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.
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.
Assembling the Build
Item Stat Priorities
Gems
Skills
Passives
Paragon Points
Follower
Gameplay
Hardcore
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!
Concept
This version of the build is designed for 4 minute runs in low-mid GRs. Convention of Elements is not great in speedruns so we use Unity instead. Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard and St. Archew's Gage protect our Squirt's Necklace. Since we want to CC different mobs all the time, we use Shield Glare over Judgment for its shorter cooldown. We can't fit in Shield of Fury, but most of the targets will be dead long before we can hit them 10 times, so it's not that good anyway.
Gameplay
The gameplay is pretty straightforward: you rush through the rift with Steed Charge looking for Elites and juicy packs of trash mobs. When you find them, you use Shield Glare and obliterate them with a few Heaven's Fury casts. Don't forget to keep up your buffs and randomly cast Fist of the Heavens every few seconds for Wrath.
Setups
If you are struggling to keep your Squirt's Necklace buff up, switch to Endless Walk. Replace St. Archew's Gage with Aquila Cuirass and Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard with Bane of the Powerful. This setup is more clunky so you need to do 5-6 minute runs in higher tier GRs.
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).
Concept
The job of a Trash Killer (TK) is killing normal (and sometimes elite) enemies in the rift to spawn the Rift Guardian. In this variant we drop Shield of Fury for Norvald's Fervor set. This lets us get full benefit out of Area Damage so we also need to stack it on gear. In this variant we play a 32 second Akarat's Champion rotation, so you need 64.5% Cooldown Reduction.
Gameplay
Your need to follow the rotation tied to your Convention of Elements. Activate Akarat's Champion exactly at the start of every other Holy cycle, so that you have the buff on every DPS rotation. Sit in the middle of the pull to maximize Pain Enhancer stacks and cast Fist of the Heavens for Wrath. Be careful to not put it on top of too many enemies, this skill can be very laggy with Area Damage! At the beginning of Physical cycle use Steed Charge and start attacking with Heaven's Fury to spawn an Oculus Ring. After it spawns cast Fist of the Heavens some more to refresh your Aegis of Valor (2) Bonus. One second before Holy use Steed Charge to move into an Oculus Ring and start blasting. At the same time your zBarb needs to use Ground Stomp to pull monsters together and stun them for your Bracer of Fury. It's very important that nobody else in the group applies any hard Crowd Control to monsters, as that will make the stun very short!!!
On the Rift Guardian, the gameplay is exactly the same as 2h RGK, except you also need to use Steed Charge one second before your Holy cycle.
Setups
At very high Paragon (5,000+), you can switch to Akarat's Champion Hasteful for more Attack Speed.
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
Shield of Fury
Fate of the Fell
Bracer of Fury
Attack Speed Breakpoints
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.