środa, 26 marca 2014

[HARDCORE GUIDE] The Divine Warrior - How to become an unstoppable force of destruction on Torment difficulty

0. CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION 
2. SKILLS - RECOMMENDED
3. PASSIVES - RECOMMENDED 
4. SKILLS -VIABLE (other abilities that you might want to pick up, depending on your personal preferences)
5. PASSIVES - VIABLE 
6. BALANCING YOUR STATISTICS & GEARING (potential BiS items that are worth looking at)
7. PARAGON LEVEL DISTRIBUTION
8. SOLO PLAY AND CO-OP PLAY (differences between both, what follower to pick for use etc.)
9. USEFUL LINKS (as an example:
spreadsheets)
10. FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)




1. How to become an unstoppable force of destruction on Torment difficulty - INTRODUCTION
I wrote countless guides throughout all the years of my gaming career and received immensely positive feedback. I came back to Diablo 3 very recently, used to play a barbarian on hardcore before the infamous inferno nerf. Some of you might know me for my barbarian guide which became the most popular diablo guide on the web with over 250,000 views. 
Right now I am playing a crusader on hardcore, my aim being nothing less than world first clear of torment VI. I have no softcore experience whatsover thus this guide might not apply to some of you that do not play hardcore (with that being said, you might still find a lot of useful information here)
Now, onto the guide itself. 
While on softcore you should aim for having as much damage as possible with a bare minimum of EHP value, that is not the case for hardcore.

Pros and Cons of The Divine Warrior build:
+
- Rather safe due to all survival and utility abilities.
- Lots of "invisible" EHP coming from block, physical damage should not be an issue.
- Quite high single target DPS.
- Amazing for party play with other classes that have lots of AoE. Your job is simple: keep the mobs at bay and focus on killing elites.

-
- Lack of sustained AoE DMG (bombardment being the only AoE skill).
- Wrath generation might be an issue because of the high cost of the Shield Bash ability (it can be easily resolved if you get a 4p and 6p of the Akkhan set or simply craft the Piro Marella legendary shield).
- Not so good for solo farming (unless you go for some AoE alternatives like Heaven's Fury/Shattered Shield rune on Shield Bash).

If there are tons of white mobs everywhere, you might end up struggling to kill them. It might be a good idea to ignore them and try to find an elite pack (if you feel safe enough on whatever difficulty you're playing that is). If your block chance is high enough, you should actually heal instead of taking damage from all the white mobs that are attacking you. Let them chase you, just use your bombardment ability when fighting an elite pack so that it also kills all the white mobs. That way, you will save yourself a lot of time and seed up your farming process significantly. 
2. SKILLS - RECOMMENDED
 Punish /w  Fury Rune
15% additional block chance on top of 15% crit chance makes this skill exceptionally good. Be sure to use your Shield Bash ability and not Punish upon Hardened Senses block proc in order to maximize your damage output. 
 Shield Bash /w  Pound Rune

The weapon damage scaling on Pound is just too good to pass up, all the other runes pale in comparison to this one, plus the reduced range is not really a penalty for us cause we are playing a melee style build anyway. 
Piro Marella makes this skill insanely good though even if you do not have the shield, it is still one of the best choices for this specific build. Be sure to have at least 28% block chance on your shield to make this skill as effective as possible. 

 Bombardment /w  Impactful Bombardment Rune

The amount of damage you can do with this thing is utterly insane (both aoe and single target) probably one the best damage abilities in Crusader's arsenal, really helps out with clearing elite packs. Be sure to combo it with your Laws of Valor, IF you are using them.
 Steed Charge  /w Endurance Rune
Really good for getting out of shitty situations, also makes you immune to cc (remember though, this is by no means a CC breaker!). And of course 3 second long immortality being the most important aspect of this ability. If you don't feel like you need this, you could replace this with an offensive ability.

As for the rune choice, feel free to use whatever you prefer the most, there is no such thing as a 'best' choice when it comes to this ability. If you feel like you want to get some extra damage, you could go for one of the damage runes.

If you have a lot of HP, for example one million, the life regen rune might be a better choice.
 Laws of Justice  /w Immovable Object Rune 
This is really, really good for survival, if your gear is not that great this ability is even better. As you acquire better gear, you might want to replace this for Laws of Valor with 100% crit damage boost (that affects your entire party!). As for the rune choices, Protect the Innocent might be better for party play but if you want to go for personal survival boost, Immovable Object basically provides you with 50% additional damage reduction.
 Akarat's Champion /w  Prophet Rune
This ability is something that you just have to take. And not only because of the insane damage bonus that it provides you with (and 20 second long immortality, assuming you pick up the recommended armor rune). If you happen to die on hardcore, this skill will actually bring you back to life (you will be restored to FULL HP!). Now, this is where it gets tricky. It will restore you back to life only if it is active so if you happen to die while Akarat's Champion is not active, you will not benefit from its additional effect. You should use this ability as often as possible but what if you encounter an elite pack that poses a huge threat to you (and Akarat's Champion is on cooldown?). You have to figure this out on your own.
Armor of Akkhan's set bonuses make this skill utterly insane.
3. PASSIVES - RECOMMENDED 
 Heavenly Strength

Simply OP, depends what weapons you've managed to find but overall, you should use this. 2 handed weapons tend to have more DPS, strength and vitality and 15% movement speed reduction can easily be negated with paragon levels. 
 Hold Your Ground
Assuming you do not stack dexterity, your dodge chance should be somewhere around 0.X% (meaning less than 1%). Swapping that for 15% block chance is insane.
 Divine Fortress
If your shield's block chance is high, this will grant you an extremely high amount of armor (with Hardened Senses active, I am block capped for example, and gain about 5 million toughness just from this single passive).
 Renewal
Usefulness of this passive is affected by your overall block chance - if the said block is somewhere around 40%, this is really worth picking up.
4. SKILLS -VIABLE (other abilities that you might want to pick up, depending on your personal preferences)


 Laws of Valor /w  Critical Rune

Despite what the actual rune effect states (that it boosts YOUR critical chance by 100%) it actually affects the entire party making this ability really good for farming with a group of other players. I suggest picking this up if you feel like you have too much toughness but not high enough damage output.

 Heaven's Fury  /w Ascendancy Rune

If you feel like you are missing some damage, you could go for Heaven's Fury ability that will speed up your farming process quite significantlyNo actual wrath cost and relatively short cooldown makes this skill even better. 
You could swap out either Bombardment or Steed Charge for this, the latter being really good for escaping shitty situations / dodging CC but other than that being of no particular use. 

Fate of the Fell makes this ability A MUST choice (if you are using Fate of the Fell, you will probably want to get rid of your bombardment and replace it with triple Heaven's Fury which is quite OP).
5. PASSIVES - VIABLE 

Renewal and Hold Your Ground are the two passives that you could potentially swap for something else. Renewal, if you feel like you don't need its healing and Hold Your Ground if you are actually getting more than 75% block while using punish.

Also, if you actually managed to drop a really good 1 handed weapon and decided to go for it instead of a 2 handed one, you should get rid of Heavenly Strength (though my opinion on the matter still stands - you should really go for a 2 hander as most crusader skills scale with weapon dmg rendering weapon attack speed close to useless).

  Finery

This passive is quite nice if your gear has lots of sockets. I used to have 7 sockets which equals to 7 x 70 = 490 strength. That is indeed quite nice.

  Indestructible

This is good for builds with high armor value but we are indeed ruining a heavy armor based build thus this passive is a viable choice. Assuming you drop to 30% hp and have somewhere around 30k armor, you will get 70/3 = 23.33...% more armor.  30,000/100 = 300 (1% of your armor). 300 x 23.33 = 6990 more armor. This ability also scales with skills such as Laws of Justice and Akarat's Champion which makes it even better.

  Holy Cause

The healing is nice but be sure to pick it up ONLY if your weapon dmg is HOLY.

  Righteousness

The only downside of our build is slow wrath generation and huge wrath cost of shield bash. If you are struggling with generating wrath, this might be a viable choice that will boost your overall DPS (as for burst damage - not so much).

 Lord Commander

If you are using both Steed Charge and Bombardment, this is quite a nice passive that might be worth picking up.

6. BALANCING YOUR STATS & GEARING 
Remember that your stats are affected by each other, your crit damage will not be as effective if your crit chance is low and vice versa. Same rules applies to defensive stats like HP, % Life and All Resistances. 

I would like to talk a bit now about All Resistances stat in Reaper of Souls. 

First of all, think about flawless square gems (imperial-like gems from before the expansion). They granted 34 all res AND 34 of a primary stat. As of now, while primary gem values jump to insane amounts like 220+, +All Res gems do not scale that well (you get almost triple times more strength than you do of all resistances). Just think about it, 1 str = 1 armor, so 220 str = 220 armor which is equal to like 22 all res. So in reality all res gems give you even less in comparison to primary stats ones. In my opinion, you should avoid getting all res gems even if you are lacking toughness and try to get more vitality/resistances on your actual gear (that way, you will end up having better DPS/EHP values).

Second of all, If you do not get +All res as a primary stat on an item, you can get one of all 6 resistances as a SECONDARY stat. Now, this is something to think about as well. In my opinion, one should avoid getting all res on an item and instead focus on other stats like crit chance/crit damage or w/e (assuming you have resistances as a secondary stat on your items). You NEED to have either +All res or  +One type of res on an item, latter being better assuming it is arcane/fire > poison/lightning (the first 2 being the most deadly types of elemental damage).

So if you can't get one type of res on an item (which is often the case for LEGENDARY items, because you will often end up re-rolling a PRIMARY stat like life on hit/regen life to a better one thus not being able to roll a secondary stat) +All res jumps up in value to the One type of Res position.

On your head slot you should aim for: Strength > Vitality > Crit Chance > Socket > One type of Res > Life % > Armor > All Res (the reason behind armor being before all res is that you can have armor AND one type of res on the same item but you cannot have armor AND all resistances - same rule applies to all other pieces of gear). 
Neck: Strength > Crit Chance > Crit Damage > One type of Res > Vitality > Holy skills deal X% more damage > % Attack Speed > Life % > All Res

Shoulders: Strength > Vitality > One type of Res > Life % > Increased Damage of abilities such as Heaven's Fury, Punish and Shield Bash > Armor > All Res

Chest: Strength > 3 sockets > Vitality > One type of Res > Life % > Increased Damage of abilities such as Heaven's Fury, Punish and Shield Bash > All Res

Gloves: Strength > Crit Chance > Vitality > Crit Damage > One type of Res > % Attack Speed > Armor > All Res

Belt: Strength > Vitality > One type of Res > Increased Damage of abilities such as Heaven's Fury, Punish and Shield Bash > Life % > Armor > All Res

Bracers: Strength > Crit Chance > Vitality > Holy skills deal X% more damage > One type of Res > Armor > All Res

Rings: Strength > Crit Chance > Crit Damage > One type of Res > Vitality > Life % > % Attack Speed > All Res

Legs: Strength > 2 sockets > Vitality > Increased Damage of abilities such as Heaven's Fury, Punish and Shield Bash > All Res > One type of Res

Boots: Strength > % Movement Speed (if you lack paragon levels) > Vitality > One type of Res >  Increased Damage of abilities such as Heaven's Fury, Punish and Shield Bash >  Armor> All Res

Weapon: Socket > Weapon DMG > Strength > Vitality > % AS > % DMG (right now the stat is bugged if you have elemental damage on your weapon, should be fixed in the upcoming patch).

Shield: % Block Chance > Strength > Crit Chance > Vitality > All Res > Life %
The stats listed above are the ones that you should aim for on rare items, as for the BiS legendary list, here are some items worth looking at:
Justice Lantern with its % block chance is really good for crusaders and makes achieving % block chance cap rather simple.

  Helm of the Rule is a really good item for us, mainly because of the default block chance that is always rolled on it. If you can craft it, it might be worth getting a few and who knows - you might get lucky.

Eberli Charo's effect is insane (45-50% cooldown reduction of Heaven's Fury!) If you are using Fate of the Fell, this is an absolute BiS.
Piro Marella reduces the wrath cost of shield bash by 45-50%! INSANE!

Akarat's Awakening has a chance to reduce your cooldowns by 1% each time you successfully block an attack (20-25%chance upon each block as far as I can recall).
 Baleful Remnant causes your killed enemies to spawn Phalanx Avatars for 10 seconds (you need to have your Akarat's Champion active though). In combination with our class set, this weapon is really strong.

Fate of the Fell summons two additional rays of Heaven's Fury which is AMAZING!

Armor of Akkhan is probably the most sought after set of items for a crusader. Its set bonuses are exceptionally good, especially for hardcore. Reduced cooldown of Akkarat's Champion by 50%?! I mean REALLY?

7. PARAGON LEVEL STAT DISTRIBUTION

Core: % Movement Speed till 110% MS (or trill 125% if you are not using a two handed weapon) > Strength
Offense: Critical Hit Damage > Critical Hit Chance
Defense: All Res > Armor % > Life %
Utility: Area Damage (Life on Hit for 1h weapons is also decent, it is the only paragon stat that scales with level) > Resource cost reduction (be sure to spend all 50 points into it, or none).

A YouTube version of the guide:



Guide is going to get updated soon so stay tuned!

26 komentarzy:

  1. Any chance to get Gloves in "Balancing your stats" updated? ;)

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  2. On it mate, I am in the process of updating the entire guide. :)

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  3. Dzięki za info || Thnx for the info ;)

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  4. Good job on updating the guide. Much appreciated, unfortunately I died yesterday and have to start all over again but it worked quite nice.

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  5. Great guide. You might want to add Judgement-Resolved to optional skills (for group support). And it would be great if you talked about Cooldown Reduction in "Balancing your stats"

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  6. hi devizz,

    I always played the dps role and I run with 1 tank + 3 ranged dps with raidcall torment 1... in my opinion, as a full tank/suport/utilty the monk is the best, Ive never seen a crusader that could tank with ease for a 4-man party without putting in risk the life of the dps ones, maybe because of his lack of crowd control, suport skills or high cooldowns... what do you think about this? I am lvling a crusader right now and as I see he is not so good on pure tanking, do you think that crusader could tank if they could have, like, 50% or more cooldown reduction? ps.: my experience in ranged dps is about 140h wiz, 30h dh and 30h wd, all hardcore, never leveled a malee character.
    also, if you think the crusader is meant to be a full dps role, tell me
    a want to theorycraft about it! hahaha

    thx,
    jonsnow#1175

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  7. Hello, you dont talk about heal (life life on hit / life per second...), these stats are useless ???? Without regen I don't think we can play especially in HC...

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  8. Thanks for all the kind words guys! :)

    CDR might be decent and it is definitely viable but I don't think it is better than crit chance and crit damage. If you feel like you don't need more % Life I suppose you could go for the white gem (assuming you have a socket in your helmet) that gives you 12.5% CDR.

    In my opinion, after the 15% damage reduction buff, crusader is a class with potentially highest survival. The problem is, it is much harder to get decent DPS with a crusader if you want to use utility/survival abilities such as steed charge/laws of justice. Right now, the only downside of my build is lack of constant AoE (bombardment's cooldown is rather long) but white mobs actually heal me instead of damaging me (I am almost block capped + I am using a shield that increases by block value by 58%, here is my armory if you're wondering: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/devizz-2472/LadyDevizz/39871334).

    If you're using renewal, you don't really need more healing. I don't like healing that much anyway, I prefer flat damage reduction over it. And life on hit is not that good if you are using a 2 handed weapon, because of rather low base AS.

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  9. pro guide holy shit gj man

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  10. Quick question if you know the answer. Shield Bash - Pound, I know it reduces the AOE radius to 8 yards but it honestly seems like 0 yards as I never see splash damage hitting the other mobs around my primary. Any ideas why this is?

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  11. Yeah, pound rune basically changes shield bash into single target damage ability, you can sometimes hit up to 2 or 3 mobs with it if they are lined up vertically but that will not happen very often.

    I actually talked about this on my stream, shattered shield rune is an alternative if you are missing AoE dmg and it MIGHT be better for solo play but if you play in a party and your other party members have a lot of aoe to compensate for your lack of it, you should probably go for pound rune.

    Hope that helps, cheers. :)

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  12. Correct me if im wrong, but is there a typo at the paragon point distribution. At main stats you say "Core: % Movement Speed till 115% MS (or trill 125% if you are not using a two handed weapon) > Strength" Isn't that 110% with heavens strength and 125% without?

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  13. Yes, you are indeed correct, thank you for pointing that out sir! ;)

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  14. Happy to help, your guide is awesome! :)

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  15. Hi man will u make any update soon? I am using ur build on hc cruss and it is awesome 1 time cruss and 1 time hc tbh :-) but I love it. gg

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  16. Glad you like it. The guide is pretty much finished, not much to add. ;) Might do an update later, we'll see.

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  17. Hello, very interesting guide I must say! With that said I just want to ask for your opinion regarding my HC Crusader build which is not quite like yours, and solo I do 993 000 DPS with my enchantress. But do you think its to offensive? What are your tips for progress through T3-T6? Any suggestions what I should aim for type of gear?

    http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Equilibrium-1586/hero/39742983

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  18. IMO you have too much all res on your items, you would gain more EHP by having one type of res as a secondary stat and by replacing your all res with vitality (or dps stats for that matter, if you are lacking DPS).

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    Odpowiedzi
    1. So I heard the "safe zone" for playing Torment level 1 and above should be around 80% resistance and armor. But you argue instead that one should have less in total resistance and higher HP and a few single res. But then ure elitpacks will hit you very very hard and even with high HP+DMG red. just a simple mistake could result in death?

      I'm not sure though what's best though.

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  19. Well, some types of elemental DMG are more deadly than the other ones. As an example, my barb (http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/devizz-2472/Devizzsmash/37535569) has about 1200 arcane resistance (coming from secondary stats) but 600 of all other resistances and I feel pretty safe on torment 3/4 and can melt elite packs in matter of seconds. I would not be able to get as much DPS if I went for all resistances on most of my items.

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  20. seems you should value elemental damage on neck higher maybe right after CD

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  21. Yeah I must agree, probably not before CD but definitely before vitality. ;)

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  22. I feel that I need to mention that you are wrong about making up Heavenly Strength's speed loss with paragon points. There is no permanent way to go above 10% with that passive, last time I checked. Neither paragon points or movement speed on gear will affect it, because it reduces your MAX movement speed, not your current movement speed. You will never get higher than 10% except with temp buffs when you take this passive.

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    1. This was already pointed out before, I suppose the wording might have been better but yes, I am very aware of that. :)

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  23. Any chance you'll be updating your guide after tomorrows 2.0.5 patch?
    I've seen some awesome Crusader changes in the data-mined info @Diablofans that might shift some skills in your build ;)

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  24. First guide i did read entirely from top to bottom :p

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