Akkhan Blessed Shield Crusader Speed Farming Variation

The Akkhan Blessed Shield deals with regular Rift farming decently all the way through the highest Torments, making it a viable build for the task.

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
Blessed Shield Combust Iron Skin Flash 1 Laws of Hope Wings of Angels 2 Steed Charge Endurance 3 Condemn Vacuum 4 Akarat's Champion Prophet
Passive Skills
Fervor Finery Towering Shield Holy Cause

The prolonged protection of Steel Skin will not be necessary in farming content, so you can swap the Iron Skin rune to the on-hit speed boost of Flash. Using similar logic, the health sustain of Consecration will be too slow and inefficient and should be replaced by the monster pull of Condemn Vacuum.

While stronger in early character progression, you will soon be overkilling on damage with the Laws of Valor Critical progression buff. In its stead, use the party-wide movement speed buff of Laws of Hope Wings of Angels.

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.

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 include 2 of the 3 pieces of the Sage's Journey set (between Sage's Passage, Sage's Apogee and Sage's Purchase), and cube a Ring of Royal Grandeur. Note that you will need to wear the Talisman of Akkhan that you skip in the progression setup.

During regular Rift farming, you will wear Goldwrap instead of The Witching Hour. Synergizing with Boon of the Hoarder and Avarice Band, Goldwrap will render you practically invulnerable in any non-GR situation.

The progression-oriented Endless Walk set 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 fire damage Stone of Jordan for the consistent boost to your Blessed Shield, and an Avarice Band for its synergy with Boon of the Hoarder.

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.

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 Goldwrap and Avarice Band for practical invincibility of your character.

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

Your armor Cube slot should be taken up by Nemesis Bracers, whose extra elite spawning property at shrines and pylons will greatly improve Rift clear times.

Lastly, in order to maintain the valuable 6-piece bonus of Akkhan and 3-piece bonus of the Sage set, you will need to cube a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot.

In your 4th Kanai's Cube slot in Season 22, you can expand your movement utility with Swiftmount, which doubles the duration of Steed Charge and allows you to cover great distances in a single activation — especially useful in sparse, corridor-like Rifts and Bounties.

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.