by Hotstreak - 10 years ago     show comments

One of the most epic parts of being a nephalem in Sanctuary is that there are so many of us! On a daily basis, players are wracking their brains, stashes, and forums for new ideas on how to build a better demon slaying machine. The Hellforge is an iconic location steeped in lore and visited briefly in Diablo II – it is a place for getting dangerous deeds done. We wanted to bottle that same ethos and create a compendium of possible builds for players new and old to research, test, and iterate upon. We will scour the community’s offerings to bring you some of the more intriguing entries in celebration of innovation and inspiration for new creations.

Hello everyone and welcome to this weeks Hellforge where I will be going over a new build that is a result of patch 2.0.5, the Combust Crusader. This build is centered around using Blessed Shield and doing as much damage as possible while being as tanky as possible. Now in the latest patch the Crusader received a ton of tuning and my eyes were popping out while reading all of the changes in the patch notes. There were a few changes in particular that really excited me though, the changes to Bombardment, Akarat’s Champion, Punish, and Blessed Shield. These skills were buffed across the board for fire based builds and since I’m running one, these changes fit ever so nicely into my Crusader.

Akarat’s Champion was just about overhauled by giving it a flat 35% damage boost, changing the spirit generation, and giving it the ability to make you immune to crowd control effects (it’s very close to Wrath of the Berserker now). It also had it’s revive ability moved into a rune to enforce some more build choices, but what excited me the most was the buff to the Fire Starter rune. Fire Starter had a damage buff along with a bit of a re design.

Akarat’s Champion

• Has been redesigned:
• This skill now:
  • Increases your damage by 35%
  • Increases Wrath regeneration by 5 per second
  • Makes you immune to crowd control effects
  • • Skill Rune – Fire Starter
      • Has been redesigned:
        • Dealing damage now burns enemies with the power of Akarat, for 460% weapon damage as Fire over 3 seconds

Another skill received a change that I so desperately wanted and that was Bombardment, as it had fire damage added to it’s Annihilate rune. This change is way too awesome because it causes Bombardment to hit like a damn truck if you have lots of fire damage, not to mention each hit is a guaranteed critical hit. Punish and Blessed Shield weren’t changed dramatically, but had their damage buffed. Now lets get into the actual build itself.

For this build to be most effective, you will need to gear your character for fire damage and will need to hunt down a few legendaries. Those legendaries being Jekangbord, Maximus, Magefist, and Stone of Jordan (with fire damage).

Punish – Roar: I can’t stress enough how good of a primary skill this is. Punish does good damage and gives you extra block. It’s rune, Roar, received a damage buff from 40% to 75% making it even more effective for a fire based build. This skill also synergizes very well with the Renewal passive.

Blessed Shield – Combust: This is the core skill of the whole build as it now does an admirable 430% of your weapon damage and will be your main source of sustained DPS. It’s range has also been increased from 8 to 10 yards while the Combust rune’s damage has been increased from 270% to 310%. With a decent amount of fire damage, this skill/rune combo has the ability to completely melt your opponents. Add a Jekangbord into the mix and you are pretty much unstoppable.

You will also want to think about finding a decent Maximus for the increased fire damage to skills and the kick ass affix that works ever so well with fire builds.

Akarat’s Champion – Fire Starter: This skill is a very big part of the build as well since you will be using it to empower your nuking ability against more dangerous enemies and Bosses. With the re design, this skill has further validated it’s spot in this build as it adds lots of damage capability and can be used to stay clear of those pesky crowd control affixes (damn frozen and jailer).

Bombardment – Annihilate: This skill/rune combo got so buffed for fire builds it’s not even funny. Now that the Annihilate rune does fire damage, you can dish out some ridiculous burst damage with it. Annihilate gives each hit a 100% crit chance with those hits doing 570% of your weapon damage as fire. For example, each of my Bombardment hits deal 25-30 million damage while melting enemies with Blessed Shield making a really nasty combo.

This change alone has helped me get up to Torment IV rift farming with ease. I have also tested this out using a Mortal Drama. While I personally don’t think it’s worth losing the Maximus proc over it, it’s still pretty effective and is entirely up to you on what you want to use.

Consecration – Bathed in Light: I absolutely love this skill and have always chosen it instead of Judgement simply because it gives me so much more survivability. When this is used together with Punish and your blocking ability, you are near immortal at times. Plus, your friends and whoever you’re running with will love you for dropping this skill when health is most needed.

Laws of Valor – Critical: I use this skill/rune in pretty much all of my builds as it gives you and your allies more attack speed along with 100% more crit damage. I typically save the active effects for must use situations and when I combo Akarat’s Champion and Bombardment.

Passives

Righteousness – I mainly use this as my regeneration passive of choice because you can’t really go wrong with it as it increases your wrath generation and your maximum wrath by 30. But if you have a really good amount of block it would be wise to try out the new Insurmountable passive, which gives you 6 wrath every time you block an attack. Now if you aren’t having any wrath issues you can use either Finery or Holy Cause for some extra zing.

Hold Your Ground – This is a great passive because it sacrifices that awful dodge stat for 15% more block, which synergizes very well with this build.

Renewal – This passive is pretty much why you want to get as much block as possible as it restores 12,379 life every time you block an attack. This passive combo’d with Consecration and high block chance gives you immortality.

Heavenly Strength – This passive is so good now since it got it’s movement speed penalty removed in the latest patch. There is really no reason at all to not use this passive if you are using a two handed weapon.

Alright so were finished going over the skill selections and passives which leaves one last thing, Paragon Points.

Core – The only thing that really needs to be prioritized is Movement Speed, especially since the speed debuff has been removed from the Heavenly Strength passive. After that it all comes down to what you feel you need the most.

Offense – There are some long cooldowns in this build so if you can, go for Cooldown Reduction. But if you feel like you need more damage max out Crit Chance or Crit Damage(whatever you need most) and then CDR.

Defense – Always max out All Resist first unless you already have 75% AR from your gear. When AR is maxed, put everything in to Armor.

Utility – For utility, I max out Resource Cost Reduction to be able to use as many Blessed Shields as possible. After that it’s sort of a toss up, I started putting points into Area Damage after RCR as this build doesn’t really benefit from Life on Hit very much.

Now your Crusader is a combustible death machine! I highly recommend giving it a whirl as it is an insanely fun build that has lots of survivability and some serious nuking power. Thanks for stopping by this weeks Hellforge! We would love to hear what you have to say about this build in the comments below.

Was it effective for you? Have you built something similar? Do you like the changes to Akarat’s Champion and Blessed Shield? Also, if you have any builds that you would want to see highlighted in a future edition of Hellforge, shoot an email over to Westmarchworkshop@blizzpro.com.