rogue experience

Brettanomyces

GoblinDruid you summed it up perfectly and why I stopped playing a rogue after enjoying one from the earliest alpha days.

I miss stun kiting to solo (stun, backstab, run away, throw daggers, stun, backstab, run away. Now we don't have enough stun for it). And the slice bleed ticks messing up vial and blinding powder drive me nuts. And the stealth nerf to throwing dagger damage was the final straw that broke my rogue spirit.

Leum

Brettanomyces How does Slice mess up Vial?

GoblinDruid

Leum
I actually hadn't experienced the Vial thing, but after he pointed it out, it makes sense to me. I'm guessing that if a mob has Slice on it and you pop vial of smoke to disappear, that the next time the DoT on Slice ticks, it's going to re-aggro the mob as if you just attacked it, thus breaking you out of stealth.

GoblinDruid

Brettanomyces
For real, that's what I mean. I used to kite mobs around waiting on my CC cooldowns to wear off so I could pop in and land a safe backstab. Now that's not really a thing. It honestly felt like a nerf.

I also felt like I rekt mobs way harder when Ambush was a separate ability independent of Stab because I would open with ambush, CC and backstab, then run back to my camp where I was solo'ing and by the time the mob had caught up to me backstab was already off of CD again, incapacitate and BAM. It's like they thought they were making Rogues better at solo'ing but IMHO they made them worse.

GoblinDruid

Leum
I'm sure they will eventually come through. I don't know if you ever played a Rogue back in '99, but we were pretty rough when EQ first launched. Even after Kunark came out I felt like Monks and Warriors out-damaged me until 51+ when I finally got my Epic. Once I was 55+ however, I could out-DPS an entire group and it suddenly felt amazing and like all the time spent playing a weaker class finally paid off.

Leum

GoblinDruid My very first character was a DE Rogue in the summer of 99 (named Leum). I had no idea what I was getting into and after constantly dying to all the poisonous animals around Neriak I decided to play something else haha. I went back to Rogue when I started playing P99 (at launch). Been a ROG ever since 😉

GoblinDruid

Leum
it was a very rough class to play back in '99, but players didn't seem to min/max as much, so I didn't feel like I had a harder time getting groups or anything 😉 I wonder if I've ever run across you on P99. I never played a Rogue there, but I always inspect every Rogue I see for nostalgia.

Leum

GoblinDruid Shankton McGee of Divinity (Barbarian old face)

NarcolepticLTD

@Leum @GoblinDruid
I'm glad Blind is actually in the toolkit, as you can use it as an interrupt - a gap opener - a quick set up for another backstab - or a breather just long enough to channel in a full bandage right in the mobs face. Slice obviously adds in a bit of complication...

In practice what I've been doing while slice is active:

blind to interrupt? Just blind and turn attack back on.

blind to reposition for a backstab? wait until you see slice tick - you now have a full 6 seconds to leisurely press blind and saunter slowly around the back of your target to strike

If you need blind to give you a large gap to GTFO, or need to VoS to completely drop aggro (while slice is active) you're gonna have to wait until twin blades is off CD and slap twin blades first, then you're good to pop smoke.

it's taken me a bit to get used to the interaction between slice and twin blades. I'm not 100% on board with it (basically due to bias of the class from other games) but I'm starting to get the hang of it. Typically I hit slice right after the global from an ambush or backstab is complete, and as soon as twin/slice are off CD I go ahead and hit twin blades. It is absolutely useless on it's own, but just alternating between the 2 (instead of trying to build max stacks) is a good baseline DPS - sort of a one-two punch.

Obviously you can mess around with stacking more slices on longer duration fights, but I've found the above to be a great method without having to use my bandwidth of awareness counting stacks where I can instead pay more attention to the situation and positioning/environment.

Oh... anecdotal at this point as I've not done a lot of testing to completely confirm it yet but - a bonused stealth backstab has interrupted a caster mob every time I've used it while they're casting on someone else, so there's another interrupt you can put in the toolbox (again, I might be wrong but so far that's been my experience)

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