Blessed Hammer Crusader Speed Farming Variation

The Blessed Hammer Crusader deals with regular Rift farming decently all the way through the highest Torments, making it a viable build for the task. Note that the deliberate pace of the build (due to the necessary inclusion of Falling Sword), makes lessens its effectiveness compared to other T16 builds.

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 Hammer Dominion Falling Sword Part the Clouds 1 Laws of Hope Wings of Angels 2 Iron Skin Flash 3 Provoke Too Scared to Run 4 Akarat's Champion Prophet
Passive Skills
Fervor Blunt Long Arm of the Law Finery

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

Throughout the farming run, the Hammerdin should keep up the Blessed Hammers rotating around them, transporting themselves between packs with a combination of Laws of Hope Wings of Angels and Falling Sword. Akarat's Champion and Iron Skin should still be applied on cooldown, and Provoke will remain part of the rotation as an emergency Wrath restoration pop.

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 cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.

• If you transition Blessed Hammer into regular rifts, it is advisable to swap Limitless away for Dominion — the orbiting hammers are very convenient in clearing trash as you move between elite packs.
• In speed farming, the damage you need for an individual enemy pack will be significantly less, allowing you to shift away from Laws of Valor Critical and focus on speed and utility with Laws of Hope Wings of Angels.
• In regular rifts, where Sacred Harness can be replaced by Goldwrap, you will need to take Falling Sword with the rune Part the Clouds — the 2-second stun will proc Hammer Jammers instead of Sacred Harness.
• The remainder of your skill lineup — Provoke Too Scared to Run (Wrath restoration tool), Iron Skin Flash (auxiliary movement skill and protective value) and Akarat's Champion Prophet (your strongest self-buff) will remain unchanged between specs.
• Fervor and Finery will remain part of your passive lineup. You can also bring slightly more damage to the table with Blunt; the loss of Holy Cause's healing should not be impactful in farming content.
• If you do not feel threatened by the difficulty, you should replace Indestructible with Long Arm of the Law. This change will ensure you have permanent uptime of the Laws of Hope Wings of Angels movement buffs.

The vast majority of the Hammerdin-specific items will remain unchanged during speed farming. You will still be taking advantage of the full set bonus of Seeker of the Light set, incorporating all 6 available pieces according to your best rolls. The trio of Johanna's Argument, Guard of Johanna, and Gabriel's Vambraces are too valuable to pass up in this build, so they also remain locked in place.

It is worth noting that in the limited challenges of regular rifts, both the Endless Walk set and Convention of Elements greatly diminish in usefulness. A better jewelry split is a Holy damage Stone of Jordan (for the permanent damage increase), and Avarice Band (for the synergy with Goldwrap and Boon of the Hoarder), as well as Squirt's Necklace for an additional damage multiplier in the build (the former favorite The Flavor of Time can now be equipped on your follower and its power will transfer to you via the Emanate mechanics).

This scaling damage increase and damage reduction from the Cpt. Crimson set (used in the GR progression build) will be redundant in regular rifts, where you can get all the protection you will ever need via Goldwrap.

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 build, we recommend aiming for the Blessed Hammer Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Blessed Hammer Sanctification: Blessed Hammer now crackles with energy damaging enemies within 12 yards of its path. All runes but Dominion now throw the hammer in a direct path in front of the Crusader.

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 ( Johanna's Argument) and shield ( Guard of Johanna), which are present across all variants of this build.

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 remains a universally desired damage amplification gem.

During speed farming, Gogok of Swiftness will be a protective overkill and should be replaced by 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 the worn Avarice Band for a sizable speed boost, and the cubed Goldwrap for near-invulnerability.

Since monster health is much more tame in the standard difficulties, you should also replace Bane of the Stricken with Bane of the Powerful for the consistent, easily sustained damage increase. If you overpower content so much that even Bane of the Powerful is unnecessary, you can consider using Wreath of Lightning for the extra speed.

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

The Kanai's Cube selection is largely locked down due to important passive bonuses for the Hammerdin build. Both Faithful Memory in the weapon slot and Hammer Jammers are hard to replace due to DPS value, and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac is one of your few sources of steady Akarat's Champion resets.

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 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.

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.