Barricade's Season 2 PVP Rogue Build Guide

Diablo IV PVP moves fast, it’s do or die, you need a build that hits hard leaving you with lots of options for escape. Luckily Barricade has got you covered! His Season 2 Rogue PVP build offers tons of choices for quick high damage engage and disengage with lots of CC to slow enemies down as you decide what your next move in. This build meets the demand for fast-paced PVP, it provides solid defensive options while giving you different tools to engage, apply CC, and shred your enemies. In this guide, we’ll be breaking down what makes this build such a powerful option for players looking to dominate PVP.

THE BUILD

Skills

• Puncture

  • Here Barricade specs into fundamental puncture, it’s an easy choice as it provides a consistent source of vulnerability, something you’ll want to apply to all your targets to ensure maximum burst damage.
• Twisting Blades

  • Your main source of damage, Barricade grabs improved twisting blades for the added daze effect on return. The additional CC is paramount as applying different forms of CC can be the deciding factor in most engagements.
• Shadow Step

  • A very important ability as it serves as a potential engagement tool, a source of CC and a source of unstoppable to break CC if you get caught. Overall, this ability gives you lots of options, use it to jump on an unsuspecting enemy, jump to an enemy outside the fight to escape, or pop it when you’re locked down for an easy out.
• Concealment

  • Similar to shadow step this ability serves as a powerful escape tool. Importantly, concealment hides you from sight and grants unstoppable, allowing you to break CC. If your shadow step is down pop this ability to quickly reposition. Barricade grabs countering concealment turning this ability from a totally defense one into a powerful reposition tool since this upgrade makes your next ability guaranteed to critically strike.
• Poison Imbuement

  • Your second powerful source of damage, Barricade grabs mixed poison imbuement for the chance at even more damage. The goal here is simple, pop poison imbuement as you’re about to go in, apply it ideally with twisting blades, or use shadow step if you have to.
• Shadow Clone

  • Barricade grabs shadow clone for an ultimate since it doesn’t sit in one specific area like deathtrap or rain of arrows, meaning it can compete with the quick movement and pace of PVP.
• Key Passive

  • Close Quarters Combat: This passive works great here as Barricade looks to quickly increase his attack speed while also applying CC and this passive assists with both goals while granting insane bonus damage as well. The goal here is speed and burst, and this passive makes it happen.
• Specialization: Preparation

  • Incredibly powerful as you’ll be able to maximize both your shadow clone uptime and the uptime of your other skills.

Aspects and Gear

• Helm: Unique Harlequin Crest

  • Easily the best in slot for pretty much every class in the game this helm provides percent damage reduction and +4 to all skills, it synergizes with every build in the game and is the reason Barricade looked to grab it for PVP.
• Chest

  • Aspect of Disobedience

    • An easy choice as this is one of the best defensive aspects. It allows you to quickly stack additional armor when hitting enemies, which you’ll do automatically every time you enter combat.
  • Affixes

    • Max Life
    • Damage Reduction
    • Damage Reduction From Close
    • Damage Reduction From Distant Enemies
  • Gem: Ruby
• Gloves

  • Rapid Aspect

    • Very strong for PVP this aspect grants 15-30% attack speed for basic skills. This allows you to quickly apply vulnerable to enemies with puncture.
  • Affixes

    • Attack Speed
    • Lucky Hit Chance
    • Ranks of Twisting Blades
    • Dexterity
• Pants

  • Escape Artist’s Aspect

    • This aspect provides defensive utility by dropping a smoke grenade and granting you a guaranteed dodge for the next 2-7 attacks. It has a 45 second cooldown but with the pace of PVP combat you’ll proc it almost immediately when engaging and might be able to avoid getting bursted which is incredibly important.
  • Affixes

    • Max Life
    • Total Armor
    • Damage Reduction
    • Damage Reduction while Injured
  • Gem: Ruby
• Boots

  • Exploiter’s Aspect

    • This aspect grants increased CC duration. With how important CC is in PVP it is incredibly important and provides a massive advantage in combat.
  • Affixes

    • Movement Speed
    • Poison Resistance
    • Damage Reduction While Injured
    • Dodge Chance
• Crossbow

  • Aspect of Corruption

    • This aspect enhances imbuement potency on vulnerable enemies, since you’ll be applying vulnerability almost immediately with puncture and then immediately using poison imbue this means you get massive free damage by running this aspect. Barricade puts it on the Crossbow for increased effectiveness.
  • Affixes

    • All Stats
    • Dexterity
    • Damage Over Time
    • Damage to Close
  • Gem: Amethyst
• Amulet

  • Accelerating Aspect

    • Critical strikes with Core Skills increase your attack speed by 22-38% for 3 seconds. This aspect is another insanely powerful addition to the build. Between all your items it’s likely you’ll be able to crit pretty consistently, however, using concealment will also guarantee the ability to crit with twisting blades meaning you can choose when this aspect activates.
  • Affixes

    • Cooldown Reduction
    • Ranks of All Subterfuge Skills
    • Ranks of All Imbuement Skills
    • Ranks of the Deadly Venom Passive
  • Gem: Ruby
• Ring 1: Unique X’Fal’s Corroded Signet

  • This unique grants a 50% chance for your damage over time effects to erupt dealing massive damage to nearby enemies. It’s a huge damage boost since a large portion of your damage comes from poison imbuement which applies a large damage over time effect.
• Ring 2

  • Pestilent Points

    • A very powerful aspect that synergizes with poison imbuement and the already very high basic skill attack speed within the build, this aspect grants every third cast of puncture a free poison imbuement with 100-150% of normal potency.
• Dagger 1

  • Bladedancer's Aspect

    • A must have for any rogue build that uses twisting blades, this aspect makes the blades circle around you upon return dealing additional damage.
  • Affixes

    • Dexterity
    • Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies
    • Damage to Close Enemies
    • Damage Over Time
  • Gem: Amethyst
• Dagger 2: Unique Doombringer

  • This dagger grants a lucky hit chance to deal shadow damage to surrounding enemies and reduce their damage done by 20% powerful for both the offensive and defensive benefits.

Vampiric Powers

• Accursed Touch: Used to maximize the potency of the other powers this grants a high chance to apply vampiric curse to enemies and allows it to have a chance to spread to other nearby enemies.
• Flowing Veins: Increases damage over time against enemies affected by vampiric curse, this really increases the potency of your poison damage on poison imbuement.
• Ravenous: Grants a lucky hit chance to increase your attack speed by 40% of your total movement speed for 6 seconds. Great for further enhancing your attack speed when combined with the other aspects and passives used in the build.
• Undying: A powerful defensive vampiric power, this power heals you for 3% life after every skill used, doubling when below 50% health.
• Resilience: Grants 1% damage reduction for each 2% missing life, a powerful defensive tool for PVP as your health is likely to drop quickly at times.

Paragon

• Glyphs

  • Versatility

    • Used on the starting board, make sure you surround this glyph with as much Dexterity as possible to activate it’s bonus to other magic nodes.

• Devious

  • Used on Leyrana’s Instinct, make sure to grab enough dexterity around this node to activate the bonus.

• Control

  • Slotted onto the cheap shot board, this glyph increases damage to CC’d targets and if requirements are met, further increases damage for different kinds of CC’d targets. Very important as a huge part of the fight in PVP is applying as much CC as possible while you damage your target.

• Efficacy

  • Slotted into the no witnesses board, make sure to get enough intelligence around this node to activate the bonus.

• Turf

  • Slotted into tricks of the trade, this glyph grants bonus damage to close targets and, if requirements are met, additional damage reduction from close enemies, very powerful for this build in PVP as you’ll always want to be close to targets when damaging.

• Canny

  • Slotted on eldritch bounty, this glyph grants increased non-physical damage and if requirements are met provides an even further boost to non-physical damage. Very powerful here as a large portion of your damage will come from poison imbuement.

• Bane

  • Slotted in the cunning stratagem board this glyph grants increased poison damage and if requirements are met grants a 10% chance for poison damage effects to deal double the normal damage. Incredibly powerful with this build as you’re putting out massive poison damage with poison imbuement.