Make rogues more useful in PVE

ghoulz66

beckylunatic said:

talon1970 said:

If Drufi is in the "Yay i am running from one corner to the other" mode

"Cat at 4am"

l0th4ri0 said:

It does seem like there should be a feat that reduces CDs for TR. I wonder if there is a stat that reduces cooldowns. Sure would be nice if we had the ability to get more stealth faster somehow though feats or at-wills or encounters or dailies. LOL

One of the best old set bonuses for TR was the T1 set that reduced encounter cooldowns with your at-will strikes. This would be lovely as a feat. (Ok... there are a number of removed set bonuses that it might be nice to see reworked into feats. Hmmmm.)

Don't see why not. Trappers threw a temper tantrum so they could remain top dps. TR are still mediocre out of stealth other than smoke bomb being spam able being a stupid idea.

beckylunatic

ravenskya said:

Okay so when I started I created a WK TR and botched it up royally. After I hit 70 I did a respec that was based off of a MI build but tweaked for WK. My damage at that point was equal to the other same IL TR's that I run with (both MI). But I have some of the top GWF's as friends so clearly my damage wasn't going to get me anywhere - I did a respec trying to create a debuff/armor breaking/ aoe TR. That was fun and actually seemed to be very useful against Orcus/ Lostmauth. The problem is that playing a debuff build with pugs people thing you have garbage damage and are therefore useless. (I was still up there on damage but not what it had been).

So last night we sat down and really studied the WK - me and one of my friends who decided to respec from MI to WK just to see what I was trying to explain. Perhaps you can fill in the missing puzzle piece.

The WK is clearly meant to be a ranged dagger throwing DOT character. However - when we all set up that way and spend a few hours on the practice dummies (and killing things in the stronghold) though it was fun -we weren't able to make the damage of the WK match up to the MI. Is there something about the WK that we are missing? Since we are on PS4 we don't have access to all of the neat tools you guys have or we'd be on them. I see a lot of attacks and feats that individually do the same or similar damage to MI attacks - but there doesn't seem to be the link we need to make it all role into a killing machine.

Is that why I'm the only WK I've ever seen? Lol

WK isn't a bad paragon in hands that know how to play it, but MI has really strong class features that can add a lot of damage. That, to me, is the main difference, although there are plenty of MI TRs who have also used the ITC encounter in order to not disrupt their DPS when a WK would have to dodge (or pray they can time their flurry-lock correctly). Vengeance's Pursuit doesn't have the same applications, and has an unfortunate tendency to try to target allies (or yourself) at the worst possible moments. It *might* be interesting to try to incorporate into bosses going "chase me, chase me"; I admittedly haven't experimented with that.

On the WK, Razor Action is just plain bad, low damage. Advantageous Position is ok-ish, but works best with the OH feature, which is strictly defensive, and this means not helping your damage. Dagger Threat is sort of fun to play around with if you slot a ton of powers that count as throwing daggers (it buffs Whirlwind and Blitz, for example), but it does nothing for the stabbing, and you need to make use of stabbing. MI class features are just plain better for DPS. WK builds have to look around going "ehhh, what's not worst?" You should not try to play WK as strictly ranged unless you accept that your DPS is going to be accordingly terrible, because Cloud of Steel can't measure up to Duelist's Flurry.

Disheartening Strike is cool. A lot of players who try WK aren't any good with it and don't let the damage tick when they should, continuously reapplying instead. You plant DS with a snapshot crit and then go to town with other attacks. The problem with relying on DoT over burst though is that if others are delivering burst that outright kills things, your damage never has time to actually work. BTW, Distracting Knife is a decent feat, but you can't really fit it into anything but a Sab build.

Hateful Knives is worse in pretty much every situation than every other daily (but it looks bad@ss), but this is ok in PvE because Shocking Execution has no point there either (and any TR you see using it in PvE is adding to the "TRs are bad" mythos). You run the same dailies as an MI TR and use them in the same situations.

I like WK and play it, but I do that with full understanding of why it isn't competitive with a good MI TR. @ravenskya

ravenskya

@beckylunatic I love my WK - and funny enough I had an SW message me last night asking me if the WK was more powerful than MI, I guess because I was neck and neck in damage with an almost 4K IL SW (My GWF friend was on his tank for us so I could actually do damage)

The more I think about the WK problem - the more it feels like there are all of these fabulous attacks - but no glue to hold it all together. Other builds have a rotation that incorporates a few moves and ends with a finisher - My WK is all over the board attempting to stack up as much DOT damage on big baddies while clearing the area of trash (and not accidentally hitting the trash with a DOT) plus dodging out of AOE's trying to keep Combat Advantage, keep stealth timed properly for the bonuses and keep them debuffed.

It's harder work being a tolerable TR than it is to be a stellar GWF

micky1p00

This thread became somewhat depressing and grim, so I think I'll link how a TR really should play:

Check out those moves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzSdPxlGGZc

fogcrow

I only skimmed this thread, but it seems noone mentioned this yet: TRs have debuffs at their disposal, that amplify the damage dealt by all party members: wicked reminder at full 3 stacks makes the target take 21% more damage, and the debuff from the 4th strike of sly flourish makes the target take another 10% more(yes, I know the tooltip says its 5% but it has been tested by ppl I consider trustworthy).
While wicked reminder has a sufficiently long duration, so I consider it a good power even at higher ILs and it comes with the advantage of always haveing an encounter off cooldown to refresh shadow of demise as an executioner, ime sly flourish needs to be spammed to keep the debuff up, so I´d only recommend it for TRs whos own dmg is too low to contribute as a dps compared to the other dps party members.
TRs also have nice control powers, that don´t send the mobs flying.

The debuffs at a GWFs disposal on the other hand, 8% from mark(don´t stack with other marks iirc) aside, only help the GWF himself...

For more information, look for the debuff guide in the guides section iirc.

ravenskya

fogcrow said:

I only skimmed this thread, but it seems noone mentioned this yet: TRs have debuffs at their disposal, that amplify the damage dealt by all party members: wicked reminder at full 3 stacks makes the target take 21% more damage, and the debuff from the 4th strike of sly flourish makes the target take another 10% more(yes, I know the tooltip says its 5% but it has been tested by ppl I consider trustworthy).
While wicked reminder has a sufficiently long duration, so I consider it a good power even at higher ILs and it comes with the advantage of always haveing an encounter off cooldown to refresh shadow of demise as an executioner, ime sly flourish needs to be spammed to keep the debuff up, so I´d only recommend it for TRs whos own dmg is too low to contribute as a dps compared to the other dps party members.
TRs also have nice control powers, that don´t send the mobs flying.

The debuffs at a GWFs disposal on the other hand, 8% from mark(don´t stack with other marks iirc) aside, only help the GWF himself...

For more information, look for the debuff guide in the guides section iirc.

I ran a debuff/armor breaker build for about a month on my WK. It did up the damage of my friends significantly - however PUGS are far less understanding of an "armor breaker TR." I am currently running 50%DPS 50% Debuff trying to see how useful that makes me in the group dynamic.

mrshabok

armadeonx said:

I remember in certain dungeons in Baldur's gate, if you didn't have your Rogue scouting and disarming certain traps the entire wall would slam your group into paste - lol. You couldn't VIP your way out of that

They could also stealth indefinitely and take out guards with a backstab and were very useful for scouting what was ahead.

Also the best way to cheese Demo in Watcher's Keep was to go inviso and just set a bajillion traps before the encounter...just drops. Imagine if rogues died they could bypass the magical wall keeping them out of the fight, so they're never really dead dead.

ravenskya

I still wish that in this game - the TR could purchase a "lockpick kit" for 1500-2000 Zen. It would be considered an item equipped to the potion tray with a 1 hour cool down. At the end of the dungeon you could use your kit for a 10% chance to pick the lock on ONE chest for the entire group.

I would spend $$ to purchase that item.

demonmonger

Lock pick would be nice ... but a standard item instead of keys for all tr.
Pick breaks a trap is set off destroying all treasure for you

ravenskya

morenthar said:

The problem with the TR is the same problem with any of the other classes.



This ain't D&D like any of us over 35 remembers.



Class roles are so FUBAR that all classes have lost what it means to be in an old school party.



Needing a rogue in the party was huge! My PnP PCs were mostly rogues! Straight up Thief or Bard Blade kit. My Blade was insane.

Amen! I keep arguing with my friends about the HR on here - an archer should be a subclass of the rogue or the actual ranger (which is a fighter variant). So the HR as it is on here shouldn't exist and there should be an archery tree on our TRs! The Ranger should be a fighter that swaps to a bow - which by the way is NOT a druid that uses plant growth...

The things that have gone sideways in this game amaze me

blur

TR class is fine and is equal to CW, HR and SW, its only GWF that stands out and that class will probably get a change which will make it perform a bit less than it currently is.
From my perspective problem of the TR class is the slow preparation. We want our SoD to hit high, since we want that we also want 10 bleed stacks first. Thats where our problem lies for the content which is dying fast. It takes around 7 seconds to do 2 rotations of DF to get those 10 stacks, then we activate SoD and do our best in next 6 seconds to get a high hit from SoD in the end. So it takes 13 seconds just to get started (we used atwill 3 times, we used stealth twice, we used daily once and we used each encounter once) but thing is bosses are dead under 10 seconds in some content, so not only have we missed the damage SoD would do but we also missed at least one encounter hit and the bleeds have almost done nothing in that time.
IF our first encounter usage would directly apply 10 bleed stacks then we could focus right away on maxing SoD and planing what to do after it. That long preparation affects us almost everywhere, especially on Drufi thanks to her "Cat at 4am" behaviour. Every content dies ridiculously fast when u have ridiculous buff/debuff teams, including FBI and mSVA (15min fbi runs and 5min msva runs).

Other thing, when you compare yourself to others, you dont know how geared they are, how much knowledge they have about their class, if they are using any bugs which make them overperform and game is full of bugs and tons of stuff is not working as intended.

In the end, learn the class, since we all have more or less the same build focus on correct stat distrubution and test your rotations to see what performs the best and stop comparing yourself to GWF's

sundance777

I don't bother setting the bleeds before the first SoD, I use the first round to wind up all the buffs and then set bleeds for the second round. I typically come in with stealth, dazing, smoke, lashing and then wind up duelist for a few rounds until stealth is back and repeat. I mix in a daily and sly flourish for buffs/debuffs whenever there is time and availability in the rotation.

I have also been rethinking my purpose in a run to help the run, running wicked reminder and setting SoD with that instead of dazing. My Tr does plenty of damage and while I was initially discouraged by being second on pain giver, I think what the TR can bring to the run in efficiency for the group is better than just being on top of that board.

It would still, as the thread title indicates, be nice to be more useful even if it was just an appreciation for the efficiency gains. Have you ever seen anyone call out, 4/5 for a dungeon, need a TR? I haven't seen that yet, not even for pvp....

demonmonger

Tr is not a squishy class... we are a slippery class that needs a little bit more at will and encounter damage.

demonmonger

(Not posting anymore) old wisdom is a thing of the past.

raymond00713

@sundance777 I dunno. I dont see any particular dps being asked for anymore on xbox. Not in SoMI where everyone is at, at least. People just asking for dcs and tanks. Sometimes they add in a "high dps", but not often.

jodema

Can anyone tell me why I'm unable to select Shocking Executioner despite the fact that I'm level 50? I can't select the level 50 Personal or Encounter either but I'm about to get to level 51.

mebengalsfan

ravenskya said:

@armadeonx exactly - back when the rogue was a rogue, and Minsc was a Ranger! You could stealth until spotted - and you got one good super hard hit out of stealth, because it's stealth and not invis (which is what this game has). You can't legitimately be stabbing a dragon in the face and "go into stealth" - that's invisibility.

I remember using my rogue to kite enemies back to the group because the rogue was a little faster - sneak in, scout for traps, backstab, then lead the enemies back to your crew who had already set up at a bottleneck. That was fun - made the rogue important and was true to the nature of the rogue.

Let's not forget that Baldur's Gate with Minsc was under AD&D 2nd edition rules and not 4/5e like NW. Rules have changed and this game follows the new rules.

ravenskya

I know... I liked the old rules better which is why we don't play DnD anymore... we play pathfinder or Savage worlds... I loved 2nd ed, it just made sense

armadeonx

jodema#1523 said:

Can anyone tell me why I'm unable to select Shocking Executioner despite the fact that I'm level 50? I can't select the level 50 Personal or Encounter either but I'm about to get to level 51.

You probably haven't spent enough points. Either that or open,close & re-open the window.

jonkoca

I really don't get this thread, a TR in our guild is the top paingiver in every run I've ever been in with him. Can't tell you Who though.

armadeonx

jonkoca said:

I really don't get this thread, a TR in our guild is the top paingiver in every run I've ever been in with him. Can't tell you Who though.

The point is that 98% of TR's usually come in the bottom half of Paingiver due to the complexity involved with feats & rotations.

A player has to have a very good understanding of the class to be competitive - unlike a lot of other dps classes.

szejhuludpuchacz

I would rather add some secret room spawned randomly during dungeon that only rogue can lockpick (maybe sort of minigame). With chest inside, addidional AD, salvage and RP. Or rooms with mobs/mechanisms that would one-shot anybody (also with stealth rings) but not stealthed rogue who can activate some traps against those mobs or disactivate mechanisms while stealthed. Parties would get additional profits but no one would be forced to take this DPS class to finish dungeon which is fair enough.

TRs DPS is not that bad, just other classes clear mobs faster thanks to more powerful aoe powers (tho whirlwind is very decent but daily).

ghoulz66

One simply does not roll WK scoundrel and expect to dps like a cw.

aaramis75

Couple of quick comments:

1 - the thread title should have been "Rogue disarm trap should have more value", as that's what the initial argument seemed to be. The way it's instead worded suggests Rogues suck in PvE, which isn't true at all. We don't need 3 pages of discussion on this; it's obvious they're holding their own in PvE and still very much of value.
I do, however, agree that perhaps trap deadliness should see a comeback. It's far too easy to run through them, ignore the damage (since, at 70, it's negligable) and as a VIP you ignore the wounds they cause anyways. It's a shame that players can steamroll through these instead of actually caring about what to do (or not do).

2 - if Rogue disarm trap *was* more useful, all the other classes would argue that they don't have any utility powers like that. Granted, this could open up a lot more utility and "fluff" to classes that could be quite fun, but at the same time consuming a lot of dev time that could be better spent elsewhere.

spideymt

armadeonx said:

A player has to have a very good understanding of the class to be competitive - unlike a lot of other dps classes.

So you think playing a TR is more difficult than for example a CW? Sry, but you dont need to be a rocket scientist to play in NW. No matter which class. Good TRs are like every other good class: At the end its the player who sits in front of the monitor and presses the buttons. If this player is good and knows what he is doing, he can play every class very well. I know some good TRs and we got 2 TRs in our guild and they are making a hell good DPS. But they dont think TRs is mor complicated to play than other classes.