Official Rogue Rework - Testers Required!

[Jarinex]

I'm currently playing the assassin mod (which might not be too much of help), but I feel the mobility tree and survival tree really do make a difference in my survival. The biggest help is the Tumble skill, because I use that a TON with my rogue. I should also point out that I don't have any points in artifice (so no rogues brew), and I'm surviving pretty well. Granted, I do have two healing infusions, so that probably helps a bit.

One thing I did notice as I play is that some traps sometimes feel a little OP. The main one I feel this way with is the Flashbang. I use that as my "Preperation" skill, and i'm always destroying enemies with it. It's amazing, but perhaps a little TOO amazing.

[Razakai]

Traps aren't enormously different in this version (except there's more of them and a few have changed) so that feedback is still useful. I'm interested in seeing if people feel traps are too good as they were significantly buffed. What feels too strong? The damage or the debuff?

[e1337ist]

i've been having issues starting a new game. It seems to sit at 100% loading for an indeterminate amount of time. I have this issue with vanilla every once in a while but reloading has always fixed it before. Heres the last chunk of my log (I think).

http://pastebin.com/84nQJaDX

[Razakai]

e1337ist solved this himself by adding Ashes DLC to the folder. Not sure why that worked as I didn't have to, but if anyone else gets the same issue give it a shot!

[Frumple]

Ouch, game breaking bug. If you try to use preparation without an acceptable trap free (e.g. my rogue with tlvl 5 trap, spring/flash/bear chosen for trap mastery, only had pit/blade free), it locks you into the trap choosing menu with no way to get out. Only way to do anything is to end the process. I'd... probably recommend putting cancel choices on all those talent-related dialogues, heh.

E: Also, uh. Preparation itself, the tooltip may be bugged or poorly described? Or the talent itself is. It appears prepared traps no longer benefit from trap mastery, which... doesn't seem right, and the tooltip itself is worded such that expecting the preparation modifier to be on top of the trap mastery one is likely.

[Razakai]

Yep, that's definitely getting fixed.

[Frumple]

And to follow up on the edit, it also appears that prepared traps don't benefit from trap launcher's tlvl 5 bonus, despite being able to be launched by it. I was... rather expecting it to, heh.

E: Alsoooo, the prepared traps don't launch the same way the regular ones do. You can toss a prepared trap via launcher over enemies, but you can't with regular traps. It'd... probably be preferable (from the trapper's PoV, anyway, heh) for both sorts to not be blocked by enemies?

E2: Also, uh. If a pitfall trap kills something, it doesn't remove the trap. Which. Doesn't seem like it was intended behavior?

[Razakai]

I should prob clarify that. Prepped traps don't as they're effectively now a ranged attack rather than a trap. I can change traps to not get blocked though, makes sense.

[Frumple]

Hrm. Any thoughts on maybe bringing down the preparation modifier and letting it inherent the trap mastery one as well? Feels kinda' weird to prepare a trap and suddenly have it doing about a third the damage. Looks like that changes with investment, but that initial impression is somewhat... painful.

E: Or maybe don't, and have preparation boost the secondary trap characteristics (radius/debuff/etc.), so it doesn't feel like you're kinda' wasting a trap when using low tlevel preparation?

[Jarinex]

Honestly, I think the damage of the flashbang trap is a little high. The rest of the traps are good, but the flashbang might need balance, as it is too good (at least with the assassin mod).

E: As I have been messing around with different traps, I noticed when I put the springrazor as a "prepped" trap, the damage is pretty low. This doesn't occur with the poison or flashbang traps. When it's a normal trap, the damage is good, but not when I have it prepped. Is that supposed to occur?

For example, the prepped springrazor does 90 damage with 45 damage over 5 turns, while the normal springrazor does 305 damage with 152 damage over 5 turns. The other two traps do not have any changes.

[Frumple]

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.

[Strongpoint]

Can tricks of the trade prodigy get reworked somehow to be a decent choice?

It is supposed to be a good for rogue choice but in its current form it is not something worth considering.

[Razakai]

Yeah there's a bug in Assassin where some traps inherit from Trap Mastery and some from Prep - they're all supposed to inherit from Prep. I'm ok with Prep being a little weaker to start with, as it's an additional trap that gives Rogue an actual ranged nuke like a techy archmage. Especially with something like Freezing/Dragonsfire for a ranged disable, or Purging for a ball of 'death to wizards'.

The real power traps tend to be the special hidden ones. Ambush, Freezing/Dragonsfire, Purging and Poison Gas are notably strong. Beam isn't quite as strong but it is dead easy to use as it activates instantly.

And yes, I want to rework TotT. I want to rework the whole Assassin Lord quest actually. If I have time I plan on importing Grayswandir's mod and expanding on it - have AL give you a quest to take over a bandit fortress and unlock the merchant there, albeit at a more expensive price. Not sure what to do with TotT though. Maybe give Stealth an Unseen Actions effect, and unlock Artifice for everyone. Existing Artifice users can get some enhanced traps. I'm really unsure atm though.

[Frumple]

Maybe a free scaling tlvl artifice tool slot (possibly in addition to what it already has)? Probably starting at tlvl 3 and going from there, so it'd benefit artifice rogues by giving them access to all four tools at once, and benefit everyone else by giving them a free slot they don't have to stick talent points in.

It's never really been a substantially good rogue prodigy, imo, though... it's much more angled toward shadowblades and whatnot -- classes with meaningful access to invisibility, to get that nasty damage malus softened up some.

E: Though hearing that about the traps makes this trapping embers run really unfortunate

[Razakai]

I should add those traps into Embers. I'll have a look at doing it over the weekend. Probably just allow them to be bought from the artifact merchant.