Alright so with 810k dps and 7.2mil thoughness I am breezing through T1 and T2 rifts on my Crusader.Well breezing through everything unless the rift guardian is the cheap knock off Ghom, those fart clouds everywhere wreck me so hard.
This build went through several iterations, including a brief affair with Phalanx - Stampede as the wrath dump (something I intend to revisit one day) which was really good, especially since it gave the build some range and additional crowd control but the biggest issue was that it scattered enemies EVERYWHERE.
The original reason for this build was because I became disillusioned with all these hammer spam builds and I don't really like hammer since it only really shines in huge huge pulls. Hammers have a few issues like...
1) They're kind of a crapshoot to hit, some times they wont land on what you want them to
2) You are completely immobile while using them, you can't poop one out and be on the run unless you use the dominion rune which is a rather mid tier rune.
3)The same hammer doesn't seem to be able to hit the same target multiple times, I tested this roughly by kiting a mob through one hammer and I only saw damage numbers pop up once. But that could be a hit box issue on the hammer, even then though I don't like the feel of it.
So with that in mind I decided to explore other options and similarly to before I finally settled on Sweep Attack with holy shock because it's actually semi decent healing bonus, I would rather use the fire rune but it's still broken or so it would seem :\
Anyways the build is rather block and crit heavy but you also need a good base of attack speed because it scales really well with your wrath generation especially with a two hander of slowness, so my suggestion is dump paragon points into attack speed, gear for crit.
So yeah here we go
The build: LMB - Punish - Roar
This gives you a really good chance for AoE damage, possibly pairing this with some Area Damage gear and it will proc very often. It should also give you a lot of reliable AoE damage that's almost passive, Punish itself does pretty good damage too, especially with a good shield.
RMB - Sweep Attack - Holy shock
I haven't really settled on a rune for this yet, I am constantly in flux between Holy sock and gathering sweep, the pulls enemies to you effect is really good because it sort of lifts them off the ground which gives a bit of additional damage mitigation. However Holy shock is a GOOD AMOUNT of LoH, in big packs and multi elite pulls it easily gives back 100k hp per sweep.
1 - Laws of Valor - Critical
This is the core of the burst damage in the build. 100% Crit damage on demand for 4 seconds gives you a window just big enough to use all your other skills and then dump sweep attacks for insane elite killing, pack clearing, t1 rift stomping damage. Also your party members will absolutely love this.
2 - Shield Glare - Divine Verdict
The basic idea with all my other skills besides the mount button ones is that they're cool downs that work off each other, I typically try and trigger them together, that being said Shield Glare with the 20% damage to targets blinded is perfect, it's not only damage mitigation but it's also control, you can use this to set the enemies up for absolute destruction with your other skills.
3 - Heaven's Fury - Blessed Ground
This rune will really shine when you've got critical up but otherwise it does fantastic supplementary damage, the burning ground effect is more versatile in big packs than any of the other rune effects if you ask me. Ascendancy is only useful against a single target, and the 3 beams called down is a bit unpredictable, mean while this solo beam will either just sit on the elite and burn everyone around him (as well as the elite) or travel around spreading its flames and killing things too.
4 - Condemn - Shattering explosion
While there are other better runes, the increased radius of Shattering explosion is enough to make me ignore superior effects because you can do so much more with a bigger radius on Condemn. You can catch more enemies in it, you can play with your distance a bit more, and you can even catch enemies on the run. If you absolutely don't think this is a very good rune then I would take vacuum instead, if not then the one that increases damage based on damage taken during charge up.
Passives: Since Holy Strength is basically required unless you've been graced with an incredible 1 handed weapon, the 3 passives I use are:
Finery: My gear has a lot of sockets and this works well with that
Renewal: High block chance means this has great synergy with that and punish - roar. Every time it blocks and you deal damage you also heal yourself. It's a pretty good amount I believe at 70 it's 12k or so per block?
Hold Your Ground: More block is great!
BUILD WEAKNESSES:
The biggest issue with this build is that it's PURE melee, you're always in melee range which means you need a good amount of toughness to help counter balance this, anything over 6mil is something I'd recommend. The other major weakness is one that just seems to be inherent to the Crusader class but this build has a massive lack of mobility, so that being said you better pray you get a densely populated rift because without that ghost pony it's gonna feel like a long trip. Also since it's cool down dependent I really wanted to work in Akarat - Rally in there but I couldn't really justify it being better than Laws of Valor critical. CDR gear doesn't really help that much since the cool downs on most of these things are rather short, you could dump maybe 30% cdr in there but it would only shave off 3 second on most of these things at the expense of better stats.
Gearing tips:
Like I said before this build is crit heavy and block heavy, I personally run with 44% crit and ~50% block. Attack speed is pretty important as well because it is your only real method of Wrath generation, wrath generation might feel slow but basically it should be maxed by the time at least one of your cool downs is up.
Gameplay style:
Whenever you can BLOW ALL YOUR COOL DOWNS TOGETHER! I made this build around popping all 4 abilities together, so every 12ish seconds you'll do some high burst damage. That being said don't hesitate to use your cool downs as they come up, they'll help a lot. I generally only save Law of Valor for a special situation, everything else I just dump as soon as it comes off cool down.
Paragon point usage:
Strength
Attack Speed
Resist All
Resource Cost Reduction
The reason I go for attack speed here is because it seems to eek out more performance per paragon point spent than crit chance or crit damage. It helps with wrath generation enough and it also helps with dumping everything in the 4 seconds of murder when your 100% crit dam buff is up. Resource cost reduction is a weird choice and I'm not entirely too sure I am pleased with it since I don't typically gear for RCR but I like how it feels so far. Especially since I don't run any additional wrath generation passives.
Final notes:
I am not pretending this is the worlds best build, but I slowly find that playing a crusader as a melee class with support abilities works a lot better than pretending to a pseudo ranged thing. You gain a lot of beneficial effects from blocking and that only really becomes abusable if you're standing in the thick of combat. I made this build for the way I wanted to play my crusader so obviously we may not see eye to eye on a lot of play style decisions. However that being said, I think crusaders really shine a lot more when you've got a bunch of "on block" effects.
Profile (which hasn't appeared to update my gear since Saturday morning) -http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Drilling-1463/hero/44068746
Alright so with 810k dps and 7.2mil thoughness I am breezing through T1 and T2 rifts on my Crusader.Well breezing through everything unless the rift guardian is the cheap knock off Ghom, those fart clouds everywhere wreck me so hard.
This build went through several iterations, including a brief affair with Phalanx - Stampede as the wrath dump (something I intend to revisit one day) which was really good, especially since it gave the build some range and additional crowd control but the biggest issue was that it scattered enemies EVERYWHERE.
The original reason for this build was because I became disillusioned with all these hammer spam builds and I don't really like hammer since it only really shines in huge huge pulls. Hammers have a few issues like...
1) They're kind of a crapshoot to hit, some times they wont land on what you want them to
2) You are completely immobile while using them, you can't poop one out and be on the run unless you use the dominion rune which is a rather mid tier rune.
3)The same hammer doesn't seem to be able to hit the same target multiple times, I tested this roughly by kiting a mob through one hammer and I only saw damage numbers pop up once. But that could be a hit box issue on the hammer, even then though I don't like the feel of it.
So with that in mind I decided to explore other options and similarly to before I finally settled on Sweep Attack with holy shock because it's actually semi decent healing bonus, I would rather use the fire rune but it's still broken or so it would seem :\
Anyways the build is rather block and crit heavy but you also need a good base of attack speed because it scales really well with your wrath generation especially with a two hander of slowness, so my suggestion is dump paragon points into attack speed, gear for crit.
So yeah here we go
The build:
LMB - Punish - Roar
This gives you a really good chance for AoE damage, possibly pairing this with some Area Damage gear and it will proc very often. It should also give you a lot of reliable AoE damage that's almost passive, Punish itself does pretty good damage too, especially with a good shield.
RMB - Sweep Attack - Holy shock
I haven't really settled on a rune for this yet, I am constantly in flux between Holy sock and gathering sweep, the pulls enemies to you effect is really good because it sort of lifts them off the ground which gives a bit of additional damage mitigation. However Holy shock is a GOOD AMOUNT of LoH, in big packs and multi elite pulls it easily gives back 100k hp per sweep.
1 - Laws of Valor - Critical
This is the core of the burst damage in the build. 100% Crit damage on demand for 4 seconds gives you a window just big enough to use all your other skills and then dump sweep attacks for insane elite killing, pack clearing, t1 rift stomping damage. Also your party members will absolutely love this.
2 - Shield Glare - Divine Verdict
The basic idea with all my other skills besides the mount button ones is that they're cool downs that work off each other, I typically try and trigger them together, that being said Shield Glare with the 20% damage to targets blinded is perfect, it's not only damage mitigation but it's also control, you can use this to set the enemies up for absolute destruction with your other skills.
3 - Heaven's Fury - Blessed Ground
This rune will really shine when you've got critical up but otherwise it does fantastic supplementary damage, the burning ground effect is more versatile in big packs than any of the other rune effects if you ask me. Ascendancy is only useful against a single target, and the 3 beams called down is a bit unpredictable, mean while this solo beam will either just sit on the elite and burn everyone around him (as well as the elite) or travel around spreading its flames and killing things too.
4 - Condemn - Shattering explosion
While there are other better runes, the increased radius of Shattering explosion is enough to make me ignore superior effects because you can do so much more with a bigger radius on Condemn. You can catch more enemies in it, you can play with your distance a bit more, and you can even catch enemies on the run. If you absolutely don't think this is a very good rune then I would take vacuum instead, if not then the one that increases damage based on damage taken during charge up.
Passives: Since Holy Strength is basically required unless you've been graced with an incredible 1 handed weapon, the 3 passives I use are:
Finery: My gear has a lot of sockets and this works well with that
Renewal: High block chance means this has great synergy with that and punish - roar. Every time it blocks and you deal damage you also heal yourself. It's a pretty good amount I believe at 70 it's 12k or so per block?
Hold Your Ground: More block is great!
BUILD WEAKNESSES:
The biggest issue with this build is that it's PURE melee, you're always in melee range which means you need a good amount of toughness to help counter balance this, anything over 6mil is something I'd recommend. The other major weakness is one that just seems to be inherent to the Crusader class but this build has a massive lack of mobility, so that being said you better pray you get a densely populated rift because without that ghost pony it's gonna feel like a long trip. Also since it's cool down dependent I really wanted to work in Akarat - Rally in there but I couldn't really justify it being better than Laws of Valor critical. CDR gear doesn't really help that much since the cool downs on most of these things are rather short, you could dump maybe 30% cdr in there but it would only shave off 3 second on most of these things at the expense of better stats.
Gearing tips:
Like I said before this build is crit heavy and block heavy, I personally run with 44% crit and ~50% block. Attack speed is pretty important as well because it is your only real method of Wrath generation, wrath generation might feel slow but basically it should be maxed by the time at least one of your cool downs is up.
Gameplay style:
Whenever you can BLOW ALL YOUR COOL DOWNS TOGETHER! I made this build around popping all 4 abilities together, so every 12ish seconds you'll do some high burst damage. That being said don't hesitate to use your cool downs as they come up, they'll help a lot. I generally only save Law of Valor for a special situation, everything else I just dump as soon as it comes off cool down.
Paragon point usage:
Strength
Attack Speed
Resist All
Resource Cost Reduction
The reason I go for attack speed here is because it seems to eek out more performance per paragon point spent than crit chance or crit damage. It helps with wrath generation enough and it also helps with dumping everything in the 4 seconds of murder when your 100% crit dam buff is up. Resource cost reduction is a weird choice and I'm not entirely too sure I am pleased with it since I don't typically gear for RCR but I like how it feels so far. Especially since I don't run any additional wrath generation passives.
Final notes:
I am not pretending this is the worlds best build, but I slowly find that playing a crusader as a melee class with support abilities works a lot better than pretending to a pseudo ranged thing. You gain a lot of beneficial effects from blocking and that only really becomes abusable if you're standing in the thick of combat. I made this build for the way I wanted to play my crusader so obviously we may not see eye to eye on a lot of play style decisions. However that being said, I think crusaders really shine a lot more when you've got a bunch of "on block" effects.
So yeah any comments and criticism is welcome!