One skill that is literally never used in any build I’ve ever seen or used is Laws of Justice. Typically people use the laws of valor for the offensive IAS and CHD bonuses etc., and sometimes people use the Laws of Hope for the movement speed bonus, but never have i seen laws of justice get any play.
This is very unfortunate for this skill and I see some applications for it in meta play for crusaders to take. Right now the Valor sader uses the heavens fury bracers and then cubes stone gauntlets or some other defensive option. I’d like to see some changes along the following lines - and I’d love feedback from others on the proposed changes.
For starters, the law itself gives a passive bonus of 120 all resistance, and active at 490. This is just not good enough to justify a skill slot for damage mitigation, which is one reason why folks dont take it. I’d change the skill to give a flat 20% damage reduction as the passive, and have the active increase your resistances and armor by 50% or something - this would be with no rune and would give a quite beefy bonus that would scale with your character. The exact values are flexible, if this is too OP i could see 10% DR and 25% armor and all res on the active.
As far as the runes, the actual effects are sensible, just not strong enough. Here is the description of each rune as it stands:
Protect the Innocent - Active: Empowering the Law also redirects 20% of the damage taken by your allies to you for the next 5 seconds.
Suggestion: 30% redirect dmg, and your dmg from attacks is reduced by your block % - though this would have to be itself capable of receiving mitigation from shields from other sources
Immovable Object - Active: Empowering the Law also increases Armor for you and your allies by 7000 for 5 seconds.
Suggestion: change All res and armor value to 200% or so - following the suggested change to the skill
Faith’s Armor - Active: Empowering the Law also surrounds you and your allies with shields of faith for 5 seconds. The shields absorb up to 26,821 damage.
Suggestion: this is a good skill similar to the monk’s mantra, except it cannot be spammed. Needs to scale with crusader armor or life somehow (since we arent looking for a zcrusader spec) which would be natural to the itemization and paragon scaling. Also maybe make it last longer or just absorb more so that the cooldown doesnt make it trivial. Ideally this could even work like the Mantra of Salvation rune which saves you from dying since zmonk doesnt take this skill or rune in metas
Decaying Strength - Active: While the Law is empowered, any enemy who attacks you or your allies will have their damage reduced by 15% for 5 seconds, stacking up to a maximum of 60%.
Suggestion: this is by far the most compelling standalone option from the runes for giving a strong and unique benefit. No real changes suggested except to make the debuff last long-ish, maybe 5-8 seconds at least.
Bravery - Active: Empowering the Law also grants immunity to control impairing effects to you and your allies for 5 seconds.
Suggestion: this rune allows greater flexibility to the barb in metas and allows the sader to help out a bit. Barb will still take IP but its helpful still.
All that said in terms of skill changes - which might be too much, but I like big buffs (and I cannot lie) - I think there is room for a new bracer or belt item for saders to take:
Affix: gain the base effect of every law skill and reduce the cooldown of your laws by 3 seconds. Additionally, laws of justice gains the effect of every rune.
So if all the skill changes were made that I suggested or something similar, you would have a very compelling option to take besides stone gauntlets that makes a crusader a good choice for metas outside their spectacular performance as RGKs. After all, who doesnt like it when classes offer more than less and QoL goes up?
Those are my thoughts, I’d love to hear yours!