The best Rogue skills and abilities to get first in Diablo IV

The action-RPG Diablo 4 brings about new classes to experiment with, and the Rogue has a few new tricks up its sleeve with the ability to use both melee and ranged attacks. While Rogues are weaker than Barbarians in terms of health and armor, they make up for it with multiple ways to engage and destroy enemies from relative safety. If you’re making a Rogue, here are the best abilities to get first to make sure you’re pushing out damage without taking too much in return.

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Best early Rogue skills in Diablo 4

The Rogue is squishy, meaning you’re going to want to play it at a range in the beginning until you can find a few solutions for melee combat. The first few levels allow little freedom in exploring the Rogue class, but that’s immaterial — your initial abilities are going to be able to destroy the enemies at a distance. Much like with the Demon Hunter in Diablo 3, you’re going to build your class with the intent to build your Energy with a basic attack, then expend it with a separate skill.

Diablo 4 Rogue energy builder

We recommend Forceful Arrow as the first Rogue skill, as every third arrow fired makes the struck enemy Vulnerable, increasing all follow-up damage while it’s active. Heartseeker can be helpful with its increased critical chance, but its proc chance feels low while the chance of proccing Vulnerable is guaranteed on every third shot.

For the second skill, Enhanced Forceful Arrow can pick up a bit more DPS with the chance to crit being increased by 15%. This second skill point will unlock the Core Skills for your build, also being the energy spenders of the Rogue class.

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Diablo 4 Rogue energy spender

We recommend Rapid Fire as your first energy spending skill, or Core Skill. This ability allows us to strike foes multiple times, and hit multiple foes in a pack with a single spray. Penetrating Shot can also be usable, but it’s less effective against single targets such as bosses, and the energy cost is more. Against a single foe, Rapid Fire offers 40 damage if all arrows hit versus Penetrating Shot’s 24 damage.

We recommend furthering your Rapid Fire skill selection with Enhanced Rapid Fire and subsequently Improved Rapid Fire, which returns 15 energy when Rapid Fire strikes a Vulnerable enemy. Alternating between energy generating until Vulnerable Procs, then Rapid Fire for the energy return, ensures you can maximize your damage up-time while dishing out a heft of damage.