Those of you who are planning to play Rogue this season may be wondering how much it has changed as far as your start and beginning to your journey. The answer is actually quite a lot, as this time around the top leveling build for Rogue is expected to be Penetrating Shot, taking advantage mostly of the major changes to precision as a key passive, making it really genuinely quite good now. In this article, we will talk about all the skill points we're using where we're putting them and we'll go over specialization, legendary aspect, and gameplay tips for the top 2 Rogue leveling builds. 

1. D4 S3 Rogue Penetrating Shot Rogue Leveling Build 

The Penetrating Shot Rogue leveling build in Diablo 4 Season 3 is a powerful ranged build that excels at clearing groups of enemies. It offers a safe playstyle and is a great option for players who prefer a ranged approach. 

• The Penetrating Shot Rogue leveling build focuses on using the Penetrating Shot skill, which always pierces through enemies and deals massive hit damage.

• This build is not the most optimal for leveling a new Rogue character, but it provides an alternative option for players who enjoy a ranged playstyle.

• The Dual Core Rapid Fire Flurry or Twisting Blades Rogue builds are recommended for leveling, but the Penetrating Shot build can still be effective.

Skill Tree

- Basic: 1 Puncture (Enhanced, Fundamental Puncture),

- Core: 3 Penetrating Shot (Enhanced, Advanced Penetrating Shot)

- Agility: 1 Dash, 3 Concussive, 3 Weapon Mastery

- Subterfuge: 5 Dark Shroud (Enhanced, Subverting Dark Shroud), 3 Exploit, Malice

- Imbuement: 5 Poison Imbuement (Enhanced, Mixed Poison Imbuement), 1 Shadow Imbuement (Enhanced, Blended), 1 Shadow Crash, 1 Consuming Shadows, 3 Precision Imbuement

- Ultimate: 3 Innervation, 2 Alchemist’s Fortune, 1 Adrenaline Rush, 3 Haste, 3 Impetus, 1 Precision 

Legendary Aspects

As this is a leveling build, you can put aspects on your jewelry and get away with just not switching them out for long periods of time.

- Trickshot Aspect

- Aspect of the Expectant

- Rapid Aspect  

Specialization 

Pick combo points. As you level higher and higher and get more control over your stats in the build to the point where your critical hit chance is genuinely high, if you crit every time that you use puncture, then you literally get full precision stacks in 3 hits, full combo points in those same 3 hits, then fire penetrating shot. If you have those crits happen, then that just gives you a beautiful lovely rhythm of perfectly buffed shots extremely frequently that will get absolutely nasty as you build it up. 

How to Play Penetrating Shot Rogue Build in D4 Season 3?

Puncture is for applying vulnerable quickly and also for using when at low energy, shadow imbuement is mostly just for applying the debuff itself which means you can apply it through penetrating shot or even just through using dash through a big group of enemies. Poison imbuement, you want to use specifically with penetrating shot as its main purpose is with shadow imbuement being more for AOE and poison being more for single target. But both still worth using even in their less ideal situations. Then we have penetrating shot, ideally you want to cast this with full precision stacks and full combo points with impetus active and with an imbuement on as well, but you cannot force all those things to line up every time. So essentially the way you want to think about it is use penetrating shot anytime that you have 3 combo points. If the other things line up correctly, then it's perfect, if they don't, it's still a waste to not fire it off. So focus on combo points above all else to know when to fire off a penetrating shot.

2. D4 Season 3 Shadow Twisting Blades Death Trap Leveling Build 

If you are not a fan of Ranged Rogue, we highly recommend giving this build a try, the Shadow Twisting Blades Rogue build. The Twisting Blades Rogue build in Diablo 4 Season 3 is a powerful and fast-paced build that excels in single-target burst damage. It utilizes the Twisting Blades skill to quickly eliminate enemies. 

Skills

For the skills, use the Shadow Step, Dash, Twisting Blades, Shadow Imbuement, Death Trap with the specialization combo points all the way up to 100. Dash and Shadow Step for the mobility, but also Shadow Step is our only unstoppable to break the CC's, so be careful not to overuse it. We alternate between puncture and twisting blades with shadow imbuement, and for big packs of elites, use death trap to group them and clear them out quickly. Combo points provides a nice damage boost to twisting blades and it also passively provides some movement speed.

Gear & Aspects

• Ranged Weapon: Bladedancer's Aspect

• Dual-Wield Weapons: Edgemaster's Aspect, Rapid Aspect

• Helm: Aspect of Might

• Armor: Cheat's Aspect

• Gloves: Accelerating Aspect

• Boots: Ravager's Aspect

• Rings: Icy Alchemist's Aspect, Aspect of the Expectant

• Amulet: Juggernaut's Aspect

Skill Tree

• Basic: 1 Puncture (Enhanced, Fundamental)

• Core: Twisting Blades (Enhanced, Advanced), 3 Study, 3 Siphoning Strikes

• Agility: 1 Shadow Step (Enhanced, Disciplined), 1 Dash, 3 Weapon Mastery

• Subterfuge: 1 Exploit, 3 Malice 

• Imbuement: 1 Shadow Imbuement, 1 Shadow Crash (Enhanced, Mixed), 3 Consuming Shadows, 3 Precision Imbuement, 3 Frigid Finesse, 

• Ultimate: 1 Death Trap, 1 Adrenaline Rush, 3 Haste, 3 Innervation, 3 Second Wind, 3 Alchemist’s Fortune, 1 Close Quarters Combat

Strengths and Weaknesses:

+ High single-target burst damage.

+ Rapid movement for fast dungeon runs.

+ Ability to shut down individual targets completely.

- Reduced area damage.

- Requires melee range.

- Lacks survivability against multiple enemies.