Rift Rogue Soul Tree Builds Guide

Rift Rogue Bladedancer

In this Rift Rogue builds guide I will be discussing about some of the best and most widely used Rift Rogue builds. While some could be literally outstanding, some might just not even make sense. This Rift Rogue builds guide explores possible combinations for selecting souls for both solo and group or team play.

By using the powerful soul combinations recommended in this article, you will be able to level up quickly, deal a lot of damage, dominate in PvP, and even tank!

Contents:

  1. Introduction
  2. Solo Play Builds
  3. Group Play Builds
  4. Leveling Builds
  5. DPS Builds
  6. PvP And Dungeon Builds
  7. Tanking Builds

Introduction

In Rift you will be selecting three souls which will be the basis for all of your character’s abilities, generally you will have one main soul and two other souls which will mainly be used for the starter abilities they give. In this guide I will be discussing the Rogue souls, what they do, and which ones I suggest that you should use.

The Rogue is a pretty versatile class, but should mainly be focusing on DPS. However you can actually go for tanking with the Riftstalker soul. You also have an option between ranged and melee dps, the ranged being the Ranger and Marksman and the melee being the Saboteur, Assassin, Night Blade, and Blade Dancer. There is also a support type soul that offers healing and buffs which is the Bard, but doesn’t quite give you enough to be the main healer.

Solo Play Builds

When playing Rift you’re able to purchase up to four roles so it is good to have a grouping role and soloing role at the very least. First we’ll look into the best soloing option for the Rogue class. You’re going to want to use Blade Dancer as your main soul and the Ranger and Bard souls for your off-souls. When these three souls are combined it gives you a ton of survivability along with damage. The ranger will give you a pet for a good source of extra DPS, and the bard gives you a 30 second heal over time which is great as it’s long enough to where you can just keep refreshing it every 30 seconds of combat.

Group Play Builds

For grouping it gets a little more complicated, you can go the route of the tank if you want to, this is using the Riftstalker soul as your main as mentioned earlier. You will be wanting Blade Dancer for the dodge buff as well as Assassin for the poison buff. When you have extra points you can’t put into Riftstalker put them into Blade Dancer for the increased dodge.

Second is the DPS, you’re able to go with the same build mentioned above for soloing with Blade Dancer as your main soul but you’ll want to switch out Assassin for the Bard off-soul, unless you want to hang on to it for some extra group healing. You’ll also want to tweak it a little bit from your soloing build to get rid of some of the damage reduction and such and replace it with more DPS oriented talents.

Another option to keep in mind is that Assassin is actually a pretty viable main soul build for DPSing in groups if you don’t like the Blade Dancer or just want to try switching it up from your soloing build if you’re getting bored of it.

Finally you’ve got the possible role of the off-healer. You’re going to need to use Bard as your main soul and pick up all of the talents that help with your buffing and healing. For your off-souls you’ll want to take Ranger and Saboteur, though they aren’t going to make too huge of a difference. Now it should be noted that you simply won’t have enough healing to be a main healer for groups in this build, so I would suggest not even going for it unless you really like healing and happened to pick the Rogue class instead of the Cleric class for some reason.

Leveling Builds

For leveling up, there is no better combination than the Bard, Marskmen, and Ranger. This class has self-healing, a pet, and some of the best damage in the game – it just does not get any better than this!

The first thing you want to is get 10 points in Bard as you can pick up Invigorated soul. This lets you use Cadence any time you want to heal you and your pet.

Additionally, with two points in Bard, you can get Anthem of Competence, which significantly improves movement speed. This makes leveling faster than any damage boost could as it makes you move faster.

Next, grab Ranger. You do not have to put any points in this role; just get it so you can have a pet.

Finally, for your third soul, get Marksman. The Swift Shot and Hasted Shot allow you to move very quickly between monsters, significantly improving leveling speed. Deadeye Shot also becomes the best use of combo points in the game once you get to rank 3.

You can use Cadence to heal and generate combo points, use two Swift Shots, then finish the enemy with Deadeye Shot. This will kill most enemies outright and leave you with a full health pool.

For more details on this Rift Rogue leveling build and how to progress it so a higher level, see the Rift Rogue leveling guide.

DPS Builds

If maximal damage is your game, then you will want to go straight for Marksman and put all ancillary points into Ranger. Ignore all the movement speed talents in the Marksman tier and only focus on ones that help you do damage.

For example, Repelling Shot and Improved Swift Shot are soloing and PvP abilities; there is no need for them in a dungeon. Instead, Increased Fire Power and Sharpshooter are much better talent points.

Your pet, when controlled well, can actually be a nice extra source of damage. In dungeons I recommend keeping it dismissed as sometimes the pathing can draw aggro; it is much easier to only use it on boss fights.

As a third soul, you can consider the Bladedancer; six points will get you some nice passive stats and the Combat Pose dexterity buff. More time and testing will be needed to see just how effective each 31 point talent is to know whether this is ideal or not. For now, just know that Marksman and Ranger deals the most damage.

PvP And Dungeon Builds

Strangely enough, out of the Rift Rogue Builds, I consider the best PvP and Dungeon build to be one and the same: Bard and Marksman.

Cadence is incredibly powerful in PvP; the group healing is massive since your team is clumped up and multiple players may be taking damage at once. To make things even better, Cadence generates quick combo points which you can then dump on Deadeye Shot or Hasted Shot.

The movement speed upgrades in Marksman allow you to chase down dying players very easily and allow you to escape as well. When you are in trouble, fire off Repelling Shot then a Hasted Shot and run for it. If that does not work, you have On the Double and Crossfire to get distance on an opponent.

Tanking Builds

There are two builds I would recommend for Rogue tanking: Riftstalker and Bard (low-level) and Riftstalker and Blade Dancer (high level).

At a low level, many healers do not have high-powered spells yet, so you will benefit immensely from 9 points in Bard for Anthem of Glory and Invigorated Soul. Put the rest of your points in Riftstalker. This way, after you have hate established, you can use Cadence to help heal yourself and the group.

At a higher level, you will want to put points into Riftstalker and Blade Dancer. I recommend putting a lot of points (31) into Blade Dancer. Pick up all the important mitigation talents and be sure to grab Improved False Blade and Disengage.

Improved False Blade means that every time you use False Blade (a Blade Dancer skill), you gain 5% dodge and 6% parry. This is a massive amount for a tank.

Additionally, given your dodge and parry rate with this Rift Rogue build, you will be able to use Disengage practically every 20 seconds. Keeping your enemy stunned 20% of the time is great for tanking!

While the level cap has prevented us from exploring this possibility just yet, I think that the Rogue will be one of the best classes for soloing tough monsters. I am under the impression that a 26 Blade Dancer, 25 Bard, 14 Riftstalker (or 22 Blade Dancer, 26 Bard, 18 Riftstalker) build will be very effective at soloing tough enemies.

You get a lot of great mitigation talents from Blade Dancer and Riftstalker yet you get a lot of good self-healing abilities from Bard. More details on this spec to come! You can also visit this lens to view some example rogue builds, or add your own for discussion as well.

No matter what you like to do in Rift, the Rogue is a highly versatile calling. By using these Rift Rogue builds, you can experience the best of what the Rogue class has to offer!

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9 Thoughts to “Rift Rogue Soul Tree Builds Guide”

  1. carbonell

    dang i thank you soooo much, its not necesarilly 100% detailed, but its about 1000% better then anything else i’ve found on the internet so far

  2. Alex

    Excellent guide – Thanks for taking the time to share

  3. Jae

    You left out a metric TON of great information about assassin soloing. I’ve done the ranged/marksman, and it’s pretty nice, but nothing compared to how awesomely fun the assassin is, not to mention how useful!

  4. Scott

    cool, I’m low level specializing in Ranger, with Marksman, and Assassin right now. I will probably try Bard with it though instead of Assassin. I do a ton of damage though… I would like the ability to heal myself a bit over doing more damage though, I think.

  5. shakkababy

    tried the leveling build, not so effective for me; with no points going into ranger (pet can not hold aggro). the mob quickly aggros on me, 0 range, and marksman has only 1 cd for point blank attacks. Might be able to kite it around if there is space. am i doing something wrong?

  6. mike

    Thought: I have not specced out of the bard/ranger/marksman yet, but ranger seems less useful later on once you kind of out grow the basic pet. Nightblade? seems a great replacement for PvP and PvE simply because 10 points gets you 15% damage buff to combo point generating attacks, which is 15% more healing with cadence and 15% damage buff to Deadeye.

  7. mike

    I should have said 15% bonus to all finishing moves, which would include Deadeye Shot.

  8. jmelea

    Dudeman, thank you
    I didnt have to buy anything
    and it was very helpful 😀

  9. Brett Perry

    I know it’s really just a matter of personal preference but for myself I’ve found that using assassin as the primary soul is by far the best way to go for soloing. The stealth ability is an indispensable tool in the sense that it allows you to very easily move through heavily guarded areas and isolate single enemies without the risk of agroing large groups… and bypassing others all together. Which makes taking on quests and enemies of a higher level, a very viable option.. And one that just isn’t possible with other classes or builds. For the same reason, it also makes gathering, mining, and/or artifact hunting a much easier task since in most cases (if you desire) you can get in and out without ever having to unsheathe your weapon.
    Personally the build I have the most success soloing with is assassin, riftstalker, and saboteur…and that also works very well in pvp, groups, and even instances. Although, I often switch to a bard heavy role when I’m in groups that are lacking in support roles. In that case I use a bard, saboteur, marksman combo.

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