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 |
---|
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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 stronger for Greater Rift progression, the
Laws of Valor
Unstoppable Force plus Cpt. Crimson combo 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. You will regain the control over
monsters — useful to clump up enemies around you for a
Bombardment barrage — with
Condemn
Vacuum.
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 Invoker 2-piece will
not be necessary, so you can exclude it in favor of utility legendaries like
Leoric's Crown and
Nemesis Bracers.
The progression-oriented Justice Lantern and
Convention of Elements should be dropped from your jewelry during farming,
since the Rift's clear speed makes their conditional buffs too slow to attain.
In their stead, use a Physical damage
Stone of Jordan for the consistent
boost to your
Bombardments, and 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 |
---|---|---|
Head |
|
|
Shoulders |
|
|
Torso |
|
|
Wrists |
|
|
Hands |
|
|
Waist |
|
|
Legs |
|
|
Feet |
|
|
Amulet |
|
|
Ring #1 |
|
|
Ring #2 |
|
|
Weapon |
|
|
Off-hand |
|
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.
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 a worn
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 Leech due
to its Life per Hit bonuses, adding some much needed life sustain to
the build.
Changelog
- 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
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.
- Diablo 4 Beta Added to the Battle.net Catalog
- Blizzard Debuting New Products + Giveaway at Comic-Con
- Class Change and New Features Debut in Diablo Immortal
- Diablo 4 Beta Invites Will Be Given to Hell's Ink Participants
- Diablo IV Added to the Playstation Store
- Diablo 3 Season 27, Patch 2.7.4 PTR Notes
- Diablo Immortal Post Launch Content Update
- The Battle.net Social Celebration Contest