Assassin - Complete Rogue Rework v1.8

[Hirumakai]

I downloaded the mod and played around with it a bit. I think its quite interesting.

1) I like the fact the rogue has an option for stamina regen which isn't in a locked tree (level 8 talent in the stealth tree). It always struck me as odd given their heavy stamina use. Rogue's brew is an interesting option when compared to the Combat Veteran Tree as well. It is a bit wierd not having access to the Combat Veteran tree, but perhaps the brew is sufficient replacement.

2) On a similar note, Marauders have no stamina regen built in until 14th level (locked advanced tree). They've lost light of foot as well as the combat veteran tree, which means certain mid and late game boss fights might be difficult, or force them to certain items. Probably will take more testing to be sure.

3) I like the changes to the Survival tree. Although I'm not sure if Heighten Senses is going overboard or not. When I was playing around with the tree myself in a mod, I split off the trap disarming/finding to the charm mastery, making it gadget mastery. However your version may be fine. I like the blind fight at level 5, it plus the 10 space "darkvision" gives a good reason to go 5/5 instead of 1/5.

4) I'm wondering if Trained Reaction and Danger Sense overlap a bit much? In one case, you get a damage reduction for a turn when dropping below X% health, while the other is a damage reduction by dropping by Y% health. Both are designed to keep you alive against one shots. I tried replacing Trained Reactions with Slow Motion, which I find is an interesting and unique ability, and thematically appropriate to Mobility. Its also a major loss to the archer class I think, who being a ranged striker can take advantage of the ability to move out of ranged attacks completely.

5) Disengage still feels bad by itself. Combining it with tumble does improve it to the point of at least usability, as you can instantly get to angle where it can actually do some good. Giving some mobility to the archer class in addition to more to the rogue definitely feels like a step in the right direction. However, I still feel disengage is a downgrade from Vault (which let you pick target locations) or Hack'n'Back which gave you an attack with the retreat. As it is, spending a full turn for a direct line jump back, and minor speed boost (at most 100% or effectively 2 steps to everyone else's single action) feels lacking to me. Compare to Lightning Speed, Phase Door, Dimensional step or Hack'n'Back.

6) On the Marauder I kind of miss having a light armor talent which increases defense. You might want to consider a light/no armor talent for the Combat Training tree.

If you want to see what my take on the generic trees were, you can look at:
http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/mobility-experiment

Feel free to take code from it or not, as you may disagree with my assessments. However, I do look forward to refinements of this addon and the rogue class.

[Razakai]

Thanks for the comments.

1/2) Duellist/Tempo was supposed to be the generic stamina regeneration talent for Rogue subclasses, but it's a bit underwhelming. Rogue is fine due to Soothing Darkness/Rogue's Brew, but you're right that Marauder (and probably Shadowblade) are now lacking. I'll probably give them back Combat Veteran, and Duellist is getting reworked a bit. Exposed will apply on parrying/dodging attacks, and Tempo will consume Exposed stacks to restore stamina, so that should be a solid form of regen when combined with other talents in the tree.
I want to rework Marauder a little to go along with these Rogue changes, but as of yet I haven't got enough of a design for them so for now it's just placeholder stuff like the Thuggery buffs.

3) I really like the Gadget Mastery idea, especially as Heightened Senses is getting a bit cluttered. I'll split the trap stuff into that next release. (the initial Survival/Mobility ideas were taken from the thread on merging them where you were posting actually)

4) It was a difficult decision to remove Slow Motion as it is pretty cool. But having guaranteed spike damage protection in Mobility gives all the Rogue classes a solid baseline defense, whereas Slow Motion is significantly less useful for most classes. Archer is, again, on my list of classes to look at so I'd like to give them some buffs too. I think they're probably stronger overall now even with the Slow Motion loss, due to superior mobility and defense.
Danger Sense is probably going to be tweaked a little. You're right that there's overlap, but it should be more distinctive. Danger Sense is intended to counter the whole 'autoexplore into a skirmisher rare and get 100>0', whereas Trained Reactions is more of a general defense mechanism vs hard hitting bosses. Might up the cooldown on DS for a start.

5) Yeah Disengage is still a bit weak. I think I'll repurpose the Vault code so you can pick any direction in a backwards cone, and up the movement speed. I'm even thinking about giving it a 1 turn damage avoidance effect, as it makes thematic sense you'd be able to move out of the way of attacks while leaping back, but that could overbuff it.

6) There is! Check Armor Training, it now affects Light Armor as well with Defence/-Fatigue/Crit Reduction.

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/node/5803

v1.6

- The numbers on many talents have been rebalanced.
- Fixed a number of tooltip issues.
- More skills will no longer break stealth on use.
- Rogues and Marauders start with the correct skills.
- Flurry has been reworked.
- Soothing Shadows now correctly displays the life and stamina regen granted.
- Lethality grants offhand weapon damage rather than crit damage bonus.
- Parry no longer has an active component, but the damage blocked has been increased. Now causes your parries and dodges to apply Exposed, which causes your next attack to deal additional physical damage.
- Tempo has been reworked. Now causes your Exposed hits to restore energy and stamina, and gives a small chance to Expose on hit.
- Lunge no longer scales based on Exposed stats. Now has a cooldown (reduced for each time you Expose an enemy), always cripples, and inflicts high mainhand damage.
- Dirty Fighting has been added to Rogues as a locked tree and heavily reworked.
- Dirty Fighting (talent) reduces the stun, pin, blind and confusion resistance of targets by 50% in addition to stunning them.
- Backstab now grants a damage boost for each disabling effect the target is under, and has a chance to inflict random status effects against disabled targets.
- Feint has been replaced with Distract, which Blinds or Confuses enemies in a small cone and reduces the accuracy/movement speed.
- Cripple has been replaced with Twist the Knife, a melee attack that extends the duration of debuffs and strips beneficial effects/sustains for each debuff active.
- Disengage's movement speed boost has been increased, and it now grants evasion at level 4.
- Increased the cooldown of Danger Sense.

[nsrr]

http://te4.org/node/5803
- Flurry has been reworked.

- Lethality grants offhand weapon damage rather than crit damage bonus.

This leaves Marauders with no way to increase off hand damage?

[Razakai]

This leaves Marauders with no way to increase off hand damage?

Correct. It seems like a big nerf, but overall they should be stronger. Consider that they now have boosted damage/speed from Tempo, additional attacks from Quickdraw, and the newly buffed Dirty Fighting. Plus the Thuggery buffs.

Long term Marauder is going to get some specific trees and things to make it more unique and less Rogue+Berserker, but for now I think they'll be in a stronger state than vanilla.

Looking at Tempo I might have to tweak it though as you can attack very, very fast against anything with multi-hit attacks. I'd appreciate people's feedback on the new Duellist tree before I panic-nerf it!

[nsrr]

This leaves Marauders with no way to increase off hand damage?

Correct. It seems like a big nerf, but overall they should be stronger. Consider that they now have boosted damage/speed from Tempo, additional attacks from Quickdraw, and the newly buffed Dirty Fighting. Plus the Thuggery buffs.

Long term Marauder is going to get some specific trees and things to make it more unique and less Rogue+Berserker, but for now I think they'll be in a stronger state than vanilla.

Hm, I guess I will have to wait and see what other changes you make. One thing that I never liked much about Marauders is that they are weak dual wielders compared to every other dual wielding class (and I mean in Vanilla, where they still had the off hand bonus). Rogues, Shadowblades, Reavers and Temporal Wardens are all better. Rogues and Shadowblades get Lethality and increased off-hand damage, Reavers can use two 1hs and get off-hand damage, and Temporal Wardens have the benefit of getting all their weapon masteries from one class talent, as well as changing dam mods to something more favorable to the class.
It seems like Marauders should have at least something in line with this. Personally, I would rather see them have the ability to wield two 1hs (even without the off hand bonus would be fine) or at least have the benefit of getting Weapon and Dagger mastery from a single talent, making the option of using a 1h and a dagger more viable.

Everything you've done with this add on is pretty brilliant and actually makes me want to play Rogue classes, but it seems unnecessary to nerf the dual wielding ability of an already weak dual wielder. That's just my opinion, though.

[Razakai]

What'll most likely happen to buff Marauders will be that Weapon Mastery/Dagger Mastery get merged, and they'll get a unique class tree that allows them to make a variety of unarmed attacks in combination with their dual strikes. 'Dirty fighting' style things like getting kicks and punches in, so they'll be able to really rack up the hits. I'm currently working on some Berserker changes which will impact them, so I expect I'll release a general class rework addon that'll affect all 3 classes.
But yes, Marauder will certainly get some more focused attention.

[nsrr]

What'll most likely happen to buff Marauders will be that Weapon Mastery/Dagger Mastery get merged, and they'll get a unique class tree that allows them to make a variety of unarmed attacks in combination with their dual strikes.

Sounds good

I don't know what you have in the works, but if you're adding some extra non-weapon attacks, maybe do more with head bashing? Having a passive chance to add a head smash when you make a regular melee attack plus a couple headwear based attacks and maybe some kind of headwear 'mastery' to improve damage? Just a thought

[Razakai]

What'll most likely happen to buff Marauders will be that Weapon Mastery/Dagger Mastery get merged, and they'll get a unique class tree that allows them to make a variety of unarmed attacks in combination with their dual strikes.

Sounds good

I don't know what you have in the works, but if you're adding some extra non-weapon attacks, maybe do more with head bashing? Having a passive chance to add a head smash when you make a regular melee attack plus a couple headwear based attacks and maybe some kind of headwear 'mastery' to improve damage? Just a thought

Pretty much. Likely the first talent will be a pseudo-Flexible Combat that lets you make punches/kicks/headbutts whenever you make melee attacks, and the rest of the tree has powerful unarmed techs. The bits from Thuggery like Riot-Born/Total Thuggery will then go into a new tree focusing more on general melee stuff for them, so they'll have an unarmed tree+general combat tree. Then probably a new locked tree or 2, not sure what yet.

[trenggiling]

How about a tree focused around using one, and only one, dagger?
It could be a sort of dagger/unarmed hybrid build, which would be really cool and thematic IMO.

[Doctornull]

How about a tree focused around using one, and only one, dagger?
It could be a sort of dagger/unarmed hybrid build, which would be really cool and thematic IMO.

That sounds like a whole new class.

One-handed weapon (Str+Cun build) or dagger (Dex+Cun build), plus unarmed.

[Razakai]

I have a new Rogue subclass in mind that will focus on 1h+unarmed, but for Marauder I'll keep them as 1h+dagger. I'll try to encourage the explicit use of 1h+dagger rather than dual dagger too, if merging weapon mastery isn't enough.

[HousePet]

Headbutting is like unarmed combat.

[rekenner]

Getting back to my high-30s, about to do the Prides (which is why I stopped) Rogue: Offhand damage being tied to lethality feels so... bad, as it's an otherwise completely useless talent. I gather that that might have been the intent, but it feels so bad to have it be back to basically just offhand damage as that talent.

I do like the change to Flurry, though.

Edit: I'm not sure what's causing it, but sometimes Shadow Dance falls off early, with nothing causing it. Just now, I used Shadow Dance, used Flurry, and destealthed ... and my Shadow Dance is off. No messages about it being taken off by an enemy.

[HousePet]

Just wondering, but is having the same damage on offhand as main hand really a big deal?
Is there any benefit to having extra damage on the offhand rather than more damage in general?
So what if it doesn't do as much damage as your main hand, you are still doing more damage than just using one knife.