The Flurry Rogue is an easy-to-play melee variant that's great for leveling in Diablo 4. You have good mobility and high AoE damage to blast through large monster packs while decimating larger foes with an onslaught of stabbing daggers and Imbuement effects.
Flurry is a Core Skill that hits enemies up to four times per use in front of you. With the Encircling Blades Aspect we convert it into a 360° AoE to jump into the fray and destroy everything around us, enabled by Shadow Step that brings us right into the middle of a monster pack.
Because we run with Combo Points, we play a simple 3:1 rotation between Puncture and Flurry, triggering various debuffs and keeping our Energy high at all times.
All in all, this is a well-rounded, beginner-friendly build if you're looking for a melee playstyle. Once you have the main setup together, you'll be cruising into the endgame.
This guide teaches you all about how to reach the endgame in Diablo 4 with the Flurry Rogue. Let's get started!
This build guide takes you through the Campaign and Early Game up to Level 50. If you're looking for Endgame guides, check out our Rogue Guides section!
- Very Mobile
- Beginner-Friendly
- Formidable All-Rounder
- Small AoE
- Always in Melee
- Mediocre Single Target
Season 4 - Loot Reborn
In Season 4, the Season Theme revolves around helping out the Iron Wolves. Compared to past themes, this one does not offer any borrowed power as the entire game has been redesigned with new itemization and crafting options, increasing player power substantially across the board. Instead, you can gather reputation similar to the Vampire Bounty Board from Season 2 to unlock rewards that supercharge your leveling journey to 100 with extra items, crafting materials and eventually even a Resplendent Spark to craft an uber unique.
We recommend to follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 4 guide for more information.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Getting Started
To start off we have to put 2 points into Basic Skills to unlock the other sections. Puncture is our choice because it applies slow and Vulnerable through the Fundamental Puncture upgrade and helps us out with extra damage when out of Energy. All of these effects make it a perfect fit for our build.
Unlocking Flurry
Flurry is our main skill. It hits four times in a cone in front of you or in a full 360° radius with Encircling Blades. Make sure to unlock this Aspect as early as possible! It's simple to use and with the Improved Flurry upgrade you can spread and perpetuate the Vulnerable debuff applied by Puncture, which is a great way of boosting your elite and boss damage. Always position yourself so that you hit the most targets possible with each attack.
Defense and Mobility
At this point you unlock Agility Skills. Here we pick up Dash, our main mobility tool to get around the open world and also engage.
Once we unlock Subterfuge Skills, we pick up Dark Shroud. It gives us much needed defense and movement speed.
Imbuements
Both Shadow Imbuement and Poison Imbuement augment our Flurry skill for various effects to make us more powerful. Shadow Imbuement allows for additional explosions when you kill an enemy that has shadow damage on them. Shadow Imbuement also gives us back Energy upon explosion with the Consuming Shadows passive, making this a great Imbuement to pick up early on. Poison Imbuement adds additional poisoning damage to help with the bigger, more stubborn mobs with higher health pools. Use this after using both charges of Shadow Imbuement for cleaning up whatever is left.
Key Passive
Close Quarters Combat is our Key Passive of choice for the build. It can easily be activated by combining Puncture + Flurry, providing a substantial damage and Attack Speed bonus. In addition, it allows us to focus on Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies stat as an extra damage multiplier.
At this point, the core setup is complete. All of our remaining points go into boosting our damage, defenses, speed or already allocated skills. This makes transitioning into the endgame very smooth with this build.
Rogue Specializations
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:
- Combo Points (lvl 15) - Use Basic Skills to boost your subsequent Core Skill for more damage and various other effects.
- Inner Sight (lvl 20) - Fuel the mark with attacks until full, then unlimited Energy for 4 seconds
- Preparation (lvl 30) - Every 100 Energy used reduces the cooldown of your Ultimate Skills by 4 seconds. Casting an Ultimate Skill resets all other cooldowns.
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 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.
How to use the Specializations
Each Specialization is very powerful and caters to specific styles of play. Pick one that suits your style and build around it. The one we're after in this build is Combo Points, which is the first to unlock. In order to use it, hit enemies with any Basic Skill (Puncture) three times to build Combo Points, then use a Core Skill (Flurry) to finish. Combo Points are displayed above the XP bar in the UI. Avoid simply spamming Flurry without any Combo Points due to its high resource cost.
Learn more details in our full Rogue Specialization Guide.
Gear Progression & Stat Priorities
As a Flurry Rogue, always use your highest DPS Melee Weapon available for more damage. Your Ranged Weapon is simply a stat stick to fuel their power, so its DPS is secondary. The stats to look for on these are:
- 1-H Weapons: Pref. Daggers, High DPS, Dexterity, % Damage and Maximum Life
- Ranged Weapons: Pref. Crossbow, Dexterity, % Damage and Maximum Life
Armor
Armor pieces typically grant us Defense and Utility stats, except the Gloves which offer a tidal wave of Offense. Here are the important stats to look for:
- Helm: Dexterity, Cooldown, Life
- Armor: Armor, Life, Resistances
- Gloves: Flurry Ranks, Attack Speed, Critical Strike Chance
- Pants: Armor, Life, Resistances
- Boots: Movement Speed, Dexterity, Resistances
Jewelry
Jewelry provides powerful Offensive stats that help us on our leveling journey. Pay close attention to the rolls as higher leveled pieces aren't always better:
- Amulet: Movement Speed, Armor %, Critical Strike Chance
- Rings: Critical Strike Chance, Attack Speed, Dexterity
If you have sockets on your items, fill them with the following:
- Weapons: Sapphire
- Armor: Ruby
- Jewelry: Diamond
Read more about itemization in our Damage Explained, Defense Explained, and Stats Explained articles.
Legendary Aspects
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 Codex Legendary Aspects
| Aspect | Dungeon |
| 1. Aspect of Encircling Blades | Forsaken Quarry - Fractured Peaks |
| 2. Aspect of the Expectant | Underroot - Scosglen |
| 3. Edgemaster’s Aspect | Oldstones - Scosglen |
Learn more details in our article covering the Codex of Power.
Helpful Legendary Powers
Here are more helpful Legendary Aspects for the Twisting Blades Rogue that can either be found in the Codex of Power or Extracted from an item drop. Note that all Legendary Aspects can be found from item drops, and that these can roll better and often significantly better than ones sourced from the Codex of Power.
- Accelerating
- Gamble 1h Weapons.
- Provides extra Attack Speed after critting, making the build a lot more powerful.
- Drop only.
- Rapid
- Gamble 1h Weapons.
- Adds even more Attack Speed for our Basic Skills.
- Codex unlock: Buried Halls - Dry Steppes
- Disobedience
- Gamble Pants.
- Provides a ton of extra defense and stacks up easily because we hit many targets with our attacks.
- Codex unlock: Halls of the Damned - Kehjistan
- Ghostwalker
- Gamble Boots
- Provides extra speed and the ability to move through enemies, which is great for better targeting.
- Codex unlock: Broken Bulwark - Scosglen
- Might
- Gamble Pants
- Since we use Basic Skills frequently, this damage reduction effect is easy to trigger.
- Codex unlock: Dark Ravine - Dry Steppes
How To Level
In Diablo 4 you level by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, completing Helltide activities, grinding Dungeons, or interacting with the Seasonal mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are made equal.
Campaign Leveling
- For your first character in Diablo 4, completing the Campaign provides the best gameplay experience and gives you access to key unlocks like your Mount.
- If you don't have your Mount, you MUST progress the Campaign until you complete the quest Donan's Favor at the start of Act 4.
- After obtaining your Mount you can skip the remainder of the campaign at any time.
- The Campaign is the slowest way to level, but it's worth experiencing the Campaign and Diablo 4's storyline at least once.
- To play Seasonal Content you need to have completed or skipped the Campaign.
Seasonal / Alt Leveling
- Complete the Seasonal questline, progress your Seasonal Journey to unlock Legendary Aspects and work on your Seasonal powers.
- If your account is below Rank 5 Renown in each zone, focus on completing your Renown.
- This only needs to be done once per realm (Softcore / Hardcore).
- Complete the Dungeons needed for any Legendary Aspects from your Codex of Power.
- From level 1-50 you should focus on getting experience in Helltides by combining Helltide activities with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or complete Gathering Legion Events.
- After level 50 you need to balance leveling up, Glyph Experience and participating in Endgame activities like Helltide, Tree of Whispers and Bosses. The fastest experience possible after reaching World Tier 3 is completing Nightmare dungeons with monsters exactly 10 levels above your current level. Check out our Nightmare Dungeon Tier List for the best Nightmare Dungeon layouts!
- Around level 30-45 you should move to World Tier 3.
- Around level 50-65 you should move to World Tier 4.
- Alternatively: Get boosted by a friend to World Tier 4 then leech experience/loot and Glyph exp (post 50), in Nightmare dungeons.
- Find the most efficient way of leveling your character in detail in our Speed Leveling Guide.
Leveling Tips and Tricks
Let's look at some tips and tricks to remember when leveling up!
- Level Up Your Potion. You need to farm materials to upgrade your character's potion.
- Make sure you collect all materials as you explore Sanctuary, especially Gallowvine which is used in many Elixir recipes!
- 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.
- Don't Imprint Your Best Aspect Onto Your Weapon. The most critical piece of gear while leveling up is your weapon, which gets replaced constantly.
- It is a better idea to put your best Offensive Aspect on your Amulet, which can be used for a long time.
- Sacred is just better. Between level 30 and 50 you're able to beat the Capstone Dungeon and enter World Tier 3, you gain access to powerful Sacred items which have higher item power and better stats. Getting a Sacred weapon significantly improves your farming speed.
- The same happens with World Tier 4 and Ancestral gear.
Summary
- The Flurry Rogue is an easy to setup and play farming build with high mobility and AoE damage.
- Build 3 Combo Points with Puncture, then unleash your spender and repeat for maximum output.
- Activate Shadow Imbuement for massive AoE explosions and clearing.
- Activate Poison Imbuement to melt elites and bosses.
- Focus on improving your Melee Weapons more than any other items.
- Look out for helpful Legendary Powers in the Codex of Power, especially Encircling Blades and those that provide extra damage and defense.
Credits
Written by wudijo, maintained by DiEoxidE
Reviewed by DiEoxidE