Rogues on TLPs - Easy Fixes

Things you could do to improve the class.

Rogue's are only damage dealers and are so important to the lore of EQ but feel REALLY bad early on in EverQuest. The only reason you'd play rogue is because you love the idea of the role and are willing to stick it out until much later on when they are viable.

1.) Give the Rogue class a passive increase to piercing skill, triple attack, backstab or something to improve their damage early on.

2.) Make Spider's Bite III potions available at the start of a new TLP, and increase the ranks available by 1 each new expansion that's opened until Rank 13.

3.) Develop additional poisons for Rogues that provide them the ability to bring something to a group they might otherwise not have available. Example:
- Tash poisons for groups with no enchanter
- Malo poisons for groups with no shaman/mage
- Slow poisons for groups with no slower
- Cripple poisons for groups with no cripple
- Versatile Damage Proc Potions we can swap based on the situation
~ Cold Damage Proc
~ Fire Damage Proc
~ Lifetap Damage Proc
~ Disease Damage Proc
~ Poison Damage Proc

Any one of these changes, or any combination of these changes can either improve rogue damage and/or provide them a way to bring more to the table for their groups based on what gaps exist in that group. Rogues are supposed to be more versatile than what form they are in today.

You've helped so many classes in early TLPs achieve a smoother and more meaningful gameplay existence, removed overpowered mechanics, and leveled the playing field. Rogues have continued to fall behind however. As a pure damage dealer with no spells or grand abilities they should be able to output at least as much early on as a Monk who has powerful abilities and utility like Mend/FD.

Its 2024, do the right thing.

I think adding good useable poisons in a step in the right direction.

Give rogues vanish early on, say level 35 or so.

It can have an endurance cost and 1 min cooldown.

Change backstab to simply display a message if you aren't behind the mob, rather than reset the cooldown every time.

And yes Poisons, I like the ideas listed in the OP.

Considering how strong monks are with FD and no weapons, the above changes are more than fair to ask.

is the problem that rogues aren't powerful enough? Or that monks are at SK levels of OP? Cause you know, nerfing monks to appropriate levels is the simple fix

It's simply everything together. EQ has increased the damage of every class except Rogue since OG classic EQ.
1) Monk fist ratio table was buffed by a LOT, so they are now monsters without weapons. This also buffed their Epic
2) Pets have been super buffed to do a lot more damage with ability to tank better
3) Spell damage was increased and mana cost was decreased for every spell out there

The above hit every class except Rogue. Rogue didn't receive any damage buffs through the years. MOTM buff on raids fixed the added damage every class does except it also hurts Rogues who have not been buffed since OG classic. It also doesn't help outside of raids in the group aspect.

Easy fix would be to put MOTM on every mob and make it exclude Rogue somehow. Maybe make piercing weapons bypass motm?

Can an admin move these posts to the class discussion please. Tired of the same people "rogues need to be OP always" posts everyday...

Haven't tested these in awhile, but used to be the resist check had a poison_level check that would make these useless except for the extra agro once you were fighting something about 10 lvls above the req level to click the poisons.

Also Spider's bite is the everyone poison. If you want to help Rogues you're looking for Bite of the Shissar.

Overall I like the model of sharply increasing the accuracy of backstab.

This is really more of a rogues are not useful, more than my favorite class is trash dps....

They wont be top, but they are not last either. Kunark is one month after launch usually and once you get the easiest epic in the game then you are doing fine. Mindless, low effort, middle of the road dps class.

Id rather give the gear to a shaman or ranger due to the lack of utility , not dps. Rogues had one job and that was to drag my corpse when i died.. you're no longer useful.

Maybe a dps bump would be an easier solution vs trying to find ways to make Rogues useful

Done that quest lately?

I think if you add a point or two to the "backstab damage" stat of all piercers up through TSS or whenever rogues start to catch up on DPS, it would bring them closer to in line with where they should be and not impact anything else since only Rogues interact with that stat at all.

The current problem is monks in particular are a pretty OP class utility wise, with their ability to fd split, mend, tank in groups in a pinch, and they do not have the facing issues a rogue has to do decent damage. The fact that monks also do more damage than rogues in addition to this in early TLPs is silly. There should be a tradeoff for that utility, and with equal gearing/buffing scenario rogues should do 10-15% more dps than a monk imho.

Do you know the backstab formula? Adding a point of damage would be a drop of water in a tub of water.

So judging by how many posts there are about "But Rogues are 1/1000th the dps of an afk monk"
The truth is? Most rogues suck and they've got a big ego about it... it is what it is.

I don't ever recall a single point in EQ where monks are so far ahead of me that I had to complain about it, why? Because overall I usually pay attention more than they do, hell I have to, I'm the MA for my raids and overall across an entire raid night, I'm doing more damage done throughout the entire raid night, you know what that means? I win.

Just because monks are doing 5-10% more dps on a boss fight doesn't mean rogues need a buff.

I've already suggested some things they could make them less useless in classic(What psychopath plays classic anyway?) but they do just fine in Kunark and beyond.

Starts with Shroud of stealth at lvl 1
Once they hit 12: Give them the same critical hits % that warriors get at 12.
Double backstab at lvl 20.
Triple backstab at 55.
Release damage proc poisons at 60.
Anatomy(Assassinate humanoids) 5 levels below you starting at 65.
Maybe increase piercer damage on rogue usable weapons by 1-3 damage starting @ GoD. Increase their 2.0 by 5 dmg and remove the +poison dmg on it.
Battle Leap at 75(Why do warriors and Zerkers get this but Rogues don't? Does it have to do with 2h?)

No one wants more poisons that do random stuff, tash/malo/slow poisons are eating into my dps by applying them, I don't have time for that.

Hey if they wanna turn us into an SK class, they can always make our poisons lifetap, imagine a 90 rogue lifetapping for 15k, yeah I'm down with that

And absolutely NO ONE wants more traps in game, good lord Hearol in TSS was HELL for a rogue/bard.

Something else they could attempt: Giving rogues an Endurance boost+Endurance regen aura, this would help groups so much it's not even funny. Currently the rogue aura is absolutely and utterly worthless afaik, it's just a trap that does very low dmg yea? I don't think I've used it more than twice lol

Also something overall for the whole game: Remove out of combat from raid, the fact that it takes as long as it does to regen endurance for melee is atrocious. Or start adding +endurance regen on items like casters get +mana regen.


Btw something else I have to add:

To those complaining about monks being better pullers: If you need to split pull less than 7, you've already failed as a group/raid. Pull it all and kill it, it's not that complicated. Plus if we're really talking about classic, 95% of groups always have an enchanter and they pretty much negate the entire group game for almost 2 years straight.

Overall I think Rogue DPS is pretty good, especially once you're through Classic. I think with a couple minor skill tweaks and maybe some additional poison utility like OP mentioned they would be a lot more attractive in groups.

Classic is definitely the biggest hurdle on TLPs. Rogues are obviously more gear dependent when compared to the monk fist table. I think starting with dual wield at level 1 like monks do would help a lot in early levels and help with damage in later levels due to higher skill cap. Additionally, getting backstab earlier than level 10 might make sense too, I think the extra skill cap would help here too. I remember getting a lot of minimum damage backstabs against Classic raid targets. I also like the idea mentioned of getting Escape in earlier expansions too. Maybe even make the backstab opener combat abilities available earlier than PoP so they're useable at their respective levels.

Classic poisons are extremely lackluster. I never bother with them. 10 seconds to apply a single proc poison that might get resisted is a tough pill to swallow. Not to mention bag space (tradeskill depot does help here some.) It's a shame because there are slow and resist poisons that basically never get used. I usually pick it up in Kunark when some of the advanced vial poisons (duration buff with chance to proc) become a bit more viable. (These were originally launched with PoP but in the current state of TLPs are craftable much earlier.)

As for the Epic, I agree it's the easiest and also very important to get ASAP. It can be done without even stepping foot in Kunark and can be mostly pre-farmed before Kunark launches. They've alleviated some of the bottlenecks, though Yendar/Renux in Steamfont can still be tough to snag at times.

All good stuff, I'd add "full speed sneak" to this list.

60 is probably too early for the "revamp" (proc counter) poisons, but used to be that Assassinate was automatic at level 60 for mobs 46? and below.

Re: Piercer damage/ratios, a "backstab only" damage augment is one of the better ideas I've seen.

I haven't used the utility poisons in awhile but they USED to stack with the DPS line.

Now you're speaking my language. Shroud line and a Theft of Life style AA would be the hotness, but we're probably getting out of scope of the thread here. Imagine it as an Aura instead of thief's eyes and whatever the 55/70 trap is. Regarding leap and weapon stances, these should probably become an archetype for all melee classes, not just tanks.

No, I don't. If 2 or so points of backstab damage won't bring them in line with monks in early expansions, I'd say add more than that and taper down as itemization improves later.

SoS and full speed sneak would be awesome at earlier levels.

It would have to be a new line of poisons. The damage scale on the shissar line is way too high. The advanced vial DD procs aren't bad 50, 75, and 125 damage. Plus the undead line which is 125 and 175. Maybe buff them a little bit?

This is still the case in PoP anyways. I usually run a DD or DoT poison for damage and then de-aggro for my utility poison.

Nobody cares what you're tired of.

Maybe find something new to complain about they aren't going to adjust a 25-year-old game because you can't play.

Give rogues kick and a kick line that's opposite of backstab.

Give rogues 2h piercing.

Problem solved