This

[Qezuzu]

No. There's nothing particularly advanced or difficult about rogues. You want to see a melee class that requires both advanced building and playing skills to excel and not be gimped, look at paladins.

The problem with rogue isn't that it's inordinately difficult, it's that it's a niche class when it comes to raiding.



Over Raided is a very small guild (fewer than two dozen players, with maybe 2-3 capped raiding characters apiece) with a extremely busy and high-end raiding schedule that is heavily constrained by attendance and raid timers. There is a lot of pressure to complete all the endgame elite/epic raids (3-4 total raids daily) on their schedule with whichever 8-12 people they happen to have online and off-timer. This means there is a large natural selection bias in favor of multi-role characters: this is why you'll find a number of builds like intimitank fvs, kensai intimitank, arcane archer fvs, etc in the guild. That means there's also a premium on DPS characters that can simply equip some incite gear and become main tank: because you'll never know what other melees might show up or be off-timer, and you might be the group's best shot. Which means bringing a rogue instead of a barb could mean the raid doesn't get done.

In raids, rogues are selfish in that they always rely on someone else when it comes to their DPS, and there are a lot of limitations to how you can use their mix of improved evasion and non-aggro DPS. For instance, though they have improved evasion they're far worse candidates for soloing fire base on EVoN6 than monks. Likewise improved evasion is useful for blades in EDQ but the anti-knockdown strength of barbs and fighters results in higher DPS overall. In a melee pack situation like EVoN6 and EDQ, rogues lose a lot of their sneak attacks if the aggro is spread out among only 3-4 melees, rather than 10. And in the case of a poor melee turnout night you also can't assign a rogue to tank elite ToD or EChrono. And rogues can't even fly in tiles or waterwalk through ice like monks can in Abbot. And so on. When these raiding issues are on the table on a daily basis and each player in the guild probably only has 1-2 melee characters to work with (since it takes time to gear each character out), rogues start to look a lot less practical.

And you specifically mention pure rogues, but that only exacerbates their niche situation as merely fillers for a generic kill pack in raids. For example, a pure rogue can't help manyshot Lailat at the start of EDQ but a tempest rogue can. You may play a pure rogue but you have to realize that at the current endgame, being pure rogue makes you even less raid-versatile in an already niche class.

This is not to say that rogues aren't useful in raids -- they most definitely can be great raid DPS. But while rogues excel under ideal conditions, they often fare very poorly in less-than-ideal groups, and Over Raided raids daily in a somewhat insane way: rain-or-shine, ideal-or-not-ideal, let's-check-whoever's-online-and-just-go. Rogues are better suited to larger guilds (say, 60 accounts with 6-10 raiding characters apiece) with a less ambitious per-capita raiding schedule and guaranteed balanced groups on every run, rather than a "hmph, well we'll figure out a way to run it on elite/epic regardless" guild like Over Raided. If you have only 8 people to bring to an endgame raid and your only 3 melees are all rogues, you're screwed; if your only 3 melees are all barbarians, you'd still have a shot at the completion.

There's also the gear issue. Damage calculators assume optimal gear, but less-equipped rogues fare very poorly against fort than well-equipped rogues do, since their sneak attacks represent a much higher percentage of their overall DPS without gear. Classes like barbarians and fighters have innate damage bonuses (like barbarian rage and kensai power surge) that are fort-agnostic, which makes them more reliable as practical raid DPS when you consider the mix of equipment levels that you'll invariably have when your guild's raiding strategy includes "let's grab whomever is off-timer, even if they're not mains." And less-equipped rogues are at an extreme survivability disadvantage compared to comparable fighters and barbarians as well, because a much higher percentage of their hp comes from gear.

And there's no need to single out Over Raided out on the rogue issue. There aren't any epic rogues on the Orien server right now, period. There are a (fairly limited) number of melees on Orien with red armor or marilith, red helm, litany, epic claw set, Kyosho's and Ravager's, etc -- but none of them are rogues, and if anyone would like to link a MyDDO to show otherwise I'm sure we'd all be interested to see. It doesn't help for rogues that at the present moment, nobody on the server has been running Epics for as long, as frequently, or as efficiently as Over Raided has been, and their guild setup tends to not favor rogues. But it's hard to fault Over Raided for what is essentially a serverwide issue when it comes to rogues on Orien. Nevertheless Over Raided is not the only game in town these days for endgame (though they used to be for a long time), and as the server continues to mature, as more players/guilds begins to run Epics, and as Turbine continues to nerf the challenge out of the content (nerfed Epic DC/AC/traps, WoE on Horoth, etc) to accelerate gear inflation, that rogues on Orien will start to get geared out as well and you'll start seeing more of them in elite guilds on this server.

They're just not there, yet.

And to rerail the thread back on the original topic: even though it's a difficult guild for rogues, Over Raided's trial period is still, bar none, the fastest and most thorough way to learn and immediately get involved in endgame raiding on this server.

Have at it.

For the gear, I think my Rogue is doing pretty **** good. One scroll away from the full Claw set, too.

20 missing HP from Tier3 GS
20 missing HP from +2 EXC CON (Bracers of the Claw?)
10 missing from Racial AP

There are a (fairly limited) number of melees on Orien with red armor or marilith, red helm, litany, epic claw set, Kyosho's and Ravager's, etc -- but none of them are rogues

Wait, not even LITANY? And I personally am a single scroll from the full Claw set, and have no interest in Dragonscale Robe/Marilith because I'm not in a guild that runs those epic raids so I have nearly 0 way to get them.

Then again, my Rogue is quite the outlier. Ran most desert epics to an crazy level, ran chains dozens of times.

I'd join your guild to realize my Rogue's potential but you're absolutely full of yourselves.

[saber7]

Okay, two things.
1) No matter how many times you compare apples and oranges at the end of the day they are still completely different.
2) Rogues are selfish? You mean because they use tactics and skills to accomplish their DPS? Sure, I'll give him that they need others to do major damage but if the goal is to complete the quest then how is it selfish to do DPS in a different way than a slot machine cookie cutter melee (to be fair I like melees alot but for the sake of this rant they are the enemy!).
3) If your using server-wide loot levels to judge character worth then you... nevermind. I only said two.

[Vanshilar]

Okay, two things.
1) No matter how many times you compare apples and oranges at the end of the day they are still completely different.
2) Rogues are selfish? You mean because they use tactics and skills to accomplish their DPS? Sure, I'll give him that they need others to do major damage but if the goal is to complete the quest then how is it selfish to do DPS in a different way than a slot machine cookie cutter melee (to be fair I like melees alot but for the sake of this rant they are the enemy!).
3) If your using server-wide loot levels to judge character worth then you... nevermind. I only said two.

1. No idea what you mean.
2. Grundus means that in raids, rogue builds generally rely on others tanking (putting themselves in harm's way by jumping in and taking aggro first) etc. for them to have their nice spreadsheet DPS. Not meaning anything about the player playing the build or anything like that, but making a point that it doesn't work well if say you only have 3 rogues available as your melees (compared with 3 barbs as an example), which becomes an issue for a small guild that may shortman raids with whatever characters are on hand. In those situations you'd want characters that aren't reliant on those things, and are more general than situation-specific with their DPS.
3. It was in response to someone asking why Over Raided doesn't have many pure level 20 rogues in their ranks. Grundus was pointing out that it's more or less a server-wide issue on Orien (that Orien simply doesn't have a sufficiently mature enough end-game base yet) not a guild-specific issue. Something like THF barbs are easy to equip quickly, something like TWF rogues take longer, hence in the early stages of the server the builds that are able to be geared quickly are naturally made first. Orien's far away from having accounts with 10 decked out characters and the player wondering what to do next.

[kernal42]

Wait, not even LITANY? And I personally am a single scroll from the full Claw set, and have no interest in Dragonscale Robe/Marilith because I'm not in a guild that runs those epic raids so I have nearly 0 way to get them.

You missed the "and" and assumed an "or". Grundus is listing loot that should be equipped on an end-game toon maximizing dps. Having "no interest" in certain pieces of loot doesn't mean they wouldn't benefit you.

-Kernal

[Qezuzu]

I made a totally random comment, not expecting or wanting an answer and knowing a good part of why it was so anyway (there are very few good rogues). And it turns into this.

*munch munch*

[Qezuzu]

You missed the "and" and assumed an "or". Grundus is listing loot that should be equipped on an end-game toon maximizing dps. Having "no interest" in certain pieces of loot doesn't mean they wouldn't benefit you.

-Kernal

You missed my "because" section.

If I WERE in a guild that ran those quests often enough, I would be more inclined to get them; but not Marilith. That's a medium armor, meaning no evasion, meaning absolutely not. Because it is nearly impossible for me to get those items, is why I don't want them; not because I don't think they'd benefit me.

And if you're judging a character by having those specific items to "maximize" DPS, that's just absurd. Once you have good stats/build and great gear, these items are a marginal increase in DPS. These are not "musts", they're just better.

[saber7]

1. No idea what you mean.
2. Grundus means that in raids, rogue builds generally rely on others tanking (putting themselves in harm's way by jumping in and taking aggro first) etc. for them to have their nice spreadsheet DPS. Not meaning anything about the player playing the build or anything like that, but making a point that it doesn't work well if say you only have 3 rogues available as your melees (compared with 3 barbs as an example), which becomes an issue for a small guild that may shortman raids with whatever characters are on hand. In those situations you'd want characters that aren't reliant on those things, and are more general than situation-specific with their DPS.
3. It was in response to someone asking why Over Raided doesn't have many pure level 20 rogues in their ranks. Grundus was pointing out that it's more or less a server-wide issue on Orien (that Orien simply doesn't have a sufficiently mature enough end-game base yet) not a guild-specific issue. Something like THF barbs are easy to equip quickly, something like TWF rogues take longer, hence in the early stages of the server the builds that are able to be geared quickly are naturally made first. Orien's far away from having accounts with 10 decked out characters and the player wondering what to do next.

1) I meant that you can't compare a DPS based fighter or barbarian and a rogue. They do different things from each other.

2) It's not selfish though. I know what he's saying but calling it selfish but in my opinion that is incorrect. Each class plays very differently from the others. A rogue contributes more to DPS by backstabbing an opponent as opposed to fighting up front but if he/she is contributing to the DPS it isn't selfish. It is just different. As to your second point about small guilds. In his post he uses his experience in a small guild is his evidence but his first statement is clearly directed at all rogues. You can't claim that your only talking about rogue in short manned raids if your going to attack the entire class.

3) That's more of a server specific issue so perhaps I was incorrect on this one but the idea that rogues are inferior, using character loot as justification seems wrong to me.

[silvertrit]

I want to see you two run aorund in circles trying to backstab each other

[Vanshilar]

I'd join your guild to realize my Rogue's potential but you're absolutely full of yourselves. You don't have all the best players, not by a long shot. You may push yourselves more but you are not that much more capable than any of the other good players on the server.

Eh you need to calm down. Grundus was explaining why most of the people in the guild chose not to go with the pure rogue route, because you asked why there weren't many pure rogues in the guild. You haven't said anything thus far that would rebut anything that he said, and now are just resorting to ad hominem attacks. Not only that, you say that but then...fail to mention any other guilds on the server that are more capable, or equally capable, etc., of end-game content. Good ad hominem attacks would at least give a factoid or something instead of just waving some nebulous "they're out there!" generality around.

Over Raided looks for players with endgame-capable characters, yes, but it looks more for level-headed and rational, thoughtful players (although how did unscythe get in? ). Having a forum outburst rather than coming up with reasoned justifications for your position wouldn't score you points.

There's another reason that I could mention, namely that back then, the only reason to go pure rogue was pretty much if you wanted cheat death. The capstone damage, opportunist, etc. are more recent changes. With the time it takes to gear characters out, pure rogues are more "in the pipeline" sort of thing rather than "already made" sort of thing, as Vengeance777 pointed out, on a server where people are still establishing their characters rather than already having a set stable of characters to choose from.

[Kominalito]

awesome threadfire, brosephs.

[Qezuzu]

awesome threadfire, brosephs.

inorite?

Eh you need to calm down. Grundus was explaining why most of the people in the guild chose not to go with the pure rogue route, because you asked why there weren't many pure rogues in the guild. You haven't said anything thus far that would rebut anything that he said, and now are just resorting to ad hominem attacks.

Because I didn't actually care about OR's lack of rogues.

I will say, however, that Grundus for certain has absolutely 0 experience playing rogues, partying with good rogues, or partying with versatile rogues. You have nothing but numbers to work on and that is why you are wrong.

But yah I'll say it was uncalled for. So now it's gone and no one will be distracted by it.

[Quarterling]

*sigh*

Oh Grundus, I guess you never played a rogue? Rogues are a tricky class to play right as in you actually need to THINK in order to be effective.

And rogues needing to rely on others for their dps? Ever hear about the radiance rapier/khopesh as well as radiance guard on a DT robe?

[Qezuzu]

*sigh*

Oh Grundus, I guess you never played a rogue? Rogues are a tricky class to play right as in you actually need to THINK in order to be effective.

And rogues needing to rely on others for their dps? Ever hear about the radiance rapier/khopesh as well as radiance guard on a DT robe?

Exactly.

It's like critiquing a movie based on movies of a similar genre, without having seen the movie.

[Vanshilar]

Because I didn't actually care about OR's lack of rogues.

Didn't enough to the point of creating a new thread about it. Gotcha.

I will say, however, that Grundus for certain has absolutely 0 experience playing rogues, partying with good rogues, or partying with versatile rogues. You have nothing but numbers to work on and that is why you are wrong.

In other words, more ad hominem attacks, now not just on Grundus, but on other people in Over Raided as well (since Over Raided has a number of rogues). And we're still waiting for you to substantively address any point that Grundus brought up.

*sigh*

Oh Grundus, I guess you never played a rogue? Rogues are a tricky class to play right as in you actually need to THINK in order to be effective.

And rogues needing to rely on others for their dps? Ever hear about the radiance rapier/khopesh as well as radiance guard on a DT robe?

Grundus was talking about raids. Soloing quests are another matter. Ah for your own safety, I probably wouldn't disparage Grundus's ability to play tricky classes if I were you. But again, still, nothing substantive about the post has been addressed.

[clkpacker]

Didn't enough to the point of creating a new thread about it. Gotcha.

I don't believe he cares about OR's rogue population enough to create the thread, but rather he cares enough about the essay Grundus wrote disparaging rogues to create the thread. Qez takes his rogues seriously; everyone has their pet class that they will defend to the death.

[Qezuzu]

Didn't enough to the point of creating a new thread about it. Gotcha.

No.

I don't believe he cares about OR's rogue population enough to create the thread, but rather he cares enough about the essay Grundus wrote disparaging rogues to create the thread. Qez takes his rogues seriously; everyone has their pet class that they will defend to the death.

Also no.

I made this thread so that OR's recruitment thread could continue with its intended purpose.

The initial statement was a meaningless remark and I didn't actually care.

And I'm not going to seriously confront his little essay because I've stopped caring about other people's blatant misconceptions on rogues. It's been done to death as well so I'm not compelled to defend anything.

Though:

In other words, more ad hominem attacks

Learn what an ad hominem is. It's very annoying when someone throws this around.

I said you lacked the knowledge to know what the rogue class can and can't do. That's not an attack on one's person, that is an attack on their knowledge of the subject.