Solo POTD Rogue build

[Loren Tyr]

Firstly, I was referring specifically to Shield selection for Riposte. I already acknowledge that a full defensive Rogue can opt for better shields. And a dps rogue can just go dual Bittercuts or whatever. If you do not want to discuss Riposte by itself, let us default to agree to disagree. A Riposte build is not an optimally defensive or offensive build, and I feel that it does need to be built around. Otherwise either Riposte rate is bad or the free full attacks is not effective. Besides defensive mindweb (aka I Win Button) of course. But there are more broken things you can do with defensive mindweb than Riposte.

Secondly, let us consider Gerun's 28def and Badgradr's 20def. Have exceptional upgrade on Badgradr's Barricade is reasonable I feel. The 8def difference will loosely translate to 8% increase chances for Riposte to proc. The hit-to-graze conversion loosely translates to 3.5%. So 11.5% increased Riposte rate for Gerun's as compared to Badgradr's.

 

In my playthrough as a riposte rogue I am getting 30% more crit counts than hit counts. So let us set Thrust rate as 50% (since Shields will have lower acc).

Badgradr's has bash (6-9 ave 7.5dmg) and Thrust (18-35 converted ave of 13.2 (50% of 27.5)). For Gerun's setup to outdamage Badgradr's, the 11.5% main hand dmg needs to exceed 20.7 or 180dmg total. On top of this do note that Gerun's incur -4 more acc penalty than Badgradr's. Also Badgradr's Barricade is able to reflect 10% of ranged attacks.

 

So based on mainhand ave 180dmg autoattack dmg (likely more since Thrust can be augmented by Sneak Attacks/Deathblows). I will say it is unlikely for that to happen and so Badgradr's Barricade is the best choice for Riposte.

 

 

Except that you can't just discuss Riposte by itself, since the choice of Barricade vs Wall or other shield also affects the performance of the regular main hand attacks, with the Bashing ability effectively slows you down. You handwaving some numbers doesn't change that. My calculations show that in that respect the Barricade has a rather hard time compensating that, even with a fairly mid-range weapon; this disadvantage will only increase as the main weapon improves, and doesn't even factor in any status effects it may impart.

 

This disadvantage relative to wielding a non-Bash shield would thus have to be compensated for in its entirety by the more potent Riposte attacks. Maybe it does, but you have shown no clear argument or calculation to support this so far, and it is far from evident. This would also very much depend on the ratio of Riposte triggers to regular attacks, a value which you have failed to specify. Please do try to support your support your claims with some semblance of fact and reasoned argument.

 

Also: neither Bash nor Thrust trigger Sneak Attack, just Deathblows. 

[Loren Tyr]

Funnily the bash ACC is not that much lower than that of the main weapon. If I remember correctly it was only 5 points lower or so...?

 

Thrust of Tattered Veils only works with Deathblowas, not Sneak Attack. It does work with Penetrating Shot though without slowing you down.

 

Yeah, that's because Bash is treated as an ability (hence also no Sneak Attack), so it gets the usual +1/level ACC bonus, compensating somewhat for the lack of +ACC enchantments and Weapon Focus. 

[mosspit]

 

Firstly, I was referring specifically to Shield selection for Riposte. I already acknowledge that a full defensive Rogue can opt for better shields. And a dps rogue can just go dual Bittercuts or whatever. If you do not want to discuss Riposte by itself, let us default to agree to disagree. A Riposte build is not an optimally defensive or offensive build, and I feel that it does need to be built around. Otherwise either Riposte rate is bad or the free full attacks is not effective. Besides defensive mindweb (aka I Win Button) of course. But there are more broken things you can do with defensive mindweb than Riposte.

 

Secondly, let us consider Gerun's 28def and Badgradr's 20def. Have exceptional upgrade on Badgradr's Barricade is reasonable I feel. The 8def difference will loosely translate to 8% increase chances for Riposte to proc. The hit-to-graze conversion loosely translates to 3.5%. So 11.5% increased Riposte rate for Gerun's as compared to Badgradr's.

 

In my playthrough as a riposte rogue I am getting 30% more crit counts than hit counts. So let us set Thrust rate as 50% (since Shields will have lower acc).

Badgradr's has bash (6-9 ave 7.5dmg) and Thrust (18-35 converted ave of 13.2 (50% of 27.5)). For Gerun's setup to outdamage Badgradr's, the 11.5% main hand dmg needs to exceed 20.7 or 180dmg total. On top of this do note that Gerun's incur -4 more acc penalty than Badgradr's. Also Badgradr's Barricade is able to reflect 10% of ranged attacks.

 

So based on mainhand ave 180dmg autoattack dmg (likely more since Thrust can be augmented by Sneak Attacks/Deathblows). I will say it is unlikely for that to happen and so Badgradr's Barricade is the best choice for Riposte.

 

Except that you can't just discuss Riposte by itself, since the choice of Barricade vs Wall or other shield also affects the performance of the regular main hand attacks, with the Bashing ability effectively slows you down. You handwaving some numbers doesn't change that. My calculations show that in that respect the Barricade has a rather hard time compensating that, even with a fairly mid-range weapon; this disadvantage will only increase as the main weapon improves, and doesn't even factor in any status effects it may impart.

 

This disadvantage relative to wielding a non-Bash shield would thus have to be compensated for in its entirety by the more potent Riposte attacks. Maybe it does, but you have shown no clear argument or calculation to support this so far, and it is far from evident. This would also very much depend on the ratio of Riposte triggers to regular attacks, a value which you have failed to specify. Please do try to support your support your claims with some semblance of fact and reasoned argument.

 

Also: neither Bash nor Thrust trigger Sneak Attack, just Deathblows.

 

Sorry but I insist on limiting my discussion to just the selection of shields to Riposte. You are a numbers guy, so I assumed you understand why I wanted to establish the boundaries when doing unit testing. My "handwaved" numbers are based on some stats that are gotten from an entire completed playthrough using a Riposte Rogue.

 

So at this point let us just agree to disagree.

Edited July 31, 2016 by mosspit

[Loren Tyr]

Sorry but I insist on limiting my discussion to just the selection of shields to Riposte. You are a numbers guy, so I assumed you understand why I wanted to establish the boundaries when doing unit testing. My "handwaved" numbers are based on some stats that are gotten from an entire completed playthrough using a Riposte Rogue.

So at this point let us just agree to disagree.

 

Ah, pardon my scepticism... this would be the same playthrough in which you failed to notice Bash and Thrust don't get Sneak Attack, I take it? 

 

Yeah, I'm a numbers guy, kind of my job. Exactly why would this translate into me understanding why it would be acceptable to ignore the main argument against using Barricade? If it's just the Riposte damage you're looking at, sure... absent math to the contrary, I'll happily grant that Barricade wins against any other shield. Wall might get reasonably close, but I would put my money on Barricade there. I fail to see how this matters. The point would be to maximize overall DPS, no? Why would I care if I do more Riposte damage, if it costs me more in regular attack damage? 

[mosspit]

 

Sorry but I insist on limiting my discussion to just the selection of shields to Riposte. You are a numbers guy, so I assumed you understand why I wanted to establish the boundaries when doing unit testing. My "handwaved" numbers are based on some stats that are gotten from an entire completed playthrough using a Riposte Rogue.

So at this point let us just agree to disagree.

 

Ah, pardon my scepticism... this would be the same playthrough in which you failed to notice Bash and Thrust don't get Sneak Attack, I take it? 

 

Yeah, I'm a numbers guy, kind of my job. Exactly why would this translate into me understanding why it would be acceptable to ignore the main argument against using Barricade? If it's just the Riposte damage you're looking at, sure... absent math to the contrary, I'll happily grant that Barricade wins against any other shield. Wall might get reasonably close, but I would put my money on Barricade there. I fail to see how this maThattters. The point would be to maximize overall DPS, no? Why would I care if I do more Riposte damage, if it costs me more in regular attack damage? 

 

 

Yes. That will be the same playthrough which I have already acknowledged with Boeroer. But thanks for pointing it out again.

 

And it would matter because then it would make sense to pick something else rather than Riposite in that case.

[Loren Tyr]

Or pick a different shield, would be my point. If the aim is to maximize DPS on a defensive-minded rogue who's aiming to have high deflection anyway, Riposte certainly seems a good pick. Whether a defensive rogue has better (effective) DPS than an offensive rogue (eg. the usual DW-Sabre or whatever) is a rather more complicated question. Wouldn't entirely surprise me if it did actually, but that would be exceedingly difficult to quantify. 

[mosspit]

Sure. And also knowing that Riposte isn't at its full potential

 

Anyways, for a defensive rogue to outdps an offensive one, I would assume it is not a simple a question of dps. Not going to dive into the questions of party compo and how survivability would mean more staying power to do more dmg.... Too many variables.

Edited August 1, 2016 by mosspit

[Boeroer]

This whole (slightly vitriolic) discussion would be obsolete if OBS did it right and bash worked like dual wielding and also got buffed by Two Weapon Style. Still don't get why it doesn't.

 

Now, with the single proc of Thrust instead of two the Barricade got nerfed a lot.

Before that I had the feeling that the Barricade was better than any other shield because - as I said - the Full Attack abilities like Blinding and Crippling Strikes and so on worked clearly better, because the Thrust triggered a lot.

 

Normally you could win some fights without using all of your Full Attacks, making the use of auto attacks (which are worse because of bash) obsolete in some fights.

 

Maybe that's why mosspit and I have the impression that Badgradr's Barricade works better than a normal shield: because Riposte and Full Attack abilities add up quite nicely and there are fewer auto attacks than one might think.

 

With a dumped DEX value you would do less attacks overall in one encounter. This would shift dps more towards the Barricade, because the ratio of "done full attacks" to "done auto attacks" in an encounter would be shifted towards full attacks (because encounters aren't endless and your party members will finish the mobs before you get to use auto attacks).

 

With a solo rogue this all would shift towards auto attacks, no matter the DEX, because you would have to kill all enemies by yourself, thus using a tin of auto attacks.

 

If you had a party that kills mobs quickly and you are only the guy that runs around and kills the casters or ranged back liners with a few Full Attacks and dish out Ripostes while getting there, I assume the Barricade would still be better. For a caster hunter it also might be better because of the 10% to 25% reflection.

 

So I think it's not easy to test this in a matter that it comes close to "real" combat.

 

When only doing auto attacks a normal shield wins - when only doing full attacks the Barricade wins. But neither the first nor the last will be the case in a usual encounter.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Boeroer

[DynEira]

You guys went out of your way to derail my thread and not really help me with early game strategy/how to play This makes me a fair bit sad so I gave up and just made a custom party I'd find fun. 

[Boeroer]

Why is that? I think you could have pulled a lot of helpful infos out of this discussion. May be a bit lenghty, but there surely are some good infos around Riposte, shields and the like in it.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Boeroer

[Loren Tyr]

When only doing auto attacks a normal shield wins - when only doing full attacks the Barricade wins. But neither the first nor the last will be the case in a usual encounter.

 

I rather doubt that actually. It depends on what kind of of Full Attack abilities you are using. For Full Attacks from Riposte, Bashing inherently offers a significant advantage because those attacks take no time, therefore per Riposte trigger it will do more damage. But this does not interfere with auto-attacking either, it happens concurrently, so it would still need to compensate for the disadvantage of having Bash for non-Riposte attacks.

 

For 'regular' Full Attack abilies like the Rogue Strike abilities, with Barricade you're indeed again at an advantage, though less so. The Bash attack still takes time though its recovery is waived, so you go from the 1:1.5 attack cycle duration ratio (main only : main + bash) to about 1:1.25. So you bump the damage from Bash a bit and improve your chance of hitting/critting with the status effect, and you increase the speed of the Bash and thus of the overall attack cycle (Thrust itself isn't affected by any of it, though). 

 

Whether this is enough in practice to overcome the built-in disadvantage of having Bash, I'm still not so sure. The fact still remains that essentially only the main attack is going to improve, the Bash and Thrust aren't, shifting the advantage further and further towards non-bashing shields. Apart from the main weapon damage it may also improve in speed through Speed enchantment or Durganization, which increases the attack cycle ratio directly. It will also likely have some side effects on hit/crit that happen more frequently without Bash.

 

So even when only doing Full Attack abilities, I still doubt Barricade gets you the higher DPS (though I grant that it likely did do so when you played with the double-Thrust Barricade before). On the whole, my conclusion remains that for a defensive rogue (specifically Riposte-oriented or otherwise, though if you go for high deflection on a Rogue it seems silly not to take Riposte) Barricade is far from an automatic choice. It will obviously depend on other factors, but my expectation would be that in more situations than not a shield like Old Gerun's Wall has the edge in DPS (as well as defensive quality). Which isn't to say Barricade is a bad choice, I'd expect the gap (in either direction) between the two setups to be relatively modest across a whole playthrough. 

 

As an aside, I think the reason it isn't implemented as dual wielding is that doing so would swing it too much in the other direction; the Bash attack and recovery duration is quite short, it seems to be a bit faster than a fast weapon attack. So enabling dual-wielding with bash would probably end up increasing the main weapon attack rate, which doesn't seem desirable either.