Rogues are Broken... Let's Fix 'em

[zeathe]

So... I feel like my Rogue toons are a bit broken on this latest update. I remember a time where I had several Uncanny Dodge clicks I could pound out during a boss fight and use that to supplement my defense. Now that Uncanny Dodge is just one 20 second burst every 2 minutes, it makes my Rogue feel broken.

Here's what I think should be done.... Cross Uncanny Dodge with the idea of Smite. Uncanny Dodge should give you 2 uses, Improved Uncanny Dodge should give you two more uses for a total of 4 uses.... Four Enhancement levels could add another 4 dodges to a total of 8 dodges.

Dodges should last for 30 seconds, one dodge recharges every five or six minutes. Uncanny Dodge should give 20% bonus, Improved 40% bonus... For balance maybe -- Similar to Rage -- it could cause a 1 min penalty, like 10% or 20% negative to dodge.

This would allow a Rogue to be viable during a Boss encounter or during large pulls for up to 4 minutes stacked (if someone spent all the enhancement points to get a full load-out) -- but the "duty cycle" of the feat would still be less than 50%.

Does this sound like an interesting change, or am I just nostalgic for the old Uncanny Dodge implementation?

[phinius]

I like this idea.

Rogues did lose alot of their defensive ability in the xpack. Which is fine as long as they still have the opportunity to manage their hate. This change would not allow full time dodge bonus but it might actually allow them to live long enough to activate diplomacy, block, tumble or whatever and even still be alive when the mob actually changes targets.

I think this is more in line with the active combat than 20 seconds every 2 minutes. Melee threat reduction only goes so far.

[delsoboss]

The idea is good but can use some tinkering (the penalty to dodge is a big no-no for me, what's the penalty for smite? Or turn undead? The rage penalty goes away with a lesser restore pot and at level 17 isn't even there anymore so no penalty.

Any new enhancement suggestion probably is on halt until the Dev start talking again about the enhancement pass, but i hope they're working on something for (Improved) Uncanny Dodge, the 2 mins cooldown is a bit much.

Granted, right now Improved Uncanny Dodge is a "free out of jail" card, but so are fvs wings/abundant step/cannith boots/air savants something/exalted angel something else and most of those have way lower cooldowns and recharge (ignoring current bugs).


Rogues did lose alot of their defensive ability in the xpack.

Uh? Where did you get that? My AC finally matters something, i have 14% passive dodge, 10% incorporeality from gear that now stacks with blur, something like 6% PRR that's small but helps against the big hits and finally Imp Uncanny Dodge as a life saver in emergency times.

My defenses surely went up, and i'm still an un-destined level 20 character.

[Kmnh]

Uncanny dodge has a passive effect - +6 dodge bonus. Your rogue has better defenses without the clickie going now than it had with the clickie going before the update :D


I think Uncanny dodge could give a static +6 to AC without breaking anything. +6 reflex might be too good.

[Ertay]

Rogues did lose alot of their defensive ability in the xpack.


Excuse me, what game are you talking about? Also, to the op: if uncanny dodge makes you feel your rogue is broken, I advise you to stay away from epic destinies entirely...

Besides that, the old uncanny dodge basically did nothing but except reflex saves on a rogue, which really is not that much. Every effect attributed to it was pure placebo, because reasonably well built rogues had no chance to get enough ac to get in range of monsters missing anyway. The new uncanny dodge is better all the way.

[Xynot2]

Lotsa stuff broke. And as usual, rogues will be last.

[Viciouspika]

To tell you the truth, I think the update made improved Uncanny dodge better. I used to only use uncanny dodge when running through traps to get to the trap boxes. Now, I have an O'cr ap button when the boss decides to target me. Twenty seconds of +50% dodge added to your passive dodge is awesome. I, also, like using it in wilderness areas when I'm soloing.

I have a mad stick build 13rogue/6barb/1fighter that gets Improved uncanny dodge from barb and rogue levels wish they were both separate feats. Two improved uncanny dodges every 2 minutes would be awesome.

To OP, if your getting that much agro from bosses or red names, your might be playing your rogue wrong. Rogues are not fighter/barbs/monks/or pallys where you run to boss and start auto-attacking. You need to manage your agro with bluff/diplo, or deception items, or block until they switch to someone else.

[Full_Bleed]

Excuse me, what game are you talking about? Also, to the op: if uncanny dodge makes you feel your rogue is broken, I advise you to stay away from epic destinies entirely...

Besides that, the old uncanny dodge basically did nothing except reflex saves on a rogue, which really is not that much. Every effect attributed to it was pure placebo, because reasonably well built rogues had no chance to get enough ac to get in range of monsters missing anyway. The new uncanny dodge is better all the way.

This!

My rogue's defenses are better than ever! With IUD and bluff I can take out things I had no chance against before... and I now have some AC and dodge that actually matters. Heck, I just did a feat swap for the dodge feat so I'd get closer to the persistent 25% dodge cap.

[Nibor]

This!

My rogue's defenses are better than ever! With IUD and bluff I can take out things I had no chance against before... and I now have some AC and dodge that actually matters. Heck, I just did a feat swap for the dodge feat so I'd get closer to the persistent 25% dodge cap.

I'm actually considering taking mobility for the same reason. My current armor has mobility built in and I'm not sure I can part with it to get more powerful armor.

[honkuimushi]

With IUD and bluff I can take out things I had no chance against before...

Unrelated, but can I just vote against the abbreviation in red, or is it too late to stop it?

[oradafu]

I'm just guessing here, but I think Uncanny Dodge is going stay as it is until the Enhancement pass happens. With the Enhancement pass, I'm almost willing to bet that Uncanny Dodge will be under the Acrobat tree and each tier of Uncanny Dodge will have a shorter cooldown with no penalties attached.

[SSFWEl]

man and I was just about to say that the update made rogues OP.
So lets call it a even and BOTH be quiet...

[Chauncey1]

man and I was just about to say that the update made rogues OP.
So lets call it a even and BOTH be quiet...

^this

I may play my rogue tonight and see what the skinny is.

[akash]

So... I feel like my Rogue toons are a bit broken on this latest update. I remember a time where I had several Uncanny Dodge clicks I could pound out during a boss fight and use that to supplement my defense. Now that Uncanny Dodge is just one 20 second burst every 2 minutes, it makes my Rogue feel broken.

Here's what I think should be done.... Cross Uncanny Dodge with the idea of Smite. Uncanny Dodge should give you 2 uses, Improved Uncanny Dodge should give you two more uses for a total of 4 uses.... Four Enhancement levels could add another 4 dodges to a total of 8 dodges.

Dodges should last for 30 seconds, one dodge recharges every five or six minutes. Uncanny Dodge should give 20% bonus, Improved 40% bonus... For balance maybe -- Similar to Rage -- it could cause a 1 min penalty, like 10% or 20% negative to dodge.

This would allow a Rogue to be viable during a Boss encounter or during large pulls for up to 4 minutes stacked (if someone spent all the enhancement points to get a full load-out) -- but the "duty cycle" of the feat would still be less than 50%.

Does this sound like an interesting change, or am I just nostalgic for the old Uncanny Dodge implementation?

No offence intended but if your Rouge is fully vulnerable without depending on uncanny dodge then it's really very squishy. Have you dumped your constitution stat? In that case I recommend re-roll (if lower than level 15) or TR (if higher than level 15). Alternatively, if your UMD is high you can always buy a full stack of Displacement scrolls to cast on yourself. These scrolls are available in Object Desire, House Phiarlan, and UMD requirement is only 28.

[.Revenga.]

Rogues received awesomesauce defensive capabilities with the Xpack, where we had nothing but blur/displacement/ss to work with before.

Uncanny dodge has received a huge buff, the cooldown is needed to balance it somewhat out.

Honestly, when i opened this thread i thought it was a complaint about how OP rogues are.

No idea why this thread exists.

[phinius]

Uh? Where did you get that? My AC finally matters something, i have 14% passive dodge, 10% incorporeality from gear that now stacks with blur, something like 6% PRR that's small but helps against the big hits and finally Imp Uncanny Dodge as a life saver in emergency times.



Excuse me, what game are you talking about? Also, to the op: if uncanny dodge makes you feel your rogue is broken, I advise you to stay away from epic destinies entirely...


Okay. Perhaps not all rogues did. My rogues lost a considerable amount. One of them went from being able to solo amrath quests, and being able to outright tank those bosses, to having to run from just a couple of archers to heal up. Uncanny dodge was not necessary but it did help in some situations when things got out of hand.

My AC went from very useful to 'where is my AC'?

You are probably benefiting from the new combat changes in the same manner as an 8 str wizard swinging a quarterstaff in melee is benefiting. That same wizard will connect with a real hit more than half of the time in at level elite content.

[kierg10]

How about we fix assassinate mm'kay?

[Vormaerin]

My AC went from very useful to 'where is my AC'?



What was your AC before and why did it fall off the map? You'd have to have pretty extreme AC to be worse off in the new system.

[phinius]

What was your AC before and why did it fall off the map? You'd have to have pretty extreme AC to be worse off in the new system.

Not invulnerable but still able to withstand a nasty encounter and still be alive to heal up afterward. Which was the point of the build. Any more than that and I would have been sacrificing DPS.

I run solo, in small parties and in full parties. I enjoyed that fact that if I didnt find a group or my group wouldnt fill that I was still able to do it anyway.

[Full_Bleed]

Not invulnerable but still able to withstand a nasty encounter and still be alive to heal up afterward. Which was the point of the build. Any more than that and I would have been sacrificing DPS.

You're going to have to put up some numbers for this complaint to be credible. What was your AC before the xpac and what is it now (including your passive dodge and PRR)?

[xveganrox]

Not invulnerable but still able to withstand a nasty encounter and still be alive to heal up afterward. Which was the point of the build. Any more than that and I would have been sacrificing DPS.

I run solo, in small parties and in full parties. I enjoyed that fact that if I didnt find a group or my group wouldnt fill that I was still able to do it anyway.

I think maybe you're mistaking your rogue for a different character. Per-MotU rogue AC wasn't high enough to give more than the automatic 5% miss chance. Now you've got that (and a lot more, if you have 35+ AC), a stacking dodge bonus (6%+), and if you had an incorporeal item you're getting another stacking 10%. In addition, Improved Uncanny Dodge went from doing nothing (+6 AC to an AC below 65ish doesn't do anything, and +6 reflex means nothing when you save on a 2) to providing a really awesome bonus. Let's not forget PRR and the +skill bonus from epic levels, with a +5 UMD meaning even the gimpiest rogues can have no-fail Heal scrolls without gear swaps - heal scrolls that, with a devotion item, now hit harder than ever for rogues (mine gets 513 from a heal scroll).

[Isolani]

For pure rogues, I guess U14 was an improvement. U14 destroyed my 13 rog/6 rng/1 mnk though. Monk level is completely pointless now, the 5 or 6 AC you got from a moderate wis score used to be valuable, now it changes mobs hit % by like 3%. And the ranger levels have been pretty bad ever since the TWF nerf a while back. Though I did have a decent dodge % from having the tempest I prereqs (dodge, mobility, spring attack).

Anyway, I used to have enough AC on that build to be almost invulnerable to trash melee mobs in most normal/hard quests, and would get some misses in elites. Now it's just a rubbish build that gets hit 40% of the time on normal, more on higher settings, and has nothing to compensate for the loss in AC. I TR'd him to get rid of the ranger and monk levels for pure rogue.

Splashing anything on a rogue seem pointless now, unless it's a flavor build. The whole shadowdancer ED is focused around capstone assassins pretty much.

[xveganrox]

For pure rogues, I guess U14 was an improvement. U14 destroyed my 13 rog/6 rng/1 mnk though. Monk level is completely pointless now, the 5 or 6 AC you got from a moderate wis score used to be valuable, now it changes mobs hit % by like 3%. And the ranger levels have been pretty bad ever since the TWF nerf a while back. Though I did have a decent dodge % from having the tempest I prereqs (dodge, mobility, spring attack).

Anyway, I used to have enough AC on that build to be almost invulnerable to trash melee mobs in most normal/hard quests, and would get some misses in elites. Now it's just a rubbish build that gets hit 40% of the time on normal, more on higher settings, and has nothing to compensate for the loss in AC. I TR'd him to get rid of the ranger and monk levels for pure rogue.

Splashing anything on a rogue seem pointless now, unless it's a flavor build. The whole shadowdancer ED is focused around capstone assassins pretty much.

Splash fighter and go Fury of the Wild with Legendary Dreadnought twists =D

[FrancisP.Fancypants]

Unrelated, but can I just vote against the abbreviation in red, or is it too late to stop it?

IUD? Only if I can make a crass joke about crowd control.

[Chauncey1]

iud? Only if i can make a crass joke about crowd control.

lol

[Isolani]

Splash fighter and go Fury of the Wild with Legendary Dreadnought twists =D

That falls under flavor builds. Quarterstaff acrobats and such, shadowdancer sucks for them. They can gain a lot through other ED, but compared to what a high DC assassin with all the shadowdancer instakills can do (assuming all the abilities ever actually work as the descriptions say), there is no other rogue build worth making but capstone assassin.

[Vormaerin]

There doesn't seem to be much to discuss here, because all we have are some fuzzy complaints that certain characters used to be "invulnerable" and now they are squishy.

Until someone provides some numbers on what AC they had before that made them super hard to hit that is now paper mache, there's nothing to talk about. IMHO.

[xveganrox]

That falls under flavor builds. Quarterstaff acrobats and such, shadowdancer sucks for them. They can gain a lot through other ED, but compared to what a high DC assassin with all the shadowdancer instakills can do (assuming all the abilities ever actually work as the descriptions say), there is no other rogue build worth making but capstone assassin.

I'll have to respectfully disagree with you there. In the current implementation, I think the only reason anyone would take Shadowdancer is if they're running a Finesse build (a flavor build). The amount of pure DPS that Fury and Dreadnought offer is way outside of the scope of Shadowdancer's limited bonuses, even if they were functioning properly. My ideal assassin build's epic setup would be

1
Primal Scream x2
Strength x1
2
Injury x2 (stacks with Ravager!)
Strength x1
3
Ward x2 or Malicious Weapons x2 if THF
Strength x1
4
Sense Weakness x1
Overwhelming Force x3 (currently bugged)
5
Fury Eternal x1
Strength x1
6
Unbridled Fury x1
Strength x1

With three twists: Stealthy (tier 1 Shadowdancer), Momentum Swing (tier 2 LD), Lay Waste (tier 3 LD). Spamming Cleave/Great Cleave (if you have it)/Momentum Swing/Lay Waste with a high strength, you can keep anything in eN and eH on its butt most of the time, and on eE the massive DPS boost will keep you killing things while the +6 from Stealthy will keep your assassinate DCs high. Adrenaline provides a ridiculous damage boost (YES, it multiplies sneak attacks too :) and knocks things down for 10 seconds, no save. And Unbridled Fury... Well, you should give it a try =)

[fco-karatekid]

... just one 20 second burst every 2 minutes, it makes my Rogue feel broken....

This burst with a 2 minute cooldown sounds familiar...

[Tid12]

I'll have to respectfully disagree with you there. In the current implementation, I think the only reason anyone would take Shadowdancer is if they're running a Finesse build (a flavor build). The amount of pure DPS that Fury and Dreadnought offer is way outside of the scope of Shadowdancer's limited bonuses, even if they were functioning properly. My ideal assassin build's epic setup would be

1
Primal Scream x2
Strength x1
2
Injury x2 (stacks with Ravager!)
Strength x1
3
Ward x2 or Malicious Weapons x2 if THF
Strength x1
4
Sense Weakness x1
Overwhelming Force x3 (currently bugged)
5
Fury Eternal x1
Strength x1
6
Unbridled Fury x1
Strength x1

With three twists: Stealthy (tier 1 Shadowdancer), Momentum Swing (tier 2 LD), Lay Waste (tier 3 LD). Spamming Cleave/Great Cleave (if you have it)/Momentum Swing/Lay Waste with a high strength, you can keep anything in eN and eH on its butt most of the time, and on eE the massive DPS boost will keep you killing things while the +6 from Stealthy will keep your assassinate DCs high. Adrenaline provides a ridiculous damage boost (YES, it multiplies sneak attacks too :) and knocks things down for 10 seconds, no save. And Unbridled Fury... Well, you should give it a try =)

Taking all 6 stats in the Fury tree is such a waste. Where is tunnel vision? 1d12 dmg when you are raged (since you have Primal Scream to rage yourself)? Yes please.

[Isolani]

There doesn't seem to be much to discuss here, because all we have are some fuzzy complaints that certain characters used to be "invulnerable" and now they are squishy.

Until someone provides some numbers on what AC they had before that made them super hard to hit that is now paper mache, there's nothing to talk about. IMHO.

On my 13 rog/6 rng/1 mnk I got AC before the same way every other monk splash got AC.

10 base
10 dex bonus
5 wisdom bonus
5 combat expertise
8 armor
5 protection
2 tempest I
6 dodge AC (3+2+1), up to +10 dodge AC if you could work an icy raiment into your gear somehow
1 alchemical dodge
4 insight
2 shield wand
3 barkskin pot
4 ship buffs

That's 65-69 AC with just gear and buffs you can keep up pretty much constantly.

Then you still had shorter term buffs...+6 AC from uncanny dodge clicks, +2 from acrobat showtime, 1 from Haste, etc.

Start adding in buffs from other players (bard buffs, recitation, ranger bark, etc) and you could get to 80+ AC when you really didn't want to get hit.

That build is horrible now though. I wouldn't bother with any of the **** anymore. Just put on some light armor, a 20% blur item, and go hit monsters.

Edit: Forgot ship buffs, probably a few other things too...point is, it wasn't that hard to get a significant AC if you wanted it.

[xveganrox]

Taking all 6 stats in the Fury tree is such a waste. Where is tunnel vision? 1d12 dmg when you are raged (since you have Primal Scream to rage yourself)? Yes please.

Ooh, didn't realize Primal Scream counts as rage.. That opens up a lot more options :)

[Dagolar]

Okay. Perhaps not all rogues did. My rogues lost a considerable amount. One of them went from being able to solo amrath quests, and being able to outright tank those bosses, to having to run from just a couple of archers to heal up. Uncanny dodge was not necessary but it did help in some situations when things got out of hand.

My AC went from very useful to 'where is my AC'?

That has nothing to do with Uncanny Dodge, and everything to do with universal AC system changes, which affected ALL classes. :P