Crusader Thorns Bombardment Build
Introduction
After the introduction of a 7th set piece, the already versatile Akkhan set expands its utility further with the ability to add more sets into the mix — in this case, the craftable Captain Crimson's Trimmings and Aughild's Authority sets. The build is designed with Greater Rift solo progression in mind. For more information about how this build performs on the ladder, please refer to our Solo push rankings.
This build also comes with its own speed farming variation, which features a build similar to the present one, but with alterations to fit a speedfarming playstyle.
Quick Reference
Skill Setup
The basic skill setup of the Akkhan Bombardment Crusader is displayed below. Read the dedicated Skills page for detailed information on choices, alternatives and build customization.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Gear Setup
The required gear setup for the Akkhan Bombardment Crusader is listed below. Check the Gear page for detailed information on choices, alternatives, gemming, Kanai's Cube and Paragon distribution.
- Helm:
Helm of Akkhan
- Shoulders:
Aughild's Power
- Gloves:
Gauntlets of Akkhan
- Chest:
Breastplate of Akkhan
- Belt:
Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle
- Pants:
Cuisses of Akkhan
- Boots:
Captain Crimson's Waders
- Bracers:
Aughild's Search
- Amulet:
Talisman of Akkhan
- Ring 1:
Convention of Elements
- Ring 2:
Unity
- Weapon:
Flail of the Charge
- Offhand:
Shield of the Steed
Season 29: Paragon Cap
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: 200 points.
- 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: Area Damage: 200 points.
Season 29: Gearing Considerations
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.
Legendary Gems
- Legendary Gem 1:
Bane of the Trapped
- Legendary Gem 2:
Boyarsky's Chip
- Legendary Gem 3:
Bane of the Stricken
Kanai's Cube
- Weapon Slot:
The Mortal Drama
- Armor Slot:
Belt of the Trove
- Jewelry Slot:
Ring of Royal Grandeur
How To get This Build Going?
In this section, we will briefly go over how to kickstart this build into reality; which items you should aim for with priority when farming and gambling, and what is their relative priority for the functioning of this spec. Note that these suggestions are exclusively aimed at getting you up and running into endgame farming, and might not reflect the gear you need to wear for high-end Greater Rift solo or group pushing. This section also assumes a fresh Season's start, which usually is the point where most players work on assembling their first build with a particular set.
If the Akkhan set is part of the Haedrig's Gift for the Season, your simplest and most straightforward path to assembling the build is to complete the Seasonal Journey chapters up to Chapter IV. The Seasonal Journey chapters will gradually give you a complete class-specific set, giving 2-3 pieces for Chapters II, III and IV.
From the pre-game menu, choose and do this week's Challenge Rift. When
successfully completed, this weekly event will grant you 5,1 million Gold, 475
Blood Shards, 370 Reusable Parts, 350
Arcane Dust, 125
Veiled Crystals, 35
Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache
material:
Khanduran Rune,
Caldeum Nightshade,
Arreat War Tapestry,
Corrupted Angel Flesh, and
Westmarch Holy Water. This will allow you some early Seasonal leeway to
extract and reforge items in Kanai's Cube, speeding up the assembly of this
build with the items recommended below.
Having some materials at your disposal, either from farming or the Challenge
Rift, is particularly important when you get duplicate pieces of your desired
set. When you do, you can use Kanai's Cube Skill of Nilfur recipe (10x
Forgotten Souls, 10x
Death's Breaths, 1x Set item) to convert into
another item from the same set. You should never salvage duplicate pieces
of a desired set before you have it assembled.
In order to assemble an Akkhan Thorns Crusader, you should do the following.
- Gather the full 6-piece Armor of Akkhan set using the advice above, or by spending Blood Shards at Kadala. In order of gamble chance, you should spend for: Shoulders, Boots, Gloves, Pants, Gloves, Helm, and Chest. Don't gamble on the Amulet; it is prohibitively expensive to gamble on jewelry early on. A trick you can also use is to gamble for duplicate pieces with an easier gamble chance (i.e., Shoulders) and convert them into another piece from the same set using the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube.
- Upgrade rare (Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube) Two-Handed Flails to get
The Mortal Drama and
Flail of the Charge; these are build-defining weapons that increase the output of your main source of damage,
Bombardment.
- Note that
Flail of the Charge is part of the Norvald's Fervor set, along with
Shield of the Steed. Gammble for the shield after getting the full Akkhan set.
- Craft yourself two pieces of the Aughild's Authority set and two pieces of
the Captain Crimson's Trimming set. They are crafted at the Blacksmith, and
their recipes can be found via completing Bounties, or slaying Treasure
Goblins. The suggested split is
Aughild's Power and
Aughild's Search for the former, and
Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and
Captain Crimson's Waders for the latter, but other combos are also viable — as long as you maintain the necessary 5 Akkhan - 2 Aughild - 2 Cpt. Crimson worn pieces split. You will complete the three sets' full powers by using a
Ring of Royal Grandeur (see below).
- Upgrade rare One-handed Swords to get
In-geom; doing this on a level 1 Demon Hunter alt will improve your chances due to their lowest loot pool of legendary swords.
In-geom greatly benefits Thorns Crusaders, since they are an entirely cooldown-based build.
- Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific
Ring of Royal Grandeur from Bounty caches. This will be helpful either in completing the basic set bonus, or mixing other helpful legendaries in the build as described in the dedicated endgame Akkhan Bombardment guide. Bounties will net you craftable set recipes as well, so you will be killing two birds with one stone. Bounties will also net you
Avarice Band (Act III), another farming-oriented staple for most builds and classes, this one included.
- While largely undesirable due to high costs, gambling or upgrading rare
Jewelry is also possible;
Convention of Elements and
Unity will drastically improve this and other builds, with other standout pieces that can be helpful like
Oculus Ring and
The Flavor of Time for your Follower.
Changelog
- 13 Sep. 2023 (gear page): Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 13 Sep. 2023 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 29.
- 13 Sep. 2023 (this page): Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (gear page): Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 28.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (this page): Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (gear page): Guide removed due to changes to the Akkhan set.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (skills page): Guide revised for Akkhan set changes and S27 theme.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (this page): Guide revised for Akkhan set changes and S27 theme.
- 13 Apr. 2022 (gear page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 13 Apr. 2022 (skills page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 13 Apr. 2022 (this page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 09 Dec. 2021 (gear page): Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 09 Dec. 2021 (skills page): Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 09 Dec. 2021 (this page): Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 23 Jul. 2021 (gear page): No changes required for Season 24.
- 23 Jul. 2021 (skills page): No changes required for Season 24.
- 23 Jul. 2021 (this page): Added note regarding Ethereal weapons for Season 24.
- 31 Mar. 2021 (gear page): Added follower recommendations.
- 31 Mar. 2021 (skills page): No changes necessary for Season 23.
- 31 Mar. 2021 (this page): Added follower recommendations.
- 17 Dec. 2020 (gear page): Minor fix to Cube selection explanations.
- 18 Nov. 2020 (gear page): Revamped gear section for Season 22.
- 18 Nov. 2020 (skills page): Revised the skill section to reflect the build's new GR pushing capabilities in Season 22.
- 18 Nov. 2020 (this page): Revised the guide to reflect its GR pushing capabilities, and added cube recommendations for S22.
- 30 Jun. 2020 (gear page): No changes required for Season 21.
- 30 Jun. 2020 (skills page): No changes required for Season 21.
- 30 Jun. 2020 (this page): No changes required for Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020 (gear page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 12 Mar. 2020 (skills page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 12 Mar. 2020 (this page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 19 Nov. 2019 (gear page): Reviewed for Season 19.
- 19 Nov. 2019 (skills page): Reviewed for Season 19.
- 19 Nov. 2019 (this page): Reviewed for Season 19.
- 22 Aug. 2019 (gear page): Item recommendations have been revised for Season 18.
- 22 Aug. 2019 (skills page): Reviewed for Season 18.
- 22 Aug. 2019 (this page): Item recommendations have been revised for Season 18.
- 15 May 2019 (gear page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 15 May 2019 (skills page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 15 May 2019 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 17 Jan. 2019 (gear page): Added suggestions for the baseline Ring of Royal Grandeur for Seasonal characters.
- 17 Jan. 2019 (skills page): Information was reviewed and approved for Season 16 with no changes required.
- 17 Jan. 2019 (this page): Guide was revised with additional recommendations for Season 16.
- 20 Sep. 2018 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 15.
- 14 Jun. 2018 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 14.
- 31 Oct. 2017 (this page): No changes necessary for Patch 2.6.1.
- 02 Jul. 2017 (this page): Updated for 2.6 and moved to new guide format.
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This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
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