A short guide to an actual RANGED rogue build. If you want a proper ranged dps build, you like kitting, you like big crits, high damage and dots this is your guide.
You will see people talking about ranged dps rogues and they do a few things wrong.
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Puncture is not a fully ranged skill rather a semi-ranged skill and it requires you to stay close to enemies to hit an enemy with more than 2 “shuriken stars” .
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Barrage is a top tier skill for LEVELING but its mid ranged and mediocre later on.
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They think shadow imbuement is NEEDED for aoe clear, wrong.
Pros
- True ranger/hunter playstyle
- very fast farmer and mobile
- Insane single target dps extremely good aoe dps
- Dot build
Cons
- Requires kiting, dodging and proper positioning
- Squishy in endgame
- Proximity shield elites are very annoying, they require specific strategy to kill
The general playstyle is kite and shoot while doting our enemies with poison (it deals decent damage). Positioning is very important and proper kiting is also important. Penetrating arrow can be trash with wrong positioning and godly with proper poisitoning against the packs. The pack clearing is a 3 step process: 1) positon yourself and the pack 2) throw one poison imbuement pene hit to start the poison dot 3) throw 3 basic attacks and hit the second pene shot, the pack should be 80-90% cleared. I could go into a more detail on a “perfect” playstyle but this is just a basic guide.
As a ranged rogue you need range, lots of range, especially if you face targets 10-15+ levels higher than you (yes you can push 10+ levels content with decent gear) so as our basic skill we use Forceful arrow, it might not be as strong as puncture but it has insane range and it is quite decent as it can cause vulnerability and knockback. Also, it fits our ranged playstyle.
So, rogues have one of the top tier clear skills (with the aspect) wich is penetrating shot, it has very high range, it penetrates big packs and it gives the feeling of a true bow character. So guess what? We USE pene shot.
Rogues also have one of the best singe target skills, rapid fire. It has high range it shoots a lot of arrows and it does A LOT of damage. It is perfect for bosses (you can kill them in a few seconds) and perfect for clearing elites or the 1-2 mobs left after a big pack clear. So guess what, we use rapid fire.
Rogues also have one of the top dot dps skills, poison imbuement (it also scales very very well with weapon damage in endgame). So guess what we use poison imbuement.
As a ranged rogue our playstyle is simple we kite, position ourself and mob packs so we can kill them, so what do we need? MOBILITY. Rogues, again have the best mobility in game dash, so we use dash. Also we have evade and we need more charges on that as well (you can get + evade charges on gear). So with 2 dash charges and 2-3 evade charges we are a kitting machine.
We also need some survivability (we will be kinda squishy nontheless), dark shroud is perfect for that and it also gives some movement speed. If you get the aspect of “free” shroud then you can use concealment as your 6th slot.
So the skills we use are:
- Forceful arrow
- Penetrating Shot
- Rapid Fire
- Poison Imbuement
- Dash
- Dark shroud or conecelament
We use combo points as it very strong and easy to play. 3 basic skill hits then core skill (in its full simplicity).
Gear and items, since it’s a short guide I won’t go into detail, but you can check my profile (I am not even close to min maxing and some subtle changes on passive and/or glyphs are happening here and there but the core is all there)and get the idea. Ideally you want a top tier dps bow as higher speed makes the build feel smoother and you get faster combo points, xbow are decent since you get bigger crits and shoot fewer shots, it is a matter of preference in the end. The basic aspects such as the penetraing shot one are mandatory for proper clear.
In gear you want to prioritize:
- Cooldown reduction
- Crit chance (very big in D4)
- Crit damage (scales very well)
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- to penetrating shot and/or rapid fire
- flat damage, markmanship skills damage
- Life
- Armor (resists secondarily)
- Other dps stats such as + distance damage, poison damage, + vuln damage etc.
Since level 45-50 I was able to clear conent +10-12 lvls at T3 and t4, and still do. It is a very strong and satisfying build if you put a bit of an effort to kite, and position yourself.
I will come back with a more detailed guide once I start pushing higher nightmage dungeons.
Link as requested (you have to copy paste text as I can’t post a link):
https://d4planner.io/skilltree/Rogue/F1:1;E5:1;F7:1;R1:5;E9:1;I6:1;S2:3;P2:5;E8:1;I5:1;W1:3;C2:1;D2:1;E18:1;S13:1;E11:3;M1:3;P9:5;D3:3;D8:3;E19:1;B4:1;A9:1;H2:3;P11:1;P10:3;I8:1;EW:231;EW1:80;EO1:252;EB:180;ER2:83;EP:2;EG:10;EA:5;EC:4
I have 55/58 on the passive tree as these are the most important and most people wont have 10 passives unlocked from renown.
Enjoy the build, cheers!