Switched to Crusader as my only toon as soon as i worked this spec into my friends group. This build is easy to gear, easy to solo and on top of it probably one of the best build to have in any party. It comes with strong damage, moderate control, huge buffs and doesent have any particular weakness when it comes to elite affixes, infact some like thunderstorm are useful to you lol.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/crusader#aciRVf!aWhS!ZbaYYb
You need marginal gear to solo torment 1 at lvl 70. Im doing it with 700k dps and 12 million thoughness. My only legendary item being my 2 hander enchanted to have a socket. Its a pretty bland legendary 2690 dps, 1099 str, 1000 vit and the socket. Another almost requirement is a solid shield with % crit chance and sweep attack damage if possible.
Stats priority is Crit damage > str > % damage to sweep attack> crit chance = attack speed > all resist > armor > vit > life on hit > what ever else you feel like.
So what makes this build solid and easy, first lets look at all the spells.
Punish - Celerity, a single target builder that both increase your survivability and your damage in the form of attack speed when you block, you block often with punish and a decent shield. (Thats part 1 of why you like thunderstorm).
Sweep Attack - Holy shock or Blazing Sweep, if you feel you dont need anymore life on hit, Blazing sweep for the damage, otherwise holy shock will make you invincible. Theres not much to say about this spender that most people dont already know, its by far the most efficient spender crusader have right now, it only cost 20 wrath and pretty big cleave damage, mine crits from 3-3.5 million to all the way 5 millions solo with my own buffs.
Condemn - Vacuum, this is where the power begins, this is what you will start elites and even big white mobs pack with. Just run in there and start sucking.
Judgment - Resolved, this is step 2, before condemn goes off pop this baby in the middle of the elite pack you just sucked in. Unless you have under 20% crit chance, which even in my shit rares where i dont even try to have crit chance yet still have 45%, this means for the next 5 seconds your attacks and those of your party on these targets will have 100% crit chance. While soloing this mean a guarantee Condemn crit nearing 20 millions.
Laws of Valor - Critical, this is step 2.5, as soon as you hit judgment hit this spell for 100% crit damage increase to your whole party. Now that both judgment and Laws of valor are used, just spam Sweep attack away and an elite pack dies under 10 seconds. Its especially powerful in groups while having some class with powerfull dps buffs like a WD, Wizard or a DH. Id say out of all classes your best allie is WD because they have a harder time getting high crit chance unlike DH, but what ever happens you are capping them, they will be thankful who ever class is with you. You are making them crit 100% of the time and adding 100% crit damage to their stats.
Steed charge - endurance, Its almost boring to make a crusader build without it, get you out of CC, makes you faster, etc. Theres no reason to make a case for this spell.
Passive only 2 Are mandatory and 1 is highly recommended to test and see for yourself, 1 is optional.
Heavenly strength, theres no way to play this build effectively without it. It gives the most damage increase out of any passives. The whole point of the spec is to deal massive damage quickly with crit damage and raw damage, if you arent supporting the strongest weapon and the highest possible stats, it kinda goes against the spec, youd be better served by something less bursty.
Finery, Im putting this as mandatory, again this is pure free stats 70 free Strength per gems you have, it should be DPS gems, mabye a few diamonds for all resist if you think you dont have enough resist, But you should double stack this bonus for Strength really.
Renewal, this is not mandatory, but i highly recommend people test this out if they feel they want to leave it out. This is part #2 of why you love thunderstorm, the tics heals you for more than the damage TS does on block, way more actually. When theres a thunderstorm around i can sit in sentry. This thing Heal you for 12000 at level 70 everytime you block. With punish in the build, you should give it a shot, if you dont want to use it or are so geared torment 6 cant hurt you, drop it and drop punish for something like slash at this point.
Holy cause, this is optional depending on your weapon, my weapon deals holy damage, this is a flat damage increase and thats it. It gave me a pretty solid increase in sheet dps because of the 2 hander with massive holy damage affix. 10% of that damage is alot once multiplied by your Strength and all your other DPS stats.
If you do not have an Holy 2 hander pick something else, theres alot of good stuff. For one if you went with renewal hold your ground is a no brainer, flat 15% increase block chance to heal yourself for 12000. If you did not because you dont need the survivability, fervor and righteousness should be your best bet.
700K dps and 12mil toughness does not sound like trivial. Unless it is for a crusader at 70. Thanks for the info though! I am leveling my crusader when I don;t play my wiz. Could you post your profile?
700K dps and 12mil toughness does not sound like trivial. Unless it is for a crusader at 70.
Its at 70, mostly rare gear, enchanted correctly, leveled gems a bit, only flawlesss royal is green in weapon. I got 1 set glove now and 1 legendary weapon. Its pretty trivial for a heavens strength crusader, i saw some with 900k/1 million dps before buffs. A slightly better weapon since i saw some that are 2900 dps would probably push me up. The toughness is even easier i actually downgraded myself i was at 16 million for a while but i started taking it out to increase damage. Crusader stats are missleading because we get such raw stats from stuff like heavenly strength and finery.
1 million dps on a crusader is like a 600k dps on a wizard pretty much lol. Its pretty late ill get some screenshots tomorow mabye.
Added an image of my stats for Rayaleith. This is about the average stats for a crusader in mostly 70 rares ready for torment 1. Note the block is low because i went for holy cause for damage instead of hold your ground. But with punish i still see alot of healing with renewal. Its where difference in gear and passives come into play with unmandatory passives of the spec.
Saying your gear is trivial does not make it trivial.
Its almost all crafted yellows and dropped...... I had that gear literally 2 hours after hitting lvl 70, minus the gloves? Im not sure since when are crafted rares considered anything but trivial. I guess you could say i had gold to spend on mystic to make useless gear potent with some digging, but id hardly call it good gear for now or hard to achieve. I spend about 15 million gold since the expansion hit, thats with gems for both DH and Crusader crafted.
Its entry gear, easy to gather reasonably quickly which is the intent.
Entry gear... 700k dps and 12 mil toughness, c'mon
I played maybe 4 hours after getting to 70 and I found just enough crafting mats to level my 3 artisans to 12. So I'm just starting to earn some to enchant, let alone having the luck to get good enchantements.
I guess I'm just a bit out of luck with mats drop and such then. I've been quite lucky in the early days of 2.0, it's just a matter of time before rng get backs with me.
Its entry gear, easy to gather reasonably quickly which is the intent.[[;/background]
;/background]
Entry gear... 700k dps and 12 mil toughness, c'mon
I played maybe 4 hours after getting to 70 and I found just enough crafting mats to level my 3 artisans to 12. So I'm just starting to earn some to enchant, let alone having the luck to get good enchantements.
I think he's right. I haven't had an issue getting to that amount of damage and toughness, but climbing up from that seems to be a bit more difficult. I even dropped some toughness for the -51% damage taken from blocked attacks shield, but still running 661k dps with 10,8m toughness and +42% lightning/Blessed Hammer damage.
The difference in our DPS is pretty much just holy cause, with my holy 2 hander it gives me a little more than 50k dps in the sheet.
How in the world did you guys climb to that dps amount in that little time?I got my crusader to 70 on release as im sure you all did, but holy hell i can't find gear that even gets me that high (high 200's atm)
I haven't been using my blood shards since after the first couple times i just got blues and shit yellows so i just said f that.. argh!
Once you start doing rift that mats is raining down on you. I just hit 800k dps, found some amulet with 554 str, 5% ias, 9.5% crit and life regen. Turned the Life regen into 92% crit damage.
I've been doing rifts more recently but I'll start picking up on this to turn everything i can to crit
Out of curiosity since your DPS is outrageous, does thorns have anything to do with your dps amount? I've noticed using hardened skin w/ that skill that adds thorns (sorry not at home - forgot the names), elites practically kill themselves in like 2 seconds just standing in molten or whatever they do.
Personally i have not tried thorns since i run in groups mostly. I dont think it has anything to do with your DPS, its all flat damage from what i saw hardened skin simply tripples your thorn. Mabye theres a legendary that helps it scale better, i dont know.
Gonna have to agree with people on 700k DPs and 12m not being entry level, especially for torment 1. My monk is around 250k DPs and 7.5m toughness and soloing torment 1
Moving this thread back to its intention, I tried it Dedcadaver, and it does work well when the group knows to concentrate firepower on the mobs you are pulling in to you. It was nice to drop an elite packs health in half in the first 4 seconds of the fight (soloing).
It is not my playstyle, but it is a good build. +1
Thanks it indeed works at it best when playing with players that knows when to start dpsing. I run mostly with my brother witch doctor and some wizards, elites just vanish out of existence.
I use a similar build but I prefer punish - roar because it procs multiple times a second with several white mobs.
Importantly roar is fire damage, so with sweep attack - blazing sweep you can consider stacking %fire damage in addition to %sweep damage.
With our builds a good golden flense becomes the new dream
Edit: at 350k dmg this will kill elites in 1 go on normal (3 seconds?), at 490k you can do this on hard. thats as far as I've gotten on hardcore.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/crusader#aciRVf!aWhS!ZbaYYb
You need marginal gear to solo torment 1 at lvl 70. Im doing it with 700k dps and 12 million thoughness. My only legendary item being my 2 hander enchanted to have a socket. Its a pretty bland legendary 2690 dps, 1099 str, 1000 vit and the socket. Another almost requirement is a solid shield with % crit chance and sweep attack damage if possible.
Stats priority is Crit damage > str > % damage to sweep attack> crit chance = attack speed > all resist > armor > vit > life on hit > what ever else you feel like.
So what makes this build solid and easy, first lets look at all the spells.
Punish - Celerity, a single target builder that both increase your survivability and your damage in the form of attack speed when you block, you block often with punish and a decent shield. (Thats part 1 of why you like thunderstorm).
Sweep Attack - Holy shock or Blazing Sweep, if you feel you dont need anymore life on hit, Blazing sweep for the damage, otherwise holy shock will make you invincible. Theres not much to say about this spender that most people dont already know, its by far the most efficient spender crusader have right now, it only cost 20 wrath and pretty big cleave damage, mine crits from 3-3.5 million to all the way 5 millions solo with my own buffs.
Condemn - Vacuum, this is where the power begins, this is what you will start elites and even big white mobs pack with. Just run in there and start sucking.
Judgment - Resolved, this is step 2, before condemn goes off pop this baby in the middle of the elite pack you just sucked in. Unless you have under 20% crit chance, which even in my shit rares where i dont even try to have crit chance yet still have 45%, this means for the next 5 seconds your attacks and those of your party on these targets will have 100% crit chance. While soloing this mean a guarantee Condemn crit nearing 20 millions.
Laws of Valor - Critical, this is step 2.5, as soon as you hit judgment hit this spell for 100% crit damage increase to your whole party. Now that both judgment and Laws of valor are used, just spam Sweep attack away and an elite pack dies under 10 seconds. Its especially powerful in groups while having some class with powerfull dps buffs like a WD, Wizard or a DH. Id say out of all classes your best allie is WD because they have a harder time getting high crit chance unlike DH, but what ever happens you are capping them, they will be thankful who ever class is with you. You are making them crit 100% of the time and adding 100% crit damage to their stats.
Steed charge - endurance, Its almost boring to make a crusader build without it, get you out of CC, makes you faster, etc. Theres no reason to make a case for this spell.
Passive only 2 Are mandatory and 1 is highly recommended to test and see for yourself, 1 is optional.
Heavenly strength, theres no way to play this build effectively without it. It gives the most damage increase out of any passives. The whole point of the spec is to deal massive damage quickly with crit damage and raw damage, if you arent supporting the strongest weapon and the highest possible stats, it kinda goes against the spec, youd be better served by something less bursty.
Finery, Im putting this as mandatory, again this is pure free stats 70 free Strength per gems you have, it should be DPS gems, mabye a few diamonds for all resist if you think you dont have enough resist, But you should double stack this bonus for Strength really.
Renewal, this is not mandatory, but i highly recommend people test this out if they feel they want to leave it out. This is part #2 of why you love thunderstorm, the tics heals you for more than the damage TS does on block, way more actually. When theres a thunderstorm around i can sit in sentry. This thing Heal you for 12000 at level 70 everytime you block. With punish in the build, you should give it a shot, if you dont want to use it or are so geared torment 6 cant hurt you, drop it and drop punish for something like slash at this point.
Holy cause, this is optional depending on your weapon, my weapon deals holy damage, this is a flat damage increase and thats it. It gave me a pretty solid increase in sheet dps because of the 2 hander with massive holy damage affix. 10% of that damage is alot once multiplied by your Strength and all your other DPS stats.
If you do not have an Holy 2 hander pick something else, theres alot of good stuff. For one if you went with renewal hold your ground is a no brainer, flat 15% increase block chance to heal yourself for 12000. If you did not because you dont need the survivability, fervor and righteousness should be your best bet.
1 million dps on a crusader is like a 600k dps on a wizard pretty much lol. Its pretty late ill get some screenshots tomorow mabye.
Its entry gear, easy to gather reasonably quickly which is the intent.
I played maybe 4 hours after getting to 70 and I found just enough crafting mats to level my 3 artisans to 12. So I'm just starting to earn some to enchant, let alone having the luck to get good enchantements.
I haven't been using my blood shards since after the first couple times i just got blues and shit yellows so i just said f that.. argh!
I can't imagine really changing the stats i have on my gear to even get me anywhere near these ridiculous 5-700k range though.
800k dps and 13 million toughness.
Out of curiosity since your DPS is outrageous, does thorns have anything to do with your dps amount? I've noticed using hardened skin w/ that skill that adds thorns (sorry not at home - forgot the names), elites practically kill themselves in like 2 seconds just standing in molten or whatever they do.
It is not my playstyle, but it is a good build. +1
edit: typos
Importantly roar is fire damage, so with sweep attack - blazing sweep you can consider stacking %fire damage in addition to %sweep damage.
With our builds a good golden flense becomes the new dream
Edit: at 350k dmg this will kill elites in 1 go on normal (3 seconds?), at 490k you can do this on hard. thats as far as I've gotten on hardcore.