Rogue - Assassin Changes

[nibel]

2. Not a solo mechanic - in "Current" DDO 90% of content can and will see through your stealth for pretty much no reason at all other then "hey I'm a random champ so ha ha screw you stealthy.". As such, "Sneaking" to solo is not viable in Elites.

I disagree with that statement. Champions mobs, See Invisibility, or True Seeing have absolutely no effect on your stealth play. I play stealth characters all the time, and with the exception of stupid spiders, I can sneak almost from 1 to cap. However, there is three major problems with stealth right now, that you forgot (I agree with the "not group-friendly"):

1) Invisibility is a major necessity while sneaking, if you don't have Hide in Plain sight. While I understand the monsters getting bonus to spot while you stay stealthed in plain view, invisibility makes them DO NOT get this bonus. This is incredibly useful while you are watching a patrolling mob to learn its path, or when you NEED to cross somewhere when the guards just never turn their faces away.

2) Other than Assassinate (a level 12 ability), there is no advantage from alpha striking from stealth. Sure, you get sneak attack damage, but in DDO this is not enough to one-shot a mob. Heck, it is not even enough to make a mob take reasonable damage to start with 30-50% HP left. Bosses even less. I'm not saying that everyone that can sneak behind a mob should be able to one-shot it, but rogues should had a huge boost if hitting something INACTIVE. Leave sneak attack to DISTRACTED mobs, and give a huge boost (huge for rogues, big for monks/rangers, good for the rest) if hitting anything that is not fighting someone else, searching for a noise, or charging into battle.

3) Stealth is plain broken at low levels because the mobs get bonus to spot too fast. When your hide skill is very low, and you don't have many ways to improve it yet (like wielding a Cutthroat Smallblade), staying on a mob's sight for 5 seconds is enough for them to detect you. And those low level mobs, made back when the level cap was 10, move A LOT around the dungeon, because at the time, stealth mechanics were based more on ambient light than your hide skill.

I know many people don't care about the starting levels, but when your new player want to try out stealth mechanics and is spotted by every kobold guard they meet, they will assume stealth is plain broken, and join the bullrushers.

[Blackheartox]

Why has noone linked this yet?



This is how a rogue is and should be in dnd!

[draven1]

Why has noone linked this yet?

This is how a rogue is and should be in dnd!

Lol, +1

[QuantumFX]

(We are still working on Mechanic.)

Here’s a suggestion for you:

- Rapid Fire: Add toggle: It gives any crossbow the rate of Fire of a Heavy Repeater. It fits the theme you guys set up, it gives named non-repeating crossbows a reason to exist, and it doesn’t step on Artificers.

[davmuzl]

This does appear to be an easy work around, but it completely changes the ability. The charm of it now is that it is a 25% fort/sneak attack bypass that the whole party can benefit from. There are enough "me" enhancements in the game. They shouldn't get rid of one of the few "we" enhancements just because it is the easier thing to do.

I like what you say there. There should be more good party based build options. For the rogue the poisons would be a good way to give more options to debuff enemies.

What rogues need is a good way to deal damage to undead and constructs which they are lacking right now(imo item effects like destruction and weaken consrtuct/undead should also remove sneak attack immunity- I don't know if they alreday do) but making them ignore all fortification sounds boring and too strong.

Apart from that it is important that all abilities have similar option when it comes to scaling into higher epic levels. I haven't done the math but I would be surprised if a rogue could get his assassinate DC anywhere near what other classes have for their stunning blow or as mentioned before the Coup de Grace and at the same time they have to work harder to make it work because they have to be stealthed. It may be possible but it also means putting everything into int that is possible while other classes can spend their action points on other things.

[Qezuzu]

We get concerned when players make blanket statements about stealth being "broken" without really outlining what they mean. While we love player feedback and welcome specific suggestions about stealth, I just don't want to set up false expectations about things stealth should allow. We wouldn't want players, as an example, to have the expectation that characters should be opening doors and pulling levers while remaining in stealth. This type of behavior would threaten too many types of content. Without specifics we can do nothing to address people's concerns.

Sev~

Yes, this please. I get annoyed when people say "stealth is broken" because seem to mean one or more of many things:
-Sneak does not actually function
-Assassinate draws aggro
-You break sneak on interacting with items
-It's not party friendly
-The game doesn't reward you for stealth (quick note, please dramatically improve the low-kill bonuses. Insidious Cunning, which is VERY difficult to achieve in a lot of quests, gives as much XP as Aggression which is easily achievable in basically every quest).
-It's too difficult to get working scores
-You can't escape aggro
-Random True Seeing champions ruin it

And so on.

I'll take a stab at outlining the problems with stealth:

1. Not a team mechanic - in "Current" DDO 90% of content revolves around bum rushing through quests as fast as possible.. bull rushing from one encounter to the next. This rarely if ever gives any rogue "time" to stealth and make use of the stealth mechanics. As such, if you are playing with other players in a "PuG" you will likely never get a chance to make use of your "Cool stealth" abilities.

2. Not a solo mechanic - in "Current" DDO 90% of content can and will see through your stealth for pretty much no reason at all other then "hey I'm a random champ so ha ha screw you stealthy.". As such, "Sneaking" to solo is not viable in Elites. Plus there is the added annoyance that you can't "One Shot" enemies from stealth "Assassins Creed" style... so when you DO manage to succeed at getting the drop on an enemy, you likely WONT kill it, and then it and its buddies will proceed to beat you to death.

On "Paper" the idea of being able to sneak past a monster to disable a trap or secure some objective without relying on combat alone.. in "Reality" I can only think of ONE quest that being stealthy is rewarded (stealthy repo).. which BTW is still completed FASTER by a Paladin/Barb/any high AC toon just bum rushing the levers and ignoring the dungeon alert.. so yeah.. GO STEALTH!!

The dungeon mechanics in DDO just are NOT suited to stealth gameplay. Note I am looking at the WHOLE of the game, just because there may be "Some" quests where its nice to have does not discount the majority of the content not being suited for it.

The entire point of stealth is to not draw aggro and avoid killing things, at least in my opinion. When I have five party members who can take aggro for me and are slicing up everything anyway, how exactly can stealth be employed? I for one am entirely content just using it as a way to use Assassinate.

Stealth not being good in solo play is false. If you're getting spotted (past lvl10 or so at least) your scores are simply not high enough. Solo sneaking not being viable in elites is also completely false, nearly any epic elite can be completed with only required kills. The only drawback is that it completes more slowly (there's no way to fix this beyond just making it broken overpowered) and you get less XP (which can be solved by changing a single value).

Stealth as a mechanic needs a complete overhaul IMO to match the game in its current format.

What's the current format of the game? Zerging everything? Stealth will never match that, they're fundamentally incompatible. Tweaks can be done but there's no need to overhaul it entirely.

[dualscissors]

[edit for clarity] Assassinate agro is working fine now.

I've seen the complaint a few times in this thread that immediately after assassinating a mob, the room's other mobs will all be agroing on you - that is to say, the mob death will instantly alert them that you are lurking. As a side effect - the complaint goes - you won't get double-tap assassinates on a mob adjacent to the mob you assassinated.

This was something that I noticed as a problem several weeks or a couple months ago, but something after a hotfix seemed to revert the assassinate-stealth agro mechanic so that this broken agroing is NOT happening anymore. I'm basing [my observation that assassinate is not agroing entire rooms] off dozens of assassinate moves in the last several weeks.

[Ayseifn]

Any chance of a more general TWFing rogue prestige at some later date?

Not fan of how Knife Spec is so limiting but it's really hard to come up with ideas that make other weapons viable without overshadowing daggers/kukris.

[amsharkwei]

what is rogue need
and
what you want give to rogue


Rogue need some ability let them not spotted by monster,movement never break sneak

Rogue need some ability control the target,on hit:target drop into helpless for few sec

Rogue need more assassinate DC,maybe add dex mod into DC,or maybe add hide skill into DC

[redoubt]

[QUOTE=dualscissors;5551986]I've seen the complaint a few times in this thread that immediately after assassinating a mob, the room's other mobs will all be agroing on you - that is to say, the mob death will instantly alert them that you are lurking. As a side effect - the complaint goes - you won't get double-tap assassinates on a mob adjacent to the mob you assassinated.

QUOTE]

Implement at crit success/fail system for assassinate:

Assume mob fort save of 60 (including its roll.) Now compare that to the assassinate DC.
DC 66 and higher is a crit success. Your kill was done will such skill the you left the mob quietly leaned against the wall/table (whatever) in a manner that attracted no notice from his friends. Assassinate timer is shortened to 5 seconds.
DC 61 and higher is a success. Nearby mobs get a check (INT, spot, listen - something) to see if they notice their newly dead friend.
DC 60 or less is a fail. Mob has a W T F moment and starts looking for you.
DC 55 or less is a crit fail. You are pulled out of stealth and the mob KNOWS where you are. He calls out to his friends, "This little bleep just tried to kill me! Get him!" Cannot stealth for 5 seconds.

[Linvak]

Again, I really don't have any issues with the Assassin tree itself. If there's any trees I'm going to fret about it's Shadowdancer. The cores really need some help.

1. I really don't know what the use of threat +/- is when we have deception and everything is cleaving anyways.

2. And after you explained that Rogues have self healing in the form of UMD, we also have Shadow Walk in the form of UMD, yet our tier 4 Epic Destiny feels the need to give us 5 more charges. (5 charges of heal > shadow walk).

3. Dimension Door is always handy, but just another core with 1d6 Sneak Attack, moving on, nothing to see here.

4. Core 6....evasion? Now, I get it, people without evasion can make use of this. But what class, that's not using LD or DC and is also wearing light armor or robes, is sitting in Shadowdancer? The other part of this core, I'm really not sure if it's good or bad. I've never taken the time to check the numbers, and whether 5% extra dmg for 12 seconds ONLY after a vorpal is making much of a difference compared to some of the other core 6s given out by some of the more popular Epic Destinies

5. My final complaint, would be more about the DC of Assassinate. You're required to spend 12/24 points into 6 Int which = 3 DC which is again, required. Of all the Coup de Grace vs Assassinate complaints, this is the one I come back to the most. Bards don't need to be in an ED that offers charisma, meaning they don't have to spend half their ED points into their insta kill DC. We get +6 right away in Tier 1 Stealthy which is huge, and this only cost us 3 points. In the end, we're spending 15/24 points on our DC in an Epic Destiny.

This is a little harder to complain about, because giving us a working Assassinate without spending those points, opens up the door for being in LD in some cases, which would be HUGE dps numbers, and maybe too much. But this is why rogues dont have the PRR/HP/QUICK self healing abilities. I myself, don't find running LD fun or even a healthy playstyle on a pure assassin where 25% incorporeal is about the only thing keeping you competative. (Again, opinion/subjective) So I would still think, with 12 more points to spend in Shadowdancer, rogues would stay in SD because there are a lot of fun and interesting abilities that you just don't have room for otherwise.

I won't even get started on the epic moment. I doubt much explaining is needed there.

In terms of "tree" help --- Shadowdancer>Assassin

[Linvak]

The entire point of stealth is to not draw aggro and avoid killing things, at least in my opinion. When I have five party members who can take aggro for me and are slicing up everything anyway, how exactly can stealth be employed? I for one am entirely content just using it as a way to use Assassinate.

Stealth not being good in solo play is false. If you're getting spotted (past lvl10 or so at least) your scores are simply not high enough. Solo sneaking not being viable in elites is also completely false, nearly any epic elite can be completed with only required kills. The only drawback is that it completes more slowly (there's no way to fix this beyond just making it broken overpowered) and you get less XP (which can be solved by changing a single value).

What's the current format of the game? Zerging everything? Stealth will never match that, they're fundamentally incompatible. Tweaks can be done but there's no need to overhaul it entirely.

I have to agree with you here. Stealth, as far as sneaking around, and avoiding things, isn't a problem, unless we're talking about spiders (even though shadow form is technically allowing you to float : p and they still notice you 100% of the time).

I think if anyone is asking to be able to just fly around, insta-killing everything, and running to the end without ever being noticed or challenged is delusional.

What I'm more focused on is 2 things.

1. Assassin, assassinate, stealth, sneak, rogue. Why is it so hard to assassinate quietly? We use to be able to do this. Sometimes I'd fail the stealth check after assassinations, sometimes I'd be able to stay stealthed and move around. Coming up behind something, and slitting its throat with your other hand over its mouth, laying him/it/her down quietly should give us a decent chance of going unnoticed. I'm not sure if there's a roll in the hide/stealth check, but it seems to be 100% fail rate within a certain radius. I'm not asking for easy mode, I'm simply asking for a chance to pick a few things off here and there, using risk and reward for being an assassin.

2. Assassinating 2 mobs that are not preoccupied with someone else, is near impossible. I've done it before, but likely 1 out off 2 or 3 hundred tries. Again, i'm not asking for easy mode, but when 2 mobs are standing next to each other, and you're duel wielding, shouldn't we have a decent chance of getting them both baring DC failure. The 2nd mob INSTANTLY notices you, even when the red eye animation hasn't even had time to form, signaling that you've been spotted, and that any assassination attempts are futile. I'd like to tie this in with my other point where, I don't think this should be a 100% occurrence, but give us a chance to make that stealth check, the closer the mob, the harder the success will be.

Again, people that are asking for the ability to open doors and pull levers are asking a bit too much. Sure, when you think about traps and trap boxes which we're able to disarm quietly, you'd think that levers and doors would be the same. But we do need to think about gameplay quality, and I agree with many of the points you made.

[hi_sa1nt]

Since coup de grace uses perform. Why can't assassinate use (Int mod + 1/2 hide + 1/2 move silently)?

Allows you to invest points into other stats besides int, and still get a relatively high assassinate dc.

I've gotten my hide and move silently in the 110+ mark... and my int in the 70s... Still, now you're looking at an insta kill comparable to Coup de Grace in terms of killing dc's.

[Silverleafeon]

Reiterating some of the player concerns we want to look into, and adding some comments:

~ We wanted to avoid adding a stealth speed boost onto Assassin because it's already in Acrobat and it seems strange to have it in both places, but we have a lot of feedback from players now that without a boost to stealth speed the assassin ends up behind in groups and has trouble setting up assassinates. Based on player feedback we will discuss what we want to do with some kind of speed boost.


Sev~

Just wanted to say that if a member of the party lags way behind the group, particularly one that needs to be in the leading edge of the party, then the entire party suffers from this poor game design.

Or put more bluntly, if team cooperation (which some of us value) places the entire party in a situation of doing nothing while a party member catches up, then we are unhappy as a whole.

[Bobby88888]

I've been toying in my head with an idea for how to boost Rogue (at least assassin, maybe all) damage.

You could do it the conventional ways such as Melee Power, Crit range/multiplier, straight bonuses, etc.
Or you could play around more with Sneak Attack damage and ways to boost it.

You could just give more and more SA dice or perhaps you could let SA damage be effected by crits according to the currently equipped weapon and/or increase how much it benefits from melee power, say (just randomly) 200% or 250%, find a balanced point. Keeping in mind that at most your Rogue assassin is going to have 51 melee power at lvl 28 on live right now.

This keeps rogue damage dependent on SA and thus slightly situational, so it could potentially afford to be slightly higher??? Not to mention it is in keeping with the flavour of the class which is far more important. That's not to say that some of the other methods couldn't or shouldn't be implemented too ofc.

It could be either implemented into base SA itself or into the SA autogrant feat helping all rogues and the more rogue you go the more benefit you get due to having more SA available. This could also be used to give Ninja Spy monks a small buff right now depending on how it is implemented.

Just a thought.

Though 2wf could also use a fix (quick way just chuck 10 melee power on it all up like other styles and be done with it)


While I'm at it I might as well chuck a few thoughts on other aspects of the Rouge out there too so here goes.

Defences: Health - Assuming you have all the associated PLs you can easily hit 1000 hp. Assuming you don't have any of those (like me) you can still almost hit 900 hp. HP isn't as big an issue as some people are making it out to be and I hope nothing is touched here for Rogues. (Those values are on a pure lvl 28 Rogue)

PRR- If you have none of the related PLs you can get to ~60 PRR currently on live. I think some small boost would be appropriate here for the Rogue. Not a large one, it shouldn't go beyond 70ish at the most I think. That gets you around 40% damage reduction which may be a little on the low side, but Rogues aren't meant to be uber tough. Enough that the spike damage shouldn't be too big, hopefully. I havn't crunched the numbers but that is where I feel might be about right.

Dodge - This is where the defences of the Rouge should be mostly focused, along with evasion (or in unique abilities such as Defensive Roll - although an ability such as that that can be accessed properly by mechanics and assassins would be cool). Dodge cap for an assassin is 27 (with shippies), this stands as their main defence and could do with a substantial bump and some more dodge rating sources (at least within the tree/trees) should be made accessible to Rogues.

Other Miss chances - These constitute the remainder and currently largest portion of a Rogues defences via incorporable, blur/displace and potentially elusive at higher levels. No changes here just listing for reference.

Any changes on defences should be done carefully. A Rogues defences do and SHOULD require hard work and investment. Done right you can get fairly good will saves and slippery mind, A high reflex save with imp evasion, a moderate dodge score with other miss chances and a low but still handy PRR and MRR.

Assassinate: Be very careful here. It could possibly do with a few more points of DC to become available but perhaps this should be done through gear rather than enhancements (maybe an insightful assassinate DC augment, +1 and +2 varieties?) or chuck +2 or something on the capstone. Just PLEASE DO NOT make it so that it is easy to get it high. It should be a challenge and it is rewarding. Please please please do not change the DC formula to use skills or the like; we don't need another coup de grace catastrophe, the DC is obscene and honestly should be revised - yes I play bards too (sorry for off topic). Also as I and several others have mentioned you need to resolve the assassinate issues with how it interacts with stealth at the very least.


You CANNOT do a Rogue pass without addressing the elephant in the room - Shadowdancer ED but I won't go into that here. I will patiently await the thread for that.

Be careful with any changes please. Don't trivialise assassinate DCs and make it so that if we are luck on doublestrike and skilleda t lining it up we can get tripple assassinates off even solo. Give an appropriate damage buff whilst trying to keep in the flavour of the class (the poison ideas you put out are a great start, I love the concept provided they work on most/all enemies. Defences need a buff but make sure that the focus is on the right type of defences but don't neglect PRR. Also Rogues really need the Wilderness lore passive feat added!!! And anything you can do to encourage the stealthy playstyle more and to reward it is awsome, be that in enhancements or future quests via fun, xp or loot
p.s. The mechanic of measure the foe isn't a very good one, that isn't what I mean by encouraging stealth playstyle.

Thanks for all the work you guys do and taking the time to read our tedious feedback, really appreciate it

[Qezuzu]

I want to second that insane Assassinate DCs are not a good idea. Coup De Grace is poorly designed in that aspect and I don't want another easy-button ability that works "out of the box", even if it means being a bit inferior.

[IronClan]

My problem with Assasinate is it's not really viable to be multiclassed ASSASSIN. A Ninja Assassin for example is totally non-viable you can't have Monk levels without massively impacting your assassinate DC.

I would like to see Assassinate changed thusly:

DC X + 1/2 Rogue Levels

Right now ignoring capstone bonuses a 19 rogue loses 1 DC to a 20 Rogue, and a 14 Rogue 6 somethingelse loses 6 DC (which results in a basically non viable flavor build ESPECIALLY after the Capstone is improved)

After this + 1/2 Rogue Levels (still ignoring capstones) a 18 rogue loses 1 DC to a 20 rogue, instead of losing 2, and a 14 Rogue 6 something else is only losing 3 DC's instead of 6.

Or you could put a version of assassinate into the Ninja Spy tree maybe?

[Blackheartox]

Another thing that i never understood in ddo.
So, we have assasins, who should be lore wise best poison users, and stealth killer.

Yet you give the absolute best hands down poison ability to shiradi.
Honestly, i never understood that

[IronClan]

Also Yes PLEASE you must address Shadowdancer ED, if you're going to make Rogues more viable in Epic levels. Their ED is terrible, second only to Fatesinger for worst ED in the game IMO.

[SealedInSong]

Dear Turbine:
Please stop changing everything.
Signed, Everybody who likes theorycrafting builds.

No, really. Just stop. Not 3 days after I put the finishing touches on my fighter/rogue/pala build, you announce a change DG and I had to redo the whole thing. Now you're changing how threat reduction works and I'll need to TR this really fun build. Judging by your producer's letter, it seems you're nerfing Manyshot AGAIN. This puts the kibosh on my Monkcher build, which I found so fun (especially solo) that I was going to keep a permanent archer of some sort. Just. ****ing. Stop.

I am regretful that your builds might have to change after these passes, but in general it's for the greater good.

I.e. most of these changes are in response to what the player base as a whole has been asking for since the enhancement pass was just an IDEA, and they help to flesh out the game as it was intended.

Also, variety is the spice of life. Thanks.