Let’s get one thing out of the way: Diablo 4 can be rough for new players. This is especially the case for builds, as they can get very complicated, very quickly. Skills, Paragon points, Aspects, Stat priority, etc.
While complexity is an essential part of the Diablo experience, it can be intimidating. If you’re looking for a leveling build guide that is simple yet effective, you’re in the right place.
A Rogue Leveling guide made easy
Are you new to the Rogue Class? Or perhaps new to Diablo 4? Don’t worry, this guide was made to help you easily and quickly put together the best leveling build for arguably the best D4 Class this season. This guide will be much shorter than the average guide, but it will take you 99% of the way, which is more than enough for leveling purposes (from levels 1 to 50).
Best Season 2 Rogue Leveling Build: Twisting Blades
The best Rogue leveling build this season is, again, the Twisting Blades build. Why? Because it is extremely lethal, even at level 10, and becomes even stronger the further you level up. Also, it’s fun and fast-paced.
How it works
This build revolves around the Twisting Blades core skill. With Twisting Blades, hit an enemy and after a few seconds, the blades will return to you dealing increasingly more damage. The more enemies they hit as they return to you, the more damage they deal.
This build is all about high mobility. Hit an enemy, position yourself so that the returning blades hit as many enemies as possible, and profit. Every other skill at your disposal will serve this hit-and-run playstyle.
What Skills to Choose
If we distill this guide to its core, it needs Twisting Blades as the core skill, Shadow Step and Dash skills to help you efficiently move around, Dark Shroud to provide more speed and survivability, and Poising Trap to provide some crowd control (and damage) to the build.
Skill Tree Points
Remember, one of the biggest mistakes when leveling is spending too much time thinking about how to spend your skills points. Instead, follow these principles and spend most of your time slaying:
1 – Use your initial Skill Points to unlock new abilities first
Need Points to unlock new nodes?
- First, Enhance and Specialize your skills
- Then upgrade Skill ranks to unlock the next node
- Don’t upgrade more Skill ranks than needed
Skills to Unlock (in order):
- Puncture (then Enhanced Puncture, then Fundamental Puncture)
- Twisting Blades (then Enhanced Twisting Blades, then Advanced Twisting Blades)
- Shadow Step (then Enhanced Shadow Step, then Methodical Shadow Step)
- Dash (no need to upgrade until much later)
- Dark Shroud (then Enhanced Dark Shroud, then Subverting Dark Shroud)
- Poison Trap (then Enhanced Poison Trap, Specialization won’t be needed here)
2 – Build into your strengths with the right Passive Skills
Skills are important, and in terms of damage and survivability, they are extremely vital in the early game. But as you get more Skill Points, you’ll want to unlock Passive ugrades. These are the ones you should prioritize (in order):
- Exploit (all 3 ranks)
- Innervation (all 3 ranks)
- Adrenaline Rush (1 rank)
- Haste (all 3 ranks)
- Sturdy (all 3 ranks)
- Trap Mastery (all 3 ranks)
As you get closer to level 50 and look where to spend your points, you can go with:
- Weapon Mastery
- Siphoning Strikes
3 – Unlock your Key Passive as soon as possible!
A top priority is to unlock your Key Passive, Momentum, as soon as the node is unlocked. This will turn the entire build up a notch.
Best-in-Class Vampiric Powers
Vampiric Powers are the core gameplay loop of Season of Blud and trust me, they are the real deal, even more so than Season 1’s Malignant hearts. As always, some Powers are decent, others are gimmicky, but a few are absolutely busted, top-tier. You would be making a huge mistake by ignoring these.
These are the best-in-slot Vampiric Powers you need:
- Prey on the Weak: You deal 16% increased damage to Vulnerable enemies. Enemies are Vulnerable while affected by a Vampiric Curse from your other Vampiric Powers.
- Metamorphosis: When you Evade you turn into a cloud of bats, becoming Unstoppable for 4.0 seconds. Enemies along your path take 160 – 240 [160%] Physical damage and are inflicted with Vampiric Curse.
- Moonrise: Hitting an enemy with a Basic Skill grants you 4.0% Attack Speed for 10 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. Upon reaching maximum stacks, you enter a Vampiric Bloodrage, gaining 160.0% Basic Skill damage and 15.0% Movement Speed for 10 seconds.
- Hemomancy: Your attacks deal 80.0% of your Maximum Life as Physical damage to nearby enemies. This effect can occur once every 4 seconds.
These are stronger than most Aspects out there, do not pass on the opportunity to significantly improve your build.
Rogue Specializations
At level 15, a Class-specific quest will give you access to specializations. There are three in total:
- Combo Points: Use Basic Skills to boost your subsequent Core Skills (unlocks at level 15)
- Inner Sight: Provides regular Energy refills after attacking marked enemies (unlocks at level 20)
- Preparation: Resets your Ultimate Skill and allows it to reset all other skills (unlocks at level 40)
But for the most part, Combo Points will get the job done just fine. If you find yourself struggling with Energy levels, consider switching to the Inner Sight.
Best Rogue Aspects to chase
If you’ve followed so far, you should have a competent build in place. However, you’ll need the right Aspects to truly take it to the next level and slay everything in your path.
There are many Aspects and Dungeons for Rogues, but these are the best ones for this build:
| Dungeon | Region | - | Aspect | Class | Type | Specs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jalal's Vigil | Scosglen |  | Bladedancer's Aspect |  Rogue | Offensive | Twisting Blades orbit for a short time after they return to you, dealing [10 – 15]% of Twisting Blades' return damage per hit. Based on the distance the blades returned, the orbit damage increases up to [[10 – 15] * 2|%|] of the return damage. Slots: Gloves, Offhand, 1H Weapon, 2H Weapon [+100%], Ring, Amulet [+50%] |
The Bladedancer’s Aspect is particularly excellent and a must-have for this build. By the way, other builds often require ingredients that are much harder to acquire (such as Uniques and Aspects). In our case, you just need to head to the relevant dungeon and complete it in order to unlock the best Aspect for this build!
🛑 Warning: You’ll be upgrading equipment so fast between levels 1 and 50 that you shouldn’t spend too many resources upgrading your gear.
The only exceptions are your Ranged weapon, your Amulet, and rings, which you can hold on to for much longer. While you’re at it, imprint the Bladedancer’s Offensive Aspect into your Ranged weapon to get a bonus +100% effect. You can thank me later 😉
Gear
While some guides will spend entire paragraphs describing what stats and affixes to prioritize, the truth is these won’t matter that much while leveling your character. Why? Because you’ll be upgrading your gear so often, focusing on min-maxing your build at this stage is a waste of time.
Gear stats and affixes matter a lot in the endgame (from level 50 onwards), but for now, this is all you need to know:
- Upgrade to whatever has the highest Item Power and move on
- For Armor: Upgrade to whatever has the highest Item Power
- For Weapons: Upgrade to whatever has the highest Damage Per Second (that’s what counts for your abilities)
- Upgrade with Emeral gems for the extra Critical Strike Damage
While leveling in Diablo 4, you want to spend less time looking at your inventory and more time farming!
Perfecting your build
Technically speaking, once you hit level 50, you won’t need a leveling build anymore. Once you hit level 50 and/or World Tier 3, you should start focusing on your stats, affixes, Aspects, and Uniques.
We’ll put together an endgame Rogue build soon, but in the meantime, these resources are here to help you:
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