Shadow Step Rogue Build Guide

The build works really well when you decimate everything in seconds, but may get overwhelmed if fights are long against high level monsters. There are several adjustments you can make when you have trouble with more difficult content:

• Check if your Armor & Resists are capped.
• Use defensive consumables.
• Roll Maximum Life instead of offensive stats on as many pieces as possible.
• Kite enemies when they become Unstoppable.

As a Rogue you do not have many sources of Unstoppable but a good way to break out of crowd controls is with Shadow Step. Shadow Clone also makes you Unstoppable for 5 seconds.

Shadow Step Rogue is a Specialized Build that requires a lot of gear to properly shine and will feel a bit clunky without it. You need plenty of Cooldown Reduction and Shadow Step Cooldown Reduction. If you do not have Harlequin Crest, reaching the required Cooldown Reduction breakpoints. The breakpoint is Shadow Step having less than 3.6s cooldown at around 60% combined CDR.

Harlequin Crest with 3 Masterworks (MW) on Cooldown Reduction (CDR) provides you with 44% CDR. Additionally, having Mobility CDR on Boots with 11.6% and Shadow Step CDR on a Ring with 19.5% (2 MWs) will put you at a combined 60% CDR consisting of:

9 * (1-0.44) * (1-0.116) * (1-0.195) = 3.58 = 3.58s Shadow Step Cooldown

Combined with Disciplined Shadow Step, you gain a Shadow Step Charge every 0.58s. While it may sound like a decent window, this combined 60% is the absolute minimum amount of CDR you should have. The more CDR you have, the smoother the build will feel. You can use CDR on the Amulet to make reaching the breakpoint easier if you do not have a triple passive one.

For more information on how to exactly calculate your CDR, check out the Cooldown Reduction Mechanics sections further below.

• Dark Shroud stacks damage reduction additively for each active shadow. Due to the additive stacking, each increase in the skill's rank and active shadows boosts your survivability exponentially.
• Shadows have a 1.5 seconds cooldown between losing stacks, but the damage reduction still applies depending on how many are active at all times.
• At maximum stacks, your effective hit points (EHP) scale as follows in these examples:
  • Rank 1: 66.6% more EHP
  • Rank 5: 92.3% more EHP
  • Rank 10: 138.1% more EHP
  • Rank 15: 215% more EHP
  • Rank 20: 354.5% more EHP

• You need exactly 66.66% Cooldown Reduction to reduce Shadow Step's Cooldown to 3 seconds.
• You can combine Cooldown Reduction affixes and Shadow Step & Mobility Cooldown Reduction tempers.
• Cooldown Reduction is inversely multiplicative with each other.
  • Example: You have two Cooldown Reduction rolls, each being 20.2%.
  • Your actual Cooldown Reduction is not 40.4% now, but 36.3% instead.
  • The formula for this is as follows:
    • 0.363 = 1 - (1 - 0.202) * (1 - 0.202)

• With Ravager's you gain an additional charge for Shadow Step.
• Ravager's also resets your Shadow Step Cooldown when you kill an enemy with Shadow Step.
• Disciplined Shadow Step reduces your Shadow Step Cooldown by 3 seconds. This is massively useful to instantly reset your Shadow Step Cooldown given enough Cooldown Reduction (66%+).

• Countering Smoke Grenade is required to reset the cooldown quickly. With sufficient Cooldown Reduction and Smoke Grenade Cooldown Reduction, you can reset the cooldown with 1 hit on a vulnerable enemy affected by it.
• Daze has different effects, depending on the target:
  • Against monsters, it's functionally similar to Stun. Monsters won't attack, move or use their spells.
  • Against players, it disables their abilities but they can still move around freely.
  • Against bosses, it raises the stagger bar.
• The damage bonus is tied to the Daze effect. If the crowd control is removed through Unstoppable, so is the damage buff.

• You can dodge most things in the game excluding Damage over time effects and certain boss-mechanics.
• Utilizing the high natural dodge chance of this build allows to keep high stacks of Dark Shroud.
• Dodge Chance affixes are not additive, but inversely multiplicative instead.
• Dodge Chance aspects, such as Assimilation are additive.
• Agile is treated like an affix, so inversely multiplicative.
• Dodge Chance Calculation:
  • [Dodge % from Dexterity] + [100 * (1 - (1 - Dodge% A) * (1 - Dodge% B) * ... * (1 - Dodge% N))] + [Additive Dodge% A] + [Additive Dodge% B] + ... + [Additive Dodge% N]
  • Example: 16.6% Dodge Chance from Dexterity, 15% Dodge Chance Affix, 15% Dodge Chance Affix
  • 16.6 + (100 * (1 - (1 - 0.15) * (1 - 0.15)) = 44.35%
  • This would grant you 44.35% Dodge Chance, instead of 16.6+15+15 = 46.6 if it was additive.

Bosses are immune to Crowd Control (CC) effects and instead take Stagger Damage when hit by one. The amount of stagger damage dealt depends on the type of CC and is proportional to its duration. After being hit by a CC effect, the Boss will temporarily take less Stagger Damage from a CC of the same type.

Effectively, this means that when you're just spamming one type of CC you don't need to spam any more of it than what you need to keep a normal enemy permanently CC-d. To stagger the Boss quickly you need to use as many different types of CC as possible. After the Boss is staggered it gains a certain amount of stacking Stagger Damage Reduction for the rest of the fight:

• After 1st Stagger: 20%
• After 2nd Stagger: 40%
• After 3rd Stagger: 60%
• After 4th Stagger: 90%

Bosses naturally regain 1% of their Stagger HP every second and when that regen is combined with 90% Stagger Damage Reduction it becomes borderline impossible to Stagger the Boss again unless you bring a serious amount of crowd controls.