Why is my experience so backwards?

[Giant Octopodes]

I come on here and read what people write, and it doesn't make sense to me.

 

I'm playing with a Rogue MC, with the rest of my party buffing my ability to stay alive, debuffing enemy deflection and DR, and increasing attack speed and movement speed whenever possible.  I focus on things I can use on a per-encounter basis, and things I can use immediately at the beginning of a fight.

 

So for me, I want the Rogue to have as fast of an attack speed as possible (avoid slow items or recovery reduction as much as possible, wear the "best" "light" armor I can) because increasing attack speed is always a direct, multiplicative increase in damage done.  Increasing damage may or may not actually increase it (were you over DR threshold before?  Did this put you over?  What is this stacking with?  What is the actual net difference between battle done before and after, and what percentage damage increase does it represent?).  Also, when you're attacking fast enough, the enemy basically never gets to take an action, because of constant interrupts.

 

In turn, I absolutely, positively, melt through enemies.  The damage the MC does is insane.  Pretty much every invocation my chanter has is 100% useless in a non-boss fight, because they're over in sub 15 seconds anyway, and he just can't ever get stacked up to use those abilities.  The Cipher builds up enough for maybe 1 spell, and it doesn't matter anyway because everything is already dead.  Add to that the positional modifications needed to ensure priority targets go down quickly, and basically the only time I ever need to rest is after boss fights, as I simply don't consume any resources at all during normal engagements.  And after boss fights, the primary reason I need to rest is because I just went ham and burned through all my spell slots with my casters (who normally again use 0-1 spells in any given non-boss fight).

 

So how do people have Rogues rated so poorly?  I understand that any character can shine when all the love is poured on them.  I also understand a party of all Rogues, or a solo Rogue, would fare poorly (or at least more poorly than a solo something else, or a party of all something else).  Furthermore, during a boss fight, I'd never go without at least 2 casters with a healthy amount of high level spell slots available (why would I?), and it's certainly happened that the MC has not been standing at the end of a boss fight (though it's no more common for them to go down than my other frontliners, paladin included, given all the tools for survival the MC has).

 

But this is a party game.  You're given a frontline and a vatican caster right at the start.  What you Aren't already given is a way to just absolutely tear foes asunder ruthlessly and immediately, and Rogues provide that.  The best debuff available in any game is death.  Foes to which that debuff is applied deal zero damage, apply no CC, and do not block movement.  Rogues apply that debuff, easily, consistently, and repeatably, better than any other class.  So how are they consistently rated instead as the worst?

 

Also, why all the love for super slow weapons?  The slower the weapon, the worse it is at interrupts, the more of a negative impact overkill is, the more time (and damage) is lost to CC, the more likely you are to be interrupted, and in any given engagement the more likely you are to suffer from the first hits, instead of attacking first (oftentimes snowballing to a flawless victory).  Doing even 4x the damage but attacking at 1/2 the speed means effectively doubling the amount of damage you're receiving (due to 1/2 the interrupts), in exchange for dealing what ends up being 2x the damage, which is not a worthwhile trade.  Why are interrupts seemingly so under valued by everyone?

 

Anyway, sorry for the super long post, thanks for reading my rant, and I look forward to everyone's insights.  I figure there has to be some things I am just fundamentally missing, because the game I am playing, and the conclusions which seem obvious based on its mechanics, simply does not match up to the advice and opinions I'm seeing online.

[Torm51]

What difficulty do you play on? Cause on normal and hard you could solo it with a chanter who uses a wand and only the skeleton invocation.

 

People complaint about rogues is on PoTD where Enemy ACC and Defense is higher so they cant kill stuff as fast making rogues softness hurt more , late game there damage is good but not great.

 

That being said i have found good uses for rogues in my parties also on PoTD so I think people just bitch when the class isn’t 100% optimized.

[Boeroer]

Yes, on PotD the enemies are not only tougher, they also come in greater numbers and deal more damage (also because there are other, more dangerous types of enemies).

 

A rogue, while his offense is great in the early to mid game because of Sneak Attack, totally falls behind in the later game because he can only deal single target damage and nothing else. And in the later game his damage doesn't rise as much as enemies' endurance does - meaning it takes a while to grind down an enemy with melee attacks, even with Sneak Attack + Deathblows. While building your whole party around it so that the rogue can shine you lose so much potential while gaining rel. little damage. And on top the guy's squishy as an overcooked ravioli.

 

At the same time a spiritshifted druid can do even more melee single target damage without the whole party having to pamper him. His time as melee single target guy my be limited, but he can also cast awesome spells once his single target damage is not sufficient. A monk can come close to a rogue's single target damage (but takes more levels) while being a lot sturdier and also having great CC and AoE capabilities.

 

It's the same problem the standard dps fighter has on PotD. Hits quite hard - but there are too many foes and he isn't very useful for anything else. 

 

A chanter on the other hand is really great on PotD (while he's not so good on lower difficulties - as you said the fights are too short). On PotD however a chanter -  specialized on Dragon Thrashed AoE damage - is one of the best damage dealers in every party while being very sturdy and doing passive healing for the party at the same time.  

 

Single target damage dealers can still be good on PotD if you build them sturdy enough to survive without too much support and then send them behind enemy lines to take out the squishies - and they have their value in boss fights.

 

But generally rogues and fighters are considered to be weak after the mid game on PotD because of the reasons I mentioned above. Also because you can have awesome occasional single target (spike) damage with other classes who bring additional stuff to the table (wizard, priest, druid, paladin). Dps fighters can get their act together again with Charge, rogues don't have such an awesome high level ability.

 

Because that's another reason: the rogue has weak high level abilites compared to other melee classes. Barbs get Heart of Fury and Dragon Leap, Paladins get Sacred Immolation, Fighters get Charge, rogues get... Smoke Cloud? Feign Death? Shadow Step? Ironic wow!

 

But all in all it depends mostly on the difficulty setting.

 

I played countless PotD playthroughs and the standard dw glass cannon rogue is by far the weakest party member in every playthrough. Not in terms of damage, but in overall usefulness.

 

Can still be fun though.

Edited February 24, 2018 by Boeroer

[Giant Octopodes]

What difficulty do you play on? Cause on normal and hard you could solo it with a chanter who uses a wand and only the skeleton invocation.

 

People complaint about rogues is on PoTD where Enemy ACC and Defense is higher so they cant kill stuff as fast making rogues softness hurt more , late game there damage is good but not great.

 

That being said i have found good uses for rogues in my parties also on PoTD so I think people just bitch when the class isn’t 100% optimized.

 

Thanks for the reply!  Yeah I'm "only" playing it on hard, seems odd to complain when a class fares poorly at a difficulty mode other than the one the game was designed around (which is normal btw).  That might also explain why everyone drools over the Chanter's 6.67 dps AOE (before DR!), calling it "insane" damage which "melts" foes, since it doesn't require an attack roll.  Higher defenses would also make debuffs harder to apply, which would exacerbate the situation (since if they're not routinely blinded, that effectively adds 20 to their deflection and 25 to their accuracy right there).  OK, I think I understand the situation a little better, thanks much again!

 

So here is how I view the classes, let me know what you think is correct and incorrect based on your experiences, and what does and does not apply on PotD.

 

Druid- has great spells with total access to all of them, starting with an AOE Blind (15s!) at level 1, gets spells on a Per Encounter basis in mass amounts at higher levels, has a combat form equal to or better than what your frontliners are doing with zero investment, with a dual wield zero recovery attack with 2h level damage.

Wizard- Great CC, ok-ish AOE damage, can unleash from the moment combat starts, and can burn through all their per rest abilities to drastically reduce the difficulty of a given encounter

Priest- Buffs and heals instead of debuffs and damage, otherwise identical to Wizards.

 

Rogue- Best single target damage.  Kills high priority targets fast, applying the best debuff in the game (death) repeatedly.

Barbarian- Less damage than Rogues (overall, and Especially to a single target), but does have at will AOE interrupts, which if properly utilized can lock down a whole group of foes until the cavalry arrives.

Paladin- Effective frontliner, AOE buffs at will, good per encounter abilities, a solid "defender" of your backline.  Also decent heals on a per encounter basis.

Chanter- Passive AOE bonuses or debuffs are never a bad thing in a party game.  Less impactful than the per rest abilities of top tier casters, especially since they need to wait before and between uses of their spells.

 

Fighter- A less great Paladin in a lot of ways (lower defenses on a defender, heals themselves instead of anyone, etc) but they can do per encounter Knockdowns with decent frequency, which is pretty great.  They also have fairly great positional control with stuff like "into the fray" or "Defender" combined with "overbearing guard".

Cipher- Great CC and buffs available, but only on a very limited basis, they're kinda like a Chanter minus the Chants (which is as bad as it sounds).  More accurately, like a Chanter whose only chant is +damage to themselves, on a character who is not a primary damage dealer and can't really compete with the big boys.  Their best ability early (Whisper of Treason) is available for anyone to grab (and someone should), and a lot of their debuffs are single target instead of AOE beside.

Ranger- Great in mass or on a solo, zero consumable run I suppose.  They're a damage dealing type of class (they certainly don't do much else), but can't compete at all with the damage of a Rogue or Barbarian type, in exchange for what is essentially a free summon at the beginning of each encounter.  Again if you have little to no recovery options, or are massing them and using summons as your entire frontline, that's ok.  Otherwise, it's not great.

 

Monk- The entire design of this class is backwards.  This is the only class in the game I would say is actively BAD.  It relies, to do anything really at all, on getting hit- and not just anyone getting hit, *specifically* the monk getting hit.  And not just getting hit, but taking damage- large amounts of it!  In exchange, they get to not use weapons, have ok (but definitely not great) damage, and have abilities which are roughly comparable to other classes per encounters (which don't require them taking damage to use).  As an example of how backwards they are, their final level 15 ability is an inferior version of the Barbarian's level 1 ability, trading an always on ability whose biggest highlight is a constant stream of interrupts for an activatable, once per encounter aoe with better damage.  /rant.  So bad.

[Giant Octopodes]

Yes, on PotD the enemies are not only tougher, they also come in greater numbers and deal more damage (also because there are other, more dangerous types of enemies).

 

A rogue, while his offense is great in the early to mid game because of Sneak Attack, totally falls behind in the later game because he can only deal single target damage and nothing else. And in the later game his damage doesn't rise as much as enemies' endurance does - meaning it takes a while to grind down an enemy with melee attacks, even with Sneak Attack + Deathblows. While building your whole party around it so that the rogue can shine you lose so much potential while gaining rel. little damage. And on top the guy's squishy as an overcooked ravioli.

 

At the same time a spiritshifted druid can do even more melee single target damage without the whole party having to pamper him. His time as melee single target guy my be limited, but he can also cast awesome spells once his single target damage is not sufficient. A monk can come close to a rogue's single target damage (but takes more levels) while being a lot sturdier and also having great CC and AoE capabilities.

 

It's the same problem the standard dps fighter has on PotD. Hits quite hard - but there are too many foes and he isn't very useful for anything else. 

 

A chanter on the other hand is really great on PotD (while he's not so good on lower difficulties - as you said the fights are too short). On PotD however a chanter -  specialized on Dragon Thrashed AoE damage - is one of the best damage dealers in every party while being very sturdy and doing passive healing for the party at the same time.  

 

Single target damage dealers can still be good on PotD if you build them sturdy enough to survive without too much support and then send them behind enemy lines to take out the squishies - and they have their value in boss fights.

 

But generally rogues and fighters are considered to be weak after the mid game on PotD because of the reasons I mentioned above. Also because you can have awesome occasional single target (spike) damage with other classes who bring additional stuff to the table (wizard, priest, druid, paladin). Dps fighters can get their act together again with Charge, rogues don't have such an awesome high level ability.

 

Because that's another reason: the rogue has weak high level abilites compared to other melee classes. Barbs get Heart of Fury and Dragon Leap, Paladins get Sacred Immolation, Fighters get Charge, rogues get... Smoke Cloud? Feign Death? Shadow Step? Ironic wow!

 

But all in all it depends mostly on the difficulty setting.

 

I played countless PotD playthroughs and the standard dw glass cannon rogue is by far the weakest party member in every playthrough. Not in terms of damage, but in overall usefulness.

 

Can still be fun though.

Sorry for the double post, I can't edit the post I made earlier yet since I'm a newb still.  So I get PotD, and in a game with per encounter and per rest abilities when you're cranking it up to "the most difficult possible", that will always naturally mean using every per rest ability each encounter, and in a game with numbers adjusted to be more difficult to hit, the priority shifts to things which don't roll to hit.  I get that.  So the ideal party probably looks something like Druid MC, Priest and Wizard, and 3 Chanters as frontline.  Sub out other classes for the chanters when needed / desired.

 

But even still- look at your second to last sentence.  In multiple PotD playtrhoughs, a Rogue made the party.  You only have 6 slots, and there are 11 classes, meaning at any given time at minimum 5 aren't in it, assuming no double ups.  It's worse than that though, because of the standard companions given to you by the game, the Rogue is not one of them.  So in a situation where you have to actively make a rogue to have one, when there's not enough space for everyone as is, on multiple occasions they merited making one and including it.  That means they were at least part time no worse than the 6th best option (out of 11) even on PotD.  So why, again, is everyone talking like they're the worst?  There's a big difference between "worst party member", which is subjective anyway, and "does not merit inclusion", which is what certainly is implied when it's routinely ranked 11th.

 

What still doesn't really make sense to me, in terms of sure, if fights are dragging on, and you're relying on the Chanter's AOE to burn down normal mobs while your Casters are burning through their per rest abilities, Rogues are less useful.  Doesn't sound particularly fun to me, but I understand.  But then why oh why would the Barbarian not rate higher?  A max attack speed dual wielding Barb can bring forth arguably the most useful effect the Rogue brings (the constant interrupts) in an AOE fashion, to drastically reduce the actions enemies take before you have time to burn them down over a long engagement.  He has a powerful self heal as well, and a much larger health pool.  I mean he could do zero damage and would still be incredibly useful.  So why no love for that style, or interrupts in general?  Do those also just not work against the bloated stats of PotD enemies?

[Abbzug]

Seconding what has been said about higher difficulties.

 

 

Also, why all the love for super slow weapons?  The slower the weapon, the worse it is at interrupts, the more of a negative impact overkill is, the more time (and damage) is lost to CC, the more likely you are to be interrupted, and in any given engagement the more likely you are to suffer from the first hits, instead of attacking first (oftentimes snowballing to a flawless victory).  Doing even 4x the damage but attacking at 1/2 the speed means effectively doubling the amount of damage you're receiving (due to 1/2 the interrupts), in exchange for dealing what ends up being 2x the damage, which is not a worthwhile trade.  Why are interrupts seemingly so under valued by everyone?

 

Mostly because of the way damage reduction works. It's a flat reduction to damage taken per hit. There's plenty of reasons to go for dual wielding, but in general you want big hits. Also attacks are broken into attack, recovery and reload phases (reload only for guns and crossbows). 2h doesn't really attack that slowly, it just recovers slowly and with the right setup you can eliminate or greatly reduce the recovery period. Also bigger weapons have stronger interrupts anyway so you might be interrupting less often but you'll be interrupting for longer periods, I don't really know how it washes out though.

[Giant Octopodes]

Seconding what has been said about higher difficulties.

 

 

Also, why all the love for super slow weapons?  The slower the weapon, the worse it is at interrupts, the more of a negative impact overkill is, the more time (and damage) is lost to CC, the more likely you are to be interrupted, and in any given engagement the more likely you are to suffer from the first hits, instead of attacking first (oftentimes snowballing to a flawless victory).  Doing even 4x the damage but attacking at 1/2 the speed means effectively doubling the amount of damage you're receiving (due to 1/2 the interrupts), in exchange for dealing what ends up being 2x the damage, which is not a worthwhile trade.  Why are interrupts seemingly so under valued by everyone?

 

Mostly because of the way damage reduction works. It's a flat reduction to damage taken per hit. There's plenty of reasons to go for dual wielding, but in general you want big hits. Also attacks are broken into attack, recovery and reload phases (reload only for guns and crossbows). 2h doesn't really attack that slowly, it just recovers slowly and with the right setup you can eliminate or greatly reduce the recovery period. Also bigger weapons have stronger interrupts anyway so you might be interrupting less often but you'll be interrupting for longer periods, I don't really know how it washes out though.

 

It doesn't wash out.  So here's some basic math for you:  a generic fight between a 2h user and a dual wielder.

We can safely ignore attack speed and recovery buffs, as they are equally available to all, other than dual wielding style (which we will use in this example).  We will set DR at the most optimal for this fight, 12 when using base weapons with no modifiers (proportionally it's the same, the value changes but not the ratios), so the dual wielder does as little damage as possible (3 per hit compared to average 7 for the 2h weapons, meaning the 2h weapon does 2x as much damage).

 

The dual wielder attacks with an 18 frame attack, 20 frame recovery (alternating weapons).  The 2h user attacks with a 30 frame attack, 54 frame recovery.  The dual wielder attacks twice as fast, sure, but that's not the important point- each time the dual wielder hits, if the concentration roll is failed, the current action the 2h user is performing is cancelled entirely.  After a .35 second delay (30 frames per second so 10 frames) the 2h user begins the attack animation again from the start.  That 40 frame total time before it completes?  It's easily enough (without any other buffs) for the Rogue to recover, and begin and complete another attack.  Which, if it hits, means another concentration roll, and another potential interrupt.  If the dual wielder is accurate enough, and the concentration rolls are failed repeatedly, the two hander will never complete a single attack.  So his damage could be 20x that of the dual wielder, it doesn't matter.

 

Now, let's talk about what happens when the 2h user hits the dual wielder.  Assuming an interrupt occurs, that's a complete cancel of the dual wielder's attack, and a delay of .75 seconds (23 frames).  Add in the 18 frames for them to complete another attack, and you're looking at 41 frames all told, which means they still complete another attack before the two hander even begins another attack.  The two hander can never deny them the ability to attack completely, even with the best luck in the world, they still get in an attack for each and every attack the two hander makes.

 

And that's just vs each other, where the action you're trying to interrupt is a simple attack.  When you can stop a knock down from occurring, a high level spell from being cast, or another critical ability of an enemy from going off, the disparity in how the interrupt mechanic works becomes even more pronounced.  So even if the 2h users did more damage (which they really do not, even when buffed to the sky proportionally before interrupts they'll do about the same even in the dual wielder's worst case scenario, the 2h user will simply be much more impressive to look at damage number wise, especially on crits), I still can't imagine not preferring the action denial mechanics of interrupts

[Boeroer]

It seems that you haven't understood some mechanics correctly.

 

For example the Dragon Thrashed chant is a DoT effect that doesn't have to overcome the full DR. It's also stackable with itself - which means that at higher levels (due to Brisk Recitation and high INT) three instances can be stacked at a time. That means that 60 base damage get applied every 3 seconds, more with a crit (10 base slash + 10 base burn per 3 sec). Add high MIG and you can see where this is going and why it "melts" enemies. On normal or hard most foes will be dead before a rogue can kill three of them. On PotD it's even better because there are more enemies and they all get hit at once. More enemies is meaningless for the Chanter because he hits them all. It has to do an attack roll and thus can also crit. It is not awesome against bosses, but not bad. I mean you deal lots of damage passively - that's quite awesome.

 

Also your perception of the cipher deviates a lot from what most people here think about them. First of all they can achieve similar single target damage as a rogue with auto-attacks (Soul Whip + Biting Whip) whithout the need for afflictions - which is awesome for a caster. Then a cipher is unmatched when it comes to mind control which is the most powerful crowd control mechanic in the game. Ask the dragons...

 

If you think the monk is bad you simply didn't understand how he plays. After playing several playthroughs with all classes and after countless testing session and also solo runs I believe that the monk is the strongest melee class in the game overall - from the beginning of the game till the end - if you handle him correctly. But needs a lot more micromanagement - more like a caster. He's also one of the best ranged dps classes in the game (from lvl 7 on). I'd say THE best ranged class. He can have awesome single target damage via lashes, very good AoE damage, very solid defenses, great starting values, some very potent single target CC options and a very big endurance and health pool. There's a reason why most players fear high level enemy monks - but enemy rogues? Not so much.

You also didn't seem to understand that a monk can use any weapon with all his abilities. He's not restricted to fists in any way, but they are a good alternative to weapons.

It sounds as if you didn't really play one. How can you say a monk is bad if you didn't play him?

 

The rogue is especially weak on PotD - but even on the other difficulties he's not top notch. And at higher levels the "ultimate CC effect aka death" takes some time to get applied. Especially once the rogue lies flat on his face again.

 

I guess if you'd do a poll in this forum then most people would say that priest is the most powerful/impactful class, followed by wizard/druid.

 

By the way: two handers have the same attack speed and recovery as swords/maces/spears (all the heavier one handed weapons). Dual wielding and every other speed bonus except DEX only affects recovery time. So once you can achieve 0 recovery with a two hander it's the better dps option (except with Full Attacks of course). It's way easier to achieve 0 recovery when dual wielding. Especially from early to mid game dual wielding is superior in most cases.

But some mechanics favor two handers over DW (abilities with primary attack & Blood Thirst for example).

 

Dps wise the best auto-attack option for rogues are fast one handers for the most part of the game. The melee weapon with the best dps in the game is Drawn in Spring if you are not at 0 recovery. Great weapon for a rogue. Once you can hit 0 with a two hander then then best dps weapon is Tidefall.

 

Single target interrupts become less important if you have other good CC options and if you are fighting a lot of enemies.

Edited February 24, 2018 by Boeroer

[Torm51]

Agree with everything Boer says, especially about monks.  Definitely strongest melee class.

[Abbzug]

 

Seconding what has been said about higher difficulties.

 

 

Also, why all the love for super slow weapons?  The slower the weapon, the worse it is at interrupts, the more of a negative impact overkill is, the more time (and damage) is lost to CC, the more likely you are to be interrupted, and in any given engagement the more likely you are to suffer from the first hits, instead of attacking first (oftentimes snowballing to a flawless victory).  Doing even 4x the damage but attacking at 1/2 the speed means effectively doubling the amount of damage you're receiving (due to 1/2 the interrupts), in exchange for dealing what ends up being 2x the damage, which is not a worthwhile trade.  Why are interrupts seemingly so under valued by everyone?

 

Mostly because of the way damage reduction works. It's a flat reduction to damage taken per hit. There's plenty of reasons to go for dual wielding, but in general you want big hits. Also attacks are broken into attack, recovery and reload phases (reload only for guns and crossbows). 2h doesn't really attack that slowly, it just recovers slowly and with the right setup you can eliminate or greatly reduce the recovery period. Also bigger weapons have stronger interrupts anyway so you might be interrupting less often but you'll be interrupting for longer periods, I don't really know how it washes out though.

 

It doesn't wash out.  So here's some basic math for you:  a generic fight between a 2h user and a dual wielder.

We can safely ignore attack speed and recovery buffs, as they are equally available to all, other than dual wielding style (which we will use in this example).  We will set DR at the most optimal for this fight, 12 when using base weapons with no modifiers (proportionally it's the same, the value changes but not the ratios), so the dual wielder does as little damage as possible (3 per hit compared to average 7 for the 2h weapons, meaning the 2h weapon does 2x as much damage).

 

 

Not going into the interruption thing as again it's not something I know a lot about in detail. I've never really done an interrupt build since I'd rather just use abilites and spells to disable stuff and I don't really dump stat resolve. But you shouldn't ignore attack speed modifiers. Even if they're equally available (and they're not, dw has more of them), they're not equally valuable which is what I was getting at. If you can swing a generic great sword as fast as someone can swing two generic sabres, then the great sword would certainly have a leg up. But again I'm not saying DW doesn't have it's place because it certainly does. You get into uniques and the opportunity cost of reaching zero recovery and it muddies things a lot.

 

Also your view of class balance is certainly novel, and I'd just go back to trying the game on higher difficulties.

Edited February 24, 2018 by Abbzug

[Giant Octopodes]

It seems that you haven't understood some mechanics correctly.

 

1. [For example the Dragon Thrashed chant is a DoT effect that doesn't have to overcome the full DR. It's also stackable with itself - which means that at higher levels (due to Brisk Recitation and high INT) three instances can be stacked at a time. That means that 60 base damage get applied every 3 seconds, more with a crit (10 base slash + 10 base burn per 3 sec). Add high MIG and you can see where this is going and why it "melts" enemies. On normal or hard most foes will be dead before a rogue can kill three of them. On PotD it's even better because there are more enemies and they all get hit at once. More enemies is meaningless for the Chanter because he hits them all. It has to do an attack roll and thus can also crit. It is not awesome against bosses, but not bad. I mean you deal lots of damage passively - that's quite awesome.]

 

2. [Also your perception of the cipher deviates a lot from what most people here think about them. First of all they can achieve similar single target damage as a rogue with auto-attacks (Soul Whip + Biting Whip) whithout the need for afflictions - which is awesome for a caster. Then a cipher is unmatched when it comes to mind control which is the most powerful crowd control mechanic in the game. Ask the dragons...]

 

3. [if you think the monk is bad you simply didn't understand how he plays. After playing several playthroughs with all classes and after countless testing session and also solo runs I believe that the monk is the strongest melee class in the game overall - from the beginning of the game till the end - if you handle him correctly. But needs a lot more micromanagement - more like a caster. He's also one of the best ranged dps classes in the game (from lvl 7 on). I'd say THE best ranged class. He can have awesome single target damage via lashes, very good AoE damage, very solid defenses, great starting values, some very potent single target CC options and a very big endurance and health pool. There's a reason why most players fear high level enemy monks - but enemy rogues? Not so much.

You also didn't seem to understand that a monk can use any weapon with all his abilities. He's not restricted to fists in any way, but they are a good alternative to weapons.

It sounds as if you didn't really play one. How can you say a monk is bad if you didn't play him?]

 

4. [The rogue is especially weak on PotD - but even on the other difficulties he's not top notch. And at higher levels the "ultimate CC effect aka death" takes some time to get applied. Especially once the rogue lies flat on his face again.]

 

5. [i guess if you'd do a poll in this forum then most people would say that priest is the most powerful/impactful class, followed by wizard/druid.]

 

6. [by the way: two handers have the same attack speed and recovery as swords/maces/spears (all the heavier one handed weapons). Dual wielding and every other speed bonus except DEX only affects recovery time. So once you can achieve 0 recovery with a two hander it's the better dps option (except with Full Attacks of course). It's way easier to achieve 0 recovery when dual wielding. Especially from early to mid game dual wielding is superior in most cases.

But some mechanics favor two handers over DW (abilities with primary attack & Blood Thirst for example).]

 

Dps wise the best auto-attack option for rogues are fast one handers for the most part of the game. The melee weapon with the best dps in the game is Drawn in Spring if you are not at 0 recovery. Great weapon for a rogue. Once you can hit 0 with a two hander then then best dps weapon is Tidefall.

 

7. [single target interrupts become less important if you have other good CC options and if you are fighting a lot of enemies.]

 

I bracketed out your points so they would be easier to reply to, I hope you don't mind.

 

1. Oh I totally get it- btw didn't know it still had to make an attack roll, that's less awesome even than I thought, so I was actually overestimating it.  However please keep in mind that before it stacks up to 3x, he has to have chanted into his 3rd phrase, which means you're at least 15 seconds into combat.  So you do 6.67 dps, then 13.3, then 20, building up.  And that's before DR, which still applies in some way shape or form (it's not RAW damage after all).  Yes it's AOE and yes it's passive and on top of whatever you're actually doing.  But when fights are over before 15 seconds comes around, you can see how it would be unimpressive.  Great PotD ability.  Like most of the chanter's kit, way too slow for anything else.

 

2. Meh.  Mind control is able to be talented into, and indeed it's the best part of his kit.  Otherwise (personal impressions) he's like the Chanter, too slow to build up to be really powerful in non-boss fights, unable to continuously unload like traditional casters in boss fights.  If all my enemies are knocked down, blinded, and / or dead before he gets out his 2nd spell, what does it even matter what that spell is?  Again I get that in PotD he would be more useful, since he basically generates additional per rest level abilities the longer the fight goes.  So the more drawn out it is, the more competitive he is with traditional casters.  Also his damage comes nowhere close to a Rogue.  Even assuming you're not investing heavily in Intellect for longer mind control duration, he maxes at around 50% bonus damage whereas a Rogue is doing 150% consistently.  And it's not like applying debuffs like knocked down or blinded is such a burden anyway, action denial and debuffs are always helpful to everyone.

 

3. I don't take damage.  Typically, in non-boss fights.  In boss fights, on average 3 people take damage (1 minor, 2 major), from the boss, before I can finish clearing all adds and lock him down.  The requirement to take damage to power up is excessively onerous under those conditions.  You are indeed correct in that Monk is the only class I haven't had personal experience with- haven't bothered yet, my party does not feel lacking, and what it does lack he does not have in his kit.  I will absolutely eventually try him, and maybe my opinion will change drastically.  More likely, I will feel like the reason I'm taking damage all the time, and therefore the reason I'm getting value out of him, is because I have a monk in my party instead of a better character who could help me avoid taking damage in the first place.  Due to lack of personal experience I can say that I absolutely could be 100% wrong about this.

 

4. I dealt with that in another reply to you (which with my time delay is further up, sorry again for that), but I mean if he was SO useless why have him around at all?  For me, on hard, I find the damage to be insane, and given a situation with the chanter, if they are both against 3, the Chanter will be doing his mild AOE damage which can ramp to something useful around the time the Rogue has finished killing 2 of them and is hacking away at the 3rd denying any actions at all to him.  I get that PotD is different but to claim it's anything other than 2nd tier on lower difficulties seems disingenuous.  Top tier being of course the primary casters, we can certainly agree the ability to blow as many per rest abilities as you want, and rest at will, makes them the most powerful option if you don't mind resting as needed.

 

5. Sure, on PotD.  Long drawn out engagements with lessened ability to CC and more facetanking puts a premium on healing.  Makes sense.  Buffs last for quite a while and can hit every party member, while debuffs tend to last shorter times, can be resisted, and are against a limited number of enemies, also having to work around immunities.  I can certainly see how that would be true.

 

Can you in turn see that debuffs, if able to be consistently applied, are instead more powerful?  If you actually can blind / knock down / interrupt everyone, and pursue an effective strategy of action denial, it doesn't matter how strong the enemy is or how weak you are, they will do nothing and you can kill them at your liesure with zero risk or damage taken, which means there's absolutely zero value to healing.

 

6. See my reply to Abbzug above, it's not about the DPS, even if 2h were way superior it'd still be an inferior option imho due to interrupts.

 

7. I'm going to just respectfully disagree on this one.  Every single weapon in the game, in addition to its other attributes, has "deals (interrupt duration) stun on hit, interrupt vs concentration".  You have an at will stun usable by all characters at a rate of potentially over 1/second.  If you have enough CC for that to not have value, then you have enough CC for nothing else to matter, and then Priests shouldn't be good since every enemy is so CC'd you never take damage anyway.  If you take damage, that means enemies get actions off, which means you failed to have enough CC to cover everything.

 

Which brings me to kinda my whole theme here- in all the advice I see, people talk like everyone's playing on PotD, and the action economy game is just unwinnable and not worth engaging in, and every fight is going to be a minute long slog or more.  If people are not playing on PotD, I feel like it would be very helpful for them to know and understand the concepts behind managing an action economy, and why Mind Control is the best debuff in the game (better than death, even, in some ways, because in addition to denying all actions from that character for the duration you actually gain actions on your side), and how the best way for you to easily win fights is to ensure you have as many useful, meaningful actions you can engage in on your side, while they have as few, and as ineffectual, of actions possible on their side.  This is universally true in virtually all games, but especially in turn based games or games like PoE.

 

This is exactly why the Chanter's AoE is so good on PotD, he gets a "free" "attack" against all foes in his AoE radius every 3 seconds, stacking up over time, which over a long fight is a LOT of free actions.  In the exact same circumstances, the "free" attacks granted by the Barb, which tick much more often (not only accuring free actions faster, but also denying more enemy actions) should offer as much or more value, not necessarily in terms of damage done, but in terms of how much he sways the tide of the action economy of each side, respectively.

[Boeroer]

I don't want to discuss this in lenght and unravel every paragraph.

 

You wanted to know why a lot of people say that the rogue feels weak to them - and we gave some reasons why that might be the case.

 

If in your game the rogue is very good (also because you taylor your party accordingly) and you like to play him then everything is fine. Also if interrupts play a major role in your game and you can use them to your advantage then that's also nice.

If monk isn't your thing that's also cool with me - I just want to interject one or two opposing arguments if somebody says something like "class X is definitely bad" - just so that other reader's don't get the impression that this is more than a personal opinion and never try that class.

 

How I play the game the rogue usually is the least useful class because of the reasons I stated above. Some other experienced players think the same way I guess - but that doesn't mean that this is the universal truth and applies to every player and every playstyle. I also don't think he's rubbish. The classes are fairly balanced when it comes to a full party.

 

But if you ask me as a quite experienced player which is the least useful class I'd always say rogue. That doesn't mean that he's not fun to play for me. I fact I think he's more fun than the usual DT-chanter - but he's less useful/powerful nonetheless, at least for me. That doesn't mean that this applies to all other players. 

 

The most important part is that the game is fun to play.

Edited February 24, 2018 by Boeroer

[Giant Octopodes]

I don't want to discuss this in lenght and unravel every paragraph.

 

You wanted to know why a lot of people say that the rogue feels weak to them - and we gave some reasons why that might be the case.

 

If in your game the rogue is very good (also because you taylor your party accordingly) and you like to play him then everything is fine. Also if interrupts play a major role in your game and you can use them to your advantage then that's also nice.

If monk isn't your thing that's also cool with me - I just want to interject one or two opposing arguments if somebody says something like "class X is definitely bad" - just so that other reader's don't get the impression that this is more than a personal opinion and never try that class.

 

How I play the game the rogue usually is the least useful class because of the reasons I stated above. Some other experienced players think the same way I guess - but that doesn't mean that this is the universal truth and applies to every player and every playstyle. I also don't think he's rubbish. The classes are fairly balanced when it comes to a full party.

 

But if you ask me as a quite experienced player which is the least useful class I'd always say rogue. That doesn't mean that he's not fun to play for me. I fact I think he's more fun than the usual DT-chanter - but he's less useful/powerful nonetheless, at least for me. That doesn't mean that this applies to all other players. 

 

The most important part is that the game is fun to play.

 

Fair enough and fair points all around.  Thanks so much for taking the time to reply, it's certainly appreciated and your insights are definitely valued, please don't think that my desire to debate over points which don't match my personal experience means that I don't hear what you're saying or value the opinions of those with a different experience and especially a different level of experience.  I certainly do!

 

I also agree that the classes are overall quite well balanced and support a wide variety of playstyles, depending on your goals, which is very nice.  The lone exception for me is Monk, and that's also the one class I have no experience in, so perhaps eventually I'll come around and see how awesome Monks are with more experience under my belt.  Again thanks very much for the replies, would you say it's fair to have as the biggest takeaway the following?

'most of the advice given relates to PotD difficulty, or when specified solo runs, as generic playthroughs on hard or under can experience success doing pretty much whatever you want, it's simply not challenging enough to warrant giving advice, in the opinion of the most experienced players'

[Boeroer]

 

Yes - at least all the advice I give is based on PotD. The good thing is that whatever works well on PotD usually also works well on lower difficulties - but I might miss or skip things that would be fun on normal/hard but don't work well on PotD.

 

I think the game on hard or even normal is challenging enough for a new player - you have to put some effort into building a nice party that feels powerful. But once said player has gained meta knowledge and understands the mechanics he/she can get away with a lot of stuff, yes. Not only on on the lower difficulties, also on PotD.

 

Once you know the tricky stacking rules and some other rules, tricks and synergies and that the key to success is nearly always "buff ACC -> do CC -> deal damage" PotD is also not very challenging (with a party). I mean I can just buff ACC on a cipher with +70 in seconds with the right party, cast a Disintegration on a dragon and then charm him. Good riddance. One can even feel sorry for that wurm. But it takes some time to figure that out. For most players it's just "Wooot! He wiped me whole party with a wing slam! Wtf this is too damn difficult! *ragequit*"

 

Concerning monk: if you never take damage then obviously a monk doesn't work too well. Especially if your party is heavy on CC.

He's also tricky to play in the early game because the "1 wound/max endurance" ratio is pretty high. Meaning in order to have 10 wounds you'd basically have to get knocked out and your health bar will suffer a lot - while at higher levels the endurance pool and especially the health pool are so much bigger that you can easily accumulate 10 wounds without feeling threatened. A nice way to make the monk easier to play in the early game is to put on heavy armor and pick Veteran's Recovery since this gives you a lot more "virtual" health and endurance and the wound management becomes less stressful.

Maybe the monk is another class that works best on PotD where you can't avoid to take some damage anyways und thus can make good use of it.

However, although I think monks are the best melee class overall I don't play them as much with a party of six - because they require a hell lot of micromanagement and often enough I don't want to spend that much attention on a single character. It's like the opposite of a DT-Chanter whom you simply steer into the fray and say "and now sing" and that's it.

 

I'm always willing to give advice - also for rogues, even on Story Mode. If somebody asks for advice on rogues I will not say "but they suck, use a monk instead" but try to point out things and tricks that I think are powerful and fun when playing a rogue. Doesn't need to be the potentially most powerful way or so - because when I look how different the approaches of players are I don't think that a definitive "most powerful build" even exists.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Boeroer

[Xilva]

My first post ever!

 

My first playthrough was also on hard playing a rogue! It was so powerful. I had so much fun targeting casters and ranged enemies. Then I saw a video of Wodjee's The Ultimate - Rogue run on youtube and made me want to attempt my first PotD game as a rogue. It was fun! Being my first time playing on PotD, I died a lot!! Those lizards in WM1 were tough. The amount of adds that swarm your party was enough to go to your back line party members and make fights chaotic. Nevertheless, I finished the game. 

 

Then I decided to copy one of Boeroer's build, The Golden Dragon barbarian. I must say, the game felt like it wasn't on PotD with this guy. I did tweak some Con to help with the health pool but retrained after getting to level 13 to copy the original build. Early levels were hard ( same with all classes on PotD ) but after Defiance Bay, I'd go for hours without my MC dying. Very solid build.

 

Even finishing the game twice, I still wanted to try other classes. I tried the DT chanter ( VERY boring ), The Skeletor wizard, The Unfaithful priest( my favorite ).

 

I wanted to justify that rogues are the better dps ( I think they're ST dps kings ). I played another rogue PotD run. I died less and  did a lot of dps at level 1 - 13. After level 13 though, I realize my rogue is just like a ranger pet after using all my per encounter abilities, all of it will be used around 2-4 adds at most. PotD has more adds than that and I need to micro manage my rogue so he can auto attack at a safer spot ( defensive skills for the win). 

 

Like Boeroer said, rogues have no high level damaging abilities and were given defensives instead ( which are very good ). And because of that, I realize i had little to no improvements in my dps after level 13. This would be okay if rogues had aoe skills. So I decided to use him as a scroll user instead 

 

TL;DR: first playthrough as rogue on hard was great. watched wodjee's ultimate run as rogue on youtube. tried PotD for the first time as rogue and died a lot, finished the game. tried other builds. played another rogue run. realized rogues weren't as good as i thought them to be but still powerful and can use a special build to deal better dps.

 

Playing from normal to hard, rogues are very viable and strong. Only after playing on PotD that I realize why the community is complaining about rogues. You have to micro manage them like a ranger pet (engage and disengage). This micromanagement is better given to 5 other members who can debuff/aoe dps/ buff. 

 

@Boeroer

I love your builds! I'm trying to get 1 or 2 PotD playthrough before the 2nd game. Currently trying the firebrand cipher I saw you post somewhere and it's wrecking face at level 5! i was hitting 50-80 per swing with soul whip+biting whip+2hand weapon. I have to treat it like a rogue though since it's not that tanky. I got the gloves and belt already, what equipments do you recommend? 

 

I'm also importing my priest save for Deadfire! what's the best deity and multiclass have you tried so far?

[MasterCipher]

I play on POTD with a Cipher MC and all mercenary party. All my chars have 18 MIG/DEX/INT and 3 RES. I micromanage combat and my cipher has done twice as much damage as the 2nd place character which is a monk. It's rare a fight lasts long enough to get off a chanter invocation. I love the mechanics in spite of the quirkiness, but am hoping combat is more challenging in POEII (I'm not in the beta).

[Boeroer]

@Xilva:

 

Glad you like the builds.

 

I'm playing a fire godlike barb with 6*Firebrand + Blood Thirst and Bloodlust atm and that's even more devastating. Since I got HoF I usually don't have recovery in a fight since Firebrand hits for over 100 damage relabily. HoF (kills some enemies) - Barbaric Blow (kills some more) - Runner's Wounding Shot (kills another) - then auto-attacks. Even if I don't kill somebody with a swing I still have Frenzy + Bloodlust which leads to a recovery of about 20 frames or so. And if my Flame Shield + Battle Forged kills somebody the recovery is also set to 0.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Boeroer

[Ensign]

The game provides many more tools than you need to complete it, even on PotD; even solo if you optimize enough.  If you take advantage of everything available the game is going to be tedious, not challenging.  The difficulty is in how complex the game is - as a new player you don't know how to build characters, what to target, how to position, let alone stuff that veterans take for granted like what order to do quests in and where the difficulty spikes are.

The first time I fought the Adra Dragon when the game was new, it took me an hour to figure out how to work more and better tools into my approach and finally get a kill (and I was very happy once I did!).  A couple nights ago I did the standard buff / debuff / paralyze / kill approach and wiped it in under a minute real time.  The skill / experience curve is real.

 

As for why rogues are rated so poorly - mostly because, if you're going to dump a ton of love into buffing and setting up a single hero to kill everything, it might as well be a barbarian - which is easier to micro, much more durable, and will actually one shot entire encounters when set up properly.  Rogues are nice early in the game, when their free 50% modifier is a big boost over the competition, but as mentioned it isn't actually all that much better than a cipher early on (which does absurd things with all that focus if you set him up instead of a rogue), and as the game progresses the rogue offers more or less the same thing while other classes have defining abilities progressively come online.

Which isn't to say it's *bad* - I'm sure you could run a bunch of fighters rogues and rangers through the game (on PotD, of course), with support coming entirely from spell use without too much trouble, but if someone is struggling to beat encounters it's not something I'd recommend.

[Whipstitch]

 

Also, why all the love for super slow weapons?  The slower the weapon, the worse it is at interrupts, the more of a negative impact overkill is, the more time (and damage) is lost to CC, the more likely you are to be interrupted, and in any given engagement the more likely you are to suffer from the first hits, instead of attacking first (oftentimes snowballing to a flawless victory).  Doing even 4x the damage but attacking at 1/2 the speed means effectively doubling the amount of damage you're receiving (due to 1/2 the interrupts), in exchange for dealing what ends up being 2x the damage, which is not a worthwhile trade.  Why are interrupts seemingly so under valued by everyone?

 

6. See my reply to Abbzug above, it's not about the DPS, even if 2h were way superior it'd still be an inferior option imho due to interrupts.

 

I get that you're just trying to make illustrative examples but you're making an awful lot of mechanical assumptions that simply aren't true or useful when comparing well optimized characters. For one thing, well-built 2 handed weapon users aren't actually twice as slow as dual wielders since you get no benefit from going below 0 recovery and once both builds have met or approach that benchmark you're left with a situation where a 2 hander is only ~15 frames or less slower than a dagger while offering longer interrupts. That actually makes it pretty dang hard to outdo endgame worthy two handers when it comes to tekken juggling people to death, especially since the higher base damage makes it a lot easier to live with giving up enchantment slots for things like the CC effects on the Hours of Saint Rumbalt, Mabec's Morning Star or Tall Grass. 

 

At the end of the day, whether you should be dual wielding or rocking a 2 hander is actually pretty build and role specific. At endgame dual wielding is a great choice for builds that have powerful full attacks or wish to compensate for heavy armor with extra recovery speed while 2 handers tend to be better for builds that rely more on primary attacks than full attacks and have the durability/combat tricks to get away with wearing light armor. In the early game it's again an apples and oranges situation because dual wielding has a more pronounced speed advantage thanks to the lack of recovery reduction gear or alacrity potions while basic 2 handers are much, much better at chewing through armor than basic daggers or even stilettos.

Edited February 26, 2018 by Whipstitch