by Hotstreak - 9 years ago     show comments

Books have often been society’s only bastion of light for passing along knowledge that would otherwise be lost to time or convoluted by the oral tradition. In order to provide new and old adventurers with as much knowledge of what to expect on their journey in Sanctuary, we created this tome of knowledge – Ars Arcanum. We will regularly feature a Legendary weapon or armor piece, discussing its stand-alone powers and capabilities, as well as how it may synergize with new builds or other items.

This is an exciting week for Diablo since patch 2.3.0 launched yesterday! So in this edition of Ars Arcanum we will be going over a brand new item that has come with the new patch. Johanna’s Argument is the new Crusader flail that is centered around using Blessed Hammer. I remember the time when I was on my first ever paladin in Diablo II, I made a zealidin first, then I realized my mistake. Shortly after I realized that I needed to be a part of the Hammerdin master race, I made one and leveled it up.

Then before you know it, I was blasting Diablo in the face with my army of hammers. So for everyone who has been waiting to re live the Diablo II days as a Hammerdin Blessed Hammer Crusader, or if you were unlucky enough to experience it in D2 and want to try it out now, then the time has finally come!

Why is it good?

This flail isn’t just good, it’s amazing. It’s affix increases the attack speed of Blessed Hammer by 100% which is pretty nifty and it’s also a 1-handed flail so it synergizes with Fervor pretty well. This flail’s true purpose though is to synergize with the new Seeker of the Light set, which increases the damage of Blessed Hammer by 750% and reduces the cooldown of Provoke by 1 second every time a hammer hits an enemy.

Now when you put all of that together you have some crazy damage potential. Wrath management isn’t even an issue, since the attack speed you get causes your hammers to lower the cooldown of Provoke very quickly. I tested this set out for most of my time on the PTR and the result of this build was extremely positive. With near unoptimized gear, I was able to do Torment 8 very efficiently and was able to even go through some Torment 10 content.

Getting this flail to roll with 100% attack speed might be a little bit difficult because RNG things but, Kanai’s Cube makes this a lot easier to deal with since every affix that you cube is always at max value. So you will most likely have either Johanna’s Arguement or The Furnace equipped in your cube based on which one is rolled better.

All in all, this is going to be a very popular item for Crusaders and is going to be the centerpiece to this build for a while to come. A long with being a big nostalgia trip.

Who is it good for?

Since this is a 1-handed flail, it is only usable by Crusaders who wish to use a Blessed Hammer build.

Where can I find it?

Since this isn’t a season exclusive item, it can be found on any mode.

The Fluff

One of the more mysterious tales in the annals of the Crusaders is that of Johanna. A powerful warrior, she disappeared suddenly. The fact that she did not take this, her favorite flail, seems to indicate that her journey was unplanned. She has not been seen since.

Maybe that’s because she disappeared into the Nexus? Which means that the Nexus is 100% confirmed as canon (not really though).