The Rogue is one of the three original classes introduced back in the original Diablo game. Over the generations, Rogues have seen several iterations like Amazons and Demon Hunters before reverting back to the classic Rogue in Diablo 4—and they’re more powerful than ever.
What makes them powerful is the variety of directions you can take your Rogue through build crafting. The most common builds revolve around focusing on either a ranged or a melee build. However, there is a third path that is often underrated, and that is the Trap Rogue build.
Diablo 4 Death Trap Rogue build, a guide
The Death Trap build is a relatively new creation in Diablo 4. Compared to old faithful builds like the Twisting Blades build which has been popular since the start of Diablo 4 or the Rapid Fire build that gained popularity later, players are now catching on to the power of Traps. Following the release of Patch 1.0.3 and the rise of season one, Trap Rogues are seeing more playtime than before.
As the name suggests, the main skill in this build is the Rogue’s Ultimate ability Death Trap. This ability can be set up on the ground and takes one second to fully arm. Once it’s ready, any enemy that comes into close proximity to the Death Trap will trigger it, causing damage to all surrounding enemies. The damage of the trap is 250 percent of the Rogue’s base damage.
Related: Best Rogue leveling build in Diablo 4
Just like other skills in the Rogue’s arsenal, Death Trap can be leveled up to improve its damage output even further. In addition, there are a couple of modifications that you can apply to Death Trap to make it even more potent. Depending on the modification you have on your Death Trap, it can be used for more than just damage.
- Prime Death Trap: When Death Trap is triggered by an enemy’s presence, it will pull in all surrounding enemies to the trap and damage them.
- Supreme Death Trap: Each time Death Trap kills an enemy, its cooldown gets reduced by 12 seconds. Killing five enemies refreshes the Death Trap entirely.
While Death Trap is already a potent source of damage by itself, Prime Death Trap turns it into a repositioning tool as well, allowing you to finish off weakened enemies. If the enemies do die, Supreme Death Trap will ensure that your Death Trap’s cooldown will keep reducing with each enemy that dies to the ability.
Death Trap Rogue skill progression
These six skills synergize very well with each other, making this build extremely potent. First, we choose the Trap skills we need for this build.
- Death Trap: The main skill of this build.
- Poison Trap: Your secondary Trap skill. Places a trap that arms after one second. When it triggers, the trap releases poison that damages all enemies standing in its radius.
While Death Trap is active, keeping Poison Trap nearby to weaken enemies before they get to your Death Trap is ideal. Poison damage over time will ensure enemies lose enough health before Death Trap finishes them off. You can have four Poison Traps active at all times, so make sure you place them in various chokepoints.
- Puncture: Your basic skill that helps generate energy. Throws a dagger that slows enemies with every third hit. Additionally, if the hit is a critical strike, it will slow enemies.
- Twisting Blades: The core skill of choice for this build. Impales enemies for two seconds, dealing damage. While enemies are impaled, they take additional damage from your attacks.
Puncture is your cookie-cutter resource generation skill. Spamming this in between casts of your Trap skills will ensure you have the energy needed to keep up your traps. Every third cast of Puncture also slows enemies, which doubles up as a crowd-control ability as well. If you select the right modifier, you can also toss three Puncture blades at a time, providing even more crowd control.
Puncture also generates combo points, which in turn makes Twisting Blades stronger. You can generate up to three combo points:
- One combo point increases the damage by 59 percent and gains 20 percent movement speed.
- Two combo points increase the damage by 72 percent and gain 40 percent movement speed.
- Three combo points increase the damage by 86 percent and gain 60 percent movement speed.
Keep spamming Twisting Blades when you have energy and combo points to spare. It is best used on single-target enemies like bosses and elites. Most of your resources are still better used on Traps.
- Dash: Leap forward through all enemies, dealing damage to them.
- Shadow Step: Dashes behind your chosen target, dealing backstab damage and increasing your own movement speed for two seconds.
Dash is the best escape skill in the Rogue’s toolkit, allowing you to zip out of trouble whenever you’re caught in a disadvantageous position. This skill becomes more useful the closer you get to endgame where most enemies in areas like Nightmare Dungeons can one-shot you if you aren’t careful.
Shadow Step is your repositioning tool to get on top of powerful enemies to take them out with your Twisting Blades. You can also use it to get out of trouble by using Shadow Step on the outermost enemy and escape with the burst in movement speed that you get.
Best passive abilities for Death Trap Rogue
First, we choose the offensive and defensive passives.
- Weapon Mastery: Provides increased damage when attacking close enemies while wielding daggers.
- Exploit: Deals bonus damage to healthy and injured enemies.
- Malice: Deals bonus damage against vulnerable enemies.
- Trap Mastery: Activating a Poison Trap or Death Trap grants you bonus critical strike chance against crowd-controlled and vulnerable enemies.
- Sturdy: Increases your damage reduction against enemies close to you.
- Concussive: Knocking down enemies grants you increased critical strike chance against them.
Next, we choose the utility-based passives.
- Innervation: Every hit of damage on an enemy grants you a 10 percent chance to gain eight energy when the hit connects.
- Haste: When your energy levels are above half, you gain increased movement speed. When they fall below half, you gain increased attack speed instead.
- Siphoning Strikes: Each critical strike that lands on close enemies gives you a 75 percent chance to heal yourself.
- Stutter Step: Each critical strike that lands on enemies gives you increased movement speed.
- Aftermath: Restore 60 energy after using an Ultimate skill.
- Adrenaline Rush: Gain increased energy regeneration while moving.
And finally, we choose the key passive ability that works as the backbone of the build.
- Exposure: Dealing damage to enemies affected by any of your Trap skills grants you a chance to reduce the cooldown of all of your Trap Skills. Additionally, you also have a chance to drop grenades that damage and stun all enemies around you.
Best Death Trap Rogue specialization
The specialization of choice that works with this build is Inner Sight. Each time you approach a group of enemies, one of them will have a purple icon hovering above them. These are marked enemies and damaging them will fill up your Inner Sight gauge. Once it fills up to the maximum, you will gain unlimited energy for four seconds, allowing you to spam your Traps and Twisting Blades.
Related: Best Glyphs for Rogues in Diablo 4
Having Inner Sight as the specialization in this build is essential because of how energy-intensive your main skills are. Twisting Blades can be spammed constantly against bosses and elites while you chuck your Poison Traps and Death Trap in the area to make short work of the weaker mobs once your entire gauge is full.
Best Death Trap Rogue Aspects
Choosing the best aspects for your Rogue is the final push you need to maximize the build’s power.
- Accelerating Aspect: Your critical hit chance and critical hit damage also provide increased attack speed.
- Aspect of Synergy: Using an Agility skill reduces the cooldown of your next Subterfuge skill. Additionally, using your Subterfuge skill increases the damage of your next Agility skill.
- Aspect of Disobedience: Dealing damage grants you increased armor per attack.
- Aspect of the Protector: Grants a barrier when fighting elite enemies and bosses.
- Aspect of the Umbral: You restore energy when you use crowd-controlling effects on enemies.
- Blade Dancer’s Aspect: Twisting Blades orbit around you before returning back. Depending on the distance they traveled, the orbit damage will increase.
- Blast-Trapper’s Aspect: Dealing damage to enemies affected by your Traps has a chance to turn them vulnerable.
- Edgemaster’s Aspect: Your skills deal increased damage depending on how much energy you have. A higher energy pool translates to more damage.
- Ravager’s Aspect: Shadow Step gains two charges. Killing an enemy with Shadow Step grants you an additional charge and causes the next Shadow Step to deal increased damage
- Cheat’s Aspect: You take reduced damage from crowd-controlled enemies. Additionally, if a crowd-controlled enemy does damage you, you gain increased movement speed.
Apart from these, there is one aspect that is a special mention because it is hard to acquire, but fits perfectly here. This aspect cannot be earned from dungeons and is an affix on a unique pants item. The negative effect of the item can be offset by killing more enemies with Death Trap.
- Eyes in the Dark: Death Trap will keep re-arming itself until it kills a non-boss enemy. However, the cooldown of Death Trap increases.
Imbue your best Rogue weapons and armor with these aspects to get the most out of them.
