General rogue build

[superior987]

What's the current general melee rogue build? I'm having trouble finding anything up to date for a straightforward melee rogue that's not focused on riposte. I assume stack dex and per, maybe a little mig, and then just pile on the passive damage boosts?

[Blades of Vanatar]

What's the current general melee rogue build? I'm having trouble finding anything up to date for a straightforward melee rogue that's not focused on riposte. I assume stack dex and per, maybe a little mig, and then just pile on the passive damage boosts?

Yes. 16 Mig, Dex, Per. You can min/max other stats depending on your desires.

 

Hearth Orlan dual Wield anything works as does Hours of St Rumbalt dump Int max Mig build.

[Boeroer]

You mean Tidefall with dumped INT max MIG I presume? With Hours of St. Rumbalt you might want to have high(er) INT in order to prone-lock.

 

Another nice alternative is Tall Grass with a rogue. You can attack from second row which means you can focus even more on offense and you won't drop down as much.

 

By the way there is no "general" build. It depends a lot on your party composition.

 

The dual sabre, all offense rogue might do a lot of dps on paper, but in the game he will go down so often that he might fall behind a more sturdier but less offensive build that can fight longer and thus deals more damage over the course of the game.

You can make a squishy rogue sturdier by adding Veteran's Recovery - but this needs MIG and INT to be effective.

 

I'm currently doing a 5 rogue 1 cipher playthrough with 5 different rogue builds: dual sabre spellbind build, riposte/strike build with Badgradr's Barricade, retaliation/missile build with Sura's Supper Plate/Starcaller, Backstab build with Tall Grass/Firebrand/Cape of the Master Mystic, Tidefall/Ultimate Hat of Alluring Perfection build with 1 INT/1 RES/max MIG/max CON, using Runner's Wounding shot as main attack ability.

 

And funnily it's the Tidefall build which did the highest damage so far - by a big margin. Then follows the pike backstabber and then the dual sabre rogue (who has the additional advantage of Sunbeam 6 times per rest). This gives a hint how powerful Tidefall is. But it also shows that the max CON and the draining from Tidefall pay off. He has no other healing source. But he's as sturdy as the dual sabre rogue who has Veteran's Recovery.

Edited July 4, 2017 by Boeroer

[rheingold]

My experience on PoTD and Hard with rogues is completely different. On hard a dual wield saber build is absolutely murderous, definitely the easiest playthrough I've had on hard. Boots of speed and the rogue will slaughter entire ranks of squishes, before the mage/cipher/Druid has time to blink. Just give him/her high resolve and take some defensive talents and it will be fine. PoTD, on the other hand, well it's like playing 2 completely different classes. They really take strain with the increased stats, and as Boeroer says a more defensive build is probably more fun.

[Boeroer]

Yes, I was talking about Path of the Damned. I can't really remember a playthrough with a rogue at Normal difficulty and I never played on Hard. So my advice may be bad if you're not playing on PotD.

[rheingold]

Not bad advice:) defense rogues are good. It's just that I have found on hard and below rogues are definitely not the bottom of the food chain, but as a class who only deals damage and doesn't bring much else to the table the extra mobs and defensive and offensive stats everyone gets hurts them far more than any other class. Which is why I keep asking for Obs to just increase their base stats. (Anything else is really not going to happen at this stage.) Heck if they are worried about balance on the lower levels just give them xtra health/endurance, accuracy and deflection on PoTD. It would make them much more of a viable class.

[superior987]

Thanks!  I remember them being super squishy, which is why I never got very far into a playthrough.  I might try out the tidefall setup, although it feels like I end up with 2/3 of my party using soldier focus every time.  Too many good weapons!

[Boeroer]

Or just give him ok MIG, CON and INT and pick Veteran's Recovery. It really helps.

Edited July 4, 2017 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

My favorite dual weapon setup for a rogue by the way is dual war hammers, not sabres.

[superior987]

Stun and disorient procs seem like they would also help with durability.  Also, did I read somewhere on here that pierce/crush was the most efficient damage combination given the DR spread on mobs?

[Boeroer]

Yes, and dual damage types is a lot more valuable than most people think.

 

Also, Shatterstar is an early hammer with Annihilation, which is great for a rogue.

[superior987]

So I started playing with actual builds for a 2h rogue, probably using Hours or maybe Tidefall if I don't give it to Eder.  I'm having a hard time fitting in dirty fighting, which makes me think I'm overrating some of the other abilities.  Making a lvl 7 hireling, I went reckless assault, deep wounds, persistent distraction.  Should i just swap deep wounds?  I think I'm having a hard time sorting the abilities that are useful for fun stuff like retaliate and spells with deep wounds vs just flanking and beating.  So, long way of saying bump for a little more specific help.  Thanks!

[Boeroer]

Skip Persistent Distraction. It's quite useless in my opinion. Distracted doesn't count for Sneak Attacks/Deathblows.

 

Reckless Asault is nice (but doesn't work with Savage attack, so you have to choose which one you want), Deep Wounds is ok. Dirty Fighting and Vicious Fighting are actually quite good - because you can also stack that with Durgan Steel later on and several other hit-to-crit conversions. Iy you combine that with an annihilating weapon (Rumbalt, Shatterstar, Resolution, Firebrand and so on) things get really interesting.

[superior987]

Man, what's the point of adding it if it's not going to trigger deathblows? Lame.

 

I guess it makes the picks easier though

[rheingold]

Man, what's the point of adding it if it's not going to trigger deathblows? Lame.

 

I guess it makes the picks easier though

No idea, been trying to figure out the point of persistent distraction for a while now, as I'm sure many other people have... Would have been great if it did set up deathblows though...

[Boeroer]

Would transform it from lame to awesome.

[Laider]

Going through POTD right now and my rogue has coped really well. Don't worry about deflection, damage reduction is your friend. Sanguine plate, shod in faith, a blunting belt and tidefall are all relatively easy to obtain, think I had them by level 7.

Just remember the rogue works best by being on the edge of a melee, or in one on one duels. They will destroy poorly armoured opponents.

At level 10 and until I could duplicate bittercut, I used the spear that you can create to proc stun and do extra damage against immobile opponents and combined this with the shield that procs on a critical bash. A little bit of micro with debuffs/buffs and this combo would regularly do close to 300 damage with a finishing blow.

I think I duplicated bittercut at level 12 and whilst this is a well known and overused set up the consistent, heavy damage means the rogue is a tank because she kills so quickly.

[chickenhed]

I'm currently doing a 5 rogue 1 cipher playthrough with 5 different rogue builds: dual sabre spellbind build, riposte/strike build with Badgradr's Barricade, retaliation/missile build with Sura's Supper Plate/Starcaller, Backstab build with Tall Grass/Firebrand/Cape of the Master Mystic, Tidefall/Ultimate Hat of Alluring Perfection build with 1 INT/1 RES/max MIG/max CON, using Runner's Wounding shot as main attack ability.

 

And funnily it's the Tidefall build which did the highest damage so far - by a big margin. 

Hi Boeroer,

 

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I though DoTs didn't show up on the character screen for damage done? So that means the dot from Wonding Shot and from Tidefall wouldn't even be counted in your leading-rogue's damage on his character sheet. If that is the case, that's even more amazing that your Tidefall rogue is leading. 

 

Or am I incorrect and DoT damage DOES show up on the character sheet?

[Boeroer]

Actually I don't know for sure. I know that certain things like Dragon Thrashed from chanter doesn't show up - or the animal companion's damage. So this is not necessarly a problem with DoTs but maybe with things which are not properly "connected" with the character who uses those things. FOr example The Dragon Thrashed is a hazard - like a trap. So maybe that's the reason why it's not counting. Same with the animal companion since it's its own party member. So maybe since wounding is realated to the weapon and works like a lash it does show up. Same with Runner's Wounding Shot. Because otherwise I can't explain the high numbers. How could a simple great sword do more damage than basically the same build who uses Backstab with Tall Grass all the time?

 

You see I mainly used Runner's Wounding Shot as my no. 1 attack skill with Tidefall. I'm pretty sure the damage numbers would be way lower if the game didn't count these things.

 

Usually I don't care about the "statistics" on the char sheet because they don't say anything about the overall usefulness of a character - but this time I thought it was convenient because I wanted to compare 5 different rogues.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Boeroer

[superior987]

Do you think the tidefall rogue would still be in the lead without dumping int? I'm debating tidefall vs hours, and have left int at 10

[Boeroer]

The difference is not THAT big. Wounding only has 5 secs base duration. Of course there's higher DPS with every second you spare, but it also depends on how many hits you can deliver in a given time - for example if you can reach the enemy more quickly (higher move speed) that will have a bigger impact on your DPS than 2 seconds of wounding spared. Or if you can hit faster.

 

10 INT is totally fine for Tidefall while I'd say it's a bit low for Rumbalt if you don't have quite high attack speed.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Boeroer

[bigwillystyle]

I have been playing with a 22 MIG / 18 CON / 16 DEX / 10 PER / 10 INT / 3 RES, doing a St. Rumbault build.  Dies rarely, great damage output.  

 

I was thinking of swapping the DEX to INT.  Need to do some math on that though.  The Rogue, at least in Act 1 & Act 2 seems fine to me.  Post Durgan Steel & WM2 / Act 3, I think the Rogue will fall behind by more than a bit, but there's definitely something fun about consistent 80-90 damage sneak attack crits in Act 2.