Rogue - Thief-Acrobat Changes

[Rhysem]

Any chances to make Trip and Sunder* always work, without a DC? The DC is there for recovery time (for trip) or secondary effects (for Sunder), but not for the actual effect. Sure, the cooldown on those abilities might be tweaked for that, with the Improved feats reducing the cooldown.

Remember that the mobs, by and large, follow the rules we do. Do you want them to have no-save trips?

[Spoonwelder]

/sigh im not being purposefully obtuse. yes, you will get hit sometimes. i have not once claimed its possible to not get hit. i have claimed that you can avoid a lot of incoming damage by putting to good use your UMD for blur, displace, nightshield and anything else that will help as well as investing in Dodge, deception, bluff to dump agro. im not claiming an extreme and not understanding why people are focused on that. so you get hit and get hit hard sometimes. it happens to us all no matter what class you play. trying to beef up rogue defense via PRR to be on par with high PRR toons like fighters is thematically wrong and a lazy way to increase rogue survivability. rogues are meant to be athletic dodging enemy swings.

what is happening is that some people here are dismissing very easy ways to mitigate and avoid damage because they want to play like a fighter. play a fighter than.

there are tells with the dragon. when she looks at you, move out of the way. when you see the tail getting ready to swing, move out of the way. will it work 100% of the time? doubtful but ive taken a lot of damage from her too as a barb with 1200+ hp, displace, blur, ~120 PRR wearing medium armor. it is inevitable that no matter what, you will get hit in combat and you will get hit hard at times. you could take it as a learning experience and try to position yourself better next time, learn to move around, invest in better dodge, use blur/displace items/scrolls or just complain because you got hit between deception procs.

i see a lot more rogues dying because they don't know what to do with agro and sometimes they don't even have decent mitigation/avoidance. the good rogue players i see that don't have issues with survivability use things like deception, timed and well placed attacks, movement, invisibility and have perma blur and other sources of damage mitigation/avoidance.

i don't know about you, but i can kill mobs pretty fast without agro. its with agro that the fight ends up longer than it should and than its about trying to stay alive long enough to kill the mob.

Acrobat is getting a huge boost with Uncanny Dodge and Spinning Staff Wall. you would have 50 seconds of relying on tactical fighting, whatever dodge investment you have, blur and any other source of damage mitigation/avoidance you have. on paper, it looks to be a top tier defense making them at least practically untouchable for 40 seconds.

It just comes down to spike damage
- Barbs (as an example) take less of a spike due to PRR and have more HP such that over time they may take the same amount of damage that damage is spread more evenly and it takes more hits in a row to surpass their HP total ie. kill them
- Rogues take more spike damage when hit due to lower PRR BUT have fewer HP such that over time they make take the same average damage, that damage has higher spikes that hit less frequently but it only takes a few hits in a row to surpass their HP total.

Thus Damage Mitigation is much superior to Damage Avoidance the way the game is built.

Blur/Displace/Ghostly/Superior twitch skills are dismissed as a a non-factor as they are all available to both parties. Heck even deception items are a saw off - I try to fit it on every melee slotting it in somehow (more so two handed fighters with more procs).

If you also want a reality check - rogues should be able to dodge more attacks and even when hit they can roll with the punch using superior agility(dex) and athleticism(tumble) they can take less actual punishment in each shot than someone who just stands their ground.

As for killing mobs - in a group I do just fine with kills between assassinates and backstabbing for nice damage...until we get to fortified mobs, or bosses with big AOE damage then I am more of a spectator. Agro isn't the real issue (other than the borked agro in the game that makes random mobs b-line to you). And lord help you if you try to solo - there are so many - you must kill mob X scenarios that a rogue is hard pressed to succeed unless you cheap out and resort to 2 hires - one to heal and one to grab agro.

[Robai]

Thief-Acrobat should be great at CC.
In necro 4 quests his CC is useless vs most mobs (not complaining, just giving an example).
During Trip DC bug I tested my Thief-Acrobat Rogue a lot in epics and he wasn't overpowered at all since I saw how many mobs are immune to Trip (it felt like 25% of all mobs in the game, in Necro 4 quests it was like 75% of mobs).
Nibel suggested that DC should work for CC duration. And this is a really good solution IMO.

Assassin should be great at instakills (thus he should have better overall dps than Acrobat). He is better at sneaking/invis/etc (including faster speed while sneaking).

Remember that the mobs, by and large, follow the rules we do. Do you want them to have no-save trips?

Not many mobs try to trip and those who do they succeed most of the time anyway (Cats/Panthers/etc.), but it's easy to adapt to that.
And if some more mobs will Trip me for just 1 sec then I see no prob (actually it would be nice if some mobs would have a chance to delay your zerging).

[nibel]

^This^

I really like this idea. While I think that Rogues shouldn't be top DPS this CC part should be reliable (especially it's needed in EEs).
Keep in mind that many mobs are immune to trip.

From the top of my head: Any flying mob (mephits, beholders, griffons), any incorporeal mob (spectres, wraiths, ghosts), all oozes, and non-earth elementals.

Also, 4-legged mobs have huge bonus to resist trips (dogs, cats), and more-legged mobs have even higher bonuses (spiders, scorpions, driders, scorrows).

Remember that the mobs, by and large, follow the rules we do. Do you want them to have no-save trips?

Since the save to resist a trip attempt is a strength roll, and not a save, you end up failing trip saves 95% of the time anyway. I don't see much difference.

Just remember that very few mobs actually use the trip command: Hobgoblins (the only humanoid mob that spam trips), dogs, and cats. Everything else knock you down by other methods, like (Greater) Command, giant's stomp, and air elemental's whirlwind.

[Basic_Uncaring]

yes they do as well as my barb.

i side step when i see incoming attacks. i move around the back of a mob after initial agro is placed on another player. i make a mob dizzy if i have trouble shedding agro. does it work 100% of the time? no. do i still get hit? yes. its a lot less by doing that than just standing there taking it.

don't look at it singularly. look at it including 5% Dodge, 5% Maximum Dodge, and 5 Maximum Dexterity Bonus for Light Armor, 1% passive bonus to Dodge at levels 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, and 20.

Also, you can activate this ability to gain a temporary 50% dodge bonus and a +6 reflex save bonus, plus evasion/improved, blur, etc.

Qhualor I have the distinct impression that you are lying.
EVERYONE who dances/jumps/tumbles around a mob to hit it in the back in ddo is only giving free attacks unless you jump the monster outright and land behind and maybe, just MAYBE a few attacks can be performed. Don't say that you can do it beacuse I wouldn't believe it even with a video

This alone would be suicide in any EE quest against a single monster. I'd really love to see how you run quests since every expert rogue so far is telling that rogues have issues and you keep ramming your *handle aggro* idea ignoring everything else. The things you mentioned so far can be easily done by any other class (even my barbarian can scroll heal and use displace clicky on permablur GS) on something that is like an almost exclusive rogue/artificer thing.

Now I have to figure out if you're lying just to troll inside the forum or you are really convinced that you survive EE (can u take like 1 or 3 opponents just by yourself?)

[Sebastrd]

It's very powerful... cooldown is fine as is...

How so?

On a character with 0 PRR, you gain 33% mitigation - here I agree it's pretty powerful. However, nobody will be running around with 0 PRR.

On a character with 55 PRR (Light Armor and a Sheltering item), you gain 18% mitigation - hardly game-breaking. This is the most realistic scenario.

On a character with 99 PRR (Light armor, Sheltering 30, Insightful Sheltering 5, all past lives), you gain 10% mitigation - barely a blip on the radar. At that point you have to wonder if it's worth the 2 AP for 10% every 90 seconds.

[Qhualor]

Blur/Displace/Ghostly/Superior twitch skills are dismissed as a a non-factor as they are all available to both parties. Heck even deception items are a saw off - I try to fit it on every melee slotting it in somehow (more so two handed fighters with more procs).

just because everyone can use the same mitigation and move around to avoid damage doesn't mean its less relevant for a rogue. its actually most important because they don't want the agro and they need to make those misses count.

it is my point, as you are also pointing out, that rogues should be using dodgy combat tactics like tumbling away from a fight.

what kind of AoE damage you talking about? if you are talking like spells that you can evade like fire than its a problem with your reflexes. you can also take Epic Reflexes if its that bad.

[Qhualor]

Qhualor I have the distinct impression that you are lying.

i stopped reading after this line. you want a real discussion, than do better.

[SealedInSong]

Very. The builds seem very comparable.

My question (and what I am interpreting from others) is what makes Rogue 16-20 interesting, particularly compared to Paladin 14-18 (with the possibility of splashing rogue).

I don't see any strong reasons to go pure acrobat. I never have, and I won't after what I see in this pass.

I find that very unfortunate. There are plenty of capstones that I love, some that I just find thematically cool but aren't necessarily more powerful, and some that just sound fun.

The acrobat 18 core and capstone sound like none of those things; it's very dull.

[SealedInSong]

All staff build have +1 crit range + multiplier regardless of paladin levels.

That leaves +3 damage to compete with holy sword's +1 enhancement bonus. +3 damage wins.

In a vacuum, yes. In EE, I'd much rather be a paladin with their defenses and DPS, vs. the rogue with comparable DPS and defense that is often insufficient.

This is not an argument for saying a specialist/striker class should get the defenses of a tanking class, but then again, we should also think about why a defensive tanking class got some of the highest DPS...

[Ayseifn]

The HP bonuses that barbs and fighter/paladins is something that really bugs me these days. Barbs used to have the highest HP total and so made excellent raid tanks because they could take a few hits if their healer was stunned and were much much less likely to die from a Horoth disintegrate. Fighter/paladin defender players complained that barbs were taking over what should be a shoe in job for them and eventually got +20% HP and a stacking +6 con, fast forward to the barb update and barbs get even more HP. Oh and monks wanted to be tanks too so got +% HP and other nice things for reasons.

Meanwhile rogues are the same as always, they don't even get any HP from their Epic Destiny Shadowdancer and most rogue builds I see on the forums have them taking toughness and epic toughness. No fighter/paladin/barb builds take toughness.

Roll back those HP buffs and the PRR gap wont be as terrible as it is right now, it's that double whammy of HP and PRR that really stings.

In a vacuum, yes. In EE, I'd much rather be a paladin with their defenses and DPS, vs. the rogue with comparable DPS and defense that is often insufficient.

This is not an argument for saying a specialist/striker class should get the defenses of a tanking class, but then again, we should also think about why a defensive tanking class got some of the highest DPS...

Playing a low DPS melee isn't really fun for most people, if a paladin builds for DPS they should be competitive.

TAs do need some DPS buffing but not all that much. They were competitive DPS wise with Centred Kenseis until TF came out and then fell behind, Kenseis could upgrade their eSoS to a decent crit profile weapon while TAs are stuck with staves.

[SealedInSong]

Revisiting this after some thought.

Still think it should be a stance. Don't think it should be exclusive with other defensive stances anymore, as that will do nothing to improve the state of most current builds.

Reworking it this way:

Momentum Defense
You nimbly roll with the blows to lessen their impact upon you. While this stance is active and you wearing light or no armor, you reduce incoming melee damage by a percentage equal to half of your dexterity modifier (max reduction of 5%).

Then, additionally, it will receive some perks in the higher cores (to reduce the stackability with other stances):
core 12: Your Momentum Defense now has a cap of 8%
core 18: Your Momentum Defense now has a cap of 12%
core 20: Your Momentum Defense now has a cap of 15%

I like this

[InfraRiot]

Here's my idea for a thematic momentum defense:

Thematically the acrobat should be quick, skillful and dextreous in combat dodging and avoiding blows very well. Let's look at momentum defense as the more you dodge, the more momentum you get (jumping, rolling cartwheeling around...) to avoid the next blow. Let's also say that the more you avoid the next blow, the less impact the one that will eventually hit you will have (the opponent gets tired the more he's swinging and trying to hit you).

Thus, everytime you avoid a hit you get +10 PRR and +1 dodge, +1 max dodge, +1 MDB. Stacks up to 10 times. Duration is short like 3-5 seconds and all stacks fade away at once you get hit or go out of combat. When you do get hit there's a cooldown of say 10-15 seconds before you can start momentum defense again because it's taxing and you need to catch your breath.

This ability will make you want to max your defenses to help you survive that hit that will eventually get through (+10-100 PRR depending on stacks). It will keep you on the move to catch your breath and you can't have it ready for the next fight because stacks fade away quickly. However, this ability should maybe only work for melee attacks and not ranged attacks. It could also boost the defensive roll percentage somehow. The more you defend the less chance that the next blow will be a killing blow. Perhaps also tie it to rogue levels so you get benefit for going deep in acrobat.

I also don't know how difficult this would be to code, but it acts a bit like the reverse of halfling agility (t4 enchancement).

Numbers can be revised but I hope you got the idea.

[BigErkyKid]

There is a bit of that impression on my end too.

I make plenty of mistakes in "DDO maths" too. For instance, I predicted that the PRR formula would actually benefit more pure monks than armor wearers. This is because it bumped the mitigation you could get for earlier values of PRR, but not so much in the late part. See this post for the maths of it (simple LINK. By the way, while it is true that say every 100 PRR buys you the same number of extra hits, it is also true that it has decreasing returns.

I was wrong in that. I limited my analysis to monks with mountain stance and high PRR. Those are currently completely outclassed healing and DPS wise by FOTM. Yes, they became relative more survivable. This is the probability distribution to die over a given number of hits using Forzah's code (you can find it here: LINK) for monk with 120 PRR, dodge 25%, incorp. 25% vs h armor 160PRR, dodge 7%, incorp. 10%. You can see that the distribution of the monk (dashed) is to the right of that of the paladin (solid), which means that it completely outclasses him.



My mistake is that I did not take into consideration the big value of not facing spike damage for dodgy toons with lower PRR. For instance, the acrobat class. The higher your PRR is, the more "manageable" you can keep damage. That is, it is unlikely that a few bad rolls turn an stable situation into one were you take critical damage (beyond your healing capacity) and die. This can be show via simulation too. Take an acrobat with 70 PRR, dodge 30%, 25% incorp. (assuming monk splash) vs armor h armor 160PRR, dodge 7%, incorp. 10%. This simulation shows you that rogues have fatter tails, meaning that they can die in only a few hits, and they can also . This is true for single and multiple enemies at the same time, however, multiple enemies make the result more obvious.



So to sum it up, physical damage "evasion" is not as good as "mitigation" in terms of keeping you alive because what matters in terms of killing a character, given the awesome self healing we are getting everywhere, is the possibility tot make a spike of damage that just overwhelms you and kills you.

If mitigation is better, then you would expect "evasion" classes to be more of a glass cannon. This is not true either, since SA does not make up much in terms of DPS. It is quite inconvenient and unreliable (SA immunities, need for deception but hard fighting multiple enemies) and it isn't "beyond awesome" as the game stands.

Nothing has changed with the proposed modifications to the TA tree, which are just weak sauce.

[Ayseifn]

Would rather Momentum Defence trigger off of kills like barb healing does and buff MDB of light armour, dodge and max dodge by 1 per kill, cap at 10 still and have them all fall off at once if you don't get another kill in that 12 sec window.

Still need some sort of buff for dex though, and maybe reflex saves. Bring back Showtime with +5 dex, +5 reflexes and action boost to movement speed(wont stack with PDK PL clicky, Expeditious Chant, Sprint Boost or paladin/fighter speed boost), throw in some negative thing like stacking -10% fortification, -10% PRR or whatever seems balanced and I'd still spend the AP.

[Saekee]

^This^

I really like this idea. While I think that Rogues shouldn't be top DPS this CC part should be reliable (especially it's needed in EEs).
Keep in mind that many mobs are immune to trip.

Robai, I was thinking about undead like skellies and zombies that have poor reflex saves while reading this--also they are part of type (undead) that can be problematic for rogue sneak damage. In heroics I have had Spare Hand equipped and knock down undead very consistently on vorpal hits despite its low DC.

I think in general trip should use dex or str. I was a black belt a long time ago and tripping someone (sweep kick) had nothing to do with strength.

[Ikeas]

A lot has been said about how rogues have far less damage mitigation than almost any other melee in the game, and I agree. I was thinking about some other classes without basic access to medium or heavy armor.

I'm always talking about pure classes.

-Rangers use light armor. Also, rangers gain a complete feat chain to improve DPS (TWF) and several feats for another combat style (archery), so rangers are not exactly feat starved. Some of their lvl up feats can be spent on armor proficency, and the ranger only loses evasion (and that can be somehow compensated by MRR). Ranger enhancements works on heavy armor (aside the dodge increases). They don't lose spellcasting either. On top of that, they have even an enancement to increase PRR.

-Bards use light armor. Warchanters can use medium armor without any consquence with the proper enhancement. Bards have little trouble to be magic buffed and self heal often (better or worse), and Swashies have great dodge amount, access to shield feats and a DPS worth of the current Olympus of DDO. Swashies also gain evasion, so they can make it work even with low MRR.

-Arcane spellcasters are not melee focused. When they become that way via EK tree, they gain access to medium armor and shields, and some PRR enhancements.

-Monks only wear robes/outfits. A non-earth monk has 0 base PRR. In earth stance and with shintao enhancements they can get up to 30 base PRR. With improved evasion, superb saves, high dodge, some self heal and mob control via stunning, seems monks are not having survivability problems (SEEMS).

-Rogues are feat starved. They suffer from picking an armor proficiency. If they do so, they also lose evasion (and/or improved evasion), a feature the rogue needs since they are trap monkeys (actually, evasion is the only reason why I could say a rogue is better trapper than an artificer). The rogue DPS trees (assassin and TA) encourages high DEX scores. Wearing heavy armour reduces the effects of a high DEX. Rogues have not any PRR enhancement (for now). Rogues cannot rely on innate spellcasting abilities to self heal or self buff. The DPS of a rogue is situational, and even on a 100% sneak attack situation, main melee classes outDPS rogues on the current game (and they don't need to manage aggro).

While assassins can still use a smart sneaky playstyle, the TA enhancements encourage a mobile but more frontal combat style, with "cleave-like" attacks and, well, two handed weapons with wide animations and glancing blows. They need some more love. They need a higher damage mitigation, because they will be damaged more often.

Difficult access to heavy armor, low average dps compared with other melee classes (situational burst, low profile weapons), not having any special defense feature (UMD is not an exclusive rogue feature, as many others said before)... smart playstyle might not be enough to make rogues appealing, nor to make them a viable melee class.

How terrible would be to give some PRR/MRR on the acrobat cores? 15 on core and 5 more on a tier 5? Make it lower on the lower tiers and higher on latter, to encourage pure class (the multiclasses will have other ways to increase PRR anyways).

[Rasputin]

...than Str? Seems like a reasonable enhancement option.

Another thought: although acrobats have a high tier enhancement that allows them to do a rush through enemies, it would be great if they had the ability to vault over long distances while a quarterstaff is equipped. Similar to the FVS wings, I suppose. I'd give it a bit of arc and not just a straight line, as if using the quarterstaff to pole vault.

Also, while I am here, the acrobat quarterstaff melee speed enhancement is not reported on the character sheet. Haste shows up correctly, but the 15% from three ranks in Thief Acrobatics does not display.

[nayozz]

i enjoyed the easy free for all trip, stunning blow, sunder and other skills...

too bad the devs fixed it... if having a 16str wizard being able to trip or stun 100% of the time is too much... why not making sure fighter, barbarian, rogue, (and other hybrid classes)
can have a nice chance to do these skill effect, without having to have all the +xx to dc items in the world ?

just saying... after the bug went live i had fun using my barbarian in a tactical way... like trip monster 1, stun monster 2 and finish it, return on monster 1...
now i think i will just respec out stunning blow and put away from the qbar the trip... and just stick with mindless cleave, greatcleave and such...

just saying... wish that "melee" classes didnt have as mandatory a +10to dc or whatever is this days item to dc...

[General_Gronker]

wish that "melee" classes didnt have as mandatory a +10to dc or whatever is this days item to dc...

Mandatory would mean it was required to perform the action. So it's not mandatory. More importantly, I trip all the time on an number of build without speccing for it. No trip gear at all. But if you want to be exceptionally good at it, then you must gear for it. That's how it is, that's how it should be. If you want it easier than that for everyone, then you want a different D&D game. One based on something not 3rd edition.