Aegis of Valor Heaven's Fury Crusader RGK Variation

The AoV Heaven's Fury Crusader fits excellently with the role of a Rift Guardian Killer in high tier Greater Rifts, and is in high demand for leaderboard Greater Rift pushing.

The Rift Guardian Killer role demands focus from the character entirely into single target damage, eschewing any consideration for Area Damage or trash killing purposes. Your skill and especially your gear choices will reflect that.

Active Skills
Heaven's Fury Fires of Heaven Fist of the Heavens Fissure 1 Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force 2 Blessed Hammer Thunderstruck 3 Iron Skin Flash 4 Akarat's Champion Prophet
Passive Skills
Fervor Holy Cause Long Arm of the Law Finery

When serving as the Rift Guardian Killer, most of the AoV Heaven's Fury Crusader rotation remains the same; facing the bigger threats in Greater Rifts — especially the Rift Guardian, whose death will be largely your task — and mowing them down with Fires of Heaven shots. You will be using Fist of the Heavens and Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force for resource maintenance, as well as Iron Skin and Akarat's Champion for protection. Since your Supports will be applying the Crowd Control necessary for the Bracer of Fury damage amplification however, you will be using Blessed Hammer Thunderstruck in that slot for faster Bane of the Stricken stacking.

The entirety of your skill and passive selection, as well as the reasoning behind their use, will remain the same as the GR solo pushing build. The only difference, as noted in the rotation section above, is the replacement of your crowd control skill (i.e. Shield Glare) with Blessed Hammer Thunderstruck; simply taken as a tool to spam and build up your Bane of the Stricken stacks faster (especially vs. the Rift Guardian).

Most of the gear from the Greater Rift solo progression build will still make sense for the group RGK variation, but a few alterations will be necessary in order to maximize your potential in this role.

You will maintain the entirety of your armor set splits, still incorporating the 5 Aegis of Valor - 2 Captain Crimson's Trimming ratio. You will also be including a fully damage-oriented jewelry setup: Convention of Elements and a Fire damage Stone of Jordan. Note that "Fire" is not an error here; you will still be dealing Holy damage, but with the powers of the equipped Stone of Jordan (equalizing your elemental damage to your highest) and your cubed Magefist, you will be able to elevate your overall Holy damage via the numerous boosts available to Fire damage. To complement your Rift Guardian Killer role, you will also be using Squirt's Necklace as your amulet, and rely on your Support teammates to keep you safe to maintain its damage buff.

In this group setup, you will have to play around a non-permanent Akarat's Champion, which will now sport about ~60% uptime. Your goal is to reach the 64.5% CDR breakpoint with Gogok of Swiftness stacks, in order to bring your Akarat's Champion to a 32-second rotation that will properly align it to your Convention of Elements damage cycles.

The duo of Heaven's Fury-specific items that you know from the solo build — Bracer of Fury and Shield of Fury — will remain intact, but you will replace Pig Sticker with Johanna's Argument to double the attack speed of Blessed Hammer and stack your Bane of the Stricken even faster.

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised and re-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — For virtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual to advanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the path outlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of life first, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive and edge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary Potion Powers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separate resource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Set items of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, and in the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

Bane of the Trapped and Bane of the Stricken remain as universally desired damage amplification gems during progression. As you will not be responsible for the trash clearing, you will drop Pain Enhancer for the extra attack speed and cooldown reduction from Gogok of Swiftness.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

Fate of the Fell is still a required legendary effect in the build, and stays locked in the weapon Cube slot.

As your support teammates will be taking care of your sustain and survivability in group GR progression, you will be dropping Stone Gauntlets from this slot for additional damage. By slotting Magefist here, you will attain another 20% boost to Fire elemental damage, which you will convert to Holy with the use of the equipped Stone of Jordan.

Lastly, in order to maintain the Aegis of Valor / Captain Crimson mixture, you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur: a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

This Season revives the Pandemonium Kill Streak buff from Season 19. Each stack grants a bonus to movement speed and damage, capping at +50% movement speed and +100% damage at 1000 kills. Hitting specific kill thresholds unleashes powerful effects. Read more in our dedicated Season of the Eternal Conflict Mechanics Guide!

While speedfarming sees limited use from this theme, Greater Rift pushing benefits significantly. Effects like Geysers (150), Meteors (400), and Angels (500) can clear elites and Rift Guardians instantly. Players may reset streaks after 150 kills to repeatedly trigger Geysers or push for 500+ kills near boss fights, often using Nemesis Bracers to spawn extra enemies.

Because the most potent effects (Geysers, Meteors, Angels) can obliterate Rift Guardians instantly up to GR150, players can retool builds for efficiency and comfort. Here’s how:

Since you can rely on killstreak procs to clear the Rift Guardian, Bane of the Stricken can be safely omitted in favor of:

• Another generic damage-scaling legendary gem ( Bane of the Trapped for builds with any form of crowd control and/or melee range, Zei's Stone of Vengeance for far ranged builds, Taeguk for channeling builds, Simplicity's Strength for primary attack-focused builds, Enforcer for pet-oriented builds, etc.)
• A survivability-oriented legendary gem ( Esoteric Alteration, Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard), or additional utility ( Gogok of Swiftness for CDR-reliant builds, Pain Enhancer for attack speed-heavy builds, or Wreath of Lightning for extra movement speed).

Adjust your equipment to items that favor durability, health sustain, and ease of movement. Consider adjusting non-essential skills for the build to ones that pull, reposition, or otherwise displace enemies to facilitate large pulls of enemy packs. In more concrete terms, this means:

• For class-synergistic items, Crusaders should strongly consider equipping Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac if not already included, as it synergizes well with cooldown-heavy builds that rely on Akarat's Champion or Bombardment.
• For additional defense, cross-class standouts like Unity (used with follower and immortality relic for them), and the Endless Walk set ( The Traveler's Pledge and The Compass Rose) are top picks, balancing damage reduction during movement with stationary damage scaling.
• Situational defensive gear includes staples like Aquila Cuirass (perfect for builds with minimal resource spending like Invoker Thorns), Stone Gauntlets ((mitigated by Akarat's Champion, Iron Skin, wearing Ice Climbers, or Altar of Rites CC-immunity node), and even niche inclusions like Justice Lantern (boosts block-based mitigation) and String of Ears (massive melee damage reduction).
• For situational items that improve your utility, strongly consider Nemesis Bracers as the extra elites equal both killstreak upkeep and GR progression. When soloing, they should be equipped by your follower; in groups, at least one party member should commit to wearing them. Edge cases will see the inclusion of Warzechian Armguards or Krelm's Buff Belt (more speed for easier scouting and pulls), and Strongarm Bracers (extra damage vs. displaced enemies). To facilitate large pulls, consider using a Follower equipped with The Ess of Johan, a proc-based analogue to an enemy-pulling skill (albeit outside your control).
• Skill-wise, make sure to include at least one movement skill ( Steed Charge) and/or an enemy-pulling tool like Condemn Vacuum or Sweep Attack Gathering Sweep. Take a look if you can include passives like Fervor (for cooldown reduction and attack speed with one-handed weapons), Lord Commander (reduced cooldown on Steed Charge) or Long Arm of the Law (to extend the benefits of your Laws for both solo and group play). The latter will be especially beneficial if you can slot Laws of Hope Wings of Angels in the build.