Crusader

[Sjofn]

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

[Pennilenko]

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

[Ironwood]

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.

[Polysorbate80]

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

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 

[Polysorbate80]

Got my new level 70 laser shield 

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.

[Ironwood]

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.

[Merusk]

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.

[Ironwood]

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.

[MrHat]

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.

[Polysorbate80]

Ok, made a huge change to skills and gear.

Why?

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

[Merusk]

Ok, made a huge change to skills and gear.

Why?

Because even a mediocre-rolled Maximus is a fucking broken weapon    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.

[Soulflame]

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

[Polysorbate80]

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.

[Hawkbit]

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?

[Polysorbate80]

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 

[Lakov_Sanite]

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

[Polysorbate80]

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

[Hoax]

I hate that fucking spell but I hated Hammerdin.

[Merusk]

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

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

[Lakov_Sanite]

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.

[Trippy]

It's slow, though.

[veredus]

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

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.

[Ironwood]

Finery ?

[veredus]

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

[Ironwood]

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

[Polysorbate80]

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.

[Ingmar]

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

[Ironwood]

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.

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.

[Threash]

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

[Ingmar]

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.

[Polysorbate80]

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 

[Ironwood]

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.

[Polysorbate80]

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.

[Ironwood]

Link ?

[Polysorbate80]

Bottom of page 1, but 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.