Underwhelming Rogue Abilities (skills)

[Veynn]

 

This is my end game Dual Wield Rogue. This is on Hard btw.

 

Is there a Ranged Rogue out there with personal record close or higher than this? I might create a Ranged Rogue after I complete my Cipher run.

[MadDemiurg]

 

This is my end game Dual Wield Rogue. This is on Hard btw.

 

Is there a Ranged Rogue out there with personal record close or higher than this? I might create a Ranged Rogue after I complete my Cipher run.

That doesn't mean anything to be fair. It only means that you have suboptimal companions and/or don't micro them as much. You can solo the game with a paladin and he'll have more kills and more damage done. My hired Cipher in a party PotD playthrough had more damage done at the end for what it's worth since I got lazy at the end of the game and only spammed amplified wave. If I bothered to drop some blizzards and fan of flames on top, druid and wizard would keep up just fine as they did in the middle of the game.

Edited April 22, 2015 by MadDemiurg

[Blovski]

Rogue would be great if not for stupid requirements of Sneak Attack-

Enemy need at least specific condition on him, or two if you want more damage (sneak attack upgrade talent)- two. In first case this should be ANY CONDITION, not only those mentioned in skill description or just an attack from behind (so it can work solo) and in second it should be just passive damage increase without stupid two conditions requirements.

 

Second problem is backstab- only when you are invisible. Which means only 2x Shadowing Beyond-> Backstab combo. And then rest…but no! You need camp supplies! If Shadowing Beyond was per encounter and 3x it would be better since you could eliminate top priority targets with Sneak Attack + Backstab plus possible Critic attack.

 

Also what Rogue miss are some sort of bombs/mines/traps that could inflict conditions (stun, paralyze etc) on enemies to synergize best with his Sneak Attack Bonuses.

 

Or if he can summon a Shadow of himself, which can’t be killed during duration but also do not inflict any damage. But thanks to it you can inflict “flanked” on enemies 1x per encounter.

 

Rogue is nice in theory, but when you play it you see how maps and some requirements and some talents execution prevent you from playing a truly Rogue/backstabber and you find yourself too many times being a inferior warrior in first line.

1. Sneak attack is *really* easy to pull off. Charmed, Confused, Dominated, Dazed, Frightened and Terrified are the only status effects that don't allow it and it can be executed from any distance.

 

2. There are two real advantages Rangers have over Rogues as archers. A) marginally higher accuracy B) Not reliant on Crowd Control spells if you run with a party that doesn't sport tons of them (I was using two chanters, druid, ranger, fighter and paladin in my last runthrough). Compared to the advantages of Rogues these are pretty minor things. Making Sneak Attack even easier would even further reduce the relative value of Rangers.

 

As far as I can see, the real problem here is that Rogues don't have the risk/reward thing that was in the AD&D games and IWD 2. Positioning and Stealth aren't very relevant to their playstyle and the way their talents work encourages static, ranged DPS. I'd love to see Rogues that get up in people's grills using Coordinated Positioning to surgically strike the enemy backline or the like but it seems like the two dominant builds are tank rogue (which is fantastic) and archer rogue (which is fantastic), both of which are more or less static.

 

Correct me if anyone's made a proper positioning swashbuckler work for them.

[Veynn]

Hmmm I might try a Coordinated Positioning build. But that requires high INT to have a longer radius.

[MadDemiurg]

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.

[SilchasRuin]

Sneak attack is "only 50%"? A single class passive that grants 50% damage is far more than any other class has bar none. The rogue has multiple other rogue only modifiers that are extremely strong and synergistic with other general damage buffs. Dirty Fighting/Reckless Assault/Deep Wounds (apparently each reapplication deals 4 raw damage on application so it's actually stronger than Vulnerable Attack)/Deathblows. +120% damage, +8 accuracy, +20% hit to crit, and +4 damage per hit(in addition to the dot) is an extremely strong set of damage modifiers which is class exclusive. 

 

As to ranged rogue vs melee rogue, in my opinion ranged rogue is inferior to casters as ranged single target seriously lags behind ranged aoe, but this is a problem with any ranged weapon damage dealer in general. A ranged rogue is probably a better ranged weapon wielder than any other class, but ranged weapons just aren't good enough. The best way to use rogue, I believe, is to use them in conjunction with strong cc to quickly mop up threats that make it to the back line, and otherwise deal with any targets on the edges of battles. The melee rogue should always be kept off to the side and engage enemies either behind, or to the side of the tank(s). If used this way with appropriate micro and cc rogue deals excellent damage and maintains reasonable survivability.

[MadDemiurg]

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.

Edited April 22, 2015 by MadDemiurg

[knownastherat]

Only 50% damage wow

 

I told you Veynn, want to play ranged, play Ranger and you get pet for free. What is next? Ranged Fighter? How to use knockdown!?? Fix fix!

Edited April 22, 2015 by knownastherat

[SilchasRuin]

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.

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.

[MadDemiurg]

 

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.

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.

Edited April 22, 2015 by MadDemiurg

[SilchasRuin]

 

 

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.

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.

[MadDemiurg]

 

 

 

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.

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 .

[voad1]

I don't agree. Barbs have terrible survivability. Low deflection and everyone knows what a joke constitution/endurance is. Most min max builds dump it for something else like more damage or deflection. Barbs have low deflection and are very poor at tanking. They have pretty poor accuracy as well. They don't crit often at all, and mine misses strikes often. They have penalties to accuracy for carnage. Most of their talents and abilities are useless. Brute force, threatening presence, yell, shout, wild sprint, vengeful defeat(relying on being taken out of a fight to do damage isn't smart with or with out second chance)

 

Heart of Fury is what? A once per rest attack that adds 25% damage? Barbaric blow is ok, but with barbs low accuracy I either don't land it so it is wasted or I don't crit. Barbs seem better off with just normal damage increase modifiers imo. Thick skinned is a meh defensive ability. Accurate carnage and barbaric blow are the only talents worth taking imo. Stalwart defiance seems good but savage defiance is so good that it doesn't need the added bonus. What good will 10 extra deflection do me for 10 seconds while I am able to regen all my endurance at the same time? And greater frenzy only adds another 6% damage to frenzy.

 

His best abilites are blooded. bloodlust, frenzy, savage defiance, and OSA. Frenzy and Savage Defiance are once per encounter. Frenzy adds a little damage but its best attribute is the added attack speed. Defiance helps with survivability. Bloodlust, blooded, and OSA are all conditional. Blooded you must be under 50% endurance to gain 25% damage, that is ok I wouldn't say it's great because I don't want to be under 50% endurance and once I try to heal I lose my damage bonus. Bloodlust is good but there must be at least 3 opponents for it to be worth anything, since you have to kill 2 yourself with a third being around for you to hopefully use this buff on. And OSA is his best skill. Adds 20 damage flat currently. But you must be engaged by at least 2 enemies. And you are restricted to melee essentially. Rogue can do melee or ranged. And it seems much easier to ensure a Rogues conditionals are met in combat especially with a party.

 

That said I really do enjoy the Barb in this game. Hope some of his talents and abilities are looked at and changed for the better as I am sure a lot of other classes could use the same treatment.

[SilchasRuin]

My surivavability point isn't that Barb makes a good tank (or even off tank for that matter) but compared to my Rogue who died very rapidly if I wasn't microing properly vs single targets barbarian could last a significant time, especially with the Savage Defiance talent. Otherwise I agree with you on the whole.

[KDubya]

My experience on PotD, level 4 now at Caed Nua with a rogue:

 

Build is melee focused Pirate theme using sabre in one hand for the +12 accuracy, Amaumau for the extra weapon, will be pair of pistols or blunderbuss to start the show then run around flank and engage with sabre from behind.

 

As stated above melee does good damage with reckless, and savage attack with easily achieved sneak attack status effect from team that has a cipher. Damage add is +30% might +20% reckless +20% savage for +70% damage and +120% sneak attack, ranged damage is +30% and +80% sneak attack/initial volley. He also gets +21 accuracy in melee from ruffian, reckless, savage (-5) and using only one weapon. To achieve this the rogue needs three talent/abilities. A two hander rogue would be getting +85% damage, +135% sneak and +9 accuracy. At higher levels you can add in deathblows for another +50%

 

Compared to a damage spec fighter (both are single target so it is apples to apples) who get +30% might, +25% weapon spec & mastery, Two handed style +15% for a total of +70% damage while using defender modal at a cost of 0.8 attack speed, +90% if you went savage modal instead. Both would also get you +55% ranged damage. The accuracy buff here is only +6 and in the case of savage only +1. The tanking version with wary defender needs six talent/abilities, the savage needs five talent/abilities, seven if you wanted both mutually exclusive modals to switch back and forth.

 

The rogue outputs more damage with less talent investment and more accuracy at the cost of less endurance, much less deflection and requiring micro to properly position and apply status effects. The saved talents can be used to further add damage via the poison DoT, increase survivability or whatever suits you.

 

Keeping the targets sneak attack susceptabel is the whole reason to go for a rogue. If you are not going to do that then better to roll with damage spec'd fighters or monks.

 

I find a melee rogue to be a fun, high risk/reward class. In my team he leads in damage, 2nd is the monk, tied for 3rd is the fighter and cipher, last are chanter and priest. If I wanted a ranged archer/gunner type I'd go ranger instead of rogue, they look to be more fun as a ranged rogue looks pretty boring without the need to run around in melee at great risk for great reward.