Thorns Bombardment Crusader Speed Farming Variation
Speed Farming
The Akkhan Bombardment 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.
Adapting Skills
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
You will maintain the basis of your progression build, with
Bombardment
Barrels of Spikes still serving as your main damage dealer, and
Akarat's Champion
Prophet as your mandatory baseline buff.
While necessary for Bane of the Stricken stacking for Greater Rift
progression,
Punish will not be necessary in regular Rift farming. In
its stead, use the massive, party-wide movement speed buff of
Laws of Hope
Wings of Angels. The same movement-driven logic is applied to
Iron Skin, where you should adjust from progression runes like
Steel Skin or
Reflective Skin to
Flash.
Moving stragglers around will be unnecessary in an environment where you
mostly oneshot monsters, so change the Draw and Quarter rune of
Steed Charge to
Endurance.
Adapting Gear
Due to Akkhan being a 7-piece
set, you can adapt the Condemn build to include the Death's Breath farming
Sage set. In order to do this, you will replace the Cpt. Crimson slots from
the progression build with Sage's pieces, meaning a mandatory
Sage's Ribbon plus one more craftable piece of your choosing. The extra
damage from the Aughild 2-piece will not be necessary, so you can exclude it
in favor of utility legendaries like
Leoric's Crown and
Nemesis Bracers. You can even carry 2 pieces of the craftable Cain set
(like
Cain's Insight and
Cain's Habit, for example) in your
inventory and make a quick swap right as the Rift Guardian is about to die,
proccing the Cain 3-piece bonus for additional Greater Rift Keystone drops.
The progression-oriented Unity should be dropped from your
jewelry during farming, since the lower difficulty of standard Rift farming
devalues its toughnes bonus. In its stead, use a Physical damage
Stone of Jordan for the consistent boost to your
Bombardments, and — when grouped up and follower-less
— an
Avarice Band for its synergy with
Boon of the Hoarder.
During speedfarming, where you can drop the overkill protection of the GR
progression setup and its rigid distribution of set pieces, the preferred
bracers become 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.
Slot | Pieces | Stat Priority |
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Head |
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Shoulders |
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Torso |
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Wrists |
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Hands |
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Waist |
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Legs |
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Feet |
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Amulet |
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Ring #1 |
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Ring #2 |
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Weapon |
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Off-hand |
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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 28: Altar of Rites
Season 28 comes with the theme of the Altar of Rites — a powerful new account-wide and Season-specific progression system that brings tremendous offensive and defensive buffs to every seasonal character. 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.
Adapting Gemming
Since monster health is much more tame in the standard difficulties, you
should also replace Bane of the Stricken with
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 an
Avarice Band for a massive Pickup Radius increase.
Slot | Gems |
---|---|
Jewelry | |
Helm | |
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
|
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Adapting Kanai's Cube
You will keep the base selection of Cube items from the progression build
— The Mortal Drama for the additional
Bombardment
impacts,
Belt of the Trove for the automated
Bombardment
blasts, and
Ring of Royal Grandeur to maintain the Akkhan and Sage set
bonuses.
Follower
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.
Legendary Potion
The preferred potion for this build is Bottomless Potion of the Tower
for its additional mitigation bonuses upon consumption.
Changelog
- 22 Feb. 2023: Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022: Guide revised for Akkhan set changes and S27 theme.
- 13 Apr. 2022: Guide revised for Season 26.
- 09 Dec. 2021: Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 23 Jul. 2021: No changes required for Season 24.
- 31 Mar. 2021: Minor revision to gearing and added follower recommendations.
- 18 Nov. 2020: Revised the guide to reflect its GR pushing capabilities, and added cube recommendations for S22.
- 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: Revamped variant around Captain Crimson set.
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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