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Nice guide, thanks! Even after nerf, this build is still very strong and fun to play. I tested in PTR.

Quote from HS_PaiMei»

Nice guide, thanks! Even after nerf, this build is still very strong and fun to play. I tested in PTR.

Yep! Very cool build indeed and i am quite happy it's so viable now.

First off, my very first season in D3, I played a Crusader. I used a Jekangbord/Punish build as a starter build, because the free set wasn't implemented yet, and I loved it. It is my favorite build ever, so I am extremely excited to see it making a comback.

I have a quick question. For Combust, does that 33% only apply to the original shield, or does it also apply to Jekangbord Shields? Because otherwise, I would think that Shattering Throw would be more consistent damage. If it does, and can therefore potentially explode 7 times per throw, then yeah. Combust would start doing insane damage, since I think Shattering Throw doesn't also make an extra 6 per shield (although it would be beautiful if it did).

That said, I think there's a little bit of wiggle room to improve this one, but I don't really have the time to mess around in the PTR to actually test it, just using d3planner. There's a couple things that really stand out as interesting choices, to start with. Mainly the LoH on weapon, assuming probably clicked the wrong skill for Shield, and in order to get Reduced Elite Damage on the chest, we would have to sacrifice a slot for one of the others, or sockets. Considering Finery, plus diamonds/Rubies, I can't imagine that's a worthy tradeoff, is it?

Next, the Long Arm of the Law passive. Assuming perfect CDR rolls on everything but amulet, and full stacks on Gogok, that is of course at basically 99% uptime. However, if we were to switch to either Hold your Ground, or Holy Cause (mainly if using Shattering Throw for some extra healing), then you still get ~50% uptime on Law, and considering CoE rolls to Fire 4 out of 16 seconds, we would be able to still have it for every Fire phase still, when it would make the biggest difference. This would also increase our Blessed Shield damage quite significantly. We could also swap the CDR on weapon for Damage %, if our other rolls are good enough to maintain it, although it is technically safer to keep it, since it results in less reliance on Gogok. Although if you can get basically perfect rolls, you can manage 55.8% (enough for 100% uptime) without Gogok OR CDR on Weapon. It's just close.

My next idea sort of expands on the concept of increasing Block Chance that Hold your Ground brings up. By putting CoE in the cube, swapping to a Justice Lantern, and also swapping Strength on the Jekangbord for Block Chance, we bring that to up to 77% block chance, which increases Blessed Shield even further, while still maintaing a bit over 700M toughness. Keep in mind, I haven't actually pushed nearly this high before, so I'm not sure what the toughness threshold requirements really would even be. I just hear from most people that damage is the part that's hard to keep up at higher grifts more than toughness.

Lastly, what about the Shield Glare rune. With the amount of CD we build up, the CD goes down to ~4ish seconds. If we were to use the Divine Verdict run, we could have that 20% bonus damage active at all times. Is the chance of charming trash really that beneficial? I know you already sorta covered that in your video, I just haven't the experience to know if it's really that significant.

Here's a link to d3planner, where I built the set listed above (only change is correcting the skill on the shield to Blessed Shield instead of Hammer), and then the set I propose. I also had a thought of maybe swapping the cube/wield weapons. I know it would result in slower Stricken stacking, at 1.82 attacks per second instead of 2.5, but each shield would hit significantly harder by default. Also a higher reliance on getting good CDR rolls/Gogok maintenance. https://ptr.d3planner.com/901290692

Quote from Tsteken»

I decided for Holy Rune and Holy Cause passive for Hardcore. Fire might be a bit higher damage but I can roll 10% damage on gyrfalcons and the healing is absurb. Nice writeup as always!

Definitely good HC setup!