So I've managed to come up with a very nice build that excels especially so in co-op, though it is still pretty good for soloing. Before I get to the build, let me explain a bit about myself as far as D3 is concerned..
I've been playing D3 on and off since it launched. RoS's launch just so happened this coincided with the week I have off of college for spring break. I decided to go hard and made a Hardcore Crusader the instant we were able to. This was my first REAL hardcore character. I only had about 100k gold to my name. I am now farming Torment 1 very comfortably with over 20 mil toughness while in combat, 18.5 mil while out, and somewhere around 14.5 mil when viewed in profile(since passives aren't taken into account). I'm a bit on the low side for damage, rocking roughly 350k with Laws of Valor's passive on. At the time of this writing, I'm paragon level 44.
REQUIRED: Judgement w/ Resolved:
On demand 20yd AOE root, but more importantly it causes any damage to afflicted monsters to have an 80% increased chance to be critically hit. I haven't gone out of my way to ensure that that includes your party members, but it sure as hell seems like it. And it's on a 20 second cooldown. 30% uptime on +80% crit chance for the whole group? Yes please.
Laws of Valor w/ Critical:
Passive 8% increased AS for your whole party. On demand +15% AS and +100% Critical Hit Damage for 5 seconds for the entire party with a 45 sec cooldown. Just so happens to synergize VERY well with +80% crit chance.
Akarat's Champion w/ Rally:
Things were already pretty good, but this is where it gets better. This rune gives you a 50% chance to reduce your cooldowns by 1 second whenever you deal damage. Does not affect the cooldown of Akarat's Champion. Popping this with the two above abilities allows you to then use them again in the same fight at least once. I was once able to use Laws of Valor THREE TIMES in about 25-30 seconds.
Recommended/My Preference: Slash w/ Guard: I play on Hardcore. This is also my first hardcore character. I do not want to die, so I use this just in case. You can pretty much use whatever you want here, but I highly prefer this.
Sweep Attack w/ Blazing Sweep: This is what I've found to be most effective. This should probably be required to be honest. It's the hardest hitting wrath spender aside from the Ascendency rune that takes away its cooldown and gives it a wrath cost of 40(too high for me). When you have guaranteed crits for 6 seconds with +100% crit hit damage, I find it's better to use this as opposed to trying to get a bunch of hammers out. Most won't hit in time and it'll likely be a waste. This is likely your biggest bang for your buck here. Also the rune is nice for extra attempts at proccing Akarat's Champion w/ Rally.
Steed Charge w/ Endurance: I REALLY like having this on hardcore. It breaks CC and makes you fast. Good for getting out of tight spots ASAP. Can change this out for whatever you like if you feel comfortable without it.
Passives:
Heavenly Strength: Use this if you have a good 2Her. Otherwise you can swap it out for whatever you need/want.
Divine Fortress: This passive gives me a TON of toughness. My shield has 30% block chance. That gives me +30% armor. It's important to note that it only increases your armor by your shield's block chance. Buffs that increase block chance do not affect this.
Hold Your Ground: Increases your block chance by 15%. As noted above, this does not affect Divine Fortress's bonus to armor.
Renewal: Everytime you block, you heal for ~12,000. This can reaaally add up when you have many things hitting you at once. Best to use with high block chance shields/justice lantern/helm of rule. Synergizes well with Punish.
These are the passives I find work best for me. Depending on your gear setup and whether or not you're playing on hardcore, other things may be better for you.
As noted above, the basic idea is to massively buff both your and your party's AS, crit chance, and crit damage for roughly 5-6 seconds while also having the ability to reset those cooldowns multiple times. A typical elite/boss fight for me will start with me popping Judgement, Laws of Valor, and Akarat's Champion all at once. It helps if your party members know to start using DPS cooldowns when they see the circle from Judgement. That's their cue to do tons of damage.
Your suggestions nullify what the build is, man. There is a reason for why I chose everything that I chose -- this was not a thoughtless build. I tested out many combinations and this is the result of that testing.
Piling the monsters up is usually not an issue. As I said, many monks run cyclone strike and some wizards run black hole. Even if there isn't one of either of those, it still is never really an issue since you REALLY only want to use your cooldowns on elites/rares/bosses. Most elite packs tend to stay grouped together unless they're ranged mobs that like to run away. EVEN THOSE ONES are grouped initially and Judgement will root them in place.
I have a bit of a feeling you just glanced at the skill selection and didn't read any of the post. If that's the case, read the original post in its entirety and you'll find strong reasoning for WHY I chose what I chose. It's an amazing build.
As far as the block chance passive goes, I'm not interested in it at the moment personally. I've tried it out and I find my choices suit me better. My shield has a 30% block chance as it is. I've considered switching after I get Helm of Rule, but I'll have to wait and see.
I would never get rid of Critical on Law of Valor with this build. The idea is to buff not only yourself but your party. Losing that 100% crit damage on everyone when you all have +80% crit chance is far from ideal. Wrathful has started feeling like it's not quite earning its spot, to be honest though. I should probably remove it, but I wanted to wait until I got Helm of Rule and/or Justice Lantern before swapping it out for the +15% block passive.
I have the shield Coven's Criterion which reduces damage from blocked attacks by 58%, but the shield only has a 22% block chance which would lower the bonus I receive from Divine Fortress by 8% from my current shield. It also has about 6k less block amount. Because of those two reasons, I really want the extra chance to block to make up for them.
The more I'm thinking about it though, it does make sense to get rid of Wrathful either way. It makes more sense to go for block chance for renewal heals compared to the 16k or so Wrathful will give you per Sweep. I'll update the guide.
@Leudine: I wrote out a response but the edit decided to glitch and not save it. So here's the shortened version of what I wrote.
At this point you're being obtuse.
I've said earlier, in this post, that I've begun to feel the effects of having Wrathful and have switched to Hold Your Ground, even though CURRENTLY the difference seems negligible and is hard to discern. Perhaps it will be more noticeable with Helm of Rule and/or Justice Lantern.
I am not talking out of my ass. I've done plenty of testing.
Akarat's procs plenty. Highly suspect you didn't completely read the original post still. Sweeping Attack with Blazing Sweep on multiple mobs procs Akarat's PLENTY to the point that I can easily chain cast the two spells.
I find it laughable that you think Akarat's doesn't synergize well with the build.
Again, obtuse.
Replacing Critical for LoJ isn't needed and destroys the synergy of the build. Your entire party will miss out on the AS and crit damage. When you have Demon Hunters, Wizards, and Witch Doctors in your group with 800k+ damage, you lose out on a LOT of free damage and fast clear potential by taking LoJ. Especially when, with Judgement activated, everyone basically has guaranteed crits for the duration.
I've been playing D3 on and off since it launched. RoS's launch just so happened this coincided with the week I have off of college for spring break. I decided to go hard and made a Hardcore Crusader the instant we were able to. This was my first REAL hardcore character. I only had about 100k gold to my name. I am now farming Torment 1 very comfortably with over 20 mil toughness while in combat, 18.5 mil while out, and somewhere around 14.5 mil when viewed in profile(since passives aren't taken into account). I'm a bit on the low side for damage, rocking roughly 350k with Laws of Valor's passive on. At the time of this writing, I'm paragon level 44.
Now that that's out of the way, onto the build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/crusader#bcVRfQ!haVe!caYYbb
And here's my character profile(even though it seems to not be updated properly..): http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Alacor-1320/hero/43532871
REQUIRED:
Judgement w/ Resolved:
On demand 20yd AOE root, but more importantly it causes any damage to afflicted monsters to have an 80% increased chance to be critically hit. I haven't gone out of my way to ensure that that includes your party members, but it sure as hell seems like it. And it's on a 20 second cooldown. 30% uptime on +80% crit chance for the whole group? Yes please.
Laws of Valor w/ Critical:
Passive 8% increased AS for your whole party. On demand +15% AS and +100% Critical Hit Damage for 5 seconds for the entire party with a 45 sec cooldown. Just so happens to synergize VERY well with +80% crit chance.
Akarat's Champion w/ Rally:
Things were already pretty good, but this is where it gets better. This rune gives you a 50% chance to reduce your cooldowns by 1 second whenever you deal damage. Does not affect the cooldown of Akarat's Champion. Popping this with the two above abilities allows you to then use them again in the same fight at least once. I was once able to use Laws of Valor THREE TIMES in about 25-30 seconds.
Recommended/My Preference:
Slash w/ Guard: I play on Hardcore. This is also my first hardcore character. I do not want to die, so I use this just in case. You can pretty much use whatever you want here, but I highly prefer this.
Sweep Attack w/ Blazing Sweep: This is what I've found to be most effective. This should probably be required to be honest. It's the hardest hitting wrath spender aside from the Ascendency rune that takes away its cooldown and gives it a wrath cost of 40(too high for me). When you have guaranteed crits for 6 seconds with +100% crit hit damage, I find it's better to use this as opposed to trying to get a bunch of hammers out. Most won't hit in time and it'll likely be a waste. This is likely your biggest bang for your buck here. Also the rune is nice for extra attempts at proccing Akarat's Champion w/ Rally.
Steed Charge w/ Endurance: I REALLY like having this on hardcore. It breaks CC and makes you fast. Good for getting out of tight spots ASAP. Can change this out for whatever you like if you feel comfortable without it.
Passives:
Heavenly Strength: Use this if you have a good 2Her. Otherwise you can swap it out for whatever you need/want.
Divine Fortress: This passive gives me a TON of toughness. My shield has 30% block chance. That gives me +30% armor. It's important to note that it only increases your armor by your shield's block chance. Buffs that increase block chance do not affect this.
Hold Your Ground: Increases your block chance by 15%. As noted above, this does not affect Divine Fortress's bonus to armor.
Renewal: Everytime you block, you heal for ~12,000. This can reaaally add up when you have many things hitting you at once. Best to use with high block chance shields/justice lantern/helm of rule. Synergizes well with Punish.
These are the passives I find work best for me. Depending on your gear setup and whether or not you're playing on hardcore, other things may be better for you.
As noted above, the basic idea is to massively buff both your and your party's AS, crit chance, and crit damage for roughly 5-6 seconds while also having the ability to reset those cooldowns multiple times. A typical elite/boss fight for me will start with me popping Judgement, Laws of Valor, and Akarat's Champion all at once. It helps if your party members know to start using DPS cooldowns when they see the circle from Judgement. That's their cue to do tons of damage.
Let me know how you like the build. ;D
Also, this is a build that's solid on its own but excels in a group. A lot of monks run cyclone strike, which synergizes with this build.
Piling the monsters up is usually not an issue. As I said, many monks run cyclone strike and some wizards run black hole. Even if there isn't one of either of those, it still is never really an issue since you REALLY only want to use your cooldowns on elites/rares/bosses. Most elite packs tend to stay grouped together unless they're ranged mobs that like to run away. EVEN THOSE ONES are grouped initially and Judgement will root them in place.
I have a bit of a feeling you just glanced at the skill selection and didn't read any of the post. If that's the case, read the original post in its entirety and you'll find strong reasoning for WHY I chose what I chose. It's an amazing build.
As far as the block chance passive goes, I'm not interested in it at the moment personally. I've tried it out and I find my choices suit me better. My shield has a 30% block chance as it is. I've considered switching after I get Helm of Rule, but I'll have to wait and see.
I have the shield Coven's Criterion which reduces damage from blocked attacks by 58%, but the shield only has a 22% block chance which would lower the bonus I receive from Divine Fortress by 8% from my current shield. It also has about 6k less block amount. Because of those two reasons, I really want the extra chance to block to make up for them.
The more I'm thinking about it though, it does make sense to get rid of Wrathful either way. It makes more sense to go for block chance for renewal heals compared to the 16k or so Wrathful will give you per Sweep. I'll update the guide.
@Leudine: I wrote out a response but the edit decided to glitch and not save it. So here's the shortened version of what I wrote.