Hi!
I’m a first time Diablo player, been playing D4 for about a week. I love the music and atmosphere. I have a level 23 Rogue and I freaking love it. I chose Rogue because research told me Rogue is closest to WoW’s Monk and I definitely see the resemblance. If you could, I have some questions:
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I use Flurry the most due to so much AoE / cleave damage that I receive from packs of mobs. Is this the right strategy? Sometimes I use Twisting Blades then dash through the mob pack for the return dagger damage to everyone.
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I use Twisting Blade as my main single target ability.
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The only core skill I use is Invigorating Strikes, and that’s for the Energy regen.
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I’m presently using the Poison Imbue, not Shadow or Frost. Is that the best overall, or should I different Imbues for AoE / single target scenarios?
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My mobility resides primarily in spacebar evade, Dash and Caltrops. Am I on the right path?
Please feel free to give me any tips, tricks or advice. My goal is to play like a WoW Monk: high APM and great mobility.
Thank you for your time!
Yes, you have grasped many main mechanics right - and Rogue is indeed a beautiful combination of monk, demon hunter, assassin and amazon.
Some basic feedback are as follows:
- 1 to 50, you pretty much can play however you want and won’t run into much trouble - so take this opportunity to play around with all the skills and passives.
But first, your basic skill. Most people use puncture because it slows, applies vulnerability, and attacks really quickly. As it is a marksman skill that’s used damage of your melee weapons, you also benefit from close quarters combat passive. The energy regen from invigorating strikes is great, but if you use shadow imbuement (and later on, baber heart), killing mobs with shadow damage gives you massive energy back with a passive, so you are not dependant on invigorating strikes. Vulnerability is also a huge damage amplifier.
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After a while, we generally gravitate towards one main attack ie either flurry or twisting blade. There are some exceptions such as rapid fire + penetrating shot; flurry + rapid fire - but that’s another topic.
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Coming back to what you are using, both flurry and twisting blades are good for both aoe and single target. Flurry is more stationary, while twisting blade is more mobile. You probably want to pick your most preferred play style so that you could free up 1 more skill slot.
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You will want to assign one slot to either concealment or shadow step for the purpose of breaking CC.
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Then, the rest of the skills are basically categorised into:
- imbuements
- traps
- utility skills
You are now likely only left with 3 skill slots, so you need to decide a general play style. Some people choose to focus on rotating between two or even three imbuements; some lay traps, and kill mobs in traps; some go with just 1 imbuement/trap and use utilities to CC mobs and kill them with core skills.
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In terms of imbuements, until 50, you would want to pick shadow for aoe, and poison for single target (you still rotate them when fighting trash mobs of course. You just rely on poison a whole lot more when fighting bosses). At a later level, ice imbuement becomes much more potent once you are able to get some chills and freezes in.
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Caltrops and poison traps all increase dmg dealt to mobs inside them. If you want to go down the trap path, setting things up and killing mobs inside will be very satisfying. There are legendary aspects that make them better. Caltrop could have stun grenades with a legendary aspect; poison trap could also benefit from an aspect that allows you to put down 4 traps at once.
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Wow, thank you for this detailed response. I’m going to read through it very thoroughly and will respond if I have any further questions. Thank you so much!
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There is just one more thing I wanna add, which is that you should familiarise yourself with the process of extracting and imprinting legendary powers. Both flurry and twisting blade benefit from legendary powers that are essential for them to excel.
They are the aspect of encircling blade, and aspect of blade dancer.
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The wise elder has spoken. I have nothing more but sass to add.
While you’re still young, enjoy the poison trap knock down + caltrops freeze combo. When you get older, you tend to be so starved of skill slots you have to choose at most one of them.
Also, I have played flurry with Combo Points(CP) since beta, and I found flurry to be the most defensive/tanky/utility core skill for rogue. Its relatively low damage but crazy boost to attack speed and vuln/stun/imbue spread literally begs for another core skill such as Rapid Fire to really take advantage. So at least for me, CP flurry automatically takes up 3-skill slots. But so far that’s my favorite way to play my rogue.
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