MadDemiurg

Not sure if fire shield pulls paladin ahead given that constant recovery is also quite great low level (and you're missing LoH if you go for shield). Plus, fighter picks Wary Defender at level 4 which puts him ahead in terms of defences at that point, while also having the constant recovery advantage.

Honestly, any class can be made to tank sufficiently well. And if you run multiple nukers you don't even need to tank that much - it takes 1-2 rounds to blow everything up.

Can you also test level 6 priest spell(cleansing flame or smth) that is supposed to make DoTs tick twice as fast? Never got to use it, but it could be fun potentially.

Wizard's jolting touch deals 20-35 shock damage. Item/scroll version is 55-75. Fan of flames is 40-55. Scroll is 45-60. Most other spells seem to be in line, so I suppose these just were not updated. I haven't checked every spell, there might be more. Majority of the spells are in line with their item versions however, e. g. fireball, rolling flame, ray of fire are the same, so I suppose this is a bug. I wouldn't mind to see wizards jolting touch toned up instead of scroll toned down though, because as of now it's completely useless compared to fan of flames.

The tooltip is horribly outdated. The only flat damage modifier that hasn't been patched out yet (and most likely will be in 1.05) is One Stands Alone. Fire weapons chant adds 25% fire damage. Nice thing about it, it works on everything including spells.

Int indeed has no effect on dps (outside of some fluctuations of number of ticks that fit into the interval). It however substantially increases total damage done. This does not matter for deep wounds since they are reapplied frequently (unless you're two handing with very poor dex or have trouble hitting at all), but it matters for other DoTs. For instance high INT priest deals craploads of damage with shining beacon. Deep wounds overall aren't horrible, but not too impressive either (1.1-1.3 dps is nothing to write home about). Since a lot of rogue class talents are trash, they are probably worth taking. I saw a dev confirmation that tooltips are wrong for all DoTs some time ago...

His aura gives -20 accuracy. Potion that reduces hostile effects duration should help I think.

Thing is, you don't even need to touch save data to cheat it.

It is very easy to cheat and there is no way to validate a trial of iron run.

I did just fine without heals on PotD as well. I had a priest, but I used healing spells like 2-3 times throughout the whole game. Better cast a seal and take no damage than save it and try to fix the damage done with heals later. I also think Druids are better healers actually. They heal more overall, their heals are just over time. This might be seen as a con, but can be also used to your advantage by casting them preemptively.

Tbh I never found much use for priest heals. They are not that strong and damage prevention is always better as it doesn't tap into your health reserves. That been said, priest buffs and CC are great. Not irreplaceable, but great.

Talons Reach is actually decent in specific situations once you reach level 9, since it's a foe only aoe with fast cast speed.

You know, you can cast tenuous grasp with a cipher and have wolves kill each other. If it misses, run away and try again. Works 10 times out of 10. Chanter with ANY race and stats can kite until he gets a phantom and then autowin with no health lost. Works 10 times out of 10. I can continue. Seems to me you're only testing straightforward facetank approaches (which are suboptimal and won't get you far solo with any class)

Adra's will save is also significantly lower than its fort save. To be fair one of the easiest ways to consistently land petrify on him includes cipher and druid. Cipher has the highest spell accuracy in general, so it's not that difficult to get even 100% hit or graze on mental binding for him. In turn it reduces reflex by ~80 (40 + 2*dex). After that, druid's petrify would most likely not only hit but also crit. Its duration is not that great, but you can recast it and you don't need much time tbh.

Cipher is 20% base with a 20% increase from a talent. Compare that to 50% base, + any damage talent rogue gets, not to mention Cipher baseline 5 less accuracy, and Cipher is hardly impressive as a weapon user. Ranged cipher is better than ranged rogue, only because Cipher is a caster first and a weapon user second. Further, it's not only 50% as deep wounds, and +20% crit to hit, which gets very substantive with the amount of +crit damage buffs that can be acquired (a total of around +90% damage on crit is not hard to get, annihilation weapon, Doemenal bonus, crit helm/gloves, and dungeon delver; which means +20% crit results in around 4.7% more damage (at any accuracy-deflection value between 0 and 50 and at 200% bonus damage not including crit) which is approximately equal to an additive 14% damage modifier at 200% bonus damage), and can both be used by ranged rogue. As far as weapon damage goes, Ranged Rogue will outdo Cipher by a pretty substantive margin with proper support, of course Cipher is one of the best classes for giving this support so i almost always have Rogue + Cipher in team. Frenzy is an excellent attack speed buff, but a very mediocre damage modifier increase, 4 might is only an additive 12% damage buff, which is nonterrible, but compared to rogue 20% damage and +8 accuracy that also is a modal, instead of an active ability and Rogue will definitely win out damage wise, especially since most of barbarian's other damage buffs all require the Barbarian to get damaged or engage multiple foes, which is much more risky than what a rogue can do. Not to mention barbarian obviously is terrible ranged as carnage is melee only. By level 9 Cipher gets much better accuracy than rogue with tactical meld if he wishes so and becomes a quite impressive weapon user. Yes, he needs to spend a talent to bring himself up to 40%, but that's hardly a big issue. As you've calculated yourself, hit-to-crit conversion is not that great even if you stack all the possible +crit modifiers (and hard hitting ranged weapons actually have negative modifiers). I've run a ranged rogue and a ranged cipher side by side, ranged rogue indeed does slightly more autoattack damage, but once the spells kick in it's not comparable. Cipher is the best class to enable a rogue, but if given a choice between ranged rogue + ranged cipher or 2 ranged ciphers I would pick the latter from optimization perspective. You're mentioning 20% damage modal, which is good, but melee only. Again, I'm not comparing cipher with melee rogue, as I said melee is decent. As far as barbarian vs melee rogue comparison goes (no point to compare with ranged, because as you said most barb abilities are melee), attack speed modifiers are better than damage speed modifiers with enchanted weapons, and barb gets 2, plus gets aoe attacks. But I'm not sure why we're arguing as we seem to have similar points. To clarify what I wanted to say: Ranged rogue is not that great as many seem to believe. He might slightly outdo cipher or ranger in terms of weapons dps, but cipher easily turns it around with spells, dealing far more damage in the end. No luck for ranger though. Melee rogue OTOH is pretty good with Reckless assault and fast weapons (if you can pull it off) and might indeed deal the most single target weapon damage, however it's not like he outdamages other melee dps classes like monks or barbs by a huge margin (and counting in aoe barb will likely do more damage overall) All in all i don't think that rogue's damage dealing capabilities need to be improved, as they are quite solid, their utility options however should be expanded and trash talents turned into something decent As for my personal playstyle, I don't like squishy melee dps and I'd rather have another caster in place of the ranged rogue. Meld is single target only, late game, and high focus cost. But yes, I suspect we do agree ranged rogue is inferior, although, and maybe you agree with this as well, it's not so much that rogue sucks at ranged, as it is that ranged, outside of casting, sucks.The only real saving grace for ranged auto is that it's very easy and lazy to play as it requires very little micro, and with certain buffs does passable damage. As to Rogue vs Barb (can't say much about Monk as I haven't played it yet) I'm fairly confident Rogue deals substantially (I think my rogue was about 30% more damage than my barbarian and about 10% behind my Wizard in my completed PotD run) more damage overall without using the bugged One Stands Alone ability. Not to mention single target spike is generally more efficient than diffuse aoe, and Barb is outclassed by casters in terms of raw aoe damage output, again without bugged One Stands Alone, Where Barb seems to shine is that it's got quite high survivability even without any defensive choices, outside of the single extremely powerful regen ability. I'll agree on the last as I think a few of the rogue's utility options are just extremely meh. The swap position one for instance has way too short of a range to be remotely useful even if you could land it on an enemy. Meld is single target, but ranged weapon is also single target, so it's not any different from any accuracy buffs rogue gets. it doesn't work well with aoe but rogue doesn't have aoe. High cost is kinda compensated by enhanced focus gain from it (it's also usable out of combat which makes it free, but this is probably a bug). But yeah, it's kinda lategame-y. Mental binding that does -40 deflection if it lands is not however. And yeah, ranged (weapons) are inferior to melee in terms of dps. Non tank melee however is prone to fast and gruesome death at times though. As for barb, OSA is definitely out for any comparisons (retaliation is not however, since I consider it legit and it's not that broken without OSA). Haven't run a barb alongside a rogue to compare directly and it would also largely depend on party/builds/micro in the end, however your 30% difference sounds reasonable in certain circumstances unlike usual claims of rogue dealing 2x damage of other classes .

Yep, added bear's. As for reflex, assuming 18/16/3/20/3/16 build: 20 base + 33 level + 27 faith and conv + 27(buckler w herald, up to 30 with exceptional big shield) + 10 fox + 10 defiant resolve + 10 item = 157-160. + whatever you get from food/rest but if you're using might/con/res resting bonus then nothing from rest probably. Still almost enough. And just to finish the picture: will 20 base + 33 level + 27 faith and conv + 10(15) item + 10 defiant resolve = 100-105 + whatever you can get from food/rest. Plus there's a paladin passive for +15 vs a lot of will based afflictions. Weakest save but still quite good. All in all, looks pretty solid.

Hm, so if we go wild orlan 18 M/18 C with +3 might/con gear for total of 21/21 we have: fort: 20 (base) + 44 (stats) + 27 (maxed faith and conviction w deep faith) + 33 (lvl 12) + 10 (item) + 16 (food/rest bonuses) + 10 (wild orlan's defiance) + 10 (bull's)= 170. Looks legit. If you go min dex your reflex won't be that great even with a shield though.

Not sure this is reachable even if you min/max. Maybe with buffs from priest/chanter. You can reach 160+ with food/resting bonuses and the fear aura of the adra dragon will keep Defiant Resolve up all the time which allows you to reach 170. Can you break that down by modifiers you use? I don't remember any good saving throw bonuses from food, this could be interesting.

Think the main time sink for a better simulator would be just tedious coding of all the class and general talents. Tried that myself some time ago for a different game, didn't have the motivation to finish. Simulating active skills would be far too complicated and would probably kill algorithm convergence even if implemented, since usage patterns are problematic to "mutate" so that they approach the local maximum. Adding levels and at least major passive talents would be a big improvement anyway.

DoT stacking or not stacking is irrelevant. You don't use DoTs for the sake of it being a DoT. You use DoTs because it deals damage. Damage removes the opposition. Druids, Wizards, and Ciphers will remove the opposition faster than a Chanter (and at a much earlier level than 9). Whether you believe it doesn't have an accuracy roll is irrelevant. It does have an accuracy roll. (and because it has an accuracy roll, giving them medium or large shields will also reduce its accuracy.) Yes, Chanter is one of the best solo classes. Solo plays into their niche: long encounters ....but utilizing their niche in a party means the party wasn't very strong to begin with. I'm not saying the Chanter is bad. That isn't my position. I'm just using the same logic some people use on other classes. If certain people, who use this kind of logic, think someone else using it is irrational or misrepresenting the topic at hand when someone else uses it, then.... (not saying you do, but there are certain people in this thread that can't see their own reflection in the mirror) As I said I wasn't sure if it had an attack roll. Just checked in game and it indeed does, even though there's no roll in the description. Bit misleading (Priest's sparks of the righteous actually has no attack roll and is a similar mechanic for instance). Anyway, chanter easily pulls his own weight by being both tanky and still decent dps, also the +25% fire damage chant works with both weapons and spells, so if you have 4 dps characters and a chanter with it he easily adds as much damage as adding a 5th one would add if you prefer burst, while being tanky and potentially doing other stuff. DoT stacking is also useful since it's a different DoT, you can't stack 2 identical DoTs from 2 druids for instance. So imo chanter is quite good in any party. This isn't the topic of the thread however .

Cipher is 20% base with a 20% increase from a talent. Compare that to 50% base, + any damage talent rogue gets, not to mention Cipher baseline 5 less accuracy, and Cipher is hardly impressive as a weapon user. Ranged cipher is better than ranged rogue, only because Cipher is a caster first and a weapon user second. Further, it's not only 50% as deep wounds, and +20% crit to hit, which gets very substantive with the amount of +crit damage buffs that can be acquired (a total of around +90% damage on crit is not hard to get, annihilation weapon, Doemenal bonus, crit helm/gloves, and dungeon delver; which means +20% crit results in around 4.7% more damage (at any accuracy-deflection value between 0 and 50 and at 200% bonus damage not including crit) which is approximately equal to an additive 14% damage modifier at 200% bonus damage), and can both be used by ranged rogue. As far as weapon damage goes, Ranged Rogue will outdo Cipher by a pretty substantive margin with proper support, of course Cipher is one of the best classes for giving this support so i almost always have Rogue + Cipher in team. Frenzy is an excellent attack speed buff, but a very mediocre damage modifier increase, 4 might is only an additive 12% damage buff, which is nonterrible, but compared to rogue 20% damage and +8 accuracy that also is a modal, instead of an active ability and Rogue will definitely win out damage wise, especially since most of barbarian's other damage buffs all require the Barbarian to get damaged or engage multiple foes, which is much more risky than what a rogue can do. Not to mention barbarian obviously is terrible ranged as carnage is melee only. By level 9 Cipher gets much better accuracy than rogue with tactical meld if he wishes so and becomes a quite impressive weapon user. Yes, he needs to spend a talent to bring himself up to 40%, but that's hardly a big issue. As you've calculated yourself, hit-to-crit conversion is not that great even if you stack all the possible +crit modifiers (and hard hitting ranged weapons actually have negative modifiers). I've run a ranged rogue and a ranged cipher side by side, ranged rogue indeed does slightly more autoattack damage, but once the spells kick in it's not comparable. Cipher is the best class to enable a rogue, but if given a choice between ranged rogue + ranged cipher or 2 ranged ciphers I would pick the latter from optimization perspective. You're mentioning 20% damage modal, which is good, but melee only. Again, I'm not comparing cipher with melee rogue, as I said melee is decent. As far as barbarian vs melee rogue comparison goes (no point to compare with ranged, because as you said most barb abilities are melee), attack speed modifiers are better than damage speed modifiers with enchanted weapons, and barb gets 2, plus gets aoe attacks. But I'm not sure why we're arguing as we seem to have similar points. To clarify what I wanted to say: Ranged rogue is not that great as many seem to believe. He might slightly outdo cipher or ranger in terms of weapons dps, but cipher easily turns it around with spells, dealing far more damage in the end. No luck for ranger though. Melee rogue OTOH is pretty good with Reckless assault and fast weapons (if you can pull it off) and might indeed deal the most single target weapon damage, however it's not like he outdamages other melee dps classes like monks or barbs by a huge margin (and counting in aoe barb will likely do more damage overall) All in all i don't think that rogue's damage dealing capabilities need to be improved, as they are quite solid, their utility options however should be expanded and trash talents turned into something decent As for my personal playstyle, I don't like squishy melee dps and I'd rather have another caster in place of the ranged rogue.

50% is good for one talent, yes, but other classes have enough damage modifiers as well, e. g. Cipher's +40% damage with biting whip, Barb's frenzy with +33 attack speed and +4(6) might, Ranger's +50% reload speed etc. Even fighter gets +25% damage along with +20% min damage and graze to hit conversion (which is not that great just as hit to crit) Reckless assault is also quite good, but melee only, as I said I do see a point in melee rogue with SA + reckless assault, it's ranged rogue that strikes me not that great. Deathblows are actually great, just not as hilariously broken as some other level 11 stuff. 20% hit to crit is not that impressive if you do the math. Unless you're going for some on crit effects, these would be among the last talents I'd pick. I don't know about 4 damage on application from deep wounds, certainly does not reflect my experience with it, but if true, it's quite decent. So as I said, main rogue features are SA, Reckless assault (doesn't work with ranged) and Deathblows. Maybe Deep wounds are also better than I thought, needs to be confirmed. From all this, Deathblows is level 11 and RA is melee only, so ranged rogue is stuck with +50% SA only for the most part of the game, Which is almost matched by say Cipher's +40% biting whip and completely overshadowed if you count the spells in. I agree that melee dw brings out the most potential out of the rogue, but it requires a lot of babysitting on PotD, while nuking requires none.

Well, bow is better for landing stunning shots for what it's worth.

He does.

I've used pike 2nd row Rogues with Reckless assault on PotD. They deal solid damage and are not as risky as dw, but nothing super impressive tbh. I also don't see how tank rogue is "amazing". Riposte is crap and adept evasion only makes up for rogue's low base deflection.