Roland's Sweep Attack Crusader Speed Farming Variation

The Rolands Sweep Attack Crusader deals with regular Rift farming decently all the way through the highest Torments, making it a viable build for the task. 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.

Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.

Active Skills
Sweep Attack Gathering Sweep Condemn Vacuum 1 Steed Charge Endurance 2 Iron Skin Flash 3 Laws of Hope Wings of Angels 4 Akarat's Champion Prophet
Passive Skills
Heavenly Strength Long Arm of the Law Indestructible Finery

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

During a standard rift run, the Sweep Crusader will keep Laws of Hope Wings of Angels running at all times and using Steed Charge from one elite pack to the next, quickly decimating it with Sweep Attack and proccing In-geom for the next round of cooldowns. Condemn Vacuum will serve a purpose similar to that in GRs — piling monsters on top of you for convenient destruction. Iron Skin and Akarat's Champion will still be cast on cooldown, as their utility and defensive bonuses are too valuable to pass up.

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 cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.

• If you find yourself overkilling in damage in speed farming with Blazing Sweep, you make a switch to Gathering Sweep which will pair nicely with Condemn Vacuum to glue enemies in your range of attacks. Note that such a swap warrants a change of Fire elemental damage on gear to Holy, so adjust accordingly.
• In farming content, the resources you spend on an individual enemy pack will be significantly less, allowing you to focus on speed and utility in your Law selection in the face of Laws of Hope Wings of Angels.
• The remainder of your skill lineup — Steed Charge Endurance (your primary movement tool), Iron Skin Flash (auxiliary movement skill and protective value) and Akarat's Champion Prophet (your strongest self-buff) will remain unchanged between specs.
• Your passive lineup from progression brings excellent value during speed farming as well, so you can stay with Heavenly Strength, Indestructible, Finery and Long Arm of the Law. If you are doing bounties, you can consider dropping Indestructible for the improvement of Steed Charge uptime via Lord Commander.

You will still be taking advantage of the full 6-piece set bonuses of Rolands, incorporating 5 of the 6 available pieces according to your best rolls. The cubed Ring of Royal Grandeur allows you to tinker with additional bonuses, most notably the inclusion of the Sage's Journey set for Death's Breath farming. Take Sage's Ribbon and Sage's Passage for example, and then complete both bonuses with the RoRG.

When speed farming, the timing based nature of Convention of Elements will be misplaced, so you can swap to the consistent damage increase from a Stone of Jordan. It is also recommended to swap away from the Endless Walk set, as it promotes a static fighting style unfit for normal rifts; use the more offensive combo of Avarice Band and Squirt's Necklace. Avarice Band's pickup radius bonus is an incredible boon during speed farming, as it benefits not only your movement speed through a socketed Boon of the Hoarder, but also negates downtime picking up progression orbs and gold. The recommended amulet is Squirt's Necklace, which provides an additional damage multiplier to the build. The former favorite, The Flavor of Time, can now be worn by the follower and its powers Emanated to you — providing those valuable double duration of Pylons, greatly smoothing out farming runs with these powerful bonuses.

In speed farm, it is advisable to abandon the damage increase from the Strongarm Bracers in favor of Warzechian Armguards, for the environment destruction speed buffs that are easily provided by the AoE of this build. The former favorites, the elite spawning Nemesis Bracers, are still very valuable, but they can now be equipped on the follower while still getting their bonus via the Emanate mechanics. You should still equip them in groups, where you cannot have a follower with you. The Nemesis Bracers value comes from the additional loot — not to mention progression — coming from the extra elite spawns. They let you finish standard rifts that much faster, and acquire the coveted GR keys in greater amounts.

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 remains a universally desired damage amplification gem.

During speed farming, Gogok of Swiftness will be a protective overkill and should be replaced by Boon of the Hoarder. The latter is a high utility gem that feeds you practically infinite gold, gives you a massive short-term speed boost while picking it up, and synergizes excellently with the worn Avarice Band for a sizable speed boost, and the cubed Goldwrap for near-invulnerability.

Since monster health is much more tame in the standard difficulties, you should also replace Bane of the Stricken with Bane of the Powerful for the consistent, easily sustained damage increase. If you overpower content so much that even Bane of the Powerful is unnecessary, you can consider using Wreath of Lightning for the extra speed.

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

Your Cube choices during normal rift farming will differ from those for Greater Rift progress, focusing heavily on utility and speed. In-geom should occupy the weapon slot, as its cooldown resets will come very handy and will happen with great frequency due to the fast elite kills in low difficulties. Synergizing with Boon of the Hoarder and Avarice Band, a cubed Goldwrap in the armor slot will render you practically invulnerable and allow you to focus on killing and looting without regard for your safety.

Lastly, in order to maintain the valuable 6-piece bonus of Rolands and 3-piece bonus of the Sage set, you will need to cube a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry 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 standard rift farming for keys is the Enchantress due to her numerous utility bonuses, allowing you to smooth out your speed runs even further.

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.

The preferred potion for this build is Bottomless Potion of the Leech due to its Life per Hit bonuses, adding some much needed life sustain to the build.

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.