Rogue Build - Pathfinder.

THE PATHFINDER BUILD.

This is a bow rogue build, because a rogue which focusses on melee is inferior in my opinion. Dividing points between strength and dexterity means no further bonus than focussing on dexterity as far as I have seen in game. Melee rogues can wear nicer armor of course.

This is not however a solid dexterity build. Before PSN took a break I was playing with a couple of friends who ran rogues and wondered why I rarely died and commonly had most kills and hardest damage. I explained the theory behind this build and they adopted it with great results.

I have decided to post it due to playing the last couple of days with poorly built rogues doing the same thing - not kiting or yanking the screen and dying. A LOT. This build is designed to add some survivability to the rogue and do away with the nonsense. Stay alive and kill things - quickly.

At lvl 75 and with no gear, the build breaks down as follows. Please note these numbers are not EXACT but are a ballpark which works for me. A little more dex would help with lvl 70 + rogue gear:

STR: 8
DEX: 114
ENDURANCE: 35 = 1457
ENERGY: 25 = 532

With gear equipped I have almost 2100 HP and almost 1000 MP.

Here's the simple explanation:
Strength does you no good in any way.

Dexterity needs to be high to equip gear and do damage of course, but you might notice that dexterity alone does not add a huge bonus to damage. You may find that having 'just enough' to equip your level in gear really takes nothing away from your potential for damage. You will see a solid dex rogue having a bigger crit though.

Endurance is great for adding some survivability to your rogue. It allows you to kite less - and whilst that's not a great habit to have, it helps a great deal when your teammates are pulling on the screen and screwing your ability to move freely. It also allows you to stand your ground and hammer a mob with your best skill, discussed later.

Energy - seems somewhat useless until you realize how much more you can do between potions. Whilst it seems like just quaffing a pot makes up for little mana, I have found this bonus to be the difference between killing a mob and falling back.

SKILLS:

10 Quickness. This is not a needed skill but you have worse things to spend points on. It's more of a 'luxury' but is still very, veyr useful. You will draw a lot of agro with this build and the faster you are, the better. Great for solo too.

3 Large Pouch. Because you will have some points left over. Why not have some extra pots? You will be using them on mana if anything, but having more mana at your fingertips gives you better mob control. This adds up to 19 pots, almost double.

1 Dash. Other builds have this and for the right reasons - the other dash-like moves suck and it is great for dodging and getting out when you're surrounded. It only needs one point as it's weapon based for damage and adds very little with more points by end game.

10 Find Weakness. Because criticals are a must have. Huge when worrying about DPS.

10 Acrobat. Adds 15% to your dodge rating. If your gear has some dodge and crit on it (as it should) you will find not only can you take a hit, but you will get hit far less. It might not seem like much - until the first time you go toe to toe with an enemy and watch him miss you - a LOT.

10 Thief Arsenal. + 50 with your weapons. You'll only use your daggers when you get bored but a + 50 on every arrow is fantastic.

10 Bloodlust. + 46 HP per kill, + 26 MP per kill. Now it's likely you'll have items that heal you with each kill intermittently, but you'll find you're always changing. You should also have some great regen, but this skill is a must for solo. In a group you may find other characters taking your kills more than you'd like, but when you destroy a mob this skill pays for itself.

10 Lightning attack. I remember not every rogue had this when the game was still new. Laughable - now everyone has it and they should. It increases your attack as well and the speed at which you use other skills.... skills such as ACID DARTS.

10 Acid Darts. This skill is your mob killer. 105 mp to use. 313 - 418 dmg (no gear equipped), 756 dmg over 3 seconds with 11 darts. It fans out and hits everything, allowing you to kite if need be and watch them die. With the best gear it only gets better. This is where this build shines - with full gear I can get 10 or 11 darts off with one mana bar. That allows me to stand where I need to be, have the enemy in range and spam the CRAP out of it. It anhialates everything and is the bane of larger bosses. With bosses you can hit and run with it, allowing the sustained damage do it's work whilst you reposition yourself. That extra mana paid off and your ability to take a hit means you can bolt if you do let them get to close. I have tried volley and find acid darts far superior.

SKILLS YOU MIGHT SEE IN PLAY AND THE REASONS YOU DON'T WANT THEM:

Expose weakness: It's nice at lower levels but it doesn't grow with your lvl or gear. When you're past end game and fighting level 80+ mobs, you'll realize it doesn't quite add up. That reduction in armor when compared to their new armor totals and the damage your team is dealing doesn't seem to be worth the points invested. Look at your own armor at high level and consider if it's much more than an annoyance.

Poison Studs: It's a percent chance to take effect and whilst that percent is significant, I haven't seen it be worth the time. You have sustained acid damage and your bow is likely to be doing fire damage as well. If enemies had immunities or resistances to various damage types, I could see it's use. I do not at this time.

Debilitating Grenade: It's a great skill early on. It's a lot of fun. However, it takes to long to deploy, doesn't effect bosses or larger enemies. You could be killing them with acid darts rather than farting around with your grenade. Seriously, it seems great for teamwork but your team can handle them without the pretty colors.

Assassinate: Slow to use again and yes, it's damage is huge. But it's not a DPS skill as far as I'm concerned and unless you want to get close and personal with daggers, it's no good.

Explosive Grenade: It's a fun skill. But it sucks later on - again it's slow, it's visual effect is misleading and deploying it is akward.

Stealth: I cannot hate on stealth. If you're super squishy and invested everything in dex, you might want it to run and hide. Problem is, if everyone in your team died and this is your last hope to live.... what happens when your drop it? Dash will get you out of harms way. You don't need this skill.

Volley: It has better range than Acid Darts. But the spread is larger and you need to consider EFFECTIVE range. I personally like getting close enough to a mob to be sure all acid darts hit them. Staying at range and shooting volley - well it seems like a waste.

All other skills - jump attack, roundhouse and so on... well they are all inferior to that 1 point in dash unfortunately. Ambidexterous is useless on a bow. Daggers are a no no anyways - having daggers equipped does nothing for you unless you're using them. The stat bonuses and effects don't carry between weapon sets.

FAIRIES.

I personally use the wind fairy - because she puts mobs on their ass and her damage isn't shabby. People commonly use their fairy when they get in trouble. With that being the case, it's best to knock the trouble down and relocate, rather than hoping it's dead. Which it probably isn't.

THINGS YOU WANT IN GEAR.

HP/MP regen of course.

HP/MP gained per kill.

Bonus to HP/MP.

Bonus to your main stats.

Weapons that do more damage and push back. Stunning and so on is nice but generally comes at the cost of more damage. I personally don't mind some push back as it keeps your enemy at bay and seems to work with acid darts.

Magic resistance. This will save your ass when those pesky mages like to hide behind a mob. Without some magic resistance, you're very squishy vs mages.

Bonus to bow damage.

Bonus to skill/spell damage.




--- PSN handle: Graihl.

Well...

A survivable bow rogue just means less damage in my opinion, but if you are more concerned about living that dps than this would work.

When looking at the dynamics of the rogue there are a few things to observe:
1. Warriors can only out damage a rogue when they spam the crippling strike move. Duh
2. Rogues are known for dps and not tanking. Kiting yes, but not tanking again.
3. Tank rogues (str/endurance) drop the sword and dagger for survivability. use the explosive trap for very nice results and mob aggro. (id stick to a mage tank)
4. Want more damage? Pull a pure dex rogue and switch from melee to bow. (MELEE WILL ALWAYS OUTDAMAGE A BOW) If you disagree, count the number of attacks you do in 10 seconds and you will see that melee will attack about 6-10 more times. plus it just flat out does more damage.


the build you have works if you hate dying and scared mages (kudos for the mage part) but:

Explo trap: Never gets old. there is a reason why a trapper will outdamage most other players. Large range and decent damage. I ran through a few stages on it and worked out really well. I prefer daggers over it, but this as a support skill for your tank is golden.

Expose weakness: As a "pathfinder" this might not help you, but when you are fixing to deal high damage, this skill allows you to do 10-50 more damage depending on what you fight. (the number comes from values i took from the legendary dark fairy fight) Think...10 more damage per hit, fix that in with crits and the amount of team mates hitting and you have much more damage coming your way. I'd get it, but only after you take home a few more keynote skills.

Btw daggers with 500 dmg per 3 on LA will out do the acid darts for boss fights.

Valid points all. It's just a build and not the absolute way to build a rogue. I find it works very well for me.

Explosive trap is a decent skill. I won't say it's crap in terms of it's damage. I just don't find it very user friendly. It's.... clunky.

Expose weakness to me really seems to be less and less worth it toward the higher levels. Again, it doesn't grow with you meaning the points invested are getting you less. In the later levels, it's too easy to pick up some other skills and dismiss EW altogether. If anything, I would toggle the three points from extra pots to it but then it would be pretty much insignificant.

Yup, the build is more survivable and perhaps it deals less damage. I haven't seen a massive drawback though - enemies die quite quickly all the same. If I felt it really nerfed damage to the point it presented more damage to the player than I think it would be pretty pointless.

In all honesty though, I just don't care for dumping all stats into dex. It's not a very creative approach to gameplay. That doesn't mean it doesn't work but again, this is just an option for a different build.

I have seen a lot of people adopt the same techniques and skills and simply die far too often. I have also seen more rogues using other skills than prior to PSN going down, which is pretty cool to see.

Melee will out damage bows, it is MUCH faster. Me personally - I'm tired of ressing rogues that seem to think they're a tank.

I may even lose the three on the pots. I have plenty of mana per the build. Perhaps I'll tweak this a little.

More likely though I'll be playing Daggerdale as of Tuesday heheh. I hope it's deeper than DHA.

That or I might throw everything into dex and keep the skills as is. The extra damage could be novel. Again, the build is meant for people wanting something new or tend to die a lot. I'm confident my kiting will keep me fine with full dex - until the team don't work so well together and someone yanks the screen into a corner....

I am actually contemplating going pure dex and putting 10 on expose weakness with 3 in bloodlust.

Though I wonder if 3 points for 9 extra pots wouldn't be more useful than the bloodlust effect. 9 pots are a sure thing, bloodlust isn't in a group AND the post replace mana. Hm.

My HP/MP regen is about 40/20 respectively, smart kiting means I am pretty much ok. Will mess with this and maybe put up a different build. I don't see any reason to change the builds though but as I posted in the dual wield thread, if you have a pure dual wield build Yukio I would like to see it.

Of course, if kiting is the be all and end all, there's 10 points in Acrobat that could go into Bloodlust. But bloodlust doesn't add up to much on a character that dies in 1 or 2 hits anyways. With that in mind though, Acrobat won't really stop a rogue getting murdered if they've gotten caught - they're still going to get hit.

Crap. Maybe that's 20 points that could be elsewhere. What to do? I could even throw 10 points on debilitating grenade to keep enemies at bay since the dex only is super squishy.

https://dhalliance.canadaboard.net/t27-ranged-melee-speed-rogue-build-magic-finder

Basically use this but without the explosive traps and use find weakness + expose weakness.

10 expose weakness
10 find weakness
10 lightning attack
10 ambidextrous
10 thief arsenal

These are the must haves. The rest points are up to you.

10 Treasure find
8 quickness
6 large pouch

Pure dex build:
The last 3 skills i placed points on were to balance out the high damage received to point amount. 10% plus to treasure find (have 129% total) will easily compensate for your potions allowing you to buy @ any stall and not lose money. You could easily replace these with some more practical such as blood thirst for mobs.

Note that is a boss killer build. The only class that can outdo this is a Str warrior spamming crippling strike. And the amount of damage isnt far off in comparison.

Adding -
10 poison darts / explosive trap
10 blood thirst

will compensate for mobs. Using explosive trap seems useless compared to the DoT of poison, but the blast range and raw damage will do you well. (however with this build you really dont need either of those skills to outdamage any other character)

So I threw together something new and quite like it:

All dex. The interesting thing I noticed here is that with gear on, my stats aren't too crippled. I can still take a hit but damn does it hurt. Keep moving, works well. The skills are where I tried something new-ish.

10 Quickness.
10 Acid Darts.
10 Lightning.
10 Thief arsenal.
10 Find weakness.
10 Expose weakness.

Then to change things, I left out the 1 point in Dash and threw 10 in debilitating grenade. The remaining 4 I put in extra pots rather than bloodlust.

My observations:

Definitely squishy. But with this being a bow class the point is to not get hit. That's where things got interesting.

Encounter a mob - throw the grenade and let off 1 or 2 dart volleys. Clean up the couple that remain. It works quite well solo and in a group I imagine it's not too shabby. It's not a monster boss killer, but it certainly puts the hurt on.

Here's where it got interesting. I was testing in Necropolis with lvl 88 mobs. I managed to get myself surrounded with 3 mobs spawning and ended up in a very small corner. I threw out 3 grenades - in different directions. I let off a few darts, cleaned up 1 or 2 stragglers and walked back down screen - to find the rest dead. I like the build now as it's great for survivability as well - IF THE GRENADE WORKS. Mobs that get half confused and attacking each other don't tend to aggro on the character.

With the damage from the grenade, a couple of darts is easily enough to rape common mobs.

I thought about trying the 4 points in bloodlust rather than pots but think the returns, especially when with other players; simply isn't enough. You'd have to kill 50 plus enemies to fill a health bar. With 22 pots, I found I could be pretty reckless with grenades and darts and pot for mana, easily making it to the next pot refill.

With a full mana bar I can also let off 2 grenades and 9 darts. I NEVER need 9 darts. Of course there were no points in acrobat but again, you don't need it if you don't intend to get hit.

Without dash, extra hp and acrobat - you're screwed if you get surrounded in a hurry. Wind fairy should save my ass IF that happens.

I like the new build, it has more character I feel. Will continue to run with it. Oh - daggers are useless though with this. Hit detection seems crap most the time and it's only a matter of time before something whomps me.

Bloodlust is a solo skill. In my eyes it better that way so your kills dont get taken by a mage with blast.

Grenades are nice for mob control. A build that focuses on a team fight and not dps needs it.

Dash: not needed.

Darts...well....its good, but for flat dps...nope.

i prefer the earth. The stun allows me to hash out 4 enemies before they come back, while the wind just pushes them away. And some monsters arent affected by it btw. (spiders, larger enemies...sometimes, gargoyles.)

Good build, good for team fights. Might not be a flat out boss killer, but this will get the job done.

What would you throw in in the place of darts?

I found that pure reg attacks with crit in mind will out do any other skill besides crippling strike.

So its really dependant on what you are going to build this for.

It depends on your purpose:

If you have daggers or swords that stun then place 10 into roundhouse for those close encounters. 85% chance to stun plus the chance of stunning with your weapons will usually get you out of the way without getting hit much.

Debilitating grenade: Even though this is good, the chance to place a debuff isnt always reliable. But if you dont mind spending the energy for it, then use it. I'd rather take home something I can count on.

Treasure finder: Yes its a useless battle passive skill, but if you think about it...Potions, items, more chances, more gold, makes its nice to know that you can spam potions without losing money. (2.7mil from this bad boy. Its nice)

Melee damage: go round house.
Support: go grenade.
Ranged: roundhouse, acid darts, treasure hunter

Well I just respecced DG to Volley instead. I THOUGHT expose weakness worked off Volley, whoops. Was thinking a volley to expose weakness and then acid darts as needed might be nifty but newp.

DG is ok, but I found I wasn't using it.

Bleh. Well I tried out roundhouse and assassinate and wasn't going to bother with leap attack - I found these skills really cater to melee (obviously) and don't work very well for a ranged character. Take into account the fact that my bow is equipped so their power is nerfed, spamming acid darts simply works better for me.

In the end I put 10 back in Acrobat for a total 40% dodge and dropped one point in sneak. If I can't kill it, can't dodge it - I can sneak and reposition.

I actually think it may be more useful for dealing with mobs. Dash was alright but got a bit messy. If I can sneak early enough, It buys me 6 seconds to get somewhere better. Will see how this goes. Was contemplating not having a 3rd skill at all.

the only issue with dodge is that you cannot move when "hit".

Even if it is high, you give the enemy more of a chance to hit you. I'd stay away from dodge unless you decide to go rogue tank.

Roundhouse is a secondary, It works well when your bow has % to stun. hint hint

Assassinate is obviouslly melee. Dont even think about using your bow with it.


Support rogue: (less damage/high int) use acid darts, DG, bloodlust
Tank rogue: (str enough for a shield/med dex/high endurance) Posion studs, acrobat, bloodlust, ET, Lighting attack, roundhouse is nice
DPS melee: (high damage/glass cannon) lightning attack, bloodlust is nice to have, roundhouse if you have both % to stun on both hands.
DPS Ranged: (Good damage) Acid darts is nice, Don;t bother with volley, Lightning attack, ET maybe.

oh...i only have 1 active skill (lightning attack)

Dash is more of an escape tool in my eyes. Use it and you just simply run through any enemies.

Yup, 1 point in dash can save your rear. Used it for the longest time. Again though, rarely needed it.

I guess if dodge is a no go I could just throw it in bloodlust again.

My bow doesn't have % to do anything but push back. Other than that it's more about the damage.

Yukio (Hideookino) wrote:

https://dhalliance.canadaboard.net/t27-ranged-melee-speed-rogue-build-magic-finder

Basically use this but without the explosive traps and use find weakness + expose weakness.

10 expose weakness
10 find weakness
10 lightning attack
10 ambidextrous
10 thief arsenal

These are the must haves. The rest points are up to you.

10 Treasure find
8 quickness
6 large pouch

Pure dex build:
The last 3 skills i placed points on were to balance out the high damage received to point amount. 10% plus to treasure find (have 129% total) will easily compensate for your potions allowing you to buy @ any stall and not lose money. You could easily replace these with some more practical such as blood thirst for mobs.

Note that is a boss killer build. The only class that can outdo this is a Str warrior spamming crippling strike. And the amount of damage isnt far off in comparison.

Adding -
10 poison darts / explosive trap
10 blood thirst

will compensate for mobs. Using explosive trap seems useless compared to the DoT of poison, but the blast range and raw damage will do you well. (however with this build you really dont need either of those skills to outdamage any other character)

wow nice build even with my ranger armor it's nice doing 1M trophy atm helping o hero/legendary act 11

"8 quickness
6 large pouch"

I think this is better off as 10 quickness and 4 large pouch. You don't need that many pots.

ripstraw ofc u need alot of pots thats a need i boost up friends and then i go melee on bosses on leg mod i use like 10-25 pots but sommtime more

Oh well I rarely play online so I dunno if I'd need more than 22 pots. But so far on legendary I don't need more than level 4 with my build. It's enough to get me to the next pot refill statue.