Rain of Arrows Rogue Guide
Welcome to the Rain of Arrows Rogue Guide! This build unleashes devastating AoE attacks that destroy entire screens of monsters at once while staying mobile while 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).
We attack quickly with Heartseeker and stat modifiers to lower the cooldown of Rain of Arrows for consistent output, which is done by using Preparation and Harbinger of Hatred's Volley sub boss power to make Heartseeker spend Energy.
With greater power and fantastic clear, comes with a slightly more challenging build rotation than before to maintain all of the juicy multipliers, but once you get the hang of it, murdering entire screens of enemies just becomes second nature.
All in all, this is a fantastic build with a unique playstyle and lots of fancy visual stimulation. If you wanted to litter the screen with thousands of arrows, this is the build for you!
Requirements for this build
- Word of Hakan
- Skyhunter
- Tibault's Will
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley Sub boss power
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.
Boss Powers
Season 8 is the Season of Belial's Return. It allows you to tap into Boss Powers obtained from World, Event, and Lair Bosses throughout Sanctuary. The new seasonal mechanic, Apparition Incursions, is available at any difficulty level and gives you the opportunity to unlock a subset of these powers very early on. Various Apparition Monsters appear in these special timed events throughout Sanctuary. Defeating these monsters spawns 1 of 10 Apparition Bosses to hunt you down and defeating them grants you their Boss Power. After defeating the first Boss, continue the event for a chance to fight a second Apparition Boss, after which Belial himself joins the fray.
There are 24 Boss Powers available and the first time you defeat one of these Bosses, you claim their power for yourself. Boss Powers each have Main and Modifier effects to boost your build. 13 are available in all difficulties (from Apparition Incursions and World Bosses), while 11 can only be acquired in Torment 1 difficulty or higher from Lair Bosses and Lilith. You can equip 1 Main Power and 3 Modifiers, and all powers can be upgraded up to Rank 20, increasing the potency of both the Main and Modifier effect. You use Spectral Ash to upgrade these powers, dropped from Apparition Incursions and by defeating any Bosses. Boss Powers also scale with your Paragon Level, growing stronger as you progress.
Best-in-Slot Boss Powers
Main Power
Beast in the Ice's Sleet - Easy to activate and gives us extra chill, for freezing enemies faster.
Modifiers
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - Required for spending energy with our basic attack to trigger Preparation and to lower the cooldown of Rain of Arrows.
- Sinerat's Flames - Free damage for having resistances.
- Flesh Reaper's Disruption - Having crowd control duration naturally on Cowl of the Nameless allows us to max this multiplier easily without investment.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Avarice's Explosive Ore - Easy to gain excess resource. Good AoE as well
- Lilith's Wind of Hate - Good way to add additional AoE as a sub power.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Rain of Arrows is our damage dealer and the main part of the build. We cast this as often as we can when its off cooldown after building stacks of Precision.
- Caltrops Provides a nice crowd control while activating various powerful buffs like chill and freeze for Frigid Finesse.
- Concealment Gives energy upon cast and allows free access to Vulnerable. Also procs Danse Macabre.
- Dash gives you incredible mobility to fly across the battlefield and an easy way to get out of tough situations.
- Heartseeker is used for additional buffs and spending energy with Harbinger of Hatred's Volley sub boss power for Preparation procs to lower the cooldown of Rain of Arrows
- Smoke Grenade gives us quite a bit of utility from more damage to disabling enemies so that they cannot attack. Can also proc Danse Macabre
Passives
- Precision is the Key Passive of choice, granting you a guaranteed critical strike upon consuming max precision stacks that gets exponentially stronger the more critical strike damage you have on your gear and paragon.
Skill Rotation
The general idea is to cast Rain of Arrows whenever its off cooldown. With the changes and bug fixes to Precision stacks, we go with Heartseeker and Harbinger of Hatred's Volley sub boss power for an easier, less convoluted way of getting Rain of Arrows off cooldown.
- Use Heartseeker to stack Precision stacks quickly. After a Rain of Arrows cast, it takes 3 Heartseeker to bring Rain of Arrows off cooldown again to be able to cast, assuming greater affix roll on Rain of Arrows Cooldown on Word of Hakan.
- Use Concealment For vulnerable access. This resets often due to Preparation. You should use Concealment before casting Rain of Arrows to activate Danse Macabre as its a major multiplier. This is important for the tougher battles asDanse Macabre is a massive buff, and can be tricky to get use to in a rotation. Be careful to not cast any other skill between Concealment and Rain of Arrows, otherwise Danse Macabre doesn't work and that paragon board in general is vital.
- Use Dash to get around the battlefield and to generally travel around the world and through dungeons quickly.
- Use Smoke Grenade for more damage and to keep enemies, especially elites from attacking you. This skill also procs Danse Macabre but Concealment is considerably better at it due to not having an attack animation.
Use Caltrops on tougher targets to add chill and freeze multipliers and to take them down quickly.
Rogue Specialization
Preparation - Use Heartseeker to spend energy to activate preparations damage reduction and ultimate cooldown reduction for Rain of Arrows.
This also helps with the upkeep of the No Witnesses for more damage with Rain of Arrows.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Rogue Class Overview.
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. For the Rain of Arrows Rogue Guide, 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
- Combat
- Control
- Headhunter
- Devious
- Versatility
Level 46
- Combat
- Control
- Headhunter
- Devious
- Versatility
Learn more details about the Paragon System in our in-depth Paragon Boards and Glyphs guide.
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. Rain of Arrows Rogue focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Neo + Qax Gives us a nice bump of damage as we won't take damage with barrier always active.
- Cir + Vex - The extra skill ranks help with increasing damage and overall quality of life.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Xal - For extra defense.
- Yax - Good amount of offering for just drinking a potion.
- Lith - We evade often.
- Bac - Decent as we're always moving.
- Yul - Build uses a lot of cooldown skills, so this is a decent activator.
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: Aldkin
Field of Languish gives a nice 20% damage reduction when active.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Rain of Arrows Rogue to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. The green arrow ↑ indicates which affix is most impactful to Masterwork Crit, and it does not indicate how many Masterwork Crits you need on that particular affix. 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 Rain of Arrows Ranks
- 1500+ Dexterity
- 3500%+ Critical Strike Damage
- 75%+ Rain of Arrows Deal Double Damage
- 200%+ Damage to Distant Enemies (All from paragon)
- 70%+ Rain of Arrows Cooldown
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 3,000+ Life
- 150%+ Movement Speed
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Rain of Arrows 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 Rain of Arrows 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.
Barrage
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.
Make sure to stock up on Elixir of Advantage II.
It is crucial that you have 150+ energy and ultimate cooldown on rings in order for this to feel good with the Harbinger of Hatred's Volley boss sub power early on. This will fix itself once you get a greater affix Word of Hakan on ultimate cooldown. Always use Elixir of Advantage II.
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.
- Word of Hakan, Tibault's Will and Skyhunter are absolutely necessary.
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.
Make sure to stock up on Elixir of Advantage II.
It is crucial that you have 150+ energy and ultimate cooldown on rings in order for this to feel good with the Harbinger of Hatred's Volley boss sub power early on. This will fix itself once you get a greater affix Word of Hakan on ultimate cooldown. Always use Elixir of Advantage II.
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.
- Skyhunter sky rockets your damage output when obtained. This also allows for additional waves for Rain of Arrows, doubling it from 2 to 4 with a good roll on the marksman projectiles cast twice.
- Cowl of the Nameless is a very powerful helm. You only care about Trick Attacks and Unstable Elixirs here, but both of these passives are so strong that it makes the helm worth using, primarily due to Trick Attacks scaling
- Word of Hakan is what makes the build happen. The triple imbuement is very nice and allows for damage scaling in ways that wouldn't have been possible. With the ultimate cooldown and double damage, this is one of the few times a unique amulet actually outperforms a typical 3 passive amulet. A must have.
- Tibault's Will is necessary to increase our energy to 150, alongside the Elixir of Resourcefulness II. This acts much like Beastfall Boots, but with much better stats when using Harbinger of Hatred's Volley sub boss power.
- Capping armor and resistances can be tricky into T3 and T4 difficulties. For short term assistance, use Rakanoth's Wake or Yen's Blessing to get a large amount of All Resistances until you get can the required stats elsewhere.
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.
Make sure to stock up on Elixir of Advantage II.
Gear & Skills
- Shroud of False Death is best in slot and should be the first mythic to chase due to the +1 all passives and the massive amount of health it gives. This also means that it becomes difficult to cap resistances and armor, so be mindful of your surrounding gear when you put this on. The endgame paragon board and gear stats are tailored with this chest in mind.
- Tyrael's Might is optional. 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.
- Ring of Starless Skies Helps with attack speed, allowing us to get through our rotations a bit faster, while also giving us a 50% multiplier as our basic attack spends energy with the boss sub power.
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 needed from the Mythic variant for speedfarming. Make sure to stock up on Elixir of Resourcefulness II.
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.
- 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.
Gear and Skills
For Pit pushing you can go with either the Mythic variant or Beastfall Barrage variant. The Beastfall Barrage variant is a bit easier to manage in a push scenario and thus more popular, but comes with its own set of problems. Read up on both variants and find out which is right for you for Pit pushing.
This is for those that want to see the screen littered in Rain of Arrows while having a somewhat simple rotation with 1:1 Barrage/Rain of Arrows casting. This is a popular rotation variant amongst the internet for its visual prowess, but comes with some major drawbacks. At best, Rain of Arrows will proc Precision key passive 50% of the time. At worse, none of your Rain of Arrows gets the Precision proc when your rotation inevitably becomes inverted. On average, about 30 to 35% of your Rain of Arrows will proc Precision and actually do damage, making this setup unfortunately inconsistent. Paragon Boards do not change.
Make sure to stock up on Elixir of Resourcefulness II.
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.
Due to the build requirements, it's simply not possible to level with this build.
Mechanics
Dark Shroud stacks damage reduction additively for each active shadow. Due to the additive stacking, each increase in the skill's rank and active shadows boosts your survivability exponentially.
At maximum stacks, increasing your total Ranks of Dark Shroud affects your effective hit points (eHP) against one-shots as follows:
Increasing Dark Shroud from:
Rank 1 to Rank 5: 15.3% more eHP
Rank 1 to Rank 11: 50% more eHP
Rank 1 to Rank 15: 87.5% more eHP
Rank 5 to Rank 11: 30.1% more eHP
Rank 5 to Rank 15: 62.5% more eHP
Rank 11 to Rank 15: 25% more eHP
- The "increased potency" effect of Prime Rain of Arrows and on the amulet effectively raises all numerical values of any imbuement applied.
- Poison Imbuement ticks for more damage.
- Shadow Imbuement explodes for more damage.
- Cold Imbuement chills for more.
Old Formula - New additions!
([1+ Crit Damage Additive] x [1.5 x Trick Attacks x (Crit Damage Legendary Glyph^Total)] - 1) x 0.15 + 0.5
Double Dipping
Precision continues its old double-dipping issues with the new Legendary Glyphs and Trick Attacks. These affect the precision multiplier and the final product, making any precision build multitudes better than it should be.
Video Guide
Summary
The Rain of Arrows 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. It is one of the most fun builds and playstyles in the game. I hope you enjoy a great build.
- Stack Precision with Heartseeker.
- Cast Smoke Grenade and Caltrops in rotation on elite packs to annihilate them.
- Use Rain of Arrows whenever it's off cooldown when you arrive to a pack of enemies.
Credits
Written by DiEoxidE