Hello, ladies, gentlemen, and rogues of all ages! Librarian Husky here. This intriguing Rogue setup combines Andariel’s Visage poison procs with Barrage’s multi-hits and speed. Though it faced some challenges last season, it’s a build full of potential and worth exploring.

Improvements in the New Season

Thanks to numerous changes this season, especially in items, this build concept is now stronger than ever, potentially being the outright best build in the entire game, or at least the second best. Although things haven’t fully settled yet, it is undeniably the best Rogue Build this season by a significant margin. This is noteworthy, considering that Rogue is one of the most well-balanced classes with numerous builds that could be considered S-tier even among other classes, but this one truly stands out.

Key Changes in the New Season

This season, the significant changes include much easier access to large amounts of both Attack Speed and Lucky Hit Chance. This allows for an insanely high fire rate on Barrage, not only triggering numerous Andariel’s Visage procs but also consistently activating mixed poison immunity cooldown reduction on hit with poison skills. Even with the insane Attack Speed, you never run out of poison immunity procs, ensuring every Barrage is poisoned and buffed, even while spamming them.

Synergy with Passives and Umber Crux Dagger

The build benefits from passives that provide bonus Lucky Hit Chance and help trigger effects like Innovate, which grants energy on a lucky hit. This season’s addition of the Umber Crux Dagger, which creates a totem on subterfuge skills reflecting 20% of damage intake for 8 seconds, pairs perfectly with this build. This synergy with Barrage offers a new level of comfort and consistency, as it provides a reliable target for Ricochet, essential for maintaining energy recovery and survivability.

Survivability and Cooldown Management

Managing cooldowns and maintaining survivability are key aspects of this build, with a significant portion of survivability coming from the Second Wind Passive. This passive grants a substantial barrier based on a percentage of your maximum life for every 100 energy spent. With the Ember Crux dagger, particularly in endgame activities like Infernal Hordes, you can place the totem and use it as an almost infinite health bar, safely maintaining full energy and barrier even as enemies die around you.

Totem Management and Build Comfort

While it’s important to reposition the totem to deal damage to nearby enemies and adapt to new spawns, the fact that the totem can exist continuously within your setup without issues significantly increases the comfort level of this build. What was once a high-skill floor requirement has now become a version that is extremely comfortable to play. This build can clear tier eight Infernal Hordes comfortably, with my best kill time on the Fel Council being just 28 seconds—a blazing fast result. Even with minimal upgrades, I was still able to gather 533 Aether during that run.

Build Mastery and Power

While my build doesn’t have perfect masterworking—it’s quite good, but not flawless—I don’t have perfect Greater Aices or similar items. Despite this, the build is undeniably powerful in every scenario imaginable in the game. I must give credit to Ain from Maxr for clarifying how Attack Speed works in Diablo I, as many of us were previously confused and had the wrong impression. This understanding has unlocked the true potential of builds like this, allowing us to surpass the previously accepted limit of 100% bonus Attack Speed.

Skill Points and Specializations

Let’s dive into the skill points, specializations, and the legendaries and uniques that make this build shine. It’s worth mentioning that while Andariel’s Visage is almost a full requirement for this build, you can specifically create this item with your first salvaged Mythic unique, as you receive three respondent Sparks from guaranteed sources this season. Although I am using two other Mythic uniques in the optimal version of this build, neither is required to get started, and I will provide replacement options for these items.

Gear and Stats Optimization

When discussing gear, it’s important to note that this build can comfortably handle tier 7 content even without perfect items. We’ll dive into the stats you should prioritize for your gear, the tempering axes to hunt for, and the specific breakpoints you should aim for. Next, we’ll cover your Paragon Board Setup and offer some tips on how to play this build based on my experience.

Skill Point Allocation and Core Abilities

First, you’ll need to spend two points on basic skills. Before switching to this build, one of the required items will interact with a passive in our skill tree to give us nearly infinite energy as long as you’re hitting enemies, so basic skills won’t matter—just allocate two points to unlock the core node cluster. We’ll be grabbing only one rank of Barrage, then Enhanced Barrage, and Improved Barrage as well. Enhanced Barrage increases the Ricochet chance to 100% against vulnerable targets, while Improved Barrage makes every third cast make enemies vulnerable. With the high Attack Speed in this build, you can hit four to five Barrages per second, ensuring consistent vulnerable application.

Reason for Minimal Skill Investment

As many might ask, the reason we only put one rank in Barrage, despite it being our main skill, is due to the high Attack Speed and the synergy with other aspects of the build. The minimal investment allows you to maximize other essential skills and passives that enhance overall performance.

Core Mechanics and Skill Choices

The reason we focus on holding down and building Attack Speed is that the main damage of this build doesn’t come directly from Barrage itself but from the poison burst proc effect of Andariel’s Visage. The use of Barrage is crucial for applying vulnerability and triggering an immense number of lucky hit procs due to the sheer number of arrows fired, the high Ricochet rate, and the ability to pierce targets. Therefore, only one point is allocated to Barrage.

Passive and Utility Skills

We also invest three ranks in the passive Sturdy for extra damage reduction from close enemies, which provides significant protection under a barrier. Next, we focus on Shadow Step, along with its enhancement and the disciplined Shadow Step. This skill is a powerful movement tool that grants the Unstoppable buff to break out of crowd control. With enhancements, it also applies daze, vulnerability, and stun to the target, while reducing its cooldown by 3 seconds, making the effective cooldown only 6 seconds.

Importance of Shadow Step in the Build

Shadow Step is essential because it’s the only Cutthroat-tagged skill on our bar, used to trigger bonuses from Cutthroat skills every few seconds, both from our key passive and legendary nodes from the Paragon Board Setup. With a 6-second cooldown, it ensures consistent uptime on these crucial buffs, maintaining the build’s efficiency and damage output.

Damage Reduction and Survivability

We’re going to take three ranks of the Rugged passive for a significant damage reduction from damage-over-time effects. This is particularly important because poison damage, of all the damage types in the game, is one of the most threatening. This passive helps ensure that poison doesn’t break through our defenses as easily. The main challenge in this build is defense; however, once you reach the right set of stats, you become essentially unkillable, except for rare situations like desecrator one-shots in high-tier hordes. Even then, this passive helps significantly, although you may eventually outgrow its necessity.

Unstable Elixir Passive

Next, we take three ranks in the Unstable Elixir passive. This passive is incredibly useful, causing nearby enemies to get stunned when you use a potion and providing a damage buff for 10 seconds after drinking a potion. This adds both a defensive and offensive layer to your build, making it even more resilient and powerful in challenging encounters.

Potion Management and Damage Buffs

This strategy works well in nearly all content, but it’s especially effective in Infernal Hordes. Since each wave lasts 60 seconds and you get fully refilled on potions between waves, if you manage your timers properly, six potions can mean a constant damage buff for the entire wave.

Subterfuge Skills and Dark Shroud

Next, we move on to the Subterfuge cluster of skills, where we’ll invest heavily. We take five ranks in Dark Shroud, one of our main defensive tools in this build. It’s important to note that Dark Shroud does not go on your active skill bar. Instead, we trigger and activate these shadows from Dark Shroud through the Umbrous Legendary Aspect, which grants a Lucky Hit Chance with critical strikes to generate a Dark Shroud shadow. Our build hits so fast that, while crits aren’t the focus, we have enough crit chance to activate this effect frequently and reliably.

Dark Shroud Enhancements

We also take the enhancement for bonus movement speed and a chance to not consume the shadow. However, we skip the further buff because the 10% bonus crit chance, while useful if you don’t have very high crit chance, becomes unnecessary as you optimize your gear. The healing option is also redundant due to the life-on-hit mechanics that sustain us effectively throughout combat.

Optimizing Attack Speed and Damage Boosts

Given the Attack Speed from Mandari and other buffs, we allocate points efficiently and use them elsewhere for maximum benefit. We take Smoke Grenade and its enhancement, which now makes any enemy hit take 25% more damage for 5 seconds—an improvement from the previous version, where only dazed enemies were affected. This change also applies to bosses, making it much more effective.

Smoke Grenade Cooldown Reduction

We also enhance Smoke Grenade to reduce its cooldown by 5 seconds when hitting a boss or elite enemy. By obtaining the tempering AIC of Smoke Grenade cooldown reduction in a utility slot on one of our items, we can lower its cooldown to under 10 seconds. Since the damage boost lasts for 5 seconds and the cooldown reduction when hitting elites or bosses is also 5 seconds, this setup allows for consistent, permanent uptime of this effect on at least one enemy.

Poison Trap Skill Integration

We then pick up the Poison Trap skill, along with its enhancement and subversion. This skill provides a damage boost to any enemies within its range, offering another high Lucky Hit Chance ability. It stacks well with the poison damage boosts already present in our build, further enhancing overall damage output.

Exploiting Vulnerabilities and Applying Bonuses

Next, we grab three ranks of the Exploit passive for bonus damage to both healthy and injured enemies, as well as three ranks of Malice for bonus damage to vulnerable and knocked down enemies. This combination is particularly powerful because it applies both bonuses if both debuffs are in effect, and since we constantly apply vulnerability and now have knockdown due to Poison Trap, it’s highly effective. This also benefits against vulnerable bosses that are staggered, as the stagger counts as being affected by all types of crowd control.

Imbuement Cluster and Poison Synergy

Moving on to our Imbuement cluster, we focus on Poison Imbuement to turn Barrage into a poison damage machine gun. We enhance Poison Imbuement for bonus energy gain when casting this skill, which is crucial since we constantly cast it to refresh the buff, making the energy gain significant. Additionally, we grab Mixed Poison Imbuement for a Lucky Hit Chance with poison imbue skills, which helps lower the cooldown of Poison Imbuement itself. This synergy allows us to cast it frequently, effectively sustaining our buffs and activating multiple passives with each use.

Key Poison Passives for Build Optimization

We begin with three ranks of Deadly Venom to increase all poison damage dealt, followed by three ranks of Debilitating Toxins to reduce the damage of any poisoned enemy attacking you. Additionally, three ranks of Alchemical Advantage are crucial for bonus Attack Speed and bonus Lucky Hit Chance every time you deal poison damage, up to a cap. This passive is one of the three most important elements to make this build work effectively.

Importance of Alchemical Advantage and Gear Optimization

Getting bonus ranks of Alchemical Advantage on your amulet is essentially a must unless you decide to replace one of the legendary aspects, which we will discuss later. While it’s not strictly required to use the build, it is necessary to make this build superior to other Rogue Builds, establishing it as the best available. Ideally, you want to hit this passive on your amulet with every masterworking proc, as this is crucial for maximizing the build’s effectiveness. Even with two out of three ranks, as shown in the examples, it’s definitely sufficient to get the job done.

Understanding Attack Speed and Its Importance

The main reason this build is so effective is because Lucky Hit Chance is crucial, and the Attack Speed from this passive stacks separately from the Attack Speed on equipment. This allows us to hit the 100% Attack Speed maximum, which was previously believed to be the true maximum. However, there are actually two separate brackets where you can achieve 100% Attack Speed.

Attack Speed Brackets and Their Effects

The first bracket includes Attack Speed bonuses from equipment, Attack Speed elixirs, and similar sources. The second bracket includes bonuses from legendary aspects, passive boosts in the skill tree, and unique effects. Reaching 100% in either bracket will not increase your Attack Speed further, but if you continue to build more Attack Speed in the secondary bracket—through aspects, passives, and similar effects—you will continue to attack faster.

Maximizing Attack Speed Potential

The result is that you can achieve a 40% Attack Speed bonus, or 45% with perfect rolls, which stacks on top of the 100% from the primary bracket. This allows your character to attack quicker and quicker, making the most out of the Attack Speed mechanics and significantly enhancing your build’s overall effectiveness.

Optimizing Build with Alternative Aspects

If you want to use this build because you enjoy the gameplay, it’s worth noting that you can replace one of your legendary aspects with the Accelerating Aspect. Our crit rate is high enough to keep this bonus active consistently, even in a non-crit build. This aspect provides a secondary bracket Attack Speed boost, allowing you to play effectively even if you lack all the bonus Alchemical Advantage ranks. While this would lower your damage somewhat, especially due to the loss of Lucky Hit Chance, it remains a viable option for running the build in a lesser state.

Additional Passives and Ultimate Skill

We also take three ranks of the Frigid Finesse passive. Even though we don’t use Cold Imbuement, we regularly freeze enemies thanks to our gear, making this passive impactful. It applies the full bonus to staggers on bosses, which is particularly useful.

Death Trap and Ultimate Cluster

For our ultimate skill, we choose Death Trap, though we don’t take its enhancements. This skill does solid damage in this build, but more importantly, it supports the Andariel’s Visage proc by resetting all of our other cooldowns, keeping the build’s loop functioning smoothly. This allows you to continuously use most of the important abilities. Additionally, it triggers the No Witnesses Paragon node, which increases all damage by a portion of your ultimate skill damage, further enhancing the build’s overall effectiveness.

Energy Management and Lucky Hit Optimization

We start by taking one rank of the Intervention passive, which grants a Lucky Hit Chance to restore energy on hit. Combined with the extra rank provided by the Umber Crux Dagger, along with extremely high Lucky Hit Chance and Attack Speed, this passive is key to achieving near-infinite energy as long as there are enemies to hit.

Additional Passives for Lucky Hit and Survivability

Next, we take two ranks of Alchemist Fortune for a bonus Lucky Hit Chance with non-physical damage, boosting the chances of our poison hits activating lucky hit effects. We also take three ranks of Second Wind, which is crucial for our survivability. This passive is so important that you’ll want to temper it as a defensive aspect on your gear, ideally on pants, for bonus ranks. With one masterworking proc and standard upgrades, you can achieve four bonus ranks.

Maximizing Barrier and Survivability

At six ranks, Second Wind provides a barrier equal to 90% of your maximum life, increasing to 105% at seven ranks. However, it’s important to note that 100% of maximum life is the cap for a barrier, so this does slightly overcap. This barrier activates for every 100 energy spent. Since our main strategy involves holding down a core skill button, we restore this barrier roughly once per second. This effectively doubles our maximum health, with the barrier being fully restored almost every second, ensuring strong and consistent survivability.

Enhancing Rogue Survivability

This strategy serves as the primary solution to the Rogue’s survivability challenges, allowing us to face tank the highest tiers of Infernal Hordes without much concern. The key to this build’s effectiveness lies in the skill tree, particularly with the key passive we choose.

Key Passive: Close Quarters Combat

For this build, we use Close Quarters Combat, which grants 15% Attack Speed for 8 seconds after using a Marksman or Cutthroat skill. Both of these Attack Speed bonuses can be active simultaneously, and when they are, all the damage you deal is increased by a portion of your crowd control damage bonus. While this is beneficial, the primary reason we use this passive is that, like Alchemical Advantage, it contributes to the secondary Attack Speed bracket. Specifically, the Marksman portion adds 15% Attack Speed to the 40% from Alchemical Advantage, resulting in a 55% bonus that is separate from the 100% normal Attack Speed stat, giving us a total of 155% Attack Speed. This could increase to 160% with better masterworking roles.

Specialization: Preparation

Our specialization for this build is Preparation, which allows Death Trap to reset all of our other cooldowns and provides a significant damage reduction buff for 10 seconds after casting. Additionally, Preparation grants benefits tied to energy management, making it an integral part of maintaining the build’s efficiency and survivability.

Cooldown Reduction and Skill Spamming

As we spend energy, the cooldown of Death Trap decreases by 5 seconds. Given that we constantly hold down the core skill button to spam this ability, the cooldown reset is incredibly fast, providing frequent uptime for Death Trap. This makes it an essential component of the build’s overall strategy.

Optimal Gear and Mythic Unique Requirement

Now, let’s discuss the gear we’re using. Before any objections, understand that this is the absolute pinnacle of build optimization—the most min-maxed setup possible. Yes, it requires a Mythic unique to function, but it is unquestionably worth it if you have that Mythic unique. You may not be ready to enter this build immediately, but within a week or two, this build offers the greatest power fantasy available to Rogue this season.

Andariel’s Visage: The Core of the Build

The Mythic unique helmet, Andariel’s Visage, is an absolute requirement for this build, as it serves as the primary damage source. The build’s main scaling comes from triggering the procs of the unique effect of this helmet. The high Attack Speed aspect is also excellent, and the best masterworking combo typically includes one proc for Attack Speed to help you reach the first bracket, and two procs for all stats boost. While life on hit wouldn’t be bad, it isn’t necessary given that the rest of the setup makes you nearly immortal.

Maximizing Poison Resistance and Survivability

In this build, I have maximized poison resistance, although it’s somewhat unnecessary given the overall setup. Moving forward, there are two additional Mythic uniques that truly elevate this build to its full potential. While these items are not required to use the build, they are what enable it to handle tier eight hordes as comfortably as you see demonstrated.

Key Mythic Unique: Tiel’s Might

The primary Mythic unique for this purpose is Tiel’s Might. This item provides an extraordinary amount of survivability in a single piece of gear. With a 14.6% bonus to maximum resistances, all of my resistances are pushed near the game’s maximum cap—84.6% for most, and 85-87% for poison. When masterworked, this unique offers 87% all-element resistances, which means you won’t need to worry about elemental resistances elsewhere in your build.

Additional Benefits and Prioritization

While the movement speed bonus from Tiel’s Might is nice, I would prioritize the final masterworking proc for general damage reduction instead, as it provides a substantial amount when scaled with item upgrades. The unique effect of this item adds a bit of bonus damage, but that’s not the primary reason for choosing it; the focus is entirely on survivability. I would rank this as the second most important Mythic unique in the build. If you have a choice of how to use your Splendid Sparks, prioritize this item for its unparalleled survivability benefits.

Prioritizing Survivability in High-Tier Content

In high-tier content, survivability must come first; damage is secondary because without surviving, you can’t deal any damage. With that in mind, if you don’t have Tiel’s Might, you should consider alternatives like a chest piece with bonus ranks to Dark Shroud as an aspect on it—ideally, a greater aspect if possible. You can pair this with the Enshrouding Legendary Aspect to increase the damage reduction of each Dark Shroud shadow applied to you.

Alternative Gear Options

Another viable option is the new Shroud of Akarat chest piece, which inherently comes with bonus ranks to Dark Shroud. This piece also has an effect that pulls enemies in and deals damage when you evade with Dark Shroud shadows active, though it comes with the trade-off of increased evade cooldown.

If you switch to one of these alternatives, you’ll need to compensate for elemental resistances elsewhere in your build. You’ll still maintain shadow resistance if using the Shroud of Akarat and poison resistance if using Andariel’s Visage. However, you’ll need to fill in fire, lightning, and cold resistances, which can be done by utilizing gem slots in your jewelry and adding armor from your Paragon board. I’ll detail where to add this armor in the Paragon board section later. If you have Tiel’s Might, though, none of this is necessary.

Ring of Starless Skies: Maximizing Damage and Resource Efficiency

The Ring of Starless Skies significantly increases your damage, but its primary benefit is the resource cost reduction, which allows you to spam Barrage as frequently as you do. However, this also means it takes twice as many casts to trigger the Second Wind Passive—the barrier passive. Without the resource cost reduction, it would take about four casts to generate the barrier, with some extra energy feeding into the next one. With Starless Skies, it takes six casts flat.

Despite this, with the stats you have, and once you have Starless Skies equipped alongside other key items, you’ll be casting Barrage around five times per second. This ensures you refresh the barrier frequently enough to justify the damage gain from Starless Skies, which offers up to a 50% damage multiplier, also applying to Andariel’s procs. Additionally, Starless Skies comes with a significant Lucky Hit Chance aspect, one of the most crucial stats for this build.

Alternative Ring Option

If you don’t have the Ring of Starless Skies, you should aim for a ring with the same affixes recommended for your other ring slot. Pair it with the Accelerating Aspect mentioned earlier to maintain a similar level of efficiency and damage output.

Alternative Options for Amulet Passives

If you’re lacking Alchemical Advantage bonus passive ranks on your amulet, or if you already have the required ranks, you can consider using something like the Retribution Aspect. This aspect offers a chance to stun distant enemies and provides a significant damage multiplier against both stunned and knocked-down enemies—conditions that are applied frequently in this build. Additionally, this effect applies to staggered bosses, further enhancing its value.

Essential Non-Mythic Unique Items

Moving on to more standard unique items (non-Mythic), the main one required for this build is the Fists of Fate. The primary reason for using this item is its incredibly high Lucky Hit Chance aspect, which is crucial for this build’s effectiveness. While the Attack Speed boost is excellent, the critical hit chance is only particularly valuable if you’re missing the Ring of Starless Skies, and even then, its impact is limited.

The Lucky Hit Chance to apply a random crowd control effect is also beneficial because our Lucky Hit Chance is so high. The unique effect itself is powerful, especially at high rolls, as it simply increases your damage. To effectively use this item in the build, it’s essential to have a good Lucky Hit roll on these gloves. While the other stats on the item are not required, higher values in Attack Speed, Lucky Hit Chance, and other beneficial stats will make you stronger overall, with crit chance being the least important.

Enhancing Build Comfort with Umber Crux Dagger

While not a requirement, the Umber Crux Dagger makes the build infinitely more comfortable by providing a target with infinite health, allowing you to spam Barrage and maintain your survivability even when all enemies are dead. Due to the interaction between Branching Volleys and Barrage, you can fire numerous ricochets off the totem itself. This not only results in incredibly high damage near the totem but also extends Barrage‘s effective range. Typically, Barrage‘s main challenge is that you need to be close to your target to ensure all arrows hit, as they spread out in a cone. However, with the totem, every arrow hits it, then ricochets off, targeting specific enemies—even from a screen away.

Alternative Options if Not Using Umber Crux

Without this unique, you could replace it with one of the legendary aspects mentioned earlier, such as the Accelerating Aspect to replace Starless Skies, or the Aspect of Elements for a 50% poison damage boost. Otherwise, aim to match the stats of your other dagger.

Legendary Aspects for Two-Handed Slot

For your two-handed weapon slot, you want to use the Creeping Death Aspect. This aspect grants bonus damage over time for each crowd control effect applied to an enemy or a flat increased bonus to Unstoppable enemies or staggered bosses. This ensures consistent damage output and enhances your overall effectiveness, particularly in challenging encounters.

Optimizing Lucky Hit and Crowd Control

This build scales exceptionally well with high Lucky Hit Chance, allowing for the frequent application of random crowd control effects, in addition to our forced crowd control. On the amulet, we use the Conceited Aspect, which has become a staple in endgame Rogue Builds. This is due to our reliance on the Second Wind Passive for survivability—if you’re surviving in high-tier content, you will almost always have a barrier active. With a constantly active barrier, this aspect becomes incredibly powerful.

Choosing the Right Aspects

It’s important to note that we avoid aspects like Edgemaster’s Aspect in favor of global damage increases. Edgemaster’s specifically boosts the damage of skills, while we are looking for aspects that enhance the damage of procs from Andariel’s Visage. For this reason, Conceited Aspect is ideal.

Ring and Attack Speed Optimization

For the ring, we use the High Velocity Aspect, which not only allows each Barrage arrow to pierce once but also grants up to a 25% bonus to Barrage Attack Speed. This Attack Speed increase falls into the secondary bracket, so we achieve 100% from the primary bracket for bonus Attack Speed, 40% from Alchemical Advantage (which could be 45% with perfect masterworking or a greater aspect), and additional Attack Speed from the High Velocity Aspect. This stacking of Attack Speed makes the build incredibly efficient and lethal.

Maximizing Attack Speed and Breakpoints

As an alternative, consider an additional 15% Attack Speed from our key passive, bringing the total bonus to 60%. When combined with the extra 25% from the High Velocity Aspect, this results in a total of 185% Attack Speed on top of the base speed of a bow. This is just slightly above the final breakpoint that Barrage can reach. Due to the game’s coding, if the difference in Attack Speed is less than one frame, it won’t actually increase the Attack Speed, meaning any speed beyond this point is wasted.

Enhancing Damage with Branching Volleys

We also use the Aspect of Branching Volleys, which increases the damage of ricochets from Barrage and gives each ricochet a decent chance to fire off two arrows instead of one. This aspect not only boosts group clear damage but also synergizes strongly with Umber Crux.

Defensive Enhancements with Umbrous Aspect

For your defensive slot on pants, the Umbrous Aspect is crucial. It provides a Lucky Hit Chance on crits to generate a Dark Shroud shadow, a key part of our defensive strategy. The main reason we focus on crit chance is to trigger this effect, though you don’t need much crit chance due to the bonuses from both Attack Speed and Lucky Hit Chance.

Concussive Strikes and Daze Effects

In the final slot, we have the Concussive Strikes Aspect on our boots, which offers a Lucky Hit Chance to daze enemies and increases damage against dazed enemies. This also applies to staggered bosses, further enhancing our effectiveness in tough encounters. Moving on, we will discuss the affixes and tempering options to maximize the build’s potential.

Optimizing Gear and Weapon Choices

When optimizing your gear, you want to focus on specific attributes. For your two-handed weapon, a bow is preferable over a crossbow due to its higher Attack Speed. The key stats to aim for are Dexterity, Maximum Life, and Damage Over Time, with importance in that order. For tempering, prioritize chance for bonus projectiles when casting Barrage, and add Damage Per Dark Shroud Shadow, as it provides the highest scaling additive damage bonus for this build.

Ideal Dagger and Ring Stats

Your dagger should have the same stats as your bow: Dexterity, Maximum Life, Damage Over Time, Barrage Double Cast Chance, and Damage Per Dark Shroud Shadow. For your ring, prioritize Dexterity, Maximum Life, and Lucky Hit Chance, with Lucky Hit Chance being most important until you reach 200% total Lucky Hit Chance with Alchemical Advantage active. Once that threshold is met, Dexterity becomes more valuable for offensive potency, while Maximum Life boosts defensive capabilities.

Tempering and Masterworking Priorities

For tempering, bonus Poison Imbuement charges per cast are crucial, especially on your ring. Aim to maximize masterworking on this specific item to ensure that every Barrage is Poison Imbued. This not only increases the chances of triggering Andariel’s proc but also boosts overall poison damage. In your offensive slots, continue to focus on Damage Per Dark Shroud Shadow to further enhance your build’s effectiveness.

Optimizing Your Amulet and Key Stats

When it comes to your amulet, the most crucial stat is bonus ranks to Alchemical Advantage. If you can secure that, the other stats become less significant—though they are still valuable. Bonus ranks to Alchemical Advantage should be your top priority, as it greatly enhances the build. If you can also get ranks of Frigid Finesse, that’s an excellent secondary option, as we frequently freeze enemies. Additional stats like percentage Dexterity increase, Maximum Life, and Lucky Hit Chance are also good to have if you can’t find all the ideal stats together.

Tempering and Masterworking Considerations

For tempering, focus on Damage Per Dark Shroud Shadow and bonus charges of Poison Imbuement, unless you’ve maxed out masterworking on your ring. If you’ve hit the masterworking cap with 200% Lucky Hit Chance, consider trap cooldown reduction instead, to enhance the effects of both Poison Trap and Death Trap.

Key Stats for Points Allocation

When allocating points, prioritize Dexterity and Maximum Life. Additionally, you need an armor roll on either your pants or boots to hit the armor cap properly in this build. If you’re missing this, you could opt for resistance to fill any gaps or even bonus Dodge Chance. For tempering on your pants, prioritize ranks of Second Wind, as this is essential for your survivability.

Masterworking and Utility Optimization

If you get one masterworking proc on your ranks of Second Wind and no others, it will grant a total of four additional ranks to the passive by the time you reach 11 out of 12 masterworking. This results in the full health 105% barrier amount, as seen in my own tooltip. For the utility slots between your pants and boots, you want one roll of Lucky Hit Chance to freeze enemies. This is particularly effective with our high Lucky Hit Chance bonuses, as freezing is an excellent form of crowd control and benefits from our damage bonuses against chilled or frozen enemies.

Boots and Armor Considerations

Additionally, you want one roll of Smoke Grenade cooldown reduction to ensure infinite uptime for Smoke Grenade. On your boots, Dexterity and Maximum Life are ideal, with your final slot dedicated to either armor (if you didn’t get it on your pants), movement speed, or—if you’re not using Tiel’s Might—something like a greater aspect for all-element resistances. This can significantly improve your overall survivability.

Mobility and Gem Choices

For your mobility temper, opt for move speed per Dark Shroud Shadow. Even without masterworking procs, this can grant up to 5.8% move speed per shadow, meaning that with five shadows, you gain about 29% bonus movement speed—far more than any other tempering options can provide in this slot.

Finally, for your gems, use skulls or resist gems in your jewelry to cover any defensive gaps, rubies in your armor for bonus maximum life, and diamonds in your weapons to boost ultimate damage.

Why Choose Diamonds Over Amethysts?

You might wonder why not use Amethysts for Damage Over Time if that’s a major focus of the build. The answer lies in the “No Witnesses” Paragon node, which we’ll discuss shortly. Essentially, this node converts additive ultimate damage into a general damage multiplier for all our effects, which is significantly more valuable than additive Damage Over Time.

Full Paragon Board Setup

Now that we’ve covered the gear, let’s dive into the full Paragon Board Setup for this build. Starting from the initial board, you want to progress up the right side, targeting the damage and health rare nodes. However, if you don’t have Tiel’s Might yet, you may want to go up the other side to gain bonus all resistances. If you do have Tiel’s Might, your elemental resistances will be more than sufficient, so you can focus on maximizing damage.

Glyph Socket and Tracker Glyph

Next, reach the glyph socket and insert the Tracker Glyph, which grants bonus damage against poisoned enemies and extends poison effects by 40%. This effectively means 40% more damage against enemies with enough health to survive beyond the original poison duration, allowing the poison to stack more effectively over longer fights and against tougher enemies.

From there, continue up the left side. This is also a good spot to stop and add bonus armor if you find that you need it for additional survivability.

Maximizing the No Witnesses Paragon Board

As previously mentioned, this is an optimal point to incorporate key nodes, particularly if you plan to utilize this strategy. Progress up and out the left side of the board, where you will connect to the No Witnesses board, focusing on the legendary node at the top.

Utilizing the Fluidity Glyph

Begin by advancing up the left side to reach the glyph socket. Here, you’ll place the Fluidity Glyph, which boosts all magic nodes within its radius and provides a secondary bonus of 10% increased damage and 15% increased energy regeneration for 6 seconds after using an agility skill. In this build, Shadow Step serves as our agility skill, which can be used every 6 seconds due to its cooldown reduction. This ensures that the bonus remains active as long as you consistently use Shadow Step.

Maximizing Node Selection

Next, prioritize grabbing the rare and magic nodes within the radius, then proceed up to the left to secure the rare and magic ultimate damage nodes. These nodes fuel the legendary node of the board itself, which we’ll address shortly.

Afterward, head up and out the right side of the glyph area, passing through the damage over time reduction and impairment reduction nodes, to reach the legendary node.

Leveraging the No Witnesses Node

The No Witnesses node increases your ultimate skill damage by applying a double-dipping effect on your ultimate skill damage stat. More importantly, it increases all damage you deal by this secondary bonus for 10 seconds after you cast an ultimate, making it a critical component of your build’s damage output.

Maximizing Damage with Death Trap and Ultimate Gems

If you use Death Trap once every 10 seconds, the bonus from the No Witnesses node will apply to all the damage you deal, including Andariel’s procs. This is why we use ultimate damage weapon gems, as they provide about a 10% increase to this damage multiplier, which is far more valuable than a flat damage-over-time gain.

Navigating the Cheap Shot Board

Next, head out the right side of the board and move to the Cheap Shot board, focusing on the legendary power on the left. Here, prioritize grabbing the top crowd control damage rare and magic nodes, then proceed through the bottom nodes for damage reduction from elites, both rare and magic. After that, wrap around the legendary node on this board.

Utilizing the Cheap Shot Legendary Node

The Cheap Shot legendary node grants a 5% increase to your damage for each nearby enemy with a crowd control effect applied, up to a maximum of 25% for five nearby enemies. This full effect is activated when you have a staggered boss nearby, which synergizes well with our general crowd control damage bonuses.

Glyph Socket and Control Glyph

Wrap around to the glyph socket, where you’ll insert the Control Glyph. This glyph provides bonus damage to crowd-controlled enemies, with a secondary effect that grants bonus damage to chilled and slowed enemies, doubled against frozen and stunned enemies. This bonus is fully applied against staggered bosses, which is significant because we stagger bosses very quickly. Lastly, grab the crowd control damage rare node and the intelligence nodes to further boost this glyph’s effectiveness.

Optimizing the Deadly Ambush Board

Next, progress through the top side of the board, focusing on damage to crowd-controlled enemies and the armor bonuses provided. Continue up the top side to attach the Deadly Ambush board. Here, the orientation of the board depends on your current stats.

Board Orientation Based on Armor Cap

If you’re below the armor cap, you’ll want the legendary power to be positioned on the bottom side of the board. This allows you to pass through the bonus armor rare and magic nodes to reach the legendary power, using the same number of Paragon points as in the setup shown here.

However, if you’ve already reached the armor cap, you should orient the board differently. Position it so you can access the trap cooldown reduction from the rare and magic nodes. While this reduction isn’t massive, it still makes a noticeable difference.

Maximizing Critical Strike Damage

Once you’ve obtained the trap cooldown reduction, proceed up and to the left to reach the Alinary node. This node provides a 23% increased Critical Strike damage multiplier against enemies, significantly boosting your overall damage output.

Enhancing Trap Skill Effectiveness

A significant portion of our damage isn’t directly affected by critical strikes, but it’s still worthwhile to invest a few points to grab the legendary node on this board, especially since it’s on the path we need to take for the glyph anyway. Additionally, the strength requirement to activate this node is crucial because in this glyph socket, we’re placing the Bane glyph.

Bane Glyph and Poison Damage Amplification

The Bane glyph increases general poison damage for every strength point within its radius. Its secondary effect gives a 15% chance to make your poison damage effects deal double their damage over the same duration. This essentially adds a proc chance to double all poison damage, which is incredibly powerful. After that, grab the damage reduction from trapped enemies’ rare nodes and the necessary strength to fully activate the glyph.

Further Board Integration and Legendary Nodes

Next, we focus on integrating additional boards, primarily for their legendary nodes. At the bottom of the Cheap Shot board, attach the Exploit Weakness board. Then, proceed down through the damage reduction from vulnerable enemies’ rare and magic nodes to reach the legendary node as quickly as possible.

Exploiting Weakness for Increased Damage

The legendary node on the Exploit Weakness board offers a 60% Lucky Hit Chance to gain a stacking buff that increases your damage. Upon reaching maximum stacks, the buff remains active for a few seconds before resetting, providing a significant boost to your overall damage output.

Maximizing Lucky Hit and Attack Speed

Our Lucky Hit and Attack Speed are so rapid that the bonus from the Exploit Weakness legendary node stays at maximum far more often than it does not. Once you’ve optimized this, return to the No Witnesses board and add one more board on the top side. As you path through, make sure to grab the extra ultimate damage rare and magic nodes—they’re useful and conveniently located.

Integrating the Eldritch Bounty Board

Next, attach the Eldritch Bounty board by pathing through the attack board. Focus on reaching the glyph socket as quickly as possible, where you’ll place the Kennel glyph. This glyph increases your non-physical damage for all intelligence purchased in the radius and adds a stacking debuff to enemies each time you deal non-physical damage, further increasing the non-physical damage you deal to them.

Focusing on Non-Physical Damage Nodes

To fully activate the Kennel glyph, make sure to collect the necessary intelligence. Instead of focusing on the rare and magic nodes within the glyph’s radius, head through the middle of the board, prioritizing the increased non-physical damage rare and magic nodes, and make your way to the legendary node.

Eldritch Bounty’s Poison Damage Multiplier

Finally, with your remaining points, focus on the Eldritch Bounty legendary node. While the maximum resistance increase won’t benefit you since you’ve already hit the cap, this node provides a constant 20% increased damage multiplier to your poison damage, significantly boosting your overall effectiveness.

Maximizing Poison Damage

You will always be hitting with a Poison Imbuement skill at least once every 9 seconds. Since the majority of our damage in this build is poison-based, this provides a massive damage multiplier. With that, your Paragon Board Setup should now be complete, with all points allocated effectively.

Playing the Build: Tips and Elixir Usage

Now that the Paragon Board Setup is finished, let’s quickly go over how to play the build. One important tip is to use the Elixir of Advantage, which is particularly effective for this build. This elixir grants both Attack Speed and Lucky Hit Chance—two crucial stats. The Attack Speed is within the first bracket, and the Lucky Hit Chance helps especially if you’re missing breakpoints in your setup.

This elixir is also the only advanced elixir in the game that requires only Angel’s Breath and bundled herbs to craft, both of which drop from the materials chest at the end of Infernal Hordes, making it easy to maintain a constant supply.

Using Poison Trap and Smoke Grenade

Poison Trap serves as a damage boost to enemies within its area, and it also places the Umber Totem for you. Smoke Grenade operates under the same principle, providing additional crowd control and ensuring you maximize the effectiveness of your attacks.

Effective Use of Abilities

When targeting elites or bosses, aim to use abilities that provide cooldown reduction. Specifically, use Shadow Step on cooldown to keep your bonuses active or to break crowd control when necessary. For Death Trap, use it on cooldown as well, but try to activate your other abilities first so that the cooldown reset is fully utilized.

Outside of these, simply hold down the button for Barrage and Poison Imbuement. With the stats and setup provided, as long as you are hitting an enemy, you’ll never need to stop. If you place a Shade Totem, it will serve this role, allowing you to spam attacks effectively.

Final Thoughts on Build Complexity

That just about covers everything. This is a fairly complex build, and I wanted to ensure that you understand the value of each part of the setup and why we do what we do, rather than just providing a list of instructions. This build requires some thought and strategy, especially when it comes to knowing when to switch out your gear and what breakpoints to aim for.

The Complexity and Reward of the Build

When aiming for specific stats across multiple items, it’s crucial to understand the build’s intricacies. This is definitely the hardest Rogue Build to assemble this season, but once it’s up and running, nothing else feels as satisfying. I understand that this build requires significant time investment and some RNG luck to fully realize, but trust me, it’s absolutely worth it.

Long-Term Goals and Final Thoughts

While you might not be able to jump into this build immediately, it should be a long-term goal for any dedicated Rogue player in Season 5. It’s a build that, once completed, will enhance your gameplay experience significantly.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you find this guide helpful as you work towards perfecting this build. Keep aiming for those goals, and remember, persistence pays off in the end. Until next time, stay focused and enjoy your journey in the game!

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