Rogue Rapid Fire Build

Introduction

Welcome to our Diablo 4 Rogue Rapid Fire Build. In this guide we’ll take you through everything you need to know to create and play this powerful build for yourself. The guide covers Skill Tree, Paragon Board choices, Glyphs, Aspects and more! This build is essentially a unique ranged counterpart of the Shadow Imbuement build. Another ranged option is our Penetrating Shot build. The Rapid Fire build plays a much more flexible, run and gun style in both close and distant ranges.

Skill Tree and Paragon Board

Glyph Leveling Priority

For our Diablo 4 Rogue Rapid Fire Build we are using the 5 Rare Glyphs to complement our damage and survivability. Below we will put them in order of which one to level first to last.

1 – (Board #3: No Witnesses) Exploit: We will need the extra radius to reach the required stats. Granting us Damage to Vulnerable targets and the ability to apply Vulnerable to all Targets on first hit.
2 – (Board #5: Cheap Shot) Combat: We will need the extra radius to reach the required stats. Granting us Core Skill Damage and Energy Cost Reduction.
3 – (Starting Board) Ranger: We will need the extra radius to reach the required stats. Granting us Marksman Skill Damage and Damage Reduction while using ranged weapons.
4 – (Board #4: Exploit Weakness) Infusion: We will need the extra radius to reach the required stats. Granting us increased Imbued Skill Damage and a slight Cooldown Reduction source when activating Imbuements.
5 – (Board #2: Eldritch Bounty) Control: We will need the extra radius to reach the required stats. Granting us increased Damage to Crowd Controlled targets and granting us increased Damage to Slowed or Chilled enemies. This Damage increase is doubled to Stunned or Frozen enemies.

Class Mechanic: Specializations (Preparation)

Preparation is our Specialization of choice in this end-game build. This is due to the usage of Shadow Clone, allowing you to make very big burst windows. It is also very easy to lower the Cooldown of Shadow Clone with Preparation.

Legendary Aspects

Legendary Aspects are one of the most powerful parts of any build. Below we list the ones used for this Diablo 4 Rogue Shadow Imbuement Build. Each build has a limited amount of Offensive, Defensive, and Utility Aspects that it can use. Here is a reminder of the slot limitations for Legendary Aspects:

Offensive – Amulets, Gloves, Ring, Weapons
Defensive – Amulets, Chest, Helm, Legs, Shield
Mobility – Amulets, Boots
Resource – Rings
Utility – Amulets, Boots, Chest, Gloves, Helm, Shield

Aspect Priority

Below you will find the list of Aspects we use and recommend for this build. The Aspects are in order starting from most important to the least. However all the Aspects are worthwhile. You can also check the build planner above for these Aspects:

Repeating Aspect (Offensive)
Edgemaster’s Aspect (Offensive)
Umbrous Aspect (Defensive)
Aspect of Disobedience (Defensive)
Vengeful Aspect (Offensive)
Aspect of Might (Defensive)
Accelerating Aspect (Offensive)
Aspect of the Protector (Defensive)
Aspect of Corruption (Offensive)
Assimilation Aspect (Resource)
Mangler’s Aspect (Utility)
Ghostwalker’s Aspect (Mobility)

Unique Items

Penitent Greaves (Boots) – These boots provide decent stats such as Movement Speed. Penitent Greaves also provides a chilling trail that increases your damage to Chilled enemies and Slows them. Replace Ghostwalker’s with these when possible.
Harlequin’s Crest (Helm) – The Harlequin’s Crest is the undisupted best in slot Helm for every build in Diablo 4. The helmet provides you with Maximum Life, Cooldown Reduction, Energy Generation and All Stats. On top of this, the Helm provides +4 Ranks to ALL Skills. Replace Mangler’s with this as soon as possible.

Malignant Hearts

Malignant Hearts, a new addition to Diablo 4 through the first Seasonal experience act as a huge boost to your build capabilities. As a result, we recommend using the following Malignant Hearts for this build:

Revenge (Brutal, Defensive-World Tier III): 10-20% of incoming damage is instead suppressed. When you use a Defensive, Subterfuge or a Macabre skill, all suppressed damage is amplified by 250% and explodes, dealing up to 1360-2040 Fire damage to Nearby enemies.
The Calculated (Devious, Utility-World Tier III): After spending 150-200 of your Primary Resource, your next attack Stuns enemies hit for 2 seconds.
Trickery (Brutal, Defensive): When you use a Subterfuge Skill, leave behind an unstable Shadow Decoy Trap that Taunts enemies. The Shadow Decoy Trap will explode after 6.0 seconds dealing 680-1020 Shadow damage. Cannot occur more than once every 5 seconds.

Alternative Choices

The Dark Dance (Vicious, Offensive-World Tier III): Every 5 seconds while above 60% Life, Core Skills cost 68-51 Life instead of your Primary Resource. Skills that consume Life deal 10-20% increased damage.
Prudent Heart (Brutal, Defensive-World Tier III): You become Immune for 2.0-4.0 seconds after you lose more than 20% Life in a single hit. This effect can only occur once every 110 seconds.

Item Affix Priority

Item	1	2	3	4	5
Helm	Ranks to Shadow Imbuement	Cooldown Reduction	Max Life	Total Armor	All Stats
Chest	Damage Reduction	Close Damage Reduction	Max Life.	Total Armor	Dexterity
Gloves	Ranks to Rapid Fire	Critical Strike Damage	Attack Speed	Critical Strike Chance	Critical Strike Damage with Imbued Skills
Pants	Damage Reduction	Close Damage Reduction	Max Life	Total Armor	Dexterity
Boots	Movement Speed	Energy Cost Reduction	Damage Reduction while Injured	Dodge Chance	All Stats
Amulet	Movement Speed	Damage Reduction	Cooldown Reduction	Ranks to Malice	Ranks to Weapon Mastery
Ring x 2	Critical Strike Chance	Critical Strike Damage	Vulnerable Damage	Max Life	Critical Strike Damage with Imbued Skills
Weapon 1H (Swords) / 2H (Crossbow)	Vulnerable Damage	Critical Strike Damage	Core Skill Damage	Dexterity	Critical Strike Damage with Imbued Skills

How To Play Rapid Fire Rogue

The Rapid Fire Rogue is a mobile ranged farming machine from the mid-game onward. As a somewhat squishy class in melee, risk versus reward is there and may take a bit of time to get used to in high tier Nightmare Dungeons. However with Rapid Fire, you can sustain fairly well due to the amount of damage you dish out consistently to give you Maximum Life back.

With the Rapid Fire Build, you have less urgency to manage your Energy usage. The reason for this is due to the Rapid Fire perk “Improved Rapid Fire”, which returns 15 Energy per cast when hitting a Vulnerable target.
Play around Preparation and your Cooldowns to get the most out of the Cooldown Reset from activating your ultimate Skill.
A simple rotation is to engage with Shadow Step, drop a Poison Trap on the target(s), use Shadow Imbuement, cast Shadow Clone to regain another Shadow Imbuement and Poison Trap, rounding out the rotation with Rapid Fire spam. Make sure to weave in the additional Shadow Imbuement and Poison Trap for maximum effectiveness.
An interesting but sometimes hard to get used to difference with the Rogue Rapid Fire Build is that we do not run a Basic Skill on our bar. This is mostly due to Rapid Fire being so strong and spam-heavy that you can afford to use it as a sort of replacement.
Use Dash and Shadow Step as a means of re-positioning. Dash can also be used aggressively as an Imbued Skill and to Slow or Daze enemies.
Remember that Shadow Clone also provides a long duration of Unstoppable. As a result you will have free reign to pump damage without being crowd control locked.

How to Play vs Mob Packs, Elites and Bosses

When approaching single-target fights such as World Bosses or high tier Nightmare Dungeon bosses, switch your Specialization to Inner Sight. With the boss as the only target, it ensures high Inner Sight up-time. You can also consider switching to Poison Imbuement for Bosses.
To get the most out of your damage in large packs of mobs, you can afford to get up close and personal. At first this may seem odd due to the build being ranged, however the build thrives up close. Being up close allows you to regain health through our Skill Tree alongside dealing huge damage through Ricochet.
Against Elites, entering the fight by Crowd Controlling the most dangerous target is advised. To achieve this efficiently, use Shadow Step as an engage tool followed by an immediate Poison Trap.

Additional Tips

This particular Rogue build that plays around Shadow Imbuement, Rapid Fire and Shadow Clone excels in pretty much all content within Diablo 4. However, there is a few important things to note throughout each end-game activity and tweaks to the Skill Tree and Aspects:

With a +4 Ranks to Shadow Imbuement Helm, you can take 4 points out of Shadow Imbuement to keep it 5/5 and put the rest into Dark Shroud.
In the PVP Fields of Hatred, the Rogue is a formidable and high-speed opponent. For PVP content, Shadow Clone serves as both burst DPS and a source of Unstoppable to prevent chained Crowd Control. Poison Imbuement is also a potential choice over Shadow.
Survivability is key if you are pushing higher tier Nightmare Dungeons. If you are struggling to survive, focus on improving positioning or adding more Damage Reduction sources to your gear and Paragon.
In the PVP Fields of Hatred, switching out and also hot-swapping gear to have access to the Eluding Aspect to break out of stun-lock, Exploiter’s Aspect to fight Barbarians, Aspect of the Protector to gain a shield vs an opponent and Escape Artist to guarantee Dodge on several attacks – is recommended. Some Aspects gain far less value while fighting in PVP.
Remember that this build excels in both ranged and melee distances. As a result of this, don’t be afraid to get in the thick of the fight or even stack up on some Close Damage.
Practice in some easier content first to get used to having no Basic Attack.
We recommend putting any additional points into your Dark Shroud. This is due to the Umbrous Aspect giving us free Dark Shroud stacks through Marksman Skill usage. You can obtain +4 ranks to Dark Shroud on your pants.

Conclusion

This concludes our guide for the Rogue Rapid Fire build in Diablo 4! For more information on Diablo 4, including Class Builds and Guides, be sure to check out our Diablo 4 home page!

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