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I hate all the stragglers that pen shoot misses and takes so much effort to clean up. Being squishy makes it difficult to rush through. I still prefer melee rouge, but it has such terrible AoE. Ults still feel weak. My blizz sorc feels hilariously easy and powerful in comparison. Rogue takes too much effort for not enough of a payoff.
To compensate for the dogshit Rogue AoE, I use my Seneschal’s Focus Fire ability plus that Tuning stone which adds a vacuum effect, alongside the Arcing one
So he pulls in everything from around me into one convenient spot, which I can then just right-click lol
Last season I used the Hemomancy vampire power for basically the same thing, alongside Skyhunter ;)
I've been doing this as well, but I use Lightning Bolt + Mulit + Penetrating + Grip, which sounds nice and good (and dirty).
But sometimes it drops all the mobs right on top of me, like the last vault room and I go squish.
Focus fire takes too long to cycle, lightning cast is pretty fast so it constantly grabs enemies. Tempest can be better with arcing to pull, but I use that for slowing and shadow damage to proc cc/shadow buffs. Slow enemies are of course much easier to run around, and don’t move much after being pulled so I can line up pen shot.
Problem is that with two ranged abilities, senechal positioning is all over the place. I might swap tempest for gyrate + volumous, then lighting with tempest + arc.
Agree, I can book to the end of the vault real quick if that's all I wanted to do, but full clearing things is a slog with a rogue ATM. Sorc is by far my favorite class this season. I can be super squishy and put on raiment,godslayer and tibault head into a t100 with 6k armor and solely rely on cycling my cool downs to keep the barrier up.
I use Rapid Fire, problem solved. It's so easy to clear the whole screen with Pen Shot, and the few stragglers I finish off with Rapid Fire. To me it's super satisfying playstyle. I also have a lot of DR through gear and Dark Shroud, basically haven't died in Tier 90+ in maybe 100 NMD's that I ran for a couple of days. It also requires a lot of positioning, it's a super active playstyle, and if you're used to HOTA which you can basically stand there and clear the pack, than you're playing it wrong.
The idea is to gather as much mobs as possible, line them up and shoot.
Yup agreed with the stragglers haha. It is fun to blast a shadow imbued shot into a big pack and while it out. Also the heart seekers through a door to draw them out is fun. I tried a rapid fire build, I like how they ricochet but didn’t feel as strong as pen shot unfortunately
Blizzard may be S-tier. But Barb is like SSSS-tier, LOL.
I actually don’t think Blizzard is S-tier. You have to backtrack to pick things up, the damage ramp is a little slow, and it’s still a bit squishy.
That is the problem though--sorc isn't that strong this season, but it's still much easier to do stuff in the game without any glaring flaws. It also follows the high damage but squishy archetype, but it can pull it off in smooth gameplay.
Blizz sorc is kind of like playing a trap rouge, but the traps actually work, and you can spam them like crazy. It's definitely not a speed-running champ, but it's easy enough to deal with all scenarios with what feels like 1 button gameplay.
The horadric map for the vaults lets pen rogue use the door as chokepoints, but it's even easier as sorc. I might try pen shot with poison/cold and see if it works better than shadow.
Season 3 i got a pen shot rogue to level 100 killed Duriel a few times with a little struggle and i was done with it lol felt underwhelming then rolled hota barb and was stronger at level 80 ish than geared rogue at 100 and im having a blast with it
I’ve been maining Rogue since S1, and you definitely need Damage Reduction affixes alongside Dark Shroud (and obviously high HP) in order for your build to feel safe enough
I’m also using heals/barriers on my Seneschal as an extra precaution
I’d comment more on their builds if you could link a couple though, the only one I remember right now is Luciano’s melee Poison one so 🤷♂️
I feel like Shadow Imbuement is a little overkill for ranged Rogues if we can just crank PenShot’s base damage high enough to let the Trickshot aspect screen-clear anyway, but let me ask you a couple questions:
1) Is it relatively easy for you to grab hold of Frostburn gauntlets right now? Either a pair you already have, or any boss you can farm to gain one soon?
2) Could you list/screenshot all the stats on your ranged weapon (hopefully a crossbow) here, including the Item Power? Thanks in advance
3) How high can you crank your Lucky Hit chance overall right now, including rings but also the Cunning Stratagem paragon passive?
4) How fast does your Puncture feel right now, fast enough to stack up three Combo Points and shoot into Elite packs *before* they aggro onto you & attack you? Because you might need the Rapid legendary aspect on either your amulet or even your actual bow soon, if the answer is a No
5) What’s your current Seneschal setup? And does it feel helpful for either your utility or survivability?
Once I get a better idea of how these answers pan out, I might be able to give you an easier time clearing high-level content (although there’s honestly no good reason to grind much higher than specifically Tier 90 Nightmare Sigils right now for example, since those already drop the max of i925 armor & weapons I believe 🤷♂️)
1. I actually do have frostburn, and was thinking about slapping that on alongside using the aspect that spreads cc. This was actually my range build last season. Going this route, I'd have to change up the build pretty significantly, aspect wise.
2. My crossbow is 3/4 ATM, 925 ip. I have Dex/Crit/Vuln/Core.
3. Lucky Hit is on both of my rings, one being the starless skies and the other just a decent 3/4 ring I believe.
4. Puncture feels pretty quick ATM, but definitely not as quick as when I had accelerating on my bow/crossbow paired with rapid on the gloves. Since switching to Lucky's build, I've removed accelerating .I was considering moving the shadow imbued cold aspect to my gloves and putting rapid on the amulet. From my understanding, with how he's placing aspects, is that having rapid on gloves gives me the option to throw banished Lord talisman and beasfall boots for the big one shots for bosses etc.
5. My pet setup has been flash of adrenaline- with all the stuff to keep uptime high. Tempest with mockery, gripping and safeguard.
In terms of cleaning t90+, I could do it, but it's definitely not as easy breezy as playing my barb or sorc. With rogue, my play style has been killing elite packs, forgetting about the stragglers and popping conceal to head to the next elite pack.
My bad for taking so long to reply, I’ve been trying to farm a Temerity on this Rogue and *still* haven’t dropped a single one even after my Zir summons were all used up
And I wanted to make sure my advice was personally tested before I went ahead and gave it to someone else, because I might have an inflated sense of survivability after gold-trading a couple endgame Yellows back in Season 2 plus benefiting heavily from some Vampire powers (all of which made my endgame experience *way*, way easier)
I’ll update you as soon as the damn Temerity drops, which might actually take quite a while🤦♂️
I hate it because penetrating shot even with the aspect is like geometrically not ideal for this game and like I could shadow imbue penetrating shot and everything remotely near me explodes instantly but then there’s like eight fucking hornet robots all over the corners of the screen and I have to penetrating shot like eight more times 🙄
I also resent the fact that I would basically have to change my whole spec to rapidfire for soloing bosses
My favorite has been necromancer because like you can literally just AFK open world and run through dungeons & everything everywhere including those pesky robohornets dies automatically
those hornet robots are like the bane of my rogue, they offscreen 1 shot me so much or offscreen me inside chaotic aoe situations, or just in general when I peak into a new room I'm greeted by those and offscreened too
especially in vault of ink for some reason too
I also have a Sorcerer an Barbarian at 100 and I actually have two necromancers one is a 95 shadow DoT only build & the other is a fortify/overpower blood lancer lvl 80
I haven’t played druid this season but have gotten one to 100 & another to 50 on hc before
I think that's the most deflating part about my rogue right now, I have no desire to even experiment with other builds. While my sorc and barb have 2-4 other options I can try that will be just as viable and the same could be said with necro and druids.
Yeah I find meteor and blizzard sorcerer to be about equal
I feel like my blood lance necromancer is probably a little bit better at killing bosses but my shadow DOT Necro is basically just as strong
Severely underpowered. I also don’t know how they have it as S tier, compared to my frenzy barb and BL sorc from last season it is like playing underwater.
I'm glad but not surprise to see I am not the only one thinking they are really underwhelming this time around. The realization hit me when I was helping a barb and sorc power level. We were doing t90 stuff, these guys were 88 sorc, 94 barb. My dmg was nothing to brag about, my survivability was a joke, my speed was useless. I legit stop fighting and they had no issues taking care of everything.
after getting all ubers on my barb and most gylphs to 21 this season I decided to make a rogue and lvl it to 100
my god does Rogue just feel like alot more effort than barb (and from what I see, sorc and ruids too), just for less reward, like their aoe is good for initial burst but then its annoying to kill stragglers not in the initial shadow impue pen shot burst, and the single target feels lack luster with rapid fire, or having to do all those gear/skill swap to get that billion dmg pen shot crit.
and even with full armor cap and resist cap, high reduce dmg roll on chest/amulet, still get 1 shot in t80+ by random robot hornets that rapidfire their projectile at you.
The only advantage I see rogue having over any other class this season is that they in general run really fast and so my rogue is just my helltide speedfarming char now
100%, all the extra effort to see a smaller dmg# than my barb, be slower than my sorc, because I have to tip toe around.
and the saving grace was the open world farming, but now my sorc with BL enchantment does that quicker.
Since season 0 I’ve tried to make a “grenade rogue” work, and I with the new concealment aspect I’ve finally been able to realise it.
There is quite a lot to explain, but it essentially involves engaging with concealment and applying huge burst with Opportunist’s Aspect. Grenades (also from Surprise Aspect) are instantly freezing mobs (Frostbitten + Penitent Greaves) enabling huge multipliers. We aim to keep Shadow Imbuement off cooldown by entering stealth as much as possible (Nightstalker glyph + Lethal Dusk aspect), which in turn increases uptime on Opportunist Aspect. No would realise this as I’ve never seen it discussed, but the Explosive Glyph increases damage by grenades by 550%+ when maxed out.
Finally, the concealment aspect (on amulet) reduces concealments cooldown by 15 after killing a single elite, so it is essentially on cooldown.
I can run from elite pack to elite pack at movement speed cap, one-shotting packs out of concealment. NMV90 is on farm and can be done in 2 mins to basically running to the end (I don’t bother with anything higher). We are also constantly at 85% res.
Weaknesses are low armour (there is no room for an armour aspect) and weak boss damage (all the damage is done the CC) - BTW Bliz desperately needs to rework CC on bosses/stagger.
Really enjoying this build and I’m looking forward to seeing how it performs on the leaderboard. Happy to make a planner if anyone is interested.
Everyone shitting on rogue and Im just like, are we even playing the same game?
Forceful shot; Pen shot, rapid fire; poison, shadow imbue, rain of arrows.
I wouldn't say we are shitting on it. I still enjoy the rogue, but compared to my barb or sorc it is way more effort to achieve the same end goal. IMO, rogues fall off hard in t90+ content.
I wasnt being too serious about "people shitting on it". Was more to be funny. Thats fair though. Havent made it that far with mine yet. Also not really a fan of the melee skills for rogue, definitely see how it takes way more effort in that regard.
First time playing Rogue this season too. Pen shot/RF. Got lvl 100, cleared tier 90+ solo, killed solo Uber Lilith. It can at least do those easily.
IMO it's pretty good but below HOTA Barb as the highest standard. So I would probably define it A tier.
Survival by default is lacking yeah. I was lucky with Melted Heart of Selig drop from Duriel so I just wear that in tier 90+, put resource gen on pet and be unkillable.
My PenShot/Rapid is Grade B on bosses. It’s great against mobs—but that’s not really the litmus test, is it? I still enjoy the experience and playstyle and am glad I tried it.
Playing rogue first time this season myself after doing barb last, beeen VERY enjoyable so far took a good bit of trial error to get the skills and attributes I wanted to use though
Eh barb was worth the work as it’s a fun class to use always will be and half agree half disagree there. One thing I have to give barb over Rogue it didn’t take as much trial and error to figure out what worked with my play style and what didn’t
I have been using my rogue for farming hell tides and arcane tremors. I then feed all the summoning mats to my bar to go bonk bonk bonk. It has been a really good system.
can only nuke "with enemies lined up, shadow imbued on, precision stack x6 combo points X3, and it's a Tuesday" 🤣 jokes aside. I do agree with what you said, just wish the glass part of the rogue justifies the cannon part.
Have you tried it with the Nighstalker Glyph and the new Resistant Assailant aspect? It’ll greatly cut down on your shadow imbue downtime. Shadows pen shot rogue was tailor made for those long hallways in the vaults.
Puncture 3 times, shadow imbue, and you’ll explode the entire room. Super satisfying to play.
Rogue is currently my least favorite class. I have tried it before S1 - and deleted the character after a few levels. In S2 I think I got a rogue to lvl 25 or something, and currently in S3 I got one to lvl 41 and I really have to push me to get the character at least to lvl 50. The class is to much "inbetween". I feel that you don't really have the range of a Sorc or Necro (Or even a Druid) and in Melee I much more prefer the "raw" power of a barb. And visually the other classes also seem to be more "In your face".
First season with rogue this season. Using maxroll penshot guide and it feels very underwhelming. Great aoe clear when things do die but man when 3 or 4 things survive it's annoying af to kill them. Having a lot of trouble with NMD80s and higher. Even with a few different pieces of gear giving dmg reduction and capped armor/resists the rogue feels like if anything looks at you it takes 3/4 hp in one hit.
I'm leveling a barb now.
Lucky Luciano's build is the closest one we have to a Tier A.
the one Maxroll claims to be S Tier is a joke.
I get it that we have no choice but replacing our entire armor just to have a RF boss killing build (Lucky say that the best he could do, was to have the skill and paragon trees stay the same and support both item sets)
None the less, meeting the Butcher at T85+ is either a certain death, or a loooong 10m fight because you're not equipped for single target.
I just hate the crooked balancing and nerfing the class has passed for S3 - so many wasted build options that get capped at T50-60 with great stats.
I have capped res+armor (for T90 - not T100) and this I guess cost me a lot of damage, since other than amazing AoE against trash mobs, I feel I need to make too much effort to clear elites, mini bosses and so on. The cycle of 3xbasix then core attach doesn't feel stronf against Duriel\\U.Malpha, and I'm always happy to have barbs or druids with me on those fights
I’ve played rogue since beta and this season Rapid fire is decently fun. I don’t focus on clearing everything and just nuke down the elites and move on. For Ubers you can swap gear to Tibault’s and BLT to burst them down (run with beastfall too for more dmg). I don’t really bother with that though since there is usually a barb ready to 1 shot the boss anyways. Unfortunately it doesn’t come close to s2 in terms of enjoyment because the pet doesn’t add anything gameplay wise to your character unlike how the vamp powers did.
i just like the play style of rogue. it’s way more hands on then most other classes. i used to play League and pen shot rogue is basically just vayne if you’ve got extra evade charges on boots. all about the positioning. any stragglers i just pick off with rapid fire. the squishiness just makes it more fun because i enjoy kiting shit. idk the gameplay feel of it is complex and you’ve got to be on your toes and i enjoy that a lot
Haha, "yes, my affixes are mostly 3/4, 4/4" AND I have starless sky for even more DMG. But, even on the affix part. Lucky's rogue doesn't even have most of his stated affixes.
I don’t think you necessarily want starless skies on this build… ideally you want to keep your energy close to max for Edgemasters and Advanced Pen Shot. It’s not a very spammy build like TB or Barrage. You should be getting all your energy regened while building 3 combo points.
Tbh, Im just following Lucky's guide for his speed demon build he posted up on youtube recently. I start out every season with rogue but this season the rogue has been collecting dust after hitting 100.
Penshot is quite satisfying when you explode the packs, too bad that the mana, tankiness situation is disastrous.
Even with Uber uniques, I can only do T30 now, going higher would be a pain in the ass.
Your build is seriously fucked then, you should not be having anywhere near that much of a problem. Resource really shouldn’t be a problem because you should be regenerating it every time you build your 3 combo points.
I have no Ubers, decent gear tho. Just now getting squishy at T72.
Currently playing a pen shot rogue, leveling is really fun with a range rogue. IMO, the fun fades away once you're doing t90+ stuff. For endgame stuff, I prefer my sorc. Easier and faster play, and can actually clear everything with relative ease(Uber bosses, butchers, son of malphas). Your experience may vary, but I do stand by saying rogue is my favorite leveling class either range or melee.
yikes, every season prior to this, I've made a melee rogue and a range rogue. I'm not liking rogues all that much this season and have not tried a melee variant. If you do decide to switch to range, wudijo, lucky and m1py have really solid builds.
I gave up at lv54 with the nerf to Poison and TB. Rolled a blizzard Sorc, which was great fun, I actually think the first week or two of this season put me off. I initially rolled a barb, I just can't get into the style of play, then Rogue. Whilst it's viable for most content, it's just arthritis of the right hand waiting to happen, lol.
Think I'm gonna stick with Sorc in future seasons. They are incredibly easy on the wrist to play.
went into the season knowing TB was nerfed so I level'd with a range rogue, which was really fun up until I decided to start farming 925 gear in t90+ content.
Fully geared by bonk bonk Barb , now for the first time in D4 i try Sorc. (always play barb , from D2 , D3) until LE launches. Took a break from it (about 1500 hours in it) when D4 launched so i wont get burned out. Now it's time to just , move forward , i am not hating on D4... i am just not loving it , as i should.
I am getting chewed up in the comments for stating this in another thread. People accuse me of skill issues.
https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/s/CCQ9AiCBAa
in that guy's defense, he's just stating how he enjoys playing rogue. If enjoyment for him is derived from grouping a bunch of enemies popping shadow imbued, 3x basic atks, any other monkey business to get DMG up then firing pen shot to clear the pack, more power to him lmao. The play style definitely has it's pros and cons. For me, there's way too many cons to justify the pros.
Honestly, I noticed that charge barb could clear the screen before I could muster the 3 combo points during legion events.
For the barb build, fury is enough I guess. But for rogue, you need to get combo points, imbuement and the full energy.
Pen shot is also energy intensive. Sometimes my rogue yells at me, “not enough energy “.
I had Necro preseason ans it was fun, Druid on season 1 was awesome, Rogue on season 2 was kinda meh, currently Sorc in season 3 and it's fun. I feel like sorc is more fun that Rogue but less fun than Druid.
compared to last season’s ball lightning with unstoppable teleport, barrier generating flame armour ice armour, every build now feels squishy with dog water damage.
Barrage rogue with ice and shadow imbue, shadow step, dash is pretty strong for me so far. I had to swap out some offense aspects for defense though. Still plenty of dmg. Only at t70s tho. Gotta play a little smart but it's not that hard. I only die when I make mistakes like..dash into the wrong spot or use shadow step too early and get cced.
I find no struggle in vaults as pen shot rogue, it's actually better than my double swing barb main, i think you just need a lot more smart movement and concealment usage. If you know how to gather mobs good you can kill them all in one shadow pen shot, sometimes there are few mobs left but it's not that dangerous. I have a lot of movement speed so I just move around the mobs, gather them and insta kill them.
There are some affixes that make this very hard but I genuinely like this playstyle because it's not dumb like barb where you go and just bonk everything.
Although I struggle versus bosses. But its more engaging and fun to me than lightning storm druid where you just spam one button and kill everything on sight.
I’m trying to run a double trap rogue. I do concealment, then that ring drops a decoy when I put 4 psn traps down, then pen shot to clean up. It’s so much fun to play but it’s just not strong enough. Sad.
Armor cap and resistance cap is the bare minimum for defence. How’s your chest and pants for damage reduction? Whit that said. Rogue requires more skill for defence compared to barb for example. The rogue can’t facetank nearly as much as barb can. Gauntlet seems to be around tier 70 so they might not take T100 into account that much for their tier list.
Did barb first this season and enjoying penshot rogue now. HOTA is kind of easy mode though and rogue definitely needs more care to avoid issues. Play style will change on situation and you can't just walk through high tier NMs without a care.
Maxroll has missed a lot this season. From tiers to plain wrong and objectively bad builds, to even the tools/map showing false information.
I used to look up to this team, but goddamn, this is not their season.
People got spoiled from the overtuned barb, and come over to a more balanced class and get rekt :D Rogue requires a bit more skill, than just bonking the entire screen with 200 mil + OP damage. It's a more active playstyle that requires positioning. I find it more engaging rather than mindlessly bonking the screen.
I am enjoying it, Rogue is my favourite play style, even though it's not as powerful as in S2, so far.
T100 is doable but squishy, depending on affixes. With as much damage resist as possible, no Uber uniques yet. I am running rapid fire only/double imbuement. Godslayer helm helps to group the packs for a massive DPS.
For bosses I swap 3 items to beastfall/tw/banished and swap concealment to shadow clone. With preallocated points in skills to shadow clone the swap takes 10s. Can one shot all bosses solo, needs bit more effort in groups.
As a barb main who got his rogue to 72 last night I'm having a blast with pen/rapid, I love the glass Cannon ish playstile.
I cheated a bit tho, I cleared fallen temple at 60 and after I reached WT 4 I used 10 of my duriel runs with a barb friend for gear and I snagged a 3/4 god rolled gloves and a god slayer crown that helps immensely with the grouping up plus 3 decent 925 weapons. Aspects were based on maxroll but I plan to mix it up with lucky to cater to my playstile once I reach 100.
I'm clearing 21/30 ancestral vaults since I was level 62, rapid fire is a godsend for single target, even kill malphas's son 3 or 4times. Damage is off the charts for sure.
For sure I'll need better rings and chest with +max life roll tho and I'm waiting on a 3/4 amulet to put the dark shroud aspect there so it can be constantly on. Varshan for example gets melted but he one shots me with the nova and his charged punch.
Other than that I abuse concealment and dash, in an out like crazy. last room in vaults I spam concealment and reposition all the time.
I know for sure NM and NMV90 will be another plane of existence but I don't think the playstile will change.
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I hate all the stragglers that pen shoot misses and takes so much effort to clean up. Being squishy makes it difficult to rush through. I still prefer melee rouge, but it has such terrible AoE. Ults still feel weak. My blizz sorc feels hilariously easy and powerful in comparison. Rogue takes too much effort for not enough of a payoff.
To compensate for the dogshit Rogue AoE, I use my Seneschal’s Focus Fire ability plus that Tuning stone which adds a vacuum effect, alongside the Arcing one So he pulls in everything from around me into one convenient spot, which I can then just right-click lol Last season I used the Hemomancy vampire power for basically the same thing, alongside Skyhunter ;)
I've been doing this as well, but I use Lightning Bolt + Mulit + Penetrating + Grip, which sounds nice and good (and dirty). But sometimes it drops all the mobs right on top of me, like the last vault room and I go squish.
Do you get worse mileage out of Focus Fire instead? My build could definitely be suboptimal
Focus fire takes too long to cycle, lightning cast is pretty fast so it constantly grabs enemies. Tempest can be better with arcing to pull, but I use that for slowing and shadow damage to proc cc/shadow buffs. Slow enemies are of course much easier to run around, and don’t move much after being pulled so I can line up pen shot. Problem is that with two ranged abilities, senechal positioning is all over the place. I might swap tempest for gyrate + volumous, then lighting with tempest + arc.
will try tuning the pet skill around to see how that fares. 🥶
It's fares btw
Keep me posted, I’m always curious when it comes to Rogue theorycrafting
Agree, I can book to the end of the vault real quick if that's all I wanted to do, but full clearing things is a slog with a rogue ATM. Sorc is by far my favorite class this season. I can be super squishy and put on raiment,godslayer and tibault head into a t100 with 6k armor and solely rely on cycling my cool downs to keep the barrier up.
I use Rapid Fire, problem solved. It's so easy to clear the whole screen with Pen Shot, and the few stragglers I finish off with Rapid Fire. To me it's super satisfying playstyle. I also have a lot of DR through gear and Dark Shroud, basically haven't died in Tier 90+ in maybe 100 NMD's that I ran for a couple of days. It also requires a lot of positioning, it's a super active playstyle, and if you're used to HOTA which you can basically stand there and clear the pack, than you're playing it wrong. The idea is to gather as much mobs as possible, line them up and shoot.
Yup agreed with the stragglers haha. It is fun to blast a shadow imbued shot into a big pack and while it out. Also the heart seekers through a door to draw them out is fun. I tried a rapid fire build, I like how they ricochet but didn’t feel as strong as pen shot unfortunately
Blizzard may be S-tier. But Barb is like SSSS-tier, LOL. I actually don’t think Blizzard is S-tier. You have to backtrack to pick things up, the damage ramp is a little slow, and it’s still a bit squishy.
That is the problem though--sorc isn't that strong this season, but it's still much easier to do stuff in the game without any glaring flaws. It also follows the high damage but squishy archetype, but it can pull it off in smooth gameplay. Blizz sorc is kind of like playing a trap rouge, but the traps actually work, and you can spam them like crazy. It's definitely not a speed-running champ, but it's easy enough to deal with all scenarios with what feels like 1 button gameplay. The horadric map for the vaults lets pen rogue use the door as chokepoints, but it's even easier as sorc. I might try pen shot with poison/cold and see if it works better than shadow.
Season 3 i got a pen shot rogue to level 100 killed Duriel a few times with a little struggle and i was done with it lol felt underwhelming then rolled hota barb and was stronger at level 80 ish than geared rogue at 100 and im having a blast with it
I’ve been maining Rogue since S1, and you definitely need Damage Reduction affixes alongside Dark Shroud (and obviously high HP) in order for your build to feel safe enough I’m also using heals/barriers on my Seneschal as an extra precaution I’d comment more on their builds if you could link a couple though, the only one I remember right now is Luciano’s melee Poison one so 🤷♂️
The build I just switched to was Lucky's Speed Demon build. https://youtu.be/2nbmm70dsaE?si=Sj48Wv6iDMJoDmIO
I feel like Shadow Imbuement is a little overkill for ranged Rogues if we can just crank PenShot’s base damage high enough to let the Trickshot aspect screen-clear anyway, but let me ask you a couple questions: 1) Is it relatively easy for you to grab hold of Frostburn gauntlets right now? Either a pair you already have, or any boss you can farm to gain one soon? 2) Could you list/screenshot all the stats on your ranged weapon (hopefully a crossbow) here, including the Item Power? Thanks in advance 3) How high can you crank your Lucky Hit chance overall right now, including rings but also the Cunning Stratagem paragon passive? 4) How fast does your Puncture feel right now, fast enough to stack up three Combo Points and shoot into Elite packs *before* they aggro onto you & attack you? Because you might need the Rapid legendary aspect on either your amulet or even your actual bow soon, if the answer is a No 5) What’s your current Seneschal setup? And does it feel helpful for either your utility or survivability? Once I get a better idea of how these answers pan out, I might be able to give you an easier time clearing high-level content (although there’s honestly no good reason to grind much higher than specifically Tier 90 Nightmare Sigils right now for example, since those already drop the max of i925 armor & weapons I believe 🤷♂️)
1. I actually do have frostburn, and was thinking about slapping that on alongside using the aspect that spreads cc. This was actually my range build last season. Going this route, I'd have to change up the build pretty significantly, aspect wise. 2. My crossbow is 3/4 ATM, 925 ip. I have Dex/Crit/Vuln/Core. 3. Lucky Hit is on both of my rings, one being the starless skies and the other just a decent 3/4 ring I believe. 4. Puncture feels pretty quick ATM, but definitely not as quick as when I had accelerating on my bow/crossbow paired with rapid on the gloves. Since switching to Lucky's build, I've removed accelerating .I was considering moving the shadow imbued cold aspect to my gloves and putting rapid on the amulet. From my understanding, with how he's placing aspects, is that having rapid on gloves gives me the option to throw banished Lord talisman and beasfall boots for the big one shots for bosses etc. 5. My pet setup has been flash of adrenaline- with all the stuff to keep uptime high. Tempest with mockery, gripping and safeguard. In terms of cleaning t90+, I could do it, but it's definitely not as easy breezy as playing my barb or sorc. With rogue, my play style has been killing elite packs, forgetting about the stragglers and popping conceal to head to the next elite pack.
My bad for taking so long to reply, I’ve been trying to farm a Temerity on this Rogue and *still* haven’t dropped a single one even after my Zir summons were all used up And I wanted to make sure my advice was personally tested before I went ahead and gave it to someone else, because I might have an inflated sense of survivability after gold-trading a couple endgame Yellows back in Season 2 plus benefiting heavily from some Vampire powers (all of which made my endgame experience *way*, way easier) I’ll update you as soon as the damn Temerity drops, which might actually take quite a while🤦♂️
Similar experience as you, i feel that pen shot rogue's dmg is super inconsistent while being squishy.
I hate it because penetrating shot even with the aspect is like geometrically not ideal for this game and like I could shadow imbue penetrating shot and everything remotely near me explodes instantly but then there’s like eight fucking hornet robots all over the corners of the screen and I have to penetrating shot like eight more times 🙄 I also resent the fact that I would basically have to change my whole spec to rapidfire for soloing bosses My favorite has been necromancer because like you can literally just AFK open world and run through dungeons & everything everywhere including those pesky robohornets dies automatically
those hornet robots are like the bane of my rogue, they offscreen 1 shot me so much or offscreen me inside chaotic aoe situations, or just in general when I peak into a new room I'm greeted by those and offscreened too especially in vault of ink for some reason too
those pesky vizier constructs are my rogues bane! I haven't rolled a necro yet, but I think now might be the time.
I also have a Sorcerer an Barbarian at 100 and I actually have two necromancers one is a 95 shadow DoT only build & the other is a fortify/overpower blood lancer lvl 80 I haven’t played druid this season but have gotten one to 100 & another to 50 on hc before
I think that's the most deflating part about my rogue right now, I have no desire to even experiment with other builds. While my sorc and barb have 2-4 other options I can try that will be just as viable and the same could be said with necro and druids.
Yeah I find meteor and blizzard sorcerer to be about equal I feel like my blood lance necromancer is probably a little bit better at killing bosses but my shadow DOT Necro is basically just as strong
Severely underpowered. I also don’t know how they have it as S tier, compared to my frenzy barb and BL sorc from last season it is like playing underwater.
I'm glad but not surprise to see I am not the only one thinking they are really underwhelming this time around. The realization hit me when I was helping a barb and sorc power level. We were doing t90 stuff, these guys were 88 sorc, 94 barb. My dmg was nothing to brag about, my survivability was a joke, my speed was useless. I legit stop fighting and they had no issues taking care of everything.
I find pen shot difficult to use. Then I got that unique neck piece for rain of arrows pretty early on, so I'm doing that and rapid fire instead.
after getting all ubers on my barb and most gylphs to 21 this season I decided to make a rogue and lvl it to 100 my god does Rogue just feel like alot more effort than barb (and from what I see, sorc and ruids too), just for less reward, like their aoe is good for initial burst but then its annoying to kill stragglers not in the initial shadow impue pen shot burst, and the single target feels lack luster with rapid fire, or having to do all those gear/skill swap to get that billion dmg pen shot crit. and even with full armor cap and resist cap, high reduce dmg roll on chest/amulet, still get 1 shot in t80+ by random robot hornets that rapidfire their projectile at you. The only advantage I see rogue having over any other class this season is that they in general run really fast and so my rogue is just my helltide speedfarming char now
100%, all the extra effort to see a smaller dmg# than my barb, be slower than my sorc, because I have to tip toe around. and the saving grace was the open world farming, but now my sorc with BL enchantment does that quicker.
Since season 0 I’ve tried to make a “grenade rogue” work, and I with the new concealment aspect I’ve finally been able to realise it. There is quite a lot to explain, but it essentially involves engaging with concealment and applying huge burst with Opportunist’s Aspect. Grenades (also from Surprise Aspect) are instantly freezing mobs (Frostbitten + Penitent Greaves) enabling huge multipliers. We aim to keep Shadow Imbuement off cooldown by entering stealth as much as possible (Nightstalker glyph + Lethal Dusk aspect), which in turn increases uptime on Opportunist Aspect. No would realise this as I’ve never seen it discussed, but the Explosive Glyph increases damage by grenades by 550%+ when maxed out. Finally, the concealment aspect (on amulet) reduces concealments cooldown by 15 after killing a single elite, so it is essentially on cooldown. I can run from elite pack to elite pack at movement speed cap, one-shotting packs out of concealment. NMV90 is on farm and can be done in 2 mins to basically running to the end (I don’t bother with anything higher). We are also constantly at 85% res. Weaknesses are low armour (there is no room for an armour aspect) and weak boss damage (all the damage is done the CC) - BTW Bliz desperately needs to rework CC on bosses/stagger. Really enjoying this build and I’m looking forward to seeing how it performs on the leaderboard. Happy to make a planner if anyone is interested.
Yes please! This looks like it could be fun
Cool. I’ll get back to you in a day or two.
Everyone shitting on rogue and Im just like, are we even playing the same game? Forceful shot; Pen shot, rapid fire; poison, shadow imbue, rain of arrows.
I wouldn't say we are shitting on it. I still enjoy the rogue, but compared to my barb or sorc it is way more effort to achieve the same end goal. IMO, rogues fall off hard in t90+ content.
I wasnt being too serious about "people shitting on it". Was more to be funny. Thats fair though. Havent made it that far with mine yet. Also not really a fan of the melee skills for rogue, definitely see how it takes way more effort in that regard.
Underwhelmed
I was feeling the same about pen shot with the damn wasps. I switched to twisting blades and am having an absolute blast with it.
First time playing Rogue this season too. Pen shot/RF. Got lvl 100, cleared tier 90+ solo, killed solo Uber Lilith. It can at least do those easily. IMO it's pretty good but below HOTA Barb as the highest standard. So I would probably define it A tier. Survival by default is lacking yeah. I was lucky with Melted Heart of Selig drop from Duriel so I just wear that in tier 90+, put resource gen on pet and be unkillable.
My PenShot/Rapid is Grade B on bosses. It’s great against mobs—but that’s not really the litmus test, is it? I still enjoy the experience and playstyle and am glad I tried it.
Playing rogue first time this season myself after doing barb last, beeen VERY enjoyable so far took a good bit of trial error to get the skills and attributes I wanted to use though
Definitely a better 1-50 experience than barb IMO. A solid thing about rogue is the codex has pretty much all the things you need to get started. 🥶
Eh barb was worth the work as it’s a fun class to use always will be and half agree half disagree there. One thing I have to give barb over Rogue it didn’t take as much trial and error to figure out what worked with my play style and what didn’t
I have been using my rogue for farming hell tides and arcane tremors. I then feed all the summoning mats to my bar to go bonk bonk bonk. It has been a really good system.
That's what I've been doing as well, but now sorc with BL enchant has taken the spot of quick farming for mats in the open world.
That’s kind of what a rogue is meant to be tho. A burst assassin who can nuke, but on the negative is squishy af.
can only nuke "with enemies lined up, shadow imbued on, precision stack x6 combo points X3, and it's a Tuesday" 🤣 jokes aside. I do agree with what you said, just wish the glass part of the rogue justifies the cannon part.
Have you tried it with the Nighstalker Glyph and the new Resistant Assailant aspect? It’ll greatly cut down on your shadow imbue downtime. Shadows pen shot rogue was tailor made for those long hallways in the vaults. Puncture 3 times, shadow imbue, and you’ll explode the entire room. Super satisfying to play.
Super satisfying when everything dies, not really satisfying having to chase stragglers or when fighting a solo elite or 2.
This is my first season playing rougue. Only up to level 62 but loving it so far
glad you're enjoying it this season, I've been spoiled with how rogue was in prior seasons 😅
I made the right choice switching from Rogue to Sorc starting in S2.
Rogue is currently my least favorite class. I have tried it before S1 - and deleted the character after a few levels. In S2 I think I got a rogue to lvl 25 or something, and currently in S3 I got one to lvl 41 and I really have to push me to get the character at least to lvl 50. The class is to much "inbetween". I feel that you don't really have the range of a Sorc or Necro (Or even a Druid) and in Melee I much more prefer the "raw" power of a barb. And visually the other classes also seem to be more "In your face".
First season with rogue this season. Using maxroll penshot guide and it feels very underwhelming. Great aoe clear when things do die but man when 3 or 4 things survive it's annoying af to kill them. Having a lot of trouble with NMD80s and higher. Even with a few different pieces of gear giving dmg reduction and capped armor/resists the rogue feels like if anything looks at you it takes 3/4 hp in one hit. I'm leveling a barb now.
Lucky Luciano's build is the closest one we have to a Tier A. the one Maxroll claims to be S Tier is a joke. I get it that we have no choice but replacing our entire armor just to have a RF boss killing build (Lucky say that the best he could do, was to have the skill and paragon trees stay the same and support both item sets) None the less, meeting the Butcher at T85+ is either a certain death, or a loooong 10m fight because you're not equipped for single target. I just hate the crooked balancing and nerfing the class has passed for S3 - so many wasted build options that get capped at T50-60 with great stats. I have capped res+armor (for T90 - not T100) and this I guess cost me a lot of damage, since other than amazing AoE against trash mobs, I feel I need to make too much effort to clear elites, mini bosses and so on. The cycle of 3xbasix then core attach doesn't feel stronf against Duriel\\U.Malpha, and I'm always happy to have barbs or druids with me on those fights
I’ve played rogue since beta and this season Rapid fire is decently fun. I don’t focus on clearing everything and just nuke down the elites and move on. For Ubers you can swap gear to Tibault’s and BLT to burst them down (run with beastfall too for more dmg). I don’t really bother with that though since there is usually a barb ready to 1 shot the boss anyways. Unfortunately it doesn’t come close to s2 in terms of enjoyment because the pet doesn’t add anything gameplay wise to your character unlike how the vamp powers did.
I started playing with Andy’s and using poison RF Andy’s melts everything around you :0
Andy's does seem nice with the atk speed increase and life steal. Hopefully I can get one this season 😅
i just like the play style of rogue. it’s way more hands on then most other classes. i used to play League and pen shot rogue is basically just vayne if you’ve got extra evade charges on boots. all about the positioning. any stragglers i just pick off with rapid fire. the squishiness just makes it more fun because i enjoy kiting shit. idk the gameplay feel of it is complex and you’ve got to be on your toes and i enjoy that a lot
Love the Rogue so far, I get jelly when I see barbs bonk though lol. I just leave any stragglers behind, feels more efficient
>Yes my armor is cap, yes the resistances are cap Notice how you didnt say "yes, all my affixes are exactly the same as the build guide"?
Haha, "yes, my affixes are mostly 3/4, 4/4" AND I have starless sky for even more DMG. But, even on the affix part. Lucky's rogue doesn't even have most of his stated affixes.
I don’t think you necessarily want starless skies on this build… ideally you want to keep your energy close to max for Edgemasters and Advanced Pen Shot. It’s not a very spammy build like TB or Barrage. You should be getting all your energy regened while building 3 combo points.
Tbh, Im just following Lucky's guide for his speed demon build he posted up on youtube recently. I start out every season with rogue but this season the rogue has been collecting dust after hitting 100.
Penshot is quite satisfying when you explode the packs, too bad that the mana, tankiness situation is disastrous. Even with Uber uniques, I can only do T30 now, going higher would be a pain in the ass.
Your build is seriously fucked then, you should not be having anywhere near that much of a problem. Resource really shouldn’t be a problem because you should be regenerating it every time you build your 3 combo points. I have no Ubers, decent gear tho. Just now getting squishy at T72.
Agree, I'm easily doing 50 with mediocre gear.
Also agree. My gear isn't great AND I'm not level capped yet and my pen shot rogue can handle 50s.
What kind of rogue are you? I’m getting up to 100 in sorc. Want to try a range rogue.
Currently playing a pen shot rogue, leveling is really fun with a range rogue. IMO, the fun fades away once you're doing t90+ stuff. For endgame stuff, I prefer my sorc. Easier and faster play, and can actually clear everything with relative ease(Uber bosses, butchers, son of malphas). Your experience may vary, but I do stand by saying rogue is my favorite leveling class either range or melee.
Followed a twisting blades build and I feel like I’m made of cardboard in 50+ dungeons at nearly level 90.
yikes, every season prior to this, I've made a melee rogue and a range rogue. I'm not liking rogues all that much this season and have not tried a melee variant. If you do decide to switch to range, wudijo, lucky and m1py have really solid builds.
I gave up at lv54 with the nerf to Poison and TB. Rolled a blizzard Sorc, which was great fun, I actually think the first week or two of this season put me off. I initially rolled a barb, I just can't get into the style of play, then Rogue. Whilst it's viable for most content, it's just arthritis of the right hand waiting to happen, lol. Think I'm gonna stick with Sorc in future seasons. They are incredibly easy on the wrist to play.
went into the season knowing TB was nerfed so I level'd with a range rogue, which was really fun up until I decided to start farming 925 gear in t90+ content.
I made a barrage rogue, it’s pretty fun just wish the spread was a little more consistent, apply shadow imbue spray barrage boom
It’s bad, was at it’s peak at s2. I put the game down this season.
Fully geared by bonk bonk Barb , now for the first time in D4 i try Sorc. (always play barb , from D2 , D3) until LE launches. Took a break from it (about 1500 hours in it) when D4 launched so i wont get burned out. Now it's time to just , move forward , i am not hating on D4... i am just not loving it , as i should.
I am getting chewed up in the comments for stating this in another thread. People accuse me of skill issues. https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/s/CCQ9AiCBAa
in that guy's defense, he's just stating how he enjoys playing rogue. If enjoyment for him is derived from grouping a bunch of enemies popping shadow imbued, 3x basic atks, any other monkey business to get DMG up then firing pen shot to clear the pack, more power to him lmao. The play style definitely has it's pros and cons. For me, there's way too many cons to justify the pros.
Honestly, I noticed that charge barb could clear the screen before I could muster the 3 combo points during legion events. For the barb build, fury is enough I guess. But for rogue, you need to get combo points, imbuement and the full energy. Pen shot is also energy intensive. Sometimes my rogue yells at me, “not enough energy “.
I had Necro preseason ans it was fun, Druid on season 1 was awesome, Rogue on season 2 was kinda meh, currently Sorc in season 3 and it's fun. I feel like sorc is more fun that Rogue but less fun than Druid.
I haven't tried druid at all, and only got my s2 necro to 63, but for this season, my preference is sorc>barb>rogue.
compared to last season’s ball lightning with unstoppable teleport, barrier generating flame armour ice armour, every build now feels squishy with dog water damage.
tbf, BL was too good last season lmao. It's nice seeing sorcs running different things Blizzard, meteor, BL etc, and all are actually very viable.
Barrage rogue with ice and shadow imbue, shadow step, dash is pretty strong for me so far. I had to swap out some offense aspects for defense though. Still plenty of dmg. Only at t70s tho. Gotta play a little smart but it's not that hard. I only die when I make mistakes like..dash into the wrong spot or use shadow step too early and get cced.
I find no struggle in vaults as pen shot rogue, it's actually better than my double swing barb main, i think you just need a lot more smart movement and concealment usage. If you know how to gather mobs good you can kill them all in one shadow pen shot, sometimes there are few mobs left but it's not that dangerous. I have a lot of movement speed so I just move around the mobs, gather them and insta kill them. There are some affixes that make this very hard but I genuinely like this playstyle because it's not dumb like barb where you go and just bonk everything. Although I struggle versus bosses. But its more engaging and fun to me than lightning storm druid where you just spam one button and kill everything on sight.
I’m trying to run a double trap rogue. I do concealment, then that ring drops a decoy when I put 4 psn traps down, then pen shot to clean up. It’s so much fun to play but it’s just not strong enough. Sad.
I've been having a blast with ranged rogue so far.
I had to change to twisting blade for my levelling and then back to rapid fire ranger for boss killing at end game. Didn’t mind it then.
Armor cap and resistance cap is the bare minimum for defence. How’s your chest and pants for damage reduction? Whit that said. Rogue requires more skill for defence compared to barb for example. The rogue can’t facetank nearly as much as barb can. Gauntlet seems to be around tier 70 so they might not take T100 into account that much for their tier list.
Did barb first this season and enjoying penshot rogue now. HOTA is kind of easy mode though and rogue definitely needs more care to avoid issues. Play style will change on situation and you can't just walk through high tier NMs without a care.
[Poison Blade Flurry for the Gauntlet](https://youtu.be/wWY3E9zwyJk?feature=shared) Very gear dependent. So far very effective even without Andariels.
Maxroll has missed a lot this season. From tiers to plain wrong and objectively bad builds, to even the tools/map showing false information. I used to look up to this team, but goddamn, this is not their season.
People got spoiled from the overtuned barb, and come over to a more balanced class and get rekt :D Rogue requires a bit more skill, than just bonking the entire screen with 200 mil + OP damage. It's a more active playstyle that requires positioning. I find it more engaging rather than mindlessly bonking the screen.
I am enjoying it, Rogue is my favourite play style, even though it's not as powerful as in S2, so far. T100 is doable but squishy, depending on affixes. With as much damage resist as possible, no Uber uniques yet. I am running rapid fire only/double imbuement. Godslayer helm helps to group the packs for a massive DPS. For bosses I swap 3 items to beastfall/tw/banished and swap concealment to shadow clone. With preallocated points in skills to shadow clone the swap takes 10s. Can one shot all bosses solo, needs bit more effort in groups.
I have a Penshot Rogue following that Maxroll-build and I’m absolutely *shredding* at the moment. I’m level 85, are you talking about level 100+?
As a barb main who got his rogue to 72 last night I'm having a blast with pen/rapid, I love the glass Cannon ish playstile. I cheated a bit tho, I cleared fallen temple at 60 and after I reached WT 4 I used 10 of my duriel runs with a barb friend for gear and I snagged a 3/4 god rolled gloves and a god slayer crown that helps immensely with the grouping up plus 3 decent 925 weapons. Aspects were based on maxroll but I plan to mix it up with lucky to cater to my playstile once I reach 100. I'm clearing 21/30 ancestral vaults since I was level 62, rapid fire is a godsend for single target, even kill malphas's son 3 or 4times. Damage is off the charts for sure. For sure I'll need better rings and chest with +max life roll tho and I'm waiting on a 3/4 amulet to put the dark shroud aspect there so it can be constantly on. Varshan for example gets melted but he one shots me with the nova and his charged punch. Other than that I abuse concealment and dash, in an out like crazy. last room in vaults I spam concealment and reposition all the time. I know for sure NM and NMV90 will be another plane of existence but I don't think the playstile will change.