Diablo III General Discussion - Page 963

On April 20 2015 08:20 BluzMan wrote:


There are two viable ways to build a crusader and one of them is 6-piece Roland (using Shield Bash, or, more rarely, Sweep Attack as the damage skill, with Piro Marella or Denial as the shield), the other being 6-piece Akkhan combined with lots of CDR and using some kind of skill that is too expensive to use outside of the 50% wrath cost reduction (most typically Blade of Prophecy combined with Frydehr's Wrath shield for a Condemn build, but there are also builds around Heaven's Fury and Phalanx). Furthermore, Akkhan comes with an added bonus of an almost permanent 150% armor buff from Prophet which is huge. Building an efficient crusader without a 6-piece bonus of any of those two sets is impossible, you will just feel helpless watching people breeze through T6. Sadly, there's no way to make Blessed Hammer work for a crusader just yet, at least as far as I know. Nor is there a viable way to build a crusader without any full sets. A quick look at Roland's full set bonus and you will see that on paper it multiplies your DPS by a factor of 15 (!) on full stacks. It kinda pigeonholes you into using it, but there's no way around that, anything else will be inefficient. Akkhan is close, but a bit more subtle and harder to build imo.

So, first you should set your mind on your set of choice (flavor of the month is Roland because it's new, but it's quite cool too), then your build and realize what items you need. Gambling for jewelry is highly impractical due to both the costs and the abundance of options (even if you get a legendary amulet at the ridiculous 100 shard cost, there's 19 to choose from, gl on getting the one you want). Gambling for weapons is close behind if not ahead of that in futility - the chances you get the legendary you need are extremely slim already, and it also needs to be ancient. Not that you shouldn't try, but it's better to get the easier slots covered first. So, if your expected build contains something other than jewelry/weapons, get it. Shield Bash users should gamble bracers, Condemn, Sweep Attack and Phalanx should gamble shields. There are no belts that really make crusaders jump to the next power level, so I wouldn't bother with those. The most obvious thing to gamble though is the set pieces you're missing, then, once you get them, their ancient versions. If you're reliant on CDR, take a closer look on the head slot to get the Broken Crown helm that doubles the effect of diamonds (or any other gem, but diamonds are the only gems worth it), relying on RoRG to keep the set bonus. If you're into fire damage, try to maybe gamble a Cindercoat instead of your respective set chest armor.

Also, you will probably get a significant sheet damage increase if you swap out the ruby in your weapon for an emerald.

On April 21 2015 03:04 Volband wrote:
Anyone who's not yet in T6/Grift1,000,000+ beast mode yet in EU want to party? I'd try it, but too afraid of pub games, I'm not even sure how could I customize what games I'm joining. D2 was so much easier in this regards. Also, having clans is awesome, but with the interactions being limited, it's pretty hard to meet people. In D2 you were bound to get to know a few guys from the common lobby, but now all I'm seeing is the occasional general chat pop-up with "s1 boost me pls, have key".

I'm playing in T4 and not sure yet what my Grift peak is, but it should be around 25~.


Thanks! I really hoped there would be more than two viable builds, but oh well.

I'm not sure if I should keep playing grifts one level at a time, or try to make some of my lgems to 25. Higher grifts doesn't have a better legendary/set drop ratio, just more bloodshards/exp/gold, right?