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 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
I run a very simular build. Isn't Blunt a better choice than Holy Cause? Afaik Holy Cause only adds the 10% holy damage if your weapon is doing holy damage. I'm not 100% sure tho. Maybe you're using it for the healing only
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.
I haven't run tests to confirm/deny the fact that Holy Cause increases your holy skills by 10% so I can't say either way. What I can say is that it will increase your damage if you use a weapon with +holy damage. It's easy to test, just find a weapon with +holy, swap to the passive, and watch as your character sheet damage increases. If you use a weapon with any other type of +damage you will not get the bonus on your character sheet.
Thus it's my opinion (again no in-game testing to prove) that Holy Cause just increases the +holy damage of your weapon because otherwise it would be "double-dipping" if you are using holy skills with a +holy weapon.
I run a very simular build. Isn't Blunt a better choice than Holy Cause? Afaik Holy Cause only adds the 10% holy damage if your weapon is doing holy damage. I'm not 100% sure tho. Maybe you're using it for the healing only
AFAIK you are wrong. Skills/Runes with elemental damage override the elemental damage affix on weapons. F.e if you have a weapon like OP with Cold Damage AFFIX the damage dealt by his Heaven´s Fury is holy damage. The passive in question has NOTHING to do with a holy elemental damge affix on a weapon. Its just a bad wording.
TL:DR:
Blunt = 20% dmg increase for justice and blessed hammer
Holy Cause = 10% elemental damage bonus to holy = All skills dealing holy damage being increased by 10%
I'm 99% sure that I'm right. The tooltip damage when having a holy damage weapon equipped got increased with the Holy Cause passive and decreased without the passive. No change at all when I had a weapon with cold damge. It can work like "skills deal more holy damage" tho. But I don't think so.
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!
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. LegendariesStack +% 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!
www.twitch.tv/teakav
www.twitch.tv/teakav
www.twitch.tv/teakav
Thus it's my opinion (again no in-game testing to prove) that Holy Cause just increases the +holy damage of your weapon because otherwise it would be "double-dipping" if you are using holy skills with a +holy weapon.
www.twitch.tv/teakav