Rogue - Assassin Changes

[Infiltraitor]

Here is the first draft of potential changes to the Assassin tree.


Deadly Shadow: You gain +2 Dexterity and +2 Intelligence. You gain +4 Sneak Attack dice. You gain +4 to Reflex saving throws.

Execute: Melee Assassinate attack: +3[W] damage. If target is below 30% health, deal 500 damage. This damage scales with 200% Melee Power. (Cooldown: 15 seconds)

Measure the Foe: Gain +2 Melee Power, +2 Dodge, +2 Maximum Dodge, +1 to hit and +1 to the DCs of your Assassinate ability for every 4/2/1 seconds you remain stealthed. This effect stacks up to 5 times and lasts for 10 seconds after you come out of stealth.

Sev~

Suggestions

Deadly Shadow: Gain +6 Dexterity and +6 Intelligence and 7.5 Melee Power.
Reason: Sneak attack dice greatly favors one specific weapon style. Also, if I'm going to capstone, I better be able to get an Assassinate DC at least within range of a multiclassed Coup de Grace.

Execute: You make an attack with +13 double strike, +13[W] damage, and +13 critical multiplier.
Reason: I really don't like the 1000 flat damage. Rather than give out consistent damage, I'd much rather have 200 damage misses 70% of the time and 3000 damage crits 30% of the time. There's a psychological reason for this. I'll remember that huge number and put it in my bio. But a constant 1000? Nope. Same DPS but much more "fun". It also scales better for when DDO goes Epic level 30.

Measure the Foe: Gain +5 Melee Power, +2 Dodge, +2 Maximum Dodge, +1 to hit and +1 to the DCs of your Assassinate ability for every 4/2/1 seconds you remain stealthed. This effect stacks up to 5 times and lasts for 10 seconds after you come out of stealth.
Reason: If I have to invest in hide skill, move silently skill, and crawl around slowly in the dark, that damage bonus needs to be noticeable. Especially if this ability has very little use in a raid tank-and-spank.

[FlaviusMaximus]

Meaning, they can Coup De Grace an entire group of mobs while an Assassin gets one shot at an assassinate per encounter.

Not sure what you mean by this.

I think the main buff Assassinate needs is making it a Tactical ability, so general tactics bonus raises its DC. That, or adding Epic levels on its DC as well.

I think they may need a minor boost to the DC. Not entirely sure what number Assassins need to hit. I calculated that my Sun Elf Assassin will have a 73 Assassinate DC at cap with a Mythic whatever-it's-called, full 5 second stealth, and a +6 tome without doing anything silly like buying potions. The DC could use a couple points added to it, but not much more.

[Hafeal]

*snip*

Sev -Hope all is well on the new PC. As always, thanks for your feedback. I really like the feedback in the thread from the players and your interaction. Here is my initial feedback:

1) I really like a push to make non-pure DPS more relevant - such as poison and bleed. The key, in practical game play, is that if everything ends up with poison immunity this will turn into a fail. And bleed is situational tool as a decent number are immune to the effect. The current system of the 3 poisons, while adding situational 'flavor', is worthless for practical play and especially useless on Elite settings, imo. To me, make the poisons a perm 'toggle' that you can switch between and add to damage at all times you are in sneak attack.

2) I was wondering if a few more bumps to stealth would be in the offing. For example, it would be nice if Assassins could sneak faster without having to take it from the Acrobat tree. Acrobats should get a movement speed bonus, like Swashbuckler (+1% level - geez my Bard is faster than anything but a darn Monk these days). As this game is played, I think it would be reasonable for a stealthed Assassin to be moving as fast as a non-stealthed character at a top tier enhancement. I think this would help quite a bit with leading a party and positioning for assassinations. If you wanted to keep sneak speed in Acrobat - perhaps just give it a bigger boost.

3) As was previously mentioned, archers a problem. How about Assassins get an equivalent to Dodge Arrows while stealthed? Just because a random arrow may head their way does not mean an assassin has to break stealth to avoid it.My initial 2 cps checking out.

[Qezuzu]

Here is the first draft of potential changes to the Assassin tree.


Core Abilities:

Assassin's Trick: This now works on all enemies and no longer has a saving throw. Targets now lose 25% Fortification and their Sneak Attack immunity.

Unless Assassin's Trick's animation length is lowered, it's not a practical ability. It's only useful when used in tandem with Bluff, because Bluff allows it to activate instantly (Bluff has weird animation priority), but this is not intuitive, it's something I found on accident.

Nimbleness: Nimbleness no longer requires sneak attacks and works on any hit.

Deadly Shadow: You gain +2 Dexterity and +2 Intelligence. You gain +4 Sneak Attack dice. You gain +4 to Reflex saving throws.

DEX is obsolete for Assassins. +4 Reflex Save isn't much of a boost for a class that usually has the highest reflex of any non-Paladin build. But Deadly Shadow was a strong capstone anyway.

Tier One

Poison Strikes: (Opponents struck by these attacks are considered to be "poisoned" for 10 seconds.)

Shiv no longer reduces threat when you attack. It instead offers an additional passive component that reduces threat of all your attacks by 5/10/15%. The attack portion now also makes a Bluff check using your Bluff skill.

If it's an AoE bluff like Improved Feint is, it'd be great, even if it's single target this would be a very useful ability and partially make up for the lack of inherent Deception, which is something I consider a limiting factor (in weapon choice) for Assassins.


Tier Two

(As a reminder, Venomed Blades now scales with 200% Melee Power.)

Bleed Them Out: The bleed damage scales with 200% Melee Power.

Damage Boost: Cost reduced to 1 AP per level. Changed to boost Melee Power by 10/20/30.

Tier Three

Critical Accuracy is removed.

Critical Mastery: (1/1/1 AP) + 1/2/3 bonus to critical damage and to confirm critical hits


Tier Four

Critical Damage is removed.

Weakness Poison: Your attacks against "poisoned" enemies (from Poisoned Strikes) reduce the Melee Power and Ranged Power of the opponent by 10 for 10 seconds.

Execute: Melee Assassinate attack: +3[W] damage. If target is below 30% health, deal 500 damage. This damage scales with 200% Melee Power. (Cooldown: 15 seconds)


Tier Five

Measure the Foe: Gain +2 Melee Power, +2 Dodge, +2 Maximum Dodge, +1 to hit and +1 to the DCs of your Assassinate ability for every 4/2/1 seconds you remain stealthed. This effect stacks up to 5 times and lasts for 10 seconds after you come out of stealth.

+10 Dodge/Max Dodge is pretty significant, and 10 MP isn't bad either. This is a really meaningful change, and not expiring on breaking stealth is exactly what this needed to make it more party-friendly and useful in general.

Deadly Poison: Your attacks against "poisoned" enemies (from Poisoned Strikes) do +5 damage.

This is pretty weak. One thing I really wanted to see from the Assassin pass was to make Poison a more integral part of Assassin, more thoughts on that later
.
Light Armor Mastery: (1/1/1 AP) While wearing light armor you gain 2/4/6 to maximum dexterity bonus of your armor. (This also affects maximum dodge.) You also gain 1/2/3 Physical Resistance Rating.

At first I thought this was a really weak ability, because if I wanted to max my dodge cap I could just take the Shadowdancer ability that raises it by 6 and use a blue augment slot to raise it another 2, but then I noticed that MtF does not increase MDB. Max stacks of MtF is +10 max dodge, for a total of 35, which is definitely going to require a lot of work to get a MDB that high without a bonus like this especially if you splash deeply into Acrobat and get the nice increases to max dodge.

3 PRR is completely inconsequential though, either add a meaningful bonus or don't at all. +5/10/15 isn't unreasonable considering Light Armor starts at a disadvantage and all this additional bonus to Max Dodge requires sitting in sneak.
Sev~

I really like the changes to Measure the Foe. It's a really game changer.

Things I would still like to see:

Make Poison a more integral part of Assassin. Poison, as it is, is 1d8 (scaling, non-crit) damage, +5 damage, a small damage debuff, and then trashy active abilities. What I would like to see is passive chance to do stat and save damage, and an active form of crowd control. I would make it a multi-selector when taking "Poison Strikes".

Tier 1: Poison Strikes: Your attacks are imbued with a poison that weakens an opponent's fortitude / numbs an opponent's body / ravages an opponent's mind. On a critical hit, your target takes a -1 penalty to fortitude / reflex / will saves, which stacks up to five times. Opponents you attack are considered "poisoned" for ten seconds.
Tier 2: Venomed Blades: On hit: 1d4/1d6/1d8 poison damage with weapon attacks. On vorpal: 1d6 CON / DEX / WIS damage.
Tier 3: None
Tier 4: Poisoned opponents take a penalty to melee power / take a penalty to attack speed / have a chance to fail when casting a spell.
Tier 5: Poisoned enemies take an additional 2d6 damage each time they take damage from any source. Additionally, you can make a melee attack and petrify / paralyze / inflict insanity on an opponent, save negates. Whether or not they succeed their save, the target takes 2d12 CON / DEX / WIS damage.

Details don't matter, this is just an example of what I would consider a meaningful Poison tree.

Assassin Spells. Ideally these would be conveniences for experienced Rogues and a way introduce a stealth-based playstyle to new players or players who haven't tried it. I'd figure you'd either need to bundle them into the core abilities or make them auto-grants for leveling up as a Rogue, but either way they'd ideally be "X per day" abilities such as:
--Invisibility
--Flaming Sphere clone that does no damage
--Brief, large bonus to Bluff (Glibness)
--Camouflage/Pass Without Trace clones
--Noisemaker clone; instant cast, but you wouldn't have as long to move away (Ghost Sound)

Assassinate being functional so long as you have stacks of Measure the Foe. So if you're trying to Assassinate something, you can't mess up because an archer over yonder plinked you and knocked you out of sneak just because you were between it and a party member. This is a minor gripe though.

All things considered it's a good start though.

You are still asking a Rogue to sneak for 5 seconds to get this buff for 10 seconds. It is not practical to do in the middle of a fight. If we are fighting against a group of mobs, I cannot sneak mid fight and assassinate them, which is why Coup de Grace is so much better. Also, if a rogue is hit, I lose the sneak and I cannot sneak anymore because they see me. This is a buff that you get once per encounter and not even, while Coup de grace can be casted multiple times. Also, in a raid instance as MoD, Wyrm, Peaks, it's just not practical.

Measure the Foe is useful as it currently is. The suggest change is a straight up improvement. You don't use it in combat, you use in inbetween encounters and the 10 second timer makes it sustainable now.

Coup de Grace is a contextual instant-kill ability and Assassinate is merely stance-based. Because of the DC I used to think that CDG was superior but crowd-controlled mobs are going to die anyway.

[moo_cow]

IME, if you are scroll healing in EE, you're doing it wrong. UMD has lost quite a bit of its luster as the game has progressed. In general, my healing options on a non-caster, non-Bladeforged go Cocoon, Elixir of SOVEREIGN Healing, .................................................. ...................., Bottomless Rum, pray Cocoon comes off cooldown before I get hit again.

500 hp heal scrolls on a rogue and you are not going to use them? Hell I would use them. Nothing wrong with using heal scrolls and cocoon.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Unfortunately...


This is only a distraction from the Mimic festival issues.


Don't follow blindly into temptation..


also please remember if + pages of feedback about Mimic Festival being wrong was ignored...what makes you think we'll get listened to on Rogue?


Stay strong...Join the Angry Mob.

MadCookieQueen - you my friend are incorrigible, and I like it! I'd give you more karma - but out of it for the day.

500 hp heal scrolls on a rogue and you are not going to use them? Hell I would use them. Nothing wrong with using heal scrolls and cocoon.

Guess they forgot that there is something called wand and scroll mastery huh?

Overall I like the direction of this Sev!

[Ranidae]

Nimbleness:
does this even do anything?
Even with epic Duelist Leathers, I think rogues are usually armor capped.
Are assassins supposed to wear monk robes?

Like someone said earlier, the real problem with assassins is the stealth system.
Anyone firing an arrow past you, or any Bearded Devil swinging a pike 9 feet away will instantly un-stealth you 100% of the time.
Throw in the fact that a CR 3 monster can spot a level 28 stealthed rogue in a couple seconds, and it's just a mess.

[QuantumFX]

Not sure what you mean by this.

Perhaps I should add the solo caveat to my complaint.

Last I checked, Fascinate lasts longer than 15 seconds. (24 seconds + 6 seconds per bard level.) Provided you don’t do something idiotic like fascinate and then cleave, you can use Coup De Grace multiple times in one encounter. (For the minimum bard level to get Coup, you should be able to use it on at least 3 Coup attempts.)

A Rogue gets exactly 1 opportunity to assassinate per encounter without a group.

You should also go back up 2 levels in the discussion where I lay out how someone with 5 Bard levels gets a instakill DC that is over 30 points higher than a 20 Rogue.

When you factor these issues together, Severlin’s argument makes no sense.

[Hafeal]

I agree that Assassination attempts are too limited - especially since they do not work on bosses for the most part. Take a large encounter, like Lines of Supply on EE, backstabbing is slow dangerous work. Assassinate is great - but triggers poorly in comparison the the spawn rate and dps and crowd control necessary to make the quest viable. Many other quests are the same.

What if each successful assassinate attempt reduced the cooldown by 1/2?

Or what if there was a separate ability = to Coup de Grace for Assassins, but only while in sneak?

Perhaps I should add the solo caveat to my complaint.

Last I checked, Fascinate lasts longer than 15 seconds. (24 seconds + 6 seconds per bard level.) Provided you don’t do something idiotic like fascinate and then cleave, you can use Coup De Grace multiple times in one encounter. (For the minimum bard level to get Coup, you should be able to use it on at least 3 Coup attempts.)

A Rogue gets exactly 1 opportunity to assassinate per encounter without a group.

You should also go back up 2 levels in the discussion where I lay out how someone with 5 Bard levels gets a instakill DC that is over 30 points higher than a 20 Rogue.

When you factor these issues together, Severlin’s argument makes no sense.

[Qezuzu]

A Rogue gets exactly 1 opportunity to assassinate per encounter without a group.

With Web and Glitter traps this isn't true. I can complete a lot of EE quests without taking damage by sneaking past enemies that don't need to be killed; for required kills I can use Glitter traps to blind mobs. Blinded mobs don't react to Assassinate kills, or combat in general if you don't make any noise by moving. Meld into Darkness for bosses. And Web traps are just sex.

Which reminds me: I'd like to ask Severlin if spell traps are going to be changed, if at all. If they're fixed (i.e. made non-functional) then the Assassin changes would need to be a lot more dramatic for my Assassin to perform as it currently does in short-man and especially solo runs.

[Torvaldsberg]

Most of the comments seem to be about lack of DPS, and do seem to have merit. However, since we are giving suggestions, I do have a few that are non-DPS, but would definitely help a stealth oriented assassin be a bit more stealthy:

Movement speed while in stealth should be obtainable in the tree that is most stealth oriented or even all 3 trees, preferably as part of the normal progression.

An enhancement that eliminates or reduces the range of tremor sense(Lightfooted?) so that assassins can actually have options against spiders, oozes, etc.

A enhancement or group of enhancements that would allow assassins to remain in stealth. Unseen manipulation for doors/levers, ventriloquism for the required discussions prior to a fight, things along those lines. These could be tiers of a single enhancement, or multiple enhancements.

Another thing I would like to see would be for the cost of enhancements that normally cost 2 points to be reduced to one as long as that character is single-classed(this would be for all classes, not just rogues). It would seem sensible, since a 'pure' one-class character should be a bit better at learning class enhancements than a character who is splitting time between multiple classes. It would not harm any current builds and would give an incentive to remain single-classed. I know this last one isn't directly related to an enhancement pass for assassins, but I thought I would throw it in.

[QuantumFX]

I agree that Assassination attempts are too limited - especially since they do not work on bosses for the most part. Take a large encounter, like Lines of Supply on EE, backstabbing is slow dangerous work. Assassinate is great - but triggers poorly in comparison the the spawn rate and dps and crowd control necessary to make the quest viable. Many other quests are the same.

What if each successful assassinate attempt reduced the cooldown by 1/2?

Or what if there was a separate ability = to Coup de Grace for Assassins, but only while in sneak?

That was a tangent I almost went into with my last post.

Assassinate based on the average of your Hide/Move Silently skills would be amazing.

If they added in a “Create a Diversion” ability ( Check this link) somewhere to the tree, that would help the situation a lot as well.

[Linvak]

Please refer to bold text if TL DR.


I'd love to type up an essay about how much I disagree with the statements "rogues need more dmg" but I could go on forever. It's a fairly subjective topic as most things are when pertaining to class specifics and we all know how emotions run rampant on the forums. Therefore, I'll keep it simple and just say that I think you're wrong if you think Assassins need help in the damage department.

But as it's been brought up by quite a few people, aggro and sneak mode mechanics have extremely hampered the key abilities that make an Assassin so much fun. I'd like to bounce some ideas off of Sev and anyone else that may be too strong, too difficult to implement, or may be good ideas. (The aggro mechanics these days seem so buggy, and I really don't know if it's working as intended or what). I also realize Sev has said they're really only focusing on Enhancement Trees, but what the heck.

- A lvl 12, 15, 18, or 20 rogue is able to move either normal speed, or even 10% faster while IN sneak mode.
With all the new changes this game has adapted too over the last year or 2, the game moves so much faster then it use to. People are clearing mob encounters at record speeds. I personally do a lot of "jump+sneak mode in mid air+assassinate as or after I land" combos skipping the +5 DC. But some fluidity would be nice. Sneak mode is basically only good in a few quests for reasons other then assassinating. With the limit of a cooldown, would the speed update/increase be so bad?

-WHAT IF WE......Gave rogues sneak mode as an offensive stance? Or changed it to some sort of stance, not to compete with precision. Normal attack sequence and speed, normal movement speed but kept the benefits. If I'm flanking a target, that's clearly focused on someone else, is it unthinkable that an Assassin could assassinate the target without stopping their attack sequence? Now, I know this sounds a little over powered, and some negatives/punishments would need to be implemented. I personally can't think of much except the chance that you are seen, or grab aggro, you're then unable to enter the stance for a certain period of time, 5, 10, or 15 seconds. But now we're getting back to the aggro issues.

-These days, when I'm 2 manning quests with a friend, he runs his Paladin, and if I'm not hidden or extremely far behind, I grab ALL aggro, even if he's run in ahead with cleaves and dmg. They run right past him to get to me. I'm pretty sure this is WAI since they seem to be targeting the "weakest" such as clerics/casters even before rogues aswell. It seems we can thank AI intelligence for this one. Although even a brainless zombie, or unintelligent troll still seems to know to prioritize the weak instead of the RAGING BARBARIAN or CLEAVING PALADIN smacking them in the faces.

-Everything seems to have aoe/cleaves that break sneak mode.

-Rangers, aggroing onto party members and if you're in the line of sight (this makes sense to me, being logical, i have a hard time complaining about it) you're hit with the arrow, also breaking sneak mode

As far as the Enhancement Tree changes go, there were some neat improvements such as crit mastery, dodge cap increase, the ap reduction in action boost, and nimbleness. But I always felt that the tree itself was decent aside from the poison line. What I felt needed improvement most was lvl 12 and 18 core abilities. The change to nimbleness was a nice touch, but compared to Paladin, Bard, Barbarian, the lvl 18 core is rather garbage. I would definitely like to see an update there. When everyone is critting for 1,500-3000 while blizting on 19-20s, and I'm hitting for at least 300-500 non crit, 500-1000+ on a 15-19, vorpaling something under 1000 HP on a 20 is rather disgusting to think about. During the lvl 20 cap, in heroics, this ability was 1 of the best in the game paired up with assassinate.

I'd like to delve into Shadowdancer sometime with everyone, but sleep is more important, and I'll leave with this.

[FlaviusMaximus]

You should also go back up 2 levels in the discussion where I lay out how someone with 5 Bard levels gets a instakill DC that is over 30 points higher than a 20 Rogue.

The thread is three pages long. No need to promote previous posts within it.

All that matters is that Assassinate has a DC that, when focused on, works consistently in the toughest content. It's only worth mentioning what Bards can achieve if the goal is either to have them nerfed or to make Assassin DCs just as high, and I like neither idea.

Bards have to land a control effect but they have an advantages with the Coup De Grace DC.

As for the argument that Bards have to jump through extra hoops to land coup (stun, daze, fascinate, etc), one could argue that Rogues are actually in the same position since they often have to sneak around for a few seconds to land Assassinate.

[Bobby88888]

Huge Wall of text incoming, sorry

First up the proposed changes.
Cores:
Assassin's Trick: Improvements sound good but if it still has the really long use time is still weak, also since it aggros mobs it is again limited in usefulness since can't be used solo effectively. The suggestion to make it passive sounds good. But maybe apply on hit as a passive effect before damage (so group can still benefit, group friendly things r good). Alternatively tie Sneak Attack Immunity Bypass in with fort bypass items and have this add a bonus.

Nimbleness: This is and was useless. You can easily obtain dodge cap without +10 temporary dodge. The change is also negligible since most assassins would be hitting sneak attacks on most hits anyway, and it was probably better in its old form due to the synergy with the ideas behind the assassin but all up was and is rubbish.

Deadly Shadow: the dex isn't very useful except for dex based flavour builds but good to be there to open that option more, but it needs something more to do with one or more of survivability, damage or assassinate. (damage and/or assassinate probably)

Tier 1:
Poison strikes: sounds interesting, though the base abilities of the poisons are lacklustre and they have a very long cooldown. Maybe drop the action point cost and the cooldown or buff the base abilities and drop the cooldown. The DC of these also needs to be revised so that it is functional.

Shiv: Seems good

Tier 2:
Bleed them Out: As was pointed out earlier damage is still negligible

Damage boost: Excellent!

Tier 3:
Critical Mastery (and related removals): Really a good change specially since assassins have to invest so many action points into harper, they need to make them back somewhere.

Tier 4:
Weakness Poison: It sounds interesting but I am sceptical. If the above changes were made to the Poison Strikes (most importantly reducing the cooldown) it could go ok, but not knowing behind the scenes how mobs function in terms of melee power I can't say, but in general debuffs aren't that great, hope I'm proven wrong.

Execute: All up the changes are great. But the damage doesn't scale well at all and I'm not a fan of the 'when below x% health' mechanic since if you hit it when they are at 30.01% health it is a no go and wasted ability. Perhaps look at scaling the damage by level and maybe something about the trigger mechanic.

Tier 5:
Measure the Foe: The whole mechanic of measure the foe isn't very good. The reduction in time for stacks to build up is amazing but all the other effects (and indeed the assassinate DC boost too) should be passive bonuses. While I get that it is in keeping with the flavour of the class (which I am all for) it causes the ability to be far too weak. The new components of the ability however are all things that assassins desperately need so even if currently not well implemented is a step in the right direction and I hope it can be implemented right.

Deadly Poison: I very much like how poison is becoming a more prominent feature of the assassin tree. And in regards to this ability anything that gives assassins more damage is very good since it is something they are very much lacking at this point.

Light Armour Mastery: I'm slightly confused on this point it doesn't give you +2/4/6 to your dodge cap right? This would be a perfect place to put that if it isn't giving that but if it is that's great, more dodge is something that thematically fits the rogue and gives them a well needed boost to defences. On that note the 1/2/3 PRR is laughable at best, either give a decent boost or give something else to boost defences.


All up its a good start but needs more work.
Some other quick changes to the tree could include a action point cost reduction on Venomed Blades, quite steep for little return,
also I personally think the Sneak attack Training abilities should be made like the Halfling Sneak attack line (1 action point and just 1d6 SA die).
Stealthy should have a tier 3 ability added to it as well.
Knife in the Darkness and Dagger in the back could both do with something more being added to them as they only provide benefit to dex based assassins and are core abilities.
Nimbleness should be changed into a passive dodge bonus and/or some other benefit in relation to defence.
Lethality could also use a damage bump, melee power or SA dice would be appropriate or possibly +1 crit multiplier on 19-20 (got no idea if balanced just chucking ideas out there) or something more unique.

What also wouldn't hurt is to put Int to damage somewhere in the assassin tree to alleviate the absolutely required action points spent in harper tree which restricts build options and diversity.

What the Rogue is lacking right now is defensive ability and offensive ability and assassinate is sadly lacking, coming in dead last as the worst insta kill ability in the game, when imo, it should be the best one.

Offence should be increased via SA, the new poison theme and melee power, whilst defence should mostly be focused around dodge and evasion but the Rogue as a whole needs more PRR since the game has started down the path where the spike damage is too high without decent PRR.
The biggest issue with assassinate right now is mob AI. You CANNOT do a rog pass without reviewing and fixing the AI. When solo you can't get a double assassinate or multiple attempts since all mobs in the area instantly aggro on you as soon as the 1st hit in the sequence registers. This needs to be addressed for for any rogue pass. The Measure the Foe mechanic to build up to a semiworkable DC also needs to be reviewed and done away with. And if you are missed while stealthed, or hit by ranged attacks it needs to not break stealth at the very least. The DC as a whole needs a few more points available, but not many, it should still be a lot of investment for a good assassinate DC but you should be able to achieve a good DC.

Also the lack of self heals added confuses me, you gave Barbarians self heals who have no reason to have them added either so why skip out on Rouge who are now the only class without them (Yes I know, Rogue has UMD, Barb can't do that while raging, but that is the whole point of rage. It gives massive buffs with a few drawbacks, you might as well let them cast spells and scrolls etc while raging now).

And while I am aware you said that you didn't think this was the place to comment on 2wf vs 2hf vs swf, I think that it is highly relevant to any changes implemented to the Assassin tree since most assassins use that fighting style and as the weaker style it ever needs to be compensated for in the tree, or in the feats.

It is a good start and a step in the right direction, I am very happy to see something is finally being done for the Rogue. The poison theme emerging is great and I hope more thematic abilities can be added that boost offensive and defensive power as well as assassinate to an appropriate level. Keep up the good work. But please, please, please do not make it too easy to make a good rogue or make them OP. Take your time and do it right.
Thanks for all the hard work you guys put in.

EDIT: Rogues also should be given Wilderness Lore passive feat.
A Shadowdancer ED pass should also be made in conjunction with the Rogue pass, it certainly needs it.

[FrancisP.Fancypants]

Get rid of the 'sneak to gain power' mechanic. I never liked it. Some extra dodge, melee power, and a longer duration isn't going to make doing nothing for 5 out of every 15 seconds any less annoying. Assassins will be a lot more enjoyable to play if that goes away. Simply give Assassins enhancement options for +5 assassinate at tier 5, no strings attached.

Assassin's Trick is looking a lot better, but it will still be horribly flawed if it continues to require this oddly long 3-4 second animation while the character can take no other actions. Make it something that can be done on an attack like Shiv is intended to do with the Bluff addition.

This. So much this.

In a group, the chance of actually pulling off an assassinate is maybe 1 in 10. Between PMs fingering stragglers, melee aggroing stuff that beelines (and inevitably smacks into you, ruining your sneak), archers with ludicrous spot, and mob lag (client/server disagreement) you're lucky to pull one off if you go into stealth at the last second. Spending more than 3 seconds sneaking up to a mob is pretty much piking.

Solo you'll either be invis running or stealthing past the hairy parts of a quest. I mean YMMV, but if you plan to get a completion within a reasonable time, stealthing constantly and starting fights just because you have a very small, very brief advantage is not the way to go about it.

Assassin's trick would maybe get used a time or two per life, which is 1 or 2 more times than I use it now. Honestly, if it just knocked a second or two off Bluff it would be an improvement.

[Powerhungry]

Another thing I would like to see would be for the cost of enhancements that normally cost 2 points to be reduced to one as long as that character is single-classed(this would be for all classes, not just rogues). It would seem sensible, since a 'pure' one-class character should be a bit better at learning class enhancements than a character who is splitting time between multiple classes. It would not harm any current builds and would give an incentive to remain single-classed. I know this last one isn't directly related to an enhancement pass for assassins, but I thought I would throw it in.

I like this suggestion as it supports/strengthens pure class builds and helps compensate for the low hanging fruit that was added in the enhancement pass and made multi-classing the OP beast that it is.
Also dramatically improve capstones, similar to the assassin capstone suggested (but change the +4 reflexes to +4 assassinate DC).

[bbqzor]

I am pressed for time and will offer more detailed feedback later.

As promised, here is a quality response now that I have time. However before I begin:

I need to know does this round of changes include a fix to a solo rogue assassin being able to both:
1) Assassinate more than one mob from a single use of assassinate, and
2) Avoid automatically agroing other mobs when using assassinate.

That still remains unanswered. Can you at least tell me if you are aware of those issues? When the stealth/AI changes went in, this changed. Previously a solo rogue could assassinate 2 mobs (say on either side of a door) alone, and avoid agroing mobs except those with high proximity. Now, a solo rogue assassinating one mob automatically counts as "agro" to the others, preventing the second assassinate from landing and, to make matters worse, ensures they get directly attacked. With more than one person this does not happen, as the mobs become "auto-aware" something is up, but agro on the other person, leaving the rogue "stealthed" from an AI point of view.

Do you need pics or videos or something or what? Its a serious problem, and one that needs (at minimum) acknowledgement that yes, its at least known about. Its one thing that makes assassinate hold up against things like coup de grace (you can hit 2-3 mobs with a correctly setup assassinate) and QP (its slower than QP, but potentially multitarget). I am almost *certain* the changes were not intentional, as the functionality of the ability does not change in situations where there are other players the mobs can/do agro on. Only lone (solo) rogues are affected. And as something which hurts a rogues ability to sneak, and operate sneakily, it seems like the kind of thing youd want to promote, not quell.

Its an enhancement, thats why Im bringing it up. During the Assassin Enhancement Pass. Anyhow heres feedback on the rest, of course, tempered by other responses so far as noted.

Assassin's Trick: This now works on all enemies and no longer has a saving throw. Targets now lose 25% Fortification and their Sneak Attack immunity.

The biggest issue with this was always the long animation time, the ability for it to get interrupted early, and the huge amount of dps lost due to both of those. As you mention here:

Interesting suggestion making the fort bypass and sneak attack work as a passive. I'll bring it up with the team.

making it passive would be of huge benefit. If you do not make it passive, you at least need to switch from the "slow, stand, point" animation to something much quicker. As an aside, all abilities in this boat need the same swap (like Stand and Be Judged in Divine Crusader). I know those other things are beyond the scope of this pass, but if you find time to clean up that animation, youll hit all those other things as additional benefit. First and foremost it needs to be playable, and a rogue standing still is either risking death at worst, or doing zero dps at best, and neither is appealing. Passive would be really nice here.

Nimbleness: Nimbleness no longer requires sneak attacks and works on any hit.

Good change, as it now helps most when you need it most (mob on you, bad situation, so face tanking). Can it be changed so the stacks count down 1 at a time as well? Im pretty sure on live it just clears out. Having it count down, so you can afford to actually sneak from one engagement to the next without robbing yourself of your earned dodge would be appreciated. Right now, being nimble also forces you to zerg... and thats not something an assassin really wants to be forced into over access to a defensive ability.

Deadly Shadow: You gain +2 Dexterity and +2 Intelligence. You gain +4 Sneak Attack dice. You gain +4 to Reflex saving throws.

Good change. Nice to see equal support for Dex rogues on this one, and the Ref save boost will really help pure rogues keep up in EE situations where Ref saves get a bit... ludicrous. It also helps ensure that lacking big armor for MRR their (improved) evasion can pull its weight. Honestly, Id like to see a bit more Ref save... like +6 (sorta like one for each core, and to parallel uncanny dodge click), but step in the right direction and all. Good design direction.

Poison Strikes: (Opponents struck by these attacks are considered to be "poisoned" for 10 seconds.)

Is this natural poison, magical poison, or what. What sort of "poison immune" level are mobs going to need to knock this off the table. Can you help by giving a few examples of (raid) bosses this would and would not work on? Like Arreatrikos, Lord of Blades, Lolth, Deathwyrm, Epic Abbot... where in there does this strike out? Are all constructs immune because its natural, or are warforged affected because its magical? With the changes to poison U14 made, that still seem to be off a few places, we really need a more specific idea of where exactly this is intended to work. Concept wise I like it though, just need more information.

Shiv no longer reduces threat when you attack. It instead offers an additional passive component that reduces threat of all your attacks by 5/10/15%. The attack portion now also makes a Bluff check using your Bluff skill.

Assuming that you change the bluff to be automatic with no animation (just like shiv is now, just regular animation with a rider effect), this is a great change. I like that it takes pressure off "forcing" subtlety in acrobat for rogues into that, and assassins should (typically) be into that.

The intent is that the Bluff check would happen as part of the attack and be included in the attack's animation time.

Thats how Im reading this to mean, that its just "free" like the animation now, it just does more stuff.

(As a reminder, Venomed Blades now scales with 200% Melee Power.)

Still not worth taking up. Look the first 2 AP get you 2.5 damage, that part is fine. The second and third AP pairs get you 1 damage. Its just a bad progression. Can you change it to 1d4, 2d4, 3d4? That way its worth taking all the way up, rather than just one rank. The melee power portion is fine and all that, its the die step progression thats pretty bad. Another thing to keep in mind is that spending 1 AP for 1 Dmg is pretty normal, so once you start spending 2 AP for 1 Dmg thats not good just in general. Melee power isnt the issue, regular damage would also scale with it and also could crit. Heck other trees you can just buy plain direct melee power. Its just a subpar progression, way the dmg:cost works out. Need to match that first tier where its about 1:1 (poison doesnt work on everything and cant crit so thats fair) and go with that all the way through.

Bleed Them Out: The bleed damage scales with 200% Melee Power.

Cool, nice change.

Damage Boost: Cost reduced to 1 AP per level. Changed to boost Melee Power by 10/20/30.

From what I see, Melee Power Boosts are still NOT working correctly as Action boosts. Things like LDs Combat Brute dont turn on, Action Hero doesnt reduce the cooldown, etc. The changes here are good, 1 AP per and change to melee power is welcome. I just want to see the actual mechanic part working right too. No need for yet another broken boost to show up, games got enough of that as it is.

Critical Mastery: (1/1/1 AP) + 1/2/3 bonus to critical damage and to confirm critical hits

Good. This

as we do passes on additional trees these enhancements will be combined as they have here.

is welcome news. Spending 1 AP on critical confirmation attack rolls was a pretty terrible point tax. Side note, check tempest out... 1 ap for the atk and 2 for the dmg, it means it takes them 9 AP to get this. Cant wait for that to go down to 3 AP too... itll help the tree out Im sure, along with whatever else goes in. At least assassin wasnt that bad heh.

Weakness Poison: Your attacks against "poisoned" enemies (from Poisoned Strikes) reduce the Melee Power and Ranged Power of the opponent by 10 for 10 seconds.

This is interesting, and good. I like that it encourages rogues to "strike first" as their method of defense. However, I have great concerns over what level of "poison immunity" will take this off the table. Take a chain like Orchard (epic or heroic, you could easily have a T4 in either). Its like 95% undead or constructs or elementals. Its the kind of place rogues might REALLY want some more defense, given the number of sneak immune things they hit. Its also the kind of mob selection that deploys the lollerskates against poison. So yea, hows that going to work out for us =/. The devil is in the details on this one.

Execute: Melee Assassinate attack: +3[W] damage. If target is below 30% health, deal 500 damage. This damage scales with 200% Melee Power. (Cooldown: 15 seconds)

The cd change to mirror assassinate and the additional scaling make this a nice change.

Measure the Foe: Gain +2 Melee Power, +2 Dodge, +2 Maximum Dodge, +1 to hit and +1 to the DCs of your Assassinate ability for every 4/2/1 seconds you remain stealthed. This effect stacks up to 5 times and lasts for 10 seconds after you come out of stealth.

Wow big buff, and rather nice. It means that every 10 seconds you want to sneak at least 1 second. I actually like that, the way rogues play, its not bad to be encouraging them to tactically stealth often. And yes I have an epic rogue, and yes he can do EE, so Im not saying that out of abstract. Stealth is the only real draw to using one over something else, and I like that this works with that.

Deadly Poison: Your attacks against "poisoned" enemies (from Poisoned Strikes) do +5 damage.

Wow, now youre *really* buying into the idea rogues can just poison everything. Again... details on what this is going to work on please.

Light Armor Mastery: (1/1/1 AP) While wearing light armor you gain 2/4/6 to maximum dexterity bonus of your armor. (This also affects maximum dodge.) You also gain 1/2/3 Physical Resistance Rating.

Well... the dex armor part is nice. And its nice that its 1 per instead of 2 like other similar enhancements. So its really pushing that "hit 25 dodge" aspect for assassins and thats cool. The 3 PRR though... maybe this could be 1/3/5? Hear me out here. If the "armor up" changes go in and light drops from 15 to 10, rogues are gonna be in the hole. Rogues REALLY dont need to be in the hole. You could also add text "while in Light Armor" to the PRR part (like it is on the dex bonus part) to make sure it doesnt get stacked up badly. But I dont want to see rogues going DOWN in PRR by the time this all gets live and interacts. They need to at least stay the same, if not go up... the melee power debuff they gained helps yes. But only if it can land, and there WILL be some mobs it wont work on. Let them stay PRR neutral on those please.

Overall good changes. Some additional questions:

- Whats Toxin Affinity good for now? With taking the emphasis off DCs for the poisons, maybe you can make this +2 DC per level? Or make the poisons use full Rogue levels? Just dont see the point, if the DC isnt the focus of the ability, and its also almost impossible to get it high enough to land, why ever bother with a line that doesnt meaningfully help it land?

- Shadow Dagger needs a real DC. The cooldown is already pretty long, the damage is pretty poor, the least it can do is reliably blind. Consider, many things are 10+lvl+stat, this is worse than that (if full rogue). And even the 10+lvl+stat formula often leaves things below par, if they cannot also be assisted by something like a spell focus item, or a vertigo item, or what have you. Maybe this could add Dex AND Int? That way its useful to both dex and int based assassins, just like the capstone, but allows rogues using both to actually get the DC up there to a legit value. Maybe thats overkill, and you wanna go with higher of dex or int and use full rogue level or whatever, just saying, needs a tweak while youre in there messin around.

- Killer... can this also peel off 1 stack at a time instead of all or nothing? Look at how many group kill or huge hit effects there are nowadays. Keeping this stacked up with something like assassinate alone is impossible since they share a cooldown.. so you have to land killshots. Yes, thats not super difficult on a rogue I know. But that doesnt mean it wouldnt help quality of life if you werent completely out in the wind everytime you miss a few kills or someone procs a lot of stuff or what not. Look at old blitz, same deal right, relying on kills and being all or nothing in the opening ticks. With being "encouraged" to sneak, setup fights, move in and out to avoid getting mobbed while you backstab everything... give assassins some breathing room here. Let them miss a beat then pick it back up. This is also gonna help Deepwood Snipers, and thats cool they need it too. Both of them could use a higher quality of life, and effects that use contemporary mechanics that acknowledge a dynamic game environment will have latency or bad roll streaks. No reason to keep this one as the bad style.

Thanks for the draft, but I hope some of the questions can be answered and that the feedback helps. Cheers.

[Vyrzain]

.......Acrobats should get a movement speed bonus, like Swashbuckler (+1% level - geez my Bard is faster than anything but a darn Monk these days)........

Yes please... Speed bonus for Acrobats : )

[Oxarhamar]

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