Rogue - Thief-Acrobat Changes

[oradafu]

If you read any rogue guides dating back to before the enhancement pass, before Motu, you will find that the best players would tell you that getting agro with a rogue is doing it wrong. Rogues were just as squishy back then. Managing agro is one of the skills to be learned in this game, and most of the people i see frequently dying with their squishy toons are quite deficient in this area.

And if you remember back then, anything other than an Assassin was just a flavor build that no one took seriously. Heck, I was kicked out of some groups upon joining them back then when it was discovered that I was an acrobat instead of an assassin because assassins were only accepted because DPS is king in DDO. That's not the case now, but it was back then so old guides focused mostly on Assassins, although they are still useful.

Acrobats do grab aggro more than the other rogues, because Acrobats are hitting everything. It's been brought up by others, but the whole tree is built around jumping into or behind a group of monsters and hitting everything with cleaves and glancing blows then moving out of the way when you grab aggro. But aggro will be grabbed, whether intentional or not just from the stick fighting style.

[Caprice]

When I hear 'Momentum Defense' it sounds more like 'keep moving'. Rather than getting hit or using special attacks, why not change it to this:

Momentum Defense: When you are not standing still for at least 3 seconds you gain +1 to your Dodge and Maximum Dodge for 10 seconds. This stacks up to ten times, each stack refreshing the duration. Tumbling adds 2 stacks. When you stop moving for more than 10 seconds, all stacks are removed.

This will encourage acrobats to keep mobile and utilize tumbling, and adds a dynamic playstyle to the tree. Personally, I'd love to see tumbling get some love. There really needs to be a good incentive to tumble.

I decided I didn't like including Tumble as a charger because it doesn't make tumbling more interesting. It just means we'll have to tumble all the time just because. Every time you go into a quest you'll tumble back and forth 5 times to charge it up. IMO that's not fun, that's busy work.

[oradafu]

Different classes and builds play differently... Why do you want make every class play the exact same way?

A rogue can't charge in and get surrounded by 15 mobs... so what? Play that class DIFFERENTLY than you play a tank.

Ahem!!

~ Modified Staff Lunge so you can sweep through enemies while it is activating. This allows players to lunge into the center of a group and deliver the AoE at the end of the lunge. Note that since the AoE attack occurs at the end of the lunge players will need to not lunge past enemies or the AoE portion will fire off after you are past the enemies.

In testing it was easy to deliver this if you weren't pressing the forward key, and harder if you were pressing the forward key since the initial part of the attack carries you further.


Sev~

[FestusHood]

And the DPS drop from using your regular named staves to generic Epic loot is significant. You're doing more damage with the named stuff, even after penalties.
Also, generic Epic weapons break fairly quickly.

We're talking about weapons to use against 100% fort mobs. I'm not convinced that your dps drops that much, with the possible exception of thunderforged.

[Caprice]

Another off the wall idea, this time for making the Tumble skill more interesting: use it as the DC base for Sweeping Strikes (as with Swashbucklers' Coup de Grace and Perform). That solves the issue with reaching EE viable DC and thus makes Sweeping Strikes a great ability to take in any content, doesn't penalize STR-based acrobats (well, not as much), makes the Tumble skill more useful, and also somewhat rewards Rogues over Paladins levels because Paladins don't have as many skill points to spare.

It doesn't make the tumbling mechanic more interesting, but once you have max skill it's fun to mess around with anyway.

[bbqzor]

If your main concern when playing a rogue is keeping up with the Joneses, maybe you should consider just becoming one of the Joneses ... are you seriously dying that often when you don't have agro?

Lol. This isnt about me, or my rogue keeping up, or me personally dying. Ive got a 800hp ee-capable rogue who does fine (not that I think thats exceptional, but its certainly adequate to play in ee just fine). Read the full series of exchanges here.

Rogues being told "you get no prr because you have dodge" doesnt account for the reality of gameplay that at some point, everyone needs PRR. You can make a guy with 0 dodge and all PRR, you cannot make a guy with all dodge and 0 PRR at the top end. If you regularly play ee and have a zero prr rogue, youd be the first person to do so Im sure.

Likewise, having agro or not does nothing to change the validity of that statement. No one plays consistently getting hit zero times while simultaneously doing max dps. Either you lose dps avoiding hits (stealth, waiting to move in, bouncing in and out to heal etc) or you stay in and take some hits to do max dps (cleaves, stomps, etc). A high dodge / zero PRR class has to make that choice. A high PRR / zero dodge class does not.

Furthermore, and most relevant, in this Thief Acrobat Thread, the exact mechanics in question are ones which A) encourage high dodge, zero PRR builds and B) builds that have abilities and perks that do optimal dps against groups of mobs. Do you see the issue there?

Bringing up agro like some staff rog is running around hitting so hard that everything turns on them and vaporizes them because theyre not a tank is completely wrong and overlooks the entire point: that you get hit without having agro, a class which encourages you to fight groups of mobs compounds this, that dodge only makes such situations less common it doesnt address them, and that manually addressing them by fighting less reduces the dps of a class whos point is dps. If your rog cant figure out how to not get agro, dont go to ee. But if youre in ee, and trying to fight groups of guys to acrobat stuff, dodge alone wont carry you. The end.

Agro is an issue rogues should have figured out long before they are at the point where prr starts to be a necessity because dodge begins to come up short. If youve been there you know it, if you havent take the word of someone who has. Just like losing sneak dice can be overcome, its still a far greater issue than losing crits. And that, too, needs to be recognized. Why does swashbuckler get +5 damage with precision, and Improved Destruction? Because landing crits is part of the class. Why does TA get fort bypass? They dont. And sneak is a far bigger part of TA than crits are of swash. Adding speed helps them keep up with TWF, itd be nice to see some things to help address the loss of sneak too other than dropping a chunk into assassin.

Why do you want make every class play the exact same way?

Dont even. From this very thread:

RA better idea would be to have it be +1 Ref save for 18s after tumbling (to match the progression down the cores to 12s then 6s for more powerful things), and an additional +1 Ref save WHILE tumbling. So you get +2 during the animation, then +1 for 18s after (or +6/3 for the whole core). I mean if you can dodge a wrench, you certainly should be able to dodge a (fire)dodgeball =p

Being best at tumbling doesnt provide much of a boost, which is why I cited that as something that Id like to see improved ... Make tumbling a part of the gameplay with "action boost" style effects like measure the foe, so that it actually plays differently via tumbling.

Obviously I dont want it to play exactly the same.

A rogue can't charge in and get surrounded by 15 mobs... so what?

So you do realize that the TA abilities REQUIRE you to go get surrounded by mobs to be effective right? That this thread is talking about that style of play because thats the style the enhancements foster? That to use them involves a rogue, fighting with a staff, against a group of mobs, frequently needing to travel into or through it? That the change mentioned here:

~ Modified Staff Lunge so you can sweep through enemies while it is activating. This allows players to lunge into the center of a group and deliver the AoE at the end of the lunge. Note that since the AoE attack occurs at the end of the lunge players will need to not lunge past enemies or the AoE portion will fire off after you are past the enemies.

now ONLY works if you land in the middle of the mobs? That the "so what" is that if you DONT do that, the enhancement tree doesnt provide its benefits?

Look, dont confuse talking about rogues in general, with rogues specific to acrobat-centric gameplay, in an acrobat thread. Seriously people. This isnt a rogue class redesign, its TA enhancement feedback. TA losing sneak is an issue just like assassins losing sneak, beyond crits (which, side note, TA also get in T5... so theyre as extra-down there as anyone with beyond basic crit stuff like holy sword, only they ALSO lose sneak too). TA having no defense against peripheral splash damage beyond dodge is an issue, because they WILL get tagged by it trying to do staff stuff. Why is this stuff even still getting brought up. TA isnt assassin. Have you guys even used an acrobat in ee? Or even to level 20 and into epic? Im starting to think not.

[oradafu]

We're talking about weapons to use against 100% fort mobs. I'm not convinced that your dps drops that much, with the possible exception of thunderforged.

Blah. I can't find my Improved Disruption or Improved Smiting weapons in the TR bank. But I did find my lvl 28 +6 Impact Staff of Smiting with 18.15 base damage. Let's compare that to a few named staves:

Bone Crusher (lvl 19) has a 18.70 base damage
Stout Oak Walking Stick (lvl 20) has a 24.00 base damage
Sireth (lvl 23) has a 23.58 base damage
Dreampiercer (lvl 25) has a 21.53 base damage
Epic/Mythic Bone Crusher (lvl 26) has a 27.03 base damage

So without even factoring in the effects on these staves...yes, there is a significant drop in damage.

[FestusHood]

And if you remember back then, anything other than an Assassin was just a flavor build that no one took seriously. Heck, I was kicked out of some groups upon joining them back then when it was discovered that I was an acrobat instead of an assassin because assassins were only accepted because DPS is king in DDO. That's not the case now, but it was back then so old guides focused mostly on Assassins, although they are still useful.

Acrobats do grab aggro more than the other rogues, because Acrobats are hitting everything. It's been brought up by others, but the whole tree is built around jumping into or behind a group of monsters and hitting everything with cleaves and glancing blows then moving out of the way when you grab aggro. But aggro will be grabbed, whether intentional or not just from the stick fighting style.

How much prr do you think should be added to the acrobat tree? Defender stance levels? You realize that the defender stance by itself only gives 25 prr. If you give every tree the equivalent of that in their enhancements, then what is the point of the defensive stance?

I have a light armor swashbuckler/fighter, and a heavy armored two weapon fighter. Their defenses are virtually identical with one exception. The swash has 27% dodge, and the fighter has 4%. In actual gameplay, the difference in their survivability is enormous.

If you are playing a rogue, any weapon with the radiance ability on it is terrific. Not only does it give you sneak attack, but it also gives an additional 50% miss chance that stacks on top of everything else. Now you could argue that a radiance quarterstaff isn't practical, and you might be right. Maybe epic greensteel will solve that? Maybe a new named quarterstaff with radiance on it?

[Qhualor]

Do u even know what you're writing about Qhualor? Do u at least compete in EE content?

Summon a monster and see if it manages to get aggro off you or even withstand it for more than a few seconds (in case of summon monsters 9). It's easy to write in a forum to use sneak..go and do it and see how monsters will annihilate you if they find you out since, for some unknown special feature, you can run away and hide again but monsters will still know where you are. Not everyone has harper tree and willing to spend money or make in game favor that requires all harper quests on EE.

We agree on that fact rogues need more dodge. Monks and rogues are supposed to be the best evading/dodging classes in ddo (yes, much better than a bard for whoever is wondering)

Yes I do know what I am writing and I do regularly run EE content. The question is, why are you not playing the strengths of a rogue?

[oradafu]

How much prr do you think should be added to the acrobat tree? Defender stance levels? You realize that the defender stance by itself only gives 25 prr. If you give every tree the equivalent of that in their enhancements, then what is the point of the defensive stance?

I have a light armor swashbuckler/fighter, and a heavy armored two weapon fighter. Their defenses are virtually identical with one exception. The swash has 27% dodge, and the fighter has 4%. In actual gameplay, the difference in their survivability is enormous.

If you are playing a rogue, any weapon with the radiance ability on it is terrific. Not only does it give you sneak attack, but it also gives an additional 50% miss chance that stacks on top of everything else. Now you could argue that a radiance quarterstaff isn't practical, and you might be right. Maybe epic greensteel will solve that? Maybe a new named quarterstaff with radiance on it?

You have to talk to someone else about PRR. I haven't talked about PRR except when it comes to BAB. PRR and MRR hurt my head. I rather we roll back to AC and Fort and fixing those basics than adding these new layers of mechanics in the game. So you'd have to address someone else about that. I don't know the answer, but it does need to be increased.

The only thing when it comes to PRR that I've talked about is giving Rogues full BAB benefits when using their weapons of choice. Rogues currently only get 3/4s BAB benefits to their Light Armor that only gets PRR benefits of 1/2 BAB +2. Rogues should be getting full BAB benefits in their Cores for their specialized weapons. That would put them on par with Eldritch Knights, Warpriests and Warchanters when it comes to BAB benefits, except Rogues will still be stuck with the two worse armors, so less PRR.

I've been talking about a different way to avoid damage by giving Acrobats more CC, such as an auto-stun or Improved Deception. These won't prevent to one hit kills or spiky damage or anything else that happens with Dodge stops working.

As for a Radiance staff, I can't see it hurting, but Radiance is alot less useful on staves because the crit profile sucks on them. It shouldn't be the only thing on the staff where the Devs say "okay, we added radiance, so now it's a acrobats staff."

[Qhualor]

Some of these points are valid, even if a bit off the rails for how most would prefer to play their Rogues.

Speaking for myself, I have used my hirelings (Panther and Owlbear) to grab aggro first, but we all know the buggy and unreliable nature of that option. Not to mention you'd probably grab aggro back once you've landed a couple of attacks.

Monster Summons scrolls (although creative), seems a bit unrealistic to take advantage during the normal run of play.

The Improved Deception in Harper is nice, but locks-out your Rogue T5 enhancements.

All of this being said, this is a thread for Thief Acrobat. As such I think we should be talking specifically about how this tree is designed to play, and again, that is in the middle of the fight. This makes for a different discussion than you are engaged in currently.

Right, I was just dropping some suggestions. In a group just let the melees grab the agro first before engaging. Solo, summons and pets and deception/bluff do work surprisingly well. I only took Improved Deception because I was doing rogue past lives and I wasn't going to use junk loot deception weapons when I have better named weapons. Someone who actually wants to play a rogue would most likely would not need the Harper T5.

[Holybird]

PITA to keep up permanently....add moderate arcane spell failure and cooldowns on scrolls and needing to scroll heal sometimes......

Note I am note looking for it on all weapons just the relatively weak weapons of the PrE's daggers, kukri and staves. So not even shortswords or rapiers just the PrE weapons. It could be added to the level 18 core so that it isn't low hanging fruit that anyone would splash for.

Because of it being also Arti spell, it doesn't suffer from ASF. Or then I have been superlucky with 85% ASF

[FestusHood]

You have to talk to someone else about PRR. I haven't talked about PRR except when it comes to BAB. PRR and MRR hurt my head. I rather we roll back to AC and Fort and fixing those basics than adding these new layers of mechanics in the game. So you'd have to address someone else about that. I don't know the answer, but it does need to be increased.

The only thing when it comes to PRR that I've talked about is giving Rogues full BAB benefits when using their weapons of choice. Rogues currently only get 3/4s BAB benefits to their Light Armor that only gets PRR benefits of 1/2 BAB +2. Rogues should be getting full BAB benefits in their Cores for their specialized weapons. That would put them on par with Eldritch Knights, Warpriests and Warchanters when it comes to BAB benefits, except Rogues will still be stuck with the two worse armors, so less PRR.

I've been talking about a different way to avoid damage by giving Acrobats more CC, such as an auto-stun or Improved Deception. These won't prevent to one hit kills or spiky damage or anything else that happens with Dodge stops working.

As for a Radiance staff, I can't see it hurting, but Radiance is alot less useful on staves because the crit profile sucks on them. It shouldn't be the only thing on the staff where the Devs say "okay, we added radiance, so now it's a acrobats staff."

Sorry about directing my prr comment at you, that may have been better aimed at someone else, or just the general idea of it in this thread.

I like the idea of giving the acrobat more crowd control options. I think they should make the sweeping strikes ability use the highest stat rather than just dex.

Maybe an ability similar to the one in magister that allows you to tumble through enemies.

Maybe an attack that works more or less like exposing strike in ranger except it is an aoe cleave.

[oradafu]

Maybe an ability similar to the one in magister that allows you to tumble through enemies.

It's currently the only thing in the Tumbler ability in the Core section at level 6, although the +2 max Dodge is being added when this stuff goes live.

[Ikeas]

Another off the wall idea, this time for making the Tumble skill more interesting: use it as the DC base for Sweeping Strikes (as with Swashbucklers' Coup de Grace and Perform). That solves the issue with reaching EE viable DC and thus makes Sweeping Strikes a great ability to take in any content, doesn't penalize STR-based acrobats (well, not as much), makes the Tumble skill more useful, and also somewhat rewards Rogues over Paladins levels because Paladins don't have as many skill points to spare.

It doesn't make the tumbling mechanic more interesting, but once you have max skill it's fun to mess around with anyway.

So much this.

[Qezuzu]

~ Yes, spike damage is a weakness of Rogues and other dodge based builds. This is by design.

Sev~

And what is supposed to be the weak point of Paladin builds who ignore >60% of physical damage and >50% of magical damage, have over 85 in every save, over 1,300 HP, excellent self-healing for a melee, etc. while still having some of the best DPS?

I'm fine with Rogues not being tanks. It doesn't make sense. I'm not fine with the lowest-defense classes not having the best DPS bar none, like how it is in basically every RPG. In DDO, right now we have many builds that are functionally unkillable that also have top-tier DPS, this is bad game design IMO. Rogues are not even in the same game when it comes to survivability compared to Paladins, Bards, Fighters, anything that can can kite and/or self-heal, even raging Barbarians, and this is okay, but to compensate they should have much better damage (especially since a lot of that damage is contexual and doesn't work on a bunch of races/monsters), and this isn't something I'm seeing.

Full BAB is a class distinction and we are unlikely to change the base BAB for rogues.

Sev~

Well except for Clerics, Favored Souls (Divine Power), Bards (Warchanter), Sorcerers, Wizards, Artificers (Tensers), and Monks (Flurry of Blows). Rogues and Druids are the only classes who do not have full BAB nor an innate ability to make it full.

No one is asking to change the BAB progression for Rogues. Putting "you get full BAB when using these weapons" (weapons that you have basically pigeonholed these trees into, by the way) into Staff/Knife Specialization is not asking much.

Why do they need to close this gap? If your main concern when playing a rogue is keeping up with the Joneses, maybe you should consider just becoming one of the Joneses.

This isn't an issue of "keeping up with the Joneses". I and I imagine many other people just don't want devs to be inconsistent. I don't want to hear "Full BAB is a class distinction" when it has already been given to a majority of the non-full-BAB classes. I don't to hear "this [weakness] is by design" when we already have a class or two that have absolutely zero mechanical weaknesses. They made Bards and especially Paladins overpowered to an extent I would call unhealthy for the game, so don't be surprised when people ask for conveniences and improvements like "do more damage while not being an immortal tank".

[Severlin]

While using a skill total as a DC was an interesting experiment for Swashbuckler's Coup de Grace, I don't think we will be doing that again. The scale at which typical DCs and skills advance is to far apart to use it as a common mechanic.

Sev~

[oradafu]

While using a skill total as a DC was an interesting experiment for Swashbuckler's Coup de Grace, I don't think we will be doing that again. The scale at which typical DCs and skills advance is to far apart to use it as a common mechanic.

Sev~

So does that mean Coup de Grace will be adjusted from its obscenely high DC formula? It is an instant kill after all, where as Acrobats are just asking for a 3 sec trip.

[CThruTheEgo]

~ Yes, spike damage is a weakness of Rogues and other dodge based builds. This is by design.

Is it also by design that bards and paladins were given absolutely no weaknesses? Because they don't have any. I certainly don't want rogues to become another easy button class, but this is a weak argument when you've set no precedent with it in the previous revamps and game balance is completely out of whack if you expect to accommodate classes with no weaknesses and classes with inherently large weaknesses. And having low damage mitigation coupled with weak self healing is a huge weakness given the amount of damage done by mobs in upper level EE content. More damage avoidance does not solve that problem and damage avoidance on rogues does not in any way compare to the damage mitigation plus self healing on a paladin or bard.

Mob damage should not have been inflated so much in the first place, nor their hp. We'd have no need for mechanics such as PRR or melee power right now if that hadn't been the case. So arguing for improving what is already a strength of the rogue class, damage avoidance, completely ignores the central problem with the class, damage mitigation. Rogues do not need more damage avoidance, this is fine as is. They need to be able to cope with the inflated mob damage. I'm not asking for them to reach invincible amounts of PRR, but currently it's a stretch for a pure rogue to reach even 70 PRR.

[Thar]

Is it also by design that bards and paladins were given absolutely no weaknesses? Because they don't have any. I certainly don't want rogues to become another easy button class, but this is a weak argument when you've set no precedent with it in the previous revamps and game balance is completely out of whack if you expect to accomodate classes with no weaknesses and classes with inherently large weaknesses. And having low damage mitigation coupled with weak self healing is a huge weakness given the amount of damage done by mobs in upper level EE content. More damage avoidane does not solve that problem and damage avoidance on rogues does not in any way compare to the damage mitigation plus self healing on a paladin or bard.

Bards and paladins have no weakness? well they also don't get 15d6 of damage in melee with a bluff or party.

Rogues need some damage mitigation. Dodge alone isn't enough. Light armor is weak protection and needs a buff. full bab+6 would be a good start and see how that works. you don't get hit with a 30% dodge... 30% of the time, then you are and your done if it's a dual or multiple sequence attack that some mobs have (ie drow blademasters)