Rogues

D

Draeos

Dalayan Elder
So with a few other classes getting some love I wanted to bring up some things about rogues and our place in the game, maybe sometime in the nearish future here we could get some love too!

I'll start by defining what I believe to be a rogues role in any circumstance and its probably the easiest one to define out of any other class, we bring damage to the table and not much else. Personally im fine with this 100% I love my big numbers and i think anyone who rolls a rogue is in the same boat, my problem comes up when we can't even compete with some of the other "dps" classes. That brings me to my biggest point.

-Movement, The second a encounter starts moving around a rogues ability to bring its only job to the table vanishes in quick order. This above all else should be addressed, one of the biggest things to add to encounter difficulty is movement and as it should be but should one class be totally f*cked because half of an encounter is movement based?

Some idea's to fix that:
-After 30seconds in combat with the same mob anytime the rogue is not in melee range and has been attacking said mob the rogue builds up a small bonus to damage/accuracy that will start to fall off once they are back in melee range, this could help mitigate just how bad movement based encounters hurt this one class more than others. I also feel like this fits into the class lore pretty good aswell.

- This is not a fix for movement directly and would be a bonus across the boards but a rogue of equal tier to any other dps class should be coming in ahead of them 80%+ of the time after all we have ONE job, but this is not always the case and I feel like it should be the case.
-Similar to the BL bonus with its pet being on the same target, As the rogue attacks its enemy from behind for however long non stop they start to notice weak points and build up a bonus, Maybe just start ignoring AC on a sliding scale? Something similar to this would be a nice fix and put us where I feel we should be.

-Something to make RNG not nearly as bad for rogues, maybe modify backstab to at least always land for its smallest amount possible, my point being the only other "pure dps" class wizard will always know what there next spell is going to land for and if its not optimal they will switch to a different resist but they have at least some control over how bad RNG can be for them, as a rogue if you miss 5 backstabs in a row and get 0 insidious stabs all the sudden your ranking in less than a a bard and there is nothing you can do about it the class is completely dependent on RNG to do its role, I don't feel like this is ok at all considering how one dimensional it is, if we are going to be one dimensional I'm sure me and lots of other rogues are perfectly fine with that but at-least lets be somewhat predictable one dimensional.

Thanks for your time reading my gripes, heres a couple more links to some other topics i started about where rogues are.


General Rogue stuff
Traps

P.S. Slaar my offer to redo poisons and traps still stands.
 
Sorry for the double post but if i get anymore neat ideas im just gunna post um right here as an edit.

-As masters of melee rogues get double the effect from mods. This would be more of a patch fix than a core fix but would be something.
Edit1: Instead of a flat bonus when out of melee range on a mob youve been in combat with for X amount of time, make it a triggerable stance, say if they rogue knows movement is about to happen they can drop into that stance to trigger this effect, it would be far less abusive and 10x more interactive.
 
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SoD rogues need Shadow Step from WoW.

I played a rogue in WoW for five years and I feel your pain. I think some easy fixes would do some wonders. Rogues having the ability to make their own "poisons" via ammo procs items would help a ton. Ability to port behind a targeted mob would be awesome, as would a short dura run speed buff. One like bards speed but only able to use in combat.
 
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Kedrin said:
SoD rogues need Shadow Step from WoW.
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That'd work if the hitbox on my client and the server ever lined up.(Hint they don't until a mobs been standing still for like .5 seconds or more.) If this was better this might not be a problem but the server and client never agree if im in a mobs hitbox while its moving.

Serious question: Can movement updates be manually configured? Could you set it up so rogues in combat get twice or 3 times the movement updates?
 
Draeos said:
I'll start by defining what I believe to be a rogues role in any circumstance and its probably the easiest one to define out of any other class, we bring damage to the table and not much else. Personally im fine with this 100% I love my big numbers and i think anyone who rolls a rogue is in the same boat, my problem comes up when we can't even compete with some of the other "dps" classes. That brings me to my biggest point.
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Personally, I really enjoy the sneaking about aspects of the class -- breaking and entering (I leveled from 10 to 40 almost exclusively on stolen goods - I wish there were more things to steal), scouting (bonus if someone decides to follow the Rogue and gets face smashed), soloing by finding single pulls no other class could hit, etc. I rolled a Rogue because I enjoy the flavour. But I do agree that the vast majority of raid/group time our function is dps -- and that on a lot of fights we are handicapped by RNG and movement issues.

Anyhow, some thoughts on changes that would address those issues and develop the class as more of a stealth flanker - and away from a 1-button mashing playstyle.
  1. Move dps from backstab to normal melee attacks from behind. This includes all other effects -- i.e., sneak attack = 4 melee swings with bonus, insidious stab modifier = off any melee crit, etc. This would allow us to get closer to a steady average (i.e., less RNG) since instead of 1 hit every 6 seconds there would be 20-30 hits, and avoid the issue of backstab simply disappearing when a mobs hitbox doesn't line up between client/server, since that potential lost dps is now spread out over many hits instead of one.
  2. Turn backstab into triggered abilities that depend on stamina level. E.g., shadow step at 80%+, ac debuff at 60-80%, etc., but do not consume stamina.
  3. Turn stamina bar into "stealth bar" -- i.e., speed of regen/drain depends on where you are in relation to mob / hate / stance. Meaning you would have to manage hate / stance use in order to use any specific triggered ability.
With regards to poison -- ammo procs would be my favorite idea so far, charges would have to be upped (i.e., single combine = small vial with 20 charges and you can comine 10 small vials for a single 200 charge large vial). Adding the next level of poisons / some ikisith poisons would cap it off.

As for traps, I wish they didn't use the pet system since that means the recast on traps is always 4 minutes even though currently trap kits have differing (and diminishing) recast times.
 
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I think a cool good idea would to make something for the rogue like a stance or a proc that would spawn a mirror image like Anos. the mirror image would do 50% dps of the char... perhaps a clicky pet? make some kind of quest to receive it.
 
Rogues could use some cool abilties.
- a distraction skill basically a super short duration pacify.
- some stam use stances like warriors have.
- love kedrins ammo proc idea from poisons.
- rogues almost never have a pet for any reason, which makes the illusion of self thing a very possible thing without breaking to many things or requiring a new system to be mad just for that.
 
I like the ideas in this thread, one I had last night was based around how concussion / FD / jolt can be relied on much more than evade. I have no idea how the background of this mechanic works, but maybe replacing the traps tome to an evasion improvement tome would be useful, as that is an ability often used and just as unreliable as backstabs in the RNG department (unless I'm missing something, it's success rate appears to be totally random to me). I completely agree with the RNG issue, dps is so sketchy and when it's supposed to be our "thing" as it is to wizards we just don't match up, and we sure don't need to beat or match them but it would be nice to get a bit closer.

Plus, look at the way we have to specialise to do max dps - casters need to know the mob's resists and have their focus effects etc. Rangers have bane arrows, but rogues need to gather up different bane+ gear for different situations (as do other melee classes, but you get my point - that's all we can do, and our class hasn't yet been fiddled with as monks and warriors have). I'm nowhere near that committed and I feel like a bad rogue for not having several different bits of high end gear for different mobs. Being able to craft poisons that grant the rogue criticals on golems/constructs or undead +/- adding a bane modifier for different types as ranger arrows do seems as though it would fit in well with the class's role. I understand though that this could end up too top heavy if lots of bane+ gear was stacked on top of that, but that seems like a decent reward for someone putting that effort in. It would be cool if we had the power to manage our dps a bit more and be more involved in what the class is doing. This doesn't encroach on paladins/ enchanter murk spell either since it would be self-only (with regard to criticals on undead/goelms/etc)

I always liked the idea of a rat pet, since it is already global under monster summons - perhaps an Ikisith quested extension acting like an Arcane Familiar, granting chances to mimic rogue backstabs as well as spreading the effect of rogue poisons to nearby hostile mobs (since rats spread disease)*

*I have pet rats and I feel bad for reinforcing their bad rep
 
I like the idea of the rat pet something like the ranger bird that'd be pretty neat you'd wanna flesh it out more than just high end ikisith stuff maybe start it at the thurg quest level then could move on by finding and talking to the best rogues in dalaya, doing some tasks for them going up from there maybe one in the vah camp, then one in murk/refugee ect that'd be real neat and something i could get behind.

-Could proc a AC debuff and accuracy boost just like the ranger pet (Not original but its been proven to work already why fix something thats not broken?)
-Mimic Backstab's at a reduced damage rate? Or just a chance to mimic a full one, could make the trap tome help scale this pet up on the chance and/or damage?
-Anytime the rogue is out of melee range and autoattack is on and your mashing backstab and have been in combat damage transfers to the pet, far as i am aware pets don't suffer latency like players do, could be a good way to fix that.
-Pets damage could go up or down depending on how well the rogue is doing on that fight? (I don't like this too too much)



-Poison construct crit $$$$ I'd be thrilled if this ware released just as rogues are now and how poisons are now, I will never understand why a monk can make a construct crittable but a rogue who stabs things in the back looks for weak points and is a melee master can't crit.
 
As far as traps go i had an idea as to how to use them without the silly pet system it currently has:

instead of summoning an invisible pet. it could spawn a tiny invulnerable npc like object that auto casts minor illusion on itself (makes sense that a trap would be something that would be normally laying around like a box or torch.) that can be hailed to activate the mob as a trap.

it would look cooler and not use pet system but i dont know how feasible it is.
 
mechkl said:
rogues almost never have a pet for any reason
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Between clicky pets and traps I almost always have my pet timer on cooldown.

Rusheeth said:
I have no idea how the background of this mechanic works
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At 220 skill/AA my evade has a ~20% fail rate, but it drops your aggro waaaay more than jolt/concuss. A chain of fails can be a pita, but if you're paying attention (i.e., don't max dps when you've failed evade multiple times), and combine with /s 5, you should have much better control over your aggro than any other class.

Rusheeth said:
this doesn't encroach on paladins/ enchanter murk spell either since it would be self-only (with regard to criticals on undead/goelms/etc)
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Self-only crits on undead/construct absolutely encroaches on those other classes. Sure, not being able to crit on undead/constructs without help may seem lame if you're of the mindset that Rogues are the "master of melee" but to my mind the whole holy warrior thing paladins have going and cursing thing enchanters have are far more interesting. What is annoying to me about the situation is that casters can spell crit on anything without extra help while melee are SOL without the proper help.

Rusheeth said:
dps is so sketchy and when it's supposed to be our "thing" as it is to wizards we just don't match up,
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If we aren't f-ed by movement mechanics or uncanny dodge mobs, rogue dps output is quite good - I'm currently at ~9% CoP bonus and am usually neck and neck with full CoP bonus rangers/wizards, only getting surpassed when they go full burn. At full bonus, I fully expect to surpass them in terms of dps output on most fights. Necro and mage situationally outdamage me, but usually fall somewhat behind me. The only class that consistently and significantly outparses me is enchanters when they have plenty of casters to AoD -- but a lot of time they're doing other stuff / limited by how much aggro they pull. So it feels like our dps is where it should be. The frustration that I have is with things like backstab being eaten by latency/hitbox problems -- i.e., things that as a player I have less control over.

Draeos said:
I like the idea of the rat pet something like the ranger bird that'd be pretty neat
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Generally speaking I'm opposed to making rogues a pet class of any sort. However, I'd much rather see Fascav's idea of the body double a la Anos than another ranger-style pet. Maybe have multiple types of doubles - one that mimics dps, one that debuffs, one that transfers aggro somehow--i.e., the rogue creates a double of the tank and the tank gains aggro if the double survives long enough--etc.

Draeos said:
I will never understand why a monk can make a construct crittable but a rogue who stabs things in the back looks for weak points and is a melee master can't crit.
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Pretty sure the logic goes:
  1. Monks punch hard/can take a beating because they understand internal energy / chi / etc
  2. Constructs are animated by some kind of internal energy
  3. Because monks understand internal energy, they can disrupt it in others
  4. Thus, crit vs construct
Since the "weak points" in constructs are internal, i.e., based on how the construct is wired/animated, the rogue can't just stab it.

Faylahs said:
instead of summoning an invisible pet. it could spawn a tiny invulnerable npc like object that auto casts minor illusion on itself (makes sense that a trap would be something that would be normally laying around like a box or torch.) that can be hailed to activate the mob as a trap.
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Minor illusion would be problematic since there are many areas w/o objects near enough for minor illusion to function / some objects would be extremely bizarre.

I think a better idea would be to have a trap kit summon the current unarmed trap pet, but then instead of setting the trap through the dialogue, the dialogue allows you to create a clickable trap item (lore? shares a timer with other traps) -- maybe using reagents -- which you could use at a later time. That way you wouldn't have to muck about with the whole pet system if you wanted to use a trap in combat. I'd much rather have to prepare ahead of time and carry some traps than use the system currently in place. Bonus: disarming traps could have a chance of giving the Rogue some kind of unique trap from the disarmed trap.
 
the good:
-giving rogues some warrior like stamina using things. Not a whole system like Warriors have, just a few abilities (determined by Rogues) to round the class out more.
-deshitting bane damage. 15 types is complete and utter shit. Lesser elemental AND planar elemental? Elemental would suffice. All this stuff that could and should fall under nature? Other examples!
-ammo slot poison procs

the bad:
-rogue pets
-stepping on other class toes
-"fixing" evade with tomes

the ugly:
-butt probes
-shadowstep. This is actually an extremely cool idea that would alleviate some major class problems, but an idea that probably wouldn't work right and end up eating tons of time (2.5 still a thing, yeah?) and energy on something that ultimately ends up working not really as intended when it even works.
 
Eh I guess I've just had a different experience Haenir. Guilds I have been with have been always caster heavy. I'm a bit ahead of you tome/gear wise and I've had the cop 5 bonus for a few years, but like I said, maybe it's just the casters and rangers I've been around. Haven't raided in Resurg much, but I group with Yusuke all the time and he always out dps's me, a good RNg run will give 900-1000dps for me but my average is 550-700, whereas Yusuke's low end is usually 700 and without much effort it's 1000 even without his pet. Don't even get me started on Ghaellie (wiz). Like I said I never expect to be pushed to top but being more reliable would be nice (a range of 500-1000 is meh), and maybe I'm just a crappy rogue, but I've been fully kitted out w/ all the clickies to try to max myself for ages and things have always been like this, on a luck heavy fight I could get some 6k and 10k+ stabs and hit my max dps and look really good, or get 2k stabs and misses and look like a dork. IDK how long you've been playing rogue, but it's been like 5 years and I'm bored as hell. And yeah evade is 100% aggro drop w/o the FD penalty, and that's cool, but a wizard can concuss like 3-4 times at the start of a fight and go full ham w/o worry, whereas a few evade misses means not backstabbing till a success which means missing out on what could have been your good stabs that fight. Your only suggestion is traps, which might be cool when you know exactly where you're going to be but idk the majority of in game situations are more dynamic than that. I really don't understand how it's not logical that rogues are supposed to be masters of deception and cunning, and pry enemies for weak spots. Poisons that make cracks in golems glow or fissure and then bam criticals. I've never been a fan of traps though. I'm all around pretty confused about why you're so against having a few flavourful changes made to an otherwise bland class, but then again that could be me being jaded by time and experience playing other classes.
 
please god don't give rogues a fucking pet. Also stop upsetting me by saying rogues are the masters of melee we all know that's not DND canon. Ammo slot poisons should have been a thing whenever cyzaine originally brought it up or whatever but poisons as a whole needed to be reworked anyway since 90% of them are trash. That is probably still the case unless everyone figured out the mystery tier recipes that may or may not have existed.


donfolstar3 said:
the good:
-giving rogues some warrior like stamina using things. Not a whole system like Warriors have, just a few abilities (determined by Rogues) to round the class out more.
-deshitting bane damage. 15 types is complete and utter shit. Lesser elemental AND planar elemental? Elemental would suffice. All this stuff that could and should fall under nature? Other examples!
-ammo slot poison procs

the bad:
-rogue pets
-stepping on other class toes
-"fixing" evade with tomes

the ugly:
-butt probes
-shadowstep. This is actually an extremely cool idea that would alleviate some major class problems, but an idea that probably wouldn't work right and end up eating tons of time (2.5 still a thing, yeah?) and energy on something that ultimately ends up working not really as intended when it even works.
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As much as I like your post the problem is more like other classes stepped on rogues toes or rogues never had toes to begin with. There has never been any reason to ever roll a rogue outside of the style factor and anybody who ever says otherwise is a dumbdumb or really believes the highkeep lantern/tmaps justifies the classes issues. It also doesn't help that the class has always been fucked by any fight that involves slow meaning slow can never actually be a mechanic unless that got fixed.


Shadowstep is cool but you could just let me use deadly throw which is a cool wow move too and somehow there is a throwing skill and I bet you could somehow make this a thing based off primary weapons and not some awful ranged weapon. You could also just make rogues run faster.

Also the answer has always been the warrior thing because rogue has been the most inactive class forever and was only on par with warriors. Maybe wizards.

Again the current implementation of poison and traps is horrible and should just be thrown in the dumpster because they're honestly worse than slaariels monk combo shit in every way ( i liked healing kick). Here let me fumble around in my inventory to get an item to right click and then hail and type a command in to most likely fuck shit up in an insignificant way or fuck shit up by crashing the zone/pulling things through walls, well worth the advanced finger waggling I went through to do this. (sorry woldaff or whomever it was). If were going to have traps can we just have that shit implemented into stance commands or something if possible.

Also evade has always been ass but unless they changed the aggro stance why is it an issue outside of maybe the toppest end where you really need to mash /s 6 button repeatedly for some burn phase shit.


Also whoever said the anos body double thing had a cool idea please let me be a ninja when I am forced to run away from a mob and continue to do damage in anime ways.


Please enjoy my meaningless , directionless wall of noncontributing words where I call ideas shit while offering no explanation as to why.
 
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Backstab should have the minimum damage raised and the opening system should get deleted because it makes playing a rogue with a paladin tank such a huge DPS nerf. As far as movement issues for rogues go, what if rogues had an ability like the WoW talent "Shuriken Toss". Basically its a ranged attack that allows you to autoattack without being in melee range for a short time. Could be cool to to put into a new stamina system. Not sure if its a feasible thing to code and dont know if you could work backstab into it but it could be a neat idea to consider
 
donfolstar3 said:
the good:
...
-shadowstep. This is actually an extremely cool idea that would alleviate some major class problems, but an idea that probably wouldn't work right and end up eating tons of time (2.5 still a thing, yeah?) and energy on something that ultimately ends up working not really as intended when it even works.
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This is a lot easier than you think.
 
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