Last Updated:February 4, 2025|Changelog
Introduction
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The Aegis of Valor (AoV) Set, while mainly focused on Heaven's Fury, also applies its massive (6) Bonus to Fist of the Heavens thus giving rise to an entirely different set of builds.
All the Fist of the Heavens multipliers are unconditional, you just have to cast the skill, there's no rotation, preparation or anything like that. This makes Fist of the Heavens builds ideal for speedfarming, especially when game difficulty is limited: in Nephalem Rifts and Bounties.
Season 27 and Sanctified Items surprisingly buffed the build to an incredible level with the seasonal exclusive Sanctified Fist of the Heavens allowing the Crusader to become a living machinegun on the battlefield! In Season 29 the nerfed version of this power was added to the Vigilante Belt making Fist of The Heavens Crusader the top build on the AoV leaderboards.
This is an Area Damage (AD) build, since Fist of the Heavens can proc it. Fist of the Heavens' large area of effect and unlimited range, combined with mobility granted by Steed Charge and Norvald's Fervor set, produce the best Crusader build when it comes to farming keys and bounties. This guide will go over everything you need to know to rock this build successfully!
Mobile ✔
Easy Playstyle ✔
Excellent AoE Damage ✔
Easy to Get Starter Gear ✔
❌ Random Targeting
❌ Inconsistent Toughness
❌ Low Single Target Damage
❌ Clunky due to Low Attack Speed
Core Setup
Items
- Aegis of Valor set provides 50% damage reduction, nearly infinite Wrath and 15,000% Fist of the Heavens damage increase.
- Norvald's Fervor set gives 200% DPS increase and also lets you stay mounted 24/7, if you so desire.
- Darklight increases Fist of the Heavens damage by 1,000% and adds an extra explosion to each cast, effectively providing a x22 damage multiplier.
- Khassett's Cord of Righteousness increases Fist of the Heavens damage by 170%.
- Vigilante Belt provides another x3-4 damage multiplier and automatically casts Fist of the Heavens when we use Steed Charge.
- Squirt's Necklace provides up to 100% damage buff, which is fairly easy to keep up on a ranged build that is killing everything on the screen in seconds.
Global Stat Priorities
Stack as much Cooldown Reduction (CDR) as possible; there aren't any Breakpoints to hit but you need every bit of it to get permanent Steed Charge. After that focus on increasing your DPS via Elemental Damage, Critical Hit Chance & Damage, Fist of the Heavens Damage, Area Damage and Attack Speed. Make sure to get Resistance to All Elements and Vitality on your defensive slots: Boots, Pants, Chest, Belt.
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:
- The full Aegis of Valor set
- Vigilante Belt, Khassett's Cord of Righteousness and Goldwrap
- Shield of the Steed
- Nemesis Bracers
4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:
- Flails to get Darklight
- Two-Handed Flails to get Flail of the Charge
- 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
| SLOT | ITEM | STAT PRIORITY |
| Main-Hand | Flail of the Charge Darklight (Cubed) | 1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Damage % 5. Attack Speed 6. Strength 7. Elite Damage 8. Fear on Hit (Secondary) |
| Off-Hand | Shield of the Steed | 1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Fist of the Heavens Damage 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Strength 5. Elite Damage 6. Fear on Hit (Secondary) |
| Helm | Crown of Valor Leoric's Crown Sage's Apogee (Crafted) | 1. Fist of the Heavens Damage 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Socket Flawless Royal Diamond 4. Strength 5. Fear on Hit (Secondary) |
| Gloves | Gauntlets of Valor Sage's Purchase (Crafted) | 1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Attack Speed 5. Strength |
| Shoulders | Spaulders of Valor Aughild's Power (Crafted) | 1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Strength 3. All Resistance 4. Vitality 5. Area Damage |
| Chest | Brigandine of Valor | 1. Sockets Flawless Royal Diamond 2. All Resistance 3. Elite Damage Reduction 4. Strength 5. Vitality 6. Life % |
| Pants | Chausses of Valor | 1. Sockets Flawless Royal Diamond 2. All Resistance 3. Strength 4. Vitality |
| Boots | Greaves of Valor | 1. Fist of the Heavens Damage 2. All Resistance 3. Strength 4. Vitality |
| Ring 1 | Rechel's Ring of Larceny Focus The Compass Rose Ring of Royal Grandeur (A1 Bounties, Cubed) | 1. Socket 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Attack Speed |
| Ring 2 | Avarice Band (A3 Bounties, Cubed) Pandemonium Loop (A5 Bounties) Restraint Stone of Jordan | 1. Socket 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Attack Speed |
| Bracers | Nemesis Bracers Warzechian Armguards Aughild's Search (Crafted) | 1. Elemental Damage 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Strength 4. Vitality 5. All Resistance |
| Amulet | Squirt's Necklace The Traveler's Pledge | 1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Damage 3. Elemental Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance |
| Belt | Vigilante Belt Khassett's Cord of Righteousness (Cubed) Goldwrap Sage's Ribbon (Crafted) | 1. All Resistance 2. Strength 3. Life % 4. Vitality |
| Potion | Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid | For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS |
- 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.
| Core | Offensive | Defensive | Utility |
| 1. Movement Speed | 1. Cooldown Reduction | 1. All Resistance | 1. Area Damage |
| 2. Strength | 2. Critical Hit Damage | 2. Armor | 2. Pickup Radius |
| 3. Vitality | 3. Critical Hit Chance | 3. Life % | 3. Life per Hit |
| 4. Attack Speed | 4. Life Regeneration | 4. Resource Cost Reduction |
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
- Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
- Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
- Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
Select Follower
For T16 we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is T16 content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death.
Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
- The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
- Nemesis Bracers: For extra Elites, Death’s Breaths and In-geom procs.
- Avarice Band: For the insane pickup radius.
- Ring of Royal Grandeur: To complete our sets.
- Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
- Sage’s Journey: For double Death’s Breaths.
- Cain’s Destiny: For 25% more Greater Rift Keystones.
For speed Greater Rifts we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is speed content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death.
Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
- The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
- Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
- Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
- Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
- Hellfire Ring, Leoric's Crown and Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed.
GR Pushing Templar
For Greater Rift pushing we recommend this Templar setup for the sustain from Heal, 10% increased damage from Onslaught, and the very powerful cheat death mechanic from Guardian. This is the only follower build that stacks Cooldown Reduction because it works with Heal. Since we take the immortality relic, we do not need any survivability stats.
Stat Priorities:
Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Templar.
Strength > Cooldown Reduction > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
- The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
- Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
- Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
- Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
- Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
- Leoric's Crown and Captain Crimson's Trimmings: For more Cooldown Reduction on Heal.
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!
Variants
Concept
This variant of the build uses the standard for Nephalem rift combination of Gold items: Goldwrap, Avarice Band and Boon of the Hoarder. Together, these three give you a screen-wide pick up radius, 30% Movement Speed, nearly infinite toughness, and a steady supply of gold. Fist of the Heavens Divine Well is used for it's screen-wide AoE coverage. All the other items and skills are focused on maximizing Movement Speed: Warzechian Armguards, Rechel's Ring of Larceny + Pandemonium Loop, Provoke Flee Fool and Laws of Hope Wings of Angels. We also try to get Chance to Fear on hit wherever possible to get some Rechel's Ring of Larceny procs when Provoke is on cooldown.
Gameplay
This build is extremely easy to play: you ride the horse and enemies die around you. At the same time you can leisurely spam your buffs without paying attention to their cooldowns. One thing you should pay attention to, is to only use Provoke when there are enemies in range, otherwise you get no Movement Speed.
Setups
If you play in groups, equip Nemesis Bracers and cube Avarice Band. At around 2,000 Paragon you can also include Sage's Journey for extra Death's Breath drops. For this you need to lose Goldwrap but the toughness is not a big issue because you kill most enemies before they have a chance to attack you.
Concept
This is basically a cross between T16 and Speed GR variants, it focuses mostly on Movement Speed because monster HP is capped, but it doesn't use any of the gold-dependent items and instead uses Leoric's Crown for extra CDR and. Everything else is focused entirely on Movement Speed: Rechel's Ring of Larceny, Provoke Flee Fool and Laws of Hope Wings of Angels. We also try to get Chance to Fear on hit wherever possible to get some Rechel's Ring of Larceny procs when Provoke is on cooldown. Finally, we use Lord Commander as our 4th passive for 100% Steed Charge uptime.
While Crusader is not the best class to run bounties, this build is as good as it gets. With 100% uptime on both Steed Charge and Wings of Angels you can get to the quest location reasonably fast, and once there you can kill everything on the screen in just a few casts of Fist of the Heavens.
Gameplay
There's nothing different in the gameplay of bounty build. When running to the quest you want to always be on the horse, so only use your buffs in-between Steed Charge casts, otherwise it will be interrupted early and you'll need to kill something to reset cooldown. Be careful to not recast the Steed Charge itself too early, as casting it while mounted will not start a new Steed Charge but will just dismount you instead.
Setups
At high Paragon you can switch Stone of Jordan for Pandemonium Loop for increased Rechel's Ring of Larceny uptime. At very high Paragon you can switch Zei's Stone of Vengeance for Wreath of Lightning to squeeze out that extra bit of Movement Speed.
Concept
This version is aiming to get as much DPS and toughness as possible, sacrificing movement speed for it, since just base Steed Charge is fast enough already. To that end we utilise 2 extra sets: Aughild's Authority and Bastions of Will. We use Justice to activate Bastions of Will damage bonus. Iron Skin's rune is changed to Steel Skin for increased uptime on the toughness buff. And finally, our 3rd gem is Gogok of Swiftness for some extra CDR and toughness.
Gameplay
With this build you want to do fairly fast runs, it's optimal to run at the tier where your average time is a little over 2 minutes. Generally you want to stay away from the mobs to maximize your Zei's Stone of Vengeance damage buff. To deal damage you need to stay on the horse as much as possible to only stop to cast Justice and Fist of the Heavens once every 5 seconds to refresh the Bastions of Will buff. At the same time you can recast Iron Skin, Laws of Hope, and Akarat's Champion if they happen to be off cooldown.
Setups
At low Paragon (when your total Strength is less than 25,000), use Guardian's Jeopardy instead of Aughild's Authority.
If you are aiming for low gemups and loot rather than XP, you can lose some damage to make your gameplay more smooth. Drop Bastions of Will set for Convention of Elements and Stone of Jordan. Use Falling Sword instead of Justice to jump over walls. To make this work, you need to go 8-10 tiers lower and go for very fast (under 2 minutes on average) runs.
Concept
Fist of the Heaven Crusader can be a backbone of an XP farming team consisting of 2 DPS Crusaders, support Necro and support DH. The build itself is very similar to Solo Speeds variant but we take advantage of CC and buffs provided by our supports and replace Motlen Wildebeest's Gizzard with Bane of the Trapped. We also drop Bastions of Will for Convention of Elements and Stone of Jordan to make our build less clunky. Since Crusader Laws don't stack second Crusader should use Laws of Valor Critical.
Gameplay
With this team you want to do extremely fast runs, around 1.5-2 minutes on average. Basically you want to permanenty stay on the horse and ride forward while everything dies as you pass it by. Don't forget to refresh your buffs in-between Steed Charge casts. Falling Sword should only be used to teleport over walls in places where going around takes a long time. For more consistent damage output, desync Convention of Elements with the second Crusader.
Setups
At low Paragon (when your total Strength is less than 25,000), use Guardian's Jeopardy instead of Aughild's Authority.
Concept
In the push version of the build we aim to maximize our damage by switching from Bastions of Will + Squirt's Necklace to Endless Walk + Convention of Elements. This also frees up a skill slot, letting us pick up Condemn Vacuum to better capitalize on Area Damage.
Gameplay
Stay on the horse as much as possible, while gathering mobs with Condemns cast in-between your Steed Charges. When your Convention of Elements switches to Holy, try to move less to let your Endless Walk partially switch to damage mode. 3 seconds into Holy, cast Condemn, Iron Skin and Laws of Hope into Steed Charge and stand completely still. If an Oculus Ring appears, quickly move into it and stand there until Lightning ends.
Unfortunately, you are not tanky enough to pull off the above strategy in every situation. Depending on how dangerous the surrounding mobs are and if you have Akarat's Champion active or not, you may need to play more defensively. You can do the same thing but move in circles during your DPS window to maintain the defensive buff from Endless Walk. In extremely dangerous situations you can just stay away from mobs and use your Movement Speed to dodge most of their attacks.
Setups
At low Paragon (when your total Strength is less than 25,000), use Guardian's Jeopardy instead of Aughild's Authority.
If you find that you can never stand still long enough to make Endless Walk work, switch it to Unity + Squirt's Necklace to get consistent toughness and bonus damage when you find a Shield Pylon.
Concept
For more information check out our full Echoing Nightmare Guide and take a look at our Echoing Nightmare Build Tier List and META post for the best builds and strategies! This build is good for this game mode. Typically we utilize a Greater Rift speed build with a few tweaks.
Changes
- Use the Divine Well rune to blow through early waves faster.
Gameplay
- Click Speed Pylon instantly to boost your mobility and dodge Green Meteors.
- Around Wave 90, click Channeling Pylon and Power Pylon.
- After Wave 100, use Conduit Pylon.
- At Wave 122, stop attacking and run to the corner to let the timer run out.
Spam Laws of Hope, Iron Skin and Akarat's Champion at all times. Cast Justice and Fist of the Heavens at least once every 5 seconds to refresh Bastions of Will buff. Keep in mind that both Iron Skin and Akarat's Champion have small downtime which makes you extra vulnerable. Try to stay away from mobs and avoid getting hit.
Video Guide
Mechanics
- 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.
Summary
- Put together the core items and acquire the full Aegis of Valor set.
- Stack Cooldown Reduction to make your life easier.
- Ride your horse forward and watch everything explode around you.
- Spam all the buttons in-between Steed Charge casts.
Charge onward to victory!
Credits
Written by Northwar.