Diablo 4 Rogue Bow Build – Freezing Rain- In this Diablo 4RogueBuild Guide, I’m going to be showing you my Freezing Rain Build, a continuation of theCold Archerbuild based off the beta version rather than the live one, as we are using theRapid Fireskill.
Diablo 4 Rogue Build - Freezing Rain
There are a couple of reasons I was finally able to make a Rapid Fire build that I was happy with. The first one is its repeating aspect, which means Rapid Fire has up to a 90% chance to ricochet to another target when put on a two-handed weapon. This would ideally be on your bow as you want every chance to ricochet as possible. The drawback of using Rapid Fire is that it tends to hit in a straight line, very rarely getting any AOE. However, this is compensated by these ricochets, making it much more viable.
The other reason is the fact that you may use it without having any energy problems through the use of theExploit Glyph. ThisGlyph’sadditional bonus causes enemies damaged by you to becomeVulnerablefor three seconds - although it cannot happen more than once every 20 seconds. And since we don’t have a way to naturally apply the Vulnerable status, this becomes a great way to get additionalVulnerable Damage, making them go down really fast.
The way this solves our energy problem is through theImproved Rapid Fireupgrade, which makes it so that you gain 15 energy per cast of Rapid Fire when it damages a Vulnerable enemy while costing 20 energy. So you only net lose 5 energy when using this, which is usually more than enough to get you through mostBoss Fights.
Enhanced Concealment&Aftermath
However, if for some reason this is not enough energy, we also have theEnhanced Concealmentupgrade ofConcealment, and theAftermathpassive maxed out.Enhanced Concealmentgives you 40 energy when you enter Concealment, whileAftermathgives you 75 energy when you use your ultimate skill, something you use regularly with this build.
And that’s because we have thePreparationSpecialization, which makes it so that for every hundred energy you spend, you reduce your ultimate skill cooldown by 4 seconds. So basically, every five rapid fires it’s going to shave 4 seconds off yourRain of Arrowsskill. And since we have no need for a basic attack, we can just keep usingRapid Fireto attack every enemy we see, making this happen very regularly.
Rain of Arrows - Ultimate Skill
Rain of Arrows is absolutely amazing in this build. I feel like it belongs in a marksman-type build or any range-type build. you’re able to use this thing through walls to just wipe out rooms of enemies, it knocks them down and it takes your imbuement into account. And because we’re using the uniqueWord of HakanAmulet, it also applies all imbuements every time you use this, meaning you’re going to freeze enemies, poison them and inflict them with aShadow Imbuement, making them explode when you kill them. This makes it absolutely devastating.
Shadow Clone - Ultimate Skill
However, if you don’t have thisUnique Amuletyet, I recommend usingShadow Clone. I like to swap this out anyway forWorld BosseswhereRain of Arrowsisn’t really that effective.
Rain of Arrows is more suited against lots of enemies, whereas Shadow Clone is a more ‘‘focused’’ skill. There is an aspect that you may apply to your equipment as well that allows you to apply the imbuements you use to your Shadow Clone, so you can help freeze around the room, slowing things down a bit more until more damage.
Cold Imbuement - Imbuement Skill
Cold Imbuement makes it so that we can freeze and chill enemies, increasing the damage dealt to them via theFrigid Finessepassive and also through theControl Glyphthat we have. This last one increases our damage against crowd-controlled enemies, as well as chilled and frozen enemies, so we get a lot of damage to Frozen enemies here.
I challenged myself when putting this build together not to use other Imbuements. I don’t haveShadoworPoisonhere. There are a lot of archery builds out there with it, including my own builds. But I wanted to just make it fully frozen with this build and see if it was viable. And it absolutely is.
Concealment - Subterfuge Skill
Besides this, as I mentioned earlier, I have concealment and what this allows you to do is becomeUnstoppable, as you go invisible, and I have it set to make my next attack critically strike.
And what I really love about this skill is, firstly, if you do get CC, this will bust you out of it and get you out of a bad situation. Second, it’ll boost your movement speed thus allowing you to run away from unexpected threats. If you open a door and you’re like ‘‘Oh crap, there’s a whole bunch of enemies!’’, you can run away really quickly, and also that instant critical when you come out of it is fantastic if you coupled withRain of Arrows.
There is nothing like dropping an all-crit Rain of Arrows on a room of enemies only to watch them all explode.
Also, as mentioned earlier, you can use it in a pinch to get some energy as well. Just remember that you only have Vulnerability on enemies for the first three seconds, so you need to kill them quickly otherwise you’re going to run out of energy.
Smoke Grenade - Subterfuge Skill
And we also have Smoke Grenade here, which I absolutely love in this build. This dazes enemies in a small AOE, who are then unable to attack or use skills. And the reason this is so fantastic is that a lot of times you are facing a really nasty elite of sorts, and hitting them with this leaves them completely disabled, nullifying some of the most dangerous elites in the game.
Additionally, we have it upgraded so that it increases the damage we do to things that are affected by Smoke Grenade, so if you throw it into a crowd you’re going to deal more damage. We also have theCountering Smoke Grenade, so on Lucky Hit, dealing direct damage to enemies affected by Smoke Grenade has a 25% chance to reduce its cooldown by one second, or by three seconds instead if the enemy is Vulnerable.
Well, we have a lot of vulnerability in this build, making the cooldown of this get reset rather easily. We do have some ways of getting extra Lucky Hit, but this makes it able to use Smoke Grenade more often.
Also, a really good synergy happens between Smoke Grenade and Frost asFrostblitz Aspectmakes chilled enemies hit by your grenade skills have a chance equal to double your critical strike chance to be instantly frozen for two seconds. So if you dropCaltropsthat’s cold damage, enemies get chilled and you can then throw this to have a chance to instantly freeze some of them, drastically boosting your damage against them. It also natively increases yourCritical Strikedamage against frozen enemies, which is fantastic because we’re dealing with frozen enemies a lot.
Caltrops - Agility Skill
Caltrops is an AOE that shoots you backward and does a little bit of damage, setsChilledon enemies that walk in it, and causes cold damage.
This skill is great for scenarios in which you are caught off-guard by a bunch of enemies when entering a room. Hitting Caltrops will automatically kick you backward and make them crowd-controlled. So you’ll get that boost and damage from crowd control. But also, they’re chilled, so you get that boost and damage to chilled as well. And then if you lob yourSmoke Grenadein there, you might freeze some of them so they can’t really do anything, leaving you to just go to town withCold Imbuementon them, or if you’re really desperate, popRain of Arrowsand that’s over.
Skill Distribution
Each Diablo 4 Rogue Build comprises the 6 Active Skills they have equipped and changing theseSkillscan drastically alter the way the Rogue Class in Diablo IV plays. In this section, we’ll take a look at what Skills you should slot for the Freezing Rain Rogue Diablo 4 Build. By the time you reach Level 50, you’ll approximately have 58 points, assuming that you’ve accumulated enough Renown from different regions to gain 10 extra points. So your Skill distribution should look something like this:
LEVEL 50+ ROGUE SKILLS
Points Spent
Enhanced Puncture
Fundamental Puncture
Rapid Fire
8 (+3 from Gear)
Enhanced Rapid Fire
Improved Rapid Fire
Enhanced Caltrops
Methodical Caltrops
Weapon Mastery
Concealment
3 (+2 from Gear)
Enhanced Stealth
Countering Stealth
Smoke Grenade
Enhanced Smoke Grenade
Countering Smoke Grenade
Precision Imbuement
Cold Imbuement
7 (+2 from Gear)
Enhanced Cold Imbuement
Mixed Cold Imbuement
Frigid Finesse
Chilling Weight
Innervation
Adrenaline Rush
Rain of Arrows
Prime Rain of Arrows
Supreme Rain of Arrows
The above list gives you the general order to invest in Skills, but keep in mind that you should prioritize picking up new Active Skills over investing in passives, so pick up passives later if you can get new Active Skills when you level up.
Diablo 4 Freezing Rain Rogue Build - Equipment, Gems & Aspects
So that’s really the core concept of the build. There isn’t really any gear that you must have for this build to work beside some things that will obviously make it better, like theWord of Hakan, but nothing mandatory really.
The most important part here is getting theExploit Glyphand slotting that to get the bonus, as it’s going to drastically boost your damage, putting Vulnerable on everything you attack. Having plus vulnerable damage on your equipment could mean you’re getting up to 70%~100% more damage on enemies, and obviously, getting those resources back every time you attack them allows you to just keep attacking, facilitating this strategy.
The way I accomplished this was by picking from Cunning Stratagem Node, which doesn’t help us at all as we don’t use combo points for this build, and using them to get theExploitpassive bonus.
Also, there are a lot of nodes that increase your core skill damage and since most of our damage comes fromRapid Fire, that worked out nicely.
Passive:Victimize
So for myKey Passivehere, I’m usingVictimize. On Lucky Hit, dealing direct damage to a vulnerable enemy has up to a 30% chance to cause an explosion, dealing 23% of the original damage to them and surrounding enemies.
Given you are spreading Vulnerable around, this is easy to do and allows you to get more AOE damage - which is great sinceBarrageis lacking in AOE damage.
It also synergizes well withAspect of Cruel Sustenance, which makes explosions triggered by this passive heal you - a good way to give you some extra healing while you just sit there and gun enemies down. However, if you find you’re not taking too much damage, I would recommend taking thePrecisionKey Passiveto further boost your damage.
Frankly, you don’t really get hit too much with this build - things just die. I tend to stay off the edge of the screen, particularly when I’m doing way higher-levelNightmare Dungeonsthan myself so that I don’t get hit. A lot of people have been joking that this is the ‘‘door build’’ because I stand in the doorway shooting, very rarely going into a room.
But if you like playing a long-range build then you don’t necessarily need this, as you’re not going to take a lot of damage - I just frankly like it for the extra healing and the explosions for AOE damage.
Cowl of the Nameless - Helm
On my helm, I haveCowl of the Nameless. This gives me cooldown reduction which is great for our ultimate crowd control duration. It gives us more energy and it gives you a Lucky Hit chance increase against crowd-controlled enemies.
Again, this isn’t mandatory for this build but it’s very nice, as it helps with Lucky Hit against things that we’re doing, basically. Everything should be crowd-controlled a lot of the time, particularly when you’re using Frost, Caltrops, and your Smoke Grenade. All those things are considered crowd control - so it’s very nice to have.
Grasp of Shadow - Gloves
Also, I haveGrasp of Shadowunique here. It has attack speed as well as vulnerable damage. Both of those are good for this build. It also has Shadow Clone Damage, so if you’re using theShadow Cloneultimate, this is good as well as Ranks to Core Skills.
It also makes it so on Lucky Hit, damaging a vulnerable enemy with a marksman or cutthroat skill has up to a 30% chance to summon the shadow clone that mimics your attack. This is fantastic for this build because you are hitting vulnerable enemies all the time, and you having that means you have a decent lucky hit chance, getting you extra damage from the shadow clone.
Accelerating & Vengeful Aspects
I also haveAccelerating Aspect, which makes it so critical strikes with core skills increase your attack speed by up to 25%. This makes you attack faster, getting out damage faster.
In addition, I have theVengeful Aspect, which on Lucky Hit making an enemy vulnerable has up to a 50% chance to grant +3% increased critical strike chance for three seconds, up to 9%. This triggers all the time because we’re continuously spreading Vulnerable around, so you’re going to get your critical strike chance up with no problem.
Smiting Band
This increases your critical strike chance against enemies that are below 35% health and increases your crowd control duration if you’re healthy by up to 40%. Both of these are great because when you are running low on energy, if a fight runs long, you want to have an increased critical strike chance against those enemies to finish them off. Also, if you fireRain of Arrowsinto a room orCaltropswhen you’re at full health, enemies will be chilled or frozen longer, allowing you to fire into them more.
Inner Calm
And then lastly, I haveAspect of Inner Calm, which makes it so the longer you stand still, the more damage you do. You tend to stand still a lot with this build as you don’t really need to move much.
And another aspect you should absolutely look out for, which I unfortunately wasn’t able to get, is theMangler’s Aspect, which on Lucky Hit, dealing direct damage to a vulnerable enemy has up to a 45% chance to daze them for two seconds. Remember that dazed enemies cannot attack you or use skills, so you could theoretically daze things all over the screen that can attack you - and this is also considered crowd control. So any extra damage you have to crowd-controlled enemies or dazed enemies will kick into effect, dealing more damage to them. So this is just really, really good to have.
So that wraps up our Freezing Rain build. This is a fantastic build, probably the favorite one I put together so far. The Cold Archer in the beta was what I wanted to make into my build and with these things I was able to finally see this thing come into fruition, and it works phenomenally. So if you’ve been looking for a good Range Archer that just uses Cold, freezing and absolutely wrecking things, this is the build for you.
Be sure to check out ourDiablo 4 Wikifor any other questions you have about the game and theBuildspage if you are looking for more Diablo IV Builds, as well as ourUltimate Beginner GuideandAll Classes Overviewif you are looking for more Diablo 4 content!
