FAST and SOLID Rogue 15 / Wizard 5. Ideas to share!

[Thrudh]

To make it simple :

CONS:
I lose sneak attack lvl 17 ( -1d6 damage )
I lose sneak attack lvl 19 ( -1d6 damage )
I lose trap sense level 18 ( this doesn't matters )
I lose 2 optional abilities lvl 16 and 19 ( this one hurts ,I don't like losing slippery mind and skill mastery )
I lose cheat death lvl 20 ( this doesn't matters )

PROS:
I gain the ability to cast level 5 Haste with extend spell
I gain the ability to cast level 5 Blur with extend spell
I gain the ability to cast Crowd control spells like HYPNOSIS and WEB...
I gain the ability to make UMD more powerfull with wizard scroll and wand mastery I
I gain the ability to make UMD more powerfull with wizard scroll and wand mastery 2
I gain bonus intelligence from wiz enhencments
I gain 2 metamagic feats

Crowd-Control spells are based on INT, and usually caster level (with heighten). Your crowd control spells will be terrible.

Splashing wizard is for buffing and buffing only...

PROS:
Jump spell
Exp Retreat (at lower levels)
Shield
Blur
Invisibility (nice for a rogue to shed aggro)
Haste
Displacement

Haste can be found in a potion. Displacement can only be found on high-end gear... Displacement (50% miss chance) makes a huge difference in combat... The main reason, in my mind, to splash 5 levels of wizard is for displacement.

The meta-magic feats are also nice, but not so much for a rogue...

Splashing wizard works better with a ranger, because you have more SP (ranger levels gets you SP too), and the free Extend meta-magic feat is useful for your ranger spells as well.

[Thrudh]

like just recently how many of the buffs provided by my misguided build could be gained from clickies that are fairly common/easily obtained.

I should point out that getting displacement clickables is not easy until you reach high levels, and have grinded the Shroud 40 times (your first Shroud items will probably be weapons)...

The concept is sound... Self-caste displacement, haste, shield, blur, jump... these are very useful... For a casual player, it can be a fun build.... At some point though, you'll have gear that mimics everything you can do with your wizard levels, and you'll wonder why you took them...

Of course, then you can just use True Reincarnation and rebuild him...

Maybe I shouldn't be so negative... I had a lot of fun with 5 levels of wizard, you can too... and when you're tired of it, just reincarnate.

[prowessss]

Imo, rogue/wizard is a great multiclass... but going 5 levels of wizard is kinda pointless... I would support you on a 7 wizard, tho!
Say, 12 rogue for t2 acrobat, 7 levels of wizard for stoneskin and firewall, and 1 level of fighter or 1 level of monk for feats?

[Rydin_Dirtay]

Just not so good on the newest raids, where the devs BALANCED the bad guys around everyone having PrEs or capstones... They've overpowered several Tier III PrEs and they've added more and more magik items, and they've really killed any good reason for arcane/melee multi-classes.

Thrudh remember that thread a few months back about Ranger/Wiz's and so forth? It was 15/5 split discussion etc. maybe in the Elf forum or somewhere else.

Anyway, I have two of those type of Rgr/Wiz builds, so I'm gonna comment on 'em.

To the OP....I can say this much...having built two of them (version 1 and version 2)...Really, these are, in today's DDO, essentially flavor builds...that is, they feature things (blur, haste, displacement) that you can fairly easily get in-game anyway. So they are not a min-max build at all. They are for fun. For flavor. Build one if you want to, but keep in mind what Impaqt said about what you'd be giving up with 15 rogue vs. 20 rogue.

I have another rogue that is an acrobat. That's going pure. Why? I've built assasin rogues. I'm thinking about Third Tier Acro and just in case they add more capstones, which they've mentioned an interest in doing.

Haste clickies seem to be more common now than ever, maybe it's just me. Just the other night I found 2/haste clickie boots of speed in some middlin-level quest like Tempest Spine or Cav of Korromar.

And Thrudh. Yes, there is too much magic in DDO. The whole game could be respecc'ed in that aspect, if ya ask me. But that will never happen. Those +5 Threnalian blades? haha. How valuable are they today? When you grow a game, sometimes it grows haphazardly in terms of balance.

[Rydin_Dirtay]

Imo, rogue/wizard is a great multiclass... but going 5 levels of wizard is kinda pointless... I would support you on a 7 wizard, tho!
Say, 12 rogue for t2 acrobat, 7 levels of wizard for stoneskin and firewall, and 1 level of fighter or 1 level of monk for feats?

Remember 13 rogue gives an additional rogue class feat...like CS or IE.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

I know, I know!!! It's Turbines fault!



True... 5 levels of wizard is a fun way to get haste, and displacement (being able to perma-displace makes a huge difference)... And if you're new and grinding out the Shroud isn't in your gameplan, than 5 levels of wizard can be fun...

Impact makes a good point that rogue/wizard will be hurting on SP... Mine is a ranger/wizard so I get SP from the ranger side too... I have about 700 as well, and I rarely run out...



Yep, it IS fun... I feel bad for trying to talk the OP out of it... I had more fun with Hasenpfeffer than any other character... This kind of character is GREAT for PUGing 6-man quests...

Just not so good on the newest raids, where the devs BALANCED the bad guys around everyone having PrEs or capstones... They've overpowered several Tier III PrEs and they've added more and more magik items, and they've really killed any good reason for arcane/melee multi-classes.

And that's too bad.

Killed the Pit Fiend (Shroud) for the second time the other day.....with a bow!

I stubornly stick to playing Talonkage in all the hardest content.

But, yeah.....I know what you mean. And for those who do grind for the gear, they can get all the pluses, on a char without any of the weaknesses.

There's certainly many beefier chars out there than mine....I've never pretended he was an uber build.
Just fun, and my best equiped char. Plus I play him well. Win/win for me.

And despite all the talk on the furums, most players' chars are not that well built/equiped/ or played from my experiance.

I just hate it when people talk someone out of a fun and IMO still useful build.

But my second favorite char may be my Rog17. And if she had Talon's equipment it would be a real hard call.

A pure Rogue is a lot of fun too.

So if there is any doubt in the OP, building a pure Rog is also a very fun option IMO.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

To make it simple :

CONS:
I lose sneak attack lvl 17 ( -1d6 damage )
I lose sneak attack lvl 19 ( -1d6 damage )
I lose trap sense level 18 ( this doesn't matters )
I lose 2 optional abilities lvl 16 and 19 ( this one hurts ,I don't like losing slippery mind and skill mastery )
I lose cheat death lvl 20 ( this doesn't matters )

PROS:
I gain the ability to cast level 5 Haste with extend spell
I gain the ability to cast level 5 Blur with extend spell
I gain the ability to cast Crowd control spells like HYPNOSIS and WEB... Which will be useless by L7 or so as they will start saving. You will be -8 on your DC compared to a full caster on that web, probabably more since their int will be higher
I gain the ability to make UMD more powerfull with wizard scroll and wand mastery I
I gain the ability to make UMD more powerfull with wizard scroll and wand mastery 2
I gain bonus intelligence from wiz enhencments
I gain 2 metamagic feats

You also left out that you will miss out on the T3 PrEs, which is the PrE level on rogues that is really worth having.

[hydra_ex]

To make it simple :

CONS:
I lose sneak attack lvl 17 and 19( -2d6 damage )
I lose trap sense level 18 ( this doesn't matters )
I lose 2 optional abilities lvl 16 and 19 ( this one hurts ,I don't like losing slippery mind and skill mastery )
I lose cheat death lvl 20 ( this doesn't matters )
Possible t3 acrobat pre ( at the very best loss of a nice and noticeable penalty, at worst, a very crippling choice since acrobat 3 is incredible )

PROS:
I gain the ability to cast level 5 Haste with extend spell ( this doesn't matters )
I gain the ability to cast level 5 Blur with extend spell ( this doesn't matters )
I gain the ability to cast Crowd control spells like HYPNOSIS and WEB... ( this doesn't matters )
I gain the ability to make UMD more powerfull with wizard scroll and wand mastery I ( this doesn't matters )
I gain the ability to make UMD more powerfull with wizard scroll and wand mastery 2 ( this doesn't matters )
I gain bonus intelligence from wiz enhancments ( this matters little )
I gain 2 metamagic feats ( this doesn't matters )

Edited to make it correct.

level 5 haste - potions... and even if there were not potions, its not worth it.
level 5 blur - wands
Crowd Control - if fully specced casters don't expect to snag every monster in their CC, how can somebody whose DC is so low that it borders on useless?
UMD's power is not based on wand DC or wand damage. Even with those enhancements on a fully specced wizard with every enhancement, wand damage and spell DC is so low it does not matter (even using one's own mana, dealing meaningful damage on a caster in most of the endgame content is difficult)
The bonus to intelligence might be nice, but is it even worth spending those 2 APs on? After all, it only benefits two skills which are already going to suffice, and its only 1 point.
2 Metamagic feats are useless. Even if your haste were useful, then you would still only want 1 metamagic - extend. But since since the spells you cast are entirely useless, the metamagic feats are a null gain.

So, to wrap up:
loose - good stuff
gain - useless stuff

[Talon_Moonshadow]

To make it simple :

CONS:
I lose sneak attack lvl 17 ( -1d6 damage )
I lose sneak attack lvl 19 ( -1d6 damage )
I lose trap sense level 18 ( this doesn't matters )
I lose 2 optional abilities lvl 16 and 19 ( this one hurts ,I don't like losing slippery mind and skill mastery )
I lose cheat death lvl 20 ( this doesn't matters )

PROS:
I gain the ability to cast level 5 Haste with extend spell
I gain the ability to cast level 5 Blur with extend spell
I gain the ability to cast Crowd control spells like HYPNOSIS and WEB...
I gain the ability to make UMD more powerfull with wizard scroll and wand mastery I
I gain the ability to make UMD more powerfull with wizard scroll and wand mastery 2
I gain bonus intelligence from wiz enhencments
I gain 2 metamagic feats

At higher lvls, it will be very dificult to get Hypno and Web to work for you. Only a max Int bild has any chance of using offensive spells with only Wiz5, above a certain level.
You would also need to take the spell focus feats and heaighten, and probably spell pen feats.
And even then, your offensive spells will have trouble landing.

I use all my wiz spells for buffs, which work fine at any lvl. (but can be dispelled almost automatically, and against some monsters those buffs don't matter)

I also have had trouble choosing my second meta-magic feat, and making it worthwhile.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Other Cons:
I think you also lose BAB because of the 5 wiz levels also.

For the Pros
- as was mentioned, your first two Pros you don't need to add wizard levels to do. You can already do them with UMD and/or pots.
- you are casting your spells at a level 5 wizard level. Not sure how effective your crowd control spells will be against mid-high end mobs.

This build is going to be incredibly difficult to play. I don't see a whole lot of success of you outdamaging mobs.

18/2 is probably much more playable.

yes you do lose some BaB. Which in my brief experiance with Epic quests, will certainly be missed there.

most other quests, it's not too big a deal. Only a few monsters have real high AC.(for now)

[binnsr]

Killed the Pit Fiend (Shroud) for the second time the other day.....with a bow!

I totally read that wrong the first time. A bowl?? really??

[Lanceroy]

I have a semi-retired 12/5 ranger/wizard who used to be very useful, but I might as well build a ranger/monk instead and use clickables...

Get that character up to 20 and true reincarnate it in a ranger/monk

[JagoKnight]

With all the negative comments on this build , I decided to use another one for my next multiclass rogue.
Close this topic , everything has been said.

lvl 15 rogue / lvl 5 wizard
NOT WORTH IT !

Stop reading here , it is not necessery.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

I totally read that wrong the first time. A bowl?? really??

Of course I got lucky. Both times where with manyshot active. And it just means I got in the last hit.

But since I've done it twice and have only about 16 Shroud runs on that char....I'd say it means people really underestimate ranged DPS....at least with manyshot.

But I was trying to use it as an example of how my very first 28pt tri-classes, splash Wiz build is still certainly competetive at end game.

That second kill was actually quite significant, because we almost wiped, clerics were OoM....I was out of healing and down to 8HP. We had one very, very sturdy tank, that our cleric was scrolls healing on like crazy while he solotanked the pit fiend.

The very fact that I was one of the few left alive, and continued to contribute without even taking damage from whirling blades, is very significant to the usefulness of my char IMO.
I had long since been off the triage list when the mana went away.

Apparently, I did take some more damage, as soon after completion I died when madstone rage wore off. (something I seldom use, since I want to be able to cast spells.....but I was out of SP at the end too, so I pulled out every trick I knew)

That was one of the most fun Shroud runs I've even been on. I got to use ever scrap of my resources....pull out every clickie even. Stayed alive forever with virtually no hp. And just happened to get manyshot back at the end and got the kill.

gimped char? Maybe....but certainly up to the challenge.

[Thrudh]

So, to wrap up:
loose - good stuff
gain - useless stuff

Displacement alone is a huge benefit..

Throw in self-cast shield, blur, jump, haste (or rage)... it's a not a bad combo.

It's not awesome, but it's not "useless" either.

And it works a lot better on a ranger/wizard (IMHO)