Akkhan Condemn Crusader Speed Farming Variation

The Akkhan Condemn Crusader can deal reasonably well with Greater Rift Speed Farming, covering the whole battlefield in Condemn detonations, while zipping through the Rift with Laws of Hope Wings of Angels. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.

During lower tier Greater Rift farming, the balance between defense, damage, and utility can be shifted to favor the latter two aspects of character building.

Active Skills
Steed Charge Endurance Judgment No rune chosen 1 Laws of Hope Wings of Angels 2 Phalanx Bowmen 3 Condemn Unleashed 4 Akarat's Champion Prophet
Passive Skills
Heavenly Strength Lord Commander Long Arm of the Law Finery

When you are Speed Farming Greater Rifts, your playstyle should at least partially reflect the circumstances by focusing on massive pulls, generic bonuses against enemies, and chaining pylon effects.

Similarly to its GR progression counterpart, the GR speed farming Condemn Crusader needs to stay in Akarat's Champion form at all times, spamming Judgment left and right to ease the Condemn decimation inflicted by their Phalanx Bowmen summons. You should be able to oneshot pretty much any enemy pack with a single detonation of Condemn Unleashed, and fluidly move between packs with Laws of Hope Wings of Angels (for short distances), or Steed Charge Endurance (for long distances).

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to burst down enemies quicker takes precedence.

• With your greatly increased speed, you will be zipping from one pack to the next, reducing the usefulness of the greater reach of Condemn Shattering Explosion. In its place, use the immediate explosion of Unleashed for precise, on-demand devastation.
• Phalanx Bowmen are still the summoned backbone of your damage, and their unrelenting barrage of arrows will produce the most Condemns-per-second you can hope for.
• Judgment is necessary for the Akkhan set to function and maintains its place in the build. You are granted all the runes from the 2-piece bonus (hence the unruned recommendation above), and should use the skill indiscriminately against enemy packs throughout the rift.
• You should alter your Law of choice from the resource-oriented Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force to the party-wide movement speed buff of Laws of Hope Wings of Angels.
• You have a call to make on using Focus and Restraint; if you need their damage multiplication, keep the generator (likely Justice Sword of Justice) from the main build. If you do not, swap the Generator out for Steed Charge Endurance as suggested above. Mounting up allows you to cross great distances in a short timespan, which is useful in certain Greater Rift layouts — occasionally sprawling and bereft of enemies.
• Akarat's Champion Prophet is an omnipresent self-buff in both versions of the build.
• Your passive selection remains unchanged from the progression build: Heavenly Strength, Long Arm of the Law, Lord Commander and Finery.

You will still be taking advantage of the full 6-piece set bonuses of Akkhan, as well as the 3-piece set bonus of the Cpt. Crimon set — for its additional Cooldown- and Resource Cost Reduction, as well as the scaling "damage dealt increased by CDR" and "damage reduced by RCR" bonuses. The two sets should be supplemented by the usual line-up of displacement-based damage buff from Strongarm Bracers (triggered by Judgment Mass Verdict), Phalanx-related legendaries ( Unrelenting Phalanx and Warhelm of Kassar), and the Condemn weapon, Blade of Prophecy.

The differences from the GR progression build can come in several forms, according to your needs and preferences:

• As mentioned above, you can drop the Generator skill (and Focus and Restraint as a whole) for the additional mobility of Steed Charge Endurance. As a result, you should use a Holy damage Stone of Jordan and a Convention of Elements as your two rings.
• Early on in character progression, when your Paragons are still low, you can make use of the craftable 3-piece Guardian's Jeopardy set, which doubles your main stats (Strength and Vitality, in the Crusader's case). This is a great early progression boon, and is achieved by equipping Guardian's Aversion, Guardian's Case, plus the usual RoRG in the Cube. Complement them with Stone Gauntlets for another massive defensive bulwark, whose downside is completely negated by the CC immunity from your permanent Akarat's Champion.

Slot	Pieces	Stat Priority
Head	Warhelm of Kassar	Strength Socket Critical Hit Chance Phalanx % Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Shoulders	Pauldrons of Akkhan	Strength Cooldown Reduction Condemn Damage All Resistance or Resource Cost Reduction Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Torso	Breastplate of Akkhan	Strength 3 Sockets Condemn Damage Vitality Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Wrists	Strongarm Bracers	Strength Critical Hit Chance Holy Damage Vitality Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Hands	Gauntlets of Akkhan	Strength (replaced by Attack Speed at High Paragons) Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Cooldown Reduction Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Waist	Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle	Strength Vitality All Resistance Life % Life per Kill (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Legs	Captain Crimson's Thrust	Strength 2 Sockets Vitality All Resistance Life per Kill (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Feet	Sabatons of Akkhan	Strength Phalanx % Damage Vitality All Resistance Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Amulet	Talisman of Akkhan	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Holy Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Ring #1	Stone of Jordan	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Cooldown Reduction or Attack Speed Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Ring #2	Convention of Elements	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Cooldown Reduction or Attack Speed Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Weapon	Blade of Prophecy	Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) High Weapon Damage Strength Attack Speed Cooldown Reduction Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Off-hand	Unrelenting Phalanx	Strength Critical Hit Chance Cooldown Reduction Phalanx % Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)

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.

Season 29 introduces a season-specific cap to stat benefits from Paragon levels, all while updating how Paragon point distribution is handled. For the duration of this Season, you can only assign 800 Paragon stat points to your character, removing the long-standing practice of main-stat stacking (with some gearing implications — see below) after you reach Paragon 800.

On top of that, you could only allocate 50 Paragon stat points to each of the four stats in a given Paragon category (Core, Offense, Defense, and Utility). In Season 29, you can allocate up to the full 200 points per category into any attribute, allowing you to more easily reach necessary build breakpoints (as outlined in the Gear page of the guide) for Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, etc.

With the changes to Paragon in mind, we recommend using the following Paragon distribution for this build:

• Core: Movement Speed: 200 points.
• Offense: Cooldown Reduction and Critical Hit Damage: Allocate points so you get over the breakpoint for permenant Laws of Valor active effect (67% sheet CDR), and then distribute points to get as close as possible to the desirable 1:10 ratio between the Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage stats, as displayed in your Character Details sheet.
• Defense: Life and All Resistance: Allocate points to maximize survivability; for Crusaders, this is usually achieved by evenly splitting 100 points into Life (directly increasing your Health pool) and All Resistance (to complement the naturally high Armor stat of Strength-based characters).
• Utility: Resource Cost Reduction: 200 points.

In terms of gear, keeping the Paragon cap in mind is paramount, as it stymies the traditional endless supply of main stat after Paragon 800. This means re-rolling mainstat off your gear is no longer desirable, and full equipment augmentation with your main stat is even more critical. Additionally, you should take a careful look at your build and consider if you can fit the following changes to strengthen your damage and survivability:

• Guardian's Jeopardy: This is a craftable armor set, and the recipe for its creation drops from Bounty farming. Guardian's 2-piece provides a decent damage reduction bonus, but the true powerhouse of the set is the 3-piece bonus, which nets you an additional 100% of your main stats from equipped items. This is a tremendous benefit in an 800 Paragon capped Season. If the Guardian set can fit into the build with minimal sacrifices (other craftable sets, tertiary damage multipliers, etc.), consider its implementation. The available pieces are Guardian's Aversion (Wrists), Guardian's Case (Waist), and Guardian's Gaze (Head). Of course, you can wear 2 pieces of the set and complete the full 3-piece bonus with a Ring of Royal Grandeur (found from Act I bounty caches).
• Endless Walk:This is a jewelry set consisting of The Traveler's Pledge (Amulet) and The Compass Rose (Ring), and is randomly found through farming, gambling Blood Shards, and/or Kanai's Cube recipes. The Endless Walk set is a nice compromise between damage bonuses (building up while stationary) and defensive bonuses (building up while moving). It can replace glass cannon choices like the Bastions of Will set ( Focus and Restraint) and Squirt's Necklace with acceptable losses to DPS.
• Unity: A character wearing this ring, along with another Unity on their follower plus an immortality relic for them (i.e., Enchanting Favor), will reduce their damage taken by 50%. Unity can roll excellent offense-oriented stats and has an innate Extra Damage to Elites roll, which somewhat offsets losing all-out offense jewelry.

Bane of the Trapped and Enforcer remain universally desired damage amplification gems.

Since monster health is much more tame in lower Greater Rift tiers, you should also replace Bane of the Stricken with Bane of the Powerful for the consistent, easily sustained damage increase.

Slot	Gems
Jewelry	Bane of the Trapped Enforcer Bane of the Powerful
Helm	Flawless Royal Diamond
Torso and Pants	Flawless Royal Ruby (Damage)
Weapon	Flawless Royal Emerald

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

You will maintain the entire Cube line-up from the base Greater Rift progression spec. The weapon Cube slot still needs to be taken by your worse rolled item between Frydehr's Wrath and Unrelenting Phalanx. The armor Cube slot should be occupied by the pet attack speed multiplication of Tasker and Theo. Lastly, in order to maintain the 6-piece bonus of Akkhan and 3-piece bonus of the Cpt. Crimson set, you will need to keep a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry Cube slot.

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.

The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is the Enchantress due to her cooldown reduction buff from Prophetic Harmony, as well as the Focused Mind attack speed buff.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.

Waller affixes are problematic for Condemn Crusader builds, since they greatly limit your opportunities to maneuver from one pack to the next, back and forth, which is the general playstyle of the build. As such, our general recommendation for your legendary potion is the Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid, which allows you to break through Waller affixes. Alternatively, Bottomless Potion of the Diamond is a straightforward addition that simply layers a short All Resist protective coating after drinking (All Resistance is the preferred form of mitigation stacking for Strength-based characters, since their mainstat scales Armor already.)