how to rogue on hard?

[cavemandiary]

Hey there.

 

Do you people have a lot of success with the rogue on hard? I've made my rogue into a glasscannon, yet the damage is somewhat disappointing even with durance throwing out interdiction every fight.

 

As a matter of a fact, my tank monk does almost the same damage with turning wheel and rooting pain, while at the same time being 4 times as tanky.

 

I've maxed out might and dex, dw, savage attack, dual wield mastery, vicious attack, that 1.2dmg 8 acc modal, and blinding strike.

 

What gives?

[Ichthyic]

there's a couple of good rogue buld threads somewhere in here.

it's doable.

I myself prefered building a ranged rogue instead of a melee rogue.

use blinding and crippling strike, and between those and webs and interdictions, at least half your shots will be for sneaks or crits.

boost your int a bit to get your blinds/cripples to last a bit longer so you can get more shots in.

use a fast bow like a good hunting bow to maximize your sneak attack damage.

works great for me.  my rogue has as much damage by herself as the rest of the team put together, and then some.

 

[Fimconte]

Vulnerable Attack (5 DR penetration) and Deep wounds (Raw dmg dot + it reapplies it on every strike for instant tick = ~4 raw dmg on every hit) are really good.
Crippling Strike is better than Blinding, because you get 2x per encounter and you want it for the 1.25x full attack for burst damage, not for the debuff. 

That said, Ranged rogue is better imho, since you don't have to worry about HP that much.  
A barbarian fills the melee striker role better, due to Carnage and much higher HP buffer (you don't want to get hit on your striker either way, but unless you stack deflect on either class they're not going to have super-high defense. As such, Barbarian works better as melee striker imho).  

The main thing with dual-wielding is that you really want -DR weapons (Stilettos/Maces? and certain weapons with 'unique' enchants).

[Lasci]

Rogues perform well with any of the offensive melee weapon styles. Barbarians tend to be strictly better at getting into melee, if only because they have the raw endurance and abilities to make something like that safer and their kit is built around it. But that doesn't mean that melee rogues are bad. When you're dual wielding you want to get vulnerable attack. It's basically a straight up +5 damage boost to your attacks, especially later in the game when everyone and their cousin has DR.

 

If you haven't taken a weapon focus talent, make sure to be flexible with what weapons you're dual wielding. Pay attention to the enemy's DR and act accordingly. Additionally, each weapon excels at something different -- hatchets add deflection for defense, spears add accuracy for more hits and less grazes, axes help with crits, stilettos give DR piercing, and so forth. Again, stilettos are typically best in this situation because you don't have enough damage to pierce through DR, so that combined with vulnerable attack gives you a huge boost in damage. 

 

I honestly think dual wielding rogues are probably the worst type of rogue, though, because it requires so much micro management of your modal and the weapons you're using.

[Daemonjax]

use a fast bow like a good hunting bow to maximize your sneak attack damage.

 

 

That would only make sense if rogue's sneak attack were flat damage bonuses like in D&D.  But it's not like there here.

Edited April 4, 2015 by Daemonjax

[Ichthyic]

the dps measurement's I have seen posted show that the hunting bow outperforms it's nearest competitor.

and now that the arbalest has been nerfed, it outperforms that as well.

plus, it's also about how many shots you can land while your opponent has a state that allows for sneak attacks.

with a hunting bow, you can easily land multiple shots before conditions like hobble or blind run out.

 

 

Crippling Strike is better than Blinding, because you get 2x per encounter and you want it for the 1.25x full attack for burst damage, not for the debuff

not against mages it isn't.  blinding mages really hurts their chances to hit you with spells.  take both talents, I say.

Edited April 4, 2015 by Ichthyic