Thorns Bombardment Crusader Skills and Runes
On this page, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing Thorns Bombardment Crusader in Diablo 3. Updated for patch 2.6.10 and Season 22.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Rotation
The build's performance hinges on the alignment of several really strong buffs
to the Bombardment damage; most notably, you have to play around the
Convention of Elements cycles and time your manual Bombardments with the
Physical part of the rotation. This necessitates that you keep track of the CoE
buff and whenever Lightning is up — the buff that directly precedes
Physical — you have to make sure that you
Steed Charge into the
thick of a fight, attaining the 5-second Norvald set buff, and then attack with
Punish and block attacks to build Invoker 2-piece stacks up to or near
cap. This simple rotation will ensure that whenever the Physical CoE cycle is up,
you will have the optimal amount of buffs to your manually cast
Bombardment burst. Needless to say, when you get into the fray, you
will need to have your defensive buffs up — this means casting
Akarat's Champion on cooldown, as well as applying
Iron Skin and
Laws of Valor
Unstoppable Force (note its RCR synergy with the Cpt. Crimson
set) whenever you expect incoming damage. After your burst cycle is complete,
you should consider the state of the battlefield — if there are only a few
stragglers up, even if they are elites, you should drag them along into a bigger
fight using
Steed Charge
Draw and Quarter; you are much stronger when you
take advantage of Area Damage.
Skills and Runes
Similarly to the older LoN spec, this Akkhan build focuses on
Bombardment as the primary damage dealer of the build, along with
the
Barrels of Spikes rune that scales off Thorns damage on gear. By
wearing
Belt of the Trove, you will have a source of automated damage that
inherits your selected rune and damage bonuses (see this build's gear page for more information);
however, you are still in control of your own cooldown, allowing you precision
and buff-syncing for the bulk of your damage.
Punish is the solitary non-cooldown skill in the build, but do
not be fooled by its unassuming generator damage — it will serve to amplify
your Thorns damage through the Invoker 2-piece bonus, which
Bombardment will take advantage of.
Mobility is a vital aspect of Greater Rifts clears, whether it is for simple
movement or more active avoidance or engagement in fights. The Crusader's best
tool for the purpose is Steed Charge, and you can add to its utility by
adding a monster displacement aspect to it with the rune
Draw and Quarter;
this way, you have an additional tool to build and distribute monster density in
a fight. Note that
Steed Charge is especially important in this build,
since it uses the Norvald's Fervor set (
Flail of the Charge and
Shield of the Steed), whose bonus multiplies your damage while mounted and
for 5 seconds after the skill wears off. You need to internalize the duration of
this buff and reapply it accordingly, since you DPS hinges on its
maintenance.
As an Akkhan-based build, it is only natural to include Akarat's Champion
in the setup. While the set bonus cuts the skill's cooldown in half, you will
still aim for the 56% CDR breakpoint (and even slightly above — consult the
gear page for more information) in order to
reach permanent uptime of this powerful steroid. The rune of choice is, of
course,
Prophet — for the additional toughness and cheat death
proc.
The traditionally defense-oriented Iron Skin skill sees its role
reversed in Thorns builds with the rune
Reflective Skin. Instead of using
it when endangered by burst, trigger it directly before a
Bombardment
barrage to skyrocket its damage. Timing this skill becomes even more important
if you push this build into Greater Rifts, since you will have to synchronize it
with a physical cycle of the
Convention of Elements rotation. It should be
noted that earlier on in character progression, you can stick to a purely
protective rune like
Steel Skin here; since the
Reflective Skin
Thorns bonuses stack additively with the Invoker bonus, the loss of DPS is
something you can consider purely for convenience and ease of piloting the
build.
You will be taking a rather unusual candidate in your 'Laws slot':
Laws of Valor with the
Unstoppable Force rune. While you do not
have any spenders at your disposal, the worn Cpt. Crimson set scales your
damage reduction based on your Resource Cost Reduction, and this rune directly
affects that.
This concludes the overview of the active skills, now let us look through the passives.
Passives
Unlike its LoN counterpart, this Thorns Bombardment variant uses
Heavenly Strength as a baseline weapon passive, due to the mandatory
two-handed
Flail of the Charge in your hands. Note that in an early season
setup, if you are still farming the Norvalds set, you can freely swap this
passive out for
Fervor according to your best rolled Thorns weapon.
You have a degree of freedom in your second passive slot, which you can adjust
according to your preferences and attempted content. If you feel your defenses
lacking (during early season gearing or late GR pushes, for example) or prefer
the safety in Hardcore, include the Indestructible cheat death. Our base
recommendation however is to use
Hold Your Ground to improve your Invoker
2-piece bonus stacking, and augment your burst as a result.
Your passive choices will be rounded out by a Thorns and a Bombardment staple
respectively — 50% increase of Thorns from Iron Maiden, and a 35%
Cooldown Reduction of
Bombardment from
Lord Commander.
Changelog
- 18 Nov. 2020: Revised the skill section to reflect the build's new GR pushing capabilities in Season 22.
- 30 Jun. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020: No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 19 Nov. 2019: Reviewed for Season 19.
- 22 Aug. 2019: Reviewed for Season 18.
- 15 May 2019: Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 17 Jan. 2019: Information was reviewed and approved for Season 16 with no changes required.
More Crusader Guides
Builds from Other Classes
Farming Guides
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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