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“Scorpions are nature’s way of saying, ‘Screw you! I’m gonna combine lobsters, spiders, wasps and nightmares!’” This build provides a tanky Rogue, who also has high single target damage and produces his own status effects through the Stun on crit version of Cladhalíath. Dexterity and Intellect have been pitched so that you can keep an enemy permanently stunned so long as you score a hit on the Stun vs. Fortitude roll that results from a melee crit. In this way, you can have high damage against a single target – while simultaneously disabling other enemies through periodic Riposte stuns as well, giving this build a nice offensive-defensive balance. Hopefully this should subvert the idea a Rogue is a weak class, with defences that are comparable to other solo tank builds but compared to some a great deal more damage. While the Yellow Flash build also uses Riposte mechanics to great effect, it seems more pitched towards the classic tank style of grinding enemies down with a wounding weapon rather than aiming for high single target damage. The Flaming Porcupine build seems to be much of the same idea as this build, but seems to have weaker defences and a slightly different focus (use of a two-handed weapon for one). As such, I think this build is distinct enough to warrant its own write-up. Why the name the Sprightly Scorpion? Because scorpions are well protected and defensive, Cladhalíath provides a stunning sting, and it’s sprightly because its attacks are fast enough to chain Stun. And because I said so! I will say this build is ENTIRELY UNTESTED (apart from the Stun-locking mechanics, which I've just had a play with, making sure the Stun-locking works). I hope to get around to testing it soonish (after Christmas maybe) but currently lack the time. I’ll update the build when or/if I finish testing it (or if one of you kind people do first), however I don’t anticipate their being any problems in terms of solo viability with the build. Without further ado… =================================== The Sprightly Scorpion =================================== Difficulty: Untested, but will test on expert PotD solo, no respec, with full upscaling -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Rogue -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Wild Orlan -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Old Valia (Colonist) -------------------------------------------------------------- Starting Attributes: MIG: 17 CON: 15 DEX: 10 PER: 5 INT: 19 RES: 12 Final Attributes: MIG: 21 (Gift from the Machine, Garodh’s Chorus) CON: 16 (Rymrgand’s Boon) DEX: 14 (Viettro’s Formal Footware) PER: 8 (Elryn’s Jacket, Song of the Heavens) INT: 26 (Gwyn’s Band of Union, Forum resting bonus) RES: 16 (Siegebreaker’s Gauntlets) -------------------------------------------------------------- Important skills: Survival 16, Lore 9, Mechanics 5 (boostable to 10). This gives third stage survival accuracy bonus for +20 accuracy against anything but kith, as well as access to things like Scrolls of Confusion and Paralysis in tougher fights. Skill point allocation: -------------------------------------------------------------- Abilities and Talents: Abilities: 1 – Crippling Strike 3 – Reckless Assault 5 – Deep Wounds 7 – Dirty Fighting 9 – Adept Evasion 11 – Riposte 13 – Deathblows 15 – Withering Strike Talents: 2 – Veteran’s Recovery 4 – Weapon and Shield Style 6 – Weapon Focus Peasant 8 – Vicious Fighting 10 – Wound Binding 12 – Deep Pockets 14 – Superior Deflection 16 – Deflecting Assault Quest Talents: Blooded Hunter Dozen’s Luck Dungeon Delver Gift from the Machine Rymyrgand’s Boon Song of the Heavens Scale-Breaker The Merciless Hand --------------------------------------------------------------- Weapons and Equipment (listing only new enchantments): Weapon set 1: Cladhalíath (Stunning, Vicious, Superb, Durgan-Refined, Freezing Lash) and Badgradr’s Barricade (Superb, Durgan-Reinforced) Weapon Set 2: Alternate Stunning or Overbearing weapon, Little Saviour (Durgan-Reinforced, Legendary) Armor: Elryn’s Jacket (Legendary, Durgan-Reinforced) Neck: Cape of the Master Mystic Belt: Looped Rope Rings: Gwyn’s Band of Union and Ring of Protection Hands: Siegebreaker Gauntlets Head: Garodh’s Chorus (Retaliation) Feet: Viettro’s Formal Footwear --------------------------------------------------------------- Weapon accuracy and defenses: Cladhalíath accuracy 100 Def/Ref/Fort/Will 110/108/108/118 Calculations: Buffed defenses: Def/Ref/Fort/Will 160/168/170/148 Calculations: -------------------------------------------------------------- Playstyle overview: Using Cladhalíath, every crit on an enemy triggers a Stun vs. Fortitude roll. Stun itself gives a -30 Deflection debuff, meaning that once an enemy is stunned crits against that enemy should occur extremely frequently (with the Deflection debuff, but also with 40% hit-to-crit conversion from Vicious/Dirty Fighting and Durgan-Reinforcement). This provides more Stun vs. Fortitude rolls, which so long as they result in a hit themselves will result in the enemy being permanently stunned with the 14 Dex 15 Int combo. Cladhalíath itself can also be made Vicious as the second enchantment, dealing an extra 20% damage to stunned enemies. With a permanent Stun effect, triggering criteria for Deathblows becomes trivial. Both Withering Strike and Sever the Soul themselves debuff Fortitude through the Weakened affliction, meaning you will easily trigger both Stun and Weakened in a single attack opening up Deathblows. Crippling Strike and Figurine flanking, as well as occasional Eyestrikes from Elryn’s Jacket, give enough other means for you to get Deathblows easily in a single encounter. With the previously mentioned massive -30 Deflection debuff from Stun, Badgradr’s Barricade also really starts to shine, with every Bash crit resulting in a Thrust of the Tattered Veils, which itself targets the massively debuffed Deflection and is effected by Deathblows. This combination of effects against a stunned enemy gives you great single target damage, while also being defensively bulky. Riposte, Retaliation and Deep Wounds provide an excellent means of crowd control. Riposte itself gives free attacks to surrounding melee enemies on misses and grazes, made viable by the build’s good Deflection, giving you a chance to Stun these enemies with Cladhalíath for a few of seconds. As these enemies are entirely immobile during this time, this reduces the overall damage you’ll take from a melee group, making it an indirect defensive maneuver. Deep Wounds and Retaliation ensure that all melee enemies are constantly taking some raw damage, making them much weaker when you get around to targeting them specifically. Eyestrike from Elryn’s Jacket has nice synergy with Riposte, Retaliation and Deep Wounds as essentially melee enemies are always at risk of something (miss/graze -> Riposte chance, hit/crit -> Eyestrike chance, all the while taking Deep Wounds raw damage and Retaliation hits). When an enemy has been blinded, their accuracy debuff means that they’ll now tend towards more misses and grazes, and as such trigger even more Ripostes. For spellcasters, the extremely strong Adept Evasion (75% reflex grazes to misses, 50% reflex hits to grazes) coupled to your reasonable Reflex score means their attacks really aren’t much of a concern. When you couple this to the 20% spell reflection from Durgan-Reinforced Badgradr’s Barricade, and the chance they also have of suffering Eyestrike, they can be comfortably left until the end of combat when you’ve dealt with the melee enemies. Hopefully this rundown should have given you an idea of the build’s high damage, coupled to some great defenses that marry some of the best qualities of a Rogue and a tank. -------------------------------------------------------------- I’ve provided a few other little sections below, for anyone interested… Attribute score choice: Race and equipment choices, damage calcs: Talent and ability choices: Early game equipment: Big boss advice: Pairing for party play: -------------------------------------------------------------- And that’s that! I hope you’ve enjoyed the build, and even if it isn’t playtested I think it’d be worth a try. If anyone manages to give it a playtest before me, let me know and I’ll update the build with your findings. Have a nice day! EDIT: Re-tested Cladhalíath, and found the previous attributes I listed to be way off. The new set work fine to chain Stun on Stun roll hits.

Tested with Borresaine, but I'm assuming all stunning enchantments are identical. Screen cap: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9072xz6q7xj4g1i/borresaine%20stun%20sneak%20attack%20bug.png?dl=0