Rogues.... It´s over!

[Andvare]

I´ve had it with rogues....

 

 

PoTD party at ~12 level.

 

Monk (offensive)

Fighter (lady of pain)

Wizard (blaster)

Cipher

Priest (durance)

Rogue (melee)

 

My rogue is _always_ dying. Every single fight. Any ideas on what to replace her with at this level?

Maybe another melee chanter?

[Elric Galad]

You might have lacked 1 melee guy to share risk with rogue. You'll still need 1 more melee guy to protect your squishies.

 

I'll say paladin or chanter indeed. Listen to your heart and go chanter.

Edited March 17, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Andvare]

What would be the benefit of having a paladin except the accuracy aura? (never had one)

[Elric Galad]

Immolation for AoE damage and constant healing.

Best single target heals of the game (lay on hand and reviving exhortations).

The above are their main unique advantages.

 

They also have increased resistance compared to chanter (or anyone).

 

Sworn ennemy make them compete with cipher or fighter for weapon damage, but only against 1 ennemy (I think a support character does not have to kill more than 1 ennemy to provide ok contribution).

 

Other picks depend on your tastes. Also have a look at paladin's order talent.

[kmbogd]

Don't send everyone at once. Usually you send your 1 or 2 tanks to initiate the combat and let them be surrounded. I usually use my DPS melee guys to go behind its tank/melee line and target the casters. Once this is done I come to clean the tank/melee line. Alternatively if your rogue is too injured, thus going behind enemy lines is too risky, I keep it near my casters as bodyguard . Rogue is an absolute beast if built properly: my Devil of Caroc (which in terms of stats is mediocre) was killing everything left and right.

 

edit 1: I immediately have my priest/paladin remove any stun/paralyze/prone  affliction on the rogue or any other melee DPS

edit 2: you want your rogue to synchronize in terms of generated afflictions with your party: have at least one other member generate an affliction on the rogue's target and then I add another one with my rogue (crippling strike, blinding strike, sap). When my target is affected by 2 afflictions it's very fun to watch (sneak attack, deathblow) messages

Edited March 17, 2016 by kmbogd

[Elric Galad]

The other problem is that rogue is not completely adapted to the rest of your party. Fighter, monk and cipher are 3 single target DPS ! They might be inferior to rogue for this, but they will surely do the job.

 

Rogue work best with 2 tank and 1 offtank (or just another guy that takes some hits). Maybe by putting Durance with a shield, average armor and hid beasty resolve on the frontline, you'll have less problem to make rogue work...

[Andvare]

Durance is fully equpped with sword & shield talent, cautious attack, sup deflection. So he is off-tankish.

 

I never run straight in with my rogue, it´s just that she gets murdered by monks and whatnot instantly after slashing her first cleric or so.

 

Sure, I see the benefit for the damage, but it´s just not feasible... testing with chanter now (although paladin looks really interesting)

[Elric Galad]

Paladin and chanter have similar purposes with different abilities. A bit like monk and fighter, or ranger and rogue.

 

Chanter has better damage potential by the way, due to fire lash and dragon AoE damage chant. They are also a bit more versatile, especially for crowd control.

Edited March 17, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Dr <3]

Paladin is more for healing/ protection - suppress affliction/ accuracy aura. Chanter is DMG ( dragon chant or dire lash ) , mass paralyze, mass Ice DMG, occasionale some buff or evocation.

Choose your destiny

[Gromnir]

in our most recent potd run, we got excellent use outta devil.  against nasty monks at level 12? alpha strike then send send paladin tank and a monk off-tank into the p00p first. onrushing monks is gonna be momentarily occupied by tanks and disabled by slicken or whatnot. chances are that by now multiple monks is prone, weakened, terrified, and flanked.  at this point devil switches from gun to tidefall or tall grass, and bolstered by paladin's lay-on, liberating or reinforcing exhortations... and likely a priestly buff such as crowns for the faithful, wades into the mix near one o' our tanky front-liners, and wrecks terrible havoc on lightly armoured monks.

 

*shrug*

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Tigranes]

A rogue should never be under fire for long - it is either attacking stuff distracted by others, or killing its enemy too fast for the enemy to fight back. The cipher's paralysis abilities would help here, but probably for your party the monk is fulfilling this role as well, and the rogue doesn't have enough opportunities to shine or enough protection from other front-line fighters. As Gromnir says, setting loose a rogue on prone or otherwise disabled enemies is the fastest way to watch several of them die within 10 seconds.

[Gromnir]

when fighting monks, drop a seal o' repulsion underneath your squishies before initiating combat, then make sure to hit the collected monks with something that reduces fortitude saves. no doubt one or two o' the monks will do the flagellant's path thing straight to whomever in your party has the worst deflection, but even if your seal only grazes the monks who sudden appear in your midst, that will be more than enough time for your rogue to hit 'em with tall grass and effectively perma-prone them.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Mocker22]

I think you have a good setup for using a rogue for the main dps if you are really focused on good CC. The key imo is not getting agro on the tanks, its totally neutralizing the opposition which wiz and cipher are incredible at. Don't even think of getting into melee with your rogue unless things are locked down. By level 12 you have the spells to do it.

[KDubya]

Or you can grab a shield and some defensive talents and use the new disorienting passive when flanking to set up your own deathblows. I'd avoid Cautious Attack as Superior Deflection is almost as good but with no malus. With you deflection at 100+ you won't die that quickly and you'll be cranking out good damage with deathblows caused merely by flanking.

[Ymarsakar]

I use a crossbow on my rogue and weapon/sshield. Very versatile.

 

If your rogue keeps dying, start using escape and coordinated positioning. 

 

I can escape engagement and still do good sneak attack damage with the crossbow. Or run up to an enemy and do a backstab at 2m with the crossbow, which is better usually than the melee stuff.

 

A wizard with essential phantom can also block the rogue from being flanked, by putting the phantom at the rogue's rear.

 

The wizard's dimensional shift, can also combo with a rogue for when it needs to get out of dodge. The wizard then pops arcane or mirrored images, goes into shield mode, and does a cone attack or terrify aoe. Then dimensional shifts back out to the phantom when the durations and endurance runs out. Spot tank. This allows the rogue to regen endurance.

 

The priest's withdraw is also good for saving a rogue, but at the expense of taking out the dps for x seconds.

 

The fighter might need Take the hit at level 11 for a retrain, as it would prolong the rogue's exposure to damage by halfing it to the fighter as raw damage. But the distance is pretty short, I would rather rely on escape/shadow/coordinated.

Edited March 18, 2016 by Ymarsakar

[MaxQuest]

Or you can grab a shield and some defensive talents and use the new disorienting passive when flanking to set up your own deathblows. 

Also it might be a good idea, to grab a shield with bash. Since most of rogue 'strike' abilities are full-attacks, bash should add to the total damage. 

[Elric Galad]

The bash DPS calculation gimme headache. You're never sure you're not gimping yourself.

[MaxQuest]

^ True that.

 

For full-attack abilities, you are always in bonus, when using 1h+shield_with_bash over 1h+shield.

 

For auto-attacking through... bashing will only do good on low levels, before you get high attack speed and high-quality enchants for the main weapon; and only against low-DR enemies. (longer explanation can be found here).

Edited March 18, 2016 by MaxQuest

[Elric Galad]

Yes, I've seen this topic.

 

It's the one that gave me headache ^^

[KDubya]

What about using the bash shield that has that spell on crit? With a Rogue's high accuracy and hit>crit conversion the spell might proc frequently. I think deep wounds would work as well with it.

[MaxQuest]

What about using the bash shield that has that spell on crit? With a Rogue's high accuracy and hit>crit conversion the spell might proc frequently. I think deep wounds would work as well with it.

Yeap, Thrust of Tattered Veils can proc really often.

Both bash and thrust deal crush damage, and they do indeed proc Deep Wounds. Just tested

 

Another worth mentioning thing is that Thrust does benefit from Deathblows.

(check the spoiler: SA +50% melee damage, while Deathblows' description writes just +100% damage)

 

 

 

10 Might rogue vs 10 DR enemy:

 

The lowest I got: (42)

 

THe highest I got: (77)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.S. The only downside is: that shield (Badgradr's Barricade) has bash1 property, which deals only 6-9 damage by itself. So you really want to crit as often as you can for the proc itself.

 

- update -

Actually a scroll rogue could be a thing. Even a 10 might one can deal some serious damage due to Deathblows.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 19, 2016 by MaxQuest

[Teioh_White]

I've noticed Sneak Attacks work with scrolls, and always assumed it was unintended, like how Carnage used to work with a few spells. Still, been in the game this long, so probably was actually intended, and is here to stay. Lore continues it's hilarious OP ways.

[chickenhed]

I'm surprised there isn't more attention to this. Very cool. Makes me love rogues even more; especially if this is intentional. 

[Dorftek]

In the screenshots I see only Deathblows, does this mean that sneak attack and deathblows don't stack?

[MaxQuest]

In the screenshots I see only Deathblows, does this mean that sneak attack and deathblows don't stack?

Iirc I have seen both (Sneak Attack) and (Deathblows) in combat log when attacking with regular attacks (provided the requirements are met). Also there is a related thread about them stacking here.

 

The reason you don't see (Sneak Attack) in the screenshot with scrolls is because, unlike Deathblows, it doesn't affect them. (at least not those tested)

In the previous post I have specifically highlighted that:

- Sneak Attack: adds +50% melee damage; +50% ranged damage

- Deathblows: adds +100% damage; +100% ranged damage

I.e. Deathblows description misses the "melee" part.

 

---------

P.S. So to resume, good weapon combinations for a rogue are:

- dual sabres (due to higher base damage)

- dual battle axes for crit rogue (due to +0.5 dmg.mod on crit) (sabres with annihilation could make it too, but I wouldn't pass We Toki)

- Tall Grass (for a mid-line rogue)

- Blunderbuss (esp. Silver Flash) because each shot triggers 6 x Deep Wounds. And with Deathblows modifier can easily bypass enemy DR. Plus a slow weapon makes the most out of rogue's strike abilities (plus +0.25 modifier on most of them)

- Persistence if can reliably maintain Deathblows and 0 recovery.

- Bittercut + Badgradr's Barricade (because bash adds to Full-Attacks; it procs Deep Wounds; together with Thrust proc, which also benefits from Deathblows) (Bittercut is almost guaranteed to deal high damage due to slash/corrode; and Vile Thorns can apply Deep Wounds to everyone hit plus is benefiting from Deathblows too)

 

Or is there anything else?

Edited March 20, 2016 by MaxQuest