Diablo 3 Season 28 Akkhan Bomb Crusader Guide

Introduction

Empowered Shrine Solo Push
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Almost completely forgotten and barely able to clear GR125, Bombardment Crusader received a whole bunch of buffs in Season 22 patch. Between reduced cooldown on Belt of the Trove, buffed damage on Armor of Akkhan and Norvald's Fervor sets, and separate multipliers added to The Mortal Drama and Belt of the Trove, the build's damage was buffed by approximately 33 Greater Rift tiers. As it turns out, a build that can clear GR158 (if it existed) solo is a tad overpowered. The build was nerfed before hitting live by approximately 10 tiers via Thorns of the Invoker adjustment.

Even with the nerf taken into account, Bombardment Crusader is the second best Crusader solo build. It also can be used as a GR150-capable trash clearer, although better options exist there.

Akkhan Invoker Bombardment Crusader is a Thorns build, which makes it very easy to get going, but at the same time leaves a lot of room for gear hunt. Getting all items in Ancient quality with Thorns secondary rolls on everything is no easy task.

This build utilizes at least 4 different sets: Armor of Akkhan, Thorns of the Invoker, Norvald's Fervor and Captain Crimson's Trimmings. Some versions of it can also include Bastions of Will set, making it the first Set-only build in history in Diablo III. So if you are worried about the environment, this is your chance: "Play green crusader—save the Earth!"

Tanky ✔
Lazy Playstyle Available ✔
Easy to Get Starter Gear ✔
Can do Everything on the Move ✔

❌ Invoker 2P is Clunky
❌ Cooldown Dependency
❌ Limited Control Over your Damage
❌ Wildly Inconsistent Damage vs Bosses

Core Setup

Core Item Build

Items

The Armor of Akkhan set provides 50% damage reduction, 1,500% damage increase, and it lets us easily achieve 100% uptime on Akarat's Champion.
Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus increases Thorns by up to 900%.
Captain Crimson's Trimmings gives around 60% DPS, 20% Cooldown Reduction, which is necessary to reach our Breakpoints, and around 70% damage reduction.
Norvald's Fervor set increases damage by 200% and lets us spam Steed Charge.
Ring of Royal Grandeur allows us to get full bonuses from all these sets.
The Mortal Drama doubles the number of Bombardment impacts and increases its damage by 500%.
Belt of the Trove casts a free Bombardment every 4 seconds and increases its damage by another 500%.

Season 28 Altar of Rites

Season 28 brings a brand new progression feature called the Altar of Rites that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you unbelievable Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops, 3 Potion Super Powers, and the juicy Wings of Terror. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic Season!

Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.

Optimal Path

Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!

Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.

Nodes 7-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!

Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.

Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.

Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!

Recommended Altar Path
Use the Scroll Bar to see Altar Progression

Global Stat Priorities

Stack Cooldown Reduction to reach 59.3% CDR breakpoint. This lets you cast Bombardment every 16 seconds, on every Physical cycle of Convention of Elements.

Make sure your defensive slots—Boots, Pants and Belt—have Vitality and Resistance to All Elements on them. Your DPS stats are: Physical Damage > Bombardment Damage > Area Damage > Thorns. Attack Speed is mostly useless as it only lets you stack Bane of the Stricken faster; you can get some in place of Strength at high Paragon. Critical Hit Chance & Damage are completely useless, because they don't affect Thorns damage.

Assembling the Build

1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cube Legendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!

2. Gather the full Armor of Akkhan set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If your last missing set piece is Talisman of Akkhan - don't gamble for it! Instead gamble for a cheap and easy item, like Pauldrons of Akkhan, and once again covert it with Recipe 4. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

The full Armor of Akkhan set
Belt of the Trove
Shield of the Steed
Nemesis Bracers
Goldwrap
Shackles of the Invoker and Burden of the Invoker

4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:

2-Handed Flails to get Flail of the Charge and The Mortal Drama
Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.

5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:

Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
Act 2: Gloves of Worship (for your follower)
Act 3: Avarice Band
Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Cain's Destiny and Sage's Journey

6. At this point you can somewhat comfortably farm Nephalem Rifts or low GRs where you can find all the remaining items you need for different variants of the build. It's better to spend your mats improving your set pieces, getting ancient weapon etc.

7. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:

Convention of Elements
Talisman of Akkhan
Shield of the Steed

Item Stat Priorities

SLOT	ITEM	STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand	Flail of the Charge The Mortal Drama (Cubed)	1. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Area Damage 4. Elite Damage 5. Strength
Ideally, you want to roll off the Damage Range from Flail of the Charge. Be wary: rerolling Damage Range to Elite Damage requires, on average, 885 attempts. Tread with caution.
Off-Hand	Shield of the Steed	1. Bombardment Damage 2. Area Damage 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Block Chance 5. Thorns (Secondary) 6. Elite Damage 7. Strength
Helm	Helm of Akkhan Crown of the Invoker Leoric's Crown Guardian's Gaze (Crafted) Cain's Insight (Crafted)	1. Socket Flawless Royal Diamond 2. Strength 3. Vitality 4. All Resistance 5. Thorns (Secondary)
Gloves	Gauntlets of Akkhan Pride of the Invoker	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Area Damage 3. Resource Cost Reduction 4. Thorns (Secondary) 5. Attack Speed 6. Strength
Shoulders	Pauldrons of Akkhan Burden of the Invoker	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Bombardment Damage 3. Area Damage 4. Thorns (Secondary) 5. All Resistance 6. Strength
Chest	Breastplate of Akkhan	1. Sockets Flawless Royal Diamond 2. Bombardment Damage 3. Elite Damage Reduction 4. Thorns (Secondary) 5. All Resistance 6. Strength 7. Vitality 8. Life %
Pants	Cuisses of Akkhan Captain Crimson's Thrust (Crafted) Renewal of the Invoker	1. Sockets Flawless Royal Diamond 2. All Resistance 3. Strength 4. Vitality 5. Thorns (Secondary)
Boots	Sabatons of Akkhan Zeal of the Invoker Captain Crimson's Waders (Crafted) Cain's Travelers (Crafted) Sage's Passage (Crafted)	1. All Resistance 2. Strength 3. Vitality 4. Thorns (Secondary) 5. Armor
Ring 1	Avarice Band (A3 Bounties) Convention of Elements Focus	1. Socket 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Area Damage 4. Thorns (Secondary) 5. Resource Cost Reduction
Ring 2	Justice Lantern Restraint Stone of Jordan Ring of Royal Grandeur (A1 Bounties, Cubed)	1. Socket 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Area Damage 4. Thorns (Secondary) 5. Resource Cost Reduction
Bracers	Shackles of the Invoker Guardian's Aversion (Crafted) Nemesis Bracers Warzechian Armguards	1. Physical Damage 2. Strength 3. Vitality 4. Resistance to All Elements 5. Thorns (Secondary)
Amulet	Talisman of Akkhan	1. Socket 2. Physical Damage 3. Area Damage 4. Thorns (Secondary) 5. Cooldown Reduction 6. Strength
Belt	Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle (Crafted) Guardian's Case (Crafted) Sage's Ribbon (Crafted)	1. All Resistance 2. Strength 3. Vitality 4. Thorns (Secondary) 5. Life %
Potion	Bottomless Potion of Amplification	To gain extra healing

Gems

Boyarsky's Chip is our most powerful damage gem. It provides more than half of our total Thorns, effectively being an over 100% damage increase.
Bane of the Trapped adds extra 60% multiplicative damage. This is a melee build, so nothing special needs to be done in order to activate the damage bonus.
Other gems vary depending on what you do: Bane of the Stricken to kill the boss in high GRs, Boon of the Hoarder for gold in T16, Gogok of Swiftness for Cooldown Reduction or Bane of the Powerful for a bit of extra damage.

Skills

Bombardment Barrels of Spikes is the main source of damage. Belt of the Trove uses the equipped rune, so we must have this on the skillbar even in T16 build.
Punish Celerity provides 15% Block Chance and Attack Speed and also lets us get a few stacks of Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus.
Akarat's Champion Prophet is a staple in every single crusader build. One skill providing 35% damage, more than double toughness, CC-immunity, Wrath regeneration and full heal on "death" is just too good to pass up.
Iron Skin Reflective Skin increases Thorns by 300% stacking additively with Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus.
Steed Charge is necessary to activate Norvald's Fervor bonus.
Phalanx is needed to reset the cooldown of Akarat's Champion. Shield Bearers rune produces the most procs, while Bowmen are more convenient for speedfarming where mobs don't live long.

Passives

Heavenly Strength is necessary to equip Norvald's Fervor set.
Iron Maiden increases Thorns, and therefore damage, by 50%.
Lord Commander massively reduces cooldowns of Steed Charge and Bombardment making it possible to get a 16s cooldown on Bombardment and 100% uptime no Norvald's Fervor buff.
The last passive is usually Finery, the strongest generic Crusader passive providing for 15% damage and 12% toughness or Hold Your Ground which is used to get more Invoker stacks. In T16 Long Arm of the Law is used instead.

Paragon Points

Core	Offensive	Defensive	Utility
1. Movement Speed	1. Cooldown Reduction	1. All Resistance	1. Area Damage
2. Strength	2. Attack Speed	2. Armor	2. Resource Cost Reduction
3. Vitality¹	3. Critical Hit Damage	3. Life %	3. Pickup Radius
~~4. Maximum Wrath~~	4. Critical Hit Chance	4. Life Regeneration	4. Life per Hit

¹ Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 800,000 Life is recommended).

Follower

Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:

The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25.000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10.000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
Guardian's Jeopardy (3) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.

Select Follower

T16 Enchantress

Speed GR Enchantress

GR Pushing Enchantress

T16 Enchantress

For T16 we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is T16 content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death.

Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.

Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.

Key Items:

The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For extra Elites, Death’s Breaths and In-geom procs.
Avarice Band: For the insane pickup radius.
Ring of Royal Grandeur: To complete our sets.
Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
Sage’s Journey: For double Death’s Breaths.
Cain’s Destiny: For 25% more Greater Rift Keystones.

Gameplay

Bombardment is the main damage skill. In high GRs you cast it every 16s, for every Physical cycle of Convention of Elements. In speeds you just spam it as much as you can.

Use Punish as much as you can to maintain Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus stacks.

Akarat's Champion should be used on cooldown. Without Akarat's Champion you lose 93% of your damage and 75% of your toughness; dropping it even for a second is a very bad idea.

Iron Skin should be used before each Bombardment cast in the Lightning Convention of Elements cycle.

Phalanx when your Akarat's Champion is on cooldown.

Hardcore

For Hardcore, your last passive must be Indestructible. Other than that, you can try using Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force in the free skill slot or switch Bane of the Trapped for Esoteric Alteration. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

Nephalem Rifts

T16 Solo

Concept
In T16 variant we drop Thorns of the Invoker set entirely. There's two reasons for that. First, it's incredibly clunky and you need to stop to hit or get hit all the time to get stacks. Second, Bombardment oneshots everything short of the Rift Guardian even without the set. Instead of damage we focus entirely on Movement Speed and Cooldown Reduction. This build is outclassed by AoV FotH Crusader but it's playstyle is ideal for watching a movie on your second screen.

Gameplay
This is the ultimate lazy build. Belt of the Trove automatically casts a Bombardment (which lasts 4s) every 4s. And that alone will kill everything in sight, as long as you have Akarat's Champion active. So all you have to do is go through the rift and pick up loot. Unfortunately, Belt of the Trove stops casting when there's no enemies on screen, which happens all the time in T16. You can cast your own Bombardment to get some more barrels, but it's not necessary.

Setups
This build is pretty tanky but it's not running Goldwrap, so you have to respect stacked molten explosions. If you ain't about that life, drop Captain Crimson's Trimmings set and get Goldwrap and Gloves of Worship instead.

When playing in groups, equip Nemesis Bracers, replace Rechel's Ring of Larceny with Avarice Band and exchange Captain Crimson's Trimmings for Sage's Journey. On the Rift Guardian switch to Cain's Insight and Cain's Travelers to get extra Greater Rift Keystones.

GR Solo Speeds

Bomb Solo XP

Concept
This is almost the same build as the one used for solo pushing at low paragon, the only differences being Bane of the Powerful instead of Bane of the Stricken, Condemn Vacuum in place of Laws of Valor and Akarat's Champion Rally. This build is quite clunky and slow so your runs will be around 4-5 minutes long.

Gameplay
In speedruns, you mostly ignore your Convention of Elements and just use your Bombardment when you see a lot of high HP mobs or an elite pack. Spam Akarat's Champion, Iron Skin and Condemn. When you find a yellow elite and kill everything around it, don't stay and wait for it to die, take it with you on a ride via Draw and Quarter!

Setups
At high Paragon (3,000+) switch from Guardian's Jeopardy to Aughild's Authority for more damage.

GR Solo Push

Select Build Version

Standard

Empowered Shrine

Bomb Solo Push

Concept
In the push build we need the most damage and toughness possible, so we use Convention of Elements and Unity. Provoke Hit Me is used for extra block chance.

Gameplay
With this build you follow a 16s rotation tied to your Convention of Elements. At the start of Lightning you need put down Phalanx at the side of the pull and then Steed Charge inside. Once inside, press Provoke and Iron Skin and hold down Punish to build Invoker stacks. Couple seconds later, when the CoE buff is at 8 o'clock, use Bombardment. After that you don't have to worry about stacks, activate your Steed Charge for the damage bonus and move into Oculus Ring when it spawns.

To maximize your damage, sync up your Belt of the Trove and Convention of Elements. For that you need to drink a potion when your current element is 1s away from running out (CoE buff at 9 o'clock). Keep in mind that if you have no enemies around, Belt of the Trove will not fire, it will most likely desync and you'll have to do it again. The same will happen if you drink the potion at the wrong moment, so try to avoid panic potions. Changing zones also resets the internal cooldown of the belt, so you need to do it at the same time (3s into any element).

On this build you have plenty of toughness but almost no recovery. Instead you can "die" every few seconds thanks to Akarat's Champion. Especially during your rotation when you go in and facetank everything you are almost guaranteed to die once or twice, so make sure that your Akarat's Champion is up.

Setups
At low paragon you have no chance to survive the beating that is necessary to stack up Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus, so you have to drop the set and use Guardian's Jeopardy instead. This lets you change Justice Lantern to Unity and drop all the block chance. Instead of Punish and Hold Your Ground you can get Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force plus Long Arm of the Law for more toughness or Condemn Vacuum and Finery.

Video Guide

Mechanics

Thorns

All damage done by Thorns is Physical.
Thorns Damage cannot critically strike (except with Envious Blade).
Iron Maiden passive provides a separate 1.5 multiplier to your total Thorns.
Read the full guide on Thorns Mechanics here.

Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus

Increased Thorns Damage, provided by Thorns of the Invoker (2) Bonus, stacks with itself up to 10 times.
Each stack of the buff has a separate 2s timer.
Thorns bonus stacks additively with Iron Skin Reflective Skin.

Bombardment Barrels of Spikes

Drops 5 barrels over 2 seconds.
The Mortal Drama doubles both the number of barrels and the skill's duration.
The first barrel drops 1 seconds after the skill is activated.
When used manually, there's also an animation delay between starting the attack and skill actually activating.
The first barrel drops at the cast location, the rest drop on nearby enemies.
Each barrel deals 200% Thorns + 570% Weapon damage.
Your Thorns are snapshot at the time of cast.
Cannot crit, including the weapon damage part.
Can proc Area Damage.
Only procs Life per Hit once per cast.