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 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).
Flurry is the co-star in this setup as it allows us to build precision stacks without spending it on accident, proc vulnerable, self healing and the ability to teleport dash to a target. This helps makes Rain of Arrows one of the fastest speed farming builds on Rogue.
Beastfall Boots gives us the ability to spend our energy quickly, which synergies with our Preparation Specialization to lower Rain of Arrows cooldown.
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
- Beastfall Boots
- Word of Hakan
- Skyhunter
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
- 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.
- Flurry is the co-star in this setup as it allows us to build Precision stacks without spending it on accident, proc vulnerable, self healing and the ability to teleport dash to a target.
- Dash gives you incredible mobility to fly across the battlefield and an easy way to get out of tough situations.
- Dark Shroud gives us extra toughness and much needed movement speed when shadows are active.
- Caltrops for chill and eventually freeze. Also great for an overall damage buff the longer enemies are in the trap.
- Smoke Grenade gives us quite a bit of utility from more damage to disabling enemies so that they cannot attack.
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 it's on cooldown, while using Flurry to bring down the remaining cooldown of Rain of Arrows to rinse and repeat. Eventually, you want to get to the point where you cast one or two Rain of Arrows and keep it moving, as the waves will continue on without you waiting for it. This is especially helpful for Pits, Inferno Horde and Undercity content where speed efficiency is king.
- 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 Precision stacks with Flurry. Ideally, we want to cast 1 Flurry per 1 Rain of Arrows. To do so, we need to have Elixir of Resourcefulness II to reach over 150 energy so that this is possible with Beastfall Boots.
- Use Flurry to build Precision stacks without spending it on accident, proc vulnerable, self healing and the ability to teleport dash to a target.
- Use Dash to get around the battlefield for better positioning with Rapid Fire 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.
Use Caltrops on tougher targets to add damage multipliers and to take them down quickly. - Always cast Dark Shroud when it's off cooldown, which should be often in this build to keep up toughness and movement speed.
Rogue Specialization
Preparation - Use Flurry 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 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.
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.
Towards the end of the slider, there are "experimental" boards. These are boards I tend to mess around with on live stream, but have not committed to. You are free to try these if you would like as one of those boards may make it as standard in this guide. This allows me to continue to refine, without changing boards people were previously following, at least until the next major update.
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
- Fluidity
- Versatility
Level 46
- Combat
- Control
- Headhunter
- Fluidity
- Versatility
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. Rain of Arrows Rogue focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Poc + Ohm activates warcry for 15% damage bonus and movement speed.
- Zan + Vex - The extra skill ranks help with increasing damage, damage reduction (Dark Shroud) 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
He has a lot to offer us from a defensive standpoint. Skills like Valiance and Bastion help protect us from heavy hits and grant Unstoppable. Aegis is great for capping all resistances and inspiration is a nice buff every time he performs ground slam.
- 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. 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
- 1500%+ Critical Strike Damage
- 75%+ Rain of Arrows Deal Double Damage
- 150 Energy (Use resourceful Elixir to meet this easily)
- 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.
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 Resourcefulness II as this allows you to cast more Rain of Arrows overall with a 1:1 ratio using Flurry.
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.
- Must have items are Beastfall Boots, Word of Hakan, and Skyhunter.
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 Resourcefulness II as this allows you to cast more Rain of Arrows overall with a 1:1 ratio using Flurry
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.
- Acquiring Beastfall Boots is necessary to be able to spend your energy efficiently enough to cast more Rain of Arrows.
- 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.
- Fists of Fate allows us to stagger bosses quickly while providing a good unconditional damage buff, which helps a bit when fighting bosses without minions.
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 Resourcefulness II as this allows you to cast more Rain of Arrows overall with a 1:1 ratio using Flurry
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 is a big damage boost over a regular ring. It can be challenging to keep all 5 stacks in a 3 second window, but with the builds amazing attack speed, the ramp up is quick.
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.
Make sure to stock up on Elixir of Resourcefulness II as this allows you to cast more Rain of Arrows overall with a 1:1 ratio using Flurry
Gear & Skills
- No changes necessary from the Mythic variant.
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.
Make sure to stock up on Elixir of Resourcefulness II as this allows you to cast more Rain of Arrows overall with a 1:1 ratio using Flurry
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.
- Use the Mythic variant for pit pushing. A more advanced breakdown for pushing over 100+ coming soon.
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.
Can this build do T100 Pit?
Why Flurry? Isn't it a Cutthroat skill and Precision needs Marksman for stacking?
How about Pitfighter's Gull? Why not use that?
Why not use Concealment for guaranteed crit and vulnerable?
Mechanics
Dark Shroud Scaling
Imbuement Potency
Precision Key Passive and Trick Attacks Scaling
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 Flurry.
- 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