The Rogue is one of the fastest and most efficient classes to play to get to max level in Diablo 4, thanks to its high damage, fast movement, and a varied arsenal of tools that make its single target and AOE damage really strong. No matter the playstyle, there’s something that will help you out. Below you’ll find three Diablo 4 leveling builds for Season 1, each with a different flavor of gameplay.
Diablo 4 Rogue Leveling Builds for Season 1¶
The three Rogue Leveling builds in Diablo 4 we recommend are as follows:
- Twisitng Blade Rogue Leveling Build
- Flurry & Trap Rogue Leveling Build
- Barrage Ranged Rogue Leveling Build
(feel free to click the blue text on these build names to auto-scroll to a relevant build you’re interested in. You can also find a quick summary of each build below.)
The Twisting Blades Rogue is the fastest movement build on the list, with one of the highest damaging core skills. However, it’s slightly tricky to pull off, thanks to the lineup damage from Twisting Blades return damage being where the main DPS output come from, and it is also somewhat legendary reliant that you only start acquiring in Scosglen. It also requires the level 20 specialization, Inner Sight, to start properly working.
Meanwhile, the Flurry Rogue is very easy to get going, and makes for a very simple AOE build with great movement speed. It does lack single-target damage, but that begins to improve with Poison Trap greatly, and really comes online with your ultimate. Once you get your capstone, and third spec, you essentially see how this playstyle works even in end game, with you placing lots of traps, resetting cooldown, and nuking packs and getting stable single target damage for a generally effective playstyle.
Lastly, the Ranged Rogue leveling build is the more simple one of the build, taking advantage of crit, and attack speed ramps, and using Barrage to do single target and AOE damage. Its overall damage output is somewhat lower than the other two builds, but it requires the least amount of content to get it rolling, likely making this the better leveling build until you get your hands on ultimate skills and want to pivot. However, it is also viable to level in if you really like the ranged archetype.
Diablo 4 Rogue Leveling Build: Twisting Blades Mobility Build¶
The Twisting Blades Rogue leveling build is a very high DPS build, focusing on your return damage on your Blades. The best way to utilize the damage of that is by grabbing as much movement as possible, and lining enemies up the best you can. So, this is going to be a very fast and agile, perfect for the Rogue archetype, as well as leveling speed, boss killing, and pack density.
However, be warned this build has a few break points while leveling, as you will need at least one movement skill to make this work, followed by key breakpoints that further improve, such as ultimate, level 20 specialization and one or two legendaries in Scosglen, Aspect of Arrow Storms and Bladedancer’s Aspect, which are Scosglen dungeon rewards that only unlocks part way into Act 2. You need the movement break point to make this work, while the rest just make the build better for general DPS output in single and AOE damage areas, further snowballing this high-damage build.
For those doing a Rogue Leveling Build for Season 1, then be aware that the new Pestilent Points Aspect is available after completing Chapter 1 of your journey. You can get this in your codex from level 10 or earlier, and have it ready for aspect enchanting when you start getting Veiled Crystal. This will help with single target damage throughout the early game leveling process!
- Puncture
- Enhanced Puncture
- Twisting Blades (TB)
- Fundamental Puncture
- Enhanced TB
- Improved TB
- Dash
- Shadow Step
- Enhanced Shadow Step
- Disciplined Shadow Step
- Enhanced Dash
- TB
- TB
- TB
- TB
- Puncture
- Shadow Imbuement
- Enhanced Shadow Imbuement
- Blended Shadow Imbuement (if you don’t have a piece of gear that grants a skill point to Poison Imbuement, feel free to assign just one point to it. This allows you to swap to PI for single target against obvious boss fights.)
- Puncture
- Puncture
- Puncture
- Disciplined Dash
- Shadow Clone
- Prime Shadow Clone
- Supreme Shadow Clone
- Precision Imbuement
- Precision Imbuement
- Precision Imbuement
- Exploit
- Malice
- Malice
- Malice
- Exploit
- Exploit
- Rapid Gambits
- Trick Attacks
- Trick Attacks
- Trick Attacks
- Concussive
- Concussive
- Concussive
- Sturdy
- Sturdy
- Sturdy
- Stutter Step
- Stutter Step
- Stutter Step
If you like this build, why not check out our full end game Rogue Twisted Blades build in D4, featuring Paragon boar, full legendary effects, stat priority and more.
Diablo 4 Rogue Leveling Build: The Vulnerable Flurry Trap Master Build¶
The general idea behind the Flurry Trap Master leveling play style is that you generate Vulnerability really easily, spread it using Flurry, and then use Poison Trap for single target, and Shadow Imbuement for AOE clear speed increase. This makes the build fairly well-rounded in its early damage profile. You also get Dash, adding to your general leveling speed and map clearing speeds while leveling.
When you enter that ultimate phase of leveling, you can see the build come online, as your Death Trap will pull enemies in range to the center, making it easy to spread your Vulnerability to all enemies brought into the trap’s center, which then combines for applying your Poison Trap onto enemies in the middle. You also get your hands on Preparation Specialization at level 30, which is a very good cooldown reset for Poison Trap, and SI, which spending energy lowers your Death Trap cooldown too. This allows you to pull large packs and get several Poison Traps easily, and potentially a second or third Death Trap off too.
You can also get your hands on the Aspect of Encircling Blades, an aspect you get from Fractured Peaks, which makes this build even better to get going early on. You can also grab the Aspect of Arrow Storms if you’d like, but its not necessary as you already do lots of AOE damage, so it will only be used as a single target damage proc while you use Puncture to refill your energy.
- Puncture
- Enhanced Puncture
- Flurry
- Fundamental Puncture
- Enhanced Flurry
- Improved Flurry
- Dash
- Enhanced Dash
- Flurry
- Flurry
- Flurry
- Poison Trap - This will begin to increase your single target boss killing.
- Enhanced Poison Trap
- Subverting Poison Trap
- Flurry
- Poison Trap
- Shadow Imbuement
- Enhanced Shadow Imbuement
- Mixed Shadow Imbuement - You already have great Vuln spread, so, you can take this to increase synergy with your poison trap damage.
- Precision Imbuement
- Precision Imbuement
- Precision Imbuement
- Poison Trap
- Death Trap
- Prime Death Trap
- Supreme Death Trap
- Trap Mastery
- Trap Mastery
- Trap Mastery
- Aftermath
- Aftermath
- Aftermath
- Poison Trap
- Capstone - Exposure: You have great AOE damage already and don’t need Victimize, and more traps going off in a fight is great for added single target damage
- Innervation
- Alchemists’ Fortune
- Alchemists’ Fortune
- Alchemists’ Fortune
- Second Wind
- Second Wind
- Second Wind
- Poison Trap
- Puncture
- Puncture
- Puncture
- Puncture
- Sturdy
- Sturdy
- Sturdy
Diablo 4 Rogue Leveling Build: Barrage Build¶
If you want a ranged rogue leveling playstyle, that is likely the best option for early-game leveling. Barrage offers the more hybrid AOE and single target, with Rapid Fire more single target focused, and Penetrating Shot more AOE focused. You can also take Heart Seeker for general crit ramping for boss battles, and it also has the best synergy with your capstone talent later on.
You also take movement skills just to make leveling quicker, along with Poison Trap for some more kiting and single-target boss damage. You can also take Shadow Imbuement for additional map-clearing speeds. Your core legendary affix while leveling is called Aspect of Arrow Storms, which is a legendary affix that comes from Scosglen, so, you will want to make that a destination once you’re around level 20.
- Heartseeker (HS)
- Enhanced HS
- Barrage
- Enhanced Barrage
- Improved Barrage
- Dash
- Enhanced Dash
- Disciplined Dash
- Barrage
- Barrage
- Concealment
- Enhanced Concealment
- Countering Stealth
- Barrage
- Barrage
- Shadow Imbuement
- Enhanced Shadow Imbuement
- Blended Shadow Imbuement
- Heartseeker
- Heartseeker
- Heartseeker
- Heartseeker
- Rain of Arrows
- Prime Rain of Arrows
- Supreme Rain of Arrows
- Precision Imbuement
- Precision Imbuement
- Precision Imbuement
- Aftermath - Grants 25 energy after casting an ultimate skill. - General DPS improvement for bosses.
- Aftermath
- Aftermath
- Exploit
- Precision - Capstone skill for Markmsan crit modifiers.
When you reach capstone, you can start synergizing your build with better critical strike chance, but it likely means you lose on some mobility. In an ideal synergized world, you want to switch from Poison Trap and Dash to Caltrops and Concealment. This will grant you much better synergy with your critical strike chances and increase synergy with the Precision capstone, so you can often generate more crits, especially while you have low crit chance in the early game.
If you want to keep mobility, we recommend only trading Poison Trap for Concealment. It will slightly lower your single target damage, but you will still have access to Dash for movement speed. You will also start getting passive damage improvements and other energy regen methods to compensate for the lack of poison damage and more Basic and Core skill-up time instead.
Other passives we recommended you take is Haste. Haste grants movement speed while above 50% energy or attack speed while below that threshold. You can also grab Stutter Step, which grants movement speed when you critically strike opponents for four seconds. This is some nice additional movement speed modifiers that scale with your ranged crit build.
You can also spend your remaining talent on improving Shadow Imbuement, lowering Concealment’s cooldown, or finding other ways to increase your damage until you reach level 50.
This concludes our Diablo 4 Rogue leveling builds for Season 1 guide. Hopefully you have an idea of what build and playstyle you’re interested in, which can take you to the next level.
Looking for more leveling builds? Check out other class’ leveling builds below:
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