"The rogue is master of opportunity, using skill, positioning, and the environment to dish out frightening amounts of damage. In their downtime, they provide solid utility, helping their friends navigate dangers otherwise unseen."
Assassin, Predator, and Charlatan. These are a few of the Archetypes that a rogue may find himself delving into. But each one of these unique branches rely off of the core class of Rogue. We don't know much yet about the class of Rogue, being that the focus of development so far has gone to our friends the Tank, Mage and Cleric.
(3/21/2021)
But from what we do know on the
Rogue Community Wiki Page the rogue is quoted with, skill, opportunity, and frightening. These three things to me are certainly core aspects of what makes a rogue, a rogue.
Skill
Rogues are iconic for being a prestigious class, requiring fast button clicks, exact timing, and intelligent placement of abilities. In a game where we will have access to both Tab Targeting (TT) and Action Based (AB) combat, opportunities should arise. Action based combat will represent the skill based, lightning fast style that makes rogue so iconic.
Opportunity
One of the primary discussions surrounding the class of Rogue is their ability to create unique opportunities through class specific interactions with the open world. As Steven has said himself
"So it'll be important and relevant for parties to make sure that they have a diversity of archetypes available to them." (In reference to Rogues). Where this has been seen before commonly through the trade of lockpicking, rogues are open to much more opportunities in the world of Verra.
Frightening
Not only are you the blade in the shadow, the lurking power that fuels your passion for RP within the realm of the rogue, but they're iconic in PvP. The Rogue is always the enemy that you see in your nightmares out in the open world. They slip out of the shadows, in the midst of fighting a few mobs, taking advantage of a player's lack of attention. Some may even just let loose of their keyboard as they let the inevitable occur.
These are the cores that create the philosophy of a rogue. It drives how us Rogues roleplay with the world around us, it allows those of us who enjoy using death as a primary gameplay mechanic. Being a rogue means that you can can find your opportunity, strike fear into their hearts as you slip out of the shadows, and use your well trained and precise skills to take the enemy down in a few swift seconds.
____________________________
How we want to fight.
____________________________
You don't build a rogue to mash the same button over and over, you don't play a rogue to leave 3 bleeds on someone and auto attack them while you watch them die. You play a rogue to rip and tear a target apart, through a swift array of pressed keys and perfect timing. You could even play a rogue purely to cause incredible confusion, by slipping in and out of the shadows, or possibly blinding your enemies.
Mobility
Mobility is absolutely key to a rogue kit, whether it is raw movement speed, or a leap through the air, or the ability to slip into the shadows. I personally would even argue that raw mobility is more important than stealth. Stealth as a game mechanic can often be done wrong, playing it like a D&D style explosion of damage as you leave stealth. This is dumb, MMO combat is far too complex to simply explode someone from stealth, and think you can get away with it. Either it's completely overpowered and truly allows oneshots then re-entering stealth, or one failed burst just leaves you in the open battlefield, leaving you to get CC'd and nuked in the middle of the enemy team. Mobility means that you can leap in, deal your damage, and leap out if need be. Rather than having to constantly be bothered by an invisible force lurking around in the open field, you have to keep your eyes LOCKED on the rogue, you have to ensure that you never lose track of them because if they do, the rogue can abuse it, by vaulting into the battlefield to execute a healer, just to backflip back into the ramparts. Not only will this create an effective battle strategy in large scale battles, but allows you to be a haunting spirit of death over anyone who thinks they can escape you in a small scale PvP interaction.
Comat Combos
Rhythm is a MASSIVE mechanic in combat, it creates fluidity, it creates non-repetitive combat, it creates raw,
sexy and satisfying reward for skill in the midst of combat. Combos should NOT be some of the stupid stereotypical crap that some MMORPGs fall into. Smacking two different buttons until you get enough stacks to do a lot of damage with one "combo" ability, is like I said: crap. A true combo requires delicate choice of spell combos, delicate choice of when to expend a powerful execution ability when you're confident you're going to finish off your opponent, not that you just built up enough combo points. Something along the lines of
Tempo Each ability develops a certain amount of tempo. Tempo stacks up to 8, and increases ability haste. Lower damage spells develop less tempo, and certain abilities cannot be cast until a certain stack of tempo is reached. If a spell is cast at 8 tempo, it is a guaranteed critical strike with an additional 150% damage, allowing for the highest tempo cost spell to be expended to deal massive damage and therefore execute. This means that the player will benefit for coming up with their own personalized and adaptable combat strategy in order to dish out massive damage. Amor Penetration
Armor penetration, and if it wasn't clear, let me reiterate, Armor. Penetration. This is one of the most incredible and rewarding combat mechanics to ever give to a mobile damaging class. Not only that, but it allows for Rogues to dish on damage on any target they want, without becoming wildly overpowered against squishy classes. Raw damage output leads to the nuking of low health players/mobs. Percentile based armor penetration allows you to not be trampled by a tank, but also not simply dish out infinite damage to low armor/low health targets as shredding 30% of their 60 armor makes far less of a difference then shredding 30% of a tanks 600 armor.
(Lets say armor is -1 damage per armor, 20 armor off means 20 more damage per strike. Therefore 200 damage on a target that has less than 10x the health would imply higher damage based off of targets with high resistances over health.) . Not only is this important for PvP content, but during PvE combat, rogues desire to excel on their own. Having armor penetration will allow rogues to fight off powerful mobs on their own, similar to the ability of clerics to sustain themselves against those powerful enemies, mages to kite, or tanks to simply eat stronger attacks.
____________________________
The Rogue's Utility.
____________________________
There have been multiple mentions throughout the years about the utility that the rogue possesses. Concepts such as that mentioned in
Steven's AMA in July 2020, where the rogue is capable of opening concealed and important doorways that can lead to different bosses, different loot, and different locations. These kinds of utilities is what really fuels the tabletop style gameplay of a rogue. Being able to crack into unique hallways, break into the backdoors of castles during sieges, destroy unique items that can provide benefits to the battle in a node siege. Although combat and deadly capability is the core of gameplay when it comes to choosing a rogue architype, by no means do I want my architype to be limited to high apm zoomers like me. There are many ways to open up the world of utility for the rogue without being overly simple and boring along the lines of pickpocketing.
Mobility Utility
Something that truly and unendingly peeves me as a high mobility melee player, is walking up to a wall of stone and going.. "Well guess I'll have to walk around this big route, because my badass rogue that does backflips off of walls before stabbing someone in the back apparently CAN'T CLIMB A ROCK!?". This can be solved in very simple ways. Either we have a static mobility ability, such as a vault before a strike down on a target, or simply a passive mobility bonus that allows you to scale structures. In my opinion, static mobility is a much better option. Not only does this create SUPER adaptive and creative movement, as players have much more choice in where they go, but mechanics such as wall scaling can create a massive load of effort from map builders, and can lead to many strange geometry interactions out in the open world. (Things like climbing on the wrong spot in a mushroom, clipping into it, and falling through the world). On top of a static jump, having something like a static AB dash attack can lead to combo'd mobility, allowing to leave no limits on the exploration of the world around you.
In The Shadows
This is truly where stealth becomes an aspect of the rogue, where it truly gives the player a reason to enter and stay in the shadows. Being behind enemy lines is most rewarding OUTSIDE of combat. Mechanics such as siphoning funds or materials from a rival node, or even your own, or being rewarded things such as certificates for collecting information on enemy targets such as caravans is the true application of stealth. Introducing mechanics such as this would create an incredibly immersive and roleplay esq. feeling to everyone who opts into the architype.
____________________________
Spell Propositions.
____________________________
In this section I am going to be throwing up into the air concepts for spells that the Rogue could have in the world of Verra. I of course have no idea how developed these already are, and they could possibly already have a finished set of spells for them, but even if they may not weight heavily on the final decisions of the Rogue spells in Ashes, I want the concepts to be put out there to truly get a grip on how we want our combat to feel. For now I am going to be operating off of the concept of
Tempo which I have mentioned previously, in general this is my introduction to the concept of rhythm in concept and can be removed from the spell concepts.
Swift Strike -
A core damaging ability, used to begin your tempo. Generating 1 tempo, a Swift Strike, deals (x) damage to a single target.
Wheel of Death -
A powerful single target ability that allows you to track a target. Generating 3 tempo, Wheel of Death is a targeted attack that lunges you towards the target, making 3 attacks dealing (x) damage over 1.5 seconds. The rogue follows the target if they move during the 3 strikes.
(Archetypes such as Scion (Ranger Mage) would allow you to follow the target even after a blink or dash, flashing you to the target as they move) Crippling Dash -
A static AB dash that does AOE damage in a large rectangle. Generating 2 tempo, In a certain AB direction, the rogue dashes forward, blades flared outwards in either direction. Every target within that area takes (x) damage. This dash can be obstructed by objects.
Piercing Blow -
A finishing move, or simply raw damage in a single attack. Generating 5 tempo, on a long cooldown Piercing blow does (2x) damage +(x%) damage based on missing health on a single target.
Generating a massive chunk of tempo piercing blow can either be a way to quickly enter fast paced combat, possibly to cast as many mobility spells as you can to get out or deep in to combat. Or develop your combo'ing skills, the drop the enemy to the perfect health total through the use of other spells, then expelling piercing blow at the perfect time to proc maximum tempo and maximum scaling %Missing health. Bladed Vault -
Another addition to the mobility of the rogue, and allowing for fluid navigation of the world. Generating 2 tempo, the rogue drags his blades behind him as he leaps into the air, dealing (x) damage in a static area around and above them. The rogue will linger in the air for .5 seconds at the apex of the leap. This can be obstructed by objects.
Dagger Toss -
Having a little bit of range is definitely needed for every class. In addition to this, give the rogue something to do in the air, and not be stuck with nothing to do as they leap, float for a moment then fall. Generating 1 tempo, the rogue whips a spare blade with extreme accuracy through the air, dealing (.5x) damage to a single target on a very short cooldown.
Outside of this, there of course will spells associated with stealth. A base ability to enter stealth, and possibly spell mechanics that allow you to enter stealth after casting certain spells like mobility spells in order to gap close before combat begins. A possible mechanic to enhance the stylized exiting stealth to create a grand entrance of damage into a fight could be the passive
Come Death.
Come Death is a passive that causes the first ability after leaving stealth to generate double tempo, therefore if you're looking to dish out massive damage when leaving stealth, you could enter with a
Piercing Blow, which immediately surpassing the 8 tempo limit, would cause you to get an overpowered crit on a high damage ability, compensating for the lack of % missing health if it's entering combat. Or possibly if you stumble upon a low health target in stealth, casting the
Piercing Strike could lead you to get a MASSIVE in stealth, overpowered crit, %health attack, instakilling a low health unsuspecting target.
______________________
Conclusion.
______________________
I could only hope that everyone out there in the community have the same passion for the upcoming game as I do. If there is just 10 people who are passionate enough about their class as I am, I'm confident that we can link hand and hand with the developers to make incredibly meaningful and FUN classes to play in Ashes of Creation.
By all means!! Reply to this post, tell me what you think, call me a moron if you want, or help me develop what might be unfinished thoughts. I love having a conversation, and possibly draw enough attention to the thread that we can get the attention of the Devs, to get a real conversation going about the in-depth development of archetypes. (4/13/2021) We're coming up on the NDA drop of Alpha 1, so it's truly the time to get the wheel rolling on how we want to customize our Ashes experience, the sooner the better for the Intrepid team.
If you got this far.. You're AWESOME! I appreciate your attention deeply, especially if it's that of those who work at the wonderful Intrepid. If you want to start up a conversation with me personally, I am in the Ashes Discord of course and my username is
ChaosFactor#6401. Don't be shy.
And as always..
Sincerely,
Chaos
