Some suggestions for making Rogues more enjoyable in future TLPs.

Because if you roll a Barb rogue you get slam which is the same as bash just does not require a shield and I know bash shares a timer with kick because wars get both. If you are going to give kick to rogues at lvl 1 why not just make it backstab?

I'd much rather it be Backstab, but all available options should be presented at least, so the Devs can see them all and decide which one they like best, if they were to even make a change at all. That said, IMO the only ones of those that should share a CD is Bash+Slam.

Went and checked:

Level 1
Bard: Buff
Beastlord: Kick, Heal
Berserker: Kick
Cleric: Heal, Nuke, Buff
Druid: Heal, Nuke, Buff
Enchanter: Pet, Nuke, Buff, Debuff
Magician: Pet, Nuke, Buff
Monk: Kick, Dual Wield
Necromancer: Pet, Lifetap, DoT, Buff, Debuff
Paladin: LoH, Heal, Bash
Ranger: Kick, Heal
Rogue:
Shadow Knight: HT, Bash
Shaman: Heal, Nuke, Buff
Warrior: Kick
Wizard: Nuke, Buff

Aside from the obvious Rogue, Bard is probably the worst offender, but they at least get their first DoT at level 2. Shadow Knight too, but pretty much every SK is going to be an Ogre with the highest starting STR in the game and frontal stun immunity, Bash requires a shield but that could be seen as a non-issue. Beastlord and Berserker I feel like are irrelevant because they're pretty much always going to be twinks anyway.

I'm rather amused there's so much churn on what a rogue gets level 1-10. The first 10 levels in EQ has always been a snooze fest for all the classes. None of the classes have much of an identity. Even SOE recognized how bad the game is at these levels and made the tutorial which powers you through at least a respectable pace.

Still, I would be a advocate to just have a simple hail quest to skip them altogether.

Definitely not true about no class having any identity at level 10.

And when does tutorial get added to TLP?

Planes of Power

Yeah so I'm not sure how waiting ~a year depending on the server is supposed to be some sort of solution. With Classic->PoP being repeated by so many people every year, it makes sense to spend more effort and time making adjustments to that era to make it better and more enjoyable.

Though I don't really consider making Backstab level 1 instead of level 10 effort or time.

Well, ya' know, this is a TLP forum. And I remember in the weeks before Mischief/Thornblade launch, literally everyone was saying that it's too late to bring up the problems with Rogues now and that it should have been done long before those servers launched. So hence this thread, making suggestions for future TLPs. It's weird to argue that a class should be considered subpar and non-viable for 5 expansions, particularly when the class was never subpar when those expansions actually existed in live time.

And I tend to agree with Atomos. The reason people don't play Rogues isn't because they have to wait 10 levels before they get backstab. Compare a Rogue to a Ranger. Both of these classes deal subpar damage when compared to a Monk, but the Ranger brings a lot of utility. The Ranger can use track to see when rare mobs are up. The Ranger is a very viable tank while leveling as he can hold aggro very well, and in addition he can SoW his group, has a damage shield, can heal, snare, invis other players, lull etc.

What utility does a Rogue bring? Now 20 years ago this was less of an issue because Rogue damage was very optimal, and Rogues also had an amazing stealth ability. CRs were a very major part of the game and Rogues were required for this role because of the fact that their hide/sneak worked against virtually every mob in the game. Now CRs are no longer mandatory, and Rogue invis is no longer reliable and is just a slow-moving invis, which is why I typically use a Larrikan's mask to cast camouflage on myself (a spell Rangers get at a very low level).

WokeCat in another thread

That was the moment, at least for me, when you literally disqualified yourself in taking part at any rogue discussion, where ppl discuss about the rogue class, they love and enjoy playing against all odds, even knowing they are not good in classic. Now we have kunark and rogues already are in the top dps in raids. And that doesnt get worse thru velious, SoL and PoP.

Btw a good rogue has the crystal mask from sky, which is a rogue only quested item and has infinite gather shadows, so you dont have to buy those many cloudy pots and can stop crying. But you prolly know that, now that you play a rogue yourself.

Shadout

It's much later than that. The tutorial isn't until after defiant armor is introduced; the gear pieces from the tutorial are equivalent to the 1-10 defiant pieces. You're possibly thinking of the starting-city newbie armor quests.

This doesn't address the fact that they bring to the table no utility. The rogue fantasy is a slippery opportunistic attacker that can circumvent danger. They do not live up to this at all. All the utility they gave to the rogue is gimmiky and most of the time useless. Other classes have utility that is ingrained into their gameplay loop that makes them unique and exciting. Also Rogue need the starts to align on a Sunday at 3 am look competitive. They have to have BiS weps, need the mobs back, and have proper ADPS support. Every other class can look competitive with none of that. Rogues are ulta specialized but they don't even do what they specialize in better than other classes of their same type and bring NOTHING else to the group/raid

I'd like to see rogues be able to charm in classic.

New combat ability: Deceive, Humans only, uses all the stamina.

Nope.

On TLP Planes of Power Gates of Discord unlock introduces the Gloomingdeep Mines Tutorial Zone.

On live the new Tutorial appeared June 29 2005, in Sept 2005 they had a standalone version of the tutorial "Escape to Norrath" you could download that was an EQ Trial.

The Merc mission there cannot be started or completed until after SoD unlocks.

Defiant gear does not start to drop on TLP servers until a week or so after TSS unlocks, originally it was from 2008 during the Secrets of Faywder era on Live servers.
............

June 29, 2005
------------------------------

A large patch was implemented today. Grab a coffee for this one.

==================================

*** Headlines ***

- Plane of Time Instancing! - Plane of Time has been fully instanced. Every raid that enters
the zone will now get its own instance of the zone.
- New Tutorial! - A new tutorial is now available, featuring new art, new models, new quests,
and a new player experience that will take you from level 1 to level 10.
- New Newbie Armor Quests! - New armor quests pick up where the tutorial leaves off, taking
players from 11 to 20.

I went and checked on Aradune earlier, it's on LDON, and I could not do Tutorial. I also checked the expansion that was Live during when the zone was added, it was during DoN, though I don't know if that means that's when it is introduced on TLP, because I did think it was earlier than that. Is it possible it is GoD?

Possible. I was using https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G9lcUWYm5YnVZfG77Ja2SG11-8rOmIuZe8-0cfzPgh8/edit#gid=0 for reference. It's for sure before TSS (defiant starts dropping).

Looks like it was changed after Phinigel (which was my frame of reference too), Phinigel unlocked it with PoP in Feb 2017.

August 16, 2017
_____________________

*** Progression Servers ***

- The tutorial will now unlock when Gates of Discord unlocks.

Are you sure the Hide skill doesn't already work as intended? From my understanding once hide is to a certain level you can slip by undead and other see invis mobs. Some mobs you can't but for those you have shroud of stealth.

Hide works about 100% of the time sometime past 100, but it does go up to 200. And the reason is it would work on more things the higher it went. If this doesn't work this way anymore than yes it should be fixed.

Someone could correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't this get removed at 60 or at a certain level of sneak? I haven't played a Rogue since Agnarr just opened PoP so I dunno if anything has changed. But I do remember having a decent speed while moving in sneak at one point.

Chaotic Stab is always what made this work.

I could agree with this.

Was it changed? I remember it always being kinda a low rate. But it got better with levels.

The Rogue Epic has always been quite easy to do and the weapons you get from VP are upgrades because quite frankly, they're in higher content than a level 50 obtainable weapon. And you can't really compare epic weapons to epic stat sticks (which is what the caster/healer epics are) since all stat sticks and clickables last beyond their level.

I've been playing a Rogue on Thornblade as an alt, and she's up to level 59 now, with her epic. I've been having fun, but sometimes have trouble finding a group.

Historically I've played casters (I did play a Monk in-era when Kunark came out originally) so it's quite nice to play a strictly melee class. Could quality of life improvements be made? Of course, but would those break the current-era game or otherwise be overpowered? Potentially.

The only things that comes to mind right away is to advance the AA which allows Rogues to backstab for minimal damage when not directly behind the target. It's quite frustrating to deal with the chaotic nature of mob positioning since, at least in Kunark, tanks can't seem to hold aggro very well. The other item is the sneak and hide from earlier.

Others seem to directly boost the power, and while being more powerful is certainly fun and enjoyable, I'm more interested in quality of life measures that increase enjoyability.

That's cringy. As another person who plays a cleric, I apologize to all the Rogue folk. I'll start hosting 5 Rogue + 1 cleric groups to make up for the snobby cleric that is most likely is a high elf (they just can't help themselves) and we will make everyone jealous of our awesomeness.

Under 20 Warriors and under 28 Paladins have issues due to the nature of their class. Everything else has issues to do the nature of their players playing them. After 20 Warriors, after 28 Paladins, Shadowknights, and Rangers should have no issues holding threat (with the exception of an early casting caster DPS blowing something up). The issue is most just simply don't.

They're either ignorant or just don't care. Its about 50/50 when grouped with one having threat issues. Or in some rare cases they're underleveled for the area.