Advise needed for gearing a lvl18 rogue assassin

[SSFWEl]

Really? The drop rate is that bad?

Could be the other poster found them 3 times in 12 runes. In about 20 runs over 2 lives I have seen them drop exactly once. The bracers I got but kinda useless for me.

I have to disagree.
Whilst I can deal out a moderate amount of damage when dealing with Trash... IMHO, if a rogue isnt utilizing SA when possible, he's not playing the rogue as best he could.

In a situation where you are beating up one monster and there are 2-3 monsters surrounding another player, even with SA proc'ing on your current target a lot, unless you are getting 100% you should move onto the non-agroed mobs since you can pretty much bash them either a) until dead b) until they agro.. Once you kill them or get agro, go to the 2nd or 3rd mob still stuck to the other group member.

A Rogue not utilizing any opportunity to get SA (ie either bashing on the mob he has because SA is firing or running to a mob he can backstab) then your the Barbarian who doesnt bother using Rage.

I'm not saying he should run around like crazy for no reason.
He should be beating on one mob until the SA goes cold, then his eye should dart to the nearest mob who he doesn't have agro on, perhaps a group of mobs and then run them down.

I have grouped with Rogues that have poor HP, wielding a greataxe and refusing to do trap boxes because "they arent that kind of rogue" but out of all of the things you can do bad on a Rogue, not taking any available opportunity to get Sneak Attack is a Epic Fail IMO

What can I say. A Rogue is not an SA monkey. Just like a wizzy is not a CC monkey. SA is a major part of Rogue and one of his biggest advantages in terms of his damage. But by concentrating on only that strength, I feel you are getting trapped into a paradigm.

But here are some other specific examples, this is by no means exhaustive, just some ideas and situations:

-You agro some fire elys. Yes you are not getting SA, but because of your imp evasion, they can't really hurt you and thus you can keep them off someone else.
-The group seems to be falling apart a bit, so you take a step back and grab your heal scrolls.
-The group seems to be falling apart a bit and you are agroing now. You need to be used to being able to manage having agro, have enough damage and resistance to stay alive.
-You keep agro on some mob you are soloing, and your paralyse procs. This lets you go back and indeed try to lose agro so you can try another assassinate (paralyze itself is not Helpless, so you don't get SA just from that).
-Sometimes you have no choice. A devil porting to you for instance, you just need to fight him down.

Just keep in mind that the game is not static and don't be a prisoner to your SA ability.


btw, I am Dex and love it.