lvl 11 Mech Rogue - am I a moron?

[William_the_Bat]

Rogue is a funny class.

1 level of rogue unlocks all the skills you need to be a trapsmith.

2 levels of rogue give you evasion.

After that, the most important thing rogue levels give is sneak attack damage and unlocking assassin and acrobat enhancements.

My take: rogue splashes are for trapsmithing, rogues are for DPS with trapsmithing.

Keep in mind DDO (like D&D) is hugely flexible in character development. It's perfectly possible to create a nearly useless character if you try hard enough. No other game has the customization options (except maybe Asheron's Call), so you shouldn't try to pigeonhole class = role like you do with other games. I've seen melee wizards, I've seen trapsmith clerics, I've seen em all, and I think it's pure awesome.

A lot of people do come to this game from other games and say something like "I want to play a tank." But tanks don't work in DDO like they do in other games. Intimidate is a skill like any other, one level of splash to unlock it, then whatever other class levels to increase survivability. Or don't bother to splash and keep it at cross-class points, relying on equipment to get your score up high enough to be useful. And then once you've rolled up an intimitank, you'll find that some people completely ignore whatever useful things you are doing in their rush to zerg to the end.

I think that coming to this game from Asheron's Call like I do is one of the reasons I reroll so much.. I am enthralled by the nearly endless character and roll-ignoring possibilities.

[Noctus]

I've seen this sort of player rational in other games as well, so some of the replies here don't come as a surprise to me. The fact is apparently that traps are too easy to disable and get around. When you have characters that can just splash a level or two of rogue and be perfectly viable in that aspect, it clearly indicates a problem and naturally you will have quite a few people that will fight to keep the system just like that.

This is about the status quo protecting what they see as their entitlement to keep an aspect of the game as a minor hurdle so that their invests in it are not so serious as to disrupt the entitlement. And I didn't have a problem supplying adequate DPS in combat.

And you know what i see?

Newbies or outright Noobs believing that a few weeks playing low and midlevel quests on 2 different character is enough to understand what every class is about, which builds are viable, and how the game should be played. And then crying about how all the other players dont know what they are talking about and how mean they are when they point to flaws in their precious builds.

[Deusxmachina]

I've seen this sort of player rational in other games as well, so some of the replies here don't come as a surprise to me. The fact is apparently that traps are too easy to disable and get around. When you have characters that can just splash a level or two of rogue and be perfectly viable in that aspect, it clearly indicates a problem and naturally you will have quite a few people that will fight to keep the system just like that.

Characters are generally giving up something for "just splashing a level or two" of rogue, and then cross-classing at least one or more of the skills. There are goods and bads to every choice.

This topic has been gone over many times, but I'd say most typical groups advertising for a rogue and no other classes are expecting one that can do traps. Now, whether you are great at traps or merely only good at traps is up to you. Sometimes people do need someone great at traps. Or at least they think they do. The way the xp system has changed, there is little reward for doing quests far above your level, so, yeah, you might be able to do those, but how often will the situation come up?

If all someone wants to do is be "utility" and no DPS, that's cool, but if they are "utility" and are at least decent DPS and don't die all the time, they'll get more re-invites. A good rogue can get so many Tells from people you PUGed with before you'll think you're a cleric.

Thing is, you have to try a bit to make a rogue that isn't at least decent DPS. Even if you have gimp strength and fight fort mobs all the time, having the right weapon in your hand can go a long way.

Someone in a rogue thread said this about stats, but I'll rephrase it here for this: Don't gimp your trap skills, your trap skills won't be gimp. Don't gimp your DPS, your DPS won't be gimp.