Attributes for a Rogue?

[nikkolasmical@gmail.com]

So I'm not the best at these games but I wanted for my second run to play a Human Rogue. I did some searching of this forum and others and a lot of people say a Rogue goes for either DPS or Tanking.  Also a lot of disagreements on which stats are most important for them.

The description of Rogue and my idea of them is they are basically about afflictions, debuffs, etc.. That's what I wanted to do. For example, Wounding damage apparently is linked to Might so I wanted to make sure my Might was decently high. But nobody really talks about Intellect with Rogues but it determines debuff length so it should be decently high as well.

I wanted to do melee, never liked playing a ranged melee fighter.

So I'd appreciate any advice you all can give

[Boeroer]

Rogues are bad at tanking. Especially in the early game. With some effort they can be build into rel. sturdy combatants while retaining good DPS, but they will never be great main tanks. They need levels, certain ability decisions and fitting gear in order to be able to withstand some hefty punishment - and they will not have that during the first levels. 

What they are good at - again especially in the earlier parts of the game - is weapon damage output. 

Having said that - I prefer a more balanced Rogue build over a glass cannon one. Glass cannons do nice dps and can take down enemy threats quickly - but they also tend to go down when merely looked at - in which case they contribute nothing anymore. A robust Rogue does less dps - but still good damage - while being able to withstand some hits without going down. 

In my opinion in easy fights the glass cannon is fun because he can shred so many foes so quickly, especially if a party member disabled them before - but as soon as things don't go as planned he's the first to go down - and then he's worth nothing. Most players tend to reload the fight then. 

The "classic" DPS rogue build is to use two sabres to maximize the dmg output of the per-encounter strikes the rogue has and to get a good balance of attack speed and dmg per hit (the higher dmg per hit the better against enemies armor/DR). With high DR he will last longer but also have less dps. But for the first few Full Attacks like Blinding Strike etc. the armor doesn't matter as much. It's the auto-attacks where he will be noticably slower with a heavy armor. Anyway - if you rush into battle with such a rogue he will go down very quickly. Wait for the enemies to engage the tank and only come in from the flanks. Use Escape and movement items while avoiding disengagement attacks.

Then there's the approach to use a reach weapon (see Tall Grass) in order to combine melee DPS with rel. safety behind the front line and not having to engage the enemy directly in close melee (can flee without disengagement attack). The overall outcome of this might be very good if you are able to control the battlefield well and manage to keep a tight formation so that not many enemies can reach the rogue in melee. But even if you manage to do that there will always be archers/gunmen and they like to target low armor/low defense chars - so it's still useful to give the reach weapon rogue a bit of DR so that he doesn't become the target of every ranged enemy and gets shot to death instantly. Or keep him stealthed until most enemies have settled on the tank or different party members. Most enemies are reluctant to switch targets after they decided.

Then of course there are ranged rogues. Here it can totally make sense to build a glasscannon because ranged characters with decent range (10-12m) usually get hit a lot less often and if they do they usually can retreat quickly and easily. 

Then you can build a rogue with shield. This variant will have the lowest DPS for a big part of the game (still good compared to other classes like Fighter or Paladin) but will be the sturdiest one. If you give him a bashing shield (first Larder Door, later Badgrad's Barricade) he can even profit from the Full Attacks that his per-encouter strikes are (shield hits first, no recovery pause, applying the affliction, main weapon hits second, getting the sneak attack bonus). Once you get Badgrad's Barricade you will have a great mix of both sides, offense and defense. You will do great DPS because the enchantment that releases Thrust of Tattered Veils on a critical shield bash has no proc limit (procs on every bas that crits), the spell works with Deathblows (+100% dmg) and you will be as sturdy as a Rogue can be. But it's a late-ish game item. Before that it's "only" a offensive/defensive melee hybrid. Still works well imo. Not as main tank - but can off-tank reasonably well after some levels.  

 

[Boeroer]

Attributes are not super important in PoE in general. A few points more here and there hardly matter.

Generally a glasscannon rogue wants to drop Resolve and Constitution, max DEX, PER and MIG and put the rest into INT (or switch INT and MIG). 

A more sturdy rogue wants more CON and Resolve, especially Resolve because getting interrupted in melee is bad. 

A Rogue with shield should have highish resolve. All defenses have increasing returns. Deflection and reflex are the defensive stat a rogue with shield will have high values in, and resolve will grant you additional deflection.

A Rogue doesn't really need a ton of MIG to deal good weapon damage. Sneak Attack and Deathblows give you sich high dmg bonuses that a bit of MIG gets dwarfed in comparison. So you can always lower MIG a bit in order to achieve a melee sturdy, balanced build. You can lower PER a bit. It is very handy in the early game but later on in the game there are so many sources of accuracy that the effect of PER isn't that impactful anymore.