Rogue Builds

[edge2054]

I can see potions and poison application not breaking stealth too.

Or just make it so only attacks that come directly from the player break stealth?

[Chattius]

My elven rogue is currently level 19. I used the speed race power for tactical running early on and stealth started to get a lot more powerful when wearing an amulet which boosts cunning/stealth. Instead a radius of 2 to go into stealth it is 1, ...

Now i will work up to stay hidden after attacks. I have the phial hotkeyed on 0 so i can light up my combat place before backstabs.

What is the highest possible cunning/stealth amulet?

[Shoob]

I know a few versions ago that the highest was around 0.4, maybe higher if you are lucky.

but now you will get that with mithril amulets only, and then rarely.

[Finguld]

I have been playing some rogues. They are very weak early on and killing things can take forever until you get better daggers. I find I really have to grind out levels to survive harder areas more than when playing other classes. I tried a stealth build and you really have to put 4-5 points into stealth itself for it to be any good. With one point I get detected all the time and that leads to a quick death. In the Fareast you need a lot of teleport scrolls and those get destroyed by all the fire spells you are getting hit with. I think the stealth mechanic should be tweeked some to make it a little better at lower levels. It was so bad early on I thought about trying plate wearing rogues instead.

[Final Master]

I haven't tried making a stealthy rogue build yet, but I do absolutely love their ability to string attacks and all the movement and low damage long duration stuns they have access to. The massive amount of critical hit messages I generate make me smile. But yes, something else to add would definitively be temporally altering the abilities/damage types of your weapons, and of course trapping.

[edge2054]

Thought of another talent idea for rogues last night.

Jack of All Trades (class talent) - Each talent rank grants you 2 extra generic talent points.

Might fit well in a tree with Use Magic Device.

[Mithril]

I have had good success with Hobbit Rogues by ignoring stealth and criticals initially. One point in dual strike and dirty fighting gives two stunning attacks against difficult opponents. One point in flurry will give 6 attacks also against heavy opponents. But I maximize Dual Weapon Training, Dual Weapon Defense, and Precision whenever possible. These are always on talents requiring no activation or cooldown. (Backstab is also always on but is only effective against those you bother to stun so I take that when the others are maximized.) Generic points goes whenever possible to Weapon Combat and Knife Mastery.

For equipment I try to get the Massacre ones since these really works well with a character having double the number of attacks of others, very high armor penetration from Precision and high cunning, and already having a good hit chance from high dexterity. When having two daggers of massacre and two rings of massacre monsters will melt away like butter before a hot dagger.

[darkgod]

Next beta introduces trapping for rogues !

[Mithril]

Next beta introduces trapping for rogues !

Very nice! Should be possible to create interesting tactics for tough monsters.

[Zonk]

I usually play Warriors/Berserkers and Mages(and Alchemists, rarely), but I decided to go for a change and play some Rogues.
It was...interesting.
One tactic I liked: be a Hobbit, use dirty fighting to stun a single enemy for a lot THEN activate Luck of the Little Folk and hit them a LOT of them, getting lots of criticals.

As for talents: I try to increase my damage potential with knives, but Dirty Fighting is also amazingl useful, as mentioned above. Didn't reach very high levels yet, though.

[Grey]

I just had a Rogue die in the sandy place (I got blinded and surrounded - stupidly didn't drink a healing potion or read a phase door scroll). Must say I got him extremely powerful - he was one-shotting almost everything with Dual Strike. I maxed out both that and Dirty Fighting and got my crits up very high. Was easy to do hundreds of damage a round. I didn't bother with Stealth at all. Against single enemies I was a real killer. To be frank it felt too powerful - I think the damage rogues can do with daggers should be nerfed a bit. Only thing they really lack is crowd control, which makes things tricky in open places.

[greycat]

Some classes have periods of the game where they feel very strong and other periods where they feel weak. You were apparently in one of the rogue's strong periods. Wait until you get to Tol Falas, Moria and beyond before you decide whether a class is too powerful. The monsters get MUCH worse.

The rogue has no ranged combat ability, no area of effect, no beams. They're good against single melee opponents, but can they handle a summoner? A pack? A spellcaster? Breath weapons? There are a lot of different situations where they'll be challenged.

[Shoob]

yeah, the prides are the bane of rogues.... the monsters there will probably see you despite you being in lvl 5 stealth mode. and they will probably also be in groups too, and it is all open, so have fun with rogues IF you get that far.

[Grey]

Heh, well that's something to look forward to. Hmm, can't imagine the new trap ability is going to help much there.

[Final Master]

It hopefully will if the odd behavior of the npcs there ends. Like how they will go into perfect line formation along the walls instead of chasing or regrouping behind a wall or something. If they were to chase, then I could see the trapping be a huge boost in their ability to deal with the prides.