Diablo 4 Rogue BuildTwisting Blades - Poison Tank

Unique Items

• Harlequin's Crest can be replaced with Cowl of the Nameless or Andariel's Visage. If you do not have those Uniques this item can be replaced with Umbrous. If you end up using Umbrous, swap 3 points in Exploit with 3 points into Dark Shroud to take Subverting Dark Shroud.
• X'fal's Corrupted Signet can be replaced with Accelerating or Rapid.
• Doombringer can be replaced with Asheara's Khanjar, Accelerating or Rapid. Also if you wish to be more defensive you can swap it with Bladedancer, adding Umbrous on your amulet.
• If you do not have Tibault's Will or Condemnation replace your Legs with Might and your Dagger with Asheara's Khanjar, Accelerating or Rapid.

Aspects

• Bursting Venoms is mandatory. The rest can be replaced momentarily. Remember that Expectant and Condemnation do not buff Poison Imbuement's damage.

Items

• Amulet: You can replace Energy Cost Reduction with Deadly Venom, Exploit or Malice.
• Chest/Legs: You can replace Damage Reduction with Maximum Life.
• Rings: You can replace Maximum Life with Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies.
• Boots: You can use Lightning Resistance instead of Cold Resistance.

Gemming

• On your Jewelry use a Topaz if you have Cold Resistance on your Boots or a Sapphire if you have Lightning Resistance. Then use Diamonds on the other two slots.

Item Considerations

• Use Daggers and a Crossbow.
• Use a Ring with Fire Resistance to combine with X'Fal's Corroded Signet.

Paragon Board Stat Requirements

• Str: 620
• Int: 620
• Dex: 750

Poison Imbuement has some hidden interactions that make it even stronger than it already is.

• Core Skill and Cutthroat Damage contribute to their own damage bucket, which is why we prioritize these stats on our Gear and Paragon Board. This got stealth nerfed in season 2, Core and Cutthroat do absolutely nothing for Poison Imbuement now.
• Although Bladedancer's blades do reduced damage they are considered a normal Twisting Blade for Poison Imbuement and therefore apply the full poison damage amount.
• All Damage, or how it's shown on the Paragon Board, Damage, gets double the normal value, which means 12.5% Damage is really worth 25%.
• Combo Points increase Poison Imbuement damage.
• Expectant, Condemnation and Tricks of the Trade do not increase Poison Imbuement damage.
• Critical Strike Damage does not increase Poison Imbuement damage.
• Damage Formula for Stats as of Season 2: (1 + 2 x Damage + All Additives + Vuln) x (1 + 0.4 x Damage to CC) (1 + 0.1% Dex)

Basic Skills

We use Puncture mainly because it enables us to use Pestilent Points to reset our Poison Imbuement's cooldown. On top of that it provides us with Vulnerable, which, while nerfed, still gives us [x]20% damage. Lastly, Puncture is the Marksman Skill we use for Umbrous and Close Quarter Combat.

Core Skills

We use Twisting Blades in this build for various reasons: not only is it overall the strongest Core Skill in terms of AoE damage, single target damage and crowd control, but also Bladedancer interacts with Poison Imbuement in a very potent matter as detailed in the Hidden Mechanics section.

Flurry is an alternative Core Skill you could use but the power level of the build would suffer quite significantly.

X:1 Rotation means we use X Basic Skills for every 1 Core Skill. For example, 1:1 Puncture -> TB means we alternate bewteen using Puncture and Twisting Blades.

Agility Skills

In this build, and most other Rogue builds, we use Dash and Shadow Step.

Dash is overall a very strong mobility ability that lets you dash across the length of your screen. We further increase Dash's strength with the inclusion of Quickening Fog, which drops a Smoke Grenade at the end of our Dash and lowers its cooldown when we daze enemies with a Smoke Grenade.

Shadow Step is our only way to get Unstoppable and also serves as mobility and Stagger.

Subterfuge Skills

We use Smoke Grenade and Dark Shroud indirectly in some version of this build.

Smoke Grenade is a very strong skill that allows us to daze enemies and get a [x]25% damage buff against any enemy dazed by it. All talent points taken that buff Smoke Grenade work with Quickening Fog.

Dark Shroud is a mediocre skill by its own because of the very long cooldown but Umbrous allows us to cast it for free when using Marksman Skills. This allows us to get up to 40% DR and 20% MS for free. For this reason, we DO NOT place Dark Shroud on our cast bar.

In this case we use Puncture as our Marksman Skill.

Imbuement Skills

As detailed in other parts of the guide, Poison Imbuement is our build's most important skill and what we base every Aspect, Skill and Gearing choice on.

Ultimate Skills

We do not use an Ultimate Skill in this build.

Armor

As of Season 2 it's much easier to reach the Armor cap so we no longer have to stack + Armor% on every slot.

You need roughly 7600 Armor to cap with a maxed Disobedience on your amulet and 9200 when the aspect is on an armor slot.

This means you need 2 Armor% affixes when you have Disobedience on an armor slot and 1 affix when it's on your amulet.

Resistances

As of Season 2 the Resistance cap is 70% and up to 85% with +15% Maximum Resistance. This is now a very strong stat for damage mitigation.

In my opinion, the most important overall resistance is Poison because it's very prevalent and unavoidable.

In order to cap your Resistances you need 1x Resistance Affix of 4 different Resistances while the rest can be gemmed.

Once you have very high item level jewelry you can do the following to cap Resistances:

• Two rings that give the same Elemental Resistance
• One Elemental Resistance affix on piece of gear
• Gem the remaining three Elements.

Example:

• Penitent Greaves 60% Cold
• Rings 2x 12% Shadow
• Gems 30% Poison, Fire and Lightning
• Intellect 15% All
• Jewlery 28.5% + 2x 12% All
• Paragon Board 28.5% All
• WT4 Penalty -50%

Totals: All: 46 Fire: 30 + 46 = 76 Cold 60 + 46 = 106 Lighting 30 + 46 = 76 Poison 30 + 46 = 76 Shadow 24 + 46 = 70

Placement Order

1. Versatility on the first board.
2. Skip the Glyph on the second board until you have a Level 15 Devious then place it there.
3. Place Control on the third board.
4. Place Turf on the fourth board.
5. Place Canny on the fifth board.
6. Place Efficacy on the sixth board.

Leveling Order

Level 15 1. Devious 2. Control 3. Turf 4. Versatility 5. Efficacy 6. Canny

Level 21 1. Control 2. Efficacy 3. Devious 4. Versatility 5. Canny 6. Turf

Refer to the following link for leveling.

Also, for leveling include Hemomancy in your build as it's very powerful early on.

Close Quarter Combat

When we attack an enemy with a Marksman Skill we get a 10% Attack Speed buff. In this build we use Puncture.

When we attack an enemy Cutthroat Skill we get another 10% Attack Speed buff. In this build we use Twisting Blades.

Once both buffs are active for a total of 20% Attack Speed, we now gain [x]40% of our Damage vs. Crowd Controlled Enemies as multiplicative damage. Since we can get over 400% Damage vs. CC this means Close Quarter Combat effectively doubles our damage done.

This build is very good for bossing but can be taken to the next level by implementing item swaps.

Amulet swap with the following stats:

• Accelerating Aspect
• +2 Ranks to Imbuement Skills
• +2 Ranks of the Malice Passive
• +% Energy Cost Reduction
• +% Damage or Dexterity

Ring to swap X'Fal's Corroded Signet with the following stats:

• Inner Calm Aspect
• +% Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies
• +% Lucky Hit Chance
• +% Resource Generation
• +% Damage to Close Enemies

Asheara's Khanjar to swap Doombringer.

Vampiric Powers are the Season 2 mechanic.

• Accursed Touch applies Vampiric Curse to monsters.
• Flowing Veins is a straightforward [x]60% buff to our damage on cursed enemies.
• Prey on the Weak massively increases our damage by making all Cursed enemies Vulnerable and giving us [x]16% damage against them.
• Ravenous because all Rogue builds regularly are at the Movement Speed cap or very close to it this power is essentially 40% Attack Speed.
• Undying provides very good healing.

If you Pact your gear accordingly, you can swap Undying with Hemomancy for Helltides to easily clear the entire screen.

11/03/2023

• Added Shako
• Added Tibault + Condemn
• Removed Penitent Greaves
• Removed Umbrous
• Changed stat priority on boots and amulet
• Removed Frigid Finesse and Dark Shroud -> Siphoning Strikes + Exploit
• Have made the Paragon Board way more defensive to account for having to use Tibault's Will

10/30/2023

• Added Asheara's back after Attack Speed testing

10/23/2023

• Changed skill tree slightly to account for Andariel's Visage.

10/21/2023

• Considerably changed the Paragon Board because Core/Cutthroat were stealth nerfed.
• Gearing was also changed for that reason.
• Decided to drop Poison Trap despite the synergy with X'Fal because it just didn't feel that great to use.

10/20/2023

• Edited written sections to account for changes to the build
• Added Cowl back to the helm slot
• Added X´Fal, very strong because it scales
• Removed Asheara because we already hit attack speed cap
• Paragon Board change to account for wrong Res calculations (forgot to halve int resistance) and for X'fal inclusion.
• Skill Tree change to account for Poison Trap inclusion.

10/19/2023

• Changed Paragon Board
• Removed Metamorphosis for Accursed Touch
• Removed Tibault's (stats too bad)
• Added Penitent Greaves and Noxious Ice
• Added item swaps to Bossing section

• The following build is a variation of the build that uses a Death Trap package instead of Smoke Grenade.

• No Tibault/Condemn.

The Maximum Resource affix on Tibault's Will is currently bugged and increase the maximum amount of Combo Points you can have up to 23 Combo Points.

When combining that with Condemnation, which has a 30% chance to fill up all your Combo Points, we reach outrageous levels of damage.

Without Tibault's Will and Condemnation the ideal rotation is 1 Puncture -> Twisting Blades.

With that combo the ideal rotation then becomes 3 Puncture -> 1 Twisting Blades when Bursting Venoms is not up and 2:1 when it is up.