The Twisting Blades Rogue build will make you a dungeon-clearing machine in Diablo 4. The damage output is insane. You can pretty much melt mini-bosses with ease.
Rogues are not known to be tanks. They rely on their high agility to evade damage, which is what you are going to be doing a lot. Dodge and evade attacks to shred through them with your blades.
You will be taking down multiple enemies within a blink of an eye and on your way to taking down the next pack of elite enemies. This build will keep you alive for a longer time, and your damage will not be compromised.
Moreover, the build can be adjusted according to the situation, so you can kill multiple foes and formidable bosses with this twisting blades Rogue build in Diablo 4.
So let’s start with the essential skills for this Rogue build in Diablo 4 and provide the information you must use to prioritize your stats and rotate your skills depending on the combat scenarios.
- Skills and unlock order
- Specialization
- Playstyle and skill rotation
- Gear, Gems, and Stats
- Paragon Boards
- Unique Items
- Legendary Aspects
- Elixirs and Potions
Twisting Blades Rogue skills and unlock order
The most important thing to focus on here is to unlock your main skills as soon as possible. Below are the skills that you need to get from the Rogue skill tree to start perfecting your Twisting Blades Rogue build in Diablo 4.
- Puncture (basic skill)
- Twisting Blades (core skill)
- Shadow Step (agility skill)
- Dash (agility skill)
- Shadow Imbuement (imbuement skill)
- Death Trap (ultimate skill)
The next step is to know the order in which to unlock the required skills. Every level-up grants your Rogue a single skill point. Investing them in the right skills gives you a power spike in D4.
Remember that you can claim your Renown in every zone to earn an extra 2 skill points in Diablo 4. So without the Paragon points, you can invest up to 58 points for this Rogue build.
Now let us take you through the order that you should follow to unlock the skills for this build.
| Unlock Order | Skill (Rank) |
|---|---|
| 1 | Puncture |
| 2 | Enhanced Puncture |
| 3 | Twisting Blades |
| 4 | Sturdy |
| 5 | Enhanced Twisting Blades |
| 6 | Fundamental Puncture |
| 7 | Advanced Twisting Blades |
| 8 | Dash |
| 9 | Siphoning Strikes |
| 10 | Siphoning Strikes (Rank 2) |
| 11 | Shadow Step |
| 12 | Enhanced Shadow Step |
| 13 | Weapon Mastery |
| 14 | Disciplined Shadow Step |
| 15 | Agile |
| 16 | Exploit |
| 17 | Malice |
| 18 | Malice (Rank 2) |
| 19 | Shadow Imbuement |
| 20 | Enhanced Shadow Imbuement |
| 21 | Blended Shadow Imbuement |
| 22 | Shadow Crash |
| 23 | Consuming Shadows |
| 24 | Death Trap |
| 25 | Prime Death Trap |
After assigning your skill points according to the table, you can invest your remaining points in any manner you feel is right. However, I recommend maxing out Shadow Crash, Shadow Imbuement, and Agile before investing in others.
The bonuses from the Shadow Crash and Shadow Imbuement will make enemies more Vulnerable, and Agile will increase your chances of escaping the enemy attacks. All these combined take your mobility and damage to the next level, making you a killing machine.
Best Twisting Blades Rogue Specialization
For the Twisting Blades Rogue build, we will use two different specializations in Diablo 4. If you are going for dungeons, use Preparation as it reduces your ultimate skill cooldown by 4 seconds.
Moreover, usage of the ultimate skill resets the cooldown for all the other skills. It means you can spam down your enemies and use Dash and Shadow Steps to move across the enemy as quickly as possible.
You can also shift to Inner Sight for single targets. This skill allows you to build up your Inner Sight gauge, providing unlimited energy for four seconds. So you can inflict severe damage during that time, so try to fill the gauge as soon as possible.
Twisting Blades Rogue playstyle and skill rotation
The Twisting Blades Rogue is a high-risk, high-reward build in Diablo 4. What that means is that you are going to be using enhanced mobility to dash in and out of combat while doing insane damage. However, one mistake, and you might die.
Damage skills
You need to trap down your enemies in a single place to take maximum benefits from this skill rotation in Diablo 4. Usage of Twisting Blades will make much more sense when you gather your enemies in a single place using the Death Trap.
The Twisting Blades will help you deal maximum damage against the pack of enemies by hitting the returning blades to as many enemies as possible.
You must hit your target one or three times and then utilize the Shadow Step or Dash to escape the enemies. This will allow you to use the returning blades to inflict the damage.
- Twisting Blades
- Shadow Step
- Dash
Mobility skills
In our build, we have placed great emphasis on the Shadow Step and Dash skill in Diablo 4. You can make use of Dash to move freely, but Shadow Step can only be used against a target.
These abilities will allow you to move away from the enemies or toward them according to the situation in D4. So make use of these abilities more often to benefit from the high mobility of this Twisting Blades Rouge build.
- Shadow Step
- Dash
Damage rotation
After understanding the skill rotation of this build, it is time to put the skills into use and learn about the actual mechanism that you must follow in combat while utilizing the Twisting Blades Rogue build.
Before getting into the depth, let us see the skills you must utilize to bring down the enemies.
- Puncture
- Shadow Imbuement
- Twisted Blades
- Death Trap
- Dash
With these skills, we are going to clear dungeons as quickly as possible, even at the hardest difficulty level.
The Puncture-Shadow imbuement combo is perfect for making enemies vulnerable and inflicting Shadow damage. This will cause weak enemies to die, and then your twisted blades and death trap combination will easily kill even the elite enemies.
You can dash into the enemies, inflict damage, and move away from the area using your returning blades to deal more damage. You can use the Bladedancer’s Aspect here to deal much more damage to the enemies.
Keep the skills coming in the same rotation to kill all the enemies in your surrounding. So make use of all abilities along with the one that provides you with health restoration to keep moving without worrying about your health.
Gear, Gems, and Stats
The starting stats for each class differ, so understanding the benefits of primary stats for the Rogue class is crucial in D4.
You need to focus on the Dexterity stat as a Rogue player, as your character is a melee class. You can also select your Diablo 4 stats according to the build and play style.
We will go with the following order for this Diablo 4 twisting blades Rogue build.
- Dexterity
- Strength
- Willpower
- Intelligence
The Dexterity will boost your dodge chance and damage. Strength will take your armor and energy generation to the next level, as Rogue is quite squishy, so we are putting more emphasis on this stat in this build.
Moreover, Willpower will improve the healing that you get through all of your healing skills. This is important as you require the restoration of your health during most parts of the battles. Lastly, Intelligence increases your critical strike chance and resistance against AOE damage attacks.
Your gem priority can stay the same for all the Rogue builds in Diablo 4.
- Weapons: Emerald to benefit from the Vulnerable enemies.
- Armor: Ruby for the highest level of life.
- Jewelry: Diamond to gain resistance to cover your weak spots.
We need to get the boost in our following stats by using the particular gear affixes in our build.
- Vulnerable Damage
- Cooldown Reduction
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Damage with Dual-Wielded Weapons
- Damage against Elites
- Core Skill Damage
Paragon Boards
The Paragon Boards provide bonus stat values apart from the ones you are already getting from your gear in Diablo 4.
Moreover, the Glyph Sockets take the bonus to the next level, but you must meet the requirements. So for the twisting blades Rogue build, we are recommending the following Glyphs.
- Chip
- Closer
- Exploit
- Combat
- No Witnesses
All these Glyphs can combine to provide you a boost against vulnerable enemies, but you must be utilizing a melee weapon. Our entire build is based on melee weapons, perfect against enemies.
Unique Items
You are hardly going to encounter unique items due to their low drop rate in Diablo 4. So we are not giving them high importance in our Diablo 4 Twisting Blades Rogue build. But if you do find some, then look for the Condemnation Dagger.
This Rogue unique dagger is perfect as it increases the damage of your core skills by a staggering 20-40 percent if you spend three combo points.
Moreover, the skills you use through this dagger improve the chances of generating the three combo points by 30 percent, so this unique item is perfect for this build.
Legendary Aspects
These aspects are very crucial for our Rogue build in Diablo 4. You will substantially increase your damage power by selecting the good aspects.
To obtain these, you need to complete dungeons, and sometimes you can also extract them from the legendary gear by visiting the Occultist.
We are going with the following Legendary Aspects for our twisting blade Rogue build.
- Bladedancer’s Aspect: It is perfect to use with Twisting Blades orbit deals 10-15 percent of return damage on each hit, and the damage can increase to 20-30 percent depending on your distance from the enemies.
- Aspect of the Expectant: the basic skill increases your subsequent core skill damage by 5-10 percent and up to 30 percent.
- Aspect of Might: Your basic skills provide you with a 20 percent damage reduction that lasts between 2-6 seconds
- Cheat’s Aspect: You are going to receive 15-25 percent less damage from the crowd control enemies, and you also gain 15 percent movement speed if hit by an enemy.
- Aspect of the Crowded Sage: You receive massive healing while being surrounded by enemies
Elixirs and Potions
You need to get elixirs that increase your resistance against damage and provide attack speed in Diablo 4. You can carry a more significant number of potions by increasing your potion capacity. Moreover, you do not have to put more points into upgrading your healing potion.
We are going with the Assualt Elixir to get the boost in our attack speed. You can also use the Iron Barb Elixir, as it increases your armor stat and provides additional Thorns in the battle.
