Seeker of the LightBlessed Hammer Crusader build is the spiritual successor of famous Hammerdin build from Diablo II. This build does exactly what it says on the box: makes hammers fly. If you've always wanted to see approximately 30 hammers orbiting you while bonking denizens of hell on the head, then you've come to the right place!
Unfortunately, this set has a serious problem - the support skill which you have to use to activate your damage and toughness bonuses is Falling Sword. There's exactly one thing that is good about this skill - it looks cool. Other than that it does nothing. Damage is completely irrelevant, despite 1,000% increase from the Seeker of the Light(6)Bonus. None of the runes provide any meaningful utility. And while it is a teleport skill, the animation is so slow that it is barely faster than walking.
On the current patch Seeker of the LightBlessed Hammer Crusader is completely outclassed by either Bombardment Crusader or Fist of the Heavens Crusader in pushing and in farming. But if you want to conquer Seeker of the Light leaderboards this is (the only) build to do it!
High Attack Speed ✔ Straightforward Mechanics ✔ A LOT of Hammers Everywhere ✔ Can Grab a Tea during Falling Sword ✔
❌ Squishy ❌ Limited Number of Targets ❌ Area Damage Doesn't Work ❌ Falling Sword is Incredibly Slow
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
Seeker of the Light set provides 50% damage reduction, 12,000% Blessed Hammer damage increase and also lets us reset cooldowns of Falling Sword and Provoke extremely fast.
Captain Crimson's Trimmings set gives around 60% DPS, 28%-65% damage reduction and 20% Cooldown Reduction.
Ring of Royal Grandeur allows us to get full bonuses from both sets.
Hammer Jammers increase Blessed Hammer damage by 400%.
Faithful Memory increases Blessed Hammer damage by up to 800%.
Guard of Johanna provides a 250% Blessed Hammer damage increase when fighting lone Elites or Rift Guardians.
Johanna's Argument doubles the damage and attack speed of Blessed Hammer allowing us to cast up to 6 hammers every second.
Season 32 Ethereals
Ethereals are powerful rare weapons that can only be found during Season 32. They were initially the Season 24 Theme. They have incredible stats, a random Legendary power, and a free passive for your class. Read our Ethereal Mechanics Guide for full details on how they work and our Ethereal Farming Guide to learn how to acquire them. What you should prioritize on them is the following:
TheLegendary Power This build requires Johanna's Argument and Faithful Memory to be functional. We need our Ethereal to roll one of these powers so we can cube the other. We also want a good roll on our Legendary power if it has a range. For speed content it is always helpful to have Ethereals with In-geom or Messerschmidt's Reaver powers, so keep those if you find them.
TheEtherealItself There are 3 different weapons available to us, each with its own benefits:
The Redeemer - This is the best Ethereal for this build providing Holy Damage, Attack Speed and a massive +50% Damage to Demons and Undead (about 60% of enemies you find in Greater Rift are one of these two types).
Astreon's Iron Ward - This option comes in close second with its Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage rolls. It's about 17% weaker than The Redeemer when fighting Undead or Demons but 25% stronger against other enemies.
Khalim's Will - This is the worst Ethereal for this build damage wise (25% weaker than Astreon's Iron Ward) but its high Attack Speed and Life Per Hit make it a decent defensive option.
The EtherealStat Rolls Each Ethereal comes with its own fixed set of powerful affixes. While some have a static value, many have a wide stat range. This means the difference between good and bad rolls is significant and something you should look for.
A Useful Passive This is just icing on the cake because a fifth passive is not going to make or break your build. You're better off hunting for the things above. Check out the Passives section down below to see which ones you're looking for.
Global Stat Priorities
Stack as much Cooldown Reduction (CDR) as possible, you want literally every single point of it on every single piece including the amulet. For Attack Speed you just need a 7% roll on the Weapon as it is multiplicative with rolls from other pieces. Make sure your defensive slots—Boots, Pants and Belt—have Vitality and All Resistance on them. Life per Hit is a great stat for extra recovery; having at least one roll on Weapon or Bracers is recommended, although not required. Stack DPS stats wherever possible: Holy Damage, Blessed Hammer Damage, Critical Hit Damage and Critical Hit Chance. Ignore Area Damage because it doesn't get buffed by Hammer Jammers.
Assembling the Build
1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cubeLegendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!
2.Gather the full Seeker of the Light set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.
Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.
5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:
Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
Act 2: Gloves of Worship (for your follower)
Act 3: Avarice Band
Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Cain's Destiny and Sage's Journey
6. At this point you can somewhat comfortably farm Nephalem Rifts or low GRs where you can find all the remaining items you need for different variants of the build. It's better to spend your mats improving your set pieces, getting ancient weapon etc.
7. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:
Johanna's Argument
Guard of Johanna
Convention of Elements
Item Stat Priorities
SLOT
ITEM
STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand
The Redeemer Astreon's Iron Ward Khalim's Will Johanna's Argument Faithful Memory (Cubed) Flail of the Charge
1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Attack Speed 5. Damage % 6. Life per Hit 7. Elite Damage 8. Strength
1. All Resistance 2. Strength 3. Vitality 4. Life %
Potion
Bottomless Potion of Amplification
To gain extra healing
Gems
Bane of the Trapped is the most common DPS gem. This is a melee build, so nothing special needs to be done in order to activate the damage bonus.
Solo push version uses Gogok of Swiftness for Cooldown Reduction, Attack speed and toughness, as well as Bane of the Stricken, which is necessary to kill the boss.
The T16 version instead goes with Boon of the Hoarder for gold and Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard to protect Squirt's Necklace stacks.
Skills
Blessed Hammer is the main source of DPS and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac procs.
Falling Sword Rapid Descent is required to activate the Seeker of the Light(4) Bonus, Faithful Memory and Hammer Jammers
Provoke Too Scared to Run is used replenish Wrath and also to reduce incoming damage a little bit.
Akarat's Champion Prophet is a staple in every single crusader build. One skill providing 35% damage, more than double toughness, crowd control immunity, Wrath regeneration and full heal on "death" is just too good to pass up.
One of the remaining skill slots is occupied by Law skill, which is either Laws of Hope Wings of Angels for mobility or Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force for defense.
Finally the last skill slot is either Iron Skin for more defense or Steed Charge for mobility.
Passives
Fervor provides massive stat boost: 15% Cooldown Reduction and Attack Speed.
Finery is the strongest generic crusader passive, which provides about 15% DPS and 12% toughness boost.
Long Arm of the Law is used to get 100% uptime on our chosen Law skill.
The last passive is Holy Cause which is our main source of recovery in the solo push version. In T16 the healing not needed so we get Lord Commander for more Steed Charge spam.
Useful extra passives to get from your Ethereal are (from best to worst):
Blunt
Indestructible
Vigilant
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Cooldown Reduction
1. All Resistance
1. Resource Cost Reduction
2. Strength
2. Critical Hit Damage
2. Armor
2. Area Damage
3. Vitality1
3. Critical Hit Chance
3. Life %
3. Life per Hit
4. Maximum Wrath
4. Attack Speed
4. Life Regeneration
4. Pickup Radius
1 Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 900,000 Life is recommended).
Altar of Rites
The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!
Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.
Optimal Path
Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!
Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.
Nodes 7-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!
Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.
Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.
Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!
Recommended Altar Path Use the Scroll Bar to see Altar Progression
Follower
Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:
The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25.000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10.000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
Guardian's Jeopardy(3) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
Select Follower
T16 Enchantress
T16 Enchantress
For T16 we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is T16 content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death.
Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For extra Elites, Death’s Breaths and In-geom procs.
Avarice Band: For the insane pickup radius.
Ring of Royal Grandeur: To complete our sets.
Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
Sage’s Journey: For double Death’s Breaths.
Cain’s Destiny: For 25% more Greater Rift Keystones.
GR Pushing Enchantress
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Enchantress setup for the Slow from Temporal Pulse, Cooldown Reduction from Prophetic Harmony, Damage Reduction and Armor from Powered Shield, and the Attack Speed from Focused Mind.
Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence> Attack Speed. Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Mempo of Twilight and Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
Gameplay
The overall Gameplay here is incredibly simple: you just spam all the buttons.
Blessed Hammer is the main damage skill and you should always hold it down to deal damage and to heal. Akarat's Champion, Iron Skin, Provoke and Laws of Valor should be spammed at all times. Falling Sword is the only skill you need to be conservative with. It's animation is very long so you lose a chunk of damage every time you use it. Only cast it when you need to refresh Seeker of the Light(4) Bonus, Hammer Jammers or Faithful Memory or when you want to reposition.
Hardcore
This build is not very hardcore-friendly due to being "Low Toughness & High Recovery"-type of build meaning that your health is always going up and down; you are often hanging on the brink of death and are at risk of getting oneshot. If you insist on playing this build in hardcore you need to swap Finery for Indestructible. Getting Life per Hit on weapon is highly recommended. Unfortunately, there aren't any ways to make this build tankier without losing a lot of damage. Your options are switching Convention of Elements for Unity or Bane of the Trapped for Esoteric Alteration. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Push
T16
Ethereals If you don't have any Ethereal Item use Johanna's Argument.
Concept In T16 version of the build we drop Hammer Jammers, because applying CC to every new mob takes too much time. We also replace Faithful Memory with Justinian's Mercy. This lets us deal damage while moving and also we no longer need Falling Sword. We use Squirt's Necklace protected by the shield from Laws of Hope to get back some of the lost damage.
As many other T16 buids, we use the Gold Items: Goldwrap, Avarice Band and Boon of the Hoarder. Together, these three give you a screen-wide pick up radius, 30% Movement Speed, nearly infinite toughness, and a steady supply of gold.
Gameplay The gameplay is very simple: Steed Charge up to mobs, throw some hammers, run to the next group. Spam Provoke for Wrath and all the other skills for Movement Speed.
Setups When playing in groups replace Warzechian Armguards with Nemesis Bracers and Stone of Jordan with Avarice Band.
SotL BH Solo Push
Ethereals If you don't have any Ethereal Item use Johanna's Argument.
Concept This is the solo push version, which tries to get as much damage and toughness as possible. To that end we use Endless Walk, Convention of Elements and Strongarm Bracers. Our chosen rune on Blessed Hammer is Limitless because it deals twice as much damage compared to the base skill. And finally our two free skill slots are occupied by Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force and Iron Skin Steel Skin for extra toughness.
Gameplay The gameplay is incredibly simple: you spam all your buffs and hold down Blessed Hammer. Don't fight less than 10 mobs to get maximum value from Faithful Memory. Before your Holy Convention of Elements cycle, use Falling Sword in the middle of the pull to refresh all the buffs and to apply Hammer Jammers to as many mobs as possible. If Oculus Ring spawns in the first second of Holy, use Falling Sword to get into it, otherwise don't bother.
Setups If you don't have max Cooldown Reduction, replace Convention of Elements with Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. It will solve your cooldown issues but you will have to use your skills conservatively. Only recast each buff when it's about to expire. If you do that well, you can even switch to Iron Skin Flash.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Faithful Memory
Provides a 10 seconds buff when Falling Sword's animation ends.
Only enemies hit by the initial impact of Falling Sword contribute to the buff stacks.
Destructible objects broken by the initial impact also contribute to the stacks.
Hammer Jammers
Applies a 10 second debuff to each monster hit by Blind, Immobilize, Stun or Knockback (although the tooltip does not state it).
The damage bonus from the debuff doesn't interact with Area Damage in any way. Area Damage procs from debuffed targets deal unbuffed damage, same for AD procs against debuffed targets.
Summary
Put together the core items and acquire the full Seeker of the Light set.
Stack Cooldown Reduction before everything to survive.
