by Darvin on Sat May 19, 2012 7:04 pm
After playing around a bit, I'm pretty sure new crusader needs to either be Goblin with a Trisword prep or Orc with a Yendor prep. For most conventional tactics, you'll almost never exceed 100% momentum anyways and you're just taking needless penalties on level-up. Furthermore, unless the boss is a high-damage opponent like Aequitas and Bleaty you really gain nothing over an old Crusader, who could just recharge his momentum between attacks. The momentum loss is particularly annoying for low-level Crusaders who are leveling up every second kill, which necessitates some easy way to quickly get out of the low-level range without killing too many monsters and wasting the momentum bonus. Since he can no longer combo momentum with a level-up catapult, it comes out to be a net wash unless you have a very well-developed game-plan.
Overall I don't like this change for the Crusader. The class was always passable on normal and some hard levels, but fizzled out on the more challenging hard levels and vicious levels. This really does nothing to help him where he needed the help most: scenarios where he does not have huge scores of popcorn available in the end-game. Given that he can't synergize momentum with level-ups anymore, this is actually a net-nerf in many situations, and as arguably the weakest class on the roster he needed an unabiguous buff.