Rogue Desire Compilation and Analysis/Conversion

This week's compilation from me is for Rogues, once again taken from only this thread and this thread since I can't be sure that the people who responded on Ashes Twitter aren't just the same people.

Disclaimer: While I do play Rogue equivalents in other games, I have no intention of playing Rogue as main Archetype in Ashes, not even as an alt (at least not seriously). Let me know if you see bias or if you feel I added my own preferences too much anywhere.

Things that Rogue-interested people wanted, with slightly better sorting than the Summoners:

1. One Rogue possible just wanted 'a stealther', if they have full stealth, another wasn't sure on the secondary yet. A third wanted the full kit of 'standard rogue things'. A fourth had interest in lots of Rogue forms and similarly 'wanted the whole standard kit'. A fifth wanted backstab and blinding. One more just wanted it generally.
2. One Predator wanted to travel quickly and stealthily and have burst damage. Another wanted to perch and use ranged attacks and a third wanted to surprise with strong skills then hide until they could do it again. Fourteen others just said they wanted this class, or the same thing (with one note about bleed and poison). Of those, one was willing to also be an Assassi, and another a Nightspell (explorer).
3. A Shadow Guardian just really wanted to mine, actually, another wanted to really make an impact with their combos. A third was just hopeful of being able to get close to tanking functionality too. Another was specifically interested in using the Augment to apply damage mitigation to an enemy. One other just wanted this class (cool gear!)
4. An Assassin really wanted to make other players paranoid, to spy, and be tactical. Another wanted agility, stealing, targeted poisons, and burst damage. Another was willing to be a Charlatan. Another was all in. As in As possible. Another was more specific, desiring crit based gameplay with heavy focus on Cooldowns. Ten others just said they wanted this class (one wanted a warhammer, another specifically did NOT want perfect stealth, another wanted to climb).
5. A potential Cultist wanted DoT interactions. Another wanted 'heal on entering stealth', intimidate, and some other damage mitigation options. Another wanted survivability and solo options. One other wanted this class.
6. A ShadowLord wanted to try out some stuff and also considered being a Nightspell. Another wanted both 'shadow clones' and the ability to hide in the shadows of others. Another wanted mobility and misdirection. One more had very specific wishes and suggestions which I used as some basis ( @Shaddohh ), five others just wanted this.
7. One Charlatan (from the Assassin sort) wanted tricky AoE stuff and confusion. Another wanted the concept of 'get in, hit hard, get out'. Another wanted to not be quite so dependent on big hits. Another wanted to draw out the enemy's big attacks and steal buffs, also getting the big hits sometimes. Two others wanted this class.
8. One Nightspell specifically said that they were looking for elemental enhancements for their attacks, DoTs and additional survivability. Another wanted speed like (and with) lightning, but would accept teleportation. Eight others just said they wanted this class and really love its components and the idea of it.
9. Most Duelists weren't sure if they wanted Rogue as Main or Rogue as Secondary, but one definitely wanted a focus on high mobility and damage and didn't care if they had to give up damage mitigation.

Rogues pose much less of a challenge in terms of aligning their wishes, they align on their own. Rogues have bigger issues because they need Augments to be quite specific and powerful because they want to deviate a lot. Within the Rogues' wish set, they are more likely to spend more time deciding which skills to not unlock. (a lot of minor detail wishes aren't in the section above). Therefore for Rogues:

1. The choice of how much effort to put into combos vs support.
2. The choice of how much to put into stealth vs visible misdirection.
3. The choice of how to focus their damage vs survivability.

Here's the scheme. Rogues love schemes.

Rogue players have a specific expectation that universally seems to begin exactly where Ashes says it should. Mobility and positioning. I mentioned 'standard kit', most people's expectation:

Some Backstab, Dodge, Stealth/Hiding, Ground Traps, along with core traits of Speed, Positioning, Critical Hits.

Secondary stuff that isn't necessarily standard but often is associated with Rogues and few other classes:
Bleeds, DoT Poisons from melee, Throwing Weapons, Smokebombs, Close range CC, Ignore Defense

The biggest requirement to make Rogues happy, therefore, seems to be to give them lots of different abilities for them to spread out their Augments over, while making at least some of these have combos, and providing enough in total that those who just want to be 'confusing' and not necessarily assassin stealthy can still get their effects.

Fortunately, Rogues have a lot of abilities that are expected of them, so, taking as much as possible from the above:
Backstab, Dodge, Stealth, Smokebomb, Leg Sweep (an example of decent Close range CC), Weakpoint (defense ignoring hit), Opportunism (something like extra damage to an enemy in some other state like Prone, Stunned, or 'afflicted by a particular DoT'), Poison Point, Fling (generic Throw), Misery Blow (Bleed), Fleetfoot, Run Up (can be used to climb or as a kick style attack on an enemy), Caltrops, Dust.

(My own personal suggestions are in a different thread which I will not actually link, since this is not the place for discussion of my ideas of that type)

Obviously any given Rogue will have their own take on this, since Rogue abilities tend to be about planning, and knowing your own capabilities, but if we look at the probable augments, the important parts here are to provide enough non-attacking abilities for those who want to focus on misdirection. So we look at the data:

The Predators wanted to use their ranged attacks and plan, so many abilities need to be usable with longer range weapons, and any range-increasing augments will be enough for them in that case. The Charlatans wanted to mislead 'openly' for the most part, so they need things like Caltrops, Dust, and Smokebomb to enable AoE debuffing of enemies.

Nightspells seem to need Poison, Misery Blow, and Opportunism, and can maybe augment Dodge with teleportation. ShadowLords also probably need Dodge and movement abilities to 'spawn their Shadow clones from'. Everyone else just needs to be able to land hits often enough to get their damage and combos, and trigger their Augments, from the more 'straightforward' and 'solo oriented' classes.

Overall, Rogues are very dependent on good Augments and specialization of their builds, meaning that they are most susceptible to being pushed into 'meta' roles if the designers aren't careful.

Due to this, some Rogues even included concepts of how they wanted Augments to work. In keeping with this, for this post specifically I will link my Reverse Engineered Augments list (about halfway down the page). Again, that's all guessing based on the class names, but it is relevant here because the Rogues in particular seem to be taking them very seriously.

As always...

THIS POST IS IN NO WAY AN EXPLANATION OF WHAT INTREPID IS ACTUALLY DOING and I made it simply because it was 'next in line' after a clarification from the last FAQ.

Rogues seem to have much more 'simple faith', probably because of the larger 'general expectation' of what the class does, so it seems like Intrepid just needs to not deviate too much and most people will be happy.

Are you one of the people that would not be happy? What else do you need, if that's the case?

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Comments

maouw

This is great, but I'm in a similar boat - I don't think I'll main a rogue (maybe Charlatan?) so I want to hear from others.

Azraya

I am more interested in what Rogue can do as your secondary class. What I would like is the option to take rogue as secondary, and be given multiple augment options that will change the core of my gameplay. Some examples of things I personally would want, is something like this:

Choosing Rogue as secondary would open a few trees, one tree offering stealth/mobility, a different one more focused on burst damage/silences, and another focused on bleed/poison/armor pen.

Something else they could do is play with different rogue classes having different levels of stealth.
A primary class rogue would get a much better version of stealth than someone who only had rogue as secondary.

Acij

Some skills could be actually done by items...like poison or smoke bomb, etc. (my thinking so dont take me for word or something)
But Im more worried for rouge sneak attack ,back stab, attacks from shadows, etc since players could zoom out their characters making HARD to sneak near them!

CROW3

@Azherae

The Duelist is the most attractive of the Rogue classes to me. My hope is that there is a great deal of versatility in how they approach a vision on this combo. It's easy to write off a duelist as that traditional western rapier-wielding trope. Don't get me wrong, I fenced epee competitively for a number of years, so I'm all for that to be one path. Another path would look more like Musashi, one of the greatest swordsman in medieval Japan (though I give Tsukahara much more attention in terms of my own training), who wielded two weapons (katana and a tanto or wakizashi). So the ability to approach combat from a finesse over power, but not finesse without power, is a key part of how that class feels.

The duelist is going to have a number of tricks of their sleeve, preferring cunning over sheer direct attacks. This is where I think bleeds and cc's will be a core part of their approach. A duelist is going to strike with precision to weaken an enemy and basically wear an opponent out until a killing strike is clearly available. In a group setting, a duelist is your dedicated flanker. In sieges they are moving quickly around the field to engage, disable / debuff, then disengage.

My main in WoW for a LONG time was a hemo-sword rogue - it was perhaps the most fun I had in pvp. Loved that spec until it was nerfed into the ground (and loved it still, it just hit like a wet noodle).

Azraya

CROW3 wrote: »

@Azherae

The Duelist is the most attractive of the Rogue classes to me. My hope is that there is a great deal of versatility in how they approach a vision on this combo. It's easy to write off a duelist as that traditional western rapier-wielding trope. Don't get me wrong, I fenced epee competitively for a number of years, so I'm all for that to be one path. Another path would look more like Musashi, one of the greatest swordsman in medieval Japan (though I give Tsukahara much more attention in terms of my own training), who wielded two weapons (katana and a tanto or wakizashi). So the ability to approach combat from a finesse over power, but not finesse without power, is a key part of how that class feels.

The duelist is going to have a number of tricks of their sleeve, preferring cunning over sheer direct attacks. This is where I think bleeds and cc's will be a core part of their approach. A duelist is going to strike with precision to weaken an enemy and basically wear an opponent out until a killing strike is clearly available. In a group setting, a duelist is your dedicated flanker. In sieges they are moving quickly around the field to engage, disable / debuff, then disengage.

My main in WoW for a LONG time was a hemo-sword rogue - it was perhaps the most fun I had in pvp. Loved that spec until it was nerfed into the ground (and loved it still, it just hit like a wet noodle).

I agree a Duelist should be pretty close to what youre saying.
It would be great if I could choose to play rogue differently, tho. I prefer better stealth and ambushing single targets with big burst damage. Really hoping they give us multiple ways to build.
For example, different styles of tanks like an evasion tank, an HP tank, CC tank with buffs.
You could do that for all classes. Give rogues the option to build into bleed/poison or build into stealth/burst or debuffs and evasion.

Serithis

The way I'm thinking classes are going to work, could end up being a bit like ArcheAge, maybe a bit of Guildwars 2, where more or less-- each distinct class archetype has a base set of abilities. And you end up with both paired as one class. Maybe a few extra skills that complete the theme of that class,
(GW2 side) OR skills with individual effects will have a cross-over added effect altered to the theme of the class. Maybe even switching between them as desired. I would like to be proven wrong on this, since I'm not in particular a fan of this system (if it feels stale and not fun and everyone metas the same combinations)), but haven't dug into the topic.

And by looking at the rest of the classes for Rogue, I'm going to go on a limb and assume that rogue is going to utilize shadow magic on some level for its basic abilities, be it teleport backstabs, or vanishes, stealths or shadow magic stabs and what have you. All the fused classes seem to be shadow themed. Perhaps Poisons or Bleeds could be in the mix of a Rogue / Rogue pair.

But -considering- there's a rogue / rogue pairing, as archetypes can be combined with themselves.. it's possible they will have unique skillsets unless it just gives "the part 2" continuation of their abilities. Given each class has 15 combinations: first 8 are with the main spec, other 7 is with it as the secondary spec, this might be the case you either start out with access to the main class abilities or secondary basic abilities if you have a different main spec.
This could mean that secondary abilities are capable of morphing to the main class theme in some way, (like certain secondary rogue abilities become imbued as a kind of shadow spell, or maybe their main spells might have shadow effects attached)
So curious to see how it will come together.

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