ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I saw a rogue who specced on traps and used a sling as it seemed. he was lvl 37.
I had the idea of a different kind of playing the rogue, namely The Sniper
momentum, blinding speed and perhaps speed rune/ or shalore elf race make up a little for the missing dmg for a ranged rogue.
Traps dmg seems to scale better with cunning now so slings are the weapon of choice as they use cunning too.
To make the ranged rogue a at least partially viable choice, only a few changes are necessary:

- I think that this kind of build would be viable, if the poisontree works would with ranged weapons!
- The other possibility for the sniper would be to make stealth crits work with ranged weapons (but i dont know if that would be too powerful)

Making the poisontree working with slings and bows would give a new strategic option for the difficult rogue class and give the option to play in an exotic way as a sniper using mainly poison and traps, which would fit perfectly with the coceptionstyl of a ranged asassin.

I dont think these changes are very complicated or imbalanced and would really apreciate a further discussion or at best the alteration of the posontree.

Thanks for the exiting game and the great work you did so far,
Regardful Tagedieb

Reminds me of my sling-slinging summoner. Hybrids like this naturally evolve from the way this game plays.
Thanks for sharing this idea.

If you can get to character level 25, then a dual-wielding, slinging, trapping rogue becomes very viable. Getting to that level can be tough, though, and you probably won't use slings regularly until around clvl 20. Your proposed build sounds an awful lot like the night goddess I'm playing, Ratridevi. Her latest feat is standing toe-to-toe with Atamathon and dominating it--no traps, no stealth, no stair-scumming, and no other funny business-just a good old-fashioned whoopin'! (She did tactically flee at first, though, to change to more appropriate gear).

Since I can't invest in Sling Mastery, I rely on other talents and critical hits to boost damage. Fortunately, the generic attack talents work for slings:

Precise Strikes - sustained, +accuracy, +crit chance
Perfect Strike - +100 accuracy for a few turns
Blinding Speed - +global speed
Lethality - +crit chance
Willful Combat - adds to power of weapon (very nice!)
Backstab - shooting stunned enemies will be critical
Deadly Strikes - +APR after hitting a target in melee

Moreover, dual-weilding techniques (i.e., sling and dagger) can still be extremely useful:

Precision - sustained, gives APR (very nice!)
Momentum - sustained (but depletes stamina), boosts attack speed (extremely nice while it lasts!)
Dual Strike - stun an enemy in melee
Dirty Fighting - stun an enemy in melee
Sweep - targets in melee range still bleed
Cripple - cripples enemy in melee
Dual Weapon Defense - increase defense (nice!)

I believe stealth talents also work, but I didn't go that build with this character.

I will verify for those wondering that this is a very fun playing style and should be made more accessible. The Field Control and Survival talent trees add much survivability. I've heaved foes, placed traps that they'll step on when they come back towards me, and fired at them as they're returning. I've placed a lure, then Rushed to it as an escape strategy. Even though my secondary weapons are two melee weapons, I rarely switch to them because it usually isn't worth using up a turn during the heat of battle (unlike TWs who have celerity), but I think that's as it should be.

Anyway, back to your point. Slinging rogues are fun. Slinging rogues could be better if poisons work. However, if we want to have a poisonous, slinging, trapping rogue, then I suggest creating a new rogue sub-class. If we add poisonous projectiles to the current rogue class, then the vast majority of rogues would get something for nothing, which they really don't need. The main reason, though, is to make slinging rogues more accessible and more fun. All my "Ratri" character attempts--maybe 4 or 5--at slinging rogues died, and I'm generally pretty good with rogues. To make this build viable, I unlocked all the standard locked rogue trees. Slinging rogues would need different trees locked/unlocked, as well as different mastery levels for talent trees, because of balance issues.

I have a good feel for what changes would need to be done, and I hope to work on this after I finish another project. So, if other people have ideas, then please share!

Here are three simple changes that would be a start for a new ranged rogue class:
(1) poisonous projectiles
(2) detonate your traps if you target and shoot them
(3) give them the archery-utility tree (i.e., Archery Prowess tree with Flare, Crippling Shot, etc.)

Any new class deserves its own tree or two, so please suggest away or link to previously posted ideas.

Cheers!