Marksman Rogue Build Guide [Penetrating Shot + Rapid Fire]

Rogue
1

Marksman Rogue Build Guide

Hi guys, I’m Asmo and this is a Marksman Rogue Build Guide for Diablo IV. The original idea for the build was to create a character with a focus on very fast clear speed that would also deal high single target damage for very quick dungeon farming. This build breaks away from the commonly followed idea of using only 1 core skill in favour of combining Penetrating Shot with Rapid Fire. By disposing of secondary utility skills, we are focusing on the simplicity of having the best single target damage skill, the best aoe clear skill, the best mobility skill, the best defensive skill and the best damage scaling skill.

If you want to see what the build looks like in action you can check out the video version of the guide with gameplay included at the beginning and at the end of the video: youtube /watch?v=DFR2z01CC0U

Aspects:

Out of all aspects this build uses, only one of them doesn’t come from a codex, which means you’ll be able to set this character up easily before World Tier 3.

  • Umbrous aspect - this is our only aspect that does not come from a codex. It grants us dark shrouds on lucky hit criticals. Fortunately we are easily getting 100% lucky hit chance and 50%+ crit chance which means it will proc very reliably. You need dark shrouds allocated on the skill tree for it to work, but you don’t need dark shrouds on your skill bar, allowing us to use an extra ability.

  • Aspect of Might - with 6 second duration, this aspect provides us with 20% generic damage reduction that stays up at all times in combat due to how combo playstyle works.

  • Aspect of the Protector - simple barrier generation when hitting an elite - very useful for sustain and makes us significantly tankier.

  • Vengeful Aspect - with the use of Exploit glyph and 100% lucky hit chance, we’re instantly stacking this aspect with a single penetrating shot to grant us an additional 9% crit chance

  • Wind Striker Aspect - Up to 16% movement speed buff. Combining this with the Stutter Step passive gives us 31% extra movement speed whenever we crit. For that reason, you always want to “tag” monsters as you’re running by and hit them for the crit proc even if you’re not intending to kill them as it will make you run faster.

  • Aspect of Arrow Storms - AoE damage field that procs from Lucky Hits. We’re putting this aspect on our two-handed weapon to double the flat damage value which can get up to 13.6.k. The reason we’re putting this instead of Trickshot Aspect on our crossbow/bow is that the Trickshot only benefits our AoE clear while this aspect helps with AoE as well as the single target damage.

  • Trickshot Aspect - this is what gives Penetrating Shot the splitting arrows. We’re putting this on our amulet to amplify the damage of secondary projectiles.

  • Aspect of the Expectant - very straightforward choice for any combo point based build.

  • Edgemaster’s Aspect - since we’re staying high on energy most of the time, especially during single target fights, this gives us another powerful damage increase. (Since it’s currently disabled due to a bug, you can try instead: aspect of bursting venoms or aspect of corruption).

  • Rapid Aspect - very large attack speed bonus for our puncture. Our core skills don’t benefit that much from attack speed, but it does matter for the basic generator.

With most of these aspects you should try to get as high rolls as possible (the only aspects where rolls don’t matter that much is the Vengeful Aspect)

Honourable mention - Eluding Aspect - This aspect will save you from dying in nightmare dungeons especially. It makes you unstoppable if you become injured while crowd controlled. 9 out of 10 times if you die you’re going to be crowd controlled, so this is a very powerful aspect to add to your build if you find yourself dying or if you play in Hardcore.

Unique Items:

Condemnation Dagger - this unique is a core part of the build and gives us a huge damage increase from its unique modifier and some decent affixes.

Other uniques:

Grasp of Shadow is a good leveling item. Unfortunately it doesn’t have any crit so our end game gloves will still be legendary.

Skyhunter - decent for leveling if you don’t have a decent crossbow but not worth using overall.

Penitent Greaves - not worth using in this build, the modifiers on these are terrible for us.

Skill Tree:

You can find the full skill tree, aspects paragon board and notes here: d4builds /builds/2206d8ce-a385-4688-ace2-c4cc8156de6e/

  • We’re starting off by rushing to Fundamental Puncture - this will result in the fastest boss kill at level 4 in the first dungeon. We don’t put any more points in Puncture beyond the first rank.

  • Next we put a couple of points in Penetrating Shot and one point in Rapid Fire. You want to level them side by side. Pick Enhanced Penetrating Shot and Improved Rapid fire after having a couple of points in each skill.

  • As soon as possible grab 1 rank in Dash unless you have an amulet which gives you the skill. If you need a source of unstoppable, you can temporarily grab shadowstep however I find that unstoppable is not necessary in Softcore until you start doing nightmare dungeons.

  • After that you want to start speccing into poison imbuement and during leveling - before you get the trickshot aspect - I recommend picking up shadow imbuement as a temporary boost to your clear. You don’t need the concealment early so that frees up an extra slot on your action bar, and shadow imbuement is the best replacement for early leveling. If you have an amulet with +1/+2 to all imbuement skills it’s enough to use the shadow imbuement without putting any points in it.

  • Pick Mixed Poison Imbuement early (we swap it to Blended Poison imbuement once we get 50%+ crit chance on our puncture).

  • As soon as possible take 1 point in Adrenaline rush and 3 points in Haste - this bonus works even in town, making your progression much faster.

  • Next take Improved penetrating shot and 3 points in stutter step.

  • For our key passive we’re picking Precision (even though some people claim it is not good because puncture is a marksman skill and will consume the guaranteed crit chance frequently it still ends up being the best key passive in practice and the damage increase is noticeable).

  • In the end game we put 1 point in concealment + subverting or countering concealment (you can also skip the extra 2 points and put them in a passive of your choice), and 1 point in dark shrouds + Subverting Dark Shroud which will be activated by our aspect.

  • Lastly we will in our passives: Deadly Venom 3/3 → Debilitating Toxins 3/3, Exploit 3/3 → Malice 3/3, Innervation 3/3

Paragon Board:

The exact pathing can be found in the d4 build config linked earlier. Here I will go over the board and glyph choices:

  • Starting Board → Ranger Glyph: With huge dexterity in radius this gives us a lot of generic increased damage and some tankiness. This is a very simple choice.

  • Cunning Stratagem → Exploit Glyph: You want to start using the exploit glyph as early as possible. The on-hit vulnerable proc will help your clear a lot. The board has a lot of strength in the radius to support the glyph and the legendary node will give you 100% lucky hit chance on Penetrating Shot and extra single target damage from additional arrows on Rapid Fire.

  • Exploit Weakness → Combat Glyph: The exploit weakness legendary node gives you a source of “increased damage taken by enemies”* which is a very good way to increase your damage. The board has a lot of Int to support the glyph which scales our crit damage and helps with energy regeneration. The board itself also has a lot of “vulnerable damage” nodes which will path through.

  • A note about Vulnerable, “damage buckets” and damage calculation. It is baffling to me how a bad interpretation of bad data in the beta ended up spawning this silly, KFC inspired idea of “damage buckets”. There are no magical buckets and the damage calculation in this game is actually pretty straightforward. Diablo IV does not use the distinction that POE does between “more” and “increased” instead they specify if something is a multiplier with an [x] or increase with a [+]. All damage increased “multipliers” are additive with each other. Vulnerable however is NOT an increase or a “multiplier” to YOUR damage dealt. It is an increase to “damage taken by enemy”. Therefore, for the engine to calculate how much does it need to increase the damage taken by enemy, it first has to know how much damage you would have dealt, so your damage increases and multipliers are calculated first, applied to the monster and then increased again by various modifiers that increase their damage taken. This is very clear from the wording and is not only the case with Vulnerable but also other mechanics such as the Exploit Weakness legendary paragon node and the Chip Glyph’s additional bonus. It also doesn’t make sense that attack speed or critical strike damage would be somehow lumped together with damage increases, they’re part of a different calculation and behave exactly as you would expect them to. Please stop hallucinating buckets.

  • Tricks of the Trade → Chip Glyph: The legendary node on this board is not really worth picking up however it has really good rare paragon passives and a huge amount of dexterity in the glyph radius which is needed for the Chip glyph. The glyph itself gives us a huge increase to physical damage which is the base damage we’re dealing and the additional bonus is one of the most powerful bonuses of any glyph.

  • Leyrana’s Instinct → Tracker Glyph: Again we’re picking this board for the stats available in glyph’s radius to maximise its benefits. The glyph itself gives us a lot of increased damage to poisoned targets and extra poison duration which synergizes with a lot of our modifiers and passives.

We leave a few paragon passives as flex points to fill in stat requirements for rare nodes depending on our current gear. I highly recommend planning your builds that way, so that your character is fully functional before level 100.

Useful modifiers on items:

Movement Speed (top priority for me on boots and amulet)

“+ Ranks to Imbuement Skills”
“+ Ranks to Poison Imbuement”
“+ Ranks to Penetrating Shot”
“+ Ranks to Rapid Fire”

Dexterity
Intelligence
Strength
All Stats (very useful for paragon rare node requirements)

Offensive:

Vulnerable Damage
Critical Strike Chance
Critical Damage
Core Skill Damage
Marksman Damage
Damage to Poisoned
Physical Damage

Imbuement Skill Damage
Poison Damage
Damage Over Time

Defensive:

Dodge Chance
Dodge Chance Against Close
Armour
Damage Reduction From Distant
Damage Reduction From Close
Damage Reduction While Injured
Damage Reduction From Poisoned
Heal on Lucky Hit (this is an extremely powerful modifier for our build which gives us incredible sustain, unfortunately it’s very hard to get in combination with Crit Chance, + Ranks to Pen Shot and + Ranks to Rapid Fire which is what we would need on our ideal gloves. I’ve spent probably 30 million gold rerolling potential gloves to try and get this combo and no luck so far, so good luck :wink: )
Poison Resistance (resistances in general are very bad, but extra poison res on 1 or 2 items is very helpful because how how much damage poison deals compared to other sources of damage in the game).

Gems:

In Jewelry we use the Skulls as armour is the best defensive stat we can get.

In Armour sockets I recommend Topaz, since 90% of the time if we’re in danger it’s because of crowd control.

In Weapons I recommend Skulls for sustain (my personal preference), or Emerald if you’re lacking damage but have good crit chance (50%+ effective crit on pen shot)

Gameplay Tips:

The ability setup on our bars is going to look like this:

Puncture, Penetrating Shot, Rapid Fire, Poison Imbuement, Dash, Concealment. Put them in whatever order is most comfortable for you.

  • Try to always use your core skills with 3 combo points. As you play with the build you’ll learn how much damage you’re doing and know when it’s not necessary to stack up to 3, but if you want to maximise your damage you should puncture first and then use core skill once and repeat.

  • When to use Pen Shot and when to use Rapid Fire: In general Pen Shot is for hitting multiple enemies and Rapid Fire is for hitting one enemy. If you’re fighting the Butcher, with a pack of other monsters around him - you want to use Penetrating Shot and aim it through the Butcher (same thing with Elites). If there is a fat little mob with extra health bothering you by himself, you Rapid Fire him in the face. Always Rapid Fire a boss.

  • When running to the boss room, immediately use all charges of dash and then use Poison Imbuement right after. That way by the time you get to the boss and rapid fire him twice, your poison imbuement cooldown will come back up and you can use 4 rapid fires in a row with the imbuement.

  • You can do the same thing when entering the dungeon. Spam dash (dash consumes the imbue that’s why you want to use it first) and evade immediately and then use poison imbuement to get the cooldown ticking.

And that wraps it up. I’ve enjoyed the build tremendously and hope you will too. Cheers! - Asmodeus.

4 Likes
2

Can we not use stuff like Temerity or Mother’s embrace?

3

Love this build, used it since I saw your video on youtube.
It’s much more fun than using only penetrating, and far, far stronger vs bosses.

You don’t use the repeating aspect? Found it usefull vs elite packs.
Also, you don’t use shadow imbuement so you don’t have cooldown?

4

I’m working on a similar build (although theoretical since I haven’t had much time to play) but take a different approach that leverages Inner Sight instead of Combo Points. The build emphasizes energy production, imbuements, dodge, and damage reduction. It drops basic skills altogether. The skill layout is d4builds /builds/f8735de9-efa2-421d-bd99-1f1770d68909/. The skill bar looks like:

  • Pen Shot
  • Rapid Fire
  • Cold Imbuement
  • Poison Imbuement
  • Shadow Imbuement
  • Rain of Arrows

The build is augmented with the following Aspects:

  • Aspect of the Uncanny Resillience
  • Enshrouding Aspect
  • Vengeful Aspect
  • Umbrous Aspect
  • Eluding Aspect
  • Toxic Alchemist’s Aspect (ranged weapon)
  • Trickshot Aspect (amulet)
  • Aspect of the Umbral
  • Assimilation Aspect
  • Aspect of Arrow Storms
  • Icy Alchemist’s Aspect

The board/glyph progress would go:

  • Starter Board → Ranger
  • No Witnesses → Exploit
  • Leyrana’s Instinct → Infusion

Defenses

Damage Reduction
The build mostly relies on raw DR to survive until you make it to the Leyrana’s Instinct board; then things start to get VERY interesting. The main source of DR is provided by Dark Shroud. With the Enshrouding Aspect each globe provides 10-12 DR for a total of 50-60%. Enshrouding also helps if you end a fight low on orbs since you don’t have the skill on your bar.

Since you’ll be using Poison Imbuement and have Toxic Alchemist’s Aspect, most everything around you will remain in a state of poisoned. This provides another 15% DR against those enemies from Debilitating Toxins.

Although non combo point Pen Shot has a lower lucky hit chance, you’ll be casting it on auto fire (or close to it) so still producing large numbers of lucky hits. Aspect of Uncanny Resilience will provide the max benefit most of the time (I don’t know what the max value is).

You also want at least one affix on each slot that allows it to have either straight DR or DR to close/distant/poisoned/etc. Of course having a high armor value is also important for base DR.

Dodge
Early on, dodge provides the build a small amount of survivability since dodge sources just aren’t plentiful. You get around .5-2% dodge from stats before you get to the paragon boards. You can also gain a small amount of dodge if you find it on gear (though other affixes are probably more important). Since you’ll be rotating imbuement skills constantly, the Agile passive will provide a constant 12%. The Assimilation Aspect provides another 8% dodge due to all the poison you are throwing around. These things together produce an overall 18-20% dodge chance.

Once you get to Leyrana’s Instinct board things change pretty drastically. After traversing the boards, you will pick up another 2-4% dodge just from dexterity. Additionally, you will obtain periodic 100% dodge chance each time you fill your insight bar. If you invest in the +damage after dodge nodes, dodge becomes one of the best offensive stats in the game.

Dealing Damage

Energy Production
Without energy, a rogue does no damage. This build focuses heavily on creating sources of energy. This is one of the reasons it uses Inner Sight over Combo Points as a specialization. Initially it will take ~20 seconds to fill your gauge which provides 4 seconds of infinite energy. Put another way, you’ll have infinite energy roughly 17% of the time as the gauge doesn’t start filling again until the 4 seconds is over. As you gain power, this can come down to 10 seconds or 29% of the time. Not only that but your energy is returned to max value at the end of the 4 seconds.

This build also produces a lot of crowd control through Cold Imbuement, Icy Alchemist’s Aspect, max energy Pen Shot, and knock down from RoA. You can also swap out Aspect of Arrow Storms for Aspect of Shared Misery for additional CC spread. Each time a CC is applied you receive 1-4 energy from Aspect of the Umbral. If you are engaging a large group, this can practically fill your globe by itself. The innervation passive provides a constant stream of energy since Pen shot will be providing lucky hits often.

Rain of Arrows not only provides damage and CC spread, the Aftermath passive recovers 75 energy each time you use it. The Consuming Shadows passive provides occasional energy, but has the flaw that the shadow damage HAS to be the damage that killed the enemy. This passive has far less effect if you are in a party since it’s less likely your damage is the killing blow. Assimilation aspect also provides a decent energy source once your dodge chance raises above 20% as it restores 5-10 energy each dodge.

Rotation
The rotation is pretty simple and only differs based on the target being trash or boss/elite. Cast Poison Imbue, Pen Shot (trash)/Rapid Fire (boss/elite) x2, Cold Imbue, Pen Shot/Rapid Fire x2, Shadow Imbue, Pen Shot/Rapid Fire x2. Repeat. You swap out one of the Pen Shot/Rapid Fires for Rain of Arrows whenever the cooldown is up and your energy gets low. There are benefits to casting RoA under either cold imbue for the CC spread or poison for the massive DoT spread. Don’t use it during shadow imbue since it’s lucky hit chance is so low and won’t trigger your AoE aspects as well as Pen Shot.

The reason you prioritize poison imbue over cold is the energy return from the cold imbue CC spread. The poison imbue also lasts longer than the chill from cold imbue so you have a better chance to cast shadow imbued Pen Shot while both effects are still active and gain the benefit of both AoE aspects for both shadow imbued casts.

Lucky Hit
This build relies on the Lucky Hit mechanic so takes full ranks of the Innervation, Alchemist’s Fortune, and Second Wind passives. Innervation will provide nice energy generation when using pen shot on packs of mobs with Trickshot Aspect. Since you’ll be rotating all three Imbues, nearly all skill casts will be imbued and gain the benefit of Alchemist’s Fortune. Since you will be spending a lot of energy thanks to your energy income, Second Wind will have a very high uptime as well.

The three AoE aspects Toxic Alchemist’s, Icy Alchemist’s, and Arrow Storms will be triggered very frequently using pen shot and provide consistent area damage. The downside to these aspects is that they don’t scale off of weapon damage and can eventually become less impactful. Once that happens, there are other aspects that might be more effective. The Vengeful aspect provides a nice damage boost while Victimize only grows stronger as your gear improves.

Lucky hit is also very important to your defenses and energy via aspects (Uncanny Resilience, Umbrous, and Umbral) as well as Innervation. Shadow crash contributes to CC spread.

Dodge as Damage
Lastly, it’s important to understand the importance of dodge to damage output. The Leyrana’s Instinct board has magic and rare nodes that provide % damage after dodge for X seconds. If you focus on satisfying the rare node’s stat requirements, you can reach +105% bonus damage for X seconds. Between your normal dodge chance and the legendary effect of the board, the uptime on this stat will be very high. As far as I know, this is one of the largest bonus damage categories you can get.

2 Likes
5

Temerity can probably replace the barrier, with the builds naturally high crit you can use the slot for something else, switch a skill to the life steal passive AND you basically won’t ever die on bosses

6

Why did you pick puncture instead of forceful arrow for your basic skill, I’m guessing it’s for the faster vulnerable? However you need to be at close range for that to trigger and it probably lowers the survivability of the build

7

Temerity is a fine replacement for the chest aspect because it does something very similar so you can totally use it. Mother’s embrace on the other hand is purely just a loss of an Aspect so it’s not worth using.

As for the other question about puncture it’s because it’s way faster and generates extra energy, but it’s very easy to swap it if you prefer another basic skill,

8

Thanks for this… I started as Rouge as it’s my favorite kinda class from any game.

All the videos we all about the twisting blades builds and I really didn’t like the gameplay. Probably because it’s not a good build for leveling.

My buddy just started playing so rather than running lower content on my sorcerer which I made and got to 55. I picked up my rouge again.

Also not even kidding my Rouges name is “Asmodeus” lol I always name my characters after demon names. Abaddon and Asmodeus are my first picks usually.

9

Upon further analysis, you lose too many stats with Temerity. my pants have all stats + extra all stats already

10

is this not too many skill points?

11

i’m thinking i might replace dash with shadow imbuement, for easier mob farming

12

Whoever designed rogue unique gloves WITHOUT CRIT needs to be fired

13

Why Penetrating Shot over Barrage for AoE?

14

I used barrage to level to the point I could obtain the trickshot aspect. The problem with barrage is that it just doesn’t hit hard enough as you level. Each arrow of barrage deals 29% dmg at rank 5. There’s 5 arrows base (non combo point) for a total of 145% damage spread across 5 enemies. The ricochets only deal 8.6% damage each and can only affect 1 additional target.

Pen shot on the other hand deals 98% weapon damage to the first target and gains 9.8% damage each enemy it hits after that. The trickshot aspect arrows deal anywhere between 9.8 to 49% damage (placed on your ranged weapon for double effect) and also pierce unlimited targets.

Only hitting 2 targets with pen shot deals 98 + 107.8 = 205.8% damage total while barrage only deals 58% damage. The numbers only go up from there as you add targets. You also have to look at the lucky shot values. Pen shot has a base 50% chance while each arrow of barrage only carries a 16% chance. There are so many effects in the game that require lucky hits that pen shot really starts to shine.

15

pen shot with shadow imbue is hilarious. I build 3 combo points usually instant with the unique dagger then i round up like 20 mobs and shadow imbue / pen shot and they all instantly explode even most elites will either insta explode if the pack is big enough or be like 20-30% health and die with the second shot. The aoe is insane

1 Like
16

First, thank you for this write up. I’ve been working on a Rogue and have settled on Rapid Fire as one of my preferred skills. I didn’t have much planning going into it, it just worked out that way and seemed to work best for my playstyle.

Having said that, I’ve been feeling a little unsatisfied with the build in my 60’s. I had been doing an imbuement build using Rain of Arrows and Word of Hakan, but that was leaving me frustrated as well, both with energy since most of those build have you taking a basic skill out of the rotation and relying on other things to keep your energy up.

I spend some time and a couple of million gold respecing into this build, and it allowed me to discover a few things. Now, I already had the repeating aspect on my crossbow for my previous build, and I didn’t want to replace that right away, but I did put trickshot onto an amulet. What I found was that Rapid Fire with the repeating aspect was much more effective at clearing groups than Penetrating Shot was. The build I was running before was using different specializations, and I found the Combo Points and using puncture again much more satisfying.

The problem with Trickshot and Penetrating Shot was that when it branched, it was at right angles, where with the Rapid Fire and Repeating, it ricochets directly to another enemy, even behind you (I believe). I also found myself missing the Shadow Imbuement as well.

I am currently working on the Paragon board you posted, and that along with a lot of the aspects you recommend, and I think especially the Condemnation dagger have been a big boon to my play sessions.

So, I have tweaked this build a bit, took out Dash and Penetrating shot, and replaced it with Shadow Imbuement and Rain of Arrows again. I don’t find myself worrying about Rain of Arrows being off of cool down, as I just don’t need it as much, and the Poison Imbuement is a great help with boss fights, as well as using Combo Points again.

Here is my current build: d4builds /builds/ff2d545a-5add-4499-a5d6-306af007b585/

The paragon board is filled out like yours so far up to level 68.75, and my last point was unlocking the Cunning Stratagem node. Not sure this build will help with the level 70 Capstone, as I’ve had my butt handed to me a few times trying it before 70. With a lot of kiting, I can get through to Elias, but he just wrecks me, might need a different build to survive that fight.

One other note, I think I can get away without Dash because I found some boots that gave me +3 charges to Evade. I’m tempted to also go back to Shadow Clone with this build.

17

The instinct specialization is a trap, there are better ways to maintain full energy.

18

Thnks for this. For some reason your name seemed familiar from back in old d3 or d2r days and found your build luckily for the class i wad playing. Literally amazing, i havent seen the butcher since before 50 so i just cleared capstone for wt4 at 63, so honestly i hope i level up a bit more before i run into him again… but this build and all the suggested stats are very helpful and also a very fun build.