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Just a reminder that I will be streaming this build on my Crusader nightly if anyone is interested or has any questions. Just for fun, thanks for checking it out!

Yeah that's what I originally thought! It makes more sense that it would give +10% holy damage to all skills dealing holy damage. I am liking the +20% to hammers though.

Oh I guess I never caught that! I think you're right. I'm switching it to Blunt for the Blessed Hammer damage.

So I've been playing my level 70 Crusader all week messing around with builds, and I think I've got an awesome build figured out that features Blessed Hammers and utilizes holy damage.




Primary Attack: Smite
Rune: Reaping
Primary Wrath-generator. I use Smite because its a great mid-range attack that allows you to stay out of Frozen/Plagued/Molten etc. and still deal significant damage. The 165% weapon damage chains up to 3 enemies, and with the Reaping rune you get bonus life regen for each chained enemy. This is pretty necessary when playing on T1+ difficulty if you're lacking life regen or life on hit.

Secondary: Fist of the Heavens
Rune: Divine Well
Fist of the Heavens works well for elite packs. 250% weapon damage in an 8 yard radius and with the rune, 6 bolts of lightning that travel outwards 12 yards. The only downside is the Wrath cost, but I only really use it on elites when I'm not already casting Blessed Hammer. The real reason I use Divine Well instead of some of the better runes for this build is that it is the only one that makes the skill holy damage.

Slot 1: Steed Charge
Rune: Endurance
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Great for getting around fast, with the 3 seconds you get usingEndurance you can make it as far as a Wizard using Teleport/Wormhole unless they're porting through walls. The only downside to this is the long cooldown, 25 seconds.

Slot 2: Blessed Hammer
Rune: Limitless
This will be your primary AoE skill. There are a couple options with runes, but I like to use Limitless because you can easily get a lot of hammers going and it clears white mobs fast. A lot of people are also using Thunderstruck, but the lightning arcs only deal 40% weapon damage. With Limitless, you get to keep the holy damage and 200% weapon damage per hammer.

Slot 3: Heaven's Fury
Rune: Ascendancy
I use Heaven's Fury for boss fights and elite packs. The 1680% weapon damage is a lot and if you cast it on cooldown during boss fights it hits them hard. Also, more holy damage.

Slot 4: Law of Valor
Rune: Critical
I use Law of Valor/Critical for the 8% attack speed buff it gives the whole party. When survivability becomes on issue on higher difficulties, I switch to Law of Justice/Immovable Object. I use the active part of the skill on cooldown, which gives another 15% attack speed and 100% crit damage.

Passive 1: Rightousness
Because you're either constantly casting Blessed Hammer or Fist of the Heavens, Wrath regen becomes an issue. I use Smite in between casting and this gives you another 3 Wrath per attack.

Passive 2: Blunt
More Hammer damage!

Passive 3: Wrathful
More healing, this time per Wrath spent. This build is always spending Wrath through Hammers or FoH so the life regen from that is nice. Also, it adds 1% of your Healing Globe bonus, which is also helpful if you have any.

Passive 4: Finery
There are a lot of options for the 4th passive, and you can choose whichever one works best for you if you're lacking DPS or Life. Vigilant or Renewal are awesome for life regen, which I need on T3+, but if you're farming T1 or 2 then the DPS buff from Finery or Fervor works well. I would use Fervor if you don't have a lot of socketed items.

Gameplay TL;DR

Run around on your horse spamming Hammers to kill white mobs, use Heaven's Fury and Fist of the Heavens on elite mobs and bosses. Attack with Smite the whole time to heal yourself. Passive skills help you out. For big boss fights, you can also switch out Steed Charge for Bombardment/Impactful Bombardment for extra burst damage.

With about 800k sheet DPS I can clear T1 and T2 pretty fast, but DPS can become an issue on higher torment levels. If you're playing solo on T3+, I would recommend switching out the Blunt passive for Heavenly Strength and finding a nice 2h weapon for that extra DPS. This means losing a lot of attack speed and movement speed, so if you have paragon points to spend, I would switch them around to make up for the loss.

Itemization

Stack +% Holy Damage on: Bracers, Amulets, Misc. Legendaries

Stack +% Blessed Hammer Damage on: Helms, Boots, Shields, Misc. Legendaries

Stack +% Smite Damage on: Belts, Pants

Stack Crit Hit Chance/Attack Speed on: Gloves, Helm, Bracers, Amulets, Rings

The combination of stacking the 3 +% damages gives you a whole lot more EDPS. Each one of my hammers is doing 2-2.5mil crits. Use an emerald in your weapon for the crit damage.

EDIT: Another thing I've been messing around with on this build is area damage. From what I've seen, hammers will do area damage and that helps a lot when clearing mobs. I crafted the 3-piece Demon's Skin set to test out the 25% area damage bonus and it seems to be working really well.

If you're lucky enough to find Justinian's Mercy or Jace's Hammer, both are great for really pulling this build together. Justinian's gives your hammers the Dominion rune, so they all spin around you while you move; Jace's makes your hammers bigger and do more damage. Here's my Justinian's, though I wish it rolled higher base damage



Here is a link to my Crusader:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TeaKav-1115/hero/43767241(item re-rolls are not showing up on b.net, my DPS is actually right around 800k)and here's my transmog for fun



Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions, thanks!

NVIDIA released a new driver a few days ago, 335.23. That might help, I have a GTX 760 and actually noticed an improvement after updating to the new driver.

Quote from theecheshirekat

I'm all about loot 2.0 but I cannot shake the feeling that farming was easier (yielded more leggys per run) pre-patch.

That's because they nerfed magic find in 2.0. You only get 10% of your total MF applied to finding legendaries now, and they removed the MF bonus you get with each paragon level.

I suppose it only makes a big difference if you were farming at a high paragon level pre-patch or relied heavily on MF for legendaries. That being said, I think they did a good job balancing it with a slightly higher drop rate across the board.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10895540027?page=2#24

222 is impressive. We were getting ~160 consistently on T6.

Torment difficulty is supposed to be an expansion-only feature, so that's probably a bug.

Name: TeaKav

Link:http://www.twitch.tv/teakav

Info: Relatively new to streaming. Currently streaming 2.0 PTR, leveling new characters, finding new legendaries, testing builds, etc. I will be streaming a lot of RoS at launch. I like interacting with viewers, because it makes streaming fun. Feel free to check it out and ask questions if you have any!

Quote from Artemix

I believe, that the idea of giving us no choice of how skills work, was to make a viable revenue through the RMAH, I can't honestly think of anything else. Now, with the AH gone, give us more options, let us level/alter/enhance the skills without needing a goddamn item, let us spend our points whatever we want, let us actually build something, that is the most amazing part of an ARPG, to build characters.

Now that the AH is gone, I think the Paragon point system is Blizzard's attempt at addressing this issue. Is this a sufficient system for creating build diversity? I don't think so, I just see most people maxing out stats like CC. Leading up to the beta/PTR I had really been hoping to see the new point system used to alter/enhance skills, not just stats, but they didn't go that direction. To answer OP's question, yes I like the game and I still enjoy playing it, though there is always room for improvement. I think the expansion is going to address a lot of the problems that people have with D3, but certainly not all of them. There will always be people that complain, just for the sake of complaining, without offering any alternatives or constructive criticism, and that is the majority of people on the official forums.

Quote from gutpik

from what i understand tooltips on skills are just "image" with fixed text, so to change it blizz will be forced to write scripts that gonna change how frames work, and then another scripts that gonna show actual stats\changes.

Though this is probably true, they were able to script something similar to show min/max stats on items, so we know they have the tools and ability to implement something like this. It depends on whether or not they see the interest in this, and if they decide to devote the time/resources to add it. Sometimes its the little "oh duh" changes like this that the community/players appreciate the most, and I think Blizzard is working on that. That being said, this is an awesome idea for tooltips and would definitely be helpful in testing builds.

No problem

I'm sure once the hype dies down a little then gold will go back down in price before RoS launches.

2 billion gold on the RMAH is $80.40 right now. It's been steadily going up in price since the RoS beta started and people realized they need more gold for the expansion.

Quote from Jamoose

The whole point of this patch is to build up an incentive for people to buy the expansion.

Exactly! Because the level is capped at 60 in the PTR, all the level 61+ skills/loot is just a tease. The PTR isn't actually to test the 2.0 loot, or the new Paragon system, that's what the RoS beta testers are doing. This PTR seems like it is only there to offer a glimpse of what players will get in the expansion and 2.0 patch, without actually letting them test it.

Well, you can't level past 60 in the PTR, but a lot of the items that drop that are ilvl61+. So right now you can't use a lot of the loot that drops in PTR, and it won't let you equip some crafted amulets since those are now ilvl61 also.