Official Rogue Rework - Testers Required!

[nsrr]

The description for Throwing Knives lists "Accuracy Bonus: +23". Is that +23 effective accuracy for Throwing Knife attacks, or is there meant to be a stat (APR, crit, dam...) listed there?

Wish I had some constructive critisism for you, but Rogue was never enjoyable for me and I haven't played the class much at all. I haven't gotten too far with the reworked version, but so far it is much more fun for me.

I'm trying to think of the best way to put it. Classes like Rogue, Archer and Bulwark feel like they were created before ToME 4 came into its own. They are clunky and awkward and whenever I play one I end up staring at the level up screen trying to suss out a build that might be fun and actually viable... and never feeling satisfied that there is one. With this Rogue I sat staring at the initial level up screen for quite a while... but because there were several builds I wanted to try and thought would be fun and couldn't decide which one to try first. Ideally, every class would instill that feeling, and many of them do... but very few of those fall into the Warrior, Mage or Rogue meta classes.

Anyhow, I'll see if can put a little more time into it this weekend and come back with something more helpful

[Jarinex]

This isn't the assassin mod

Flashbang's about on par damage wise with springrazor, which doesn't have a DoT component. They all suffer a major damage malus (at least initially) with the prepared version, because they're not inheriting Trap Mastery's effectiveness increase. Base traps are honestly pretty okay, from what I've noticed so far, save the bladestorm trap. Damage is decent (at least for a while), cooldowns are workable, costs aren't that bad. The debuffs are there and conceptually good, though in practice I've found the bear trap's pin is about the only one that matters for a fair chunk of the game (since the other two primaries just blow things up and leave nothing left to debuff Also flashbang's blind likes to convince enemies to walk around traps, which can be unfortunate.). They're still about as clumsily effective as they ever were, just without blowing yourself up, heh. Haven't gotten to play around with the special ones yet, though.

Oh pffft, well nevermind then. I'd start a new rogue, but i'm already so far into my current rogue I would hate to start over.

[Razakai]

Yeah, the 'accuracy bonus' on throwing knives is a flat +accuracy rather than the weapon accuracy bonus stuff. Will reword it to not cause confusion.

So plans for this weekend:

- Fix the various bugs Frumple found
- Retool Duelist to provide better defense. Make it more focused on dodge/parry/avoid.
- Tweak Rogue's Brew to provide flat healing+% heal
- Add special traps to Embers
- Think about Tricks of the Trade

e: Here's the initial draft and very rough numbers for the new talents.
Parry becomes more consistent vs small/large hits, and gains the projectile evasion from Misdirection.
Tempo loses the counter, but no more fussing around with stacks, you just get the stamina/speed right away. Duelist's Focus is a new talent that should provide some solid defense vs all damage types, and smooths out burst damage via reducing critmult.
Feint is now a combination of Feint and Lunge, less damage and a longer cooldown but easier to use.
Cloak of Shadows is a renamed Soothing Darkness, loses the debuff cleanse but provides flat DR for a few turns giving you safety from retaliation damage etc when opening.
As Misdirection is now part of Parry, new talent is Turn the Tables. Goes with the debuff theme of Scoundrel, gives you a chance to negate and reflect stuns and the like. Bit like a slightly less reliable but offensive Unflinching Resolve.

Duelist

Parry - Parries incoming attacks, giving you a 12-25% chance to negate melee hits and a 12-25% chance to deflect projectiles 1-3 tiles away.
Tempo - Each time you parry, dodge or avoid damage you regain 5-15% of a turn and 1-5 stamina. This cannot occur more than 3 times per turn.
Duelist's Focus - Enhances your reflexes, giving you a 10-24% chance to entirely avoid damage, and reducing damage taken from critical hits by 15-50%. Only works in light armor.
Feint - Switch places with a target, following up with a stab for 150-300% offhand damage that cripples (50% power) for 3-5 turns. Cooldown is reduced by 1 each time you parry, dodge or avoid damage, but not more than once per turn.

Soothing Darkness replaced by...
Cloak of Shadows - While stealthed, increases life regeneration by 7-35, stamina regeneration by 1-5 and reduces all damage taken by 15-40. This persists for 3 turns after exiting stealth, or 4 at talent level 3 and above.

Misdirection replaced by...
Turn the Tables - When an attacker afflicted by your Scoundrel's Strategies attempts to apply a detrimental physical effect to you, you have a 5-25% chance to negate it. If they are adjacent to you, you redirect it onto them at 30-70% duration.

e2: Although this might make Marauders into walking gods. Might need to figure out how to not have that happen! The light armor restriction helps a little I guess.

[Frumple]

Mm... minor bug with heartseeker targeting, at least with the graphics settings I've got. You can target things that are behind enemies, and the line will still show blue (i.e. you're supposed to be able to use the talent on them), but if you try to it just fails. Doesn't set the talent on cooldown, at least, which is nice, but it doesn't work, either. Feedback's making it so I can't really tell whether you're supposed to be able to leap over things with it or not, basically.

E: Actually, another possible small one with the same talent. Apparently you can't use it on tiles that have enemies in it you can't see. So you can't try to nail the rogue you know is there, but not showing due to stealth, with the talent, as an example. When you try, it fails to work same as above. Near as I can recall, mooooost talents like heartseeker (rush, blindside, etc.) don't behave that way, so it's probably unintentional?

[Razakai]

Yep, looks like I've set the talent to hit rather than bolt. I've fixed that just now. Will post a new version of the download this weekend that has all the bugfixes+Duelist changes.

[e1337ist]

It would be nice if we could have some kind of timer showing how long an enemy is still removed by Pitfall Trap. A buff or mixed effect timer on the side of the screen would be neat. A debuff on the enemy would word too but I can't check that when they're removed from the map. heh

Edit: It would also be nice if Throwing Knives could somehow be programmed to use advanced weapon statistics when the option is enabled. I could live without it, but it would make me feel better.

[Razakai]

All new version posted, this time cut down to 212mb. New Duelist, a few new talents in Stealth and Scoundrel, and a bunch of bugfixes.

[Frumple]

Immediate impression is definitely that duelist is more of an impact in just raw survivability -- the first character didn't die nearly as quickly as they've been liking to, hehehe. Also immediate impression is that it would be really nice to have some kind of overt visual cue when it works -- a flyover +parry or +deflect as appropriate (maybe even with the amount of damage parried or deflected shown in the combat log?) would help significantly in really getting a feel as to how much help the talent is being, without having to constantly eyeball the combat log. Probably a +focus sort thing for the third tier, too.

[Razakai]

Adding a parry message in should be pretty simple. Thought I did it, guess not! I already have it in place for the new Misdirection status effect blocker. The Duelist's Focus part is a bit of an engine limitation unfortunately - flat damage cancellation is shared with other talents so I'd need DG approval to change that function.

Glad that Duelist is working well. Combined with the flat DR on Soothing Darkness and Misdirection's debuff redirection Rogue should be less squishy, but not straight up tanks. Tried to make sure the majority of their defense is either themed around chance to avoid/dodge/parry, or done by disabling the enemy with Scoundrel/Poisons/Traps. I really don't want them to just end up as a tanky heavy melee, as that'd ruin the flavour.

e: I'd also appreciate people's feedback on play experience with new-Misdirection. Eyeballing the numbers it seems fine (esp as it requires an accuracy check to reapply the status), but in practice it could turn out to either be too low-impact or incredibly broken.

[Micbran]

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet nor if it was ever added to the game (I'm going to go with the very safe assumption of no) but this would be very handy for rogues, no?
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=43735

Essentially, it's an addon that allows traps to be triggered by knock back and enemies rushing through them.

[bpat]

For the issue of missable poisons, you should be able to spend 1,000 gold on any you don't have after finishing the Charred Scar from the randart merchant. This would discourage scumming for alt/non-alt Daikara, Harkor'Zun and late Dark Crypt spawns.

[Sheila]

Basing unlocks/prodigies in dark crypt in its current state is awful anyways, I don't think anything should be this way unless dark crypt is fixed not to be a death trap.

[Razakai]

I like that trap idea. I'll speak to DG about getting it added, as it'd synergize quite well with Feint or to just deal with high-mobility melee mobs.

Currently there won't be any new poisons (except for the ones you learn via Vile Poisons+Mystical Cunning), so no missing unlocks there. I might add new-poisons in a future patch but we'll see.

Letting the player buy Dragonsfire/Freezing Trap (whichever they're missing) is quite a good idea though and I'll see about getting that in.

[Frumple]

Poison that inflicts worm rot (though maybe a lower/removed chance of the status stripping aspect) would be delightful >_>

Actually sounds like something that would make a lot of sense to get from eating the corrupted sandworm heart. Could see a lot of stuff along those lines, really. Hex bile (10-25% chance to inflict random hex per turn) from siding with the corruptor, an AM-styled poison (I could see something that's like burning hex, but stronger, arcane burn, and spell only... call it Eyal Sap?*) for not, something (else) horror related... some kind of afflicted themed one? I could see a poison that had a low duration, acted sorta' like abyssal shroud/creeping darkness, and increased the spread of the darkness for every turn it was applied (stealth boost or possible unseen action effect while inside, almost certainly trigger armor of shadows, etc., etc.). Different one that spawned shadows if something died under the effect (or % based chance per turn). Lightning based one that pulsed electricity, hitting both the afflicted and those in a small radius, and could daze. And on and on and on. There's a lot of room for a lot of poisons, ehehehe.

*Though... thinking on that one, I'd personally say it'd be really nice to get some fancier named poisons up in this stuff. There's particularly good room for that in hypothetical findable ones -- your workhorse/guaranteed ones could be stuff like it already is, <foo> poison and whatnot, and then the findable stuff would have names like Shadow Bloom, Storm's Heart, Felia's** Blood, Amakthel's Breath, etc., etc., etc. Proper fantasy poison names, the kind that gets imported from the distant east and you buy in damp sewers under the capital or from that one kind old apothecary only the thieves guild knows deals in death. It's a rogue's romance, y'know?

** The name of one of maj'eyal's moons

[Razakai]

I like the idea of the fancifully named poisons. My new-poisons just had fairly dull descriptive names, and tended to be 1 per element. So far they were:

Fire: Burning Hex-style effect
Cold: Chance to freeze, iceblock penetration
Darkness: Increased damage based on missing life, summoned a ghoul on kill
Temporal: Chance to inflict warp debuffs
Nature (antimagic): Spell failure %
Acid: Scouring (reduces powers)
Physical: Stacking debuff that stunned+dealt physical damage at the end

With each of them converting your poison to the element type, with only one 'elemental' poison being active at once.