Repeater Rogue: how bad is the ammo issue?

[Raoull]

I'm planning on a repeater rogue soon, but was wondering if going pure was worth the hassle. In theory I'd like to stay pure, and go the Max assassinate route, where I could either assassinate mobs or just repeater them from a safe distance.

But I'm wondering if ammo won't be too much of a pain. One of my toons has a 6 ranger splash for manyshot, and for a while he was too AP tight for the AA summon arrows ability. Ammo was a pain. (Especially since he was a low str halfling.) Eventually I LRed him into str based, which freed up the APs, and I no longer deal with that hassle.... but it has me worried.

How bad is ammo management for a rogue that doesn't have an artie splash? If I give up on assassinate, splashing 2 or more artie isn't a huge deal, but I'm sort of hoping for the full rogue experience on this toon.

Worth it? or should I just acknowledge that a repeater build requires Artie levels until they fix the Conjure bolts scroll bug?

[Hoglum]

Get house D favor (150 I think), a couple big quivers & sturdy bolts. There are 2 types of sturdy bolts. The large thin quiver holds 3 types of bolts, 1000 per stack.

You get around 4000 shots from 1 stack of 1000 sturdy bolts (75% return rate).

2 stacks in each large thin quiver + 1 stack regular bolts ~ 9000 shots per inventory slot. 3 or 4 quivers should keep you going for a while.

[rayworks]

I'm planning on a repeater rogue soon, but was wondering if going pure was worth the hassle. In theory I'd like to stay pure, and go the Max assassinate route, where I could either assassinate mobs or just repeater them from a safe distance.

But I'm wondering if ammo won't be too much of a pain. One of my toons has a 6 ranger splash for manyshot, and for a while he was too AP tight for the AA summon arrows ability. Ammo was a pain. (Especially since he was a low str halfling.) Eventually I LRed him into str based, which freed up the APs, and I no longer deal with that hassle.... but it has me worried.

How bad is ammo management for a rogue that doesn't have an artie splash? If I give up on assassinate, splashing 2 or more artie isn't a huge deal, but I'm sort of hoping for the full rogue experience on this toon.

Worth it? or should I just acknowledge that a repeater build requires Artie levels until they fix the Conjure bolts scroll bug?

Buy a couple of quivers. Swap when low. Then, once you get House D favor you can get sturdy arrows and stop worrying.

[Tscheuss]

If this is going to be a TR, stock the House D arrows and quivers first.

If this is going to be first life, you can buy a few quivers and swap as needed if space is tight. I used to restock normal bolts every 2-3 quests before I got House D favor. Just don't waste them on breakables until you get the Sturdy ones.

Either way, you will need STR or a strength item to keep from being burdened.

[Raoull]

OK, sounds like it is doable. Mainly worried because while I don't horribly mind a splash, I'd probably go Shadarkai if I was a splashed rogue, but I'd rather go Morninglord on a pure rogue for max assassinate.

I guess I'll go Morninglord. Worst case scenario, I have until lvl 18 to decide if I want an artie 2 splash before I end up in epics.... I may hold off on dumping my cleric level until I'm more sure though, in case I want to swap out more.

[Nayus]

Beware swapping Quivers is awful!

[Todkaninchen]

Beware swapping Quivers is awful!

Another possibility...

Put your main quiver on a hotbar. Put "excess" bolts in your inventory. (Since you use them up, it clears space/weight for loot gathering). After you see "reloaded 100 bolts" message during a fight, when there's a lull, click the hotbar to open quiver, hit autogather and top quiver off out of inventory. If you run out of "excess" bolts, open inventory, open a spare quiver, pop bolts into inventory then autogather into your main quiver.

That way, if you have a Quiver of Poison, you're not losing it to reload. It's quick to keep up, and the quiver autofills when you buy new bolts anyway.

Another possibility, if you're running with a party, is to switch over to a keen or vorpal great cross. You should be doing enough damage to still knock things down fast, the slower ROF means both more sneak attack damage and less ammo usage and you can get some pretty silly damage off a good great crossbow on a crit. If you're soloing though or there's mass mobs up close, you'll do better with a repeater, especially one with a deception proc (or gear with it on it) or something like paralyzing, Wounding of Puncturing/Virulent Poison (constitution), or the like.

Personally, I like to splash 2 levels or arti on my repeater rogues (1 for bolts, 2 for runearm which offsets the sneak attack damage loss), it also lets you take the skill enhancements in both trees for trapping skills to offset the capstone loss plus both trees' weapon buffs stack.

I have--however--done the pure thing and currently have a rogue 6/ranger 5 (will be ranger 14 when done) that skip the arti splash. the rogue/ranger combo with rogue mech for INT to damage on great crossbows (and light repeaters, as necessary) plus the deepwood stuff to buff ranged attacks is kinda' fun so far. Crits up into the 150's, more if they're helpless, and crits very often. Still, the ammo thing is an issue.

[MalkavianX]

I'm planning on a repeater rogue soon, but was wondering if going pure was worth the hassle. In theory I'd like to stay pure, and go the Max assassinate route, where I could either assassinate mobs or just repeater them from a safe distance.

But I'm wondering if ammo won't be too much of a pain. One of my toons has a 6 ranger splash for manyshot, and for a while he was too AP tight for the AA summon arrows ability. Ammo was a pain. (Especially since he was a low str halfling.) Eventually I LRed him into str based, which freed up the APs, and I no longer deal with that hassle.... but it has me worried.

How bad is ammo management for a rogue that doesn't have an artie splash? If I give up on assassinate, splashing 2 or more artie isn't a huge deal, but I'm sort of hoping for the full rogue experience on this toon.

Worth it? or should I just acknowledge that a repeater build requires Artie levels until they fix the Conjure bolts scroll bug?

How about a stack of Conjure Bolts scrolls? Shouldn't be difficult at all to get umd high enough to cast a level one scroll. Stack of 100 scrolls would net you 100,000 bolts... in one stack.

Or you could just take one level of arty, unless you feel it's absolutely necessary to stay pure.

[Hobgoblin]

How about a stack of Conjure Bolts scrolls? Shouldn't be difficult at all to get umd high enough to cast a level one scroll. Stack of 100 scrolls would net you 100,000 bolts... in one stack.

Or you could just take one level of arty, unless you feel it's absolutely necessary to stay pure.

scrolls are bugged and dont make bolts right now

known issue not high on the list

hob

[goodspeed]

Id thought the best splash was to take some arti for int to both att and dmg.

[MalkavianX]

Id thought the best splash was to take some arti for int to both att and dmg.

Can't you get the same thing from the mechanic enhancements?

[goodspeed]

Can't you get the same thing from the mechanic enhancements?

The mechanic gives you int to dmg mod. But the arti gives you both dmg and att. However you can only use one at a time which is why alot of people that go pure repeater splash in the rog to use int strictly for both. I think the insightful strikes spell is a lv 2 arti spell.

[darkovac]

scrolls are bugged and dont make bolts right now

known issue not high on the list

hob

I think that Cordovan (or someone from Turbine) written that they'll fix it (or try to fix it) on forums around launch of u22. I believe it was some discussion about known bugs players would like to be fixed sooner, can't find it now so maybe it's just my wish speaking .

[JOTMON]

It is a PITA.
Conjure bolts scrolls still don't work.
multiple quivers and constant runs between quests to house D to restock..

I ended up with a splash of artificer which worked just fine.

[Saekee]

What about the wand of flame arrow? I remember using the wand (UMD) to generate 50 flaming bolts. Do the wands work or are they borked?

[dontmater]

scrolls are bugged and dont make bolts right now

known issue not high on the list

hob

been broken when it came out.. how many years ago.. . . ... . . . . . .

[Raoull]

Been runnin this guy a bit.... so I may as well respond with a few things.

The biggest, is Dennith Sturdy bolts are huuuuuge. I load up a quiver of poison with 2 stacks of 1K sturdy bolts plus a stack of something else, and I'm good for a while. Many quests only use a few hundred sturdy bolts. It seems that even when a quest goes really long I still only go through a full stack plus a chunk of a second. Before I got the Dennith favor, I had to restock nearly every quest. Also, check out the holds on your airship.... our has a Dennith Ammo (and a regular ammo) vendor so I don't even need to head to House D to reload.

The weight of spare bolts is a bit of a pain. My main quiver is doable, but I contemplated a second.... and the weight then became an issue. I imagine in epic where randomly slotting +6 str is so much easier this will cease to be a problem. So for emergency spares, I carry a stack of scrolls of Flame Arrow. (A spare quiver full of sturdy bolts may hold more shots per Eq slot.... but is destroyed by scrolls on a bolt per weight ratio.) Strange that the Conjure Bolts scroll doesn't work yet the Flame Arrow does. They'll conjure 50 bolts a pop. I haven't actually needed them yet, but I'm glad they're there.