Shadow Step Rogue Build Guide
Welcome to the Shadow Step Rogue Endgame Guide! This build features an unorthodox Rogue archetype and a unique playstyle. This build uses Shadow Step to deal damage and zoom through all content in the game! Turbocharged with Momentum and Stolen Vigor, Shadow Step deals massive damage and allows you to sweep elites with ease.
This relies on stacking Cooldown Reduction to instantly jump from enemy to enemy, boosted by conditional multipliers on each hit and fully utilizes Shadow Clone.
The Gear, Skills, Paragon, and Gameplay setup are unique to this build and require a strong understanding of the class to pilot properly!
Requirements for this Build:
- This build requires specific gear, unique, and affix rolls. Missing the recommendation even a bit can lead to a very unpleasant experience with the build.
- You need at least 60 %, or higher, total Cooldown Reduction for Shadow Step for the build to feel fluid, and around 70 %+ to unleash its full potential. The Cooldown of Shadow Step should be lower than 3 seconds.
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.
Endgame Boss Powers
Main Power
Belial's Crystal Decoy is our main Power. Due to Boss Powers consuming the buff from Danse Macabre, we use a boss power that does not deal damage frequently but helps us with grouping.
Modifiers
- Beastmaster's Training - The top choice for summons, and Shadow Clone is classified as one.
- Sinerat's Flames - A simple yet effective damage increase for elemental damage, which we deal through our Imbuements.
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - Another damage bonus, easy to maintain as we apply Vulnerable constantly through Enhanced Shadow Step.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Torusk's Rage - If you do not have Harbinger of Hatred's Volley yet.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
Essentials
We only pick up Blade Shift to advance the Skill Tree.
Zoom through the map with Shadow Step. Shadow Step is your main damage skill. Prioritize Elite enemies with your Shadow Steps to take them down before they can act. To be efficient, there are many details you need to master.
Caltrops is used to apply Chill for Frigid Finesse, and to increase damage against tough Elites and Bosses.
Poison Trap and Smoke Grenade are used to trigger Alchemical Advantage and whenever you need more damage.
Dark Shroud is your main defensive tool. It provides massive amounts of Damage Reduction and increases your Movespeed.
Shadow Imbuement is allocated because Assassin's Stride automatically triggers it. This works for your Shadow Clone even without Imitated Imbuement!
Shadow Clone should be used on Cooldown, as it is a massive damage amplifier and resets all of your other Cooldowns.
The T1 Starter Variant barely reaches a Shadow Step Cooldown of 3.21s. This will feel clunky, but it becomes more pleasant once you obtain more Cooldown Reduction.
Skill Rotation
You should aim to hit targets in the middle of a pack to cleave them down efficiently.
- Use Caltrops, Smoke Grenade, and Poison Trap against tough elites and bosses.
- Use Shadow Step to Cleave down mobs.
- This hit will reset your Shadow Step CD through the Disciplined Shadow Step upgrade with enough CDR.
- With Assassin's Stride, all of your Shadow Steps will be imbued with Shadow Imbuement. This also procs Uncanny Treachery when you hit an Elite, granting you Stealth after every cast.
- Dark Shroud provides more damage reduction and movement speed.
- You always want to use Shadow Clone as soon as it is ready to reset all of your other cooldowns and to activate many of its damage bonuses, such as No Witnesses. The Clone itself also significantly contributes to your damage output.
Rogue Specialization
Preparation
Preparation refreshes all of your Cooldowns after using your Ultimate. We use Qax to spend energy and reset the Cooldown of Shadow Clone faster.
The damage reduction is also nothing to scoff at!
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. 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.
Shadow Step Rogue Endgame Paragon
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
To Level 15
- Versatility
- Fluidity
- Canny
- Devious
- Control
To Level 46
- Versatility
- Fluidity
- Canny
- Devious
- Control
Learn more 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 into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Shadow Step Rogue focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Moni + Kry - This is an important combination for this build, as it allows you to gather enemies from afar to stack your Ravager's aspect for massive damage.
- Yul + Qax - This causes you to spend your Energy, which allows Preparation to trigger for Cooldown resets. It also gives you a massive damage boost!
Alternative Choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Zec - This allows you to reduce the cooldown of Shadow Clone. Ideally, activate Shadow Clone first.
- Thul - Mystical Frost Nova is strong. It freezes, amplifies damage, and makes enemies Vulnerable.
- Neo - Before you find the legendary Runes, this is a great replacement.
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: Subo
He reveals all enemies and materials on the minimap, allowing you to farm Iron Chunks and Bundled Herbs easily. The highlighting is very useful to spot out Elites in Dungeons, as you will recognize the pattern for elites quickly after getting used to it.
Opening Fire grants you more Critical Strike Damage and is up quite often.
Ready At Hand is quite useful for moving between packs and when all mobility skills are on Cooldown.
Reinforcement: Varyana
We choose Bloodthirst for more attack speed.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Shadow Step 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 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:
- Less than 3 seconds Shadow Step Cooldown
- 60 %+ Shadow Step Cooldown Reduction
- 50 %+ Critical Strike Chance
- 40 %+ Attack Speed
- 10+ total Ranks of Shadow Step
- 2000 %+ Damage on Next Attack after Stealth
- 400 %+ Ultimate Skill Damage
- Armor Capped 1000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 7,000+ Life
- 20 %+ Dodge Chance
- 10+ total Ranks of Shadow Clone
- 150 %+ Movement Speed
- 40 %+ Shadow Clone Cooldown Reduction
Shadow Step Cleave's affix is positively bugged. You gain 100% of the main damage as cleave damage, regardless of the temper value. This allows you to save Masterworking crits for other affixes, such as Damage on Next Attack after Stealth.
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Shadow Step 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 Dance of Knives 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 to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming, and more.
If you are fresh in Torment 1 and come 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.
This Variant feels clunky due to the lack of proper Cooldown Reduction. It becomes significantly more enjoyable to play with better gear.
Gear & Skills
- Early on in your progression, focus on Armor & Resistances to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% to all Resistances, and it is recommended to keep both capped (1000 Armor, 70%+ Resistances) at all times. As you unlock higher item 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.
- Umbrous is an important survivability tool for many Rogue builds. As long as you have not found it, use Mot and/or Dark Shroud on your skill bar for extra defense.
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.
At this point, you should have enough Cooldown Reduction to permanently spam Shadow Step. This gets even smoother once you acquire the Mythic Uniques for the next variant.
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.
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.
The way this build is meant to be played. Enjoy becoming nauseated from flickering all over the place!
Gear & Skills
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.
The build works really well when you decimate everything in seconds, but you may get overwhelmed if fights are long against high level monsters. There are several adjustments you can make when you have trouble with more difficult content:
- Check if your Armor & Resists are capped.
- Use defensive consumables.
- Roll Maximum Life instead of offensive stats on as many pieces as possible.
- Kite enemies when they become Unstoppable.
As a Rogue, you do not have many sources of Unstoppable, but a good way to break out of crowd controls is with Shadow Step. Shadow Clone also makes you Unstoppable for 5 seconds.
Shadow Step Rogue is a build that requires a lot of gear to properly shine and will feel a bit clunky without it. You need plenty of Cooldown Reduction and Shadow Step Cooldown Reduction. The breakpoint for Shadow Step is having less than 3.5s cooldown at around 60% combined CDR.
You want at least a combined 60% CDR, resulting in (some examples):
9 * (1-0.44) * (1-0.116) * (1-0.195) = 3.58 = 3.58s Shadow Step Cooldown
Combined with Disciplined Shadow Step, you gain a Shadow Step Charge every 0.58s. While it may sound like a decent window, this combined 60% is the absolute minimum amount of CDR you should have. The more CDR you have, the smoother the build will feel. You can use CDR on the Amulet to make reaching the breakpoint easier if you do not have a triple passive one.
The Starter Variant barely reaches a Shadow Step Cooldown of 3.28s. This will feel clunky at the beginning.
- You need exactly 66.66% Cooldown Reduction to reduce Shadow Step's Cooldown to 3 seconds.
- You can combine Cooldown Reduction affixes and Shadow Step & Mobility Cooldown Reduction tempers.
- Cooldown Reduction is inversely multiplicative with each other.
- Example: You have two Cooldown Reduction rolls, each being 20.2%.
- Your actual Cooldown Reduction is not 40.4% now, but 36.3% instead.
The formula for this is as follows:0.363 = 1 - (1 - 0.202) * (1 - 0.202)
For more information on how to calculate your CDR, check out our Cooldown Reduction article.
Mechanics
For more even more in-depth information about specific Rogue Mechanics and Interactions, check out the Rogue Compendium by Avarilyn.
- 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.
- Shadows have a 1.5 seconds cooldown between losing stacks, but the damage reduction still applies depending on how many are active at all times.
- At maximum stacks, your effective hit points (EHP) scale as follows in these examples:
- Rank 1: 66.6% more EHP
- Rank 5: 92.3% more EHP
- Rank 10: 138.1% more EHP
- Rank 15: 215% more EHP
- Rank 20: 354.5% more EHP
- With Ravager's, you gain an additional charge for Shadow Step.
- Ravager's also resets your Shadow Step Cooldown when you kill an enemy with Shadow Step.
- Disciplined Shadow Step reduces your Shadow Step Cooldown by 3 seconds. This is massively useful to instantly reset your Shadow Step Cooldown given enough Cooldown Reduction (66%+).
Bosses are immune to Crowd Control (CC) effects and instead take Stagger Damage when hit by one. The amount of stagger damage dealt depends on the type of CC and is proportional to its duration. After being hit by a CC effect, the Boss will temporarily take less Stagger Damage from a CC of the same type.
Effectively, this means that when you're just spamming one type of CC you don't need to spam any more of it than what you need to keep a normal enemy permanently CC-d. To stagger the Boss quickly you need to use as many different types of CC as possible. After the Boss is staggered it gains a certain amount of stacking Stagger Damage Reduction for the rest of the fight:
- After 1st Stagger: 20%
- After 2nd Stagger: 40%
- After 3rd Stagger: 60%
- After 4th Stagger: 90%
Bosses naturally regain 1% of their Stagger HP every second and when that regen is combined with 90% Stagger Damage Reduction it becomes borderline impossible to Stagger the Boss again unless you bring a serious amount of crowd controls.
Summary
Playing the Shadow Step Rogue can be very tricky, because of the reliance on high Cooldown Reduction on your gear. Keep these tips in mind while progressing:
- Aim Shadow Step at the middle of a pack to Cleave them down.
- Consider putting Shadow Step on a keyboard button to reduce the strain on your wrists.
- Activate Shadow Clone whenever it comes off cooldown.
- Use Caltrops, Smoke Grenade, and Poison Trap against tough elites and bosses.
Credits
Written by Avarilyn