Diablo 4 Season 1 introduces a new questline to hunt Malignant Monsters across Sanctuary. Defeating them drops Caged Hearts that are placed in Jewelry infested sockets to gain build-altering powers. Check out the full Season 1 The Malignant guide from Chewingnom to learn more!

With this in mind, let's look at the top 3 best Caged Hearts (and alternatives) for this build:

If you acquire Caged Heart of The Barber, you have the option to pick up 1-2 points Consuming Shadows for extra Energy recovery because the Heart's explosions are considered Shadow damage. In general, you are looking for:

Caged Heart of The Barber absorbs all outgoing damage but immediately triggers as soon as the target has absorbed enough to be defeated. The main advantage of a short timer is that if you don't deal enough damage to a single target, the explosion triggers sooner and can chain react from multiple targets to blow up an entire pack whereas a longer timer helps in prolonged combat due to the stacking damage buff.

If you don't like the delayed damage playstyle around Caged Heart of The Barber, you can run with Caged Heart of the Vile Apothecary which is a great alternative in all situations.

This requires a short explanation on why this appears in several of the guides, mainly combo point multiple imbuement builds. The Vile Apothecary has a chance to apply all imbuements on a single hit. This allows double dipping of multipliers that were not possible before, specifically with Cold Imbuement and Shadow Imbuement. This concept also ties into the Eldritch Bounty Legendary Node for some very nice scaling.

To top it off, The stun grenades from Cluster Munitions proc the Frostbitten Aspect to further increase our multipliers with the above, provide extra safety, and trigger a ton of stagger on bosses.

While the above is designed for optimal performance, there is wiggle room in the skill selection while keeping the core build intact. Not everyone enjoys a dual core skill setup. You can opt for Dash in place of Rapid Fire for more movement options or a Trap for more of a lure playstyle. Poison Imbuement for a triple imbue playstyle is ok as well in place of Rapid Fire, but note that poison is a little weaker in this setup due to the Tempting Fate heart, though still an ok alternative for single target damage. If you don't like Shadow Step, you can opt for Dash, though going this route means you should consider replacing Penitent Greaves with boots that has Eluding Aspect on it for emergency crowd control breaks.

Bows are stronger now relative to the vulnerable nerf on crossbows and now becomes a viable option. You can replace Puncture with Forceful Arrow as a basic attack when using Bow for a more true range playstyle.

Rogues can choose one out of three special passives that enhance their playstyle. Since like other Rogue builds, Penetrating Shot is resource hungry with limited ways of Energy recovery, we choose Combo Points for high burst damage which scales really well with Penetrating Shot per point. You get slightly over double the damage and additional lucky hit chance (up to 30% more) at 3 Combo Points. Additionally, Rapid Fire gets additional arrows per combo point gained as well as more damage.

Basic Skills (Puncture) are required to build Combo Points, which are spent by Core Skills (Penetrating Shot). For the best damage/Energy ratio you always want to build up 3 Combo Points before using Penetrating Shot. Shooting more or less than 3 Combo Points results in less damage overall. Later on you unlock further synergies that make this Combo Point playstyle even more powerful with Condemnation and Aspect of the Expectant. Rapid Aspect and attack speed rolls work well in building Combo Points quicker for faster burst, however it can make it difficult to manage your Energy.

We need to level up our Glyphs to activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. For some Glyphs, we MAX our bonuses by allocating every relevant node in range, while on others we take the min required for the Additional Bonus only. Because Glyphs at level 15 increase their radius, we need to prioritize leveling them by completing Nightmare Dungeons. After that, we prioritize leveling our strongest glyphs to level 21.

You play like a long-range Sniper. Use what you can to keep enemies at bay while lining them up to achieve as much damage as possible with the Advanced Penetrating Shot passive. The more successful you are at lining up your shots, the quicker you clear enemies and loot.

As with all Combo Point builds, resource management is rather easy as you're naturally regenerating Energy when you're not using Penetrating Shot. Puncture, Consuming Shadows, Innervation, Combat and Energy cost reduction on gear all aid in resource management to where you don't have to think about it.

As for cooldown, you only have to keep up with Shadow Imbuement and Cold Imbuement. With cooldown reduction on helm, pants (imbuement cooldown) and neck, you can comfortably rotate between these 2 imbuements without much trouble. Due to the heavy investments in imbue stats, it is critical that you're always using an Imbue before firing Penetrating Shot, otherwise your damage falls off hard.

Feel free to use Shadow Step whenever necessary to go faster. Usually it's best to use the first after a pack to reach the next one. When you see elites or mob types that have lots of crowd controls, it's best to keep one charge of Shadow Step ready so you can get out of them.

When you start diving into the Endgame, you don't have all the tools available to achieve the final build versions. Let us guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.

Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. While we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.

The answer to many questions can be found in the following sections.

There are many stats and status effects that generate on gear, but many are not important for your build. See below for a general breakdown as well as a per slot priority in the list.

Fill your item's sockets with the following:

This build benefits the most from the following consumables:

Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successful in this game mode:

You can optimize your build further for certain endgame activities, such as Speed farming, Nightmare Dungeon Pushing, etc. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to achieve the best results in them.

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.

The Penetrating Shot Rogue is a ranged powerhouse of a build that excels at destroying big packs of monsters with impactful nukes that reward good timing and positioning. Due to its safe ranged playstyle it is also able to push high in Nightmare Dungeons without much trouble and super fun to play!

Written by: DiEoxidE
Reviewed by: Tenkiei, Wudijo