Aegis of Valor Heaven's Fury Crusader Skills and Runes
On this page, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing Aegis of Valor Heaven's Fury Crusader in Diablo 3. Updated for patch 2.6.10 and Season 22.
Active Skills |
---|
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Passive Skills |
Rotation
In its essence, the build deals damage in a very straightforward manner
— face the monsters you want to demolish and 'shotgun' their faces off with
Heaven's Fury
Fires of Heaven. The Aegis of Valor set itself will nudge you
towards constantly interweave
Fist of the Heavens casts in your
Heaven's Fury spam, as you will need to maintain the damage amplifying
triple stacks from the 2-piece bonus, and also the stacking damage reduction and
Wrath restoration from the 4-piece bonus. This results in a
Fissure cast
roughly every few
Fires of Heavens in order to maintain all the buffs. In
order to maintain the
Bracer of Fury damage bonus, you will also need to
apply some hard crowd control on enemies, usually done via
Judgment or
Shield Glare; this will also be helpful to keep the more dangerous mobs
at least temporarily disabled. The remainder of your skills you will simply apply
as soon as they come off cooldown, as their bonuses are universally helpful: the
survivability and damage bonuses of
Akarat's Champion,
Iron Skin and
Laws of Valor.
Skills and Runes
The main damage dealer in the build is Heaven's Fury — a signature
Crusader skill that sends a furious beam of holy fire that purges your enemies.
You will gain the namesake Holy Shotgun effect from the rune
Fires of Heaven. The entire build revolves around the amplification of its
damage, including the set bonuses, skill selection and supporting gear.
In this Heaven's Fury-focused build,
Fist of the Heavens is taken
strictly for the set mechanics with the 2- and 4-piece bonuses, (see this build's gear page for more information).
With respect to that, the best rune to take is the arcing
Fissure,
whose constant ticks between two or more fissures will greatly assist you with
Wrath management. Note the potential lag coming from overdoing
Fissure
casts, and try to restrict yourself to around 3 casts, placed optimally at the
edges of a fight.
When it comes to Law selection for high end progression, squeezing every bit
of attack speed (and damage, respectively) while not losing too much on
survivability becomes a delicate balance, one you can straddle by taking the
offensive Laws of Valor with the
Unstoppable Force rune. This will
both mitigate your
Heaven's Fury Wrath spending and trigger the Cpt.
Crimson bonuses; this auxiliary craftable set scales your damage reduction based
on your Resource Cost Reduction, and
Unstoppable Force does count as sheet
RCR.
While dealing a lot of damage on their own, your Heaven's Fury shots
depend a great deal on the damage amplification of the
Bracer of Fury. This
legendary item necessitates the use of a crowd control skill in the build, and
early on in character progression, you will be hard pressed to find a wider AoE
and more defensive utility than
Judgment with the
Debilitate rune.
If you are looking to squeeze some additional damage from this slot instead, which
will be useful in high tier GR progression, you can use
Shield Glare
with
Divine Verdict in this slot.
Note that in Season 22, this skill slot needs to be taken by
Steed Charge, in order to take advantage of the Norvald's set damage
multiplication. You can add a helpful monster-controlling aspect to the skill
by using the rune
Draw and Quarter. Normally, this slot would be taken by
Iron Skin — a staple damage reduction tool, cutting incoming damage
in half and removing enemy collision through the
Flash rune.
Second, you will be running Akarat's Champion, whose powerful bonuses
you will strive to have permanently with the help of
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac resets. While
Akarat's Champion increases
your damage multiplicatively by 35% and supplies you with 5 Wrath per second as
a base effect, the skill also takes on a defensive role through the tanky
Prophet rune. Supplying you with 150% additional Armor and a free life,
this skill will keep you safe and alive in high
Greater Rifts.
This concludes the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.
Passives
In a spec that is largely dependent on fast attacks and cooldowns, it is no
wonder Fervor is taken for the outstanding 15% Attack Speed and Cooldown
Reduction while wielding one-handed weapons. Note that in Season 22, this passive
should be replaced by its 2-handed mirror,
Heavenly Strength, due to the
temporary ability to use the Norvald's Fervor set in the build.
Finery is another Crusader staple, adding 1.5% Strength for every
socket across your gear, including weapon and jewelry. Assuming an average of 10
sockets across a well-equipped character,
Finery amounts to a decent
boost of both damage and toughness.
In order to maximize your damage and add sustain, Holy Cause should be
added to the passive mix, since it synergizes elementally with your main damage
dealer and has a healing side effect. Its base 10% damage buff is also nothing
to scoff at.
Long Arm of the Law doubles the duration of the active effects of Laws and
ensures the permanent uptime of
Unstoppable Force. Aided by this passive,
you will have an easy time maintaining both the
Fires of Heaven spam and
the damage mitigation of the Cpt. Crimson set.
Changelog
- 18 Nov. 2020: Skill changes to go with the gear changes for Season 22.
- 30 Jun. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020: Slight skill clarification for endgame pushing.
- 19 Nov. 2019: Guide revised and updated for Season 19.
- 22 Aug. 2019: Reviewed for Season 18.
- 15 May 2019: Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 17 Jan. 2019: Information was reviewed and approved for Season 16 with no changes required.
More Crusader Guides
Builds from Other Classes
Farming Guides
This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
- Activision Blizzard Q4 2020 Earnings Call
- Will Blizzard Launch a New Title at BlizzConline?
- BlizzConLine 2021 Official Preview and Trailer
- BlizzConline Celebration Bundles in the Shop!
- The Darkening of Tristram Ends January 31st
- What to Expect from Blizzconline 2021? (Predictions)
- The New Battle.net Is Almost Here, Going Live in NA
- The Darkening of Tristram Returns January 3