TCS Rogue, DW Sabre, 4 Shot Thaos ( 1 BS + 1 CS )

[Guy's]

 

Finally accomplished the Triple Crown Solo achievement with a duel wielding rogue using sabre's. Thought I would share some pics and some thoughts about how amazing sabre's are for a duel wielding rogue.

 

I've tried many different types of duel wielding rogues on my TCS attempts, like stiletto's, dagger's and rapier's, but it's just so hard to go past the raw damage output of the sabre. With the right sabre's and the right talents and abilities you can achieve some crazy high damage with your critical strikes, and consistently high damage overall.  

 

The rogue has the perfect assortment of talents and abilities that synergise extremely well with sabre's. In particular, abilities like sneak attack and deathblows that are a percentage based damage modifier, add more bonus damage to a sabre swing than any other single handed weapon because of the naturally high base damage of the sabre. Also, abilities like blinding strike (BS) and crippling strike (CS) will add more damage to sabre's than any other single handed weapon for the same reason. Another very nice synergy between sabre's and abilities like BS, CS, WS or FS and Finishing Blow is that being a "Full Attack" ability, (which for a duel wielder is an attack with both weapons within the single use of the ability, essentially two attacks for one ability use), is that the Full Attack actually removes any recovery between the two weapon swings. This isn't so noticeable with fast weapons like stiletto's or rapier's, but is quite noticeable with the slower saber. So not only do you get a solid percentage based modifier, +25% first hit, +75% second hit (sneak attack) then +50%(sneak attack) for the duration of the debuff, but you also get the benefit of a massive recovery bonus aswell. So when you use BS then go straight into CS, your essentially getting 4 weapon swings while only serving one recovery period between BS and CS. VERY powerful when using the high base damage sabre, even more so when you string a finishing blow on to the end, which is also a Full Attack. A perfect example of how good this is for sabre's is in my screen shot of the combat log for Thaos. You can see from the time I engaged Thaos in melee, to the time he was killed, that I only hit him 4 times, but those 4 attacks were only using the 2 abilities BS + CS. Also note that from engagement to death, he was only able to get one attack/spell off.

 

My choice of sabre's were Resolution + Purgatory, as they both come with an additional 50% crit multiplier, for a total of 90% crit dmg multiplier when coupled with The Merciless Hand +30%, and Dungeon Delver +10% talents. Both were enchanted with exceptional, corrosive lash and slaying (vessel). These enchantments make both weapons 12/12.

 

As a quick tip, an item that should never be overlooked for the rogue, especially if you intend on getting Deathblows, is the Rotfinger Gloves. Hands down the best rogue gloves in the game, and one of the easiest to get. The ability to use Spreading Plague is an absolute godsend. Firstly, it isn't checked against any defenses, so it has 100% chance of applying to any enemy in the game. Secondly, it applies 2 debuffs, Weakened + Hobbled, which instantly gives your attacks Deathblows. And on top of that, each of the 3 charges can jump from your initial target, up to an additional 5 targets, ensuring your Deathblows are consistent. As if that wasn't enough, you also get 3 charges per rest of Touch of Rot, which with high might, does considerable aoe damage, and absolutely destroys enemies like spiders, and many of the vessel creatures.

 

 

 

Overview of my character:

 

Death Godlike, Deadfire Archipelago - Raider

 

Starting Attributes

 

MIG - 18

CON - 8

DEX - 20

PER - 8

INT - 6

RES - 18

 

Final Fight Attributes

 

MIG - 23

CON - 11

DEX - 25

PER - 10

INT - 10

RES - 23

 

 

Abilities/Talents

 

Blinding Strike

Crippling Strike

Deathblows

Dirty Fighting

Vicious Fighting

Finishing Blow

Devastating Blow

Reckless Assault

Shadowing Beyond

Two Weapon Style

Weapon Focus: Ruffian

Deep Pockets

Deaths Usher 

The Merciless Hand

Dungeon Delver

Gift from the Machine

Song of the Heavens

Blooded Hunter

Berath's Boon

 

Equipment

 

Purgatory - Exceptional, Corrosive, Vessel

Resolution - Exceptional, Corrosive, Vessel

Persistance - Exceptional, Burning, Spirit

Aru-Breaker - Exceptional, Crush, +2 INT

The Ring of Wonder

Ring of Deflection +10

Finreah's Grace

Blunting Belt

Rotfinger Gloves

Shod-in-Faith

 

Food Used in Final Battle

 

Ale

Dragon Meat Dish

Farmers Spread

Casita Casserole

Pearlwood Chicken

Darkest Rauatai Cookies

Rauatai Sweetpie

 

Quickslot Items

 

Obsidian Lamp Figurine

Ebony Spider Figurine

Iridescent Scarab Figurine

Oaken Scarab Figurine

Potion of Major Endurance

Flask of War Paint

 

 

I have some more screenshots i will add tomorrow, i can only add one of the pics due to the size of the file.

 

Anyways, hopefully this might give some people inspiration to play their own sabre rogue, and have as much fun as i did doing TCS.

 

Also, i had read somewhere on these forums that the dev's were looking for people to submit a copy of their save file for TCS, so they can check to see if it was done without cheating in someway, or quitting during combat and reloading. If anyone can direct me where to go to post my save file or know how i can send the file to them so they can verify that I did it legitimately, please let me know.

 

 

Cheers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Exoduss]

Only bad thing is that you advertised Rotfinger Gloves for a sure nerf next patch( Item is perfect for solo rogue), other than that nice thread i played something like that on Easy Normal and Hard ( did all of them with solo rogue dual wielding using stilettos  ) and i was thinking what kind of rogue should i go for POTD 

[LordHellscream]

nice build! what's the trade off between Stiletto vs Sabres?

[Guy's]

Here's a few more screen shots...

 

 

 

[Guy's]

Only bad thing is that you advertised Rotfinger Gloves for a sure nerf next patch( Item is perfect for solo rogue), other than that nice thread i played something like that on Easy Normal and Hard ( did all of them with solo rogue dual wielding using stilettos  ) and i was thinking what kind of rogue should i go for POTD 

 

Heh, your prob right about the gloves. What they give to a solo rogue is quite substantial, and are the first things i buy after Killing Merwald and reach Defiance bay (as well as The Ring of Wonder, 'just in case'). I figured it would help a lot more people with their solo rogue runs if they realised their potential. I hope it doesn't get nerfed. 

 

In all honesty, i think for POTD any of the tried and tested weapon setups like duel stiletto, dagger, rapier or spears or whatever you wanted to play are viable. I've used them all for TCS solo. Each setup will require slightly different tweaking to compliment the weapons your using, for example, if using faster but lower base damage weapons like dagger's or stiletto's, you will almost certainly want to get the Vulnerable Attack modal for the DR reduction, something the sabre for example doesn't need. Most of the time, success in battle is about positioning and management as well as damage. After using them all i can say by far my personal favourite weapons to use are sabre's. I've used stiletto's quite a few times, and i really liked them. I normally went for Azureith's Stiletto + Bleak Fang. My issue with stiletto's however (and all low dmg fast weapons for that matter), and in particular with the two i mentioned, is that with such low base dmg, you almost 'need' to get Vulnerable Attack modal which i'm not a fan of at all, and also that once you get your proc crits of lightning and corrode (which is awesome and a lot of fun!), your essentially left with plain stiletto's for the rest of the fight. Which isn't that great on long drawn out fights, made worse when the crits happen at the wrong time and only hit one enemy. In my opinion, Vulnerable Attack and Savage Attack modals are terrible, but in some cases necessary for low dmg fast weapons. Usually if you're picking the rogue for a solo TCS run, its because of the rogue's dmg output, more often than not for the duel wield dmg (and of the course the fun factor!). So basically, you'r going to want to increase you're overall 'attack power' as much as you can, and what Vulnerable and Savage Attack modals do is simply exchange one 'attack power' attribute for another, in the case of Vulnerable Attack swapping attack speed for DR reduction, and Savage Attack swapping accuracy for dmg..neither of which you really want to lose at all. So I think the overall gain of those 2 modals is fairly lackluster and in no way can compare to the rogues class modal Reckless Assault, which swaps one 'defensive attribute' for two 'attack attributes'. That's just how i feel about it anyways. But as i was saying before i have used them all, and had fun with them, and i think all of the available setups are viable, I just prefer sabre's. Hopefully you'll do well on your on POTD run. I've probably died at least 12+ times attempting TCS rogue before i managed to do it, so don't give up!

[Omnicron]

Nicely done!

What did you do about the two statues in your run?

I am surprised you managed a TCS with such low Con, I know a Rogue is quite squishy, or is that where Shadowing Beyond saved you?. 

Did Thaos ever try hit you with cleansing flame? (that would be my fear, although with enough summons you might be able to keep his attention elsewhere)

What other items besides the sabers and the gloves did you use? 

[MadDemiurg]

I think OP used a standard split and wait tactic. Thaos is not a threat 1 on 1 if you wait out his buffs and vs cleansing flame - basically distract with summons and hope he doesn't decide to hit you (he has only a few seconds to do it anyway). Killing him fast once he's alone and without buffs is not difficult as he only has 200ish health. You have to practice splitting and do it perfectly though because if you fail it on TCS you're screwed and that's the main risk (and also why I don't like this tactic, apart from it feeling cheesy).

 

As for low CON - my solo wiz had 3 . Judge would be a bit risky on a melee rogue built like this even 1 on 1 though as he can basically stunlock you with kncokdowns and you need some durability buffer to recover.

[Omnicron]

I think OP used a standard split and wait tactic. Thaos is not a threat 1 on 1 if you wait out his buffs and vs cleansing flame - basically distract with summons and hope he doesn't decide to hit you (he has only a few seconds to do it anyway). Killing him fast once he's alone and without buffs is not difficult as he only has 200ish health. You have to practice splitting and do it perfectly though because if you fail it on TCS you're screwed and that's the main risk (and also why I don't like this tactic, apart from it feeling cheesy).

 

As for low CON - my solo wiz had 3 . Judge would be a bit risky on a melee rogue built like this even 1 on 1 though as he can basically stunlock you with kncokdowns and you need some durability buffer to recover.

 

Yes but Wizard has insane Deflection  

[Guy's]

Nicely done!

What did you do about the two statues in your run?

I am surprised you managed a TCS with such low Con, I know a Rogue is quite squishy, or is that where Shadowing Beyond saved you?. 

Did Thaos ever try hit you with cleansing flame? (that would be my fear, although with enough summons you might be able to keep his attention elsewhere)

What other items besides the sabers and the gloves did you use? 

I used basically what you need to use on the last fight going it solo with a rogue, the split them up tactic. I can't imagine how you would do it any other way, fighting all 3 at the same time seems a tall order, especially because your relying on summons to tank. I think the main reason you split them up, is not so much for the judges, but to get Thaos away while you kill the two judges. I can see taking both judges is doable, probably not while Thaos is there though. Its a pity i don't have a video recorder of some sort to record any of my playthrough's, but i can give you a rundown of how i did the fight..

 

I started the fight as normal, letting the north Judge agro on me. As soon as combat starts you RUN, you run as fast as you can west to the left side of the screen. With a bonus of +2 move speed (i used Aru-Breaker + Farmers Spread) you can make it all the way to the left of the screen before you get controlled, but the more speed the better i guess. You will get a pair of boots of speed after you enter the pit, those help immensely, but i've practiced my particular version of this strat a few times so i chose to keep Shod-in-Faith. When you get controlled by Thaos, the north judge will be right up on you waiting for you to turn back. As soon as you turn you want to use Shadowing Beyond immediately. Sometimes your lucky and the judge will go in to a spell cast, and you can get away easily, other times he will hit you and prone you or he will have locked engagement with you and will land a disengagement attack on you, which also prone's you. As long as the first thing you do when you see your character circle turn back to green is use Shadowing Beyond (even before moving) you should be fine even if you get proned. The north judges prone usually lasts around the 3-5 second duration time, or there abouts, while at 10 INT Shadowing Beyond Lasts for 10 seconds. This should give you enough time to last out the prone and get away by going straight south to get out of vision range of both Thaos and the Judge.

 

After that you want to circle around the bottom towards the second Judge. This Judge is actually quite easy, his attack dmg really isn't that strong, if he crits it hurts of course, but generally he doesn't do that much melee dmg. He does slash/crush dmg with his poleaxe so with ~20DR to both you should be fine. You just need to position yourself between him and the wall beside him so you don't get pushed back towards the centre of the map where Thaos will usually be. I start this Judge by summoning my 3 beetles and trying to spread them out around him if its possible. Then i open up on him with Spreading Plague which at 10 INT lasts for 15 seconds, then i use a flask of war paint and rush him. You want to position your self fairly close to him without getting into melee range before using your flask, and what i normally do is try to time it so that when i use my flask and rush in, my first attack on him is immediately after an attack he has made on one of the beetles since the judges have a fairly high recovery, you can get your first couple of hits in on them before any risk of being targeted. I used the vessel enchant on both my sabre's, so i had really high accuracy against them with war paint. 85 base accuracy, +5 from slaying vessel, +15 from war paint for 105 total accuracy. Also, i allways make sure to get Flanked on them with my summons and my own position, because for melee dmg -10 deflection on an enemy is exactly the same as +10 accuracy on your character. So you could say i had 115 accuracy against the judges, i didn't miss. Once i engaged him in melee i think i hit him 3-4 times to get him to 'Badly Injured' state, then i used finishing blow to kill him. All deathblow attacks from Spreading Plague, i didn't use BS or CS on either Judges, i wanted to save those for Thaos. 

 

This next part takes some practice as it is quite tricky, trying to separate the last Judge from Thaos. How i started this next phase of the encounter, was to use a fresh summon. I used spiders for this, as the spiders, especially the smaller two are very fast. I summoned them out of vision range of Thaos and the judge, then i split them up. I sent a small spider north, a small spider south and the large spider stayed with me, a little south from where i just killed the first judge while hugging the wall. Then at the same time i sent both small spider's towards the centre to gain agro on both Thaos and the last Judge. As soon as the Judge agro's on one small spider i send the spider running in the opposite direction to Thaos and rush the second spider towards Thaos to make sure it gets the agro. Thaos will allways use his Cleansing Flame attack at this point and target the spider. I'm not sure what it is that triggers his use of casting that spell, if he casts it after a Judge dies or if its random, but using this strat, he will allways cast Cleansing Flame as soon as he is engaged after the first judge dies. While he is casting, the first spider is kiting the Judge as far from Thaos as possible with its high movement speed, at the same time you and the large spider are circling around the wall in the direction of the second judge. At this point the spider who had agro on Thaos will be dead, and Thaos will again be separated from combat as the Judge will have been kited away. Then I sent the large spider into the judge, and noted the remaining HP of the small spider. It was almost dead, so i waited back and switched to my pathetic bow and hit him for like 8 pierce dmg or something like that and missed another 2 times while he finished off the large spider. As the last spider was about to die i switched back to my sabre's and prepared to summon my shades. Immediately as the spider died i summoned my shades which is important for this judge as the shades blind help a lot against his prone attacks. Then it was rinse and repeat, Spreading Plague + War Paint, time your first attack after his last attack to get some free hits, get the flank, then its 3-4 hits gets to Badly Injured then Finishing Blow and dead. 

 

After this i had one shade left, sent the shade in first towards Thaos to get initial agro, as i got close to him, i used my last Spreading Plague, used a war paint and 4 shot him with BS + CS, no Finishing Blow. I used Steps to the wheel after BS to try and petrify him for CS, but it only grazed and lasted for a 1.4 sec. Turned out it wasn't needed anyways, couldv'e just used CS straight away. 

 

As for the low constitution, generally your going to try and not tank much if anything. DR offsets both low constitution and a poor defense for most things. That's why i use heavy armour. But even at 11 constitution for that fight + war paint, i sit around ~260 Endurance, which is usually enough to allow you to re-evaluate any situation your in where your taking dmg and give you enough of a buffer to re-position, heal, or worst case scenario Shadowing Beyond (Just don't get hit by Cleansing Flame, but this falls under position and strategy, not CON value). Generally, the higher your DR the less value CON has, aside from fortitude saves. If an enemy is constantly doing minimum dmg to you because of high DR, then there's no point in having 400+ endurance. Of course, the judges in the Thaos fight were doing more than min dmg to my rogue, but not enough that i was getting 2-3 shot. You have a buffer and on top of that, they died very fast, so they didn't get an opportunity to rail on me for an extended period of time, in fact i don't think i was hit more than 3-4 times by the judges. Through all of my combined TCS attempts, i've cleared up to level 13 of Caed Nua, killed the sky dragon, done bounties and all sorts of things, and I feel that the biggest threat wasn't from high dmg attacks from enemies, it was being disabled in some way and unable to act or react, like petrify, paralyze and stun. Being a full blown tank you'll certainly want to get a high CON, but for a character that isn't tanking full time, or even at all, you can skimp on it quite a bit.

[Tennisgolfboll]

Boom headshot thaos!

 

Nice.gaming

 

But the gloves should roll to hit

[alexis13]

I do something similar on my wizard so I can fight without spells so much.

 

Not that much dmg but and ofc no sneak attack.

[alexis13]

Do you really need expert mode for the achievement? I feel it doesn't really add any difficulty to the game, just tediousness and a crippled half made UI.

 

Not that I could get it anyway lol, I have the GoG version so no achievements =D

[Nobear]

You do need expert mode for the achievement. The one thing I find more difficult about it is not having spell area highlighting. You have to develop a feel for where to target so as not to hit yourself with a slicken or chill fog, and to target the highest number of enemies.

 

For a rogue though, your only spells are from Rotward Gloves, so it wouldn't seem to be near as much of an issue.

[chalsengi]

This makes me upset to have a rogue in my party. If in a party-based RPG one solo class can trivialise the most combat on the highest difficulty, then whats the point of it being a "party-based" RPG? Doesnt seem like theres really any point in class-building or party-building, because you really only need to do one thing well to win every encounter - bring a dual-sabre rogue.

 

Im reminded of a game called Aarklash Legacy, which despite its shortcomings, was impossible to solo on the highest difficulty. I still havent beaten that because it was genuinely tough.

[Raven Darkholme]

This makes me upset to have a rogue in my party. If in a party-based RPG one solo class can trivialise the most combat on the highest difficulty, then whats the point of it being a "party-based" RPG? Doesnt seem like theres really any point in class-building or party-building, because you really only need to do one thing well to win every encounter - bring a dual-sabre rogue.

 

Im reminded of a game called Aarklash Legacy, which despite its shortcomings, was impossible to solo on the highest difficulty. I still havent beaten that because it was genuinely tough.

If you feel like that about rogues you must hate spellcasters.

[Boeroer]

And never play a cipher.

[Raven Darkholme]

Or only use him ranged. You will still hate him because he does almost rogue damage without afflicted enemies, but at least you won't have to watch Echo melt everything on screen. :D

[chalsengi]

Yeah in my current game I only play martial characters. No heals either. The closest thing to magic is probably Paladin abilities. Certain classes, items, abilities etc are just too OP and would ruin the enjoyment of the game for me by removing the challenge. If I were to use everything available, POTD would be absurdly weak and boring. I hope they add a new difficulty that increases amount of mobs and more immunities. Crit and AoE immune would be cool.

[Raven Darkholme]

I absolutely hate, when a game requires YOU to weaken yourself, so it doesn't get boring.

I have high hopes for 2.0, but the same time I'm afraid to be disappointed.

Oh well, I can always solo for more challenge...