Suggestions for Assassin Revamp

[John_Rove]

A couple suggestions that me and a few friends came up with today for the Assassin Pass.
First 2 Are for Assassin Capstone, 3rd is A general change to the tree.



Reduce CD on Assassinate
Add a static DC bonus to Assassinate
Move Venomed blades to t1, and have the current poison strikes work as a modifier of it, ala touch of despair in NS

[Nuclear_Elvis]

I would like to see the top tier enhancement (upper right) for Knife specialization to include stackable +1 enchantment to all daggers (may be asking too much for that to apply to both daggers and Kukri). This could stack with +1 Enchant from Harper's -- then we'd see daggers finally getting some much-needed love in the game.

[redoubt]

Shadow Dancer: Executioner's Strike needs to use Dex or Int whichever is higher. (This matches the stats available within shadow dancer.)

Consider allowing "killer" to stack more times.

Consider adding more places to increase assassinate DC. Maybe in the sneak attack enhancements in the assassin tree or in the cores.

Make assassinate take place before ANY other affects/damage so it doesn't break the assassinate.

Make successful assassinates have a chance to not alert nearby mobs. I suggest a "crit success/fail" system like there is for traps. I.e.:
--Assume a mob with a 50 fort save. Mob rolls a 10, so total is 60.
--If the assassinate DC is 55 or less it is a crit fail and the mob is alerted and he calls his friends for help. You are pulled out of sneak.
--If the DC is 56-60, the mob has a WT F moment and starts looking for you. Nearby mobs get a spot and listen check against you. (vs hide and move silent.)
--If the DC is 61-65 the mob is a assassinated and nearby mobs get a spot and listen check to see if they noticed.
--If the DC is 66 or higher you crit succeed and its as if you killed it and leaned it against the wall like nothing ever happened. Noone know you are there... good job!

Consider a way for rogues (and maybe others) to open doors and pull levers without coming out of sneak or invis. Maybe use open lock or disable or hide/move silent...?

I'm sure i'll think of more. 8)

[doubledge]

Add more to the tier 5 enhancements: as is, if you're not a pure rogue, and you use ANY other type of two weapons besides kukiris or daggers, the assassin tree is completely useless to you.

I was planning on doing a splashed centered rogue 13/monk 1/ranger 6, but unfortunately... shortswords are not "supported".

Even if they just threw in a 2 AP +3d6 sneak attack into there, to top off the sneak attack chain, it'd be a huge step.

Maybe making the poison strikes do +1d6 poison damage PER DIFFERENT TYPE OF POISON YOU HAVE (eg, if you waste AP to get something other than heartseeker, you get a bonus to all types of the poisons) upon use would be nice too.

:edit Maybe make the cores NOT USELESS too? Throw on +1d6 sneak attack per two cores... INT or STR based assassins get less than no benefit from the first two cores. (Same goes for tempest.). Core 3 is garbage, and needs to have the DC increased, the animation removed, and core 4 is... bad.

My reccomendations is:

Core 1: Grants weapon finesse.
Core 2: Grants dex-to-hit with anything effected by weapon finesse. +1d6 sneak attack.
Core 3: Animation's gone, DC up
Core 4: When sneaking, gain +1 dodge for 6 seconds, stacks once per 2 seconds, up to 10 stacks. +1d6 sneak attack
Core 5: Same as is
Core 6: Same as is, but adds +2 dex.

[Qezuzu]

Merge Assassinate and Measure the foe. Give +2 base DC per rank of Assassinate (12, 14, 16.) Remove Shadowdancer's +6 assassinate, make it something else. Reduce Assassinate cooldown to 10s

Have Measure the Foe expire on a timer, not when you break stealth. Have Assassinate be usable whenever you have stacks of Measure the Foe, not just when you're in stealth.

Improve Envenomed Blades, make it a tree. e.g.
-Tier 2: 1d8 damage
-Tier 3: additional 1d10 damage, select one of: -2 Will Save, -2 Fort save, -2 Reflex save
-Tier 4: additional 1d12 damage, select one of: Insanity on crit (briefly attacks allies,) Petrification on crit, Knockdown on crit (these have saves which will scale to USEFUL LEVELS in epics)
-Tier 5: 4d6 STR or DEX or CON damage on vorpal or something

Put in some way to apply Improved Deception on any weapon you weild

Knife Specialization should apply to more light weapons, at least so long as you have Finesse or something

Lethality does an additional 500 damage/epic level to non-bosses.

Completely remake Mechanic

Reduce cooldowns in Acrobat

[Saekee]

Lots of discussion has been done before. Here is an interesting thread before Harper came out (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/447351-Shout-Out-To-All-The-Rogues): https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/447351-Shout-Out-To-All-The-Rogues. Nokowi and other talented rogue folks weighed in on their ideas there. The harper tree changed everything, making INT assassins much stronger. They still require expert playskills and specific gear. I feel that rogue is one of the most advanced classes to play in this game. Nokowi shows in his videos how effective the traps are with the mechanic tree trapping boost, for example; his web traps were holding EE mobs (uses 100% of disable device skill).

I suggested new class feats for rogues. This would give incentives for having more rogue levels. It is this post (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/447351-Shout-Out-To-All-The-Rogues?p=5412391&viewfull=1#post5412391) here. See also the feedback from the master assassins afterward. Here is the list:



Improved Precision: Precision feat now bypasses 40% fort
Insightful blade: int to damage with daggers, kukris and staves
Heartseeker: Your equipped weapon gains Heartseeker 1. Can be taken multiple times.
Improved assasinate: adds 4 to assasinate DC. Can be taken multiple times.
Ghost: You gain permanent 10% incorporeality. Stacks with all other sources
Detonater: +6 DC to traps, 10% trap setting speed. Can be taken multiple times
Faker: +4 UMD
Cunning: +2 sneak attack die. Can be taken multiple times
Rune arm juryrig: can use Rune arms, but only for imbues
shadow mirror: 6% doublestrike or doubleshot. Can be taken multple times
etc


The idea would be to make them hard to choose between, enhancing different builds

Rogue is my preferred class but I am so conscious of their strengths and weaknesses that I have been doing splashes (6 monk/7 wiz/7 rogue) or ninjas until I feel more confidant gear-wise.

Comments in Red below. These are my humble opinions from avoiding assassinate while loving stealth and other elements of roguishness.


A couple suggestions that me and a few friends came up with today for the Assassin Pass.
First 2 Are for Assassin Capstone, 3rd is A general change to the tree.



Reduce CD on Assassinate agreed
Add a static DC bonus to Assassinate overpowered IMHOP
Move Venomed blades to t1, and have the current poison strikes work as a modifier of it, ala touch of despair in NS nice idea, but keep in mind that people who splash rogue will benefit far more



I would like to see the top tier enhancement (upper right) for Knife specialization to include stackable +1 enchantment to all daggers (may be asking too much for that to apply to both daggers and Kukri). This could stack with +1 Enchant from Harper's -- then we'd see daggers finally getting some much-needed love in the game. Neat idea, not sure how essential--the killer enhancement is supposed to do something like that


Shadow Dancer: Executioner's Strike needs to use Dex or Int whichever is higher. (This matches the stats available within shadow dancer.)

Consider allowing "killer" to stack more times. nice idea

Consider adding more places to increase assassinate DC. Maybe in the sneak attack enhancements in the assassin tree or in the cores. I am not sure that is necessary. No need to make it more powerful simply because bard's CDG is stupidly OP and wrongly implemented

Make assassinate take place before ANY other affects/damage so it doesn't break the assassinate. This is an important bug fix--is it still an issue?

Make successful assassinates have a chance to not alert nearby mobs. I suggest a "crit success/fail" system like there is for traps. I.e.:
--Assume a mob with a 50 fort save. Mob rolls a 10, so total is 60.
--If the assassinate DC is 55 or less it is a crit fail and the mob is alerted and he calls his friends for help. You are pulled out of sneak.
--If the DC is 56-60, the mob has a WT F moment and starts looking for you. Nearby mobs get a spot and listen check against you. (vs hide and move silent.)
--If the DC is 61-65 the mob is a assassinated and nearby mobs get a spot and listen check to see if they noticed.
--If the DC is 66 or higher you crit succeed and its as if you killed it and leaned it against the wall like nothing ever happened. Noone know you are there... good job!

Consider a way for rogues (and maybe others) to open doors and pull levers without coming out of sneak or invis. Maybe use open lock or disable or hide/move silent...?

I'm sure i'll think of more. 8)
Really cool ideas. I would make it more simple--if the assassinate fails but is 'close' as in above numbers, have a 'dazed' effect like the SAP feat. Then you can try again by bluffing them...;) Definitely like the idea of a kill that is so flawless, you are a Hitman; they slump a little and you slip their helm over their eyes as if they are just a little tired. . .



Add more to the tier 5 enhancements: as is, if you're not a pure rogue, and you use ANY other type of two weapons besides kukiris or daggers, the assassin tree is completely useless to you. I disagree, that is overpowered and not in the spirit of assassins

I was planning on doing a splashed centered rogue 13/monk 1/ranger 6, but unfortunately... shortswords are not "supported". you can wield EMGs and use knife spec and still be centered. Good luck farming them though.

Even if they just threw in a 2 AP +3d6 sneak attack into there, to top off the sneak attack chain, it'd be a huge step. You get that with the capstone

Maybe making the poison strikes do +1d6 poison damage PER DIFFERENT TYPE OF POISON YOU HAVE (eg, if you waste AP to get something other than heartseeker, you get a bonus to all types of the poisons) upon use would be nice too. yes poisons need to be rethought

:edit Maybe make the cores NOT USELESS too? Throw on +1d6 sneak attack per two cores... INT or STR based assassins get less than no benefit from the first two cores. (Same goes for tempest.). Core 3 is garbage, and needs to have the DC increased, the animation removed, and core 4 is... bad.

My reccomendations is:

Core 1: Grants weapon finesse.
Core 2: Grants dex-to-hit with anything effected by weapon finesse. +1d6 sneak attack.
Core 3: Animation's gone, DC up
Core 4: When sneaking, gain +1 dodge for 6 seconds, stacks once per 2 seconds, up to 10 stacks. +1d6 sneak attack
Core 5: Same as is
Core 6: Same as is, but adds +2 dex. these are very good


Merge Assassinate and Measure the foe. Give +2 base DC per rank of Assassinate (12, 14, 16.) Remove Shadowdancer's +6 assassinate, make it something else. Reduce Assassinate cooldown to 10s that is a good idea

Have Measure the Foe expire on a timer, not when you break stealth. Have Assassinate be usable whenever you have stacks of Measure the Foe, not just when you're in stealth. interesting. Not sure what to make of this. Certainly if you are standing unnoticed, why not be able to kill?

Improve Envenomed Blades, make it a tree. e.g.
-Tier 2: 1d8 damage
-Tier 3: additional 1d10 damage, select one of: -2 Will Save, -2 Fort save, -2 Reflex save
-Tier 4: additional 1d12 damage, select one of: Insanity on crit (briefly attacks allies,) Petrification on crit, Knockdown on crit (these have saves which will scale to USEFUL LEVELS in epics)
-Tier 5: 4d6 STR or DEX or CON damage on vorpal or something very powerful. Too powerful? Not sure

Put in some way to apply Improved Deception on any weapon you weild Overpowered. That is why Harper has it as its Tier 5--makes you choose. Also note that Shadar-Kai get this if you go up their tree, so if you lack Improved deception gear you can go that route instead of grinding

Knife Specialization should apply to more light weapons, at least so long as you have Finesse or something no I really think this is too powerful

Lethality does an additional 500 damage/epic level to non-bosses. Whoa! Very powerful. Too powerful IMHP.

Completely remake Mechanic Just needs some way of speeding up the RoF of Great Crossbows; then it becomes a very fun flavor build. Otherwise, everyone will splash Arti, if not 14 Pally, with Xbows.

Reduce cooldowns in Acrobat

[redoubt]

I suggested new class feats for rogues. This would give incentives for having more rogue levels. It is this post (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/447351-Shout-Out-To-All-The-Rogues?p=5412391&viewfull=1#post5412391) here. See also the feedback from the master assassins afterward. Here is the list:



Improved Precision: Precision feat now bypasses 40% fort
Insightful blade: int to damage with daggers, kukris and staves
Heartseeker: Your equipped weapon gains Heartseeker 1. Can be taken multiple times.
Improved assasinate: adds 4 to assasinate DC. Can be taken multiple times.
Ghost: You gain permanent 10% incorporeality. Stacks with all other sources
Detonater: +6 DC to traps, 10% trap setting speed. Can be taken multiple times
Faker: +4 UMD
Cunning: +2 sneak attack die. Can be taken multiple times
Rune arm juryrig: can use Rune arms, but only for imbues
shadow mirror: 6% doublestrike or doubleshot. Can be taken multple times
etc


The idea would be to make them hard to choose between, enhancing different builds


I really like this idea. More feats is a good thing. My only caveat would be to make sure that a fighter or monk do not become a better assassin than a rogue. (via extra feat slots.) I think this could be covered by carefully typing the feats.

About Shadowdancer: While I think there should be a few more points of assassinate DC somewhere for rogues to pick up (probably in the assassin tree), I think we should be careful about taking it out of shadowdancer. I've met a few assassins that don't run in shadow dancer already and still have good DCs; I'm not saying I can replicate it or even understand how they pulled it off. The end result could be an assassin with EE assassinate DCs that can run in LD or DC; I think we would have to evaluate this carefully as it may be overpowered. Similar to a DC caster needing to stay in a caster tree, we may want assassins to stay in an assassin tree. Thoughts?

About assassinate:

This reminded me.

They need to make it either a tactical skill OR drop more items with bonus to assasinate and with higher values. The other tacticals get items with up +15? Assassinate gets +4? ah...?

I get that instakill DC cannot be as high because those are not insta-kill (other than the helpless damage makes them pretty much insta-kill, but technically they are not). So on a sorc life i'm doing right now, I'm wearing a necklace with min level 15 that gives +4 to evocation. The first item with bonus to assasinate is shadar-kai only item for +2 at level 15. Next item is the EPIC Midnight Greetings at level 20 for +2. Then the necklace at level 28 for +4. Even the casters can get +6 at level 26 on a tier2 thunderforged weapon.

I can see reason to allow rogues to get a higher DC than casters due to the cooldown and the requirement to actually sneak up on the target. Failure of the first try for a caster means throughing a different insta-kill and then maybe a mez of some sort if that also fails. For an assassin, failing the attempt means entering melee combat immediately and rogue are squishy and that junk hurts on EE.


Fix Assassinate aggro. (How about a tiered Enhancement to auto-stealth after a successful assassination?)
Fix TWF range to be equal to SWF and S&B range.
Make more abilities stances/passives.


I only play max-Int assassin (DC 74 as of U22) so my comments pertain mostly to that style of assassin. I have solo'd many EE quests (EE Trackers Trap most recently) with this build (in Shadowdancer ED), so I know for a fact that Int build was a viable option prior to U23.

Changes needed for Int build:
1. Fix U22 agro (I've been using epic roderics wand to assassinate without getting auto-agro)
2. Make hitting the assassinate button always give you a chance at assassinate (It doesn't on EE about 10% of the time)
3. Higher DC item ONLY AT MAX LEVEL (level 28 or level 30 gear) to handle high DC of new content. I did ~50 epic lives and DC's are fine on EE quests while leveling, even out of destiny.

For U23, I plan on spending 40+ points in the assassin tree and taking through tier 4 of the new Harper Tree while dumping my mechanic and acrobat trees. I have mixed feelings about this Tree. (I would rather have stealth back)

Any updates Nokowi? I did just pull the assassinate necklace and this idea would nullify it, but what about letting TF weapons have +6 assassinate like DC casters can get? As I said in my quote above, DC casting is far easier and safer than assassinate, but it gets much better boosts to its DCs than assassinate does.

[SirValentine]

Add a static DC bonus to Assassinate



Why? Rogues can already hit higher instakill DCs than casters can, and without needing to use SP to do it.

[DarthCaedus]

Shadow Dancer: Executioner's Strike needs to use Dex or Int whichever is higher. (This matches the stats available within shadow dancer.)

Make successful assassinates have a chance to not alert nearby mobs. I suggest a "crit success/fail" system like there is for traps.

Consider a way for rogues (and maybe others) to open doors and pull levers without coming out of sneak or invis. Maybe use open lock or disable or hide/move silent...?

I'm sure i'll think of more. 8)

This

more fast sneaking options + more stealth options would be most welcome.

[DarthCaedus]

Why? Rogues can already hit higher instakill DCs than casters can, and without needing to use SP to do it.

You can't really compare the combo of wail of the banshee + power word kill + finger of death with assassinate. PM wins every time on that argument.

You should really compare assassinate with bard coup.

[redoubt]

You can't really compare the combo of wail of the banshee + power word kill + finger of death with assassinate. PM wins every time on that argument.

You should really compare assassinate with bard coup.

Which doesn't require stealth nor spending 10 seconds not killing while your DC charges up.

[SirValentine]

You can't really compare the combo of wail of the banshee + power word kill + finger of death with assassinate.


Sure I can.



You should really compare assassinate with bard coup.


This thread's about Assassin, and I was specifically commenting on the suggestion that they need more DC. I didn't really feel the derail it with a tirade about how stupid I feel Coup is. If you'd like to make the comparison, go ahead. Personally, not interested.

[CThruTheEgo]

About Shadowdancer: While I think there should be a few more points of assassinate DC somewhere for rogues to pick up (probably in the assassin tree), I think we should be careful about taking it out of shadowdancer. I've met a few assassins that don't run in shadow dancer already and still have good DCs; I'm not saying I can replicate it or even understand how they pulled it off. The end result could be an assassin with EE assassinate DCs that can run in LD or DC; I think we would have to evaluate this carefully as it may be overpowered. Similar to a DC caster needing to stay in a caster tree, we may want assassins to stay in an assassin tree. Thoughts?

I agree. Keep the DCs in shadowdancer to make it the assassinate tree. With a 69/74 DC (without/with measure the foe), I can assassinate with roughly an 80-90% success rate in EE Stormhorns, which is still where you'll find the highest fort saves. Everywhere else it's 100%. So the option to run in a different destiny is already there if you don't mind having a weak assassinate in 1 quest chain. Personally, I don't think assassins need a boost to assassinate DC because it's already possible to get it to nearly 100% in all content. It does require gear, but it should imo.

Coup de grace is the only easy button instakill because it doesn't require gear, and only minimal building for, to get it to 100% successful. But this should not be the baseline for comparison imo.


DC casting is far easier and safer than assassinate, but it gets much better boosts to its DCs than assassinate does.

I'm not so sure about that. How easy is it for PMs to get a 74 DC nowadays? Not too long ago, assassins were able to get a higher DC than a caster, but I don't know if that is still the case or not. If you want to build for spell pen also, then it's definitely more work for a PM.

[redoubt]

I'm not so sure about that. How easy is it for PMs to get a 74 DC nowadays? Not too long ago, assassins were able to get a higher DC than a caster, but I don't know if that is still the case or not. If you want to build for spell pen also, then it's definitely more work for a PM.

The ease and safety I was referring to comes from being able to cast spells at range and having more than one option. My current PM is enchant/necro focused. I can throw circle of death, then mass hold to catch the ones that the circle missed. If any get past that I can hit them with FOD. All of this happens before they get into melee range with me. Lastly I can drop Wail and kill anything that closes on me. If I'm really worried (which is rare) I can prepare the battlefield; mind fog and disco then step up just past it and start the casting chain I mentioned above, then retreat into the disco&fog if the mobs are still coming. Then I can also fall back on enervate and a second FOD by then. And this is all just staying in my two best DCs.

By comparison a rogue, must sneak (thus going slower) and must get into melee range just be able to use the attack. It is also the only attack, if it misses the rogue is in melee combat. Yes, there is SAP and running away, but these are not conditions a DC caster ever subjects themselves too.

I hope that makes my comparison more clear.

On getting high DCs: I've never though the DCs posted here on the forums were easy to achieve (not for a caster and not for an assassin.) I have also long been against making the "standard by which DCs are measured," the ones found posted here by multi-completionist with every piece of gear. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the work you have put in and I read your posts on the subject and strive to improve my builds using the things you (and those like you) post, but I've never considered those DCs to be realistic. (As an example, my enchant/necro PM with 2 rogue levels has a 65 enchant DC when I have magister bent that way. At present he is set up for MOD and has 57 Trans, 55 necro and 59 enchant (from memory.)

My experience has been that a good player with good gear is often going to be 10 or more DC behind the optimum builds found on the forums. (Sadly my wizard does not have as much INT as your rogue does.) I don't run Yugo or store pots (I noticed they are not listed in your build either) and epic litany is still very high end and difficult to get. (Yes you can get it on a 20th list, but unless you run with the right guild or very late night with the Chinese, getting to 20 runs is very difficult.) Same for a "mythic" item. So again, I'm not saying any of it is impossible, just that it should not be considered the standard or the average. It should be recognized for what it is: the best. (And I don't thing the game should be balanced against the best, but something a little below that which will apply to a larger % of the population in game.)

All this combined is why I've been pushing for the addition of a few (not a lot) more DC points to be made available to assassins.

[bsquishwizzy]

I haven't pulled out my Assassin in a long time. is this one of those "I can't assassinate mobs in EE" type issues, or are people trying to Keep Up with the Jonses because Bards and Paladins now rule the roost?

I was having next to no problems with my Assassin in Heroic (second or third life) - and I run Elite exclusively - and I don't recall him being all that gimp in EH content. So, I'm having a hard time understanding why we need an "assassin pass. As far as I'm concerned, their DPS in general is really good if you equip them properly.

If it's an EE issue, then that's something that probably should be addressed in the EDs, not the Assassin tree.

[CThruTheEgo]

The ease and safety I was referring to comes from being able to cast spells at range and having more than one option. My current PM is enchant/necro focused. I can throw circle of death, then mass hold to catch the ones that the circle missed. If any get past that I can hit them with FOD. All of this happens before they get into melee range with me. Lastly I can drop Wail and kill anything that closes on me. If I'm really worried (which is rare) I can prepare the battlefield; mind fog and disco then step up just past it and start the casting chain I mentioned above, then retreat into the disco&fog if the mobs are still coming. Then I can also fall back on enervate and a second FOD by then. And this is all just staying in my two best DCs.

By comparison a rogue, must sneak (thus going slower) and must get into melee range just be able to use the attack. It is also the only attack, if it misses the rogue is in melee combat. Yes, there is SAP and running away, but these are not conditions a DC caster ever subjects themselves too.

I hope that makes my comparison more clear.

Point taken.


On getting high DCs: I've never though the DCs posted here on the forums were easy to achieve (not for a caster and not for an assassin.) I have also long been against making the "standard by which DCs are measured," the ones found posted here by multi-completionist with every piece of gear. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the work you have put in and I read your posts on the subject and strive to improve my builds using the things you (and those like you) post, but I've never considered those DCs to be realistic. (As an example, my enchant/necro PM with 2 rogue levels has a 65 enchant DC when I have magister bent that way. At present he is set up for MOD and has 57 Trans, 55 necro and 59 enchant (from memory.)

My experience has been that a good player with good gear is often going to be 10 or more DC behind the optimum builds found on the forums. (Sadly my wizard does not have as much INT as your rogue does.) I don't run Yugo or store pots (I noticed they are not listed in your build either) and epic litany is still very high end and difficult to get. (Yes you can get it on a 20th list, but unless you run with the right guild or very late night with the Chinese, getting to 20 runs is very difficult.) Same for a "mythic" item. So again, I'm not saying any of it is impossible, just that it should not be considered the standard or the average. It should be recognized for what it is: the best. (And I don't thing the game should be balanced against the best, but something a little below that which will apply to a larger % of the population in game.)

All this combined is why I've been pushing for the addition of a few (not a lot) more DC points to be made available to assassins.

I wouldn't say this stuff is standard or average. It's min/maxing, which is not necessary for 90% of content. It's only 1 chain where a 69/74 DC is needed to be effective. You could easily drop 10 DCs and still have a near no-fail assassinate in 80-90% of the game's content. You'd probably have trouble in EE Wheloon and I wouldn't even bother using assassinate in EE Stormhorns. Personally, I don't see much of a problem with having the most difficult content requiring a great deal of specialization. Don't get me wrong, if they add some DCs I'm certainly not going to be upset about it or cry easy button. It would definitely open up some build options.

I see what you're saying, but I'd argue that the gear is easier to get now than it ever has been. Epic Fanged Gloves and the beholder ring (don't recall the exact name atm) with int 11 can both be farmed from the epic necro IV chain reward on epic casual. Insightful int 3 is definitely one of the more difficult to find items, although we do have more options for that now as well.

Regarding the mythic helm, it's only 2 DCs above the epic version. There are currently 4 sources of assassinate DC on gear. 2 of those offer +4, both of which I would agree are not easy to obtain. Dark Diversion pretty much requires 20 completions of a raid that is no longer run and the Mythic helm is purely a luck grindfest. We used to have only 1 option though (Epic Midnight Greetings), which was/is arguably no easier to obtain than the 2 +4 options. The Epic helm, however, is very easy to acquire.

And I agree that it's easier to farm MoD with a good guild, but at least on Sarlona I see pugs for it a few times a week, so that's still accessible to those who want to make the effort.

You can also find int 10 on lootgen very easily. So overall, gear is much easier to acquire now than it used to be. If anything, I'd argue that a high end DC is more accessible to the average player than it used to be because of the accessibility of gear.

Also, I do have Yugo pots listed in the int breakdown, but I don't use store pots. Yugo pots are still within a reasonable reach imo, they just require a little work and persistence.

[John_Rove]

I haven't pulled out my Assassin in a long time.
Depending on when you last played your assassin, that may affect the validity of your future points.



I was having next to no problems with my Assassin in Heroic (second or third life) - and I run Elite exclusively - and I don't recall him being all that gimp in EH content.
That is why I suggested the DC boost be in the capstone, so that you cannot get it until Epic Levels. As for EH, I am glad that you are able to effectively play a difficulty that is barely higher than EN. (A discussion for another time).



So, I'm having a hard time understanding why we need an "assassin pass. As far as I'm concerned, their DPS in general is really good if you equip them properly.

The Assassin pass should be part of the Rogue Pass. And the reason it is needed is lack of proper scaling of enhancements to Epic levels or in the case of Other Rogue Trees (Notably Mechanic) a need for them to be re-imagined to be useful especially since the introduction of the Harper Tree.



If it's an EE issue, then that's something that probably should be addressed in the EDs, not the Assassin tree.
I completely disagree with this. By tying it to EDs you limit Assassins to either using a specific ED or having a twist just to be effective at what they are made to do.

[CThruTheEgo]

I haven't pulled out my Assassin in a long time. is this one of those "I can't assassinate mobs in EE" type issues, or are people trying to Keep Up with the Jonses because Bards and Paladins now rule the roost?

I was having next to no problems with my Assassin in Heroic (second or third life) - and I run Elite exclusively - and I don't recall him being all that gimp in EH content. So, I'm having a hard time understanding why we need an "assassin pass. As far as I'm concerned, their DPS in general is really good if you equip them properly.

If it's an EE issue, then that's something that probably should be addressed in the EDs, not the Assassin tree.

I also don't have a problem with how assassins are currently implemented. I think they're stronger than ever. But I think the problem others have is there is very little flexibility in build options. It's true that high end assassin builds are essentially cookie-cutter builds with little wiggle room or variation between them. Compared to newer classes/trees that allow for a lot of variety, assassins are pretty far behind in this regard. Building to their strengths gets you a very powerful character, but there are nearly no options for variety or multiclassing. Personally, I don't have a problem with it being this way, but I can understand wanting more options.

[bsquishwizzy]

Depending on when you last played your assassin, that may affect the validity of your future points.

(Rolls eyes)

Probably about 2 – 3 months ago.


That is why I suggested the DC boost be in the capstone, so that you cannot get it until Epic Levels. As for EH, I am glad that you are able to effectively play a difficulty that is barely higher than EN. (A discussion for another time).

Last time I checked, there were few, if any problems with Assassinate in EH. In EE, people are bleeding out their eyeballs in outrage over DCs across the board. So targeting Assassins for a “boost” is not the answer for this. Your best bet is reworking Shadowdancer.


The Assassin pass should be part of the Rogue Pass. And the reason it is needed is lack of proper scaling of enhancements to Epic levels or in the case of Other Rogue Trees (Notably Mechanic) a need for them to be re-imagined to be useful especially since the introduction of the Harper Tree.

No class, as far as I am aware, scales enhacements to Epic levels.

And no, the trees absolutely do NOT need to be re-imagined. The amount of SA damage that rogues do, on average, is utterly insane. Acrobats are exceptionally strong melee builds, as far as I am aware. And Assassins are a de-facto easy button for melee damage. You just can’t play them like you do every other toon: run up and start smacking stuff.

The only thing that may be off with Mechanic is that regular XBows suck, and traps have needed a re-work for some time now. It’s been a long-standing issue.


I completely disagree with this. By tying it to EDs you limit Assassins to either using a specific ED or having a twist just to be effective at what they are made to do.

You should not be relying on the heroic capstone to be uber in EE content. Likewise, if I have a wizard, I sure as heck am not going to rely on an ED in the divine sphere for my casting stats. That’s just dumb. I’m either going to go Draconic or (ha ha) Magister. Sharardi casters are an unintended consequence of how the trees were laid out and how EE ended up being.

Likewise, a rogue is going to look for one or two distinct EDs as their best destinies. You want to twist in Cocoon, knock yourself out. But relying on a non-rogue-oriented for your top-tier needs is not a recipe for success, in my opinion. You can call it limiting, but that’s what distinguishes on ED from another.

Once again – is this “need” coming from Assassinate DCs in EE content, or “keeping Up with the Jonses” when it comes to being competitive with Bards and Pallys?

[bsquishwizzy]

I also don't have a problem with how assassins are currently implemented. I think they're stronger than ever. But I think the problem others have is there is very little flexibility in build options. It's true that high end assassin builds are essentially cookie-cutter builds with little wiggle room or variation between them. Compared to newer classes/trees that allow for a lot of variety, assassins are pretty far behind in this regard. Building to their strengths gets you a very powerful character, but there are nearly no options for variety or multiclassing. Personally, I don't have a problem with it being this way, but I can understand wanting more options.

Yeah, but look at other side of the coin here – you want non-pure rogues pulling off Assassinate with about as much effectiveness as pures? Which, when you open that door, that’s the first thing people are going to go for.

Given the undue benefits of splashing rogue – evasion, trapping, and so on – I think keeping the trees pretty narrow is not a bad idea.

“Bleed Them Out” is sorta “meh.” I could see bumping that. I have yet to be able to get any effective use out of “Shiv” or “Assassins Trick” (Bluff, in my opinion, is better for a variety of reasons). Those I could see being revised a tad. You can debate the value of Killer – I don’t see a need for it to be bumped. The poisons have debatable use – I’ve used them from time-to-time, and they are effective in heroic. As for the rest, I don’t see much of a need to change things, honestly.

[Saekee]

. . .We used to have only 1 option though (Epic Midnight Greetings), which was/is arguably no easier to obtain than the 2 +4 options. The Epic helm, however, is very easy to acquire. I have run a TON of Tide Turns at all difficulties. So far I have one EMG, so yeah--grindy...I also have just about all the other s/s/sgear from Sentinels earned in the process (wonderfully useful...). For those reading this, check out the guide in my signature for doing Tide Turns on EE to help you farm it.


Yeah, but look at other side of the coin here – you want non-pure rogues pulling off Assassinate with about as much effectiveness as pures? Which, when you open that door, that’s the first thing people are going to go for.

Given the undue benefits of splashing rogue – evasion, trapping, and so on – I think keeping the trees pretty narrow is not a bad idea.

This is why I suggest we revamp the class feats (see earlier post). Those are only available to rogues at the higher levels. So yeah, someone could splash, but they would miss out on them.

[CThruTheEgo]

Yeah, but look at other side of the coin here – you want non-pure rogues pulling off Assassinate with about as much effectiveness as pures? Which, when you open that door, that’s the first thing people are going to go for.

This is why I tend to agree. Swashbuckler is a perfectly good example of this gone completely wrong.

[Chai]

Yeah, but look at other side of the coin here – you want non-pure rogues pulling off Assassinate with about as much effectiveness as pures? Which, when you open that door, that’s the first thing people are going to go for.

Given the undue benefits of splashing rogue – evasion, trapping, and so on – I think keeping the trees pretty narrow is not a bad idea.

“Bleed Them Out” is sorta “meh.” I could see bumping that. I have yet to be able to get any effective use out of “Shiv” or “Assassins Trick” (Bluff, in my opinion, is better for a variety of reasons). Those I could see being revised a tad. You can debate the value of Killer – I don’t see a need for it to be bumped. The poisons have debatable use – I’ve used them from time-to-time, and they are effective in heroic. As for the rest, I don’t see much of a need to change things, honestly.

Id put a T5 ability in assassin that allows players to add +1/2/3 to their rogue level for assassinate DC, capped at 20. This would allow 3 level splashes to spend AP to get their DC back up to what a pure would be.

[Qezuzu]

Improve Envenomed Blades, make it a tree. e.g.
-Tier 2: 1d8 damage
-Tier 3: additional 1d10 damage, select one of: -2 Will Save, -2 Fort save, -2 Reflex save
-Tier 4: additional 1d12 damage, select one of: Insanity on crit (briefly attacks allies,) Petrification on crit, Knockdown on crit (these have saves which will scale to USEFUL LEVELS in epics)
-Tier 5: 4d6 STR or DEX or CON damage on vorpal or something very powerful. Too powerful? Not sure

Put in some way to apply Improved Deception on any weapon you weild Overpowered. That is why Harper has it as its Tier 5--makes you choose. Also note that Shadar-Kai get this if you go up their tree, so if you lack Improved deception gear you can go that route instead of grinding

Knife Specialization should apply to more light weapons, at least so long as you have Finesse or something no I really think this is too powerful

Lethality does an additional 500 damage/epic level to non-bosses. Whoa! Very powerful. Too powerful IMHP.

Completely remake Mechanic Just needs some way of speeding up the RoF of Great Crossbows; then it becomes a very fun flavor build. Otherwise, everyone will splash Arti, if not 14 Pally, with Xbows.

The effects of the poison were just an example. Ideally I'd want to see Damage/additional damage, debuff/additional damage, CC effect/useful level of stat damage.

Taking T5 in the Harper tree means you can't take Assassinate. Choosing between Assassinate or inherent Improved Deception is a no brainer decision, if you're using the Assassin tree it's ultimately for Assassinate. A T5 Harper enhancement is a complete non-solution. You can't take 41 AP, get INT-to-damage from Harper, get the bare necessities from Mechanic (Improved Traps III) and the bare necessities in Acrobat (Haste Boost III) to have enough left over to invest even more than a couple points in the racial tree, let alone sixteen points; it also requires using a single, P2P race. Making choices in building is fine but the current sources of inherent Improved Deception are completely inaccessible to Assassins, and one of the biggest issues with Rogue is the limited choice of weapons. The gap of power, utility and solo-ability between an Assassin with Agony and one without is simply huge, it and eMG are the *only* viable Improved Deception weapons and neither of them are terribly easy to get. Oh, and for Acrobats (as well as Mechanics which may or may not be made viable again,) there are no weapons available that enable sneak attacks (though I think there's a staff or two that causes knockdown and maybe helpless but I'm not sure.)

Knife Specialization applying to more light/finessable weapons isn't that OP... considering that you can get that for three levels of Bard. Swashbuckler has the same +1 mult/range on Daggers and +1 mult on Kukris, in addition to basically every other weapon. 15-20/x3 is already quite a good profile, is it too much to ask to have a similar profile for other classes of weapons instead of making every Assassin use daggers/kukris?

Again, numbers can be tweaked. A vorpal sneak attack from such a high level Assassin (18) should be devastating, it WAS when vorpal was instant death but it's now far less useful than a lvl18 core should be. And note that this is a lvl18 core; most of the best multi-class options are unavailable at this point.

To make Great Crossbows viable, you'd have to increase their rate of fire by... a lot. Just stick with repeaters.

[slarden]

Assassins are basically flavor builds in the current game. They get the party 30% trap bonus, can kill a dangerous champion usually and have great boss dps. They work fine in a party and assassinate dc is not the issue rogues have. The current game favors high prr/mrr and rogues don't have it. Improved evasion negates almost all magic damage, but some of the biggest source of magic damage in EE is not evadable, e.g., disintegrates from liches.

Bard has easy access to medium armor, displacement and easy dodge.

Sneak should be a better form of defense for rogues and there should be more opportunities to not break sneak, e.g., 20 second attack while remaining in sneak. There should also be bluff bonuses to scale to ee bluff requirements like tanks get intim bonuses.

[Qezuzu]

I agree. Keep the DCs in shadowdancer to make it the assassinate tree. With a 69/74 DC (without/with measure the foe), I can assassinate with roughly an 80-90% success rate in EE Stormhorns, which is still where you'll find the highest fort saves. Everywhere else it's 100%. So the option to run in a different destiny is already there if you don't mind having a weak assassinate in 1 quest chain. Personally, I don't think assassins need a boost to assassinate DC because it's already possible to get it to nearly 100% in all content. It does require gear, but it should imo.


About Shadowdancer: While I think there should be a few more points of assassinate DC somewhere for rogues to pick up (probably in the assassin tree), I think we should be careful about taking it out of shadowdancer. I've met a few assassins that don't run in shadow dancer already and still have good DCs; I'm not saying I can replicate it or even understand how they pulled it off. The end result could be an assassin with EE assassinate DCs that can run in LD or DC; I think we would have to evaluate this carefully as it may be overpowered. Similar to a DC caster needing to stay in a caster tree, we may want assassins to stay in an assassin tree. Thoughts?

If you want Shadowdancer to be the Assassin tree then make it no so terrible. I'd rather burn two Twist slots (instead of just one) than use that garbage. The only actual appeal of Shadowdancer is 1. Stealthy (can be twisted) 2. Meld into Darkness (can be twisted) and 3. Shadow Manipulation. Everything else is just sort of nice to have or convenient (Shadow Form, inherent DDoor,) useless (Pierce the Gloom,) poorly designed (Executioner's Strike,) bafflingly awful (Dark Imbuement,) or just buggy as sin (Consume.)

As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to use Shadowcancer is flavor or for the handful of quests where Shadow Manipulation is really useful. Dreadnought and Crusader are better in every other area.


No class, as far as I am aware, scales enhacements to Epic levels.

Some of the new Barbarian enhancements do.


You just can’t play them like you do every other toon: run up and start smacking stuff.

Lol, do you think everyone here just doesn't know how to get sneak attacks? Rogue DPS isn't terrible but it's still pretty mediocre. My own Rogue can only just break 2k DPS, and this is while using Haste+Damage boost and a full stack of Blitz. I know of several builds that can get 3k and beyond.


The only thing that may be off with Mechanic is that regular XBows suck, and traps have needed a re-work for some time now. It’s been a long-standing issue.

Almost every enhancement in the mechanic tree is either outright useless (+1 crit range on great crossbows as lvl18 core) or an extremely marginal bonus (+10% doubleshot, when repeaters get reduced benefit.) The entire tree needs to be remade, Turbine should honestly be embarrassed that an example of such terrible design has persisted for so long.


You should not be relying on the heroic capstone to be uber in EE content. Likewise, if I have a wizard, I sure as heck am not going to rely on an ED in the divine sphere for my casting stats. That’s just dumb. I’m either going to go Draconic or (ha ha) Magister. Sharardi casters are an unintended consequence of how the trees were laid out and how EE ended up being.

The caster trees offer a lot more to a caster than Shadowdancer does to an Assassin. Multiple abilities in Shadowdancer would have to completely reworked or replaced for a Shadowdancer Assassin to be even approach the level of a Draconic Sorcerer, or even a Dreadnought Fighter.


Once again – is this “need” coming from Assassinate DCs in EE content, or “keeping Up with the Jonses” when it comes to being competitive with Bards and Pallys?

Bards and Pallys? Rogues have a bunch of fundamental flaws that need to be addressed, beyond simply liking the class there's no reason to actually use it. They still lag behind other classes in basically every area.

They are less survivable than Paladins, Fighters, Bards, Barbarians, every class that can kite, and of course every class with innate self-heals. Even monks are harder to kill due to more HP and enhancement-granted PRR. You need to multiclass or burn feats to use heavy armor. There are no rogue enhancements that improve dodge cap or grant PRR, or general saves (you can get saves vs. poison and traps lol.) The only perk is Improved Uncanny Dodge which is only active 25% of the time.

They have no AoE DPS. Cleaves are too expensive unless you multiclass in fighter. Remember when I mentioned that Rogues have mediocre damage? The problem is much greater when you're comparing it to a build that spams cleave against groups of enemies.
-Paladins get cleaves from enhancements.
-Barbs get cleaves from enhancements
-Fighters have tons of feats meaning cleaves are easy to get
-Rangers have Dance of Death
-Casters get AoE spells and archers get IPS

Assassinate is mechanically inferior to almost every other insta-kill ability.
-ANY multiclassing lowers its DC. This means no Bladeforged (not like you can get Reconstruct because INT-to-dmg+Assassin tree take up everything.) One level in any other class lowers it by 2. Two lowers it by 3. Wizards can use an 18/2 build and only lose 1 DC on their Necro spells. Coup-De-Grace gets d20+Perform with only 5 Bard levels.
-You need to be in a stance. A stance that breaks when you are hit. Or missed. If some archer over yonder is targeting you, or if you get hit by something cleaving a party member, you fail your Assassinate (I know how to avoid this, point is that it's a mechanical flaw.) The stance also lowers your speed, so you can't reliably Assassinate stuff that is moving away from you. Other insta-kill abilities do not have a "penalty" as large as this, you just press it and it works. Especially helpful when you're soloing.
-Double Assassinate only works with TWF, meaning SWF and THF are not good options
-You need to crouch for ten seconds to get +5 DC. You need to either be in a horrible Destiny or burn a Twist slot to get another +6. Without either of these things, the highest a reasonable (so no store or alchemical pots or INT twists) DC can reach is, IIRC, 63: this is with 20 rogue levels, as a Drow, full investment in INT, 6x INT from a Destiny, a Mythic item (Muffled Veneer) or a Raid item (Dark Diversion,) +11 INT item, +3 ins. INT, tome... everything.
-15 sec cooldown but it kills two. That's good at least.

The mechanics of Assassinate mean it takes a lot of finesse. You could say it has a high skill cap. Problem is, other insta-kill abilities have a very low skill cap and easily outperform Assassinate.

Dependance on Sneak Attacks means an Improved Deception weapon is necessary. There are two of them (that are good): one is from CitW (which is dead) and the other is an epic item (have fun with the epic mat roulette.) Rogues depending on contextual damage is not the biggest issue, the problem goes away entirely with ID weapons but the issue is that ID weapons are a necessity, which greatly reduces the number of weapons a Rogue would use. Oh and there are zero ID staffs or repeaters

Since you're not STR-based, you can't use Trip or Stunning Blow effectively (of course there wasn't room to take SB in the first place.) Rogue's only form of good CC is Web Traps, which are AWESOME but only because they're not working as intended. Oh and they don't work on some terrain because reasons, and most parties won't wait for you to set them up except in very difficult areas or shortmanning. Their DC may be impossibly high but, compared to the actual spell it takes so long to "cast" and has a much longer cooldown.

The Mechanic tree hahahahahaha

[draven1]

Things I want to see in rogue pass :

1. Crittable sneak attacks
2. Significant Cool-down reduction for most active skills
3. Complete renovation for shadowdancer ED, shadar-kai race
4. Int or dex based tactical movement(trip, daze, stun) when sneak attack
5. Poison attacks for tactical uses & higher DC
6. More Trap making & practical usefulness(especially for grenades)
7. More swiftness(movement speed)
8. Rendering helpless on tripped mob for acrobat
9. Applying melee power for fixed dmg skills like 'Excute' & adding to normal dmg, not replacing it
10. Reducing animations for 'Assassin's trick'
12. Allowing to assassinate undead & constuct when you use 'assassin's trick'
13. More assassination DC gear & raised DC(casters got +12 DC from gears, but, assassins have just +4 DC)
14. The way endure incomming damage when you are hiding(A single arrow that deals damage 1 can cancel hiding, even if it just missed or dodged)
15. Changing 'Assassin's trick' to a buff, not to target granting skill or shorten its cooltime to 6 sec

[redoubt]

Q, I'm in agreement on why assassinate is weaker than DC casters.

I do like that knife spec is knife spec. There are other ways to get crit bonuses in other classes. Knives are the assassin "thing" for lack of a better word. If it is too weak, then I'd rather see it be more powerful for knives, rather than make it apply to more weapon types. I don't know if this would be in the form of additional crit bonus or just +x stacking enhancement to knives.

I agree that Shadow Dancer could use some buffing. I actually had an INT based assassin (based on CThru's build) that I used to fill in Divine Crusader when it came out. My contribution to the group was better in 99% of the cases in DC than SD. I never went back to SD. I just gave up on assassinates.

[draven1]

Why? Rogues can already hit higher instakill DCs than casters can, and without needing to use SP to do it.

What if your cleric can use ONLY 1 insta-kill, not AOE multi-instakill, must be in melee range, dont have aggro, should be in sneak, can be canceled by just 1 arrow, melee hit, should wait 10 sec to raise DC + 15 sec cooltime itself to land just 1 instakill and can't instakill undeads & construct?

And, arcane & divines can have higher DCs now.
They can just kill anything in sight very easily & quickly with multiple single instakill, AOE instakill & can't be canceled because instakill spells can be quickened.
They even can instakill undeads & constructs.

That's why it's hard to find end game power-gamer rogue. Assassins SHOULD have better DC than arcane & divines because it's FAR MORE hard to play properly.
I have both endgame arcane & divine, and they are just semi-parked because it was too easy, game-breaking easy for most contents.

And, Shrines are enough for most quests, SP pots are not rare anymore. SP consumption isn't issue unless you would handle EE bosses by yourself or try to kill literally every single mob in quest even in full 6 man group.
Even some builds virtually have infinite SP, too.

[CThruTheEgo]

+10% doubleshot, when repeaters get reduced benefit.

This is incorrect. Testing has shown (http://ddowiki.com/page/Talk:Doubleshot) that repeaters receive full benefit from doubleshot, even though devs have stated otherwise (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/421405-Epic-Feats-Levels-26-28?p=5066196&viewfull=1#post5066196).

I won't bother picking apart the rest of your post because it's all been said and done before, and it all comes down to this anyway – you either like assassins enough to be able to make them work, or you don't.

[Qezuzu]

you either like assassins enough to be able to make them work, or you don't.

I've only played an Assassin for quite a long time now, I'm pretty sure I know how to make them work. I'm not trying to brag, but as far as I can tell I've pushed non-Acrobat rogue as far as it can go.

We already know that a Rogue pass is happening so we might as well highlight the problems they have and suggest solutions.

-lowest defenses
-no AoE damage
-assassinate requires intensive investment, and is difficult to use at max capacity (one attempt every 15 seconds) unlike other sources of insta-kill
-very limited weapon choice
-only form of CC is technically an exploit
-everything about mechanic tree
-doesn't have the DPS to make up for it

What here can you "pick apart"?

[Ayseifn]

This is incorrect. Testing has shown (http://ddowiki.com/page/Talk:Doubleshot) that repeaters receive full benefit from doubleshot, even though devs have stated otherwise (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/421405-Epic-Feats-Levels-26-28?p=5066196&viewfull=1#post5066196).

I won't bother picking apart the rest of your post because it's all been said and done before, and it all comes down to this anyway – you either like assassins enough to be able to make them work, or you don't.

I liked assassins before the enhancement pass but not at all since, it's not at all about power creep of other classes just the change in direction that assassin took. Assassinate used to be optional, you could got str/dex/int based if you wanted and weapon choice was open to almost anything. Now it's daggers, max int, mostly pure, boring.


I've only played an Assassin for quite a long time now, I'm pretty sure I know how to make them work. I'm not trying to brag, but as far as I can tell I've pushed non-Acrobat rogue as far as it can go.

We already know that a Rogue pass is happening so we might as well highlight the problems they have and suggest solutions.

-lowest defenses
-no AoE damage
-assassinate requires intensive investment, and is difficult to use at max capacity (one attempt every 15 seconds) unlike other sources of insta-kill
-very limited weapon choice
-only form of CC is technically an exploit
-everything about mechanic tree
-doesn't have the DPS to make up for it

What here can you "pick apart"?

1: Yep, they've always had the worst defence and I'm kind of ok with that. Seems too far behind barb though, if a 700-900 HP rogue with 100 PRR is struggling a 2-3k HP barb with 200+ PRR would probably be sleepwalking through that quest. The evasion vs PRR/MRR equation is broken ATM, MRR is way too strong so either nerf it or buff rogues in some way to make the viable.

2: Would like this tied into some form of TWF buff and not be class specific, otherwise TWF bards/pallys/fighter/etc will also be left out in the cold, but something does need to happen here. End game right now is TRing, questing means killing 100's of mobs per quest and if you can only hit one monster at a time and they only have 3-8k HP on EE single target DPS isn't something worth raving about.

3: Assassinate should be optional, just line stunning fist, quivering palm, coup, holy retribution, ear smash, etc. Too much focus is on int and assassinate at the moment, dex and str based assassins should be just as viable. I'd be cool with it being based on hide+move silent/3 or something, leave the int stuff for poisons, grenades and traps. Can still go harper if you like those other tricks and want the best trapping DC as well as more skill points but it shouldn't be a no brainer.

4: That was probably the biggest mistake with the enhancement pass, no multiclass synergy at all so stuck with mostly pure when the game opened up to multi classes in a huge way leaving rogues in the dust. It's also super boring, I'd love a light hammer rogue or a one with rapier/short sword or the like but stuck with crappy daggers. Should just give some crit profile buffs if you have a light weapon in the off hand similar to swash while leaving the bigger weapons to rangers similar to vanguards.

5: Diplo/intim/bluff all could use some tweaks here, also add improved feint to the rogue bonus feats without the CE pre req and make sure it actually works.

6: Yeah, where do you even start here?

7: For sure, rogues were the highest DPS melees up until MotU and were still pretty competitive until the enhancement pass. They really should get that crown back again, they've never been solo speed runners but in groups they'd really pull their weight and speed things up a lot. Going back to that kind of class balance would be great and help make grouping fun again. I don't mean make them 1.5-2x the DPS of paladins again and unravel all the good work that went into the pally/bard/barb passes, just a tad bit more so that paladin players appreciate their damage contribution in groups and rogues appreciate an agro magnet to get that damage.

[Ayseifn]

If we're talking Shadowdancer as well, what it's really missing is some sort of multiplicative bonus. Melee power helps a bit but stuff like the +1 crit range from DC, Blitz, Pulverizer, headsmans chop and adrenaline to some extent are what's missing. 6d6 SA damage and 4 MP per tier is an alright start I guess if a tad boring, tweaking those values could obviously get you competitive but I don't think it'd be a fun ED.

Making SA damage scale 1.1-1.2x per tier could be one way to go so at tier 6 your SA damage is 1.6-2.4x base, still kind of boring though as there's no real choice in it but at least it's something other than more crit bonus stuff and you can always add in better optional choices with it. Maybe make it an optional tier 3-5 thing? IDK.

The epic moment needs to change, ATM it's garbage and I never take it. Not saying having an epic moment be a debatable choice is a bad idea just scratching my head trying to think of any build that'd get more use out of it rather than throw those AP into something else.

Dex vs Int. I kind of like that there are some abilities that only work for one or the other rather than than either or. Int based toons will go for Shadow Manipulation, int enhancements and Consume while dex based toons will go for dex enhancements, Executioners Shot and things that buff max Shadow Charges. Executioners Shot could use a buff though because a 35% chance to kill if you have the DC for no fail is still kind of weak but allowing an Int DC for it instead of Dex is just silly, same thing with allowing a dex DC for Consume, Shadow Manipulation or to show how stupid it is, an Assassins Assassinate. You can't get max tier Celestial Bombardment as well as Strike Down in Crusader so don't see what the big deal is with Shadowdancers having to choose here either, pick dex or int and take what works for your ability choice rather than have everything handed to you.

Defensively Shadowdancer was pretty great but these days it's falling behind. Before the Armour Up update things like Shadow Form, Dodge, reflex saves and Meld into Darkness were pretty solid but now not so much. Heavy armour and 1.2x HP are way stronger IMO, I don't want to ruin the flavour by adding in a heap of PRR/HP but something needs to happen here.

[CThruTheEgo]

-no AoE damage

Sneak attacks and AoEs are antithetical to one another. This just doesn't make sense for an assassin imo. The whole playstyle of an assassin is about not getting agro because that's how you get your awesome dps. If you use an AoE, grab agro, and lose your sneak attack, you just dropped your dps by a considerable amount. I get it, other classes have a lot of AoE options now and maybe assassin single target dps should be increased significantly to make up for this, but I don't think they should have an AoE.

As far as I'm concerned, acrobat is the AoE option for rogues because they get glancing blows and will most likely take the cleaves. They are better off multiclassing anyway so their sneak attack damage is not as large a percentage of their overall dps.


-doesn't have the DPS to make up for it

Assassin dps is on par with every other class that hasn't gotten their pass yet, better in most cases, in fact. At least that has been my experience when comparing my assassin to my other characters. If yours isn't, I don't know what to tell you other than see the link in my sig.

Since bard/pali/barb are apparently the new baseline, I'm sure we can expect a dps increase if rogues actually do get a pass, which still isn't set in stone btw.


What here can you "pick apart"?

As I said, I'm not going to bother repeating what I've said a dozen times in other threads like this one. If you want to see my arguments, just take a look at the many other threads about people complaining about rogues. Both sides of the argument have been well represented in all of them. I will address new points, however, such as AoEs.

[jalont]

How does any of this add more challenge to the game? This is silly. Assassin's are already overpowered.

[redoubt]

Anyway, for Assassinate I would really like to see the DC formula reworked to be a higher base + 1/2 Rogue level as Multiclassing a Assassin right now is 100% verboten by the DC formula and this is very much outside of the flexibility and customization DDO hangs it's hat on.


If you made it 20 +1/2 rogue level you would still need max rogue levels. What am I missing here?

[redoubt]

Dex vs Int. I kind of like that there are some abilities that only work for one or the other rather than than either or. Int based toons will go for Shadow Manipulation, int enhancements and Consume while dex based toons will go for dex enhancements, Executioners Shot and things that buff max Shadow Charges. Executioners Shot could use a buff though because a 35% chance to kill if you have the DC for no fail is still kind of weak but allowing an Int DC for it instead of Dex is just silly, same thing with allowing a dex DC for Consume, Shadow Manipulation or to show how stupid it is, an Assassins Assassinate. You can't get max tier Celestial Bombardment as well as Strike Down in Crusader so don't see what the big deal is with Shadowdancers having to choose here either, pick dex or int and take what works for your ability choice rather than have everything handed to you.



Why do you think you can't have Celestial Bombardment and Strike down at the same time? I would image builds like battle clerics have both and find they both work great.

Shadow Dancer is often considered to be the assassin destiny. As such, I think INT for executioners strike makes sense.

Without things like that added in, why be in SD? I can take an assassin and put them in DC and have much better dps. If I want I can twist the boost to assassinate. All I miss at that point is 3 DC from not being able to take INT in my destiny.

As you have also said, SD needs some work. This is just one suggestion, in a thread about rogues, to make it more appealing a type of rogue.

[slarden]

Why do you think you can't have Celestial Bombardment and Strike down at the same time? I would image builds like battle clerics have both and find they both work great.

Shadow Dancer is often considered to be the assassin destiny. As such, I think INT for executioners strike makes sense.

Without things like that added in, why be in SD? I can take an assassin and put them in DC and have much better dps. If I want I can twist the boost to assassinate. All I miss at that point is 3 DC from not being able to take INT in my destiny.

As you have also said, SD needs some work. This is just one suggestion, in a thread about rogues, to make it more appealing a type of rogue.

All the abilities should work on higher or int/dex like most other destinies do.

[redoubt]

All the abilities should work on higher or int/dex like most other destinies do.

If you are talking about shadow dancer, then yes, all the DC abilities should use INT or DEX, whichever is higher. I suggested this earlier in the thread. (Another poster was using divine crusader as an example to the contrary, but it didn't make sense and I was questioning them on it.)

[Arkantios]

Hey all, XxMazexX from Orien here. I've been playing this game for going on 4 years now and rogue was my first class I ever played. It's still my favorite class to this very day. For people that have played longer than me or around the same time, you know the rogue has been probably one of the classes that fluctuates the most in terms of OP'ness and whatnot. We've gone to topline dps insane killing machines to..."dude...aggro mechanic...***..". Not saying that rogues aren't completely viable and fun to play still but they could need a little bit of reworking.

First and foremost, I will say I am biased towards assassin rogues because I have played them for so long. This will not prohibit me from trying to put in some good thought towards mechanics and acrobats. As an assassin I've played the traditional sneak and don't get aggro assassin but I've also played a brute of a rogue which I call my SneakATank.
It is more-so my SneakATank 2.0 since my first one was before the enhancement pass. I was using an epic chimeras fang with the greater dragonmark of the sentinal parried with an eMG. I purposely built that to get aggro with mobs and to tank raid bosses effectively. I still got my SA by using blinding and deception items galore.

My current rogue build is like this in ways such as I run as a blitzing rogue, take aggro of things when need be (Yes I use cleave and great cleave) and still use procs of items to gain SA. However, I've put a bit more of the sneaking and whatnot of the traditional assassin into my build because of how hard things can tend to hit lately. Btw, yes, I still can hit the mid - high 60's with my DC even as a brute rogue. I'm in the process of currently reworking gear so I can go back to most of my old ways, but that's for another day.

As for now, I was the person that started the thread "https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/447351-Shout-Out-To-All-The-Rogues" and it went a long way. I'm glad to see there is even more interest in the rogue coming from friends and other rogues across the servers. So, I just got done reading all the way through my old thread and this current one and tried my best to pull together the ideas I thought best. Discuss them as you please.

I think I'll start with the general rogue things since they seem to be the most abundant, which ya know....makes sense.




Improved Precision: Precision feat now bypasses 40% fort.
Insightful Devastation: Int to damage with daggers, kukris and staves. (Changed Name)
Heartseeker: Your equipped weapon gains Heartseeker 1. Can be taken multiple times.
Improved Assasinate: Adds 4 to assasinate DC. (Took off ability to take multiple times)
Ghost: You gain permanent 10% incorporeality. Stacks with all other sources.
Detonater: +6 DC to traps, 10% trap setting speed. +50% Damage with all traps (Added Damage, Took off ability to take multiple times)
Faker: +4 UMD (Possible pre-req of skill foc UMD).
Cunning: +2 sneak attack die. Can be taken multiple times.
Rune Arm Juryrig: Can use Rune arms, but only for imbues. (Clarifying that this means that they get every effect on the runearm but simply cannot use the runearm shot)
Shadow Mirror: 6% doublestrike or doubleshot. Can be taken multiple times. (Either leave this as it is and take off the ability to be taken multiple times, or, reduce to 3-4% and keep the multiple times thing)
Saekee posted something like this on my old thread and this was the revamped version of it as I recall. We agreed this looked like a better list as well. The Insightful Devastion might not be as useful as before, but it is still a thought for the people that don't want to put that many points into the Harper tree. More Options ftw.


Combat Expertise - Defensive combat stance. 13 int. Acrobats taking this would have a nice and needed increase to their AC and it is a pre-req for the currently broken Improved Feint, which is exceeding useful for Acrobats as well as Assassins.

Improved Feint - This needs to be fixed first but it is an exceptional feat for a Rogue to have. As a Rogue, I know that we need more ways of obtaining SA, or getting aggro off us for that couple seconds. If fixed, since it's a feat, adding 2-3W would be wonderful.

Hamstring - This feat is highly underutilized. Mostly so because we don't have the extra feat slot for it. I know personally I've needed to get away from a few things because I was low on health, so I use to hamstring them, go use a heal scroll, and jump back into combat. *Rogue Thinking 101*. Also, since feat, add 2-3W.

Insightful Reflexes - Come on, this is made for rogues, we all know it. Assassins and mechs need to pump int for max DC and damage and acrobats still use int quite a bit. This feat just seems obvious to have included in the bonus list.

Precise Shot/Rapid Shot/Point Blank Shot/Imp Precise Shot - First things first, Artificers get them as bonus feats. If a rogue is heavily spec'd into mechanic he should be able to take these feats as bonus feats. Rogues in general are extremely burdened with low feats and trying to be a ranged rogue is almost impossible to get all the ranged feats without sacrificing all sorts of other things. These are 4/7 of the basic feats we get at heroic. Add imp crit, possibly insightful reflexes, and completionist and you're already maxed unless you're a human.

Weapon Finesse - "Dagger in the Back: You can now use your Dexterity for damage with Daggers and Kukris. If you possess the Weapon Finesse feat, this also applies to melee weapons with which you can use your Dexterity modifier to hit. This enhancement does not work with handwraps or unarmed attacks."

Sap - "When this feat is activated, a melee special attack is made. If it hits, the victim is dazed for 18 seconds normally or 30 seconds from a successful sneak attack. (Whether or not your character can normally perform sneak attacks) or until they are damaged. Unlike Trip and Stunning Blow, no save is made against this effect, as of Module 4. Creatures who cannot be sneak attacked will not be affected." This being a 2-3W attack would be recommended if, and only if, the damage is done before the Sap effect, otherwise it would not be quite as useful.

Force of Personality - Rogue's are pictured as suave. Always have been. We use cha for bluff, diplo, umd, etc, so to us it can be rather important. Adding this would stop the most of us who just dump it because it's only used for skills.

On the end note from Force of Personality, for the love of god please take Bluff and Diplomacy off the same timer. I don't know anyone who actually uses Diplo instead of Bluff. Because they are on the same timer, most of the time I only put points into it because of the optionals in the crucible. Only reason.

Okay, so these feats were something a friend of mine thought about before Saekee posted his feats. These feats "make sense" to possibly be on the rogue bonus feat list simply because of how they would be used. Descriptions as to why are listed next to each feat. Btw, the ranged feats are my little way of trying to incorporate mechs a bit more. Same goes with improved feint for acrobats and assassins.

Speaking of Improved Feint quick, someone made the comment that there should be a shadow cleave ability. Since I play a brute assassin I loved this idea. I know not everyone would agree since assassins are apparently suppose to be sneaky and whatnot, but not everybody plays a cookie cutter int based/only assassin. Perhaps giving it 2-3W, -200% threat gen on hit, and an int or dex based bluff on all targets hit would be a viable way of trying to keep both traditional and brute rogues happy. Plus acrobats might like it too.

Another general purpose rogue thing would be towards sneaking. If rogues, more-so assassins, are suppose to be in this more we need more reason to actually sneak around a decent amount of the time. Measure the foe is nice for assassins, but what about the other two lines? I propose adding a certain amount of PRR/MRR while sneaking, and also a static increase to the bluff skill while sneaking. For the PRR/MRR during sneaking, if you're trying to hide from someone and they swing at what they think "might" be you, they definitely aren't going to hit you as easily or in the best spot of your body compared to not sneaking. As for the bluff increase, if you hear a random voice coming from the darkness, wouldn't you be inclined to check it out? (This is assuming you're on watch duty)

Something else tons of people have commented on with sneaking is the ability to pull a lever or open a door without breaking sneak. This makes sense honestly. Just picture it; opening a door without breaking sneak and whispering to the guard on the other side to come get some cookies or something with your 80+ bluff. They come out, and poof, you slit their throat. Another thing people have been talking about is the annoying fact that an arrow doing 1 damage can pull you out of sneak. I think there should be a certain amount of damage you have take to pull you out of stealth. This way you wouldn't be constantly interrupted when trying to sneak through something or just assassinating a target. Have stealth have the static damage needed to deactivate it and then add enhancements into assassin or acrobat to increase the damage needed to be taken to pull you out of it.

Not going to spend too much time on this one since most people already know it, but we really need a different twf moving animation. The current one is simply atrocious and can reduce dps by ridiculous amounts.

Most of us rogues at least splash into the Harper tree if not going into it rather far. We all see that Imp Deception at the very top, but not many of us want to give up our T5's, assassins especially. Make this a rogue tree ability, but possibly higher in the trees so people can't just splash for it.

Just a few more general things to talk about.

* Every 10 point of tumble should give +1% dodge.
* Possibly increase the speed at which we can sneak.
* Take Diplo and Bluff off the same timer. Please. Seriously Please.
* Maybe introduce certain gear only certain classes can wear?
* Extra SA on cores - Maybe only assassin.

Ok, so for Acrobats I can't really say much, but for them and the other two trees, we really need reduced cooldowns, drastically. I mean some of the acrobat is seriously 20-30 second cooldowns for not all that special of an attack.

As for Mechs, there are a few things I've seen along the way.

* Tons of people say completely redo the tree because it's apparently atrocious. Can I have more people elaborate on this?
* Mechs should have an increase trap damage resistance. Tier system -10%/-20%/-30% damage taken from traps
* Something that would be cool is let them take trap parts and make imbued bolts from them. Maybe even let them shoot traps from the crossbows. Web/Disco/Noise, etc.

Okay, now onto Assassins, which yes....there will be more here than in the other two parts. I need more people that have played those two to comment please.

* Old Vorpal - I know this is a long shot, but instead of just being the basic vorpal at 18, make it old vorpal where regardless of hp, if you rolled a 20 it was dead.
* Measure the Foe could get a reduction on time to 1 sec/+1 DC if Stealth doesn't get any buffs to it.
* Assassinate cooldown should be reduced to 8-10 seconds.
* Make Assassinate come before ANY other damage and/or effect.
* Someone commented that killer should be able to stack higher. This could be a good idea.
* The animation on Assassins trick is wayyyy too long. Reduce or take off the animation or make it an assassin stance.

* Poisons.... Yeah, they weren't a bad idea, just poorly implemented. There are several ways to rework them. The one that I feel has the most potential is look at how the ninja spy's ToD is made. It has the ToD stances leading up to it. Make each one of the current poison strikes a stackable stance. This can lead up to a nasty poison attack, or just simply leave them as stackable poison stances. Either way, have them only be able to proc every certain amount of seconds. Higher cooldowns with better poisons as you go up the tree.

I'll leave this post on a creative note from someone that would like to see more depth from assassinate.



Make successful assassinates have a chance to not alert nearby mobs. I suggest a "crit success/fail" system like there is for traps. I.e.:
--Assume a mob with a 50 fort save. Mob rolls a 10, so total is 60.
--If the assassinate DC is 55 or less it is a crit fail and the mob is alerted and he calls his friends for help. You are pulled out of sneak.
--If the DC is 56-60, the mob has a WT F moment and starts looking for you. Nearby mobs get a spot and listen check against you. (vs hide and move silent.)
--If the DC is 61-65 the mob is a assassinated and nearby mobs get a spot and listen check to see if they noticed.
--If the DC is 66 or higher you crit succeed and its as if you killed it and leaned it against the wall like nothing ever happened. Noone know you are there... good job!


Hope you guys can endure reading all of that. Sorry about the length, but I think I got a good amount of the things we've all talked about into a single post or so.

[Ayseifn]

If you are talking about shadow dancer, then yes, all the DC abilities should use INT or DEX, whichever is higher. I suggested this earlier in the thread. (Another poster was using divine crusader as an example to the contrary, but it didn't make sense and I was questioning them on it.)

Celestial Bombardment is three tiers and 1 AP per tier, Strike Down is 2 AP and only one tier. That's 5 AP to get both and since it's tier 6 you can't max out Bombardment while also taking Strike Down, it's also wisdom only and not the highest of str, wis or cha.

[Qezuzu]

Sneak attacks and AoEs are antithetical to one another. This just doesn't make sense for an assassin imo. The whole playstyle of an assassin is about not getting agro because that's how you get your awesome dps. If you use an AoE, grab agro, and lose your sneak attack, you just dropped your dps by a considerable amount. I get it, other classes have a lot of AoE options now and maybe assassin single target dps should be increased significantly to make up for this, but I don't think they should have an AoE.

As far as I'm concerned, acrobat is the AoE option for rogues because they get glancing blows and will most likely take the cleaves. They are better off multiclassing anyway so their sneak attack damage is not as large a percentage of their overall dps.



Assassin dps is on par with every other class that hasn't gotten their pass yet, better in most cases, in fact. At least that has been my experience when comparing my assassin to my other characters. If yours isn't, I don't know what to tell you other than see the link in my sig.

Since bard/pali/barb are apparently the new baseline, I'm sure we can expect a dps increase if rogues actually do get a pass, which still isn't set in stone btw.



As I said, I'm not going to bother repeating what I've said a dozen times in other threads like this one. If you want to see my arguments, just take a look at the many other threads about people complaining about rogues. Both sides of the argument have been well represented in all of them. I will address new points, however, such as AoEs.

Improving single-target DPS is certainly a way to compensate for no AoE damage, but the point remains that, currently, Assassins' damage is significantly lower when compared to a cleaving... anything, really. Yes I know of Acrobat and yes I know how good Acrobat builds can be, but we're not talking about Acrobat right now.

My Assassin has just about everything that can push the damage up, like you I've also pushed Assassin to about as good as it can be. All the classes that have had a pass are higher, of course, but so are centered Kensai fighters, every caster, most monk-based builds, druid (only cause broken tho)... honestly the only ones I can say are probably lower are Artificers (who really need a pass anyway) and TWF ranger, who have Dance of Death anyway lol.

Now I'm not saying the gap between DPS is super massive or that Assassin can't pull weight but given all the other shortcomings non-Acro rogue rogue has, particularly no AoE damage, it's just not that good.

[CThruTheEgo]

Improving single-target DPS is certainly a way to compensate for no AoE damage, but the point remains that, currently, Assassins' damage is significantly lower when compared to a cleaving... anything, really. Yes I know of Acrobat and yes I know how good Acrobat builds can be, but we're not talking about Acrobat right now.

My Assassin has just about everything that can push the damage up, like you I've also pushed Assassin to about as good as it can be. All the classes that have had a pass are higher, of course, but so are centered Kensai fighters, every caster, most monk-based builds, druid (only cause broken tho)... honestly the only ones I can say are probably lower are Artificers (who really need a pass anyway) and TWF ranger, who have Dance of Death anyway lol.

Now I'm not saying the gap between DPS is super massive or that Assassin can't pull weight but given all the other shortcomings non-Acro rogue rogue has, particularly no AoE damage, it's just not that good.

This is why I don't like to bother with these kinds of debates anymore. Based on my experience of playing my assassin now, it does not match what you are saying. And that's what these debates always end up as – for some it's great, for others it sucks.

Yes it is behind bard/pali/barb, but so is everything else. That's to be expected when devs have stated that these revamps are the new baseline. Yes it is behind broken wolf dps builds, but they're not WAI, so that's not a valid comparison. Yes they are behind nuking sorcs and shiradi casters, but those have been top of the dps heap for as long as they've been around, so that's nothing new. No they are not behind centered kensais and you can't possibly be serious that they are behind monks.

On my assassin, I actually took points out of melee power from the harper tree to invest in more threat reduction because I was pulling agro too often. You don't pull agro when you're doing less dps than others. And it's certainly not because of running with weak players. Assassins got a huge dps boost when they got int to damage and then again when melee power was applied to sneak attack damage. And while I realize the limitations of the kill count as a measure of dps, I also recognize its potential as a measure of dps. My assassin is consistently at, or near, the top of the kill count. I've played low dps builds that just can't consistently top the kill count, so there's something to be said for a build that does top it. So I just don't see this "low dps" on assassins that you're talking about. But both of us are basing our opinions on our oersonal experience with them, which is why no amount of arguing is going to change our perspectives and it's really useless to debate it.

Again, if they want to give rogues/assassins a boost to bring them up to speed with bard/pali/barb, I'm not going to complain. But in my experience, assassins have gotten considerable boosts already recently and are not nearly in the bad shape that some seem to think they are.

EDIT: And btw, I think artis are in pretty good shape too, at least mine is because he performs quite well also. I certainly wouldn't put him at the bottom of the dps list.

[IronClan]

If you made it 20 +1/2 rogue level you would still need max rogue levels. What am I missing here?

Presently it costs you 1 DC per level multiclassed where 1/2 would cost you 1 DC per 2 levels multiclassed, making the cost of a 2 or 4 level multiclass much more reasonable, and even a 5 or 6 level multiclass possible with the trade off of a 20% reduction in assassinate effectiveness. Presently 6 levels of multiclass = 35% loss of effectiveness (capstone +6 levels), with 1/2 rogue levels it = it would be 15% less lost. Still a high price and a tough decision, but presently it's simply out of the question.

Please don't bother with "it must be only fail on a 1 in EE Stormhorns or it's 100% useless" Forum version of DDO slant. I don't play the Forum Version. if you weren't going in that direction then sorry for being preemptive nothing personal but it gets tiresome.

I wouldn't be opposed to a different forumla that relaxed it even more, my suggestion was just a non specific starting point as far as I'm concerned. Considering the modern state of DPS and the necessity for being in sneak, etc. I don't think assassinate is anything more than a nifty/fun flavor ability personally... I can kill far more efficiently by CC'ing and AOE/cleaving stuff with far less opportunity cost. Fingering stuff or wailing stuff is also far more effective, Hell I've got a caster that can insta-kill 1 mob per 6 seconds from a distance, wearing heavy armor and a tower shield. I've never understood the melee centric view that a melee with an insta-kill is automatically overpowered. (see all the amazing overvaluation of Coup De Grace by some people).

[redoubt]

Celestial Bombardment is three tiers and 1 AP per tier, Strike Down is 2 AP and only one tier. That's 5 AP to get both and since it's tier 6 you can't max out Bombardment while also taking Strike Down, it's also wisdom only and not the highest of str, wis or cha.

Okay, I follow you know. You are talking about running out of points to spend.

I can also see where Bombardment using WIS or CHA would make sense with WIS/CHA/STR being the stat options. (I don't think STR makes sense for a SLA though.)

[redoubt]

Presently it costs you 1 DC per level multiclassed where 1/2 would cost you 1 DC per 2 levels multiclassed, making the cost of a 2 or 4 level multiclass much more reasonable, and even a 5 or 6 level multiclass possible with the trade off of a 20% reduction in assassinate effectiveness. Presently 6 levels of multiclass = 35% loss of effectiveness (capstone +6 levels), with 1/2 rogue levels it = it would be 15% less lost. Still a high price and a tough decision, but presently it's simply out of the question.

Got it. That makes sense. (That's why I asked, I wasn't seeing the formula from this perspective yet.)


Please don't bother with "it must be only fail on a 1 in EE Stormhorns or it's 100% useless" Forum version of DDO slant. I don't play the Forum Version. if you weren't going in that direction then sorry for being preemptive nothing personal but it gets tiresome.

Not at all. That is why I have a DC wizard with 2 rogue. I know you can trade off a point here or there and still make a working build.


I wouldn't be opposed to a different forumla that relaxed it even more, my suggestion was just a non specific starting point as far as I'm concerned. Considering the modern state of DPS and the necessity for being in sneak, etc. I don't think assassinate is anything more than a nifty/fun flavor ability personally... I can kill far more efficiently by CC'ing and AOE/cleaving stuff with far less opportunity cost. Fingering stuff or wailing stuff is also far more effective, Hell I've got a caster that can insta-kill 1 mob per 6 seconds from a distance, wearing heavy armor and a tower shield. I've never understood the melee centric view that a melee with an insta-kill is automatically overpowered. (see all the amazing overvaluation of Coup De Grace by some people).

Totally agree again. This is why I think a few more points can be made available to invest in the assassinate DC. Its just that much more difficult to use and this would let you tune your assassin AND invest in a few other things. (In moderation!)

[slarden]

Assassin assassinate DC is not the problem and I agree with comments they were helped significantly by the harper tree - as were artis. The changes to melee power were also a net positive.

Assassins are not overpowered for sure, but they are productive and useful party members today. Obviously when you stack them up against bards they look a lot worse and lose on almost every comparison point and that comparison makes sense since bards were given coup. An experienced player will have no problem making an assassin work. They are a fun build to play, but not as solo-friendly and not as much of an easy-button as other builds are.

I think when making comparison points you can't compare top-tier assassin like CThruTheEgo to an average bard swashbuckler as a comparison point. Swashbuckler is an easy-button build and assassin is a more complicated nuanced build to play. I think DDO should keep some advanced builds that are harder to play - it adds a fun element to the game.

Still, I think rogues should get some unique and creative defensive/sneak clickies to make up for their prr weakness. It would kind of go along with the theme of keeping assassins an advanced build, while compensating for the fact that evasion has become less useful and PRR more useful recently. I would also like to see some ability to boost bluff or have some special rogue bluff clickies. Whatever they do with rogue I hope they don't make it an easy button because I would like there to be some advanced classes that take some real investment and practice like assassin and DC casters.

[draven1]

Still, I think rogues should get some unique and creative defensive/sneak clickies to make up for their prr weakness.

If there is Defensive roll buff and cooldown reduction for uncanny dodge, it would be nice :D

[Wipey]

(As an example, my enchant/necro PM with 2 rogue levels has a 65 enchant DC when I have magister bent that way. At present he is set up for MOD and has 57 Trans, 55 necro and 59 enchant (from memory.)

(And I don't thing the game should be balanced against the best, but something a little below that which will apply to a larger % of the population in game.)

All this combined is why I've been pushing for the addition of a few (not a lot) more DC points to be made available to assassins.
"Set up for Mod" wizzy has like 71 Transm / 69 Necro ( 4 th life, 5 tome with Yugo ).
When some rogue has 74 and yours doesn't, shouldn't the whole point be trying to get there and not going to forums and asking for even more buffs ?

[Qezuzu]

"Set up for Mod" wizzy has like 71 Transm / 69 Necro ( 4 th life, 5 tome with Yugo ).
When some rogue has 74 and yours doesn't, shouldn't the whole point be trying to get there and not going to forums and asking for even more buffs ?

74 DC requires sitting in sneak mode for 10 seconds and requires being in Shadowdancer (meaning not in Dreadnought or Crusader.) Shadowdancer sucks.

In reasonable conditions (not solo, not in trash destiny) DC is more like upper-60ish. And you're still burning a twist on Stealthy.


things

I highly doubt our experiences differ much, but it's really noticeable when someone comes around playing a better class/build, of which there are lots, as good as I can an Assassin.

While we can agree to disagree, I would ask you to consider people who aren't utterly maxed out; a lot of Assassins' performance comes from Assassinate. Getting an EE-capable DC requires a lot of gear and exclusively using a build close to yours, plus Agony is a necessity and it comes from a dead raid. Most other classes get TF weapons, some Necro4 gear and then they're close to done, all other improvements to gear are marginal. Assassin really only works well when you've put a ton of work into it, this isn't the case for a lot of other classes/builds and this is what the improvements should ultimately aim to fix (make it more accessible and not so gear-dependant.)


EDIT: And btw, I think artis are in pretty good shape too, at least mine is because he performs quite well also. I certainly wouldn't put him at the bottom of the dps list.

Look, Assassin is not as bad as I may have made it seem but Artificer is definitely in need of some love.

[Wipey]

74 DC requires sitting in sneak mode for 10 seconds and requires being in Shadowdancer (meaning not in Dreadnought or Crusader.) Shadowdancer sucks.

In reasonable conditions (not solo, not in trash destiny) DC is more like upper-60ish. And you're still burning a twist on Stealthy.

If that's the case, then it's too low. Good "number" for fort based instakills is maybe ~ 75 at cap.
It's okay to have 95 Vanguard Stun, it's 30 seconds cooldown is prohibitive.
75 Necro or Evo instakillers is okay, limited by sp usage.
So is Stun fist or Frozen Fury.

Imo that has to be achievable with top notch gear, smart build choices and high destiny and stat investment.
Old QP or Coup is not okay.

[CThruTheEgo]

I think when making comparison points you can't compare top-tier assassin like CThruTheEgo to an average bard swashbuckler as a comparison point. Swashbuckler is an easy-button build and assassin is a more complicated nuanced build to play. I think DDO should keep some advanced builds that are harder to play - it adds a fun element to the game.

...snip...

Whatever they do with rogue I hope they don't make it an easy button because I would like there to be some advanced classes that take some real investment and practice like assassin and DC casters.

^This. I would like to see assassins remain the unique and skillful build they are today. Too many buffs and they will just end up as another easy button. We don't need that.


Still, I think rogues should get some unique and creative defensive/sneak clickies to make up for their prr weakness. It would kind of go along with the theme of keeping assassins an advanced build, while compensating for the fact that evasion has become less useful and PRR more useful recently. I would also like to see some ability to boost bluff or have some special rogue bluff clickies.

They already have solid damage avoidance, but they could certainly use a boost to damage mitigation. Properly played, they're not going to be getting hit a lot, but it's just going to happen eventually. And the spike damage on EE can be a lot. Damage mitigation is probably their biggest weakness currently.


I would ask you to consider people who aren't utterly maxed out; a lot of Assassins' performance comes from Assassinate. Getting an EE-capable DC requires a lot of gear and exclusively using a build close to yours, plus Agony is a necessity and it comes from a dead raid. Most other classes get TF weapons, some Necro4 gear and then they're close to done, all other improvements to gear are marginal. Assassin really only works well when you've put a ton of work into it, this isn't the case for a lot of other classes/builds and this is what the improvements should ultimately aim to fix (make it more accessible and not so gear-dependant.)

I have considered people who aren't utterly maxed out. They'll do just fine in the vast majority of the game. As I've already pointed out, you can drop DCs by quite a bit and still be effective in 90+% of the game. Personally, I think min/maxing should be required to be optimal in that last 10%. We have plenty of easy button classes/builds already and I'm fairly certain we will be getting more. Not everything needs to be that way. Assassin, because of its already unique and challenging playstyle, seems like the ideal build to remain a challenging build to play.

I'm currently playing a SWF paladin that I am desperately trying to hurry up and TR out of because it is so boring to play. There's nothing special or unique about the build, it's just a standard SWF paladin. It does not have any difficult to acquire gear, mostly stuff I had on bank toons. And yet I can solo EEs like it's normal. I can stand and let half a dozen EE mobs in Stormhorns beat on me for quite a while before I need to bother healing. People that I've grouped with tell me it's a great build. My response is that it's just an example of stupid paladin OPness because it's really not anything special. It's a first life that I've put no effort into. I shouldn't be able to solo EEs on a build like that. Upper level content should not be that easy. Top notch gear and build should be required to perform well in top level content. I don't mind if they want to give rogues/assassins a boost, but they should not turn them into something that has easy access to high end content. Sorry if that sounds elitist or exclusionary, but I personally think you should have to have a solid build to do well in the hardest content.


Artificer is definitely in need of some love.

Arti is in the same boat as assassin. Performs well when not optimal in 90+% of content, requires optimization to do well in the other 10%. Thre's nothing wrong with that being the case.

[Qezuzu]

I have considered people who aren't utterly maxed out. They'll do just fine in the vast majority of the game. As I've already pointed out, you can drop DCs by quite a bit and still be effective in 90+% of the game. Personally, I think min/maxing should be required to be optimal in that last 10%. We have plenty of easy button classes/builds already and I'm fairly certain we will be getting more. Not everything needs to be that way. Assassin, because of its already unique and challenging playstyle, seems like the ideal build to remain a challenging build to play.

I'm currently playing a SWF paladin that I am desperately trying to hurry up and TR out of because it is so boring to play. There's nothing special or unique about the build, it's just a standard SWF paladin. It does not have any difficult to acquire gear, mostly stuff I had on bank toons. And yet I can solo EEs like it's normal. I can stand and let half a dozen EE mobs in Stormhorns beat on me for quite a while before I need to bother healing. People that I've grouped with tell me it's a great build. My response is that it's just an example of stupid paladin OPness because it's really not anything special. It's a first life that I've put no effort into. I shouldn't be able to solo EEs on a build like that. Upper level content should not be that easy. Top notch gear and build should be required to perform well in top level content. I don't mind if they want to give rogues/assassins a boost, but they should not turn them into something that has easy access to high end content. Sorry if that sounds elitist or exclusionary, but I personally think you should have to have a solid build to do well in the hardest content.

I definitely don't want Assassin to become an easy button. It's the whole reason why I think Paladin is poorly designed, like you say, and unhealthy for the game. I was thinking more along the lines of:

-Make Assassinate more party friendly; Measure the Foe stacks expire on a timer instead of on breaking sneak and stacks higher, can Assassinate so long as you have MtF stacks maybe
-Have Knife specialization apply to more classes of weapons, at least if you have weapon finesse
-Inherent Deception effect
-Make poison a more integral part of Assassin, so Assassin-based multiclasses can, uh, exist (beyond Assassinate, what major things does the tree actually offer?)

Assassin can be made more accessible (I don't mean getting into the hardest content with overpowered abilities, I mean making it mechanically easier to use and without relying on specific gear) without breaking it when it's at the level you or I use it.

[redoubt]

"Set up for Mod" wizzy has like 71 Transm / 69 Necro ( 4 th life, 5 tome with Yugo ).
When some rogue has 74 and yours doesn't, shouldn't the whole point be trying to get there and not going to forums and asking for even more buffs ?


74 DC requires sitting in sneak mode for 10 seconds and requires being in Shadowdancer (meaning not in Dreadnought or Crusader.) Shadowdancer sucks.

In reasonable conditions (not solo, not in trash destiny) DC is more like upper-60ish. And you're still burning a twist on Stealthy.



If that's the case, then it's too low. Good "number" for fort based instakills is maybe ~ 75 at cap.
It's okay to have 95 Vanguard Stun, it's 30 seconds cooldown is prohibitive.
75 Necro or Evo instakillers is okay, limited by sp usage.
So is Stun fist or Frozen Fury.

Imo that has to be achievable with top notch gear, smart build choices and high destiny and stat investment.
Old QP or Coup is not okay.

Yes, when you see great builds on the forums, you should try to be more like them, but as Q pointed out, and it appears you agree, the assassinate mechanic is just different.

Sure, I can copy Cthru's build. Its a great build. But what other class has to invest so heavily in a SINGLE attack? You really cannot compare assassinate to a DC caster with a necro spec. The caster is just so much more versatile with it. Yes, harper has helped immensely with making the heavy INT investment more useful, but you are still pretty well pigeon holed into a destiny with INT if you want max assassinate. Then add that to assassinate you must be in melee range, you must be in sneak, you must have hide/move silent or you won't be in sneak long.

I don't feel like I'm asking for an easy button, nor do I want one. I would just like to be able to still make a good assassinate DC while not in Shadow Dancer. (The only other destinies with INT are magister and draconic, which are not good for an assassin either.) Going out of SD you lose:
- Tier 1 twist slot or 6 DC (stealthy)
- 6 INT (3 DC)
If you take the twist you lose 3 DC, if you don't, you lose 9 DC. That's pretty significant.

What I have been trying to point out is that the investment in a DC like Hassan's Assassin is far more costly than a similar investment in a DC Palemaster. The Palemaster gets much more utility out of the DC than an assassin does.

This has led me to ask for options to bring assassin up to similar to such a DC caster. A DC caster can get +4 to DC at level 15 from Wheloon and +6 by level 26 from items and TF weapons. The best an assassin get +4 at level 28 (and +2 at level 20, or 15 if you are Shadar Kai.) Is asking for similar items for assassinate asking for too much? Is that an easy button?

The other part, with regard to DC that I have asked for is a small amount of DC in the enhancement tree. Somewhere in the 2 to 4 points range. Again I ask, is that too much?

When run in a group, assassinating is infrequent. The groups move very fast and even with faster sneaking you cannot maintain Measure the Foe and keep up; you will sneak there after it is all dead. So running with the group and killing with sneak attack damage is more the norm. By comparison a DC caster can run at full speed and cast their insta-kill spells. If you are solo, then assassinate is more useful, but your speed compared to something like a DC caster is much slower. Its these types of things that make me think that a few more options for assassinate would be a good idea.

[draven1]

This has led me to ask for options to bring assassin up to similar to such a DC caster. A DC caster can get +4 to DC at level 15 from Wheloon and +6 by level 26 from items and TF weapons. The best an assassin get +4 at level 28 (and +2 at level 20, or 15 if you are Shadar Kai.) Is asking for similar items for assassinate asking for too much? Is that an easy button?



DC casters & divines at lvl 28 get even +12 DC from gears, not just +6.

6 TF base DC + (1 TF Staff universal DC or 1 DC from alchemical 1 handed wis +2) + 2 yellow augment slot + 1 shadow dragon armor + 2 epic deific diadem = 12

This is totally unfair. Assassins just get +4 at lvl 28.

Casters & divines raise their DC even more by store pots(+2~4 DC).
Because of duping, I can see many casters & divines uses those pots for hard quests.
They literally one shot every trash mob in sight in stormhorn EE.

[redoubt]

DC casters & divines at lvl 28 get even +12 DC from gears, not just +6.

6 TF base DC + (1 TF Staff universal DC or 1 DC from alchemical 1 handed wis +2) + 2 yellow augment slot + 1 shadow dragon armor + 2 epic deific diadem = 12

This is totally unfair. Assassins just get +4 at lvl 28.



Good catch. Thank you.

[Nuclear_Elvis]

Great discussion, but a macro issue to consider -- a well made Class Enhancement Tree should allow an average player to go pure Class, with most Action Points in the specific Enhancement tree (with a fair amount in Race also, of course) -- and with that pure Class/pure enhancement build become a viable character who has use throughout the game.
Does pure Rogue as Assassin offer this? In current state, I think most would agree that the Assassin tree tops out too early, primarily because too many of the choices in the tree are non-essential or too limited in usage to matter. We need that "filler" from Tier 1-4 to be seriously reviewed and considerations given for replacement. As I previously mentioned - even the Tier 5 Knife could be improved by adding a stackable +1 Enchantment to Dagger and/or Kukri.

[Ayseifn]

DC casters & divines at lvl 28 get even +12 DC from gears, not just +6.

6 TF base DC + (1 TF Staff universal DC or 1 DC from alchemical 1 handed wis +2) + 2 yellow augment slot + 1 shadow dragon armor + 2 epic deific diadem = 12

This is totally unfair. Assassins just get +4 at lvl 28.

Casters & divines raise their DC even more by store pots(+2~4 DC).
Because of duping, I can see many casters & divines uses those pots for hard quests.
They literally one shot every trash mob in sight in stormhorn EE.

Apples and oranges, Necro wizards and assassins can both hit a sustainable 75 or so DC last I read into it.

Pure rogues get a base 30 DC while a wizards with heighten starts at only 19.
Rogues can get +6 from a tier 1 twist and another +5 from a single enhancement.

Also which store pots are you talking about and why can't a rogue also benefit from them?

[redoubt]

Apples and oranges, Necro wizards and assassins can both hit a sustainable 75 or so DC last I read into it.

Pure rogues get a base 30 DC while a wizards with heighten starts at only 19.
Rogues can get +6 from a tier 1 twist and another +5 from a single enhancement.

Also which store pots are you talking about and why can't a rogue also benefit from them?

I've played both. High sustained DCs are easier on a caster. I think people who have not played an assassin really discount the penalty involved with measure the foe. The +5 requires you to be in sneak. There is no comparable penalty or requirement on a caster. In sneak you will not stay with the group. To use assassinate in groups, as they run today, you really have to assume you won't have this. Groups won't wait for you to sneak ahead and assassinate, its just faster to zerg, so they will.

If you try to work it in a group, you have to pick a mob that is not already moved into the melee (these mobs will be dead to fast to bother with.) If, as you set up, the mob agros and begins to move, there is a decent chance you will physics miss (lag and the bad twf range don't help here.) If you are even more patient and expect it to move and then follow it, its going to be dead before you can sneak to it at the melee. Casters don't have this problem. They just cast at distant mobs and hit even if they move, its kinda like magic or something. ;)

I've mentioned it before, but I moved my INT based assassin into Divine Crusader for better cooperation in a group. The mechanics involved with assassinate are group un-friendly as it is, measure the foe being counted as an integral part of your "sustained DC" just makes it worse.

Next, Magister gets +3 from a T2 and -10 debuff in T3, which can be trigger by an aoe and then taken advantage of by a second cast. You don't get a second assassinate if the first one fails. And in Tier 4 you can get a 15% cool down reduction.

5th core of Exalted Angel is +3 to all DCs and then you can twist all the goodies in Magister to also boost your DC. So on a necro spec'd divine, that's:
+3 AA
+3 Magister T2
+10 from Magister T3 debuff
-15% cooldown from Magister T4
and you can do all that from range at full speed... and before the difference in +12 items vs +4 items.

I didn't mention store pots, I don't like them, but they are equal between casters and rogues. As are Yugo pots.

Also, valid point on base DC.

[cru121]

Rune arm juryrig: can use Rune arms, but only for imbues


I'd LOVE if everyone could wear rune arms, and only artificers would be able to shoot.

[burningwind]

I'd LOVE if everyone could wear rune arms, and only artificers would be able to shoot.

shoting with rune arm is not an issue. only artificer have access to fast recharge and stable charge. for other class to use it they will have to stand still and wait rather long for it to charge up. which is totally ok imo

[Ayseifn]

I've played both. High sustained DCs are easier on a caster. I think people who have not played an assassin really discount the penalty involved with measure the foe. The +5 requires you to be in sneak. There is no comparable penalty or requirement on a caster. In sneak you will not stay with the group. To use assassinate in groups, as they run today, you really have to assume you won't have this. Groups won't wait for you to sneak ahead and assassinate, its just faster to zerg, so they will.

If you try to work it in a group, you have to pick a mob that is not already moved into the melee (these mobs will be dead to fast to bother with.) If, as you set up, the mob agros and begins to move, there is a decent chance you will physics miss (lag and the bad twf range don't help here.) If you are even more patient and expect it to move and then follow it, its going to be dead before you can sneak to it at the melee. Casters don't have this problem. They just cast at distant mobs and hit even if they move, its kinda like magic or something. ;)

I've mentioned it before, but I moved my INT based assassin into Divine Crusader for better cooperation in a group. The mechanics involved with assassinate are group un-friendly as it is, measure the foe being counted as an integral part of your "sustained DC" just makes it worse.

Next, Magister gets +3 from a T2 and -10 debuff in T3, which can be trigger by an aoe and then taken advantage of by a second cast. You don't get a second assassinate if the first one fails. And in Tier 4 you can get a 15% cool down reduction.

5th core of Exalted Angel is +3 to all DCs and then you can twist all the goodies in Magister to also boost your DC. So on a necro spec'd divine, that's:
+3 AA
+3 Magister T2
+10 from Magister T3 debuff
-15% cooldown from Magister T4
and you can do all that from range at full speed... and before the difference in +12 items vs +4 items.

I didn't mention store pots, I don't like them, but they are equal between casters and rogues. As are Yugo pots.

Also, valid point on base DC.

True, Measure the Foe is more akin to debuffs than what your sustainable DC really is, that said it's not like you'll be missing 5 DC all the time. +1-3(2-6 seconds) isn't really that hard to get, if you're doing the bluff/sneak/assassinate thing sure but even then you can still throw out a Poison Strike first for an effective +1 DC, well when epic ward stat damage gets changed you will be able to.

As for the grouping aspects yeah I'd like to see some changes here, zerg ahead of the group by a few rooms and then assassinating 2-3 mobs is always risky, if you fail then not only are those mobs after you the rest of the room is too. Not fun on EEs. Or you can do what most assassins I group with do and come and assassinate a mob I've beaten down to 5-10% HP rather than just wait for the next set of monster or go and find their own. I guess it's alright for quests with cut-scenes or long animations before monster become hittable and for teleporting mobs if you understand their AI well, but on the whole pretty antisocial.

Unless it's buggy again you should still be getting 2-3(offhand, doublestrike) assassinate attempts per assassinate attack, been a long time since I've played an assassin though so not up with the latest bugs with it.

[SirValentine]

Sure, I can copy Cthru's build. Its a great build. But what other class has to invest so heavily in a SINGLE attack? You really cannot compare assassinate to a DC caster with a necro spec.


I haven't played it, but it does look like a nice build.

And, yes, a max-DC caster can easily spend 5 Heroic feats, 3 Epic feats, and 4 twists all to improving their DCs...and still end up with a DC around the same as Hassan gets with zero Heroic feats (OK, there's really only 1 here that helps, but still), zero Epic feats, and only 1 twist, oh, and a 3-points-of-Int-behind race. The investment comparison is crazy!

So if we took Hassan, made it Drow or Sun Elf, gave it Completionist, Great Intelligence x3, and twisted 3 more Intelligence, and drank a Lasting Int potion, that'd be 12 or 13 points of Int higher. But, yes, that would be a heavy investment. Hassan doesn't do it, because, as he says, he wants a decent Assassinate DC "without sacrificing solid dps and/or survivability." But that's the same trade-off DC casters have to make to get their DCs high, too.

[Soleran100]

I haven't played it, but it does look like a nice build.

And, yes, a max-DC caster can easily spend 5 Heroic feats, 3 Epic feats, and 4 twists all to improving their DCs...and still end up with a DC around the same as Hassan gets with zero Heroic feats (OK, there's really only 1 here that helps, but still), zero Epic feats, and only 1 twist, oh, and a 3-points-of-Int-behind race. The investment comparison is crazy!

So if we took Hassan, made it Drow or Sun Elf, gave it Completionist, Great Intelligence x3, and twisted 3 more Intelligence, and drank a Lasting Int potion, that'd be 12 or 13 points of Int higher. But, yes, that would be a heavy investment. Hassan doesn't do it, because, as he says, he wants a decent Assassinate DC "without sacrificing solid dps and/or survivability." But that's the same trade-off DC casters have to make to get their DCs high, too.

I believe you are mixing apples and oranges here if you really wanted to you could also say with completionist the caster is getting a boost to spell pen and other spell dc's that assassins have no comparison to.

Also rogues(melee) have more stats to invest in then casters but more to that point assassins take the twf line which gives them more assassinations per strike so in your analysis the rogue has to invest in feats as well.

So a rogue needs dex, con, int
wiz needs con, int

But let's forget the feats the caster sacrifices ZERO in defense to boost their dc's, they can instakill at range, they aren't limited to a sneak mechanic that lowers mobility and speed etc........

Wizards with high or low dc's still get blur/displace/stoneskin,ddoor and if you bring into question palemasters (which tend to focus on instakills) they can heal themselves as well or wf or bf to repair. All in all casters have MANY more options then rogues for defense aside from spell dc's with no sacrifice. Not to mention rogues diminish significantly on undead where as casters aren't hit in the same way.

I'll say I was pretty unimpressed with my "main" (at the time) assassin because of the squish factor and hassle it is to try and run around in a group sneaking which is slow.

[Arkantios]

So sad...nobody even read my post...

[Bolo_Grubb]

Id put a T5 ability in assassin that allows players to add +1/2/3 to their rogue level for assassinate DC, capped at 20. This would allow 3 level splashes to spend AP to get their DC back up to what a pure would be.

I don't think a multi-class should be able to get their assassinate DC as high as a pure

[bsquishwizzy]

Some of the new Barbarian enhancements do.

Ok, that’s one class.

I’m not sure that anyone with a barb – I’m working on an assumption here – is basing their epic build on their heroic capstone.


Lol, do you think everyone here just doesn't know how to get sneak attacks? Rogue DPS isn't terrible but it's still pretty mediocre. My own Rogue can only just break 2k DPS, and this is while using Haste+Damage boost and a full stack of Blitz. I know of several builds that can get 3k and beyond.

Why does no one read my posts when they decide to respond?

The type of damage numbers you are talking is in epic levels, NOT heroic. If you are pulling 2K DPS (assuming you mean per second or per swing) on a lvl 15 assassin, I’d REALLY like to see your layout. Because most people usually hit in the hundreds, at best.

So, based on the numbers you’re giving me, you’re talking epic content. I’m just going to deduce that right up front.

Using epic numbers, you now want to fiddle with heroic enhancement trees? Do any of you think this isn’t going to throw the heroic game WAY FRICKIN’ OFF? Because, as it stands right now, a mediocre rogue assassin with maybe a single life behind their belts is a frickin’ killing machine. I have to stop and marvel sometimes that I’m getting the number of kills that I am because it seems effortless.

So no…rogue DPS isn’t terrible. It is apparently terrible in epic. It therefore should be addressed in the EDs…not enhancements.



Almost every enhancement in the mechanic tree is either outright useless (+1 crit range on great crossbows as lvl18 core) or an extremely marginal bonus (+10% doubleshot, when repeaters get reduced benefit.) The entire tree needs to be remade, Turbine should honestly be embarrassed that an example of such terrible design has persisted for so long.

Just because you don’t know how to utilize what’s there doesn’t mean the enhancenments are “useless.” Mechanic is the go-to tree for trapping. People here tout about how they are putting out 90+ DCs on their crafted traps. Mechanic is useless to most people because it starts with crossbow proficiency. Crossbows in this game are totally, frickin’ useless. I’m almost willing to bet you’d be better off with a thrower of some sort over the use of a crossbow. Hence, the bottom tiers of mechanic are just as useless as the weapon they utilize. Fix the weapon, and you basically fix Mechanic.



The caster trees offer a lot more to a caster than Shadowdancer does to an Assassin. Multiple abilities in Shadowdancer would have to completely reworked or replaced for a Shadowdancer Assassin to be even approach the level of a Draconic Sorcerer, or even a Dreadnought Fighter.

Draconic is the only tree that is useful to casters, as everybody here just about agrees that even with Magister, you’ll have a VERY hard time making DCs for EE content. And boosting DCs is what Magister is really all about. That is, unless, you’re really into null magic somethingorother which I’m pretty sure most casters aren’t into.




Bards and Pallys? Rogues have a bunch of fundamental flaws that need to be addressed, beyond simply liking the class there's no reason to actually use it. They still lag behind other classes in basically every area.

I can solo more heroic content, easier, on a rogue than I can just about any other class. Even in epic, I can do that. Maybe not EE, but Eh definitely.

I think what it comes down to is this two-dimensional concept you have to playing a rogue. If a rogue is not smashing things like a barb, then it sucks…so we need to mindlessly boost DPS so that everything does melee like a barb.


They are less survivable than Paladins, Fighters, Bards, Barbarians, every class that can kite, and of course every class with innate self-heals.

Ever hear of UMD? Rogues have it by the truckload.

This one statement tells me you have no FRICKIN’ clue as to what you are talking about…



-Paladins get cleaves from enhancements.
-Barbs get cleaves from enhancements
-Fighters have tons of feats meaning cleaves are easy to get
-Rangers have Dance of Death
-Casters get AoE spells and archers get IPS

Assassinate is mechanically inferior to almost every other insta-kill ability.

On my rogue, I could knock off two to three mobs at a time, and NEVER took aggro.

What happened was a change in the aggro mechanic, not that rogues got nerfed somehow.

Rogues should not have the best or the most quantity of instakills. That’s reserved for PMs. Likewise, I think a stealthy rogue getting its own cleave is totally laughable. Really?



The stance also lowers your speed, so you can't reliably Assassinate stuff that is moving away from you. Other insta-kill abilities do not have a "penalty" as large as this, you just press it and it works. Especially helpful when you're soloing.

Funny. I assassinate on the move all of the time.



-Double Assassinate only works with TWF, meaning SWF and THF are not good options

Ummm…duh.

Does anyone need to go into detail how having two weapons is desirable for more hits, and therefore more potential kills?




The mechanics of Assassinate mean it takes a lot of finesse. You could say it has a high skill cap. Problem is, other insta-kill abilities have a very low skill cap and easily outperform Assassinate.

Heaven forbid that we have people actually learning how to play a toon in order to do it well…



Dependance on Sneak Attacks means an Improved Deception weapon is necessary. There are two of them (that are good): one is from CitW (which is dead) and the other is an epic item (have fun with the epic mat roulette.) Rogues depending on contextual damage is not the biggest issue, the problem goes away entirely with ID weapons but the issue is that ID weapons are a necessity, which greatly reduces the number of weapons a Rogue would use. Oh and there are zero ID staffs or repeaters

Ever heard of “bluff?” I use it all of the time. And it is highly effective.


Since you're not STR-based, you can't use Trip or Stunning Blow effectively (of course there wasn't room to take SB in the first place.) Rogue's only form of good CC is Web Traps, which are AWESOME but only because they're not working as intended. Oh and they don't work on some terrain because reasons, and most parties won't wait for you to set them up except in very difficult areas or shortmanning. Their DC may be impossibly high but, compared to the actual spell it takes so long to "cast" and has a much longer cooldown.

This is your first fair point. And you’ve basically agreed that traps are bjorked. Which needs to be resolved.


The Mechanic tree hahahahahaha

…which is the tree that is supposed to be the best at traps…

[CThruTheEgo]

-Make Assassinate more party friendly; Measure the Foe stacks expire on a timer instead of on breaking sneak and stacks higher, can Assassinate so long as you have MtF stacks maybe
-Have Knife specialization apply to more classes of weapons, at least if you have weapon finesse
-Inherent Deception effect
-Make poison a more integral part of Assassin, so Assassin-based multiclasses can, uh, exist (beyond Assassinate, what major things does the tree actually offer?)

I could get behind some of these suggestions, as long as the don't change the unique and challenging playstyle of an assassin.


what other class has to invest so heavily in a SINGLE attack?

...snip...

What I have been trying to point out is that the investment in a DC like Hassan's Assassin is far more costly than a similar investment in a DC Palemaster. The Palemaster gets much more utility out of the DC than an assassin does.

Investing in int is not only for assassinate. It offers a great deal of utility. It also provides your to-hit stat, damage stat, know the angles stat, reflex save (with insightful reflexes), more skill points, and higher search and disable. There's a great deal of synergy in there. Nothing is sacrificed by investing in int and, in fact, a lot is gained. What exactly do you think is being sacrificed by investing heavily in int on an assassin?


You really cannot compare assassinate to a DC caster with a necro spec. The caster is just so much more versatile with it. Yes, harper has helped immensely with making the heavy INT investment more useful, but you are still pretty well pigeon holed into a destiny with INT if you want max assassinate. Then add that to assassinate you must be in melee range, you must be in sneak, you must have hide/move silent or you won't be in sneak long.

I don't feel like I'm asking for an easy button, nor do I want one. I would just like to be able to still make a good assassinate DC while not in Shadow Dancer. (The only other destinies with INT are magister and draconic, which are not good for an assassin either.) Going out of SD you lose:
- Tier 1 twist slot or 6 DC (stealthy)
- 6 INT (3 DC)
If you take the twist you lose 3 DC, if you don't, you lose 9 DC. That's pretty significant.

Many other DC based builds will sacrifice a twist slot to boost their DC, often for a lot less than +6 too. It's not unusual, so why is that a problem?

I haven't addressed shadowdancer yet, but I personally think it's a decent destiny for an assassin. It sucks if you're not an assassin, but so do a lot of EDs when your not playing the right build for them. Shadowdancer provides:

-6d6 sneak attack (nothing to sneeze at)
-25% incorp (also very good)
-up to 7 dodge as well as +6 MDB to reach dodge cap in light armor
-fort bypass (ideal for a sneak attack based build)
-a useful displacement clicky if you learn to time it right
-6-9 assassinate DC
-shadow manipulation (more useful for solo than group play imo)

It offers a lot of utility by providing a little bit of everything – dps, damage avoidance, DCs, limited CC. It suits assassins quite well imo.

There's only two other ways to get that much incorp – wraith form (requires 12 wiz) and shadow fade (requires 6 monk). Shadow fade is annoying as hell to maintain because you have to refresh it every minute. Shadowdancer's incorp is easy – turn it on and forget about it. Any casting based wiz is probably going to be in lich form, so wraith form is generally used on multiclass melee wizards and is basically used only on niche builds.

The only thing assassins could really use some help with imo, is damage mitigation. I don't know if that should come from the class, enhancements, or destiny, but that's the only area in need of improvement in my experience.


When run in a group, assassinating is infrequent. The groups move very fast and even with faster sneaking you cannot maintain Measure the Foe and keep up; you will sneak there after it is all dead. So running with the group and killing with sneak attack damage is more the norm. By comparison a DC caster can run at full speed and cast their insta-kill spells. If you are solo, then assassinate is more useful, but your speed compared to something like a DC caster is much slower. Its these types of things that make me think that a few more options for assassinate would be a good idea.


I've played both. High sustained DCs are easier on a caster. I think people who have not played an assassin really discount the penalty involved with measure the foe. The +5 requires you to be in sneak. There is no comparable penalty or requirement on a caster. In sneak you will not stay with the group. To use assassinate in groups, as they run today, you really have to assume you won't have this. Groups won't wait for you to sneak ahead and assassinate, its just faster to zerg, so they will.

If you try to work it in a group, you have to pick a mob that is not already moved into the melee (these mobs will be dead to fast to bother with.) If, as you set up, the mob agros and begins to move, there is a decent chance you will physics miss (lag and the bad twf range don't help here.) If you are even more patient and expect it to move and then follow it, its going to be dead before you can sneak to it at the melee. Casters don't have this problem. They just cast at distant mobs and hit even if they move, its kinda like magic or something. ;)

I've mentioned it before, but I moved my INT based assassin into Divine Crusader for better cooperation in a group. The mechanics involved with assassinate are group un-friendly as it is, measure the foe being counted as an integral part of your "sustained DC" just makes it worse.

Next, Magister gets +3 from a T2 and -10 debuff in T3, which can be trigger by an aoe and then taken advantage of by a second cast. You don't get a second assassinate if the first one fails. And in Tier 4 you can get a 15% cool down reduction.

5th core of Exalted Angel is +3 to all DCs and then you can twist all the goodies in Magister to also boost your DC. So on a necro spec'd divine, that's:
+3 AA
+3 Magister T2
+10 from Magister T3 debuff
-15% cooldown from Magister T4
and you can do all that from range at full speed... and before the difference in +12 items vs +4 items.

I didn't mention store pots, I don't like them, but they are equal between casters and rogues. As are Yugo pots.

Also, valid point on base DC.

In these two quotes you are talking about the unique playstyle of an assassin that requires skill to play effectively. This is exactly what should not be changed. In a group you should be assassinating whenever it is off cooldown and dps-ing in between. This requires knowledge and awareness of a number of factors to be able to do effectively and is exactly what makes the playstyle unique and challenging.

Fighting happens in clusters. If you have knowledge of the quest, then you know when and where those fights will happen. The vast majority of groups are going to zerg, so anticipate this and move ahead of them. Leave while the group is finishing off the last mob or two and start heading to the next fight in sneak mode, building up measure the foe as you go. Get to the next encounter, wait for the group while selecting a high fort target to take advantage of the bonus DCs from measure the foe. More than likely the group will have caught up with you right about the time you get there, so choose your target quickly. Move into position, assassinate, then drop out of sneak mode and go attack whatever mob the group is currently beating on. Select your next target while dpsing, a lower fort target since you won't have measure the foe, drop into sneak mode as assassinate goes off timer, get into position, assassinate, then go back to dpsing with the group.

If you fall behind the group, don't stay in sneak. Catch up to them and just don't count on having measure the foe. For a large percentage of content, measure the foe doesn't matter anyway. It's only the highest level content where you really need it and want to take advantage of it. Where it doesn't matter, just zerg right along, dropping into sneak only to keep assassinate on timer.

If you're sitting in sneak mode all the time doing nothing but assassinating, then you're wasting a huge amount of potential dps. You have to be able to switch between assassinate and dps quickly and effectively to utilize the build's full potential.

Getting into position requires knowledge and awareness of mob movement and attack patterns. Archers, for example, stand in one place for a certain period of time, then move a short distance and continue firing. If they are being attacked in melee, they will move back away from their attackers. If they are not being attacked, they will move to the side or forward towad their target. If you're paying attention, you will know how long they've been standing in one spot, how soon they will move, and where they will be headed when they do. All mobs follow some sort of pattern like this. If you know it and are paying attention, then you end up in the right place at the right time and they never see it coming.

You also have to be aware of mob attacks so that they don't knock you out of sneak. Don't cross an archer's line of fore and avoid melees' cleave attacks, for example. Altogether, playing an assassin effectively requires knowledge of game mechanics, quests, and the immediate situation, taking all of that into consideration and acting accordingly.

It's this very dynamic and skillful playstyle, especially in a group, that makes assassins a unique build to play. Under no circumstances should this be made easier because this is exactly what makes them so much fun to play. If you're good at it, then you're as deadly as any necro caster, as well as many other builds for that matter. No, this playstyle is not newb friendly because it does require a great deal of knowledge to play effectively. No, it is not a playstyle that is widely enjoyed by a large percentage of the playerbase. But it's the only build that plays this way and is greatly appreciated by those of us who do enjoy it. And if it's a playstyle that appeals to you, then you will learn to be good at it.

[Qezuzu]

So no…rogue DPS isn’t terrible. It is apparently terrible in epic. It therefore should be addressed in the EDs…not enhancements.

It's not terrible, it's just subpar. And that 2k number is while in Dreadnought, buffing that tree buffs virtually every other melee which defeats the purpose.

Heroic levels are freaking easy (well, relative to epics) so I don't really care about that, the game starts at lvl20 as far as I'm concerned. But anyway, you could modify Lethality or the capstone to increase the damage while not 'breaking' heroics.


Just because you don’t know how to utilize what’s there doesn’t mean the enhancenments are “useless.” Mechanic is the go-to tree for trapping. People here tout about how they are putting out 90+ DCs on their crafted traps. Mechanic is useless to most people because it starts with crossbow proficiency. Crossbows in this game are totally, frickin’ useless. I’m almost willing to bet you’d be better off with a thrower of some sort over the use of a crossbow. Hence, the bottom tiers of mechanic are just as useless as the weapon they utilize. Fix the weapon, and you basically fix Mechanic.

lol

The go-to tree for trapping? INT-based Assassin, hell any rogue splash can get no-fail on all traps. Mechanic gives what, +3 disable device/search (as tier one, so anyone can take it) and you can find traps from further away?

Yeah Improved Traps are required for ridiculous web DCs; I invested enough to get a tier 2 enhancement, I'm truly a master mechanic.

Honestly, Assassin just needs a few tweaks (change Assassinate mechanics, flesh out the Poison aspect, Lethality scales with epic levels) but Mechanic needs a complete overhaul. Even to Repeater users the tree doesn't really offer anything, especially compared to Artificer:


lvl1 core: Offers nothing except improved Sneak Attack range. You can argue that Great Crossbows being gimp are the reason why this is bad but it's doubtful that they'll ever be made better than repeaters
lvl3 core: Tanglefoot is GREAT for low levels but quickly loses its usefulness.
lvl6 core: INT-to-damage is no longer special considering anyone can get it with harper. My own Assassin used repeaters with INT-to-damage through harper (using Artificer dilly for proficiency) before I TRed it into human.
lvl12 core: a convenience and free proficiency
lvl18: LMAO
lvl20: It's decent

Crossbow Training Tree: For 8 AP, you get +4 to hit and +2 damage on repeating crossbows. It's really not worth it.
Lacerating Shots: Exclusive to Great Crossbows so it's automatically terrible
Thunderstone: see Tangleroot
+skills +saves: Most trees have this so it's fine.

Improved Traps: INCREDIBLE because it's bugged
Wand and Scroll Mastery: Great. Little expensive.
Skill boost: If you ever need to use this, you're either trying to disable certain heroic traps or you need to get some gear.

Wrack Construct: I guess it's decent maybe?
Ooze Flask: See Tangleroot
UMD: You can get 39 UMD at what, lvl15ish?
DEX/INT: Every tree has it.

Disable Construct: lmao
Leg Shot: lmao

Rapid Fire: Repeaters are supposed to get reduced benefit but apparently they don't. The fact that they're not supposed to and yet this ability was still put in is baffling.
Time Bomb: I tried to use this last TR. I was a little excited, 1200 AoE damage+AoE knockdown? Sounds great. But it bugged out constantly. Sometime it would do no damage and sometimes it would only hit half the enemies. And two minutes cooldown? Compare this to Assassinate: with Assassinate, you can activate it 8 times in the time it takes for Time Bomb to go off timer.

Red are enhancements I would consider lucrative. It's not pretty. I don't "not know how to utilize it," it's simply garbage, there's nothing to utilize.


Funny. I assassinate on the move all of the time.

If you're trying to Assassinate that is moving directly away from you then it's likely you're not going to make physical contact, unless you're adjacent to it when you activate Assassinate.


Ever heard of “bluff?” I use it all of the time. And it is highly effective.

Yes. Did you know Bluff has a cooldown? Improved Deception is required for reliable sneak attacks, Agony or epic Midnight's Greetings are required; at the very least, a rogue with one is far more effective than one without, even when you consider bluff.

Did you also know Bluff doesn't have animation priority, and its own animation supersedes the animation of some other abilities? This means you can simultaneously activate Bluff, Assassin's Trick, Damage Boost, and Haste Boost; and then cancel the animation early with trip (or any other tactical ability.) That's a tip coming from someone who has no frickin' clue what he's talking about.


This is your first fair point. And you’ve basically agreed that traps are bjorked. Which needs to be resolved.

Resolved as in fix the DC to what it's supposed to be, i.e. useless? Because that'd be a massive nerf to Rogues, Web Traps allow them to solo difficult content.

Web traps are not WAI but they're not broken. Yeah their DC is incredibly high but, as I said, compare it to the spell. Sorcerers have a 3 second cooldown on Web IIRC, Wiz has 6 IIRC. Web traps has a 15 second cooldown and it takes, what, six seconds from starting to lay the trap until the time it goes off? Quickened Wizard or Sorcerer lays it in about a second.

[Monkey-Boy]

I haven't played it, but it does look like a nice build.

And, yes, a max-DC caster can easily spend 5 Heroic feats, 3 Epic feats, and 4 twists all to improving their DCs...and still end up with a DC around the same as Hassan gets with zero Heroic feats (OK, there's really only 1 here that helps, but still), zero Epic feats, and only 1 twist, oh, and a 3-points-of-Int-behind race. The investment comparison is crazy!

So if we took Hassan, made it Drow or Sun Elf, gave it Completionist, Great Intelligence x3, and twisted 3 more Intelligence, and drank a Lasting Int potion, that'd be 12 or 13 points of Int higher. But, yes, that would be a heavy investment. Hassan doesn't do it, because, as he says, he wants a decent Assassinate DC "without sacrificing solid dps and/or survivability." But that's the same trade-off DC casters have to make to get their DCs high, too.

You're a DC cleric, and as i must congratulate you on learning how to ice-skate uphill I think you should compare what a Pale Master has to 'give up' to get great DCs and not a cleric.

And it's really not much.

[CThruTheEgo]

Web traps are not WAI

This is unknown actually. Testing has shown us that the DC of magical traps is affected by the improve traps enhancement the same way that elemental traps are affected as stated in the enhancement description. But we don't know if that is WAI or not. It certainly wouldn't be the first time a description in DDO is incorrect, or the first time an ability applied to something it shouldn't. So until we get an official dev comment, it could just as likely be either one.

EDIT: I agree that it is certainly not overpowered in it's current state.

[CThruTheEgo]

So sad...nobody even read my post...

I read it, I just tend to take the game as it is and leave it up to others to figure out how to improve it. That said, I think you have a lot of good suggestions in there. They offer some interesting improvements without fundamentally changing the playstyle, which is what I am most concerned with preserving. Any changes that are made should do just that – improve the class/build without changing how it actually plays.

[draven1]

I think mechanics have a reboot chance in their speciality... Trap

Imagine...

Smoke grenade, flashbangs, fire-arms(repeaters) in mechanic's hand.

Symbol of stun trap with disable device skill DC(Stun bomb),
Wail of banshee trap with disable device skill DC(C4 bomb)!!!
Finger of Death grenade!
It's like modern warfare in DDO!

Fire in the Hole!!

[Monkey-Boy]

I think mechanics have a reboot chance in their speciality... Trap

Imagine...

Smoke grenade, flashbangs, fire-arms(repeaters) in mechanic's hand.

Symbol of stun trap with disable device skill DC(Stun bomb),
Wail of banshee trap with disable device skill DC(C4 bomb)!!!
Finger of Death grenade!
It's like modern warfare in DDO!

Fire in the Hole!!

okay . . . that sounds awesome.

I think the Mehcnics Capstone should let them make "Undermine" bombs :)

[MadCookieQueen]

okay . . . that sounds awesome.

I think the Mehcnics Capstone should let them make "Undermine" bombs :)


why do I see a Red Light/Green Light EE Deathwyrm party happening if this was possible?


Well....I'll bring the martinis...you bring the flagons...and Tes will bring his usual girly laughter.

[Saekee]

okay . . . that sounds awesome.

I think the Mehcnics Capstone should let them make "Undermine" bombs :)


I think mechanics have a reboot chance in their speciality... Trap

Imagine...

Smoke grenade, flashbangs, fire-arms(repeaters) in mechanic's hand.

Symbol of stun trap with disable device skill DC(Stun bomb),
Wail of banshee trap with disable device skill DC(C4 bomb)!!!
Finger of Death grenade!
It's like modern warfare in DDO!

Fire in the Hole!!
well, this is about assassins, but I agree that mechanics should be demolitionists. Oh, and add Kobold race for the total Undermine experience.


I'd LOVE if everyone could wear rune arms, and only artificers would be able to shoot.
The idea with those feats is to make it so a pure rogue is more appealing. Glad you like the idea. It would not be everyone--just rogues willing to spend one of four good feats with better choices than now.


^This. I would like to see assassins remain the unique and skillful build they are today. Too many buffs and they will just end up as another easy button. We don't need that.
Totally agree. Let's have one class that is the ultimate skill class. An INT rogue is the most skilled class in the game and I love the idea of demanding the most skilled players to run them. Nokowi's vids are an inspiration.


Also, pleeeease, to anyone who continues to do so (not Cthru obviously) do not bring up easy-button bards and pallies as points of comparison. Pally holy sword needs to be nerfed to only work with longswords and bard's swashbuckling and CDG need to be only with rapiers and based upon more than just a skill (perform), respectively. that is a different topic of course.

[redoubt]

Investing in int is not only for assassinate. It offers a great deal of utility. It also provides your to-hit stat, damage stat, know the angles stat, reflex save (with insightful reflexes), more skill points, and higher search and disable. There's a great deal of synergy in there. Nothing is sacrificed by investing in int and, in fact, a lot is gained. What exactly do you think is being sacrificed by investing heavily in int on an assassin?

True, the Harper tree has given a lot to assassins. I will admit that I have been out of rogue since Harper came out doing other past lives. Harper looks to add a good amount of power and shift the last of the assassin investment away from DEX and fully into INT (aside from qualifying for TWF, of course, which you still need.) It does make an assassin more more like a DC caster now. Take CON and the casting stat (INT); just drop enough into DEX for TWF. So on a Harper Assassin, I think you are going to be correct. Again, I've not had the pleasure of being a Harper yet (I left rogue in the summer after I decided my rogue was better of in DC.)

Maybe this helps me understand that part of what I disagree with on Assassins is that Turbine gave us the Harper tree instead of putting those things in assassin where they should be.


Many other DC based builds will sacrifice a twist slot to boost their DC, often for a lot less than +6 too. It's not unusual, so why is that a problem?

Its not a problem, I was simply listing the trade offs. I even gave an example of a divine caster who would twist several things from Magister to improve DCs. The difference lies in what you give up. My assassin twisted 1) sense weakness, 2) hail of blows, and 3) cocoon.

By comparison my Pale Master runs in Draconic and twists the Magister bonus to DCs. I get full INT from Draconic as well. (There is zero need to twist cocoon as I am already self healing.)


I haven't addressed shadowdancer yet, but I personally think it's a decent destiny for an assassin. It sucks if you're not an assassin, but so do a lot of EDs when your not playing the right build for them. Shadowdancer provides:

-6d6 sneak attack (nothing to sneeze at)
-25% incorp (also very good)
-up to 7 dodge as well as +6 MDB to reach dodge cap in light armor
-fort bypass (ideal for a sneak attack based build)
-a useful displacement clicky if you learn to time it right
-6-9 assassinate DC
-shadow manipulation (more useful for solo than group play imo)

It offers a lot of utility by providing a little bit of everything – dps, damage avoidance, DCs, limited CC. It suits assassins quite well imo.

There's only two other ways to get that much incorp – wraith form (requires 12 wiz) and shadow fade (requires 6 monk). Shadow fade is annoying as hell to maintain because you have to refresh it every minute. Shadowdancer's incorp is easy – turn it on and forget about it. Any casting based wiz is probably going to be in lich form, so wraith form is generally used on multiclass melee wizards and is basically used only on niche builds.

I did enjoy my time in Shadow Dancer as an assassin. I agree with all you say here about it. To that I would add that I would like to see execute have a DEX or INT option.

I actually used Untouchable to great success. I planed out my dodge feats and items so that with 7 stacks I hit my Max Dex Bonus in dodge. This allowed my to invest in other things to help round out my character. This is the sort of thing I want to see more available with regard to Assassinate. Just 2-4 points that can be picked up elsewhere that allow you some additional options for rounding out your character.


The only thing assassins could really use some help with imo, is damage mitigation. I don't know if that should come from the class, enhancements, or destiny, but that's the only area in need of improvement in my experience.

I do worry about this with the new champion system. There is a lot of True Seeing out there and I ran with 25-50% displacement all the time. Losing this mitigation everytime I come across a mob that does 2-4x normal damage has the potential to be devastating. Then again, the PRR from even light armor has been boosted since the last time I was a rogue. But I do agree the some small bump here would be nice.





In these two quotes you are talking about the unique playstyle of an assassin that requires skill to play effectively. This is exactly what should not be changed. In a group you should be assassinating whenever it is off cooldown and dps-ing in between. This requires knowledge and awareness of a number of factors to be able to do effectively and is exactly what makes the playstyle unique and challenging.

Fighting happens in clusters. If you have knowledge of the quest, ...

/snip

It's this very dynamic and skillful playstyle, especially in a group, that makes assassins a unique build to play. Under no circumstances should this be made easier because this is exactly what makes them so much fun to play. If you're good at it, then you're as deadly as any necro caster, as well as many other builds for that matter. No, this playstyle is not newb friendly because it does require a great deal of knowledge to play effectively. No, it is not a playstyle that is widely enjoyed by a large percentage of the playerbase. But it's the only build that plays this way and is greatly appreciated by those of us who do enjoy it. And if it's a playstyle that appeals to you, then you will learn to be good at it.

Agreed. I really enjoyed those things about the class. What you describe is how I played most of the time. I was always in and out of sneak (which is how I formed my opinion on the usefulness of MTF.) I even ran quests like Fire Peaks and Deathwyrm to great success by playing to my strengths and avoiding things I was bad at. I have to say DPS'ing on the phalactary made me sad though... 8(

I've incorporated tons of things that forumites like you and Nokowi have talked about. As an example, I pressed my armor piercing as high as I could so I could start seeing sneak attack and crit damage on mobs that are normally immune. I don't want to you to think I don't take your advice seriously, I do!

I also agree that it is a difficult sub-class to play well (I'm referring only to Assassin; I've not played the other two.) I also found it rewarding to do things with it that people didn't think could be done. I did find damage mitigation (as you have discussed) to be on the weak side. My main is on a very long road back to being an assassin. I had played an assassin back when the level cap was 16 and I just didn't feel the survivability was good enough. I moved my main into one again over a year or two ago (it all starts to run together after 9 years). I felt it was much improved, but that there were still things missing. I'm working through a litany of past lives heroic, epic and iconic to improve DPS and survivability. I'm hoping to return to rogue with a solid base of PRR so that using light armor with the past life PRR will provide enough mitigation to be survivable. (It would make me sad if giving up improved evasion for heavy armor was the best way to survive.) As I play up other classes I am collecting gear to go toward my finial build which is assassin. (I got a few sideways looks when my "Paladin" took the occultation necklace out of the chest; I had to explain that I'm really a rogue! I narrowly avoided a lynch mob on that one.)

Anyway, I do enjoy our discusions on the topic, but I just got a text telling me its time to get in game and play. See you there!

[bsquishwizzy]

It's not terrible, it's just subpar. And that 2k number is while in Dreadnought, buffing that tree buffs virtually every other melee which defeats the purpose.

Heroic levels are freaking easy (well, relative to epics) so I don't really care about that, the game starts at lvl20 as far as I'm concerned. But anyway, you could modify Lethality or the capstone to increase the damage while not 'breaking' heroics.

I have no problem with *maybe* buffing capstone (though I’ve had no problems in the past on EH from 20 – 23). But not everyone things the game starts at 20. And, again, you start playing with enhancements, you break the game for the rest of us.


The go-to tree for trapping? INT-based Assassin, hell any rogue splash can get no-fail on all traps. Mechanic gives what, +3 disable device/search (as tier one, so anyone can take it) and you can find traps from further away?

Yeah, umm, no. High INT DCs on traps are not no-fail. I have an INT-based Drow (max INT), with all level-ups into INT, trying traps. Stuff like force traps get evaded on elite content. And it’s been like that for some time. Unless you are talking about disabling traps, and that is probably true. Then again, I’ve seen a lot of splash class toons that boast their “no fail” scores, blowing trap boxes on HE. So I kinda disagree.

Granted, I haven’t tried traps in the last month or so. Not sure if any changes or “fixes” have been applied since then.

And +3 to disable device / search is nothing to sneeze at. And, if I want to go pure, it doesn’t exist in any of the other trees. So yes, it is the go-to PrE for trapping. Period. And traps generally suck, have always sucked, and still need to be revised.


Honestly, Assassin just needs a few tweaks (change Assassinate mechanics, flesh out the Poison aspect, Lethality scales with epic levels) but Mechanic needs a complete overhaul. Even to Repeater users the tree doesn't really offer anything, especially compared to Artificer:

I’m not 100% against tweaks to *maybe* the capstone. Mechanic, however, is tied to standard crossbows, and that is really their one main flaw. And the only problem with non-repeating crossbows is that they are not repeaters. So you have a weapon in the game that is useless in virtually all content – mainly because no one wants to use it. Its rate of fire is a joke.

Hence, this isn’t a problem with Mechanic. This is a problem with crossbows. You either get rid of them, which is dumb given that they are a part of D&D lore, or you make them worth having. Right now, no matter what Mechanic puts into them, they are NOT worth having period. Hence my insistence in fixing crossbows.

Your point about poisons? You’re dead-on. They are mildly effective in heroic. Past lvl 15 they’re not worth using. And they are ineffective in most group play.

The last thing I want to see is Mechanic being simply a clone of some Artificer tree, which is what all this discussion of repeaters and rune arms is going to do.

As for your point about Tanglefoot, you’re probably right. I’d prefer more CC in this type of fix than straight DPS.

INT-to-Damage and Harper? I’d prefer this as an option over Harper in that Harper is one of those across-the-board trees, and not specific to the class. Frankly speaking, it was a mistake to put it in the game in the manner it was implemented. I don’t see how hamstringing Mechanic and forcing people into Harper makes Mechanic any better.

Wrack Construct was always a joke, even before the enhancement pass. And yes, that should definitely be reworked.



If you're trying to Assassinate that is moving directly away from you then it's likely you're not going to make physical contact, unless you're adjacent to it when you activate Assassinate.

Faster Sneaking + Speed item + Haste. Most patrolling mobs move slowly and you can bump and assassinate in the same motion.

The new aggro mechanic pretty much prevents you from killing more than one without a party present to keep mobs distracted with melee. However, in this case, I can usually nab 2 – 3 consistently with a single assassinate.

What they did to aggro is really what is hampering assassins. I like the more realistic aggro mechanic, but I think it needs to be tweaked because they minute anything gets taken out, mobs with their backs turned automatically go into kill mode. And this shouldn’t be the case.

Even when the do go into kill mode, if you have enough invested in Move Silent and Hide (which you should, I might add), they’ll never see you unless you decide to hang around while they flail about swinging in the air. I’ve tried this fairly recently (maybe three weeks ago), and know this for a fact.


Yes. Did you know Bluff has a cooldown? Improved Deception is required for reliable sneak attacks, Agony or epic Midnight's Greetings are required; at the very least, a rogue with one is far more effective than one without, even when you consider bluff.

Did you also know Bluff doesn't have animation priority, and its own animation supersedes the animation of some other abilities? This means you can simultaneously activate Bluff, Assassin's Trick, Damage Boost, and Haste Boost; and then cancel the animation early with trip (or any other tactical ability.) That's a tip coming from someone who has no frickin' clue what he's talking about.

I’m aware of all of this.

In solo play, bluff is a no-brainer. Position, then bluff-pull, wait for aggro to end, sneak behind, and assassinate.

In team play, you let someone else take aggro, no bluff is needed. Use bluff as a means to shed unwanted aggro.

Deception’s only major drawing card is one-on-one melee with something you cannot assassinate, like a boss, and it does not proc enough, or effectively enough to be utterly reliable (although Golden Guile doesn’t suck). And, to be honest, if you are an assassin, you’re sneaking and assassinating whenever you can.

Deception is best used with a ranged weapon. It is a go-to thing for my assassins (read: Golden Guile, which is the only reliable deception I’ve found in heroic), but I do not heavily rely on that for the majority of my killing.





Web traps are not WAI but they're not broken. Yeah their DC is incredibly high but, as I said, compare it to the spell. Sorcerers have a 3 second cooldown on Web IIRC, Wiz has 6 IIRC. Web traps has a 15 second cooldown and it takes, what, six seconds from starting to lay the trap until the time it goes off? Quickened Wizard or Sorcerer lays it in about a second.

Here’s the deal: you say Mechanic is broken. Then you say traps are broken. Well, part of Mechanic’s draw is traps. Hence, the reason why I say if you fix traps, much of your Mechanic angst is resolved.

Don’t compare a rogue to a sorc or a wizard. They are not the same, nor should they be the same. And while you’re 100% correct that a wizard can drop a web in the blink of an eye, those types are unlikely to melee, disable traps, and so on. Plus, a wizard or a sorc needs to shrine to get their capacity to instakill back. A rogue can go forever without shrining. So, casters have drawbacks as well.

Casters own CC. Rogues are really, really good utility players.

[SirValentine]

...I think you should compare what a Pale Master has to 'give up' to get great DCs and not a cleric.

And it's really not much.

If you want to say that "great" DCs are good enough, that's a fair argument. For both Assassins and casters. My caster's DCs are probably excessive everywhere but EE Storm Horns & the 3 highest-level EE raids.

My point is that "max" DCs take huge investment that's very similar across different build. And the archetypal example Assassin build mentioned in this thread gets those great-but-not-max DCs without making that huge investment. The claim that Assassinate somehow takes far more investment is absurd.

Which goes back to my original point that Assassins can get competitive DCs, either "max" with heavy investment, or merely "great" without, not too far off the values casters can get.

[CThruTheEgo]

I've not had the pleasure of being a Harper yet

Harper was a game changer for assassins. It provides the perfect synergy for them.

[Chai]

I don't think a multi-class should be able to get their assassinate DC as high as a pure

arcane casters can, bards can, divine casters can get higher multiclassing with monk (+2 wis capstone versus 4 wis for stance).

Assassins already have to be in shadowdancer, and stealth for 10 seconds, just to get max DC. I feel a little leeway wouldn't be the end of the world. It would still be capped at 20 levels, be tier 5, and only give 3 levels of leeway.

If you have less than 20 levels of rogue, the AP would be spent to grant +1/2/3 levels of rogue to assassinate DC, max of 20 levels. The character with max DC would still be a majority of rogue levels, at 17/3.

[Qezuzu]

Hence, this isn’t a problem with Mechanic. This is a problem with crossbows. You either get rid of them, which is dumb given that they are a part of D&D lore, or you make them worth having. Right now, no matter what Mechanic puts into them, they are NOT worth having period. Hence my insistence in fixing crossbows.

We could also just make the tree not have reduced benefits for Repeaters.


In team play, you let someone else take aggro, no bluff is needed. Use bluff as a means to shed unwanted aggro.

If you're letting someone else take aggro you're not attacking, which means you're not doing as much damage as you could. This is what I was talking about, an Assassin with ID is more effective.


Deception’s only major drawing card is one-on-one melee with something you cannot assassinate, like a boss, and it does not proc enough, or effectively enough to be utterly reliable (although Golden Guile doesn’t suck).

Deception is reliable when you have accessory+weapon. Also, it "locks" bosses by spamming a bluff effect on them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63arxpwyFyo).


Here’s the deal: you say Mechanic is broken. Then you say traps are broken. Well, part of Mechanic’s draw is traps. Hence, the reason why I say if you fix traps, much of your Mechanic angst is resolved.

Traps are not broken. Elemental ones are certainly not useful. Web is the only trap that's consistently useful, Glitterdust has some uses as does Hypnotic Pattern but 95% of the time I'm using Web (and 4% is Noisemaker).


I think mechanics have a reboot chance in their speciality... Trap

Imagine...

Smoke grenade, flashbangs, fire-arms(repeaters) in mechanic's hand.

Symbol of stun trap with disable device skill DC(Stun bomb),
Wail of banshee trap with disable device skill DC(C4 bomb)!!!
Finger of Death grenade!
It's like modern warfare in DDO!

Fire in the Hole!!


okay . . . that sounds awesome.

I think the Mehcnics Capstone should let them make "Undermine" bombs :)

I do actually think it'd be best if the Mechanic tree focuses on traps and grenades. I like Swashbuckler, as OP as it is, because it's unique, as is the new spellsinger. New Paladin was poorly designed because it's OP but at least it has traits that differentiate itself. Mechanic should be the same, it shouldn't just be Artificer except not. Focusing on traps would differentiate it. Example enahncements

-Dramatic increase in Elemental Trap damage
-Decrease it "cast" time and cooldown
-Tier 5 "Minelayer" ability, lay down a lot of traps at once or just dramatically reduce the cooldown and cast time
-Traps and Grenades have additional effects, e.g. Cold traps have chance to freeze

Adding higher spells levels would also be interesting. lvl4, 5 and 6 sound good for now. That could include:
-Phantasmal Killer
-Fear
-Solid Fog
--Cloudkill (poison gas trap! classic)
--Hold Monster
--Prismatic Ray
---Flesh to Stone
---Undeath to Death
---Circle of Death :cool:

[draven1]

We could also just make the tree not have reduced benefits for Repeaters.



If you're letting someone else take aggro you're not attacking, which means you're not doing as much damage as you could. This is what I was talking about, an Assassin with ID is more effective.



Deception is reliable when you have accessory+weapon. Also, it "locks" bosses by spamming a bluff effect on them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63arxpwyFyo).



Traps are not broken. Elemental ones are certainly not useful. Web is the only trap that's consistently useful, Glitterdust has some uses as does Hypnotic Pattern but 95% of the time I'm using Web (and 4% is Noisemaker).





I do actually think it'd be best if the Mechanic tree focuses on traps and grenades. I like Swashbuckler, as OP as it is, because it's unique, as is the new spellsinger. New Paladin was poorly designed because it's OP but at least it has traits that differentiate itself. Mechanic should be the same, it shouldn't just be Artificer except not. Focusing on traps would differentiate it. Example enahncements

-Dramatic increase in Elemental Trap damage
-Decrease it "cast" time and cooldown
-Tier 5 "Minelayer" ability, lay down a lot of traps at once or just dramatically reduce the cooldown and cast time
-Traps and Grenades have additional effects, e.g. Cold traps have chance to freeze

Adding higher spells levels would also be interesting. lvl4, 5 and 6 sound good for now. That could include:
-Phantasmal Killer
-Fear
-Solid Fog
--Cloudkill (poison gas trap! classic)
--Hold Monster
--Prismatic Ray
---Flesh to Stone
---Undeath to Death
---Circle of Death :cool:

Yup,

Sound burst grenade(Stun grenade),Tactical Detonation grenade(Fire & Stun) would be nice, too :D

I think mechanics could have chance to get some grenade & trap itself from disabling trap.
And, assassins could have chance to get temporary some double strike chance & raising assassinating DC from disabling trap.
And, Acrobats could have chance to get temporary movement speed boost from disabling trap.

If you would disable a trap, everyone is already jump though it, lol
Everyone just doesn't have patience now to wait a rogue who give juicy 30% more xp to group.
So, I think some benefits would be nice for that player who contribute for whole group. :D

[CThruTheEgo]

We could also just make the tree not have reduced benefits for Repeaters.

What "reduced benefits" are you referring to?

[Ayseifn]

What "reduced benefits" are you referring to?


Expert Builder: You gain a +1 Competence bonus to Critical Multiplier with Great Crossbows. In addition, this ability reduces the cooldowns of Alchemical Trap attacks by 20%.

1, 2 3 and 4 of:

Crossbow Training: +1 to hit with all crossbows. +1 damage with all non-repeating crossbows.


Rogues were a dumping ground for a lot of the under used weapons like daggers, kukris, staves and great crossbows. The great crossbow thing made some sense because unlike Artificers Rogues get a lot of SA damage that'd make repeaters a no brainer. That's on paper though, what happened in reality is that great crossbows are better for Artificers because of Endless Fusilade and other things. Basically you can get you Base Damage Rating to around 100 on an Arti and unload a crazy amount of damage with fusilade and then swap to a repeater if you want while Mechanics are stuck with a worse repeater than Artificers as well as a worse great crossbow. The idea was ok but didn't work at all in practice.

Can we talk about acrobats in this thread yet? We've done Mechs, Assassins and Shadowdancer so only missing them so far. ;)

[CThruTheEgo]

1, 2 3 and 4 of:



Rogues were a dumping ground for a lot of the under used weapons like daggers, kukris, staves and great crossbows. The great crossbow thing made some sense because unlike Artificers Rogues get a lot of SA damage that'd make repeaters a no brainer. That's on paper though, what happened in reality is that great crossbows are better for Artificers because of Endless Fusilade and other things. Basically you can get you Base Damage Rating to around 100 on an Arti and unload a crazy amount of damage with fusilade and then swap to a repeater if you want while Mechanics are stuck with a worse repeater than Artificers as well as a worse great crossbow. The idea was ok but didn't work at all in practice.

Can we talk about acrobats in this thread yet? We've done Mechs, Assassins and Shadowdancer so only missing them so far. ;)

Thanks for the clarification. My knowledge of the mechanic tree is only in regard to the usefulness of it for an assassin, so I never paid attention to the crossbow enhancements. For me, mechanic rogue goes by a different name – artificer.

[Qezuzu]

Can we talk about acrobats in this thread yet? We've done Mechs, Assassins and Shadowdancer so only missing them so far. ;)

Acrobat builds are really strong (e.g. Zeus) which is why I don't think it needs as much improvement as the other trees do.

I do, however, think Sweeping Strikes and Staff Lunge should have their cooldowns reduced, Sweeping Strikes should get its DC from either of DEX or STR, and that some defensive enhancements should be put in the tree (more HP, higher dodge cap, PRR).

Cartwheel charge is garbage, way too weak for a lvl18 core. Followthrough should have a longer duration and should hit more targets.

[bsquishwizzy]

We could also just make the tree not have reduced benefits for Repeaters.

Someone correct me if I am wrong here, but repeaters are only specific to Ebberon lore. They did not exist in classic D&D. They have a distinct lore problem.

Plus, you remove the restriction for repeaters, you have zero incentive for anyone to use them. I think the whole point of the mechanic revamp – because I believe the original enhancements didn’t have any XBow-specific stuff if I recall – was to have *someone* using standard crossbows. We can sit here and debate whether that was right or wrong to do, but that’s not the point. DDO has a crossbow problem. Removing restrictions for certain classes to get at repeaters doesn’t actually fix that problem – it just fixes that specific class. Likewise, I’m sure the Devs have figured this out as well, and I doubt that this request will be looked at.

Fix crossbows, and this aspect of mechanic gets fixed.


If you're letting someone else take aggro you're not attacking, which means you're not doing as much damage as you could. This is what I was talking about, an Assassin with ID is more effective.

Huh?

As a rogue your job is to *never* take aggro. Ever. You are not a tank. You are not a full-on dodgy barb. You’re a thief who uses sleight-of-hand. Hence the term “backstab” and “sneak attack.”


Deception is reliable when you have accessory+weapon. Also, it "locks" bosses by spamming a bluff effect on them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63arxpwyFyo).

The only deception item I’ve seen in game that “locks” a boss – and I’ve used a lot of them – is Improved Deception items, and you don’t start getting those until around lvl 14-ish. Standard deception items only trigger a 5% chance up and down the board, which locks nothing. That’s 13 levels of “blah.”

Deception is another one of those things they screwed up with loot. They do Deception I – V, but the chances of proc-ing is always 5%. Had they increased the chances with the level of Deception applied – and removed the “Improved” monikor - it would be a better effect to look for. But standard deception is lacking. You’re almost better off with a feeding or lesser vampirism item.



Traps are not broken. Elemental ones are certainly not useful. Web is the only trap that's consistently useful, Glitterdust has some uses as does Hypnotic Pattern but 95% of the time I'm using Web (and 4% is Noisemaker).

There are something like 25 different craft-able traps in the game. You’ve given me 4 of them that you find actually useful. That means that 80% of the traps out there you have no use for, or are useless in most content. Given my past trap-making experience, that’s about accurate.

So you want to tell me that a system where 80%+ of the items that come out of it are useless isn’t broken?

I’m with you on the Mechanic tree focusing on traps, grenades, and doing stuff to constructs. But in doing so, you’ve basically tied it to a failed system. So matter how you slice it, you need to fix the system in order to fix the class.

[Chai]

Someone correct me if I am wrong here, but repeaters are only specific to Ebberon lore. They did not exist in classic D&D. They have a distinct lore problem.

Repeaters were called Chu-Ko-Nu in AD&D and originated in Oriental Adventures - published ~1985.


As a rogue your job is to *never* take aggro. Ever. You are not a tank. You are not a full-on dodgy barb. You’re a thief who uses sleight-of-hand. Hence the term “backstab” and “sneak attack.”

I thought this should be addressed too. While I agree that's how a rogue should be effectively played, many on the forums use the ability to solo EE content as the benchmark of how powerful a class or PRE is. There is quite a bit of feedback on bards for instance comparing them to rogues and people being put off by how easy the bard can solo versus how hard it is for a rogue to do so - because of this very point, they are most effective when they do not have agro, and the most effective way to not have agro often gets accused of "relying on the play of others" to make your class work well.

[Ayseifn]

Acrobat builds are really strong (e.g. Zeus) which is why I don't think it needs as much improvement as the other trees do.

I do, however, think Sweeping Strikes and Staff Lunge should have their cooldowns reduced, Sweeping Strikes should get its DC from either of DEX or STR, and that some defensive enhancements should be put in the tree (more HP, higher dodge cap, PRR).

Cartwheel charge is garbage, way too weak for a lvl18 core. Followthrough should have a longer duration and should hit more targets.

Acrobats were really strong before TF weapons and Armour Up but they've fallen behind a bit now just like Kenseis, also the tree has weird things going on.

No way to stun mobs but you get +30% helpless damage, the +10% movement speed got removed during the enhancement pass so what was one of the fastest classes is now one of the slowest and most of the special attacks suck as you've noted.

These days my acrobat has 15 paladin levels and wears heavy armour, solid PRR/MRR, viable stunning blow, cheaper and better Staff Spec from Holy Sword, +10% movement, +20% HP, more healing amp and a better cleave. Only things I lose are Kip Up and some sneak dice, just like mostly Mech builds who aren't the best with any crossbow mostly Acrobat builds aren't the best with staves so they do need some buffs.

[Qezuzu]

As a rogue your job is to *never* take aggro. Ever. You are not a tank. You are not a full-on dodgy barb. You’re a thief who uses sleight-of-hand. Hence the term “backstab” and “sneak attack.”

As a party member your job is to contribute as much as you can. If you feel like actively trying to not take aggro is good contribution, I'll have to disagree. I Assassinate whenever possible, and when I'm not doing that (or healing) I'm attacking and either rely on my threat reduction to work or for the target to get proc'd with Deception, and if I do draw too much aggro I'd cast Displacement and Improved Uncanny Dodge.


So you want to tell me that a system where 80%+ of the items that come out of it are useless isn’t broken?

Sorry, I thought you meant broken as in overpowered, not broken as in effectively non-functional. Yes, traps should be improved, and having Mechanic focus on traps would be a good path to take, so they wouldn't simply be outclassed by Artificers (or outclass Artificers themselves) or pidgeonholed into a weapon type that has very little representation in named items (L xbows (http://ddowiki.com/page/Category:Light_Crossbows), H xbows (http://ddowiki.com/page/Category:Heavy_Crossbows), G xbows (http://ddowiki.com/page/Category:Great_Crossbows)).

[Arkantios]

Huh?

As a rogue your job is to *never* take aggro. Ever. You are not a tank. You are not a full-on dodgy barb. You’re a thief who uses sleight-of-hand. Hence the term “backstab” and “sneak attack.”


Lol...........? I made a pure human rogue with the greater dragonmark of the sentinal for the full incite on the epic chimeras fang with an emg in my offhand.
I built this guy purposely to still have a high assassinate DC, but to be be able to pull and keep aggro from the raid or normal party. It's my SneakATank.
So to your bogus comment, I say nay.

[dualscissors]

Lol...........? I made a pure human rogue with the greater dragonmark of the sentinal for the full incite on the epic chimeras fang with an emg in my offhand.
I built this guy purposely to still have a high assassinate DC, but to be be able to pull and keep aggro from the raid or normal party. It's my SneakATank.
So to your bogus comment, I say nay.

Heavy armor instead of evasion? Exceptional amounts of past lives/epic past lives for PRR + HPs? Unyielding Sentinel instead of Shadowdancer?

After the initial assassinate, if you're holding agro, doesn't that waste all of the work of building your assassinate DC if you aren't stealthing and angling for another round of instakills?

[John_Rove]

Heavy armor instead of evasion? Exceptional amounts of past lives/epic past lives for PRR + HPs? Unyielding Sentinel instead of Shadowdancer?

After the initial assassinate, if you're holding agro, doesn't that waste all of the work of building your assassinate DC if you aren't stealthing and angling for another round of instakills?

This was long before ED's existed.

[dualscissors]

This was long before ED's existed.

Gonna say...because in tough EE content I think the general advice of rogues not ever (mostly ever) keeping agro is observably solid advice - both to keep up worthwhile DPS and so as not to get one-two punched for 400-400 damage and death screened.

[Arkantios]

Heavy armor instead of evasion? Exceptional amounts of past lives/epic past lives for PRR + HPs? Unyielding Sentinel instead of Shadowdancer?

After the initial assassinate, if you're holding agro, doesn't that waste all of the work of building your assassinate DC if you aren't stealthing and angling for another round of instakills?

As John said, This was before ED's. When Epics were actually hard. And I had blinding guard gs and all sorts of deception procs. That added with cleave/great cleave, and some sort of dodge, jumping, going into sneak, and assassinating something as I land or shortly after wasn't all that hard even with full aggro.

[Arkantios]

Gonna say...because in tough EE content I think the general advice of rogues not ever (mostly ever) keeping agro is observably solid advice - both to keep up worthwhile DPS and so as not to get one-two punched for 400-400 damage and death screened.

Even with my rogue with not the greatest gear, EE's arent too bad. Plus I run in LD and tend not to get 2 shot. Since I'm returning from a short break, I'm redoing my gear setup with Enecro 4 items. Once I get all that, It'll be a lot easier for me to take a bit of aggro when needed again.