ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Skipping on Dex (collecting on equipment maybe?) and increasing Will instead. Has anyone tried this? If only there were less Dex requiring talents, this build will be much more viable. May be going full Antimagic and relying deeply on stealth and traps?

I haven't played much Rogue, but you can basically max out three stats by endgame so going Dex, Wil, Cun should be fine. You'd just need to dump Str or put a minimal number of points in Str to use gear.

someone has won Insane as a mind star rogue, so its possible. Not sure if its optimal and probably its easier to start with daggers and then phase into mind stars.

Effigy wrote:I haven't played much Rogue, but you can basically max out three stats by endgame so going Dex, Wil, Cun should be fine. You'd just need to dump Str or put a minimal number of points in Str to use gear.

This defeats the whole point of mindstars. You already get str->cun substitution on daggers as a rogue and the only benefit mindstars have is that they use different stats.

Atarlost wrote:This defeats the whole point of mindstars. You already get str->cun substitution on daggers as a rogue and the only benefit mindstars have is that they use different stats.

The main point of going mindstar for me is an additional much needed mindpower boost for AM and fungus.

You don't need any real DEX investment beyond equipment to use t1/t2/t3 daggers. Later on you wouldn't even for tier5 daggers.

People are widely under the mistaken impression that stats are of primary important for requirements. This is completely false.

By far the most important thing you should consider stats for is the %damage on weapons in particular. As a very very far behind second is the modest contribution to power that stats give.

Finally the point you put into stats from level are generally dwarfed by the stats you get from gear, esepcially on Insane. A main stat at 150 is reasonable for insane. To get there you have put 50 points from level and gotten 100 from gear and other things (maybe a potion or wyrm bile etc). So for stats gear is twice as important.

A rogue could easily put 5 points into dex and get the rest from gear for the first few tiers of daggers and see no appreicable loss in effectiveness. Additionally after Will and Cunn, the next best stat is likely to be Dex. Other possibilities are STR or MAG depending on your build (Arcane Might, Super power, extra phys power). Keeping in mind that STR, outside of prodigies, is not much use if you have gear that is boosting phys power already. 5 point of STR to get 1 phys power is a not a difference maker. And Con just sucks and is a non-factor. Also keeping in mind that some key Rogue things scale on Dex.

Your stat choice is mainly about gear. Both in how it determines you effectiveness and how you actually get to certain levels of both a stat and a power/crit.

The only stat that does not take a serious hit in its contributions is the crit on Cunning. Which is not an issue for this build and in general everyon takes anyway precisely because of this.

You can easily do this build with will and cun maxed from level investment and have other two stats at about 35 from the other third of level based stat points and be perfectly fine and even close to optimal. The real question is about gear, with gear you should probably go for 3 stats although due to the way gear works out you can often get STR and DEX together on gear and would probably be fine with 4 in that case. Will is pretty much on any type of gear and can be found in conjunction with anything, cunning is similar but more likely to be on leather than say massive armor. You can definitely get wil/cun/dex/str to good level via gear. Depending on prodigy you may wish to emphsize STR over dex but again that is mostly gear based and even in the case of a Super power build is not that big a deal as it only give you Mindpower and that would only help for certain corner cases for a Rogue. If you go Superpower you are probably more concerned with getting Will as high as possible.

On Insane with drowning there is no reason you can't get enough dex to wield a pair of decent daggers. And you should never have to unwield them until you get some decent mindstars as you simply won't find t3 stuff.

Another option is to scum Zigur's mindstar store for decent t3 mindstars, but those will expensive and you need to kill stuff you make the money and you need money for the MS training as well.

PUtting even 10 points into dex to make the start doable is a complete drop in the bucket and the crit shrug off makes dex a perfectly viable third stat anyway. In the end mindstar starts need a significant amount of money, on Insane this is actually easier but you gotta be able to kill stuff. You could try doing it with traps alone, but a good flurry from t3 daggers is invaluable for the start especially since melee is WAY WAY harder than ranged on Insane.

The analysis that a point in Dex is a point lost in Cun or Will is completely wrong. A point in dex is a point lost in MAG or STR and the contribution of either of those is minor unless you go Arcane Might, and people looking for that sort of thing would probably go Super Power which is mainly for Willpower for Rogues anyway.

Its a non-issue.

A_V_E wrote:

Atarlost wrote:This defeats the whole point of mindstars. You already get str->cun substitution on daggers as a rogue and the only benefit mindstars have is that they use different stats.

The main point of going mindstar for me is an additional much needed mindpower boost for AM and fungus.

I am not sure I would go AM/fungus for rogue, but that being said the winner who did this previously was AM (I think without fungus which is funky since fungus is 5x better than AM).

If I did go this route I would seriously consider superpower as a prodigy. But again the powers are stepped down to a very large degree and while its nice to have a portion of your STR be mindpower that contribution is minor compared to other things and SHOULD NOT be sacrificed for.

By far the main contributor to mindstar damage is the stats. Adding 30% will onto a mindstar is very significant. The extra MP from STR is nice but it will not make a huge difference even if you boost STR hugely which would require sacrificing other things and is not worth it. Getting say an extra 10-15 MP from taking super power is nice, but subsequently boosting STR past what is easily gotten is not a huge difference maker especially since Fungus does not scale to particularly greater effectiveness from that and scaling AM is not that strong anyway.

If one were to put 10 level point into dex instead of STR they would lose 2 physical power and 2 mind power if they took super power. That is a neglible drop in the bucket.

One could easily invest 10 into dext in the first 10 levels of insane and never touch dex againt and still have STR at decent level for a third stat with the remain level points and gear. In fact, you are almost certainly going to wind up with medium high dex ANYWAY because a lot of leather has STR with DEX on it.

Its really a completely moot concern.

cctobias wrote:The analysis that a point in Dex is a point lost in Cun or Will is completely wrong. A point in dex is a point lost in MAG or STR and the contribution of either of those is minor unless you go Arcane Might, and people looking for that sort of thing would probably go Super Power which is mainly for Willpower for Rogues anyway.

Its a non-issue.

If you're going to wind up pumping dexterity anyways why use mindstars at all? Daggers always use 0.45 dex 0.45 cun (for rogues) while mindstars use 0.4 will 0.2 cun at tier 3 up to 0.5 will 0.3 cun at tier 5. If dex=will=cun the dagger gets at least 12.5% more benefit from stats. Daggers are just better as weapons, especially at the levels the game is reportedly hardest.

Atarlost wrote:If you're going to wind up pumping dexterity anyways why use mindstars at all? Daggers always use 0.45 dex 0.45 cun (for rogues) while mindstars use 0.4 will 0.2 cun at tier 3 up to 0.5 will 0.3 cun at tier 5. If dex=will=cun the dagger gets at least 12.5% more benefit from stats. Daggers are just better as weapons, especially at the levels the game is reportedly hardest.

You never played with mindstars, right? Psiblades talent increases stat modifiers on mindstars up to 0.95 will 0.57 cun for tier 5 (at 5/5 1.3 mastery). And mindstars are the only weapon that does not receive offhand penalty. Among other benefits, this talent also increases mindstar stat and mindpower bonuses up to 1.9 (at same mastery).

In general when "pumping" a stat the vast majority of that is from equipment not leveling.

You could easily have 150 willpower and still have 80-100 dex at endgame by "pumping" will and and ignoring dex just because you get items with multiple bonuses. Dex is a good third stat. It reduces crit damage and some rogue things scale with it.

You don't end the game with 12 in dex. Its not gonna happen.

You can bring three stats the 60 with level points if one of them is dex it does not suddenly make mindstars pointless. There is little reason to bring dex to a hard stop at 60, but it certainly in absolutely no way precludes from trying to make willpower and cunning as high as possible. Due to the nature of ego and itemization you could easily windup with will and cunning very close to dex, because will and cunning wind up on many items with multiple stats and get put on pretty much all types of gear and it will just so happen that unless the OP wishes to make a massive armor rogue (which is perfectly fine if you abandon stealth and a quite valid build) that could easily wind up with very high dex simply by choosing equipment with the highest +Will.

Now if the OP did go the massive armor route this might change some as they are more likely to get Str and Con, but even there Dex will show up as dex is part of the that ego loadout. The biggest problem for a massive armor person is getting Mag. So if you wish to make full use of Arcane Might going heavy armor is likely to but into maxing Mag, but not Will, Cunn, or Dex.

People will tell you if you want to go massive armor you just "pump" STR. No again, wrong. STR does nothing for you armor, in fact dex is better as its crit damage reducation stacks with massive armor crit change reduction. For Massive armor you want a set of gear that bring you to 60 STR, then you wear the armor and then you put on your gear with your real stats in this case Will/Cunn. Now for such a build STR is actually still a good third stat as it gives some physical power and has a nice interaction with superpower and a decent chance to get good items with STR on it of that type.


With Psiblades Mindstars are HUGELY more effective if you have the stats. The power rating on daggers don't mean jack compared to stat contribution for actualy damage. Even then though Mindstars are not necessarily the best weapon option. But they are competitive in damage and with high enough stats arguably superior. Mindstars however are VASTLY superior when it comes to defense Leaves Tides evasion to ALL types of attacks, not just melee, with high mindpower its about 40% avoidance. Nothing from daggers offers such a thing. Additionaly Mindstars give a very decent heal and a global speed slow.


Anyway the above critiicism is still meaningless as you can easily do a build with 10 points spent in DEX and then spend the rest in Will->Cun->Str. Is it possible and even favorable in some cases to do Dex instead of Str. Yes because Dex is a good defensive stat that has not step down on it for that defense.

A Mindstar build allows you to get quite good t oexcellent Mindpower, very high APR, various special effects or mastery bonuses, the best stat scaling of almost any weappon (and stat scaling to largest contributor to damage with phys power) and very good defense. All of this while offering equally viable options for your third stat or a hybrid between third stats.

The above statement seems to be stuck in the idea that a Mindstar rogue only has a point if you are assiduously avoid Dex as a stat. This is simply wrong. You don't need to have a focus on ANY stat other than Will/Cun and can therefore do whatever the heck you want. You don't avoid Dex like the plague on the off chance you really might want to use daggers instead. That is silly.