Any advice would be appreciated. Also I play flurry/shadow

Not that folks should care, but maybe some here will find it amusing.

Jumped back into the game a couple weeks ago to do what I always do, see how far I can push a Basic Attack based Rogue.

For the first time, I managed to take down a couple of max NMDs last night.

I'm sure I'm not optimized, as I'm not as smart as the people who figure out really good builds, and I'm not as skilled either. But I thought it was pretty cool that a janky, non-meta, non-optimized rogue could do that content.

Looking forward to S4 and where that takes basic attacking!

I don't have a planner or video to show or anything, but I can elaborate if anyone is curious.

Good luck rogue-ing!

Hey, first of all apologies for my english. So after the PTR test and overlall playing rogue exclusively since launch, I feel like Rogues are really in a bad place right now. In terms of build diversity it's probably the most balanced class, still needs some work on that end, but in general really good.
The problem I have is with survivability and damage.

Survivability - Rogue is the only class in the game that has no access to any form of DR like Fortify or Barrier. We have no way to generate any of those DR systems through skills or paragon. Sure we can use some aspects on gear, but if we do we lose damage (much needed) or another defensive aspect. Basically to survive higher content we're pushed to take Dark Shroud, which is a great skill with the aspect, but in order for it to be fully worthy we should have the balls all the time.
TLDR here - we need a way to generate Barrier or Fortify.

Damage - for me at least, Rogues were supposed to be the "high risk, high reward" class in the game. I will be fine with the lack of better survivability if we have a better damage output. Rogues in terms of damage compared to other classes are lacking in damage overall. We're pushed to play with combo points in order to have meaningful damage output, if we don't the class will be in D tier in terms of builds. This was more apparent in the PTR were Rogue's best build was a broken one. We need something in terms of "x% damage after entering stealth, x% after leaving stealth" Something in the form of that would cover some survivability and damage as well.

I'm curious as to what this sub thinks about the Rogue's state at the moment.

Pulled a starless last night which brings me to having 4 Ubers besides the doomie I keep on me for surviving T100s. I put it on and took it for a spin, and it definitely slaps in crowds where I am spamming pen shot in dungeons.

But I don’t have a shako. Would you keep starless and keep grinding, or transmute a doomie, selig, starless and Andy’s into a hat?

I thought the crit damage aspect went 30-40%, now I see it’s 20-30%. Am I just imagining things?

I got to play some of the PTR last week. See my feedback and suggestions for the Rogue below.

Original document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19otU0XyH1tV8gLQoBtwiw9X5Bxot1Iu3agAI-syzUbo/edit?usp=sharing

Summary of Issues

• Combo points are too dominant out of the 3 specialisations
• Puncture is too dominant out of all the basic skills
• Melee builds are more or less viable to play, but don’t feel as fantastic as before
• Ultimates are limited in their use cases and general effectiveness
• The removal of damage reduction from affixes has made survivability for Rogues challenging
• Most Rogue uniques are underperforming or not build defining enough
• Some build archetypes are not yet viable
• One-shot builds currently trivialise boss content

Note: not all these issues will be wholly addressed here, though it’s still important to point them out.

Preface

• This feedback has been prepared after playing the PTR in the lead up to Season 4 and contains suggestions to address the stated problems above and any other specific problems outlined in further notes
• We will assume that Pit 200’s and Tormented Uber bosses are the chase achievements for a season. No matter how strong a build is, these bosses should always remain challenging on some level
• This feedback will focus on changes that can be implemented for the Season 4 patch or a mid-season patch. This feedback will refrain from suggestions that are best suited for an expansion
• All uniques will need to be revised with the new itemisation updates. Any feedback about uniques here will focus on their aspect powers or available mods only and not tuning of existing affixes.

Resolved in the PTR

The following items were resolved in the PTR and should be kept in mind when reading the rest of this feedback.

• Close Quarters Combat: The tempering affixes and the new Gems add a lot of Damage to Crowd Control enemies on offensive slots. This addresses the heavy nerfs that Close Quarters Combat received in Season 3. Together with how much easier it is to stagger bosses, this will now do reasonable damage going into Season 4.
• Victimise: The changes to Victimise to fix its damage bugs and increasing its lucky hit has put Victimise in a good place for Season 4. There’s some cases where Victimise double dips on certain damage but the cases seem natural and not imbalanced compared to alternative key passives (Precision, Close Quarters Combat). If more double dipping scenarios are found and are easily exploited, then Victimise may need a nerf in the future.

Skills

• Primary Forceful Arrow: Make all enemies hit after the initial pierce vulnerable as well.

Every 3rd cast of Forceful Arrow makes the enemy hit vulnerable, but this currently doesn’t carry through to enemies hit thereafter.

​

• Barrage: Spread Barrage arrows more evenly to not shoot as many arrows off to the sides as the number of arrows grows.

Currently Barrage with Cunning Stratagem shoots the last 4 arrows off to the sides which have a low chance of hitting anything. This change should make the probability of hitting stuff with the extra arrows higher.

​

• Flurry: Increase the combo point damage scaling from 1.75 to 1.85 at 3 combo points.
• Advanced Flurry: Increase the damage bonus from 30% to 35%.

These will increase the damage of Flurry to make it feel a little less terrible against bosses. Advanced Flurry utilisation may be affected by Jugganaught’s aspect which increases evade’s cooldown, hence the further increase in damage for this node.

​

• Reactive Defense: Change to “Gain 3% Damage Reduction from Distant Enemies, or instead gain 6% Damage Reduction while inflicted with Control Impairing Effects”

This change will add some modest damage reduction benefit versus distant enemies when the Rogue is not crowd controlled.

​

• Enhanced Smoke Grenade: Reduce the damage bonus to 10% but make it work on bosses and unstoppable enemies for a flat 2 second duration.

This will shift some of the utility of smoke grenades towards bosses to make Smoke Grenade more usable in more scenarios.

​

• Dark Shroud: Reduce the cooldown duration from 20 to 16 seconds and add cooldown reduction for additional ranks to Dark Shroud.

Dark Shroud is very useful for damage mitigation but is far from ideal to put into the skill bar due to its long cooldown duration. This change should be a big help for melee based builds that don’t or can’t use Umbrous Aspect that want to explore additional damage mitigation options.

​

• Poison Trap: Increase the damage from 396% to 450%.

This change will make pure trap based builds more viable.

​

• Poison Imbuement: Increase the damage from 100% to 120%.
• Blended Poison Imbuement: Reduce the increased poisoning damage from 75% to 60%.

Poison Imbuement to be tuned a bit stronger overall, and more so independently of learning the Blended Poison Imbuement node. Great for melee builds that can’t take advantage of Precision in particular.

​

• Blended Cold Imbuement: In addition to the instant freeze, when one or more enemies are frozen by Cold Imbuement, gain 20% damage to those enemies for 6 seconds and reduce the cooldown of Cold Imbuement by 3 seconds.

Blended Cold Imbuement has never been a popular choice throughout Diablo 4. With freeze on lucky hit tempering affixes being introduced in Season 4, Blended Cold Imbuement in its current state will be totally redundant and needs some extra utility to have some relevance.

​

• Shadow Clone: Apply legendary aspects, paragon nodes, glyphs and other modifiers on the Rogue onto the Shadow Clone. In exchange, reduce the Shadow Clone’s damage from 60% to 45%.
• Supreme Shadow Clone: As per above, reduce the additional Shadow Clone damage bonus from 20% to 15%.

Currently the Shadow Clone takes on 100% of the Rogue player’s stats. However the vast majority of the Rogue’s damage comes from its other modifiers, making the Shadow Clone only do small fractions of the Rogue’s damage. Shadow Clone should also benefit from enhancers such as Trickshot or Repeating aspects but not trigger any lucky hit effects. Shadow Clone should not use imbued attacks unless the Rogue is also using Aspect of Imitated Imbuement.

​

• Momentum: Increase movement speed from 15% to 20% and add 10% dodge chance.

The reward for momentum has been overlooked as damage output has been favoured when survivability has not been a major issue until now. This change along with the removal of damage reduction from gear will make this passive more attractive for melee builds.

​

• Precision: Reduce the additional Critical Strike Damage bonus from 15% to 13%.

Precision synergises with combo point attack rotations very well and is one of the reasons why ranged combo point builds have been dominant in Season 3. To put this into perspective, an Inner Sight based build takes more than twice as long as Combo Point based Precision builds to take down high end bosses. With the reworked itemisation in Season 4, Precision will still see a net buff, so this change will just lighten that buff a bit.

​

• Precision: Remove the small Precision stack delay so that stacks gained are gained immediately.

This is a quality-of-life change to make Precision more intuitive to play by making Precision stacks immediately rewarded to the Rogue ready for that large follow up attack.

​

• Exposure: Increase the damage and size of all traps by 10% and increase stun grenade damage from 40% to 50%.

In addition to Exposure’s current benefits, increasing the size of all traps (including Death Trap) will allow pure trap builds to deliver damage to more enemies at the same time. Death Trap will be able to pull in more enemies this way for greater utility.

​

Specialisations

• Inner Sight: Marked enemies increase your critical strike chance against them by 10%, while in Inner Sight do 10% more damage.

Despite the recent buffs to Inner Sight, a build using it still has markedly lower damage output compared to combo points. Making marked enemies receive more damage will also provide a small additional benefit for attacking marked enemies and improve Inner Sight’s performance in boss fights.

​

• Inner Sight: Rework the mechanic to refund 100% of the energy spent instead of reducing the energy costs of core skills to 0.

This small quality-of-life change to Inner Sight will allow energy consumption based mechanics like the Second Wind passive to work while in Inner Sight. Note that Channelling Shrines run into this same issue and a change should be applied to the shrine effect as well as long as it doesn’t break any other class mechanics.

​

• Inner Sight: Gauge should fill up from damage over time effects and damaging enemies with barriers.

Inner Sight has cases where the gauge does not fill up. Filling the gauge in these cases should make Inner Sight gameplay more consistent.

​

• Inner Sight: Rework the gauge fill up mechanic to be less weighted on fractions of life removed from enemies.

Currently it requires roughly 1/6th of Nightmare Dungeon 100 boss and 1/12th of a Pit 200 boss’ life to completely fill the Inner Sight gauge, even though Pit 200 bosses have many times more life than Nightmare Dungeon 100 bosses. This results in exponentially higher Inner Sight downtimes for the more difficult bosses and for attack rotations much more likely to fall off because of running out of energy. Smoothing out this curve to make Inner Sight behave more consistently across different levels of content will make Inner Sight builds less frustrating to use.

See 2 timestamped videos below for comparison purposes:

​

• Preparation: Increase the cooldown reduction on ultimate skills from 5 seconds to 6 seconds.

Increase the potency of Preparation in light of gear in Season 4 having high amounts of cooldown reduction.

​

Paragon

• Diminish: change the damage reduction bonus to apply for all types of damage received from Vulnerable enemies.

Diminish’s damage reduction bonus is too conditional, and with the scarcity of damage reduction options this change will make this Glyph more attractive to use.

​

• Fluidity: Increase the energy regeneration bonus from 9% to 13%.

A buff in the dark here, but does anyone really use this glyph? It would be interesting to know.

​

• Tricks of the Trade: Increase the damage bonus from 25% to 30%.

This damage bonus will improve cutthroat based core skills and make cutthroat based basic skills more enticing options to use. This will also help alternating cutthroat and marksman dual core skill based builds like Flurry with Rapid Fire.

​

• No Witnesses: Keep the same benefits, but also increase the total damage bonus by 20% when your ultimate skill is cast with Preparation.

This will make ultimate skills and other accompanying skills more punchy overall while making it impactful with minimal investment into Ultimate Skill Damage bonuses. For example if you have 0% Ultimate Skill Damage, your total bonus will be 20%[x].

​

• Leyrana’s Instinct: Increase the Core Skill Damage bonus from 25% to 35%.

The removal of Core Skill Damage from item affixes has indirectly nerfed this node. This change is designed to help offset the effect of this nerf.

​

Aspects

• Pestilent Points: Make this aspect work for all Rogue basic skills.

Why Blizzard made this aspect only work with Puncture is honestly beyond me.

​

• Arrow Storms: Increase the base damage of Arrow Storms by 50% and increase the damage bonus from 35% to 48%.
• Vengeful: Increase the base damage of Arrow Storms by 30% and increase the damage bonus from 40% to 48%.

Arrow Storms currently do not deal enough damage to be worth using long term.

​

• Enshrouding: Increase the frequency of free extra shadows to spawn from every 3 seconds to every 2 seconds.

Enshrouding aspect is under-used and lots of combat requires moving away from incoming attacks in order to avoid death or crowd control. This change will allow Rogues to stand in place for a shorter amount of time to gain additional shadows.

​

• Cruel Sustenance: Increase the amount of life gained per enemy damaged from Victimise.
• Stolen Vigor: Increase the amount of life gained per second per Momentum Stack.

With the removal of damage reduction and survivability in Season 4 being weighted towards maximum life, the effectiveness of Cruel Sustenance and Stolen Vigor has been indirectly nerfed. An increase to the healing amount is needed to compensate for this indirect nerf.

​

Uniques

• Windforce: Change ranks to Concussive to Marksman Skills. Remove the lucky hit chance requirement on the aspect.
• Eaglehorn: Change Physical Damage to Dexterity. Make the aspect every 3rd cast instead of every 4th cast and double this damage bonus versus bosses.

Changes to both bows above should help them be more competitive inline with Skyhunter. Windforce being the general all rounded option, and Eaglehorn carved around penshot and Victimise.

​

• Condemnation: Change the damage bonus from 20-40% to 25-40%.

This change should make finding a not-so-terrible Condemnation easier.

​

• Eyes in the Dark: Keep the damage bonus, but make Death Trap re-arm itself at a random nearby location when it kills an enemy or hits a boss.

There is no real use case for Eyes in the Dark right now. Either you hit a boss, kill an enemy, or missed completely and have to kite an enemy into the Death Trap. Having Death Trap re-arm at a random location after it kills an enemy or hits a boss has a chance of getting more free kills or free damage while fitting with the theme of "Eyes in the Dark".

​

• Cowl of the Nameless: Change the lucky hit chance bonus to also work versus bosses and players.

The lucky hit chance affix spawning on helm slots in Season 4 will overshadow Cowl’s 25% lucky hit chance vs crowd controlled enemies. Making the lucky hit chance bonus apply to bosses and players opens up the uses of this unique in other scenarios.

​

• Beastfall Boots: Reduce the damage per energy bonus from 0.5-1.5% to 0.5-1% and cap the total damage bonus to 110%.

Beastfall Boots have been used in “one-shot” builds to cheese all boss content. This change will remove the one shot potential without destroying the theme or purpose of the boots. With the extra ultimate cooldown reduction and maximum resource bonus potential available in Season 4, the damage bonus can be triggered more often and triggered more often with sufficient energy to get the maximum effect in normal gameplay. If possible, cap the resources spent in line with the damage bonus cap.

​

• Scoundrel's Leathers: Rework to spawn traps under enemies on hit rather than at the mouse cursor’s location and fix the spawn rate of traps to match the tooltip’s description.

Currently Scoundrel's Leathers do not spawn traps often enough (see https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d4/t/scoundrels-leathers-unique-not-spawning-traps-as-often-as-it-should/154550) and have a weird mechanic where they spawn near the mouse cursor position (see one of Wudi’s latest videos).

​

• Word of Hakan: Rain of Arrows casts with Word of Hakan to apply the Prime Rain of Arrow’s imbuement potency bonus.
• Scoundrel’s Kiss: Rework to lob arrows in a small cluster-like formation instead of a straight line.

This turns Rapid Fire with Scoundrel’s Kiss into a skill shot that can be done at range instead of arrows spreading over a long line that derps its single target damage potential. Enemies caught in the middle of the cluster will then take the most damage while enemies clipped will only get explosions from 1 or 2 exploding arrows.

The current shotgunning effect forces melee ranged play and should be fixed by making arrows lobbed in the air for a minimum amount of time and the arrow spread to be uniform no matter how close or far the landing spot is away from the player.

​

I was looking up for some builds and I saw that some people use concealment for this build and some people use the clones, each one is better for me? Where can I find tips for rogues? I’m new at the game and new in Reddit… sorry if my question is dumb

I’m looking forward to not having to think this much between Chest Armor lol. What would you choose? I know the initial thought is juggernaut always but that sovereign mail of might is making me have my doubts.

What’s your thought process on picking here?

A bit torn on this one, and don't want to Salvage a potential long-term upgrade. I can still potentially max out the +All Stats as well.

Thanks for the input.

What skill is supposed to benefit from this exactly? I somehow tie it to Trickshot aspect for Pen Shot, however I since there are no tooltips on skill that mention "trick shot", I fail to see what is this exactly and how does it work.

I wanted to try a poison build and ditch exploit for bane kinda like we did in season 2 (not as an aspect but as a vampiric power). So I was wondering if the effect is just single target now or does it still spread to other enemies?

Has anyone tried any sort of grenade-centric build on the PTR? Maybe dabble with azurewrath?

Based on the updated aspect notes, it seems like you would be able to get into a loop of stealth and grenades with strong cc, just wondering if anyone has tested the damage

Did the new aspects and changes make TB competitive again in S4? As a melee rogue, I was pretty disappointed to find that TB builds hit like a wet noodle in S3 with all the nerfs to poison. In theory, moves like TB and flurry should do more damage than ranged due to risk of being up close and taking more damage. Has this changed at all or is ranged still the king?

I've always wanted to use cold imbuement on rogue and sometimes briefly spec into it to try it out. It feels good when you can one-tap freeze everything around you, say with a skill like flurry, but I always have mixed feelings about it.

I feel like if I'm already using flurry, killing bosses at a reasonable speed is going to be a challenge and investing in cold imbuement doesn't help at all here, right? Sure, I can try to apply stagger, but that's usually not a feasible way of killing bosses. I always just end up reverting to something else, usually shadow/poison combo. Shadow for groups and poison for high value single targets. Plus the shadow damage multiplier works on bosses (so even more poison damage).

Basically, I really want to give cold imbuement a serious shot, but I'm worried I'm investing in a skill that makes me worse at something I'm already fairly slow at (boss killing). How do you guys make it work?

Worth noting, I actually have made multiple one shot rogues (last season and this season), both of which one shot world boss. So I know rogue CAN kill bosses super fast, but I feel like I'm having trouble finding a build that rolls dungeons AND bosses. Usually my Rogue builds end up being only good at one or the other.

Haven't seen any feedback on the new RF aspect, which could essentially convert RF to be a hybrid skill. Anybody here tried it, and what do you think about it?

i want to trade for scroundel's kiss.

i have 3 skyhunters for trade...

Thanks!

Quick question: is there a cap on attack speed with basic attacks (like Puncture)? I know there is a general attack speed cap, but last I saw it didn't apply to basic attacks. Anyone have any info on that?

BIG EDIT: It didn't attach the damn image, working on that now.

https://preview.redd.it/3hsn0iwvlurc1.png?width=380&format=png&auto=webp&s=69c4e15f67f044474a39004e7d06e445022e29b0

So I recently switched from Penetrating Shot to Barrage Rogue, just to try something new since I've basically been playing PS since my first Eternal character in pre-season. The linked crossbow is the best weapon I've found so far by a mile, with three good affixes and one unfortunate dead one. Never seen a Skyhunter above ilvl 900, either. Someday.

So basically I'm wondering what, if anything, I should do with this. I currently have the Branching Volleys aspect out of the codex on my amulet, but I've read that some people like putting it on their weapon instead. I recently extracted a perfect one from a trash ring, so I'm wondering if it would be worth replacing that Edgemaster or not. Or maybe putting something entirely different on it! I'm really not sure what to do, and welcome any advice or thoughts on how to best put this weapon to use.

I'll keep farming for a 4/4 crossbow of course, but zero luck so far.

Just wanted to share my Uber lilith kill with a Barrage build.

S3 Rogue Barrage - Uber Lilith kill

Credits to M1PY, the build is based on his Gauntlet Barrage build. https://maxroll.gg/d4/planner/tl3yy03g