Welcome to the Rapid Fire Rogue Guide. This build is a great all-rounder suitable for any situation, with variations available for high-end content where the skill's massive single target damage really gets to shine.
Rapid Fire is an attack skill that unleashes a hail of arrows in a straight line sequentially. This naturally produces high damage output against bosses but makes dealing with packs of enemies difficult.
A new unique ring for S4, the Scoundrel's Kiss, alters this skill a bit, giving it some much needed area of effect explosion on impact based on where your mouse cursor is set. Rapid Fire truly becomes an all-rounder with the new unique ring.
This setup is about optimizing your damage output at a safe distance so we take Caltrops for more damage and to stay distant, Cold Imbuement for insane multipliers and to crowd control, as well as Combo Point Passive to buff the arrows output and fire additional arrows each cast.
If playing like a ranged sniper and staying out of danger with good positioning sounds good to you, then this is definitely the build you should play! Let's jump in and see what Rapid Fire Rogue is all about!
This build guide assumesyou have a Level 50+ Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with ourBarrage Leveling Guide or Penetrating Shot Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Rogue playstyle, check out all of our Rogue Guides.
DifficultyAverage
SpeedfarmingStrong
PitExcellent
BossingExcellent
DefenseAverage
Season 4 - Loot Reborn
In Season 4, the Season Theme revolves around helping out the Iron Wolves. Compared to past themes, this one does not offer any borrowed power as the entire game has been redesigned with new itemization and crafting options, increasing player power substantially across the board. Instead, you can gather reputation similar to the Vampire Bounty Board from Season 2 to unlock rewards that supercharge your leveling journey to 100 with extra items, crafting materials and eventually even a Resplendent Spark to craft an uber unique.
We recommend to follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 4 guide for more information.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
- Heartseeker is our Basic Skill of choice for building combo points and Precision stacks quickly at a safe distance.
- Rapid Fire is your main ability. This Core Skill a stream of arrows in a straight line.
- Dash gives you incredible mobility to fly across the battlefield and an easy way to get out of tough situations.
- Caltrops makes it easier to stay at a distance while providing some nice damage buffs and chill/freeze.
- Cold Imbuement is a buff you use for Rapid Fire. It converts your damage to Cold and Chills the monsters. With enough hits, you can Freeze the monsters, increasing your damage substantially combined with Frigid Finesse while also increasing your survivability!
- Shadow Step fills the last slot. This is used as a "get out of jail free" skill for when you're in a tough situation and need some breathing room or for extra mobility.
Passives
- Precision is the Key Passive of choice, granting you a guaranteed critical strike upon consuming max precision stacks that gets exponentially stronger the more critical strike damage you have on your gear and paragon.
Alternatives
Forceful Arrowis also a great basic attack to use for its knockback effect. Puncture is always a strong option as well if you prefer to play a bit closer.
Gameplay
You play like a long-range Sniper. The general idea is to use whatever is at your disposal to keep distance while keeping up all of your buffs from various skills and passives. Heartseeker does a great job at stacking combo points easily from long distance and is the foundation of which this playstyle is built off of.
- Use Caltrops to keep distance and apply chill and freeze.
- Heartseeker isn't used for DPS, but for its utility to build Combo Points.
- Build 3 Combo Points, activate Cold Imbuement, then fire Rapid Fire.
- Use Dash to get around the battlefield for better positioning with Rapid Fire and to generally travel around the world and through dungeons quickly. Beware that Dash and Shadow Step can be Imbued, so avoid wasting charges on it.
- Use Shadow Step to get out of tough situations and get around the battlefield more efficiently.
Rogue Specialization - Combo Points
Rogues choose one out of three special passives that enhance their playstyle. Rapid Fire can be played with any of the Specializations Though Combo Points fits the style of play we're going for here while proving the most safety and burst damage output. In this guide, we're going to focus on Combo Points.
Building up Combo Points with your Basic Skill gives you 3 additional arrows that also hit harder. This also works well with Cold Imbuement as more arrows per shot leads to more ricochets, thus more Freeze and more damage.
Later on you unlock further synergies that make this Combo Point playstyle even more powerful such as Aspect of the Expectant. Rapid Aspect and attack speed rolls work well in building Combo Points quicker for faster burst, however it can make it difficult to manage your Energy.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Rogue Specialization Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
As with all Combo Point builds, resource management is rather easy as you're naturally regenerating Energy when you're not using Rapid Fire. Combat and Energy cost reduction on gear all aid in resource management to where you don't have to think about it.
As for cooldown, you only have to keep up with Cold Imbuement, and this is easy to do with Cold Imbuement tempers on jewelry. Due to the heavy investments in imbue stats, it is critical that you're always using an Imbue before firing Rapid Fire, otherwise your damage and utility falls off a bit.
Mobility
Feel free to use Dash whenever necessary to go faster. Usually it's best to use the first after a pack to reach the next one. When you see elites or mob types that have lots of crowd controls, it's best to keep one charge of Dash to reposition safely.
Paragon Board
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15!
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression
Glyphs
We need to level up our Glyphs to increase their power and activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. Glyphs have a radius of 3 by default, this increases to 4 at Glyph level 15. Complete Nightmare Dungeons to obtain Glyph experience.
Note that there are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the last two steps in the Paragon progression above for details. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Exploit
- Combat
- Control
- Canny
- Ranger
- Efficacy
Level 21
- Combat
- Control
- Ranger
- Canny
- Exploit
- Efficacy
Alternative Glyphs
After finishing your main setup, you can also level up the following that can be useful:
- Infusion
- Devious
- Frostfeeder
There are a total of 225 Paragon Points. Starting with level 50 you gain 4 Paragon Points per level, including 20 fromRenown, and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Also check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Endgame Gear & Skill Progression
When you start diving into the Endgame, you don't have all the tools available to achieve the final build versions. Let us guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. While we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.
- Unlock the following Aspects in your Codex of Power:
- Rapid Aspect in Buried Halls (Dry Stepps)
- Eluding Aspect in Caldera (Fractured Peaks)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Edgemaster’s in Oldstones (Scosglen)
- Might in Dark Ravine (Dry Steppes)
- Cheat's in Luban's Rest (Scosglen)
- Aspect of the Expectant in Underroot (Scosglen)
- Corruption in Renegade's Retreat (Kehjistan)
- Retribution in Abandoned Mineworks (Kehjistan)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects by farming in Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, through the Tree of Whispers, or gambling with Obols:
- Aspect of Elements
- Aspect of Repeating
- Umbrous Aspect
- Concussive Strikes
- Moonrise
- Undying
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
- Scoundrel's Kiss
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Uber Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Harlequin Crest
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Steps
Starter
Leveling
to 100
Endgame
& the Pit
Speedfarming
Bossing
Once you have completed the leveling process to 50, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup, you can farm the Legendary Aspects and Unique items you need for the next progression point.
Gear
- Unlock, Edgemaster’s Aspect, Rapid Aspect and Aspect of the Expectant in the Codex of Power.
- Continue using Dark Shroud on skill bar until you find Umbrous. Once acquired, use Smoke Grenade and drop Dark Shroud as shown in the original skills section of the guide.
- Use Repeating until you get the Scoundrel's Kiss later.
Skills
- We take Shadow Imbuement.
- Early game, we struggle with vulnerable procs until the exploit glyph secondary effect comes online. We also don't have any tempers yet to have 100% uptime on Cold Imbuement. Shadow Imbuement solves both of these issues early on.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects and Temper mods, allowing you to pilot a much stronger version of this build. Additional Legendary Aspects are used to fill slots that may be replaced with Unique items later on.
Gear
- Work on getting the tempers mentioned to further progress the build.
- Work on acquiring Umbrous Aspect as much as possible by gambling Chest or Pants with Obols. A good roll gives you nice uptime on Dark Shroud shadows which essentially gives you a free skill.
- Acquire Undying to increase our sustain dramatically and help with survivability.
- Acquire Scoundrels Kiss unique to make Rapid Fire stronger.
- Look for better rolls from Aspects that you may have used in the Codex.
Skills
- Here we closely follow the original skill tree.
In this setup, you have access to all Unique items, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and Masterworking. This allows you to pilot this build at its peak efficiency. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to implement them.
Gear
- Here we are in the realm of min-maxing what we already have. Look for Greater Affixes for key stats to continue to scale your damage.
- Make sure to reach at least 9230 Armor to be capped against all enemies in the game and boost your Resistances to 70%. The planner is designed to help you reach cap easily. There's a little bit of headroom in case you get lowballed on some rolls.
Uber Uniques
The Harlequin Crest is a really good uber unique to obtain for this build, adding crucial ranks to Dark Shroud for defense, better chill for Cold Imbuement and of course more Rapid Fire damage.
Skills
No changes to Skills
The Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers. Rogues are by default a fast class, but with a few tweaks, can be even more so for these activities.
Gear
- Gear does not change from the Endgame and Pit setup.
- If you have the Harlequin Crest, slot that over the legendary helm.
Skills
- No changes to skills.
Here we talk This setup is intended to defeat the Tormented Bosses (lvl 200 version) and Uber Lilith and makes some adjustments based around these high-end encounters. For the One shot version with gear swaps, refer to our Specialized guide! https://maxroll.gg/d4/build-guides/one-shot-rogue-guide
Gear
- Gear does not change.
- If you have the Harlequin Crest, slot that over the legendary helm.
Skills
- We drop Shadow Step and pick up Shadow Imbuement for the multiplicative damage.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to be successful in this game mode:
- You can replace Dexterity and Dodge with Maximum Life on gear.
- Focus on acquiring Doombringer and include it instead of an offensive aspect.
- Take more defensive minded aspects in place of utility aspects on Chest and Pants.
Build Scaling, FAQ & Mechanics
The answer to many questions can be found in the following sections.
Damage
Defense
- Combo Points: With the Combo Point Specialization you can use Heartseeker up to 3 times to boost your next Rapid Fire. This is further enhanced by Aspect of the Expectant. You use the Rapid Aspect to build Combo Points faster and reduce downtime between your nukes. Building Combo Points allows you to keep your Energy high for the Edgemaster’s. Use and time Aspect of Elements for big burst damage, especially vs elites and bosses.
- Vulnerable: While not a major factor in this build, it's a good idea to have some sources of it as it is a multiplier. Exploit Glyph makes for easy procing for Vulnerable.
- Crowd Controls: Cold Imbuement provides you with a way to Chill enemies, which enables multipliers such as Frigid Finesse
- Critical Strike Damage: The key passive Precision scales well with Critical Strike Damage. Get as much of this stat on gear and paragon.
- Don't get hit: Snipe enemies from a distance and use Evade to stay out of danger.
- Defensive Legendaries: Aspect of Might and Cheat's Aspect are both great defensive aspects as you're always attacking and have access to a Crowd Control. Aspect of Disobedience is good too after you pick up a bit of attack speed. Umbrous Aspect is excellent as it gives you free Dark Shroud shadows just for attacking. The best defense however is not to get hit.
- Movement Speed: One of the most important stats you can get for defense. The faster you are, the easier it is to dodge and not get hit. Stack as much of this as you can with Haste, Subverting Dark Shroud, and movement speed stats on boots and amulet.
- Stack Defense on Chest and Pants: These 2 gear slots provide the most protection for your character, stats that are difficult to get elsewhere. If you feel squishy, it is probably because you're lacking defensive stats on these slots.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Stat Priorities & Gear Options
To enable your build to perform optimally, you need to reach certain Stat "Breakpoints". Some examples are reaching 100% to Critically Strike, or 20 Resource per second. Since there are many values of these stats on different pieces of gear, read the checklist below and refer to the recommended Tempered Affixes and Masterwork Crits ↑. Desirable Greater Affixes will always be the top three recommended Affixes.
Recommended Stat Thresholds
- 4+ total Cold Imbuement Count
- 15+ total Rapid Fire Ranks
- 8+ total Dark Shroud Ranks
- 1000+ Dexterity
- 30%+ Attack Speed Bonus
- 1500%+ Critical Strike Damage
- Armor Capped 9,230
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 30,000+ Life
- 30%+ Dodge Chance
- 150%+ Movement Speed
- 15%+ Chance to Freeze/Stun/Daze/Slow
- Helm: Might
- Direct swap for Harlequin Crest if you find one.
- Lucky Hit ↑
- Dexterity ↑
- Maximum Life
- Armor
- ⚒️ Dodge Chance
- ⚒️ Chance to Freeze/Stun/Daze/Slow
- Chest Armor: Umbrous
- Dark Shroud Ranks ↑
- All Resistance
- Maximum Life
- Armor
- ⚒️ Armor %
- ⚒️ Chance to Freeze/Stun/Daze/Slow
- Gloves: Concussive Strikes
- Ranks to Rapid Fire ↑
- Critical Strike Damage
- Attack Speed
- Dexterity
- ⚒️ Critical Strike Damage
- ⚒️ Chance to Freeze/Stun/Daze/Slow
- Pants: Undying
- All Resistance ↑
- Maximum Life
- Armor ↑
- Dodge
- ⚒️ Dodge Chance
- ⚒️ Chance to Freeze/Stun/Daze/Slow
- Boots: Frostbitten
- Movement Speed ↑
- Dodge Chance ↑
- Dexterity
- All Resistance
- ⚒️ Movement Speed
- ⚒️ Chance to Freeze/Stun/Daze/Slow
- Amulet: Edgemaster'sElements
- 1. Ranks to Frigid Finesse ↑
- 2. Ranks to Weapon Mastery↑
- 3. Attack Speed
- 4. % Dexterity
- ⚒️ Critical Strike Damage
- ⚒️ +2 Cold Imbuement Count
- Ring: Elements & Repeating (if you don't have Scoundrels Kiss).
- Critical Strike Damage ↑
- Attack Speed
- Chance to make enemies Vulnerable (one ring)
- Lucky Hit Chance
- ⚒️ Critical Strike Damage
- ⚒️ +2 Cold Imbuement Count
- Ring: Scoundrel's Kiss Unique
- Critical Strike Chance
- Ranks to Rapid Fire ↑
- Imbuement Cooldown Reduction
- Attack Speed After Dodge
- Bow: Retribution
- Critical Strike Damage ↑
- Dexterity ↑
- Maximum Life
- Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️ Rapid Fire Chance to Cast Twice
- ⚒️ Critical Strike Damage
- Main Hand: Expectant
- Critical Strike Damage ↑
- Dexterity ↑
- Maximum Life
- Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️ Rapid Fire Chance to Cast Twice
- ⚒️ Critical Strike Damage
- Off-Hand: Rapid
- Critical Strike Damage ↑
- Dexterity ↑
- Maximum Life
- Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️ Rapid Fire Chance to Cast Twice
- ⚒️ Critical Strike Damage
Fill your item's sockets with the following:
- Royal Emerald into Weapons for extra damage.
- Royal Ruby into Armor for more survivability.
- Royal Diamond or Royal Skull depending on what you need capped.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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.
Mechanics
Video Guide
Summary
The Rapid Fire Rogue is a superb allrounder with a toolkit that prepares you for all situations. It's a fun and mobile farming build that with a few tweaks can transform into a DPS powerhouse to take on the biggest challenges the game has to offer. I hope you enjoy a great build.
- Build 3 Combo Points with Heartseeker, then finish with Rapid Fire.
- Keep ranged while applying all buffs and debuffs for maximum burst damage and safety.
- Use Smoke Grenade to help deal with tough elites by disabling them and adding an additional multiplier.
- Use Cold Imbuement for extra damage and utility.
- Use Agility Skills cleverly to gain advantages in combat, rather it's positioning for keeping distant.
Credits
Written by DiEoxidE
Reviewed by wudijo
