Penetrating Shot Rogue Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Penetrating Shot Rogue Endgame Guide! Are you looking for a ranged, "nuke the entire screen"-playstyle for Rogue? Well, this is it! A relatively easy to understand, powerful build which scales well into the endgame.
Penetrating Shot is a Core Skill that fires one massive, piercing arrow. The Umbracrux combined with Victimize and the Trickshot Aspect amplify your Area of Effect. As with most Rogue skills, maximizing its potential requires good positioning because you deal increased damage the more enemies you hit in a line.
We use Penetrating Shot with Preparation and Victimize. Therefore, we need a lot of Vulnerable Damage and Lucky Hit Chance through gear and passives to guarantee obliterating any monsters!
This is a very satisfying and rewarding build that requires some planning ahead to maximize its potential. This guide teaches you the best way to tackle endgame with the Penetrating Shot Rogue!
Requirements for this Build:
- A source of applying Vulnerable for Victimize such as the Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable affix.
- If you do not have it, you need to imprint Accursed Touch instead of True Sight as a band-aid solution.
- If you do not have Fists of Fate yet, you may imprint Accursed Touch on your Gloves instead as shown in the Starter Variant.
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
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
Essentials
- Penetrating Shot is your main ability. In this build, Penetrating Shot barely contributes to damage. Instead, you use it as a railgun to trigger Lucky Hit Effects for Victimize and Fists of Fate. Therefore, we leave it at Rank 1/5.
- We pick up the Knockdown Upgrade from Penetrating Shot to feed into our Malice and Retribution multipliers.
- Shadow Step grants you mobility and the ability to break out of control impairing effects via Unstoppable.
- Dash is an excellent repositioning and mobility tool.
- Smoke Grenade helps you to crowd control enemies and adds a powerful damage modifier.
- Dark Shroud is your main defensive tool and is activated without having it on the skill bar through Umbrous on our Pants. If you do not have it yet, take Dark Shroud on your skill bar instead of Poison Trap.
Imbuements
- Poison Imbuement allows you to utilize synergies to further amplify your Lucky Hit Chance through Alchemical Advantage and damage through Noxious Ice. The Mixed Poison Imbuement upgrade reduces the Cooldown significantly.
Ultimate and Key Passive
- Death Trap is used to group up enemies effectively.
- Victimize is your Key Passive and main damage dealing ability. To get the most out of it, you need to stack Vulnerable Damage and Lucky Hit Chance on gear.
- You pick up damaging passives such as Malice to fuel your Victimize multiplier. Frigid Finesse increases your damage against Frozen enemies and is activated by your Lucky Hit: Chance to Freeze Tempers and Fists of Fate.
- You sustain your Health through Siphoning Strikes.
Skill Rotation
Fundamentals
- Activate Poison Imbuement whenever it is ready to have you Penetrating Shot imbued at all times. This also activates Eldritch Bounty.
- Spending Energy reduces your Death Trap through Preparation.
- Use Death Trap to group up enemies effectively whenever it is ready to also activate No Witnesses.
- Toss Smoke Grenade into Elite Packs to amplify your damage against them and score additional Lucky Hits with it.
- The Umbracrux spawns a totem whenever you use Smoke Grenade. This totem acts as an additional target to score Lucky Hits on and trigger Victimize explosions.
- Keep Shadow Step ready for the ability to break out of control impairing effects via Unstoppable.
- Dash is an excellent tool for repositioning and traversing the map faster as needed.
Rogue Specialization
Preparation
The Preparation Specialization reduces your Ultimate Cooldown by 5 seconds for every 75 Energy that you spend.
We relentlessly fire Penetrating Shot to lay waste to our enemies and spend a lot of Resource that way.
This allows us to reduce the Cooldown of Death Trap significantly and gives us 15% damage reduction.
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.
In the Paragon we pick up important damage multipliers and use Glyphs that benefit our Vulnerable Damage for Victimize. A lot of Rogue's power relies on enemies being Crowd-Controlled so key items like Fists of Fate are important to apply them.
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.
Penetrating Shot 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
- Exploit
- Fluidity
- Headhunter
- Devious
- Control
To Level 46
- Exploit
- Control
- Fluidity
- Devious
- Headhunter
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 into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Penetrating Shot Rogue focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Lith + Ohm - Invokes War Cry after being stationary. We stand still a lot to shoot, so this activates quite frequently.
- Poc + Lac - Invokes Challenging Shout for more defense. We spend a lot of Resource while shooting, so this activates reliably.
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 frequently so that is a good alternative to Noc.
- Yax - We drink a potion frequently to keep Unstable Elixirs up, so this rune can also be beneficial.
- Lac - Invokes Challenging Shout for more defense.
- Kry - Helps with grouping up mobs.
- 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.
- Mot - You can use this before you have access to Umbrous in addition to taking Dark Shroud on your skill bar.
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: Subo
He reveals all enemies and materials on the minimap, allowing you to farm Iron Chunks and Bundled Herbs easily. The highlighting is very useful to spot out Elites in Dungeons, as you will recognize the pattern for elites quickly after getting used to it.
You gain a multiplicative increase to your Lucky Hit Chance whenever Subo attacks an enemy through his Ambusher passive. This greatly benefits your Victimize procs.
With how frequently we want to drink Potions for Unstable Elixirs, Share a Drink helps us to generate more.
Reinforcement: Raheir
We choose Bastion for extra defense when grouping mobs with Death Trap.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Penetrating Shot 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:
- 100%+ Lucky Hit Chance
- 50%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 1500%+ Vulnerable Damage
- 2000+ Dexterity
- 30%+ Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable
- 4+ Extra Poison Imbue Charges
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 6,000+ Life
- 160%+ Movement Speed
- 6+ Total Ranks of Malice
- 50%+ Chance for Penetrating Shot to shoot an additional Projectile
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Penetrating Shot 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 Penetrating Shot 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.
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% to all Resistances and it is recommended to keep both capped (1000 Armor, 70%+ Resistances) at all times. As you unlock higher item 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 have not found it, use Mot and/or Dark Shroud on your skill bar for extra defense.
Vulnerable Source
- A source of applying Vulnerable for Victimize such as the Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable affix is mandatory to have.
- In the Starter Variant, we ensure this by imprinting Accursed Touch on your Gloves, which are later replaced by Fists of Fate.
- If you do not have Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable on one of your Rings by the time to equip Fists of Fate, make sure to imprint Accursed Touch on a Ring instead of True Sight until you find one or enchant it successfully.
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.
- Fists of Fate help us greatly with staggering and taking down bosses in addition to offering a sizable damage bonus.
- If you do not have Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable on one of your Rings by the time to equip Fists of Fate, make sure to imprint Accursed Touch on a Ring instead of True Sight until you find one or enchant it successfully.
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
- Heir of Perdition is the best in slot item for this build. The insane Lucky Hit Chance benefits Victimize greatly and the damage multiplier on top is excellent.
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?
My damage is low, what is happening?
How are Dark Shroud stacks generated in this build?
Isn't Penetrating Shot bad on single target?
Mechanics
Dark Shroud Mechanics
Attack Speed Caps
Victimize Damage Formula and Scaling
Victimize Damage Backloading and Internal Cooldown
Cooldown Reduction Scaling
Dodge Mechanics
Stagger Mechanics
Video Guide
Coming soon by M1PY on YouTube
Summary
The Penetrating Shot Rogue is a ranged powerhouse that excels at destroying packs of monsters with impactful explosions rewarding good timing and positioning. Due to its safe ranged playstyle it is also able to push high tiers without much trouble. It is also fun to play!
- Use Death Trap to group mobs together nicely and activate No Witnesses.
- Throw Smoke Grenade to activate the totem from The Umbracrux.
- Use Shadow Step or Dash for Mobility.
- Fire Penetrating Shot against as many targets as possible while hitting the totem to proc Victimize.
Penetrating Shot Rogue initially is a tough to manage build. Depending precise positioning and active buffs that must be maintained to deal damage, it can put you in danger if you are not careful. Patience in learning is required to master the rotations. Once you do, you shall unleash its true power!
Credits
Written by M1PY