Would you change the Classic Rogue class?

You asked for it. Here's my response:

1. Give them Kick (not on the same timer as 'Backstab')

2. Rework Intimidation to work like necros' Screaming Terror (3 ticks) on a 2 minute cooldown. (i.e. turn 48s fear into 18s mez)

3. Remove Make Poison.

4. Rework Apply Poison so it becomes a selectible buff (active AA) which you auto-learn at certain levels:
-- DD (no stun) poison with unlimited charges but as a timed buff with a reagent cost.
-- DOT poison with unlimited charges but as a timed buff with a reagent cost.
-- Snare poison with unlimited charges but as a timed buff with a reagent cost.
(Only one of those at one time with 2 procs per minute -- i.e. buffs won't stack)

5. Remove Backstab and call it Gut Slicer (or whatever) and remove the positional requirement.
(All melees will mostly try to be behind the mob anyway to avoid ripostes/dodges/parries etc.
Also, mage pets and NPC can 'frontstab' too.)

6. Remove the delay required between Hide and Sneak Attack.

7. Raise their defense (agi/dodge/parry) significantly which will help in solo play. They would still lose big chunks of their little health pool when hit but at least don't have to regen for minutes after every light blue con kill.

8. Add Iksar to allowed races.

9. Make Evade fire off 'backstab' so people don't have to do AttackOFF-PicketPocket-Hide-AttackON macros anymore.

There you go, went all crazy on it. They don't need some insane fix. A vendor that sells a backstab aug in classic would be enough, you guys seem to forget that people use trash gear in classic, if you give them all of that stuff it will be a bit much no?

I agree that Rogues were marginalized with the whole concept of not needing to get a corpse at all.
A backstab aug and poison revamp would go a long way to making them more fun to play.

Maybe the idea of an expensive single dose poison was in the spirit of the original EQ, but many other quality of life additions have been given to players in general. I can't see where a poison lasting a while, like a buff would be a problem at all.

SKs get attack buffs, so do Rangers and Druids. Just give the rogue a poison that works the same, on a 30 minute timer. That timer can then scale just like an attack buff would for other classes.

Then perhaps an augment that will allow 'backstab' to do more damage if you aren't positioned behind the mob, but less than a full backstab.

I mean.. NPCs can backstab from the front and snakes can kick - but not rogues! And Rogues actually have feet to kick!

This "balancing" notion is rooted in entitlement mentality. Every class should have a reason to play it, but every class should not be "equal" to others. Some classes **should** do less damage than others.

Personally, it makes far more sense to boost rogue sneak into actually being useful ... but thanks to corpse drag and res tokens, that would lead to a multiplicity of exploits. Adding more locked doors in later expansions would also be sensible, but again the entitlement mentality steps in -- people believe that, if they're playing a game, they're automatically entitled to any and all content therein.

They need to steal an eq2 ability that stuns a mob and you can move around and backstab it properly.

Yep.

I would say give rogues a stun, rework the poisons, give them a vanish ability at like level 25 or something that's trainable like FD.

One more thing, change it so backstab cooldown doesn't reset if you aren't behind the mob, simply a message telling you to get behind the mob.

Classic Poison are such trash it's insane they haven't been completely scrapped and revamped into the proc buff style of poison on live. Pretty much all other trades kills have gotten better over the years, but his one sticks out as a remnant of the oldest era of the game. Completely broken and worthless by tlp standards .

drunken fighter stance for tanking.
1hb only, depends on alcohol tolerance.
add stun procs in combat.

Sorry, but this is BS. Most people making suggestions to spice up rogue gameplay, getting rid of redundancy or just plain wanting to make the class more fun or modernize it are not doing this because of entitlement mentality. You seem to be kinda negative minded. But that's just a wild guess on my side. Go touch some grass and let people have fun writing about their ideas in a video game forum instead of stating they're all mentally entitled

It's a wild guess. Did you read these suggestions? The OP started the thread with the statement that "the devs hate rogues", and it was followed by gems like this:

"As a rogue veteran: Full damage from all angles for backstab..."

You concurred, with the request to: "remove the positional requirement" for backstab. This doesn't "spice up" or "make more fun" the class -- it literally takes away the one feature that makes rogues unique. It would turn playing a rogue into an AFK snooze-fest. There's plenty of other classes like that already: why make another? Then came the wild request to give rogues mez. Why not give them cheal, res, and port spells too? Boy, that'd make the rogue a fun class!

Exaggerate much?

You can be of different opinion and not like what people are suggesting as much as you want.
You can also try to ridicule them by repeating their suggestions and add your personal view to underline you are right and they are wrong

All I said is don't call them mentally entitled if you want to be serious about something

You said more than that, but your screen name is so eclectically eccentric, I'll forgive you.

If you want to improve rogues, don't make them more like other classes, but less. How about making rogues the one class that can make as much by not killing mobs as other players do by killing them? And yes, I'm talking pick-pocket-- but not in a group, but off non-aggro mobs only.

An activity a rogue can do solo. Make it tricky to perform, and dangerous-- and you could even award rogues exp for doing it, in addition to the plat.

• An earlier and more reusable way to drop aggro. They end up pulling bc they're otherwise useless; might as well give them s tool for it.
• A meaningful self only heal, maybe 25% to 50% of their max hp.
• Increase their dps and make them less weapon reliant, especially in classic.
• Additional special attack that works from any side of the mob. Unscrupulous Kick maybe.

I would be supportive of changing literally every class, and I would do it by re-vamping the AAs already in the game and bringing in a "build" system, similar to Diablo.

Basically, open up AAs early (Maybe General at L10, Archetype at 20, Class at 30) and reset AA required levels to make sense, but cap the total # of AAs at something like 120 and make them progressively harder to get. Also limit the acquisition, something like [You can only have Current_Level * 2 total (AA spent + banked)] - so you can't just snag all at L30 - and limit how you can spend them by putting a progressive and overall limit on how many you can spend in each category --> General=Unlimited, Archetype=Current_Level*1.5, Class=Current_Level*1.
Let's you build/customize your toon.
Then re-building would have some type of cost associated with them - maybe a plat / exp / time sink to reduce abuse. Something like 10% of the going rate of a krono + 1/2 your current level exp + 1 hour of an uncurable rez sickness or something.

All they would have to do is bring back classic monk fists and suddenly Rogues, and every other melee, would be in a really good spot.

There's still really crummy things about Rogues that aren't classic. I know for a fact that there are mobs in Sol B, LGUK, Karnor's Castle, Sebilis etc. who will see through Rogue Hide/Sneak until Planes of Power come out. Makes Rogues stealth pretty much useless, like you have to go pick them up and escort them, meanwhile Rangers can run around at full speed with their invis and lull passed mobs who give them see through invis.

I played a Rogue on Mischief and I remember having to sit back while the SK did our CRs because at least when the mobs saw through his invis he didnt die instantly, and/or could feign death.

The poison thing is stupid too. If you haven't played a Rogue then you have no idea how expensive it is to use poisons... only to still get easily out damaged by a monk with their bare fists.

I could write a book on this honestly. Also maybe make Rogue's lock pick useful at much lower levels. Oakwynd launched, and we can't open the doors in UR or Befallen. We better get a Rogue then ! But nah, Rogues can't even do that.

The class is super bad, and seeing people say that they should be left this way .. because they are good 15 expansions down the road are posting on the wrong forum. This is TLP.

There's a reason why servers die before Rogues become relevant or viable. There's a reason why all of us are playing on TLPs. The time period where Rogues suddenly start to break even with Monks is PoT. But Monks can tank, feign death, mend, have no positional requirement, and don't have to spend thousands of platinum on poisons. And then Berserkers come out and Rogues are completely irrelevant anyways.

Also this is not classic at all. Classic Rogues, such as on P99 have amazing stealth and damage, and their lock picking is an actual requirement for many parts of the game. They don't spend thousands of dollars on poisons just to get out-damaged by other classe anyways.

All this is made worse too because a lot of classes that were traditionally bad are much stronger than they used to be. Rangers were never viable tanks or DPS (go play a Ranger on P99 and see how that works out for you). Rangers never got SoW at low level. Paladins never got rez at low level. Hybrids in general couldn't cast spells before level 9. Wizards were straight up non-playable.

Like why did all of these classes get enhanced, with rogues getting gutted into oblivion.

Just make a macro with backstab and hide on it and presto, you have what you are asking for here.

Read me again. I am already using a macro for Evade (which also does PickPocket to save another button press). I am using Backstab via /autoskill so I actually never press the Backstab button.

Now imagine Evade firing off Backstab (which goes off automatically). That would make Evade automated as well and lower your agro while you stab and save you from stopping attacking, pressing the Hide button and then start attacking again which is kinda cumbersome.

And completely unnecessary. What I was trying to tell you is you don't have to stop attacking to evade. Just push hide. I don't think further automating a class that already has very few buttons to push is beneficial.

You do have to stop attacking to pickpocket. But that's a meh skill that is only needed for a few quests and can then be forgotten. Tying it in with your hide button and using it on raid mobs, that you can't pickpocket anyway, is hurting your dps.

Just push hide, while attacking.

Rumor was the first two players to make it to 50 in game were both Rogues who teamed/positioned so one of them was always backstabbing in a fight. I remember getting in one of my frequent debates with Rogues that not only did they make more pp then any other character with pickpocket, but they frequently topped the parser list when they didn't spend all their time logged out of combat so they they could pickpocket mobs in groups. The retort was ~Yeah, but with a macro I can tab out of combat, pickpocket and get back in combat so fast you won't know it!

I once confronted a Rogue who constantly advocated for Rogues to be reworked for 'class balance' because they were the weakest class. I told him you are the strongest class and just conning the developers into giving you more. He replied, "Yes and it worked! Why should I stop?"

Notice how there is never, we are talking about a 20+ year history, of a Rogue saying pickpocket loot should be automatically shared with the group? Things that would make them less egregious in groups are never brought up. Give them the ability to forage food for the group or something positive. Cricket!!! Always "make my character stronger" and keep the things that irritate people. Compare Rogues to Bards and Enchanters who only have their biggest utility in groups. Bards and Enchanters are considered a must have in groups, Rogues not so much.

And BTW: Disarm works for everybody. Weapon appears on the ground at your feet. I don't do it in groups because it wouldn't be nice.

Last time I checked that is no longer the case. The weapon goes into the mob's inventory.