Diablo 4 Imbuement Rogue Rapid Fire Build Guide (2024)

This Imbuement build for the Rogue in Diablo 4 focuses on a post-campaign Endgame Rapid Fire build that functions without too many Aspects, but becomes much more potent with the completed build!

This guide is up-to-date for Season 3 and Patch 1.3.0.
Check our Diablo 4 Builds Catalog of uniquely crafted builds for each class.

The Rogue has a lot of popular melee builds, but not so many ranged builds. This build is setup around Rapid Fire and Rain of Arrows using Imbuements for devastating AoE.

This build guide assumes you’re at least level 50 and have completed enough of your Renown to have gained the 10 additional Skill Points available.

If you want a great leveling build to reach this point with, try our Rogue Leveling Build. At the end of this guide you will find instructions on what and when to pick up if you want to play this Imbuement Rogue Rapid Fire Build while leveling a character.

Build Overview

This ranged build for the Rogue has a focus on Imbuements, using all three to make use of their Aspects that combine them all together for even more potency. We’ll also be using Rapid Fire to trigger multiple Lucky Hit effects that cause additional AoE, while Rain of Arrows remains a means to quickly apply the Imbuements through the Word of Hakan Unique Amulet later on.

Defensively, We’ll be using Concealment as our way to get out of sticky situations. It gives us Unstoppable, Stealth, and Movement Speed all at once. We’ll additionally be upgrading it so we can trigger Vulnerable more reliably as well.

This means we’ll be a bit more vulnerable than the typical Rogue that would take Shadow Step instead. You can opt to pick up Shadow Step to have it, as ranged builds can still use it just fine.

Skill and Passive Breakdown

In this section, we’ll be talking about each skill we use. This is the whys and hows of how the build works, and then we’ll cover the skill point distribution.

Skills

These are the main skills for the build. We’ll explain what purpose each serves and how they fit the build.

Rapid Fire

Rapid Fire is the majority of our damage and our primary Imbue target. We’ll be upgrading it to Improved Rapid Fire so it can be used consistently on Vulnerable targets, nearly refunding its own cost. It’ll also be supported the Aspect of Repeating, which allows it to ricochet to additional targets.

Concealment

Concealment does a fair bit for the build, being our escape tool, but also an additional source of Vulnerable outside of our Imbuements thanks to Subverting Concealment. It will also grant us a boost of instant Energy when we use it as well, which just makes it a great tool with a lot to offer.

Shadow Imbuement

Shadow Imbuement will help do a lot of the lifting for AoE for the build, as the explosions will happen often. Additionally, these explosion will grant us Vulnerable to anything caught in them that doesn’t get taken out by them, thanks to Blended Shadow Imbuement.

Poison Imbuement

Poison Imbuement really boosts our single target damage, doubling the damage of our skill, but applying it as poison. If we Critically strike, this poison will almost triple our base damage, thanks to Blended Poison Imbuement.

Cold Imbuement

Cold Imbuement helps to provide some much-needed Crowd Control in addition to additional damage and Vulnerable appliation. With Rapid Fire being a multi-hit attack, it can quickly stack Chill up to the point it Freezes. With Blended Cold Imbuement and the Frigid Finesse passive, that’s a sizeable chunk of damage we can add.

Rain of Arrows

Rain of Arrows will be able to apply out Imbuements to large groups all at once. Once we get Word of Hakan, this gets even better by applying all three at once with each cast.

Before we get Word of Hakan, we’ll want to use Shadow Clone Instead, for the increased damage. We’ll also use the Aspect of Imitated Imbuement alongside this until we get the unique amulet, Word of Hakan.

Passives

Here we’re only going to talk about the main passives we absolutely want as well as our Key passive. There are unfortunately a couple we will need to take to get access to these though.

Key Passive – Precision

With Rapid Fire being a multi-hit attack, we’ll be able to very quickly stack Precision up without too heavy of an investment into Critical Strike Chance. Once we’re consistently landing Critical Strikes, we’ll instead get more frequent Critical Strike Damage boosts.

Sturdy

Sturdy offers us Damage Reduction vs Close Enemies, which we’ll definitely need with the reduced mobility options of the build. While it’s limited to Close range targets, those are the ones that will often be harder for us to deal with anyways.

This also lets us spend an excess point to grab Siphoning Stikes, which can further help our close-range combat.

Weapon Mastery

Since we’re an entirely ranged build, Weapon mastery will either grant us Damage vs Vulnerable for using a Bow, or increased Critical Strike Damage with a Crossbow. Since Vulnerable isn’t the most consistent with ranged builds, well want to use a Crossbow where we can, as it’ll scale better for us.

Agile

With this build cycling cooldown down, this actually makes Agile worth using. While it won’t have quite 100% uptime, it’ll get pretty close in the late game giving an almost constant boost to your dodge chance.

Mending Obscurity

We use Concealment for multiple reasons in the build, and this is one of them. This gives us a huge chunk of Life recovery, just for going into Stealth.

Exploit

This is free damage for when our enemies are Healthy or Injured. While it’s not an always active bonus, the bonus to healthy Targets helps our initial burst, which can help take out most weak enemies.

Malice

Much like Exploit, this is free damage against Vulnerable targets. While Vulnerable isn’t super consistent we’ll have a number of ways to get it, so we’ll have it up more often than not.

Precision Imbuement

Precision Imbuement gets more value here than a standard build would get since we’ll have 6 attacks before we’re out of Imbuements, with the possibility of more thanks to the Aspect of Bursting Venoms.

Deadly Venom

Since we deal Poison Damage at all, this is a great pickup. Alongside the Aspect of Bursting Venoms, this can help provide a fairly consistent and useful damage increase in drawn-out encounters

Alchemical Advantage

We’ll want plenty of Attack Speed, and this gives us some just for poisoning targets. Once we get the Word of Hakan and are able to use Rain of Arrows frequently, we’ll be able to apply this to larger packs all at once and immediately have the max bonus.

Frigid Finesse

With Cold Imbuement, we’re able to make good use of this for a bit of extra damage during and after Cold Imbuement. Thanks to the Aspect of Noxious Ice, this will also extend through Poison Imbuement as well.

Innervation

Innervation is one of the additional ways we’ll use to help allow Rapid Fire to sustain its own Energy cost. This gives us a chance with every hit to recover a portion of energy.

Skill Point Distribution: Where to Assign Your Skill Points

This is an easy-to-reference table for where we’ll be placing all of our Skill points. These are listed in the order they appear on the skill tree.

Icon	Skill Name	Skill Tree	Points
	Puncture*	Basic	1
	Enhanced Puncture*	Basic	1
	Fundamental Puncture*	Basic	1
	Rapid Fire	Core	5
	Enhanced Rapid Fire	Core	1
	Improved Rapid Fire	Core	1
	Sturdy	Core	1
	Siphoning Strikes	Core	1
	Weapon Mastery	Agility	3
	Concealment	Subterfuge	1
	Enhanced Concealment	Subterfuge	1
	Subverting Concealment	Subterfuge	1
	Agile	Subterfuge	3
	Mending Obscurity	Subterfuge	3
	Exploit	Subterfuge	3
	Malice	Subterfuge	3
	Shadow Imbuement	Imbuement	1
	Enhanced Shadow Imbuement	Imbuement	1
	Blended Shadow Imbuement	Imbuement	1
	Poison Imbuement	Imbuement	1
	Enhanced Poison Imbuement	Imbuement	1
	Blended Poison Imbuement	Imbuement	1
	Cold Imbuement	Imbuement	1
	Enhanced Cold Imbuement	Imbuement	1
	Mixed Cold Imbuement	Imbuement	1
	Precision Imbuement	Imbuement	3
	Deadly Venom	Imbuement	3
	Alchemical Advantage	Imbuement	3
	Frigid Finesse	Imbuement	3
	Rain of Arrows	Ultimate	1
	Prime Rain of Arrows	Ultimate	1
	Supreme Rain of Arrows	Ultimate	1
	Innervation	Ultimate	3
	Precision	Key Passive	1

Gearing and Stats

In this section, we’ll cover all the things you’d want to keep an eye out for to enhance the final build. This includes our Recommended Weapons, Specialization, Aspects, and of course, Uniques.

Recommended Weapons

We’ll ideally use a Crossbow as our main weapon, so that we gain the bonus to Critical Strike Damage. Using a Bow isn’t terrible, but with an inconsistent Vulnerable application, it won’t provide a good enough bonus long-term.

Our Melee weapons will just be used as extra stats and Aspect holders. So Ideally, you find helpful bonuses to stats that provide general damage. Once you get a decent Ancestral melee weapon with good stats, it’ll be unlikely to ever have to replace it, as its Item Power doesn’t matter at all unless you find yourself still needing to use Puncture.

Ideal Stats

The table below details the ideal stats for our gear, be on the lookout for gear that matches at least three of the four rolls below.

Due to the width of the table, we highly recommend mobile users rotate their devices to view it properly.

Recommended Gems

This build uses Emeralds in our Weapons, Topaz in our Armor, and Diamonds in our Jewelry.

We use Emeralds in our Weapons as we’ll be applying Vulnerable frequently. This allows Vulnerable to also boost our Critical Strike Damage.

We use Topaz in our Armor as our choice of Unstoppable has a rather long cooldown. This makes it so if we’re getting chain-stunned, we’ll actually be able to take hits fairly well.

We use Diamonds in our Jewelry as with Resistances being flat bonuses now, they’re much more valuable for reducing damage. These can be any resistance gem, and changed out to fit the content you’re doing.

Vampiric Powers

During the Season of Blood, we’ll have access to Vampiric Powers, which allow us to slot up to five unique powers into our Sanguine Circle to increase the power of the build. We’ll include more than the maximum in the selection below to offer alternatives, but they will be listed in order of their relative strength.

Specialization

Regardless if you’re using Word of Hakan and Rain of Arrow, or Shadow Clone as you wait, This build uses Preparation as its specialization. Once things are set up well enough to use Rapid Fire by itself, this because a very important part of how we play.

The Preparation Specialization itself will lower the cooldown of our Ultimate, meaning we’ll get to use it more often. This means huge damage more consistently, and is very potent when we’re able to just constantly spend and regen our energy the way Rapid Fire can allow.

Aspects

We’ll cover the Aspects that are recommended for maximizing the potential of the build. We’ll also suggest which gear slot you should look to place them in.

Aspect of Repeating

The Aspect of Repeating is what allows Rapid Fire to hit multiple targets, we’ll need this to spread our Imbuements as well as additional Lucky Hit triggers.

We’ll be slotting the Aspect of Repeating in our Bow for the highest ricochet chance possible.

Aspect of Bursting Venoms

The Aspect of Bursting Venoms will help our otherwise low single target damage. If we get lucky, this can allow us to very rapidly stack Poison on a target and just keep chaining uses of Poison Imbuement.

We’ll place the Aspect of Bursting Venoms in our Gloves. We don’t need to boost its power in any way, as the chances don’t increase and the flat damage effect isn’t the part we’re after.

Icy Alchemist’s Aspect

This Aspect adds additional AoE based on Lucky Hit Chance that deals Cold damage in an area around chilled or frozen targets. This helps to boost the AoE that’s already part of Shadow Imbuement, helping to trigger it more reliably.

The Icy Alchemist’s Aspect will be placed on the first of our melee weapons. With it being a rare aspect and us not using our melee weapons, it’s a reasonably safe place to place it without the worry of replacing it.

We’ll drop this in favor of Aspect of Repeating once we get Word of Hakan, and Accelerating takes the Ranged Slot.

Toxic Alchemist’s Aspect

The Toxic Alchemist’s Aspect is much like the Icy Alchemist Aspect, this time creating explosions that deal Poisoning Damage instead of Cold. These explosions allow us to more reliably use Damage vs Poisoned.

The Toxic Alchemist’s Aspect will be placed on the second of our melee weapons. With it being a rare aspect and us not using our melee weapons, it’s a reasonably safe place to place it without the worry of replacing it.

Accelerating Aspect

The Accelerating Aspect takes our consistent Critical Strike Rate and Guaranteed Crits and turns them into additional Attack Speed. This gives us an overall boost of DPS, increasing our damage output.

The Accelerating Aspect will take our Gloves slot until we get Word of Hakan, when it’ll be moved to our Ranged Weapon.

Aspect of Corruption

Being focused entirely on Imbuements allows this Aspect to really shine, boosting the power of all of the Imbuements we use. While it will only apply to Vulnerable enemies, we’ll be able to

The Aspect of Corruption will be slotted in our Amulet until we get Word of Hakan, where we’ll move it to the Gloves.

Aspect of Noxious Ice

This Aspect allows us to extend the Chill of Cold Imbuement into Poison Imbuement, and gives us a more reliable chance to freeze. This also allows the Aspect to increase Poison Damage against Frozen enemies.

The Aspect of Noxious Ice can be placed in either our Helm or Boots. Whichever slot isn’t taken by this Aspect will be taken by the Aspect of Shared Misery.

Aspect of the Umbral

Between Chill, Freeze, and the occasional Knockdown, we have a fair bit of Crowd Control to trigger this. The Aspect of the Umbral is used to help Rapid Fire sustain its energy cost letting it be used as the main attack.

Being the only Resource Aspect we use, the Aspect of the Umbral will be slotted in one of our rings.

The Aspect of Shard Misery is just here to supplement the spread of our Chill and Freezes. This slows for better use of the Aspect of the Umbral as well as Icy Alchemist’s Aspect.

The Aspect of Shared Misery can be placed in either our Helm or Boots. Whichever slot isn’t taken by this Aspect will be taken by the Aspect of Noxius Ice. We’ll drop this when obtaining Flickerstep.

Umbrous Aspect

The Umbrous Aspect is great, as we’ll have a good bit of Lucky Hit Chanace and Attack Speed, which combined with Rapid Fire allows this to trigger often. While they’ll be un-upgraded, it’s a great defensive bonus for the build.

The Umbrous Aspect will be placed in our Chest slot. It’s one of the few defensive slots we have left.

Aspect of Disobedience

The Aspect of Disobedience is great as Armor provides damage reduction from all sources, and since we have Poison Imbument, we’ll be able to stack it up quickly..

We’ll place the Aspect of Disobedience in our Pants. Pants are our only remaining Defensive slot, so we place them here.

Unique Items

We’re only going to talk about the few that offer the strongest effects on the build. While there are others that help, these are the ones you really want to slot into your build if you get the chance. These will drop starting in Tier 3 content, but decent upgrades for the build once you get them.

Word of Hakan

The Word of Hakan is a Unique amulet that Imbues Rain of Arrows with all of our Imbuements at once. Unfortunately, Rain of Arrows has a very low Lucky Hit chance, which means it won’t just be a cascade of element explosions, but it does enable it very easily.

Flickerstep

Flickerstep is a unique pair of Boots that reduce the cooldown of our Ultimate if we evade through enemies. Paired with the Word of Hakan and Preparation, you’ll be able to fire off Rain of Arrows very regularly.

Cowl of the Nameless

Cowl of the Nameless is a decent Unique option for a Helmet. While you’d lose the Potential Life or Resistance you’ll get a few great things to make up for it. You’re guaranteed to get Cooldown Reduction and Ranks to All Imbuement Skills, which is normally exclusive to Amulets. You’ll also get the Unique Effect, which increases your Lucky Hit Chance.

Paragon Boards and Glyphs

These two endgame options are part of the Paragon System which is available starting at level 50.

Paragon Boards

Paragon Boards are a feature that becomes available at level 50. These boards allow us to spend the Paragon points we earn for leveling and Renown to strengthen our character. Each of these has a single Glyph Slot to place a glyph of our Choice.

Starter Board

As usual, our generic Starter Board has a lot of basic damage and defense bonuses.

We’ll push up the right side through Prime, and then up the left side through Skillful after getting the glyph. This gets us through getting the more important damage nodes. We’ll eventually come back and fill it out a little more when we get a Glyph for it.

No Witnesses

Being a build setup around preparation, No Witnesses is a great tool that increases the damage of our Ultimate and provides a long-duration damage buff after using it. This board also offers us a lot of great offensive bonuses like Critical Damage, Damage vs Healthy, and Attack Speed.

We’ll want to rotate this board so No Witnesses on the lower half of the board. Then we’ll path up the left side through Culler, make out way over to No Witnesses, then grab Ruin before continuing the initial path straight up to Knowledge. From there we’ll grab the Glyph and head out the right side. We’ll come back later for Recuperate and Training.

Eldritch Bounty

Eldritch Bounty grants us some additional Maximum Resistance and Damage to Cold, Poison, and Shadow after using respectively Imbuement Skills. It’s a nice bonus in addition to the reason we’re actually taking the board, which is to boost our Imbuements and Non-Physical Damage.

We’ll rotate this board so that the Legendary Node is closest to our start point. We’ll path down through Imbuer then head directly up and to the right, pathing through Eldritch Bounty, Ready Supply, and up to our Glyph Slot. From here we’ll head up through Potent and exit topside. We’ll come back later to get Restorative and Dosage as we have the points and Glyphs.

Exploit Weakness

Exploit Weakness is a great board, but we take it last as until we get decent gear our uptime on Vulnerable will be a bit low. It does however boost our damage in other ways beforehand that can still be worth getting. Damage vs Elites and Damage vs Injured Enemies are both great stats found here as well.

For this board, we’ll path up through Unassailable and straight up to Exploit Weakness. Then we’ll head up and to the right to grab Hunter Killer before making our way over to our Glyph. After getting the Glyph we’ll head up and take Artifice then back near to start of the board to grab Exploit and Cold Resilience.

Glyphs

Each of our Paragon Boards has a Glyph Slot, where we can socket one of our Glyphs. These Glyphs provide powerful bonuses that can be leveled up by completing Nightmare Dungeons to increase their power. Below are the Glyphs we recommend and what board to place them on.

Ranger

Ranger boosts the damage of our Marksman Skills for every 5 Dexterity in Range. With our Main skill being a Marksman Skill, this is exceptionally good. As an added bonus when we allocate 40 Dexterity, we get Close Damage Reduction while using a ranged weapon.

We’ll place Ranger on the Starter Board, as we can get 70 Dexterity with very little extra point investment compared to other boards. This gives a huge damage increase as well as easily filling out the bonus.

Infusion

Infusion boosts our Imbued Skill damage for every 5 Intelligence in range. With 25 Intelligence allocated, we’ll also reduce the cooldown of a random Imbuement when we activate a different one. Paired with Apsect of Bursting Venoms, we’ll be able to very quickly lower Imbuement cooldowns.

We’ll place Infusion in our No Witnesses board, as it has the most Intelligence in a comfortable range to grab for the bonuses. We’ll only want to hit 25 for the bonus initially, but we can easily add more later if desired.

Exploit

Exploit increases our damage toward Vulnerable targets for every 5 Strength in Range. With 25 Strength in Range, it applies Vulnerable for 3 seconds with our first hit against an enemy. This makes us less reliant on Cold Imbuement for Vulnerable outside of boss encounters.

We’ll place Exploit on the Eldritch Bounty board, as the Strength for the bonus is easily within range thanks to the Magic Nodes

Efficacy

We’ll mostly be using this Glyph for the base effect. With some tuning after we have all of our paragon points, we can easily enable the secondary effect which increases the potency of our Imbuements.

This will be slotted in our Exploit Weakness board, which with careful pathing and a couple of magic nodes for Intelligence make it fairly easy to activate the bonus here.

Leveling Order

If you want to play this build from level 1, the next segment of this build guide is for you. Below you will see the exact leveling order in which you should acquire your skills and passives to maximize damage and overall performance.

Levels	Icon	Skill	Purpose
2-3		Puncture	Upgrade to Fundamental Puncture for early Vulnerable application. Dropped later when Rapid Fire can sustain itself.
4-6		Rapid Fire	Upgrade to Improved Rapid Fire to allow for frequent use with Vulnerable from Puncture.
7-9		Sturdy	Free Close Damage Recution.
10-12		Weapon Mastery	Bonus Critical Strike Damage while using Crossbows.
13-15		Concealment	Enhance to Subverting Concealment for Guaranteed Vulnerable when exiting Stealth.
16-18		Exploit	Free damage vs Healthy and injured enemies.
19-21		Shadow Imbuement	Upgrade to Blended Shadow Imbuement for additional Vulnerable applications.
22-24		Poison Imbuement	Upgrade to Blended Poison Imbuement for stronger Synergy with Precision.
25-27		Shadow Clone	Upgrade to Supreme Shadow Clone for increased damage. Swapped to Rain of Arrows when we get Word of Hakan.
28-30		Cold Imbuement	Upgrade to Blended Cold Imbuement for increased damage.
31-33		Precision Imbuement	Critical Strike Chance for Imbued Skills.
34		Agile	Increased Dodge chance when we use a cooldown
35		Precision	Key Passive, guarantees more regular Crits, and more crit damage later.
35-39		Rapid Fire	Maxing out our Damage skill.
40-42		Malice	Increased Vulnerable Damage
43-45		Innervation	Helps Rapid Fire sustain its Energy Cost
46-48		Deadly Venom	Boost Poison Imbuement and the Toxic Alchemist and Bursting Venom Aspects
49-R2		Alchemical Advantage	Grants Attack Speed when we Poison. Requires Renown to max
R3-R5		Frigid Finesse	Increases damage to Chilled or Frozen Enemies.
R6-R8		Mending Obscurity	Burst of healing any time we use Concealment
R9-R10		Agile	Maxing out the dodge bonus

To learnhow to maximize your damage in Diablo 4, check out our dedicated guide. It breaks down all of the ways to scale your Damage, including getting the biggest numbers possible, and what factors play into achieving that.

This concludes our guide to the optimal Imbuement Rogue Build for Diablo 4’s Endgame. Check out moreDiablo 4 Buildshere on VULKK.com