They did limit it to 1 summon, the next summon will replace the previous. This makes the guardian particularly rough, especially the ones those that teleport or wander around.
There is this problem with Bombardment, wallers cause barrels to go nowhere, same with too many enemies on screen. It is very frustrating.
As for cooldowns, the CDR tied to Fervor and 1h is very stupid. We should be able to take Fervor together with Heavenly Strength. Why are 2h setups double penalized? They don’t work well with zodiac either.
Akarat’s Awakening is fine, but too many builds cannot squeeze it.
Akarat’s Champion, why is Armor exclusive to Prophet? It should live on all runes, leave cheat death to Prophet.
Justice Lantern is a crappy version of Barbarian’s Band of Might. It is not class exclusive. We really don’t have a class exclusive DR item. Perhaps Justice Lantern should be reworked to always grant 35% DR plus 1/3 of your block chance. I think builds that normally take Unity should have some kind of fallback for Pub groups.
Every build, every damn build of the crusader class is playing the piano of multiple cooldowns to stay alive and do damage. Resources are meaningless. CDR is king or you drop dead and your damage is a joke. Every build.
The class is an epitome of everything wrong with D3 design and its complete lack of a customizable UI.
For the same reason it is the class that would benefit the most in playability from a basic customizable UI. If you have played WoW, then the “tellmewhen” addon gives you configurable cooldown timer icons that can be moved and arranged anywhere on your screen.
Wouldn’t you love to have these indicators near your character instead of the bottom of your screen!? What an atrocity it is to play this class. I’m not playing the class. I’m playing an action bar.
D4 is literally repeating all the same design mistakes of cooldowns and other garbage.
Shield of Fury - Each time an enemy takes damage from Heaven’s Fury or Fist of the Heavens , it increases the damage they take from Heaven’s Fury and Fist of the Heavens by 30% - 40% , stacking up to 10 times.
I also think for various reasons, increase the radius/pull effect of Condemn - Vacuum by maybe 10-20 yards. I might be bias, but it always felt too close range to me. I honestly would prefer it to pull in the mobs without the mechanic of closer to detonation, but again that is solely a personal preference. I am loving the feedback, you all have some really great ideas.
(2)Set - Every use of Blessed Hammer and Blessed Shield that hits an enemy reduces the cooldown of Shield Glare and Provoke by 1 second. You take 60% less damage for 10 sec after casting Shield Glare or Provoke
(4)Set - If an enemy is in range, every second you automatically cast Blessed Hammer - Dominion rune. After casting Shield Glare, this effect occurs more rapidly for five seconds. Shield Glare gains the affect of all runes.
(6)Set - Increase the damage of Blessed Hammer and Blessed Shield by 25000%
Supporting item changes:
Faithful Memory - replace Falling Sword with Shield Glare - include The Final Witness effect - change mechanic to refreshing instead of overwriting.
Akkhan’s Manacles - change mechanic to first 3 enemies hit - add Blessed Hammer - OR add the damage multiplier to Gabriel’s Vambraces
Norvald’s Fervor - increase damage to 400% - This would give competition to Guard of Johanna and Johanna’s Argument - providing players with choice, more attack speed or better mobility, at the cost of different skills and passives!
Akkhan’s Leniency - include the change provided by dmkt - 120% damage modifier and 1000% to single target
This does leave the flexibility to leave Falling Sword in the set if the devs decide in place of Shield Glare. Falling Sword’s issues would have to be resolved of course.
All numbers would be tested in PTR to avoid extreme OP issues.
Including Blessed Shield gives players the option to run the build/set focusing on either Blessed Hammer or Blessed Shield, both of which have different supporting items. Leaving Blessed Shield out of Faithful Memory provides options, not using the exact same gear for each build.
I revisited AoV with Ivory Tower yesterday. I was dying regularly in GR140. I didn’t remember it being this squishy – even with the high block% Justice Lantern setup. Keep in mind I’m at 6700 paragon, non-season. The Ivory Tower play experience heavily relies on defense – which is tuned for GR130s.
I got tired of fishing for AoV Ivory tower and revisited AoV Fist of the Heavens in push - I cleared GR137. As you know, this build has terrible defense. The offense is held back by defense. With another 50% DR, I’m sure I could squeeze GR139.
With FotH placed onto Shield of Fury @ 40%, we lose Norvald’s, which helps to reduce clunk. We equip Fate of the Fell in the cube, while wielding Dark Light. This results in a merger of FotH and Heaven’s Fury for max damage. The build loses Strongarms+Condemn, it gets gets a little wonky with mixed element (Holy/Lightning). SoJ is NOT recommended though, best to just run 20% holy and 20% lightning elements.
I think we’ll see clears around GR143-44 with this. It will cause lag in groups if we take Blessed Ground – but that might be ideal for survival. We may have to wait a few seconds to reach full potency and endure more punishment from the enemies, hence why I’m suggesting raising the DR of the 4pc too.
How to make AoV better for everyone without factoring in the Crucible Power:
AoV 4pc: raise cap to 75 stacks. (needs more comfort in GR140s)
Shield of Fury: 45% per stack up to 15 stacks, includes Fist of the Heavens as a way to grow stacks (prevents crazy FoTH speeds, may still be beneficial to take Norvald’s).
(2)Set - Consecration radius, effect and duration is doubled. Unlock all runes for consecration.
(4)Set - Take 65% less damage for 10 sec after casting consecration. Reduce the cooldown of consecration by .5 seconds every time an enemy takes damage while in consecration.
(6)Set - Increase the damage enemies take by 20000% while in consecration.
Supporting items
Hellskull - gain 10% increased damage while wielding a two-handed weapon. Consecration now pulls enemies into the center of the Consecration. This effect only works for you, not your allies.
Inviolable Faith - casting Consecration also cast Consecration beneath all of your allies. Consecration now becomes an aura for you and your allies.
Build is self-explanatory. The open modifier gives freedom of dps skill choice and is for character only for obvious reasons.
It’s a class set with only 50% passive DR on a class that has all weapon slots tied up and has no decent dedicated defensive legendary. The Justice Lantern ring is a joke for the DR it provides relative to other class legendaries like band of might or dayntee’s binding.
This is on top of AOV being defensively dependent on multiple defensive cooldowns that WILL have downtime at just the wrong time to get you squished.
Valor needs to be buffed to 75-80% DR at max stacks, and about 100x the FOH damage (seriously) that it has now.
Edit: patch just launched and I did a GR 120 clear on my old invoker. Got top 10 in class leaderboard as a result. Dead class confirmed.
(2)Set - Judgement has no cooldown and gains the effect of every rune. Manually hitting an enemy with Smite automatically cast Judgement on that enemy.
(4)Set - Attacks from Phalanx Avatars reduce the cooldown of Akarat’s Champion by 0.5 seconds. Reduce damage taken by 70% for 15 seconds after casting Phalanx.
(6)Set - Increase the damage of Phalanx and Smite by 20000%. Phalanx Avatar’s now target the first enemy hit by Smite, not the chained enemies.
Supporting items
Golden Scourge - Smite now jumps to 3 additional enemies and does 400-500% more damage.
Armor of the Kind Regent - Smite gains the effect of every rune and jumps to an additional 3 enemies.
Unrelenting Phalanx - Phalanx now cast twice and gains the Bowmen and Bodyguard runes. This change makes the Stampede rune a viable choice.
There needs to be a mechanic that does not resummon phalanx avatars (Bowmen/Bodyguard/Shield Bearers) if they are already active. These changes will eliminate the lag issue from the current build.
Conceptually making Smite trigger Judgement for grouping and Phalanx - Stampede a targeted semi-nuke. Having Bowmen and Bodyguard for extra dps and tanking. Smite/Stampede can be played in melee or ranged giving the build flexibility.
The worst thing about the current Akkhan rework is that they removed the CDR stacking need to get Akarat’s Champion uptime, yet you still need to stack CDR to get enough bowmen uptime.
They pretty much took the Akkhan condemn build, in which everything came from your character directly, and funneled that into jumping through judgement spam and pet AI garbage, and ending up at a comparable or worse result.
Let’s embrace the Falling Sword skill because it is such a wasted opportunity to for the Crusader class.
Rework Falling Sword’s Animation
Falling Sword must become an amazing mobility skill, make its animation very quick like Dashing Strike. Falling Sword must become a skill that’s quicker than traveling with Steed Charge, currently the animation delay is slower than using Steed Charge.
Seeker of the Light
(2pc) Set:
Every use of Blessed Hammer and Blessed Shield that hits an enemy reduces the cooldown of Falling Sword and Provoke by 1 second.
(4pc) Set:
You take 50%80% less damage for 8 seconds after landing with Falling Sword. Enemies hit by Falling Sword take 600% damage from Blessed Hammer for 8 seconds.
(6pc) Set:
Increase the damage of Blessed Hammer and Blessed Shield by 30,000%.
Faithful Memory (rework)
Falling Sword stays in the ground and Memorizes the damage dealt to the first enemy hit by your Blessed Hammer. After 5 seconds Falling Sword explodes and deals 300% of the Memorized damage to all enemies within 15 yards.
LoD Blessed Shield vs Suggested Rework Damage Comparison
Set Bonus: 98.5x → 301x = 3.05x
Element %: 1.8x → 1.4x = .778x
Squirts → Endless Walk: 1.5x
LoD Gem → Bane of the Trapped: 1.6x
Captain Crimson: 1.6x Total: 9.11x or 14GRs
Expected Outcome: GR149-150 @ 5k paragon
Blessed Hammer Damage Comparison
Set Bonus: 151x → 301x = 2x
Faithful Memory Transitioned to Seekers 4pc: ~1x
Faithful Memory Rework: 4x+ Total: 8x or 13GRs+
I LIKE IT. Is there a reason that the 4pc does not include Blessed Shield? Also, would including Blessed Hammer in Akkhan’s Leniency make it OP?
When I propose my set reworks, I do not do the math. I just think of the mechanics and figure the developers can tweak the numbers. PTR testing to finalize the power level.
Thank you for your effort, it is appreciated.
Cam’s Rebuttal - Remove resource cost and cooldown of Falling Sword. Falling Sword now pulls in all enemies with 25 yards upon landing.
Possibly a welcome addition to the proposed changes in the SoTL set. I think it would help maximize the new mechanic of the Memorize effect. Or add it an existing legendary item supporting the set. Addition to 4pc bonus? Whichever option is best suited.
@dmkt, what do you think would be the best option for the new legendary power of Cam’s Rebuttal. If it remains on the sword, you would lose out on Johanna’s Argument. To me it feels weird to add it to Guard of Johanna or Gabriel’s Vambraces since those are Blessed Hammer bonuses already. Do you think it would be better included in the 4pc bonus or make a new item, belt/bracers? I’m honestly at a loss.
All these great ideas, I do hope something comes out of them.
