I’m going to be showing you my Shadow Sniper build, which is another Rogue build in Diablo IV. I really like Rogue builds for some reasons. That is a burst DPS build that focuses on the use of the Shadow Imbuement, which makes enemies explode when you kill them when they’re under this effect.
Penetrating Shot / Shadow Imbuement
The general strategy with this build is to employ Penetrating Shot and then when you imbue that with the Shadow Imbuement, enemies are infected.
If they die while they’re infected, then they explode for more damage and what happens is enemies will die from this Penetrating Shot because it has very high damage.
It travels through enemies and then it’ll cause a chain reaction of explosions where everything on the screen typically gets wiped out except for the very hard to kill Elites and you kill almost anything in one or two arrows of this.
Trickshot Aspect
What makes this even more deadly is a couple of things.
First is the Trickshot Aspect. If you can get this on your equipment, then your Penetrating Shot is actually going to split when it hits enemies and it’s going to shoot arrows off to the side, which will deal a percentage of that damage.
That damage will be higher if you get it on your bow then it will be if you get it on any other piece of gear. So, try to get Trickshot Aspect on your bow or go to the Occultist and put it on your bow for increased damage from those arrows that come out of the side.
Enhanced Penetrating Shot
Additionally, once you have enhanced Penetrating Shot, you’re going to gain 20% increased damage per enemy at pierces. That is a lot of damage that can add up very quickly.
Improved Penetrating Shot
Finally, when you have improved Penetrating Shot, if you hit at least three enemies with your Penetrating Shot, then your next Penetrating Shot has a 20% increased Critical Strike Chance.
It’s even more likely to critical hit, which then in turn deals with more
Also, keep in mind that if you’re in the combat point specialization and you have three charges of combat points built up, then your penetrating arrow is going to deal even more damage before you fire it off. So, that’s definitely what you want to do if you can. Hit with your basic attack whatever you’re using.
Forceful Arrow
In this case, I’m using Forceful Arrow, but you don’t have to pick Forceful Arrow. It’s not necessary for this build, it’s just the one that I like.
But if you hit with your basic attack three times, then fire off your imbued Penetrating Shot. It’s going to deal even more damage, which is even more likely to result in a chain reaction of explosions.
And one of the things I really like about Forceful Arrow is that every third shot makes an enemy vulnerable. When you’re fighting bosses, this chain reaction doesn’t typically happen because there isn’t typically a lot of trash around bosses.
Some boss fights do, but not most of them. So, this strategy doesn’t work as well against bosses. When you get vulnerable on them, it helps to increase your damage against them even if you just get a little here periodically. That’s why I like Forceful Arrow.
Dash
Another ability we use for this build is Dash.
This is a really good mobility skill. If you’re playing a bow build, you obviously don’t want to be any nearer to enemies than you absolutely have to be, so having Dash on your bow allows you to get away from enemies when you need to and create separation so that you don’t get hit and you can attack them from a distance.
Another good thing about Dash as well as it can be imbued with Shadow and Human. I don’t think it’s as good to use as Penetrating Shot because you just don’t deal with the same sort of damage. But you can use it in a pinch. If you need to like to get away from enemies and it’s imbued, maybe you trigger some reactions with it.
Dark Shroud
I’ve also added Dark Shroud to this build just because I like the theme of Shadow here, but also because it gives you eight percent damage reduction for each orb around you when you start with five. So, that’s a 40 damage reduction.
This helps keep you alive because you’re kind of squishy as a Rogue. Each time you get hit that, one of those orbs is going to disappear and you’re going to have less and less damage reduction.
But this skill is a 20 second cooldown, so you can just basically use it before you go into each trash pull and then you’ll be able to be protected from damage for a few hits and reduce that damage so that you don’t die.
Aspect Of Volatile Shadows
A good synergy for this build is the Aspect of Volatile Shadows.
It makes it so when one of your orbs gets removed. You actually do an AOE Shadow explosion around you.
Consuming Shadows
And that works really well with the Consuming Shadows passive, which you should also have in this build because that makes it when an enemy dies to Shadow damage, you gain energy back.
This is a very energy hungry build, so you want to be able to get that back. And obviously, Consuming Shadows also works very well with your imbued skills. So, if you view a Penetrating Shot and then wipe out everything, you usually refund the entire cost of that skill, which is great.
Ultimate Skill
Lastly, we have our ultimate skill. I recommend either using Death Trap or Rain of Arrows and there are a couple reasons for that.
Rain Of Arrows
Rain of Arrows, when imbued with Shadow Imbuement will basically cause the entire screen to explode. That happens almost anyway with Penetrating Shot and this has a much longer cooldown than Death Trap, in my opinion.
Death Trap
Death Trap has more like condensed damage and so it works better in my opinion for like smaller groups of enemies and it works better for bosses as well because you’ll be able to pull it off more often on bosses and you’ll hit them for more damage.
As I mentioned earlier, bosses is kind of the Achilles heel of this build because you can’t trigger all these train reactions in a boss fight most of the time and it works very well against Elites and stuff that have a lot of enemies around them.
But usually boss fights are Solo or they’re periodically spawning enemies that don’t spawn very often.
A couple of great things about Death Trap as well is that it deals with Shadow damage, so it’ll trigger Consuming Shadows. If you need energy, you can drop it to just get a bunch of quick energy up, which is great.
Prime Death Trap
You can passively upgrade it to make it pull enemies in to get them away from you.
Also, reduce the cooldown cost by 10 seconds if you kill an enemy, so you can get that down to 40 seconds.
Then, if you have any other reduction cost, you can get that down to like maybe 30 or 35 seconds, which isn’t terrible.
Exploiter’s Aspect
And there’s also a note about the Exploiter’s Aspect as well.
I was using this on my Cold Archer build and it seemed like increased my damage against bosses. I need more testing to verify for sure.
But if it does indeed increase your damage, then this would be a good one to add to this build because again bosses are sort of the weak point. So, that’ll come in handy when you are facing a boss to get that extra damage.
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