Rank #1 Death Trap - T100 Destroyer

The Death Trap Rogue Build Guide teaches you about Gear, Skills, Paragon, Playstyle & Seasonal Mechanics in Diablo 4.

Death Trap is a versatile skill that pulls in enemies and deals great damage.

Starter

When monster density is high and your gear is still low you have to spam Poison Trap + Death Trap. Eventually, you can get away with just Death Trap after you place your initial Poison Trap. Sometimes you will need to cast Barrage when your Poison Trap and Death Trap are on Cooldown, but it won't happen often.

Against, Bosses you will very likely have to include Barrage in your normal rotation.

General

• You should cast Caltrops, Smoke Grenade and Poison Trap for damage and try to keep 100% uptime on their damage multipliers.
• If you overlap a new Caltrops over an old one before it expires it will inherit the maximum 45% Damage Multiplier.
• You will cast Dash for Mobility.
• Concealment is used as an infinite source of Unstoppable.
• If you are expecting to get Crowd Controlled a lot you can spam it.
• Spam Death Trap for damage.
• Smoke Grenade also provides Poison Damage, activating Alchemical Advantage.

Speeds

• For Speedfarming you can drop Caltrops and Smoke Grenade for Dash and Shadow Step.
• During Speed Pits, it is fine to just hold down Dash and Death Trap.
• Put dash on Shift keybind (re-bind force-standstill if you use it) so you can hold down Shift + Your DT Button, to have your character spam both alternatingly.
• Make sure to always keep moving to stack up Hit and Run as fast as you can.
• Pick the highest Pit Tier in which you still one-shot monsters and try to complete it below 60s.
• The Boss should not take you longer than 5 seconds.

Pushing

• When Pit Pushing it is important to group up multiple packs of enemies by dragging them with Death Trap.

T100 Destroyer

• Always keep Hit and Run at 6+ Stacks.
• Caltrops is only used for the Boss.
• Spam Conceal, Dark Shroud and Shadow Imbue.
• Hold Dash & DT to keep alternating between them.
• Qax might set your DT on Cooldown when you do not hit enemies. See the variant for fixes.

This build works by getting the right combination of Cooldown Reduction, Ranks of Death Trap and Energy expenditure, allowing you to endlessly spam Death Trap.

Death Trap Rogue's power comes from Scoundrel's Leather making it a Core Skill and Beastfall Boots allowing you to reset the Cooldown fully after every cast.

The way this works is that Death Trap is considered an Ultimate and a Core Skill at the same time. This allows it to fulfill both Beastfall Boot Requirements. In combination with Preparation, and 150+ Maximum Energy, every Death Trap cast lowers your Death Trap's Cooldown by 10 seconds. When you manage to lower your Death Trap's Cooldown below 10 seconds you will then be able to cast it indefinitely, given you restore at least 150 Energy.

You need a lot of resource generation to sustain 150 energy with only 1 restore temper, stacking strength (and slotting rubies) helps a lot. Aim for 1000+ Strength with Shroud of False Death.

Refer to my Video about it and this Sheet to calc it out for yourself.

Leveling

You can't really level with this build as you need Scoundrel's Leather, tight Tempers & Masterworks and Mythic Uniques. I would recommend you level with the following Dance of Knives Leveling guide.

Cooldown Reduction and Energy

The Cooldown of Death Trap is affected by Ranks to Death Trap and our Cooldown Reduction. Because of this Vehement Brawler reduces your Cooldown.

You can use THIS Sheet to calculate your Death Trap Cooldown by making a Copy.

You require a 10 second Death Trap Cooldown.

Energy Management

In order to sustain your energy you need to recover all your Energy after every Death Trap cast.

Energy is replenished through Beastfall Boots (+25), Aftermath (+35), the unique Chaos Perk A Beast Cornered (~45) and a Casting an Ultimate Skill restores X Energy Temper on one of your rings. All these values are added together and multiplier by your Resource Generation stat, which usually sits at around 15% with 500 Strength. That means a factor of 1.15. With all of these active, you should have no trouble restoring 150 Energy.

With a +35 Restore on Ultimate Cast Temper, you need at least 21.6% Res Gen from Shroud of False Death (2 MW Crits or a GA) and 1000 Strength to restore 150 Energy.

Refer to my Video about it and this Sheet by Ava to calc it out for yourself.

Mercenaries

We use Raheir with Shield Charge as it makes it much easier for you to cap your Armor and also provides Fortify. Provoke provides you with more damage. Alternatively and especially so when Speedfarming, you can use Subo with Share a Drink for more Potions to sustain Crazy Brew and his map-reveal.

Varyana with Earth Breaker is used to Knockdown, which also increases the damage you get from the Malice passive.

Runes

• CirVex can lower your DT Cooldown and increase the damage by providing you more ranks to it.
• CirOhm is slightly better if you have more than 14 ranks of Death Trap already.
• PocWat is the best choice as it executes enemies. Alternatively,
• ZanJah can be used to go even faster.
• ZanXan is slightly less damage but a valid choice at lower attack speeds
• PocMot is a choice if you are lazy do not want to press Dark Shroud manually.
• ZanQax is the highest DPS possible, but requires you to always hit a target to restore energy through your Lucky Hit Chance to restore Energy tempers on your Weapons. It's not consistent enough for Speeds, but if you dont mind the occassional DT CD due to it, its the highest dps.
• YulJah is used in the T100 Destroyed because Zan is already paired with Qax.

Chaos Perks and Chaos Uniques

Chaos Perks

• Hit and Run is completely insane for Speedfarming and having 7+ stacks of it happens very often. It's a crazy damage boost and you want to keep going fast to keep it up.
• Crazy Brews allows us to cap out our Attack Speed when combined with our other bonuses and is an incredible speed and DPS boost.
• Enervated Strikes is a direct multiplier to our damage, as Death Trap is considered a Core Skill through Scoundrels Leathers.
• The other Perks do not do much for this build and should only be used if you do not have access to the optimal ones.
• While good on paper, Restoring Energy or reducing Cooldowns on hitting enemies is not reliable enough. We want to be able to spam Death Trap independently of having a target.
• Alternating Alteration is picked due to lack of other appealing 3rd options.

Chaos Uniques

You want:

• Beastfall Boots as Pants
• Banished Lord's Talisman as Gloves
• Scoundrels Leathers as Boots

These 3 can be swapped to depending on how/where you drop them. Just keep in mind that you want the 1.2x multiplier on the unique effect that is only provided if the Chaos Unique is not in its regular slot.

Elixirs and Incenses

It's important to run Elixirs and Incenses at all times. Not only because they increase your Experience gain but also because they provide very strong combat boosts.

For Elixirs you will use Elixir of Resourcefulness for Maximum Energy, which will increase your Beastfall Boots Damage Multiplier.

For Incenses you will use Spiral Morning for Dexterity, Song of the Mountain for Armor and Soothing Spices for All Resistances and more Armor.

Attack Speed Breakpoints

Because the game's server operates in frames (images), Skills can only be cast in a whole number of frames. This means, for example, that you can't cast a Skill in 10.2 frames. To extend this example further, that means that all Attack Speed values that lead to a cast time of 10.01 to 10.99 frames would mean you end up casting at 11 frames, effectively wasting all Attack Speed gains from 11 frames to 10.01.

In order to avoid wasting Attack Speed, you can calculate the Attack Speed Breakpoints for your skills using THIS SHEET.

You might be wondering how frames translate into actual Cast Speed. Because the server runs at 60 frames per second the way we translate frames into Cast Speed is with the formula: 60 / Frames = Casts per Second.

For Season 10, the Chaos Perk Crazy Brews allows us to almost max out our attack speed entirely and therefore we stick to Crossbows and 1 Dagger & 1 Sword.

Masterworking and Greater Affixes Explained

Masterworking

Masterworking (MW) enhances an item's stats. Each MW rank boosts all affixes by 5%. Ranks 4,8,12 give a 25% bonus to a random affix (MW Crit).

In this planner, the color blue on an item denotes that the affix got one MW Crit, the color yellow denotes that the item got two MW crits and the color orange denotes that the item got three MW crits.

For future reference the amount of MW Crits on an affix will be denoted by 1MW, 2MW, 3MW.

Greater Affixes

Greater Affixes (GA) on an item force the affix to roll at the top of it's range of possible values and then applies a 50% increase to its value. GA increases are additive with Masterworking increases.

In this planner, the yellow star to the left of an affix denotes that is a GA.

Example

To put it all in to practice, let's calculate what stat increase a GA Affix on a 12/12 Masterworked item with 2 MW Crits gets:

Ranks 1-3, 5-7, 9-11 all give 5% -> 9 * 5% = 45%

Two MW Crits -> 2 * 25% = 50%

GA = 50%

Total = 45% + 50% + 50% = 145%

Masterworking and Greater Affix Priority

Unless a certain amount of a stat is required and no more, like in the case of Attack Speed Breakpoints, Armor and Resistances, GA and MW priority should be easy to follow.

Guides, which follow a Starter -> Midgame -> Endgame progression, are structured such that the difficulty of the MWing outcome and amount of GAs on items also progresses as expected.

For example, a Starter variant will generally have 1GA items with three 1MW affixes. A Midgame variant will generally have 2GA items with a 2MW Affix and a 1MW affix. An Endgame variant will generally have 2GA/3GA items with a 3MW affix.

From this you can derive that the GA on the starter version is the most important, the second GA added is the second most important and the third GA added is the third most important affix.

In the case of Masterworking, 3MW = most important affix, the 1MW in the Midgame variant is the second most important affix and from the Starter variant with three 1 MW affixes you can know which is the third most important affix.

When GA and MW don't align you are most likely in the presence of a stat with a certain threshold you have to meet or a cap and those will be explicitly stated in the guide anyways.

In the case of Uniques GA and MW, progression standards are generally shifted by one as they are easier to MW because they have 4 affixes and also easier to acquire with multiple GAs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are we using Versatility if Death Trap is a Core Skill now, thanks to Scoundrels Leathers?

Because Death Trap gets the Non-Basic/Core tag which means it still works.

I can not spam Death Trap infinitely, what am I doing wrong?

Make sure to:

• Have your Death Trap below 10 seconds Cooldown.
• This requires a lot of Cooldown Reduction, Death Trap Skill Ranks and good tempering rolls and masterworks. Greater Affix Ultimate Cooldown Reduction on Beastfall Boots is also very useful here.
• Have means to restore 150 Energy.
• This should be the easier part with A Beast Cornered and one Casting Ultimate Skills restores Primary Resource Temper on a ring.
• Actually have 150 Energy in the first place
• You need +resource on your Beastfall Boots and can drink an Elixir of Resourcefulness II.
• Have Preparation as Specialization equipped.

8th of October 2025

• Updated T100 Paragon to match what I use in-game

7th of October 2025

• Updated for Patch 2.4.1

3nd of October 2025

• Updated AS Breakpoint Sheet and Resource Calc Sheet in the In-Depth section
• Added T100 Destroyer Variant with in-depth explanation
• Removed Midgame Variant and Swapped Simple Reset in it's slot instead

28th of September 2025

• Minor updates to wording, formatting fixes and a few updated choices for more clarity in distinguishing between Endgame and Pit Pushing

27th of September 2025

• Updated Endgame Variant. Also added more info how to restore Energy properly.

25th of September 2025

• Added Easy Reset Variant

23rd of September 2025

• Guide fully updated for Season 10 - Infernal Chaos

30th of July 2025

• Formatting and typo fixes.

23rd of July 2025

• Updated Pit Pushing Paragon (all points spent)

13th of July 2025

• Optimized Speedfarm Version for farming Pit ~79 in under 90s
• Frostbitten goes in for Vehement Brawler
• Control instead of Headhunter
• Qax instead of Thul

6th of July 2025

• Minor fixes to Paragon pathing
• Formatting and typo fixes

1st of July 2025

• Patch 2.3 Season 9 Sins of the Horadrim