Welcome to my Diablo 4 Twisting Blades Rogue guide! This build is a very effective endgame farming build that moves faster than anything else in the game and can take out even the toughest bosses in seconds.
However, this power comes at a price. What I mean is that its defense is mediocre, and it’s hard to get the best out of it. If you’re looking for a fun and agile Rogue build in Season 2, then this is a guide you can’t miss!
Twisting Blades is a two-step melee attack that deals moderate damage when you attack a single enemy. Then, after a temporary delay, blades will return to you from the enemy’s position.
These returned blades are the actual core of the build and what you need to deal damage to your enemies. These returning blades deal high damage to all enemies in their path. Combined with various movement skills such as Evade, Dash and Shadow Step, you can eliminate entire groups at once during flight to increase the efficiency of farming Diablo 4 Gold.
Also, Advanced Twisting Blades allows you to reset most abilities, making them almost ready to go. While it may be difficult to get the hang of it right away the first time you play it, with a little practice, you can successfully use Twisting Blades Rogue in Diablo 4 as well.
Vampiric Powers
Diablo 4 Season 2 introduces a new quest line to hunt down Lord Zir’s Shadow Vampire forces in Sanctuary. Since Lilith’s blood still exists in our bodies, we take the damage inflicted on us as we level up, gaining new Vampiric Powers.
Completing seasonal quest lines, taking part in seasonal Blood Harvest events, and collecting Potent Blood are the primary ways to get and enhance these abilities.
There are 22 Vampiric Powers, divided into 2 different types: 15 Minor Vampiric Powers and 7 Major Vampiric Powers.
To activate these Vampiric Powers, you need to have 3 types of Pacts: Ferocity Pacts, Divinity Pacts, and Eternity Pacts.
Once you’ve equipped the correct Pact Armor, you can activate Vampiric Power in Sanguine Circle via the character screen. Note that different powers require different amounts of types of pacts.
Of course, if you buy Diablo 4 Gold in advance, you can also use Potent Blood to upgrade your Vampiric Power from level 1 to level 3.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the best Vampiric Powers for Twisting Blades Rogue and how they affect this build:
- Accursed Touch: Triggers and spreads Vampiric Curse for additional effects.
- Prey on the Weak: Ensures Vulnerable uptime and further enhances our damage.
- Moonrise: Adds extra attack and movement speed to the setup.
- Ravenous: Often provides a huge buff to attack speed, resulting in more damage.
- Hemomancy: Sometimes increases the area of effect damage and heals you.
Skill Tree
Next, let’s talk about the skill tree for this Twisting Blades Rogue build.
First, Puncture is our chosen base skill for gaining energy and applying Slow and Vulnerable.
Twisting Blades is our main ability. After you insert two knives into an enemy, the knives will return to you from the enemy’s position after 1.5 seconds. During this time, Bladedancer’s Aspect will also cause Blades to briefly circle around you, providing the perfect combination of single-target and AOE damage.
Dash and Shadow Step will provide you with incredible mobility, allowing you to fly across the battlefield and increase your damage efficiency.
Shadow Imbuement can help us clean up our backpack and restore energy by consuming Shadow. Poison Imbuement can inflict a large amount of single-target damage on elites and bosses.
Rogues can choose one of its passive skills to enhance their play style. Our choice here is Combo Points to increase the damage of Twisting Blades when needed.
Accumulating Combo Points using basic skills can give you more damage and increased movement speed after using Twisting Blades.
When our Diablo 4 Gold is insufficient and resources cannot be replenished in time, this skill can achieve high damage output with low energy consumption. Most of the time, you don’t have to think too much about Twisting Blades and just go for the major attack.
Paragon Boards
For Paragon Boards, we need to upgrade our glyphs to increase their power and activate their perks with surrounding nodes.
Since level 15 glyphs increase their radius, we need to prioritize upgrading them by completing Nightmare Dungeons. But you may not get the benefits until you place them on Paragon Board later.
If you only farm Nightmare Dungeons on your way to level 100, you can also upgrade your glyphs to 15 in the order it placed them for immediate effect. After that, we prioritize upgrading the strongest glyphs to level 21.
Note that once the surrounding Paragon nodes reach level 15, there will be some glyphs position swapping and some adjustments.
Gameplay
Twisting Blades is our main damage skill. In order to use it effectively against hordes of monsters, you must hit as many targets as possible with the returning blades.
In short, single-target encounters, just use this skill as often as possible. But in longer single target encounters, switch to a 1:1 or 3:1 rotation between Puncture and Twisting Blades to build up Combo Points for better resource efficiency.
Dash and Shadow Step are our movement skills. Dash can be used freely, while Shadow Step needs to have a goal. It can be used to teleport up or down cliffs in outdoor content.
Shadow Imbuement will blow up packs and help us regenerate energy by consuming Shadow. It also helps spread Vulnerable’s debuffs more easily for increased damage until Exploit Glyphs come online.
Use Shadow Imbuement whenever you’re fighting a larger target, like an elite or a boss. Best-case scenario is to collect 3 Combo Points beforehand to maximize its damage. Note that two Imbuements cannot be used, so we must use them in a loop.
Endgame Gear & Legendary Aspects
When you start digging into Endgame, you don’t have all the tools at your disposal to achieve the final build. Let us guide you through the different progression points, allowing you to transition from our upgrade guide to the final build.
Some of your skill tree choices depend on which Legendary Aspects and Diablo 4 items you have access to. While we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, everyone’s exact progression will be different.
You can find the following Legendary Aspects by farming Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, and Tree of Whispers or gambling with Obols:
- Ravager’s Aspect: Shadow Step’s second charge provides an excellent quality of life and speeds up your run. Once you have it, place it on the boots, move Ghostwalker Aspect to your Amulet and replace Aspect of the Expectan.
- Aspect of the Umbral: While this power exists in Codex, it is very weak at its minimum. With high rolls, you can always gain a lot of energy to fully enable Spamming Twisting Blades.
Also, you can find the following D4 uniqueitems by farming in Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, and Helltides. It’s important to note that you can’t gamble for unique items with Obols.
- Tibault’s Will: It easily triggered this effect using Ravager’s Aspect of a huge damage boost. If you feel this item is not enough, use defensive legendary instead.
- Godslayer Crown: We used this item in Pinnacle Boss variant of the build, dealing massive burst damage.
- Andariel’s Visage or Harlequin Crest: If you’re lucky enough to get these drops, replace Cheat’s Aspect.
- Doombringer: If you’re lucky enough to get this drop, you can use it instead of Aspect of Corruption or Ravenous Aspect. This sword has amazing stats and damage reduction process to make it easier to survive in high-end content.
Summarize
Twisting Blades Rogue is a super fun mobile assassin that can farm outdoor content and low-level Nightmare Dungeons better than any other build. While it’s quite difficult to learn, once you get the hang of its gameplay, it feels incredibly rewarding and a brilliant choice to start a new season!