LoD Bombardment Crusader Speed Farming Variation

The LoD Bombardment Crusader deals with regular Rift farming decently all the way through the highest Torments, making it a viable build for the task. The ability to play with Messerschmidt's Reaver allows for freedom of movement that makes the build especially adept at bounties.

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
Provoke Flee Fool Bombardment Barrels of Spikes 1 Condemn Vacuum 2 Steed Charge Endurance 3 Laws of Hope Wings of Angels 4 Akarat's Champion Rally
Passive Skills
Heavenly Strength Iron Maiden Lord Commander 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.

Most of your time will still be spent on the move, proccing your massive Rechel's Ring of Larceny speed boost with Provoke Flee Fool and riding from pack to pack with Steed Charge. Once you find a big enough pack, draw them in with a quick Condemn Vacuum and finish them off with a Bombardment assault. Last but not least, pop Akarat's Champion and Laws of Hope Wings of Angels as often as you can — for the cooldown reduction resets (from the former) and the speed boosts and monster collision removal (from the latter).

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.

• Bombardment is still your main source of damage, both manual and automated from the worn Belt of the Trove. Stick to the rune Barrels of Spikes for the Thorns damage.
• Condemn Vacuum will fulfill much the same role as in Greater Rifts; piling monsters on top of you, to be quickly cleaned up with a precise Bombardment shot.
• Akarat's Champion is still present in the build as a damage amplifier, but due to the powers of Messerschmidt's Reaver you will be able to cast it in a care-free manner to get the benefits of the Rally rune.
• For speed farming, you can abandon Laws of Justice and branch out into Laws of Hope Wings of Angels — one of the strongest, group-wide mobility buffs in the game.
• Another alteration to consider is swapping away from Punish (or Blessed Hammer, if you were doing the Zodiac variant) for Provoke Flee Fool, which will trigger the effects of a worn or cubed Rechel's Ring of Larceny for a massive speed boost.
• Steed Charge is just as, if not more useful in speed farming than in GR progression. Consider altering the rune to Endurance, especially if you are doing bounties.
• Most of your passive lineup is too valuable to change: Iron Maiden, Lord Commander and Finery will also be present during farming. By swapping to Messerschmidt's Reaver, you will have to use Heavenly Strength in the place of Fervor from the progression spec.

Most of the gear from the Greater Rift progression build will still make sense for speed farming, but a few variations will be necessary in order to maximize your productivity and momentum during regular Rift clears.

The vast majority of your pieces remain unchanged between the two builds; you will still rely on Aquila Cuirass for protection, on Blackthorne's Jousting Mail for the extra damage, on Leoric's Crown for the CDR, and Belt of the Trove for the free Bombardments.

You can make some minor alterations to further smooth out farming runs; Stone Gauntlets can be too defensive for regular difficulties, so you can swap it out for the Act II bounty cache legendary Gloves of Worship, while Strongarm Bracers can be overkill on damage increasing, so they can be replaced by Warzechian Armguards. Former considerations like Nemesis Bracers and Homing Pads can now be slotted on your follower, and you will attain their benefits from the Emanate mechanics.

Ice Climbers will also be too defensive for regular difficulties, so you should swap them out for Illusory Boots; the latter add to the fluidity of farming runs to a much higher degree than any alternative item in the slot.

As for your weapon, replace progression-oriented options like Pig Sticker with Messerschmidt's Reaver — the speedy fights will feed into your weapon procs for permanent uptime of all your important cooldowns.

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.

Unfortunately, the LoD Bombardment build does not have a great way of utilizing the three Sanctification powers. Thus, you should simply 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). The Sanctification power outcome does not matter. In the case of this build, good candidates for Sanctification are your shoulders ( Burden of the Invoker) and your gloves ( Stone Gauntlets), 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.

Boyarsky's Chip remains a universally desired damage amplification gem for Thorns-based builds. Legacy of Dreams will be required if you run the full-legendary item setup, but if you opt for a Legacy of Nightmares setup, you can run an overall damage increase like Bane of the Trapped (requires crowd control!) or Zei's Stone of Vengeance.

In normal rifts, Bane of the Stricken should be replaced by Boon of the Hoarder. This high utility gem feeds you practically infinite gold and gives you a massive short-term speed boost while picking up gold, automated by Avarice Band.

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

The weapon cube slot will be taken by The Mortal Drama, a flail that doubles the number of Bombardment impacts. The effect is simple, but devastating as it not only affects your own shots, but those of Belt of the Trove as well.

To complete the Gold-based synergy started by the Boon of the Hoarder and Avarice Band combo, you should use Goldwrap to ensure practical invincibility from simple gold pickups during regular rift farming. Note that you can wear your better rolled item between Goldwrap and Belt of the Trove, and cube the other.

You can use Rechel's Ring of Larceny in the jewelry slot of the Cube to gain a massive burst of speed every time you cast Provoke Flee Fool. This ring is similarly interchangeable with the remainder of your jewelry (if you are not using the LoN set, of course), depending on your better rolled items.

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.

Two legendary potions can be considered useful in a Bombardment Crusader build. Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid allows you to break through Waller affixes, which is a great boon to a build that is highly dependent on mobility. 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.)

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.