Rating
+1

Shield Heavy Roland Crusader - GR 40+

Seasonal
Hybrid
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Skills

  • Shield Bash Pound
  • Shield Glare Zealous Glare
  • Steed Charge Endurance
  • Iron Skin Steel Skin
  • Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force
  • Akarat's Champion Embodiment of Power
  • Heavenly Strength
  • Lord Commander
  • Finery
  • Towering Shield

Items

More Details
  • Legendary Gems

    • Bane of the Powerful
    • Mirinae, Teardrop of the Starweaver
    • Invigorating Gemstone

Kanai's Cube

  • Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac

I suppose it's pretty obvious that you'll want the majority of your equipped items to be the Roland set, however, I made small change when I looted The Ring of Royal Grandeur. After equipping this item, it reduced the amount of set items needed to obtain the set bonus(es). That's my reasoning for having Blackthorne's Jousting Mail equipped instead of Roland's Determination. It allowed me to retain my Roland Set 6 bonuses while having the addition of the Blackthorne items, up to Set 3. This is only a recommendation, though, and serves to grant you the helpful bonuses against elites. I just recently acquired one of the Blackthorne belts (Notched Belt) as well, and added it to my build in order to acquire the 4th set effect for the Blackthorne set.


If you have the recommended Blackthorne's items equipped, the bonuses you'll gain are:

  • +250 Vitality and increases damage against elites by 10% (2 pieces)
  • Reduces damage from elites by 10.0% and +25% Extra Gold from Monsters (3 pieces)
  • Character becomes immune to Desecrator, Molten, and Plagued monster affix ground effects (4 pieces)

This is due to the ring providing the extra set bonus.


For some reason, the selector won't let me choose some of my powers for Kanai's Cube, so I've described them here:


Weapon Power: Piro Marella (reduces the Wrath cost of Shield Bash by %50)

Armor Power: Reaper's Wraps (Health Globes restore %30 of your Primary Resource)

Jewelry Power: Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac (reduce the remaining cooldown of one of your skills by 1 second when you hit with a resource-spending attack)

Paragon Priorities

Core

Movement Speed
Maximum Resource
Primary Stat
Vitality

Offense

Cooldown Reduction
Critical Hit Chance
Critical Hit Damage
Attack Speed

Defense

Resist All
Life
Life Regeneration
Armor

Utility

Resource Cost Reduction
Area Damage
Life on Hit
Gold Find

Maxing out the #1 choices on this list should definitely be your top priority. Cooldown reduction and Resource Cost Reduction are very important to the viability of this build, as there is obviously no addition of resource building skills, other than Shield Glare being runed for Zealous Glare. Movement speed is always important to be able to power through rifts, etc., and Resist All is as well, for heightened survivability.

Build Guide

This Crusader build is definitely based heavily on the Roland Set, with a few little tweaks to increase damage. I am currently running it on my level 70/Paragon 262 Crusader, playing recently at Torment IX. I am having a pretty fun time blasting everything around me no matter where I am, with the super powered up Shield Bash/Shield Glare combo in this build.


After several weeks of playing and tweaking this build, I have found that this combination of items and skills provides the largest boost to damage, and gives added utility.


It's helped me to complete all of the Season 11 challenges up through Slayer in the Season Journey. I'm currently at 2/10 on Champion, and hoping to get through more soon.


I hope that readers find this build helpful and fun!