Diablo 4 Best Rogue Build Guide (Strengths, Skills, Glass Mechanics, Guilds, Gameplay Tips)

Diablo 4 Best Rogue Build Guide (Strengths, Skills, Glass Mechanics, Guilds, Gameplay Tips)

3/18/2023 11:22:36 AM

In this Diablo IV Rogue Build Guide, we look at the strengths, weaknesses, skills, class-specific mechanics, and different builds for the Rogue class and even rank the builds based on strength in the end game to help you decide if this is the class you want to play and up next.

Diablo 4 Best Rogue Build

Diablo IV Rogue Build Guide for Open Beta

Diablo 4 Rogue Strengths

Rogues are unique in that they can alternate between ranged weapons and melee weapons, freely using either type of skill and their character will automatically start using the appropriate weapon which means that Rogues have the ability to equip more weapons than any other class other than the Barbarian. Rogues with a total of 11 items because they can have both melee weapons but also a ranged weapon such as a bow or crossbow, this allows for more equipment customization than the Sorcerer, Necromancer, and Druid.
Rogues also have tons of strong AOE options with Flurry, Shadow, Imbuement, and Shadow Clone being some of the strongest abilities the Rogue has.
Rogue also gets to allow find themselves with one of the three-row guilds Sisterhood of the sightless eye, Mercenaries of Kajistan, or the outlaw Smugglers of Hauser. The aligning process involves a quest chain unique to each of the three factions and each Rogue Guild provides its own class-specific benefits to the Rogue.
Rogues are also the only class that can modify the damage type of their skills to either cold poison or Shadow by imbuing their weapons with Shadow poison or cold, the Rogue also has a ton of slows and stuns with skills like kale trops which disengages the Rogue and places an AOE slow on the ground, Shadow crash which gives Shadow damage a chance to stun every third puncture attack applies a slow and advanced flurry which lets your flurry stun enemies you evaded through.
Rogue also has the best mobility in the game with an abundance of move speed increasing abilities and skills that allow them to maneuver over the battlefield with ease they have a passive skill called Stutter Step which causes critical strikes to grant 15% movement speed, Shadow step which allows them to quickly get to their enemies concealment which makes the road Unstoppable and grants 25 movement speed and twisting blades which grants up to 60% increased movement speed. There's even more with momentum granting 15 movement Speed Dash which lets you lunge forward and slash enemies in your path. Haste which grants 15% move speed when above 50 energy and 15 attacks speed when below 50% energy and honestly there are even more.

Let's just say Rogues have no shortage of movement speed, increasing abilities and can weave in and out of combat easily

Diablo 4 Rogue Weaknesses

When it comes to weaknesses, all that Mobility comes at a cost Rogues are a squishy class, they have exactly zero abilities that give fortify and not a single skill provides absorb. Unlike the sorcerer who can at least go invulnerable and put on some absorption Shield Fields, Rogues do not have any abilities that do either, this means that this class will require the player to make clever use of stealth, evade, vanish, and other evasive abilities to stay alive.
That's not to say Rogues have no damage-reducing abilities though, for example, dark shroud grants the Rogue 5 protective shadows each reducing damage taken by 8% which means 40% damage reduction and each Shadow also grants 3% move speed meaning 15% while all five are active, ach time you take damage you lose a shadow, so once again to play Rogue well it will require a player skilled at not getting hit.
Also, the Rogue play style is different from other classes, you have two resource pools: your energy and combo points. Basic skills are used to build combo points and core skills use them, an increase in power the more combo points you've accumulated up to three, this makes the road class a little bit harder to play than other classes.

Diablo 4 Rogue Skills

Rogues have six skill groups:

Basic
Core
Agility
Subterfuge
Imbuements
Ultimate

Each tier is unlocked after a certain level is reached, for example, core skills are unlocked at level 3, agility at level 7, subterfuge at 12, imbuements at 17, and ultimate at level 24.

Best Rogue Skills:

Death Trap places a trap that activates when an enemy moves within range dealing 316% Shadow damage to enemies in the area
Flurry unleashes a flurry of stabs and slashes dealing 76% damage to enemies in front of the Rogue
The Rogue Dismount ability leaps off their Mount and fires a volley of arrows mid-air reigning destruction down as they land and.

Diablo 4 Rogue Class Specific Mechanics

Because of rogue specializations, they have three major options which can dramatically change their play style.

Rogue Guilds

Rogues get to align themselves with one of the three Rogue guilds:

Sisterhood of the sightless Eye
Mercenaries of Kazistan
Outlaw Smugglers of Hausar

The lining process involves a quest chain unique to each of the three factions and each Rogue Guild will provide its own unique benefits to the Rogue.

Rogue Specializations

The benefit is to specialize in one of the three following specializations:

Combo Points - The Combo Point specialization makes it so that your basic skills now generate extra combo points and certain skills consume combo points for additional effects
Inner Sight - Inner Sight allows you to attack marked enemies to fill up your inner sight gauge when it's full you gain unlimited
Preparation - Preparation specialization was not available during the last build of the game, so we actually don't know exactly what it does

Each of the specializations helps Rogues complete their class specific quests throughout Diablo 4 and all three can be unlocked throughout the game, but players can only have one active at any time, each one seems as powerful as an ultimate ability so it's definitely a strong class specific mechanic.

Diablo 4 Best Rogue Builds

The main themes are Marksman which uses skills like Forceful Arrow, Heart Seeker, Rapid Fire, Reign of Arrows, and Precision Cutthroat which uses skills like Blade Shift, Twisting Blades, Shadow Step, Shadow Clone, and Momentum or a combination of both Marksman and Cutthroat skills.

Diablo IV Shadow Imbue Flurry Rogue Build

Now when it comes to the end game, the best end game build is Shadow Imbue Flurry Rogue:

Shadow imbuement causes your skills to deal Shadow damage and infect enemies which causes them to explode upon death dealing AOE damage. Blended shadow imbuement makes the explosion apply vulnerability to enemies hit by it. So this is AOE vulnerability and enhanced flurry grants 1% life back every time, flurry damages a vulnerable enemy and also improved flurry makes all enemies vulnerable if it hits at least one enemy that is already vulnerable. So flurry has a lot of potential to deal with AOE damage and apply vulnerability and when combined with Shadow imbue there's a massive amount of AOE damage that the road can dish out.

Not only that but there's even a legendary item that makes flurry attack in every single Direction - 360 Degrees around the Rogue instead of directly in front which greatly improves the already powerful AOE damage of flurry. If you're playing on a console, this build will be perfect for you to just smash buttons and still hit your enemy even if they're behind you.

This build also seems like a lot of fun because you get defensive Shadow skills like dark shroud and movement speed increasing abilities like Shadow step, and you basically become like a phantom just rapidly moving from enemy to enemy dealing Shadow damage being surrounded by dark shroud, and to top it all off you can create a shadow clone of yourself which does 80 of your damage and mimics, the exact abilities you do nearly doubling all the damage you're doing with this amazing build.

So you get the amazing end game viability of being able to clear any content in the game and at the same time really captures the fantasy of a shadowy assassin.

Keep in mind though that this is all based on data available from the closed beta test and information online and it will most likely be changes before the final game releases.