SilchasRuin

2h rogue is not strictly optimal as a dps char, especially not using Pikes, you have the same micro requirements as a dw rogue, but due to dw's higher damage at 0 dr, as damage modifiers increase, dw will outpace 2h in terms of damage, especially as the 15% damage gain from 2h style is additive with the extremely long list of damage modifiers a rogue gets. it's probably somewhere around 10% less dps compared to a dw rogue, but if you're not looking for strict optimization that's probably okay. I suspect however, that in conjunction with a particular greatsword, 2h rogue could function as a reasonably effective offtank, which may be the best way to play it.

Sneak attack is "only 50%"? A single class passive that grants 50% damage is far more than any other class has bar none. The rogue has multiple other rogue only modifiers that are extremely strong and synergistic with other general damage buffs. Dirty Fighting/Reckless Assault/Deep Wounds (apparently each reapplication deals 4 raw damage on application so it's actually stronger than Vulnerable Attack)/Deathblows. +120% damage, +8 accuracy, +20% hit to crit, and +4 damage per hit(in addition to the dot) is an extremely strong set of damage modifiers which is class exclusive. As to ranged rogue vs melee rogue, in my opinion ranged rogue is inferior to casters as ranged single target seriously lags behind ranged aoe, but this is a problem with any ranged weapon damage dealer in general. A ranged rogue is probably a better ranged weapon wielder than any other class, but ranged weapons just aren't good enough. The best way to use rogue, I believe, is to use them in conjunction with strong cc to quickly mop up threats that make it to the back line, and otherwise deal with any targets on the edges of battles. The melee rogue should always be kept off to the side and engage enemies either behind, or to the side of the tank(s). If used this way with appropriate micro and cc rogue deals excellent damage and maintains reasonable survivability.

While these two skills are relatively worthless, particularly Fearsome strike which, while it gives two debuffs is also per rest and single target, they're hardly the only worthless skills in the game, I can think of more than a few. As to sneak attack being bad or hard to get off... All I can say is that if you're having a hard time keeping a target primed for sneak attack you're either deliberately gimping yourself by making poor decisions with your casters, or have placed a rogue into a very suboptimal party.

What? I'm not quite sure how you're getting that from my response, I'm only noting the strengths of Resolution. Idk where you're getting that I'm "talking utter nonsense and imagining things that aren't there". All I'm saying is: the base quality isn't that important, draining isn't a great dps enchantment, "normal difficulties" are irrelevant, and reliable isn't as bad as you make it out to be. Slayer is a pretty mediocre enchant, way worse than reliable unless you're particularly enchanting for a specific area/boss/bounty/etc. Well, it pretty much seemed like it to me. Sorry if I offended you with that remark. I'd need a wall of text here for each of your arguments and it's 1:50am already, so I'll make it extremely short. Reliabe is good, I never said it's crap, but it's not something for crit builds while the crit multiplier is. Bringing in hearth orlans into the equation won't change that. I never said Purgatory was godly, but I find draining to be extremely useful. My melee rogue can tank (unless she gets CC'd and while health lasts ofc), is a DPS beast and an off tank at the same time. Reliable has equal effectiveness if the difference between deflection and accuracy is between -45 and +15. A crit build is generally speaking using +hit to crit modifiers, and thus can afford to take talents such as savage attack and dual wield instead of going for single wield, while still maintaining respectable crit chance. A hearth orlan rogue at +15 accuracy over an enemy's deflection grazes 35% of the time, hits 35% of the time, and crits 30% of the time, reliable will add 7% to hits from grazes, which is a respectable damage increase on what would otherwise be low roll hits. Now if your accuracy goes above 15 over the targets deflection clearly the value of reliable will drop, however mobs with such low deflection will tend to die rapidly regardless.

What? I'm not quite sure how you're getting that from my response, I'm only noting the strengths of Resolution. Idk where you're getting that I'm "talking utter nonsense and imagining things that aren't there". All I'm saying is: the base quality isn't that important, draining isn't a great dps enchantment, "normal difficulties" are irrelevant, and reliable isn't as bad as you make it out to be. Slayer is a pretty mediocre enchant, way worse than reliable unless you're particularly enchanting for a specific area/boss/bounty/etc.

Neat idea, but seems like the spherical cow in a vacuum of class testing. This test as is ignores far too many variables to get at anything other than whats the best result when 2 classes auto attack each other to death.

Draining is useless on DPS builds with proper micro, it's a great property for Off tanky dps chars, but for dedicated DPS the goal should be to not take damage period. Purgatory isn't bad because of that, but it's not as godlike as you make it out to be. Also the reliable property and anihilation go together fine on characters like a hearth orlan rogue, who can crit a lot even at relatively low accuracy. Normal difficulty is a joke, so I would assume PotD where there are a number of mobs with substantial deflections and other defenses(which make it difficult to land debuffs to deflection) thus Reliable has at least some use on a DPS char.

Anihilation is the exact same modifier battle axes have, so just counting that modifier alone, Resolution is the equivalent of a higher damaging Battle Axe. Reliable isn't anything amazing but it's a decent property nonetheless, especially in the early game. Enchanted up to Superb and given a lash, Resolution is probably better than any other one hander in the game.

You're ignoring Resolution, which can be found at level 4 of Od Nua, and can be grabbed when you're at level 4/5 without too much hassle.

Generally speaking, Dual Wield outscales 2handers as damage modifiers grow arbitrarily large. As DR is a flat damage reduction as it becomes a smaller portion of the damage dealt, the closer to the base case (0 DR) it becomes. At 0 DR: DW Fast > DW Average (Saber may bump this up) > 2H Slow. So if the class you're playing has multiple strong damage modifiers, then dual wielding is preferable, Rogues are a particularly relevant example as they hit very high damage modifiers relatively easily. For a barbarian I believe 2handers will be stronger, as Barbarians gain a 33% atk speed bonus and have relatively few % damage modifiers, especially ones that are not situational. Further, carnage reduces your damage by a percent, thus moving you even further from the base(ideal) case for dual wield.

Were are you getting your math from? This is not World of Warcraft. In PoE, a +24% action speed increase is NOT an increase in weapon swing speed. It's a decrease in recovery time between weapon swings. And that timer is paused when you make any movement. And by the way, Dexterity + The weapon is not the only factor here. The type of armor you're wearing also determines your action speed (in fact it's a bigger factor than dexterity) But the bottom line is that you can't brush away the nature of the encounters in this game (like you're doing here). Things simply cease being a matter of DPS when most fights see your rogue only needing to hit with his weapon 2 or 3 times Dexterity is the only stat that actually affects action speed and recovery time, initially it only affected one of these, but currently it effects both of these. You should not be wearing armor on a midline rogue so armor is completely irrelevant. The timer also is not paused, but rather slows down (by a multiplier is my understanding, so higher dexterity will reduce the time it takes even while moving). As to where my math is from, it's from this thread: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/72272-combat-mechanics-attack-speed-recovery/ although I rounded (in favor of might, I might add) for simplicity of calculations. Otherwise it's based purely on the fact that attack speed is a multiplier with all damage modifiers, while might is additive with most modifiers. You completely ignored my first point. If the rogue hits 3 times and kills the mob in 3 seconds, that's markedly better than hitting the mob 3 times and killing it in 4 seconds. Further, because dexterity affects the time between the rogue's next attack on another mob, you can calculate the entire set of enemies the rogue fights as if they are single enemy with one large health bar, with the exception that over damaging will reduce the efficiency of any attack, and if the rogue has already finished recovery time during the movement between targets, which would actually make a paused timer better for dexterity, not worse. If every fight you're going against your rogue is barely attacking you're playing on too low of difficulty and overleveled for encounters. Also again, while marginal increases in efficiency are wonderful for small scale trash fights that might actually end fast, there are larger boss and trash battles where fights do not end very quickly, and where the dps gains from dexterity are very very apparent. Finally you haven't addressed at all just how little might does on a rogue compared to dex. The chance of might causing your character to actually fulfill the conditions in which it would actually be better than dex (short encounter where might causes the amount of damage needed to go from 4 swings to kill to 3) is laughably low, as especially at higher levels might's actual contribution to damage becomes on the order of 9%(at 235% bonus damage, the addition of 24% damage from 18 might is ~9%) rather than the 24% shown.

An interesting thing to note: 18 might 20 dexterity will outscale 20 might 19 dexterity when bonus damage is +235% or greater without including might. This means eventually Elf/Godlike will become a stronger racial choice for Rogue (melee) than Aumana, assuming that each point of dexterity is worth at least 2% dps increase. This is without taking into account racial abilities, but based on this, taking them into account, my suspicion is that Death Godlike may be the best end game Rogue race. The only question is how strong the 10% crit conversion on Hearth orlan is in the context of the high accuracy and the 20-30% hit to crit conversion rogue can get naturally, in conjunction with the numerous +crit damage modifiers that can be stacked.

Not really. Do you know what the difference between 18 Dex and 10 dex is? Yeah. +24% action speed. This means that a pike-wielding rogue with 18 Dex will be able to hit something with his pike 4 times in the time it takes a pike-wielding rogue with 10 Dex to hit it 3 times. Sounds positively game changing, right? Except that it isn't. Because fights don't last that long in PoE, unless you're a really Sh*tty player, Or you're soloing. And we're also dealing with Pikes. They're slow weapons. And no amount of Dex will make them fast weapons. Maybe if we were talking about Stiletto dual-wielding it'd be a different matter, but again...we aren't. Alright so a few problems: the time length fights last is only relevant insofar as there is potential for attacks to be wasted. Damage, by the same token is also wasted whenever an attack deals more damage than an enemy has health. The only point relevantly in favor of might as opposed to dex is if on an arbitrarily small scale, additional might results in an enemy dying in 2 hits rather than 3, or the best case in which an enemy dies in one hit due to the additional damage from might. However, it is just as possible that an enemy should die in 2 hits no matter the might, making the second attack faster is thus a simple speed increase, However this is all functionally irrelevant, trash encounters that are as fast as you describe are not necessary to make decisions for unless your sole goal is to speed to the end of the game on easy as fast as possible. For PotD, the interesting fights that require min-maxing for greatest efficiency gains are boss battles which do not end in an attack or 2. Now a simple comparison of dex to might for the best case for might on a rogue. I will treat each point of dexterity as worth a 2% dps increase, based on some information I've heard regarding dex, if dex functioned as, as written, a straight 3% increase in the number of attacks per second it would be worth 3% dps, which would exacerbate might's relative inefficiency even more. A level 1 rogue with sneak attack and a normal weapon with 10 might 18 dexterity does 174% of base dps. A level 1 rogue with sneak attack and a normal weapon with 18 might and 10 dexterity does 174% of base dps. So the best case for might on rogue is precisely equal to dexterity. Every additional damage modifier will cause dexterity's effective dps contribution to remain constant while might's will decrease as a percent gain. Example: a level 3 rogue with 10 might 18 dexterity with Reckless Assault, Two-Handed Style and a Fine weapon will deal 232% of base dps. A level 3 rogue with 18 might 10 dexterity and the same talents will deal 224% of base dps. As the number of increase damage modifiers grows, the contribution of might as a % of dps steadily declines while dexterity remains constant. Now of course, for a rogue this is all relatively pointless from a practical perspective, excepting for the decision of which land, as there's no reason to not max both dexterity AND might, still from a theoretical perspective knowing that dexterity out-values might is useful,

This is flat out false, dexterity is far stronger than might as a dps increase on a rogue, and is far better at reapplying prone as well. Dexterity is a multiplicative modifier with all damage boosting stats, Might is additive with the majority of damage boosting stats, including reckless assault, sneak attack, deathblows, vicious weapon modifier, qualitiy modifier, and I believe critical modifier. 30% bonus damage from might to 300% damage is only 330% total dps whereas 30% attack speed is something like 20% dps increase, so would increase dps to 360%.

Max Might, Int, and Dex, dump (go to lowest value) Con and Perception and put anything remaining in resolve. Resolve is slightly better than perception because will save is usually what is targeted for charm/confuse/dominate. Constitution is functionally worthless on a rogue except for fortitude saves as Rogues have low base health and constitution is a percent modifier so the actual amount of Health/Endurance lost from minimum constitution compared to average constitution is negligible. You want max int because the best weapon for Pike rogue is Tall Grass which gives prone on Crit which will have its duration buffed or reduced by your int. Dexterity is arguably the most important stat for damage on a Rogue as it's multiplicative with all other damage modifiers, outside of possibly speed and recovery modifiers (though Im unsure about those), which means compared to might, by mid game dexterity will dramatically outscale might as far as value for dps goes. If for some reason you absolutely must have non-minimized perception and constitution you'd be better off dropping might than dex or int (maybe, depending on rate of prone application if your rogue stays focused on a single target average int may work if used in conjunction with high crit).

In your valuing of Races I think you're somewhat overvaluing racial maximum stat bonuses compared to racial abilities. The 1 more resolve and 1 more perception a hearth orlan has compared to a Pale Elf amounts to 2 deflection 3 concentration and 3 interrupt which seems to me for a full defensive tank less valuable than 10 DR fire and cold. Also Constitution doesn't seem particularly useful to a full tank compared to might on a fighter, outside of certain niche cases versus enemies who attack slowly with high accuracy at low levels. Might also increases a fighter's survivability for particularly long fights while giving a slight increase to the damage output, and possibly a decent increase to damage output if you are running a min'd int medium-high dex fighter.

All extra damage is additive. Flames of Devotion deals +50% damage as burn. If you have Burning Lash enchanted on a weapon and picked up the Intense Flames talent, you deal +50% burn +25% burn +25% burn damage (for a total of +100% burn damage). Not 50% * 25% * 25% (+78.1% total). This was done because multiplicative damage modifiers were deemed too difficult to balance. The only exceptions to this rule are Critical Strikes and talents like Scion of Flame, a talent that increases certain specific damage types (although it is currently bugged and does not affect abilities like Flames of Devotion or weapon enchants). You've done the math wrong, it's actually 1.5*1.25*1.25 for the multiplicative case which would be 2.34, or a 134% damage increase compared to the 100% damage increase given by additive modifiers. It's possible % elemental damage functions as an additive damage modifier to itself and multiplicative with base damage modifiers.

To be passionate is to act at the whim of your passions, your emotions. What you did was passionate because you did what you did because you were angry, either at him lying to you or at him leaving the Eothasians to rot. To be aggressive is to be willing to be assertive and forceful to get what you want. An aggressive character could be perfectly in control, utilizing their aggression to push people in to doing what they will. A passionate character on the other hand acts as their emotion dictates, they might at one minute proclaim the grandeur of the sunset and their love of mankind, but piss them off and they might also decide to rip your head off and mount it on a pike.

Any ability that relies on a weapon attack to apply an effect uses the weapon's accuracy for the attack itself, but there is a separate roll to determine if the effect is applied, I do not think it uses your weapon's accuracy to determine this.

Honestly the main problem with Paladin is that it cannot protect the party against disabling status effects. Single target buffing defense is viable if enemies consistently go after one target and you know what it is, but the lack of after the fact removal for charm/confuse/dominate effects is crippling, as is the lack of defense against aoe stuns and paralyze. As long as the paladin lacks the ability to adequately buff a party against these threats I can't choose to take a Paladin over a priest because he can't perform these critical support tasks. A party being stunned, or a party member being charmed are possibilities that can cause a fight to degenerate rapidly. While I understand the need to ensure that paladins play differently from priests, either new aoe defensive support should be added or exhortations need to be modified so they can perform these tasks. Having liberating exhortation able to be cast on charmed/confused/dominated allies would be a good step to making paladins viable, but aoe stun/paralyze would still need to be answered.

Almost all of the buffs you can find which are unique on armor can be found on other slots and don't come at a 15% or higher recovery cost. There's a ring that gives +1 to 3 stats and second chance. 15% recovery speed penalty is still significant and in every case I've seen more significant than the offensive boost you can get from clothing. Even the padded armor that gives sneak attack bonus damage isnt really worth it, especially when you could instead use Glanfathan Hunting Boots which give the same bonus without the recovery penalty. The +1 ring to 3 stats is nice with second chance, but +1 stats don't stack with +2 stats, nor do 2 x +1 stats = +2 stats so if you want +2 in a single stat, the bonuses from this ring become moot other than the second chance ability, which if built in to a unique armor stat can free up an entire slot for some other unique ability, particularly in the case of ring where unique abilities are abundant. IMO it's all about stacking as many uniques into as few a slots as possible to optimise your character. 15% recovery speed is almost negligable in this regard, particularly on a character with 20+ dex anyway (or am I wrong about this last point... which begs the question... what is the difference between recovery speed and action speed gained by dex? The stats on the ring are fairly unimportant and on melee dps, the main party member who might want second chance, there are few rings competing for the spot. Whether or not the 15% is negligible is beside the point since the defensive gain is even more negligible on a dps character. Unless you have trouble keeping your casters alive, which is frankly very easy versus everything but teleporting mobs, there's no reason to bother with a defensive unique like second chance on a caster, and there are few to no uniques that are actually offensively relevant, especially ones that are not more useful on other spots. Something like Aloth's armor might be worth it in the early game on casters, due to their limited early game casts, but outside of that there's not much that would actually benefit caster or a melee dps, and almost certainly not more than losing the armor penalty benefits them.

Almost all of the buffs you can find which are unique on armor can be found on other slots and don't come at a 15% or higher recovery cost. There's a ring that gives +1 to 3 stats and second chance. 15% recovery speed penalty is still significant and in every case I've seen more significant than the offensive boost you can get from clothing. Even the padded armor that gives sneak attack bonus damage isnt really worth it, especially when you could instead use Glanfathan Hunting Boots which give the same bonus without the recovery penalty.

The thing about all of the armor options is you get very little out of them with low deflection unless the enemy does low damage and fast attacks, of which I haven't seen many outside of certain DoT spells. If you have say 6 DR this is only giving you a false sense of safety outside of low levels and low difficulty. If the enemy deals 50 damage per attack then that 6 DR is equivalent to 12% damage reduction but comes at the cost of around 10-15% DPS reduction. If you're specced for damage that 10-15% is coming out of a high stat, the damage you deal per second, in favor of buffing a low stat, how much damage you can take, by the same percent amount. Furthermore, if you're able to avoid your rogue getting damaged in the first place the buff to survivability is completely negated. Now on low difficulties at lower levels you might get a decent survivability buff, but if anything this where you need the extra sturdiness the least needed.

The key to using a melee rogue effectively is not armor, but crowd control. With appropriate cc usage you can keep a rogue alive quite easily in cloth. Heavier armors tradeoff is too high for minimal gain. In order to make heavy armor effective you really need high deflection which comes at a substantial dps cost, not even considering the dps cost of the armor itself. The rogue should focus almost entirely on dealing with enemies that are currently cc'd, this has a further benefit of enabling sneak attacks, thus killing two birds with one stone. When supported by a Wizard and Cipher, it's very easy to always have a disabled target for the rogue to go after. Disable targets that go behind your tank and sick the rogue on them. The rogue should only rarely be getting attacked, and if he does draw aggro you should disable the enemy attacking him and the rogue should then be able to quickly drop whatever enemy was attacking him. There is also a rather useful ring that I believe you can buy from the Ondra's Gift merchant that gives the Second Chance property, if you mess up and your rogue pulls more aggro than he can survive this item will give your rogue a second lease on life and buy you time to either cc or draw the aggro away from him.

Certain characters are still causing 0 duration prone in beta, however some character's prone abilities still seem to be functional. Currently my custom Cipher, Wizard, and Aloth's prone effects are broken and have a duration of 0, while my custom created fighter and priest are fully functional.