D3 S28 Crusader Fresh Level 70 Guide | 2.7.5

What three Legendary gems? L25 them ASAP.

Your next goal should be getting at least L25 on your three most important gems. Just get repeat the cycle of Nephalem Rift for a Key -> Do a Greater Rift until you get them, and do the absolute minimum level you need to level them up. Get them and level them quickly – do not feel pressured to “maximize” your rift keys by inflating the difficulty.

Legacy of Dreams is mandatory, as mentioned in the basics segment! Level this up as much as you can.

From here you have some choices

Honestly, I recommend double defensive gems like Molten Wildebeests Gizzard, or Moratorium if you’re getting chunked. Defense is a huge problem for this build, at least early on.

Want more damage? Bane of the Powerful is a cheap investment for an amazing powerup. You can replace this later for a Trapped for DPS, or something like Moratorium if you want more early game defense.

Can’t ever go wrong with leveling up a Boon of the Hoarder for speedfarming.

Legendary Items in ALL SLOTS

LoD gets stronger with each legendary item you have equipped – so get to it! You should aim to get this done “passively” by natural item drops, but you can also craft items if you’re desperate.

Simply wear whatever junk you find eventually
replacing them with useful pieces as you get them!

Spending Blood Shards is “OK”, but only use Death’s Breath to fill up the slots if you’re absolutely desperate. You’ll get an item for each slot in no time (you can even craft them). Save your resources for finding SPECIFIC items that will greatly boost your power. We talk more about this in the next segment, refinement.

Ancients DOUBLE this bonus, and they’re a welcome boost to consider.

Defense Type & Gems

Barbs / Crusaders are STRENGTH classes (they get free Armor from STR). So, in the face of all this free armor, your prime defensive stats are ALL RESISTS > VIT.So try to reroll ALLRES on your gear if you need defense, and REMOVE AS MUCH ARMOR (it’s pretty useless as a rolled-in stat).

So your gemming strategy (body and legs) should be slotting your best Diamonds, as they give ALLRES.

Basic Rerolls

Since legendaries are a little expensive to reroll EARLY ON, try to make the most by REMOVING GARBAGE STATS, and getting anything “remotely usable”.

STR and VIT are your primary stats and are welcome everywhere, also, as mentioned above, ALL RESISTS are also very welcome.

You want self-healing. First of all Crusaders have a special “Life per Wrath Spent” stat which show up on Flails and Crusader Shields. It’s a pretty good source of healing, if you can manage to roll it without too much loss. Life per Hit is also godly in the really early game, so don’t worry if it shows up in your gear.

Fist of Heavens % is found in Boots and Helm.

The Element%, you want is either Holy or Lightning, found typically in Bracers and Amulet.

Remove useless stats

• Life Regeneration – garbage for any build.
• Attack Speed – it usually an endgame tune-up stat.
• Excess Resource Cost Reduction – Is a crutch, and only niche builds need it.
• Excess Cooldown Reduction – Only useful for an endgame “need”.
• Unused skill / element% – literally USELESS.
• Armor – Useless for us, take ALLRES instead.

Take better stats

• STR VIT– can’t go wrong with these. Your core stats!
• ALLRES Life% Great defensive stats.
• Sockets are essentially MANDATORY.
• Life per Hit – Great early game sustainability.
• CRIT Stats (CHC / CHD) – More for endgame, but I’d take this over garbage stats.
• Skill and Elemental% – that you use.

Full Build Preview: LoD Fist of Heavens

Remember, almost all of the items are irrelevant except the belt and flail. Every other item is essentially fluff / support / utility.

You can freely change any of the skills to Falling Sword for that option to jump, potentially saving you time in your travels.

Full Build Preview: Valor Fist of Heavens

You’ll eventually want to transition into this build, as it’s much more powerful, and allows the use of Norvalds set. As for the best rune to use in Fist, I feel Holy is better for speedfarming, and Fissure is better for tryharding.

RoRG allows us to use Guardian 3 + Valor 6 + a FILLER (Leoric, Aquila if you can manage it). It’s a toss up between Captain Crimson and Guardian, as both have their ups and downs. Guardian seems better for toughness.

You only NEED Darklight and Cord. For your weapons, if you don’t have Norvalds set yet the only other relevant weapons are utility ones like Swiftmount.

Again, feel free to use Falling Sword as another mobility skill, as many of these skills aren’t important.

Here’s advice on how to spend your blood shards with Kadala, roughly in order of importance:

Khassett’s Cord of Righteousness / Goldwrap – Belt: The cord is a godlike upgrade which massively alleviates our wrath problems. Goldwrap of course is great for the good ‘ol Hoarder speedfarming variants.

comically, that’s it. You only need 1 item to really turn the build on. lol.
EVERYTHING ELSE IS FILLER, and pretty much only used for the LoD version

From here you can find the Valor set pieces, and along the way find these filler items:

Nemesis Bracer – Bracer: Massive improvement in all forms of rifting.

St. Archews Gage – Gloves: Great elite defenses.

Leoric’s Crown – Helm: Just a generic power up, either Cooldown, RCR or Life…

Blackthornes Jousting Mail – Legs: Simply because it can roll Elemental%.

Akarat’s Awakening – Crusader Shields: Difficult to obtain and not that important, but it’s something… Norvalds set shield is also in this pile.

That’s pretty much it for the “important” ones. You can try your luck with rings…

Here’s advice on how to get your weapons from Deaths Breath rare item upgrades (Kanai’s Cube Recipe: 25x Deaths Breath convert a rare into random legendary of same type), roughly in order of importance:

1h Flail for Darklight – absolute core to your build. It’s a 20x boost!

2H Flail for Norvalds Flail (then Crusader shields for the other set piece) – try to get these when you’ve transitioned into valor.

You only NEED Darklight and Cord. For your weapons, if you don’t have Norvalds set yet the only other relevant weapons are utility ones like Swiftmount.

And for fillers… The only other weapon I would want is Messerschmidt’s Reaver from 2H Axe, when you’re trying to get 100% uptime on Akarat’s Champion. 2H Mace for Furnace is ok?

Nothing else is really WORTH spending DB’s for, and would rather spend to try and get jewelry you might not have yet.

Rings and Amulets are tough to get from either BS or DB’s (due to the large amount of possible outcomes), but if you’re done getting your core items from these currencies – and you haven’t got your core accessories, it’s a viable way to spend them. Typically you’ll just find these as you grind – then use currency if you’re desperate. Anyway, if I had to rank the importance of your rings and ammys…

Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac is for the time in your build wherein you’re trying for 100% Akarat’s Champion uptime.

Unity is a decent defensive option, but you need the follower immortality relic, and another Unity for the follower! It’s quite important for this build, so try to get it setup when you can.

Justice Lantern can be cute (and surprisingly effective). Defense is rare for this build.

As an aside – Ring of Royal Grandeur and Avarice Band are BOUNTY ONLY rings (respectively ACT I and III), which DO NOT APPEAR FROM any other source. They, like any other bounty item, DO NOT DROP from monsters, gambling, upgrades or any other source outside of their respective BOUNTY CACHE.