Drop dashing strike for Inner Sanctum, drop SW for Cyclone strike. Gasp drop dashing strike? It's not an easy call and the escape utility is something you'll miss, but in a group state you need someone to function as control/tank. This doesn't mean you need to build Zdps, this is about balance. Breath of wind is more than enough to keep your spirit up and yes there will be time you are spirit capped, you'll also need to rotate in a few CSs in there, which also spawn clones and dumps spirit. Its a really small interrupt in damage and the added benefit is the way to go.
SWK can be group viable, you simply need to make concessions.
If you read/are using the FotH holy build that is on this forum, I am the author. If not, I'd suggest you look into it and see if it could help you at all on your problems.
The biggest problem you have is your weapon. Regardless of the %holy damage the weapon is just horrid. For reference on the damagebounds of 1hs and 2hs is (1800-2300) and (2400-3000). Rough Estimates, but that is basically the damage level you'll see of 1h and 2h weapons. Your 1h is 1900. So as far as 1hs go you are in the bottom of the damage ranges. Skycutter is a good weapon for this build if you can get one that is closer to 2250+ dps. The math behind this is that a 2700~ 2h is roughly 25% stronger than a 1h. 20% holy damage brings them closer and a dps passive instead of Heavens Strength would bring them almost on par. What you have is drastically holding you back sadly.
Your best bet is to use a 2h with super high top end. There are a few 1hs that are viable on a crusader but they need to be rolled very well and have an entire build that supports them. A lot of the posts here have good info
I don't have a problem with Laws, and problem is probably to strong a word, but I think LoV>Critical is way over used. I'd like to see the other two laws used, like Justice>immovable object or perhaps find a Law o Hope to fit into a build. Judge>FS is a good combo, i've enjoy that one myself. I really didn't mean it as a criticism of your build, more of a criticism of our skill choices that pigeon hole us into these two moves so solidly.
I wrote the Fist of Retribution guide that's on these forums. You should try that build for a bit and see what you think of our single target. I've kill t3 Butcher in 24s. No its not super high end, but that's still like 300m damage in under 30s which prob constitutes a decent single target damage lol :).
Still like your build. I can't wait for sweeps fire dot to get fixed.
Bombardment>impactful I believe. The one that is 3360% weapon damage if you want to use that.
More on CDR:
As a single stat, its not that good. However the more you get of it the stronger it is. I would NOT recommend sacrificing key stats for it however. The most important DPS stats in this game for crusader are Crit Damage, %elem, %skill, and CDR. I would just about never sacrifice CD on gear for CDR as it is simply the strongest dps stat in the game by a mile. Likewise %elem is prob the second strongest. %skill is very good and is personal preference to how much of it you want. I personally only look for it on my boots to modify my spender.
So as to your gear to reroll: I would leave most of that alone. The place I would look to get it is helm, as a royal gem is 12% CDR and the largest starting point for CDR. You already have CDR on your shoulders, and the other places you'd lose to much. I'd reroll the %BS on helm to a socket, and use paragon points in CDR. Its ok to sack CD in paragon points for CDR. Going forward look for CDR on those places you listed and see if you can work it in. I'd follow the following stat guide line:
CC:40% anything much beyond 40% is slightly wasted. CC is a gateway stat and you simply need to crit often, not all the time.
No offense to your build, but I'm sick of the Judgement>LoV staples in so many guides. I find it uninspired and bland. Also just a massive crutch. I'd rather drop both the skills for another kind of utility or more flavor of the build than just another two buttons of buffs. Personal pref and not really anything wrong with using those two moves, just /sigh at yet another guide where you're more of a buff bot than a damage contributor.
Fain is incorrect. Blessed Shield and Shield Bash do scale with %block modifiers. It was changed in a hotfix about a week after release of RoS, so that should help.
I'm not sure what you are looking for here. You are full legend with gear that is focused and on a build and should be doing very good damage. If you're just looking for input, here's what I'd change, Heads up, its long. Bored+Stoned+2AM= this rant.
Divine Fortress>Renewal. You shouldn't need so much defensive oriented passives when you are going for a block build. Why you would go for block and not have renewal in there is beyond me. There are a couple things that you can't block, but by and large blocking is the best defensive stat in the game. If you're curious how blocking math works, it calculates damage based on your armor/resists and then after that you roll block chance/amount. Its not 10-24k upfront. If you play with damage numbers on, depending on difficulty and gear, most hits are are not greater than 20k unless they are a hard hitting spell or a wind up move from a bruiser mob.
Bombardment>Condemn:Unleash.I see you are using AC>Rally. It is the heart of my build also. Getting a 1-2 more bombardments off on an elite pack is nice, but its a physical damage move that you aren't really supporting. Its a fantastic move so you can get away with it, but Condemn is much short CD and is holy so its modified by your gear. Unleash makes Condemn instant so you don't need to wait the 3s for the explosion. This during AC is pure destruction.
Heaven's Fury>Blessed Ground:Ascendancy is great. You can keep it if you like it. The reason I use Blessed Ground is because It is usually more damage than ascendancy. Ascendancy is a little wider, so it hits a few more mobs, and does about 25% more damage per tick. Blessed Ground caused a ground effect for roughly 75% of the 1280% base of Heaven's Fury, or roughly 58% of Ascendancy value of 1680%. The ground effect plus the base beam does 30% more damage just from that alone. Blessed Ground is also wider than the ascendancy beam by about 4-6 yards, so it actually cleaves better. Now the real point. Blessed Ground hits more frequently. AC>Rally scales off of # attacks in a given amount of time. This means that if you can apply DoTs and other such effects that simply hit vary often (HF,BS) then you can cycle your moves more. Blessed Ground is literally twice as effective at this than ascendancy.
Phalanx>Shield Glare:Divine VerdictSynergy is the name of the game. Phallanx doesn't fit here. Its costing you wrath, and you don't have a generator so you simply have to wait for it to regen and its physical damage. It doesn't bring anything to your kit. Since you are using a 1h, maximizing damage here is going to be very important. Shield Glare gives you 20% more damage, a 4s stun that can hit a ton of enemies, and causes neph globes to spawn given your bracer. SYNERGY.
More CDRThis is something not enough Crusaders do. People seem to think that because wizards stack crit/CD/AS out that ass that that is the only way to build damage. There is also some tabu on Resource Cost and CDR. If you look at a stat and intrinsically cringe without fully thinking about how the stat truly plays or effects your character than you might as well just BAAAH along with the rest of the sheep. CDR effects a minimum of 4 abilities almost all crusaders. Here, you have a build that allows you 5. This increases the effectiveness of CDR on your build by 25%. Why is CDR good? Think about damage over an elite fight. A Wizard will have a rather high straight line where they throw one spell at it a ton of times. Crusaders have a really high peak, dwarfing the wizards damage, for a second or two, then falls to a much lower sustained line followed by another peak when CDs come back up. CDR drastically lowers the time between peaks. Average Damage over that time = DPS and a far more realistic look at DPS than the ignorant DAMAGE stat that blizzard has given us.
You might think, well I have AC>Rally, so I don't need CDR. Wrong. CDR lowers the CD of AC, it also lowers the amount of procs needed to use your spells again. Say each of your Spells has a 15s CD, and you get about 5 reduction of CDs per 5 seconds, so 1 a second. This + time means that it would take 7.5s to get your spells off CD again. What if those spells were 10s instead? THen you'd only need 5 seconds to use those spells again. Over the course of 20s of AC, the first scenario nets you 3 uses (0,7.5s,15s). The second nets you 5(0,5,10,15,20).
These aren't direct examples of situations in game, to many variables. The concept does apply. Another thing to consider is effective up time. Look at Heavens Fury, 6s duration and 20s CD. 6/20 = 30%. With 40% CDR the CD is no 12s, but the move still lasts 6s. 6/12= 50%. Keep in mind that all of our abilities go on CD from the moment of use, not the moment there effect ends. So for AC, the CD is actually 70s, as its up for 20s (90-20). With 40% CDR that CD becomes 54s (90-(90*.4)). So now the move is up for 20s and down for 34s. Look at hot drastic the difference here is.
TL:DR, CDR= more move fequency=more damage than any other stat when considering damage over given time.
Ya holy damage 2h would be amazing. Seems off that there are so many 1hs with % ele damage on them, but only maximus with %fire damage for 2h. %fire has the most unique legends, so maybe thats just a part of the appeal.
Darklight is pretty awesome. I think crusaders with certain 1h is completely fine and can do just as well as with a 2h. Darklight is prob one of those one hands.
Golden Scourge might be close. 2h-1h damge difference is roughly 25-30% damage difference. So 20% holy damage and a roll in the 2200 might be close. I do think smite is a lack luster builder. perhaps with holy cause + finery without heavens strength and 20% holy damage, it might be really close.
The down side here is that % weapon damage is huge, and it will drastically lower all your abilities. Try both, see what you think.
You can use the Hallowed Shield (i'm jealous, I don't have that set) as the %holy damage there is awesome. The Hallowed has a nice set bonus, but I'm not sure the 2p is > than the stats a 2h weapon bring. If you could find a 2h with holy damage that would be your best bet in the long run. I think CD is still a huge stat, I wouldn't recommend dropping that anywhere if you can avoid it, though AS is what I would drop for CDR.
The best places to find CDR is:
Helm:Socket
Shoulder: CDR Roll (one of the best places, the %skill here I don't like (condemn/HF) because we only hit these buttons so often. I prefer more frequent use (CDR) to a small increase in %skilll here)
Gloves: IMO our Trifecta gloves are STR/CC/CD/CDR. Not super ideal here, but plausable.
Rings: Again with Trifecta rolls, or here is where I would drop CC. Stay at ~40%CC but crit rolls the lowest here
Shield: Rolling Affixes on shields SUUUCKS. Blizz needs to address this because there is about 27 different things that can roll here. Can still get up to 10% CDR here
Paragon points: 50 points is 10% CDR. Compared to 5% crit, 10% AS and 50% CD, CDR has a really high value. CC prob has the lowest as 5% crit is actually really small compared to what 10% CDR and 50% CD bring to the table.
Edit: to actually answer your question, 100% CD is a lot. I do not think giving that up, if possible, is the best way to go. But I would recommend getting around 25-35% CDR. I'm starting to believe that getting a decent amount of these stats is the way to go, I do not know that a 50-60% CDR build is really viable given all that you would need to give up. I think I'm around 39% CDR and I love it.
Also CDR is not addititive. This means that 8% from gloves and 12% from helm socket =/= 20% CDR. Its like 18.xx%. Not sure on math here.
if you got any tips, appreciated (btw i got the GyrfaIcon's thing but it s so boring to use that im using this buiId over bIessed shieId spamming, for more singIe target dps -0 which the BS buiID Iacks, so i find that eIites are actuaIIy easier on ur buiId )
AS is a nice stat if you are looking for responsive attacks from your character. It comes out to a very small increase in dps though. AS is largely a quality of life spell that only impacts your ability to build wrath slightly faster and spend it slightly faster. This is an increase in dps but one I find to be less than what is worth in from the investment into the stat. Personally I like CDR as our "attack speed" stat because CD effects 4 of our abilities. More attack speed does not mean you get to hit your hard hitting buttons more often, in fact it delays them because you are investing into attack speed. As a class I don't find that we need to hit frequently to do our damage, we need a big meaty 2h that can bring the pain that scales off of our % weapon damage on so many of our skills.
For instance, with 40% CDR I hit provoke very often, which gives 30 + 5wrath per target hit. This can be compared to the amount of wrath you get from your spender. I'm not so good with D3's math that I can calculate this out for you, but with next to no AS on my gear I very very rarely have wrath problems. And If I do, it's only a matter of a few seconds till I can taunt again.
I believe the Hallowed 2 set is AR and % attack speed? I do not know if that is worth losing out and 400+ dps and double STR/stats that a 2h weapon could provide (you mentioned your 1h axe). I'm of the option that very few 1h are viable (but there are some) and that you need a 2h weapon for the crusader to really shine.
As for passives, those are very personal. I can agree with Renewal, its great for healing if you are finding wrathful lacking. I personally don't like to run to many healing passives and like to get 1-2 offensive passives, Utility passive, Healing passive. Paragon points are largely personal preference, I simply listed the way I enjoy spending them :).
I'm glad you and others are enjoying the build though. Hope my feedback helps :D.
I have pretty decent gear, my armor is in the guide info, and I crush t3. I can do t4 and t5 but its just a little slower and requires higher resists. I've found t3 to be the most optimal farming speed for where my gear is at the moment. I'm glad everyone is having such a great time with the build though. Its nice to hear that my guide is having an effect on people enjoying the crusader class.
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SWK can be group viable, you simply need to make concessions.
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The biggest problem you have is your weapon. Regardless of the %holy damage the weapon is just horrid. For reference on the damagebounds of 1hs and 2hs is (1800-2300) and (2400-3000). Rough Estimates, but that is basically the damage level you'll see of 1h and 2h weapons. Your 1h is 1900. So as far as 1hs go you are in the bottom of the damage ranges. Skycutter is a good weapon for this build if you can get one that is closer to 2250+ dps. The math behind this is that a 2700~ 2h is roughly 25% stronger than a 1h. 20% holy damage brings them closer and a dps passive instead of Heavens Strength would bring them almost on par. What you have is drastically holding you back sadly.
Your best bet is to use a 2h with super high top end. There are a few 1hs that are viable on a crusader but they need to be rolled very well and have an entire build that supports them. A lot of the posts here have good info
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I wrote the Fist of Retribution guide that's on these forums. You should try that build for a bit and see what you think of our single target. I've kill t3 Butcher in 24s. No its not super high end, but that's still like 300m damage in under 30s which prob constitutes a decent single target damage lol :).
Still like your build. I can't wait for sweeps fire dot to get fixed.
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More on CDR:
As a single stat, its not that good. However the more you get of it the stronger it is. I would NOT recommend sacrificing key stats for it however. The most important DPS stats in this game for crusader are Crit Damage, %elem, %skill, and CDR. I would just about never sacrifice CD on gear for CDR as it is simply the strongest dps stat in the game by a mile. Likewise %elem is prob the second strongest. %skill is very good and is personal preference to how much of it you want. I personally only look for it on my boots to modify my spender.
So as to your gear to reroll: I would leave most of that alone. The place I would look to get it is helm, as a royal gem is 12% CDR and the largest starting point for CDR. You already have CDR on your shoulders, and the other places you'd lose to much. I'd reroll the %BS on helm to a socket, and use paragon points in CDR. Its ok to sack CD in paragon points for CDR. Going forward look for CDR on those places you listed and see if you can work it in. I'd follow the following stat guide line:
CC:40% anything much beyond 40% is slightly wasted. CC is a gateway stat and you simply need to crit often, not all the time.
CD:as much as possible
CDR: Where available
%Elem: as much as possible.
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/self respect.
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I'm not sure what you are looking for here. You are full legend with gear that is focused and on a build and should be doing very good damage. If you're just looking for input, here's what I'd change, Heads up, its long. Bored+Stoned+2AM= this rant.
Divine Fortress>Renewal. You shouldn't need so much defensive oriented passives when you are going for a block build. Why you would go for block and not have renewal in there is beyond me. There are a couple things that you can't block, but by and large blocking is the best defensive stat in the game. If you're curious how blocking math works, it calculates damage based on your armor/resists and then after that you roll block chance/amount. Its not 10-24k upfront. If you play with damage numbers on, depending on difficulty and gear, most hits are are not greater than 20k unless they are a hard hitting spell or a wind up move from a bruiser mob.
Bombardment>Condemn:Unleash.I see you are using AC>Rally. It is the heart of my build also. Getting a 1-2 more bombardments off on an elite pack is nice, but its a physical damage move that you aren't really supporting. Its a fantastic move so you can get away with it, but Condemn is much short CD and is holy so its modified by your gear. Unleash makes Condemn instant so you don't need to wait the 3s for the explosion. This during AC is pure destruction.
Heaven's Fury>Blessed Ground:Ascendancy is great. You can keep it if you like it. The reason I use Blessed Ground is because It is usually more damage than ascendancy. Ascendancy is a little wider, so it hits a few more mobs, and does about 25% more damage per tick. Blessed Ground caused a ground effect for roughly 75% of the 1280% base of Heaven's Fury, or roughly 58% of Ascendancy value of 1680%. The ground effect plus the base beam does 30% more damage just from that alone. Blessed Ground is also wider than the ascendancy beam by about 4-6 yards, so it actually cleaves better. Now the real point. Blessed Ground hits more frequently. AC>Rally scales off of # attacks in a given amount of time. This means that if you can apply DoTs and other such effects that simply hit vary often (HF,BS) then you can cycle your moves more. Blessed Ground is literally twice as effective at this than ascendancy.
Phalanx>Shield Glare:Divine VerdictSynergy is the name of the game. Phallanx doesn't fit here. Its costing you wrath, and you don't have a generator so you simply have to wait for it to regen and its physical damage. It doesn't bring anything to your kit. Since you are using a 1h, maximizing damage here is going to be very important. Shield Glare gives you 20% more damage, a 4s stun that can hit a ton of enemies, and causes neph globes to spawn given your bracer. SYNERGY.
More CDRThis is something not enough Crusaders do. People seem to think that because wizards stack crit/CD/AS out that ass that that is the only way to build damage. There is also some tabu on Resource Cost and CDR. If you look at a stat and intrinsically cringe without fully thinking about how the stat truly plays or effects your character than you might as well just BAAAH along with the rest of the sheep. CDR effects a minimum of 4 abilities almost all crusaders. Here, you have a build that allows you 5. This increases the effectiveness of CDR on your build by 25%. Why is CDR good? Think about damage over an elite fight. A Wizard will have a rather high straight line where they throw one spell at it a ton of times. Crusaders have a really high peak, dwarfing the wizards damage, for a second or two, then falls to a much lower sustained line followed by another peak when CDs come back up. CDR drastically lowers the time between peaks. Average Damage over that time = DPS and a far more realistic look at DPS than the ignorant DAMAGE stat that blizzard has given us.
You might think, well I have AC>Rally, so I don't need CDR. Wrong. CDR lowers the CD of AC, it also lowers the amount of procs needed to use your spells again. Say each of your Spells has a 15s CD, and you get about 5 reduction of CDs per 5 seconds, so 1 a second. This + time means that it would take 7.5s to get your spells off CD again. What if those spells were 10s instead? THen you'd only need 5 seconds to use those spells again. Over the course of 20s of AC, the first scenario nets you 3 uses (0,7.5s,15s). The second nets you 5(0,5,10,15,20).
These aren't direct examples of situations in game, to many variables. The concept does apply. Another thing to consider is effective up time. Look at Heavens Fury, 6s duration and 20s CD. 6/20 = 30%. With 40% CDR the CD is no 12s, but the move still lasts 6s. 6/12= 50%. Keep in mind that all of our abilities go on CD from the moment of use, not the moment there effect ends. So for AC, the CD is actually 70s, as its up for 20s (90-20). With 40% CDR that CD becomes 54s (90-(90*.4)). So now the move is up for 20s and down for 34s. Look at hot drastic the difference here is.
TL:DR, CDR= more move fequency=more damage than any other stat when considering damage over given time.
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The down side here is that % weapon damage is huge, and it will drastically lower all your abilities. Try both, see what you think.
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For instance, with 40% CDR I hit provoke very often, which gives 30 + 5wrath per target hit. This can be compared to the amount of wrath you get from your spender. I'm not so good with D3's math that I can calculate this out for you, but with next to no AS on my gear I very very rarely have wrath problems. And If I do, it's only a matter of a few seconds till I can taunt again.
I believe the Hallowed 2 set is AR and % attack speed? I do not know if that is worth losing out and 400+ dps and double STR/stats that a 2h weapon could provide (you mentioned your 1h axe). I'm of the option that very few 1h are viable (but there are some) and that you need a 2h weapon for the crusader to really shine.
As for passives, those are very personal. I can agree with Renewal, its great for healing if you are finding wrathful lacking. I personally don't like to run to many healing passives and like to get 1-2 offensive passives, Utility passive, Healing passive. Paragon points are largely personal preference, I simply listed the way I enjoy spending them :).
I'm glad you and others are enjoying the build though. Hope my feedback helps :D.
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