Diablo 4 Murmuring Obols

Through the 2.5.0 PTR, we've already learned about the new exclusive items for each class in Diablo 4 Season 11. Hardcore fans know that these new Uniques will essentially determine the trend and popularity of these class builds in the upcoming season. While all data is currently based solely on PTR, some items may be buffed or nerfed, but major changes are unlikely.

Among these new Diablo 4 items, one stands out and has the immense potential to propel Dance of Knives build to the top of the rankings in Season 11: Rogue-exclusive Death's Pavane Unique pants.

Here, we'll discuss the impact of Death's Pavane on Dance of Knives Rogue and why this build was able to completely disrupt the game balance and dominate The Tower endgame event during PTR.

Death's Pavane

First, these unique pants allow you to deal more damage when using Dance of Knives skill, while also significantly improving your survivability.

Death's Pavane's inherent attributes grant you a higher dodge chance when using Dance of Knives skill, which provides a substantial survivability boost. Additionally, it increases your critical strike chance and movement speed, making it very useful.

It's important to note that this item has some unique mechanics. It works by dropping knives when you use Dance of Knives and hit an enemy. Picking them up grants a charge, increasing your damage by 10-20% for 6 seconds, stacking up to three times for a 60% damage multiplier.

Essentially, you'll be in a charged state most of the time, giving you the opportunity to deal infinite damage. This is why Dance of Knives Rogue dominated The Pits and The Tower during the PTR.

While this game-changing stat boost will almost certainly be nerfed after the official release of Season 11, it remains the top build choice for players, especially Rogue players, with its new unique gear.

Build Gameplay

Now let's talk about the gameplay and powerful features of Dance of Knives Rogue build.

Skills

In terms of skills, you'll need to use Puncture or other basic skills to increase damage and accumulate combo points. You can increase the damage and effects of your core skills by stacking combo points, including the damage bonus to your primary attack skill, Dance of Knives. Building combo points is the core mechanism for maximizing damage output, as spending more combo points will produce stronger effects when using core skills.

Next, use Dark Shroud to reduce damage and combine it with Shadow Clone to further increase damage. Additionally, you can choose Shadow Imbuement, Cold Imbuement, or Poison Imbuement depending on your playstyle and build.

Of these, Shadow is best suited for fast farming because it explodes and quickly clears large areas of enemy packs; Cold has very strong single-target damage; and Poison's damage output is also decent, but its damage frequency is relatively low, which is normal across various builds. However, combined with Aspect of Creeping Death, Poison Imbuement's power is quite considerable.

Therefore, you can choose any skill; they are all pretty good now, each with its own unique characteristics.

However, since Shadow Imbuement is better suited for clearing maps, and the latest update has made many changes, now each boss has different areas, I would recommend Shadow if you want to experience more open-world content. Plus, Dance of Knives build itself is suitable for speed runs.

In addition, we have Dash skill, which allows us to significantly improve the build's mobility. It's also another agility skill, which we need to activate for snapshots.

The principle of a snapshot is simple: it's about accumulating combo points. Assuming you have three combo points, you'll need to activate Shadow Clone, Dash, and Shadow Imbuement.

Once all skills are snapshotted, you'll have near-infinite damage output. However, after Shadow Clone expires, you'll need to re-execute the entire combo. This is necessary because activating the ultimate skill grants an additional bonus, and the ultimate skill's damage provides a universal damage multiplier and boosts all damage.

Also Read: Developer Interview Reveals New Changes In Diablo 4 Season 11 | Item Upgrade, Map Unlock And The Tower Endgame

Equipment & Stats

As for the necessary equipment for this build, Heir of Perdition or Harlequin Crest are both good choices in Season 11. Other item options are as follows:

• Helm: Heir of Perdition
• Chest Armor: Shroud of False Death
• Gloves: Grasp of Shadow
• Pants: Death's Pavane
• Boots: Mangler's Aspect
• Amulet: Umbrous Aspect
• Ring 1: Aspect of Inner Calm
• Ring 2: Aspect of Elements
• Ranged Weapon: Aspect of Star Shards
• Dual-Wield Weapon 1: Aspect of Apogeic Furor
• Dual-Wield Weapon 2: Edgemaster's Aspect

Because the item crafting system has undergone a complete overhaul in the new season, not only has the chance of Tempering and Masterworking rolling RNGs been reduced, but another high-risk, high-reward item upgrade mechanism has also been added - Sanctification, although its reputation is not good.

Therefore, in Diablo 4 Season 11, you can essentially regenerate attributes randomly. Ideally, you only need to focus on obtaining affixes like Critical Strike Chance, Movement Speed, and Lucky Hit Chance.

The most important stat for your build is Movement Speed, as this prevents your Dance of Knives skills from easily becoming ineffective. Other important stats include Fortification, Resistance, and Immunity to Crowd Control every 12 seconds.

Runes

Next is the rune section for Dance of Knives Rogue build.

• Bac and Zec: These runes reduce ultimate skill cooldowns, which is extremely useful for a Dance of Knives build that relies on high burst damage.
• Neo: When using normal skills, this Rune of Ritual reduces ultimate skill cooldowns, making your ultimate skills easier to cast and deal continuous damage.
• Vex: This Rune of Invocation provides extra skill points, which is very useful for improving the skill tree and maximizing damage and defense.

Paragon Boards

For Dance of Knives build in Season 11, key Paragon Boards include Exploit Weakness, Danse Macabre, and Headhunter. These boards provide crucial damage bonuses to active abilities, extend the duration of Vulnerable states, and increase damage against controlled enemies - the very control effects that are key to maintaining the build's Cold and Poison Imbuement mechanics.

In short, Dance of Knives Rogue build is so powerful in Season 11 because of the perfect synergy between its core abilities, the new unique Death's Pavane pants, and the new season's mechanics. This combination allows the build to deal massive area-of-effect damage while maintaining high mobility.

While currently in a transition period between the end of 2.5.0 PTR and the yet-to-be-released Season 11, Diablo 4 development team continues to release information about Season 11 periodically.

Interestingly, compared to previous seasons, the most appealing aspect of Season 11 isn't its seasonal Divine Gifts mechanic, but rather the updates and additions to various gear upgrade systems, and the new dungeon, The Tower.

While The Tower itself isn't particularly innovative in terms of gameplay, its true uniqueness lies in its return to the leaderboard system - a system that previously appeared in D4 but was removed in Season 6.

Recently, the developers' revelations about the special leaderboard rewards for The Tower have reignited the excitement of players who have been quietly awaiting the new season. We'll introduce the relevant information below.

What Is The Tower?

The Tower is an event added to Diablo 4 endgame content starting with Season 11, specifically manifested as a randomly generated, multi-stage, time-limited dungeon.

It's worth noting that The Tower operates similarly to the permanent The Pit, and there are even more connections between them:

For example, both require you to travel to The Artificer's Obelisk in Cerrigar to enter. Furthermore, the available The Tower levels can be re-selected, or you can directly enter the corresponding level of The Tower from an unlocked The Pit level.

It's also worth noting that unlocking The Tower requires completing the seasonal journey's rank mission, Hellish Decent Capstone Dungeon. This dungeon system, like the leaderboard, returned to the game in Season 11.

How To Complete The Tower?

Each run of The Tower dungeon has 5 levels. All enemies and bosses you encounter are randomly generated, and you must clear them within 10 minutes.

During the clearing process, you can collect progress orbs from defeated enemies to fill the dungeon's progress. Once full, a Tower Guardian will spawn as the final boss; defeating him completes that run of The Tower.

The stronger the enemy, the more progress orbs they provide, thus helping you complete The Tower faster and achieve better rankings on the leaderboard. Enemy types typically include:

• Elites
• Champions
• Mastery Goblins

To gain more damage or defense against rarer The Tower enemies, you should not only equip Diablo 4 items that provide boosts, but also utilize the help of Pylons.

What Are Pylons?

Pylons are buff shrines that appear during The Tower dungeon runs. There are three types, each with different effects. You will encounter four each round of The Tower, with the last one having a random effect from the three types.

• Pylon of Channeling: You don't consume resources when using skills, and skill cooldowns are reduced.
• Pylon of Power: You can deal more damage.
• Pylon of Speed: You gain the unstoppable and unhindered effects, and your movement speed is greatly increased.

When you encounter Pylons, you will find that they are surrounded by shields. Only by destroying the shields can the corresponding Pylon be activated. While The Tower itself isn't difficult to complete, activating Pylons can help you climb the leaderboards.

How Does The Tower Leaderboard Work?

The leaderboard is broadly divided into hardcore and casual categories. Each category includes solo, duo, trio, and quad modes. Solo mode is further subdivided into six game classes.

Based on your team and class choice when completing The Tower dungeons, your final ranking, character ID, completion date, and dungeon level will be displayed in the relevant category - provided you rank in the top 1000.

What The Tower Rewards Are Available?

Due to the leaderboards, you cannot earn rewards by repeatedly farming The Tower. You only receive onetime rewards upon clearing new levels.

The development team recently revealed that regular rewards will probably include gold and gear. The higher your ranking on the leaderboard, the more numerous and rarer the rewards will be. Top players will also have the opportunity to unlock exclusive cosmetic rewards!

These cosmetic items will likely be titles and halos with unique formats or visual effects, allowing other players to immediately see your achievements in The Tower challenge and fully demonstrate your skill level.

Therefore, obtaining these cosmetic rewards will likely be difficult; you might need to consistently rank top in your category every time the leaderboard resets.

It's important to note that only the character you used to complete the challenge can wear these cosmetic items, not other Diablo 4 characters in your account. Otherwise, it might cause confusion when others view the leaderboard.

Since rewards are not distributed through leaderboards in 2.5.0 PTR, and the developers have stated that they will continue to optimize the leaderboard system after Season 11 launches, the final reward system is currently unclear.

However, what is certain is that in the future, you will be able to prove your Diablo 4 skill and ability through The Tower challenge, motivating yourself to continuously improve. After all, leaderboards are inherently competitive.

In summary, the mechanics and gameplay of The Tower itself are not complex; the challenge lies in achieving the top rankings. Dungeon time is limited, so sometimes the difference between your time and the person ahead of you can be just a matter of seconds.

That's all for this introduction. More details will be revealed when Season 11 goes live. Let's look forward to December 9th!