LostCrusader said:
Anyway, my overall impression with the crusader has been that condemn is one of the best skills I have found in the game, and all their right click skills are basically worthless besides the flail swing with the fire damage rune.
Which is funny, because that rune is bugged to shit right now and doesn't work at all. It uses your weapon damage pre-calculation to determine it's damage, meaning it does 160% of your weapons damage... without any of the associated stat boosts you should get with it. It's (as of time of writing) one of the most useless runes the Crusader has.
Jandau said:
1. Shield builds suck. They are conceptually nice, but just don't work all that well. Building around block is laughable, as the numbers on block-related stuff are terrible. Also, notice that stuff like Shield Bash scales off Block Chance - You know, that number that generally moves in between 10-40 range. In a game where even mig-range damage is in the hundreds of thousands. Yeah, it just doesn't scale past low levels.
As a Crusader, if your block chance is less than 25%, you're doing something wrong. You should have a fairly consistent 25-30% unbuffed block with potential to jump up to 40-50% in combat depending on spec.
That said, if you're using block as damage mitigation, you are
also doing something wrong. The primary reason for block is all the fun things that block triggers, like 70% of your weapon damage return, an item proc (look up the Coven's Criterion for the best example), etc. It's definitely worthwhile.
Jandau said:
2. Wielding 2H weapons in one hand sounds cool, but in actuality it's kinda bad. 2H weapons aren't much stronger (if at all) than 1H weapons, and you have to give up a passive skill slot (which you desperately need for other stuff) AND eat a movement speed penalty. Only use it if you have a really good 2H weapon that would provide a massive boost to your stats and drop it as soon as you get a comparable 1H weapon.
3. Slower weapons are kinda better. A lot of your abilities are cooldown based, so Attack speed has little to no impact on them. However, raw damage will let you get more out of them on every cooldown. This is the one saving grace of Heavenly Strength, as 2H weapons are usually slower. But you will also find slow 1H weapons, so in the long run 2H tends to fall off.
The Crusader is tailor-made to use 2h weapons. In terms of stats, 2h isn't that much better (though it does quantifiably roll values in a ~30% higher range), but it is very rare for a 1h weapon to have a comparable damage range as a 2h. In the 70 legendaries, most 1h are in the 1900-2300 damage range, while 2H are typically in the 2500-2900 damage range. There's obviously outliers in either direction for both, but that's a good rule of thumb.
As you said, Crusader damage abilities are cooldown-based, and that means that the weapon's damage per swing is the important part, not the big number it spits out at the top of the tooltip (read: the dps). 2H are pretty much always the way to go, unless you're going for a particular build, and most of those are less "use 1h" and more "use this particular item that happens to be a 1h"
Also, just for clarity's sake since I made the same mistake, Heavenly Strength
does not reduce your movement speed; it reduces your maximum movement speed. By default, the max speed you can move at is 125%. Heavenly Strength lowers that limit to 110%. That's it. It does not reduce your current move speed by 15%.
Jandau said:
4. Condemn is your friend, especially early on. So is Heaven's Fury. Falling Sword looks cool, but is kinda crap as it has both a long-ass cooldown AND a Wrath cost. Laws are a waste of slot for the most part, unless you're in a group. Phalanx is terrible, except with the Bowmen rune, which turns it into a solid, cool skill. For Wrath spenders, I suggest looking into Sweep Attack - It's among the higher damage ones, it's a decent AoE and it's reliable. I've heard good things about Heaven's Fury with Fires of Heaven rune. For Wrath builders, Punish is kinda pointless, but the rest are fine. I personally use Slash with the Crush rune
120% agree on Condemn and Heaven's Fury, fantastic abilities there, and on Phalanx, waste of a spell that it is. The rest I disagree on to some extent or another.
Falling Sword can be very good if you get a handle on the aiming and learn when best to use it. It's more finicky than the others, but it has a lot of utility beyond just the damage (which is considerable, especially with the spawn minions rune), what with being able to teleport over walls and other assorted environment hazards with it.
The Laws are very good, but they really don't come into their own until 60+. They're useful, certainly, but they really need the extra effects of their runes to really be as good as they can be. Especially the resist all law. Its final rune is "you are immune to CC and/or can use this to break CC"; it's goddamn amazing when farming torment, not to mention the 1.5 pieces of gear worth of resist all it gives you passively.
Finally, Punish is a very good ability. It's quite slow compared to the other wrath builders, but it has some fantastic additional effects from the runes that make it great. My personal favorite is the 70% weapon damage dealt to attacker of a blocked attack, but there's several others (like increased life regen or crit chance after blocking) that are just as good.
Jandau said:
5. For Passives, I consider Righteousness almost mandatory. Wrath is a pain in the arse to generate and this mitigates that issue. Holy Cause can be awesome if you focus more on Holy damage, as the healing it provides is quite decent. One slot might have to go to Heavenly Strength, depending on your gear. For the rest, it's mostly up to you, though stuff like Wrathful, Indestructible, Divine Fortress and Vigilant are decent picks.
Righteousness is very necessary for any build that makes much use of wrath. I, personally, ditched it entirely in my current build (because thorns), but just about any other build requires it.
As a general rule of thumb, most Crusaders can expect to be using Heavenly Strength, Righteousness, and (gear depending) Finery, with the final slot being whatever's best suited to their individual playstyle and ideas about the build. My personal preference is for the "lose all dodge for 15% block chance" one, but there's some valid arguments for most of the passives.
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