Orien S.W.A.T. planning/brainstorming session here

[katz]

Orien S.W.A.T. members and hopefuls... the gauntlet has been thrown down, and we are going to proudly stand up and answer the call!



but i'm thinking we might need a smidge more planning than the 'on the fly' method we employed to utterly stomp shroud.


VOD - shouldn't be too terribly hard, if a bit chaotic. only hangup i can actively think of might be fire-bat stage. what to do about the bats? someone with Grandmaster ED and EIN prepped? or just take em as they come and hope the evasion saves our hides?


TOD - again i'm not seeing any major issues aside from shadow phase... how to handle the shadows...a solid fog clickie or acid fog scroll would probably be sufficient to generate initial agro... but after that? tank like a caster does? ship resists or even a wearable item of superior cold resist is of course a given, and the UMD to scroll fire shield: hot is also pretty well a given... green steel cold absorb item? Templar's Bulwark? (5 points extra on top of all your other resist for the standard version, 10 points for the epic version) Block Energy from Unyielding Sentinel ED? it's probably doable. have 2 on heal scroll rotation for them?




what say you, rogues of Orien?


throw other raids up here you want to take a crack and and we can discuss those, too!

[Veriden]

This is the exact reason I can't wait till my rogue life on Veriden,

[katz]

This is the exact reason I can't wait till my rogue life on Veriden,

well hurry the heck up then, man!

[MaximusParthas]

Lets' do it.

VOD bats
Use ED abilities that damage or kill groups. Scrolls of wail or symbol of death etc.

TOD
A clicky or 3 as you said, then sup cold resist, reduction, fireshield and shadowwalk.

We've got enough rogue thugs to tank it np.

Send me an ingame mail so I'm off timer and I'll be down. (schedule permitting of course)

HOX will probably be very easy.

[katz]

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=392938

will have LFMs pointing to this thread all week also.

[Arkantios]

Gah I just hit 18 I'm going as fast as I can Lolz. It's boring not being 20 anymore

[Sunnyshadow]

does ranger 12 7 paladin 1 rogue count as a rogue?

[Qezuzu]

Not much SWAT activity on Orien as of late...

Anyway, for all-rogue raids, based on my experience:

Baby:
Tempest's Spine
Non-epic Chronoscope

Easy:
The Titan Awakes
Reaver's Fate
Non-epic DQ and VON6

Medium:
Vision of Destruction
Hound of Xoriat
The Thirteenth Eclipse
Plane of Night (epic normal)

Hard:
Tower of Despair
Plane of Night (epic hard)
Ascension Chamber
Medium raids on hard/elite
The Demon Queen (epic normal)

Elite:
The Master Artificer (epic normal or hard)*
The Lord of Blades (epic normal)*
The Chronoscope (epic normal or hard)
Caught in the Web (epic normal)
The Demon Queen (epic hard)
Tower of Despair (hard/elite)
Ascension Chamber (hard/elite)

Dante Must Die:
The Demon Queen (epic elite)
Plane of Night (epic elite)
The Chronoscope (epic elite)
Caught in the Web (epic hard or elite)
The Lord of Blades (epic hard or elite)*
The Master Artificer (epic elite)*

*I have very little experience with these raids

For anything below Hard, I think your average, reasonably geared Rogue can suffice.

For Hard I think you'll need a few all-star rogues, but the rest can be average. For Elite, maybe half the party should be "highly" geared.

For Dante Must Die (and perhaps elite raids), the incoming damage for your party is tremendous. You have no shortage of DPS, but every single one of your party members should have considerable resistance against damage. The main difference between a normal raid party and an all-rogue party is the amount of healing going around. With just one or two divines, there is a lot going around, so you can slack off on your own defenses. But when there's little healing going on, this is not an option. You will need to give up some DPS if you plan on doing this. A dead rogue is no help.

• Shadow Form is a must, make sure everyone gets a charge. Give everyone a chance to mark the first mob you see, then kill it
• If you don't want to use Shadow Form or Shadowdancer, use Unyielding Sentinel or some other ED that has a emphasis on Defense. But 25% incorporeality is significant
• High healing amp, 170% (10/20/30% items combined) is easy
• +80 AC
• +700 HP
• Highest dodge you can get. Shadowdancer gives a nice +7%, IF you can get the charges.
• As high a PRR as possible. For a rogue with Light Armor and 25 BAB (clicky), you'll have something like 14 PRR. Ew. If you plan on going for Dante Must Die raids, you may want to consider:
  
  • Combat Expertise, gives higher AC. Combine with the Dreadnought TierII ability for an additional 20 PRR. Switch this feat for whatever stance you normally use (power attack, precision) or something else.
  • Adamantine Bear Cloak. +9 PRR.
  • Have one or two people in raid have the Magister TierI ability, Sigil of Spell Warding, for +3 AC and +15 PRR for everyone in range.
  
  
• Combine all that and you get 55 PRR, or about 28% reduction in damage. This is significant
• Debuff the boss with whatever you can

All in all, for the top raids, I believe they can be done. But there is almost no margin for error. Everyone in your party needs to be highly geared and very experienced, and you need to plan and communicate thoroughly. Really, this amount of criteria lowers the number of viable rogues on each server to only a few, but we'll see if anyone can do this.

Well, after writing the above, I couldn't NOT try my best at achieving my own criteria. So guess what I did all day.

Image

Note that I'm also protected by 25% incorporeal miss chance, and some dodge.

Reposting these from the SWAT thread.

We've done VoD, HoX and Shroud and they're all quite easy.

ToD is quite possible if we get our s*** together with the Shadows. They wiped us twice last time, you know.

EDIT: Just noticed that this is an old thread. Is SWAT dead, on Orien or otherwise?

[Arkantios]

Nope, just resting and waiting for me to get to 20. Lolz