If you've been looking for a Multishot style build on Rogue, here it is! The Barrage Rogue is a very versatile skill that fires multiple arrows which fan out starting from the center. It leaves a really cool shadowy after effect which looks even cooler when stepping away after an attack.
Barrage Rogue is a jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none build, as you pick which distance is right for the situation, making it a true hybrid build. Cast the skill at mid range to spread your arrows out for massive AoE, or Dash towards the elite left over to shotgun all arrows into a single target for great damage.
This build uses Umbrous Aspect to add a 7th skill for free. You still take points into Dark Shroud for the extra movement speed as the Umbrous Aspect picks up all perks you put into the skill.
This is a straight forward build that's super fun to play and this guide teaches you the best way to tackle end game with Barrage Rogue!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Barrage Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Rogue playstyle, check out all of our Rogue Guides.
Season 3 - Season of the Construct
In Season 3, you obtain the Seneschal Construct through the Season Questline, then collect Governing Stones or Tuning Stones to add attacks and augment them to support your build. Only certain Tuning Stones work with a particular Governing Stone. Look at the bottom of any Tuning Stone tooltip to see if it is compatible with your Construct's currently equipped Stones. Lastly, they can be leveled up by getting duplicates to max out their power. Check out our full Season 3 guide for more information.
Recommended Stones
- Tempest - To apply buffs and debuffs efficiently with its fast tick rates.
- Frigid Support - Applies chill, giving us easier access to freeze and other crowd control buffs.
- Breaking Support - Helps to keep up Vulnerable and remove Barrier from enemies in Nightmare Dungeons or monsters like Knights and the Butcher.
- Arcing Support - Allows Tempest to hit multiple targets for widespread buff and debuffs.
- Flash of Adrenaline - A free damage buff to boost our character further.
- Duration Support - To improve the uptime of the buff.
- Tactical Support - To improve the uptime of the buff.
- Safeguard Support - Free damage reduction.
Alternative Stones
Many other options are possible to support this build, including different Governing Stones to apply the effects. Feel free to experiment!
Governing Stones
- Autodefense - Great to increase survivability.
- Reconstruct - To recover health more reliably.
- Lightning Bolt - Decent damage with built in bounce attack
- Firefly - Nice sustain damage over the course of an encounter.
Tuning Stones
- Slowing Support - Great to help stay ranged.
- Poison Support - Can be combined with Debilitating Toxins for additional defense.
- Initiative Support - Helps keep your construct close to when it's off wondering and not doing anything.
- Resource Support - Helps to keep the setup smooth to play.
If you are lucky enough to get either Evernight or Genesis from Uber Malphas, you want to swap Breaking Support for Evernight and Safeguard Support for Genesis on your Construct for their powerful effects.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
- Heartseeker is our Basic Skill of choice for easy aiming, faster attack speed and Critical Strike Damage buffs.
- Barrage is your main ability. This Core Skill fires a cone of arrows that expand outwards.
- Dash gives you incredible mobility to fly across the battlefield and an easy way to get out of tough situations.
- Smoke Grenade makes fighting tough engagements, especially versus elites, a bit easier.
- Cold Imbuement is a buff you use for Barrage. It converts your damage to Cold and Chills the monsters. With enough hits, you can Freeze the monsters, increasing your damage substantially combined with Frigid Finesse while also increasing your survivability!
- Shadow Imbuement fills the last slot. Similar to Cold Imbuement it buffs Barrage by converting it to Shadow damage. Both can't be used simultaneously. Its primary use is to blow up trash packs efficiently and improving Energy restoration.
Passives
- Precision is the Key Passive of choice, granting you a guaranteed critical strike upon consuming max precision stacks that gets exponentially stronger the more critical strike damage you have on your gear.
Alternatives
While the above is designed for optimal performance, there is wiggle room in the skill selection while keeping the core build intact. Smoke Grenade is not everyone's cup of tea and can be quite difficult to use. You can replace this for Shadow Step for more movement options or a Trap such as Caltrops or Poison Trap for more of a lure playstyle. You can also opt for Concealment with the new aspect for some stealth action.
There's also wiggle room for choice of basic attack. You can go for Forceful Arrow if you prefer to bully your enemies mid range or you can use the tried and true Puncture as it remains a very good choice for any combo point build. There is no right or wrong choice here.
Gameplay
Since Barrage is a versatile skill, you start off at mid range to maximize arrow spread and then you move close to cluster all of your arrows into any single target that is left. Blasting all of your arrows into one target is known as shotgunning. On tough affixes like Suppressor and Damage Resistance, you want to switch the order and take them out first and shotgun it down.
- Use Smoke Grenade to apply Daze, which makes enemies easier to deal with and elites unable to cast affixes. Dazed enemies also take 20% more multiplicative damage, which is a nice bump of damage to quickly dispatch tough situations.
- Heartseeker isn't used for DPS, but for its utility. It gives you Combo Points, attack speed and a critical strike damage buff.
Build 3 Combo Points with Heartseeker, activate Shadow Imbuement, then fire Barrage. - Always activate Shadow Imbuement first when approaching a large pack of enemies, as it's really good at taking out big packs with AoE explosion damage. This also keeps your Energy full with Consuming Shadows early endgame and synergizes well with Edgemaster’s Aspect.
- Use Dash to get around the battlefield for better positioning for Barrage and to generally travel around the world and through dungeons quickly.
- Use evade with Metamorphosis to grant a damage buff for Tibault's Will.
- For tougher enemies, especially those that may be above your character level, you activate Cold Imbuement when Shadow Imbuement is on cooldown to finish them off. For single target situations like bosses, swap the order and use Cold Imbuement first for Stagger effect. Always use an Imbuement when you can. Beware that Dash can be Imbued, so avoid wasting charges on it.
Rogue Specialization - Combo Points
Rogues choose one out of three special passives that enhance their playstyle. Barrage can be played with either Combo Points or Inner Sight. Though the former is a little stronger, so in this guide we're going to focus on Combo Points.
Building up Combo Points with your Basic Skill gives you 3 additional arrows that also hit harder. This gives the skill a Multishot feel and makes for great AoE spread clear. This also works well with Cold Imbuement as more arrows per shot leads to more ricochets, thus more Freeze and more damage.
Later on you unlock further synergies that make this Combo Point playstyle even more powerful with Condemnation and Aspect of the Expectant. Rapid Aspect and attack speed rolls work well in building Combo Points quicker for faster burst, however it can make it difficult to manage your Energy.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Rogue Specialization Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
As with all Combo Point builds, resource management is rather easy as you're naturally regenerating Energy when you're not using Barrage. You can use Consuming Shadows and Energy cost reduction on gear all aid in resource management to where you don't have to think about it.
As for cooldown, you only have to keep up with Shadow Imbuement and Cold Imbuement. With cooldown reduction on helm, pants (imbuement cooldown) and neck, you can comfortably rotate between these 2 imbuements without much trouble. Due to the heavy investments in imbue stats, it is critical that you're always using an Imbue before firing Barrage, otherwise your damage falls off hard.
Mobility
Feel free to use Dash on an enemy whenever necessary to go faster. Rogues naturally have a lot of movement speed, so getting around the open world and the battlefield is never an issue.
Paragon Board
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15!
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Glyphs
We need to level up our Glyphs to increase their power and activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. Glyphs have a radius of 3 by default, this increases to 4 at Glyph level 15. Complete Nightmare Dungeons to obtain Glyph experience.
Note that there are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the last two steps in the Paragon progression above for details. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Control
- Exploit
- Combat
- Canny
- Ranger
- Infusion
Level 21
- Control
- Combat
- Ranger
- Canny
- Exploit
- Infusion
Alternative Glyphs
After finishing your main setup, you can also level up the following that can be useful:
- Efficacy
- Devious
Also check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Endgame Gear & Skill Progression
When you start diving into the Endgame, you don't have all the tools available to achieve the final build versions. Let us guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. While we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.
- Unlock the following Aspects from Dungeons:
- Rapid Aspect in Buried Halls (Dry Stepps)
- Eluding Aspect in Caldera (Fractured Peaks)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Edgemaster’s in Oldstones (Scosglen)
- Might in Dark Ravine (Dry Steppes)
- Cheat's in Luban's Rest (Scosglen)
- Aspect of the Expectant in Underroot (Scosglen)
- Corruption in Renegade's Retreat (Kehjistan)
Vengeful Aspect in Inferno (Kehjistan) - Branching Volleys in shadowed-plunge (Hawezar)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Aspect of Elements
- Accelerating Aspect
- Icy Alchemist's
- Umbrous Aspect
- Juggernaut's
- Mangler's
- hectic
- metamorphosis
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
- Condemnation
- Skyhunter
- Beastfall Boots (For Boss one shot variant)
- Godslayer Crown (For Boss one shot variant)
- Banished Lord's Talisman (For Boss one shot variant)
- Tibault's Will
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Uber Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Harlequin Crest
- Ring of Starless Skies
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Steps
Endgame
& Speed Farm
Uniques
One Shot
Once you have completed the leveling guide, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup, you can farm the Legendary Aspects and Unique items you need for the next progression point.
Gear & Strategy
- Edgemaster’s Aspect, Rapid Aspect, Branching Volleys and Aspect of the Expectant in the Codex of Power.
- Continue using Dark Shroud on skill bar, following the Barrage Leveling Guide until you find Umbrous. Once acquired, use Smoke Grenade and drop Dark Shroud as shown in the original skills section of the guide.
If you chose to use Puncture as your basic attack, use a Crossbow instead of a Bow.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects, allowing you to pilot a much stronger version of this build. Additional Legendary Aspects are used to fill slots that may be replaced with Unique items later on.
Gear & Strategy
- Work on acquiring Umbrous Aspect as much as possible by gambling Chest or Pants with Obols. A good roll gives you nice uptime on Dark Shroud shadows which essentially gives you a free skill.
- Acquire Mangler's for boots. This is a great aspect for crowd control and helping you stay alive in battle.
- Acquire Accelerating: Grants lots of extra Attack Speed for more damage output and lucky hit effects.
- Acquire Hectic to greatly reduce our cooldowns and make our rotations feel much more fluid.
- Acquire Metamorphosis for an easy way to proc unstoppable and to set you up for Tibault's Will later.
- Acquire Elements for big rotational damage.
- Look for better rolls from Aspects that you may have used in the Codex. With Umbrous Aspect, You'll want to put more points into Dark Shroud as all of the passive bonuses do count.
- No changes to skills
In this setup, you have access to all Unique items and Legendary Aspects. This allows you to pilot this build at its peak efficiency. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to implement them.
Gear & Strategy
- Condemnation: This Dagger gives you extra damage that synergizes well with Combo Points. The 30% proc to generate 3 combo points is not important as you still have to stack 3 stacks of Aspect of the Expectant. Until then, use Accelerating Offensive Aspect on your sword.
- No changes to skills.
Speed Farming
Rogue naturally does well with speed farming early and endgame, so the normal build is technically the best speed farming setup. No changes here are necessary.
Skills
No changes to skills.
Gauntlet is Diablo 4's brand new endgame competitive mode with leaderboards! This content is based around the difficulty of a Tier 70 Nightmare Dungeon. Success and climbing the leaderboards will be about decision making and understanding the Dungeon itself and less about how powerful your gear is. Things are subject to change as we learn more about the Gauntlet.
Gear
- This is a setup optimized for Gauntlet. The biggest difference here is taking Concealment instead of Smoke Grenade for more utility, which requires us to remove Might for Resistant Assailant's. We also take shrine duration on Amulet and Boots. You can also go for Shadow Step over Cold Imbuement and take Nightstalker instead of Infusion for additional movement speed if you find yourself dealing enough damage.
- If you are not planning on min/maxing or try hard the content, but would rather casually get the rewards associated with the Gauntlet, ignore this setup and continue using the speed farming/endgame setup in the previous tab.
Gear with Ubers
- Since we don't need as much armor for the Gauntlet, we are able to be more free with unique choices here. We Drop Umbrous and remove points from Dark shroud to cap out points in Concealment and Mending Obscurity
- Same as above, if you are not planning on min/maxing or try hard the content, but would rather casually get the rewards associated with the Gauntlet, ignore this setup and continue using the speed farming/endgame setup in the previous tab.
With the ability to target farm Uber Uniques from Duriel, many players may need to answer the question "How do I fit these items onto my build?". This setup makes use of the most valuable Uniques that are available for it in the game.
Note that this build does not require any uber uniques to be effective and only benefits slightly from wearing them. You can choose to ignore the Duriel farm and have a complete build that feels almost as powerful.
Gear
The Harlequin Crest "Shako" is an incredibly powerful addition to the build for maximizing our damage and adds a bit of Damage Reduction. Taking this helm means dropping Tibault's Will for higher Nightmare Dungeon and Vault content as taking both means a big rework of the build to try and cap armor, which is often not worth the hassle for the typical user. This also means Metamorphosis has less value, but can remain on boots if you enjoy having an easy unstoppable.
Ring of Starless Skies is a powerful uber unique that's usually used for builds that spam a single skill, but can be used in this combo point setup. This is because there's a 3 second window to keep up the buff and combo point rotations can be tight due to utilizing a basic attack. If you find yourself dropping the buff often due to the short window, you should skip this uber unique all together for a regular ring with an aspect.
The Doombringer is another amazing item that gives a ton of overall toughness. Since we're mostly midrange with the occasional shotgun for single targets, this uber unique may or may not be beneficial to you as it is a big damage tradeoff. If you find yourself needing the extra cushion, slot this.
Here we talk about one shotting bosses with abnormal amounts of damage! While not particularly useful in other content, this is a great way to carry friends in 4 man Uber Duriel and Uber Malphas runs! It does require a good bit of changes to run the setup and the sequence can be tricky. Below is a variant that is user friendly with the least amount of changes/prep possible coming from the original Maxroll guide. Great thing is, no Uber Uniques are necessary or required!
Gear
- You want Godslayer Crown, Banished Lord's Talisman, Tibault's Will and Beastfall Boots uniques. Skyhunter is optional, though you should already have one at this point. Crossbow with the Elements works really well here too.
- Chest stats have to change due to the unique boots to cap your resist. We keep most stats the same, even if they're not relevant to the setup.
- We add Inner Calm for more damage.
Skills
- We pickup Shadow Clone to activate the Beastfall Boots
- Flurry is slotted mostly for convenience. It's only there as a cheap and fast way to spend Energy for the Banished Lord's Talisman as it shaves off a bit of time. You can drop this for a trap and the Ambush paragon legendary node if you prefer to one shot with a higher critical strike damage number.
Paragon
We try to keep the paragon changes as small as possible. We go with Infusion in place of Control. We pick up Tricks of the Trade legendary node.
Gameplay
Now comes the crucial part! It is important that you follow these steps in order to successfully pull off the one shot variant.
- Use Flurry (or Rapid Fire if you opt out of Flurry) to spend 300 Energy for the Banished Lord's Talisman effect.
- Stack Precision to 6 and Combo Points to 3.
- Do the first 2 steps before the Boss spawns.
- Use Shadow Clone to activate Beastfall Boots
- Use Shadow Imbuement
- Dash through the Boss.
- Use Barrage for instant Boss kill.
There are many different variants of the Boss one shot. Remember we're keeping it simple with the least changes and requirements.
Build Scaling & Stat Priority
Learn about the important build scaling mechanics and stat weights.
- Combo Points: With the Combo Point Specialization you can use Heartseeker up to 3 times to boost your next Barrage. This is further enhanced by Condemnation and Aspect of the Expectant. You use the Rapid Aspect to build Combo Points faster and reduce downtime between your nukes. Building Combo Points allows you to keep your Energy high for the Edgemaster’s. Use Aspect of Elements for high burst damage, especially on bosses.
- Crowd Controls: Cold Imbuement provides you with a way to Chill enemies, which opens up damage modifiers such as Damage vs Chilled, Damage vs Crowd Controlled and Damage vs Frozen.
- Don't get hit: Snipe enemies from a distance and use Evade to stay out of danger.
- Defensive Legendaries: Aspect of Might and Cheat's Aspect are both great defensive aspects as you're always attacking and have access to a Crowd Control. Aspect of Disobedience is good too after you pick up a bit of attack speed. Umbrous Aspect is excellent as it gives you free Dark Shroud shadows just for attacking. The best defense however is not to get hit.
- Movement Speed: One of the most important stats you can get for defense. The faster you are, the easier it is to dodge and not get hit. Stack as much of this as you can with Haste, Subverting Dark Shroud, and movement speed stats on boots and amulet.
- Stack Defense on Chest and Pants: These 2 gear slots provide the most protection for your character, stats that are difficult to get elsewhere. If you feel squishy, it is probably because you're lacking defensive stats on these slots.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Stat Priorities & Gear Options
Choosing the right stats for your gear can make or break your build. You won't always find perfect stats (also known as affixes or modifiers) though, and you may need to make a tough choice between two good pieces of equipment. Use the following list of priorities to compare your gear and pick the best.
- Helm: Might
- Direct swap for Harlequin Crest if you find one.
- Armor
- Cooldown Reduction
- Basic Attack Speed
- Maximum Life
- Life on Kill
- Chest Armor: Umbrous
- Any 2 Resistances
- Damage Reduction
- Armor
- Maximum Life
- Gloves: Hectic
- Ranks to Barrage
- Attack Speed
- Dexterity
- Lucky Hit Chance
- All Stats
- Crit Damage with Imbued Skills
- Pants: Tibault's Will Otherwise, Look For: Enshrouding
- Damage Reduction
- Ranks to Dark Shroud
- Maximum Life
- Armor
- Imbuement Skill Cooldown
- Boots: Metamorphosis
- Any 3 Resistances
- Movement Speed
- Movement Speed on Elite Kill
- Dodge Chance
- Shrine Duration (For Gauntlet Only)
- Amulet: Branching Volleys
- 1. Ranks to Exploit
- 2. Armor
- 3. Cooldown Reduction
- 4. Movement Speed
- 5. Imbuement Skill Cooldown
- 6. Damage Reduction
- 7. Shrine Duration (For Gauntlet Only)
- Rings: Edgemaster’s & Expectant
- Critical Strike Damage
- Critical Strike Chance
- Maximum Life
- Vulnerable Damage
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Crit Damage with Imbued Skills
- Damage with Imbued Skills
- Bow: Skyhunter
- Until you obtain Skyhunter, use regular Bow with Elements or Branching Volleys if your amulet doesn't have it.
- High DPS (Item Power)
- Critical Strike Damage
- Core Skill Damage
- All Stats
- Dexterity
- Critical Strike Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
- Main Hand: Condemnation
- Otherwise Look For: Moonrise (Sword)
- Critical Strike Damage
- Core Skill Damage
- All Stats
- Dexterity
- Vulnerable Damage
- Off-Hand: Rapid
- Critical Strike Damage
- Core Skill Damage
- All Stats
- Dexterity
- Vulnerable Damage
This build benefits the most from the following consumables:
- Elixirs: Elixir of Cruelty, Iron Skin Elixir, Elixir of Fortitude, Heady Assault Elixir & Heady Precision Elixir
- Incenses: Song of the Mountain, Reddamine Buzz & Chorus of War
FAQ & Mechanics
Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.
Why Cold Imbuement over Poison Imbuement?
I was following the previous paragon board. Any way I can look at that still?
Mechanics
Dark Shroud Scaling
Video Guide
Summary
The Barrage Rogue is a versatile hybrid capable of tackling all situations. It takes some time to get use to knowing when to stay back and when to go in for the kill, but overall it's a really fun build to play and brings back the glory of Multishot!
- Build 3 Combo Points with Heartseeker, then finish with Barrage.
- Pick your positions wisely. Know when to spray AoE and when to shotgun single targets.
- Use Cold Imbuement and Shadow Imbuement in tandem.
- Use Agility Skills cleverly to gain advantages in combat, rather it be positioning or keeping distant.
This is initially a tough to manage build. With multiple cooldowns, precise positioning, and active buffs that must be activated in order to deal damage, this can often times puts you in danger if you're not careful. Patience is required to master the rotations and once you do, you shall unleash its true power.
Hungry for more Guides?
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Credits
Written by: DiEoxidE
Reviewed by: Tenkiei, Wudijo