Viper Rogue Build - Diablo 4

We have put together a Viper Rogue Build for Diablo 4, this post will cover the whole build, gearing, aspects, and the paragon board.

Viper Rogue Gameplay and Playstyle

The Viper Rogue build is based on poison, the main attack being rapid fire to get as many attacks as possible out to spread to multiple enemies, using both shadow and poison imbuement on rapid fire.

This build is ranged but can be played up close to enemies, we’ve made this build have full uptime, and never runs out of energy, so you can constantly just use your core attack, rapid fire, and not need to use a basic attack.

Stats and Enchantments

These are the best stats to look out for, for this Viper Rogue build, it should help with damage and make the playstyle feel a lot smoother.

Offensive Stats:

Ranks of Imbuement (all/poison/shadow)
Imbued Skill Damage
Imbuement Critical Strike/Critical Strike Damage
Poison Damage
Vulnerable Damage
Ranks of Poison Trap

Defensive Stats:

Damage Reduction from Enemies that are Poisoned

Utility Stats:

Imbuement Skill Cooldown Reduction
Cooldown Reduction
Lucky Hit (not too important but nice to have)

Rogue Legendary Aspects

Here is a list of the most important legendary aspects to make this build work and why:

Primary Aspects

Offensive Aspect of Repeating

This aspect makes it so Rapid Fire has a chance (30-45%) to ricochet to another target. Placing this onto a 2 Handed weapon will increase this to (60-90%) chance. Rapid fire shoots 5 individual arrows, all giving them a (60-90%) to ricochet to another target, having one of the imbuements on will get this spread across all enemies.

Aspect of Imitated Imbuement

Your Shadow Clones also mimic the Imbuements applied to your skills and grant your shadow clone (8-16) increased damage for 5 seconds. This will also help spread that imbuement across the pack of mobs, giving additional attacks, traps, and additional lucky hit chances.

Aspect of Corruption

Your Imbuement Skill effects have (20-40%) increased potency against Vulnerable enemies. This works really well as Shadow Imbuement will make all enemies vulnerable.

Ravenous Aspect (Ring Only)

Killing a Vulnerable enemy grants you (50-70%) increased energy regeneration for 4 seconds. This is great, especially near the early stages of the build as you will be able to have this huge energy regeneration buff after using shadow imbuement.

Lucky Hit Aspects

We decided to go down more of a lucky hit route with this build, it is not necessary but does make the build fun if you manage to get lucky with the legendary aspect drops.

With the 5 original attacks you get from Rapid Fire, plus the cap of 90% ricochet, you could get 10 attacks out at once with just one click. Having Shadow Clone active at the same time will give at least an additional 5 attacks, maybe more, which will greatly increase the chance for a lucky hit proc.

Toxic Alchemist’s Aspect

Damaging a Poisoned enemy with a Shadow Imbued skill has a chance to create a toxic AoE explosion that applies Poisoning damage. As Shadow Imbuement can also explode on death of the affect enemy this works great running this poison and shadow imbuement build.

Aspect of Bursting Venoms

A chance to create a toxic pool, standing in it will make poison imbuement have no cooldown and charge limit. This works really well as you will have no issues with energy for this build.

Defensive Legendary Aspects

Aspect of Disobedience

You will gain increased Armour for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to (25-50%) this works great with poison as every tick of the poison will grant you armour, spreading it to multiple enemies, you will not have an issue keeping this up.

Eluding Aspect

Becoming Injured while Crowd Controlled grants you Unstoppable for 4 seconds, (40-20) second cooldown. This can be a great life saver if you get in a rough situation, trapped in a small room, back up against the wall etc.

Viper Rogue Unique Items

Unique Helm

There are a few unique items that complement this build pretty well, if you are enjoying the lucky hit poison aspects, Anderiel’s Visage Unique Helm can also have a chance to trigger a poison nova AoE damage over time, while also giving all stats, attack speed, and life steal.

Unique Gloves

Both Grasp of Shadow and Fists of Fate are both really good for this build, as both give additional lucky hit bonuses. I’ve tested both and both feel equally fun, I’d recommend Fists of Fate if you enjoy the gamble but Grasp of Shadow if you’d like to see 2 Shadow Clones by your side.

Fists of Fate will give you more crowd control, it is a bit more of a gamble with this item as you can randomly deal 1-300% of your normal damage, but you also get the additional lucky hit bonuses.

Grasp of Shadow is perfect if you want to stick to the shadow clone and Vulnerable damage route. As it has a lucky hit chance when using a marskman or cutthroat skill to summon a shadow clone.

Gems

Armour: Topaz – Damage Reduction While Control Impaired

Weapons: Amethyst – Damage over time for both Poison and Shadow Imbuements

Jewelry: Skull – Additional Armour

You could also go Emerald for the Weapons but as there is a lot of poison going off you may benefit more from just having the damage over time.

Rogue Skill Tree

Heartseeker

Enhanced Heartseeker

Rapid Fire

Enhanced Rapid Fire

Improved Rapid Fire

Stutter Step

Weapon Mastery

Concealment

Enhanced Concealment

Poison Trap

Enhanced Poison Trap

Countering Poison Trap

Shadow Imbuement

Enhanced Shadow Imbuement

Blended Shadow Imbuement

Shadow Crash

Consuming Shadows

Poison Imbuement

Enhanced Poison Imbuement

Blended Poison Imbuement

Deadly Venom

Alchemical Advantage

Precision Imbuement

Shadow Clone

Prime Shadow Clone

Supreme Shadow Clone

Innervation

Alchemist’s Fortune

Second Wind

Aftermath

Adrenaline Rush

Exposure

Rogue Specializations (Shift+C)

The best specialization to take with this Viper Rogue Build is Preparation. This means that every 100 energy you spend will reduce your ultimate skill’s cooldown by 4 seconds. The best thing with this build is that you are constantly using energy so this will always go down, you will rarely have this on cooldown, in addition, activating your ultimate will reset the cooldowns of your other skills.

So after using your imbuement skills, you can reset the cooldown on these imbuement skills by either using your ultimate ability or when your poison trap activates it has a 30% chance to reset the cooldowns to your imbuement skills too.

Viper Rogue Paragon Board

The way this build works with the paragon board is that you want to focus on your poison, imbuements, and the trap. This is so most of your attacks will be imbuement empowered. You will have constant energy regeneration, whether that’s from killing enemies with shadow damage, a vulnerable enemy, and getting energy from lucky hits.

With this build you also have the emergency of using your ultimate and/or concealment will grant you energy and you also have the 15% energy regeneration while moving.