Rogue - Assassin Changes

[Saekee]

How about adding 'Sap' feat at assassin lvl 6?

'Sap' is very roguish feat, but rogues are very feat-starved class. So, no rogues uses it.

It will give more flavor(Sapping Infiltrator) & improve practical usefulness for rogues.

OOOOOH this is a great idea. Please take note. Add SAP as a free feat! Love it! Not sure where to put it--maybe in the core, around level 6?

[redoubt]

We changed the animation. It's now slicing motion that take less than a second instead of the three second point animation. Looks pretty good in combat. We also cut the cooldown to 6 seconds and changed the duration to 15 seconds so an assassin can keep it up on two targets.

Sev~

Cool. I (and likely others) look forward to seeing it in action!

[Mryal]

'Sap' is very roguish feat, but rogues are very feat-starved class. So, no rogues uses it.

It will give more flavor(Sapping Infiltrator) & improve practical usefulness for rogues.

Also, poison ability can be improved by adding reasonable DC & some CC ability(paralysis, blindness, daze, even mind control for high lvl rogue) for it.

Rogues need more tactical options.

Those are all great points.

[HuneyMunster]

Poison Strikes, Weakness Poison and Deadly Poison.
- Are abilities all link so that deadly also requires weakness or can u just take 2 of the three?


Does Shiv bluff portion apply a bluff similar to using bluff or deception item proc where it turn the targets back to yourself?

[HatsuharuZ]

We changed the animation. It's now slicing motion that take less than a second instead of the three second point animation. Looks pretty good in combat. We also cut the cooldown to 6 seconds and changed the duration to 15 seconds so an assassin can keep it up on two targets.

Sev~

Would you be willing to change the Bluff animation to this as well? No need to change the cooldown, just the animation. The bluff effect only lasts 4 seconds, btw.

[edrein]

Any chance that Damage Boost Can be Changed To Melee/Ranged Power boost, similar to what was done for Paladin. This, to me, makes sense as there are rogues which use ranged attacks that can currently use damage boost. If it is changed to just Melee Power, you are taking that tool away from them.

Assassins are melee. I'm sure ranged power will be put in the revamped version of Mechanic.

[Fedora1]

I like the way this is going. If TWF gets a revamp rogues will be awesome sauce again, and will bring rangers back to the table somewhat.

[Severlin]

Poison Strikes, Weakness Poison and Deadly Poison.
- Are abilities all link so that deadly also requires weakness or can u just take 2 of the three?


Does Shiv bluff portion apply a bluff similar to using bluff or deception item proc where it turn the targets back to yourself?

~ You can skip Weakness Poison and still take Deadly Poison and vice versa. Obviously if you don't take at least one of the Poisoned Strikes the others will be useless.

~ I am not sure what you mean with your bluff question.

Sev~

[bbqzor]

~ I am not sure what you mean with your bluff question.

When you bluff a mob successfully (or via deception weapon proc) it physically turns around a moment. Theyre wondering if Shiv mimics that behavior (the mob turning around). I hope this isnt news and it just wasnt clear what the question was.

[Melllllkor]

dang bugs!

[Mellkor]

I like many of the proposed changes and the ideas posted here.

Now my 2 cents:

I think the focus of assassin improvements should be:

1: Increase sneak attack damage from xd6 and progress to xd8, then xd10, and finally to xd12. I think this alone will bring rogue DPS on par with recent dps changes to other classes and fits with the assassin theme.

2: Add the ability to lose ALL aggro currently on the assassin based on the hide skill. (requires something like having no mobs within sight or within a certain distance or maybe just requires a shadow charge). Kind of like a ninja vanish kind of thing, this would be really great and add a new dimension in both solo and group play.

3: increase the dodge CAP from 28% to something like 40%.

4: dramatically increase the usefulness of poisons, particularly on bosses.

5: add a tiered ability to decrease assassinate cooldown(s) and fix the current assassinate/aggro bugs!

6: For assassinate DC, I think just doubling the current bonus to measure the foe would be about right. Or increasing possible item bonus to +10 or so.

7: Improve current fort bypass abilites or add/improve specific abilities to do sneak damage on sneak damage immune mobs.

I really like this idea posted above by redoubt:

Measure the foe:
add 5% sneak speed per stack (yes, if you get all the sneak speed bonuses you will sneak faster than your normal movement, but these are assassins. They should "appear" out of nowhere. Speed is key to this and also just to keeping up with the group in todays game.)
Have the stacks expire one at a time.

[FuryFlash]

Can we get "Sap" feat at assassin lvl 6 for free?

With adding champions into DDO, we need more tactical decisions.
But, rogues doesn't have many tactical movements, even though it is one of tactical melee.

How about adding 'Sap' feat at assassin lvl 6?
...
'Sap' is very roguish feat, but rogues are very feat-starved class. So, no rogues uses it.

It will give more flavor(Sapping Infiltrator) & improve practical usefulness for rogues.

Also, poison ability can be improved by adding reasonable DC & some CC ability(paralysis, blindness, daze, even mind control for high lvl rogue) for it.

Rogues need more tactical options.

Adding sap as an automatic feat for rogues at level 6 in the core along with assassin's trick would be great! Possibly even a multi-selector between assassin's trick and sap would be good.

[Bobby88888]

I like many of the proposed changes:

My 2 cents:

I think the focus of assassin improvements should be:

1: Increase sneak attack damage from 1d6 and progress to 1d8, then 1d10, and finally to 1d12. I think this alone will bring rogue DPS on par with recent dps changes to other classes and fits with the assassin theme.

2: Add the ability to lose ALL aggro currently on the assassin based on the hide skill. (requires something like having no mobs within sight or within a certain distance or maybe just requires a shadow charge). Kind of like a ninja vanish kind of thing, this would be really great and add a new dimension in both solo and group play.

3: increase the dodge CAP from 28% to something like 40%.

4: dramatically increase the usefulness of poisons, particularly on bosses.

5: add a tiered ability to decrease assassinate cooldown(s) and fix the current assassinate/aggro bugs!

6: For assassinate DC, I think just doubling the current bonus to measure the foe would be about right. Or increasing possible item bonus to +10 or so.

7: Improve current fort bypass abilites or add/improve specific abilities to do sneak damage on sneak damage immune mobs.

Some good ideas here, though I don't agree with all of them (we are on the forums here )

1. Something like this is the perfect way to boost assassin DPS (which it really needs). Alternatively some form of Sneak Attack on Crit effect or effected by say 200% melee power ( as a high level assassin core) or a combo of the above 3. I also think that the poison or assassin's mark idea is another great way that can be used to do this in CONJUCTION with some of the above.

2. This sounds like an interesting idea though at this stage I'm not necessarily sold but certainly interesting.

3. Something like this is needed.

4. Yes, this.

5. At the very least yes to fixing the assassinate bugs.

6. No just no. While I think assassinate DC needs a little more, make it a small bonus only. +1 or 2 more, +4 tops. And not via measure the foe.

7. I think I mentioned this earlier as an idea but at any rate I like it in theory.


EDIT: I also want to reiterate and remind that you can't do a Rogue pass without fixing up their ED and without finishing off the shadar-Kai race (racial abilities are still missing.......)

[Severlin]

EDIT: I also want to reiterate and remind that you can't do a Rogue pass without fixing up their ED and without finishing off the shadar-Kai race (racial abilities are still missing.......)

We are not, for this update, doing any ED passes except adding Ranged Power as part of the ranged power pass, nor are we working on any iconic or racial trees. That would push the patch off by too long.

Sev~

[redoubt]

We are not, for this update, doing any ED passes except adding Ranged Power as part of the ranged power pass, nor are we working on any iconic or racial trees. That would push the patch off by too long.

Sev~

Good, bad or ugly, thank you for staying active in the thread.

[Bobby88888]

We are not, for this update, doing any ED passes except adding Ranged Power as part of the ranged power pass, nor are we working on any iconic or racial trees. That would push the patch off by too long.

Sev~

That's disappointing but I understand where you are coming from. Thanks for letting us know, really appreciate it.

[Rautis]

We changed the animation. It's now slicing motion that take less than a second instead of the three second point animation. Looks pretty good in combat. We also cut the cooldown to 6 seconds and changed the duration to 15 seconds so an assassin can keep it up on two targets.

Sev~

Nice. Let's hope it doesn't look too out of place when you use it from distance. Current Assassin's Trick isn't a melee attack but functions more like bluff. This is nice because you can use it even when using ranged weapons. Changes to assassin's trick alone boost assassins(and other rogues as spending 11 ap into assassin is not the worst idea) alot as only other options for sneak attack immunity removal that I can think of are Shadowdancer Shadow Mastery on vorpals and Wrack Construct which is very limited.

Now only thing that could use a change is the assassinate DC. While the formula is rather strong and gets workable DCs for heroics and some epics it falls behind because of no items and only one epic destiny with +6 to DC. If you compare for example Stunning Fist which gets about similar formula but with ½ character levels instead of full rogue levels gets 6(soon 5 when level 30 is possible) less from levelup part of formula. Now you have to look at enhancements, EDs and items that boost each of these abilities.

Assassinate gets a +4 DC raid item, +6 from EDs and +5 from Measure the Foe. +15.

Stunning fist gets +3 from Grandmaster of Flowers, +6 Legendary tactics, like +15 from normal stunning item, then possible +6 from insightful combat mastery(can replace with whatever half of your int modifier can be if you go harper), +3 from possible dwarf, bladeforged or warforged, +3 from kensei, +3 fighter past lives and then +3 from vanguard. +42 and I probably forgot something. Very specific build but so is level 20 rogue.

So after you drop 5 points off from stunning fist because it only gets half character level bonus the total difference in DC boosts is 22 points in favor of stunning fist. Also debuffing for stunning fist is simpler as you won't lose +5 DC from Measure the Foe if you use for example twf improved sunder for usually -6 fortitude save. On d20 system 22 DC difference is insane. There can be places where Stunning Fist only fails when foe rolls a 20 and Assassinate only works if foe rolls a 1. Assassinate is more final solution than a stun so I could understand why it would have a bit lower DC but if difference is close to 20 points it is too much. And now there are special attacks with even more DC than stunning fist that could have been used in this comparison instead. Coup de Grace for example.

I didnt add racial stat bonuses into calculations to keep it a bit simpler. There is drow race with +4 total int and WF and BF get -2 wis. I might have also forgotten some things in favor of one of these abilities.

In my opinion the issue is that there are attacks with great itemization and enhancement support and then there are things like Assassinate, Shadow Dagger, Thunderstone, Time Bomb, Ooze Flask, Tanglefoot and some Henshin Mystic attacks with little or no support to push their DCs to point where they would be meaningful abilities. It is a pity because I like these. They just aren't usable because DCs can't be boosted enough in game.

[Qezuzu]

Shadowdancer needs a pass but it's not required to improve rogues, seeing as you can, you know, use Dreadnought or Crusader like every other melee.

[UurlockYgmeov]

We are not, for this update, doing any ED passes except adding Ranged Power as part of the ranged power pass, nor are we working on any iconic or racial trees. That would push the patch off by too long.

Sev~

I blame the Kobold Konsortium and their darn control weather wands for all the snow days!

[Thrudh]

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




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

You know Wizza, you're not known as the most positive poster on these boards... but still, you managed to get a dev to answer your direct questions MULTIPLE times in this thread, yet you just keep throwing insults his way.

Do you really think this is the way to get the results you want?

Has this method EVER worked for you, in real life, or on these boards?