Pleading for Rogue buff once more

[the streaker]

So then divide out the finishing blow low endurance bonus... 1700/2.5 = 680. That's still pretty decent for any class. And how long does druid's shapeshift form last nowadays? 20-something seconds? A lot of my fights last longer than that. I agree with your last part, impossible to be sure unless you build a druid to see how high he can go, but let me tell you ahead of time that this exercise has already been done tons of times over the years and rogue comes out on top.

 

re: "lucky crit", check a properly built rogue's accuracy and crit rate. You're less likely to get a graze than a crit.

Edited December 31, 2016 by the streaker

[Boeroer]

Finishing Blow is just useless. It generates very high numbers if the endurance is already very low, overkilling like crazy. You can't rule it out in the way you did it. You need to know how much endurance was left and take that as the "real" damage that was done. No creature in PoE that gets hit by a 1700 finishing blow had more than 100 to 200 endurance left I would guess.

 

Lucky crit means that your damage roll is high, too. It doesn't mean that you have to be lucky to land a crit. Most rogues will have a 50/50 hit/crit ratio.

 

I highly doubt that the rogue will come out on top of anything except getting knocked out. But feel free to do some encounters with a rogue and a druid and report how it turns out. But this time my bet is on the druid.

Edited December 31, 2016 by Boeroer

[JerekKruger]

... maybe smear a dragon's or kraken's eyeball over it.

 

This made me laugh.

[Elric Galad]

Regardless of single target DPS, in general the problem with Rogues in my opinion is:

 

Low surivability, low party utility.

 

Other CRPGs this is offset with unique utility such as:

lockpicking, disarm traps, pickpocketing.

In PoE, this is as we know is universal.

 

When you bring a Rogue, keeping them alive is like an extra chore more than anything.

That high single-target DPS rarely comes in to play.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other issues are:

Problem 1

No incentive to use light armor.

 

Suggested Solution:

Buff that stacks inversly proportional to Armor's recovery penalty:

50% recovery = no bonus

40% recovery = +10% dodge

...

15% recovery = 35% dodge

0% plain clothes = 50% dodge

 

This bonus wold stack stack with deflection.

(multiclass talent perhaps that gives half that effect)

 

This could help with staying alive. Perhaps baking this into Evasion. Or just like Fighters have Armored Grace, Rogue's have "Comfortable in sweatpants"

 

Problem 2.

No incentive to use fast light weapons due to high DR.

 

Suggested Solution:

 - % Raw damage conversion, perhaps doubled while flanking.

    OR

 - ArmorPenetration stacking debuff. Stacks faster with fast weap.

   Perhaps double stacks while flanking.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem 3.

Rework the strike abilities. Low duration single target abilities.

All of them feel very very underwhelming mid-late game.

 

Suggested Solution, Alternative 1.

Either simply make their charges per encounters scale per level.

ex. Blinding Strike: 1/encounter + 1/3 levels.

 

Suggested Solution, Alternative 2.

Perhaps make their ability strikes more like the vencian casters.

 

Global pool of charges representing (prepared alchemical supplies or whatever)

 

Abilities can either:

• Add to the palette of poisonous flavours,
• Or change the paintbrush technique in which is the poison is applied.

Ex.

Global charges 4 + 1/level.

 

Flavours:

Blinding poison, cost 2 charges

Crippling poison, cost 1

Withering poison,

Fearing poison,

Sap poison,

 

 

Paintbrush-technique:

(implemented like a modal which affects what happens when you press the poison ability)

Strike  (Basic, apply poison with single weapon)

Pin point:  (single weapon. Apply poison with +50% duration, -50% ability damage)

Double-Strike: (Full attack, +50% damage, -50% duration)

Blow dart: (medium range attack, -80% damage)

"Blown-Kiss" powder: (short AoE range conal spread, -100% damage)

Pirouette: (Attack all adjacent. -20% duration, -20% damage, +100% charge cost)

Smoke-bomb: (medium range AoE, like Wizards's Arcane Assault, +200% charge cost)

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

And neither of my above suggestions address the stealth issue, which I do not disagree needs something.

You simply need way too many Ability/Talent points to make it "half OK" for the first strike of combat.

 

The slippery/mobility based abilities could also be improved add extra "poison charges" when used, emulating the Rogue trying to buy more time to be able to survive in combat until the opponent can once again be weakened enough for them to engage in melee.

 

ex.

Evade: restores 3 alchemical supply charges.

 

Problem 1 :

 

I don't agree with your suggestion about light armor.

 

Rogue are a DPS class so they're already incented to use light armors.

With current system, you can still build a heavy armored rogue, it's usually not optimal, but there have been some good roguse build using heavy armor on this forum. 

 

This is one of the basis of PoE design to enable the use any armor or weapon from any class.

I don't think it would be good to change this, especially when most rogues already wear light armor due to min-maxing.

 

I never found that Rogue survivability was that much a problem by the way. They are surely not tanky, but when used with caution, they are able to survive pretty well.

The problem for me is that they don't get enough rewards compared to the risks they take. 

 

Problem 2 :

 

I don't agree neither for similar reasons.

It's nice to have any class being able to use any weapon.

Full Attack system favors dual wield, so I don't think two handed are favored at all for rogue class.

 

Furthermore, when you start stacking +% damages like rogue does, small weapons tend to become better that medium ones, because they have a higher DPS apart from DR.

When damages per hit rises, DR becomes less significant, eventually making light weapon superior. 

 

However, DR Bypass abilities could be nice. Stacking Bypass would be a very nice high level ability.

And adding raw damages per hit is exacly what Deep Wound would do if made stackable ^^

 

 

However, I agree that there is a problem for Backstab and Final blow. For these, I think small weapons should get a better multiplicator. 

 

 

Problem 3 :

 

Good idea even if I don't think we will see it for PoE 1. Sorry for being pessimistic

Edited December 31, 2016 by Elric Galad

[JerekKruger]

So then divide out the finishing blow low endurance bonus... 1700/2.5 = 680. 

 

As Boeroer says, if you do a 1700 finishing blow against an enemy with, say, 100 endurance remaining, you've actually only really don't 100 damage. At that point you needn't even bother dividing by 2.5, as you could have done that 100 damage without finishing blow anyway. 

 

... impossible to be sure unless you build a druid to see how high he can go, but let me tell you ahead of time that this exercise has already been done tons of times over the years and rogue comes out on top.

 

 

This has been tested. People aren't just talking hypothetically here, there was an entire thread where someone claimed that a spiritshift druid was (when build correctly) amazing at single target damage. Other people (including Boeroer at the time iirc) were sceptical, but after testing it turned out that no, the spiritshift druid really was ridiculously good at single target damage.

 

re: "lucky crit", check a properly built rogue's accuracy and crit rate. You're less likely to get a graze than a crit.

 

 

Lucky crit doesn't refer to the idea that crits are uncommon, it refers to getting a crit, that is also a high damage roll, and which benefits from any other non-guaranteed damage bonuses a class might have access to.

[Elric Galad]

Yeah, no offense, dude, but you should trust the veterans here.

 

Especially because they are rational and change their minds if you demonstrate they're wrong.

So they're likely not to speak without taking into account past discussions and conclusions.

 

Which might not be the case on less comitted forums.

Edited December 31, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Blades of Vanatar]

Rogue's do not need to be buffed, They work out just fine in party or solo mode. They hit hard and flee. That's what a Rogue does. In any non PotD setting their survivability is not a issue. On PotD it is a challenge. But isn't that what PotD is, a challenge? Why make changes to a class to make the toughest difficulty setting easy to overcome. Kind of defeats the purpose in my book. Most of the game Rogue is a top damage dealer. Only when you meet optimum level/talent/ability/weapon combination at the very end of the game are you really seeing a difference. That difference isn't that much compared encounter challenges.

 

Changing how backstab/invisibility works could be tweaked, but there is no need to change Rogue itself. I have tried Dual Sabres, Axes, Stillettos, Two handed Swords, Pistols, Blunderbuses, Bows.... all weapons basically with a Rogue. In all setup styles.They deal good damage with all weapon types in many different ways.This game has SO many types of combinations that the Devs have zero chance of making each class do comparable damage and still fulfill a plethora of different roles.

[Boeroer]

They deal good single target damage but are not the best choice for that while also being more flimsy than any other class that profits from going melee.

They have no class-specific means to do anything in an AoE - so they should really rock at affecting single targets. That's the main problem. Plus: the high level powers of rogues are very unexciting.

 

They deserve a buff. If OBS would tweak stealth/invisibility in favor of rogues, or basically in favor of backstab, that is a buff for me and would be welcome.

 

By the way if somebody comes up with a trick or build how to make the rogue more useful and powerful in the mid to late game (besides using Deathblows + Deep Wounds + spells, which is fun) I would be more than happy to change my mind... again.

 

He's not awful and terrible, he just feels a bit weak compared to other classes. He's supposed to be really good at dealing damage because he can't support and his CC is very limited. But to make up for his lack of AoE damage his single target damage numbers are too low and it's too much fuzz to keep them up. Just my opinion.

 

A single ability or an improvement to an ability could change that. Look at barbs (new Blood Thirst, improved HoF) and fighters (Charge mainly for me).

Edited December 31, 2016 by Boeroer

[Dr <3]

Here you can see my druid (not even  100% maxed) with avenging storm active, backed up with a simple priest (champios boon + devotions for the faithful + blessing)  and a chanter  (+ 25% fire lash).

 

I dare you to obtain something even similar with a rogue.

 

On a crit i got:

- 113 perforation dmg + 120 burning dmg

- 38 raw lash dmg (boar tusks) in 12 secs

-  70 lighting dmg + 21 fire lash dmg for avenging storm proc

 

So i see about 360 dmg on a critical hit, and i can hit like that for the whole 24 seconds, without need of affliction or whatsoever on my target (i junst need to buff myself)

 

(It just 1 shotted every troll in black meadow)

Edited December 31, 2016 by Dr <3

[Dr <3]

And i could have also casted some kind of affliction on them so also apprentice sneack attack would have kicked in.

 

Side notes:

- druid have shapeshift belt ad only worthful item

- he is my main so he has merciless hand + gift from the machine

- druid has both Fire and lighting elemental enanching talents

- druit has all DMG enanching talents

- with an alacrity potion you can even activate vulnerable attack and reach nontheless 0 recovery, but at this point 5 damage penetrazione more are a little deal

Edited December 31, 2016 by Dr <3

[Blades of Vanatar]

They deal good single target damage but are not the best choice for that while also being more flimsy than any other class that profits from going melee.

They have no class-specific means to do anything in an AoE - so they should really rock at affecting single targets. That's the main problem. Plus: the high level powers of rogues are very unexciting.

 

They deserve a buff. If OBS would tweak stealth/invisibility in favor of rogues, or basically in favor of backstab, that is a buff for me and would be welcome.

 

By the way if somebody comes up with a trick or build how to make the rogue more useful and powerful in the mid to late game (besides using Deathblows + Deep Wounds + spells, which is fun) I would be more than happy to change my mind... again.

 

He's not awful and terrible, he just feels a bit weak compared to other classes. He's supposed to be really good at dealing damage because he can't support and his CC is very limited. But to make up for his lack of AoE damage his single target damage numbers are too low and it's too much fuzz to keep them up. Just my opinion.

 

A single ability or an improvement to an ability could change that. Look at barbs (new Blood Thirst, improved HoF) and fighters (Charge mainly for me).

Fair enough.

 

I have used multiple Rogues in a Party in PotD with no pure tanks in the party. They breeze through most of the encounters. Yes the party struggled with some of the Highest level content but it was not that difficult to overcome. Barb's suffer in those encounters as well.

 

If OBS never patches the game again it will not stop me from using Rogues and thoroughly enjoying them.

 

I am not against Rogue tweaks but I am more than satisfied by their current state. I can see tweaking them leading to OP status. Slippery slope....plus you class builders will find a loophole to abuse minutes after patch release and race to be the first to post it....

[JerekKruger]

Plus: the high level powers of rogues are very unexciting.

 

To me this is the bigger problem. I can handle a class being underpowered but if it's also underexciting then I have very little motivation to ever play them. As such, I doubt Rogue's will ever reach a stage where they are interesting enough for me to play in PoE, and I am mainly holding out hope that Obsidian will do something interesting with them in the sequel.

[Elric Galad]

I sincerely doubt there could be a Rogue buff able to make them more OP than a druid.

[Blades of Vanatar]

I sincerely doubt there could be a Rogue buff able to make them more OP than a druid.

The Druid should be Nerfed. If we keep upgrading every class the game becomes way too easy and no fun to replay. Pooey on that....

[peddroelm]

Shapeshift druids have some slight accuracy issues. 

Edited December 31, 2016 by peddroelm

[Boeroer]

The only nerf I would do to druids would be to take away spellcasting while shifted and make Spiritshift a modal. That would be enough for me. They don't feel more power- or useful than the other classes except rogue. Mind that a spiritshifted druid "only" does single target damage and easily gets outperformed by a barb or chanter when it comes to overall DPS.

 

By the way: I played a solo barb in PotD and did every encounter and had not much problems. No kiting involved after some levels. You can't do that with a rogue. They start off weaker than a rogue though. But barbs can catch up and overtake quickly.

 

But since this is about rogues, let's talk about sensible rogue buffs.

[the streaker]

 

So then divide out the finishing blow low endurance bonus... 1700/2.5 = 680. 

 

As Boeroer says, if you do a 1700 finishing blow against an enemy with, say, 100 endurance remaining, you've actually only really don't 100 damage. At that point you needn't even bother dividing by 2.5, as you could have done that 100 damage without finishing blow anyway. 

 

... impossible to be sure unless you build a druid to see how high he can go, but let me tell you ahead of time that this exercise has already been done tons of times over the years and rogue comes out on top.

 

 

This has been tested. People aren't just talking hypothetically here, there was an entire thread where someone claimed that a spiritshift druid was (when build correctly) amazing at single target damage. Other people (including Boeroer at the time iirc) were sceptical, but after testing it turned out that no, the spiritshift druid really was ridiculously good at single target damage.

 

re: "lucky crit", check a properly built rogue's accuracy and crit rate. You're less likely to get a graze than a crit.

 

 

Lucky crit doesn't refer to the idea that crits are uncommon, it refers to getting a crit, that is also a high damage roll, and which benefits from any other non-guaranteed damage bonuses a class might have access to.

 

 

Your first part is a bit misleading. A lot of enemies have more than 100 endurance, and usually it takes more than 1 hit to kill them. The rogue doesn't one-hit kill everything, which means the damage is not lost, like you suggest. Only when you reach the point where a class can one-hit a lot of powerful enemies does it mean any further damage is meaningless.

 

I'd love a link to the spiritshift druid calc you mention.

 

Regarding the last part, the variation in weapon damage is not that much, surely you know this? Taking the Estoc as an example, average damage roll is only 15% lower than the max damage. It's not like you'll roll one attack and hit for 500, and then roll another and hit for 200. More like you'll roll 500 on a lucky hit, and 425 on an average hit.

 

Also, you guys are wrong about finishing blow. The point is not that you can do 1000 damage on a dead target. The point is that eventually you run out of good DPS talents/abilities to take, and finishing blow is an easy +50% damage in any circumstance and additional massive damage to take down bosses. You'd be silly NOT to have it on a build whose only focus is single-target DPS.

 

Someone else said "trust the veterans here" but honestly, and don't take this the wrong way, the veterans have long since come and gone (except peddrolem, to his credit he was testing out abilities and calculating stuff since the game came out). This is an old game that is not too complicated and has been "solved" for a while now. It's kinda disappointing to come back here and instead of calculations and technical discussion you see "trust us" and "lol nerd".

[Dr <3]

Have you seen my post? Do you honestly think that you can obtain similar numbers with a rogue?

[Boeroer]

Who said "lol nerd"? As far as I know nobody did that. This has been a civilized discussion so far and I would be happy if it stays this way.

 

I also wouldn't say that you should blindly trust the "vets" - who can define what that is - but if some people who played the game quite a bit and did a lot of research and testing all tell you their experiences you maybe should keep an open mind and consider that there might be a slightchance that they don't talk total nonsense. Especially if they report about tests that have been done inside the game and outside of a highly theoretical and maybe outdated spreadsheet.

 

You can still present a testing setup where a rogue build beats a druid in single target DPS throughout the same encounter.

 

I tried to post several builds for every class here in the past and sunk countless hours into planning, testing and playing those builds. And sadly there's a reason why I only posted two rogue builds so far and both are no melee rogues: it's not because I hate rogues (I don't). They just don't perform as well as all the other class builds I tried. Not in terms of fun (which is highly subjective) but also not even in the terms of dps. You can't solo bounties with them. It's possible with any class exept rogues if you don't want to split pull and draw the invisibility card all the time. And nowadays it's even worse when compared to other classes because those got really neat abilities during the expansions. That's no proof of course,but those are hints that cope with my general impression that rogues are the weakest (and most one-dimensional) class atm.

 

If you want to keep up with barbs, casters and monks in terms of damage and you only can deal single target damage it better be really really high or really reliable.

 

I mean there are some builds that work quite well, like the shield rogue with Badgradr's Barricade for example. It's fun enough. It's just sad that even such a creative idea gets outperformed by most other classes that can even add something else than single target damage to the party.

 

Concerning Finishing Blow: I think we talk past each other. It's a not too good DPS ability with weird mechanics that has very limited uses per rest. It has not much impact on your DPS. Not like Charge or Wildstrike or Heart of Fury or whatever else do which too can use per encounter and are even more powerful when used properly. So I don't think it's of any value to say rogues are good damage dealers because of the very circumstancial Finishing Blow. It is now what Heart of Fury was before the buff: a bad joke. It would be a whole other situation if it would be a per encounter ability or even a (weaker) passive ability: more bonus damage the lower the endurance of the target - now that would have been a cool ability.

 

They can do good single target DPS, true, but they are not the best, that's what's sad about the whole situation. Because they can't do much else than that.

[Boeroer]

Have you seen my post? Do you honestly think that you can obtain similar numbers with a rogue?

I never managed. And I really tried when that druid > rogue discussion came up back then. Not with annihilating sabres nor with dual Drawn in Spring and also not with dual Bittercut (although that's quite neat with the two damage types + Spirit of Decay + corrosive lash). It works with Missile Barrage + Deathblows though. But that's a bit limited.

[Phenomenum]

Hey, Happy New Year all of you! I wish you a buhch of luck, peace and happiness!

Edited December 31, 2016 by Phenomenum

[JerekKruger]

 

Your first part is a bit misleading. A lot of enemies have more than 100 endurance, and usually it takes more than 1 hit to kill them.

 

Most enemies have more than 100 endurance yes, but you're not going to be getting huge Finishing Blows hits against them until their endurance is low and, unless I misunderstood, your 1700 perfect crit relied on Finishing Blows/ Certainly the only 1700ish number I see in the thread you linked is Kaylon's calculation, which relies on an enemy being below 1% endurance. Under these circumstances, 100 endurance is incredibly generous, since the highest endurance I can find on the Gamebanshee guide is about 750 for one of the two bog dragons, so under 1% would be 7 endurance (assuming PoE doesn't track decimal endurance).

 

So to clarify: If you hit an enemy with a 1700 crit when it has 7 endurance remaining then you have only really done 7 damage and therefore that huge crit is not reflected in your real damage output.

[Elric Galad]

 

[...]

 

 

Your first part is a bit misleading. A lot of enemies have more than 100 endurance, and usually it takes more than 1 hit to kill them. The rogue doesn't one-hit kill everything, which means the damage is not lost, like you suggest. Only when you reach the point where a class can one-hit a lot of powerful enemies does it mean any further damage is meaningless.

 

I'd love a link to the spiritshift druid calc you mention.

 

Regarding the last part, the variation in weapon damage is not that much, surely you know this? Taking the Estoc as an example, average damage roll is only 15% lower than the max damage. It's not like you'll roll one attack and hit for 500, and then roll another and hit for 200. More like you'll roll 500 on a lucky hit, and 425 on an average hit.

 

Also, you guys are wrong about finishing blow. The point is not that you can do 1000 damage on a dead target. The point is that eventually you run out of good DPS talents/abilities to take, and finishing blow is an easy +50% damage in any circumstance and additional massive damage to take down bosses. You'd be silly NOT to have it on a build whose only focus is single-target DPS.

 

Someone else said "trust the veterans here" but honestly, and don't take this the wrong way, the veterans have long since come and gone (except peddrolem, to his credit he was testing out abilities and calculating stuff since the game came out). This is an old game that is not too complicated and has been "solved" for a while now. It's kinda disappointing to come back here and instead of calculations and technical discussion you see "trust us" and "lol nerd".

 

 

 

Sorry if this "trust us" sounded a bit pretentious. It was more a lazy answer than anything.

 

I've found the link you were asking for about Druid vs Rogue damages.

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84749-whats-wrong-with-druid-shapeshift/page-2

 

Happy new year 2017 to everyone by the way !

Best wishes to you and your families !

[Dr <3]

Thks for the link. Also consider that now the "wildstrike bug" is fixed, but also without it the druid DMG remains outstanding

[Boeroer]

Yes - Avenging Storm getting the wildstrike lash was totally game breaking. Good they fixed that.

When I first tried that druid my jaw dropped to the floor until I figured out that there was this bug. But still impressive performance. It's even better if you skip Outlander's Frenzy and put on Sanguine Plate and Shod-in-Faith, run to your target and catch a crit, then shift. You'll have even more speed, more MIG and END and waste no time for casting. Rogue can do the same of course.