Halfling Rogue Enhancements?

[WisdomOrFolly]

Hi, new rogue here planning out enhancements. Haven't found a lot of threads talking about it. I'm building a dex based rogue that primarily solos and plan to focus on the assassinate tree. I'd like to hear from some more experienced rogues on how helpful they find various enhancements - example builds and suggestions very appreciated! Thanks!

My questions:

Assassin tree
Shiv: What does +1[W] damage mean?
Critical accuracy - dex rogues have pretty high hit rates, so is this still helpful?
Critical damage - do criticals happen enough to make this skill worthwhile, or should a more reliable skill (like points in Dex) be taken instead?
Measure the foe: If I'm not going to rely solely on assassinate to kill enemies, do I need this skill? Is it possible to stealth in the middle a fight so I can skulk back and assassinate another mob?

Thief-Acrobat tree:
Shadow Dodge: is it a stance? If so, what stances does it conflict with, and has anyone found it useful?
Improved defensive roll: this looks really good, but requires a lot of points in this tree - useful for my kind of build?

Halfling:
Bold/Break out the leeches: how useful is this if halflings have such high saving throws anyway?
Nimble reaction: do you accrue enough dodge to make this useful?
Dragonmarks: would you say this is essential for a soloist? Are potions not enough?

Thanks again!

[Krelar]

Assassin tree
Shiv: What does +1[W] damage mean?
Critical accuracy - dex rogues have pretty high hit rates, so is this still helpful?
Critical damage - do criticals happen enough to make this skill worthwhile, or should a more reliable skill (like points in Dex) be taken instead?
Measure the foe: If I'm not going to rely solely on assassinate to kill enemies, do I need this skill? Is it possible to stealth in the middle a fight so I can skulk back and assassinate another mob?

Thief-Acrobat tree:
Shadow Dodge: is it a stance? If so, what stances does it conflict with, and has anyone found it useful?
Improved defensive roll: this looks really good, but requires a lot of points in this tree - useful for my kind of build?

Halfling:
Bold/Break out the leeches: how useful is this if halflings have such high saving throws anyway?
Nimble reaction: do you accrue enough dodge to make this useful?
Dragonmarks: would you say this is essential for a soloist? Are potions not enough?

Thanks again!

if you look at the base damage of your weapon it will be something like 1d6 some weapons, especially higher level ones, will have and additional number so it will look like 2[1d6] which is effectively 1d6 times 2. +1 W means it increases the number in front of the [] so our 2[1d6] would become 3[1d6] or 1d6 times 3.

Critical accuracy probably isn't that important but you need it if you want to unlock any of the other three abilities that use it as a prerequisite.

How often you critical hit depends on what weapon you are using. There's a good chance you will be getting crits 30% of the time at higher levels.

I have shadow dodge on my rogue and it doesn't conflict with anything that I am aware of. Be careful about the fort reduction though, getting critically hit can kill you fast. My rogue is warforged and has 170% fort with the stance on.

[karl_k0ch]

Re: Critical Damage. With a Dagger or Kukri, Knife Mastery and the Improved Critical feat, your weapons have a Crit profile of 15-20x3. Which means that on an attack roll of 20, the weapon deals thrice the base damage. What does this mean if you have tier 3 the critical damage enhancement? This means, that on a roll of 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20, you deal extra 3*3 damage (3 extra damage times the critical multiplier.) Over 20 attacks, on average, this adds up to 54 extra damage. So against targets with no fortification, you can view this enhancement as 2.7 extra damage.

Re: Measure the foe. It's a useful, but situational buff. Usually, I attack mobs I don't have aggo of and every 15s, I get into sneak mode, assassinate, and commence stabbing. Some quest allow some setup for this (delayed mobs spawning, cut scenes, mobs walking towards the group), where measure the foe will help.

Re: Nimble Reaction: This depends on the armor you are wearing. It should be pretty easy to get towards the dodge cap, e.g. with a +10 Dodge item, 6 Dogde from Uncanny Dodge you are already looking at 16 dodge, which is more than most light armors. But then, it's a cost/benefit question. Personally, I picked from the Halfling tree only the core abilities which increase saves and dex, as well as the extra sneak attack damage. 41 points went into the assassin tree; I took subtlety and haste boost from acrobat and wand and scroll mastery from Mechanic.

Re: Dragonmarks. I think that feats are usually pretty sparse on a rogue, and I never bothered with the dragonmarks. However, I found enough UMD to use Heal Scrolls enough to be able to take care of my own. If I'd make use of dragonmarks, I'd probably pick up something like a cleric level, to be able to use empower healing on those. But I probably wouldn't do that on an assassin.


Note: I'm writing this from the perspective of a capped halfling rogue. So, especially the dodge numbers are higher than while leveling. I hope this still contains some useful information.

[SSFWEl]

Re: Dragonmarks. I think that feats are usually pretty sparse on a rogue, and I never bothered with the dragonmarks. However, I found enough UMD to use Heal Scrolls enough to be able to take care of my own. If I'd make use of dragonmarks, I'd probably pick up something like a cleric level, to be able to use empower healing on those. But I probably wouldn't do that on an assassin.
n.

I am on of the wierdoes who used full healing dragonmaks even before U19. I still love them.
I still have yet to decide about an +20LR, but atm I am an 18 rogue, 1 ftr, 1 WIZ (!). Why wiz? for the bonus feat that I use for maximize. Why not empower heal from say cleric or druid? Because 1. takes a feat and 2. with devotion slotted I easily hit over 600 heal with the heal DM with no metas. (AND wiz turns my wep into a spell implement adding another 24 to spell power. At least I THINK that's what's doing it).

But what about the other 2 types of DM? Well for them I prefer maximize from wiz. The 9x least DM cures for ~70 - not unuseful, and the 6x lesser DM cures for over ~250 - pretty usefull. And now that they nerfed Assassins with no scroll mastery (taking scroll mastery means 11 AP from mechanic), they heal way more than scrolls.

AND no concentration check.