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Wisdom of Crowds - Rogue Guide
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On The Wisdom of Crowds
It is a commonly-held belief that the consensus of a large enough group of people is often nearly as good as the knowledge of an expert. With this in mind, I have decided to collect information found on the forums in hopes of creating a source of useful information. If nothing else, it should be more up to date than Zerk's Rogue Guide. ~Mentathiel
Disclaimer
This is based on personal experience and 'what some guy said on the forums' rather than scientific investigations. As such, it might be wrong.
Character Creation
Much has been said about stats and races, but the basic message is this; low strength is bad. Rogues use strength for their damage and a full set of banded armour (an example of low-level armour with 91AC) is heavy, about 47lbs. If your weight allowance is only 60 (starting strength for a dark elf or gnome) then that leaves just 13lbs for a weapon and anything you loot from corpses.
Other than this, feel free to read the Rogue class-page.
Gaining Experience
As soon as you can, look at joining a group. A rogue is not a tank, has no crowd-control ability and can't use tricks like roots or snares to escape until level 20. In a group though, you can stab away to your heart's content without the risk of death which comes with a solo career. Zones like Befallen and Crushbone offer accelerated experience and collecting Crushbone Belts can be very profitable if you sell them or give a fair amount of experience if you complete the associated quest yourself. The same is true of Crushbone Shoulderpads and the related quest.
It's worth noting that quests which gain you experience or money are a much better idea than those which gain you items. There are almost no quest rewards after the first few levels which can compare to the items you can buy from other players with the platinum you have collected.
Weapons
At level 1, you want something with a good DPS. High damage or low delay will be ideal, but try to focus on piercing, since you'll need to be handy with piercing weapons once you hit level 10 and learn to back-stab. There is a damage-cap in place at these low-levels, so the highest-damage weapons are actually not as useful for a newbie rogue as a fast weapon. Despite the fact that you will probably keep getting given daggers by your guild, a rapier or a spear is often a better choice.
Level 10 brings backstab, a fairly useful skill which does high damage from behind and is at least one more attack from in front. A higher-damage weapon means better backstab damage, but it has to be piercing. At this level, a good balance between damage and delay is the most important trait, but damage should win out if two weapons ever seem close.
Some rogues will swap weapons in combat, switching to a high-damage weapon for backstabs, then back to a good ratio for normal combat. Some other rogues suggest that this is a bad idea as it harms your DPS enough to negate any advantage you might get.
MAGIC ITEM
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: Piercing Atk Delay: 27
DMG: 8
Effect: Engulfing Darkness (Combat, Casting Time: Instant) at Level 27
WT: 2.0 Size: SMALL
Class: ROG
Race: ALL
MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: Piercing Atk Delay: 25
DMG: 9
DEX: +4
WT: 1.0 Size: MEDIUM
Class: WAR RNG SHD BRD ROG
Race: ALL
MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM
Slot: RANGE PRIMARY
Skill: Piercing Atk Delay: 25
DMG: 10
WIS: +5 MANA: +10
WT: 4.7 Size: MEDIUM
Class: WAR ROG SHM
Race: ALL
MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: Piercing Atk Delay: 22
DMG: 10
WT: 1.5 Size: MEDIUM
Class: ROG
Race: ALL except ERU HIE TRL OGR IKS
MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO DROP
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: Piercing Atk Delay: 25
DMG: 15
STR: +20 DEX: +10 STA: +10 AGI: +10 HP: +100
SV DISEASE: +10 SV MAGIC: +20 SV POISON: +20
Haste: 40%
Required level of 46.
Effect: Seething Fury (Worn)
WT: 2.5 Size: SMALL
Class: ROG
Race: ALL except ERU HIE TRL OGR IKS
A note:
MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: Piercing Atk Delay: 25
DMG: 9
DEX: +4
WT: 1.0 Size: MEDIUM
Class: WAR RNG SHD BRD ROG
Race: ALL
MAGIC ITEM
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: Piercing Atk Delay: 27
DMG: 8
Effect: Engulfing Darkness (Combat, Casting Time: Instant) at Level 27
WT: 2.0 Size: SMALL
Class: ROG
Race: ALL
Armour
The first priority of any rogue is to get the best weapon they can afford, so armour is usually a secondary priority. If you find yourself dying a lot, you (for some reason) primarily solo, if you find some rogue armour going cheap or if you see strength gear for sale, feel free to upgrade. If you're saving up your cash for the next weapon in the progression though, feel free to skimp on armour. You are not a tank, you are DPS; as long as the tank knows what they are doing and you are evading, you are much more use to a group doing high damage with aMAGIC ITEM
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: Piercing Atk Delay: 27
DMG: 8
Effect: Engulfing Darkness (Combat, Casting Time: Instant) at Level 27
WT: 2.0 Size: SMALL
Class: ROG
Race: ALL
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: Piercing Atk Delay: 22
DMG: 3
WT: 2.5 Size: SMALL
Class: ALL except CLR PAL DRU MNK SHM
Race: ALL
The best low-level armour for a rogue is banded armour, for 91AC. It will cost you about 85pp for the full set, so you should be able to afford it by the time you're level 10, but is player-crafted and so you may find blacksmiths levelling up their skill who will sell it cheaper or just give it away to newbies. It's heavy at 47lbs, but you should have the strength to carry it if you put enough points into the stat at character-creation and have picked up some strength gear along the way.
Skills
I was advised to spend training points for levels 1-9 only on unlocking important new skills, saving them up for a huge investment in Backstab once you hit level 10. Having failed to take this advice, I can vouch for the huge difference between 10 skill and 55 skill when it comes to damage; this is a defining skill for rogues, so getting it up as fast as you can really pays off. Luckily, backstab will skill up pretty fast once you have it, so you should never have to invest training points in it again. Hide and sneak should also be kept high, which means using them as often as possible.
As to the less useful skills; there are apparently two schools of thought...
Opinion 1 - Save your points
While skills like Hide, Sneak and Dodge are useful and should be unlocked as soon as you can manage it, not all skills should be unlocked straight away. Pick Lock, Pick Pocket and Sense Traps all unlock much earlier than you will need them. While you can pick locks in Befallen from level 6, it is a much better idea to wait until you are ready to use these skills. Unlocking Pick Locks at level 6 gives you 6 skill, unlocking it at level 50 will give you 50 skill. The same goes for Disarm Traps; why unlock it at 21 when you might not even see a trap until 50?
Opinion 2 - Practice to stay skilled
Rogues have a selection of skills which nobody else can really match. At the same time, they have limited use. Some rogues suggest heading to Befallen every ten levels to keep your Pick Locks up to date (though make sure you have 11 points in the skill and a set of lockpicks before you go) so that you don't end up sitting in Befallen at level 50 trying to skill up to max level all in one go. On the plus-side, locks never go trivial; the first door in Befallen, which requires 11 skill, can be used to skill you up to the cap whether you are level 6 or level 60.
Tools of the Trade
As a rogue, you are not really a complex class. You want to stay behind mobs where possible, do lots of damage and avoid catching too much hate. There are a couple of tricks which can help you do this...
Evade
Rogues have a useful combat trick called evasion; it is achieved by dropping out of combat and hiding. If it works, you shed a lot of hate and hopefully lose the attention of the mob if it has anything else to attack. Obviously, this is a great trick when you are in a party and can set it back on the tank, but it can be used in solo play to improve your hide skill and allow you to Pick Pockets. Most rogues use a simple combat macro for evasion:
- /attack off
- /doability 1 (where '1' is the slot used for hide)
- /attack on
If you want, you can also add other skills to this macro before turning attack back on. Pick Pocket is common, a skill you cannot normally use in combat, as are Disarm and either Sense Traps or Sense Heading.
When to evade is a common question and the three most common answers I have heard are:
- Every time the hide skill is up, as it helps shed hate and skill-up hide; if you are using a complex macro (with pick pockets, disarm, etc.) then this is a good option
- Wait until the warrior loses aggro, then use evasion to drop down the hate list
- Every time you get a powerful hit or proc, to help offset the sudden rise in hate
Since evasion turns off your attack, it does lower your DPS. If you are in a group and the tank is holding aggro, use evade sparingly to keep up your DPS. If the mob is turning to attack you though, you will be doing less damage and cannot backstab for full damage. Ideally, you want to evade often enough that the mob keeps its back to you but not so much that you are losing out on the chance to hit them...
Backstab
When you think of rogues, you tend to think of backstab. When you get it at level 10, you should throw lots of skill-points at it. If you can, get it as close to 55 as you can and then finish the skill-up in the field; it is a major source of damage-potential for a rogue. After that, feel free to go crazy using it in combat.
Used from behind a foe, it is a big chunk of damage. It is better than normal damage, unresisted by defensive skills which affect frontal attacks and acts as an extra attack anyway. Used from in front of your foe, it is a simple bonus swing that turn; not quite so devastating, but still quite useful. If the foe is facing you and is not going to turn around (fighting solo or the tank is down) then spam backstab just for the slight increase in DPS, but it can be worth delaying your backstab if the mob is nearing 20% (and is about to run) or if you have only just got aggro and think you can evade to get it back onto the tank.
Backstab is the reason why rogues use piercing weapons, by the way; this skill only works with piercing, though it is your choice whether to use a dagger or a spear. As I mentioned earlier, backstab ignores weapon speed, so high damage weapons are best for backstabbing. Trading weapons is a personal choice, but I wouldn't bother; choose a good weapon with high damage/good DPS for your main hand and you will be fine.
Poison
While this is another archetypal rogue skill, many rogues actually suggest ignoring Make Poison and Apply Poison until a much higher level simply because it is an expensive/awkward skill to raise and does not provide as much of an advantage as most people think until you hit higher levels. Yes, it's nice to have, but only if you have got a higher-level main financing your adventures.
Poison is basically a handful of effects which you can add to a foe. Whether it's a snare or a DoT, you probably have casters in your group who can do the same thing better and more reliably, so save your money and buy a better dagger if you are that worried.
Instill Doubt
Instill Doubt is a fear effect, so what's not to love? In a good group, it can be used for fear-kiting and it does expose their back, but running down a fleeing mob in a busy zone is a good way to get yourself a train.
For the solo rogue, this might be more useful. A fleeing mob is exposed to backstabs and a good snare poison might make it possible to fear-kite, but rogues were not really designed for this technique, so a lot of guides I have seen suggest leaving this technique to the rangers and druids.
Other Tips
- When you are sneaking, consider walking sideways; for some reason, strafing is faster than walking forward
- Hide and sneak, when used together, are often better than invisibility; get used to using them and they will save you a lot of trouble
- Sneaking slows you down, so don't sneak while running from a train
- Looting corpses (even your own) or handing in quests will reveal you, but will leave sneak working
- Getting hit by an enemy will end sneak and probably indicates that you are no longer hidden
- Some enemies can see through Hide, just as some enemies can see through Invisibility
- Safe Fall works even on a small fall, as long as you would take damage
- Bind Wounds is no substitute for magical healing, but it's better than natural healing
- Picking pockets is often considered rude in a group, but make sure you practice it because you want this skill nice and high in time for the Epic Quest
