f13.net

Any thoughts so far?  I rolled one tonight and have had a bit of fun with it.  Only midway through Act 1 on hard, lvl 16, but so far I haven't even thought of using a health pot.  Very tanky with some effective CC.

I like the animations.

It's not a Wizard though.

I think the primary attacks kinda blow.  Two ranged attacks and Two smashy attacks and only one of them procs the shield.

It's kinda annoying.

I'm levelling one purely in Adventure Mode. 22-ish so far. Very tanky and starting to get some decent AOE type attacks. The death from above thingy is fun.

Same-o. Pretty unimpressed with the damage output but that leap-smash makes up for it.

I saw a tooltip that said they do not get the 30% damage reduction that barbs and monks do. Why they are considered a ranged character instead of tanky melee, I do not know. Word is they may be squishy at 70 though.

Got one to the 50s, not sure I will bother getting him to 70 anytime soon, but fun ride so far.

Rolling with all the Big Boom skills atm, condemn, falling sword, & ion cannon. Works fairly well. Just press all three and basically anything not a super unique is dead.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/crusader#acTilh!bVUh!aZZZbZ (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/crusader#acTilh!bVUh!aZZZbZ)

I was running a build like Ragnoros while leveling early on. It was something like this (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/crusader#aZhilY!bYUh!bababb), and I had found a neck with a Vortex+Snare effect and a weapon that created 2 additional Rays for a 5-ray light show. It works fine in lower difficulties and mid levels. At high levels, it just doesn't work. It seems like after 60 they're just not in a good place right now. The dps is really low and to reach that dps point when it isn't shit then their defense turns to paper and they die really fast.

Oddly enough, the best build I've found is a defensive one focused on thorns, but make sure to bring a Wizardbutton spamming monkey with godmode activated so you don't fall asleep on shitty bosses like the Skeleton King where thorn builds take 10mins to kill him. Wizards will get to enjoy the lack of need to kite and +80% crit chance buff for 6s every 20s. Or just re-do your build for bosses and suffer against shamans/mallet lords.


http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/crusader#bkdRXQ!TheU!YbYYab

Explained in the spoiler

Fun build with the Thorns.

I think you can run a lot of different defensive builds.  Best build I found is to just maximize Blessed Hammer.

You HAVE to have Judgement/Resolved.  80% to Crit a huge group and immobilize them for 6s is NUTS.

I'm also running a ranged build similar to yours Ragnaros. Level 45 atm, and doing the whole socketed weapon with a high level ruby in it thing. Shit melts.

Socketing a thorns gem in may actually be even more absurd by the way.

At level 40 I got to equip a level 60 legendary 2h axe and some pox faluds (you know, the fart pants). For about ten glorious levels, my method was "air drop into a pack, pick up loot." Didn't even have to swing my weapon unless it was an elite pack.  :why_so_serious:

Now I'm 66 and those fun times are way, way over.  :heartbreak:

My wizard wore the Stinky Britches for about 30 levels. Best trousers ever.  :heart:

I love that the effect icon for them is a skunk.

Reflective Skin/Thorns build hotfixed, something about killing Ghom on t6 in 3 seconds was broken. Of course, this happens right after I find a weapon named Hack with a socket and good stats that applies 90%+ of thorns on every attack and socket it with a royal level thorns gem -_-

Really though, this class is still severely lacking in comparison. They can survive things but do little to no damage (outside of their burst every 30-40seconds). So they're essentially a buffer/debuffer for other classes at this point. Which is kind of alright, but the costs are too high, durations too short, and/or cooldowns are still too long to be really useful. I have found another build that does good dps, but feels a little bit lacking in survivability (even with 9mil toughness) on t1/t2

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/crusader#UedfOQ!Ugia!aZYbYb

Spam hammers and cooldowns when they're up. Try to combine Judgement + LoValor with Bombardment. Blessed Hammers seem to hit enough if you keep mobs close

I can confirm that this is indeed hilarious  :awesome_for_real:

Got my Crusader to 56 and am starting to feel the low DPS that's been mentioned. Just levelling in Adventure Mode and had to drop down to Normal because it was feeling like this:
(http://i.imgur.com/HZo3tVR.gif)

Crusader is the new wizard.

Buddy I play with is already at 12M toughness / 600k dps.

Time to start one of my own.

That's amazing can you link his profile?

haha no it isn't. I believe that's real, it just isn't.

^This. It's not the new wizard, it's not even in the same league.

For reference: wizards are hitting 2 million dps now on their paper doll. 

For context, that does not include all the +% on their gear.

Sheesh, i thought my wizard was baller at 350k.

How on earth is two million even possible.  I'm still wearing multiple level 60 items, because the level 70 drops I've been seeing are so terrible.

Hell, I never broke 100k at level 60.

All I know is that I can kill shit on my wizard very fast. I'm talking 100 million hp mobs in just a hair over 20 seconds. I've seen other wizards recently that just make my dps look pathetic.

Also what is this paper doll that was mentioned?

The guy I saw link his profile on Reddit has changed since last night, so it was apparently a gimmick thing.   He's "Only" 1.1 million now.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Weily-1945/hero/778135

Hell, my Monk has crappy weapons and no set pieces yet and is at 200k.  300k 'at the top' is no big shits for Crusaders and says they're kind of weak unless they're playing "Taunt all the things."

That guy isn't even capped out and doesn't even have the best gear. There's an issue right now though with one of the best sets, the shield in the Hallowed set is rolling at level 60 instead of 70. So no one is making the set despite it being UNBELIEVABLY GOOD.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Rath-1709/hero/43502565 (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Rath-1709/hero/43502565)

I'm finding that Condemn is now no longer doing the same damage.  Or, in fact, hurting much of fuck all.  Seemed to happen once I hit the high levels.  I'm now 64 and, frankly, if it continues like this it's getting rotated out.  I can understand it not just killing things at this high level (despite my huge dps) but I can't understand it not even budging the health bars at all.

Yeah... got my Crusader to 70. Put a couple of legendaries on, tooled around a bit. Went back to my Wizard. Wiz is tankier and more DPSy.

Only thing that's made the Crusader viable for me is 1) playing it on Normal with my son (he's 10, so he wants to explode things not hack away at them. I'm good with that.)  2) Giving him a +260 damage gemmed weapon. It's HILARIOUS.  3) ION CANNON - PPPEWWWWW

This is sort of the spot I'm at too. I got my Barb to 70 first in RoS and felt pretty useless in groups compared to ranged classes, existing seemingly only to buff their damage and keep enemies roughly in place. My crusader hit 70 this weekend and after collecting some average 70 gear I find myself in the same position. You end up investing so much of your gear into defensive stats just to be able to survive melee range that your DPS is shit compared to classes that don't have to worry about it.

Acting as the buff bitch for your group and keeping everything in place might seem like a perfectly functional role until you remember that the ranged classes have plenty of CC/clumping abilities on their own and they'd still probably be better off bringing another Wiz instead of a Barb/Crusader/Monk. I realized just how little I was bringing to the table when I played in a 4-ranged T2 group (ranged crusader build just to survive at the time) and they were able to just chew through everything without the benefit (or dead weight) of a tanky class.

Wizards are the tank class.

Return of the tank mage! :awesome_for_real:

Got her to 70 last night  http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Flaffy-1442/hero/44205085 (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Flaffy-1442/hero/44205085)  Edit:  The +Int on the mace was modded to +1k strength instead, but it doesn't show.

It was definitely a slog in the upper 50s, and again in the upper 60s.  I had to drop from Inferno to, uh, whatever's two notches below Inferno for much of those levels.  Wound up having to grind from mid-68 to 70 before hitting Malthael.

Part of that is that my gear is definitely sub-optimal.  It's not hard to gear for tankiness, or to gear for dps, but putting both together at the same time is proving to be troublesome.  The wizard still just tanks better.  As an example, both of them hit the enrage timer on the Butcher, but the wizard just stands in the fire blasting away.  The crusader can't come close to doing that (although using that shitty Andariel's helm isn't helping that...)

My single-target DPS sucks.  I find myself using Holy Bolt for the healing while waiting on cooldowns since I can't for the life of me seem to get any +life on hit on gear.  I like the shield proc effect, but the short range attack is just impractical for all the mobs that won't fucking sit still or come in close enough to hit.

DPS vs packs isn't bad.  Instant-cast condemn & the flail attack with the +80% crit effect are good at clearing packs of white mobs, and I loooove the orbital laser.  I need a lvl 70 version of the shield that reduces the cooldown by half, that thing is awesome.  Or a shitload of cooldown reducing stat on everything.

I was really sad when I outgrew that shield that halved the cooldown of that. I need a 70 version too!

Did you really hit the enrage timer on the butcher with a wizard? I have to see it to believe it.

That's not hard on Torment though.  Like many of the bosses, he's a huge fucking hitpoint sink and he doesn't stay still as much as the others do.

My wizard isn't some 1-million dps monstrosity, she's only about 365k paperdoll dps + the arcane and skill damage gear she's wearing.  The Butcher gets to about 20% (Torment I) before the enrage, but it's academic since she can still facetank him.

The crusader maybe got him to 50% before the enrage, and couldn't take the fire.  I'll have to try it again now; her dps is only slightly behind the wizard and her toughness has improved considerably as well.

EDIT: Attempted Torment I Butcher again with the Crusader, got him to 25% before enrage this time.  Fire damage was better this time, still dropping health but at a level the healing wells & potions could deal with.  So my Crusader is now almost as good as a bad wizard  :oh_i_see:

Got my new level 70 laser shield  :grin:

I do need to see about getting a socket in my hat for a diamond, and maybe dump my attack speed paragon points into cooldown reduction.  I should be able to get the cooldown on heaven's fury to ~6 seconds without hurting too much, which would basically be 100% uptime on the effect (since it lasts 6 seconds).

All the good crusader shit is on cooldowns rather than wrath anyway.  It's just hard to wean myself away from bigger paperdoll numbers=better dps.

While I'm bitching, sweep needs a goddamn holy damage rune.  Having one lone physical damage skill in my rotation is a pain in my butt, but I don't really like any of the other wrath spenders.

Crusader really seems to have been buffed.  Found myself unable to die on Torment I.

Alas, the skills are still not the most synergistic nor exciting things ever.  I doubt that'll change much.

They're burning crusade paladins with orbital lasers.   At least that's how I'm building mine.  We'll see how good it turns out to be.

That's how I built mine.  Don't get me wrong, it works fine, but it's really boring just swiping things until your cooldowns are up again.

Which seems to be how it rolls.

Could be just me hating the D3 skill system of course.  Let's not rule that out.

I don't understand why they made some choices with the elemental synergies.

Its as if one person designed the wizard, and everyone else went another way.  Every ability should have Fire/Cold/Lightning and then different classes can have a couple of the the other ones poison (WD, DH), arcane (Wiz), phys (barb, DH), and holy (Crux/Monk).

Instead the only synergy Crux has is Holy.

Ok, made a huge change to skills and gear.

Why?

Because even a mediocre-rolled Maximus is a fucking broken weapon  :drillf:  Fire chains rock when you're not the one forced to stand in them...

Yeah, I keep hoping a better weapon will drop for my Wiz so I can give my Crusader my Maximus when he hits 70.

Wait, the fire chain between you and the demon is an actual fire chain?

Yup.  Doesn't scale with +fire damage unfortunately, but it will with more dps/crit damage/etc.

For perspective, currently for me it crits for a little under 4 million, while sweep is critting for between 5-6 million.  However, sweep doesn't tick twice a second on everything in a line, and the demon lives for about 15 seconds if not killed.

On T1, that means swing a few times to spawn the demon, then run down the hallway letting everything you find chase you.  The demon will follow way behind you as well, and everything between you & your pet demon dies while you just gather more monsters.

T2 is almost as easy, T3 feels about "right" for difficulty.  At that point the chain is just nice extra dps while still having to burn all my other skills.

I still need to reroll some stats if I'm going to keep the build, but even with everything optimized I'm guessing T4 would be as far as this would take me.

My Crusader is 36 or so, but I'm concentrating on him now almost 100%. 

I tried using a stripped down but similar build to yours.  It's good, but at this level relies on condemn a bit too much for my liking.  How does it work at 70?  Does the M1 skill (can't remember primary attack name) do any significant damage?

The holy version or the fire version? Justice left click went from "meh" to "ok" damage.  Punish I used to actively hate, now I'm only mildly angry with it for its lack of range since the fire 'splosion is now a more useful source of damage.

The holy one has more healing, if you use the passive for heal on holy damage, and/or holy bolt, but fire - with my bracer, magefist, and maximus I've already got more +fire damage than my old +holy damage build, and that leaves a cindercoat and +fire mods on my andariel's and an amulet to push me to somewhere around +100% fire damage.

And yet, thanks to the lack of synergies Ironwood mentioned, Condemn will still get none of that since it's not fire damage  :uhrr:

Here's my crusader, nigh indestructible on T1 and my dps is pretty solid as well.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/starrynight-1168/hero/45619240

I just don't grok the love everyone seems to have for blessed hammer.  Doesn't float my boat for some reason.

I hate that fucking spell but I hated Hammerdin.

I'm going with, "It pops up on a shit ton of gear and they had to reroll another stat."

The hammer is 360degree aoe that can be going while you do other shit and it also provides a good bit of mobility as well since you can move/drop/move/drop etc.  There's no max number of targets and with fire the pools it leaves on the ground provide solid coverage and with the patch a good amount of damage as well.

I hated the hammer at first as well but all the other wrath spending alternatives don't seem to have the same cost/dmg efficiency.

It's slow, though.

Here's what I am running right now, I do mostly a lightning build. So lightning and physical I guess. My gear is mostly pretty new and no longer optimized for lightning at all but still works great. I need more forgotten souls since I have 37% + holy I need to try to re roll to lightning.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Toadchewer-1728/hero/44089698 (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Toadchewer-1728/hero/44089698)

T1 is easy with this build, takes me usually about 20-25 minutes to do a T1 rift by myself. For bosses I jump on them with Falling Sword, the lightning rune usually stuns them in place. Pop Laws of Valor then Bombardment and Phalanx with Bodyguard rune and they usually melt. The lightning rune on Blessed Hammer is pretty awesome since it keeps doing damage after the initial hammer has hit.

Finery ?

I don't need to up my ability to survive, I just need more DPS. Not a lot of other choices to add DPS.

Playing a thorns build now on my wee dude and it's a LOT more fun.  Burns through beasties at a rate of knots.

How much thorn damage does it take to be viable?  I played around with it while it was broken post-patch, but haven't really given it a whirl otherwise.

At low levels? It just takes a marquis topaz and a weapon with a socket in it.

It's no longer as massively overpowered as it was (mostly due to Iron Skin being, well, not working as intended) but it really, really ups the DPS and melts enemies when done right.  I only have about 18k in thorns, but I have the sanguinary bracers and the Maiden talent, so I find that bosses are smacking their head off a brick wall when I pop the skills.  Which cooldown remarkably quickly.

My char is in this thread if you want to have a look at him lately.

It doesn't seem like that would scale terribly well when mobs in higher difficulty levels have tens of millions of hps.

Thorns scales with your primary stat at a rate of I believe 25%, and that goes up to full scaling when Iron Skin/reflectivewhatever is active - so it does actually scale.

Yup, with the 50k bugged thorns & 8k strength, the iron skin 200% thorn damage rune was giving me crits for 30 million.  I'm guessing Ironwood is still seeing crits for 9-10 million?  And most elite packs tick damage on you quickly.

The ~1/2 million thorn damage at T6 was critting for 250 million, but I had trouble living long enough to pop Iron Skin  :oh_i_see:

I haven't crunched any numbers or anything, but I breeze through T1, even on 4 player.  Indeed, if it wasn't for the wife, I'd kick it up a notch.

I have provoke and shield block skin, also bowmen and the law that procs Nephalim.  Running into a pack and then popping all them means the pack vanishes.

For ranged chaps, I have Captain Americas 3 shields and they crit a fuckload and hit everything, so we're good there.  Main is Punish with Shield thorns to really, really get the damage going.

My Provoke fills up the wrath meter, which I then empty with caps shield.

All in all, it's a fuckload more fun than my previous build of 'press four buttons, shit comes down from the sky, wait for them to cooldown again', which in hindsight made me hate the Crusader far too much.

This new build feels a lot like the Wizard Critical Mass boomathon, as you use all the skills all the time, something that other chars seem to lack a lot.

Finally broke 1 million DPS on the in-game paperdoll, for what little that's worth as a calculation.  A full burn on the skeleton king actually worked out to something like 12 million dps

I still wish I could hit shit at range, but I can't get any drops to support a ranged build.

Link ?

Bottom of page 1, but http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Flaffy-1442/hero/44205085 (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Flaffy-1442/hero/44205085) 

Only shows 859k there since it doesn't add everything, or the +fire damage.  I should dump it into that other elemental calculator page thingy and see what it comes up with.

I'm not sure where to go from here.  A SoJ would help, but I can NOT get one to drop, nor can I get shit like the +extra Frisbee shield, or the weapon that makes it free, or more than one piece of the 6-piece crusader set.  All I get is mostly more 2-handers I'll never use for anything but crafting materials.

I have Janken-board.  It's the most fucking awesome thing in the game.  Mine is really, really shite and STILL puts big yellow numbers all over the shop.  It stacks with the 3-shatter shield rune, so if I provoke to full wrath, shit just dies.

And then you get the flail that removes the wrath cost from blessed shield and you are basically playing a whole different game.

Wait, WHAT ?

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/gyrfalcons-foote

That is soooo broken.

Sure, it's not a 2 hander, but broooooken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wsBjMAK55s

Beating a T6 Rift with perfect Gear + Ring of Royal Grandeur.

Yes, that seems like the more apt title.

Isn't there a ring set that gives 50% extra damage with spenders when your resource is full? that might beat rorg + soj if you have the flail and shield.

It's good gear, but far from perfect.

http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/amiar-1992/Jeff/43531489

https://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Amiar-1992/hero/43531489

Yeah, that's pretty much what I would have expected there in the playstyle;  the damage not so much - he seemed to be taking tons and not getting much life back.  My chaps is the opposite.

Removal of the run speed penalty to Heavenly Strength is worth the price of admission all by itself in this patch :grin:  I wonder if they modified the crusader weapon that also removed the penalty?  That's one of the few I don't have laying around

Got a stone of Jordan to drop, as well as aughild's plans.  Still can't get a jekangbord or gyrfalcon, but I'm working on switching back to +holy damage again anyways.  I've got 3/6 akkhan sitting in the bank, and once I start changing over my gear won't sustain the +fire build I've been using.  I hate that Akkhan's bonus is to akkarat's champion, but even with current crap I should wind up around 75% cooldown reduction, which almost gets it down to the 20 seconds needed for constant uptime, and I'm sure I can get a few more percentage points somewhere.  Of course, that requires two more pieces to drop...

REALLY ?? YOU FOUND YOU HAD TO DO THAT EVENTUALLY ?  IT DIDN'T OCCUR TO YOU THAT WOULD BE NEEDED ?

Ok, I'm a convert to loving the game, but Blizzard still fucking suck at thinking.

I may stick with fire after all, since they've tweaked the damage types; less reforging.  Also, with the right shield, the passive changes, and some CDR shield glare is now effectively a permanent cc/damage buff to everything nearby.

Edit:  Feels like they changed something with the shield glare cooldown since last night; it was refreshing at about 5 seconds while today it's taking around 8.

Edit 2:  Did I say less reforging?  8 tries now and the bracer still won't re-roll fire  :uhrr:  Going back to fire has still been worth it, even so (but FUCK YOU BRACER).  Having some trouble getting used to using Condemn with a timer rather than instant-cast, though.

OK, let's talk legendaries. You need lots and lots of scap legendaries to salvage for parts to do enchanting to improve other stuff, right? Do you still need scrap form legendaries to enchant rares? Cause that's just mean. Or can you even enchant legendaries at all?

Anywho, so I need to be finding lots of legendaries and scrapping some of them. But which ones do I keep and which do I salvage? Is there a list of class-defining game changers for all classes or do I have to wade through the research for each and every class to compile a list of keepers as wrll as look carefully at everything else and guess how important it might be to a class I may want to play in the future? Because I don't have room to keep everything and there's the need to scrap some anyway, but having to make so many decisions with so little knowledge is killing me.

You can (and should) enchant legendaries and set items.

As to what to scrap:  My general suggestion is to keep one of any class specific items; even if it sucks now they might change something later to make it awesome.  If you get a duplicate, keep the better of the two.  Also, what's considered best-in-class isn't always cut-and-dried, despite what the powergaming number crunchers will say.  If the "best" gear forces a playstyle I hate, then I don't want it.  And TBH, unless one is trying to do T6 there's a lot of ways to get shit done.

Otherwise bust up all that generic stuff with no special powers at all, or useless powers like xp on gold pickup.  That keeps me in plenty of forgotten souls most of the time, except like right now when the item I'm trying to reforge will NOT give me the stat I want.

Beyond that there's other considerations like "does this have more than one stat I would need to reforge on it therefore recycle it", but that usually requires more thought. 

Thanks, but that puts me back to looking for a list? Or is there some hint I'm missing that flags *this is a class specific item don't scrap it doofus!* ? 

Class specific shields will be "crusader shields" or have crusader specific orange text.  Crusader specific weapon is likely to be a flail or grand flail.  Other than a list, you'll just have to look closely for the rest.

I do not like the removal of the 'drop nephalim orb' rune on Law.

I do not like it at all.

There are those bracers that give ~6% chance to drop an orb on blind...!

Got my crusader to 70. Still do no damage.  YAY.   :awesome_for_real:  Is there a spec that's decent for DPS when your gear still makes no sense and has zero synergy?

Bring a wizard friend.

Shield bash + pound hits like a freaking mack truck.  It's critting for over 3 mill and i'm only lvl 63 with a yellow unsocketed flail.

I used the fire rune, since I could make a Piro Marella and had a little +fire damage.  Added bonus is that you get some AOE clear with it as well.

Hit 70 on my second HC crusader this morning, got a decent Jek from kadala and now i'm breezing through torment 1 rifts.  I easily face tank everything, my health barely drops and my damage is miles better than a fresh 70 should be at.  Some of that might be the jek, but i feel pretty OP atm. 

I enjoy how I've found plans for literally like a dozen set/legendary items but somehow all of the legendary mats I find are for plans I don't have

That's not the real winner.

The real winner is when you're playing with a partner (in my case, usually the wife) and the plans drop for one, the reagent for the other.  And you can't trade.

This has now happened at least 4 times.  It's insanely coincidental and hugely annoying.

I've got a cache tab full of mats, and finally got maybe 10 sets of new plans over the last couple of days. 

Alas, they're all worth fuckall as upgrades.  So I spent the evening levelling the witch doctorette to 70 and used some to make her some generic 70 legendaries

It's not even worth it to make generic level 70 legendaries.  Unless you get extremely lucky a yellow you can easily craft and reroll into the perfect stats will serve you a lot better than rolling the dice on a legendary.  Only stuff with specific orange bonuses that fit your build are worth crafting, or set items, or the few legendaries that come preset with mostly already good stats.  Six random properties stuff is either going to blow or cost a ton to fix.

The last week has left me with 30+ forgotten souls with no immediate use on top of a bunch of shitty mats with NO use and crafting plans of dubious quality.  I said "fuck it" and made a bunch of shit.  Most of it actually turned out ok, the umbral oath was the only one that took some re-jiggering.

It'll all be replaced in a week anyway, yellow or orange  :oh_i_see:

I could have sworn that I have successfully traded a recipe with somebody in my party before. I must be mistaken, I will have to check that out again.

I'm going to feel a right cunt if you're right. That said only plans you need drop so its sophies choice.

Next time you group with somebody, and a material or recipe drops hover over it and see if it has the two hour trade timer like other items do. I would do it but I cant log on till much later.

They're bound.

once you have enough crafting recipies and mats sitting around, it's a goddamned orgy for the next class you get up to 70. so that's kinda cool