AoV Fist of the Heavens Crusader Guide

1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cube Legendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!

2. Gather the full Aegis of Valor set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. The full Aegis of Valor set
2. Vigilante Belt, Khassett's Cord of Righteousness and Goldwrap
3. Shield of the Steed
4. Nemesis Bracers

4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:

1. Flails to get Darklight
2. Two-Handed Flails to get Flail of the Charge
3. Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.

5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:

• Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
• Act 2: Gloves of Worship (for your follower)
• Act 3: Avarice Band
• Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
• Act 5: Pandemonium Loop
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Aughild's Authority, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny

6. All the remaining items such as for example Squirt's Necklace are not critical for the build so it's better to just wait for them to drop and spend your mats to get set items with better rolls, ancient weapon etc.

7. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:

• Flail of the Charge
• Squirt's Necklace
• Focus or Restraint

• Zei's Stone of Vengeance is our main DPS gem, giving up to 80% extra damage vs far away targets.
• Bane of the Trapped replaces Zei in push variant where we have a more melee-focused playstyle.
• Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard is necessary to protect your Squirt's Necklace buff from stray projectiles.
• The third gem is either Boon of the Hoarder for Nephalem Rifts or Gogok of Swiftness for Greater Rifts and Bounties.

• Fist of the Heavens is the main source of DPS. We never actually cast this skill, but we still need to have it on the bar to make Vigilante Belt work.
• Iron Skin Flash is one of the most used Crusader skills which provides both 50% damage reduction and large Movement Speed boost.
• Steed Charge Endurance is used for mobility and to activate Norvald's Fervor damage bonus and Vigilante Belt.
• Akarat's Champion Prophet is a staple in every single crusader build. One skill providing 35% DPS, more than double toughness, CC-immunity, Wrath regeneration and full heal on "death" is just too good to pass up.
• One of the remaining skill slots is occupied by Laws of Hope Wings of Angels giving us both mobility and extra damage.
• Finally the last skill slot is free, except for variants of the build that run Bastions of Will, which use Justice Hammer of Pursuit. For other variants this skill slot can be either Provoke Flee Fool to activate Rechel's Ring of Larceny or Condemn Vacuum to group up mobs.

• Heavenly Strength is mandatory to equip both pieces of Norvald's Fervor.
• Indestructible is used to prevent random oneshots when Akarat's Champion and/or Goldwrap buff falls off.
• Lord Commander is necessary for 100% Steed Charge uptime without any kills.
• Finery, the strongest generic crusader passive, which provides about 15% DPS and 12% toughness boost.
• Some variants use Long Arm of the Law for increased uptime on our Law skill.

The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!

Optimal Path

Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:

1. The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
2. Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25.000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10.000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
3. Guardian's Jeopardy (3) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
4. Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
5. Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
6. Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
7. Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.

Select Follower

Fist of the Heavens is the main damage skill, its resource cost is completely negated by Aegis of Valor (4) Bonus, so you can just cast it on everything that moves.

Akarat's Champion, Iron Skin and your chosen Law skill should be spammed as much as cooldown allows in order to maximize the uptime on defensive and Movement Speed buffs.

Steed Charge is used when you need to move, or in the middle of the fight when Norvald's Fervor buff is about to fall off you use it to quickly move away from the mobs and refresh the buff.

This build is not very hardcore-friendly due to being dependent on toughness buffs which do not have 100% uptime. As a result you can often find yourself to be way squishier than expected, and if an unlucky attack happens to come your way, you just proc your Indestructible without any warning. One way you could remedy this would be by including Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac for 100% uptime on the Law and Akarat's Champion. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• Produces an extra explosion with each cast of Fist of the Heavens, instead of having on explosion directly under the cursor, two are spawned to the left and to the right of it.
• Both explosions can damage the same target.
• Both explosions can proc Area Damage.

• Provides a Movement Speed buff every time you take damage while the effect is active.
• Duration of the buff is refreshed by every new damage instance.
• Buff is provided even if all the damage is shielded.
• Buff is not provided if damage is negated e.g. by dodge or by Indestructible.

• Affected enemies flee in fear for 3 seconds.
• Stacks multiplicatively from different pieces of gear.
• Fear is applied after the damage, meaning that it can never proc when the target dies in one hit.

• Provides a 150% Movement Speed buff for the duration.
• For 0.4 seconds after activation, blocks all the skill casts.
• Using any skill while the buff is active will remove the buff. This includes Steed Charge itself even if its cooldown is shorter than its duration.

• Casts Fist of the Heavens every ⌊60 / APS⌋ frames.
• Fist of the Heavens uses the equipped rune and can proc Area Damage.
• The damage multiplier is equal to your total Movement Speed, including the baseline 150% from Steed Charge.