Here is the best Rogue ranged levelling build for Diablo 4. Whoever loved the Demon Hunter in Diablo 3 will have a lot of fun with this build.
Diablo 4 players need to choose a class in the beginning of the game, depending on what play style they prefer. You have to decide, if you want to be a sophisticated Sorcerer dealing elemental damage, maybe a Necromancer conjuring your own army of skeletons or maybe just go berserk and bonk everything with big hammers as a Barbarian or Druid?
If you ask me, none of these are the way to go. Old school ranged damage with a bow or crossbow and a few nasty stealth abilities is the only right choice. The Demon Hunter was absolutely awesome in Diablo 3 (even in Diablo Immortal) and with the right build, the Rogue in Diablo 4 is just that.
Note: The Rogue in Diablo 4 can be played as a melee or ranged character, or as a mix of both. In this guide, we will focus on a purely ranged build that will get you through the campaign and into endgame. This is not an endgame build to push Nightmare Dungeons!
Diablo 4 Rogue Ranged Build: Skill Distribution
Here, we will tell you what abilities and talents you should go for in your skill tree. We won't go into detail concerning your gear, since this is a levelling build and you will replace your gear regularly. Just know that for your legendaries and aspects, you are obviously looking for affixes that support your picked skills.
So here we go, these are the active and passive skills you want to pick for a purely ranged build that dishes out tons of damage. The number in brackets shows, how many skill point you should invest in the main skill:
| Skill/Talent (Points) | Upgrades | |
| Basic Skills | Forceful Arrow (1) | Enhanced Forceful Arrow -> Fundamental Forceful Arrow |
| Core Skills | Penetrating Shot (5) | Enhanced Penetrating Shot -> Improved Penetrating Shot |
| Rapid Fire (5) | Enhanced Rapid Fire -> Improved Rapid Fire | |
| Stutter Step (3) | - | |
| Sturdy (3) | - | |
| Agility Skills | Dash (1) | Enhanced Dash -> Methodical Dash |
| Weapon Mastery (3) | - | |
| Concussive (3) | - | |
| Subterfuge Skills | Exploit (3) | Malice (3) |
Imbuement Skills | Shadow Imbuement(3) | Enhanced Shadow Imbuement -> Blended Shadow Imbuement |
| Poison Imbuement (2) | Enhanced Poison Imbuement -> Blended Poison Imbuement | |
| Shadow Crash (1) | Consuming Shadows (2) | |
| Deadly Venom (1) | ||
| Precision Imbuement (3) | ||
| Ultimate Skills | Innervation (3) | |
| Key Passive | Precision (1) | |
| Specialization | Combo Points |
How To Play The Rogue Demon Hunter Build In Diablo 4
So let's explain our choice of skills. Our Basic skill, the Forceful Arrow, with its upgrades will not only make enemies vulnerable, but also push them back and even stun them, if they hit another enemy while being pushed back. This ensures we can keep our enemies at a distance.
For our Core skills, we actually pick two different ones: Penetrating Shot and Rapid Fire. The first works best combined with Shadow Imbuement, which infects enemies and makes them explode upon death – this is our crowd clear. The second should be combined with Poison Imbuement to deal massive single target damage to bosses and elite monsters.
The Penetrating Shot is basically a sniper skill that at the same time works a charm in taking out huge groups of smaller enemies. Just cast Shadow Imbuement and shoot the Penetrating Shot through a whole group of enemies and watch them explode. If you can get your hand on the Trickshot Offensive Aspect, the Penetrating Shot will get even better.
Rapid Fire on the other hand is our main ability to deal a lot of single target damage. We went with the Improved upgrade since this will gain you some energy if you hit vulnerable enemies. Since our basic skill is making enemies vulnerable, this ensures that we can use Rapid Fire even longer before our energy is depleted. For even more single target damage, you should always use the Poison Imbuement with this skill.
Since we don't want to rely only on our one default dodge to not get hit, we invest a few points into the Dash ability, which will make us more mobile and allow for several dodges in a row to get out of harms way.
And this brings us to the Ultimate skills. You might wonder why we didn't pick any of the great abilities like Rain of Arrows or Shadow Clone, but having two Imbuements with the two Core Skills is way more valuable. Instead, we max out the Innervation passive that will always keep our Energy high to use our Core Skills as often as possible.
Finally, we round everything off with the Precision Key Passive that will increase our critical strike damage. All other passive talents we picked will either help with energy regeneration, survivability or more damage.
Now that you know what skills are the best, let's talk about the Specialization. We recommend to use Combo Points. It is the first Specialization you unlock for the Rogue and will amplify your damage by a lot. Every basic attack grants one Combo Point up to a maximum of three, which are then used up to boost your next Core skill.
Penetrating Shot with three Combo Points will increase your damage by 90% and your Lucky Hit Chance by 30%, but Rapid Fire is even more op. Use Rapid Fire with three Combo Points for a 39% damage increase and 8 arrows fired instead of five.
If you attack a boss, always hit him three times with your basic skill and then with Rapid Fire. Just repeat this and you will melt them in no time.
And that's it. With this Rogue build, you will destroy everything in Diablo 4, and be incredibly mobile at the same time. One of the best builds and super fun to play, especially if you liked the Demon Hunter.