Dance of Knives Rogue Leveling Guide

Season 8 is the Season of Belial's Return. It allows you to tap into Boss Powers obtained from World, Event, and Lair Bosses throughout Sanctuary. The new seasonal mechanic, Apparition Incursions, is available at any difficulty level and gives you the opportunity to unlock a subset of these powers very early on. Various Apparition Monsters appear in these special timed events throughout Sanctuary. Defeating these monsters spawns 1 of 10 Apparition Bosses to hunt you down and defeating them grants you their Boss Power. After defeating the first Boss, continue the event for a chance to fight a second Apparition Boss, after which Belial himself joins the fray.

There are 24 Boss Powers available and the first time you defeat one of these Bosses, you claim their power for yourself. Boss Powers each have Main and Modifier effects to boost your build. 13 are available in all difficulties (from Apparition Incursions and World Bosses), while 11 can only be acquired in Torment 1 difficulty or higher from Lair Bosses and Lilith. You can equip 1 Main Power and 3 Modifiers, and all powers can be upgraded up to Rank 20, increasing the potency of both the Main and Modifier effect. You use Spectral Ash to upgrade these powers, dropped from Apparition Incursions and by defeating any Bosses. Boss Powers also scale with your Paragon Level, growing stronger as you progress.

Leveling Boss Powers

Alternate Boss Powers

• Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - Once you get access to Torment.
• Hatred's Embrace's Haste - Is a solid replacement until you get Wandering Death's Chest Beam. None of the blue main powers significantly effect this build, so this choice here is not as important.

Poison Imbuement

Poison Imbuement is exclusively used while leveling to have an easier time dealing with Bosses. If you are struggling a lot with those, fetching Corruption from Renegade's Retreat in Kehjistan is a good idea. Only activate Poison Imbuement when facing a tough enemy, as you can not imbue a skill with more than one Imbuement at a time.

Alternative Pick

If you are not struggling with single target damage, you may pick Dash instead of Poison Imbuement to go even faster. Be careful not to use Dash while you are stealthed by Concealment or imbued by Shadow Imbuement though, else your Dance of Knives will not benefit from 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. Enshrouding allows you to gain a charge here and there as well.

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. 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. Momentum 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 Thul, 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 many sharp turns
• Do not linger on mobs and never stop moving
• You need around 160%+ Movement Speed after buffs 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. You can put Blade Shift on your bar in place of Poison Imbuement.
• Once you have sufficient Movement Speed 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.

Doing this exact rotation is not required, but significantly increases your damage output while leveling. Later on in the endgame variants, this becomes less important due to not relying on Concealment for Critical Strikes anymore. Therefore, the optimal order of execution while leveling is as follows:

1. Enshroud yourself with Dark Shroud.
2. Cast Shadow Clone.
   • If you have Prime Shadow Clone allocated, do a small spin with Dance of Knives to break Stealth as explained in the disclaimer above.
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

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.

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.

Most important Drop

• 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. Grasp of Shadow
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. Eyes in the Dark (enables the Endgame Death Trap Rogue)
2. Scoundrel's Kiss (enables the Endgame Rapid Fire Rogue)
3. Skyhunter (enhances the Endgame Rapid Fire Rogue)
4. 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

• Cir + Zec - This allows you to reduce the cooldown of Shadow Clone. Ideally activate Shadow Clone first.
• Neo + Thul - Mystical Frost Nova is very strong, it freezes, amplifies damage and applies vulnerable. The activation is very consistent with Neo as you do not get hit very often.

Alternative Choices

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

• Lac - Invokes Challenging Shout for more defense.
• Tam - If you get lucky and drop this, you can use it instead of Neo.
• 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.
• Yax - Great way to generate offering that synergizes with Unstable Elixirs.
• Gar - To reach 100% Critical Strike Chance more reliably.
• Lum - Helps restore Energy in the early game when you may be resource starved.
• Qua - A massive Movement Speed boost while leveling.

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.

• Try to get Star Shards as early as you can from gambling and start blasting!
• Use Shadow Imbuement and Concealment to buff you up before starting your Dance of Knives spin.
• Use Shadow Clone whenever it is available.
• 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 Avarilyn