With each new Season, I level one of my remaining non-level-70 character classes to level 70, and now, with Season 5 (I skipped season 2 and 3) I've done so with my Crusader. And damn, what a fun character to play with.
At the moment, I'm at such a stage with the character that I can easily do Torment VI rifts without dying and relatively quickly.
With that, I've discovered a really quick and painless way to farm Death's Breath (which automatically also helps with farming Blood Shards).
Death's Breath is a crafting material you need for most Legendary and Set recipes, and of course, to use on Kanai's Cube (which is where I use it mostly).
With the build I'm about to share - and it's by no manner or means a perfect build - I can do Rift runs very quickly and can easily get 10-15 Death's Breath with each run.
Firstly, I recommend you take the Torment Level you can play without too much hassle, and half it. I can play Torment 6 quite comfortably, so I'm doing the farming on Torment 3.
Here is how I'm geared for this:
Paragon Points
Let's start with my Paragon Points - The important part here is to put every point you can into Movement Speed in the Core section of Paragon - I'm level 175, and that has given me 44 points to push into Core, and with every single point pushed into Movement Speed, I get a 22% speed boost!
On its own, that already makes a big difference in how quickly you can go through the rifts. Speed is the key with this build - you want to do the runs as quickly as you possibly can!
Gear - Sets
The most important piece of gear I have on this build is the Sage's Journey Set. Its very sweet (3) set bonus is to increase Death's Breath drops by 1. Crucial if you want to farm Death's Breath, which is, after all, what this build's about! Sage's Journey is a Set Recipe that you can get from Horadric Caches by completing Bounties. Other than the extra Death's Breaths it drops, it isn't much good.
Boots - Sage's Passage
Let's start with the Boots - in my case it's part of my Set, Sage's Journey - I crafted until I got one with a Movement Speed boost - I haven't even Reforged it yet:
Hands - Sage's Purchase
I use only 2 of the 3 items thanks to my Ring of Royal Grandeur - equipping these gloves gives me my bonus Death's Breath when killing elite/rare packs. I got lucky with the roll and got the added Critical Hit Damage, but as you can see, I haven't reforged this one either:
Wrists - Nemesis Bracers
These bracers are great for this build - each time you activate a shrine or pylon, it spawns and elite pack to kill - another chance to get 2 more Death's Breath, and it makes finishing the rift quicker thanks to those orbs you get when you've killed the leader of the pack:
1 Handed Weapon - Jace's Hammer of Vigilance
The weapon I use is quite cool too - it increases the physical size of your Blessed Hammers, meaning they more easily hit enemies (I think):
You'll see where this is going hehe :)
Shield - The Final Witness
This is one of my favourite items, The Final Witness, which is a Crusader Shield. It gives your Shield Glare the ability to hit ALL the enemies around you, and not just in an arch in front of you. Blinding them all. Oh YEAH!
Those are the main items for this build - the rest is a combination of the Invoker set (massively boosting Thorns damage - I have 4 of the 6 set bonus), and the other items all boosting damage and critical hit chance.
Skills
Now the juicy part - the skills I use. This build is to allow you to run through normal rifts as quickly as possible. There are two main skills that give you a speed boost while active - Laws of Hope's one activated ability, and Steed Charge. Together with this, I use Shield Glare and Bombardment, and my two main attacks are Punish and Blessed Hammer:
Punish
The main reason I use punish is because I have a cool belt that give me access to all the runes for the skill. So it's a given :)
Blessed Hammer
I have boosted Blessed Hammer the most with my skills, including my Kanai's Cube abilities. I'll talk more about the combo for this below...
Shield Glare
With my shield's ability, I blind ALL the enemies around me - it's awesome!
Laws of Hope
The Rune I use is Wings of Angels - activating the Law gives you a big speed boost, plus the ability to run through enemies, together with a shield that absorbs lots of damage - I don't care about the shield for this build, just the speed boost, and the ability to run through the mobs.
Steed Charge
Rune for this one is Endurance - increases the time you have your horse for to 3 seconds. Speed remember!
Bombardment
I use the Barrels of Spikes Runes - mostly because of the Invoker set focusing on Thorns damage, and together with my passive it gets boosted as well.
Passive Skills
The important one here is Lord Commander - it reduces the cool down of Steed Charge and Bombardment.
Blunt is also handy, because it increases the damage of my Blessed Hammers.
Kanai's Cube
The three skills I have active on Kanai's Cube are:
1. Weapon/shield slot
Guard of Johanna - I got this from a shield - it increases Blessed Hammer damage by 250% for the first 3 enemies it hits. Now, if you look closely in the above screen shot, the rune I have selected for Blessed Hammer is Limitless, which basically gives the hammer a chance to split into two hammers when it hits an enemy.
2. Armor slot
I got a sweet pair of pants called Hammer Jammers. And boy oh boy is this the sweetest piece of gear I have (combined with the cool Shield). Here's what it does:
Enemies take 400% increased damage from your Blessed Hammers for 10 seconds after you hit them with a Blind, Immobilize or Stun.
WOW!! I mean, WOW!!!! So, whenever I start a battle, I quickly blind everyone around me with that sweet shield and Shield Glare, and then spam Blessed Hammers, only to see my critical hits doing almost 3 times as much damage as usual. It kills them QUICK!
3. Jewelry slot
The Ring of Royal Grandeur - everyone knows this one - it's a must if you want to equip sets - it basically reduces the number of set items you need by 1 to get the set bonuses.
Then, last but not least, here's the strategy:
Just do Regular Rifts. And as you enter it, immediately hit Steed Charge and run past/through any non-elite/rare mobs you get (unless they block you when your charge runs out or something) - if Steed Charge has depleted for now, hit the Law, which gives you another boost and the ability to run through the mobs. Once that has finished, Steed Charge should have recharged, and you can hit it again. By now you should have hit an elite or rare pack - if you do hit one, run straight into the middle of hit, and throw that Shield Glare and start spamming your Blessed Hammers. In no time they should die, and if they dropped a Death's Breath, you'll get another one that's to the set, Sage's Journey.
Carry on in this fashion until you finish the rift. At Torment 3 you will get about 70-80 Blood Shards too at the end (correct me if I'm wrong) and if you were lucky about 10-16 Death's Breath. The added bonus is it should only take 3 or 4 minutes to complete the rift like this :D
Oh, and of course, whenever you use a Pylon or Shrine, another rare pack will spawn speeding things up even more.
When you have enough Blood Shards, buy from Kadala whichever item you need. If you didn't get what you wanted, you can take the Rares (yellow items) to Kanai's Cube and turn them into Legendaries (here's where the Death's Breath comes in - you need 25 for each time you do this).
Doing rifts in this manner will also get you lots of legendary drops - in one rift I got 5 legendary drops! You should also level you Paragon levels in this way quickly, so it's overall a very relaxed and quick way to do lots of stuff at once.
Hope this helps! Have fun!
