Just to start with a bit of history.. I've been playing since before Kunark and was heavily active up until Planes of Power. After that is when my playing became sporadic at best. From what I've seen many of the classes in the game are in a very nice place for soloing, grouping, and are otherwise capable and well rounded. Rogue on the other hand moved a very different direction. Group DPS is not so high that it would warrant the huge lack of survivability or ability to solo. From what I hear, Raid DPS when well geared is pretty decent if not top.. which is nice. But how much of a difference does it take to sacrifice everything else about the character that makes the game fun? The thoughts I've been having recently serve a pretty common purpose. They in no way affect DPS of late game raiding.. The primary goal is to provide the character with a much more rounded set of options available to them throughout the game. Core issues.. Survival when taking sustained damage. This is primarily referring to taking melee damage. There are several ways to reduce this damage, however I feel that burst damage from enemies turning to hit the rogue is about where it should be. It's the sustained portion of it that needs to be addressed. In addition to this Rogues do very little damage from the front arc which can severely hamper solo kills and fights in which you're forced to tank even though there is a hugely increased risk due to you taking damage. 1) Survival and Damage through Parry/Riposte. I feel that further support for a Rogue in the form of increased Parry and Riposte frequency will assist with adding a little bit of defense to sustained damage. I would like to see several things.. First, an AA that increases the frequency of Parries and Ripostes. Second, an extension to the Knaves Return Strike AA that increases the chance of a Backstab when you Riposte. Third, a new Riposte AA that has a very short duration damage debuff whenever you successfully hit an enemy with a Riposte. With these three combined, the amount of damage you will end up taking from sustained sources will drop drastically. The burst damage won't change too much and shouldn't affect raids much at all as you're not the main tank, nor should you be. The amount of frontal arc damage via Riposte/KRS will increase as well. I'd like to see Rogues doing about 110-125% of the damage they could otherwise do from the rear arc without being targeted.. or at least much closer to 100% than they are right now. Bonus suggestion for improved Riposte functionality.. I'd love to see a new AA line that increases the Duration of the Counter Attack discipline as well as an extension to the Hastened Counter Attack.. Hopefully to bring it down to ~10 minute cooldown. 2) Increased Poison Utility and Usability. I would love to see poisons go from a counter based system to a straight duration system. As it is right now you're lucky if your poison lasts a full half hour let alone the duration listed. Especially when you're in a raid or group. Also, there is almost never a reason to use a Utility poison over a Damage poison when you have the option. First, I'd like to see poisons go to a straight duration system so you won't end up using it all up and having to spend hundreds of thousands of plat just to keep your raid poisons stocked. Second, I'd really like to see either the drop rates for Utility Poison materials increased or simply have the items moved to the store even if you needed to process them from raw materials you buy. Poisons should not be an afterthought.. or something for the rich. They should be a character feature that is heavily used. 3) Allow Range options by the following methods.. First, add an Endless Quiver style AA to Rogues. If this allows us to use existing bows to a greater effect, that's great! If people feel it's not thematic .. then simply limit it to Thrown Weapons. Second, If this is limited to thrown weapons I'd like to see more Thrown Weapon items in high end loot tables. Rogue has their Rake AA's and should be able to make decent use of them! 4) I'd love to see an AA line that reduced AoE damage on Rogues.. both from spells and more importantly from Rampage style boss damage! And finally, Bonus suggestion. I'd really like to see a very basic tracking skill similar to what Bards have. I'm not asking to track like a Druid or a Ranger.. but in EQ2 and most other games with a "Scout" or "Rogue" profession if Tracking exists, the Rogue has it. I'm fine with getting it via AA as well similar to the Foraging Ability. Summary/TL;DR - Raid DPS is fine as it is, Group DPS is fine as it is, Survival from sustained damage really needs to be raised, Poison needs to be more user friendly, and Rogues could really use some sort of range option.
Oh.. forgot to toss this one in there.. But I'd also like to see another Run Speed Increase. With our high reliance on Stealth it's very hard to keep up with others on mounts. When we're required to run pretty much everywhere.. you'd think we would be faster! Extend the Speed of the Scoundrel AA to allow for speeds similar to Bard Speed!
Rogue DPS is certainly as close to "fine" as it's been for quite some time really.. Balance issues are always going to ebb & flow between classes especially with where the game is now. Anyway, Lately I've been thinking it might be worth adding a few additions to the 'Tumble' AA line as I've found it useful not only moving throughout a zone, but also mitigating some damage.. It would be helpful if there were further ranks to A. Have the buff last longer, B. Shorten it's re-use time & C. Negate the negative effects on damage dealt (this would obviously call for further ranks of the initial AA as well as a 'Hastened' AA) In regards to poisons I do agree that the components could be more common (especially the Tainted Delphiniums/Privets) .. Raid poisons can last an entire night assuming you don't die, but when you inevitably do die, that's another 3 of those components used so either A. Allow the tainted's to drop more frequently in lower tier RoF/COTF zones (it's a mixture of 95 & 100 poison drops for the most part) or more drastically .. Have poisons flagged for raid mobs only persist through death (This is an idea of someone else not my own, and while a bit drastic, could solve some issues with components) Lastly (for now) I think 'Shared Stealth' has always been talked about amongst the community and given the need for 'double invis' these days it could prove to be useful so long as the reuse is sufficient not to trivialize things too much.. it's really a utility idea and it wouldn't be true SoS (the sneak portion) but it could be quite useful for the times you want to get your group someplace quickly & safely.. These are all pretty much utility-based/fun kind of AA idea's nothing that pertains to the current dps climate but I'll make some more suggestions once I have a bit more time to lay them out.
As one of the worst soloing classes I've always thought it would be nice to have an ability like keenslice in convo does: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=35198 Basically flips the mob around 180 degrees so their back faces you and stuns them briefly, giving the rog an opportunity to backstab for full damage instead of the diluted non back damage.
i would like to see an upgrade to our cure line so it doesn't just cure poison only. make it so it cleanses us from a lot wider variety of spell types. we are supposed to be masters of creating different types of poisons on our daggers from disease to magic ect, we should also know how to reverse the effects. also some AA's that shorten its reuse a bit more too. an upgrade to our Ligiment slice "snare" would be cool also since we dont have any upgrades to final blow. extended thiefs vision AA. increased effect of sleight of hand so each hit removes more hate more ranks of tumble so it lasts longer and refreshes faster an AA that gives us more pets from our phantom assassin instead of 1 we get 2 or 3 at once, this could be random ? just a few ideas...
Also.. I'm sure I'm not the only one that dislikes the fact that we were the original Assassins, yet our Assassination ability is bottom of the barrel when compared to Head Shot and Decapitate. Yeah, you've got to wait until much later to Decapitate.. but once you get it, you can get it to fire off of pretty much every normal attack. As well as an ability to have Riposte also fire off a normal attack. You also end up being able to decapitate more than you can Assassinate (higher cap and more mobs). As far as Headshot goes, it's pretty much THE leveling tool pre-80. You can Head Shot from relative safety without the use/requirement of a Merc. I don't mean to take a negative tone but it's really been getting to me for a while. I'd like for the Anatomy cap to allow for the same level mobs as Decapitate at max if not 1-2 higher (We do have to sink over 200 AA into it compared to a mere 27 afterall). I feel the expanded Knaves Return Strike and increased Parry/Riposte will help a bit as well.
I'd like to know where they devs think we're supposed to stand in DPS. As I understand it we're supposed to be the top melee dps so long as we're behind the mob. As it stands now that is not happening, and with the caster/melee issues of modern expansions casters just walk away like we're not even there as far as damage goes. So where are we supposed to be? Until we get that answer chances are we won't get anywhere with the AA discussion.
Updating with information put into the Feb Dev Discussion.. Rogue thoughts.. I'd really like a developer to reply to this as it is VERY important to me. I've even got an active petition in hoping it's addressed as it's a huge impact to my ability to play this game. There are several huge issues that Rogues have in this game, while DPS is a primary concern of most people it's not the most important thing to me. From everything I've heard.. DPS is at a pretty decent place for Rogues right now when properly buffed and they know what they're doing. At least when they're in raids. The issues I'm talking about are glaring for either most melee or at the very least a select few. Lack of Survival while soloing or grouping is a HUGE one. Lack of valid Range options is another. Overcomplexity of existing utility, and lack of further utility is another. And finally.. lack of overall DPS while soloing is especially difficult for a Rogue.. and it's even worse when combined with all of the previous issues. With the removal of Assassination on Riposte via Knaves Return Strike we lose one of the very few soloing mechanics we had to work with.. Here are the issues broken out and a suggestion I have that might help address it. Keep in mind, my suggestions are just that.. suggestions. The problem is still there and if you decide that you don't like my suggestions please come up with something that addresses the problem. 1] Survival - This is an issue when soloing, grouping, or raiding especially as a Rogue. Soloing/Grouping - It can be very difficult to take sustained damage from an enemy, recently it's seemed as if things started hitting for much more damage than they used to. I'm currently level 91 and can hardly solo my level 85 daily mission in Old Blood Field. And when I say I can hardly solo it.. with even level gear, decent mastery of my character, and a J5 Healer on Reactive I can barely kill light blue enemies 1 v 1. If a second one joins it means I'm going to die.. My experiences with grouping are much worse usually resulting in death in under 5 seconds when fighting even content such as enemies in Grounds or Lunanyn. Suggestions for addressing this. Riposte, Parry, and Dodge are my three favorite skills for a Rogue and I feel like they hardly ever rely on them. They seem to want to face tank like a fighter does. The closest thing I have to making me different is my Lithe Discipline. With Lithe I have issues with my endurance and cannot use other Disciplines that could be useful for damage. My suggestion for this is to enhance these defenses through AA's. 1) A Parry/Riposte Rogue Passive AA that increases frequency of Parries and Ripostes heavily. 2) A Dodge Passive Rogue AA that could 'hopefully' take the place of Lithe and the other dodge combat abilities. I'd be perfectly fine if those abilities were removed in favor of a static AA. 3) Extension of Knaves Return Strike to increase damage off of Ripostes via Backstabs. 4) A New Riposte Rogue Passive AA that debuffs the damage done by enemies hit by your Riposte for a very short time. Not enough to cause you to aggro juggle to debuff.. but enough to make it so that when you do get hit by sustained damage while soloing you won't die from burst damage every time. Raiding - When raiding the biggest issue I ever ran into was Rampage damage. It was just something that you had to deal with. It was never fun. It always kept the healers much more taxed than they ought to be. I usually got passed over for ANY ranged character as they would simply not be near the rampage. I feel that this mechanic is directly detrimental to Rogues.. and that we should be able to reduce it through AA's. It would allow Rogues to much more easily enter into raids and have fun with the late end of the game. I feel that this Rampage Damage Reduction AA would be extremely useful to all lightly armored melee characters such as Rangers, Monks, Berserkers, Rogues, Beast Lords, and possibly even Bards. 2] Lack of Range Options - This is a very short one.. but Rogues have pretty much no range options available to them. There are times where it's pretty much needed in order to do DPS without instantly killing yourself. 1) I'd really like to see an Endless Quiver style AA. 2) This is somewhat of a continuation of the first suggestion.. I'd really like to see itemization for Thrown Weapons as opposed to Bows for Rogues. Something on par with existing high end bows. If this happens I'm entirely happy with making the Endless Quiver option function only for Thrown Weapons. 3] Complex Utility Mechanics - This is primarily referring to Poisons. 1) I'd really like to see poisons become duration based and not Duration + Charge based. With the amount of utility/damage that Poisons provide to us and the amount we rely on them to be on par with other classes.. It's amazing that they're as expensive as they are to make (at the high end) yet only have a couple dozen charges. 2) Utility Rogue Poisons and High End Damage Poisons should be easier to make. Merchants should either sell the materials to make them directly or farming the materials should be much easier to do. 4] Finally Lack of DPS while soloing. - Frontal Arc DPS is pretty pathetic for a Rogue.. It can be very difficult to achieve positioning as a Rogue and not always as rewarding as it would be to simply play a class without that restriction. I suggest upping Chaotic Stab damage to be much more on par with the amount of damage we can pull from the rear arc. Probably closer to 80% of full damage. When soloing however, that combined with Ripostes should bring a Rogue closer to 120-125% of the damage they can do normally as there is much more risk. I hope it wasn't too hard to read. One more thing.. in regards to Assassinate/Headshot/Decapitate ease of use. Assassinate: It's a small chance off of a backstab. There is a small chance to backstab off of a Riposte. There is a small chance to Riposte off of an attack against you. Headshot: It's a small chance on a ranged attack. Decapitate: It's a small chance off of a normal attack. There is an AA to cause all Ripostes to generate a normal attack as well. The way I've always understood it to work would be.. Decapitate is a Chance off of either a Normal Attack or Riposte (Because the Riposte has a normal attack as well) Headshot is a Chance off of a Ranged Attack (Which they can perform quite often) Assassinate is a Chance, off of a Chance, off of a Chance.. and can be INCREDIBLY difficult to proc compared to the the others. Will this be changing at all? Because it hardly seems fair. Also.. Extra bonus question.. Decapitate is not limited to the same enemies Headshot and Assassinate are. Will this be changing? If so, how will it be changing? And finally.. There is a huge AA cost discrepancy between Headshot AA, Anatomy AA, and Decapitate AA. Will this be changing and how? Bonus-Bonus Suggestion.. I think it would pretty cool to have Track as a Rogue, even if it's limited like the Bard gets. Especially with all Rogue classes in EQ2 having it. Bonus-Bonus-Bonus Suggestion.. Rogues could use a little bit more speed as we've pretty much got to get everywhere without any sort of magical assistance. The only ones as bad off as we are at times are Warriors and Berserkers.
I posted this in response to Piestro a few moments ago. I have a level 100 Rogue as Esero will grudgingly admit to... It still works on humanoid-only mobs, which describes maybe 10-20% of combat NPCs. Likely no undead things, which leaves most all of Dead Hills out. Are bixies/clicknars humanoid? If not, scratch Bixie Warfront HAs too. Ethernere Tainted West Karana has almost no humanoid mobs. Oh hey, most of Neriak is still open! ...also, how many level 99 and below mobs do we typically fight nowadays? Most things I kill are white-yellow-red. Can we expect to see a broader spectrum than living humanoid-only mobs? Or to increase the cap to level 100 due to its limited usage versus Decap/Headshot? Recall that this only fires off on a backstab, versus a normal swing for a berzerker or arrow shot for a Ranger. Its chance to fire off is significantly less (even when running the Frenzied Stab discipline) compared to the other chain classes, so if the % chance to trigger per fire attempt is the same, Rogues will be around 10% of what the other classes are.
I don't want to take the time to respond to the bulk of your post right now, but this in particular. They won't let us sneak/hide on a mount so we're stuck relying on a 4 minute randomly dropping invis click from the darkest night. Fixing mount hiding, or giving us a run speed boost would be the smallest bone. Considering the crap we put up with.
Lets just say I would not mind Run 8 or 9. As far as suggestions.. I could probably go on for another 3 pages by myself. I just took some of the more important ones that I feel need to be addressed in order for the class to actually feel fun and useful. As it is right now I get depressed watching even level casters go around soloing content I can't even hope to go toe to toe with for more than 5 seconds.
Melee combat has become increasingly more deadly and almost not worth doing most of the time. And I get tons and tons of excuses. Rogues weren't meant to solo, You shouldn't try to solo even level content, You're so much better in a group than you are solo, and one of the ones that ticks me off the most "If you want to solo go roll up a Necro, Mage, or Beast Lord.".. yeah.. that shouldn't be the official response. The fact that there is a problem needs to be acknowledged. Warriors and Rogues are two classes that feel it really hard right now.. other classes do as well when attempting to take on even level content without some sort of a crazy gimmick as well. Monks, Berserkers, Warriors, and Rogues.. pretty much the pure melee classes have some really tough times soloing even level content while Enchanters, Wizards, Mages, Necromancers, Beast Lords, Etc.. can all do pretty damn well. It looks like the secret is "Don't get hit, because we're going to make it as deadly as possible. And if you're a Melee who has core mechanics that REQUIRE you getting hit... just don't try." and it really feels bad sometimes. Paladins, Shadowknights, and Warriors can at least take a hit. Monks, Rogues, and Berserkers have no option other than melee and our mitigation/avoidance just isn't up to par in the slightest. If all of the suggestions I made earlier make it in for Rogue that would at least go a long way to addressing the problems that I have with it. I'm pretty sure Monks and Berserkers could be improved as well in both survivability and DPS in their own ways. Pretty much every melee class needs a bit of tweaking to make the game playable.. But I still argue the fact that the worst case out of the bunch is the Rogue.
I am happy with where rogues are at all said and done. Yes, there is always room to do more dps but I digress. My biggest axe to grind is the lack of content that takes advantage of our unique gifts as rogues. We are supposed to be thieves with nimble hands and skills of stealth to do massive damage from the shadows. Seldom do we do that. If we are not supposed to be top dps than at least allow us to use the skills that counterbalance that. Practically speaking, if anything, I would not mind a triggered mitigation ability that stacks with everything and a way to forage or steal poison mats. The stealing would be more fun! I don't aspire to solo as rogues have always been bad at that and I don't pretend to want to go that route. I would rather have what I am good at made even better versus what I stink at already made only slightly less stinky. That and all the time I spent skilling up lock picking, pick pocketing and, and trap disarm to mean something in today's game. The last time that was used is in the epic ornament quest. Two daggers up from me on that, but that was the last time those skills got used and it was for fluff. Fun fluff but still fluff.
I'd like some ability to gain AA without requiring a group. With assassinate being g i m ped having some ability to do something beyond killing level 88 light blues would be nice. Especially since even that's being made less effective. Any caster running around with a wiz merc can molo AA more effectively than we can with assassinate being marginalized.
Click sneak hide during mount casting time and youll be sos, you can also click escape on a mount and stay sos until you zone.
I semi really don't care for this as a rog .. While throwing and have the back can assassinate, as well as incursion ( dam base aa thats a BS ) as well as of course the ole refresh 5 sec bs key. The big change even in some really lower end end stuff is they have a ton of hp still. I never really exp'd using assinate.. and never really swarmed .. though on occasion was fun to pull 15-20 and hit CT with RF and hope you killed them before they killed you lol. The way assi used to work could exp slowly and was good for farming TS stuff a bit O plat here and there. The fact you have you be up front and personal 100% of the time like zerkers was the HUGE drawback to taking on higher level stuff with alot of hp.. so this change just makes it more of a crap shot if trying to solo.. you'll need a healer merc and only singles mebbe doubles if you disc to save merc and get exp and still have down time. Yeah it will be cool to see them fire off in a group and yes there is room for upgrades .. last i saw they were going to be very very watchful of the dam and start on the much lower end so i woudln't see much if any dam increase till see see live and howpeople are using it. In current content stuff alot won't qualify as humoind and 99 or under. Even with a healer merc .. slow pots/slow dagger stuff can be a beast to take on and well most of the old timers know i am ac too lol so lol 5-15k hitters + ae's/adds ect of named is almost impossible .. just too much too fast ( esp named but even reg mobs can push their dps output pretty well and be well over a mill to a mill and half hps) No one has really said what the base will be..aka yeah 2 procs per min ya ya but .. how much will HDEX affect that if at all now ? Or has that already been figured in the baseline to some extent. Much like attack is mostly capped and the returns over the cap are fairly crap lol. The amount of AA spent leveling assinate max level.. the amount of Chatoci stab aa .. ect its quite a hefty number .. and esp for a rog who stil is looking at off stuff and def stuff and we all know you want to throw some fun stuff in there too! whiel i am max AA and have been and usually am and as many glyph almost as spent AA sure big deal but wow thats alot of aa to go in to be able to do that and some rogs may look and take different paths pending thier playtime/style. Ideally i'd love to to see the trigger chances scale to the level of a mob... aka your farming some grey crap .. it fires a ton .. and scales up to teh 2 procs a min on max level to asi ( well or HS/Decap) Stuff with bigger hps will hurt rangers less then zerks and rogs since VL /root ect and may take a tad longer over all is stil considered safe ( if its snareable/rootable)( aka risk vs reward) Grouping wise no one is gonna pick up ranger,zerk,rog over a wiz merc ESP if they have merc aa making them better.. why clerics are gettign less groups .. i mean really other then buffs who gives a crap if a merc dies if its that vital its a quick afk while it refreshes hehe ( the wiz merc own the rog merc as it is already lol) It's a slow cone push twords casters overall merc and real players. Yeah ned some of those classes to raid for sure but not so much in group and as merc aa's get bought and maxed out i am sure many mercs of all classes are repsectivly better then some real players ( even those who play thier class well ) I just hope in the end its balanced ( ya i know wishful thinking right ?) AA's spent on each of the 3 classes vary to some huge disparity as well as affectivness on mob types and risk. Just feels a big ole paint brush was painted and the 3 chain classes got caughtup in teh brush stroke and we'll suffer in the end...........
I won't argue about survival needing some boosts, but DPS is *not* fine as it is. The top 3 on a recent parse, deliberately cherry picked as at the time it was the best I've ever achieved, and I still got beaten by a Monk. Yes that's a class with self healing, superior mitigation, superior avoidance, and no positional penalties, beating me on a burn (it's a given they also beat us on sustained). Rogues have simply fallen behind. General Vaxa in 173s (NB: engaged time was 48s for all of us bar tank), 103700k @599419dps --- Ber 10133k @206803dps --- Mnk 9365k @195102dps --- Brogett 7872k @164010dps Yes the monk probably got lucky. New flash - so did I. I don't normally get parses like that and it's only because I got some lucky crits off too. Everyone who is pushing their top parses is doing so with a bit of luck, because without it they wouldn't be your top parses of course. Since then I managed a 35sec parse of 170k dps, but still it remains that the best ever genuine melee parses in our guild are ber >> mnk > rog. That is simply wrong. (The ber parse here is pretty weak compared to his own personal bests, which are closer to 300k) If I look at the non-burn situations and do combined parses over entire events, eg WK1 with lots of mobs and both trash plus a big boss, or bixie 2, etc, then I find I'm beaten by monks 9 times out of 10. Rogues need more dps to beat the more defensive oriented class. Either that or we need to be non-rogues and go down a defensive route. I doubt the devs would see that as a sensible direction to take, surely?
Anyone that actually plays the game knows that rogue dps is not "fine as it is". With our position and mitigation penalties, it's expected to be lower when those are not met. But if we are able to counter those, we should be ahead in the Melee dps department by a significant margin, which we are not. Also with more large aeo ramp fights and rear cone aoes that rear arc is mitigated. Basically backstab needs a large boost to its damage. Or the base damage on piercing weapons needs to be increased.
