Shields are effective sustain. What they lack in healing power, they can make up in EHP, since they land on top of life pool. But, that's just my opinion and experience with shields on other classes. As long as shields are paired with life healing they are nearly as effective as the raw healing overall. They should not be dismissed.
All I'm saying is that crusader can heal just fine in terms oh LPS (including shielding). It's their OTHER problems and nerfs that make them ineffective. If sader could heal for 1k LPS, they STILL would not be viable in a 2+2 meta.
124k shield is baseline Laws of Hope activation (all runes).
Healing is worse vs single target but still doable, and still well over 200k per second once wrath enough to continue sweep spam. I could sweep spam vs 2 targets but prob not 1 with my testing setup (which happens to have a fair amt of RCR - apparently both good and bad for this heal set up). 5.0 APS is still achievable with Flense worn, allowing a free weapon/shield cube which can help with wrath gen solutions.
Max CDR (70+ pre gogok), Roland 6, zodiac, golden flense in cube.
Freydehr makes Condemn (no attack turn) into a wrath dump.
Assuming one activation per second (and it is more frequent than that) and 150 wrath spent per second (between Sweep at 5 APS, and Condemn at 2 activations per second) Laws of Hope Faith's Reward heals party for 10k (regen) 124k (shield) and 150k (1k x 150 wrath) per second (total 284k per second). Consecration is an additional 50k per second.
This adds up to 334k per second. Not the 500k I alleged, but I figured there would be some way to further optimize (more wrath gen/dump, some weapon or shield to add healing?)
Healing is fine? 60k/sec is all healing they can make.
More like 500k per sec for max heal zcrus on live (if you include shields).
I'd call that fine and within the realm of what a monk heals. With 0 mitigation, however, it's not in the same ballpark. Even 500k is more like 15% of monk heals when you take into consideration the mit bonus disparity.
And no, the zcrus healing is not through Salvation. After looking closer, the build I ran to conclude crus healing is around 500k per sec is actually very different than the linked build, although it shares a fair bit of gear and skills.
I was just playing around with something similar this morning, looking at healing capacity of Crus. They can heal as well as a monk. They provide crap for mitigation, however wbich makes them completely inferior in survival dept.
Healing is fine. Neutered buffs, lack of mitigation for party, and cc resist killing draw and quarter are the problem.
Fire twister puts mobs in random positions after the first pull (not a huge deal, but better off with WW and fire EB imo).
Especially in the version with no teleport (also a substantial problem in my view as you can't aid in agro), halo will freeze things and ramp cc resistance. In addition you are snaring them with iceblink. Area dmg matters. Pulling monsters matters. Needlessly ramping cc resistance and hampering pulls is a problem for party edps.
Just my opinions having played a lot of zdps wiz specs and pull specs.
Where's toxin!? Why no EB + Conflag? Why snarl/impede pulls and strongarm buffs with Halo of Arlyle ? (I've never found arlyle setups to be optimal for zwiz - buff costs two active skills and a ring, has low uptime, and lovks out other buffs and pulls)
I've used a similar spec and it holds meta promise and is quite nice for speeds.
Be careful when assigning value to DR in the form of "deals X% less dmg" debuffs. They work on physical monster attacks but not on ranged dmg from unaffected monsters, and (I think) not on certain elite affixes. I recently tested on Azmodan's summoned fireballs and Toxin, Concussion, Blind had no effect. (Poor example, but it's all I got atm).
Dodge can also be overvalued if players start running into 2-3 shot combat. Dodge does almost nothing vs spike dmg. Dodge is great if mitigation is already there and near useless if not. It's a 'win more' stat in many scenarios.
Barb provides more effective defense in light of these considerations, esp during critical transit operations where almost all monk defense offline, and barbs are providing cc and movespeed as well as full defense.
I'd start with both monk and barb. Survival/function first. If it's too much, dps can sub out esoteric for BoP, a multiplicative ~38% vs elites for most of rift.
But, that's just me. Dead or fleeing dps does no dps. Dps is much more likely to die in transit without barb. Excessive deaths are also no fun.
In terms of meta inclusion, Mitigation Monk might be where it's at.
Mitigation is edps. It let's wizards (for e.g.) run SoJ and Deep Freeze, and offensive passives. In a single dps 4p meta, those trades net a nearly 50% increase in edps.
0
Shields are effective sustain. What they lack in healing power, they can make up in EHP, since they land on top of life pool. But, that's just my opinion and experience with shields on other classes. As long as shields are paired with life healing they are nearly as effective as the raw healing overall. They should not be dismissed.
All I'm saying is that crusader can heal just fine in terms oh LPS (including shielding). It's their OTHER problems and nerfs that make them ineffective. If sader could heal for 1k LPS, they STILL would not be viable in a 2+2 meta.
0
124k shield is baseline Laws of Hope activation (all runes).
Healing is worse vs single target but still doable, and still well over 200k per second once wrath enough to continue sweep spam. I could sweep spam vs 2 targets but prob not 1 with my testing setup (which happens to have a fair amt of RCR - apparently both good and bad for this heal set up). 5.0 APS is still achievable with Flense worn, allowing a free weapon/shield cube which can help with wrath gen solutions.
0
Max CDR (70+ pre gogok), Roland 6, zodiac, golden flense in cube.
Freydehr makes Condemn (no attack turn) into a wrath dump.
Assuming one activation per second (and it is more frequent than that) and 150 wrath spent per second (between Sweep at 5 APS, and Condemn at 2 activations per second) Laws of Hope Faith's Reward heals party for 10k (regen) 124k (shield) and 150k (1k x 150 wrath) per second (total 284k per second). Consecration is an additional 50k per second.
This adds up to 334k per second. Not the 500k I alleged, but I figured there would be some way to further optimize (more wrath gen/dump, some weapon or shield to add healing?)
0
I'd call that fine and within the realm of what a monk heals. With 0 mitigation, however, it's not in the same ballpark. Even 500k is more like 15% of monk heals when you take into consideration the mit bonus disparity.
And no, the zcrus healing is not through Salvation. After looking closer, the build I ran to conclude crus healing is around 500k per sec is actually very different than the linked build, although it shares a fair bit of gear and skills.
0
I was just playing around with something similar this morning, looking at healing capacity of Crus. They can heal as well as a monk. They provide crap for mitigation, however wbich makes them completely inferior in survival dept.
Healing is fine. Neutered buffs, lack of mitigation for party, and cc resist killing draw and quarter are the problem.
0
It's less their lack of healing, and more their neutered buffs and horse pull (cc resist changes).
I was reading the updated cc resist description (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/game/guide/gameplay/game-difficulty#monster-resistances) and Draw and Quarter is not consistent.
Supposedly...
1. Cc resist max is 95%.
2. Cc resist ticks down 10% per second when no cc is applied.
3. Knockbacks only land if cc resist is below 65%.
This leads one to expect a maximum decay time of 3-4 seconds between sucessive knockbacks (ramp to 95% then 30+% decay over 3+ seconds).
However, the wait is 10 seconds after Draw and Quartering a monster. Something is wrong.
2
Sad... and infuriating for all the NS players that need stash.
0
Toxin stacks.
Fire twister puts mobs in random positions after the first pull (not a huge deal, but better off with WW and fire EB imo).
Especially in the version with no teleport (also a substantial problem in my view as you can't aid in agro), halo will freeze things and ramp cc resistance. In addition you are snaring them with iceblink. Area dmg matters. Pulling monsters matters. Needlessly ramping cc resistance and hampering pulls is a problem for party edps.
Just my opinions having played a lot of zdps wiz specs and pull specs.
0
Where's toxin!? Why no EB + Conflag? Why snarl/impede pulls and strongarm buffs with Halo of Arlyle ? (I've never found arlyle setups to be optimal for zwiz - buff costs two active skills and a ring, has low uptime, and lovks out other buffs and pulls)
I've used a similar spec and it holds meta promise and is quite nice for speeds.
0
It ticks down 10% per second iirc. That means you can harpoon once every 4s and never encounter immunity.
3
Accessible chests yes.
In coop, if I am in front, yes.
In coop, if I am behind, no.
0
Be careful when assigning value to DR in the form of "deals X% less dmg" debuffs. They work on physical monster attacks but not on ranged dmg from unaffected monsters, and (I think) not on certain elite affixes. I recently tested on Azmodan's summoned fireballs and Toxin, Concussion, Blind had no effect. (Poor example, but it's all I got atm).
Dodge can also be overvalued if players start running into 2-3 shot combat. Dodge does almost nothing vs spike dmg. Dodge is great if mitigation is already there and near useless if not. It's a 'win more' stat in many scenarios.
Barb provides more effective defense in light of these considerations, esp during critical transit operations where almost all monk defense offline, and barbs are providing cc and movespeed as well as full defense.
0
Forbidden Palace is dropped for the ignore cc rune in absence of barb.
Intervene is actually quite good as mobility and burst defense.
In the presence of the 300+ DIBS, Forbidden isn't so amazing. It just takes specific situations to justify a sub-out.
I
0
I'd start with both monk and barb. Survival/function first. If it's too much, dps can sub out esoteric for BoP, a multiplicative ~38% vs elites for most of rift.
But, that's just me. Dead or fleeing dps does no dps. Dps is much more likely to die in transit without barb. Excessive deaths are also no fun.
0
In terms of meta inclusion, Mitigation Monk might be where it's at.
Mitigation is edps. It let's wizards (for e.g.) run SoJ and Deep Freeze, and offensive passives. In a single dps 4p meta, those trades net a nearly 50% increase in edps.