Welcome to the Heartseeker Rogue Specialized Guide! This is a brand new build for season 4 made possible by the new itemization changes. The build focuses around buffing the basic attack skill Heartseeker with other abilities, passives and multiplicative aspects while building around the Victimize key passive for massive area of effect damage. Victimize is the hero of the build with our ability to scale this passive to insane amounts of damage. This pairs nicely with Heartseeker and its ability to hit multiple times per cast and good base lucky hit chance to proc the key passive.
We use the Inner Sight specialization for additional critical strike chance when activated. This setup is straight forward, easy to play, and the first of its kind on Maxroll. Great for those looking for something different. Learn everything you need to know on how to make the most out of this build!
Our Specialized Builds are late game builds with specific requirements and purposes. To play them, you are expected to have near a level 100 character and most of the listed items available. To get there, we recommend you use one of our existing lvl 50-100 Endgame Build Guides.
Click on the planner to see all of the different variations!
Paragon
Look below for the selected Paragon Boards, Paragon point allocation, and the correct Glyphs you should use for the Heartseeker Rogue. Note: The Paragon Boards below are the final setup with no steps.
If you're having issues capping resistance early, use Diminishin place of Ambushon the Leyrana's Instinct Paragon board.
Season 4 - Loot Reborn
In Season 4, the Season Theme revolves around helping out the Iron Wolves. Compared to past themes, this one does not offer any borrowed power as the entire game has been redesigned with new itemization and crafting options, increasing player power substantially across the board. Instead, you can gather reputation similar to the Vampire Bounty Board from Season 2 to unlock rewards that supercharge your leveling journey to 100 with extra items, crafting materials and eventually even a Resplendent Spark to craft an uber unique.
We recommend to follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 4 guide for more information.
Gameplay
The Heartseeker Rogue is a straight forward shooter of a build. It's high in mobility and damage modifiers. Below explains how to best get the most out of each skill on your bar.
Heartseeker is the main skill. You can start most engagements with this nearly off screen and kill trash mobs in the open world before they can get near you.
When things get a little tough, you want to dropCaltrops to stack buffs and deal more damage.
Use Smoke Grenade whenever you see an elite pack to disable them. This also gives a nice multiplier and synergizes with Concussive Strikes which allows you to burst them down quickly.
Use Poison Trap to help keep mobs still and activate Concussive, Trap Mastery and Retribution. This skill is very good in combination with Caltrops.
Both Dash and Shadow Step are here for mobility and to get out of sticky situations. Use both liberally to put yourself in the best positions possible.
Gear and Stat Requirements
The Heartseeker Rogue requires specific Aspects, Affixes, Masterworks and Tempers on your gear to perform well. Unlike some of the other specialized builds, The Heartseeker Rogue can come online a bit earlier due to its less strenuous requirements. See below:
Legendary Aspects:
Elements
Edgemaster’s
Retribution
Rapid
Concussive Strikes
Frostbitten
Umbrous
Might (This gets replaced if you find a Harlequin Crest)
Adaptability
Moonrise
Accursed Touch (Use this in place of Retribution if you do not have the % chance to make enemies Vulnerable as a stat on ring).
Undying
Inner Calm (Pit 100+ variant in planner instead of Elements)
Shared Misery (Speedfarming Content/Pit)
Uniques:
Harlequin Crest (Not required)
Elixirs: Elixir of Advantage II Stock up on this and/or craft a lot of these. The attack speed and lucky hit chance boost is godlike for this build.
Recommended Stat Thresholds
20%+ Critical Strike Chance
30%+ Attack Speed
8+ total Ranks of Dark Shroud
10+ total Ranks of Heartseeker
1500%+ Damage to Vulnerable Enemies
80%+ Chance to Cast Heartseeker Twice
25%+ Lucky Hit Chance
% Chance to make enemies Vulnerable (on ring)
Armor Capped 9,230
Resistance Capped 70%
40,000+ Life
30%+ Chance to Freeze
15%+ Chance to Stun/Daze
150%+ Movement Speed
40%+ Caltrops Size
40%+ Caltrops Duration
FAQ & Mechanics
When I can transition to this build?
It's important to have a lot of Vulnerable damage, high roll on Heartseeker cast projectiles twice and a decent amount of Lucky Hit Chance (preferably 20%+) with glyph levels at 15. If at least these things are acquired, you can transition into this build and continue to find and temper better gear.
Bow or Crossbow? Which is better?
They both deal similar DPS. Bow will attack faster and thus more procs while Crossbow will hit harder. The amount of vulnerable damage you'd lose going to a Bow hardly matter once you've rolled/tempered Vulnerable damage everywhere else.
Bow is generally preferred in very high Pit pushes due to its attack speed, allowing more Undying and Umbrous procs which equates to more survivability. Outside of this, it is merely preference.
Sword vs Daggers. What's the deal?
There is none in terms of damage. Both have implicit stats (critical strike damage for swords and close damage for daggers) that equate to less than 1% of your overall damage when you're geared out. What daggers are good for is making Shadow Step and Dash feel slightly more fluid due to the daggers having a slightly higher base attack speed.
Whichever 1 hand weapon rolls better is the one you go for.
Which Elixirs?
Elixir of Advantage II Stock up on this and/or craft a lot of these. The attack speed and lucky hit chance boost is godlike for this build. Elixir of Antivenin is also good and can be used along side Advantage II without overriding it. Both are extremely important for high Pit content.
Do I have to use Poison Trap?
No. The 6th skill can be whatever you want, as long as it has value. Some people take Death Trap for a pull, and some others take Flurry with Combo Points specialization for a boost of attack speed. Concealment is popular for elite hunting in very high Pit Tiers. These are all viable. You take what feels good for you.
Getting multiple passives on an Amulet is really hard. Any other options?
Yes. Frigid Finesse is a good passive alternative.
A great basic starter amulet would be: - Lucky Hit Chance - Critical Strike Chance - Attack Speed
This will get you by until you can upgrade.
Are any Uniques useful for this build?
Godslayer Crown is useful for swapping it in after staggering a tormented boss for more burst damage.
Harlequin Crest is decent, but you give up Lucky Hit Chance. Only slot this if you have Lucky Hit Chance everywhere else.
How are Dark Shroud stacks generated for this build?
Even without Dark Shroud on your skill bar, you can gain shrouds through the Umbrous Aspect. It is used in this build to profit from the enormous damage reduction especially when you get hit infrequently. You gain stacks by hitting enemies with Heartseeker (a Marksman skill) greatly benefitting from Lucky Hit Chance.
Mechanics
Learn about the mechanical details that make the build tick.
Dark Shroud Scaling
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.
At maximum stacks, increasing your total Ranks of Dark Shroud affects your effective hit points (eHP) against one-shots as follows:
Increasing Dark Shroud from:
Rank 1 to Rank 5: 15.3% more eHP
Rank 1 to Rank 11: 50% more eHP
Rank 1 to Rank 15: 87.5% more eHP
Rank 5 to Rank 11: 30.1% more eHP
Rank 5 to Rank 15: 62.5% more eHP
Rank 11 to Rank 15: 25% more eHP
Attack Speed Caps
While all the exact mechanics are much more nuanced, there are two separate Attack Speed Bonus caps of +100% that apply to all builds for a total potential of +200%. For Rogues, these two caps are distributed in the following way:
So whenever you deal 100 Damage with Shadow Step, Victimize explodes for 320 Damage.
A few effects can double dip for Victimize, effectively increasing your total damage output twice.
These effects get multiplied again for the Victimize Explosion, after already having been multiplied to the damaging skill.
Below are known and tested relevant interactions that double dip for Victimize, credits to Ava:
Control x1.2
Deadly Ambush x1.23
Enhanced Caltrops x1.45
Exploit x1.18
Exploit Weakness x1.25
This results in an additional multiplier of: 1.2 * 1.23 * 1.45 * 1.18 * 1.25 = 3.157 if all conditions are met. This is applied to the Victimize Explosion.
Factoring both Multipliers together, this results in an actual Victimize Multiplier of: 3.2 * 3.157 = 10.10
So if you for example deal 10 million damage with Shadow Step, Victimize will deal 101,000,000 explosion damage.
Dodge Mechanics
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 it 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.
This would grant you 44.35% Dodge Chance, instead of 16.6+15+15 = 46.6 if it was additive.
Smoke Grenade Mechanics
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.