Crusader Condemn PvP Build Guide

This build is molded by the needs of melee combatants during PvP in Diablo Immortal, leaning heavily onto hit-and-run tactics and focusing on turning the Crusader into a crowd control machine — able to lock down entire areas and dominating fights through the sheer helplessness of their enemies.

If you are interested in approaching a different type of content, please see our other Crusader builds below.

The build plays out as an inversion of the typical farming Crusader. Draw and Quarter remains the focal point of the build, but no longer as a movement tool. You should circle the outskirts of the brawl instead, looking for a suitable target and using Falling Sword as a gap closing tool with the powers of Little Lance. When you catch your enemy in melee distance, pop Condemn to continually draw them on top of you, and unleash a spiraling Spinning Shield for devastating damage. Then, Draw and Quarter right on top of them — using your superior speed and sheer damage to run them down. If they manage to survive your initial cooldown barrage, you have some downtime to weave Punish in — it should keep you alive long enough to replenish your active abilities. If the enemy tries to disengage once again, you will likely have a triple charge of Falling Sword once again to cut them down.

Primary Skill: Punish is a single target-oriented Primary Attack whose notable aspect is the increased Block Chance, as blocking attacks mitigates 20% of the damage dealt — a noticeable impact when facing PvP opponents in the perilous circumstances of melee combat. This skill will be used to fill in the downtime when all of your other abilities are on cooldown.

Crowd Control: Condemn deals decent damage on its own, and its controllable detonation aspect adds a good deal of mastery to its use. This mostly shines through when you add a crowd control facet to the skill with the use of Iron Suzerain, making Condemn a convenient pull for PvP.

Primary Mobility: Falling Sword falls into the category of Dashing skills, but its delayed nature and multi-stage effect make the skill more nuanced and interesting — at the cost of pure mobility effectiveness. This downside will be mitigated through the legendary effect of Little Lance in this build. Still, Falling Sword is most effective as an opener or closer in battle, allowing you to reposition and lock down the enemy forces according to your needs.

Main Damage Dealer / Secondary Mobility: Draw and Quarter is the focal point of Crusader builds and an integral part of mastering the class. Timing your cooldown use, particularly of skills that buff you up passively or whose effect follows you around, is essential — you will otherwise interrupt your mounted duration and lose valuable time. It is equally — if not more! — important to pay heed to crowd control effects, dodging any potential hampering of the Draw and Quarter uptime. While it is active, your Primary Attack is replaced by a skill-specific "Strike" — for all statistical purposes, this counts as a Primary Attack and should be factored in when choosing gear. Spam this Strike for additional damage while charging around.

Secondary Damage Dealer: Spinning Shield is one of the hardest-hitting single target skills in the Crusader arsenal, with additional AoE utility provided by supporting legendary items. It is among the most modifiable abilities in your toolset, and you will alter its default state into a spiraling trajectory that is useful for chasing down foes in PvP. Make sure its charges are used when you have an enemy controlled and cornered, and are not frivolously spammed.

Equipment is split into Primary (right side of character screen) and Secondary (left side).

Primary equipment includes the Main-hand, Off-hand, Head, Shoulders, Chest, and Legs slots of your character sheet. These slots can — and should — be filled by Legendary items, since their legendary powers and ability to be socketed with Legendary gems vastly overpowers lower tier gear. Of course, these slots will be temporarily filled with Common (Grey), then Magic (Blue), and then Rare (Yellow) gear, before graduating into Legendaries (Golden).

The suggested Legendaries for Draw and Quarter Solo Crusaders are:

• Main-hand: Little Lance — This legendary sword alters the mechanics of Falling Sword, swapping its deliberately paced default leap for a much more convenient and utility-driven forward surge; the generous triple charges provided by the item offer great repositioning potential.
• Off-hand: Pavise of Ten Wings — This legendary shield changes the pattern of Spinning Shield, replacing its default boomerang behavior for a spiraling power that encircles the Crusader upon use.
• Head: Any Good Roll — This PvP-oriented Crusader build has no specific legendary helm to strive for, so simply use your best rolled item in this slot.
• Shoulders: Sivket's Advantage — These legendary shoulders provide a very simple, straightforward, yet undeniably valuable effect — extending the duration of Draw and Quarter by 30%. They can be further awakened to cut the cooldown of the skill by 10%, single-handedly improving the uptime of your most valuable skill in the rotation.
• Chest: Iron Suzerain — This legendary chest adds a crowd control aspect to Condemn, continually pulling enemies towards you upon use. This power, when combined with the superior speed provided by the steed, makes the PvP Crusader incredibly deadly and hard to peel.
• Legs: Cavalier's Courtwear — These legendary pants alter the powers of Draw and Quarter, replacing the default pulling benefits of the skill with a displacement effect and additional damage when you trample through them.

Secondary equipment includes the Amulet, Rings, Hands, Waist, and Feet slots of your character sheet. These slots can — and should — be filled with Set items, since the bonuses they form once completed vastly overpowers lower tier gear. Of course, these slots will be temporarily filled with Common (Grey), then Magic (Blue), and then Rare (Yellow) gear, before graduating into Sets (Green). Secondary equipment can only be socketed with Normal gems.

The recommended set for Condemn PvP Crusaders is Windloft Perfection, which increases movement speed and scales damage accordingly, enhancing the sprinting prowess of the Draw and Quarter-empowered build. The set consists of:

• Whipcrack (Waist) — Farmed at DestructionsEnd in difficulty Hell I and above.
• Stump-Stir (Feet) — Farmed at KikurasRapids in difficulty Hell I and above.
• Hurtling Steel (Hands) — Farmed at Tomb of Fahir in difficulty Hell II and above.
• Wisdom's Edge (Neck) — Farmed at Forgotten Tower in difficulty Hell II and above.
• Fairfleet (Ring 1) — Farmed at Mad King's Breach in difficulty Hell IV and above.
• Foulfleet (Ring 2) — Farmed at Pit of Anguish in difficulty Hell IV and above.

The set bonuses of Windloft Perfection are as follows:

• 2-piece Set Bonus: Gain Thousand Winds, increasing your Movement Speed by 15%. Thousand Winds deactivates for 3 seconds if you take damage.
• 4-piece Set Bonus: Increases your damage done by 20% while Thousand Winds is active.
• 6-piece Set Bonus: Gain a shield that makes you immune to damage 5 times while Thousand Winds is active. Cannot gain this shield more often than once every 40 seconds.

Improving your attributes in Diablo Immortal generally revolves around increasing the total amount of Combat Rating, or CR. Every primary attribute point (Strength, Fortitude, Vitality, Willpower, and Intelligence) grants you 1 point of CR.

The priority attribute for Crusaders is Strength, which gives +0.3 Damage per point; given otherwise identical options, use the one with higher Strength to increase your DPS. Second in the priority order is Fortitude, which adds to your Armor Penetration — indirectly increasing damage dealt by also improving your crit chance. This attribute suffers from diminishing returns due to crit caps, but is still quite valuable. Third in the priority order is Vitality, which simply increases your Life total; the longer you can stave off death, the better.

Stat priority order and stat benefits for Crusaders are as follows:

• 1. Strength — Grants +0.3 Damage to Crusaders, and +1 to your total CR.
• 2. Fortitude — Grants +0.1 Armor Penetration, which affects your crit chance. It also grants +0.1 Armor; Armor increases your Block chance, and blocking attacks mitigates 20% of the damage dealt. More mitigation is never amiss, and even more so when dealing with riskier content like the Helliquary. It also adds +1 to your total CR.
• 3. Vitality — Grants +3 Life; the more you can add to your total health pool, the better. This is especially true for melee classes like the Crusader, as they are frequently in the thick of the fight and endure hits head on. This attribute also adds +1 to your total CR.
• 4. Willpower — Grants +0.1 Potency and 0.1 Resistance. Potency increases the duration of harmful effects that you inflict on your foes. Resistance lowers the duration of harmful effects inflicted by your enemies on you. This attribute also adds +1 to your total CR.
• 5. Intelligence — Grants +1 CR. This attribute does nothing else for Crusaders, and should be avoided as much as possible.

You should not put an emphasis on Special Attributes when considering between gear pieces. This is due to the overpowering importance of Primary Attributes and your CR total. That being said, the better Special Attributes are the two Crit Stats (Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage), Cooldown Reduction, Beneficiary Effect Duration, and Movement Speed. You can also consider Increased Damage to Players for PvP gear.

Pieces of Primary Gear that you upgrade at the Blacksmith attain up to three additional Bonus Attributes for Reforging at Ranks 6, 11, and 16. These Bonus Attributes belong to "families" (outlined and ranked below); a Family Bonus can be unlocked if all three Bonus Attributes are from the same family. Multiple Primary Gear pieces can have the same Family Bonus to improve your proc chance. The process of Reforging is done with the Reforge Stone consumable. Note that only Primary Gear pieces can be reforged; Secondary Gear pieces cannot.

• 1. Tremor Stone is the most valuable bonus for general content, as its Family Bonus adds a crowd control proc and extra damage to your Primary Attacks.
• 2. Vengeance Stone brings a single target-oriented Family Bonus that becomes increasingly important as you push the difficulty of the content you are doing, i.e. Challenge Rifts. Enhance your progression-oriented Primary Skill, Punish, to have a chance at finishing off Challenge Rift Boss fights within the timer.
• 3. Wildfire Stone is mostly valuable due to its innate attributes, as it brings valuable Critical Hit Chance to the table. The Hydra summon from the Family Bonus is mostly an extra minion to soak up damage.
• 4. Barrier Stone has a Family Bonus that brings some much needed mitigation to Crusaders, a class that face-tanks all of its damage. The absorption shield is paired with some excellent innate attributes like Damage Taken Decreased and Block Chance, which further reduce incoming hurt.
• 5. Jolt Stone offers situationally valuable bonuses; it has Beneficial Effect Duration Increased as an innate attribute, which is decent for groups, and a Cheat Death proc which is never amiss when soloing content. Its Family Bonus brings soft CC to attackers, which is decent mostly for PvP.
• 6. Ravager Stone offers summoner-oriented innate attributes that are quite useless to Crusaders, as their only minion comes from the legendary proc of Cradle of Pebbles. Its Family Bonus requires enemies to be slain to proc, significantly diminishing its usefulness when doing progression content like Challenge Rift bosses and Helliquary.

As per tradition for Diablo games, socketed gear allows you to insert beneficial gems according to your needs. In Diablo Immortal, gems are divided between Normal Gems (socketable in Secondary Gear) and Legendary Gems (socketable in Primary Gear).

Normal Gems can only be socketed in Secondary Gear. Normal gems are divided into Red, Blue and Yellow sockets, and their priority is listed below. Priority-wise, gems are decent power increases to your character, but should never come at the cost of Primary Attributes and your ORDR score. Go for Red and Blue gems over Yellow if possible, as they provide a stronger bonus overall.

• Red Sockets: Prioritize Tourmaline as it provides a straight Damage increase. Ruby is also decent for the Life increase, but only if you lack Tourmalines.
• Blue Sockets: Prioritize Sapphire, which increases your Armor Penetration, and your Critical Hit Chance stat as a result. Note that Crit Chance provided from Sapphires has diminishing returns, capping out at 33%; when benefits from ArPen get too insignificant, swap to Aquamarine. Aquamarine provides Armor, which is a decent source of damage mitigation.
• Yellow Sockets: Prioritize Citrine for the Potency gains, increasing the duration of harmful effects you inflict on enemies; however small its benefits, they trump the Resistance effects provided from Topaz.

Legendary Gems can only be socketed in Primary Gear. They provide unique and very powerful bonuses on top of a robust stack of stat increases. Legendary Gems are found in Elder Rifts enhanced by the Crest consumables, as well as through crafting at the Jeweler in Westmarch.

Early on in Crusader character progression, you should use common, 1- and 2-Star Legendary Gems like:

• Fervent Fang — Can be obtained from the Battle Pass, saving you some Crests. Provides a stacking damage increase against a target with successive attacks; great for single target damage.
• Power & Command— When timed correctly, this gem will provide a decent boost to your Primary Attack damage. Note its rotating bonus, alternating between Primary Attack- and Cooldown-boosting at 9 second intervals, and try to fit your Spinning Shield and Condemn usage in the Cooldown half of its bonus.
• Everlasting Torment — For the mere cost of a critical hit, this gem inflicts a considerable DoT and an Attack Speed increase to boot. Even at a low quality, this gem starts off with incredible stats and fits nicely from the get-go.
• Chained Death — This is a great early game gem, especially during farming where you usually pull hordes of enemies to maximize your AoE skills. It amplifies your damage the more enemies you fight, encouraging chaining fights together.
• Lightning Core — Despite its low proc chance, this damage-dealing gem can wipe out entire packs when activated, or focus down a larger foe, making it a decent addition to you legendary gem lineup.
• Berserker's Eye — This gem increases damage dealt at the cost of an increase in damage taken. For most of the farming PvE content, this is a reasonable trade-off that you can feasibly mitigate with the Crusaders's strong sources of shielding.

When perfecting your character for endgame content, the 5-Star Best-in-Slot Legendary Gems for Crusaders include:

• Blood-Soaked Jade — With its Damage and Movement Speed increases, it is largely considered to be the best legendary gem in the game for pretty much all forms of content.
• Seeping Bile — The value of this gem scales with the number of attacks you inflict, fitting well into Crusader setups that spam Spinning Shield and Consecration. With a considerable damage proc and a spreading effect, it is one of the best additions to your legendary gem lineup.
• Frozen Hearth — With percentage-based mitigation against ranged damage, this is one of the strongest defensive legendary gems you can support your character with.
• Blessing of the Worthy — Crusaders thrive at melee ranges and sustain a lot of attacks, making the retaliation proc of this gem quite valuable. Note its scaling off maximum Life, which turns the Sader's considerable health pool into a makeshift nuke.
• Chip of Stone Flesh — This is a PvP powerhouse of a gem, inflicting hard CC and increasing damage dealt on affected targets. It also provides decent value for progression content.
• Howler's Call — Triggered off Primary Attacks (including the Strike from Draw and Quarter), this legendary gem supplements the lacking reach of most Crusader builds with a hard-hitting ranged proc.

Paragon Points are character-specific progression system that allows you to advance in power after you reach maximum level. Each level gives you a Paragon point to spend into currently available nodes on the five Paragon Trees. While Paragon Trees are specialized for certain tasks, you should always keep in mind the tenets of character building — increasing damage and mitigation as much as you can. Paragon specialization for PvP-oriented players is a little different to general PvE strategies, prioritizing the mitigation of the Survivor tree first, and swapping into the PvP-centric Gladiator tree later. Always keep in mind that the (circular) Persistent Attributes are always active once leveled, but the (square) Specialization Skills are only applied when their respective Paragon Tree is active.

• Survivor Tree: The defensive bonuses of this tree function in PvP, which cannot be said for the other default tree (Vanquisher) — making Survivor the preferable tree for PvP-focused players. Pick up the first five Life nodes at the top, then a point in Unyielding. Then, go down and max out Armor, and pick up the one-point Escape Artist. Go back to the upper row to max out the second, 20-point Armor node, and finish the row with one point in Stalwart. Return to the middle row, max out the 15-point Life node and finish the row with a single point in Precognition. From Precognition, go straight down and max out the Damage node. This puts you at Paragon 79.
• Vanquisher Tree: Move over to that offense-oriented tree for a short while, allocating 5 points in the Damage nodde in the middle, picking up Zeal on the way, and spending another 14 points in the Damage node directly below. This puts you right at Paragon 99.
• Gladiator Tree: This tree unlocks at Paragon level 100, and is entirely dedicated to PvP bonuses. It makes the most sense to respec your Paragon points completely and delve directly into this tree. Max out the middle and top rows of the Gladiator tree (granting you Life, Damage, Resistances and Armor Penetration, alongside unique bonuses like Quick Witted, Cheat Death and Uncontrollable), costing you exactly 63 Paragon points. Spend the remaining points on the Vanquisher tree (the lower left corner of 5-point Damage node, Zeal and 25-point Damage node), and Treasure Hunter tree (5-point Armor node).
• Treasure Hunter Tree: Pick up Swift Learner, then the 15-point Damage node. Go over to the Soldier Tree and take Hold Formation, head down to the 15-point Resistance node, and then further down to the 15-point Damage node.
• Life and Utility pickups: In the Vanquisher tree, pick up the 25-point Life node straight across Zeal, and get the 1-point Judgment to finish off the middle row. Get the 5-point Life node right at the start of the Survivor tree, then the 15-point Life node in the first column of the Soldier tree. Continue in the Soldier tree — right across the Life is the 1-point First Aid, just below is the 1-point Combat Veteran, and then — the 1-point Battle Morale. Pick all these 1-point wonders up for a nice increase of overall utility.

When you turn in Bestiary pages, you will receive a class-specific consumable. For Crusaders, this item is the Battle Hymnal, which increases all damage done by yourself and your nearby allies by 10% for 20 minutes. Be generous with its use, especially in party content; buffs like these are what make the Crusader an invaluable member of the group.