Multiboxing Crusaders

[Ishar]

So; the 'crafted sets' thread lead me to think about cinder/magefist and look at fire based options. Blessed shield + combust looks tempting. Anyone know if it continues to ricochet after exploding?

[Devile]

Finally got some time to play today. Still with 4x Crusaders, didnt have time to add the monk. Just wanted to farm some rifts. Since my DPS improved a bit, wanted to scale back to T4 but I was dying a few times. I crafted Reaper Wraps for all my chars and changed my build to this:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...Rf!gaeS!bZaYYY

Made a huge difference and now I'm facerolling T4. 0 deads, no matter what mobs I get which BTW, have been the annoying Act 5 mobs back to back in the last 10 rifts or so. Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force + 10% resource cost reduction from Paragon + Reaper Wraps and well timed Provokes let me play without a Wrath generator. No wrath generation gear. Akarat's Champion Embodiment of Power just lets me spam Fissures like crazy without any Wrath issues. I only have like 30% CDR for now and its available very fast. Besides I run with Trag'Oul Coils bracers in all my chars so every well I see, I switch and have AC again.

I just use my normal combo and pop AC if I see Nighmarish / Vortex / Knockback affix in a pack or for Rift Guardians. Elites usually die in less than 5 secs. I'll move up to T5 once I improve my toughness a little more and have more CDR so Akarat's Champion is available faster and also I can round robin Laws of Valor Critical in 2 crusaders.

[Devile]

Was able to get around 40% CDR only and the results were amazing. I'm doing T5 at a comfortable pace (not face roll, not too slow either), without dying. Changed my build to this:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...Rf!gaeS!bZYYYY
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...YT!gaeS!bZYYaY

With enough CDR, I was able to free 1 slot which I used it for Heaven's Fury. I've been looking for Darklights but haven't seen a single one, yet I've been lucky with Fate of the Fell and since I had 3 doing nothing, I decided to give it a shot. I'm very happy with the results. I can clear things at a decent pace. Laws of Justice Decaying Strenght is just AMAZING. I've never been able to facetank the 4 legs Rift Guarding (Hammermash alike). It usually 2 hits me but here it was doing pretty much nothing. I was able to facetank it during the entire fight without dropping below 70% life. My main Crusader has 14m toughness and the weakest has 6.8m toughness and it didn't go below 50%. The debuff stacked to 60% which made it hit like a girl

I don't have RoRG on these chars, only 2 pieces Aughild's + Captain's so I don't get the 3 piece bonus yet. Planning on getting rings for all and also Blackthorne's belt and chest to get the 3 piece bonus there. With the additional 27% damage to elites I may be able to faceroll T5. Other choise could be Phalanx Bowman + Tasker and Theo gloves and see how good they are for single targets instead of Heaven's Fury.

The downside is that 40% CDR is not enough. Judgement and Shield Glare are not as available as they were in the past. It took me a while to get used to it, but I'm working on getting higher CDR. Sadly, weapons and shields are not so easy to get with the desired rolls + CDR. If I could get CDR there, 50% would be really easy. Or get Darklights and change Heavenly Strenght to Fervor. I don't care about the attack speed, but that 15% CDR will get me up to 50% without changing much in my items.

I really wanna make the switch to Fire that way I dont need Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force and use Critical. With a good Cindercoat, it will prolly be more than enough, not to mention Magefist, Cindercoat and Maximus are not difficult to get. That's 60% Fire damage which I can't really get from any other element. Sure Schaefer's Hammer can be good, as well as Thundergod's Vigor that best case scenario with perfect Lightning rolls, its 35% Lightning vs 60% Fire + 30% resource cost reduction + a Demon beast with Fire chains that does a shitload of damage. Maybe keep Unstoppable Force but ditch Reaper Wraps so I can use a Andariel's Visage with even more Fire damage. I see a lot of interesting Fire runes for a lot of skills.

I think Lightning will get me to faceroll T5, but not T6. For T6 I'm gonna need far more damage since mobs have almost twice health. I can scale Fire a lot easier than Lightning so I guess that's my progression path. I would love to have 1-2 chars with Furnaces

[Ishar]

seems like 40% should be enough to do 2 judge/2 shield based on math:

• 40% of of 20 is 8, 20-8 is 12, and judgement lasts for 6 seconds.
• 40% of 12 is 4.8, 12-4.8 is 7.2, and shield glare lasts for 4 seconds.

Create a 2 step mapped key in isboxer and call it a day. I'm not at 40% CDR yet, but 3 Judge 1 Shield seems to get by. I've been slumming it in torment 2 though, since it's faceroll and I never die. Toughness is high; but DPS is low, I'm farming T2 for mats to remake some of my Augh pieces that rolled poorly. One crusader is sitting at 20 million toughness, but at a severe cost in DPS; the rest are at 10 or so. If I don't get lucky with BT I will probably roll some Asheara's pieces in the meantime. (Have 3/4 rings, so can easily get full set bonus on all 3 sets).

I'm also still using condemn/burst. I have 2 blades of Prophecy (having bad luck with weapons, really) and 2 steadfasts. I have a Foote and a blacklight, but both are a massive sheet DPS drop; and neither have a socket. I might reroll them to have one later, haven't decided.

What skills do you think you'll base a fire build off of? The +damage does seem pretty tempting. On the other hand; no fissure... I was thinking jenka/foote and shield/combust would be a good starting point.

[Devile]

Times are right but those are for white mobs only, Elites shake the debuffs in prolly half the time or less and u dont want a Frozen + Arcane pack, spamming ice and arcane beams all over the screen. I've died a few times cause my Shield Glare was not up or wasted my Akarat Champion on an easy pack. The only thing that kills me really bad is the Infernal Maiden. That Rift Guarding does some serious damage and I can't chain blind her like other bosses. Bloodmaw is a joke compared to her.

I haven't planned my Fire build yet but I think it will be very similar to what I have for Lightning with the Fire runes of the same skills. Heaven's Fury will be replaced by something else which I haven't decided yet. Options from the top of my head:

• Falling Sword Superheated is my first choise for now. Great damage and can be used as escape mechanism. I can use it to initiate my combo without walking to my target.
• Bombardment Annihilate looks nice, but I need 3 more Mortal Dramas and I dont really like the long cooldown and the fact that is not instant, packs may move around by the time it hits.
• Round Robin of Consecration Shattered Ground is a great option too since it heals and does damage. I really wanna know if 2 runes stack the healing. That would be so OP. With only 30 secs cooldown, I can easily round robin with 2 groups with different runes and have it up all the time just like the Laws.

Also, if I keep Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force, I'll prolly ditch Provoke and have 2 of the previous skills instead of just 1 for more damage. Right now the only reason I keep Provoke is just to recover Wrath, I don't really notice it does any damage in T4-T5. With Cindercoats and Reaper Wraps, Provoke won't be needed IMO.

Falling Sword + Consecration + Judgement / Shield Glare + Fissure Spam looks like a very nice combo. Maybe have 1 Crusader with Falling Sword Part the Clouds to stun when I land so it gives me a little time to cast the rest of my combo without getting interrupted.

I'll definitely test this. Already have Magefists for all my Crusaders and working on the Cindercoats. Maximus will take some time, still I can test with any high DPS 2H for now to see how it goes on T4-T5. I need to farm more Arcane Dusts. Sucks that crafting requires so many of those :/

[Devile]

I did some test with the Fire build with just 1 Crusader. I didn't have all gear with Fire damage, but at least Maximus, Cindercoat and Magefist so it was a decent test anyway. No doubt it does more damage than Lightning since u can stack more Fire damage. I was criting for 20% more and I didn't even have full Fire gear, which I theory sounds great for multiboxing this build, but I noticed I was missing the damage I usually get from the Fissure arcs. For solo runs or if u are the only Crusader in a party, for sure, I think Fire is a better choice now, specially if u have the gear for it, but for multiboxing, I think Lightning is still better.

Obviously this is no serious test, just a glimpse to check a few things. I think the arc damage is considerable and we need to consider that before switching to another element. There's far more testing I need to do in order to ditch Fire for multiboxing Crusaders. I'll continue to gather all the parts for my chars and once I have them all, I'll do a live test and time my rifts. Have a good sample size and decide from there.

[Ishar]

Look forward to your experiments. Probably worth hanging on to a couple sets of elemental gear to guard against future tweaks. Wish we had bigger stashes.

What's your sheet dps on your crusaders in lightning gear, btw?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk

[Devile]

They are around 800-900k and 15-30% lightning damage, 13-30% FotH damage. Need to improve a lot there, but haven't been very lucky with amulets. Only 2 have Thundergod's Vigor and I'm not using Schaefer's Hammer anymore. Looking for Eberli Charo shields so I can spam Heaven's Fury. Also wanna try a Holy Build with Blessed Hammer instead of Fissure and use Holy Cause for damage and healing. Need SoJs urgent since I have no elite damage, as well as RoRG.

PS: If I go to a Fire build, I think it will be only if I switch to Darklight and add a monk to the party. The additional Fist of the Heavens will def add a ton more damage but only if mobs are right next to me and that can only happen with a monk. I think that will be the best combo of all. CC and buffs from the monk and DPS from 3x Fire Crusaders with high APS and CDR. At least on paper looks very efficient and fast compared to my current setup.

[Ishar]

Round Robin condemn isn't that horrible at grouping things up.

Monk adds a nice chunk of DPS though, true. And mobility. But you gotta factor that against the loss of one set of fissures. With darklight's it might be worth it. I only have one darklight, and I haven't experimented with it. Perhaps I should, since it should add a lot of DPS to fissure as well. My darklights stats are not so good, though.

[Ishar]

So toying with a ZDPS monk in the mix, starting from your 'draft':

Crusader 1: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...fl!gaeV!cbYZYY
Crusader 2: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...fl!gaeR!cbaZYY [towering shield to reduce CD on shield glare]
Crusader 3: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...Tl!gaeV!cbYZYY
ZDPS Monk: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...kf!bhcY!cYcaYZ

[I'm not using finery because I don't have a lot of gem's socketed. After I reroll some sockets I'll swap]

I'm thinking of dropping punish for something else. I don't really need a wrath generator, with reapers wraps. I'm also trying to stick to lightning because of fissure. Maybe condemn even though it's not lightning. Or consecration.

Movement speed from annihilation is nice; and exploding palm.

My idea for keybinds Seems to work, for what it's worth:

KeyBinds

Spam(Q):
    Step 1:    CycloneStrikeMap / Aura
    Step 2:    ExplodingPalm
        JudgeRR / ShieldGlareRR
        Crusader_Rotation
        Monk_Rotation    
Pull(A):    Cyclone Strole
Move(F):    ForceMove
    Alt
    Reset
Panic(W):    DrinkPotion
Other(D):    BigBoyPants
    
Keymaps
Auras:    ValorRR/Justice/Conviction 
Reset:    CycloneStrikeMap to step 1
    ExplodingPalm to step 1
    BigBoyPants to step 1
    Spam to step 1                 
CycloneStrikeMap 
    Step 1: CycloneStrike (Only trigger once)
    Step 2: Blank (Do Not advance)       
ExplodingPalm:
    Step 1: Exploding Palm (repeat for 1 seconds)
    Step 2: Blank (Do Not advance for 8 seconds)
Monk_Rotation    
    Step 1: CW/BW for 1 seconds
    Step 2: Deadly Reach for 3 seconds
Crusader_Rotation
    Step 1: punish for 1 seconds
    Step 2: Fissure for 4 seconds.
BigBoyPants: 
    Step 1:  heaven's fall, Inner Sanctuary 
    Step 2:  Akarahat's Champion

It might need some tweaking, but seems to work. Got me through a rift, anyway. Generally I just hit the spam key. Occasionally I'll need to tap A mid fight. D once or twice on elites. Panic if I need to panic.