As expected, the Set really isn’t strong once you start pushing high. I won’t claim to have tested the MOST optimal build, but I tried 3 of the runes and used a setup that should have at least been able to handle GR100 - and none of the runes could muster it.
The good news is the 4-piece bonus does stack extremely fast since the bolts also add stacks. The 2-piece procs really easily in density, not so much on single target in my opinion. It’s a 2nd Darklight in density, and it’s a poor man’s Darklight on bosses.
The bad news is there is no defense and no resource management for this build. Even with Crimson & Khassett’s Cord I found myself running out of Wrath the second Unstoppable Force expired. I went max CDR to try and keep Akarat’s Champion and Unstoppable Force up… but that didn’t work out.
Crusader Shield - how are you going to introduce a Fist of the Heavens ONLY set, but not give us a Shield / Off-Hand for it? Give us a defensive shield to use with this build maybe? Hell, just slap the 4-piece bonus on a Crusader Shield and give it to us twice or something. Other builds could take advantage of that defense too.
I’m going to assume there is no redesign coming for obvious reasons. So as it stands, this build is a no go for me. Unless there’s an item combination I am blanking on, which is definitely possible - I just don’t see this Set doing anything other than T16.
GR100 in 4:48 @ 28.4k strength
GR110 in 12:32 @ 28.4k strength
GR115 in 13:48 @ 36.9k strength
GR117 in 13:42 @ 36.1k strength
GR120 failure
Cube: Darklight, Khassett’s, RoRG
Jewelry: CoE, Compass Rose, Traveler’s Pledge
Armor: Capt Crimson, AoV
Bracer: Strongarms
Weapons: Flail of the Charge, Shield of the Steed
Legendary Gems: Trapped, Stricken, Zei’s
Passives: Indestructible, Heavenly Strength, Finery, Long Arm of the Law
Skills: FotH:Fissure, Steed Charge: Rejuvenation, Iron Skin:Steel Skin, Law of Valor:Unstoppable Force, Akarat’s Champ:Prophet, Condemn:Vacuum
Survival is very poor past GR110 (28k str) and GR115 (37k str).
Low damage, 1Tril off Lightning cycle and 3Tril on Lightning.
I did not have issues with resource until i got rid of Provoke, I ran out of wrath once with Echoing Fury + Pain Enhancer.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The Fist of the Heaven’s build needs at least 14 GR levels worth of damage to be competitive with Invoker, Blessed Shield and Condemn. Increase Khassett’s Cord to 800% and Darklight to 800%.
Add a free permanent law to Aegis of Valor’s 4-piece bonus. Make it Laws of Justice:Decaying Strength. The resists and damage reduction will greatly help with survival. AoV also becomes a great asset for groups. The set should allow for 2 active laws. If this cannot be done, add RCR to the 4-pc bonus and raise the stacks cap to 65.
Khasset’s Cord be modified to give standard RCR to boost defense through Captain Crimson.
Overall, the game play feels too simple – let me explain: i just have to attack with FotH and keep my buffs up. It’d be nice if i had to juggle some skills, or make attacks a certain way based on a new mechanic.
Many players have requested that Phalanx, Smite and/or Heaven’s Fury be added to the 6-pc set bonus. Adding Heaven’s Fury is an easy win. There are other posts in General/Crusader forums that discuss potential set revisions in depth, there are some good ideas out there:
I haven’t played the actual set yet, but quick first impression on how it looks - too monochromatic. Other armours have some different colour inlays on them at least, maybe do the same for Aegis of Valor set.
DMKT nailed it the set is lacking virtually everything its going to need to make it anywhere, no more testing required until updated patch notes with changes are made. I personally think the set should be reworked to benefit heavens fury as well, it would be multi purpose that way for speed t16 and GRS. Without major buffs and a overhaul of the bonuses this set shouldn’t make live. One of the set items should be changed and made into a shield if a crusader shield isnt being made to benefit the spec.
Quick fixes to help the spec
Bracers of Fury- Benefit both heavens fury and fist of the heavens
Shield of Fury-Benefit both heavens fury and fist of the heavens
This would open the door for a build that uses both fist of the heavens and heavens fury in unison.
I tried a straight AoV build wearing Kassets, EW, Nems, and I used an Akarat’s Awakening to see if that would help with cooldown. Also had a justice lantern and 68% sheet block chance.
Had Akarat’s Addendum, Cindercoat and Obsidian in cube. I ran a Firestarter setup.
I know we joked about it… but it was painful to see me getting one shot within 1 second of going into a T16 rift.
For the love of Imperius, just give us a flat DR and offer some RCR AND CDR too. I had Iron Skin, Akarat’s Champion, Unstoppable Force, Shield Glare with the wrath returning rune and I was still running out of resource.
Needs more damage and toughness big time.
FotH is visually satisfying though.
EDIT: I’m around 1350 paragons btw.
TBH, if they want to keep the DR the way it is, I’d like them offer us all laws and runes at the same time as part of the 4pc… I wanna feel like Imperius… inspiring my allies to fight better and longer.
But we really need some more damage though. Definitely a shield.
Crusader is my second most played class, but I stopped playing a long time ago. With the new set, I decided to level a new character to test it.
Aesthetically the set looks great, although I think the textures could use a little more polish, as they look kind of unrefined in the main menu (when the character is occupying the full screen).
Gameplaywise it is very cool. The Fist of the Heavens skill looks very cool and it is satisfying to use. My testings were done in nephalem rifts in Torment XVI. The 2 piece bonus is ok for a 2 piece bonus. The 4 piece bonus, which seemed like a concern, is actually pretty fast to ramp up to. If you are pushing GR though, I can see that dying in a rift guardian fight can be punishing, as in a single target fight it takes longer to stack the defense. My suggestion is to double the damage reduction per stack and cut the stacks in half. Also, the stacks have a 10 second duration (different from the 5 second that is written on the patch notes), which is good. As for the 6 piece bonus, I can’t comment too much on the damage as I did not try to push with it, but it felt lacking for a TXVI rift and I was resource starved very frequently. I had to make tons of adjustments to make it better.
This is the build I used:
5 piece AoV
2 piece Crimson
Endlesswalk set
Ring of Royal Grandeur
Strongarms Bracers
Darklight
Lidless Wall
Cube - Akkhan’s Addendun, Khassett’s Cord of Righteousness, Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac
The only way I managed to not get resource starved was going full Akarat’s Champion with Addendun in the cube to give me 10 Wrath per second and the defense from Prophet. This way I could use the Hasteful rune to increase my attack speed to spam FotH. Obsidian ring guaranteed that I had AC, Provoke and Law up all the time. But at this point it felt that I was just playing Akkhan. As for FotH itself, I chose the Reverberation rune because of the knock away to proc Strongarms bracer and the slow to proc Bane of the Trapped. This also allowed me to use Zei and work as a ranged build. The one problem with the Reverbaration rune is that the knock away is too random. In a group of enemies, it would just scatter them, sometimes even drawing some of the towards me. I would suggest changing the knock away to a knock back.
My final suggestion would be to make something to differentiate if from Akkhan. The resource is a huge problem for this build, forcing the player to try to go for fulltime Akarat’s Champion. The resource cost reduction from the belt simply isn’t enough. The set lacks any meaningful shield (or bracer), so I would suggest repurposing one of the useless shields to give the build something extra. And again, it felt a bit lacking in damage.
The build I made doesn’t have issues with resource management, but I had to jump through some hoops and use odd specific items and abilities to basically give myself endless Wrath. The set and build is definitely lacking in defensive capability and the limited space for experimenting doesnt help.
Here is what I think should change.
Heaven’s Fury should benefit from the set. It is a heavenly set, so thematically it makes the most sense for an ability that shoots beams of light from heaven to be used.
Heaven’s Fury should get a flat damage % increase as well as one of the following effects.
“When an enemy takes damage from Heaven’s Fury, your Wrath Regeneration is increased by 20”, or perhaps “When you use Heaven’s Fury, your Wrath Regeneration is increased by 20 for X Seconds”. Perhaps even more Wrath Regen would be fine and balanced too. Maybe 30 idk.
That would allow people to use a supporting ability that has supporting items (which happen to fit into all the available slots) in a way that compliments Fist of the Heavens. It also allows people to have multiple playstyles with the build. You could do an old fashioned shotgun build, or you could use the regular Heaven’s Fury beams as a Resource generating CD while spamming Fist of the Heavens.
If there is a good amount of wrath regen, it would mean I could use Prophet for Akarat’s Champion instead of the one that increases my wrath regen which is necessary for my build to work. It would at least help with survivability.
I think beyond that, there needs to be some sort of damage reduction item. A shield like you said sounds like a great idea since the set does have “Aegis” in the name. My Akhan’s Blessed Shield build has over 1.3 Billion toughness. Compared to my Aegis of Valor build which only has 94 Million toughness. I couldn’t come up with anything to increase my toughness that wouldnt wreck my resource management. The support is simply not there.
This is a great concept, straight up 50% RCR also works well too for Crimson, redundant with Akkhan, but solves 2 problems (defense and resource). Though, it’d be nice to have these benefits outside of Captain Crimson.
2-Piece Bonus: Hitting enemies with Fist of the Heavens summons up to 4 Phalanx Archers each dealing 500% increased damage (additive) or 200% (multiplicative)
4-Piece Bonus: Each time your Phalanx Archers hit an enemy you gain 10% damage reduction stacking up to 50% and the effect of your equipped law is doubled (both active and pasisive)
6-Piece Bonus: Increase the damage of Fist of Heavens and Wrath generating skills by 5000% stacking up to 20,000% each time your Phalanx Archers hit an enemy
In the 2-piece bonus I wouldn’t mind either a 500% increased damage (additive) or at least 200% increased damage (multiplicative).
Now if you had the Unrelenting Phalanx shield equipped with this set each time you hit enemies with Fist of Heavens you would summon up to 8 Phalanx Archers.
I really like these ideas. I would hope it wouldn’t take too much development resources to implement since you are modifying existing items rather than making new ones. It makes the set a lot less one dimensional. Here hoping blizzard is able to implement.
4p fist of heavens grants Dr like it is now but heavens fury now heals you for 3-5% of your total life per sec or each cast of fist of heavens reduce cool down on your law by 1 sec or each cast of fist of heavens grants stack of rcr by 1 % stacks 50 times
6 p heavens furry damage is increased by 10k% and enemies affected by heavens fury take 20k%more damage from fist of heavens
Bracers of Valor each point of wrath spent by fist of heavens heals you for 1400- 1500 life value increased by heal on gear
with the new set.