Disclaimer: This guide is no longer suppported and is out of date. If you're looking for a Bombardemnt Crusader guide, try LoN Bombardment. If you're looking for a build to compete on Akkhan Leaderboard, try Akkhan Condemn.
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 after the nerf, Bombardment Crusader was the second best Crusader solo build. But then came the Akkhan set rework and while it didn't completely kill the build, it definitely was pushed out of relevance.
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 30 Soul Shards
Soul Shards are powerful socketable items that initially dropped during Season 25 but they are returning for Season 30! There are 4 available for Weapons based on the Lesser Evils, with another 3 for Helmets based on the Prime Evils. They drop at Rank 0 and be upgraded three times with the brand new Hellforge Embers to unlock additional powers, or be used in the Kanai's Cube as Augments. Here's how they progress:
Rank 0: Soul Shards begin with a unique static Legendary Power. Creates a Rank 50 Augment.
Rank 1: Gives all powers from the normal gems. Creates a Rank 75 Augment.
Rank 2: Grants one additional powerful stat. Creates a Rank 100 Augment.
Rank 3: Unlocks 1 of 3 bonus Legendary Powers unique to that Soul Shard. Creates a Rank 125 Augment.
Warning: Leoric's Crown and Broken Crown do not work with Soul Shards!
Read our Soul Shards Guide written by Chewingnom for full details on how they work. What you should prioritize on them for Solo Pushing is the following:
The Correct Soul Shard& Rank 3 Power The best shards for Solo Pushing are:
Helmets: We want to use Sliver of Terror for the massive damage buff from our abilities on cooldown. For the Rank 3 power take the Ring of Fire to unleash a devastating AoE blast for big leaderboard pushes!
Weapons: We want to use Remnant of Pain to let our Bombardment Crit. For the Rank 3 power take the additional Attack Speed to further power up your character!
The Rank 2 Stat The stats that come from the second upgrade are not equal. Here's what we're looking for on them:
Helmets: We want either Main Stat for damage or Melee/Ranged Damage Reduction to survive. Avoid Armor and All Resistance as their stat ranges are far too low compared to the others options.
Weapons: We want Physical Damage to boost our character's power the furthest. Avoid Attack Speed and Critical Hit Chance as their stat ranges are too low compared to the others.
The Stat Ranges on the Rank 1 and 2 Powers This is just icing on the cake because the ranges will not make or break your build. Still, look for the Soul Shards with the best stat ranges, especially on the offensive stats.
For the other game modes, other Soul Shards can be used. Check the Variants below to see what's used there.
What about extra Soul Shards? Either salvage them for gems, or upgrade and use them in Kanai's Cube for Augments.
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. Thanks to Remnant of Pain our Thorns damage can crit so we stack Critical Hit 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.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.
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:
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.
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).
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, Elemental Damage from Amplification, Damage Reduction and Armor from Powered Shield, and the Attack Speed from Focused Mind.
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 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 LightningConvention 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!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Speeds
GR Solo Push
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.
Bomb Solo XP
Concept This is almost the same build as the one used for solo pushing, the only differences being Zei's Stone of Vengeance instead of Bane of the Stricken, and Stone of Jordan instead of Unity.
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, Phalanx and Iron Skin. 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.
Bomb Solo Push
Concept In season 30 we need an extra skill slot to proc Remnant of Pain which makes it impossible to get good number of Invoker stacks. So we replace it with Aughild's Authority.
Gameplay With this build you follow a 16s rotation tied to your Convention of Elements. At the start of Lightning stop moving and let the monsters gather around you. Couple seconds later, when the CoE buff is at 8 o'clock, use Iron Skin and Bombardment. Quickly follow it up with Steed Charge to get just outside the pull and blind them with Shield Glare. 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.
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.
