Rogue - Thief-Acrobat Changes

[flaggson]

This is insane...

Can we make UMD always work too?

And hold spells?

Come on guys... Are we seriously at that point? Where we're asking for abilities to always work, with no investment?

This.

[Qhualor]

Uh, fortification reduces a 4x crit to 1x for 75% damage reduciton. What is it you are using that mitigates crits more than that on your rogue? You keep confusing damage avoidance with damage mitigation. Fortification is the best defense against big damage crits a rogue is going to get in light armor. That is completely removed by the champion buff while there is no champion buff to remove PRR.

No avoidance technique will work 100% of the time. Previously fortification and PRR were reliable if the character was built correctly.

its not hard to get enough fortification. i always run around with 115% in epics and that's been plenty for me. fortification is good after the mobs are able to bypass your other total miss defenses like dodge and blur and are able to land an attack the second they are actually facing you between deception procs and are able to bypass your fortification to land that rolled crit. this is random and unlikely to happen, but i know it does happen.

right. there is no 100% that you wont get hit. ive never said that. i don't see anything wrong with an occasional moment when a rogue got his ass handed to him just like i feel the same for any other class. if there was a 100% avoidance than there would be no need for tactical and timed attacks or any reason to invest in the strengths of the class like deception, assassinate or bluff for a rogue. they could just stand there and take the hits like a fighter can.

[Qhualor]

So everyone else can put on a harmor and take the hits, but the rogue has to be more clever about it?

No one is going to do that, outside of flavor reasons, if the DPS does not make up for it somehow. TA did not get much more coming that way, so this upgrade feels like the devs listened to the complaints by the players and stopped power buffing classes. Pity that some have already been buffed to uberness.

ive been saying for a long time that heavy armor is too powerful and it looks like there will be some corrections coming. simply put, if you want to play a fighter than roll a fighter. you want to play a rogue than play a rogue. playing a rogue like a fighter only leads to off the wall suggestions asking to make rogues unhittable.

that's a problem with the game itself, not the class. using the excuse because the game is fast paced shouldn't mean reworking a class to be more like a fighter. this is why we have power creep issues.

[Qhualor]

I'm sorry i have to make sure you know what you are talking about given your history of misconceptions and lack of knowledge in some areas displayed on this forum.



You are purposely not getting it. What is your defense against damage taken? Not against getting hit. Against damage taken! It's HP (which obviously rogues won't get high as a d6 class with no benefits to HP), fortification (to prevent huge damage spikes from crits) and PRR (to shave off some percentage of incoming damage). Since rogues have practically no PRR apart from light armor and BAB combo, they NEED a sheltering item to survive even two hits in EE. No one is saying to give them free 50 PRR. We are saying to give them some. Because when lvl cap raises to 30 all those 200 PRR pallies will need a new challange and we all know how Devs introduce challange - by adding mobs that hit harder. And when the new mobs are challenging for high PRR classes, they'll utterly destroy low PRR classes.

Basic rogue in SD with 25% dodge and perma blur has 45% chance of not being hit. The same rogue has 27 PRR from light armor, BAB, plus up to 30 PRR from a raid item. That's max of 57 PRR w/o any past lives. That's around 35% damage reduction. Add in champions and their buffs like TS, fort bypass, double damage and it's not only hard to survive a few hits, you don't stand a chance.

You are just like second Snootch. "Rogues don't need CON because they are not meant to get hit", only in your example it's PRR, which basically means the same.



That is a class problem and if it goes on like this it's gonna be a game problem because as the power of the mobs will be rising, inevitably they will be doing more damage and rogues will be dead with 1 or 2 hits when their miss chance doesn't kick it. It's simple as that. Mitigating and dumping agro is all well and good but it doesn't really work when you are fighting 5+ melee mobs, mobs with random agro, mobs with cleave attacks, mobs with huge melee range like bosses and so on.

thank you for your dismissiveness. i can certainly say the same by your responses.

you are purposely leaving out UMD that a rogue should have access to for nightshield, blur, displacement. you are purposely leaving out letting others grab agro before engaging a fight. you are not looking at the strengths of the class, rather the strengths of specific damage mitigation. and you question me? in epics, i was running around with between 30-40 PRR in light armor as a rogue without even trying doing them as past lives and not using items with sheltering on them. you know why i didn't have issues with survivability? because i utilized the sources available to me and didn't run straight into a mob fight like i was some raging barbarian.

PRR should be for fighters and barbarians because they are front line melees that need reduced damage taking on all the agro and constant hits. rogues and rangers should be primarily dodge. they should be getting missed and dodging away from a fight rather than being in the middle of one. im fine with PRR being a weakness for rogues as long as they can have a high dodge plus they can increase miss chances with UMD. that is what makes sense, not slapping on more PRR so a rogue can fight like a fighter.

theres only 1 type of Champion that actually poses any real type of danger and that's the ones with True Seeing and bypassing all fortification. that's the same problem for everyone though and extremely random occurrence. Champions have been nerfed down pretty hard and only specific cases have i seen it be a problem for certain players.

if you play your rogue smarter and play with the strengths of the class using UMD to mitigate damage, you shouldn't be having such big problems. the only rogue players i see that don't do that are also the ones that have problems staying alive. it is a player problem if they wont use the class to its fullest benefit.

[Myrddinman]

i think staffs breaking during a quest is a problem with the hardness and durability. wood or otherwise, weapons shouldn't be breaking so easily during normal questing. i don't agree with adding item defense to the tree to be a way to solve the problem. i think the devs should look into the problem and see if there is a way to boost the hardness and/or durability. i did a failed staff life once using all the heroic named staffs in the game that a Acrobat would use while leveling to 20 and it was a huge pain having to always have a back up weapon for when my main weapon would break halfway through a quest.

It definitely has to do with hardness and durability, especially since most staves are wood. I'm not sure what development would have to go into upping these totals on all staves though. I suspect part of the underlying problem has to do with a combination of attack speed and material (wood).

I don't think it's unreasonable to add the actual Item Defense enhancement (1/1/1 25%/50%/75%) into the TA tree. Perhaps passives to the cores are a bit unwarranted There are several other class trees that have this already, which is ironic considering I've never even considered spending points there. But for the one class that would get the most mileage out of the enhancement, it's absent.

Regardless, considering some of the more pressing discussions in this thread, I am happy to let sleeping dogs lie

[Failedlegend]

20 seconds is plenty of time to get yourself out of the "oh ****" moment, either by killing the bad guys, or getting the heck out of dodge...

I Never said it's not a useful ability, I said I loathe short duration "action boosts" and so do a large number of people...an ignorable Tier 1 or 2 action boost is fine but this is a Tier 5 slot.

So how about a multi-selector....Spinning Wall Action Boost for people who like watching cooldowns and duration timers, than Momentum Defense (as shown above) which is a lesser but Passive buff that is thematic to acrobat and caters to people who like to look at the game (both types would get the other MDB, Dodge,etc.)

As for "forcing a play style" so what? Assassin "forces" you to stealth around to assassinate, PM Aura forces you to find alternative sources of healing (and make anything with a weak light spell feel like an epic boss but that's another thread), Arcane archer "forces" you to use a bow, Leveling as a Wizard "forces" you to not be able to take a different class that leve...You say "Forcing a playstyle" I say "Creating a Unique & Thematic Play Experience" and I'm actually trying to be flexible.


@No Save Tactics: No, even if it was trash mobs only it would make tactics users deadly, and you wouldn't even have to strive for that (ie. Your 6 Str Wizard tripping Giants example) that said I think its a bit to difficult for Tactical abilities to function right now and near impossible for a first life character even if their twinked out. I've tried both full ****** strength and a PDK that maxes both Str and Cha (PDKs add +1/3 Cha Mod to tactics DC w/ PDK weapons) and Crams as much AP in tactics DC boosts a Humanly possible and most stuff still saves.

[Miow]

Oh no, you missed it. Mechanic's were changed a couple years ago into Artificers.
Arty's are way better trappers than Rogues. /sarcasm

I hope they make Mechanics a viable build again. But please, no more pew pew pew repeaters.

Great crossbow?

[Augon]

We are probably done with Thief-Acrobat design until we see how it plays on Lamannia. The only two things we will be watching at this point is comments on Spinning Staff Wall since we just changed that, and feedback on trip DCs.

Sev~

So, when do you anticipate Lamannia opening up so we can play with these changes?

[Thar]

We are still working on what we will do with the DCs to Trip, Improved Trip, and Sweeping Strikes. The time sink is doing our due diligence on monster stats. We need to get the value ranges for both Balance skills and straight Strength bonuses for all the creatures in the game before we finish our work.

Sev~

Please take into account that all classes could use trip/tactic dc changes as they work 0% of the time at higher levels for normal characters.

[brzytki]

thank you for your dismissiveness. i can certainly say the same by your responses.

you are purposely leaving out UMD that a rogue should have access to for nightshield, blur, displacement.

Now you've lost me here. And it's only a beginning lol. Blur is in my previous post, displacement won't be always on, unless you've crafted 5-6 gs clickies or scrolling one every 30 sec. Nightsield? What does it have to do with melee?

you are purposely leaving out letting others grab agro before engaging a fight.

I do not. I've been playing rogues for 6 years and i know for example that even if you run into the room as a 2nd or 3rd person, some of the mobs might be agro'd on you.

you are not looking at the strengths of the class, rather the strengths of specific damage mitigation. and you question me?

Of course i'm not looking at the ideal image you want to say is reality. I'm looking at situations when the s**t hits the fan. I've said it already, when the dodge+concealment+incorporeal work it's all good. But when you get hit, you might lose half of your HP bar. And i'm looking at the future updates, it's called not being shortsighted. Tell me what will your rogue do when the cap is increased to 30 and the new mobs will hit harder to be a threat to high PRR classes? Will you still tell us "No, it doesn't matter that mob hits your 1k hp rogue for 700dmg after your measly PRR because 2 out of 3 times it misses you."

in epics, i was running around with between 30-40 PRR in light armor as a rogue without even trying doing them as past lives and not using items with sheltering on them. you know why i didn't have issues with survivability? because i utilized the sources available to me and didn't run straight into a mob fight like i was some raging barbarian.

I'm sorry but you don't understand the concept of acrobat then. Read again what attacks acrobats have and get back to us.

PRR should be for fighters and barbarians because they are front line melees that need reduced damage taking on all the agro and constant hits. rogues and rangers should be primarily dodge. they should be getting missed and dodging away from a fight rather than being in the middle of one. im fine with PRR being a weakness for rogues as long as they can have a high dodge plus they can increase miss chances with UMD. that is what makes sense, not slapping on more PRR so a rogue can fight like a fighter.

See my comments above above about acrobat concept and me not being shortsighted.

theres only 1 type of Champion that actually poses any real type of danger and that's the ones with True Seeing and bypassing all fortification. that's the same problem for everyone though and extremely random occurrence.

TS+fort bypass, TS+double damage, double damage+fort bypass. Actually i read on wiki that all champions have double damage so maybe true. But it's certainly not the same problem for everyone. Rogues have lower HP, don't have high PRR. That means they'll get hit for more damage and they'll be closer to death than other classes, so no, definitely not the same problem.

if you play your rogue smarter and play with the strengths of the class using UMD to mitigate damage, you shouldn't be having such big problems. the only rogue players i see that don't do that are also the ones that have problems staying alive. it is a player problem if they wont use the class to its fullest benefit.

Your "play smarter" doesn't hold against examples given in my last paragraph.

[Thrudh]

I think its a bit to difficult for Tactical abilities to function right now and near impossible for a first life character even if their twinked out. I've tried both full ****** strength and a PDK that maxes both Str and Cha (PDKs add +1/3 Cha Mod to tactics DC w/ PDK weapons) and Crams as much AP in tactics DC boosts a Humanly possible and most stuff still saves.

You think a first life character should be effective with tactics on epic elite? Because again I assume you're talking about end-game epic elite...

Because tactics work fine on heroic elite and epic hard if someone focuses on tactics... I don't see a problem with having to do a little extra work on your character to get tactics working in end-game epic elite.

I'm tired of everyone on these forums declaring things "broken" when they really mean "broken for the 5% of the game that is end-game epic elite"

[Thrudh]

Please take into account that all classes could use trip/tactic dc changes as they work 0% of the time at higher levels for normal characters.

This is 100% incorrect.... Unless your definition of "normal characters" means characters who do absolutely nothing to increase their tactics DCs.

The devs should just stop reading these boards if you guys are going to throw out junk like this and call it "feedback"

"Tactics work 0% of the time!" Uggh.

[Thrudh]

I do not. I've been playing rogues for 6 years and i know for example that even if you run into the room as a 2nd or 3rd person, some of the mobs might be agro'd on you.

So you've been dying every single fight for 6 years? The way you talk is that rogues die every time they take 2 hits.

And i'm looking at the future updates, it's called not being shortsighted. Tell me what will your rogue do when the cap is increased to 30 and the new mobs will hit harder to be a threat to high PRR classes? Will you still tell us "No, it doesn't matter that mob hits your 1k hp rogue for 700dmg after your measly PRR because 2 out of 3 times it misses you."

We can talk when future updates come out.

TS+fort bypass, TS+double damage, double damage+fort bypass. Actually i read on wiki that all champions have double damage so maybe true.

Take the champion out before he even swings at you...

If there are multiple champions, move around so you can engage one at a time.. That's what we mean by play smarter.

Seriously how did you handle aggro as a rogue for the last 6 years? Shouldn't you already know all this?

[brzytki]

So you've been dying every single fight for 6 years? The way you talk is that rogues die every time they take 2 hits.

And the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other...

[Oxarhamar]

I do not. I've been playing rogues for 6 years and i know for example that even if you run into the room as a 2nd or 3rd person, some of the mobs might be agro'd on.


*Snip


Your "play smarter" doesn't hold against examples given in my last paragraph.

You've shown that play smarter is not something you choose to do in your earlier statement.

Why are you rushing in 2nd or 3rd like a barbarian?

Why are you not letting the mobs agro establish on the others first so you can strole up behind them and get full Benifit of your speak attacks.

If you don't want agro don't take agro, that we call agro management, tactics, team play, play smarter. Even in a party with no team play you just let the other go first let them be the cannon fodder then enter combat agro free.

There are very few mins who have random agro & only Maruts prefer to attack rogues over other classes.

[Urjak]

No, Sev's already told us it was not WAI and it will be fixed.



That's utter nonsense, do you even play a rogue in EE? Do you only fight 1vs1?

Well, well ...
.) Yay, for fixing one of the long standing bugs
.) Meh, for one less reason to spend point in TA and taking more than one rogue level

Thx for the info though!

[bbqzor]

The devs get it. Its an acrobat thread, they looked at the acrobat centered feedback and saw a design flaw. They added a PRR action boost parallel to uncanny in order to address it. Now you can use acrobat abilities as they are intended to be used without suiciding once a certain difficulty threshold is passed. Problem solved.

Everyone saying play smarter or acting like umd=prr (seriously... at least use stoneskin for such an example) is focused more on general rog gameplay, and ignoring that in an acrobat thread, as it relates to acrobat abilities, some of those options are definitely subpar for the way they interact with the enhancement tree. In short, theyre not really providing any feedback, theyre trying to say all rogs should play the same and strictly adhere to a predefined play position regardless of the fact this tree obviously and intentionally changes that position.

Trying to point out to such people that things like cleaves, stomps, wings, chains, and whatever else hit you as a byproduct of using a staff to glance, cleave, Staff Lunge, Sweeping Strike, or Follow Through multiple mobs at a time results in a situation needing such enhancements is now pointless. The devs got the message and acted, and say theyre happy with it.

And I am too, I think acrobat looks great now and look forward to trying it on lama. Especially since the main issues with assassinate (poor interactions with new stealth and dc related problems) basically got left out of that tree (and until the items show up in a reasonable fashion, left out completely).

I hope mechanic gets an equally compelling rework, with such things like trap setting timer reductions (itd be nice if it was similar to base spells to use mid fight), chance to avoid using up traps to extend supplies (which should also apply to theives tools, 25/50/75% chance to not consume them would be welcome), an intentional correction to trap dcs which leaves them useable (instead of worthless or accidentally op), construct related sneak attacks (like assassin trick but 24/7 only on constructs or something), and some interesting "combat engineer" type feels (like alchemist fire, make it do 20 inferno stacks and count down, since rogs cant refresh their own, great rog dot from easy cut and paste code, or add inferno stacks to fire traps, easy wins). There is no need to convince anyone else that acrobats should get mitigation, the devs already got past posts with "generic rogue blinders" on. Hopefully mechanic comes out as well, and rogs will have several good options without being forced to lean on a single (not working properly) assassinate enhancement.

[Oxarhamar]

We are probably done with Thief-Acrobat design until we see how it plays on Lamannia. The only two things we will be watching at this point is comments on Spinning Staff Wall since we just changed that, and feedback on trip DCs.

Sev~

Mechanic time?

[Qezuzu]

I'm tired of everyone on these forums declaring things "broken" when they really mean "broken for the 5% of the game that is end-game epic elite"

If non-EE content wasn't easy to the point where one could literally walk in without any points spent in enhancements and complete without issue, then maybe those abilities would matter if they worked in non-EE content.

Seriously how did you handle aggro as a rogue for the last 6 years? Shouldn't you already know all this?

I don't know about brzytki, but I consider myself one of the better Rogue-users in the game. I get annoyed when people rebut "Rogues are squishy" with "just play better lel" or anything like "if you think [class] has [flaw] then you're just using it wrong". You're just hand-waving away suggestions/criticisms, by very experienced Rogue-users in some cases, to improve Rogues (to a point where they're not overpowered but also not so far behind the curve), and it's frankly disrespectful.

[Thrudh]

II don't know about brzytki, but I consider myself one of the better Rogue-users in the game. I get annoyed when people rebut "Rogues are squishy" with "just play better lel" or anything like "if you think [class] has [flaw] then you're just using it wrong". You're just hand-waving away suggestions/criticisms, by very experienced Rogue-users in some cases, to improve Rogues (to a point where they're not overpowered but also not so far behind the curve), and it's frankly disrespectful.

I play rogues too, so I'm allowed to disagree... So far, most of the suggestions have been.. "Make Rogues just like barbs and fighters and paladins"... and those are terrible suggestions.