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Twisting Blades Rogue Endgame Build Guide

Season 8 - Belial's ReturnEndgame

Last Updated:April 28, 2025|Changelog|FAQ

Welcome to the Twisting Blades Rogue Endgame guide! This is a great speedfarming build for clearing content faster than many others in the game, but it is also coming with a high skill ceiling. If you are looking for a fun & agile Rogue build that flies around the battlefield, you've come to the right place!

Twisting Blades is a two-step melee attack: First, you attack a single enemy for a moderate amount of damage, then the blades return to you from that enemy's position after a short delay. These returning blades are the core of the build and what you need to play around to succeed. Finally, these returning blades rotate around you with Bladedancer's Aspect, transforming you a walking dervish as you fly across the map with Dash.

The strongest version plays around permanent Poison Imbuement applications to produce large DoT ticks. All in all, Twisting Blades is a very versatile skill that can do everything reasonably well, making this build a great allrounder choice.

The Twisting Blades Rogue is powered by the Alchemical Admixture Key Passive allowing you to scale your Poison DoTs extremely high!

Even though it may be difficult for you to play the build well at the beginning, do not despair! With some practice and our guide, you too are able to succeed with the Twisting Blades Rogue in Diablo 4.

Let's twist again!
Twisting Blades Rogue Endgame Setup

View all variants

Note

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.

Pros
  • Fast Playstyle
  • Strong against Bosses
  • High Mobility
Cons
  • Difficult to Play
  • Blades are delayed
  • Low Area of Effect

Boss Powers

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Twisting Blades Rogue

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

Urivar's Lobbed Bombs - Helps to reduce the cooldown of our Shadow Clone.

Modifiers

  • Andariel's Flaming Skull - Significant damage increase to our Poison DoT.
  • Sinerat's Flames - A simple yet effective damage increase for elemental damage, which we deal through our Imbuements.
  • Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - This power provides you with a simple yet effective damage increase.
Twisting Blades Endgame Boss Powers

Alternate Boss Powers

  • Torusk's Rage - before you get access to Harbinger of Hatred's Volley.
  • Flesh Reaper's Disruption - A decent substitute before you acquire Andariel's Flaming Skull.

Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.

Skills & Gameplay

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Twisting Blades Rogue

Essentials

  • Pick up points in Blade Shift to advance the Skill Tree.
  • Twisting Blades is your main skill and you want to use it as often as possible. This allows you the benefit from it's damage stacking mechanic, which increases per hit and lasts for 3 seconds. To maximize this benefit, you want to stack a lot of attack speed. Furthermore, Twisting Blades allows you to reduce your other skill's cooldowns upon hitting enemies.

Mobility & Defense

  • Dash enable you to move faster across the map, therefore it is also a great tool to engage the fight with.
  • Dark Shroud makes us very tanky and also increases our Movement Speed per stack. It also boosts our critical strike chance which is important for Blended Poison Imbuement. Umbrous allows you to take it off your skill bar.

Imbuements

  • Poison Imbuement is your main Imbuement. Activating it adds an extra Damage over Time effect to your next Twisting Blades casts. Therefore, you invest heavily into it and eventually deal almost all of your damage through its Poison applications.
    • You can get extra Imbuement charges from Tempering mods on Pants and Boots. Moreover, Preparation also allows you to reset the cooldown.
    • Until you can fully sustain it, Bursting Venoms can be imprinted to reset its cooldown.
Twisting Blades Rogue Endgame Skill Tree

Ultimate and Key Passive

  • Shadow Clone is used to activate No Witnesses and significantly boost our damage to apply more Twisting Blades stacks and to apply Poison Imbuement.
  • Alchemical Admixture is activated through Poison from Poison Imbuement and Cold from Caltrops.

Skill Rotation

Fundamentals
  • Use Shadow Clone on cooldown to reset your Poison Imbuement and other cooldowns through Preparation and gain all of its other benefits through nodes like No Witnesses.
  • Imbue your Twisting Blades with Poison Imbuement
  • Generate Dark Shroud stacks with Umbrous.
  • Use Dash for Mobility and repositioning.
  • Drop Poison Trap on elites and bosses for a significant damage boost.

Rogue Specialization

Preparation

Preparation reduces your Ultimate Cooldown by 5 seconds for every 75 Energy that you spend.

We relentlessly attack with Twisting Blades and spend a lot of Resource that way.

This allows you to reduce the Cooldown of your Ultimate Skill significantly for permanent uptime and gives us damage reduction.

Preparation

Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Rogue Class Overview.

Paragon & Glyphs

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Twisting Blades Rogue
!
Important

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.

← Use the slider for progression steps →
Twisting Blades Rogue Endgame Paragon
Tip

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

  1. Bane
  2. Canny
  3. Versatility
  4. Tracker
  5. Efficacy

To Level 46

  1. Bane
  2. Canny
  3. Versatility
  4. Tracker
  5. Efficacy

Learn more about the Paragon System in our in-depth Paragon Boards and Glyphs guide.

Runes

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Twisting Blades Rogue

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 Twisting Blades Rogue focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot
  • Tam + Thul - Mystical Frost Nova is very strong, it freezes, amplifies damage and applies vulnerable. The activation is very consistent as you spend a lot of energy.
  • Cir + Vex - Increases all of our skill ranks.
Alternative Choices

If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:

  • Wat - Decrepify helps with stagger, defense and allows an execute at 10% HP, can be combined with Xol in your other Runeword to generate large amounts of offering.
  • Yax - Great way to generate offering that synergizes with Unstable Elixirs.
  • Jah - for more Mobility when farming, can replace either bottom rune.
  • Poc - If you have not found Tam yet.

Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.

Mercenaries

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Twisting Blades Rogue

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.

You gain a multiplicative increase to your Lucky Hit Chance whenever Subo attacks an enemy through his Ambusher passive.

Scorched Earth improves your Damage over Time massively.

Reinforcement: Varyana

We choose Bloodthirst for more Attack Speed.

Twisting Blades Rogue Mercenaries

Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.

Stat Priorities & Item Progression

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Twisting Blades Rogue

To enable the Twisting Blades 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.

  • 30%+ Lucky Hit Chance
  • 70%+ Critical Strike Chance
  • 2500+ Dexterity
  • 300%+ Poison Damage
  • 8+ Extra Poison Imbue Charges
  • 100% Attack Speed
  • Armor Capped 1,000
  • Resistance Capped 70%+
  • 7,000+ Life
  • 80%+ Chance for Twisting Blades to Hit Twice
  • 30%+ Shadow Clone Cooldown Reduction
  • 500%+ Ultimate Damage
Starter
Ancestral
Mythic

Item Progression Goals

Before you dive into the Endgame with the Twisting Blades 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.

Starter
Ancestral
Mythic

Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.

Build Variants

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Twisting Blades Rogue

This section is designed to guide your Twisting Blades 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.

Starter
Ancestral
Mythic
Pit Push

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.

Gear & Skills

Starter Twisting Blades Rogue Gear
Starter Twisting Blades Rogue 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.

Gear & Skills

Ancestral Twisting Blades Rogue Gear
Ancestral Twisting Blades Rogue 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.

Gear & Skills

Mythic Twisting Blades Rogue Gear
Mythic Twisting Blades Rogue Skills
  • Heir of Perdition - Provides us with important Core Skill Ranks and Critical Strike Chance.
  • Shroud of False Death - Generally the best Chest Armor to use.
  • Ring of Starless Skies - Amazing choice with how much Resource we consume to increase our damage output.

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.

These are the key changes:

We drop Dash for Smoke Grenade.

Gear & Skills

Pit Push Twisting Blades Rogue Gear
Pit Push Twisting Blades Rogue 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.
  • Remember to use Consumables when Pushing:
    • Elixir of Advantage II to reach Cap 1 Attack Speed.
    • Elixir of Fortitude II if you have trouble surviving.
    • Queen's Supreme
    • Soothing Spices
    • Song of the Mountain

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 about the Twisting Blades Rogue Build.

Mechanics

For more Rogue Mechanics and Interactions, visit the Rogue Compendium by Avarilyn.

Video Guide

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Twisting Blades Rogue

Updated S8 Video Guide Coming soon by M1PY on YouTube

Summary

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Twisting Blades Rogue

The Twisting Blades Rogue is a super fun and mobile assassin that speedfarms content better than almost anything else and can pull its weight in higher end content thanks to Poison Imbuement.

  • Use Shadow Clone on cooldown to reset your Poison Imbuement and other cooldowns through Preparation and gain all of its other benefits.
  • Imbue your Twisting Blades with Poison Imbuement.
  • Drop Caltrops on elites and bosses.
  • Place Poison Trap whenever it would immediately trigger.
  • Use Dash for Mobility and repositioning.

Credits

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Twisting Blades Rogue

Written by M1PY
Thanks to Avarilyn for in-depth testing on Rogue mechanics

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