When I was playing Diablo 4 recently, I noticed that a lot of rogue players were focusing on the melee playstyle, both leveling up and endgame. If you’re looking to try a ranged playstyle that utilizes a bow or crossbow, then the Penetrating Shot Marksman Rogue Build I’m going to cover next is just what you need.

Skill Tree

*The basic skill we’re going to pick up is Forceful Arrow, which fires a powerful arrow at an enemy and every third cast makes them vulnerable.

Enhanced Forceful Arrow increases the Critical Strike Chance on that third shot as well.

Then, you should pick Fundamental Forceful Arrow, which will keep you alive by knocking back enemies if they’re close and even sometimes knocking them down for one and a half seconds.

You don’t want to level this beyond rank one out of five at least early on in the game, as there are far more important skills to unlock and there’s very little return gain from that skill point.

*Our main ability is going to be Penetrating Shot, which fires an arrow that pierces through in a straight line.

Enhanced Penetrating Shot increases the damage of the arrow by 10% each time it passes through an enemy.

Then, Improved Penetrating Shot increases your Critical Strike Chance by a whopping 20% for your next Penetrating Shot if you hit at least three enemies with it.

At level 15, you gain access to the Rogue specific questline, which I recommend you do as soon as possible. It unlocks Combo Points, which further enhances your Penetrating Shot.

Your rotation will become simple at this point. You accumulate three Combo Points for every three Forceful Arrows you fire. You can also activate Penetrating Shots and unleash this skill. All in all, these Combo Points not only do massively increased damage but also give you a 30% chance to hit a lucky hit.

Trust me. It’s way better if you use Penetrating Shot at three Combo Points rather than two or one. I see a lot of players making this mistake early on and that’s unlocking tons of offensive abilities of which you won’t be able to use them all on the battlefield. That is because you have limited energy resource.

*The next ability you want for this build is Dash, which gives you two charges that lets you maneuver the battlefield effectively while dealing some damage.

I would definitely get Enhanced Dash by using Diablo 4 Gold as that increases Critical Strike Damage for 5 seconds for any enemies damaged by your Dash.

*Dark Shroud is going to give you even more damage reduction up to a maximum of 40%. You gain five charges of this and each time you’re hit you lose 8% damage reduction. Before an engagement, make sure Dark Shroud is up for maximum survivability.

Enhanced Dark Shroud gives it a 10% chance that on a hit you don’t actually lose a ball and lose the damage resist.

Then Countering Dark Shroud is super nice because when you have four or more active Dark Shroud, you gain a whopping 8% Critical Strike Chance.

Also Read: Diablo 4 Patch 1.0.2d Update Notes! - Changes & Nerfs

*You definitely want to pick up Weapon Mastery fairly quickly as well. With bows, we get 12% increased damage to vulnerable enemies. And for crossbows, you get 15% increased Critical Strike Damage. This build heavily focuses around doing massive crits. So, my preference would be for a crossbow. But a bow isn’t too far behind.

*You want to pick up three ranks of Exploits, which helps you do increased damage by a mass of 18% when enemies are either at the top end of their health bar or at the bottom end. Remember, for any passives, when you’re leveling, don’t prioritize them early on. It’s way more fun to unlock new abilities before you start making them three out of three.

*For this build, when we’re dealing with large groups of enemies, we’re going to be using Shadow Imbuement. Because Shadow causes explosions and are great for taking out groups of enemies.

What Shadow Imbuement does is powering up your next two attacks with Shadow energy. In this build, that will be your Penetrating Shot primarily, but also Dash can be imbued as well.

Enhanced Shadow Imbuement gives you even more Critical Strike Chance of warping 15% against injured enemies infected by Shadow Imbuement.

Then Blended Shadow Imbuement makes enemies affected by the initial explosion vulnerable. Honestly, you can make whole crowds of enemies vulnerable because of this.

*We also pick up Poison Imbuement for this build. Because when you want to deal with bosses or you want large single target DPS, Poison Imbuement is going to be a lot better because it applies damage over time.

Enhanced Poison Imbuement increases the poison damage over time by one second longer. And more importantly, it unlocks Blended Poison Imbuement whereby Critical Strikes deals 75% increased poisoning damage.

*Precision Imbuement here is great and increases your Critical Strike Chance by 9% when three out of three. You will eventually make Poison and Shadow Imbuement 5 out of 5. But again, you can leave them one out of five until later on when leveling.

You want to unlock your key passive Precision as soon as it’s available. It’s going to progressively stack up Critical Strike Damage bonuses and when you reach maximum stacks, it’s going to guarantee a Critical Strike that does 40% increased damage.

*Again, we’re stacking so much Critical Strike chance and damage just by the build itself. You’re going to hit some pretty big numbers. Then, finish off the build by getting one point in Adrenaline Rush. So, you can unlock Haste, which 3 stacks of which will give you a bonus to movement speed or attack speed, depending on how your energy resource levels are.

Aspects

In terms of aspects, the main aspect you want is the Trickshot Aspect, which you get a little later in the game in the Bastion of Faith dungeon. But you can roll this early on using the Obols Curiosity Vendor. If you want to try your luck, I’d recommend going for gloves as they cost the least Obols and can roll the aspect.

Trickshot is going to create two further penetrating arrows perpendicular to your initial shot, which just makes the skill ridiculous, as it becomes so much easier to hit multiple enemies. This means that you can activate all the effects of Enhanced and Improved Penetrating Shot much easier.

An aspect, which I’d recommend getting earlier on is the Aspect of Inner Calm, which you can get in the Raethwind Wilds Dungeon in Scosglen. It increases your damage by 5% for each second you stand still, up to a total of 30%.

You’re often going to be firing arrows from a distance while standing still. This is a great aspect to get put this one on your dagger or sword. So, you don’t need to replace it very often. Because your damage is going to be determined by your crossbow or bow for this build, which means you’ll be upgrading it often when leveling.

As we all know, some of Rogue’s skills can only be unlocked after reaching a certain level. It doesn’t matter if you don’t meet the level requirements, you can take a look at the Boosting service on this website. This way you can skip the boring leveling process and make all kinds of powerful builds to strengthen your characters.