Heartseeker Rogue Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Heartseeker Rogue Specialized Guide! This is a basic attack build designed for ranged play that does well in both single target applications and density, thanks to many different multiplicative offerings to buff Heartseeker itself as well as the Victimize key passive for AoE that basic attacks generally lack.
Heartseeker really starts getting good when you find the Shard of Verathiel and a Fists of Fate, which is a hefty damage buff, a ton of lucky hit chance, and a way to cleverly use the Preparation specializaion to take this build even further.
We also use Preparation for damage reduction and to cast our ultimate skill often, giving us full uptime on a massive legendary node multiplier, No Witnesses.
This setup is straight forward, easy to play, great for those looking for something different. Learn everything you need to know on how to make the most out of this build!
Requirements for this build
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.
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
Skills & Gameplay
- Heartseeker is our damage dealing Skill of choice that also procs Victimize and Preparation.
- Death Trap procs No Witnesses legendary node while also gathering enemies for more effective Victimize procs.
- Dash gives you incredible mobility to fly across the battlefield and an easy way to get out of tough situations.
- Caltrops is primary for tougher targets that will take a little longer to kill. This skill provides a massive buff while enemies are inside for long periods of time.
- Shadow Step provides unstoppable and another source of movement for efficient gameplay.
- Smoke Grenade gives us quite a bit of utility from more damage to disabling enemies so that they cannot attack.
Passives
- Victimize is the Key Passive of choice, which gives some much needed AoE int the form of a proc that scales with Vulnerable damage.
Skill Rotation
The Heartseeker Rogue is a straight forward shooter of a build. It's high in mobility and damage modifiers. Below explains how to best get the most out of each skill on your bar.
- Heartseeker is the main skill. You can start most engagements with this nearly off screen and kill trash mobs in the open world before they can get near you.
- Use Death Trap to proc No Witnesses legendary node while also gathering enemies for more effective Victimize procs.
- Use Smoke Grenade whenever you see an elite pack to disable them. This also gives a nice multiplier which allows you to burst them down quickly.
- Caltrops can be saved for tougher mobs as it's not needed in every fight. Place them well to keep enemies inside as long as possible.
- Both Dash is here for the mobility and to get out of sticky situations. You can engage with this skill, but be careful not to end up in the middle of a large pack.
- Use Shadow Step as a means for unstoppable and/or for more movement options for better positioning.
Rogue Specialization
Preparation - Spend resource to reduce your ultimate cooldown and gain 15% damage reduction.
For Heartseeker this requires Shard of Verathiel for it to spend energy to make use of this specialization.
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.
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
Level 15
- Exploit
- Devious
- Control
- Headhunter
- Diminish
Level 46
- Exploit
- Devious
- Control
- Headhunter
- Diminish
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. Rapid Fire Rogue focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Moni + Ohm - War Cry buffs us with 15% extra damage.
- Poc + Mot - This is our way of getting free Dark Shroud shadows while freeing up an aspect slot for more damage.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Cem - We evade often, so this is a good activator.
- Vex - The extra skill ranks help with increasing damage, damage reduction (Dark Shroud) and overall quality of life.
- Xal - For extra defense.
- Yax - Good amount of offering for just drinking a potion.
- Lith - Great for stand still and shoot players at the sacrifice of mobility.
- Wat - Good choice for some damage reduction and a way to use another classes skill for the Xol rune.
- Yul - We have a lot of cooldowns in this build, so this rune is good for that.
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
We take Bastion for the shield, the unstoppable and decent damage buffs.
- Reinforcement: Varyana
Her Earth Breaker skill provides a knockdown to proc the second portion of Malice.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Heartseeker 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 Stat Thresholds
- 5+ total Ranks of Dark Shroud
- 1500%+ Vulnerable Damage
- 80%+ Chance to Cast Heartseeker Twice
- 1500+ Dexterity
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 3,000+ Life
- 150%+ Movement Speed
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.
- Coldclip is the foundation of the build. Until we acquire Fists of Fate, we need to run Accursed Touch for decent vulnerable uptime for Victimize.
- We have no way to spend energy without Shard of Verathiel, so we take Inner Sight Specialization while still building towards Preparation. This means no Ultimate yet either.
- Use Umbrous on helm or chest if you have not obtained the Mot rune.
- At this stage, there's not a lot of access to lucky hit, so we rely on Heartseeker raw damage multipliers a bit until we can scale lucky hit and vulnerable damage a bit more.
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
- 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.
- Shard of Verathiel is a big pickup with its massive attack speed bonus and hefty multiplier for Heartseeker. Main reason we take this is to be able to spend energy to proc Preparation and No Witnesses, as well as the Second Wind passive.
- Acquiring Beastfall Boots allows you to sustain the energy drain from Shard of Verathiel with ease, making it a requirement at this stage of the build.
- Fists of Fate help us greatly with its massive amount of lucky hit chance, which means bigger victimize backloaded explosions.
- Cowl of the Nameless provides some additional passive damage while also granting a good chunk of lucky hit vs crowd controlled targets.
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
- Shroud of False Death Is best in slot with the +1 to all passives. This chest however requires to shift things around to cap all resistances.
- Tyrael's Might is optional. It makes it much easier to hit your Armor and Resistance caps, even in high Torment difficulties. This allows you to min/max the setup further for example by removing such Paragon nodes and putting them into more damage.
- Heir of Perdition gives us good all around stats with a massive multiplier and more emphasis on lucky hit chance.
- Ring of Starless Skies along with a few Innervation tempers allows us to drop Beastfall Boots boots and go for more damage.
- Here you also want to work towards reaching the frame 14 attack speed break point by obtaining 92.5% in Cap 1 and 83.5 in Cap 2, while using Elixir of Advantage II.
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.
No changes are necessary from the Ancestral or the Mythic versions for speedfarming.
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
- 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.
- No changes needed for the build.
FAQ & Mechanics
I'm losing all of my Energy and can't cast! Help!!!
Bow or Crossbow? Which is better?
Which Elixirs?
Why Royal Diamonds in weapons?
Getting multiple passives on an Amulet is really hard. Any other options?
How are Dark Shroud stacks generated for this build?
Mechanics
Learn about the mechanical details that make the build tick.
Dark Shroud Scaling
Attack Speed Caps
Dodge Mechanics
Smoke Grenade Mechanics
Video Guide
Summary
The Heartseeker Rogue is a superb allrounder with a toolkit that prepares you for all situations. It's a fun and mobile farming build that with a few tweaks can transform into a DPS powerhouse to take on the biggest challenges the game has to offer. I hope you enjoy a great build.
- Heartseeker is the main skill. You can start most engagements with this nearly off screen and kill trash mobs in the open world before they can get near you.
- Use Death Trap to proc No Witnesses legendary node while also gathering enemies for more effective Victimize procs.
- Use Smoke Grenade to disable elites and give a nice multiplier.
- Caltrops can be saved for tougher mobs as it's not needed in every fight. Place them well to keep enemies inside as long as possible.
Credits
Written by DiEoxidE
Reviewed by wudijo