Diablo 4, there is a plethora of passive Rogue skills that may be used to augment and improve the player's build. Choosing passive skills is vital to constructing a viable character that can survive both the endgame and more difficult world tiers. However, players may only choose a single Key Passive. Key Passives are a selection of build-changing passive skills that can grant powerful bonuses, stack with other benefits, and even alter the way certain skills function.
There are five Key Passive skills available for Rogue players. Since it's only possible to have a single Key Passive, it's important for players to carefully consider their build and what will best benefit them before committing. Though different Key Passives will be more beneficial to certain builds than others, some skills in this category offer more overall than others.
5 Momentum
The Momentum skill sits solidly at the top of the list largely due to the number of specific requirements that must be met for it to become functional. This passive generates a stack of momentum whenever a Cutthroat ability strikes a stunned, frozen, or dazed enemy or strikes an enemy from behind.
Not only does this limit the passive to characters that utilize more close-combat Cutthroat skills, but also makes it less effective for players that do not make use of stunning or freezing attacks. What's more, these stacks of Momentum do absolutely nothing until you acquire three of them. Then, and only then, does the player receive Momentum bonuses.
This isn't to say this key passive is useless by any means, as the bonuses received are sizable. While at three stacks of Momentum, players take 20% less damage, regain energy 30% faster, and move 15% more quickly. This passive synergizes well with skills like Smoke Grenade and Frost Imbuement, and is especially useful for builds focusing on mobility.
4 Exposure
This passive skill is also limited to only a single type of ability, focusing instead on triggering off of traps. Specifically, dealing damage to an enemy affected by a trap skill has a 25% chance to either reduce the cooldown of all trap skills by 20% or drop a cluster of stun grenades that deal physical damage and briefly stun enemies.
Though useless for players who don't utilize trap abilities, this Key Passive is a must-have for trap-based Rogue builds. Since most builds utilizing traps tend to hinge on avoiding melee combat, this skill offers a powerful ability that can turn the tide of battle and get players out of tight spots.
Since the Death Trap ultimate ability is considered a trap skill, Exposure's cooldown reduction also applies to it, increasing the speed at which players can deploy another devastating shadow attack.
3 Precision
The overall power bonus generated by the Precision skill puts it ahead of other limited key passives. This skill generates a stack of Precision each time players critically strike with a Marksman ability. Each stack of Precision increases the player's critical strike damage by 4%, building up to a maximum of 20% with 5 stacks. That's not all, though. Upon reaching maximum precision, the player's next marksman skill is guaranteed to critically hit, dealing an additional 40% critical strike damage and consuming all stacks of precision.
This skill is limited to players who make use of marksman skills but synergizes well with nearly all skills of that type. Since ranged Rogue builds tend to specialize in performing critical strikes and increasing their chance to do so, this key passive directly suits their expertise. Precision synergizes especially well with the penetrating shot skill and is a necessity for players who want to turn their ranged Rogue into a one-hit-kill sniper.
2 Close Quarters Combat
As the name implies, this Key Passive is specialized for close combat Rogues. It's much more versatile than others in the category, offering the player a 10% attack speed bonus each time they strike an enemy with either a Marksman or Cutthroat skill. The effect practically guarantees that a player will have at least one of the two attack speed bonuses active during combat.
Players who utilize both Marksman and Cutthroat skills can stack the two bonuses together for a total of 20% faster attacks. Additionally, while both of these bonuses are active the Rogue deals 30% more damage to crowd-controlled enemies. While the necessity of crowd control is somewhat limiting, the broad definition of what qualifies as crowd control makes this skill especially versatile across the board.
1 Victimize
Victimize is number one on this list for good reason. Not only is this skill quite versatile, requiring only that enemies be vulnerable, but it also stacks additional damage onto vulnerable targets. To clarify, this Key Passive grants a 30% chance to cause an explosion every time damage is dealt to a vulnerable enemy. This explosion deals around 23% of the original attack's damage to both the initial target and nearby enemies.
The versatility of this skill is multiplied when considering that this additional damage is useful against both single enemies and crowds. This, coupled with its high trigger chance, make Victimize one of the Rogue's most powerful passive skills. The damage dealt by this passive can be further combined with shadow damage and Rogue AOE abilities. Shadow Crash is an especially potent addition to this combination, allowing shadow explosions to spread vulnerability and further increase the chance of victimizing an enemy.
Diablo 4 is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox 1, and Xbox Series X.