Barrage Rogue Leveling Guide

Diablo 4 Season 1 introduces a new questline to hunt Malignant Monsters across Sanctuary. Defeating them drops Caged Hearts that are placed in Jewelry infested sockets to gain build-altering powers. Check out the full Season 1 The Malignant guide from Chewingnom to learn more!

With this in mind, let's look at the top 3 best Caged Hearts (and alternatives) for this build:

If you acquire Caged Heart of The Barber, you gain extra Energy recovery because the Heart's explosions are considered Shadow damage. In general, you are looking for:

Caged Heart of The Barber absorbs all outgoing damage but immediately triggers as soon as the target has absorbed enough to be defeated. The main advantage of a short timer is that if you don't deal enough damage to a single target, the explosion triggers sooner and can chain react from multiple targets to blow up an entire pack whereas a longer timer helps in prolonged combat due to the stacking damage buff.

If you don't like the delayed damage playstyle around Caged Heart of The Barber, you can run with Caged Heart of the Vile Apothecary which is a great alternative in all situations.

At this point you unlock some of the Rogue's signature skills: Dash & Shadow Step. The first of these two Agility Skills has two charges and allows you to zip around the battlefield to either engage, escape or reposition yourself. While you can choose either of them, the second option is the preferred choice for this guide as it allows you to teleport right into the fray to position yourself for an attack. It also grants the powerful Unstoppable effect and extra Movement Speed to fly through the early game and you can use it to teleport across cliffs which is very helpful in outdoor zones.

At level 13, we unlock Subterfuge Skills, where we pick up Poison Trap and Dark Shroud. The former is a great tool for close range combat, which Barrage is all about in big fights. It enables extra Trap & Poison damage synergies and knocks down enemies to make fights more safe. The latter is great due to the massive amount of protection and Movement Speed it provides, especially against bosses.

At level 15, we also unlock the Rogue Specialization. Finish this Priority Quest as soon as possible to get Combo Points. Before we can fully solve our Energy recovery to spam Barrage at all times, we still regularly use Invigorating Strike for chip damage and to buff subsequent attacks. These Combo Points are displayed in the center right above your XP bar.

At level 18, we unlock Imbuement Skills. Here we pick up Shadow Imbuement which gives us a great tool to deal with Barrage's biggest weakness: low AoE damage. Imbuement Skills amplify Core Skills (Barrage) by converting their damage to another type and adding extra effects. Activate Shadow Imbuement whenever you fight a big pack of monsters and fire away for some satisfying explosions!

At this point we unlock several important effects to help us solve any Energy issues. Consuming Shadows refills our resources every time we use Shadow Imbuement against a pack of monsters. Innervation gives us extra Energy procs randomly as we spam Barrage, which helps against single targets.

At level 20 we also switch the Rogue Specialization to Inner Sight, which regularly refills all Energy and allows infinite spamming of our skills. At this point you should not have to press Invigorating Strike much anymore and you apply Vulnerable easily with your other skills, so remove its upgrade and change it to Primary Invigorating Strike for an extra Lucky Hit buff whenever we actually use it.

Here we also pick up Countering Poison Trap to allow us even more Energy refills via Consuming Shadows. For extra synergy, we use Methodical Shadow Step for the stun on engaging in combat. Aim it at an elite in the pack to combo with Poison Trap's knockdown.

Precision is our Key Passive of choice for the build. Since Barrage is a multi-hit Marksman Skill, we can get multiple stacks of it with a single attack to unleash a powerful combo frequently. Now it becomes clear why we chose a Cutthroat Basic Skill at the start: If you used a Marksman Basic Skill, you'd frequently lose all your Precision stacks on an attack that does nearly no damage.

These synergies working together give us a lot more damage output against tougher enemies, improve AoE clear due to Barrage's ricochet effect and allow us to heal in combat with Siphoning Strikes. This is further assisted by picking up various damage and Critical Strike Chance passives all over the tree. Once you have collected all these passives, the full build is pretty much online and it's going to be smooth sailing into the endgame from there.

After gathering all Renown in Diablo 4 you have 10 extra Skill Points to spend on every character. Your first priority is to spend them toward the leveling progression we've shown above. Once you've reached the end, put them into these nodes to build toward the Barrage Rogue Endgame Build Guide (coming soon).

The Rogue's Class Specialization allows you to choose one out of three powerful passive effects to boost your build. The three available choices are:

Once you reach level 15, you have to complete a short questline starting in Menestad, Fractured Peaks. A Priority Quest leads you there to help out Leyrana. After a few stops outside of town you have to enter the Forsaken Quarry Dungeon and finish the questline there, unlocking Combo Points. After that, the other two Specializations unlock automatically once you reach their minimum level.

Each Specialization is very powerful, so you need to build and play around them. The one we're after in this build is Inner Sight which helps us out with our struggle for more Energy recovery. Until you unlock it at level 20, simply use Combo Points, then switch and never look back. Once you use Inner Sight, you start seeing a purple eye icon next to your resource globe and a similar icon appearing above nearby monsters. If you hit marked targets, you fill the gauge that eventually grants you a full Energy refill and unlimited Barrage spamming for 4 seconds. Depending on how low you are on resources, you need to pay more or less attention to this effect.

Leveling up in Diablo 4 is similar to most other ARPGs and MMOs - we're at the mercy of what drops. For the most part this means replacing Rares with better Rares all the way up to 50. If you're lucky enough to find some Legendaries you can get a significant power boost and you likely want to equip it. Assuming you don't find any of those, let's look at some key stats to look for along the way:

Hint: Press SHIFT over an item to compare it to what you're wearing!

Focus on upgrading your Ranged Weapon at the Blacksmith while leveling to save materials for other items later.

If you're lucky enough to have some sockets on your items, fill them with the following:

The Codex of Power is a collection of Legendary Aspects you can imprint onto Rare or Legendary items at the Occultist. They unlock after completing specific Dungeons located around Sanctuary. For leveling there are a few powers that can significantly help us if we have the funds to imprint them:

Top 3 Codex Leveling Powers in Order:

Warning: DO NOT imprint your Ranged Weapons as they will be constantly replaced while leveling. Put Offensive Aspects on your Amulet, Rings, Gloves or Melee Weapons instead.

If you're lucky enough to find a Legendary while leveling, chances are it'll be an upgrade for you and you should equip it immediately. However they are not all created equal, and some of them can accelerate your journey tremendously. Let's look at the top 5 powers you could find and how to take advantage of them:

Before we end this leveling guide, let's look at some general tips and tricks to remember for all classes and specs!

Compare your Items... Literally. Press Shift over an item in your inventory to compare it to what you're wearing. This makes it easy to determine what is and isn't an upgrade.

Renown is your Friend. While exploring the different zones, take time to gather Renown along the way. It has long-term benefits for your entire account, including more Skill/Paragon points and Potion charges. Renown is gained by activating Waypoints, finding Altars of Lilith, completing Side Quests/Dungeons and rescuing Strongholds.

Be Careful with Gold. A lot of endgame processes, like extracting and imprinting Legendary Aspects, are extremely expensive for a brand-new character. Don't spend all of your Gold along the way!

Don't Imprint Your Weapon. The most critical piece of gear while leveling up is your weapon, which gets replaced constantly. This makes imprinting a Legendary Aspect on it a waste of resources. Instead, put your best offensive Aspect on your Amulet, which can be used for a long time.

Coming soon.

Written by wudijo
Reviewed by DiEoxidE