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DIABLO 4 S1 POST NERF BEST ROGUE LEVELING BUILDS D4 11 STARTER ROGUE BUILDS FOR LEVELING TO 50

Diablo 4 S1 Post Nerf Best Rogue Leveling Builds - D4 1.1 Starter Rogue Builds for Leveling to 50

7/21/2023 6:37:03 PM

With the patch 1.1 released, there have been massive nerfs to classes in Diablo 4. Rogue class is still considered as the most loving character is Season 1. In this article, we are going to show you 2 best Diablo 4 S1 Rogue builds for leveling after patch 1.1, including the skill tree, legendary aspects & malignant hearts. We help you progress efficiently from level 1 to 50 in Diablo 4 Season 1.

Best Diablo 4 Season 1 Starter Builds for Leveling

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What are the differences between Season 0 and Season 1?

The gameplay that you are seeing is with all of the brand new updates that we just got. So starting right off, siphoning strikes got a massive nerf, it requires luck hit chance basically, this passive is almost worthless. On top of that, they actually gave us some nice little buffs with Rogue. Aftermath actually got a buff, that means when we act better ultimate, more resource. On top of that, the Paragon actually got changed with the combat glyphs, doesn't really matter too much, but the Eldritch Bounty Node actually got increased from 6 to 9 seconds. And then on top of that, the specialization the preparations ultimate cooldown got increased from 4-5 which is a buff which means we get more cooldown reduction. Even though we got a cooldown nerf, the Rogue is still pretty good. In terms of doing monster levels that are higher, it usually be getting 15%, then it would be 20% and 25%, when the monsters were 3 levels higher, 25% bonus. If you go to 10 levels which used to be just 1 level higher than you, you would get 15% bonus at 10 levels. So with Eldritch Bounty, this is going to be massive for the brand new Malignant Hearts.

Here’s the complete overview of Season 1 Rogue starter builds after patch 1.1.

Diablo 4 S1 Post Nerf Best Rogue Leveling Builds (Lvl 1 to 50) - D4 1.1 Starter Rogue Builds for Leveling

Rogue is probably going to shape out to be one of the better classes in the season, they still retained a crazy amount of their strength even with a lot of the nerfs. For most people, Rogue is probably going to be the best leveling build. So we are going to go over with you the best way that you just want to spend your skill points to get up to at level 50, also have a pretty easy way to reference all these skill points. Now let’s go through these D4 Season 1 best Rogue leveling builds post nerf!

1. D4 S1 Penetrating Shot Ranged Rogue Build After Patch 1.1

This is the best ranged leveling option. There are other options out there, but this ranged speed leveling Rogue build is very straight forward, deals high damage, and has great survivability.

Best Skills for Rogue Build in Diablo 4 Season 1

The build is centered around barrage, if you look at all 3 of the ranged core skill options, barrage is the most consistent and widely applicable core skill option while leveling. Rapid fire has a really tight spread and shines much later into the end game, but while you're leveling, the tight spread of Rapid Fire is really annoying while leveling because it makes clearing AOE situations much harder. Penetrating shot requires a lot of aspects to actually become relevant, but barrage out of the 3 requires the least aspects recently got a tiny buff and it's a nice Middle Ground between having boss damage and AOE damage.

For skills with this build, we're going to be using the basic skill puncture for combo point generation, barrage for our primary core skill damage option, poison trap for some crowd control and crit chance from the trap mastery passive. Dash and shadow step for some movement to navigate through dungeons quickly and finally shadow imbuement for some extra clearing power inside of dungeons.

Aspects for D4 Ranged Rogue Starter Build Post Nerf

Since this is a leveling build, you definitely don't need to worry about best in slot aspects. But there are a few aspects that with this build are really going to be nice to have. So you should consider clearing those dungeons as soon as possible to get the aspects into your codex.

Rapid Aspect: This aspect is really nice to have because we are using combo points with this build. So having extra attack speed on our basic skill lets us use puncture more often and makes combo point generation much easier.
Aspect of the Expectant: This one isn't needed very early on as this build is already strong without it. But since we are using combo points, you're always going to be using three basic attacks before using a barrage. So this aspect is a no-brainer huge damage increase.
Aspect of Branching Volleys: This is another nice to have as it gives barrage, some stronger AOE clearing power.

Gears for D4 Ranged Rogue Build After Patch 1.1

While you're leveling from 1 to 50, you're not going to have optimal gear because most of your gear has limited stat lines, but it is important to know what stat lines you should keep an eye out for on all of your gear.

Helmet: Dexterity, shadow imbuement
Chest & Pants: damage reduction
Gloves: Ranks of barrage, attack speed, crit chance
Boots: Move speed, dexterity, energy CDR
Crossbow, Sword: Core skill, dex, vuln, crit dam
Rings: Crit chance, crit damage, vuln, max life
Amulet: Move speed, CDR – offensives/defensives

D4 S1 Ranged Rogue Build Gameplay - How to Play Penetrating Shot Ranged Rogue

You'll start combat by using puncture 3 times, this gives you maximum combo points. Then if you have a large pack of enemies, you'll activate shadow imbuement and then use barrage. When shadow imbuenent is off cooldown, you're still going to do the same rotation. You use puncture three times, barrage and repeat. Combo points is very nice because it enhances the damage of your core skill and it's going to make up for the fact that while you're leveling from 1 to 50, you're not going to have a paragon board optimized gear or any of the fancy things that were awarded in the end game. For the other abilities, you'll use poison trap while kiting enemies to bait them into it to CC them or if you're playing aggressively, you can shadow step into a pack and then instantly drop poison trap as you're engaging them. Speaking of shadow step, this is your unstoppable skill. It can be used to quickly navigate through dungeons and it's also very nice to have for when you get stuck in crowd control. Finally, dash is a great option for dungeon navigating and speeding up your clear time as you're leveling. While going from 1 to 50 if you're gearing your character correctly, you don't need double imbuements. But later on when progressing into World Tier 3 and 4, dropping dash for cold imbuement.

2. D4 S1 Starter Twisting Blades Rogue Build After Patch 1.1

What build will we take into the new season to power level and grind our way efficiently to World Tier 4? It's Twisting Blades! Twisting Blades is not only good, it's absolutely King at everything, single target, mod clear, mobility, damage avoidance, CC. It's fantastic, every meta build for Rogue is also hilariously really good, the balance is great for this class. Twisting Blades on the other hand is brilliant from the start.

The goal of this is to just absolutely blast the level 50. We’ll be going over absolutely everything that you need to know to be able to blast such as some of the Malignant Hearts, the legendaries that you want to be looking out for.

Basic Skills

Go puncture for the vulnerable application and we're going to play with this pretty much the entire time. Puncture guaranteed vulnerable, decent energy gen whenever we hit crowd controlled enemies which we do fairly often because puncture can apply slow.

Core Skills

When it comes to our core skill, playing twisting blades, twisting blades is still the absolute best core skill for Rogue, it is the highest damaging core skill, you get the blade dancers aspect very early on, it just scales very well, you'll literally be one-shoting things pretty much the whole time while leveling. And you also get the cooldown reduction even though it did get nerfed, having any amount of cooldown reduction is very good early on while leveling because it's just going to massively speed up the process. So put the points into there and then get the enhanced twisting blades, so the return value is higher. Feel free to use a different core skill if you want.

Agility Skills

Then we're going to unlock dash and unlock shadow step. Dash is just fantastic mobility, 1 charges of this. The primary goal of this build is to get to 50 or end game as fast as humanly possible, so you can unlock the capstone. Around 40 to 50 is more appropriate for realistically how long the leveling build should last. And then when you want to transition into an end game build is around when you unlock World Tier 3. So for this build, you're just going to be in World Tier 1 the whole time just like annihilating everything. So movement and mobility is the most important thing for you. So dash and shadow step are absolute no-brainers. Dash - crazy mobility, shadow step - movement speed, unstoppable and it later even gives you some crit chance and stuff. Now that we actually have cooldowns, we're going to go into the cooldown reduction through twisting blades, then we're just going to fully level up twisting blade. So it does more damage.

Subterfuge Skills

Pick the dark shroud for the movement speed, this is one of the skills you can actually end up swapping. But because we are prioritizing speed, we're going for dark shroud literally just for the movement speed, maxed out this could be 20% movement speed just to start off with, and you're very slow starting out. So getting the 20% baseline is fantastic for you.

Imbuement Skills

We're just going to slam a point to weapon mastery, just do a bit of extra damage and then we're going to unlock shadow imbuement, which is the literal best Rogue skill. The amount of AOE that shadow imbuement gives you is going to massively speed up the leveling process. The benefit of shadow imbuement is because you're constantly killing enemies with shadow damage, you can pick up consuming shadows to give you a massive 30 energy per kill. Consuming shadows is going to massively speed up the process while leveling. Then we're going to max out weapon mastery for more damage and then max out exploit for more damage.

Ultimate Skills

Then go further into movement speed, you shouldn't need too much damage or more survivability at this point, we get adrenaline rush and haste.

Legendary Aspects for Twisting Blades Rogue S1 Build