LoN Thorns Bombardment Crusader was the META Crusader solo build back in Seasons 5 through 8. It was later outclassed by various set builds and more or less forgotten until Season 22 when it received massive buffs. With two separate multipliers added to The Mortal Drama and Belt of the Trove, the build's damage was buffed by approximately 23 Greater Rift tiers. This made LoN Bombardment quite strong again.
Compared to Akkhan/Invoker Bombardment, LoN Bombardment has a lot more flexibility in terms of items and skills, making the build much more pleasant to play and a lot better at speedfarming. With Season 23 LoN Bombardment found another niche where it can shine: No Six Piece Set Crusader leaderboard!
During Season 24, LoN Bombardment could make use of Ethereals unlike its Akkhan counterpart which allowed LoN Bombardment to pull ahead and claim the title of the strongest Bombardment build.
This is an Area Damage (AD) as well as a Thorns build, since Bombardment Barrels of Spikes interestingly benefits from both these mechanics. The setup is very easy to get going since you don't need any Critical Hit Chance or Critical Hit Damage rolls, 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.
Can be Very Tanky ✔ Top tier Speedfarming Build ✔ Great at Utilizing Area Damage ✔ Can do Everything on the Move ✔
❌ Hard to Gear ❌ Inconsistent Cooldowns ❌ Limited Control Over your Damage ❌ Long and Boring Rift Guardian Fights
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
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%.
Convention of Elements increases Physical damage by 200%.
Akarat's Awakening reduces all cooldowns with each block, while Leoric's Crown straight up adds some extra Cooldown Reduction. With these items we have permanent Akarat's Champion and can cast Bombardment on every Convention of Elements rotation.
Stone Gauntlets increase our Armor by 250% with no downside thanks to Akarat's Champion.
Aquila Cuirass reduces incoming damage by 50%.
Season 33 Shades of the Nephalem
For the duration of Season 33, you gain one extra slot in Kanai’s Cube that allows to choose any Legendary Powers for a total of 4 slots. While normally a player can equip one power each from the Weapon, Armor, and Jewelry categories, now you can add a second of one of these categories! Some builds enjoy major damage buffs while others are able to run completely different setups, for example through otherwise impossible combinations of weapon effects.
In addition, whenever you press a shrine or pylon, you spawn a Shadow Nephalem of your class to assist you for 1 minute. These use various abilities and provide helpful extra damage in the early game and for lower tier Greater Rifts. Learn more in our Season 22 overview.
In this build, we can combine Legacy of Nightmares set with Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac playstyle, which eventually lets us use Akarat's Champion Rally to unleash double Bombardment.
Global Stat Priorities
Get at least 60% Cooldown Reduction (CDR). Thanks to Akarat's Awakening there's no hard breakpoints but having more CDR makes your life easier. Make sure your defensive slots—Boots, Pants and Belt—have Vitality and Resistance to All Elements on them. Get around 40k Life per Hit (Weapon, Bracer, Rings, Helmet, Gloves). Your damage 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 cubeLegendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!
2. This is a Legacy of Nightmares/Legacy of Dreams build and in the latter case its success is heavily dependent on this gem's rank. The first order of business is to equip a(n ancient) Legendary or Set item in every slot to take advantage of its power. Make sure to not have any Set Bonuses equipped or the rings/gem will be nullified and you will deal no damage! Farm speed Greater Rifts (in under 5 minute clears) to find the items and level your gems as high as possible.
Rings to get Convention of Elements, Stone of Jordan, Unity, Justice Lantern, and The Wailing Host/Litany of the Undaunted.
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 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 Cain's Destiny and Sage's Journey (for your follower)
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 pieces etc. Finally you can spice up your season by doing some Ubers to craft Hellfire Amulet (recipe can be bought from Squirt the Peddler in Act 2).
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:
Belt of The Trove
Akarat's Awakening
Item Stat Priorities
SLOT
ITEM
STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand
Pig Sticker Johanna's Argument Messerschmidt's Reaver In-Geom The Mortal Drama (Cubed)
1. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Area Damage 4. Life per Hit 5. Attack Speed 6. Strength
1. All Resistance 2. Strength 3. Vitality 4. Thorns (Secondary) 5. Life %
Potion
Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid
For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS
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 an 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, Legacy of Dreams in Speed GRs to equip extra rings.
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 is used to proc Life per Hit and stack Bane of the Stricken. It also provides 15% Block Chance and Attack Speed.
Akarat's Champion Prophet is a staple in every single crusader build. One skill providing 35% damage, more than double toughness, Crowd Control Imunity, Wrath regeneration and full heal on "death" is just too good to pass up.
Iron Skin Reflective Skin increases Thorns by 300%.
Condemn Vacuum lets us pull enemies together and destroy them with Area Damage.
Finally the last skill slot is usually occupied by a law: Laws of Justice Decaying Strength, Laws of Hope Wings of Angels or Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force.
Passives
Fervor provides 15% Cooldown Reduction and Attack Speed.
Iron Maiden increases Thorns, and therefore damage, by 50%.
Finery is the strongest generic Crusader passive providing for 15% damage and 12% toughness.
Hold Your Ground gives 30% block chance for more Cooldown Reduction via Akarat's Awakening.
Lord Commander massively reduces cooldown of Bombardment letting you use it on every cycle.
Long Arm of the Law is used in T16 and GR Speeds for movement speed.
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. Life per Hit
3. Vitality1
3. Critical Hit Damage
3. Life %
3. Pickup Radius
4. Maximum Wrath
4. Critical Hit Chance
4. Life per Second
4. Resource Cost Reduction
1 Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 800,000 Life is recommended).
Altar of Rites
The Altar of Rites is a tree 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 extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!
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
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
Speed GR 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.
Speed GR Enchantress
For speed Greater Rifts 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 speed 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 more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Hellfire Ring, Leoric's Crown and Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed.
GR Pushing Enchantress
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Enchantress setup for the Slow from Temporal Pulse, Damage Reduction and Armor from Powered Shield, and the Attack Speed from Focused Mind. You can choose between Prophetic Harmony and Amplification depending on how much Cooldown Reduction you have on your gear. Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Enchantress. Intelligence> Attack Speed. Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Mempo of Twilight and Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
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 whenever possible to get some healing and to keep up the Attack Speed and Block Chance buffs.
Akarat's Champion should be used every 20s. Without Akarat's Champion you will get slowed by Stone Gauntlets!
Iron Skin should be used before every Bombardment cast to buff its damage.
Condemn Vacuum is used all the time to group up mobs and before/during Physical to apply Strongarm Bracers debuff.
Hardcore
For Hardcore, your last passive must be Indestructible. You can make this build extremely tanky by playing the Legacy of Dreams version and using either Unity or Justice Lantern (or even both). Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Speeds
GR Solo Push
T16 LoN Bombardment
Concept Bombardment is not the best build for Nephalem Rifts because the skill is quite slow and Belt of the Trove stops casting when there's no enemies on the screen. As a result you have to spend 1-2 seconds on each group of enemies, despite having enough damage to oneshot everything. In this variant we use Messerschmidt's Reaver to reset Bombardment cooldown and a bunch of movement skills to go faster.
This build is outclassed by AoV FotH Crusader in terms of speed, but as an upside you can play it without using the keyboard!
Gameplay Spam all your movement skills and Bombardment, use Akarat's Champion Rally to reset Bombardment's cooldown.
If you feel very lazy, you can just let Belt of the Trove do all the heavy lifting. All you need to do is walk through the rift picking up gold and loot, pressing any buttons is purely optional.
Setups If you lack damage, use Squirt's Necklace and replace Condemn or Provoke with Iron Skin Reflective Skin. In groups, you need to equip Nemesis Bracers and cube Avarice Band because you no longer have a follower.
Bomb Solo XP
Concept In Solo Speeds we use a Cooldown-centered version of the build with In-geom and Akarat's Champion Rally. For extra damage we equip Squirt's Necklace protected by St. Archew's Gage and Laws of Hope. Instead of an attack skill we use Steed Charge Endurance for more mobility. CDR is by far the most important stat for build. You need at least 65%+ to make the build work somewhat well, but don't stop there and try to get it all the way to 72%. Prioritize CDR over everything including Thorns, Ancient items and even Physical Damage!
Gameplay Constantly spam, Laws of Hope and Iron Skin and Condemn. It's tempting to hold Iron Skin and only use it before Bombardment, but if you do that your Belt of the Trove procs will deal no damage. Hunt for elite packs to proc your In-Geom. When you enter the rift, just ride the horse until you find the first elite. Use Bombardment -> Rally -> Bombardment to kill it. From that point move through the rift using Bombardment and Belt of the Trove to kill trash and saving Akarat's Champion for the next elite pack.
Always pay attention to your Iron Skin and only use Bombardment when it's up!
When the Rift Guardian spawns look at your Convention of Elements. Use Iron Skin at the start of Lightning cycle and 3 seconds later double cast Bombardment. With 10 Squirt's Necklace stacks this combo should oneshot the Rift Guardian.
Setups If you're low paragon and/or have many non-ancient items, toughness may become an issue. In that case switch to Akarat's Champion Prophet.
You can replace Lidless Wall with any Crusader Shield with Cooldown Reduction, Bombardment Damage and Thorns. This trade will cost you about 5% damage, but if you have a good crusader shield and bad Lidless Wall then it can be an upgrade. If you do this switch, the similar philosophy can be applied to Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan and Blackthorne's Jousting Mail.
Keep in mind that Stone of Jordan lets you use any element and not just Physical. Don't salvage Lidless Walls and Squirt's Necklaces just because they have 'wrong' element!
If you want to play this build in groups change Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan to Blackthorne's Jousting Mail, equip Convention of Elements instead of Unity, move Squirt's Necklace to the cube and equip The Flavor of Time.
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac version
Concept In this version we use the Legacy of Nightmares set together with Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac with Blessed Hammer buffed by Johanna's Argument to proc it. Gabriel's Vambraces together with Laws of Valor Unstoppable Force let us keep Aquila Cuirass buff while spamming Blessed Hammer.
While all this hammer suff costs us a couple of small damage items such as Pig Sticker, Andariel's Visage, or Blackthorne's Jousting Mail, it also brings two big advantages. We stack Bane of the Stricken much faster and we no longer need to stand still and facetank mobs to have our cooldowns back up.
Gameplay With this build you follow a 16s rotation tied to your Convention of Elements. At the start of Lightning you need to activate Iron Skin and make a tight group of mobs with Condemn Vacuum. Couple seconds later, when the CoE buff is at 8 o'clock, use Bombardment. Move into Oculus Ring when it spawns and use Vacuum again to suck in more mobs.
You need to constantly spam Blessed Hammer while stutter-stepping and keep up all your buffs. Only recast them when they are about to expire to avoid wasting Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac procs! Long Arm of the Law passive makes this buff management a lot easier but it's not required, so you can replace it with Indestructible or Holy Cause if you feel comfortable enough.
During the Rift Guardian Fight you can cast Iron Skin + Bombardment once or twice (depending on your Cooldown Reduction) off rotation to get in some extra damage.
Setups Hellfire Amulet is the best necklace for this build but it can be very difficult to obtain. If you don't have it, your other options are Squirts Necklace for double damage during Shield Pylon, or Eye of Etlich for 30% reduced missile damage.
If you don't want to deal with the downside of Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan you can replace them with Blackthorne's Jousting Mail. You will lose about 5% damage but now you can be lazy and just stand still.
At very high Paragon (6000+), you can change Akarat's Champion's rune from Prophet to Rally. With this setup you also need to get full Cooldown Reduction (including Enchantress' Prophetic Harmony and Lord Commander passive). This will let you double cast Bombardment on each Physical Convention of Elements cycle, provided you can reset your Akarat's Champion cooldown in time. You will lose about 30% toughness and "cheat death" effect but gain 50% damage.
At low paragon you can opt to greatly increase your toughness by exchanging Legacy of Nightmares for Unity and Justice Lantern or Stone of Jordan.
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.
