Diablo 4 reintroduces us to several older characters from the series in a new light. One of them is the Rogue, who makes its return from the original Diablo with an all-new skillset and abilities. Just like with other classes in the game, the Rogue has a diverse skill tree that allows for many different builds. One of the best builds for a Rogue is the Rapid Fire skill build.
There are many viable builds to choose from, but if your playstyle focuses on using the bow, the Rapid Fire build will be perfect for you.
Rapid Fire Rogue build
As the name suggests, the Rapid Fire Rogue build revolves around one core skill of the Rogue, Rapid Fire. While not as high on the totem pole as some of the other end-game builds like the Twisting Blades build, the Rapid Fire build is a relatively new build that has crept up in the meta. After Patch 1.0.3 was released, the usage of this build has only increased further.
Rapid Fire is quite a powerful core skill to have in any bow-based build. This skill allows the Rogue to fire five arrows in rapid succession in a straight line. Each arrow deals 30 percent of the Rogue’s base damage per hit, leading to a total of 150 percent base damage if all five arrows hit the targeted enemies. This damage can be increased even further.
Related: Best Rogue leveling build in Diablo 4
When the Rogue’s combo points go up, the power of Rapid Fire does as well. With higher combo points, the number of arrows fired and the damage per arrow increases even further.
- One combo point increases the damage per arrow to 33 percent and the number of arrows fired to six.
- Two combo points increase the damage per arrow to 37 percent and the number of arrows fired to seven.
- Three combo points increase the damage per arrow to 42 percent and the number of arrows fired to eight.
And like any core skill, Rapid Fire can be leveled up four more times to increase the damage numbers even further. The overall damage will scale with your level, so you will always be able to handle most enemies at any point in the game. You can also upgrade your Rapid Fire with different enhancements depending on how you want to build your Rogue.
- Enhanced Rapid Fire: The mandatory upgrade to Rapid Fire. This enhancement adds a five percent critical hit chance per arrow, up to a 40 percent chance on the eighth arrow.
- Advanced Rapid Fire: One of the two optional upgrades to Rapid Fire. When you evade an attack, Rapid Fire increases your critical hit damage by 30 percent.
- Improved Rapid Fire: The second optional upgrade to Rapid Fire. When you damage vulnerable enemies with Rapid Fire, you gain 15 energy per arrow hit.
Enhanced Rapid Fire already ensures your Rapid Fire will hit hard. If your build requires a lot of energy usage, Improved Rapid Fire is the way to go. If you feel like you can manage your energy usage, Advanced Rapid Fire is a straight-up powerful damage boost to your Rapid Fire.
Now that you know how Rapid Fire fits into your build, this is how your skill progression will look when it comes to your other skills.
Skill progression
Since you can equip six skills at a time, these are the ones that complement your Rapid Fire the best.
- Rapid Fire: Your main skill in this build. The one you will be using as your primary damage source in every situation.
- Concealment: This is your defensive skill in the build. You will go invisible for four seconds and the skill turns you unstoppable for its duration.
Rapid Fire will shred your enemies as long as they are in a straight line. If you can replenish energy quickly, you can spam this ability to your heart’s content. Improved Rapid Fire can be your upgrade of choice till you gain a source of energy regeneration, then you can switch to the more aggressive option, Advanced Rapid Fire.
Concealment is saved for those moments when you get out of position and are swarmed by enemies. You will turn invisible and break enemies’ line of sight while doing so. If you are surrounded by them, Concealment’s unstoppable buff will allow you to phase through them. The four seconds of Concealment’s duration should give you enough time to get into an advantageous position again.
- Cold Imbuement: Imbues your weapon with cold energy. The next two attacks or skills will deal bonus cold damage and chill enemies per hit, slowing them.
- Shadow Imbuement: Imbues your weapon with shadow energy. The next two attacks or skills will deal bonus shadow damage and infect enemies that explode upon death.
- Poison Imbuement: Imbues your weapon with poison. The next two attacks or skills will deal bonus poison damage and poison damage over time for five seconds.
Imbuement skills are key to this build because they enhance every attack made by your Rapid Fire in addition to another skill we will talk about next. Depending on the kind of imbuement you use, you will gain different benefits on each attack. If you are focused on crowd control, Cold Imbuement will allow you to chill enemies. Repeated hits will freeze them, rendering them immobile and open to attack.
Once they’re frozen, if you’re looking to take out clusters of enemies at once, Shadow Imbuement’s infection will allow you to explode enemies upon death. This explosion deals enough damage to set off chain reactions that will explode several enemies in a row if you managed to infect all of them with Rapid Fire and your secondary damage skill.
And finally, Poison Imbuement will allow you to take down tanky enemies quickly. The poison damage over time will chip down their health to a level where you can finish them off easily. This imbuement will be your key skill when it comes to taking down strong elite packs, solo enemies, and bosses, so make sure to keep it up when you encounter them.
- Rain of Arrows: Our ultimate skill of choice in this build will be Rain of Arrows. This skill fires two massive volleys of arrows into the air. When they land, each volley deals 100 percent damage to all enemies in the area for a total of 200 percent damage.
The final skill in this build would be Rain of Arrows. This ultimate skill is chosen for its immense damage as well as the ability to proc your chosen Imbuement skill over a large area of effect. Cold Imbuement will freeze large groups of enemies while Shadow Imbuement will start off a chain reaction of explosions. Poison Imbuement will be able to take down elite packs with ease.
Passive abilities
The final skills to be used in this build revolve around the passives that make this build work.
- Weapon Mastery: Provides bonus damage when using a bow against vulnerable enemies and increased critical strike damage to enemies when using a crossbow.
- Exploit: Deals bonus damage to healthy and injured enemies.
- Sturdy: Increases your damage reduction against enemies close to you.
- Malice: Deals bonus damage against vulnerable enemies.
Next, we move on to the Imbuement passives.
- Precision Imbuement: Increases your Imbuement stacks from two to six per cast.
- Deadly Venom: You deal increased poison damage.
- Alchemical Advantage: You gain increased attack speed for every poisoned enemy around you.
The next passive skills work to manage your energy.
- Innervation: Every hit of damage on an enemy grants you a 10 percent chance to gain eight energy when the hit connects.
- Haste: When your energy levels are above half, you gain increased movement speed. When they fall below half, you gain increased attack speed instead.
And finally, the key passive of the build.
- Precision: When your Marksman skills land critical strikes, you gain a stack of Precision. Each stack gives you a four percent increased critical strike chance with a max of five stacks. Once all stacks are acquired, the next strike deals bonus critical hit damage and consumes the stacks.
These are the best passives that synchronize well with Rapid Fire and the need to spam the ability. The specialization of choice that works with this build is Preparation because it will drastically reduce the cooldown of your ultimate ability and provide you with constant energy to spam Rapid Fire.
The final part of the build we will be tackling is the aspects.
Aspects
The last part of the build involves choosing the best aspects for your Rogue to maximize the build’s power.
- Accelerating Aspect: Your critical hit chance and critical hit damage also provide increased attack speed.
- Aspect Repeating: Adds a chance for Rapid Fire to ricochet to other targets upon contact.
- Aspect of Shared Misery: Allows your crowd-control effects to spread to other enemies when you hit a crowd-controlled enemy.
- Aspect of Disobedience: Dealing damage grants you increased armor per attack.
- Aspect of the Protector: Grants a barrier when fighting elite enemies and bosses.
- Aspect of the Umbral: You restore energy when you use crowd-controlling effects on enemies.
- Aspect of Bursting Venoms: Adds an additional poison buff to your next attack. When you land a critical strike, a pool of venom spawns that deals additional damage over time and reduces your skill cooldown.
- Aspect of Noxious Ice: When you chill poisoned enemies, they gain double the chill effects. You also deal bonus poison damage to frozen targets.
- Toxic Alchemist’s Aspect: When you poison a shadow-infected enemy, there is a chance for them to explode in a poison cloud, dealing damage over time.
- Icy Alchemist’s Aspect: When you infect chilled or frozen enemies with shadow damage, there is a chance for them to explode in a cold explosion that increases their chilled or frozen status.
One final note to round off this build is to get the “Word of Hakan” unique amulet. This piece of jewelry adds all Imbuements to your Rain of Arrows, making it the best accessory to use in this build.
