[1.1.9.0] Empyrion's Judge - Paladin - Crucible 4:42

Interesting. I actually made a simple macro in iCUE and it worked mostly fine but that thing is basically a bloatware and I lose quite a bit of fps because of it. Delay was somewhat noticeable but it wasn’t that bad.
I’ll try to play around in your software, thanks for the help.

Well, this is what I was doing. But now I have work around not having force move toggled on (which makes VM so much smoother because you go where you point your cursor instead stopping at random enemies and it also allows you to stack volcanic strides under huge enemies like Herald of Stars which normally is not possible) - that’s why I was asking if you have any trick for doing it, instead just holding force move key when doing vire’s might.

True, but Combustion Band kinda opens up amulet slow because you’ll only lose 8% RR instead 16%. Then you can use Shard of Eternal Flame (for more VM) or Tainted Ruby of Gar’Dal (for more Judgment, +1 to Inquisitor skills and life-leeching fire aura). I would even consider Herald of the Apocalypse here.
Proc on the blue ring is kinda meh, because it’s short range and burn duration is not that needed because all your cooldowns are shorter than burn duration on your skills (so you will be re-applying it constantly). I’d say devotion provide enough burn duration for this build. Don’t get me wrong - more is always nice but I don’t think it’s necessary.

IMO, that’s the beauty of this build - medal, amulet and rigs are somewhat flexible slots so you can kinda switch the focus of the build between Vire’s, Judgment and Aura of Censure without loosing much. I’d say Vire-focused variant does the most damage, Censure is more safer, more RR and less ability spam than Vire and others are more meme-y but still work (I’m using Ruby because that’s what dropped for me).
And now I’m curious how Apocalypse memes would perform :smiley:

Just my feel on it:

The 16 RR in AoE cannot be compared to combustion’s low area proc.

The amulet gives far more reliable RR coverage, maiking the build feel even smooother.

Tainted Ruby of Gar’Dal was in my old and slower iteration of this build in another thread. I’m still for the RR Flames of wrath all the way.

Anyway, feel free ofc to make any changes you deem fitting to your play style :smiley:

It can do anything. I even finished in good time with Hyrian Shield and was fun.

Whatever works

I completely agree and I will be using Flames of Wrath when/if I ever drop it :slight_smile: I just mentioned that you have options and it’s not just “use those items or this build won’t” kind of deal.

Funnily enough, I dropped that shield and used it for a bit not so long ago. However, I found Hyrian’s Claw rather underwhelming compared to Sun Spot.
It makes you quite tanky, though.

Maybe it will get % elemental DoT next time, who knows :slight_smile:

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Would someone be able to explain to me the use of seal of blades/might in the main hand/off hand please?

I just started playing and this confuses me.

Seal of Blades - pierce resistance, 5% attack converted to health (the only source of life leech in this build), 8% armor and some flat pierce damage which is converted to fire and used by skills and procs with %weapon damage, although I’m not sure if that amount even matters.

Seal of Might - resistances, physical damage which is converted to fire.

So it’s mostly for resistances + there are no better options (seal of resonance could be nice, though).

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You forgot about Seal of Blades Whirling Blades ‘aura’ that does some damage too thanks to the conversion.
Superfluff would probably take 2 Seals of Might otherwise.

Adding to what was said above in reply to your question, there is also a damage oriented version that I posted up in the build.

just uses 2x Flints for pure damage. The beauty of the build it that it doesn’t need lifesteal, or any other lifesteal gimmicks. Just positioning,

Could I consider using a Fleshwarped Defender? I happen to have one lying around with the double-rare Flamewall and of Wildfire affixes, and even without the affixes it reduces Judgment cooldown and target damage output.

I use one in my Paladin build.

Judgment doesn’t scale as well as Vire’s might when pushed, and you don’t get the benefit of global cooldown reduction from having a off-hand, but it can also work.

I guess, it’s fine for leveling but final build doesn’t need it since Cinderscorn performs the same role.
Reduction to target’s damage is useless since Aura of Censure already does that. Also, Judgment cooldown is not that important - it’s enough to get it down to around ~3s for higher uptime of Heart of Wrath. This build relies on mobility so ideally you should be moving all the time which means defensive aspect of the shield is kinda wasted.
It’s good for leveling, though. Build is not very tanky until level 90 when you get most items in place and learn how to pilot it.

Really like the concept of this pally and i’m lvling 1 too. May i ask how do you put your devotion point ?

Perhaps @Superfluff can comment with a preferred leveling devotion route, but until then, this is what I jotted down:

Something like this should basically mean minimal respeccing:

  • crossroads red
  • jackal
  • crossroads green
  • spider
  • remove crossroads green
  • solael’s witchblade
  • remove crossroads red
  • quill
  • mantis
  • crown (3/5 points)
  • magi
  • hyrian
  • viper
  • lantern
  • crossroads yellow
  • crossroads blue
  • phoenix
  • remove quill
  • torch (6/7 points)

or if you want toad over quill for ADCTH, then something like this works:

  • crossroads red
  • jackal
  • crossroads green
  • spider
  • remove crossroads green
  • solael’s witchblade
  • remove crossroads red
  • crossroads purple
  • toad
  • crown (3/5 points)
  • magi
  • mantis
  • remove crossroads purple
  • hyrian
  • viper
  • lantern
  • crossroads yellow
  • crossroads blue
  • phoenix
  • remove toad
  • torch (6/7 points)

The second route gets you to crown slightly faster as well at the (negligible) cost of respeccing out of one extra purple point. If you want quill instead of toad and faster access to crown, then you can take the second route and wherever I wrote toad, just use quill instead.

There may be better routes for leveling QoL, but I put these out there as routes that start with jackal for total speed, rush RR devotions quickly, and require minimal respeccing along the way to the final map.

Also, in both routes, the order of magi, hyrian, and viper is pretty flexible and easy to change around as long as you remember that you need to get the purple from mantis before grabbing hyrian.

Edit: this guide by @RektbyProtoss may also interest you if you happen to be looking for a thorough leveling resource to fall back on that bears some similarity to your final goal:

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Thank you very much.

First - kudos @Superfluff for such a fun casting pally build. I’ve tried a couple of variants of it, with the Fleshwarped Defender (similar to your old Judge Dredd post), and sampling both the Tainted Ruby and Mark of Ulzuin before coming back to your build. About the only difference is that I don’t have the belt with those affixes, so I am making do with an Inquisitor’s Ugdenbog Waistguard with useful resist affixes instead.

I will disclaim any skill in piloting - I’m the sort of guy who panics and displaces into a brick wall, or charges away from one Nemesis into the face of another; I shouldn’t be permitted to drive movement runes in general. Still, my experience was - the build is awfully squishy. There’s no strong circuit breakers, and no sustain other than Word of Renewal on long cooldown; I was constantly struggling to survive DoTs or SR crystalled terrain (I don’t play Crucible very much). So I question the value of Hyrian, especially given you have ditched your original build’s shield. Very slight modification can give you Giant’s Blood and Wayward Soul, and I’ve found that gives good health management at the cost of a very minor drop in fire/burn +%. I’m currently running this build with those devotions and it works well; about the only thing I would hope for is to find a belt with the ideal double-rare affixes as you are using.

1.1.9.2 wasn’t very gentle for this build - skills, devotions, items were all nerfed because of “burn damage rebalance”. The only positive change is the fact that Phoenix is now fixed and Judgment got a bit of CD reduction on off-hand.

So I decided to do the only sensible thing in this situation - add more burn stacks to compensate for nerfs. I slapped Blazeseer set on and moved around some skill points to pump up Guardians. It went better than expected - with constant Rain of Fire and Guardians dealing more damage SR65 is a breeze.
I didn’t try anything higher because I’m out of mats to fix resistances - unfortunately, they aren’t comfortably overcapped because I have some items low-rolled items. Also, I still don’t have Gaze of Empyrion.
Here’s my GT link:

I’m still running Ruby and Bane for sustain. Build works better for me this way - instead constant kitting, I keep the boss in a small area where all my damage happens (rain of fire, meteor shower, volcanic stride, fissures and all my auras), while dodging as many hits, projectiles and ground effects as possible.
Even Fabius and Iron Maiden are jokes (at least in SR65…) once you get good strategy (charge the boss with Blazing Ends, go through the boss with VM, cast Judgment and Sun spot - repeat). Grava is a problem because of energy burn, though - a lot more kitting is required.

I thinking of dropping Hyrian since it doesn’t do much. Flame Torrent on Guardians (we convert (we have ~80% chaos to fire conversion) would be a dream (another burn stack) but then I don’t have enough skills to proc everything… So I’m thinking about Crab for another damage absorption (since we already rely heavily on it) or even Bard for elemental damage and energy management (I have to chug a potion every now and then).

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Damn looking at the patch notes,this seems to have been hit on multiple fronts,dunno if you mentioned but also the guardian becoming ele instead of fire RR is also a big one

But I dont rly like this direction,i really enjoyed the big ass aura of censure,so I simply took out Hyrian(i really dont see it doing much for this build)…and i completed Ulzuin torch,that last node seems far more worth it with all the burn damage,and completed rhowan.

Still have a bunch of free points,i swaped spider with raven and panther,gained a bunch more OA,but I am curious if Fiend would be a bigger increase,atm im using fissure on guardians they seem to proc it really well

Why? It doesn’t change anything, afaik.

You can still do that. I just don’t have Empyrion’s Gaze. Censure doesn’t do burn damage, it just ticks fire damage every second. Fire damage wasn’t touched, IIRC.
Flames of Wrath is still BiS, even after nerfs. I don’t use because I don’t have it and I enjoy additional sustain (I’m a lazy pilot :stuck_out_tongue:) and more Judgments (this skill was buffed, except burn damage).

I’m still on a fence. Hyrian provides armor, elemental damage, retaliation and damage blocked by shield - most of the time we don’t use the latter 2 which means it’s kinda not worth it. But I still keep Hyrian’s Bulwark in my inventory and swap to it in SR when I get physical resistance mutator. Build is much slower (Sun Spot is basically level 20/16 Doom Bolt with added massive burn and -2s CD…) but a lot more comfortable to play. Some bosses are really stressful with bad mutators. Yesterday I fought Fabius 3 times in a row with off-hand and -16% physical resistance, and it wasn’t fun. I had enough of him the second time and he had to show up in a boss room, too… So now I carry the shield with me and swap to it. Killing is much slower but it’s a smooth ride. Although I probably should use Stormfire with it because the skill that comes with the shield is rather bad on burn build.

Anyway, if I were to swap Hyrian - I’d go for defence (since that part of Hyrian mostly doesn’t work if we don’t have a shield). I think Crab fits because it basically works like a shield and we are already using two barriers. This build is supposed to dance around bosses instead relying on sustain so having something to block occasional hit should be nice.

Fiend should be big, because each Guardian can proc is separately and we convert 80% chaos to fire. But there are not enough skills to proc other stuff, unless we add another skill to the build. We have Judgement, Vire, Sun Spot, Blazing Ends and Guardians and we need to proc Meteor Shower, Fissure, Elemental Storm and Phoenix.

What do you mean guardians being ele instead of fire doesnt change anything?isnt elemental counted as 3 damage types in one?meaning by having guardians be elemental instead of fire we get like 10% rr instead of the old 30%

Nope, Elemental RR counts as all 3 damage types equally, so -30% Elemental resistance counts as -30% Fire, Cold and Lightning resistance respectively.