Last Updated:January 22, 2025|Changelog
Introduction
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Aegis of Valor (AoV) is the latest Crusader set to be introduced into the game with Season 19. Featuring some impressive numbers—15,000% increased damage, as well as the only stacking buff in the game that was stacking multiplicatively with itself—this set brought about a new era in the world of Diablo III power creep. The highest Greater Rift tier—150—was cleared solo for the first time using AoV Heaven's Fury (HF) Crusader build.
Since then the build was nerfed in 5 separate occasions each time roughly halving the power of the setup, with the addition of a cap to Shield of Fury stacks then a nerf to it, the prevention of animation canceling, the nerf to Ivory Tower and finally the nerf to the (2) Bonus stacks to be additive instead of multiplicative with themselves.
However the build still stands as one of the strongest Rift Guardian Killers and one of the strongest solo builds across all classes. The raw power of the set itself also makes it very easy to get into higher difficulties straight away, even before the full build is completed.
This is an Area Damage (AD) build when using Norvald's Fervor setup, since selfcast Heaven's Fury can proc it, while other setups are not as Shield of Fury does not interact with it and Ivory Tower casts cannot proc it either (see Mechanics). Apart from Heaven's Fury, the set also increases damage of Fist of the Heavens (FotH). AoV FotH Crusader really shines in lower difficulty speedfarming content such as Nephalem Rifts, Bounties and Speed Greater Rifts, where Heaven's Fury is not so good due to its small AoE and overall clunkiness.
Easy to Play ✔
Good Sustain ✔
Good Season Starter ✔
Excellent Single Target Damage ✔
❌ Slow
❌ Limited Skill Choices
❌ Clunky Supporting Items
❌ Sensitive to CC Resistance
Core Setup
Items
- Aegis of Valor set provides 50% damage reduction, nearly infinite Wrath and whopping x717 Heaven's Fury damage increase.
- Captain Crimson's Trimmings set provides roughly 60% DPS increase and more than 100% toughness boost.
- Ring of Royal Grandeur is necessary to get the full benefit from both sets.
- Fate of the Fell increases Heaven's Fury by 500% and adds 2 extra beams, in case of Fires of Heaven all three beams can hit the same target, dealing triple damage.
- Shield of Fury increases Heaven's Fury damage by up to 300%
- Bracer of Fury increases Heaven's Fury damage by 400% but only against enemies affected by some of hard Crowd Control (CC) effects.
- Convention of Elements - due to the restriction imposed by Bracer of Fury this ring becomes much more valuable, increasing the overall damage output by more than 150% if CC is overlapped with Holy part of the cycle.
Season 34 Sanctified Items
Originated from Season 27, Angelic Crucibles are new consumables that drop anywhere once you're Level 70 in Season 34. Using them on items reforges them into Sanctified Items with Primal Ancient stats, and adds one of three new unique Class Powers listed below. For full details on how they work, check out this Seasonal Guide by Chewingnom!
Unfortunately none of the Class Powers buff our build in a meaningful way, so just use the Angelic Crucibles to get a free Sanctified Primal Ancient with perfect stats.
Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to craft it on matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend Sanctifying one of the following items:
- Shield of Fury
- Fate of the Fell
- The Compass Rose
Global Stat Priorities
Get at least 55% Cooldown Reduction to have high uptime on Akarat's Champion. Make sure your defensive slots—Boots, Pants and Belt—have Vitality and All Resistance on them. Stack DPS stats wherever possible: Holy Damage Increase, Heaven's Fury Damage, Critical Hit Damage and Critical Hit Chance. Area Damage should be mostly ignored, because it doesn't get buffed by Shield of Fury.
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
- Bracer of Fury
- Shield of the Steed and Shield of Fury
- Nemesis Bracers
- Goldwrap
4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:
- Two-Handed Flails to get Flail of the Charge and Fate of the Fell
- Rings to get Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac
- 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
- Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Cain's Destiny and Sage's Journey
6. At this point you can somewhat comfortably farm Nephalem or Speed Greater Rifts where you can find all the remaining items you need for different variants of the build. It's better to spend your materials improving your set pieces, getting 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:
- Fate of the Fell
- Shield of Fury
- Flail of the Charge
SLOT | ITEM | STAT PRIORTY |
Main-Hand | Flail of the Charge Fate of the Fell Johanna's Argument Pig Sticker | 1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Damage % 4. Attack Speed 5. Cooldown Reduction 6. Strength |
Off-Hand | Shield of the Steed Shield of Fury Ivory Tower (Cubed) | 1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Heaven's Fury Damage 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Elite Damage 5. Strength |
Helm | Crown of Valor Leoric's Crown (Cubed) Pride's Fall (A3 Bounties, Cubed) Cain's Insight (Crafted) Sage's Apogee (Crafted) | 1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Socket Flawless Royal Diamond 3. Vitality 4. Strength |
Gloves | Gauntlets of Valor Stone Gauntlets (Cubed) Magefist (Cubed) St. Archew's Gage (Cubed) Cain's Scrivener (Crafted) Sage's Purchase (Crafted) | 1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Critical Hit Damage 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Attack Speed 5. Strength 6. Physical Resistance |
Shoulders | Spaulders of Valor | 1. Heaven's Fury Damage 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Resource Cost Reduction 4. All Resistance 5. Strength |
Chest | Brigandine of Valor | 1. Sockets Flawless Royal Diamond 2. Heaven's Fury Damage 3. Elite Damage Reduction 4. All Resistance 5. Life % 6. Strength 7. Vitality |
Pants | Chausses of Valor Captain Crimson's Thrust (Crafted) Cain's Habit (Crafted) | 1. Sockets Flawless Royal Diamond 2. All Resistance 3. Strength 4. Vitality |
Boots | Greaves of Valor Captain Crimson's Waders (Crafted) Cain's Travelers (Crafted) Sage's Passage (Crafted) | 1. All Resistance 2. Strength 3. Vitality 4. Armor |
Ring 1 | Convention of Elements The Compass Rose Unity Stone of Jordan Avarice Band (A3 Bounties) | 1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Damage 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Damage Range 6. Attack Speed |
Ring 2 | Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac Ring of Royal Grandeur (A1 Bounties, Cubed) | 1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Attack Speed Increase |
Bracers | Bracer of Fury Warzechian Armguards Nemesis Bracers | 1. Holy Damage 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Strength 4. Vitality 5. All Resistance |
Amulet | The Flavor of Time Squirt's Necklace The Traveler's Pledge Hellfire Amulet | 1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Damage 3. Holy Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Cooldown Reduction |
Belt | Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle (Crafted) Sage's Ribbon (Crafted) | 1. All Resistance 2. Strength 3. Life % 4. Vitality |
Potion | Bottomless Potion of Amplification | To gain extra healing |
- Bane of the Trapped is the most common DPS gem, the bonus is always active thanks to Judgment.
- Bane of the Stricken is necessary to kill the Rift Guardian.
- The third gem is usually Pain Enhancer for extra Attack Speed or Gogok of Swiftness for RGK and CDR-dependent variants of the build.
- Heaven's Fury Fires of Heaven is the main source of damage, thanks to Aegis of Valor (4) Bonus we can spam this skill despite its heavy Wrath cost.
- Fist of the Heavens Fissure is necessary to activate Aegis of Valor (2 and 4) Bonus. Fissure is used as both fissures and lightning arcs provide Wrath each time they deal damage, making it unnecessary to cast Fist of the Heavens too often.
- Judgment is used to activate Bracer of Fury bonus damage. Alternatively Shield Glare can be used to the same effect, but Judgment's longer duration and more convenient area of effect make it an overall better choice.
- Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force provides 50% Resource Cost Reduction which lets us spam Heavens Fury even against single targets where Wrath generation is low. And at the same time it provides 50% damage reduction thanks to Captain Crimson's Trimmings. 15% Attack Speed from the base skill is just icing on the cake.
- 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.
- Finally the last skill slot is free; 90% it's Iron Skin Flash for free movement and damage reduction, but in some cases where speed is needed above everything else Steed Charge can take its place.
- Heavenly Strength is mandatory for 2h variants, for the 1h ones Fervor is used instead for its massive CDR boost.
- Holy Cause is the main source of recovery as well as a nice damage boost.
- Long Arm of the Law lets us have easy 100% uptime on Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force.
- Finery is the strongest generic crusader passive, provides about 15% DPS and 12% toughness boost.
Core | Offensive | Defensive | Utility |
1. Movement Speed | 1. Cooldown Reduction | 1. All Resistance | 1. Resource Cost Reduction |
2. Strength | 2. Critical Hit Damage | 2. Life % | 2. Area Damage2 |
3. Vitality1 | 3. Critical Hit Chance | 3. Armor | 3. Life per Hit |
4. Attack Speed | 4. Life Regeneration | 4. Pickup Radius |
1 Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 750,000 Life is recommended).
2 Avoid any source of Area Damage for RGK variants as this is useless and it can lag the game.
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!
Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.
Optimal Path
Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!
Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.
Nodes 7-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!
Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.
Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.
Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!
Use the Scroll Bar to see Altar Progression
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.
Speed GR Enchantress
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. If you are using Speed GR variant with Unity, make sure to also equip it on the follower together with Smoking Thurible!
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.
- The Sultan of the Blnding Sand, Blind Faith and Cord of the Sherma to proc Bracer of Fury.
GR Pushing Enchantress
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Enchantress setup for the Slow from Temporal Pulse, Cooldown Reduction from Prophetic Harmony, Damage Reduction and Armor from Powered Shield, and the Attack Speed from Focused Mind.
Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > 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.
- Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
Fist of the Heavens needs to be used at least once every 5 seconds to maintain Aegis of Valor (2) Bonus. With Fissure it will also be enough to keep your Wrath maxed out in the rift, although during the bossfight more fissures might be necessary.
Heavens Fury is your main attack skill and it should be spammed as much as possible to deal damage, apply Shield of Fury stacks, heal via Holy Cause, and to generate Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac procs.
Akarat's Champion, Laws of Valor and Iron Skin are three toughness buffs that you want to keep up all the time. It's important to only cast each skill when the buff is about to run out, to avoid wasting any Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac procs. For the build variations which don't use Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, the Akarat's Champion is used exactly at the start of every other Holy cycle of Convention of Elements, Laws of Valor is used on cooldown and Iron Skin is used when extra toughness or Movement Speed is needed.
Finally the CC skill, Judgment or Shield Glare, is only used right before the Holy cycle. Using it at any other time will reduce your overall DPS due to Crowd Control Resistance mechanics.
The build is quite tanky already so the only change for hardcore is swapping Finery for Indestructible, the strongest cheat death passive in the game. 5s long invulnerability combined with Akarat's Champion CC-immunity lets you use Town Portal no matter how perilous your current circumstances are. Be aware however, that if you "die" due to being stuck, using Iron Skin Flash after the passive procs will not give you any Movement Speed and you will still be stuck until the invulnerability runs out. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Concept
Using AoV Heaven's Fury Crusader in Torment 16 is a lot like coming to a carnival shooting game with your own 105mm M102 Howitzer: people give you weird looks but it works. Generally AoV FotH Crusader will be better for T16, but this is fun in its own way and you also can use Cain's Destiny.
Here we drop almost all our damage multipliers: Shield of Fury, Bracer of Fury, Convention of Elements, Finery, Holy Cause are all gone. However, each of three beams still deals enough damage to oneshot yellow Elites on non-critical hit!
Since the damage is so overwhelming we focus on other stats: Attack Speed, CDR, and Movement Speed. We use a bunch of standard T16 items: Goldwrap, Avarice Band, Boon of the Hoarder, Warzechian Armguards.
Gameplay
This is red-hot 1,000°C Crusader vs Nephalem Rift. Your Heaven's Fury is replaced with a Disintegration Ray and everything it touches evaporates instantly. Rush through the rift and mainly hunt for Elites. The only buff you have to keep up is Laws of Hope Wings of Angels. Don't forget to cast Fist of the Heavens sometimes for Wrath.
Setups
When playing in groups, equip Nemesis Bracers, use Avarice Band instead of Stone of Jordan, and Sage's Journey instead of Captain Crimson's Trimmings. On the boss, equip 2 pieces of Cain's Destiny and Bracer of Fury. When the boss becomes targetable, use Judgment Deliberation to immobilize it for 10 seconds. Even without 20,000% damage from Aegis of Valor (6) Bonus, you will kill the boss in just a few seconds. Enjoy your extra Greater Rift Keystones!
Select Build Version
Concept
This is a very different variant of the build that relies on Ivory Tower to deal damage. This build requires high Paragon (3,000+) to function, but once you get there it handily beats all the other variants.
There are quite a few changes to the build: Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac is replaced by Justice Lantern for extra defense and 16% Block Chance. With Hold Your Ground and 31% Block Chance on the shield we get to 77% Block Chance, meaning almost every time an attack hits us the Ivory Tower hits back. Since our attack speed is very low compared to how many attacks we can block, there's no point to actually running Fires of Heaven so we use Blessed Ground, which passively stacks Shield of Fury for us. Because we no longer need Wrath to cast Heaven's Fury, we can switch from Fissure to Divine Well for more healing. Finally we switch Stone Gauntlets to Aquila Cuirass in the cube because we have a lengthy Akarat's Champion downtime.
Gameplay
When playing this build you are facing two main challenges: positioning properly to deal damage and surviving your Akarat's Champion downtime. The key to overcoming both is intelligent usage of Iron Skin. In your 32s cycle there's 4 periods: 1st DPS phase - 4s of Holy, Chill phase - 12s, 2nd DPS phase - 4s and finally 12s Downtime. During these 32 seconds you can use Iron Skin 3 times. In order to transition smoothly between these phases you need to use it in the following way:
- 3s before the 1st DPS phase (1s into Fire) - use it to safely move into the pull and position yourself for max DPS.
- In the middle of the Chill Phase (end of Lightning) - use it here because the cooldown allows for it and to gain freedom of movement before 2nd DPS Phase
- 2s into Holy on 2nd DPS phase - this way Iron Skin stays active during first 2s of Downtime allowing you to move out of the pull and run away/hide from the damage.
In order to maximize your damage you want to get hit as much as possible. So you need to stand inside of many melee mobs and somewhere in the open so that all the ranged mobs can see you. Also you need to stand still during your DPS phase and 1-2s prior, in order to make sure that you don't dodge any attacks.
For the Rift Guardian fight you change the pattern a little bit: you use Iron Skin during your Holy, together with Provoke and Judgment. This guarantees that you can take everything the boss dishes out and stay in position to deal damage. When not on Holy you can just run away and focus on dodging, you don't even need to attack the boss because Blessed Ground is stacking Bane of the Stricken for you.
Homing Pads on your follower are extremely useful for this build. Since you don't need to attack to deal damage, you can channel Town Portal during Holy and enjoy free 65% damage reduction. This is especially useful vs the Rift Guardian.
Setups
At very high Paragon (6,000+) you can drop Justice Lantern and Hellfire Amulet for Endless Walk set. Since we lose Long Arm of the Law in the process, Unstoppable Force is replaced by Provoke Hit Me for more blocks. Another option for this skill slot is Punish Fury which provides 15% Critical Hit Chance and Block Chance, but unlike Provoke it has an animation and makes the build a lot clunkier.
Concept
This is the basic version of AoV HF crusader. We use Pig Sticker as our weapon and stack maximum Cooldown Reduction (including the Necklace!) to get 99% uptime on Akarat's Champion.
Gameplay
The skills are used exactly as described in core gameplay section. During your Holy rotation of Convention of Elements, you need to position yourself next to Elites or high HP mobs to hit them with all 3 beams of Heaven's Fury. Even with perfect CDR rolls you will have a tiny downtime on Akarat's Champion. Be careful during that time, either use Iron Skin to retain the CC-immunity or just stop attacking for a moment. If you don't do this, you will be unable to attack for the next 5-8 seconds!
Setups
If you want to be tankier, go Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac plus Squirt's Necklace or Hellfire Amulet with Indestructible instead of Endless Walk to get permanent Iron Skin.
You can also choose between Gogok of Swiftness and Pain Enhancer as your third legendary gem. The former is more consistent and gives you some toughness, while the latter has way more damage potential if you fish for the right rift. You will either have to deal with 3.5s Akarat's Champion downtime (which you can cover up with Iron Skin) or lose Stone Gauntlets for Leoric's Crown.
Finally, you can choose between Judgment Debilitate and Shield Glare Divine Verdict. The latter is harder to use, since it has smaller area and shorter duration, but it's a lot stronger defensively (Blind vs 40% reduced damage) and about the same offensively (20% additive vs more attacks while CC lasts).
Concept
At higher Paragon (6,000+) you can drop Pig Sticker and Shield of Fury to use Norvald's Fervor set. This version of the build deals slightly more damage and can also make use of Area Damage but it is incredibly squishy. Instead of having permanent Akarat's Champion, we now play a 32 second rotation. This eases up the Cooldown Reduction requirements as we now need only 64.5%. In its place we get some Area Damage rolls.
Gameplay
The gameplay stays mostly the same but now you need to also use Steed Charge before every Holy rotation of Convention of Elements.
You are very vulnerable during your Akarat's Champion downtime. When your second damage phase ends immediately use Steed Charge to move to a safer area and keep running to switch Endless Walk into defense mode.
Setups
You can choose between Gogok of Swiftness and Pain Enhancer as your third legendary gem. The former is more consistent and gives you some toughness, while the latter has way more damage potential if you fish for the right rift.
Finally, you can choose between Judgment Debilitate and Shield Glare Divine Verdict. The latter is harder to use, since it has smaller area and shorter duration, but it's a lot stronger defensively (Blind vs 40% reduced damage) and about the same offensively (20% additive vs more attacks while CC lasts).
Select Build Version
Rift Guardian Killer's (RGK) job is to kill the Rift Guardian at the end of the run.
Concept
In group play we no longer need to run our own Crowd Control skill, since zBarb takes care of that with Ground Stomp. The Johanna's Argument together with Blessed Hammer Thunderstruck is used to apply Bane of the Stricken stacks faster. In this variant we play a 32 second Akarat's Champion rotation, so you need 64.5% Cooldown Reduction (with Gogok of Swiftness stacked).
Gameplay
In the rift your job is just to exist. You just run around keeping your Endless Walk in defensive mode, giving Laws of Valor buff to your trash killer and that's all you really have to do. If you feel tanky enough you can also run around a bit to aggro some mobs but that's it.
Now on the Rift Guardian fight is when you get to actually play the game. Your rotation consists of two parts: stacking Bane of the Stricken and dealing damage. After your Holy ends you want to use Fist of the Heavens 3-4 times to generate a lot of Wrath and then only use Blessed Hammer for the next 9 seconds. Then at roughly 2 seconds into the Fire you need to use Fist of the Heavens 3-4 times again to get the Aegis of Valor (2) Bonus and to replenish Wrath. Then during your Holy you only hold down Heaven's Fury and do nothing else. You need to activate Akarat's Champion exactly at the start of every other Holy cycle, so that you have the buff on every DPS rotation.
Unfortunately, this exact rotation is not always possible. Some bosses will not stand in one place and when they walk out of your Fissures you will need to cast more Fist of the Heavens to maintain your wrath. This will harm your stricken stacking, but the most important thing is not running out of Wrath during your Holy, so make sure to pay attention to that.
Additionally, three Rift Guardians are bugged: Infernal Maiden, Perendi and Vesalius. These bosses don't take periodic damage from Fissures. In order to generate Wrath while fighting them you need to make use of Lightning Arc part of Fissure. To do that you need to put Fissures away from each other otherwise there will be no lightning. The best way to do it is by placing 3 fissures: one to the left, one to the right and one directly on top of the boss. All 3 of these bosses also like to teleport around so you will need to pay a lot of attention to your Wrath and repeat this 3 fissure pattern if necessary.
Setups
If you are dying too much in the rift, switch Holy Cause to Indestructible.
At very high Paragon (5,000+), you can switch to Akarat's Champion Hasteful for more Attack Speed.
Rift Guardian Killer's (RGK) job is to kill the Rift Guardian at the end of the run.
Concept
This variant equips Fate of the Fell and cubes The Furnace. As a result the skill slot previously occupied by Blessed Hammer becomes free. Most commonly used skill is Steed Charge for extra mobility, although it can also be Judgment Resolved for damage or something else entirely.
Compared to Hammers RGK variant, this build deals almost twice as much damage upfront but it stacks Bane of the Stricken a lot slower. This means that when bossfight is short enough (2min or less), the 2h variant actually kills the boss as fast or faster than the Hammer version and it also has other benefits such as more mobility and higher damage in the rift.
Gameplay
The Rift Guardian fight is more simple than Hammers version: you don't have a separate skill to stack Bane of the Stricken, so all you have to do is make sure that you cast Fist of the Heavens in the last second of Fire and that you have enough Wrath to spam Heaven's Fury during Holy. When off-Holy you can freely alternate between Fist of the Heavens and Heaven's Fury, just make sure to get your Wrath back and then you can try to squeeze out an extra bit of DPS.
Setups
If you are dying too much in the rift, switch Holy Cause to Indestructible.
At very high Paragon (5,000+), you can switch to Akarat's Champion Hasteful for more Attack Speed.
Video Guide
Mechanics
- Applies a stack every time Heaven's Fury deals damage. Cannot apply stacks to the same target more often than once every 0.9/APS seconds.
- Stacks are lost when the target leaves combat. Normal mobs and Elites lose stacks when you move too far away or change zones. Bosses never lose stacks. Additionally, some mobs can dispell stacks even when you are fighting them: Terror Demons lose stacks when entering invisibility, Morlu Legionaries lose stacks when they enter their stone form.
- Damage bonus from stacks doesn't interact with Area Damage in any way. AD procs from debuffed targets deal unbuffed damage, same for AD procs versus debuffed targets.
- Adds two extra beams to Fires of Heaven in a shotgun pattern.
- Hitting the same target with more than 1 beam deals extra damage.
- The beams' hurtbox extends inside and slightly behind crusader.
- The damage bonus is only active while the target is crowd controlled. All the normal CC-related considerations apply.
- Some Rift Guardians can ignore your crowd controls, reducing your damage by a factor of 5 (Vesalius is immune to blinds, Erethon breaks Judgment whenever it dashes).
- Check out this post by Chewingnom for more informations about Crowd Control!
The important question that needs to be answered to determine the value of Attack Speed is "How many times can I cast Heaven's Fury during my Holy Convention of Elements cycle?". For answer refer to the following table:
FPA | Attacks | Window |
32 | 8 | 15 |
31 | 8 | 22 |
30 | 8 | 29 |
29 | 9 | 7 |
28 | 9 | 15 |
27 | 9 | 23 |
26 | 10 | 5 |
25 | 10 | 14 |
24 | 10 | 23 |
23 | 11 | 9 |
22 | 11 | 19 |
21 | 12 | 8 |
20 | 12 | 19 |
Window refers to how close to the start of Holy your first attack must be. For example with 30 frames breakpoint you attack exactly 2 times per second, meaning that in 4s you can attack 8 times, and if your first attack lands anywhere in the first 29 frames of Holy, then the 8th will land before Holy is over. As you can see, some breakpoints actually increase your DPS by adding extra attacks, while others only make it easier to perform a DPS rotation correctly. To convert in-game Attack Speed into FPA values, refer to d3planner or read the full Attack Speed Mechanics Guide.
- Fires of Heaven are shot in the direction your character is facing.
- Fires of Heaven shot by this item have no proc coefficient, they don't proc Area Damage, don't heal with Holy Cause and don't apply Shield of Fury stacks.
- Can only fire a shot once every 12 frames (5 times per second). If 2 attacks are blocked in the same 12 frame interval, then the next proc will deal double damage. If 3 or more attacks are blocked, the damage is increased to 250% of the base. Blocking more attacks will not increase the damage further.
- Blocking an attack with Punish Fury active immediately consumes the Critical Chance buff.
- Fire Chains Champions Packs will be your best friends when playing Ivory Tower builds as Fire Chains have a tickrate of 10 times per second. Also, the Rift Guardian Orlash with its Lightning Breath throwing 20 projectiles in quick succession as a beam is the best Rift Guardian for Ivory Tower.
Summary
- Put together the core items and acquire the full Aegis of Valor set.
- Stack Cooldown Reduction to keep up all your defensive buffs.
- Don't recast the buffs until they almost run out.
- Only use Crowd Control skills directly before your Holy rotation.
- Don't die 4Head
Cheers!
Credits
Written by Northwar.