Rogue is arguably the most mechanically complex but rewarding class in Diablo IV. While not as great with DPS as a Sorcerer or as tanky as Druid, Rogue still manages to be among the top classes in the game thanks to its high burst damage and excellent mobility. While the Diablo 4 Rogue class definitely suffers in solo play, especially against bosses, with the proper build you can turn the tide of any battle.
Without the correct use of skill points, you might find leveling a Rogue a lot more difficult than some other classes. If you have chosen Rogue as your class and are going through the process of leveling it, we have compiled this Diablo 4 Rogue vampire build to make the journey easier.
As you might have guessed by the name, the vampire build for Rogue will allow you to regen life from enemies without needing potions. The main purpose of this build will be to give you as much survivability as possible while keeping your DPS high. No one wants to survive for too long while doing no damage, resulting in a boss encounter that lasts for minutes.
We will be going over all the essential skills needed for your Rogue vampire build in Diablo 4, what stats to prioritize and how your skill rotation should work during different combat scenarios.
Jump To:
- Skills and unlock order
- Rogue specialization
- Playstyle and skill rotation
- Gear, Gems and Stats priority
- Paragon Board
- Unique Items
- Legendary Aspects
- Elixir choices
Vampire Rogue skills progression and unlock order
Our initial priority with this D4 Rogue build will be to unlock skills as quickly as possible and then improve them later. Below we have mentioned all the skills you need from the Rogue skill tree for this build and later we will explain in what order to unlock and use them.
- Puncture (basic skill)
- Twisting Blades (core skill)
- Flurry (core skill)
- Dash (agility skill)
- Shadow Imbuement (imbuement skill)
- Death Trap (ultimate skill)
Now that you know which active skills to unlock, let’s go over the order in which you should unlock and upgrade them as you level up your Rogue in Diablo IV. Keep in mind that while you get 1 skill point per level, you can get 2 additional points from each zone by completing the Renown tasks. This allows you to invest a total of 58 points in your character before going for Paragon points.
The table below will highlight the order in which you need to unlock skills and their upgrades
| Unlock Order | Skill Name |
| 1 | Puncture |
| 2 | Enhanced Puncture |
| 3 | Twisting Blades |
| 4 | Flurry |
| 5 | Enhanced Twisting Blades |
| 6 | Fundamental Puncture |
| 7 | Enhanced Flurry |
| 8 | Improved Flurry |
| 9 | Dash |
| 10 | Enhanced Dash |
| 11 | Sturdy |
| 12 | Siphoning Strikes |
| 13 | Siphoning Strikes (Rank 2) |
| 14 | Exploit |
| 15 | Malice |
| 16 | Malice (Rank 2) |
| 17 | Shadow Imbuement |
| 18 | Shadow Crash |
| 19 | Consuming Shadows |
| 20 | Consuming Shadows (Rank 2) |
| 21 | Advanced Twisting Blades |
| 22 | Flurry (Rank 2) |
| 23 | Consuming Shadows (Rank 3) |
| 24 | Death Trap |
| 25 | Prime Death Trap |
Once you have assigned your skill points according to these and unlocked all the skills for the leveling build, you are free to invest the remaining points in upgrading these skills. I would recommend maxing out Exploit, Malice and Flurry before the others.
Thanks to the bonuses of Exploit and Malice, you will constantly be doing increased damage to every enemy regardless of their health state. Flurry works in sync with these and Shadow Imbuement by spreading Vulnerable and shadow damage to every enemy hit by the attack.
Best Rogue specialization
For this build, we are going to stick with the Combo Points specialization, even during boss fights. As most boss encounters in Diablo 4 end up with a lot of adds, it’s best to focus on leeching life from them instead of Unlimited Energy that Inner Sight provides. With the number of mobs you will be facing, it’s difficult to proc the Unlimited Energy from Inner Sight anyways.
With the use of combo points, you will deal a massive amount of damage and get healed with Flurry attacks.
Vampire Rogue playstyle and skill rotation
The energy cost of this build is high due to use using two Core skills from the Rogue skill tree. Luckily, we have a fix for that.
Energy Generation
For energy generation, our Puncture spam and Consuming Shadows upgrade comes in. Puncture will make enemies vulnerable and generate energy. Shadow Imbuement will cause shadow damage and when those enemies die, you will regen energy to keep spamming Flurry and Twisting Blades.
So for energy generation to keep your build going, follow this skill rotation in order
- Puncture x3
- Shadow Imbuement
- Flurry
You also need 2 legendary aspects; Ravenous and Energizing, which we will discuss below. This entire build revolves around keeping every enemy around you Vulnerable to maximize damage from not only your weapon attacks but also explosions caused by Shadow Imbuement.
Vulnerable
As mentioned above, maintaining Vulnerable on enemies is crucial especially at higher difficulties when you need a lot more health regen. For this build, the following skills and upgrades will allow you to apply Vulnerable or spread it to multiple enemies
- Fundamental Puncture
- Improved Flurry
To spread vulnerable, you need to make sure you group up enemies instead of just taking them on one by one, even if there are a bunch of elites in the group. Your lifesteal will protect you which is the purpose of this entire Vampire Rogue build.
To get started in a fight, group up enemies and then hit one of them with your Puncture in such a way that at least two of your blades hit the target and make it Vulnerable.
Now you need to spread that Vulnerable to all the enemies nearby. For that, you will use Flurry. However, before actually doing that you need to enable Shadow Imbuement to buff up your Flurry with Shadow damage.
Once you cast Flurry, it will apply Vulnerable and Shadow Damage to every enemy hit by your Flurry. This will not only make them weak to further attacks but also heal you through Siphoning Strikes and Enhanced Flurry.
As these enemies die, they will cause massive Shadow explosions and kill more. Their deaths will also generate 30 Energy for you through Consuming Shadows.
Damage rotation
Now that we have gone over the individual portions of the skill rotation for this build, let’s go over how you are actually going to use your Diablo 4 vampire rogue build in combat. First, we will mention the skills to use in order and then explain them further.
- Puncture (3x on a close enemy)
- Shadow Imbuement
- Flurry
- Twisted Blades
- Dash
As mentioned earlier, Puncture-Shadow Imbuement-Flurry combo will make enemies Vulnerable and take shadow damage. Most weak enemies will die by this point and cause explosions to weaken others.
For the Champions and Elites still left standing, you need to hit one of them with your Twisting Blades. Once the blades are stuck in the enemy, you need to be quick and then Dash through multiple enemies. As the blades return to you, they will pass through these enemies, dealing 30% bonus damage and with the Bladedancer’s Aspect equipped, they will rotate around and continue to deal more damage.
Keep repeating this order and the battlefield will be filled with explosions and your flying blades, killing everything in your path and healing you as if you never lost any health. This will further be amplified by the Aspect of the Crowded Sage.
Gear, Gems and Stats Priority
Starting off with stats, as every class benefits differently from each stat you need to know about how Rogue benefits from the primary stats. Being an agile melee class, Rogue’s main stat to focus on is Dexterity and the rest depends on your build and playstyle. For this Diablo 4 vampire Rogue build, we will be prioritizing stats in the following order
- Dexterity
- Willpower
- Intelligence
- Strength
Dexterity will obviously improve your damage and dodge chance. Intelligence will increase Critical Strike Chance and increase Resistance so you can stay within AoE damage areas in case you need to follow your damage/heal rotation.
Willpower will improve the healing you receive through your skills which is very important for this build as you are going to be staying alive by leeching health from enemies. Last but not least, Strength will improve your Armor and Energy generation.
Gem priority pretty much stays the same for most builds in Diablo 4.
- Weapons: Emerald to improve Critical damage against Vulnerable enemies
- Armor: Skull or Ruby to increase health or healing received through attacks
- Jewelry: Diamond to increase Resistance against all elements
For gear affixes, look for the same affixes that boost your stats or provide benefits like
- Damage against Elites
- Core Skill Damage
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Energy Cost Reduction
- Damage with Dual Wielded Weapons
- Damage Reduction
Paragon Boards
For the most part, Paragon Boards are just stat upgrades to provide you bonus stat values on top of what you are getting from your gear. Glyph Sockets can further amplify the effect of these drastically if you can meet their requirements.
We recommend the following Glyphs to use for this vampire Rogue build in Diablo 4
- Closer
- Diminish
- Pride
With the help of these, you will take reduced damage from Vulnerable enemies and while using melee weapons, which you are for this build. On top of that, you will also deal extra damage to Healthy and Injured enemies which further amplifies the effects of your Malice and Exploit passives.
All this of course is dependent on you first reaching the bonus requirements of these glyphs.
Unique Items
Considering their extremely low drop rate, we aren’t going to rely too much on Unique items for this vampire Rogue build. However, Mother’s Embrace ring you get for finishing the campaign can be quite useful as it increases Energy regeneration allowing you to spam Flurry more.
On top of that, Condemnation dagger improves your Flurry and Twisting Blades damage when you use 3 combo points. The dagger’s unique skill also allows an increased chance to instantly gain 3 combo points instead of performing 3 attacks.
Legendary Aspects
These aspects are very important, especially for resource generation. Some of these can be found by completing dungeons while others are only acquired as rolls from gear items. If you find an item with the Aspect you need but poor stats, go to the Occultist and extract that Aspect to inventory for later use.
For the vampire Rogue build, we will require the following Legendary Aspects
- Ravenous Aspect: killing vulnerable enemies increases Energy regeneration
- Energizing Aspect: damaging Elites with Puncture generates Energy
- Aspect of the Crowded Sage: you are healed based on the number of Close enemies
- Bladedancer’s Aspect: Twisting Blades circles around you after returning, dealing damage
- Aspect of Inner Calm: Deal bonus damage based on how long you stand still
Elixirs and Potions choices
While our focus is to generate health from enemies, it doesn’t hurt to have some potion upgrade levels. Make sure you do Renown activities around the map to unlock Renown rewards and increase your potion capacity.
You don’t have to upgrade your healing potion to the max but at least level 45 upgrade would be good.
For elixirs, it mainly depends on what type of enemies you are fighting to increase damage against them. So use Elixir of “slaying” based on your enemies. As a universal rule, we would recommend using Iron Barb Elixir to improve Armor and gain Thorns. Alternatively, you can also use Assault Elixir to improve attack speed.
