LoD Blessed Shield Crusader Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Blessed Shield Combust Condemn Vacuum 1 Provoke Hit Me 2 Laws of Valor Critical 3 Iron Skin Steel Skin 4 Akarat's Champion Prophet
Passive Skills
Fervor Hold Your Ground Towering Shield Finery

The LoN Blessed Shield Crusader moves from fight to fight, looking for a favorable engagement and trying to attract the biggest amount of monsters possible, building up density with Condemn Vacuum. Once you get a good pack of demons engaged, draw them in with Provoke and pop Laws of Valor Critical, then then begin your Blessed Shield barrage. In emergency situations, you should pop Iron Skin to halve incoming damage. Last but not least, activate Akarat's Champion whenever it is available; ideally syncing up with your Law activation and a Fire cycle of Convention of Elements for a massive spike in your damage.

Your primary damage dealer is found in Blessed Shield — a far range, ricocheting projectile that only needs aiming for its initial target. Rune-wise, take Combust, for its one-in-three chance to inflict a significant amount of extra AoE on hit; with Gyrfalcon's Foote at your disposal (see this build's gear page for more information), resource is no longer a consideration and you can spam for as long as the fight demands.

To boost the damage of Blessed Shield, you can implement Provoke with the Block chance-raising Hit Me rune. The rune's effect overwrites the 75% block chance cap of the game and provides a nice, albeit short boost to your damage.

Laws are a cornerstone in Crusader builds, and in this high GR progression setup, you will be trying to squeeze every bit of DPS possible by including Laws of Valor Critical; its attack speed bonus is an exact fit with the resource-free, spam-oriented nature of the build, and its Crit Damage bonuses make up for deficiencies in this stat, which are inherent in Shield-wielding builds.

Your emergency protective cooldown comes in the form of Iron Skin, improved with the longer lasting Steel Skin rune. Since the build fights in mid-to-close range (keep in mind the relatively short radius of Pain Enhancer, which is an important part of your DPS), you will frequently be faced with situations where facetanking is your only option. Iron Skin will cut incoming damage in half for a reasonable amount of time, allowing you to fight through the pain.

The signature Crusader steroid, Akarat's Champion, is present in this build as well; unlike Akarat-based builds, you will not be able to reach permanent uptime, but even 50% or so is more than enough to make its inclusion desirable. Coupled with the Prophet rune, this skill nets you a 35% multiplicative damage increase, 150% additional Armor buff and a cheat death proc, which results in an impressively durable build.

You have some flexibility in your final active skill slot. Our general recommendation is to take Condemn Vacuum, as it allows you to build up monster density with a further reach and more reliability than simply using Provoke. Alternatively, you can slot Steed Charge — either with the longer lasting Endurance rune, or the pulling utility of Draw and Quarter.

This concludes the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.

Blessed Shield Crusader builds are armed by necessity with Gyrfalcon's Foote, and as such, they make great use of the Fervor passive. It nets you Cooldown Reduction and Attack Speed bonuses, both of which are a great fit to the build.

Towering Shield is a passive tailored for Blessed Shield Crusaders, providing a sizable additive damage bonus to your main damage dealer.

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.

You have some freedom in your final passive slot. Generally, we recommend using Hold Your Ground to cap yourself on Block Chance and add a nice smattering of damage to your Blessed Shield, since it scales partially off this stat. If you value safety higher, you can not go wrong by slotting the Crusader cheat death passive Indestructible.