Dance of Knives Rogue Leveling Guide

Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:

Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.

Combo Points and Preparation

At level 15, we unlock the Rogue's Specialization class mechanic. After finishing the Priority Quest for it, you pick up Combo Points. Star Shards allows us to increase our Charges for Dance of Knives when we use Blade Shift to gain Combo Points.

Preparation unlocks at level 30. By the time you have acquired sufficient Movespeed to not run out of Charges while spinning with Dance of Knives, swap Combo Points out for it.

Dark Shroud

A key defensive layer for any Rogue build is Dark Shroud. Use it often and try your best to keep up the stacks for Damage Reduction, Movement Speed and Critical Strike Chance buffs. Luckily, there are a few good ways to automate this effect: Umbrous and the Mot rune. Alternative, Enshrouding also works fine, especially because of Yax. Dark Shroud also provides us with Movement Speed to keep our Charges more easily.

Shadow Clone

You pick up Shadow Clone to have a reliable source of Unstoppable other than Concealment or when you are fighting dangerous Elites and Bosses. While leveling, the damage your clone deals is also non-negligible. If you get stopped while Channeling Dance of Knives and your Concealment or Imbuements are on Cooldown, you can reset those through Preparation.

Key Passive

Your Key Passive for the Dance of Knives Rogue Leveling Build is Momentum. You gain a stack that increases you Movement Speed, Damage Reduction and Damage dealt by a significant margin whenever you cast a Cutthroat Skill. [id=391681]Momentum[/d4-skill] is an excellent choice for leveling and allows you to have an explosive start.

Final Journey to Level 60

At this point, most of the key synergies are unlocked and the gameplay loop is almost complete. As you level up, you unlock a lot of extra points that go into various offensive and defensive passives or max out certain skills. Check out the skills progression above to see where to put your points as you go, but feel free to deviate from the order displayed as necessary. For example, if you need extra defense or healing, you may pick up Sturdy or Siphoning Strikes earlier or if you haven't acquired a source of Chill or Freeze such as an utility temper mod on your armor, there's no reason to include Frigid Finesse yet.

How to not run out of Charges with Dance of Knives

• Start the channel with at least 4 Charges
• Move in fluid circles or a straight line, do not take sharp turns
• Do not linger on mobs and never stop moving
• You need around 190%+ Movement Speed to infinitely keep spinning.

Still trouble sustaining the channel?

• Combo Points + Star Shards allows you to gain more total Charges. If you attack up to three times with Blade Shift, you gain 1 additional Charge per Combo Point.
• Once you have sufficient Movement Speed (190%+) to infinitely spin, swap it out for Preparation.

Optimal Rotation

The order and situation in which you use your Skills is very important to allow you to perform well with any given build. As a Dance of Knives Rogue this is even more important, because Dance of Knives snapshots certain buffs for the entire duration of your channel, irrespective of their regular duration. Therefore, the optimal order of execution is as follows:

1. Drink 2 Healing Potions to activate your Yax + Qax runeword.
   • You can only drink a Healing Potion at full Health if you have at least 1 Point in Unstable Elixirs.
2. Enshroud yourself with Dark Shroud.
3. Cast Concealment.
4. Activate Shadow Imbuement for clearing or Poison Imbuement for Bosses.
   • You can pick up Poison Imbuement as soon as you have dropped Combo Points for Preparation.
5. Start spinning with Dance of Knives.
6. If you get interrupted or run out of Charges, you need to begin at Step 1 again.
   • If any of your Skills are on Cooldown or you have no Imbuements left, use Shadow Clone to reset all your Cooldowns through Preparation.

Rogue Specialization

Unlocking Specializations

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 (Inner Sight at 20, Preparation at 30) and can be freely assigned at any time.

To get started as a Dance of Knives Rogue, always use your highest DPS Melee Weapon available for more damage. Your Ranged Weapon is simply a stat stick to fuel your power, so its DPS is secondary. Otherwise, follow the priority list below. While you don't have all of the desired temper manuals available, simply try to get anything useful on your gear until you acquire the right ones. For example, % Damage, Damage to Close, Vulnerable Damage, etc. all work as long as you activate their conditions. Likewise, you can temper multiple defensive options such as Resistances, Life, Armor to fill gaps in your survivability. Tempering low level gear is relatively cheap and the results can be very impactful.

Tempering Tip:

For the early game, Elemental Surge Weapon Tempers are very powerful due to their high base damage, especially if you are twinking. If you find these, you may want to keep imprinting them on your weapons for an easy time.

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 or salvaging items with these powers. Check out our Map Tool to locate these Dungeons.

For leveling, there are a few powers that can significantly help us if we have the funds to imprint them. In addition, keep an eye out for powerful Unique items you may find for this or other builds.

Season Journey Drops

• Star Shards

Nice-to-have Dungeon unlocks

1. Enshrouding (Ghoa Ruins - Hawezar)
2. Volatile Shadows (Ancient's Lament - Dry Steppes)
3. Protector (Lost Archives - Fractured Peaks)
4. Wind Striker (Shivta Ruins - Kehjistan)
5. Arrow Storms (Howling Warren - Scosglen)
6. Vengeful (Inferno - Kehjistan)
7. Retribution (Abandoned Mineworks - Khejistan)

Great Uniques for this build

1. Cowl of the Nameless
2. Fists of Fate (also used in the Dance of Knives Endgame Rogue)
3. Penitent Greaves

Jackpot Drops

If you already have Aspect of Star Shards, you're all set. However, as you level up, you may get lucky and find some great random drops. Some of these can increase your power temporarily or if you are interested in trying another build archetype. Keep in mind that there are many more Aspects and Uniques that can be useful to multiple builds; this just lists some of the most impactful ones. While we usually recommend starting with Endgame Builds at level 60, you often can make them work earlier with these drops:

Build-defining Aspects

• Bladedancer's (enables the Endgame Twisting Blades Rogue)
• High Velocity (enables the Endgame Barrage Rogue)
• Encircling Blades (enables the Endgame Flurry Rogue)

Build-defining Uniques

1. Saboteur's Signet (enables the Endgame Grenade Rogue)
2. Eyes in the Dark (enables the Endgame Death Trap Rogue)
3. Scoundrel's Kiss (enables the Endgame Rapid Fire Rogue)
4. Skyhunter (enhances the Endgame Rapid Fire Rogue)
5. Andariel's Visage (enables the Endgame Andariels Rogue)
6. Shard of Verathiel (enables Endgame Heartseeker Rogue)

You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Dance of Knives Rogue focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Bac + Yom - Invokes Petrify after traversing. With our high mobility, we keep this all the time and use it to proc No Witnesses and Preparation.
• Yax+Qax - Qax Rune keeps its buff for the entire duration of Dance of Knives. Use the Yax+Qax Combo before using Concealment and starting the Dance of Knives Channel.

Alternative Choices

If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:

• Bac - Slight damage boost for when you do not have Yom yet.
• Yax - We drink a potion frequently to keep Unstable Elixirs up, so this rune can also be beneficial.
• Lac - Invokes Challenging Shout for more defense.
• Kry - To group up enemies
• Wat - Decrepify helps with stagger, defense and allows an execute at 10% HP, can be combined with Xol in your other Runeword to generate large amounts of offering.
• Mot - You can use this before you have access to Umbrous in addition to taking Dark Shroud on your skill bar.

Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.

Hired: Varyana

sdf Hysteria, Bloodthirst and Bloodlust are all excellent early tools to increase our Attack Speed and therefor our Base Damage of Dance of Knives.

Reinforcement: Raheir

We choose Bastion for extra defense when having our main damaging window active through Shadow Clone.

In Diablo 4, you can level by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, completing Helltide activities, grinding Dungeons, clearing Strongholds, fighting in the Undercity of Kurast or interacting with the Seasonal Mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are equal.

Into the Endgame

This step marks the end of the leveling guide. Below is the Paragon setup to get you started in Torment difficulty, but ideally, you should now transition towards the endgame version of this build or choose another of your liking.

Paragon & Glyphs

Use the slider to see progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

The Dance of Knives Rogue is a super fast, fun to play leveling build that scales very well into the lategame.

• Progress the Season Journey to get the Aspect Cache for Star Shards and start blasting!
• Use Shadow Imbuement and Concealment to buff you up before starting your Dance of Knives spin.
• Keep attacking to stay alive with Siphoning Strikes and Dark Shroud triggered from Umbrous.
• Focus on gathering your defenses first, then expand your offensive repertoire.
• Keep moving while channeling Dance of Knives to not run out of Charges. Spin2win!

Written by M1PY