Post-exp rogue?

[Infiltrator_SF]

I was thinking of starting a new game on ironman or expert (or both) and I was considering the changes to rogue. Basically individual stealth matters a lot, and the perception change is also significant. Anyone experimented with these? Would backstab be finally viable?

 

Thanks.

[dukefx]

Why would it be any more viable than before and what has perception to do with any of this? Individual stealth doesn't change anything. Before you sent your rogue ahead, now you can sneak up on them with the entire party. No difference, your rogue gets spotted, no backstab either way.

[jsaving]

Backstab worked great in IE games for many reasons.  First, backstab did up to 5x normal damage, giving you very strong burst damage.  Second, stealth almost always held up long enough that you could successfully deliver your backstab before being spotted.  Third, IE weapons were much stronger than PoE weapons with many more on-hit status effects, giving you a good chance to take your foe out of the fight permanently even if your backstab didn't drop him.  Fourth, there were many ways to quickly re-enter stealth/invisibility in IE and do a quick succession of backstabs, drastically multiplying your damage.  Finally, if all of those were exhausted and your enemy was somehow still standing, you could easily disengage with boots that gave you 2x movement speed. 

 

None of these things apply to any great degree in PoE either pre-2.0 or post-2.0.  Backstab's damage multiplier is far weaker, stealth is far more detectable, weapon status effects are much weaker, opportunities for re-entering "backstab mode" are much fewer, and the ability to successfully disengage are all inferior to IE.  While there are builds that successfully make use of PoE's backstabbing as a small part of their strategy, large changes would be needed to bring PoE's backstab anywhere near the usefulness of the IE version. 

[Infiltrator_SF]

I wasnt planning on insta-gibbing everyone multiple times per combat. But I was looking to emulate a similar strategy and from what I've noticed this was made more possible with the changes. I was just looking for impressions and observations of those that have already tried something like that.

[Nobear]

I wasnt planning on insta-gibbing everyone multiple times per combat. But I was looking to emulate a similar strategy and from what I've noticed this was made more possible with the changes. I was just looking for impressions and observations of those that have already tried something like that.

 

While I haven't tried it yet, I'm with you that it sounds cool. Here are my thoughts. That thread also discusses what Backstab does and does not stack with.

[Infiltrator_SF]

Thanks for your input, I guess no one has done it and reported on it just yet. Might as well give it a go myself, though I must say I'm not as versed in the ruleset as I am with the old IE games.

[Nobear]

Thanks for your input, I guess no one has done it and reported on it just yet. Might as well give it a go myself, though I must say I'm not as versed in the ruleset as I am with the old IE games.

 

What difficulty would you be playing? I'd be interested to know how it goes for you. Have fun!

[Infiltrator_SF]

I was planning on hard/expert, not ironman since I don't know what I'd be getting into and I was planning on getting story characters.

[pi2repsion]

One thing that works well with the expansion is to use the Devil of Caroc as a 2H rogue wielding the Grey Sleeper for massive sneak attack damage and a 10% chance on hit and crit to paralyze. (As well as the 5% chance to cast Twin Stones and the 5% chance to summon three random undead minions on hit and crit, which are also pretty darn nice side effects of this superb 2H Estoc). I wonder how using a PC rogue with optimized stats and not forced to wear a -40% recovery speed armour (as the Devil is) in the same role would perform compared to traditional DW melee builds.

Edited September 7, 2015 by pi2repsion

[Boeroer]

Don't know about the Sleeper, but I run a 2H hearth orlan rogue with Hours of St. Rumbalt (Annihilation, Overbearing) at the moment and it's just great. Causing prone and doing +150% damage when I crit is so powerful. It feels better than my dual wielding sabre rogue that I played before. You also don't need that many special attacks to cause afflictions, because the sword does it for you.

[pi2repsion]

Don't know about the Sleeper, but I run a 2H hearth orlan rogue with Hours of St. Rumbalt (Annihilation, Overbearing) at the moment and it's just great. Causing prone and doing +150% damage when I crit is so powerful. It feels better than my dual wielding sabre rogue that I played before. You also don't need that many special attacks to cause afflictions, because the sword does it for you.

I have not tried Hours of St. Rumbalt or other crit-focused weapons before; How often does the "crits can inflict prone" overbearing effect fire on crits?

[Boeroer]

Dual sabres also have Annihilation and are better dps-wise because of the full attacks that crippling strike and so on provide. But they lack the possibility of causing the prone affliction. So the sabres will go to my monk instead.

[Ymarsakar]

 

Don't know about the Sleeper, but I run a 2H hearth orlan rogue with Hours of St. Rumbalt (Annihilation, Overbearing) at the moment and it's just great. Causing prone and doing +150% damage when I crit is so powerful. It feels better than my dual wielding sabre rogue that I played before. You also don't need that many special attacks to cause afflictions, because the sword does it for you.

I have not tried Hours of St. Rumbalt or other crit-focused weapons before; How often does the "crits can inflict prone" overbearing effect fire on crits?

 

 

Every crit, as far as I know. Or at least majority of them if I missed something. I used to think it was like percentage based to, so I never used them as getting accuracy high enough to get a crit before the Perception buff, was... not so good.

 

Basically, there are ways to convert 100% of your hits to crits, via buffs. Dire blessing, potions, paladin's zealous 2 upgrade, and the rogue is the most popular class for this trick because of the +10% +10% talents it has to convert hits to crit.

 

Borresaine that op bow that STUNs on crit, Tall grass, and st Rum, are popular weapons for the critical rogue which is also the cc rogue. What makes these weapons so powerful is that you can get it in the early game, with enough gold.

Edited September 7, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[Boeroer]

Yep. That's the best part. Loot Readric's Hold and you've got enough money to either buy Tall Grass or Hours of St. Rumbalt. They improve your performance a lot because of their high acc buffs (+8 or +12) that you normally don't get that early in the game.

[pi2repsion]

Thanks, Ymarsakar and Boeroer.

 

In that case, with good enough accuracy, the Hours will clearly be better than the Grey Sleeper for the purpose of ensuring that a disabling status effect granting crit is active as the paralysis, while having a very decent duration, only happens on 10% of hit and crits, i.e. 10% of the attacks that don't result in gazes and misses, while the prone effect will occur on 100% of crits, and a with decent accuracy and the relevant hit->crit talent, considerably more than 10% of a rogue's attacks will be crits.

 

So for an endgame weapon, a highly enchanted Hours of St. Rumbalt will beat the snot out of the Grey Sleeper for the purpose of maintaining the target disabled and dealing high single target damage. (On anything not immune to prone).

 

The Grey Sleeper's comparative advantage then, is that it is a weapon you can pick up at levels 6-9 depending on the difficulty level you are playing on, requiring you to fight 4-5 tough encounters in White March's Longfalls and then spending 10 minutes visiting some already cleared locations in the main game to turn it into a superb weapon, whereas the Hours can't be made superb until level 12. (But then, the Grey Sleeper can't be White Forge enchanted...)

 

Of course the Grey Sleeper also has those nice 5% undead summons and 5% twin stones AOE, and there is that awesome thrice-per-rest -60% attack speed, -2.5 move speed for 15s FoeAOE debuff, but I guess that if one is to run 2H Rogue as a main, the Hours is where it is at.

 

(Or specialize in Great Sword and use the Hours as primary weapon and Grey Sleeper when it makes sense - assuming there's no other in the party that needs that Estoc).

Edited September 8, 2015 by pi2repsion

[Boeroer]

On the character sheet you can see your hit/crit ratio. My hearth orlan rogue with maxed per has 50/50. So he has a 50% chance to crit when he's not missing. High acc helps of course, but also every source of hit to crot conversion that you can get. Hearth Orlan gives 10%, so do the two rogue abilities/talents. On top of that you can add the Paladin's Zealous Focus together with his corresponding talent, which adds another 5%. Then there is a nice priest buff that does 20% (that overrides Zealous Focus). So you can get a "passive" conversion of 35%. That helps a lot.

Another nice weapon together with the interrupt talent is Mabec's Morning Star (Azzuro sells it), which stuns on crit and has a 1 sec interrupt. That's even better than prone because the debuff is more severe - meaning that you are critting even more if the enemy was stunned the first time. And if you only hit, you still cause a long interrupt. That's also a great weapon for barbs because of carnage.

[Boeroer]

im playing PotD

[pi2repsion]

Okay, I checked the Overbearing effect of the Hours of St. Rumbalt and Tall Grass.

 

It works like this:

 

Every crit with an Overbearing weapon causes a separate roll with your weapon accuracy vs. fortitude to cause prone for 3 seconds.

 

 

So it doesn't automatically apply on every crit, but since most enemies have considerably lower fortitude than your rogue's accuracy, it will feel as if it did since most crits will reapply prone.

[Killyox]

Okay, I checked the Overbearing effect of the Hours of St. Rumbalt and Tall Grass.

 

It works like this:

 

Every crit with an Overbearing weapon causes a separate roll with your weapon accuracy vs. fortitude to cause prone for 3 seconds.

 

 

So it doesn't automatically apply on every crit, but since most enemies have considerably lower fortitude than your rogue's accuracy, it will feel as if it did since most crits will reapply prone.

Sure it isnt +acc on prone? Because for example The Grey Sleeper has +15 accuracy on paralyze effect when it occurs.

[pi2repsion]

Good question, Killyox. I should have been more careful in my formulation. I didn't check more closely for a possible offset due to the current character panel accuracy confusion, just saw that "yup, it seems to roughly match what I think is my rogue's accuracy".

Edited September 10, 2015 by pi2repsion

[Psychevore]

On the character sheet you can see your hit/crit ratio. My hearth orlan rogue with maxed per has 50/50.

 

 

 

84% crits.

 

PotD. Yeah, I know it's a Ranger.

 

Base stats are 18/5/19/20/4/12

Edited September 10, 2015 by Psychevore

[dudex]

..213 crits and 254 hits is not 84% crit.

 

u add it up to find the %  so it  213/(213+254)

 

anyways that screen is misleading because if u use aoe heals like shod in faith everytime u heal it will add to the hit count. Im sure some other spells count as well. it also does not display misses

Edited September 11, 2015 by dudex

[Psychevore]

..213 crits and 254 hits is not 84% crit.

 

u add it up to find the %  so it  213/(213+254)

 

anyways that screen is misleading because if u use aoe heals like shod in faith everytime u heal it will add to the hit count. Im sure some other spells count as well. it also does not display misses

Oh, I thought the crits were a part of the hits.

 

And I don't have Shod in Faith on the ranger, or any other ability on the ranger that doesn't directly hit the enemy.

 

 

 

 

How are the companion's hits counted? On the ranger's sheet? Not at all?

Edited September 11, 2015 by Psychevore