Aegis of Valor Heaven's Fury Crusader RGK Variation

The AoV Heaven's Fury Crusader fits excellently with the role of a Rift Guardian Killer in high tier Greater Rifts, and is in high demand for leaderboard Greater Rift pushing.

The Rift Guardian Killer role demands focus from the character entirely into single target damage, eschewing any consideration for Area Damage or trash killing purposes. Your skill and especially your gear choices will reflect that.

Active Skills
Heaven's Fury Fires of Heaven Fist of the Heavens Fissure 1 Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force 2 Blessed Hammer Thunderstruck 3 Iron Skin Flash 4 Akarat's Champion Prophet
Passive Skills
Fervor Holy Cause Long Arm of the Law Finery

When serving as the Rift Guardian Killer, most of the AoV Heaven's Fury Crusader rotation remains the same; facing the bigger threats in Greater Rifts — especially the Rift Guardian, whose death will be largely your task — and mowing them down with Fires of Heaven shots. You will be using Fist of the Heavens and Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force for resource maintenance, as well as Iron Skin and Akarat's Champion for protection. Since your Supports will be applying the Crowd Control necessary for the Bracer of Fury damage amplification however, you will be using Blessed Hammer Thunderstruck in that slot for faster Bane of the Stricken stacking.

The entirety of your skill and passive selection, as well as the reasoning behind their use, will remain the same as the GR solo pushing build. The only difference, as noted in the rotation section above, is the replacement of your crowd control skill (i.e. Shield Glare) with Blessed Hammer Thunderstruck; simply taken as a tool to spam and build up your Bane of the Stricken stacks faster (especially vs. the Rift Guardian).

Due to the introduction of the Norvald's Fervor set to the build in Season 33, you will drop the Blessed Hammer from the setup to make room for Steed Charge. The latter will not only bring some welcome mobility to the build, but also procs the valuable damage buff of the Norvald set. You can supplement the skill's usefulness by taking the monster displacement rune Draw and Quarter.

Most of the gear from the Greater Rift solo progression build will still make sense for the group RGK variation, but a few alterations will be necessary in order to maximize your potential in this role.

You will maintain the entirety of your armor set splits, still incorporating the 5 Aegis of Valor - 2 Captain Crimson's Trimming ratio. You will also be including a fully damage-oriented jewelry setup: Convention of Elements and a Fire damage Stone of Jordan. Note that "Fire" is not an error here; you will still be dealing Holy damage, but with the powers of the equipped Stone of Jordan (equalizing your elemental damage to your highest) and your cubed Magefist, you will be able to elevate your overall Holy damage via the numerous boosts available to Fire damage. To complement your Rift Guardian Killer role, you will also be using Squirt's Necklace as your amulet, and rely on your Support teammates to keep you safe to maintain its damage buff.

In this group setup, you will have to play around a non-permanent Akarat's Champion, which will now sport about ~60% uptime. Your goal is to reach the 64.5% CDR breakpoint with Gogok of Swiftness stacks, in order to bring your Akarat's Champion to a 32-second rotation that will properly align it to your Convention of Elements damage cycles.

The duo of Heaven's Fury-specific items that you know from the solo build — Bracer of Fury and Shield of Fury — will remain intact, but you will replace Pig Sticker with Johanna's Argument to double the attack speed of Blessed Hammer and stack your Bane of the Stricken even faster.

Due to the 4th Kanai's Cube slot in Season 33, replace Johanna's Argument and Shield of Fury as your worn weapon and offhand with the Norvald's Fervor set, Flail of the Charge and Shield of the Steed, for their additional damage multiplier. Shield of Fury should be moved to the 4th Cube slot.

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 and Bane of the Stricken remain as universally desired damage amplification gems during progression. As you will not be responsible for the trash clearing, you will drop Pain Enhancer for the extra attack speed and cooldown reduction from Gogok of Swiftness.

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

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

Fate of the Fell is still a required legendary effect in the build, and stays locked in the weapon Cube slot.

As your support teammates will be taking care of your sustain and survivability in group GR progression, you will be dropping Stone Gauntlets from this slot for additional damage. By slotting Magefist here, you will attain another 20% boost to Fire elemental damage, which you will convert to Holy with the use of the equipped Stone of Jordan.

Lastly, in order to maintain the Aegis of Valor / Captain Crimson mixture, you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur: a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties.

In Season 33, where you will be wielding the Norvald's Fervor set, you will gain the powers of Shield of Fury — a powerful piece for this build — by cubing it away in the seasonal 4th 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.