It’s hard to beat the flair of the bow and daggers that we get when using the Rogue class in Diablo 4, and it’s not just all for the looks. Rogues can dish out some serious damage with plenty of agility to back it up before enemies can react or players can get their hits in.
With so many skills to choose from in each class tree, it can be hard to decide which Rogue build you want to go for. Although the game is still at an early stage, we’ll outline the best build for this class in Diablo 4, so you can easily make your way through Strongholds and more.
Best Rogue Build for Diablo IV
This build we’re about to cover is based on the Shadow Imbument skill and the explosion damage it can create amongst effected enemies. The Shadow Imbument mixed with plenty of critical strike chance is a recipe for damage that RageGamingVideos has outlined on YouTube. I have used this build myself, with some slight changes, and I was able to decimate anything in my path with some extra flash to go along. Below you can find all the skills you’ll need, how many points should be in each, and the modifiers that help the most.
Rogue Shadow Imbument Build Diablo 4:
- Basic Skill – Puncture 1/5: Throw blades a short distance to slow enemies and deal damage. Critical Strikes always slow.
- Enhanced Puncture
- Primary Puncture: Used for the Ricochet of the blades for more crowd control as you herd the enemies together.
- Core Skill – Penetrating Shot 5/5: This is the bread and butter of the build. The arrow will pierce all enemies in a line and deal massive damage with each hit.
- Enhanced Penetrating Shot
- Improved Penetrating Shot: Increases the critical strike chance by 20% for hitting three or more enemies.
- Agility Skill – Dash 1/5: Used to apply our debuffs, the dash uses a cooldown with two charges and applies plenty of crowd control as well as our imbuement.
- Enhanced Dash
- Methodical Dash: Helps alleviate the cooldown mixed with the crit damage from the move above. This way, you can dash whenever you need to in Diablo 4.
- Subterfuge Skill – Dark Shroud 1/5: This is a great way to give yourself defense while also increasing your critical strike chance with the press of a button.
- Enhanced Dark Shroud
- Countering Dark Shroud: Activates an additional 10% critical strike chance as long as two of the shadows are active. This goes along with the defense as well.
- Imbuement Skill – Shadow Imbuement 5/5: We want this applied for nearly every fight. The goal is to apply this to all enemies with your dash and a Penetrating Shot. Any enemies hit with shadow will explode and your critical strike chance will go up by 25% against imbued enemies.
- Enhanced Shadow Imbuement
- Blended Shadow Imbuement: Causes vulnerability after the initial explosion of the Shadow Imbuement debuff on enemies.
- Imbuement Passive – Precision Imbuement 1/3: Gain an instant 5% critical strike chance.
- Ultimate Skill – Shadow Clone: Use this for an instant shadow clone that will stick with you for 15 seconds and deal 80% of your damage with passives as well.
- Prime Shadow Clone
- Supreme Shadow Clone: Increase the damage by 20% of your Shadow Clone when activated.
The idea with this Diablo 4 Rogue Build is to get the Shadow Imbuement on all the enemies in front of you. Start each fight by hitting the enemies with Puncture and slowing them down in a train. Then you activate the Shadow Imbuement and dash through the crowd you’ve built.
Afterward, you can activate the Dark Shroud and spam the Penetrating Shot to eliminate all of the enemies in the blink of an eye. Choosing gear will be tougher with so many items still tough to get, but there are a few things you want to look for. Life-on-kill skills can save you plenty of trouble and we recommend it for this build. You’ll also want gear that boosts the Penetrating Shot in any way, along with Imbument.
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When you encounter bosses or tougher enemies, that’s your opportunity to use the Shadow Clone ultimate. If you’ve set up the fight as we outlined above, then activating the ultimate will eviscerate anything in front of you and fights will only get easier as time goes on. It didn’t take me too long before the skills became an easy rhythm and enemies were a breeze.
You’re also free to try the Forceful Arrow basic skill if you want to stick to ranged attacks on the bow, but there isn’t as much crowd control. The arrows also tend to push back the enemies farther than the puncture blades would, and the skill is a bit slower. So it’s still possible to use the Forceful Arrow, especially for some easy vulnerability on enemies and some extra basic damage, but it could hurt the overall build.
