[CLASS BUILD] the fast assassin (dual wielding rogue)

[Madscientist]

I want to create a rogue who goes for full offense, moves and attacks as fast as possible and does lots of damage.

I want to thank a lot of people who gave me some advice for this, especially Boeroer and MaxQuest.

 

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The fast assassin

 

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diffuculty: hard version 3.06 ( I tried to optimize a lot, so it should work for PotD too)

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solo: not intended, should be part of a full party

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class: rogue

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race: pale elf (elf for dex and per, pale because he is a cold killer)

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background: a raider from the deadfire

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stats:

mig: 11

con: 10

dex: 20

per: 19

int: 08

res: 10

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skills: max stealth, spend the remaining points however you like, maybe survival bonusses

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abilities and talents:

v1: crippling strike

lv2: backstab

lv3: reckless assault

lv4: two weapon style

lv5: deep wounds

lv6: weapon focus ruffian

lv7: dirty fighting

lv8: outlanders frenzy

lv9: withering strike (most damage), blinding strike (best debuff) or escape

lv 10: vicious fighting

lv11: deathblows

lv12: spirit of decay

lv13: sap

lv14: fast runner

lv15: shadow step, feign death or something else you did not take at lv 9

lv16: vulnerable attack

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items:

weapon: resolution+purgatory, bittercut+vent pick as alternative for slash resistent foes

 

boots: boots of speed or viettros formal footware (dex+4) if you have other sources of movement speed

 

head: maegfolc skull (mig+4)

 

armor: something light so you attack fast, maybe Gwisk Glas (robe with second chance)

 

neck: liliths shawl (per+3)

 

belt: ???

 

rings: ring of thorns (dex+3), ring of deflection, ring of protection

 

hand: gloves of swift action

 

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I want a rogue who attacks as fast as possible and who does lots of damage this way.

 

about stats:

Dex is the only thing that reduces the duration of everything (attack, recovery, reload). Even if you cut the recovery completely (what I intend to do), dex will still increase your attack speed. By maxing out dex, this chas attacks as fast as possible in this game (when he uses fast weapons, but I use sabres for max damage). Why also max per? rogues have a high base acc. What does a char with high acc need? EVEN MORE ACC! Unless your acc is 100 points higher than the enemy defense, more acc means more damage. If you can remove misses and grazes and rogues can covert hit to crit, you will crit a lot. This is especially good with anihilating weapons (+50%crit damage). High per means also high interrupt. crit gives also +25 interrupt. When you attack fast with high per, the enemy has less chances to interrupt you while you will interrupt the enemy a lot. Of course this is only true for the enemy you attack. Beware of attacks by other enemies, you cannot take many hits and your defense is low.

 

Why so little might? For most classes, might is the main boost to damage. Rogues have several other factors that will increase their damage (sneak/death attack, backstab, reckless assault, deep wounds (this profits from might)). Just to be sure, assuming they use the same weapon rogues get as much damage bonus from might as any other class and more might is always good. Its just that gave dex and per a higher priority for this char because I wanted fast attacks with lots of crits.

 

Why so little int? This rogue has no AoE attacks, so it influences only the duration of debuffs. If you kill the enemy before the debuff runs out, it lasts long enough. He is part of a party, so other party members can and should CC enemies too.

Con and res should not be dropped too much, because you need to be alive in order to deal damage.

 

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abilities and talents: I tried to focus on things that increase your damage and acc. Vulnerable attack comes late because it slows you down and this build is about speed. But at the end of the game you might have zero recovery even with vulnerable attack. Then you should turn it on to do more damage.

 

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weapons: I choose those sabres for max damage and for the style ( I am a pirate ;-). Good alternatives are any weapons that cause prone or stunn on crit (you crit a lot) or that are anihilating. For example We Toki (axe with prone on crit, all axes are anihilating) or Godanshuntyr (hammer, stunn on crit, +1 mig, high interrupt, 2 damage types).

You could also go for 2h weapons (change weapon style talent and skip vulnerable attack). You can do it the save way and use tall grass (long range weapon with prone on crit). Or you take Hours of st. Rumbalt as the ultimate weapon (annihilating, prone on crit, 2 damage types, you gett it with acc enchantment). With a 2h weapon, the damage per hit will be higher. But it is much harder to get zero recovery. If you manage to get zero (or at least very low) recovery with St. Rumbalt, your damage will be much larger than with dual sabres because all the damage modifiers (remember, rogues have a lot of them) are based on base damage. However, speed was my main factor for this build, so I stick with dual wielding.

 

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I am not an expert for equipment, so I chose the one that gives the highest stat bonusses. Your armor should not be too heavy, because the goal is zero recovery. In the best case you reach zero recovery without the use of spells or potions even when vulnerable attack is on. Durganise your weapons and armor, which any char should do anyway. Add a corrosive lash to your weapon. I chose corrosive because of bittercut as alternative weapon. If you do not use sabres, you can chose whatever element you like.

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how to play: Enter stealth before combat. Your first two normal attacks will be a backstab them. Attack enemies who are engaged by your tank or who stand alone. You will likely die if you get surrounded. Fast movement helps you because if you spend less time walking, you have more time to do damage. Your party should help you. If they CC the enemy, the enemy cannot kill you and you have no problem to use death attacks, which should kill enemies really fast before CC runs out. Use your full attack skills (crippling, blinding, withering strike) anyway, they have a damage bonus and there is no recovery between them (when dual wielding, a full attack uses both weapons). Every time I play I give each char a ranged weapon as secondary weapon. It can be better to do less damage from a save position than to make no damage because you are dead. Sometimes enemies stand in large AoE damage or your tank(s) manages to block the enemies path completely.

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If you have any comments, please post them

I am happy for every advice I can get.

[Boeroer]

Nice,

 

for the belt maybe the Binding Rope would be helpful. You don't want to get hit, but if you do you could as well apply stuck to the enemy. Helps to debuff the enemy further (possibly adding Deathblows) and thus to kill him more quickly - or helps with running away.

 

Another alternative would be the Girdle of the Driving Wave. It will give you 1 Knockdown per encounter. But opposite to the Fighter's Knockdown it's not a Full Attack (at least last time I checked). OBS seems to have forgotten about that item when they buffed Knockdown from Primary to Full Attack. But still: it will help with disabling and unlocking Sneak/Deathblows.

[Torm51]

So I like the build It's good damage but I just think you will fold like a stack of cards in melee without some type of escape.  If you get some type of escape it can be good.   Dragons: stay out of melee engagement and focus on killing their adds until the beast is heavily CCed.

Edited August 22, 2017 by Torm51

[Blades of Vanatar]

Do the Dex bonuses stack for the boots and ring?

[Torm51]

Do the Dex bonuses stack for the boots and ring?

I am pretty sure they do not.  Only attribute bonuses that stack with gear are weapon slot bonuses. 

[Raven Darkholme]

Why 20 Dex?

You already dual wield, have gloves of swift action and will eventually get Durgan Refined.

Maxing Might instead will give you way more damage than 20 Dex, it doesn't matter that the rogue is slightly different from other classes, Might still gives you exactly the same benefits it gives to other classes.

check also here: https://youtu.be/KtAFiEuSiMk?t=31809

Edited August 22, 2017 by Raven Darkholme

[Boeroer]

As he said: his goal is to attack as fast as possible with sabres. Hence the name of the build.

 

20 DEX will greatly shorten his attack animation though. And he will not reach 0 recovery early - so in the early game it's quite good to have high DEX. And since the rogue starts with Sneak Attack he has no big problems against DR.

Edited August 22, 2017 by Boeroer

[Raven Darkholme]

Yeah I can see how it is useful early game, but latest with Durgan Refined you will lose out on damage.

Attacking as fast as possible is nice, but if it's a question of attacking without recovery either way but losing out on massive damage because your animation might be a couple of frames faster then it is a huge waste of stat points and brings me the question why you would invest into damage talents in the first pklace if you don't even care for max damage.

 

On a build like this I would always look for max dps because that also falls under fast attack, you wouldn't get max dps on a rogue if you were slow.

[Madscientist]

Each point of dex will increase attack speed by 3%. Lets compare a char with 20 base dex and 10 base mig with a char with 20 base might and 10 base dex (base means the value at character creation). Through equipment and buffs we raise the main stat to 27 ( =51% bonus, I will calculate with 50%).

 

A char with 27dex and no recovery will have 3 attacks, while a char with no recovery and 10 dex will have 2 attacks in the same time. Thats a DPS difference of 50% the attack speed difference.

A char with 27mig would also deal 50% more damage than a char with 10mig, if mig was the only thing that influences your damage.

But mig adds 50% to weapon base damage while dex increases the speed of your attacks by 50%.

Rogues have lots of other modifiers to base damage.

 

As an example, I will compare two rogues who use deathblow (100%), reckless assault (20%) and a critical hit with an anihilating weapon (100%). One of them has 50% dex bonus and no mig bonus and the other one has 50%mig bonus and no dex bonus. Base damage = 10.

dex: 10 * ( 1 + 1 + 0.2 + 1) = 32 damage per hit

mig: 10 * ( 1 + 1 + 0,2 + 1 + 0,5) = 37 damage per hit

 

The mig rogue does 15,625% more damage per hit than the dex rogue. This does not include an elemental lash or weapon enchantment. This would reduce the advantage of the mig rogue further.

The mig rogue does get a bonus damage to deep wounds by the way.

 

This is the damage per hit, but now compare DPS. Once again, in the time where the mig rogue makes 2 attacks, the dex rogue attacks 3 times.

dex: 3 * 32 = 96

mig: 2 * 37 = 74

 

The DPS of the dex rogue are 29,73% higher than the DPS of the mig rogue.

 

summary:

The mig rogue has a higher damage per hit, the dex rogue will cause more damage in a certain time.

 

Of course, having both high dex and mig would be optimal. But you need some per to hit thigs and you should not drop con and res too much, because dead chars deal no damage.

 

If you are obsessed with math you can count in all the damage modifiers, buffs and equipment you can get and calculate the optimal values for dex, mig and per to achieve both, max damage per hit and max DPS. I skipped the math and chose dex.

 

EDIT: This calculation is done without DR. Enemies with DR will make the mig rogue more powerful. When I have time, I could look at how much DR the mig rogue overtakes the dex rogue.

EDIT2: In my example, when the enemy has more than 22DR, the mig rogue has a higher DPS than the dex rogue.

EDIT3: The sentence "thats a DPS difference of 50%" is false. I have corrected it.

EDIT4: Sorry, an elemental lash profits from might. I think it has more benefit to the mig rogue than to the dex rogue, especially with DR.

Edited August 23, 2017 by Madscientist

[Boeroer]

Another thing in favor for DEX is that it also shortens the recovery duration. The example above uses 0 recovery. A rogue in robes can't reach 0 recovery without durgan steel (if he doesn't use consumables) - so before getting durgan steel (and the gauntlets) the MIG/DEX ratio is even smaller. I also had several playthroughs were I never saw Gauntlets of Swift Action.

 

I don't understand Vulnerable Attack though. A rogue with sabres doesn't need that a lot. I would guess it lowers your DPS as soon as Outlander's Frenzy wears off (it's rather short with 8 INT)? It will add 6 frames of recovery (to 20 frames of attack animation, that means 30% slower) and it will only give you 5 damage. I didn't do any math, but is this worth it?

Without it you don't even need to cast Outlander's Frenzy in order to reach 0 recovery. The casting of that also costs time and DPS.

 

I personally would maybe pick Penetrating Shot and Prestidigitator's Missiles instead. Start with a blunderbuss-backstab, follow up with missiles on Deathblows and then run into melee.

In that case the perfect belt would be th Coil of Ressourcefulness in order to switch from gun to sabres quickly.

Edited August 23, 2017 by Boeroer

[Madscientist]

A char with 50% speed bonus through dex will always do 3 attacks while a char with 10dex will have 2 attacks in the same time. It does not matter if you have zero recovery, full recovery or something in between. This means the ratio between the dex rogue and the mig rogue should stay the same, independent of recovery. Its just that less recovery increases your DPS but not your damage per hit. This is true for all chars.

 

Sorry, I have not done the calculation for vulnerable attack. I also do not have the formula that determines the recovery cut.

So I do not know what bonusses are nessescary to reach zero recovery.

If you really want to know, you should ask MaxQuest.

[Boeroer]

I know. I wanted to know if you know.

[Madscientist]

OK, after all this dicussions I made a test and tried to "simulate" the expected damage with and without might for resolution (sabre) and St. Rumbalt (greatsword). The data are taken from the wiki, so they may be wrong. I have used deathblows (100%), reckless assault (20%), anihilating crit (100%), superb weapon (45%), 50% might bonus, sabre (20%), 2h style (15%) and a 30%lash (=lash + talent). The sabre has a base damage of 11 - 16, I took the average 13,5. The greatsword has a base damage of 14 - 20, I took the average of 17. The numbers are rounded and I do not include all bonusses that you might have in the game, so these data are just a first guess.

 

resolution without might bonus: 51,975 + 15,6 = 67,575 (slash damage + 30% lash damage = total)

resolution with might bonus: 58,725 + 17,6 = 76,325 (about 13% more damage per hit)

 

St. Rumbalt without might bonus: 64,6 + 19,4 = 84

St. Rumbalt with might bonus: 73,1 + 21,9 = 95  (about 13% more damage per hit)

 

The damage per hit of the 2h weapon is about 25% higher than the sabre!

 

Please note that St. Rumbalt is even better than this number because of:

- prone on crit, which allows sneak attacks, reduces the enemies deflection and the enemy cannot attack you

- The weapon uses the best of 2 damage types, no need to change the weapon.

Sorry, but I am not a math expert, so I cannot put a number to those advantages. like prone on crit is worth X points of damage per hit.

 

My calculation does not include increased crit multiplier (durgan steel and/or quest talent), buffs (e.g. +10% from priest bless spell) or any other effect (e.g. equipment) that might increase your damage. It does not include special attacks or backstab because they can only be used a few times in combat. I assume a crit, because this char will crit a lot. So I cannot put a number on things increasing acc or that convert hit to crit. If you enchant the weapon better than superb, add other damage bonusses and perform special attacks, it will be in favour of the 2h weapon, because the effect is based on your base damage. 2h Weapons are better against enemies with high DR and those are the importent ones, because nobody cares how much overkill damage you do to a wolf.

 

Your damage will often be higher than the numbers above. The damage bonus of St. Rumbalt over a sabre will be more than 25% in most cases.

 

For the numbers above, I have also tested, when the DPS of the mig rogue is higher than the DPS of the dex rogue. The mig rougue becomes better when the enemy has an DR of 38 or higher. I have not played the game on PotD, so I do not know the highest DR of enemies in this game. Anything that increases your damage will increase the DR value where mig becomes better (It was 22DR in my first guess. Now I tried to use more realistic conditions when fighting a dragon and it is 38DR. Since I have not included all possible sources of damage it will usually be even higher.)

 

summary:

 

- The damage bonus for a rogue with a 50% mig bonus is about 13-15% of damaga per hit compared to a rogue without this bonus.

- A rogue with very high dex and little might will almost always have a higher DPS than a rogue with high mig and little dex.

- A 2h weapon will do at least 25% more damage per hit than a dual wielder. Most of the time the bonus will be even higher, but it is hard to put a number on it.

- This is mostly guessing: A char with St. Rumbalt who does everything to increase his speed (durgan steel, gloves, potion, only cloth armor, . . .) will not only have a much higher damage per hit, but also the same or even higher DPS than the best dual wielder.

 

While a dual wielding rogue with max dex may not have the ultimate damage per hit or DPS that is possible in this game, his damage will definitely be very high compared to most other chars, at least against a single target. The dual wielder has it much easier to reach low or even zero recovery. High dex and low recovery is also useful when you use items, scrolls or other things.

[Raven Darkholme]

Yeah, a 2hander will make Dex look a lot better, that is kinda what I figured.

Also St. Rumbaldt seems really awesome for this kind of build since it has the best of both worlds Reaching and stun on crit.

 

edit: oh wait it doesn't have reach, my bad, but still looking strong.

Edited August 24, 2017 by Raven Darkholme

[Dr <3]

Thumbs up for your calculation, but things are unfortunately a bit more complex... You have to factor also recovery duration, full attacks efficiency and so on... You tried to mach your calculation with what you find using maxquest dps calculator? ( Link in his signature)

[grausch]

A dual-wielding rogue who has two weapons that both cause afflictions can be extremely effective against single targets - refer to @Wodjee's run and see a poor Sky Dragon get taken out like it was nothing. Hours of St. Rumbalt will only have one disabling attack in the same time as a DW char can have two, i.e. twice the chance to stun/prone. Unfortunately, it would be impossible to calculate the DPS difference to account for these factors due to the "luck" element involved.

 

The point is that while the DPS calculation are very useful, they do not take all of the factors into account. With my Frozen Lance wizard, I liked higher speed as I could interrupt more and thus get hit less. While the end-build was built with DPS in mind, the interrupts tended to be more valuable.

[Madscientist]

Thumbs up for your calculation, but things are unfortunately a bit more complex... You have to factor also recovery duration, full attacks efficiency and so on... You tried to mach your calculation with what you find using maxquest dps calculator? ( Link in his signature)

Sorry, I did just look into the wiki and used the basic damage formula [ dmg = weapon base dmg * (1 + sum of all mods) ] and thought what damage modifiers you would likely have.

For the DPS, I assumed 0% and 50% attack speed bonus, so I multiplied the damage number of the dex build with 3 and the one of the mig build with 2 ( when the dex char makes 3 attacks, the mig char makes 2 attacks in the same time).

I do not know the formula that calculates recovery cut. All these data are only true if the chars I compare have the same recovery. Thats why I cannot compare the DPS of the dual wielder with the 2h weapon.

As I have written, this calculation does not include several other damage modifiers and the use of abilities or buffs.

 

I did this in 30 minutes with a sheet of paper and a calculator. This is definitely not a perfect simulation.

But as a first approximation it is useful to see if a concept makes sense and how it is compared to some alternatives.

I know it is unrealistic to assume that a char has 27dex and 10mig or vice versa, but it makes calculation easier.

 

What have I leearned from this:

The build I have posted will often do over 70 damage per hit without the use of buffs or special abilities, just by using a regular attack. And it attacks very fast.

This is enough for me to say: A dual wielding rogue with low mig and high dex is viable and I will not be completely depressed when I try this and find out that the damage is pathetic.

Since I want to play on hard with a full party (not PotD) this char will be good enough to face all challenges. It is not the best char posible (even if you look only at melee rogues), but it is definitely good enough.

[Madscientist]

Thanks for reminding me about the links of MaxQuest.

 

They show that when dual wielding durganized weapons:

- with 2 weapons without speed mod, you can reach pasive (without potions or abilities) zero recovery only without vulnerable attack and if you have the gauntlets of swift action.

You will have zero recovery if you apply an effect (e.g. frenzy or potion), then you can even have vulnerable attack on and still have zero recovery.

- If you use 2 weapons that have both the speed mod and you have the gauntlets of swift action, you will have passive zero recovery even with vulnerable attack on.

 

AFAIK, there are no weapons that have speed mod and are anihilating and/or prone/stunn on crit at the same time.

This means I can skip vulnerable attack.

The program also shows that this char attacks twice as fast as a dual wielder with 10dex and full recovery, even if you do not have the gauntlets and you do not use potions or abilities (you still have a very small recovery)

 

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The other link of MaxQuest shows, that reckless assault and shadow step are exclusive. I guess when shadow step expires, reckless assault will not turn on automatically.

This means I will not take shadow step, because you will lose acc if you do and it is easy to forget to turn on reckless assault again.

So at lv15 it means feign death (to save yourself and gain more backstabs) or another full attack skill

[Boeroer]

Oh, I didn't know that about Shadow Step. That makes it even worse.

[LitleBold]

Hi ! First thanks for this tutorial, help me a lot. I follow it except about weapons. I prefer play with 2 daguers, for roleplay things, and founded 2 rare drops early in the game... does it change something to your advices using daguer at the place of sabres ?

[LitleBold]

Just about an ability you took, call "two hand style" but its for 2H weapon, not 2 weapons a hand...

[Archaven]

Sorry for hijacking this thread. Was always wondering if rogue and stiletto is a viable option? The main problem i see with Pillars is the DR. Enemies have so high DR and even immunities, is there really a point in going these kind of damages?

[Boeroer]

Yes. Light weapons have the highest dps of all weapons (certain enchantments aside) with a rogue. Look at the "Flail's Fire Lash" thread...

Stilettos are very fast and have 3 DR bypass which is a good combo. You can pick Vulnerable Attack early and still be faster than with sabres and so on but deal the equivalent +8 damage per hit. That is the same damage increase as a +60% damage bonus on a sabre would be!

Bleak Fang even has rending on top, giving it 11 DR bypass. Azureith's Stiletto triggers Jolting Touch on crit. Spells work with Deathblows (= double damage for Jolting Toch and the immediate corrosove damage of Bleak Fang's Touch of Rot).

Another thing is that stillettos have some representations that do slash damage instead of pierce: Lagufaeth stilettos. You can use them as backup-set for pierce-immune foes.

 

So yeah: totally viable.

 

And yes LitleBold, he meant Two Weapon Style, not Two Handed Style. 

[Phenomenum]

Yes. Light weapons have the highest dps of all weapons (certain enchantments aside) with a rogue. Look at the "Flail's Fire Lash" thread...

Stilettos are very fast and have 3 DR bypass which is a good combo. You can pick Vulnerable Attack early and still be faster than with sabres and so on but deal the equivalent +8 damage per hit. That is the same damage increase as a +60% damage bonus on a sabre would be!

Bleak Fang even has rending on top, giving it 11 DR bypass. Azureith's Stiletto triggers Jolting Touch on crit. Spells work with Deathblows (= double damage for Jolting Toch and the immediate corrosove damage of Bleak Fang's Touch of Rot).

Another thing is that stillettos have some representations that do slash damage instead of pierce: Lagufaeth stilettos. You can use them as backup-set for pierce-immune foes.

 

So yeah: totally viable.

 

And yes LitleBold, he meant Two Weapon Style, not Two Handed Style. 

 

About Vulnerable Attack: it's good for early game, but not so good since you get Deadlows, i think... For two reasons:

1. +5 dmg per hit became not so sighnificant comparing your overall damage and comparing to large healthpool of enemies

2. If you don't reach 0 recovery (which is heavy depends of equimpent and random loot), VA slows you down and do nothing for your DPS, and even reducing crit rate.

Explanation:

Without VA you can deal 10 hits in 10 seconds (for example), and with VA (-20% attack speed) you can deal only 8 hits in the same period of time.

One hit deals, for example, 30 dmg - then your overall dmg in 10 seconds will be 300. With VA you get +5 dmg to every hit (so it will be 35) but can hit only 8 times, so overall damage will be 35*8=280 in 10 sec. In addition, you will have lower crit chance, becose you deal less hits (attack rolls) in the same amount of time. So crit chance will be also reduced by 20%.

 

On the other side, yeah, it's guaranteed +5 damage bonus, even if you graze, but you don't see any sighnificant andvantage in 99% fights past lvl 11.

For me it's a "trade bad for worse" option.

 

But if you can manage to reach constant 0 recovery (i mean "constant" - not limited by time and not dependent from triggers like Frenzy on Sanguine Plate) then it will be a nice damage bonus.

Edited October 11, 2017 by Phenomenum

[Braven]

DR reduction is slightly less valuable for rogues because they have high damage multipliers from abilities like sneak attack and deathblows which makes DR less problematic.

 

With high damage, attack speed becomes more powerful. Vulnerable attack comes with a speed penalty and no stilettos have the speed enchantment which can harm attack speed. While DR-bypass is always nice, at somepoint in may not be worth the cost in lower attack speed (as far as optimal DPS). However, It is always always good early and maybe the best (before deathblows). In other words, it is good as long as you are not sacrificing something better.

 

If you want an enchantment like Draining for better survivablity, stillettos are quite nice. They also get a +4 additional accuracy boost from a plot talent in white march giving them a nice midgame boost.

 

In the white march, there is the Vent pick stilleto. It’s best use case is with rogue because the Flames of Devotion lash synergizes best with high damage multipliers.

Edited October 11, 2017 by Braven