Diablo 4 Rogue Leveling Build Guide: Shadow Flurry

This leveling build for the Rogue in Diablo 4 focuses on the early game progression of the class, all the way through the campaign’s completion. We’ll guide you through the leveling process, including Skill Order and notable Aspect from dungeons.

The Rogue in Diablo 4 is one of those classes that like to be quick and flashy with their skills. We’re going to cover a melee-focused build that comes online early and remains effective from level 1 well into the end game.

This Rogue leveling build will assume you’re starting out fresh from Level 1. We will include the skill points from Renown in both the base game and Vessel of Hatred Expansion.

To learn more about the available Classes in Diablo 4, read our beginner guide. It will give you more than enough information on each one and show you the advantages and disadvantages of each one.

Build Overview

This Rogue leveling build focuses on the Flurry Skill, using a skill that is better for leveling as it’s not as reliant on quick reactions or your positioning. We’ll still be popping packs of enemies with ease and dealing substantial damage thanks to Shadow Imbuement.

This build will still be incredibly mobile thanks to Shadow Step, which helps us get around quickly as well. It’ll also help us break free from Crowd Control, should we get ever get caught by any.

With Dark Shroud there to cover defenses, we won’t be as fragile, but we’ll still have to rely a fair bit on our mobility and positioning to stay safe. Eventually, we’ll be able to improve this skill to make it even more reliable and consistent, for when our enemies don’t just pop from our damage.

We’ll be looking to use the Combo Points Rogue Specialization for this build, as it’ll greatly boost our damage. We also don’t benefit from Inner Sight quite as much as the Twisting Blades build would, which solidifies this choice. Preparation is still an okay choice but offers much less damage for the build.

Skills and Passives Breakdown

In this section, we’ll discuss each skill we use. We’ll explain the whys and hows of how the build works and then cover the general leveling order.

Important Skills

Important Passives

Here we’re only going to talk about the Passives that grant the build the most benefit, what they do, and why they’re critical to the build.

Key Passive – Momentum

As a pure melee build, we have a choice between Momentum and Victimize for Key Passives. Since Flurry has a very low Lucky Hit Chance, Momentum wins out here for the consistency. Victimize can still be good once we get deeper into Paragon and can boost it far more, but for leveling, it’s not great.

This grants us a stacking buff that grants Damage Reduction, Energy Regeneration, Movement Speed, and Damage per stack we have with stacks only being lost when Marksman Skills are used. Combined with its Aspect it’s an incredibly powerful and reliable bonus.

Sturdy

As a melee build, the damage reduction from Sturdy will help us out quite a bit, as we’ll be close to enemies at all times.

Target Practice

Target Practice grants us passive Critical Strike Chance. Alongside Trick Attacks, this heavily reduces our overall need to stack Critical Strike Chance on gear, making it easier to gear up.

Exploit

Exploit is a huge damage increase, granting multiplicative damage bonuses against Healthy and Injured enemies. With a lot of our goal being that we make enemies simply pop and disappear, this is a great pickup.

Malice

Thanks to being able to readily apply Vulnerable, Malice will do plenty to help boost our damage. While this boost will only apply to Vulnerable enemies without a consistent way to knock enemies down, we’ll be able to make frequent use of it.

Precision Imbuement

Precision Imbuement is a little bit of a tricky one to consistently benefit from, but we’ll have no trouble making use of it thanks to Shadow Imbuement. It’ll be far from a permanent bonus, the early critical strike chance is very valuable for the build. Once we get higher rarity Tempering Manuals, we’ll have more consistent access to this.

Innervation

Innervation restores our Energy with a Lucky Hit. Combined with Flurry’s multiple hits, allows us to consistently trigger it. Without factoring in any bonuses to Lucky Hit, at rank 3, Innervation will have roughly a 15% chance of triggering at least once each time Flurry is cast, per enemy.

Second Wind

Second Wind grants us a temporary Barrier each time we spend 100 Energy, and is a great defensive option later into progression, when we can pick up a Crown of Lucion. Before this, Advanced Flurry will make it trigger very infrequently without high Attack Speed.

Leveling Order: Where to Assign Your Skill Points

We’ll start our leveling by taking Invigorating Strike and Enhanced Invigorating Strike. This will allow us to get our Core Skills, where we’ll take Flurry and upgrade it to Advanced Flurry, as well as a point in Sturdy for some damage reduction and to unlock more skills.

Now we have access to our Agility Skills, where we’ll pick up Disciplined Shadow Step for extra mobility. Next. we’ll max Weapon Mastery for the damage it offers and to get access to our Subterfuge Skills.

In Subterfuge Skills, we’ll pick up Subverting Dark Shroud. This gives us a ton of damage reduction as well as a bit of sustain should we get hit and lose a shadow. Then we can take a point in Siphioning Strikes for Life recovery and get access to Imbuement Skills.

For Imbuement Skills, we’ll take Mixed Shadow Imbuement. This gives us more AoE as well as Critical Strike Chance. Then, we’ll max Flurry to boost its base damage and get it hitting harder, and get access to our Ultimate Skill.

We’ll take Supreme Shadow Clone as our Ultimate Skill of choice. This will copy our skill casts, and with a couple of levels later on effectively double our damage. We’ll fill the point we need to Reach our Key Passive by maxing Target Practice and Trick Attacks to ramp our Critical Strike Chance.

Next, we’ll take a point in innervation for Energy recovery. Now we pick up Momentum as it’s the strongest Key passive we can get. Then we’ll max Innervation, Alchemist Fortune, and Precision Imbuement for more Critical Strike Chance, Lucky Hit Chance, and Energy sustain when Shadow Imbuement is active.

We’ll max Exploit and Malice to continue stacking our damage bonuses. Then, we’ll max Dark Shroud to increase its Damage reduction. After that, we can max Shadow Clone to bring its damage up and add additional burst damage.

To finalize the build, we’ll pick and max Countering Smoke Grenade. This gives us a boost of damage against harder enemies, and we can replace Dark Shroud with this skill as the Umbrous Aspect will maintain our Dark Shrouds. Then we’ll put the remaining points into Second Wind for the added defenses going into the later stages of the game.

Rogue Leveling Progress Summary

This section sums up the Leveling Process in an easier-to-reference format.

Levels	Icon	Skill	Purpose
2-3		Enhanced Invigorating Strike	A quick attack that provides an Energy Regeneration boost.
4-6		Advanced Flurry	Main DPS with ramping damage
7		Sturdy	Early Damage Reduction
8-10		Disciplined Shadow Step	Mobility and Unstoppable.
11-13		Weapon Mastery	Great DPS boost regardless of current weapons.
14-16		Subverting Dark Shroud	Damage Reduction and sustain.
17		Siphoning Strikes	Consistent Life Recovery for just a single point.
18-20		Mixed Shadow Imbuement	Adds decent damage and AoE burst. Unlock and use Combo Points Specialization
21-24		Flurry	Fully level our Main Damage Skill.
25-27		Supreme Shadow Clone	Taking our Ultimate for extra damage.
28-30		Target Practice	Free Critical Strike Chance.
31-33		Trick Attacks	More Critical Strike Chance for free.
34		Innervation	Energy Sustain
35		Momentum	The Key passive for the build, which improves our damage and mobility.
36-37		Innervation	Finish maxing.
38-40		Alchemist’s Fortune	Lucky Hit Chance when Shadow Imbument is active
41-43		Precision Imbument	Another Critical Strike Chance bonus when we use Shadow Imbuement.
44-46		Exploit	More damage at the start and end of an encounter
47-49		Malice	More damage to Vulnerable enemies
50-53		Dark Shroud	Increases Damage reduction by leveling the skill.
54-57		Shadow Clone	Reduced Cooldown and adds initial burst.
58-R4		Countering Smoke Grenade	Max and upgrade for extra damage, replaces Dark Shroud on hotbar.
R5-R7		Rugged	Damage Reduction against DoTs
R8-R9		Sturdy	Finish maxing for more Damage Reduction
R10-R12		Second Wind	Temporary Barrier for expending Energy
Alternate R10-R12		Figid Finesse	Increases the usefulness of Icy Alchemist’s Aspect, allowing it to grant this damage bonus.

Gearing and Stats

In this section, we’ll cover all the things you’d want to keep an eye out for to enhance the final build. This includes our Recommended Weapons, Specialization, Aspects, Runewords, and, of course, Uniques.

Recommended Weapons

This build wants Swords for the Dual-wield Slots and a Crossbow For the Ranged Slot. This is due to the Weapon Mastery passive giving better bonuses for us with these weapons. This combination of weapons gives us a general Damage increase from the Swords and Critical Strike Damage from the Crossbow.

This build can also make use of various One-Handed Uniques and Mythics, which will affect the bonuses granted by Weapon Mastery. Keep this Passiv in Mind when optin got use any of them.

Ideal Stats

The table below details the ideal stats for our gear, be on the lookout for gear that matches at least two of the three rolls below. We’ve also included Aspects here for easier viewing, refer to the Aspects section for additional details on why these are selected.

Affixes that are CAPITALIZED are the Ideal Affixes to get as a Greater Affix. These are not required but are a good way to push the build further. Affixes in Bold are the ideal Affixes to boost with Masterworking.

In cases where multiple Affixes are listed, the secondary option is for when another stat reaches its cap. This is most common with Armor, where you’d take Maximum Life after reaching the Armor cap.

Gems and Runewords

This build uses Emeralds in our Weapons, Emeralds in our Armor, and Skulls in Jewelry.

We opt for Emeralds in our Weapons as we’re heavy on Critical Strikes, and this increases our damage.

We use Emeralds in our Armor, as they provide additional Dexterity, which boosts our damage. For a more defensive option, we can use Amethysts to boost the Barrier granted by Second Wind or the Que Rune.

We go with Skulls for Our Jewelry as Armor is harder to come by. We can use Resistance Gems if needed, as it is important to cap both.

For Runewords there are multiple great combinations we can use, below are our recommended Runewords for Different stages of the builds.

Stage	Ritual | Invocation	Result
Leveling	Cir | Lum	Casting 5 Skill restores 210 Energy.
Leveling	Cem | Gar	Casting Evade Grants 15% Critical Strike Chance. Stacks to 25%.
Midgame	Moni | Gar	Casting 2 Mobility Skills grants 20% Critical Strike Chance. Stacks to 25%
Midgame	Cir | Que	Casting 5 Skills grants Druid’s Earthen Bulwark for Barrier.
Endgame	Tam | Que	Casting 6 Core Skills casts Druid’s Earthen Bulwark, granting Barrier
Endgame	Cir | Xal	Casting 5 Skills increases Maximum Life by 20% for 6 seconds

Specialization

This build uses Combo Points as its Specialization. Combo Points allow us to forgo Attack Speed on most of our Armor, so long as we build and spend the Combo Points.

Alternatively, if Combo Points aren’t an interesting playstyle, Preparation is a viable option as well. This allows us to have Shadow Clone up far more often, but due to Advanced Flurry reducing our Energy Costs, it will take more casts to trigger.

Boss Powers

Boss Powers are exclusive to Season 8, and offer us a wide variety of options. But we’ve narrowed down the best choices for all stages of the game.

For more information on Boss Powers, check out our Boss Powers Explained guide, which details how to get and upgrade each power, and potential uses for them.

Stage	Power	Reason
Leveling	Skerg’s Toxins (Main)	Deals heavy Poisoning Damage to anything that hits us.
Midgame	Grigoire’s Lightning Square (Main)	Consistent AoE Damage.
Endgame	Flesh Reaper’s Disruption (Main)	Combine with Varshan’s Lifesteal as a Modifier and Aspect of Accursed Touch for consistent AoE damage
All	Beast Master’s Training (Modifier)	Huge increase to Summon Damage for stacking Critical Strike Damage, which we already do.
All	Hatred’s Embrace’s Haste (Modifier)	Free Critical Strike Chance for keeping our Shadow Resistance capped. Caps out Critical Strike Chance alongside passive bonuses without further investment.
All	Sinerat’s Flames (Modifier)	Boost Elemental Damage, scaling with our Resistances.
Endgame	Varshan’s Lifesteal (Modifier)	Combine with Flesh Reaper’s Disruption as a Modifier and Aspect of Accursed Touch for consistent AoE damage

Aspects and Uniques

In this section, we’ll cover the Aspects you’ll want to grab from dungeons as you can, as well as ones to keep an out for to help the build along. We’ll also talk about the uniques that can help the build out in a few ways, though these will be fairly rare compared to the aspects.

Aspect of Encircling Blades

Aspect of Encircling Blades not only makes Flurry a fully circular AoE around us, but gives it an additional multiplicative damage bonus, talk about a huge win. This makes Flurry way less tricky to use and massive increases the number of enemies you can pop with a Shadow-imbued Flurry.

As our largest and most consistent bonus, make sure this makes it onto the Ranged Weapon Slot for more damage.

Breakneck Bandit’s Aspect

Breakneck Bandit’s Aspect provides Flurry with another damage boost and the ability to Stun, enabling Trick Attacks.

Aspect of Stolen Vigor

The aspect of Stolen Vigor is a great way to add extra value to the Momentum Key passive, granting us a good bit of damage for maintaining our stacks.

As our second strongest Damage Aspect, make sure this makes it on to an Amulet.

Aspect of Imitated Imbuement

The Aspect of Imitated Imbuement allows our Clone to also use Imbued Skills. This one is more of an optional choice to help boost the damage from our Shadow Clone, but is a fantastic pick-up if we take Poison Imbuement as a swap for bossing.

Icy Alchemist’s Aspect

With the Season 3 changes, this Aspect now contributes AoE Cold damage and Chill to builds using Shadow Imbuement. This also provides a source of Chill, which not only adds a small layer of defense, but can also result in more damage with Frigid Finesse. Frigid Finesse allows it to be consistently useful without significantly altering our tree, and very easy to fit in if we get Barrier from the Que Rune or Ranks of Second Wind from Tempering.

Toxic Alchemist’s Aspect*

This works similarly to Icy Alchemist, but releases a Poison AoE instead. It’s great damage early on and we could use it to activate passives like Debilitating Toxins or Alchemical Advantage, but this requires significant adjustment to the passive tree to fit. It’ll be the first Offensive Aspect we want to drop in favor of a Unique Weapon.

Ravager’s Aspect

Ravager’s Aspect is great just for the extra charge of Shadow Step, which helps to quickly stack Momentum and trigger Lucky Hit Chance effects. Ultimately, it’s more mobility and utility, which is exactly what we want from the skill.

Umbrous Aspect

Umbrous Aspect allows us to restore Dark Shroud shadows by simply critically striking our enemies, which we’ll do often enough to maintain our stacks passively. This allows us to swap it from our Hotbar in favor of Smoke Grenade in the later stages of progression.

Enshrouding Aspect

The Enshrouding Aspect is a great defensive boost we can take after the Daze Aspects were nerfed quite heavily. This allows us to generate Dark Shroud by using our Healing Potion and increases their damage reduction a bit.

Mangler’s Aspect*

The Mangler’s Aspect allows us to consistently Daze enemies, allowing us to use it as a defensive layer as well as enabling Trick Attacks for more damage. We’ll eventually drop it in favor of Tempering Chance to Daze to make room for Uniques.

Galvanized Slasher’s Aspect*

Galvanized Slasher adds utility to our Shadow Step, giving it a chance to restore all of our Energy. Shadow Step is great at activating this as it has a high Lucky Hit Chance. Eventually, we can drop this to open space for Unique Itemsafter shuffling Aspects around.

Unique Items

We’re only going to talk about the few that offer the strongest effects on the build. While there are others that help, these are the ones you really want to slot into your build if you get the chance. Keep in mind these won’t drop until you enter World Tier 3, which is possible by the end of the leveling process

Crown of Lucion

Crown of Lucion is a Unique Helmet that provides a ramping damage increase, with the downside of also increasing Energy Costs. This works well with Advanced Flurry as it helps offset the downsides of the Unique Effect. The ramping Energy Costs will require some Resource Generation or Energy per Second on gear to maintain.

Heir of Perdition

Every Stat on this Mythic Helmet is just exceptionally good for the build as we can make use of every single one, but a very late game option that can even free up Temper Slots from taking Critical Strike Chance. Crown of Lucion offers a slightly stronger damage multiplier, x75% at full stacks vs Heir of Perdition’s x60%, but the extra ranks on Flurry more than make up for this and allow for far more consistency.

Grasp of Shadow

These Unique Gloves offer a good mix of Stats, but often aren’t worth using without the Skill Ranks Affix being a Greater Affix. This makes it somewhat competitive with a standard pair of gloves with Ranks to Flurry. Using them will, however, come at the cost of having to drop an Offensive Aspect and its Tempers, but largely has the same bonuses we’d get anyways.

Condemnation

Condemnation is a Unique Dagger that works well with the Combo Points Specialization, which is the preferred option for this build. It offers a great multiplicative bonus while granting a chance for any of our attacks to instantly create 3 Combo Points to use. This can allow Flurry to rack up a ton of damage very quickly.

Ashera’s Khanjar

Ashera’s Khanjar is another Dagger that can find use in this build. It gives us a stacking Attack Speed boost, which stacks on top of any Attack Speed from Gear, making Flurry a faster skill. It’s a decent replacement for Accelerating Aspect, especially since it comes with ranks of Weapon Mastery. This Attack Speed can even exceed the normal Attack Speed cap of 100%, making it incredibly valuable.

Doombringer

Doombringer is a Mythic Sword that offers a ton of defensive power, including a huge boost to Maximum Life and multiple Damage Reduction effects. It also has a massive bonus to All Stats, all but ensuring all Paragon bonuses end up activated, providing a huge bonus to offense and defence.

Ring of Starless Skies

The Ring of Starless Skies is a Mythic Ring, which makes it one of the last upgrades we can get, but pairs exceptionally well with both Advanced Flurry. This makes Flurry super cheap to cast and removes any need to invest any Tempered Affixes into Energy Generation while adding more ramping damage to it.

Paragon Boards and Glyphs

Paragon Boards and Glyphs are a feature that becomes available at level 60. Below are our recommended Paragon Boards and Glyph Choices. These are listed in the order we recommend them as well as their pathing.

With the abundance of Paragon Points we can earn, we’ve split the pathing into Initial Pathing and Additional Pathing. Initial Pathing is the clusters we pick up while pathing through the board, while Additional Pathing are the ones we come back for later for additional stats once we’ve gotten all of our Glyphs socketed.

Starter Board

Starter Boards offer a lot of generic offensive and defensive stats. In this case, Damage, Elite Damage, Armor, and Maximum Life are worth picking up.

This board offers a lot of accessible Dexterity, so we’ll socket Closer here to take advantage of this.

This Glyph grants Increased Cutthroat Kill Damage Per 5 Dexterity allocated in range. With 40 Dexterity allocated, it grants an increase in Damage Reduction against Close Enemies. At Glyph Level 45, it also grants a multiplicative bonus to Damage against Close Enemies.

Cunning Stratagem

Cunning Stratgem will boost the Non-Damage Combo Point Effects, which is Attack Speed in Flurry’s Case. This Paragon Board also offers us a lot of defenses as well as some Core Skill Damage.

This Paragon Board is rotated so that the Glyph Socket is in the Lower Right of the Paragon Board

This board offers a lot of accessible Strength, so we’ll socket Exploit here to take advantage of this.

This Glyph grants Increased Vulnerable Damage Per 5 Strength allocated in range. With 25 Strength allocated, it applies to Vulnerable when we first strike an enemy. At Glyph Level 45, it also grants a multiplicative bonus to Vulnerable Damage.

Exploit Weakness

Exploit Weakness gives us a stacking Damage bonus when hitting Vulnerable enemies. Additionally, this Paragon Board a ton of extra Vulnerable Damage.

We rotate this board so that the Glyph Socket is in the Lower Left of the Paragon Board.

This board offers a lot of accessible Intelligence, so we’ll socket Combat here to take advantage of this.

This Glyph grants Increaed Critical Strike Damage Per 5 intelligence allocated in range. With 25 Intelligence allocated, it refunds small amount of Energy when Critically Striking. At Glyph Level 45, it also grants a multiplicative bonus to Critical Strike Damage.

Cheap Shot

Cheap Shot gives us a stacking damage buff for each nearby Crowd-Controlled enemy nearby. Additionally, this Paragon Board offers us some more Damage.

This Paragon Board is rotated so that Calculated is near the Upper Side of the Paragon Board.

This board offers a lot of accessible Dexterity, so we’ll socket Chip here to take advantage of this.

This Glyph grants Increased Physical Damage Per 5 Dexterity allocated in range. With 40 Dexterity allocated, it grants a stacking damage bonus when dealing Physical Damage. At Glyph Level 45, it also grants a multiplicative bonus to Vulnerable Damage.

Eldritch Bounty

Eldritch Bounty increases our Damage and Resistance of the same Element as our most recent Imbued Skill we cast. Additionally, this Paragon Board offers us a lot of Non-Physical Damage and Reduced Imbuement Cooldowns.

We rotate this Paragon Board so that the Glyph Socket is in the Upper Left of the Paragon Board.

This board offers a lot of accessible Strength, so we’ll socket Turf here to take advantage of this.

This Glyph grants Increased Damage to Close Enemies Per 5 Strength allocated in range. With 25 Strength allocated, it grants increased Damage reduction against Close Enemies. At Glyph Level 45, it also grants a multiplicative bonus to Close Enemies.

When you are done with the leveling process and have finished the campaign of Diablo 4, you can check out our Endgame-focused Imbuement Rogue Build guide. We also have a leveling variation of it if you are interested in playing it since level 1.

Check out more Diablo 4 Builds here on VULKK.com