Akkhan Condemn Crusader Speed Farming Variation

The Akkhan Condemn Crusader can deal reasonably well with Greater Rift Speed Farming, covering the whole battlefield in Condemn detonations, while zipping through the Rift with Laws of Hope Wings of Angels. 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.

During lower tier Greater Rift farming, the balance between defense, damage, and utility can be shifted to favor the latter two aspects of character building.

Active Skills
Steed Charge Endurance Judgment No rune chosen 1 Laws of Hope Wings of Angels 2 Phalanx Bowmen 3 Condemn Unleashed 4 Akarat's Champion Prophet
Passive Skills
Heavenly Strength Lord Commander Long Arm of the Law Finery

When you are Speed Farming Greater Rifts, your playstyle should at least partially reflect the circumstances by focusing on massive pulls, generic bonuses against enemies, and chaining pylon effects.

Similarly to its GR progression counterpart, the GR speed farming Condemn Crusader needs to stay in Akarat's Champion form at all times, spamming Judgment left and right to ease the Condemn decimation inflicted by their Phalanx Bowmen summons. You should be able to oneshot pretty much any enemy pack with a single detonation of Condemn Unleashed, and fluidly move between packs with Laws of Hope Wings of Angels (for short distances), or Steed Charge Endurance (for long distances).

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to burst down enemies quicker takes precedence.

• With your greatly increased speed, you will be zipping from one pack to the next, reducing the usefulness of the greater reach of Condemn Shattering Explosion. In its place, use the immediate explosion of Unleashed for precise, on-demand devastation.
• Phalanx Bowmen are still the summoned backbone of your damage, and their unrelenting barrage of arrows will produce the most Condemns-per-second you can hope for.
• Judgment is necessary for the Akkhan set to function and maintains its place in the build. You are granted all the runes from the 2-piece bonus (hence the unruned recommendation above), and should use the skill indiscriminately against enemy packs throughout the rift.
• You should alter your Law of choice from the resource-oriented Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force to the party-wide movement speed buff of Laws of Hope Wings of Angels.
• You have a call to make on using Focus and Restraint; if you need their damage multiplication, keep the generator (likely Justice Sword of Justice) from the main build. If you do not, swap the Generator out for Steed Charge Endurance as suggested above. Mounting up allows you to cross great distances in a short timespan, which is useful in certain Greater Rift layouts — occasionally sprawling and bereft of enemies.
• Akarat's Champion Prophet is an omnipresent self-buff in both versions of the build.
• Your passive selection remains unchanged from the progression build: Heavenly Strength, Long Arm of the Law, Lord Commander and Finery.

You will still be taking advantage of the full 6-piece set bonuses of Akkhan, as well as the 3-piece set bonus of the Cpt. Crimon set — for its additional Cooldown- and Resource Cost Reduction, as well as the scaling "damage dealt increased by CDR" and "damage reduced by RCR" bonuses. The two sets should be supplemented by the usual line-up of displacement-based damage buff from Strongarm Bracers (triggered by Judgment Mass Verdict), Phalanx-related legendaries ( Unrelenting Phalanx and Warhelm of Kassar), and the Condemn weapon, Blade of Prophecy.

The differences from the GR progression build can come in several forms, according to your needs and preferences:

• As mentioned above, you can drop the Generator skill (and Focus and Restraint as a whole) for the additional mobility of Steed Charge Endurance. As a result, you should use a Holy damage Stone of Jordan and a Convention of Elements as your two rings.
• Early on in character progression, when your Paragons are still low, you can make use of the craftable 3-piece Guardian's Jeopardy set, which doubles your main stats (Strength and Vitality, in the Crusader's case). This is a great early progression boon, and is achieved by equipping Guardian's Aversion, Guardian's Case, plus the usual RoRG in the Cube. Complement them with Stone Gauntlets for another massive defensive bulwark, whose downside is completely negated by the CC immunity from your permanent Akarat's Champion.

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.

This Season comes with the theme of Angelic Crucibles — consumable items that empower Legendary items with perfected Ancient-level stats, as well as infuse them with one of three unique, powerful, class-specific abilities at random. For this variant, we recommend swapping Steed Charge Endurance from the base build above for Falling Sword Rapid Descent. As for the Angelic Crucible effects: aim for the Falling Sword Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Falling Sword Sanctification: After casting Falling Sword, you descend from the sky with two Archangels that can cast Consecration and Condemn.

Use Angelic Crucibles on an item that crosses over most (if not all) variants of a build, and is also an item that is relatively harder to perfect than other slots (since sanctifying an item maximizes its stats). In the case of this build, good candidates for Sanctification are your weapon ( Blade of Prophecy) and shield ( Unrelenting Phalanx).

You can read more on Angelic Crucibles and the sanctification process in our dedicated Angelic Crucible Mechanics guide.

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 Enforcer remain universally desired damage amplification gems.

Since monster health is much more tame in lower Greater Rift tiers, you should also replace Bane of the Stricken with Bane of the Powerful for the consistent, easily sustained damage increase.

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

You will maintain the entire Cube line-up from the base Greater Rift progression spec. The weapon Cube slot still needs to be taken by your worse rolled item between Frydehr's Wrath and Unrelenting Phalanx. The armor Cube slot should be occupied by the pet attack speed multiplication of Tasker and Theo. Lastly, in order to maintain the 6-piece bonus of Akkhan and 3-piece bonus of the Cpt. Crimson set, you will need to keep a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry Cube 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.

The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is the Enchantress due to her cooldown reduction buff from Prophetic Harmony, as well as the Focused Mind attack speed buff.

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.

Waller affixes are problematic for Condemn Crusader builds, since they greatly limit your opportunities to maneuver from one pack to the next, back and forth, which is the general playstyle of the build. As such, our general recommendation for your legendary potion is the Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid, which allows you to break through Waller affixes. Alternatively, Bottomless Potion of the Diamond is a straightforward addition that simply layers a short All Resist protective coating after drinking (All Resistance is the preferred form of mitigation stacking for Strength-based characters, since their mainstat scales Armor already.)