Rogue - Thief-Acrobat Changes

[bbqzor]

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

The issue is, at the uppermost ranges of the game, the spikes scale up faster than the rogues ability to take them. This is why so many people want to see some/more PRR. Its not that dodge doesnt do a good job. Its that, being an mmo, you are subject to 1000s of attacks over your gameplay. Any dodge amount less than 100% means you WILL eventually get spiked out. A rogue is a ticking bomb in that sense, eventually you blow up. A PRR based build doesnt really face that scenario, sure you get hit often but its rarely a spike.

I get you wont significantly change this, but I hope you consider that moving forward its something you might want to look at correcting, in other fashions if not enhancements. Something like itemizing a Light Armor that has +40 sheltering is one way to help light armor guys without giving it to heavies. Obviously thats a bit insular for a full item example but hopefully you get the idea.

On the topic of Sneak Attack and the top content having undead and constructs; this doesn't prevent people from putting value into Holy Sword and other critical boosting abilities, so using this as an argument that Sneak Attack isn't valuable is less compelling to us.

A paladin (or whatever) that cant crit isnt out the bulk of their class dps progression. And casting holy sword doesnt have the same investment that sneak attack does. Sneak takes your class levels, items to boost sneak, epic feat to boost sneak, items to bypass fort to attempt to land sneak, items like deception to land sneak when alone, etc. You invest lik, *your whole guy* in it, and then it turns off against random (or in the case of current end game, not so random) mobs.

A paladin or barb or whatever that focused on crits a bit doesnt lose their whole character investment. They still get their light d6, or their frenzy d6, or their inspire courage song, or what not. They didnt spend items and feats trying to make it higher (other than the ubiquitous improved crit, but rogues will have that too). They didnt have on 5+ different items (sneak, insightful sneak, deception, imp deception, armor piercing) trying to make their light/frenzy/song better.... because there arent items for that, and there doesnt need to be. Maybe a seeker item, but again a rogue will likely have that as well. Anyhow you can see the easy discrepancy.

Look, everyone loses dmg against those mob types. Everyone. Rogues lose WAY MORE than anyone else. Trying to say "no crits" is the same as "losing 20d6" or whatever it comes out to in the end is crazy. Rogues lose crits too. But they ALSO lose sneak. How is that additional loss "not compelling". Thats a rather disheartening thing to hear from a designer, it should absolutely be compelling, its their biggest Achilles heel and that should be weighed on the design side.

They are obviously, on paper and more importantly in play, the most fickle dps bet. I hope the new assassin trick helps, but TA may need to go out-of-tree for that. It would be nice to see them get some things that can help in their own... the +base damage is the right idea but a bit small against the entirety of sneak attack. Hopefully you can do something with that glance enhancement to make it appealing, maybe change it to stacking armor piercing when holding a staff or something if you cant get the glances to work. They need some non-sneak or sneak-enable options, for times they face sneak immune guys.

Once we decide what to do with Momentum Attack we will be holding off on other changes until we see how these play on Lamannia

Momentum Defense, you mean? Or is Momentum Attack something new youre doing in place of defense that doesnt require getting hit or what not.