Best powers to steal with Kanai’s Cube in Diablo 3

If you play Diablo 3 and don’t know what Kanai’s Cube is, we have a really great write-up that covers the basics. Yes, it’s four years old, but Kanai’s Cube hasn’t changed much in the intervening years. However, sometimes it’s hard to know exactly how to use Kanai’s Cube, especially when it comes to using its ability to supply you with the bonus power of up to three Legendary items you’re not actually wearing.

These powers can come from Weapons and Off-Hand items, Armor, and Jewelry. While many of these powers are class and spec specific, others are not — some Legendaries are good for just about anyone.

As we all get ready for Season 18, let’s talk about some excellent Kanai’s Cube options for Legendary powers for your Diablo 3 character.

Jewelry

• Ring of Royal Grandeur — this Legendary gives you the benefit of a set bonus with one less piece of the set than is usually required. Using this item in the Kanai’s Cube jewelry slot lets you basically mix and match sets, such as this Barbarian build that mixes the full 6 piece Might of the Earth set with 4 piece Immortal King, which it accomplishes using five pieces of MotE and three pieces of IK. This build would be utterly impossible without the Ring of Royal Grandeur’s effect, but thanks to Kanai’s Cube you can gain that benefit and still use a different ring. Whether you want to mix various set bonuses or just use a legendary item you wouldn’t otherwise be able to, the Ring of Royal Grandeur is an excellent choice for the Jewelry slot in Kanai’s Cube.
• Countless Julia’s Cameo — while I almost always use this amulet in my Jewelry slot unless I need another for my particular build, it is but one of five amulets that renders the wearer completely immune to a specific type of damage. There’s one for fire, poison, cold, and lightning damage as well as arcane, which is the damage type that Countess Julia’s Cameo completely negates. For whatever reason, I have the most trouble with Arcane damage, and so I love Countess Julia.
• Dovu Energy Trap — Do you like stuns? Here’s a solid buff to your stuns.
• Broken Promises — a ring that makes up for a low crit chance, Broken Promises basically counts the attacks you make and if you go five attacks in a row without a critical hit, it buffs your critical hit chance to 100%. If you don’t have a better Jewelry option for your Kanai’s Cube, this is a solid choice for pure damage.
• Krede’s Flame — what if you don’t want to be immune to fire, but instead want to trade pain for power? Krede’s Flame lets you regenerate your primary resource (Fury, Mana, Discipline, Wrath, whatever it is) as you take damage from fire. It’s a percentage based trade off — so if you take 1% of your health as fire damage, you’ll get 1% of your primary resource back. Situationally a fun and powerful bonus to get for your Kanai’s Cube bonus.
• The Ess of Johan — This one is a fantastically fun option, especially when you’re using attacks where you want to get all of your enemies together in one spot. The Ess of Johan has a chance on hit to pull in enemies toward your target and slow them by 60–80% and what’s really great about it is that it counts as a knockback, so Legendary items like the Strongarm Bracers will have amazing benefit on people using this ability on Kanai’s Cube. 

Armor

• Strongarm Bracers — Combined with the Ess of Johan or any other ability that inflicts knockback (and it doesn’t have to be a knockback you do, it can be from another player or one of your followers) the Strongarm Bracers give you a 30% damage buff when used through Kanai’s Cube. It’s an excellent armor power to cube for any knockback reliant build.
• Mantle of Channeling — Amazing for when you are building your character around one of the channeled abilities listed, this armor power stacks with the legendary gem Taeguk in a multiplicative way. This means you can get up to close to 45% bonus damage on any channeled ability with this armor power and Taeguk as one of your legendary gems. That’s very sweet for Monks, Wizards, Demon Hunters, Witch Doctors or Barbarians using one of the abilities buffed by the Mantle. It’s an amazing ability.
• Bracers of Fury — Similar to the Strongarm Bracers, these deal 400% extra damage to Blind, Stunned, Immobilized or (undocumented) Frozen targets. You do not have to be the one who applied those conditions to your targets, making these bracers stack well if anyone in your group has the Cord of the Sherma, or if you are wearing it. Similarly, the Cord of the Sherma itself is an excellent choice for Kanai’s Cube.
• Vigilante Belt — It’s a belt that flatly reduces the cooldown for all abilities by 5% when used in the cube. That’s it. That’s what it does. It’s good for literally everyone.
• Paudrons of the Skeleton King — These are kind of weird, but if you really hate it when you die and want to minimize the chances of that  happening, these Pauldrons can serve your armor power needs. Not only do they give you a chance to avoid death and get a small heal bump, they’ll fear nearby enemies which is nice if you’re in a situation where you can die in the first place.

Weapons

• The Furnace — A flat 50% extra damage against Elites Monsters. Considering how nasty Elites can be, this is (and deservedly so) one of the best all purpose weapon extractions one can choose from Kanai’s Cube. Since it’s a two-handed mace, Wizards and Demon Hunters cannot equip the item and thus cannot use the weapon as one of their Kanai’s Cube choices.
• Ahavarion, Spear of Lycander — Since the first weapon was unusable by Wizards, here’s a staff they can use (along with everyone except Barbarians, Crusaders and Demon Hunters — none of them can). Ahavarion has a chance to give you the effect of one of the shrines found throughout Sanctuary every time you kill a demon. The chance is around 1%, which is fairly low, but with the amount of demons you’ll be killing in Diablo 3 you’re bound to hit the jackpot sooner or later.
• Wizardspike — Everybody can use Daggers, and Wizardspike has a fun ability to cube. It basically gives you a free Frozen Orb, which is a Wizard spell with a specific rune applied. It doesn’t matter what class you are, anyone who cubes Wizardspike has a chance to hurl Frozen Orbs around.
• Scourge — Do you want to explode a blast of fire around you for 15 yards for 2000% weapon damage? Sure, we all do! Cube Scourge’s Legendary power and you’ll be able to do exactly that from time to time, randomly, because come on it would be overpowered as heck if it just exploded for 2000% weapon damage as fire every single time you hit someone. As a two-handed sword, everyone but a Demon Hunter can extract and use this power.

There are lots of other items to extract, some necessary for specific class builds, but these items will give you a place to get started. Be on the lookout for them and any other items that could serve you well in the infamous cube.