Rogue: Rough-in of Assassin

[Brennie]

Don't you mean we're missing 10.5 from the free 1d6 that each tier of assassin currently grants? SA training IV is still in there, just backloaded to tier 4. Hopefully that lost 3d6 shows up later but who knows.

Sneak attack training adds +1 sneak attack die per rank. Since there is 4 ranks of this, we end up with 1d6 more sneak attack than previous. However, as Sephiroth noted, the static +3 sneak attack damage per rank ability that is currently available to all rogues on live currently (which is also, confusingly enough, called Sneak Attack Training) is absent. So, even with the extra d6, it is actually a net loss of sneak attack (unless we go digging around in other trees, which may not be possible due to enhancement tree limitations, for instance on an 18/1/1 multiclass)

[amsharkwei]

Special effects or only Daggers and Kukris.
Many rogue players like to use Short Sword or Rapier


Assassin's Trick
Activate: Target intelligent opponent loses 25% Fort and immunity to Sneak Attack for 12 seconds if the target fails a Will save (DC 10 + Rogue Level + Int Modifier)
Let your target immunity to sneak atack ?!
What a stupid ability!

Three kinds of useless Poisonous attacks
hehe
you really kiding me

Critical Accuracy
+1/2/3 to confirm Critical Hits
confirm Critical ?!
useless for rogue

Shadow Dagger
Throws a dagger made of solidified shadows at your enemy. Deals 4d8 unholy damage and blinds the target (Fort DC 10 + Half Rogue Level + Intelligence Modifier negates Blindness)
This ability have a very low DC,and Very limited damage
useless

Execute
Melee Assassinate Attack: Deals +3[W] damage. On Sneak Attack: If the target is below 20% health, deal 500 damage (Fort DC 10 + Half Rogue Level + Int Mod negates).
500 damage to the target below 20% health
Very unstable capacity
useless

Killer
When you kill a target, you gain a 5% Morale bonus to melee doublestrike for 15 seconds. Weak enemies will not always produce this effect. The killer buff can stack up to 2/3/4 times.
Need kill a target?
some times,your teammate do the last hit to the target
useless

Knife Specialization
+1 Critical Threat Multiplier with Daggers and Kukris. Daggers also gain +1 Critical Threat Range.
Where is my Short Sword?
Why the rogue players can only use Daggers and Kukris ?
I don't know how you thinking

Don't ever trust numbers posted by Shade

I have play rogue for 14 years

What we need is more effective capacity
Kills a living target instantly,or let them stop working

[amsharkwei]

Another very important point

Where is my fast sneaking?

Let us sneaking like a snail? never !

by the way,I'm a old rogue，I have a say here

I'm not shade,I'm AMSHARKwei,the most loyal fan for Rogue
↓
http://tieba.baidu.com/f/like/furank...%CF%C2%B3%C7#p
This is the ranking of the chinese DDO players Forum
I am the AMSHARKwei

I will always choose and stick Rogue class forever

[amsharkwei]

There is one thing the Rogue are very much needed, new stealth system (or say threat systems).When you been founded by a monster, you leaving the field out of the monster's view, and then you use your sneak ability, but whether you sneak into any place, the monster can always accurate to find your place, this is clearly unreasonable.I have met my fate, Rogue increasingly like a Leather-Armor-Fighter more and more.

need more enchantments to add DC to Assassnate

[artistx]

where do you go in-game to look at the rough-ins?

[Dunklerlindwurm]

by the way,I'm a old rogue，I have a say here

I'm not shade,I'm AMSHARKwei,the most loyal fan for Rogue
↓
http://tieba.baidu.com/f/like/furank...%CF%C2%B3%C7#p
This is the ranking of the chinese DDO players Forum
I am the AMSHARKwei

I will always choose and stick Rogue class forever

[Tid12]

where do you go in-game to look at the rough-ins?

I'm interested in this also.

[apep1412]

Special effects or only Daggers and Kukris.
Many rogue players like to use Short Sword or Rapier


Assassin's Trick
Activate: Target intelligent opponent loses 25% Fort and immunity to Sneak Attack for 12 seconds if the target fails a Will save (DC 10 + Rogue Level + Int Modifier)
Let your target immunity to sneak atack ?!
What a stupid ability!

No, you misread the sentence. It says they lose 25% fortification and the also lose their immunity to sneak attack.

Execute
Melee Assassinate Attack: Deals +3[W] damage. On Sneak Attack: If the target is below 20% health, deal 500 damage (Fort DC 10 + Half Rogue Level + Int Mod negates).
500 damage to the target below 20% health
Very unstable capacity
useless

Killer
When you kill a target, you gain a 5% Morale bonus to melee doublestrike for 15 seconds. Weak enemies will not always produce this effect. The killer buff can stack up to 2/3/4 times.
Need kill a target?
some times,your teammate do the last hit to the target
useless

It's almost like these two abilities were created to be used together.
My assassin would enjoy the second one, if it stays in for the final version. If there are enough enemies to use the second ability, my assassin has probably already killed 2.

Knife Specialization
+1 Critical Threat Multiplier with Daggers and Kukris. Daggers also gain +1 Critical Threat Range.
Where is my Short Sword?
Why the rogue players can only use Daggers and Kukris ?
I don't know how you thinking

I didn't see the part where this was required and nerfed your damage with all other weapons. No one's forcing you to take this and it is something that's too good to apply to all weapons.

Don't ever trust numbers posted by Shade

I have play rogue for 14 years

What we need is more effective capacity
Kills a living target instantly,or let them stop working

Assassinate still kills instantly and one of the 'useless' poisons can paralyse.

Another very important point

Where is my fast sneaking?

Let us sneaking like a snail? never !

by the way,I'm a old rogue，I have a say here

Faster sneaking is in the Thief Acrobat tree, for these placeholder trees. We currently have 80 AP and it takes 41 to get a capstone. You can still take a generous amount of enhancements from another tree without giving up the assassin abilities you like.

You have as much of a say as any other player, and less of a say than the Turbine employees that make the final decision.

[karl_k0ch]

At first glance: Assassinate at level 18+ is a bit sad for leveling, but for capped builds it's not that horrible. Most builds which were aiming for a decent assassinate score had 18+ rogue levels anyway.

[maddmatt70]

I am guessing knife assasin will be pretty expensive action point wise which will balance it between strength based and dex based a little but likely not sure what this means for strength based or rapier wielding or khopesh wielding rogues. Overall very nice. I am wondering if there is still is the plan for this to be also available to halfling as a racial enhancement tree? Does that mean we could see dex based halfling knife dual wielding rangers or paladins or whatever?

[Ape_Man]

Nice, I'm stuck at work and can't get Llama to work for some reason. Can we see the roughs of the other PREs please? particularly Tempest and anything racial?

[HatsuharuZ]

All of the dagger and kukri enhancements would be useless for monk/rogue builds. Neither daggers or kukris are ki weapons. Perhaps they should change that?

[karl_k0ch]

All of the dagger and kukri enhancements would be useless for monk/rogue builds. Neither daggers or kukris are ki weapons. Perhaps they should change that?

http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Midnight_Greetings

[HatsuharuZ]

http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Midnight_Greetings

Oh, I know about that. But what if I want to make use of the assassin tree (as a rogue/monk) during levels 1-19?

[Eladrin]

So no assassinate until level 18 now? Ouch.

In our current setup (subject to change), it's possible to get tier 5 enhancements at level 11. (40 AP spent in tree.)

And with the way this PrE is set up, characters will most likely either skip Weapon Finesse and focus on daggers or kukris, meaning they wouldn't have the strength to use rapiers even if they wanted to, or skip the dagger/kukri benefits and go strength based (possibly with kopeshes instead of rapiers).

That's our intent - the dagger/kukri abilities in the tree are intended to open up additional options for dex/int builds rather than completely replace existing weapons. A strength based assassin build, for instance, will likely want to go with rapiers, or even possibly the khopesh. We'll try to be careful with this.

Also noticed that we're basically trading in +12 damage per hit on sneak attacks from our current Sneak Attack Training IV for +1d6 SA die, Dex to damage with select weapons and some triggered attack abilities with +[W] bonuses. That looks like a net loss to me.

You've also got Venomed Blades (+4.5 per weapon) and the active abilities like Execute.

Where is my fast sneaking?

Tier one of the Acrobat, Ninja, or Deepwood Sniper tree. You'll have 80 action points to spend, and can't put them all into one place.

[rimble]

All of the dagger and kukri enhancements would be useless for monk/rogue builds. Neither daggers or kukris are ki weapons. Perhaps they should change that?

That's a good argument for at least Short Sword I think, for some Ninja Spy synergy.

[karl_k0ch]

Oh, I know about that. But what if I want to make use of the assassin tree (as a rogue/monk) during levels 1-19?

http://ddowiki.com/page/Midnight_Greetings

And, to put it into perspective, there are exactly two autogrants as well as one tier 5 ability which exclusively favor Knives. All the other enhancements/bonuses benefit every playstyle of a monk/rogue. You can surely make use of the tree without that. (Although I agree that it would be nice to have a Dex-to-hit/Dex-to-damage bonus for Short Swords. Maybe this can be found in the Ninja spy tree.)

Given very first autogrant of this tree, some Dev might want to re-evaluate the "Assassin's Training" item property on MG and EMG. :P

[Eladrin]

http://ddowiki.com/page/Midnight_Greetings

And, to put it into perspective, there are 2 autogrants as well as 1 tier 5 ability which exclusively favor Knives. All the other enhancements/bonuses benefit every playstyle of a monk/rogue.

The Ninja Spy will also have similar innate abilities to give options to reduce the multiple ability dependency of short sword builds.

[karl_k0ch]

The Ninja Spy will also have similar innate abilities to give options to reduce the multiple ability dependency of short sword builds.

My edit above got ninja'd. Literally.

I like this choice, it fits very nicely flavor-wise, and gives niche weapons a reasonable boost.

[sephiroth1084]

In our current setup (subject to change), it's possible to get tier 5 enhancements at level 11. (40 AP spent in tree.)

Well, that's promising, but with important enhancements like faster sneaking and Subtle Backstabbing showing up in other trees, even though they make a lot of sense in Assassin, this is still likely to be pushed back a few levels, especially if racial enhancements end up being really worthwhile.

I don't mind there being strong decision-making worked into the process, but sticking this at the same tier as the vorpal ability feels inappropriate, as does putting the iconic ability of the PrE all the way at the end.

That's our intent - the dagger/kukri abilities in the tree are intended to open up additional options for dex/int builds rather than completely replace existing weapons. A strength based assassin build, for instance, will likely want to go with rapiers, or even possibly the khopesh. We'll try to be careful with this.

Right now, Str-based rogues who can spare a feat pick up EWP: Khopesh, and every other rogue goes with rapiers and shortswords. Some rogues use the Epic Midnight's Greetings, without feat support (ie., Improved Critical).

With this big push for Assassins to be using daggers and kukris, rapiers and shortswords are looking to largely be left in the cold, as most of the Assassin population will either go with the new flavor here, or the Khopeshes they were looking to use anyway. Also, without including a free Improved Critical for one or the other type of weapon, rogues won't be able to swap back an forth effectively.

If we had some real support with named daggers and kukris, this might be a little easier to swallow, but that really isn't the case. Plus, this still probably leaves Str-based Assassins as significantly better DPSers, as they have more ways to increase their attack/damage stat (Rage, Madstone, etc...).

And as I mentioned also, Str-based Assassins will fair much better vs. undead with DR bludgeoning than the Dex-based versions, because they can swap to hammers or maces without also losing all of their stat bonus for to-hit and damage in addition to their sneak attack and poison damage. At the very least, allow the Dex to attack/damage abilities to apply to all light weapons, please. I already hate taking my rogue into undead-laden content without having basically zero recourse for harming them at all.

Tier one of the Acrobat, Ninja, or Deepwood Sniper tree. You'll have 80 action points to spend, and can't put them all into one place.

Ninja and Deepwood are both focused on stealth, like the Assassin is, while the Acrobat really isn't, which is my issue. Why isn't the PrE that gets bonuses to Hide and Move Silently getting the ability that improves that action? If it's just to encourage multiclassing, there are better ways to do that.

The Ninja Spy will also have similar innate abilities to give options to reduce the multiple ability dependency of short sword builds.

I'm all for options that improve variety, but I'm not a big fan of those that add further restrictions on what is viable or worthwhile. One of the nice things about Assassin is that it's weapon-neutral, meaning that you can change weapons you're using without much hassle. For instance, on my Assassin, I went from a Dex-based build and TRed to a Str-based one, but didn't have to change over my rapiers and shortswords, because they still work well. Plus, I have a couple of named daggers that work just as well, and have been trying to get a Midnight's Greetings epic'ed, which isn't quite as solid (18-20 threat range instead of the 17-20 on my daggers and shortswords, or 15-20 on the rapiers), but it's usable fairly effectively, as are the light bludgeoning weapons I had for undead, though I now how some 1-handed ones as well.

I'm perfectly happy with the tier 5 enhancement that improves the multiplier for kukris and the multiplier and threat range for daggers, but not that these are the only weapons that benefit from the Dex to attack and damage. In one instance you have a great ability that we've been asking for, that frees us from having to pick up Weapon Finesse on this feat-starved class, and then in the next we realize that we still need the feat, because there are situations where we're going to be without those bonuses. If you still intend for rogues to take Weapon Finesse, replace the Dex on to-hit with something else, and apply Dex to damage with all finessable weapons.