I'm down so long as you're cool with backpedaling to act 4. Should only take an hour and some change to breeze through even if we're clearing it.
I have no problems with that. I was only on the first mission of act 5 anyway. Couldn't finish the first mission in the hour I had to play before work.
Still expecting $&@$ RoS to get here from Amazon! Good news is since it's delayed they gave me $10. I guess that's worth all this extra waiting to play but only just. Hopefully be getting some levels this weekend!
How are you high level tootin' crusaders liking it? At mid 20s it seems ok, but not blown away by it yet. I've been switching up the main wrath generator attack, but I haven't settled on one which I like best (although not even close to unlocking all the runes). So far the chains seems like a nice AoE ability with reduced damage, and the slash seems the best damage dealer but point blank. Secondary attacks the sweeping attack is freaking deadly, and falling sword/bomber man combo blows up a lot of stuff. Tried the pillar of light but wasn't too impressed...
It's a fun class. I usually keep my crusader ranged with either justice or smite as my wrath generator. Heaven's fury is good with the rune that makes it bigger. I think falling sword and condem are in almost everyone's bar because they're pretty sweet. At 61+ you'll get bombardment, which is massive damage, but a full minute cool down. You can use a passive to drop it to 40s and akarat's champion with rally to get it even lower, but it's probably not the best DPS you can get. The steed charge thing never really gets good unless you're being power leveled and need a run the fuck away button. It is funny with the drawn and quartered rune though.
I'd say it's a fun class, but I don't know if it'll stick as a class that I enjoy more than my demon hunter and monk. I will say I believe I'll prefer it over my barbarian or wizard, but it's still early. I like the abilities well enough, and it does indeed seem to be that bruiser caster class that it's supposed to be. I run slash with crush and blazing sweep for my primary and secondary. I also use judgment with the resolve rune, condemn with reciprocate, heaven's fury with ascendency, and falling sword with rapid descent. "But sardonic where is your law?" Fuck laws; the only aura I need is that of gore and blood from the fallen.
Besides, you usually have Smokey running law of hope and healing judgement to keep your ass from dying instantly.
I've been playing in Torment IV on my Demon Hunter with my group of RL friends. One of our group PLed a Crusader to 70 to play with us. Through Torment II they work absolutely amazingly as a tank, but in T3/T4 so far, I'd much rather have my Monk or Barb friend take point than the Crusader, simply because the Crusader can't keep up the damage. Tank skills are great, and maybe it's his item build, I'm not sure. All I can say is I've noticed we kill much faster when we replace his Crusader with his Monk, who are (on paper) equally geared, and they tank equally well. Personally, I leveled my Crusader up as DPS, and found that the damage lacked significantly vs my Demon Hunter and Wizard. I really want to like the class, and I'll try different builds, but this has been my experience with it over the past 6 days.
I've been having quite a bit of fun With the crusader myself, and I've been playing a lot of t3 and t4 in group play, and primarily t2 solo. My crusader currently has a base damage of just over 400k, and a toughness of 18m. I don't die often. As far as crusader damage goes: you're right, barbarian is going to take him on that. That's what the class is meant to do: stand and slaughter. They sacrifice the survivability in order to do that, but they have tremendous melee damage output. However, from what I've seen, crusader has the ability to dish out damage that would consistently place it above the monk. Exploding palm can throw down large amounts of damage to groups, but with basic attacks and secondaries I feel like the crusader just hits harder and in larger radaii overall with maintaining an equitable level of survivability (if not greater). Monks have some nice sustain passives like near death experience, but I can also pop Akarats and break 40m toughness for 20 seoonds, and get reborn if I die during that time. I rarely need to do that as it is. Abilities like condemn and heavens fury with fires of heaven hit like trucks, and you can spam both very often. When the opportunity presents itself I fully intend to swap out my rings and amulet for more damage stats. When I do, I should still maintain a toughness in excess of 12m, but push my damage up into the 500-600 base range. I don't know, from what I've seen (and done with my monk), I have a hard time not feeling that the crusader seriously outclasses the monk if you're trying to take a tanky DPS approach. I feel like the monk, as a pure tank, would sustain better and longer, just as I feel that the barbarian, as a pure melee DPS, would hit harder. I feel that the crusader, however, excels better than the other two when it comes to walking that line between the realms of tank and DPS.
My crusader is still a baby but generally speaking if all my skills are up, I pop them and absolutely crush the opposition for about 10 seconds. Anything still alive after that will kill me My biggest difficulty is that I can't see a damn thing once I throw my lightshow up, so affixes like frozen/etc. tend to take me by surprise while I'm in close bashing them. Hoping I can make a viable hammer build at 70, but it's just a hobby. I'm more of a WD/DH guy.
I love my crusader. He has become my favorite character. I've got his stats a little changed around. Right now I have a damage of 620k and a toughness of 12m base. If I need to be a bit tankier I can trade out about 170kish damage for an extra 6m toughness with an amulet swap (which can then be boosted to a total over 45m). My DH has been more or less shelved at the moment, though I might try dusting him off in a few days.
