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. It is one of the contenders for being the fastest build in the entire game. Zooming through all content the game and any challenge has to offer at unmatched speeds is exactly what this Death Trap Rogue build is all about. In Season 11, Death Trap is much easier to gear than in previous seasons, due to now having access to Cooldown Reduction on Gloves and Rings. The new 4 affix limit allows you to progress into it faster.

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If you are not level 60 yet, make sure to check out the Rogue Leveling Guides from our Tier List instead.

Disclaimer

Some of the Masterworks and Tempers may not be correct yet, refer to the explanation below the equipment planner to see the correct ones described.

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 Flurry, when your Poison Trap and Death Trap are on Cooldown, but it won't happen often. With Improved Flurry you even dash to your target.

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

General

• You always want to keep alternating between Dash and Death Trap.
• • For that to work smoothly, bind Dash to your Shift-Key.
  • You can then hold down both the Shift-Key and whatever button you assigned Death Trap to and it will automatically alternate between the two.
  • The more attack speed you have, the faster this process becomes (check Breakpoints).
• Depending on your respective variant, cast either (or all of) Caltrops, Smoke Grenade and Poison Trap for damage multipliers and try to keep 100% uptime on them.
• If you overlap a new Caltrops over an old one before it expires it will inherit the maximum 45% Damage Multiplier from Enhanced Caltrops.
• • The faster you clear monsters, the less you need to cast these. If you are killing Elites in less than 2 seconds it is not worth to stop your Death Trap spam.
• 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.
• Subverting Smoke Grenade also provides Poison Damage, activating Alchemical Advantage.
• Shadow Imbuement Dash is used to activate Mixed Shadow Imbuement.
• Press Dark Shroud whenever it is off Cooldown to always maintain 5 stacks of it.

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.
• If you want to gain XP as efficient as possible, pick the highest 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.
• Playing around the Deadeye passive becomes more important.
• You need to have a slower approach to the entire run, which means using Dash less frequently.

T100 Destroyer

• Bind Dash to Shift.
• Poison Trap is only used for the Boss.
• Always spam Concealment, Dark Shroud and Shadow Imbuement.
• Hold Dash & Death Trap to keep alternating between them.

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

Death Trap Rogue's power comes from Scoundrel's Leathers 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 Boots 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.

Refer to this Sheet to calculate it out for your specific gear. The sheet tells you how to fix shortcomings.

Leveling

You can't really level with this build efficiently. The Starter Variant can technically be played even before level 60, but this may feel more like a scuffed Flurry build. I would recommend you level with the following Dance of Knives Leveling guide instead.

Runes

• CirVex lowers 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.
• ZanJah can be used to go even faster. YulJah in T100 Destroyer.
• 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, but if you dont mind the occassional DT CD due to it, its the highest dps.

Masterworking and Greater Affix Priority

Both Masterworking and Tempering have been completely reworked in Season 11, which are set to give players more control over their gearing progression.

If you want to learn more about Masterworking and Tempering, check out our Masterworking and Tempering 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's Aspect 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, 150+ Maximum Energy and means to Restore 150 Energy after each cast.

Energy Management

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) and a Casting an Ultimate Skill restores X Energy Temper on both 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 +32 (GA Temper on Ring 1) and
• a +41 (GA Temper + MW Capstone on Ring 2) Ultimate Restore Temper and
• 400+ Stength you are fine.

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 Advantage II to reach the Attack Speed Breakpoint.

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.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are we using Versatility if Death Trap is a Core Skill now, thanks to Scoundrel's 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. GA Ultimate Cooldown Reduction on Beastfall Boots is also very useful here.
• Have means to restore 150 Energy.
• Actually have 150 Energy in the first place
• Have Preparation as Specialization equipped.

11th of December 2025

• Updated for Season 11 - Patch 2.5.0

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

23rd of September 2025

• Guide fully updated for Season 10 - Infernal Chaos

1st of July 2025

• Patch 2.3 Season 9 Sins of the Horadrim