Aegis of Valor Heaven's Fury Crusader BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build takes advantage of the full 6-piece Aegis of Valor set bonus, incorporating five of the six available items and completing the requirements via a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. As far as bonuses go, the 2-piece set bonus is a stacking, self-multiplicative damage amplifier that persists for 5 seconds after casting Fist of the Heavens and does not reset, it simply needs to be refreshed on a regular basis. The 4-piece bonus is protection-oriented, offering a stacking damage reduction buff — and whose 'hit' requirement works with the Fissure ticks, making it easily stackable and persistent. The 6-piece bonus is a straightforward damage buff to the main spenders of the build, although this spec will focus on Heaven's Fury specifically and will use Fist of the Heavens as an auxiliary support skill (see this build's skills page for more information).

Armor set-wise, you will also be crafting and equipping two of the three pieces of the Captain Crimson set (the Captain Crimson's Thrust, Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and Captain Crimson's Waders). You will complete their full bonus via Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. This set provides CDR as well as RCR bonuses, and then scales your damage dealt and damage reduced according to both stats, respectively — bringing a massive boon to the build.

Two thirds of your jewelry will be dedicated to the Endless Walk set, The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge. Its bonus adds a unique mechanic that slowly increases your damage by up to a 100% if you remain stationary, and drains it away and increases your damage reduction while moving. This matches the gameplay dynamic of this build, which alternates between periods of attracting monster attention into large pulls, and stationary Fires of Heaven destruction. Your remaining ring slot should be dedicated to Convention of Elements, which simply provides a massive damage increase during the Holy cycle of its rotation.

In this almost exclusively set-dependent build, your weapon and offhand will also be set piece fixtures — the Norvald's Fervor set, Flail of the Charge and Shield of the Steed, which doubles your damage output while Steed Charge is active, and for 5 seconds after you dismount. This creates a unique stop-and-go feel to the build, where you scout the battlefield (either for the full duration of Steed Charge, or you can cancel it by activating any other skill), then stop, pre-buff and release your burst (see this build's skills page for more information).

There is an alternate version of this build that wields Fate of the Fell in the main hand, and uses a cubed Ivory Tower to deal damage. This is a block-based variant that differs in its approach to both skill usage and gearing and while powerful, it is recommended only once you stack high enough Paragons (3k+). When it comes to equipment, the alterations include the following:

• Wielding Fate of the Fell in your main hand and cubing Ivory Tower.
• Swapping the Endless Walk set for Justice Lantern for the additional block chance, and Hellfire Amulet of Strength for a synergistic fifth passive ( Hold Your Ground, Long Arm of the Law).
• Using Aquila Cuirass in the armor Cube slot over Stone Gauntlets.

Another option that eases your rotation is to wield a Pig Sticker plus Shield of Fury combo. Shield of Fury increases the damage taken by enemies for each hit they suffer from Heaven's Fury, stacking up to 10 times. Note that the shield's effect is not restricted to a single target, and will stack for each affected enemy separately; the stacks will also persist through zone transitions and death, making the shield's effect quite potent. While lacking any flashy bonuses, Pig Sticker has the superior attack speed of the dagger weapon class (1.5 base); second, it rolls up to five primary stats,meaning it can have Damage %, Area Damage, Cooldown Reduction and Increased Attack Speed, and have it be optimized with a Strength augmentation. And third, its unique bonuses vs. human and beast enemies are multiplicative in nature and can lead to massive damage spikes in certain rift compositions.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Heaven's Fury % bonus on both the shoulders and chest (maximum of 30%), Holy elemental damage on both the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 50% and 500%, respectively), and Area Damage of 100%+. Heaven's Fury Crusaders are heavily Cooldown-dependent, so try to your best to reach a 70%+ CDR point in your sheet.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool between 700-900k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through Life per Hit on gear, with at least one high roll in your setup (i.e. bracer).

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Strength.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised and re-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — For virtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual to advanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the path outlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of life first, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive and edge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary Potion Powers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separate resource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Set items of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, and in the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that dump as much as you comfortably can into Strength, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness, or Maximum Wrath if you want to play around with a bigger resource pool.

In the Offense section, max out Crit Chance, Crit Damage, Cooldown Reduction, and Attack Speed in that order. In Defense, prioritize All Resistance, then Life %, then Armor, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Area Damage and Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Life on Hit and Globe Radius.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. The gem procs itself with its level 25 property when in range and is otherwise triggered by Shield Glare or Judgment, making it an inseparable part of this melee range setup.

To start out with the build, we recommend that you use Gogok of Swiftness in the second gem slot; its Increased Attack Speed, Cooldown Reduction, and scaling Dodge bonuses all bring massive value to the build. Later on in character progression, as the build scales excellently with Attack Speed and can afford to fight at a near-melee range, Pain Enhancer makes an excellent fit for high tier GR progression. The level 25 property of the gem amplifies your Attack Speed for every struck ("bleeding") enemy nearby, allowing you to drop some IAS from gear and use it for CDR and Area Damage instead.

With the loss of the infinite Shield of Fury stacking effect as of patch 2.6.7a (now capped at 20), Bane of the Stricken is re-introduced as a mandatory legendary gem for GR progression. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. Note that the middle ray of Heaven's Fury hits first of all three, so you can target-stack on a priority target, i.e. the Guardian (and not his minions).

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

Tucked away in the Cube, Fate of the Fell will not only provide a general boost to the skill, but will add two extra rays, producing the signature 'shotgun' effect. Note that these rays are an exception to the procs rule, and count as casts of the skill — meaning, they have proc coefficients and will trigger area damage, to the tremendous benefit of the build. They additional rays also count towards the Shield of Fury stacking damage effect.

Aquila Cuirass halves incoming damage as long as you do not dip below 90% of your resource reserve.

In this Aegis of Valor / Captain Crimson mixture, you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur: a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties, to tie the two sets together. The ability to run with one full 6-piece set bonus and an additional 3-piece bonus, dodging the undesirable guaranteed stats on the Grandeur by cubing its power, is a tremendous boost to the build.

In Season 33, where you will be wielding the Norvald's Fervor set, you will gain the powers of Shield of Fury — a powerful piece for this build — by cubing it away in the seasonal 4th slot.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is the Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction- and increased attack speed bonuses, both of which are helpful to the needs of an attack speed- and CDR-heavy build such as this one.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Amplification (the highest pure health recovery pot, as its healing amplification procs itself for 75% health restoration), or Bottomless Potion of Rejuvenation (for the extra resource recovery proc when used below half HP — useful in a resource-intensive build such as this one). Pick whichever you feel helps you out the most.