akarat's champion for provoke.

Yes it has a 15 second cooldown, but apparently it's probably the best spell in the crusader's arsenal for topping off my wrath resource tank when i run out. So i can spam hotl while waiting for my heavens fury to refresh.

So that pretty much fixed the issue of not being able to spam hotl reasonably more, but now theproblem is, i don't have akarat's champion !



akarat's champion = fast attack speed. also reduces cooldown on spells on every hit (for my heaven's fury). Will auto max health if you receive a critical death blow to help you avoid getting killed.

provoke = wrath top up to refill the tank, to make it so that hotl can be spammed more than 1-2 times then waiting a long time to respam again. also can increase my block chance by alot to make my shield legendary affix to block dodge kick in. and the obvious taunt enemies to group them nice and close so the heavens fury beams are more focused (helps when there isn't a monk around to pull).


they both have their strong points. I'll be testing both out to see which i like most, but i guess most people opt for provoke for the praticality of it to make hotl more meaningful. Because as a 2handed weapon user, there is just no way to regain wrath without using a strong generator such as provoke for a near instant refill when you're out of wrath.

I looked at changing a passive but i didn't really want to change anything there. I looked at replacing another skill, but i can't seem to change what i got. Maybe the buff, but then i'd lose the attack speed passive ! and my amulets shako strategy to proc

And whos gonna remove horsey too useful for getting places. maybe for ubers i can though.



a tanky thorns build in torment 6, may be the superior option to dps and stay alive i suspect but will that be a satisfying way to play though ? That it ends up the only viable build for t6.





when using akarat's champion, very few hotl is being cast because i'm not generating wrath fast enough to spam it effectively. So my dps while waiting on heaven's fury is slashing with the zealadin attack speed buff.

so does that mean a shield showing 29 block chance, and has the 11% in the shield actually the mean isn't 29+11 = 40 block, but is 18+11 ? is that what your saying ?


i think i more or less answered that in my guide. But for more specifics like how much heal you get when using holy spells like heaven's fury - ascendency with the passive holy cause, you will need to google online for the exact amount of heal you can expect.





PS: just 2 reminders

you can watch my crusader in action on my live twitch stream
http://www.twitch.tv/mooglestiltzkin

but seeing as i don't have a 2nd monitor, you can redict your questions to me ingame on my battle tag moogle#6806 if you have questions to ask about what you see in the stream

also that my build isn't one necessarily suited for everyone, because it's specific to the mix of gear that i have. So you don't have some of the gear i have, especially the weapon, you may be disappointed by the result. It's more of a guideline how this sort of build would work, and gives you an indea how to build your own using the gear that you actually do have.

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Mar 31 2014, 09:44 AM

that is definitely a valid arguement. i agree in the lower torments, my current ares is probably overkill but i leave it as such so i can do higher torments without having to re-jewel so often. it cost me like 1.2m + to unsocket....



i'm also beginning to wonder that i should. hotl doesn't seem to be affected by attack speed, and i pretty much use that and heaven's fury.

thx for clearing that up, now i know for sure

there are different ways of playing crusader.

i saw a 2handed weapon that made slash generate more wrath per monster it hits with the slash attacks.

so though 2handed maybe that legendary affix will help the wrath generation, so you can maintain wrath spender spams like fist of the heaven or some other nuking ability that uses wrath.

Just to share, this is probably the most nice offensive pally shield


it's not crusader shield but it may as well be.


And justice lantern isn't totally fail as we had initially thought. You can fix this one up to be chd with chc that is acceptable. Just wish though that vit was str



This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Apr 2 2014, 02:20 PM

right now testing thorn build on my female crusader.

i suspect if i can get the thorn set helm, i can then use 2 set items

- thorn set
- asheara set
- the bounty bracer with 1000% thorn chance dmg whenever enemies hit me

the demon set bonus for fire 4k dmg is probably better for a thorn build, but i just wanted to use asheara's for fun.

anyways i have around 15k thorn damage with my current gear. so if that bracer were to proc, that would be multiplicative 1000% which would be 15 million damage.

i got that but mine was a lower roll :/


Anyways i was messing around with thorns but couldn't quite get it to work well. maybe i'm missing the thorn helm to complete the set, and maybe some other things.

Even without the complete build, i can already see this sort of build being where you stand still, let yourself get hit...... even with the hack..... you'll still be doing this .... it's annoying


Anyway i used my main male crusader and rebuilt him by swapping in the asheara set pants and boots. This gave me the set bonus for increased all resistance. The boots also had all res which my previous ones didn't, and also max ms. This then did 2 things for me

1. use 2 less para point for hitting 25ms
2. allowed me to swap in 2 max level strength gems to replaces the all resistance gems.

The result is, i do more damage now, and i can tank better.

My first legs in ros was the amulets. So i got the shakos (2/3 tri) and leoric (trifecta) first.

i think the fate of fell was then my next drop. Got extremely lucky getting this soon of course it could be better if i could have it as holy damage and to get a higher weapon dps roll.

The mempos was next. Also very lucky. seems to be bis, unless you can get a mempos with same primary stats but with 5 primary affixes, so you could have chc without having to lose the socket.

someone found the chaing mail i am using. they wanted to brim IT !! so i told them to trade with me instead, so i rescued it lol

then i started doing bounties starting from act1 to get the grandeur royalty ring (2/3 tri), king leoric shoulders.

then act 2 bounties. New boots.

act 5 bounties, new shield.

did manglemaw t6 runs, got thorn set pieces (which i use the shoulders atm). as well as my soj and unity dps rings.

Found some plans, and crafted asheara's pant and boots. I wanted to try a trifecta craft but not lucky.

replaced my magifist trifecta for a yellow trifecta glove.

i'm still using the legacy lacuni (bracer) and witchin hour (belt) because one has chc with as on it, whereas the other has chd with as. There are alternatives with chc and as on them but not easy to get. For the ms you can shift that to paragorn points, as you can get back the strength from the bracer. But the belt is very hard to use a newer one because most of them don't even have as with chd. So unless it's a lv 70 whd i doubt i would be upgrading belt anytime soon.

anyway around 1-2 weeks farm i guess.

replace life per wrath for a socket.

add in a max chd gem then compare the damage between the 2.

By the way if people are wondering how i am able to drop 2 all res gems from pants and use strength gems instead, it's because my new boots has all res in them.

Also the pant and boot set combination gives me another 100 ares. So this allowed me to do that.

But to further boost my dps for heavens fury, i could find a boot similar to mine, but reroll out movement speed for boosting heavens fury/holy damage.

the movement speed stat would be regained through paragorn points.

i also switched shield to one that replaced all res for a chc instead. I think this is the route crusaders should go, because 10chc will help you get a higher dps. it's worth losing the 100 ares for that. as long as you can make up for it elsewhere to stay above 1100 ares.


So now i do 1mil+ dps on white sheet. and much more when i'm actually fighting




Issues:

1. weapon = fire dmg
2. fist of the heaven = lightning dmg
3. heavens fury = holy dmg

very hard to make full use of a elemental damage boost when your gear and skills are varied in elemental damage types. The most i could have hoped for is concerting weapon to holy damage, to make the most ouf of a "increase holy damage by 10-20 %" modifier. alas

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Apr 4 2014, 08:41 AM

another possible build is a fire spec crusader using blessed hammer and consecrate seemed interesting seeing someone else use that. they were using bombardment as their nuke.

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Apr 3 2014, 07:42 PM

i just found a leoric signet (found another yesterday as well but was dex)

I'm unsure though if i want to replace the vit or the all resistance to make way for CHD



I also found a new andariels helm which seems strong if i add in chc for ubers.


the mempo's is my farming helm with socket for exp



Anyway regarding the leoric ring, i was checking on vit and all resistance...

gear i most likely won't have all res on is
- glove (trifecta duh)
- bracer (not holding my breath here. cauz i want str chc, as. and usually i aim for vit here rather than ares usually. anything after that is usually icing)
- shield (making room for chc 10)
- rings (trifecta rings. so not normally all res here)


also my gems currently are
- chest (3 diamond max gems)
- pants (2 ruby max gems)


my stats are as such.... *keep in mind a ring is unequiped, and the boot is lv 60...


the reason i did that, is because in the future i most probably will be using a different set e.g. akarat's or other, and they may not have that all resist bonus. So have to disable it first.

Armor i don't think is that big an issue, because obviously i'll be having str with a ring and better boots. i put in a lv 70 boot and the leoric ring, the str stat makes my armor 14608 which is 80.67% dmg reduction.

For all resistance the 1020 is 74.46% spell dmg reduction





So the question is, is my hp pool high enough ? and is all resistance good enough for torment 6 ? and what about the resistance cap ? Seeing as there is diminishing returns the higher your ares gets, so what is the ares needed to do t6 ? as well as the expected hp ?



Another consideration, if i get all res on leorics, i may be able to replace a diamond gem 78 ares in chest (barely) for a max strength gem 280.

the general consensus in regards to ar and armor ratios for damage mitigation seems to be that for every 1000 armor you should have 1 ares. so if i have 14k armor, then i need 1400 ares for me to achieve a more efficient damage mitigation stat.

While that sort of guideline is good, it doesn't take into account that str not only adds in armor, it also helps your dps. so the question remains, is it worth getting the strength for more damage ? or getting the ares closer to the sweet spot in my example 1400 ish ares ?

so any opinions ?


PS: some insight into how the armor and all resistance mechanism works in damage mitigation





This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Apr 4 2014, 12:51 PM

gratz.

also just wondering whats your ares and armor at ?


This is me now with my new leoric's ring. I in the end chose to keep vitality, and instead replace all res. I rolled an attack speed and stop there.




This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Apr 4 2014, 01:35 PM

ah i c thx. more or less same then defensively

i think i can boost my damage if i use my yellow trifectas, but meh


are you using any ares on your shield ?

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Apr 4 2014, 01:38 PM

a while back for quick gear up farms, people were doing the following

1. manglemaw t6
2. core of arreat demonic chests
3. bounties in normal, split team do objectives individually (open many saved bounty caches in t6 for imperial gems)
4. rifting t1
5. other secret methods not publicaly known
6. using rift shards max 500 at any one time, to gamble on gear


these usually were the best ways to gear up. some were nerfed, or going to be nerfed. some got a slight buff like kadala.

your issue seems to be lack of farm, cause it should be raining legs so maybe your farming the less effective places or something, cause should have more then this. Nice shoulders by the way

so some of the people you see didn't necessarily play as much, but they knew the good spots and got leg drops very fast, and this was how they became so op so soon .... but blizzard has been busy closing these loop holes, so you better be quick as soon as you found one of these things



by the way how did you reach 61 block ? (the cap is 75).

I notice that your using the justice lantern ring. Not sure how your build works, but i'm using rings more oriented toward a trifecta, rather than block, and i probably do more damage. So if you replace ring for trifecta you can tighten up your chc and chd values to get higher dps output.

chd =
- witchin hour belt 50%
- rings (50% each)
weapon 130%)
- gloves 50%

increased block gear options
- justice lantern *usually weak dps
- helm of command *it's called something different for the lv 70 version, but has block in it. But not attack speed. Maybe it's alright to lose attack speed here, and get it elsewhere from maybe a set item bonus like cain's or other ?
- shield


This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Apr 5 2014, 08:40 AM