Official Rogue Rework - Testers Required!

[Razakai]

Well, although the Stealth uptime is lower you do get the offensive/defensive benefits of Shadowstrike and Soothing Darkness persisting for 2-3 turns after stealth. I never actually noticed the mobs missing me aspect much - I'd hope the regen and debuff cleanse from SD would counteract that. Maybe I've been overly cautious on the cooldowns and duration of the stealth talents though. Shadow Dance had a much higher uptime in my mod version and it was far too strong as it gave you many turns of +critmult auto crits, regen, infinite stamina and debuff removal. But adding 1 turn onto the persist duration of Shadowstrike/Soothing/Dance might be ok.

Quite surprised you're dying more though! I found Parry to give a fair bit of defense, combined with being able to kite nastier things by using knives and traps. Unlocking Artifice and taking Rogue's Brew as the first talent also helped a lot as that's a fairly hefty instant heal+cleanse.

Don't worry so much about testing in Embers or the like. This is mostly just to catch bugs and make sure there's nothing significantly over/underpowered. Tinkers interacting with Rogue would also be neat, but unfortunately I don't have the time to alter Embers as well. Next on the list would be adding new poisons and artifacts for Rogue.

Lucky Day (and luck) kinda needs improvement in general, like many prodigies.

[Mordy]

UA is removed - Shadow Dance is the effective replacement for it and HiP, offering 100% restealth chance and a short duration of unbreakable stealth. Stuff like Shadowstrike's crit bonus also persists out of stealth for a short duration. Note that there's less prebuffing for Rogues (no more Wilful Strikes etc) and the ones that remain (Blade Flurry, Marked for Death) do not break stealth. If there are talent buffs that break stealth I'll change those - will do that for Blinding Speed and Perfect Strike as I forgot about them.

Movement Infusion. Heroism Infusion. Shield runes. And many potential activable item that matters.

The trick here is more a matter of convenience. The prebuff combat routine currently for a rogue once unseen action is owned is just that : prebuffing. Your version breaks that so the new cycle would be that once an hostile target is found to stop, turn off the stealth, turn off the possible stealth autocast the player set up, wait for stealth to get out of cooldown, buff, reactivate stealth, attack. Although this version also means you cannot use movement infusion at all to attack which is kind of a nerf.

All in all, this makes stealth very clunky to use and the "optimal" gameplay is VERY annoying and micromanaging intensive. I'd suggest something simple. Unseen action has two effects in fact. The base idea is to make a (hard) stealth check roll when doing any action compared to the creatures that see you. But when nobody sees you, you cannot fail those checks so one could say that it has a second effect : making all actions not break stealth when nobody sees you. I'd say, make that second effect always active no matter what.

[Frumple]

The convenience thing is a pretty good point. Possibly even bundle it straight into stealth itself, so you can start doing that right from the start?

Though yeah, I've always found the mis-targeting (and straight up missing) aspect of stealth to be very noticeable, and it's certainly the better defensive measure than a couple turns of regen or a debuff clease. The big difference between the two is that the former is proactive, which almost always keeps you out of a lot more trouble than something reactive like a regen (which does nothing if you're not missing health) or debuff removal (which similarly does nothing if you're not debuffed ) will.

Will admit, though, I keep just not using parry, either not enough when I actually have the talent or just not at all, so I can't say how well things are going when it's being actively used. I guess I should just set it to auto-activate on seeing enemies or something and seeing how that turns out. Have the same problem with block, honestly; if I can't set it to auto I tend to barely use it. S'mostly just because it's something that more or less needs to be spammed, and constantly paying attention to it to activate it at the right time gets... tiresome, I guess.

[Razakai]

I'm not opposed to quality of life changes. I'm considering the exact way to approach it. If it's a matter of prebuffing with runes and infusions, I may make no_energy actions no longer break stealth. That's quite easy to do, and Rogue lacks any instant talents to abuse this. Might be some degenerate Adventurer build, but I'm not balancing around that. Means you can heroism/shield in advance even if something pops up around a corner.

Have slightly tuned up the other stealth talent's duration/cooldowns too, to better balance around the lack of UA. I'm quite tempted to give some sort of evasion effect after you leave stealth, but might overlap a bit with Misdirection. Will see.

I've also replaced the download link with one that's significantly smaller by deleting music and stuff. This has the stealth tweaks listed above plus the Venomous Throw bugfix.

[Frumple]

Hrm. Anyone else getting an error* when they mouse over... whatever the third tier duelist talent is... in the level up screen using the updated/downsized version, or have I managed to (somehow) screw things up on my end?

*LUA Error: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:82: bad argument

E: Actually, I'm getting the same error when I try to open up the 'm' menu, which... kinda' makes the game unplayable? Complete mess trying to reassign keys to talents, in any case.

E2: ... make that when I right-click on talents, too, which means I can't reassign anything or set anything to auto. Yeeeaaaahhh.

[Razakai]

Yeah dumb mistake on my part, gave Feint a bad description. Uploaded a new, fixed version. If you don't want to download it all again, go to \t-engine4-rogue\game\modules\tome\data\talents\techniques\duelist.lua and add local dur = t.getDisarmDuration(self,t) to line 161, as so:

Code: Select all

	info = function(self, t)
		local evasion = t.getEvasion(self, t)
		local tempo = t.getStacks(self,t)
		local dur = t.getDisarmDuration(self,t)
		return ([[Make a cunning feint that tricks your target into swapping places with you. As you swap you disarm the target for %d turns, gaining %d stacks of tempo.
		Switching places will confuse your foes, giving you a %d%% chance to avoid damage for 5 turns after use.]]):
		format(dur, tempo, evasion)
	end,

edit: also had a word with DarkGod about Stealth and he's fine with having non-instants no longer break it, so hopefully that should make Stealth nicer to use.

[Frumple]

Fix definitely worked, heh. Though with non-instant, just make sure that dealing (at least non-trap) damage while stealthed (and not dancing) breaks it, too -- rogues don't have many AoE/around corner talents available, but there are quite a few items that do. Which is also why being able to use non-instant stuff while stealthed if they can't be seen is particularly nice, even above and beyond the rogue's natural kit. Lets 'em use non-instant buffs et al.

Small quality of life thought, though... maybe have a number alongside the sustained/passive effect ala damage shields or whathaveyou for throwing knives? It'd be nice to know how many you have at a glance instead of having to mouse over.

E: Ooh, and maybe have the rogue's brew give concrete numbers as well as the percentages? That'd be another thing of notable convenience. Though maybe tie that to the tooltip of the brew itself rather than the tool talent, to keep the base tooltip from getting even bigger...

[Razakai]

Oops, that was also a typo - I meant I spoke to him about letting instants no longer break stealth (which they no longer do as of that update). So heroism, shield, movement, racials etc will never break stealth regardless of proximity.
How to handle non-instant buff effects is still something I'm thinking about, as letting Rogue corner-snipe things to death while benefiting from the autocrit+critmult of Shadowstrike could be a problem. Having stealth cancel on damage doesn't quite solve this, as it means that if you had a poison effect running that would break your stealth if it hit a target.
I might make it so if there's absolutely no mobs within sight stealth won't break, as that means you could duck behind a corner to apply buffs on seeing mobs. Though outside of a couple of charms, rarer artifacts and Light (more for Shadowblade than Rogue), I can't think of that many non-instant buffs a Rogue would use. My pre-buff sequence on them was usually just heroism, racial, blade flurry, shield.

You don't see a number on the Throwing Knife buff? I'm pretty sure I can, what UI are you using?

Putting the exact life/stamina % on Rogue's Brew is fine and easy enough to do. I might actually tweak the numbers on it a little though as I might have gone overboard on nerfing it from the mod version.

[Mordy]

Skeleton Bone Shield isn't instant though :p

The idea that instant talents don't break stealth when used in LoS of monsters is neat though. Might be worth losing access to the non instant talents prebuff outside of LoS. Although in this case it's mostly annoying for skeletons which might not really need that "nerf".

There's also the question about potential non instant item active buffs like Thorn totems (the one that gives armor).

[Frumple]

How to handle non-instant buff effects is still something I'm thinking about, as letting Rogue corner-snipe things to death while benefiting from the autocrit+critmult of Shadowstrike could be a problem. Having stealth cancel on damage doesn't quite solve this, as it means that if you had a poison effect running that would break your stealth if it hit a target.

I'd mostly think having it break stealth on damage when you're outside LoS would be enough? Basically if you 'round the corner something it'll break stealth. Maybe exempt DoTs, or at least the hits after the first one, I'unno.

You don't see a number on the Throwing Knife buff? I'm pretty sure I can, what UI are you using?

HUD's on classic, graphics are ASCII 32x32, if it makes a difference, interface style is dark, font style/size is basic/normal. Everything involving icons is disabled.* Not sure what else would help, but I can answer if y'ask, heh.

Can't help but ask insofar as design/balance goes... any chance of parry being shifted to something like dismissal or bone shield? Sustain with a cooldown after trigger, something like that. Or perhaps becoming increasingly fast with talent point investment, so setting it to auto is less of an issue. Anything to cut down on the micromanagement of it, basically It's good, now that I use it, but it's also like block, or something like having to spike a psionic shield every time you want to block damage -- certainly it's more optimal to manage the damage as is, but the effort ;_;

E: Actually, what'd be kinda' ideal, t'me, would be to leave the passive effect as is, and have the talent itself be a sustain that triggers on certain damage thresholds, possibly with talent investment lowering it (or maybe just with a lower threshold, so it wouldn't twig off 1 damage poisons or whatev'). So it'd auto-activate if it got hit with an attack, say, 90% of the block value (or at least over 5% or somethin'), at level one, and then be on cooldown for the eight turns it already is (or rather, the parry "charge" regens after 8 turns, ala bone shield). Could probably have it kick off on talent deactivation if a charge is available (or maybe even not, and have the sustain aspect have a longer than normal CD) as well, sorta' like a psionic shield, just in case the player wants to manually parry for whatever reason. Note I'd totally feel ya' if y'just said "Too much coding" or somethin', but a tweak somewhere in that direction would be... really nice, to me anyway. You'd basically have the same effect, it'd just be less effort and attention dedicated to it

*Looks like this:

E2: Also, uh. I just noticed the tempo counterattack will hit enemies at range? Tooltip suggests that's not intentional, but I definitely just hit an elf tempest on the other side of a room with parry.

E3: Aannnndd venomous throw looks like it has a typo in the tooltip? The format code on the bottom of it seems a bit off, and the tooltip is reporting stuff like 111 turn durations :V

E4: Odd one, and I'm not entirely sure how I'm getting it to happen (it's not terribly common, and I usually don't notice until a turn or three after it happens, and I've got enough of a headache I'm consistently forgetting to check the log until it's too far after for me to be arsed to dig through spam), but I'm somehow ending up with scoundrel tree debuffs when fighting enemies that don't have access to the talents, and also seem to lack anything vis a vis equipment that could be somehow reflecting it on me. I'm not sure if I'm somehow hitting myself or what, but it's... rather annoying. And occasionally deadly when it manages to get me to proc fumble at a bad time. Maybe some kind of check to keep you from self-inflicting those particular debuffs?

E5: Okay... the bladestorm trap. Does it scale pretty hard or something, or is the tooltip just a damned dirty liar? It is not even remotely durable (30% resall is not going to save 15 HP from anything, especially not with 30% armor hardiness and barely any armor) at level four, and is significantly flimsier than, say, a toxic canister from the tinker (which itself isn't exactly durable, but it can at least take a hit or two). If you wanted to keep the HP, but actually make it so it's durable, maybe set it so it can't take more than one damage per turn?

[Razakai]

I wouldn't mind making Bone Shield not break stealth. Skeletons are a fairly archetypical Rogue race after all. Are there any other particular non-instant buffs you can think of outside of items?

Might be an issue with that UI - I'll have a look and see if Combo Points show up with the counter number on it, and if so will add that to knives. I use the UI with buff icons and they have a counter there.

As for Parry and Duelist, the active parry is something you're kinda intended to manage. It's a good way to get Tempo stacks back up after using Lunge. Although if you have it on autocast on adjacent enemy that would work pretty well too. Sorry if that wasn't what you hoped for, I understand some people do prefer more passive/sustain playstyles!
On that note - do people think Duelist is sufficient to give Rogues a decent level of defense? It's intended to be the primary way for Rogue to not explode when fighting anything, but I'm unsure if it's meeting that goal.

Yeah Tempo is supposed to be range 1. I think I've made this bug on every single counterattack talent I've ever written.

I may have aligned the Venomous Throw tooltip incorrectly after fixing the duration - will fix that tonight.

That Scoundrel issue is very odd. I'll make sure to mark the triggers as only working vs hostile targets and hopefully that fixes it.

And Bladestorm is probably lying! I may have copied the Lure life scaling and not noticed how bad it is. I'll make it scale more like Fatal Attractor or the like, as it should be able to take a few hits.

[Frumple]

I wouldn't mind making Bone Shield not break stealth. Skeletons are a fairly archetypical Rogue race after all. Are there any other particular non-instant buffs you can think of outside of items?

Evasion

Many of the escort trees, too... Barrier comes to immediate mind, ferex.

As for Parry and Duelist, the active parry is something you're kinda intended to manage. It's a good way to get Tempo stacks back up after using Lunge. Although if you have it on autocast on adjacent enemy that would work pretty well too.

Irritatingly enough, autocast on adjacent, while probably the most effective auto insofar as at least something hitting it, is also pretty ineffective (you want to parry plenty of things that are coming at you from range, after all, and they tend to be at least as common/dangerous as adjacent attacks) and fairly likely to just get you killed (i.e. it triggers, blocks nothing or a piddly 10 damage attack or somethin', and then the enemy explodes you. That's an issue with parry (and block) period, but you're losing more turns/causing it to happen more when it's on auto).

On that note - do people think Duelist is sufficient to give Rogues a decent level of defense? It's intended to be the primary way for Rogue to not explode when fighting anything, but I'm unsure if it's meeting that goal.

Hehehe, I definitely don't think duelist (or at least the first two talents -- I haven't gotten around to using feint or lunge) is sufficient -- like I said, I'm dying hella' easier than I did with the previous incarnation of rogue.** The active portion of parry itself has actually gotten me killed more than once... for whatever reason (guesses: being squishier than block using classes to begin with, own insistence on actually using it/setting it to auto so I don't have to manage it) it seems not even as effective as block as a defensive measure, which is particularly kinda' damning in the early/mid game, heh.* And the CD's higher than even tlvl one block, of course, which means even trying to manage its use, you're not as likely to actually catch an attack that it would not be mostly wasted on. The omni-effectiveness is conceptually a good thing, but I think I've noted to you somewhere else before that block's limited damage types is almost never actually a concern -- that's especially true in the early/mid game, where the majority of damage is physical and there's even fewer notably common other damage types, so in practice it's just kinda' there.

Parry's passive effect... well, it's there, I guess? I rarely actually notice it, and I think the most consistent thing it's done is cut down on some of the retaliation damage fan of knives has been netting me.*** It's a worse (numbers are broadly lower, iirc, especially early and considering it's not 100%, doesn't have the deflection effect) and inconsistent cloak tessellation that's a passive. Understand it's weaker 'cause it is a passive aspect and it's alongside the active one, but, uh. Yeah.

Tempo's stacks are basically unnoticeable, and a complete bastard to build up with just parry besides (one of the reasons I haven't gotten around to trying the other two talents ) -- the counterattack's there and fairly powerful, but it's also basically less effective than, well. Block's counterattack effect. Or any of the actual counterattack talents from pretty much any other class. Which is again sorta' understandable 'cause it has other effects, but as a defensive sort of thing, it's a pretty iffy addition to the rogue's survivability. Alssoooo, like with knives, with my setup the number of stacks (ala combo points or somethin') don't show up. Actually don't show up with mouseover, either, just the current bonus.

All that said, a rogue using duelist and shoving 4-5 points into parry is definitely harder to kill on the face of things. It's just still fairly easy to kill

S'all personal first-ish impression stuff, of course, and I still need to try other builds (after this trap-focused on keels over, I'm probably going to try a stealth/assassination one and ignore the duelist tree entirely -- we didn't have it before, and it seems t'me I'm dying more now, so maybe if I just don't use it...), but that's my initial impressions. Also I really need to be doing off-computer stuff right now, so I'll leave the response at that for the moment, heh.

*Doubly so considering I almost never actually use block on block using classes before hitting 30 or at least stralite/voratun shields -- I really should pay attention to that behavior, now that I think about it, because in retrospect when I try it it results in pretty much exactly what I'm seeing with parry.

... which, uh. Would probably mean just never using parry except maybe against (slow) projectiles, since there's no particular way (save eye of the tiger, I guess) to increase the uptime (either via CD reduction or increasing the duration), unlike block.
**Normally with that, if I could get steel daggers before dying, I probably wouldn't die until I hit at least the melinda crypt/dreadfell, especially if I managed to get to UA without soaking a death. So far with the remake, I'm just kinda' dying everywhere and not even reaching character level 20
***Actually, looking at the tooltip again, I may be entirely wrong on that. Description suggests it only works on melee attacks and arrows and whatnot, not... well, everything else, of which there is a lot, much of which (i.e. retaliation damage ) is particularly notable for a rogue.

E: Got rescheduled on, so have a little more time, though... probably going to spend that playing. Incidentally, it'd be really nice if traps just didn't do friendly fire period, instead of just not hitting the player. Trying an embers run, and the poor orc that shows up to help with the outpost got instantly exploded on the first enemy. I can only imagine it's hilarious and/or farcical with maj'eyal escorts. I mean, it was before if you were trying to go primarily trapping, but now you actually don't mind being close so it's probably worse

E2: Oooh, I just noticed what may be (at least in part) causing you to hit yourself with those scoundrel debuffs: Hitting an iceblock you're stuck inside. Good to know. Also somewhat unfortunate, heh.

[Razakai]

Yeah, I was worried that might be the case. I'm quite surprised you're actually more squishy that pre-remake though - what with stuff like leeching poison, rogue's brew, better ranged options/debuffs etc. Definitely a problem if the loss of UA is causing that big a survivability drop, as the removal was more targeted at offence than defense.

I probably won't change it just yet, but will think about the structure of Duelist. Parry really needs to grant solid core defense on it's own so people aren't pigeonholed into grabbing every defensive talent Rogue has and neglecting utility/offence.

Considering also changing Soothing Darkness to no longer dispel effects (which is of limited use in the initial stages of a fight when it's usually active) and instead grant a solid amount of damage avoidance... or refluffing it as Cloak of Shadows and having it grant flat DR and life/stamina regen. That leaves Duelist as the damage avoidance tree. So new-Duelist could be...

Parry - Instead reduces melee and ranged damage by a set %. More reliable, no weird scaling when used by bosses etc etc.
Duelist's Focus - Reduces crit damage taken, gives flat chance to avoid damage.
Tempo - Taking damage from adjacent attackers has a chance to regain stamina/turn energy and grant a low damage counterattack that disarms briefly.
Feint - Swap places with a target and followup with a crippling offhand strike. Cooldown is reduced each time Tempo triggers. No more lengthy setup to get cripple working.

So dipping into Duelist and picking up Stealth gives you a decent melee/ranged damage reduction effect, some avoidance and crit reduction, and increased life regen+flat DR for the first couple turns after starting a fight. Also much less staring at stacks and micromanaging blocking. This is just some quick sketches though, not sure how I feel about some of the new bits. I'll try coding some concepts up and seeing how they feel.

[Frumple]

For what it's worth, the increased dying may just be because I'm actually taking defense talents (besides stealth) in the early game instead of just going full offense and flurrying everything to death Trying out all the new stuff, I haven't even tried taking flurry, yet (though in my defense, I just don't really like the dual offense tree and I'd rather be playing with the neat new stuff, heh).

Though... yeah, leeching poison is kinda' iffy as a notable defensive measure, since it just doesn't work on a number of things (and still only so-so without venomous strike/throw giving the burst heal*), rogue's brew is... early, it's kinda' junk, especially without extra investment in it (and, in the rework's favor, I'm definitely finding it hard to find points for everything I want, even ignoring a few trees in the process) -- the heal is just not good on tlvl 1 (better on 2+, but early on** even a 25%+ heal is probably only going to be like 50-ish HP, which is... on par with the absolute minimum healing infusions :V). It's better as a debuff stripper than anything (and worse than a physical wild at it ). The extra debuffs are a thing, but don't really provide that much more than they previously did (they're just structured much better and more enjoyable to use ), particularly until you get a good chunk into the game.

Still, I'm definitely noticing more full to dead/near dead moments than previously, and having more trouble staying alive long enough to kill stuff. Will try a few more play styles in the near future, though, just to see how much of a difference it makes. Maybe the defensive stuff comes into its own later in the game, and the earlier parts should be dedicated to just murdering everything before they can hit you much.

*It's definitely noticeable, mind, it's just kinda' inconsistent. Contributes to staying alive, but not exact substantially, and you'd honestly probably be better off with numbing/crippling much of the time, especially against anything even remotely non-trash mob.
**Y'know, there's a thought. Maybe rogue's brew could provide a flat heal until it reaches a certain talent level (so it'd be more useful in the 10-20ish range), and then either switch to or provide an extra percentile heal? Could kinda' see doing similar stuff for the other tool talents -- nightmare instead of sleep for the dart, sticky smoke or somethin' for the screen, maybe adding a low damage weapon hit to the blades stuff like that. Though it'd make the silly long tooltip even longer, which... yeah. Yeah. Or just switch up the brew to provide a (not too large -- something like 100-150 + 25-50 per tlvl? Maybe less, I'm fairly terrible with theorycrafting numbers, heh) flat heal + the percentile?

[Razakai]

Yeah, Leeching is more of a lategame thing. Mystical Cunning lets you poison even immune targets, and lategame 5-10% of your damage is potentially 100s of points.

I agree with Rogue's Brew. I'll change it to is a flat heal + smaller % of maximum life, so at low levels it's far more useful.

That was kinda my playstyle while testing! Stealth+Heartseeker pretty much 1 shot anything I engaged with from a fair distance, and Fan of Knives/Flurry/Whirlwind finished anything else off. So probably didn't notice the defense quite as much, as if it was a boss I'd pop Shadow Dance and explode it, or at the very worse just kite it forever via Smokescreen, Knives and Traps. It's certainly intentional that Rogue is quite squishy if you just mash your face at stuff, but I think I've taken that too far from what you've said.

Now I'm wondering what Marauders will be like with the new trees+Bloodthirst. Maybe a contender for the new OP class title...

e: One big issue is probably that I couldn't get the changes to light armor+Mobility+Survival from my mod added. Those pretty much accounted for the core of Rogue defense, so that might be why they're hurting a lot more in this version.