Infiltrator_SF

Would you mind reading the thread before replying? Rogues should still have a variety of archetypes - swashbuckler, duelist etc. that allow for a variety of weapons. But for >>backstabbing<< builds, they should have an incentive to use daggers/stilletos etc., otherwise they will be again the most useless weapon type in the game, so might as well just remove it if they don't want it actually used.

Hey guys, I just wanted to ask if, other than the vision cones and stealing from shops, combat-related stealth is getting some love. Specifically, rogue stealth in PoE was very unsatisfying and unintuitive. You were punished for using "rogue" weapons, such as daggers and stilettos, and instead incentivized to use heavy 2-handers to deliver backstabs. This I could understand. In a way it's the legacy of old D&D titles and staff of the ram days in BG2. On the other hand, the 2-handers didn't deliver nearly much of a blow from backstab as even 1-handed weapons from BG2. You could never expect to one-shot mages and the like, not to mention creeping up on someone was much, much harder - to the point where you could never reliably set up a rogue behind the enemy line and engage with your other party members - the rogue would always get spotted in the process. Another thing that hurt rogues is the vagueness of stealth/invisiblity/backstab/special attack relations. Sometimes you could backstab foes twice even if they saw you coming - if you used auto attacks. Other times, special attacks couldn't backstab if used from invisibility. All of these discrepancies, coupled with the rogues being really weak other than single target dps, severely hurt their usefulness. It didn't help that specializing in both mechanics and stealth was a lost cause. You couldn't have someone good at sneaking and disarming. But that's more of a problem with the skill system than with stealth I guess. So, my suggestions for deadfire would be: - Incentivize the use of "rogue weapons" for backstabbing and dual-wielding. This can be done in a myriad of ways, like providing bonuses to sneak attack/backstab for the weapons of a certain category. - Allow specialization into both stealth and machinery. Skills should overall feel more useful and rewarding. - Make backstab builds viable (in potd). Currently backstabbing is like a "fun" mode, where fun equates to microing your ass off to achieve minimal results. Backstab should reward tactical decisions and character planning substantially, sacrificing consistent for burst dps. You can now sort of do this but even the weakest monsters (on potd) survive the initial damage.

Eh it's not as intensive as those BG2 dances around FOV for sure I guess you spec your rogue to be more offesive given his reach? Do you dump any stats?

Yeah, staff of the ram comes to mind. Still, you're saying I can top dps as backstabber with tall grass? Is it worth the micro? And how would you distribute stats?

Hey guys. So when the game was released I tried to make a rogue with stealth with a full party and got bored fairly quickly. Reason is, stealth kind of sucked back then, and so did backstab, so I gave up half-through the campaign. There was no glorious chomp from BG2. I want to give the game another go, having both expansions, and I was hoping if someone could bring me up to speed with what's good/viable with melee rogues on PotD and non-merc companions. Thanks

Hey really cool guide man. Mind giving us the short version of the party that you run? I was thinking, Druid-Eder-Pallegina-Aloth-Durance-Grieving Mother?

Yeah sabres look nice. What about stats? You think dumping res is worth the offensive stats?

Thank you for the insight, now all I need to do is figure out what kind of build is optimal because I'm kind of bad when it comes to mechanics of this game - dual wield/single weild, stat/talent allocation and such, I have been out of the game too much to know which works best with backstab, but the basic BG2 concept of stabbing stuff like in the olden days should work now?

I've returned to PoE, not having played the expansions and I read a lot of changes were done to rogues, specifically backstab and its mechanics. Is it viable now? Can you do something akin to BG2 (which I loved) where you go on a stab fiesta with invisibility potions/abilites? If so, what are the optimal builds for that, I tried searching but I haven't came up with much other than people agreeing how backstab is viable now.

I was planning on hard/expert, not ironman since I don't know what I'd be getting into and I was planning on getting story characters.

Thanks for your input, I guess no one has done it and reported on it just yet. Might as well give it a go myself, though I must say I'm not as versed in the ruleset as I am with the old IE games.

I wasnt planning on insta-gibbing everyone multiple times per combat. But I was looking to emulate a similar strategy and from what I've noticed this was made more possible with the changes. I was just looking for impressions and observations of those that have already tried something like that.

I was thinking of starting a new game on ironman or expert (or both) and I was considering the changes to rogue. Basically individual stealth matters a lot, and the perception change is also significant. Anyone experimented with these? Would backstab be finally viable? Thanks.

You can get the wurm in the Endless dungeon, it's not a backer pet afaik.

Yea.. you don't need stealth to get to the edge of an enemy vision and shoot them. You can do it with anyone. Want to use that rogue to actually backstab a caster in the back of the fight? Too bad. First, you're not getting to get there even if you open up with the rogue, because you can only stealth past trash monsters. You also can't go past them once combat begins because guess what, if your fighter has declared his intention to fight, your rogue has to do it as well or the cosmos will implode onto itself. Shadowing Beyond doesn't stop incoming projectiles, so it is highly impractical because you typically use it to avoid aggro, and if you try to be cheeky and initiate fight from stealth then use this you're gonna drop dead 9/10 times.

If you did you'd know companions' personalities tend to clash with the leaders and thus were quite relevant. You also don't consider it as a roleplaying aspect which I also outlined. Also, If you bothered to play some stealth characters in PoE you'd know you can poof in and out of combat magically. Just not with the actual stealth skill. Might consider playing the game before asserting the mechanics in question. Sneaking, or scouting? What are you talking about here? No matter the case.. open up that thesaurus and be sure to let us know what Sneaking actually entails since we already have the definition for scouting (for some reason).

Agreed. Stupid arguments on the other hand are invalidated by pretty much anything.

Also class, personality and gear is irrelevant. Nope. Have you even played IE games before? Thanks for the non-related dictionary entry by the way.

Nothing preventing you from that - In fact it's made even more "realistic" (or at least closer to the pen and paper counterparts) since you flank them now instead of doing "magical undetectable damage from the shadows" Oh, look. Someone's talking about realism.. Should I talk about how realistic it is for my entire party not to see past 20 meters in broad daylight? Or how houses are little on the outside but huge on the inside? Or maybe how one guy is taken out of stealth when another one 50 meters away makes his presence known to someone. Surely, there's no room from magical undetectable damage from the shadow in this game. No sir.

Yeah, said it in my own thread.. really poor gameplay implementation of stealth, both from a tactical and roleplaying perspective. There isn't much fun to be had for those of us that enjoyed stabbing people in previous IE games.

Apart from the practical and tactical reasons, there's also the roleplaying one, even though I am not a roleplayer myself. I mean, why would some characters even sneak when it doesn't go with their personality, class, armor.. it doesn't make any sense.

Source: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/70311-new-engine/page-3?do=findComment&comment=1566279 That's great to hear actually. Hopefully it's in a patch rather than having to wait for the expansion for it to get fixed. Perhaps they should, like many devs, include a beta build of the game where you can test and squish bugs prior to launching a patch on the stable version.

The question is, is a feature like this feasable for a patch, or the (imminent) expansion? I really hope there isn't too much backtracking when it comes to coding for this, as I find the rogue experience really lacking because of it.

I'm at Caed Nua, and had some time to experiment a bit with weapons and such. What is your guys opinion on fast weapons? As far as I can see, their damage output is considerably lower over the course of time, and the abilities that utilize damage use the base values so slower weapons have much more potential to one-shot something. Case in point, I carry an arbalest with my rogue to "backstab" people with, as stilleto backstabbing is too weak. Its sad that the same problem that plagued BG2 also comes to haunt PoE.. I mean, a staff of the ram shouldn't be a better backstabbing weapon than a dagger, but it is apparently.

- Make interrupt builds actually work, make fast weapons good for something. - Stealth per individual member, not an on/off switch for the entire party - More interactions with the party, better (stat wise) party members, also, dont have to voice a lot of them, just add more choice in party members. In comparison to BG2, the pool of members ( is really small.