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Death Trap Rogue Endgame Build Guide

Season 8 - Belial's ReturnEndgame

Last Updated:May 4, 2025|Changelog|FAQ

Welcome to the Death Trap Rogue Endgame Guide! This build focuses on spamming your ultimate skill unlike any other to deal with anything the game has to offer. While various traps may be included in any Rogue build, this one specializes in dealing damage almost exclusively by spamming Death Trap non-stop. This is achieved by stacking enough Trap, Ultimate or regular Cooldown Reduction to get Death Trap's cooldown to below 10 seconds and then triggering Preparation twice with one shot using Beastfall Boots and a pool of min. 150 Energy to instantly reset the skill. Thanks to Aftermath you can instantly fill your Energy bar again and repeat.

A big advantage of this playstyle is the constant resets of all of your abilities and the opportunity to pull enemies together at will with Prime Death Trap, which makes the build stand out and defuses the danger in most elite fights.

The key item that enables the build is Eyes in the Dark and it's recommended to acquire it before transitioning to this build. These pants solve several problems at once and boost the ultimate's damage through the roof. While the best setups run the aforementioned Beastfall Boots combo, it's possible to get started without them by using the Exposure key passive to reset your traps, which is later replaced by Momentum and focusing around Overpower. Let's jump in and see what it's all about!

Requirements for this build
  • Eyes in the Dark
Death Trap Rogue Endgame Setup
Note

This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Rogue Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.

Boss Powers

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Death Trap Rogue

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.

Endgame Boss Powers

Main Power

Beast in the Ice's Sleet - Reliable source of Freeze to increase our damage through Frigid Finesse.

Modifiers

  • Flesh Reaper's Disruption - Damage multiplier. Temper Crowd Control Duration on Gloves to maximize the effect.
  • Sinerat's Flames - A simple yet effective damage increase for elemental damage.
  • Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - This power provides you with a another damage increase.
Death Trap Endgame Boss Powers

Alternate Boss Powers

  • Torusk's Rage - before you get access to Harbinger of Hatred's Volley.
  • Flesh Reaper's Disruption - A decent substitute until you acquire the legendary powers.
  • Urivar's Lobbed Bombs - Helps to reduce the cooldown of our Death Trap. Especially useful early on.
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Why not use ... power?
  • Belial's Eye Beams - Modifier does only work while stealthed, it was changed to not give unbreakable Stealth anymore, so it does not help.
  • Outlaw Sharpshooter's Eye - You do not want to stand distant, as Supreme Death Trap only hits when in Close Range.

Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.

Skills & Gameplay

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Death Trap Rogue
  • Barrage is only used in the Starter Variant to bridge the gaps for when Death Trap is inevitably on Cooldown due to not having good enough Death Trap Cooldown Reduction tempers.
  • Death Trap is our Ultimate Skill and main damage dealer. With enough cooldown reduction we can get to the point where we can spam this indefinitely and filling our entire resource bar with Beastfall Boots + Aftermath.
  • In the early progression, we instead rely on Exposure to reset its cooldown.
  • Dash and Shadow Step grant us high mobility and can be used to apply imbuements.
  • Shadow Imbuement is used to activate Eldritch Bounty.
  • Concealment is used to guarantee the Critical Strike upon using Death Trap and also apply Vulnerable. Mending Obscurity is our main source of healing.
  • Caltrops adds a powerful damage buff with Enhanced Caltrops. Use Disciplined Caltrops with the Exposure Starter Variant and swap to Methodical Caltrops later on.
  • Momentum is our Key Passive. It most importantly increases our maximum Energy to reach 275 more easily and grants us a decent damage multiplier.
Death Trap Rogue Endgame Skill Tree

Skill Rotation

  • Keep Shadow Imbuement up for Dash or Shadow Step. Not all of your hits with them have to imbued, as Eldritch Bounty lasts 9 seconds.
  • (On Bosses) Start with Caltrops and keep them inside the area for Enhanced Caltrops.
  • Use Concealment to become Stealthed and ensure your next attack is a Critrical Strike and applying Vulnerable.
    • This also activates Danse Macabre.
  • Activate Death Trap for a massive nuke.
  • Keep alternating between Concealment and Death Trap.
  • Use your Evade (especially when you have Jah), Dash and Shadow Step to keep moving. Evading also activates Balestra which is decent damage boost.
  • (On Bosses) Keep an eye on the stagger bar and prepare to nuke right when it fills as many of our damage modifiers rely on crowd controls.

Rogue Specialization

Preparation - Spend resources to reset your Ultimate Skill, which in turn resets all your other skills.

This choice is the key to the build in order to immediately reset Death Trap and with the rest of our abilities all the time.

Preparation

Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Rogue Class Overview.

Paragon & Glyphs

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Death Trap Rogue
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Important

Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.

Use the slider to see the 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.

← Use the slider for progression steps →
Death Trap Rogue Endgame Paragon
Tip

Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

To Level 15

  1. Explosive
  2. Ambush
  3. Versatility
  4. Canny
  5. Headhunter

To Level 46

  1. Explosive
  2. Ambush
  3. Versatility
  4. Canny
  5. Headhunter

Learn more about the Paragon System in our in-depth Paragon Boards and Glyphs guide.

Runes

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Death Trap Rogue

You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Death Trap Rogue focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

  • Zan + Xal - Massively increases your Maximum Life which is important to increase your Overpower damage.
  • Poc + Jah - We continuously gain and spend tons of Energy, so this is an easy activator. Jah allows us to jump around quickly while also gaining access to the damage bonus from Balestra.

Alternative choices

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

  • Cir + Vex - The extra skill ranks help with increasing damage and reducing cooldown of Death Trap.
  • Gar - To reach 100% crit more reliably.
  • 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.
  • Ohm - War Cry buffs us with helpful extra damage.

Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.

Mercenaries

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Death Trap Rogue

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: Raheir

He provides us with more defense and Fortify through Shield Charge, which is important for Overpower Damage. We also gain extra damage through his Provoke.

Reinforcement: Varyana

We choose Bloodthirst for more attack speed.

Death Trap Rogue Mercenaries

Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.

Stat Priorities & Item Progression

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Death Trap Rogue

To enable the Death Trap Rogue to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. The green arrow ↑ indicates which affix is most impactful to Masterwork Crit, and it does indicate how many Masterwork Crits you need on that particular affix. Keep in mind that certain stats, such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed, and more, have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that moment.

Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds

  • Sub 15 sec Death Trap Cooldown
  • 600%+Overpower Damage
  • 50%+ Attack Speed
  • 500%+ Overpower Damage
  • 2000+ Dexterity
  • 400%+ Ultimate Damage
  • Armor Capped 1,000
  • Resistance Capped 70%+
  • 20,000+ Life
  • 150%+ Movement Speed
  • 275+ Max. Energy
  • 1000%+ Stun Grenade Damage
  • 15+ Ranks of Death Trap
Starter
Ancestral
Mythic

Item Progression Goals

Before you dive into the Endgame with the Death Trap Rogue, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build. See below for further details about the different progression steps and variants. Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. Keep in mind that while we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.

Starter
Ancestral
Mythic

Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.

Build Variants

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Death Trap Rogue

This section is designed to guide your Death Trap Rogue from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestral and Mythic. At the final step, you should be fully decked out with a great all-rounder build. From there, follow the other min/max variants if you want to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming and more.

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Energy Requirement

You need 186 energy (so +86 from Gear and if needed Galvanized Slasher's) to have enough for Momentum and Elixir of Resourcefulness II to bring you to 275 Maximum Energy. This is the breakpoint required for Banished Lord's Talisman to Overpower on every single cast of Death Trap. You also need at least 9 Ranks for Aftermath to restore enough Energy per Cast. Do not swap to the Ancestral Variant without it.

Starter
Ancestral
Mythic
Pit Pushing

If you are fresh in Torment 1 coming from a leveling guide, this is where you begin. Since only some Aspects can be guaranteed from Dungeon unlocks for the Codex of Power, focus on acquiring the additional aspects via gambling with Murmuring Obols.

Gear & Skills

Starter Death Trap Rogue Gear
Starter Death Trap Rogue Skills
  • Early on in your progression, focus on Armor & Resistances to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% all Res and it's recommended to keep both capped (1000 Armor, 70+ Res) at all times. As you unlock higher power gear, masterworking levels and more Paragon points, you naturally scale your character into the higher difficulties and can start replacing some of these rolls with offensive or utility stats.
  • In the Starter Variant, we use Barrage to bridge the gaps in our Cooldowns for Death Trap until our gear is ready to move to the Ancestral variant.
  • In order to spam our ultimate non-stop, we need to reach 150+ max. Energy and <10sec cooldown on Death Trap. Without Beastfall Boots and some masterworking this is impossible, so instead we play with Exposure to reset the cooldown until this combo is unlocked.
  • Explosive Verve allows us to easily trigger Exposure with Caltrops, Smoke Grenade, Death Trap and the grenades from the key passive itself to ensure we have a good flow in the build.
  • Ensure to temper Lucky Hit Chance on your gear to proc Innervation more often.
  • Before unlocking the build's final setup, you may be stuck with your ultimate on cooldown from time to time. Use your Trap skills to activate Exposure to reset it. Otherwise, follow the general gameplay described in the sections above.

The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestrals, Paragon points, all Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and the most important Uniques to pilot this build. Some Legendary Aspects are used temporarily to fill slots that may be replaced with more Unique items later on.

Gear & Skills

Ancestral Death Trap Rogue Gear
Ancestral Death Trap Rogue Skills
  • You can swap to the Ancestral Variant as soon as you drop Banished Lord's Talisman, Beastfall Boots and Scoundrel's Leathers and get over 275 Energy (after buffs from Momentum).
  • You can drink an Elixir of Resourcefulness II if you can not reach the necessary Energy, even with Galvanized Slasher's on a ring.

This is the final version of the build's progression, including all regular Unique items, Mythic Uniques, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and Masterworking, leaving you with a great all-rounder build for all content in the game. Additional variants use this as a baseline to optimize around certain activities.

Gear & Skills

Mythic Death Trap Rogue Gear
Mythic Death Trap Rogue Skills
  • Ring of Starless Skies is a big damage multiplier since there aren't many good tools available to boost Death Trap otherwise. It also helps us to cap resistances while wearing so many uniques.
  • Harlequin Crest is Best in Slot because it provides us with necessary CDR, Energy and Skill Ranks. It even provides Maximum Life!
  • Doombringer is used for its gigantic Max Life boost. This greatly benefits our Overpower Damage.

This setup optimizes the build to push the highest possible Tiers in The Pit after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.

As the meta is evolving rapidly, expect to find more frequent changes to this variant.
  • You drop Shadow Step for Smoke Grenade.
  • You drop Shadow Imbuement for Poison Trap and make some changes in the Paragon.
  • When fighting mobs in the Pit, stay ranged against them, so Deadeye take effect.
  • Supreme Death Trap only works in Close Range, so stay close against the boss.

Gear & Skills

Pit Push Death Trap Rogue Gear
Pit Push Death Trap Rogue Skills
  • When fighting monsters in high tiers of the Pit, remember that after crowd controlling elites for 5 seconds, they become Unstoppable for 8 seconds. This may be the right moment to start kiting them around because your damage done goes way down and they can freely retaliate.
  • In high tier boss fights, beware that many of your conditional damage and damage reduction modifiers cannot activate outside of stagger phases. This means they generally deal more damage against you than regular monsters and you have to prioritize dodging the attacks from shadow bosses while you can barely scratch them outside of stagger bursts.
Death Trap Pit Pushing Paragon

FAQ & Mechanics

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Death Trap Rogue

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.

Mechanics

Video Guide

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Death Trap Rogue

Summary

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Death Trap Rogue

The Death Trap Rogue is a fun to play, fast-paced tactical genius that performs well in almost any scenario. With a range of tricks and devices up your sleeve, and constant resets on all of your cooldowns, you can deal with anything.

  • Invest into Energy recovery as much as possible early on so you can spam Barrage for Exposure until you can do the 150 Energy + Beastfall Boots combo.
  • For Endgame alternate between Concealment => Death Trap => Repeat
  • Stack Momentum while keeping on the move with Dash and Shadow Step.
    • Remember to imbue these from time to time with Shadow Imbuement.
  • Drop Caltrops on Bosses and other tough enemies.
  • Your massive Health pool will be able to keep you alive even without having armor or resistances capped.

Credits

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Death Trap Rogue

Written by M1PY
Initally written by wudijo

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