In this Diablo 4 guide, we’ll showcase some of the best Rogue leveling builds in the game.
This guide covers the best Rogue leveling builds in the game, which will undoubtedly help you level up faster from 1 to 50. If you like to take your time and enjoy the game like most of us, having a targeted build is also helpful in focusing your time spent on acquiring the necessary gear and aspects for that build.
We tested and played all these builds, and we can confidently say they are the best Diablo 4 Rogue Leveling builds in the game. If you enjoy these guides or are looking for more Diablo 4 builds or guides, we recommend our Diablo 4 Complete Guide.
Twisting Blades Rogue Build
The Twisting Blades Rogue is one of the most popular and powerful builds in the game. It showed us the true power of the Rogue when played correctly and with the proper gear and Aspects. The build focuses on building Energy and spending it with our core skill, Twisting Blades. There’s more to that, so let’s begin.
Main Skills
Specialization
Legendary Aspects
- Bladedancer’s Aspect – Twisting Blades orbit for a short time after they return to you, dealing 10% of Twisting Blades’ return damage per hit. Based on the distance the blades returned, the orbit damage increases up to 20% of the return damage. We recommend imprinting this to your neck for that 50% extra bonus. The aspect can be unlocked by finishing Jalal’s Vigil in Scosglen.
- Blast-Trapper’s Aspect – Lucky Hit: Dealing direct damage to enemies affected by your Trap Skills has up to a 30% chance to make them Vulnerable for 3 seconds. Unlocked by completing Kor Valar Ramparts in Fractured Peaks.
- Edgemaster’s Aspect – Skills deal up to [10 – 20]% increased damage based on your available Primary Resource when cast, receiving the maximum benefit while you have full Primary Resource. Unlocked by completing Oldstones in Scosglen.
Gameplay
The core of this build is centered around Twisting Blades and applying debuffs and poison to your enemies.
Our main generator is Puncture, which throws blades for a short distance and slows them. The upgraded Puncture also is used to apply Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Twisting Blades is used as our main damage source while also reducing your cooldowns in the process. It’s very important to remember that Twisting Blades has a return component, meaning you have to play around with positioning and attacking with the skill.
Poison Trap is a powerful cooldown, placing up to 4 traps on the ground, dealing 344% damage over 9 seconds. The skill has a CC component to it as well, knocking down mobs for 1.5 seconds when it traps are activated.
Dark Shroud is our main defensive ability, providing up to 40% damage mitigation. (8% per shadow, 5 shadows). The ability also increases your movement speed for up to 20%.
Dash is the main movement ability of the Rogue, but it also debuffs the enemies by Slowing and Dazing them. The skill also grants you 20% Critical Strike Damage for 5 seconds when attacking the mobs you just dashed through, making it a powerful offensive and defensive spell. This has 2 charges, but you can get more charges from some items.
Lastly, we have Shadow Step, which is the Rogue’s gap closer and acts both as an offensive and defensive ability. The ability has a CC component in the form of a Stun, which makes it extremely good, especially vs. single targets.
Now that we talked about our main skills and how they are used, it’s important to say that this build is centered around CCing your enemies and doing large amounts of damage. The Poison Trap component also plays a major role due to passives such as Deadly Venom or Debilitating Toxins which increase your Poison damage done and debuff your foes so they do 15% less damage.
Another important passive is Trap Mastery, which we’re maxing out this build, that when Poison Trap or Death Trap activates, you gain a 4% increased Critical Strike Chance against Vulnerable and Crowd Controlled enemies for 12 seconds.
To end the gameplay component of the Twisting Blades Rogue leveling build, we will use the Inner Sight Specialization, which provides unlimited energy for a short period by attacking marked enemies. Also, for our Key Passive, we’re using Momentum for more damage mitigation (20% increased Damage Reduction), Energy regen (30% increased Energy Regeneration), and movement speed (15% increased Movement Speed).
Skill Tree
Here’s the full setup for the Twisting Blades Rogue leveling build, including the Skill Tree. Click on the image below to go to the full build.
Penetrating Shot Rogue Build
The Penetrating Shot Rogue build is a powerful ranged build that focuses mainly on large groups but also has good single-target damage. The build also focuses on Inbuements, adding 2 to our arsenal as Shadow Imbuement and Poison Imbuement. This assures excellent AoE capabilities as well as single-target DoT damage.
Main Skills
Specialization
Legendary Aspects
- Trickshot Aspect – Whenever Penetrating Shot damages an enemy, 2 additional arrows split off to either side. These side arrows deal 10% of Penetrating Shot’s Base damage and do not split. We recommend imprinting this on your amulet for 50% bonus. Unlocked by completing Bastion of Faith in Hawezar.
- Aspect of the Expectant – Attacking enemies with a Basic Skill increases the damage of your next Core Skill cast by 5%, up to 30%. Unlocking this aspect for your Codex of Power comes by completing the Underroot dungeon in Scosglen.
- Rapid Aspect – Basic Skills gain 15% Attack Speed.
Gameplay
This build is similar to the Twisting Blades one due to the fact that it relies on Puncture as a filler and generator and Penetrating Shot for those big numbers. However, Penetrating Shot alone can do so much, that’s why we’re using our strongest imbuements, Shadow and Poison.
Shadow Imbuement makes your next 2 Imbueable Skills deal Shadow damage and infect enemies for 6 seconds. Infected enemies explode on death, dealing 40% damage to all surrounding enemies. In translation, this skill does insane amounts of AoE damage.
For fewer mobs and single-target damage, we have the Poison Imbuement, which alows your next 2 Imbueable Skills to deal Poison damage and apply 100% of their Base damage as additional Poisoning damage over 5 seconds. This is our big single-target ability or 2-3 mobs in a pack.
This build uses the Combo Points specialization, meaning that after you build 2-3 combo points with Puncture, you can cast your Penetrating Shot for that increased damage and increase Lucky Hit chance: +30%/+60%/+90% damage, 10%/20%/30% chance.
Once again, Dark Shroud is our main defensive ability, providing up to 40% damage mitigation.
Dash is the Rogues’ main movement ability and can be used defensively and offensively. The ability also slows your targets and provides 20% increased critical strike damage for 5 seconds.
As you’ll see from the full skill tree (below), we’re also using Shadow Crash and Consuming Shadows to increase our Energy Regeneration and to get a CC component when the Rogue does AoE with Shadow Imbuement.
To end this Rogue leveling build, we’re using as our Key Passive, Precision: Critical Strikes with Marksman Skills grant you Precision. You gain 4% increased Critical Strike Damage per stack of Precision, up to a maximum of 20%. When you reach maximum Precision, your next Marksman Skill is a guaranteed Critical Strike that deals 40% increased Critical Strike Damage, then consumes all stacks of Precision.
Skill Tree
Here’s the complete build for the Penetrating Shot Rogue leveling build. Click on the image below to see the Skill Tree and plan your journey.
Flurry Rogue Build
The Flurry Rogue leveling build is very similar to the Twisting Blades build, but it adds an imbuement in the mix, the Poison Imbuement. In other words, we’re trading Shadow Step for Poison Imbuement for that extra single-target damage.
Main Skills
Specialization
Legendary Aspects
- Aspect of the Expectant – Attacking enemies with a Basic Skill increases the damage of your next Core Skill cast by 5%, up to 30%. Unlocking this aspect for your Codex of Power comes by completing the Underroot dungeon in Scosglen.
- Aspect of Encircling Blades – Flurry damages enemies in a circle around you and deals 8% increased damage. Unlocked by completing Forsaken Quarry in Fractured Peaks
- Edgemaster’s Aspect – Skills deal up to [10 – 20]% increased damage based on your available Primary Resource when cast, receiving the maximum benefit while you have full Primary Resource. Unlocked by completing Oldstones in Scosglen.
Gameplay
As we said earlier, this build is pretty much another variant of the Twisting Blades Rogue build, but instead, we’re using Flurry as our Core Skill and Poison Imbuement as our single-target DoT.
Puncture is our main Energy generator as well as applying Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Flurry is our main spender that, besides bringing good damage into the mix, it also allows the Rogue to heal for up to 12% of total life. And while this is great, it’s not all – Flurry also helps the Rogue spread the Vulnerability to all the targets it hits via the Improved Flurry upgrade: If Flurry hits any Vulnerable enemy, it will make all enemies hit by that cast Vulnerable for 3 seconds.
Poison Trap is a powerful cooldown with a CC and damage component, placing up to 4 traps on the ground and dealing 344% damage over 9 seconds. With this build, the Poison Trap also has a 30% chance to reset the cooldown of Poison Imbuement.
As you already know by now, Dash is a must for every Rogue build. It’s the main movement ability of the Rogue, but it also debuffs the enemies by Slowing and Dazing them. The skill also grants you 20% Critical Strike Damage for 5 seconds.
For our Key Passive, we’re using Momentum for more damage mitigation (20% increased Damage Reduction), Energy regen (30% increased Energy Regeneration), and movement speed (15% increased Movement Speed).
Lastly, we’re playing with the Combo Points Specialization, which grants Flurry increased damage and a +30% Attack Speed bonus: +15%/+30%/+45% damage, 1.5/3.0/4.5-second bonus.
Skill Tree
Check out the full build and skill tree for the Flurry Rogue leveling build. Just click on the image below to start planning your point allocation.
Rapid Fire Rogue Build (honorable mention)
We also decided to add the Rapid Fire Rogue build to this list as an honorable mention. The build is decent, it has times when it shines, but we feel it underperforms vs. the other posted builds. This build is pretty similar to the Penetrating Shot Build; it has the same principles, so we won’t add a gameplay section, being pretty similar.
Main Skills
Specialization
Legendary Aspects
- Edgemaster’s Aspect – Skills deal up to [10 – 20]% increased damage based on your available Primary Resource when cast, receiving the maximum benefit while you have full Primary Resource. Unlocked by completing Oldstones in Scosglen.
- Aspect of the Expectant – Attacking enemies with a Basic Skill increases the damage of your next Core Skill cast by 5%, up to 30%. Unlocking this aspect for your Codex of Power comes by completing the Underroot dungeon in Scosglen.
- Rapid Aspect – Basic Skills gain 15% Attack Speed.
Skill Tree
Click on the image below for the full build and the Rapid FIre Rogue build skill tree.
