Death Trap Rogue Endgame Build Guide
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 from Varshan 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 Close Quarters Combat. Let's jump in and see what it's all about!
Requirements for this build
- Eyes in the Dark
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Spiritborn Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.
Season Theme
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:
- Seething Opal of Equipment
- Seething Opal of Gold
- Seething Opal of Materials
- Seething Opal of Torment
- Seething Opal of Socketables
Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Barrage is our core skill but barely contributes damage. Instead, it's used as a conduit to trigger lucky hit effects, activate Beastfall Boots for Preparation and to make enemies vulnerable.
- Death Trap is our Ultimate Skill and main damage dealer. With enough cooldown reduction we can get to the point where we can alternate this and our core skill by emptying and filling our entire resource bar in tandem with the unique boots + Aftermath. In the early progression, we instead rely on Exposure to reset its cooldown and cast it less frequently.
- Smoke Grenade helps us stay alive, adds a powerful damage modifier and activates Alchemical Advantage.
- Dash and Shadow Step grant us high mobility. If you're resource starved early on, replace one of these skills with Puncture or Invigorating Strike until later.
- Caltrops adds a powerful damage buff with Enhanced Caltrops. In most farming situations this ability is too slow and clunky, but it's very helpful to take down tanky bosses.
Skill Rotation
- Hold Force Attack + Barrage, tap Death Trap continuously. Ideally cast them in a 1:1 cycle.
- Dash or Shadow Step at least once every 8sec for Close Quarters Combat.
- (On Elites & Bosses) Throw Smoke Grenade for a 25% dmg buff.
- (On Bosses) Start with Caltrops and keep them inside the area for Enhanced Caltrops.
- (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.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Rogue Specialization Guide.
Paragon & Glyphs
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.
Death Trap Rogue Endgame Paragon
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
- Control
- Ambush
- Turf
- Snare
- Versatility
To Level 46
- Turf
- Ambush
- Snare
- Control
- Versatility
There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels: 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Runes
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
- Yul + Mot - Generates Dark Shroud without having to rely on Umbrous, freeing up that aspect slot. Use the aspect (e.g. on Helm, Chest, or Amulet) and another rune (e.g. Gar) until you get this combo.
- Zan + Vex - The extra skill ranks help with increasing damage and reducing cooldown of Death Trap and increase survivability with Dark Shroud.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Poc - We continuously gain and spend tons of Energy, so this is an easy activator.
- Vex - The extra skill ranks help with increasing damage and reducing cooldown of Death Trap.
- Xal - For extra defense.
- 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
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 extra all resistances and occasionally casts Bastion that gives us near invincibility for a short time. In addition, he prevents us from getting oneshot every 30 seconds thanks to Valiance. Beware that he's not present when playing in groups and make sure you remain resistance capped without him, e.g. by swapping gems, paragon nodes or using incenses.
Reinforcement: Varyana
We choose Earth Breaker for extra crowd controls and stagger.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
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. 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 10 sec Death Trap Cooldown
- 60%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 50%+ Attack Speed
- 1000%+ Damage vs. Close
- 2500+ Dexterity
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 80%+
- 6,000+ Life
- 160%+ Movement Speed
- 150+ Max. Energy
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.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Build Variants
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.
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
- 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.
- Umbrous is an important survivability tool for many Rogue builds. As long as you haven't found it, use either Mot or Dark Shroud on your bar for extra defense.
- 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.
- Instead of starting with Trap Cooldown Reduction, we first go with Innervation tempers on our jewelry to fuel the Barrage spam between Death Trap casts. If you find yourself running out of Energy too often early on, also try to add Resource Cost Reduction rolls on rings or replace either Dash or Shadow Step with Puncture to fill the gaps.
- 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
- Note that without Harlequin Crest it's very difficult but possible to get the required cooldown reduction for sub 10sec Death Trap cooldown. You need good Beastfall Boots, triple Trap Cooldown Reduction tempers on jewelry, some masterworking on these and potentially another Cooldown Reduction roll on Helm or Amulet.
- As you upgrade your gear to Ancestrals with more masterworking levels and reach higher paragon, you can focus more and more on replacing Armor & Resistance rolls with better stats, but ensure to stay capped at 1000 Armor and 70%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in.
- Once you acquire Beastfall Boots, reach above 150 max. Energy (can use Elixir of Resourcefulness II to start) and get your Death Trap cooldown to around 10 seconds, you can now reset your ultimate with a single Barrage and switch your key passive to Close Quarters Combat. This means you no longer have to worry about affecting enemies with traps outside of their standard utility, but now you have to hit an enemy at least once every 8 seconds with either Dash or Shadow Step.
- While this is not a lucky hit-based build, Fists of Fate help us greatly with staggering and taking down bosses in addition to offering a sizable damage bonus.
- One temper of Elemental Surge - Poison on a weapon helps us to keep Alchemical Advantage active without the need to use Smoke Grenade all the time. This is mostly a quality of life feature and shouldn't be used if your Chance for Death Trap to Deal Double Damage can't reach 100% with only two tempers yet.
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
- Harlequin Crest makes it much easier to hit the cooldown reduction requirement and frees up temper/masterworking for Ultimate/Trap Cooldown Reduction in other slots. It also comes with a good chunk of armor which allows you to min/max the setup further for example by removing such Paragon nodes and putting them into more damage.
- Shroud of False Death is a powerful damage boost because it adds many small bonuses across the skill tree, allowing a small respec by reallocating a few points. We don't care much about its stealth effect but it can be a nice extra.
- 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.
- Since all of our Armor slots are occupied with Uniques, we need to use Mot to generate Dark Shroud stacks or put Umbrous on the Amulet.
This Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
Gear & Skills
- We don't make any adjustments for speedfarming in this build.
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.
Gear & Skills
- We don't make any adjustments for pushing in this build.
- 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.
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.
What can I do to improve survivability?
How can I trigger Unstoppable?
What can I do for better Energy recovery?
Which adjustments should I make on Hardcore?
Mechanics
Dark Shroud
Beastfall Boots
Attack Speed Caps
Stagger
Video Guide
Summary
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.
- Combine Death Trap with Poison Trap to pull in and crowd control all nearby enemies before decimating them.
- Use your crowd controls to deal more damage and stay alive with Dark Shroud triggered from Umbrous or Mot.
Credits
Written by wudijo