Best Rogue leveling builds in Last Epoch

The Rogue, like in many ARPGs, serves as Last Epoch‘s swift striker. Alongside loads of dodge chance, this sneaky character dispenses arrows, blades, and even birds on their foes. There are plenty of good ways to level a Rogue in Last Epoch, so let’s go over our favorites.

Best options for leveling a Rogue in Last Epoch

The Rogue Class a woman holding a bow in Last Epoch — This whole saving timelines thing needs someone with a bit of finesse. Image via Eleventh Hour Games

Leveling a Rogue in Last Epoch is an enjoyable time, thanks entirely to their incredible movement speed. You’ll be served well with a high Critical Hit Rate, fantastic Attack Speed, and really solid Damage Over Time potential. However, Rogues suffer in terms of durability, relying on Dodge Rating and a handful of buffs to stay alive. These builds mix a healthy amount of the Rogue’s fantastic strengths while trying to balance out their weaknesses.

Early game: Puncture, Decoy, and Smoke Bomb

A woman fires a flurry of arrows toward spiders in a dark dungeon of Last Epoch. — Listen, we all start somewhere. Screenshot by Dot Esports

Playstyle: Long-range skirmisher or close-range brawler
Difficulty: Easy
Key Skills: Puncture (Specialized), Smoke Bomb (Specialized), Decoy, Ballista, Acid Flask
Key Passives: Agility, Swift Assassin

During the first part of your Rogue’s journey, make sure you experiment with different playstyles if possible. The Rogue has two playstyles it likes: A long-ranged skirmisher which utilizes powerful bows or thrown weapons alongside a summon, or a melee brawler which utilizes high dodge rate and quick movement to guarantee survival while tearing through enemy lines. Both are very rewarding but are actually quite different. Play around with equipping bows and melee weapons now before you have to pick your playstyle permanently.

Either way, use Puncture as your main attack. Puncture, Flurry, and Cinder Strike are the three primary melee attacks early on. Puncture has the best range and area-of-effect, perfect for the mobs of enemies you encounter while leveling. For difficult encounters, we recommend throwing down an Acid Flask to melt a foe’s armor and make it easier to pick away at them.

The two big Passives to level are Agility and Swift Assassin. Swift Assassin finds a home on every Rogue build, adding additional damage to your strikes and granting a huge amount of attack speed. Agility applies Haste to yourself and is perhaps the best method of doing so. Most other Rogue Passives are window-dressing in comparison to these two.

Tip: What weapons should you use as an early-game Rogue?

In general, your early game be spent with a Bow in hand. Rogues are squishy, requiring some Passives from the Bladedancer tree to be realistically viable on the frontlines. However, you can use Dodge, Parry, and Thiefguard to reduce the damage that sticks on you.

Then, when you unlock your Mastery, you’ll have access to three builds which have solid damage, but require you to pay a bit of attention to max out your damage and survive easily. They are:

Bladedancer: Shadow Cascade

An edited image showing the icon for the Bladedancer Mastery in Last Epoch alongside a player. — A cascade of blades will be the last thing your foes see. Images via Eleventh Hour Games/Remix by Dot Esports

Playstyle: Close-range, cloning brawler
Difficulty: Hard
Key Skills: Shurikens (Specialized), Shift (Specialized), Shadow Cascade (Specialized), Synchronized Strike (Specialized), Umbral Blades (Specialized), Decoy, Puncture
Key Passives: Agility, Pursuit, Once, Veil of Night, Shadow Master, Careful Assault

The melee variant of Rogue, the Bladedancer, typically uses the Shadow Daggers Skill to tear through single targets and make mincemeat of lesser mobs. However, while leveling up, we found it much easier to use Shadow Cascade, a high-damage circular attack which is also used by your Shadow Clones. This attack, thanks to the clones following you, allows you to clear enemy encounters and whittle down elites with ease. In addition, many of this build’s strongest effects are tied to Shift, the Rogue’s dash, making it capable of casting Shurken and Umbral Blades at the same time it dodges. Bladedancers are inherently quite tanky—with improved Dodge Score and Dusk Shroud procs—so you’ll never be in too much danger.

If you’re looking for one of the fastest builds in Last Epoch in terms of playspeed, Shadow Cascade Blademaster is it. Just be ready to compensate for some Mana faults early on.

Falconer: Throwing Damage (Shuriken and Dive Bomb)

A screenshot of the Falconer using Falcon Strikes in Last Epoch — Which one of these two is more dangerous? Screenshot by Dot Esports

Playstyle: Long-ranged skirmisher
Difficulty: Medium
Key Skills: Shuriken (Specialized), Falconry (Specialized), Dive Bomb (Specialized), Aerial Assault (Specialized), Shift (Specialized)
Key Passives: Handler, Crimson Strikes, Avian Hurl, Blast Radius, Evasion Tactics, Needle-Like Precision, Spell Breaker

Our favorite Falconer Rogue build for leveling and clearing focuses on Throwing Damage. Utilizing a variety of abilities—from the Rogue’s Shuriken to the Falconer’s Dive Bomb—the Falconer specializes in doing large areas of effect that scale off of a character’s Throwing Damage Tag. Thankfully, the Rogue has an excellent and cost-effective option in Shuriken, a spammable and cheap ability—rather than the Armor of Blades applier the Shuriken is now known for. Meanwhile, Specializations for Falconry, Dive Bomb, and Aerial Assault can be built for Throwing Damage, making the build synergize beautifully. And the Falconer’s Passive tree helps with that beautifully, granting you plenty of Throwing Damage and letting your bird benefit from it greatly.

No Rogue option has such a consistent and effective area of effect damage from such a safe range. The Falconer is perfect for players wanting to be summoners but feel active in combats.

Marksman: Detonating Arrow

A woman fires an electrically-charged arrow at bird warriors in Last Epoch. — That electric arrow is going to clear everything for you. Screenshot by Dot Esports

Playstyle: Long-ranged skirmisher
Difficulty: Easy
Key Skills: Detonating Arrow (Specialized), Shift (Specialized), Shuriken (Specialized, not on bar), Decoy, Explosive Trap (Specialized), Smoke Bomb (Specialized)
Key Passives: Draining Arrows, Arrow Storm, Sniper’s Gambit, Barrage of Pain, Perfect Aim, Death From Afar

The Marksman, the bow specialist Mastery in Last Epoch, might not be our favorite in terms of tiers. However, it makes up for that in its brutally simple Detonating Arrow leveling build, one which spams a no-Mana cost ability to devastating effect. This is theoretically the easiest build we have here, requiring you to spend no Mana or really do anything to clear enemies efficiently. However, it lacks single-target damage, so you’ll have to use your Explosive Traps and Smoke Bomb to whittle these high-health targets down. This is also the least durable of the three builds, requiring clever placement and dodges to avoid death if anybody gets close to you—though, it has plenty of ways to recover Health if hit, from Draining Arrows to Thief’s Quiver.

This is the kind of build for a player who wants to take it quite easy and always be at a safe range in Last Epoch. It’s definitely the simplest, but the least consistent in terms of clear times—those Elites will take a while for you to clear out.