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Rift Guardian Mechanics

Last Updated: September 14th 2023

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Introduction

When you reach 100% progression in Nephalem and Greater Rifts, a Rift Guardian (RG) appears and all monsters despawn in Greater Rifts. Rift Guardians are the final boss of the Rift and players must kill it within the 15 minutes Rift timer to successfully complete a Greater Rift.

Similar to Act Bosses, Rift Guardians are considered Elites, meaning any Elite Damage mechanic or affix (The Furnace, Stone of Jordan...) works on them. They all have the same amount of hit points (HP) since patch 2.3.0 (Season 4) for balance purposes.


Rift Guardians are immune to some crowd controls: Charm, Fear, Hex, Knockback and Taunt do not affect them. Moreover, Vesalius has a unique immunity to Blind. Every other crowd control behaves the same as Elites on Rift Guardians. This means they have a Crowd Control Resistance (CCR) cap set at 95% and they're unaffected by Crowd Controls whose duration is reduced below 0.85 seconds. Check out the Crowd Control Mechanics article to learn more on this!

The Rift Guardian has arrived.

Rift Guardians always spawn on players if they can. If they can’t due to you standing in an exiguous spot or in specific layouts (Arreat Crater entrance), they spawn on the nearest available spot. This nearest spot only takes distance to players into consideration and not pathable layout distance, which means the "nearest" spot can actually be extremely far from players in maps like Plague Tunnels.

The Rift Guardian that spawns is always random; there is no factor influencing which one spawns in your Greater Rift. There are a total of 25 Rift Guardians in Greater Rifts, each with its own unique abilities.

Teleport Ability

Every Rift Guardian except Vesalius has a teleport ability to ensure it always finds a target to fight. This teleport has a 30 second cooldown. The idea behind it is simple: if the Rift Guardian fails to find a target to attack, it teleports to the closest player it can find. In practice there are two cases players can witness:

  • The Rift Guardian teleports to a nearby location if there are players around but it cannot target them due to line of sight.
  • The Rift Guardian teleports to the closest player if it doesn't find any target within its aggro range of 100 yards (approximately 2 screens).

The first case can happen on every Rift Guardian but is more common to encounter on some of them. Rift Guardians may lose line of sight with players when surrounded by too many monsters, like with The Choker and Perendi (partly because of their tiny hitbox). This can also happen when using Nemesis Bracers to kill the boss with Area Damage. Some RGs such as The Choker or Man Carver are also subject to constant aggro resets which can randomly cause this issue.

The Choker, known for its continuous random teleports

The second case is widely (ab)used by players depending on the META. This mechanic is used to position Rift Guardians near a pylon or in a specific spot to fight it. The most common way to do it is sending the whole group to a chosen spot while the zBarb keeps the boss' focus on him. Once the group is positioned, the zBarb casts Ignore Pain to not be interrupted and teleports out of the Greater Rift. As the RG does not have a target to attack within 100 yards, it will teleport to the closest available party member, which should be on the whole group that is standing at the chosen spot. The zBarb can then come back into the Greater Rift and join back the group to fight the Rift Guardian. As stated above, this trick cannot be used on Vesalius.

It is also possible and sometimes faster to use the portal to the previous or next Greater Rift floor, or even simply die (only in Softcore!) when the group is positioned in order to let the boss teleport to the rest of the party. It is also pretty common in Softcore to use the "Revive at Last Checkpoint" button to avoid the time penalty, as the Rift Guardian will teleport on you at the entrance of the floor once you revived. Be careful if you use this trick, as the Battlefields layout specifically does not have checkpoint, hence you would revive at the entrance from the previous floor!

Rift Guardian Killer


The Rift Guardian Killer, commonly known as RGK or Boss Killer, is a fundamental role in groups since Season 7 and the (near) extinction of 3-support METAs. The main task of the RGK is... to kill Rift Guardians. In order to do so, the RGK requires a build that revolves around high single target damage often combined with a lot of Attack Speed to stack Bane of the Stricken as fast as possible.

Bane of the Stricken is the cornerstone of Rift Guardian Killer builds. It is the best gem for long Rift Guardian fights by a mile. While having a 1.25 multiplicative damage boost against Rift Guardians is great, its primary effect is what makes this legendary gem a true powerhouse for boss killing.

The first enemy hit by an attack with a proc coefficient >0 takes a stack of Stricken's primary effect, which increases the player's damage against the target. For all non-channeling skills and Whirlwind, on stack application, Bane of the Stricken goes on internal cooldown (ICD) following this formula:

To make it more straightforward:

  • ICD Scalar is a static value set at 0.9 for Bane of the Stricken;
  • FPS (Frames per Second) is constant at 60 as the game runs at 60 FPS;
  • Skill APS is your Attack Speed for a specified skill with separate Attack Speed multipliers taken into account such as The Shame of Delsere or Alacrity;
  • FPA (Frames per Animation) represents the number of frames it takes to perform your skill.

To get the exact FPA values and Attack Speed brackets for each skill you can visit the D3planner (without Adblock!) and mouse over the "Breakpoint" under the skill's description. If you're interested in learning more, check out the Attack Speed & Breakpoints article by Northwar!

 

Finally, normal enemies and Elites lose all Bane of the Stricken stacks when they lose aggro to players. Rift Guardians however never lose stacks even if the player dies, switches between Greater Rift floors or teleports to town.

Generally Rift Guardian Killers needs to be tanky enough to survive during the Greater Rift to be able to follow the party and help the zBarb with bodypulling and scouting. Some RGK builds can afford to have damage or toughness buffs to help the Trash Killer in its task.

Boss Killers can also finish off individual Elites or high progression monsters. This is especially true when normal monsters (and consequently Area Damage or density to scale damage in general, the main damage source of Trash Killers) are lacking, at the end of a Greater Rift floor for instance. Every little bit helps!

Damage Soaking

Even though most Rift Guardians abilities can target random players within a certain range and can reset their aggro, they mostly attack the closest target with their basic attack and their abilities.

This is what we mean by damage soaking: As Rift Guardian Killers builds are generally not tanky, support players (mainly the zBarb) should always try to be a meat shield by positioning itself as close as possible to Rift Guardians (even in its hitbox, which is possible thanks to Illusory Boots). This will redirect most of the basic incoming damage and relieve the RGK from worrying too much about survival.

Some boss abilities deal AoE damage despite targeting the closest target, such as Perdition's cleave or Orlash's breath. This explains why "tanking" some Rift Guardians with their back facing the RGK can be a good idea depending on the boss you're dealing with. For solo players, using your Follower (especially the Templar as it is melee) to tank the Rift Guardian and soak some abilities is a good strategy.

Rift Guardians

In this section, we will cover the abilities of all 25 Rift Guardians that can spawn in Greater Rifts as well as some tips and tricks to beat them.

Agnidox

Blighter

Bloodmaw

Bone Warlock

Cold Snap

Crusader King

Ember

Erethon

Eskandiel

Hamelin

Infernal Maiden

Man Carver

Orlash

Perdition

Perendi

Raiziel

Rime

Sand Shaper

Saxtris

Stonesinger

Tethrys

The Binder

The Choker

Vesalius

Voracity

Special Rift Guardians

These Rift Guardians can only spawn in special rare Nephalem Rifts:

Lord of Bells

Josh Mosqueira

Conclusion

Rift Guardians can be tough to deal with depending on your build. Sometimes you rely on Hamelin or Saxtris for Area Damage, while others look for single target Rift Guardians. Similarly, some squishy builds are looking for bosses with low incoming damage or that barely move around. No matter who you're looking for, with some practice and game mechanics knowledge you can take down even the worst Rift Guardian for your build! Hopefully this guide has been helpful and you now know everything about Rift Guardians in Diablo III!

Credits

Written by Chewingnom.
Shoutouts to Rob for the initial boss abilities write-up.
Reviewed by Raxxanterax & Northwar.

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