Roland's Sweep Attack Crusader BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build incorporates 5 pieces of the Roland's Legacy set, plus a cubed Ring of Royal Grandeur — and leaves the jewelry to balance offense and defense with the Endless Walk set. Rolls-wise, this Sweep Attack-centric playstyle (see this build's skills page for more information) makes good use of skill damage affixes on the Roland's Visage and Roland's Stride. The Roland's Bearing and Roland's Determination (which you likely skip due to Cpt. Crimson) are responsible for the majority of the tankiness, and on the Roland's Grasp an Area Damage roll is incorporated alongside the usual Crit Chance and Crit Damage. While not the sole focus of the playstyle, Cooldown Reduction is still helpful and is taken on the Roland's Mantle as the fourth primary, alongside Strength, Vitality and Area Damage.

Armor set-wise, you will also be crafting and equipping two of the three pieces of the Captain Crimson set (the Captain Crimson's Thrust, Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and Captain Crimson's Waders). You will complete their full bonus via Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. This set provides CDR as well as RCR bonuses, and then scales your damage dealt and damage reduced according to both stats, respectively — bringing a massive boon to the build.

The cubed Ring of Royal Grandeur allows you to split between protection and damage in the worn jewelry slots. One of the 2.4 reworks, the Endless Walk set — The Compass Rose ring and The Traveler's Pledge amulet — adds a unique mechanic that slowly increases your damage by up to a 100% if you remain stationary, and drains it away and increases your damage reduction while moving. This is the exact tactic employed by the build, which shifts from long-distance Steed Charges into massive Condemn pulls and stationary Sweep Attack destruction.

Your other ring slot will be taken by Convention of Elements, whose rotation of elemental bonuses you will have to keep under close scrutiny. Once the sequence reaches the Fire element, you will enjoy a significant increase to your damage — so try to adopt a strategy of drawing monster attention during the off cycles, and major Sweep Attack spam during the Fire cycle. An alternative for the slot is the Unity, providing substantial damage reduction when paired with another on the follower, plus an immortality item for them (i.e. Enchanting Favor).

Strongarm Bracers with high Fire damage and unique property rolls are the best in slot bracers for this Sweep Attack build when doing Greater Rifts, as Condemn Vacuum will proc the additional damage on any enemy affected by the pull.

The first part of the mandatory mainhand and offhand combo, the Golden Flense legendary flail, makes up for the lack of any elemental or elite bonuses with a massive skill bonus and an indispensable unique property: 6 Wrath refund per enemy hit. Coupled with Unstoppable Force, this weapon will be the foundation of your Wrath management and a solid reason for you to seek bigger and bigger fights. Note that the worn weapon slot is interchangeable with the weapon Cube slot recommendation, The Furnace — and in an optimized setup, it is actually preferable to wield the mace and cube the flail, due to its superior innate stats! The Furnace provides you with an incomparable source of bonus elite damage, significantly shortening time spent in the most dangerous moments of Greater Rifting — fights with champion packs and Rift Guardians.

Finally, Denial is the necessary shield for a Sweep Attack-centric build. Its unique affix cements the AoE orientation of the build, increasing the damage of your main attack per enemy hit. While the bonus capping at 5 enemies engaged might seem a paltry requirement for most decent rifts, do not disregard the high chance of a single target Rift Guardian fight, where your damage will drop sharply. It bears repeating — take the most out of the AoE nature of Denial and focus on clearing up to the Guardian in the shortest amount of time possible. For its rolls, aim for high Crit Chance,Strength, and a Socket to synergize with the Finery passive.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Sweep Attack % bonus on both the helm and boots (maximum of 30%), Fire elemental damage on both the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 50% and 500%, respectively), and Area Damage of 100%+. Sweep Attack Crusaders are somewhat CDR dependent, especially once Cpt. Crimson is incorporated in the build, so try to reach a mandatory baseline of 50%+ CDR.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool between 700-900k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through Life per Hit on gear, with at least one high roll in your setup, but ideally two (optimal slots are the weapon and/or bracer).

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Strength.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

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.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that dump as much as you comfortably can into Strength, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness, or Maximum Wrath if you want to play around with a bigger resource pool.

In the Offense section, max out Cooldown Reduction, Crit Chance, Crit Damage and Attack Speed in that order. In Defense, prioritize All Resistance, then Life %, then Armor, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Area Damage and Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Life on Hit and Globe Radius.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. The gem procs itself with its level 25 property, making it an inseparable part of this crowd control-heavy setup.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken takes a firm slot in the second jewelry socket. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. Sweep Attack is a textbook example for such a build, making the gem mandatory.

Gogok of Swiftness offers a fixed Attack Speed and scaling Dodge chance bonuses, working nicely with the Attack Speed focus and survivability needs of the build. On top of that, the gem offers a Cooldown Reduction bonus through its level 25 property, reducing both important downtimes and feeding into the Cpt. Crimson damage bonuses.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the highest available level of Rubies in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally, these will all be Flawless Royal Ruby as soon as possible. As you grow in Paragon (bulking up Strength in the Core section) and aim for higher tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive Flawless Royal Diamond. There is no specific breakpoint where you do that; the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of toughness impede your progress. Sweep Attack Crusaders are moderately Cooldown Reduction dependent, so a Flawless Royal Diamond should be socketed in your helm. In your weapon, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

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

As previously noted, you will be cubing your weaker roll between The Furnace and Golden Flense, and wearing the other. Ideally, you will be wielding the mace and cubing the flail, but it can be the other way around for as long as necessary to obtain the right rolls.

Aquila Cuirass will halve incoming damage as long as Wrath does not dip below 90% of its reserve, which is not a hard bonus to keep throughout the rift as long as you maintain density in fights, where the Golden Flense will refund you back to the Wrath cap. This bonus will almost invariably drop against single-target Guardians, lending somewhat to the "fishing" nature of this build.

In the Roland's / Captain Crimson mixture, you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur, a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties, to tie the two sets together. The ability to run with one full 6-piece set bonus and an additional 3-piece bonus, dodging the undesirable guaranteed stats on the Grandeur by cubing its power, is a tremendous boost to the build.

In your 4th Kanai's Cube slot in Season 33, place s Unity for additional damage reduction without losing out on our traditional recommendation for the worn legendary ring, Convention of Elements.

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 Scoundrel due to his powerful crit buff, allowing you brief windows of extra damage that are well suited to the strengths of this build.

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, which synergize perfectly for the high attack speed and sustain-through-attacks playstyle of the build.