Rogue - Mechanic (and Traps) Proposed Changes

[flagged]

"Mistake" is too strong a word. I wonder if it will come back to haunt us later. Rogue 4 does lock someone out of taking both Holy Sword and 10K Stars, which would be my immediate concern, but I suspect that someone is going to find a sneaky way to "abuse" it. There are a lot of shuriken builds with enough Rogue levels to take it, for instance, who might count themselves satisfied with losing the extra 3 DEX from the new Shadow Dodge in exchange for 10 RP.

If it was attached to the cores it would be a decent barrier against that wouldn't it, and it could arrive at a Melee power of 12 or 15.

[FestusHood]

Can we get a trap proposal thread?
I want to see what you guys plan overall.
Keep in mind, damage traps arent popular.
Popular are the cc ones, so anything that brings in a doze of cc, and additionally helpless, is wonderful.
Esp with the change to trap setting time and activation

The reason elemental traps aren't that popular is because they just don't do that much damage. This is especially true of the grenades. If the epic versions did as much damage as say, the bottled fireballs you could get from the anniversary cards, they would be pretty cool.

[ddorimble]

I don't see all 6 cores covered in the proposal so it is most likely still there I would just like to see it clarified.

All these Rogue proposal threads have worked that only changes are called out. If it's not mentioned, it's not changed.

[FestusHood]

Really like the looks of this. The only thing i would change, and this is totally selfish, but it would be nice if the expert builder could be moved to the level 12 core. This is entirely due to my desire to try that along with the sniper shot from deepwood stalker in ranger with a great crossbow. Might be overpowered, i don't know. Imagine a great crossbow being overpowered? Nah.

[Caprice]

If it was attached to the cores it would be a decent barrier against that wouldn't it, and it could arrive at a Melee power of 12 or 15.

Yes. I have no problem at all with your suggestion. I don't think I know what the "right" target number is though. Since Turbine put in 10 I assume that they want to balance MP and RP to have similar "opportunity" costs, but we'll see how the rest of the balance pass works out.

[FlaviusMaximus]

18/2: constant +2d6 +2d8 from Glass Cannon
versus
20: constant +2 damage, +2d6 Sneak Attacks, +1 all relevant class skills, decent panic button & burst DPS ability, +2 to all DCs for abilities in tree

I agree that 18/2 will be popular, but I think the capstone isn't terrible either and I think I could justify to myself staying pure.

You're right. I wasn't fully considering what already exists in the mechanic capstone and was primarily looking at what was added. I removed my initial statement.

[Caprice]

Shuri builds lose doubleshoot from t 5 former for some dps, i dont know if the trade off is good since the alt way to build a good chucker was to rely on dshoot since we can now create builds that have a better uptime of stars thrown with dshoot then 10 k.
10 k really isnt a must pick for chuckers for a long time.
I see couple nice repete and gxbow builds currently

I wasn't saying that was the main concern, just that it was the first thing that came to mind. Besides while getting enough Dshoot to make 10K bad is certainly achievable, it does take some effort whereas 10K stars is an easy click-and-drag for any Monk 6. There have been some prominent chuckers that based off Rogue (e.g. several of the Meteor Shower line) for the DEX from Acrobat and to combine SAs with the extreme rate at which star attacks happen. For the most part they went Wiz5+ and tier 5 EK for full BAB, because BAB has an oversized effect on throwing rate (something I hope we might see fixed in the Ranged Pass) but I am not sure if the tier 5 bonuses here outweigh that - might be enough. I would love to see GXbows become a FotM though, that would be hilarious.

[Cleanincubus]

Until this makes it to Lamannia, I'll reserve judgement, but right now I'm not seeing anything that makes Mechanics anything less than a nerfed Artificer.

Could we at least get an increase to Disable Device, Open Lock, and Repair? Or a speed increase to do those skills? It would at least give some reason to pick Mechanic over just going Artificer.

[gwonbush]

Until this makes it to Lamannia, I'll reserve judgement, but right now I'm not seeing anything that makes Mechanics anything less than a nerfed Artificer.

Could we at least get an increase to Disable Device, Open Lock, and Repair? Or a speed increase to do those skills? It would at least give some reason to pick Mechanic over just going Artificer.

Well, you get +1 crit range and multiplier over artificer for starters.

[Caprice]

You're right. I wasn't fully considering what already exists in the mechanic capstone and was primarily looking at what was added. I removed my initial statement.

Whereas I missed that Hip Flask is an Action Boost, so it competes directly with other boosts that may be more useful in general. I've now edited that post you linked to make this clear. I think that's enough to convince me that the 18/2 is strictly better as a repeating xbow user.

I am trying to find an AA bow version that I like but it takes too many AP or sacrifices too much. Putting the critical bonus at 18 locks out the deeper splashes that would make a bow build work better, but I assume that's the point.

[Myrddinman]

Well, you get +1 crit range and multiplier over artificer for starters.

True...but you can still splash 2 Arty with that level 18 core. I still don't see a huge benefit for Capstone over splash, which is disappointing.

[Unsmitten]

Sev,
Over all, I think this tree will be great, BUT I have a couple issues with it.

First, the DCs for Tanglefoot, Thunderstone and Ooze Flask will still be to weak for EE content, adding epic level*2 like another suggested or at least epic level to it would make them viable.

My other issue is with this adding bows to the tree. Personally,(and everyone will not share this view) I think it should only be for crossbows and throwing like it has been. That is, unless(If-then) the Arcane archer tree is opened up to crossbows. Another, more fitting idea is to allow bows to benefit from the sniper hit/damage and Fletcher(and Rapid Fire as they can now). Instead exclude bows from the crit profile updates in the core. Also, I would like to see the cores beefed up even more then you plan.

Core I should be as it is, but add(like Deepwood Stalker) 5 SA/PBS range with each core/no max range at Capstone

Core II DC should be (Reflex DC 10 + Rogue Level + Epic Level(*2) + Intelligence Modifier Negates)

Core III Change name to Improved Sight, and combine the Int to damage with xbow/thrower with the 50% increased search/detect range.

Core IV move core 5 to 4 and read as follows. Expert Builder: You gain a +1 Competence Bonus to Critical Threat Range and Critical Multiplier for crossbows and thrown weapons.

Core V could be Master Arbalest, and read as follows. You gain +1 to hit, +1 damage, and 1 extra Sneak Attack die with crossbows and thrown weapons. As well as a +1 Bonus to Critical Threat Range and Critical Multiplier for Great Crossbows(in addition the the bonus granted from Expert Builder)

Capstone I would propose get rid of the dodge bonus, replace it with a static +5 ranged power and make it no longer an action boost.


Obviously this is How I would like to see it, but for sure the DC of the enhancement based flasks will suffer in EE if they are not boosted.

[FuryFlash]

~ The flavor we wanted for Mechanic is to be a saboteur and sniper.
~ We don't want them to be an Artificer light, so we don't want to just import Artificer stuff into the tree.
~ Runearms will stay exclusive to Artificers.

We had a long discussion of conjured bolts versus Fletching on the player council forums. Some points:

~ If you really want to conjure bolts you have UMD and scrolls.
~ Conjuration spells really isn't in flavor for rogues.
~ Fletching will really shine when we have more powerful crafted ammunition with updated crafting systems, and will be also be really good if we put more powerful ammunition on special vendors.

As an aside I like the idea of making ammunition found in treasure to drop with an increased stack size. I can't promise that for Update 25 however.

Sev~

All around good stuff here, although I noticed that despite making them a "sniper", there has been no additional increase to ranged sneak attack/PBS range. The 5 meters that the first core gives is OK, but I would say that a sniper should have a little more. Now if anyone would like to correct me and say that this is actually good enough as is, that would be good because I don't really have any experience playing crossbow rogues.

Something that I have noticed in the past to be a huge problem with great crossbows is that they are somewhat buggy with attack speed which can make you lose shots for no reason. Haven't tested in awhile, will head on now and see.

From memory:
This is with all attack speed feats for crossbows at fairly high levels. Using a great crossbow, I hold down fire. The shots start off shooting normally, but eventually the bolts start firing way too late. They become out of sync with the crossbow shooting animation. IIRC, the sound goes at the same time as the bolt, not the crossbow. Once the gap gets to about a half second maybe, shots start disappearing.

Could anyone else confirm this problem/ if they have seen this before? I might just be me.

Anyway, good changes, especially like how traps will be better. This is long overdue.

[Urjak]

Here are the proposed changes for the Rogue Mechanic tree.

*snip*

• Sharpshooter: +3 to hit and damage with all bows, crossbows, and thrown weapons. Non-repeating crossbows increase the damage to +6.
• Mechanical Reloader: You reload repeating crossbows 20% faster, draw thrown weapons 20% faster, and reload non-repeating crossbows 40% faster.
• Time Bomb: Cooldown is now 20 seconds. Time to set the bomb is now very fast. Time before exploding is now 2 seconds. Saving Throw to negate knockdown now uses your Disable Device skill as the DC.
• Sniper: (2 AP): You gain 1 extra sneak attack die with bows, crossbows and thrown weapons. Non-repeating crossbows increase this to 2 sneak attack dice and also gain +1[W]. Great crossbows now Vorpal on a 19-20.

Sev~

Looks all very interesting ... does that mean that (in combination with all the other available attack speed bonuses of course), it will finally be possible to break through that seemingly hard-coded ~84 attacks per minute limit for throwing weapons? So far various tests of different people (including myself) have shown that once one reaches those approx. 84 attacks/minute, additional attack speed bonuses don't help - but since this would affect the time needed for drawing aka "reloading" => would that finally stack and thus make it possible to get over those ~84 apm?

[Urjak]

All around good stuff here, although I noticed that despite making them a "sniper", there has been no additional increase to ranged sneak attack/PBS range. The 5 meters that the first core gives is OK, but I would say that a sniper should have a little more. Now if anyone would like to correct me and say that this is actually good enough as is, that would be good because I don't really have any experience playing crossbow rogues.

Aw, forgot about that one in my previous post - the 5 additional meters are not enough to comfortably deal ranged sneak attack - this should be more like +3 meters / core

[maddong]

Looks all very interesting ... does that mean that (in combination with all the other available attack speed bonuses of course), it will finally be possible to break through that seemingly hard-coded ~84 attacks per minute limit for throwing weapons? So far various tests of different people (including myself) have shown that once one reaches those approx. 84 attacks/minute, additional attack speed bonuses don't help - but since this would affect the time needed for drawing aka "reloading" => would that finally stack and thus make it possible to get over those ~84 apm?

I'm thinking not since I don't think quick draw makes a difference in the cap rate and that is "drawing speed". I'm guessing every attack style caps at 3x bab0 attack rate.

[Severlin]

All these Rogue proposal threads have worked that only changes are called out. If it's not mentioned, it's not changed.

This is correct. This lists additions and changes.

Sev~

[blerkington]

Hi,

There's an awful lot of power in the Tier 3 core (Expert Builder) relative to its cost.

Thanks.

[LuKaSu]

Hi,

There's an awful lot of power in the Tier 3 core (Expert Builder) relative to its cost.

Thanks.

It's not Tier 3, it's the level 18 Core. (http://ddowiki.com/page/Mechanic_enhancements) They just didn't mention the cores that they didn't change.

[Myrddinman]

Hi,

There's an awful lot of power in the Tier 3 core (Expert Builder) relative to its cost.

Thanks.

It's actually Tier 4...Sev only listed the changes