I've been running/refining a build that that allows me to melt T6 rift/bounty/mat farm and T6 Malthael farm. It’s a bit of a hybrid of some of the other builds I've commonly seen playing with other crusaders. It relies on constant uptime of Arakat's Champion like the vast majority of endgame crusader builds. Capable of tanking, DPSing from any distance effectively, crowd controlling, and protecting your group members effectively.
The skills:
Primary: Fist of the Heavens: Heaven's Tempest: this skill hits like a truck, leaves an AE whirlwind in its wake, and does very nice AE spread damage. In terms of raw killing power, I personally think this outperforms all the other secondaries.
Secondary: Falling Sword: Superheated: I REALLY like this skill, it hits like a truck, leaves a powerful DOT for 6 seconds after it lands and can be used as a secondary mobility skill.
Concentration: Shattered Ground: Provides a small healing buff. I use this to stack with the Falling Sword firey ground to create a circle of death, it melts mobs on T6 very quickly. Alternative to this being: Shield Glare: Divine Verdict: The baseline cool down for this ability is only 12 seconds without cool down reduction, and it both acts as a crowd control ability and strong damage debuff. It requires good positioning and timing to be used optimally, not to just be popped at its cool down.
Steed Charge: Nightmare: Great mobility skill, like all the other abilities I use I chose it for dual functionality, as it can also be used offensively to path through enemies and leave burning ground beneath them. Can be changed to Endurance specifically for groups to keep on the front lines and grab more chests/bodies to pop Harrington buff.
Laws of Jutsice: Decaying Strength: Ever since I started playing around with this thing I have been able to free up a lot of gear/skills that were previously dedicated to defense. For 5 seconds it massively increases my resistances and then for 5 seconds afterwards the mobs are debuffed and hit me like babies. With my 46% CDR this 10 second window is up the vast majority of the time it is needed.
Arakat's Champion: Firestarter: I had previously been using Prophet which is a great way to increase your toughness if you are dying too much. Once I was able to outgear the T6 toughness breakpoints I changed this to Firestarter which is a massive DPS buff.
Passives: Heavenly Strength: No explaination needed.
Wrathful: A very commonly used passive that acts as a strong form of life leech, due to this passive the secondary stat on gear "health globe bonus" is highly desirable for crusaders. As the build spams an ability that costs 30 wrath more than once a second, every time you cast FOH you gain 25k HP + (1% of your total health globe bonus x 30).
Holy Cause: 10% DPS increase, if you feel brittle you can change either this or Finery to a more defensive passive, but the point of using the Prophet rune for Arakat's is to avoid using numerous other abilities to gain adequate defenses. (I currently have 93.01% negation from armor, but my resists are only providing ~56% reduction to specific elements).
Finery: With 2.0.5 this skill is drastically improved and provides both a DPS and armor bonus.
Mandatory gear:
Reaper's Wraps: This build loses the 5 wrath per second of the alterative Arakat's rune, so it is extremely helpful to counterbalance this by being able to refill your mana at will by running through the battlefield collecting health globes (although with enough resource cost reduction this isn't hugely necessary). These are also farmable which means you can craft one every time you have 120 essences.
Cindercoat: The one slot Akkan's set is not used. The resource cost reduction is mandatory for this spec.
5 piece Akkan's + RROG. I'll assume a baseline understanding of how the constant uptime Arakat's is, there are plenty of other guides around here that describe this well.
*** I am currently running with the 6 piece Akkans and either Bul Kathos or Unity rings as my Akkan chestpiece provides tons more toughness than the Cinder and I feel that its working better, mana thankfully isn't an issue with slow attack speed of Maximus not draining it as fast as Darklight does.
Hellskull: This now adds 10% DPS if you are wielding a 2 hander, this and Holy Cause together add 20% DPS, no small amount.
Harrington belt: The text on this item says "when you open a chest you gain increased damage". Things that will proc this buff include: corpses, loose tiles, weapon/armor racks and chests. It is not hard to keep this buff up 50% of the time in combat. I consider this belt the best belt in the game, bar none for all classes and specs, without any of the others even remotely coming close to its usefulness.
Maximus: As this is a fire build, its nice to have a potent 2-hand sword that has 15-20% fire damage as one of the stats. The fire chain itself hits VERY hard (mine currently crits for 13million and although I do not know the exact attack rate its clearly much higher than 1 per second). The original issue with the maximus demon is that he gets owned in T6 in a couple seconds. As I’ve increased my toughness to T6, I’ve found that he survives considerably longer at this point unless a hard hitting mob specifically melees him. Steed Charging down long halls with the pet active creates a pretty awesome death zone for the mobs stuck in that area.
Typically I attack by using Falling Sword on a group. As I land, I cast Law of Justice and Concencration to buff myself from damage and create a dual circle of death from both the Falling Sword and Conc. DOTs. I then spam FOH and/or align the maximus fire chain to hit the most important DPS targets.
So I played around with this last night, took me from T4 - T5, thank you for that. It does hit like a truck.
I have all gear but only 4 pieceAkkan's + RROG. When I get the 5th piece cool down shouldn't be an issue but currently it is. I'm short on wrath. So the question - what's the best way to add more wrath back into the build whilst maintaining highest possible dps? Would it be a shied glare restoring wrath? Prevoke instead of Laws to add wrath? Or maybe a Slash / Justice primary when everything is oncooldown and no wrath. I'm currently sitting at 40% CD.
Also another question for you -many people use Darklight with this build. (I personally prefer Maximus for range and downtime). Any views on that?
The build (and FOH in general) are not optimized for having significant downtime on Arakat's which without the full bonus will always happen. Once you have Arakat's up the majority of the time mana will become less of an issue. Four things I would say for you are that your Cindercoat (while really nice otherwise) only reduces fire damage 23%. These can go up to 30% and the higher ones really pay off with this build as wrath management is a bigger deal with this spec.
The second thing would be to max out your paragon points in to resource cost reduction. Unfortunately, <paragon 400 this means you are losing area damage instead, but if you have periods of no dps due to wrath it might be an overall dps gain you would need to test that.
When playing solo use the Templar for the 1.1 wrath regen per second which is helpful.
Lastly, try to find a good Hellskull exactly like yours but with wrath regen instead of % HP.
Also a cool addendum to this spec and most constant Arakat's specs that have large amounts of CD reduction:
If you have a "Swiftmount" one handed flail and use the Endurance rune and Lord Commander Passive, you can maintain Fleeting Shrine like movement speed constantly. I find it really REALLY helpful for bounty farming, as I sprint literally the entire way to my goal.
OK very useful tips thanks! One more question regarding enchanting gear; out of crit chance, crit damage and elemental which is the most important? I see people maxing out their elemental but if they didn't have crit chance would they still roll elemental? Surely without a certain amount of chance / damage elemental suffers?
That's nearly an impossible question to answer unfortunately, because the value of each stat changes depending on how much if it you have, as well as how much of the others you have.
As a good general rule of thumb regarding gear slots where you have to make these types of choices: you want an amulet with %elemental damage / STR / CC / CHD , bracers with % elemental and CC, a SOJ with % elemental / STR / cooldown reduction and either CC or CHD, and a RROG that rolls with either cooldown reduction (and change LoH to CC) , CC or CHD (and then change LoH to CD reduction).
For example I have 50% CC, 340% CD, 40% fire damage, 40% CDR (with paragon). I see some player's get like 50% CC, 400% CD, 80% elemental and 50% CDR. Is that from perfect rolls and paragon maxed?
I just wonder how beneficial elemental would be over CC, CD.
Update, I've finished my holy set which includes a 2662 dps Fate of the Fell that has 3.83 wrath per second on it as a secondary stat, equivalent holy SOJ and mildly less powerful amulet to my fire one.
I tried out the holy shotgun build in comparison to my fire one for a side by side comparison and found T6 clears to be mildly slower as holy. The issue I have with the holy shotgun build is that it completely revolves around spamming one ability, and this requires adjustments to all the other skills to allow for adequate wrath generation even with 3.83 wrath generation on my Fate of the Fell (Law of Valor changed from Critical to Unstoppable Force and Shield glare from Divine Verdict to Zealous Glare in my case).
I'd say overall the actual punch of Heaven's Fury: Fires of Heaven obviously hits stronger than Fist of the Heaven's: Heaven's Tempest - but, when the Maximus fire chain, 20% more damage from Shield Glare, damage from Nightmare are added up the overall dps was higher with fire, at least in my case.
The difference in clear times was minimal, but I personally enjoyed the fire play style a bit more. The shotgun build relies on melee range, and to hit mobs with multiple spears of heavens fury being very close. The other abilities become support abilities for it, as it costs 40 wrath, and ultimately I felt like the build play style was "walk up and spam this one attack, rinse and repeat". Powerful, simple and gets the job done- but I didn't think it was as fun to play. Another nice aspect of the holy build was I obviously didn't need a Cindercoat anymore, so I just used 6 piece Akkans. At this point I was able to drop my RROG for a nice Unity with 471 STR, 5.5 CC, 12% elite damage and 8% CDR. I still don't need it to survive in T6, but in terms of raw DPS I felt it was an excellent second ring choice.
Anyhow, I felt I should probably actually test my build out against a very commonly used and known to be powerful build once I acquired my full holy set to actually make sure it wasn't just powerful within fire, and I felt like it stood its ground.
Updated, made some improvements since I posted this. Finally able to gain enough defenses to comfortably hang out in T6 and also switch to Firestarter awhile back which was a big DPS boost.
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The skills:
Primary: Fist of the Heavens: Heaven's Tempest: this skill hits like a truck, leaves an AE whirlwind in its wake, and does very nice AE spread damage. In terms of raw killing power, I personally think this outperforms all the other secondaries.
Secondary: Falling Sword: Superheated: I REALLY like this skill, it hits like a truck, leaves a powerful DOT for 6 seconds after it lands and can be used as a secondary mobility skill.
Concentration: Shattered Ground: Provides a small healing buff. I use this to stack with the Falling Sword firey ground to create a circle of death, it melts mobs on T6 very quickly. Alternative to this being: Shield Glare: Divine Verdict: The baseline cool down for this ability is only 12 seconds without cool down reduction, and it both acts as a crowd control ability and strong damage debuff. It requires good positioning and timing to be used optimally, not to just be popped at its cool down.
Steed Charge: Nightmare: Great mobility skill, like all the other abilities I use I chose it for dual functionality, as it can also be used offensively to path through enemies and leave burning ground beneath them. Can be changed to Endurance specifically for groups to keep on the front lines and grab more chests/bodies to pop Harrington buff.
Laws of Jutsice: Decaying Strength: Ever since I started playing around with this thing I have been able to free up a lot of gear/skills that were previously dedicated to defense. For 5 seconds it massively increases my resistances and then for 5 seconds afterwards the mobs are debuffed and hit me like babies. With my 46% CDR this 10 second window is up the vast majority of the time it is needed.
Arakat's Champion: Firestarter: I had previously been using Prophet which is a great way to increase your toughness if you are dying too much. Once I was able to outgear the T6 toughness breakpoints I changed this to Firestarter which is a massive DPS buff.
Passives:
Heavenly Strength: No explaination needed.
Wrathful: A very commonly used passive that acts as a strong form of life leech, due to this passive the secondary stat on gear "health globe bonus" is highly desirable for crusaders. As the build spams an ability that costs 30 wrath more than once a second, every time you cast FOH you gain 25k HP + (1% of your total health globe bonus x 30).
Holy Cause: 10% DPS increase, if you feel brittle you can change either this or Finery to a more defensive passive, but the point of using the Prophet rune for Arakat's is to avoid using numerous other abilities to gain adequate defenses. (I currently have 93.01% negation from armor, but my resists are only providing ~56% reduction to specific elements).
Finery: With 2.0.5 this skill is drastically improved and provides both a DPS and armor bonus.
Mandatory gear:
Reaper's Wraps: This build loses the 5 wrath per second of the alterative Arakat's rune, so it is extremely helpful to counterbalance this by being able to refill your mana at will by running through the battlefield collecting health globes (although with enough resource cost reduction this isn't hugely necessary). These are also farmable which means you can craft one every time you have 120 essences.
Cindercoat: The one slot Akkan's set is not used. The resource cost reduction is mandatory for this spec.
5 piece Akkan's + RROG. I'll assume a baseline understanding of how the constant uptime Arakat's is, there are plenty of other guides around here that describe this well.
*** I am currently running with the 6 piece Akkans and either Bul Kathos or Unity rings as my Akkan chestpiece provides tons more toughness than the Cinder and I feel that its working better, mana thankfully isn't an issue with slow attack speed of Maximus not draining it as fast as Darklight does.
Hellskull: This now adds 10% DPS if you are wielding a 2 hander, this and Holy Cause together add 20% DPS, no small amount.
Harrington belt: The text on this item says "when you open a chest you gain increased damage". Things that will proc this buff include: corpses, loose tiles, weapon/armor racks and chests. It is not hard to keep this buff up 50% of the time in combat. I consider this belt the best belt in the game, bar none for all classes and specs, without any of the others even remotely coming close to its usefulness.
Maximus: As this is a fire build, its nice to have a potent 2-hand sword that has 15-20% fire damage as one of the stats. The fire chain itself hits VERY hard (mine currently crits for 13million and although I do not know the exact attack rate its clearly much higher than 1 per second). The original issue with the maximus demon is that he gets owned in T6 in a couple seconds. As I’ve increased my toughness to T6, I’ve found that he survives considerably longer at this point unless a hard hitting mob specifically melees him. Steed Charging down long halls with the pet active creates a pretty awesome death zone for the mobs stuck in that area.
Typically I attack by using Falling Sword on a group. As I land, I cast Law of Justice and Concencration to buff myself from damage and create a dual circle of death from both the Falling Sword and Conc. DOTs. I then spam FOH and/or align the maximus fire chain to hit the most important DPS targets.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Lytic-1611/hero/43964461
First my profile -http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/rfeather-2981/hero/41236311
So I played around with this last night, took me from T4 - T5, thank you for that. It does hit like a truck.
I have all gear but only 4 pieceAkkan's + RROG. When I get the 5th piece cool down shouldn't be an issue but currently it is. I'm short on wrath. So the question - what's the best way to add more wrath back into the build whilst maintaining highest possible dps? Would it be a shied glare restoring wrath? Prevoke instead of Laws to add wrath? Or maybe a Slash / Justice primary when everything is oncooldown and no wrath. I'm currently sitting at 40% CD.
Also another question for you -many people use Darklight with this build. (I personally prefer Maximus for range and downtime). Any views on that?
Would love to hear your thoughts! Thanks :o)
The second thing would be to max out your paragon points in to resource cost reduction. Unfortunately, <paragon 400 this means you are losing area damage instead, but if you have periods of no dps due to wrath it might be an overall dps gain you would need to test that.
When playing solo use the Templar for the 1.1 wrath regen per second which is helpful.
Lastly, try to find a good Hellskull exactly like yours but with wrath regen instead of % HP.
If you have a "Swiftmount" one handed flail and use the Endurance rune and Lord Commander Passive, you can maintain Fleeting Shrine like movement speed constantly. I find it really REALLY helpful for bounty farming, as I sprint literally the entire way to my goal.
As a good general rule of thumb regarding gear slots where you have to make these types of choices: you want an amulet with %elemental damage / STR / CC / CHD , bracers with % elemental and CC, a SOJ with % elemental / STR / cooldown reduction and either CC or CHD, and a RROG that rolls with either cooldown reduction (and change LoH to CC) , CC or CHD (and then change LoH to CD reduction).
I just wonder how beneficial elemental would be over CC, CD.
I tried out the holy shotgun build in comparison to my fire one for a side by side comparison and found T6 clears to be mildly slower as holy. The issue I have with the holy shotgun build is that it completely revolves around spamming one ability, and this requires adjustments to all the other skills to allow for adequate wrath generation even with 3.83 wrath generation on my Fate of the Fell (Law of Valor changed from Critical to Unstoppable Force and Shield glare from Divine Verdict to Zealous Glare in my case).
I'd say overall the actual punch of Heaven's Fury: Fires of Heaven obviously hits stronger than Fist of the Heaven's: Heaven's Tempest - but, when the Maximus fire chain, 20% more damage from Shield Glare, damage from Nightmare are added up the overall dps was higher with fire, at least in my case.
The difference in clear times was minimal, but I personally enjoyed the fire play style a bit more. The shotgun build relies on melee range, and to hit mobs with multiple spears of heavens fury being very close. The other abilities become support abilities for it, as it costs 40 wrath, and ultimately I felt like the build play style was "walk up and spam this one attack, rinse and repeat". Powerful, simple and gets the job done- but I didn't think it was as fun to play. Another nice aspect of the holy build was I obviously didn't need a Cindercoat anymore, so I just used 6 piece Akkans. At this point I was able to drop my RROG for a nice Unity with 471 STR, 5.5 CC, 12% elite damage and 8% CDR. I still don't need it to survive in T6, but in terms of raw DPS I felt it was an excellent second ring choice.
Anyhow, I felt I should probably actually test my build out against a very commonly used and known to be powerful build once I acquired my full holy set to actually make sure it wasn't just powerful within fire, and I felt like it stood its ground.