4941

With the way they give out gear these days, the Paragon level cap to access higher Torment levels is a bigger issue than I thought it would be. My Crusader started crushing T6 as soon as he got his 6-piece set and a couple legendaries (like I can easily solo in a 4-player game), but that was at about 50 Paragon levels. Now I have to wait another 50 levels before I can play an appropriate difficulty level. And I don’t have enough GR keys to just do that.

4942

I want to say that Paragon leveling has gotten much smoother. On my non seasonal characters I’ve only gotten to P90 while on this seasonal Crusader I’ve already passed that up (want to say I’m just over 100 but I’d have to check) with pretty spotty casual solo play.

4943

They increased the amount of XP given at level 70 in the latest patch.

4944

Thanks for your tips. I went from scrapping by on T5, to easy doing T6 (except for Urzeal that bitch). Still a bit more squishy that I would like. In the guides, so many special things (rings, shields, etc) to add, no idea where to get them. Just put hours in I guess & hope they drop I guess.

I tried T7, but holy crap, that was a real jump from T6. I died way too quick.

BTW - the sever sword procs for 40-50M every 5-6 hits, so it’s way more valuable / useful than you might think. For example, I put a 2H sword up with 4,000 DPS, and a jewell for crit and my little sever (2K DPS, no socket) just completely owns it in every way. So don’t be badmouthin’ it ;-)

Edit: Updated linkto my crusader.

4945

If you are going to run with Invoker, you need…THORNS! Like, nothing else matters.

On your weapon, roll off one of the damage modifiers for a socket and put in your best topaz. That will significantly boost your thorns damage immediately.

Run rifts and grifts until you get the thorns legendary gem - Boyasky’s Chip. Again, that will add significantly boost your thorns damage and it is handy legendary farming to boot for that 5th and 6th Invoker piece. Unless another ring comes along you will need to roll a socket on one of your current ones. Crit hit damage on the RoRG is the obvious choice as you don’t need to stack crit (see below).

Get rid of Blessed Hammer and instead pair Consecration/Bed of Nails with Iron Skin/Reflective Skin. Those in combination will in turn combo very nicely with your spiker shield. Mobs in your 15m radius will melt when you run into a pack and hit Provoke, Iron Skin, Consecration in quick succession

Crit does not matter with thorns as thorns does not crit based on gear stats, so replace Punish/Fury with any other rune. Celerity is usually the go to as the increased attack speed will mitigate incoming damage through more life on hit.

You are still showing the Heavenly Strength passive, I assume you have switched that out with something else at this stage. If not, it has to go while you are using the 1-hander, obviously. Fervor is nice for more AS, again more LoH.

Iron Skin and the additional attack speed for LoH will probably help with squishyness, but if not try changing Provoke to Too Scared to Run to slow incoming damage. Or switch out Laws of Valor for Laws of Justice/Decaying Strength to raise resistances and reduce incoming damage. You’ll also probably pick up another mitigation legendary gem during grifts, such as Moratorium, Esoteric Alteration or Wildebeest’s Gizzard.

4946

If you can find a Belt of the Trove or an Aquila Cuirass they will both boost your toughness considerably. Until then, consider swapping Bombardment in so you can at least pop it when things get hairy to proc the 4 piece bonus of Invoker’s. Blessed Hammer is the obvious choice to drop (nevermind – that’s probably already going for Iron Skin), but you could also consider Provoke or Akarat’s Champion.

4947

Provoke complements the Spiker shield too nicely while you are using that. I’d probably replace Akarats with Bombardment while you are rocking that shield and waiting for more set items or the Belt of Trove, Aquilas Cuirass or Justice Lantern to drop. Assuming squishiness remains a problem. At T7, Akarat’s is not going to be all that beneficial if you can put down the thorns hurt right, particularly after slotting a topaz in the weapon and finding the thorns leg gem.

4948

Again, Sever is just magnifying an already-killing blow into a hilarious overkill crit. I mean, it’s amusing, but it doesn’t actually increase your damage output unless they changed it dramatically from its previous form.

4949

Sever’s legendary effect is completely cosmetic now.

4950

Just a quick note that HOLY CRAP I like this build. Much better than the one on icy veins (of course that build was more end-game, which I lacked so many different pieces). I breezed through T6 and Grift 23. I’m going to see about bumping things up a notch.

THANKS!

4951

So went to Grift 28 and then went to T7. T7 is doable, but I do have to watch my step. Big crowds can still get me. I set everything off, do tons of damage then retreat & pick off the ones that come after me. I’ve probably run 6 rifts and 4 grifts, with nothing special dropping (got steeds charge to complete the 2-piece set of flail & shield, but I don’t want to give up 2x thorns damage from provoke.

I spent all my blood shards on shields & converted 6 shields to legendary, but not getting the shield that I need. I’ll keep plugging away.

4952

Try for the belt or the chest piece first. The shield is a rare bastard and does not proc enough at low difficulty to really be worth it - it only really gets going from GR55+. Nor is the shield game changing from a survivability perspective, like the belt, chest and ring. Sadly rings are expensive to gamble for with Kadala, so you are best waiting for them to drop or upgrading rares with the cube.

4953

Thanks. I’ve been working on 1 and 7. I only have Boon to collect gold to upgrade gems, plus I need to run more GRs to get a damage gem. I did upgrade the chest, lucky sharded Ancient Arachyr’s. I’m trying a life gem in the helm, I was a little squishy to begin with. Cubed a weapon and ring (duh, just a big brain fart on my end).

Haven’t swapped the set in yet, mostly because I have no idea how to compare DPS of 2H v. 1H + Mojo. I should just try it like you said, I’ll keep an eye out for those or do the craft/upgrade cube for them.

4954

Had a pretty good run last night on my Invoker Crusader. Finally got the thorns LG from a greater rift and got it up to level 6. That plus a new ancient weapon that dropped with another 8k thorns and a gem slot allowed me to pop up over 100k thorns damage. I dropped some damage and survivability from the better 2 handed weapon I had, but at T6 things just absolutely melt now, though at T8 the damage is still good but I’m way too squishy to make it worth it.

4955

Is there a penalty to dual wielding? I currently have 2 swords equipped and am getting about 220K damage. I have a 2-handed weapon that according to all attributes, DPS, Stregnth, etc, should provide less damage then my 2 swords. However when I equip my 2 handed weapon my damage jumps up to 290K. Why is this?

With that said, I did a couple test runs through a L14 Grift and found that I completed it faster duel wielding than I did with the 2-handed weapon. I’m guessing that is mostly due to the orange attributes on the 1 handed weapons where the 2-handed weapon doesn’t have any orange abilities.

4956

Sheet DPS is often very misleading in D3. You have to factor in a lot of stuff that doesn’t really appear on the raw DPS numbers, and it can be quite a math problem. At the end of the day, unless you want to sit and really crunch numbers (which there are numerous threads in various class forums on how to do), going by feel will get you most of the way there. It’s pretty easy to tell what works and what doesn’t, regardless of what your sheet DPS says.

The listed DPS is one of the things that’s always bugged me in D3, as it does make it difficult to easily tell if something is an upgrade or not. Some builds like increased attack speed (which will boost your sheet DPS), while others are actually hurt by it due to resource problems. It’s kind of a quagmire.

Most class forums have a few number crunchers that have broken down a lot of popular gear choices, good place to check first if you have questions about dual wield vs 2h, as there are no real hard and pat answers that work for all classes/specs.

4957

Is there a penalty to dual wielding?

Not really. The only real penalty is the decisions you make on not having some of the potential defensive bonuses afforded by an offhand - block chance, block amount, all resist, defensive socket, etc, etc.

In regards to dual wielding mechanics, attack speed is the average of your two equipped weapons and your hits alternate between weapons. Sheet DPS is some calculated average of that, rather than both weapon DPS’s added together. But the reality is each hit does the DPS associated with the weapon that dealt it. Same with weapon affix procs - a particular weapon’s affixes (eg life on hit) will only proc on alternating hits.

In regards to sheet DPS, it is indicative only as it tries to represent a bunch of affixes and inter-relationships with core stats, abilities, etc. It is not unusual to find a lower sheet DPS build that is in reality more effective than something with higher sheet DPS.

4958

I was running a 2H for the longest time. The way I ended up comparing was taking my best 1-hander with a socket, and moving my Emerald to that socket, equipping it, and then my best Mojo. That gave me a feel for the kind of DPS the 1-hander would need to force me to switch over.

Fortunately for me, soon thereafter I cubed an ancient ceremonial knife, which I added a socket to (since I had 2 Rambaldi socket adding things) and the combination of that knife + my Henri’s Perquisition Mojo have served me well so far. The knife’s special ability does nothing for me but just swapping to an Ancient weapon makes an enormous difference in DPS.

I’ve had luck getting a Mask of Jeram and also a Furnace to drop, so all I really need is those stupid Tasker and Theo gloves. I’ve spent hundreds of shards and haven’t seen 'em yet.

4959

Dual-wielding in D3 is pretty confusing. It alternates attacks between the two weapons, so if your offhand is markedly worse than your mainhand you’ll actually lose damage. You also get a straight-up 15% attackspeed increase. This is great for main skills that spam attacks or gain resources per attack. You also get another emerald in the offhand, which is huge.

With a 2Her, you attack much slower but hit much harder with each attack.

And with a 1H+offhand shield/fetish/orb, you attack faster than a 2H but hit less hard. But, you gain the benefit of your offhand which can also be significant.

4960

I don’t disagree with anything sharleo wrote, but how was it so drastically different from the icy-veins build? Unless you weren’t looking at the thorns build there :)