Rogue - Assassin Changes

[SamaelBael]

Hello DDo community, time for me to step out of the (forum) shadows for the class and enhancement tree I love and play since 2009.

The changes to the tree mentioned in the op sound great in general, here are my thoughts to poisons:

The poison enhancements mentioned in this tree lack the impact that the poisons from the ninja have. I would like to see some similarity/balance there. Poison is poison, no matter which tree it is from. Maybe there could be some more synergies (drow/ninja/assassin)?

The tier 1 poison attack will most likely be a melee attack. I disagree with the inability of an assassin to apply poisons on ranged attacks. How about some form of Sting of the Ninja? Melee and ranged dot, if necessary, chained to Venomed Blades?

In both trees, the old and the now planned, it does not sit well with me that the poisons are attacks that must be applied manually mid-fight. Coating weapons should be done before the battle. If not Sting of the Ninja style/chained to Venomed Blades, how about some form of weapon enchantment? No spell point cost but able to coat the weapons of partymembers?

Some other questions:
Shiv: does the threat reduction stack with the TA's?
Move Silently/Hide: with 3 points in it +1 SA die (both halfling and shadar-kai get a bonus with 3rd point)?

From my point of view, Assassins should lie between Thief-Acrobat and Mechanic concerning its attack range. capable to do massive damage within the SA range of generally 15 feet. Pure single target damage.
Please do not tie the Poisons to melee attacks like the Assassinate and Execute attacks. Execute would gain a lot if it could be used in ranged combat (SA's 15 feet).

Time to slip back into the shadows,
Samael Bael

[Wizza]

Correct. It isn't meant for the middle of a fight. It's an opener for solo rogues.

Correct. Rogues are not supposed to party with other people, we give them abilities that are good for soloers but awful in teams. Gotcha.

In a raid you should be dealing out tons of Sneak Attack damage so you are probably fine there.

Correct as well. An ASSASSIN is not supposed to ASSASSINATE in a raid because you already do tons of SA damage. Gotcha.

Rogues have UMD and don't have Rage preventing them from casting if they need a healing source.

You are not being realistic and not keeping up with the times if you think Scroll healing is even close to being a realiable source of healing.

The specifics of TWF are probably off topic for this thread.

Sev~

No they are not. One of the reasons rogues suck so much is because TWF suck so much. If you wanna ignore the problem, be my guest, but don't you even try to say that it is off topic because obviously it's not.

We don't. We don't want the abilities to be the same, or even necessarily equivalent. We'd rather look at the tree and class as a whole. Bards have to land a control effect but they have an advantages with the Coup De Grace DC. They have support spells but don't have stealth or 15d6 of Sneak Attack.

Sev~

"They don't have stealth". Seriously? Barely anyone uses stealth if not for assassinate.

[LavidDynch]

Assassins used to be pretty good in DDO, they had effective multiple assassinate strikes (in one blow) and highest DPS -- always a bit squishy... Today they are just squishy, with no backup heal option and sneaking is more or less broken, and mobs spawn by the rates of 1000 in each quest...

- Mass bluff AOE -- that works on everything.
- Hide in plain sight
- Disarm -- Whenever an assassin breaks stealth they gain 50% doublestrike for 4 seconds and disarms its opponent for 2 seconds, render it prone to helpless.
- Devour life energy -- 5% life steal.

[amsharkwei]

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.
-That's good ,someting useful debuff for boss fighting



Nimbleness: Nimbleness no longer requires sneak attacks and works on any hit.
-Rogue need permanent +10% to dodge



Deadly Shadow: You gain +2 Dexterity and +2 Intelligence. You gain +4 Sneak Attack dice. You gain +4 to Reflex saving throws.
-Not so good for a capstone,+4 Assassinate DC is good


Tier One

Poison Strikes: (Opponents struck by these attacks are considered to be "poisoned" for 10 seconds.)
-I suggest remove the old "Poison Strikes" add these abilitys to Venomed Blades
Venomed Blades:Opponents struck by Venomed Blades 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.
-Great! and the opponents struck by this attack will drop in helpless for 2 sec


Tier Two

(As a reminder, Venomed Blades now scales with 200% Melee Power.)
-If you have the "Poison Strikes"from T1,your Opponents struck by Venomed Blades are considered to be "poisoned" for 10 seconds,some poison damage on time,stack 3/4/5 times


Bleed Them Out: The bleed damage scales with 200% Melee Power.
-Make it to be a passive ability:your Venomed Blades will causes your opponent to bleed. The bleed effect can stack up to 3/4/5 times.



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


Tier Three

Critical Accuracy is removed.
-haha
Critical Mastery: (1/1/1 AP) + 1/2/3 bonus to critical damage and to confirm critical hits
-haha


Tier Four

Critical Damage is removed.
-haha

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.
-Make it to be a passive ability:your Venomed Blades will 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)
-Good,andwe need a marker in the monster's health bar,where is the 30%


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.
-need more Assassinate DC,maybe 2 per stack?



Deadly Poison: Your attacks against "poisoned" enemies (from Poisoned Strikes) do +5 damage.
-Make it to be a passive ability:Your attacks against "poisoned" enemies (from Venomed Blades) do +5 damage.


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.
-3prr is not good for a T5 ability.add 2/4/6 to hit and assassnate DC


Rogue need more Assassinate DC
and the Venomed Blades should be the soul ability for rogue

I suggest change the Assassinate's working principle:
-Assassinate have no cool down time,it use 1 Assassinate charge
-Every 15 sec,rogue gain 1 Assassinate charge
-Rogue can hold a maximum of 5 Assassinatecharges
-Assassinate can hit 2 or more targets in melee range,as a melee AOE
-A succeful Assassinate heal positive damage equal to your Rogue level
-Every Assassinate can make a Hide check,that let you never founded by monsters

[geoffhanna]

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.

If not, those need to be included. They have to do with the interactions with the "new" stealth/awareness system that went in awhile back.

This. So much.

Even though you (Severlin) have said that the pass will only affect enhancement trees. Assassins, and many rogues but especially assassins, need to have stealth fixed. It is their core thing.

[Arkantios]

Hey there Sev, these changes look decent as a start to the change of the assassin tree. I'm happy with knowing this is only the first draft and things are probably going to change. Also, since I know you're replying a lot in this thread, https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post5532841 this might interest you. I realize that you've said this thread is based only upon the enhancements, but I'd like if you could at least look over this because from my perspective, it is most of the things that are wrong or that could / need to be changed with the rogue in general. Some of them being enhancement.

Anyway, thanks again for giving us rogues something to look forward to.

~ XxMazexX

[RD2play]

the assassin insta-kill should be at least as good as the swashbuckler one if not better !!! so either reduce preform to CtG to half mod, or give assassinate a way to get it higher than 120dc with not much effort.

love the idea posted to let you have a chance to keep stealthed after a successful assassinate.

[Nyata]

first off, I am really really glad rogues are finally getting some love from the dev side. so thanks much for that already!

of course though it's never quite that simple, and everyone has to put in their 2 cents, so here's mine:

quite frankly, I take objection to the expression solo-rogues... I play pure assassin/trapper rogues, because they make great team players and a worthwhile addition to any group. If the idea is to create yet another class that is supposed to be multiclassed and twisted into being able to solo end game content... you'll kill yet another reason for LFMs and grouping.

UMD as a source of healing... well... uhm.. sure. scrolls may be great... but... if you are in a pinch, i.e. mobbed, you plain simply do not have the TIME to change your main hand weapon to a heal scroll, click the heal scroll, change back and start fighting again. by that time, you are already dead.

and you will be dead by that time because taking two glancing blows from some two-handed weapon will already whipe out your measly hitpoints. yes. glancing blows and stray arrows that break you out of stealth are one of the major problems you have on a sneak-based ability like assassinate. specially since you need to stay in sneak to wait for the cooldown to finally finish.

why stay in stealth instead of dishing out the awesome sneak damage in a raid or general mob? well see above, 2 hits will kill you. basically, when I group with 'real healers' - they simply keep mass heals in mob encounters on me, keeping all other melee classes capped on HP, and me barely alive lol. sure, I usually rock the kill counts on my assassin, but only because I benefit from teamwork.

adjusting the 'hive consciousness' of a mob would go a long way already to help rogues, as someone mentioned earlier. if I assassinate one member in the mob, the rest of it should not agro on me. because that kind of is contradictory to the idea of assassinating, isn't it? they should stand in awe and wonder staring at their dead mate with a puzzled 'how the hell did that happen?' face.

[General_Gronker]

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.

Doesn't matter what you do to this if it takes as long to use as it does now.

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

You should keep this sneak attack based.

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

This is a 100% unneccessary change that just propagates power creep.

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

Or, better yet, GET RID OF MELEE POWER.

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

Useless. +x to crit damage and crit confirm in any form is pretty useless. It's more like an ability tax than something useful.

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.

Ditch the melee power, dodge, and max dodge, just keep the reduced time frame. No need for the other stuff.

[Annyee]

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.

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.


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.


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.

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

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.

Sev~

Here are some suggestions and ideas. I'm not saying these are the best but I do think it is helping to go into the right direction. Ignore at your own peril.

Assassin's Trick: No save is good. Vs all enemies even better. Could it be a self buff? Like 30 buff 1 min cooldown or 15 sec buff 30 sec cooldown? This would allow it to better used with staves/glancing blows/cleaves. Also, since you have released a lot of content with massive trash waves it would make sense that the class updates would have something that works to clear all that trash. Pally light damage/Barb Frenzy extra damage works with glancing blows/cleaves so it would be within the power curve to allow Rouge Sneak Attack to do the same.

Nimbleness: Great change. This really helps push builds into at least 12 rouge lvls. After living on a blitzing Barb I am concerned that the 2 sec cooldown and 6 sec fade will limit this core ability though. Also, sneaking by design is a bit slower so at 6 sec fade off I think this would really push people away from any kind of sneak method to questing. Could we try 1 sec cooldown and 12 sec fade off one stack at a time? This would match Momentum Defense in the Acrobat line.

Deadly Shadow: I like it but...... I'm not sure. It's missing something..... Some of the other reworked capstones are really great..... How about adding some kind of Hiding in Plan Sight feature. Or better yet, remove the -%movement to speed and the -20 to jump/tumble skills while sneaking. When you think about it Assassin's are suppose to be the best at sneaking, with the capstone assassin's should not have any negatives while sneaking.

Poison Strikes: Did this get fixed? Do you know what was bugged with it?

Shiv: Maybe adjust to 10/20/30 or higher. Their are not a lot of -% threat options compared to +% agro. If you don't want Rouge's to have agro, up the -%.

Bleed Them Out: This needs a complete rework. +(w) damage is good but the cooldown on the effect is to long, the bleed duration is too short and a single d6 is still a single d6 200% or not. Max stacks is 3 anyway and even if you had 10 stacks at 400% melee power every 1 sec its still to slow. Honestly the whole idea of dot damage on a melee is just not good. Casters its great. Stack dots and kite until its dead. Melee is a different story. The whole point of melee is to kill as fast as you can and Dots are NOT a good way to do this. I would take this back to the brainstorm stage.

Damage Boost: Standard good.

Critical Accuracy: Good, not needed

Critical Mastery: Standard goodness

Critical Damage is removed.: Yep, was rolled into Mastery, good

Weakness Poison: Interesting. DeBuffs. What if it was a Tier ablity? like 5/10/15 pwr 10/15/20 sec? Or 10/20/30 for 10/20/30. Or 10/20 for 10/20 sec? I would like something like that as long as it was 1 AP per rank.

Execute: Remove the 30% life. Its a goofy game mechanic. If I have already beat a mob down to 30% why do I need an ability to instakill it? Keep the +(w) and scaling 500 but please loose the 30% req.

Measure the Foe: I like it. Again 10 sec is a really short buff. Could we get 15?

Deadly Poison: 5 extra damage is good and all but it does not cry Deadly Poison to me. Now if it had some kind of Paralyzing effect THAT would be some Deadly Poison. Compare with Bard/Barb t5 abilities and I don't think a Paralyzing Rouge would be OP.

Light Armor Mastery: Double the PRR add MRR and call it good.

[Torvaldsberg]

UMD as a source of healing... well... uhm.. sure. scrolls may be great... but... if you are in a pinch, i.e. mobbed, you plain simply do not have the TIME to change your main hand weapon to a heal scroll, click the heal scroll, change back and start fighting again. by that time, you are already dead.
.

As an alternative to healing, perhaps something similar to the Bugbear Assassin's ability to 'poof' mid-fight then come back?

[LittleLexi]

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.

Sev~

While I like certain aspects of this buff - it doesn't make much sense thematically that you retain a stealth-based buff after exiting stealth. Not in this instance anyway. I mean, I could stealth to get the buff, and then walk up to a monster and stare them right in the face - yet somehow I'm "stealthily" attacking them, as long as it's within 10 seconds of leaving stealth? Can you at the very least make it so that you benefit from this ability on your next attack after leaving stealth, as long as it counts as a flanked attack? And perhaps an extra +5 boost to the DC if this attack is performed while still in stealth mode.

The reason being: I've always longed for some kind of play style that actually encourages the player to use stealth. It's really fun, and fulfills another way of playing the game that appeals to a lot of people. The last thing we need is more "in your face DPS, DPS, DPS!!!". It's nice to have alternatives, and this enhancement tree(and ability in particular) has proved to be an extremely fun, and effective one for me since I've toyed around with it. And in solo, and group play no less.

Those that are posting about it being useless in a group, or akin to "piking" while sneaking up to a mob, might want to rethink their approach. Try adopt a more strategic tact in your questing, and lose the mentality of "Must zerg through everything" "Must see big dps numbas!" "Must complete quest in x number of mins" etc.
Not to mention that in those few seconds you're not hitting mobs, while you're party members are - you're sneaking up to a prime target - such as a caster, or orange name - and 1 hit killing it. Therefore, making up for the damage you didn't do while sneaking, and then some. You'll be surprised how fun and satisfying it can be.

And if you don't want to play that way - that's perfectly fine! You don't have to invest in this tree, or specific enhancement. Let those of us who do use it, continue doing so without having every darn enhancement get corrupted into your typical generic DPS blegh...

Having said that - I would like to echoes of power many of the sentiments being made by my fellow players. i.e:

-Stealth and how it interacts with AI could use some tweaking.
-Assassins should get a bonus to speed while sneaking. Perhaps 5% per core enhancement that stacks with other sources up to a cap.
-TWF needs some addressing.
-Poison playing more of a role, and being more effective than it currently is.
-More interesting and unique effects instead of the plethora of Melee Power, Doublestrike, Doubeshot yada yada nonsense that's inserted because of a lack of creativity.

That's all for now. And thank you very much for addressing our concerns

[GoldyGopher]

My responses are in-line

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.
Um, so every 15 seconds I get to smash a button for an enhancement that last 12 seconds but only targets 1 target.
I rarely use this active ability now as it takes longer to target and activate than it does to usually beat down the mobs.

Nimbleness: Nimbleness no longer requires sneak attacks and works on any hit.
Why not give something that is a passive if it is always going to on. My TWF Rogue Assassin currently has this on now most of the time, now it will be all of the tiome, except for the first Mob I face.

Deadly Shadow: You gain +2 Dexterity and +2 Intelligence. You gain +4 Sneak Attack dice. You gain +4 to Reflex saving throws.
How many pure rogues do you think you are going to have. Right now on Kyber 8% of Rogues are pure. And the only reason the number is that high is because 1/4 of those rogues on Khyber are 2 level or lower.
How many reflex saves are pure rogues in the assassin tree missing? I gotta ask because it cannot be many as they are mostly dex builds with what a +50 Reflex save.
The +4 Sneak attack dice isn't bad.

Tier One

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

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.
Not bad


Tier Two

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

Bleed Them Out: The bleed damage scales with 200% Melee Power.
I don't nessecarily find this to be a useful ability now, more because of where else my characters need to spend AP on their abilities. So I am at best meh not bad.

Damage Boost: Cost reduced to 1 AP per level. Changed to boost Melee Power by 10/20/30.
Again the issue of AP sepnt across multiple trees, I wonder how many people take this.

Tier Three

Critical Accuracy is removed.

Critical Mastery: (1/1/1 AP) + 1/2/3 bonus to critical damage and to confirm critical hits
I like this one! be better if it was 1/2/4 but hey.


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.
As a replacement for Critical Damage this is pretty awful. The problem has to do with spending AP, Right now Assassins are spending about 40 AP in the tree, to make this useful they will have to spend 45 to 47 AP, that's a heck of a price to pay. I totally understand what Turbine wants to do and I am okay with the concept, its just it costs too much in terms of AP

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)
20% 30% what's the difference. Against mobs that 20 to 30% makes a difference with damage scaled... wouldn't you do more than 500 HP of damage?

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.
Okay I guess.

Deadly Poison: Your attacks against "poisoned" enemies (from Poisoned Strikes) do +5 damage.
As a TIER five passive this is pretty weak considering all the AP you need to invest.

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.
Again, DEX builds, Light Armor, did I miss a memo. Pretty pointless in this tree. Would rather see a passive that grants PRR/MRR at a slightly higher level.

Sev~

The first problem with the Rogue trees is they do not synergize with other trees that well in general if the primary character class is rogue. Heck they don't synergize amongst themselves let alone with other classes. This (and Thief-Acrobat) do nothing to remedy that problem.
There is very little benefit to staying pure class and far more benefit to multi-classing.

The biggest issue I have with the tree is that to get the full effect of what's available I have to spend 9 additional AP, that is a heck of high price to pay, and even higher when you want people to stay pure. Considering you are looking at 20 in racial, 15 in harper, and 49 in Assassin that's 84 points and I don't think it really improves the character, at least my characters, over what is there today.

[tpbtoc]

Why not let Assassin's assassinate like/better than Bards? Standing still, aggroed, running at full speed. The assassinate mechanic we have is horrible because of so many obstacles player has to overcome to be able to land a successful kill.

[draven1]

I think, for current meta game, what is really needed for assassin is...

1. Swiftness & Speed

Whenever a assassin disabling traps, the rest of group tend to just jump through those traps, then a rogue left far behind.

Whenever a assassin try to do something useful for battle, you should wait in sneak(measuring the foe).. then.. wait cool-time(assasinate or execute).. prepare something(bluff or assassin's trick, poison things).. enduring slow movement speed in sneak, plus A SINGLE ARROW THAT MISSED YOU can break your sneak.

But for current high lvl endgame meta, even tough EE mob can be dead like in 0.5 sec. And many encounters have so many mobs.
Heavy armored high hp, high save toons have also insane DPS.

So, usually battle scene for current end game is like this..

"Rushing ahead with high PRR(200+ sometimes 250+), using displacement toon then grab enough mobs(usually 10+) then cleaving or attack with insane attack speed(exploits, swf) while in blitzing."

So, there is very little chance for assassins, because they are REALLY SLOW and not enough DPS against mass mobs.
I dont think assassins should get AOE DPS, but they should get the TOP single target DPS to compensate lack of AOE DPS & low defense, only situational DPS.

2. Escaping crisis methods with low defense profile

As you know, rogues are squishy.
But, they are cunning, so usually they could survive for most situations using their guts & intel.

But, nowadays, too many mobs in chaos from that rushing heavy armor toons made those cunning guts & intel useless, because you can't bluff 10+ mobs at the same time and it's hard to get enough diplo DC for current EEs.


3. More bypassing crit immunes & sneak attack crits

U21, U22, U23 was undead heaven. And many classes have really high DPS boost.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

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.

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

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.

Tier Four

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.

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

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.

assassins trick - does it still take forever to use, without ability to be canceled mid use? if so its still worthless.

nimbleness - how about instead of +1% dodge on hit, or in addition to, it also adds +1/2 prr. rogues dont need help with dodge they do need help with prr. also on hit instead of on sneak is a good thing.

poison strikes - are the attacks themselves still useless? the effects i guess are interesting from a flavor perspective but not particularly useful (even the -5% hp thing, stuff just dies too quick) and iirc their dc mechanics were not great but honestly i have never paid them any attention because the abilities were pointless. cooldowns should also be examined to make sure the new line doesnt have a terrible uptime considering the minimal/moderate power youre giving it. will the poison apply on hit? on successful poison attempt? if necessary will there be a dc revamp? will it support dex/int rogues as well as int/int rogues?

shiv - what are the stacking mechanics going to be for the passive threat reduc? will it stack with items? of like amounts? with other enhancements? from the same class or other classes? of like amounts? what is the cooldown going to be? will the animation take forever (probably best to jsut use the bluff animation so at least its no worse than what we already have)? will it share a cooldown with bluff? overall this seems like it oculd be useful but if you dont carefully answer all these questions, and they are not answered positively then why would i spend ap in this enhancement?

weakness posion - do enemies actually have mp/rp? this could be a very interesting and useful dmg mitigation method for rogues, i like it.

execute - this is actually a pretty satisfying buff to this ability. probably worth taking depending on prereqs and ap splits.

measure the foe - i really like this.

deadly poison - is this going to scale with melee power? im assuming it will be added to firstnumber dmg and therefore scale regularly. right?

light armor mastery - am i reading this correctly and rogues will be able to have more than 25% dodge? or is it just raising mdb? if its just mdb then this is pointless. if it actually raises the max dodge cap then this is good.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

Our class passes will not include additional class feats or class abilities for a variety of reasons. They will mostly focus on the enhancement trees.

Sev~

off topic: fighters are screwed.

[dualscissors]

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.

500 hp heal scrolls are not going to happen unless you're dumping lots of APs and valuable gear slots into picking up healing amp. While there is nothing wrong with some level of sacrifice for healing amp, most of the top rogues I read on the forums can't afford the APs to get past mediocre improvements on heal scrolls. The DPS/assassinate needs take priority.

Not seeing anywhere near 500hp returns on my heal scrolls, backing out of a fight, doing the cumbersome gear swaps, making sure I don't get whacked by a mob and have to make an astronomical concentration check, swapping back to my weapon and reentering a fight...is a lot of work to get 200-300 hps back.

[Saekee]

500 hp heal scrolls are not going to happen unless you're dumping lots of APs and valuable gear slots into picking up healing amp. While there is nothing wrong with some level of sacrifice for healing amp, most of the top rogues I read on the forums can't afford the APs to get past mediocre improvements on heal scrolls. The DPS/assassinate needs take priority.

Not seeing anywhere near 500hp returns on my heal scrolls, backing out of a fight, doing the cumbersome gear swaps, making sure I don't get whacked by a mob and have to make an astronomical concentration check, swapping back to my weapon and reentering a fight...is a lot of work to get 200-300 hps back.

It is true that wand and scroll mastery ends up being too AP costly for the assassin builds posted in the forums (like Hassan and Nokowi). But anyway with full mastery, the heal hits are double to start (so 100 hp becomes 200 if I recall correctly, or 90-->180) then healing amp boosts that double if one has 100% at least.
If you add a GS weapon with first two tiers of healing amp (assuming you already have the +60 slotted on gloves) then you can hotbar shortcut the weapon and the heal scrolls. Then with one selection you can equip both, cast, etc. I am betting you know this but just posting it for others who might not.

[Severlin]

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.

~ Assassin's Trick animation is too long and should be significantly reduced or the functionality made passive.

~ There's a lot of concern about the "Poisoned" state abilities being too limiting if none of them work on poison immune enemies. We will look into this. My initial thought is an acidic poison that works on any enemy, or change the flavor to some kind of "Exploit Weakness" that works on any enemy.

~ Player's have concern about TWF balance since it is the style many current Assassin builds employ. That probably requires it's own thread. We don't want to dismiss the discussion, but we also don't want to derail this thread.

On the other hand:

~ Smaller damage bonuses from on hit effects can add up quickly and provide significant help to sustained DPS. While not as sexy as the big numbers from critical attacks, we will probably refrain from adding big boosts to those abilities for the moment until we can gather meaningful data from Lamannia.

~ We don't want to roll abilities of active attacks into passives. We want the Assassin's active abilities to be meaningful.

~ Changes to stealth require tech work and affect lots of game systems and are prone to side effects so we have to be careful there. Anything that involves significant changes to monster AI is out of scope for this update and this hampers any global revamp to Stealth.

(We are still going through feedback.)
(We are still working on Mechanic.)

Sev~