Infinite Energy ✔
Simple Rotation ✔
Frequent Ultimates ✔
Deals Damage at Range ✔

❌ Needs an Aspect
❌ Low AoE Damage
❌ Vulnerability Required
❌ Cooldown Management

Season 1 - The Malignant

• There are 32 Caged Hearts divided into 4 different colors, 1 color for each type:
  • Vicious: Orange, Offensive Power
  • Brutal: Blue, Defensive Power
  • Devious: Pink, Utility Power
  • Wrathful: Black, Super Power
• The first 3 must be socketed into their respective infested socket color, while the 4th can be placed into any infested socket.
• You can only have one Wrathful (Black) heart equipped at a time.
• Once socketed, they cannot be removed. Instead they can be broken down into Invokers to target farm the Caged Hearts you want inside Malignant Tunnels.
• Higher powered Caged Hearts drop at higher levels.

Best-in-Slot Caged Hearts

1. Caged Heart of The Barber: Allows us to trigger AoE explosions that multiply our damage in monster packs.
2. Caged Heart of Revenge: Adds tons of damage reduction that's always useful (the explosion is irrelevant).
3. Caged Heart of the Picana: Triggers extra damage to help with AoE clear.

Alternative Caged Hearts

• Caged Heart of the Vile Apothecary: Powerful extra damage procs that help us in all situations.
• Caged Heart of the Dark Dance: Gives us free attacks every 5 seconds, helping with resource management.
• Caged Heart of Creeping Death: For setups with Poison damage, this is a powerful bonus.
• Caged Heart of the Malignant Pact: Cycles through great bonuses all the time.
• Caged Heart of Cluster Munitions: Triggers stun grenades that can Freeze enemies with Frostbitten Aspect once you have found Penitent Greaves. This is a great combo to replace Corruption when engaging high level monsters.

The Barber Setup

• a short timer (best case 2.0 sec) for farming content
• a long timer (best case 4.0 sec) for high-end content

Skill Tree

Rogue Specialization - Preparation

Paragon Board

Glyphs

Glyph Leveling Priorities

Gameplay

• Rapid Fire is your main ability. Due to the Energy restoration of Improved Rapid Fire you can spam this skill indefinitely as long as you hit at least one Vulnerable enemy which we trigger in various ways (Exploit, Blast-Trapper's, Blended Shadow Imbuement). Preferably, position yourself right in front of your main target to guarantee the hits and profit from Close Damage (Reduction) modifiers. 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.
• 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 all or at least most 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.
• Activate Poison Trap whenever you are engaged in a longer fight, for example against a pack of elites or a boss. The Poison ticks help you with various offensive and defensive buffs and allow you to trigger the Vulnerable effect through Blast-Trapper's Aspect. It also has a knockdown effect to disable enemies and can reset Shadow Imbuement's cooldown.
• Dash and Shadow Step are our mobility tools. In addition to the Shadow Imbuement combo mentioned above, Dash can also apply a Crit Strike Damage buff and Slow enemies to apply crowd control modifiers. Use it liberally both in and outside of combat. Shadow Step is great to engage a pack, in particular against Suppressor Elites and Champion monsters. With it you can position yourself right in front of your main target, Stun and deal with them safely before focusing on others. When there are monsters and Elites with crowd control nearby, keep Shadow Step ready for a situation where you may need to get out.
• Shadow Clone is our Ultimate. Due to Preparation we are able to activate it frequently and with enough Attack Speed and Cooldown Reduction achieve around 50% uptime. This cooldown is used for a variety of purposes:
  • 1) Improving AoE clear by adding more arrows.
  • 2) Improving AoE clear by resetting Shadow Imbuement.
  • 3) Improving single target damage against the boss.
  • 4) Gaining Unstoppable to get out crowd controls.
• Depending on the content you're running, you can choose to hold the cooldown for when you need it the most or simply use it whenever it's ready. It's best to at least make sure that the cooldown reset of Preparation hits most of your other skills before you activate Shadow Clone.

Resource & Cooldown Management

Infinite Energy Recovery

Ravenous Aspect

Exploit Glyph

Blended Shadow Imbuement

Blast-Trapper's Aspect

Shadow Imbuement

Shadow Clone

Dash & Shadow Step

Endgame Gear & Skill Progression

Progression Goals

1. Unlock the following Aspects in your Codex of Power:
   • Edgemaster’s in Oldstones (Scosglen)
   • Blast-Trapper's in Kor Valar Rampart (Fractured Peaks)
   • Ravenous in Shifting City (Dry Steppes)
   • Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
   • Arrow Storms in Howling Warren (Scosglen)
   • Protector in Lost Archives (Fractured Peaks)
   • Cheat's in Luban's Rest (Scosglen)
   • Wind Striker in Shivta Ruins (Kehjistan)
   • Corruption in Renegade's Retreat (Kehjistan)
   • Inner Calm in Raethwind Wilds (Scosglen)
   • Shadowslicer in Twisted Hollow (Scosglen)
2. Find the following Legendary Aspects by farming in Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, through the Tree of Whispers, or gambling with Obols:
   1. Repeating: Gamble Swords. This is our main Aspect and 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. If you have no other option, you can also put it on an amulet until you find another copy. This replaces Inner Calm.
   • Umbrous: Gamble Pants. This gives us free Dark Shroud shadows whenever we attack for lots of extra defense. This replaces Protector which falls off at higher levels.
   • Accelerating: Gamble Swords. Grants lots of extra Attack Speed for more damage output, healing and lucky hit effects. This replaces Arrow Storms.
   • Smiting: Gamble Swords. Adds extra Critical Strike Chance and crowd control duration. This replaces Shadowslicer.
   • Synergy: Gamble Swords. Lowers the cooldown of Poison Trap so that we can use it more reliably. This replaces Ravenous once resources are no longer an issue.
   • 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 Penitent Greaves.
3. Find the following Unique items by farming in Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides. Note: You cannot gamble Unique items with obols!
   • Penitent Greaves: Replacing Ghostwalker or Ravager, these Boots offer free Chill for more crowd control, Energy recovery from The Umbral and extra damage from its effect. With them you can replace Innervation with Frigid Finesse to gain a sizable damage bonus.
   • Harlequin Crest: If you get lucky with this drop, replace Cheat's.
   • Doombringer: If you get lucky with this drop, you can use it instead of Aspect of Corruption. This sword has amazing stats and a damage reduction proc to survive high end content such as Nightmare Dungeon Pushing or Pinnacle Bosses more easily.

Progression Steps

Build Scaling, FAQ & Mechanics

Build Scaling

Stat Priorities & Gear Options

• Vulnerable Damage, Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Damage and unconditional additive damage bonuses such as Damage to Close Enemies or Core Skill Damage are huge damage boosts so stack them as much as possible.
• Core Stats: Dexterity is the best, followed by Intelligence and Strength. Avoid Willpower if possible. We also pick up some All Stats rolls to unlock Paragon nodes.
• Defensive Stats: Especially on Chest & Pants we stack tons of Damage Reduction to survive. There are many options available so we try to gather a good combination of all of them.

• Royal Emerald into Weapons because we have near permanent Vulnerable uptime.
• Royal Ruby into Armor for more survivability.
• Royal Skull into Jewelry for better defense and extra scaling with Disobedience.

• 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

Hardcore Adjustments

• 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.
• Include Protecting in your setup, replacing Cheat's. While this does reduce your overall damage reduction, it has the benefit that if you manage to keep your health high most of the time, you get incredible protection against incoming burst damage to allow you to get to safety. For a more defensive variant, you can also keep Cheat's, move Disobedience to the amulet, move Accelerating to a regular offensive slot and replace Corruption to run with 4 defensive aspects.
• For even more protection, include Eluding instead of Smiting 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.

Level 100 Endgame Variants

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

I feel squishy, how can I increase survivability?

The build naturally includes some strong defensive choices on skill tree, paragon and through legendary aspects. Outside of that, good item rolls are a primary factor in increasing your survivability, in particular your chest and pants armor pieces. Make sure to focus on these and stack stats like damage reduction, maximum life and armor as much as possible. To go even further, you can also roll defensive stats on your amulet. For more details, take a look at the stat priority table above.

My damage is too low, how can I improve it?

Your main source of damage is your ranged weapon, in particular its item power that directly scales its damage per second. This is the base for all further damage calculations, so make sure to focus on finding a high level weapon. In addition, you want to stack offensive stats like Critical Strike Chance & Damage, Vulnerable Damage, Core Skill Ranks and others and level up your Glyphs to unlock even more power through the Paragon system. For more details, take a look at the stat priority table above.

I'm running out of Energy all the time, what's wrong?

The Vulnerable debuff is key in making the build work, as only with it applied you can profit from the Energy return of Improved Rapid Fire. The most common issues are that your Exploit Glyph is not yet activated or you're not applying the debuff with Blast-Trapper's Aspect in long fights. Take another look at the Cooldown & Resource Management section to figure out what's missing.

My AoE damage is low, what can I do?

Your most important tool to deal with large packs of enemies is Shadow Imbuement. Avoid activating it randomly when you don't need it just to deal with a few enemies and instead focus on blowing up the large packs that would require many shots to mow through them. Especially when there are many targets, the best way to apply the Shadow Imbuement debuff is to pair it with Dash instead of Rapid Fire. A well-placed imbued Dash can infect most of a pull and once you start firing the explosions deal with the rest. For the big fights, you also have your trusty Shadow Clone to assist you with even more damage. Other than that, focus on gambling a good roll of the Repeating Aspect to help you out with more arrows.

What are the pros and cons of Bows and Crossbows?

Both weapon types offer the same DPS (damage per second) value at any given item power. This leaves two main differences between them:

• 1) Attack Speed (0.90/s Crossbows, 1.10/s Bows)
• 2) Inherent Attribute (Vulnerable Damage on Crossbows, Distant Damage on Bows)

Since we have nearly infinite Energy, increasing Attack Speed isn't a downside for resource management, making Bows a viable choice for this build. The problem is that Rapid Fire, despite being a Marksman Skill, is generally played at a relatively short range due to Close Damage synergies, positioning requirements and situations where you have to deal with priority targets like Champions and Suppressors.

This reduces the value of a Bow's inherent stat whereas the Vulnerable Damage offered by Crossbows almost always applies. Vulnerable is a separate damage multiplier that you generally have a lot less of than the additive category including Distant Damage, so increasing that number is a lot more impactful to boost your overall damage output, even at lower overall values. In general, for ranged builds Bows lead to a faster and more consistent playstyle because you can deal with small enemies and reset your Ultimate Skill via Preparation more quickly.

How to deal with Champions and Suppressor elites?

Since you can't fire at a specific target when they are hidden behind others, the only real counterplay you have is to dive in with Dash or Shadow Step and single them out in melee range before dealing with remaining enemies. Check out the gameplay section above for more details.

Can I play this build with different Ultimate Skills?

Yes, any of the three Ultimates is suitable for Rapid Fire due to the natural synergy with Preparation! In both cases, the setup needs some extra adjustments though:

• Rain of Arrows: The main enabler for this skill is Word of Hakan and heavy investment in imbuements. We already have Shadow Imbuement, but it's important to pick up at least Mixed Cold Imbuement for the damage buff for Rain of Arrows to deal great damage. If you can free up even more points, adding Blended Poison Imbuement would be helpful, too. These imbuements don't have to be on your skill bar to be applied to Rain of Arrows via the unique.
• Death Trap: With a stronger focus on Traps you can use this skill for more frequent AoE bursts and cooldown resets via Preparation. It has a short cooldown by default and if your single target damage is good, you can replace Precision with Exposure to bring back Death Trapeven more quickly. The main way to trigger the Key Passive is to throw Poison Trap into large packs and then firing at them. Like this you can speed up your runs with better AoE damage and more cooldown resets at the cost of consistent damage output. Unfortunately the lucky hit chance of Rapid Fire isn't as strong as on other builds because you can't hit many targets at once with it.

Are Windforce or Skyhunter great uniques for this build?

Hell no.

Windforce basically never procs with Rapid Fire's low lucky hit chance and Skyhunter's effect is simply not very impactful when we fire so many arrows all the time and only one of them can get buffed. In both cases we also lose a double-power legendary aspect and tons of way better stats we could roll on regular weapons.

How are Dark Shroud stacks generated in this build?

Even without Dark Shroud on your skill bar, there are two ways to gain shrouds: Enshrouding Aspect and Umbrous Aspect. The latter is used in this build to profit from the enormous damage reduction especially when you get hit infrequently. For it to work, you don't even have to invest any points into Dark Shroud on the skill tree, but you can if you want to profit from a higher damage reduction value or its enhancement and upgrade options.

Why Rubies instead of Topazes in Armor sockets?

Percentage-based increases to Maximum Life (e.g. from Royal Ruby or Paragon nodes) scale multiplicatively. Each individual source of % life multiplies your base life (7959 total at level 100), but does not affect flat life bonuses from gear.

• With 5x Royal Ruby and no flat life bonuses, the total benefit is 1.04 ^ 5 = 1.2166 for a total bonus of 21.7% effective hit points (EHP).
• With 5x Royal Topaz you gain 1 - (0.9 ^ 5) = 41% damage reduction while crowd controlled, which leads to an increase in EHP by 1 / (0.9 ^ 5) = 69.5% but you don't have any other benefits.

This means that while you are crowd controlled, you are ~39.3% more tanky when running 5x Royal Topaz over 5x Royal Ruby in your armor sockets. Considering how rarely monsters crowd control you, it's usually better to just go for more life all the time but ultimately both remain viable options depending on the content.

The main downside of running Royal Ruby is that with a bigger life pool, there is also more health you need to heal up again after taking damage, so your overall recovery goes down. However, many healing effects are % based such as your Health Potion or Siphoning Strikes so that this is generally not a big problem.

Mechanics

Dark Shroud Scaling

• 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, the total increase in survivability against one-shots scales in the following way:
  • Rank 1: 40% damage reduction -> 66.7% more toughness
  • Rank 2: 42% damage reduction -> 72.4% more toughness
  • Rank 3: 44% damage reduction -> 78.6% more toughness
  • Rank 4: 46% damage reduction -> 85.2% more toughness
  • Rank 5: 48% damage reduction -> 92.3% more toughness
  • Rank 6: 50% damage reduction -> 100% more toughness
  • Rank 7: 52% damage reduction -> 108.3% more toughness
  • Rank 8: 54% damage reduction -> 117.4% more toughness
  • Rank 9: 56% damage reduction -> 127.3% more toughness
  • Rank 10: 58% damage reduction -> 138.1% more toughness
  • Rank 11: 60% damage reduction -> 150% more toughness
  • Rank 12: 62% damage reduction -> 163.2% more toughness
  • Rank 13: 64% damage reduction -> 177.8% more toughness
  • Rank 14: 66% damage reduction -> 194.1% more toughness
  • Rank 15: 68% damage reduction -> 212.5% more toughness
  • Rank 16: 70% damage reduction -> 333.3% more toughness
• The differences between the most common rank values are:
  • Rank 1 to Rank 5: 15.3% more toughness
  • Rank 5 to Rank 9: 18.2% more toughness
  • Rank 9 to Rank 13: 22.2% more toughness
  • Rank 13 to Rank 16: 26.6% more toughness

Penitent Greaves

• Penitent Greaves apply Chill roughly once per second on an enemy, adding to the stagger bar.
• The Chill lasts for three seconds. This prevents Aspect of the Umbral from triggering again on the same target for that duration.
• The Damage to Chilled Enemies is multiplicative with other sources.

Video Guide

Summary

• Focus on acquiring 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 and summon your Shadow Clone frequently for more damage output.
• For high-end content, switch to a Combo Points setup for insane damage output.

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