The Rain of Arrows in Diablo 4 is powerful enough on its own to clear entire screens of enemies, as well as chunk bosses for way more than what you'd expect. I'd just like to say there's something so satisfying about casting Rain of Arrows and watching the entire screen disappear. In order to better utilize the rain of arrows, having sufficient Diablo 4 Gold is also essential.
Integrals
We use Word of Hakan to boost up Rain of Arrows with all the imbuement and grab perks in each of the imbuement skills, as those apply as well. So, extra damage to chill frozen enemies, extra poisoning damage and duration, and extra Elemental damage taken, and crit chance against injured enemies. Then, we also grab all the amazing perks in that area of the skill tree, and then we're basically done. What's crazy is that's all this build really needs to start working. In order to cast our ultimate Rain of Arrows as much as possible, we use Preparation as our spec and Flickerstep as well. On display is a 27-second cooldown Rain of Arrows, down from 55 seconds, with various sources of cooldown reduction.
When I was playing well and microing properly and not just being lazy, I could cast Rain of Arrows on nearly every pack of enemies. An interesting tidbit most people probably don't know about the Preparation spec is that it resets your evade cooldown, as well as all your other cooldowns, meaning you can evade through enemies with a Flickerstep, cast random arrows, and then evade again directly after.
About Rapid Fire
When we don't have Rain of Arrows ready to cast, which is honestly not that often, we use Rapid Fire with its refunding resource perk and a decent amount of resource regeneration from Strength in our free ring slot. We get back about 18 energy per cast, which effectively makes Rapid Fire cost 7 energy. That's all we need to stall out until we cast Rain of Arrows again, so that we always have DPS being applied to whatever we're fighting.
As long as I was using the Exploit Glyph, I never once ran out of resource, even without using a basic skill or any other generator, which is a unique kind of detail that might get glossed over or underestimated how effective that kind of idea really can be in a build. It effectively gives you an entirely extra skill. And then couple all this with the Combat Glyph, so we refund 12% of what it costed in the first place. So we're actually getting back about 20-21 energy, and so realistically, it only costs four, not seven.
We like using Concealment with the guaranteed critical hit perk because we hope to cast Rain of Arrows directly from Concealment, and then it's back off cooldown immediately. Concealment is again so that as soon as we want to fire off another Rain of Arrows, we can do so, and we can be concealed instantly and not have to wait for a long cooldown or anything like that. We use the Rapid Fire aspect to allow it to ricochet while utilizing the three different imbuement skills to navigate our way through different combat situations in a way that feels like something only a Rogue can really do.
Playstyle And Leveling
Even without Rain of Arrows, Rapid Fire is able to take care of anything and playstyle and leveling everything on its own. I was sincerely surprised by this at first because I first tried to just dodge around and only use Rain of Arrows exclusively. But then as I transitioned more to using Rain of Arrows to take care of elite and champion mobs specifically, is when I felt this build truly take shape and smooth out in the way that you try to smooth out all ARPG builds.
So rest assured, even without F-step and the X'Fal's Corroded Signet, this build can get started with just a good crossbow and Word of Hakan. And that's what I love about it. It's one of the few builds in the game that solely relies on a single unique in order to make it completely and immediately viable.
Key Passive
If you're looking for a good season starter build, level with Twisting Blades since it's still absolutely broken and the fastest leveling skill on Rogue. And as soon as you get Word of Hakan, you can make the swap to one of the cooler and more satisfying key passive builds available to Rogue. I like to use Victimize on this build since it scales off of the Exploit Glyph, and vulnerable damage is one of the best sources of additive damage in the game, especially when you get it on gear. And it makes Rapid Fire feel even more like a force to be reckoned with all on its own. Though you could use Precision with this exact setup, so whichever one you prefer is probably what's best overall.
Playing this build, and I think it is incredible, and would wholeheartedly recommend it to anybody. Its biggest weakness would be the suppression AOE on Elite mobs, of course, because it's a range build. But what's great about it is that you can cast Rain of Arrows outside of the bubble and then walk into the bubble, and that Rain of Arrows that you just cast outside will damage the enemies inside of the bubble. So you can preemptively start a one-shot, and then it's actually safer when you think about it.
