Welcome to the Rain of Arrows Rogue Endgame Guide! This build unleashes devastating AoE attacks that destroy entire screens of monsters at once while staying mobile and offering solid single target damage against bosses. Note that the main combo gets enabled by Word of Hakan and before acquiring the amulet using the Ultimate Skill is not recommended (luckily it's a common unique drop and target-farmable from various endgame bosses).
Rapid Fire is an attack skill that unleashes a hail of arrows in a straight line sequentially. This naturally produces high damage output against bosses but makes dealing with packs of enemies difficult.
In order to solve this problem, the build puts a strong focus on Shadow Imbuement, which can be combined with either Rapid Fire itself or Dash to apply the debuff to an entire group of enemies at once. For the really big packs, a well-placed Rain of Arrows is going to take care of it, which we beef up with lots of damage modifiers to ensure total destruction. Through Preparation and the Flickerstep unique we can reduce its cooldown to mere seconds and have it ready for every major engagement.
A great perk of the build is that you never run out of Energy as long as enemies are Vulnerable thanks to Improved Rapid Fire, mainly achieved via the Exploit Glyph and various other triggers.
With this build you can do it all and enjoy a fast-paced, simple-to-play Rogue variation. Let's jump in and see what it's all about!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50+ Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Barrage Leveling Guide or Penetrating Shot Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Rogue playstyle, check out all of our Rogue Guides.
It's recommended to activate the Exploit Glyph (requires level 55-60) and acquire Word of Hakan and Repeating Aspect before starting out with this build.
Season 2 - Season of Blood
Completing the seasonal questline, partaking in the seasonal Blood Harvest event and collecting Potent Blood are the main ways of obtaining and empowering these abilities. Check out the full Season 2 Guide from Chewingnom to learn more! Helms & Boots can have up to 3 Pacts, Pants can have up to 4, Chests & Gloves can have up to 5 giving you 20 Pacts to empower.
Recommended Vampiric Powers
- Accursed Touch (Major) - Triggers and spreads the Vampiric Curse for extra effects.
- Prey on the Weak (Minor) - Ensures high Vulnerable uptime for Improved Rapid Fire and buffs our damage.
- Flowing Veins (Major) - Buffs our Poison damage massively.
- Anticipation (Minor) - Lowers the cooldown of Rain of Arrows for more frequent uses.
- Ravenous (Minor) - Frequently offers a massive buff to Attack Speed for more damage and Preparation procs.
Once we acquire the lategame uniques Temerity and Flickerstep, we replace Accursed Touch and Ravenous with Metamorphosis and Undying because we focus on resetting Rain of Arrows much more using Evade instead of our attacks and can build big shields.
Alternative Vampiric Powers
Without a major change to the build for example by including Blast-Trapper's Aspect to trigger Vulnerable, it's not recommended to remove the combo of powers that enables Improved Rapid Fire described above.
- Undying (Minor) - Can replace Flowing Veins or Anticipation for more healing.
- Infection (Minor) - Can replace Flowing Veins or Anticipation for more random damage procs.
- Hemomancy (Minor) - Can replace Flowing Veins or Anticipation to sometimes deal AoE damage and heal you.
- Resilience (Minor) - Can replace Flowing Veins or Anticipation for extra damage reduction.
Eternal Realm
If you're playing on the Eternal Realm without access to Vampiric Powers, there are two notable differences:
- Some setups may use Metamorphosis to trigger Unstoppable and/or Tibault's Will. The same can be done with Shadow Step or Concealment.
- Some setups may use Metamorphosis or Accursed Touch together with Prey on the Weak to apply Vulnerable. The same can be done with Puncture, Exploit, Blast-Trapper's or Blended Shadow Imbuement.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
- Rapid Fire is our main attack skill. It deals high single target damage and refills its own Energy cost thanks to Improved Rapid Fire as long as the target is Vulnerable, making Basic Skills unnecessary once the core setup is complete. More often than not, you'll end up finishing your main target before the final arrow, so try to line up your enemies to hit more behind them.
- Rain of Arrows is our Ultimate Skill. Due to Preparation and Flickerstep we are able to activate it frequently.
- Use it whenever you are fighting large packs that Shadow Imbuement can't clear on its own. If necessary, use Evade (with Flickerstep) to reset the skill, otherwise keep it ready for the right moment.
- Before firing, position yourself to hit the most enemies possible but beware of the long casting animation when in danger.
- It's best to make sure that the cooldown reset of Preparation hits most of your other skills before you activate your Ultimate.
- Against Suppressor elites, you can pre-fire the skill and then jump into the bubble to deal damage to them. If it's not safe to do so immediately, the first wave will still knock down everything even while you're outside so you can do it on the second wave. If there are overlapping Suppressor bubbles, try to stay right in the middle of them.
- Rain of Arrows can go through many walls in Dungeons. You can use this to your advantage to deal with monster packs without giving them a way to retaliate.
- Dash and Shadow Step are your mobility tools to use in and outside of combat.
- Shadow Step is great to engage a pack, in particular against Suppressor Elites and Champion monsters.
- When there are monsters and elites with crowd control nearby, keep Shadow Step ready for a situation where you may need to get out.
- The only way to keep up Close Quarters Combat in this build is with Dash and Shadow Step. Use any of these two skills frequently (at least once every 8sec) while making sure that you hit a target to activate the melee portion of the passive for a massive damage multiplier.
- Against monster packs, activate Shadow Imbuement to infect them and trigger on-death explosions as you mow through your foes.
- If there are many targets present, it's best to do so with a Dash straight through the center as you can hit multiple enemies with a single attack to spread the debuff, then follow up with Rapid Fire to chain explosions.
- Against bosses, you can also activate it to increase your Critical Strike Chance towards the end of the fight thanks to Enhanced Shadow Imbuement.
- Poison Imbuement is a single target DPS boost. Keep it ready to combine with Rapid Fire against elites and bosses.
Note: This demo is not the exact build but shows a similar playstyle without the Ultimate - will be updated.
Rogue Specialization
Preparation - Spend Energy to reset your Ultimate which resets all other skills.
Since we spam Rapid Fire all the time, we spend tons of Energy which is immediately recovered through the skill itself. Like this we can reset our Ultimate Skill very quickly. Preferably you should have everything on cooldown when you fire Rain of Arrows to get the most value out of this effect.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Rogue Specialization Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
Managing your Resources and Cooldowns is crucial to the success of this build.
Infinite Energy Recovery
Rapid Fire automatically restores almost all of its cost by hitting a Vulnerable target. Any remaining Energy required comes from the natural regeneration of Rogues and Resource Generation rolls on Rings. This means our top priority is making sure that we always hit at least one Vulnerable enemy each time we use Rapid Fire.
Before you acquire the Exploit Glyph, you may not reliably refill your Energy between packs. In the early game, it's better to drop Shadow Step for Puncture which to help with that.
- This is alleviated by the Season 2 Vampiric Powers Prey on the Weak that allows easy application of Vulnerable when combined with Accursed Touch.
Ravenous Aspect
This is a great resource tool and can be acquired early from the Codex of Power. Even the minimum roll has great value and smooths out the Energy recovery from the start until we drop the Aspect later once we have permanent Vulnerable uptime on most enemies.
Exploit Glyph
For regular farming content, this Glyph is the number one source of Vulnerable. For short fights it guarantees the effect after the first hit against a target, given that you finish them within 3 seconds. You can simply spam Rapid Fire into a pack and trigger it to gain resources back automatically before moving on to the next.
Paragon Board
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15!
Rain of Arrows Rogue Paragon
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Glyphs
We need to level up our Glyphs to increase their power and activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. Glyphs have a radius of 3 by default, this increases to 4 at Glyph level 15. Complete Nightmare Dungeons to obtain Glyph experience.
Note that there are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the last two steps in the Paragon progression above for details. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Control
- Diminish
- Exploit
- Efficacy
- Versatility
Level 21
- Control
- Diminish
- Efficacy
- Versatility
- Exploit
Note: Don't level Ranger as it's only used as a progression placeholder until later. With the release of Abattoir of Zir, Diminish gets replaced by Tears of Blood and Versatility moved to the Starting Board. See the AoZ variant below for a full Paragon Board.
There are a total of 225 Paragon Points. Starting with level 50 you gain 4 Paragon Points per level, including 20 from Renown, and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Also check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Endgame Gear & Skill Progression
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.
Progression Goals
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.
- Unlock the following Aspects in your Codex of Power:
- Edgemaster’s in Oldstones (Scosglen)
- Ravenous in Shifting City (Dry Steppes)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Rapid in Buried Halls (Dry Steppes)
- Arrow Storms in Howling Warren (Scosglen)
- Protector in Lost Archives (Fractured Peaks)
- Might in Dark Ravine (Dry Steppes)
- Cheat's in Luban's Rest (Scosglen)
- Wind Striker in Shivta Ruins (Kehjistan)
- Expectant in Underrot (Scosglen)
- Corruption in Renegade's Retreat (Kehjistan)
- Shadowslicer in Twisted Hollow (Scosglen)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Repeating: Gamble Swords. This is our main Aspect and for most of the progression goes on our ranged weapon for the boosted effect. Make sure you only imprint this on a weapon you're going to use for a while, as it may not drop again soon. This replaces Inner Calm.
- Escape Artist: Gamble Pants. This gives us free Smoke Grenades and extra defense after taking a hit. This replaces Might once you no longer use a Basic Skill.
- Accelerating: Gamble Swords. Grants lots of extra Attack Speed for more damage output, healing and lucky hit effects. This replaces Shadowslicer.
- Ravager: Gamble Boots. The second charge on Shadow Step gives great quality of life and speeds up your runs. This replaces Wind Striker until you find Flickerstep.
- Noxious Ice: Gamble Boots. A massive damage buff for a fully imbued Rain of Arrows because you Freeze enemies instantaneously once you have the full setup. This replaces Arrow Storms.
- Conceited: Gamble Swords. Grants us a damage bonus when we have a Barrier, triggered by Protector or Temerity.
- Elements: Gamble Swords. Grants a cycling damage buff that increases our burst in the right moment. This replaces Shadowslicer.
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops. Note: You cannot gamble Unique items with obols!
- Flickerstep: Replacing Ghostwalker or Ravager, these Boots offer a powerful cooldown reduction effect for your Ultimate Skill and great stats.
- Temerity: Replacing Protector, this item grants us a powerful Barrier for extra defense and to trigger Conceited.
- If you get lucky with Uber Unique drops, consider the following adjustments:
- Harlequin Crest: Replace Escape Artist for a massive damage & toughness upgrade.
- Andariel's Visage: Replace Escape Artist to fuel the Barrier generated from Temerity.
- Doombringer: Replace Accelerating to survive high end content more easily.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Steps
Once you have completed the leveling process to 50, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup, you can farm the Legendary Aspects and Unique items you need for the next progression point.
Gear
- Unlock all the Codex Powers mentioned above. Some of them are used only temporarily as a filler until later.
- Edgemaster’s goes on the ranged weapon until we acquire Repeating, then we move it to a regular slot.
- Ravenous can only go on a Ring and is used until the Exploit Glyph is online.
- As soon as you acquire Word of Hakan and have consistent Vulnerable uptime, you can move to the next step in the progression.
Skills
- This is the base setup with only Codex Powers. The goal is to progress our Energy recovery enough until we reach a point where we don't need a Basic Skill anymore.
- Puncture is a useful tool early on to help with Energy recovery in two separate ways: It regenerates some on its own and applies Vulnerable, which we can use to refill by attacking with Rapid Fire.
- Smoke Grenade is optional and can be replaced with any other skill of your choosing.
- The skill tree stays largely the same throughout the progression steps, but some adjustments are made as you go depending on the tools available to you.
Gameplay
Compared to the full Rain of Arrows setup, this plays a bit more straightforward and similar to other Rogue builds. Note that this setup uses Combo Points so you can attack with Puncture to deal extra damage. Use your Basic Skill at least once every few seconds to apply Vulnerable when at low Energy. Other than that, follow the general skill rotation described in the Gameplay section above.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successful in this game mode:
- Focus more on your Chest & Pants while gearing up. Make sure to have only defensive stats on these two slots as they provide a ton of survivability.
- Add extra Armor & Maximum Life instead of damage nodes on your Paragon Boards.
- For even more protection, include Eluding instead of Arrow Storms to get out of crowd controls.
- Be more conservative with Shadow Step and keep a charge ready when you engage enemies that can crowd control you, for example Cold Enchanted elites or Snakes mob types.
Build Scaling, FAQ & Mechanics
Read on to learn all about how to scale this build into endgame:
- Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies: This is a very powerful stat because it boosts Close Quarters Combat to add an extra damage multiplier to the build.
- Critical Strikes: We stack Critical Strike Chance which helps us deal more damage and apply bigger poisons via Blended Poison Imbuement.
- Vulnerable: For this build to work, we need high Vulnerable uptime, achieved with the Exploit Glyph and Prey on the Weak.
- Energy: Rapid Fire restores its own Energy cost almost entirely when hitting a Vulnerable target. This allows us to freely spam our main attack and benefit from other perks such as the Preparation cooldown resets.
- Attack Speed: Since we don't have to worry about resources, we can get as much AS as possible for more damage output and to trigger Preparation more often.
- Ultimate Skill Damage: No Witnesses allows this stat to scale all of your damage multiplicatively when you use your Ultimate, so we stack it wherever we can.
- Poison Damage: Core Skill Damage, Ultimate Skill Damage & Marksman Skill Damage together function as a separate damage multiplier for Poison Imbuement, allowing us to apply massive DoTs with our attacks.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Stat Priorities
Choosing the right stats for your gear can make or break your build. You won't always find perfect stats (also known as affixes or modifiers) though, and you may need to make a tough choice between two good pieces of equipment. Use the following list of priorities to compare your gear and pick the best.
- Helm: Disobedience
- Any Resistance
- Cooldown Reduction
- Total Armor %
- Ranks to Poison Imbuement
- Maximum Life
- Chest Armor: Escape Artist's
- Any 3 Resistances (with Flickerstep)
- Total Armor %
- Damage Reduction
- Damage Reduction from Close
- Damage Reduction from Distant
- Maximum Life
- Gloves: Noxious Ice
- Ranks to Rapid Fire
- Attack Speed
- Critical Strike Chance
- Lucky Hit Chance
- All Stats
- Dexterity
- Pants: Temerity, look for high rolls of the effect & Maximum Life.
- Otherwise Look For: The Protector
- Damage Reduction
- Damage Reduction from Close
- Total Armor %
- Damage Reduction From Distant
- Maximum Life
- Damage Reduction Something
- Boots: Flickerstep, look for high rolls to Ultimate Cooldown or Movement Speed.
- Otherwise Look For: Ravager's
- Movement Speed
- Any 3 Resistances
- Movement Speed on Elite Kill
- Dodge Chance
- Amulet: Word of Hakan look for Rain of Arrows Cooldown Reduction, and Ultimate Skill Damage.
- Rings: Elements & Repeating
- Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies
- Resource Generation
- Critical Strike Chance
- Maximum Life
- Vulnerable Damage
- Bow: Corruption
- High DPS (Item Power)
- Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies
- Ultimate Skill Damage
- All Stats
- Dexterity
- Vulnerable Damage
- Core Skill Damage
- Main Hand (Sword): Accelerating
- Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies
- Ultimate Skill Damage
- All Stats
- Dexterity
- Vulnerable Damage
- Core Skill Damage
- Off-Hand (Sword): Conceited
- Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies
- Ultimate Skill Damage
- All Stats
- Dexterity
- Vulnerable Damage
- Core Skill Damage
Fill your item's sockets with the following:
- Royal Diamond into Weapons to scale No Witnesses.
- Royal Ruby into Armor for more survivability.
- Any gem type of Resistances you are missing into Jewelry, prioritizing Fire and Lightning first. If you are capped on all of them, add Royal Skull for more Armor.
This build benefits the most from the following consumables:
- Elixirs: Elixir of Cruelty, Iron Skin Elixir, Elixir of Fortitude, Heady Assault Elixir & Heady Precision Elixir
- Incenses: Song of the Mountain, Reddamine Buzz & Chorus of War
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.
I feel squishy, how can I increase survivability?
My damage is too low, how can I improve it?
I'm running out of Energy all the time, what's wrong?
My AoE damage is low, what can I do?
What are the pros and cons of Bows and Crossbows?
How to deal with Champions and Suppressor elites?
Are Windforce or Skyhunter great uniques for this build?
How are Dark Shroud stacks generated in this build?
Why Rubies instead of Topazes in Armor sockets?
Mechanics
Dark Shroud Scaling
Eldritch Bounty
Imbuement Potency
Video Guide
Summary
The Rain of Arrows Rogue is fun to play build that rewards good timing and positioning with a massive, satisfying AoE nuke that destroys everything in its path.
- Focus on acquiring Word of Hakan, Repeating and activating the Exploit as early as possible.
- Make sure to always apply Vulnerable for Energy recovery from Rapid Fire.
- Activate Shadow Imbuement and infect many enemies with Dash to deal with large packs of monsters.
- Reset Rain of Arrows using Flickerstep and Preparation to use it more frequently.
- Pick up Eldritch Bounty early on and respec your Paragons near level 100 to attach it as the last board instead.
Hungry for more Guides?
Rogue Guides
General Guides
Credits
Written by wudijo
