The New Rogue

[nem0]

I'm totally convinced by the new barbarian, but I still have slight doubts about the rogue.

 

Still quite limited in he does. Still wondering if he is superior by far to the ranger (and his pet).

 

Given that pet hits like a slow truck, given you can't durganize a pet or its fur, given that it can't have lash, recovery reduction, or upgrade its dex, and attack as fast as an average weapon, I'd say pet (wolf) does approximatively 1/3 of a rogue with deathblow by itself.

 

Ranger itself does about the same, due to ranged weapon doing less damages than melee and twin arrows getting more dr reduction than sneak, deathblow and other damage modifiers.

 

So in best case, rogue seems better, but is it by far ? Not sure...

I think the most notable thing about the rogue buffs is to riposte and escape. The riposte buff easily quadruples the proc rate in even encounters and escape can increase it even more.  As for the ranger, I think that with twin arrows and driving flight he still comes out on top, especially with persistence and pet attacks(stag carnage is working now).  Rogue can however be better at crowd control, pulling aggro, and survivability with escape, invisibility, and feign death. Still I don't think even with consistent sneak attack and deathblow procs he can compete in total damage with monk, barb, or ranger; against single targets I think he is probably 2nd behind spirit shifted druid.

[Jojobobo]

I'll try Riposte extensively with my tanky Rogue once this hits GoG, I was PotD soloing fine on 3.02 (at least until my hard drive got wiped) as a damage over time Rogue (Deep Wounds, Retaliate, Envenomed Strike, Touch of Rot, Drawn in Spring - and with 3.03 let's add in Combusting Wounds). I think with decent defences Riposte will now be worth it - particularly with Drawn in Spring for the damage stacking with Deep Wounds. As soon as the patch get's a GoG release, I'll be all over it.

 

I've not quite deciding yet if Adept Evasion is worth the cost of another Strike or not (bearing in mind I'm dropping a Strike for Riposte). I guess maybe it is, particularly against things like Dragons? It'd be great to have some advice on this going in, I'd have 102 Reflex end game so maybe it would be nice on solo - however Strikes definitely help a lot.

 

I also think Fearsome Strike is actually worth a look on solo now - huge and long lasting Deathblows so long as you have decent Intellect. Given solo runs need to rest regularly anyway, I don't think it being per rest is really much on a problem. I'd be looking to run a 20 Int Rogue solo, if you chain Fearsome Strike onto something that lowers Fortitude (e.g. Spreading Plague from the Rotfinger gloves) and then get the now-more-likely crit you get 33.75 dual Weakened/Hobbled durations - with Riposte full attacks and Retaliate both racking up damage and crits from Death Blows and Dirty + Vicious Fighting, plus any other attacks you're making like spell scrolls which are also affected by Death Blows, you're a damn beast.

[nem0]

Riposte is kind of like the rogue carnage so I will try to compare the two:

 

Assume equal accuracy, weapons and weapon speed.  For riposte assume we have 25% chance for opponent to miss giving us 15.5%(.2 *.25 + .3 *.35) per opponent attack to riposte. 

 

Carnage: Primary target 100% damage 

                Secondary targets 67% damage

 

Riposte: Primary target 100% damage + (.155 *  2) = 131% damage

              Secondary targets  31% damage

 

With deathblows and sneak attack the damage can get much stronger however, later in the game we are most likely going to be attacking at 0 recovery which means that carnage will scale much better with our increase in attack speed. Riposte still only procs out our opponents' attack speed. With sneak attack and deathblows added it is about double (considering damage buffs from weapon enchantments and other sources) our regular damage.

 

Carnage: Primary target 2(A.S.) * 100% damage = 200%

                Secondary targets 2(A.S.) * 67% damage = 134%

 

Riposte: Primary target 2(A.S.) * 2(S.A. + D.B.) * 100% damage + (.155 *  2 * 2) = 462% damage

              Secondary targets  2(S.A. + D.B.) * 31% damage = 62% damage

 

Rogue with riposte should be able do well as long sneak attack(S.A.) and death blows(D.B.) are activating on hit. It still won't do near as much to adjacent targets attacking the character as carnage but obviously with the bonuses the single target damage is much higher than the barbarian. The only problem is you are much squishier than a barbarian.  Still, you get an approximate buff of 15.5% damage late game against everyone who is actively attacking you. Not bad but not game changing.

Edited June 2, 2016 by nem0

[Elric Galad]

Stuff like zealous endurance might help a bit ^^

 

Does cloak of the mystic finally working in a non cheesy way ?

 

And does full attack work backstab ? I mean, does +150% apply to both attacks ?

[Loren Tyr]

Assuming they didn't change that part in 3.03, from stealth at the beginning of combat (though not coming out of Shadowing Beyond invisibility) the first two attacks get backstab regardless of weapon style, including ranged weapons (reload time and all). However, you only get the second one on auto-attack, if you click to attack something before the second attack lands you don't get additional backstab. As I recall though, if the target expires on the first hit and you let the AI attack an adjacent target, you do still get a second backstab (not sure this works with dual-wielding though). Note that this is two attacks total (not two full attacks per se), so with dual-wielding it's still just two hits. 

 

Like I said though, not sure whether anything changed about this since 3.02, will need to verify.

 

Edit: I checked, still works like that. Even better actually, you also get a second Backstab with Shadowing Beyond. Again provided that you don't yourself actively initiate a new attack.

Edited June 2, 2016 by Loren Tyr

[Dr <3]

Master mistic Cape finally fixed! Hooray!

[Dr <3]

Ok, some thoughts:

 

1) backstab is not fixed 100%, when you hit from "stealth" with a double attack (dual wielding) for me the backstab dmg bonus applies only on the second hit, not the first one. Moreover for me does not trigger at all out of shadowing beyond, so the hit and hide plan is a bit of failure for now.  So backstab is useful really only at the start of the fight, you can't have multiple use of it apart from feign dead (see n°2)

2) a great ability to abuse instead is feign dead. After the first timer in wich you feign your dead expires you have some seconds in wich you are invis and backstab trigger all attacks. So also if it is more or less 6-7 sec, you can deal otrageus amount of dmg. The problem is that if you solo usually using feign dead reset the fight after some sec, so you will find yourself still in the middle of the battle, without per encounter ability renewed and without the invisibility --> so pretty much dead. The only way i found to go round the problem is cast some evocation (figurines), feign dead, hope that the evocation survive the whole feign dead timer and after that you are an invisible killer. In non solo this obviously is not a problem, since you should always have some companions alive. But is also true that in non solo take out the rogue of the battle for 10-12 sec at the start of the fight may not be a great trade anyway.

3) swadding sheet proved superior to the fixed cape of master mystic, since the invisibility triggered doesn't consent backstab, instead mass stun from swadding sheet gives you salvation (everyone stunned) and dmg bonus via sneack attacks/deathblows

4) expert evasion is worth it also in a non super high reflex rogue, really gives you a huge protection vs every aoe attack

5) in game using double bittercuts (+ corrode dmg talent), purgatory or drawn in spring took to very similar resaults, maybe a little better for duoble bittercut, but not so much above the others (tested on soldiers in craghold buffs)

[Loren Tyr]

Ok, some thoughts:

 

1) backstab is not fixed 100%, when you hit from "stealth" with a double attack (dual wielding) for me the backstab dmg bonus applies only on the second hit, not the first one. Moreover for me does not trigger at all out of shadowing beyond, so the hit and hide plan is a bit of failure for now.  So backstab is useful really only at the start of the fight, you can't have multiple use of it apart from feign dead (see n°2)

 

In which version did you try this? Because in the current (beta) 3.03 version it works on the first two attacks regardless of weapon style and weapons used, provided you don't interfere with the auto-attacking. It also works fine from Shadowing Beyond (and any other invisibility effect, as far as I'm aware). 

 

This is mostly how it worked in 3.02 as well by the way, though you only got a single backstab from Shadowing. However, it failed to trigger on the first hit when you used one of the rogue Strike abilities, which is presumably what you were doing when you got the results you describe. This is also (mostly) fixed in 3.03 (beta), you now can eg. Blinding Strike + Backstab from stealth on the first attack as well. For some reason this doesn't work properly from Shadowing Beyond yet, so if you Blinding Strike when Shadowed the backstab is suppressed (I'll report this in the Beta support forum).

[Kaylon]

5) in game using double bittercuts (+ corrode dmg talent), purgatory or drawn in spring took to very similar resaults, maybe a little better for duoble bittercut, but not so much above the others (tested on soldiers in craghold buffs)

The average difference between the dps of these weapons is of course very small (+/-1-3dmg depending on targets) and depending on DR/rng you'll get different results. If you get a higher than average number of criticals purgatory might come on top, if a target has low corrode DR bittercut might come on top...

 

If you compare purgatory to a normal sabre the average difference on crits is 8dmg - and if you crit on 50% of hits that's only a 4dmg increase in dps compared to a sabre without annihilation.

[Dr <3]

 

 

Ok, some thoughts:

 

1) backstab is not fixed 100%, when you hit from "stealth" with a double attack (dual wielding) for me the backstab dmg bonus applies only on the second hit, not the first one. Moreover for me does not trigger at all out of shadowing beyond, so the hit and hide plan is a bit of failure for now. So backstab is useful really only at the start of the fight, you can't have multiple use of it apart from feign dead (see n°2)

In which version did you try this? Because in the current (beta) 3.03 version it works on the first two attacks regardless of weapon style and weapons used, provided you don't interfere with the auto-attacking. It also works fine from Shadowing Beyond (and any other invisibility effect, as far as I'm aware).

 

This is mostly how it worked in 3.02 as well by the way, though you only got a single backstab from Shadowing. However, it failed to trigger on the first hit when you used one of the rogue Strike abilities, which is presumably what you were doing when you got the results you describe. This is also (mostly) fixed in 3.03 (beta), you now can eg. Blinding Strike + Backstab from stealth on the first attack as well. For some reason this doesn't work properly from Shadowing Beyond yet, so if you Blinding Strike when Shadowed the backstab is suppressed (I'll report this in the Beta support forum).

Ok, you are right i always used the strikes for the full attacks, i have to try again with normal attacks.

[Elric Galad]

Feign death + Salvation of time/Spelltongue + backstab : potential god mode.

 

Did not work completely in 3.02 as attacks during extended time did not proc backstab...

[Boeroer]

Nice idea. Salvation of Time might be great for this. Sadly, Spelltongue isn't enough to prolong duration endlessly anymore. Maybe with carnage it still is, but attacking single targets even with 0 recovery isn't enough anymore. I tried it with a fighter to exend all his aweseome buffs and it didn't work so well. Maybe it's better if you crit a lot or once the foes are properly buffed - like Lagufaeth with Broodmothers are most of the time or Xaurips with priests and Ogres with Matrons can be. Together with Salvation of Time you should be able to squeeze out a lot of extra duration. Too bad Spelltongue's base damage is so underwhelming.

[Elric Galad]

I came to the conclusion that a rogue does about 133% damages of ranger + pet under following circonstances :

- everyone has its endgame stuff

- everyone has favorable circonstancial bonus (predatory, sneak attacks...)

- neglected crits (better for rogue)

- potion OR (frenzy AND gauntlet) not abused

- also tested potion abused against DR 15.

 

I'll try to display the table later.

 

My conclusion is that Ranger has more CC, AoE and pet tanking.

Rogue has 33% more damages and an edge against high DR. He has tricks too, like backstab, but they are not as good or buggy.

 

Rogues will be fine if Backstab/Invisibility (including cape of master mystic) was fixed.

Also Riposte would make more sense if it was 30% of misses too. Now Riposte chances decreases with a too high Deflection...

Edited June 7, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

Is there still some backtstab stuff not fixed in 3.03 ? I can't test it myself because I have not Internet yet on my PC. From what I read above, it seems so.

[Loren Tyr]

Is there still some backtstab stuff not fixed in 3.03 ? I can't test it myself because I have not Internet yet on my PC. From what I read above, it seems so.

 

It mostly works (you get backstab on first two attack, if auto-attacking; works with Strike abilities; works with Shadowing Beyond and such).

 

There are two remaining issues I found: when attacking from Shadowing Beyond (and presumably all other forms of invisibility, other than regular Stealth), it still doesn't work with Strike abilities (you don't get any backstab). When attacking from Stealth while dual-wielding with a Strike ability, you only get backstab on the second attack (but Strike on both); this seems to have something to do with the fact that in this case the off-hand weapon attack is performed first, that's at least my guess. 

 

Anyway, I have reported these and they have been added to the bug database, so hopefully they'll still get fixed in the full 3.03 patch.

Edited June 7, 2016 by Loren Tyr

[Elric Galad]

And is it working with cape of master mystic ?

 

I heard it isn't.

[Loren Tyr]

I would expect so, since presumably it sets the same IsInvisibile state as Shadowing Beyond. That didn't work properly in 3.02 either though (only one backstab, or none at all with Strike abilities), so it could well be that reports of it not working were caused by the same issue. Since Shadowing Beyond is now mostly fixed I would think the Cape should work with it as well. Would need to be tested in 3.03 to be sure though, don't have WM installed at the moment so I can't test that out myself right now. 

[Elric Galad]

Ok, some thoughts:

 

[...]

3) swadding sheet proved superior to the fixed cape of master mystic, since the invisibility triggered doesn't consent backstab, instead mass stun from swadding sheet gives you salvation (everyone stunned) and dmg bonus via sneack attacks/deathblows

 

I found where I have read where cape of master mystic didn't work with backstab. Which is strange when I think twice as I remember the bugged one constantly triggered backstab... Edited June 7, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Dr <3]

I remember that o tested that but i don't if i were using the stikes or the normal attacks. Since that post i have to add that sometimes the Cape works as it shoild, sometimes still turns you in perma-invis, i have not found a proper rule up to now. So maybe my tests awer a bit messy.