Calling all Rogues!

[maxtorps]

Similar to the episode about Necros where I appealed to you all for info here (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=427344).

Soon, I'll doing an episode of the podcast about Rogues.

If you have any hints, tips, strategies or tactics that you use, why not share?
You can post them here and I'll read them on the show, or you can leave a voicemail or even book yourself in for a chat and be on the show! Actually, I really need someone who plays a rogue to take part.

Check the sig for details.

Let's have all those rouge hints and tip!

[7thGate]

Ah, this looks fun! I main a Rogue, and Jayya is my only character over level 35. I've enjoyed playing her quite a bit, and have accumulated a number of tips and tricks over the years. I'll look at posting more notes later, but here's some to start:

Doing Damage:
--Carry Emeralds and proactively ask Shamans to Avatar you. Avatar is one of the largest damage boosts you can get.
--You can camp Avatar and remain in voice to log in in many situations to preserve the buff for a fight and allow the Shaman to recharge to Avatar another Rogue.
--Duelist is the go-to damage discipline for short fights, Avatar of War or fights like Sontalak/Zlandicar where you're going to eat a lot of AOEs before possibly getting aggro. Basically, if you're in a fight where you are going to die before you can react if you catch aggro, use Duelist. In most other fights, Nimble is going to be a much stronger choice because successfully catching a mob with Nimble on tank death extends the fight by 12 seconds and allows for chain to stabilize on the next tank. If you buy the raid an extra 12 seconds to burst down Vyemm or Tunare you add much more damage than Duelist ever would.

Leveling
--Leveling is easiest by joining traditional groups and stabbing things
--https://wiki.project1999.com/Shardwing_Courier is a good solo target if its up while you're traveling to/from ToV and you're carrying snare poison for bow kiting or geared/raid buffed enough to kill it. You can turn in the quest drop to Fjokar while using Sneak while KoS, and its worth the same XP as soloing ~7 blues.

Hide/Sneak
--Sneak makes you undetectable by any mobs in the back 3/4 arc. Nothing in the game can see through sneak.
--Sneak lets you pickpocket mobs if you are KOS, as well as do quest turnins to KOS mobs. Hide needs to be off.
--Hide makes you invisible to everything from all directions, but some specific mobs can see through it. Some notable examples include: All ToV named mobs, all VP named Dragons, many Flurry drakes in ToV (but not all), Fire Giants in Sol B, a guard on the stairs to Emperor Crush in Crushbone, and some oozes in howling stones.
--Rogues can move with both Hide+Sneak on. Their movement speed is slowed, but the amount decreases with level. A SoWed Rogue can run while Hide+Sneak faster than an unsowed character.
--Because no VP trash sees hide/sneak and rogues can open the Phara Dar door, a VP allows you to easily walk to sky solo.
--Rogues can test if they're on an aggro table by trying to Hide. If they get the evade message, they're on some mobs aggro table. If they just get the normal hide message, they're clean. That lets them stay in when its unclear whether the raid is dirty and everyone is cycle camping because they are (the only class who is?) able to check for sure.


Pulling and Bows
--Rogues can do a lot of pulls. They lack feign death and DA, which hurts, but they can start trainouts from unexpected or difficult to reach places with Hide+Sneak and have a relatively easy to acquire 340 range aggro tool with Exquisite Velium Reinforced Bow + Flight Arrows that allows for aggoing things deep behind see invis KOS stuff. Examples include:
Pulling Armor of Zek (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34-CT5xr-iI with additional trick involving 1 way wall)
Pulling Statue on Quake (can loiter at door and pull if you see anyone running up to compete, can start Statue Trainout with bow from past the door to state room)
Training and holding mobs for a tag with Nimble+CotH or TL box (such as this Zlexak Split: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U5lrI2Z4dk )
Pulling Tormax's Throne room while KOS (you can shoot across at the giant next to Yetarr while sneaking, which gives enough range to turn hide back on and run out before the giants on your side aggro)
Pulling Dlammaz (just shoot him and turn hide back on and train out)
Pulling Ymmeln from outside normal leash range to a bonewalked Necro pet to bring Ymmeln in to 4 way.
Pulling VP: there's a whole art to this. I'm not very good at it yet, but Rogues are usually backup to Bards there since we can quickly get anywhere in zone regardless of see invis status. The actual trainout is tricky though, since Hide+Sneak is too slow to outpace racnars.

[Tnair]

random specific to p99 thing:

--your swimming speed is unchanged by sneaking, you can sneak/hide while swimming full speed. this is faster than sneak/hiding on dry land by a fair bit, and can be a superior way of moving around some zones

fun but not incredibly impactful rogue shenanigans:

--you can pickpocket shields and weapons from city guards, even at low enough level for the shield to be useful (i got one at level 7 once)
--you can pickpocket ice giant toes, and also jewelry and a lot of coin off of ice giants. stealing their frozen toes without them noticing is extra hilarious to me.

[Toxigen]

As soon as you're able to, carry a Reaper of the Dead around with ya. You never know when a single complete heal could save you/your group from 30+ minutes of CR.

Know if your group is going to wipe and get yourself out so you can drag everyone's corpses to zone ent / CR spot. Sometimes with especially aggressive pullers, I would just stay sneaking/hidden until the pull is into camp and stable before teeing off on the first mob.

You can help with pulling. If a monk is flopped outside of camp with a pull too large for your group, you can assist by waiting for a few to path back then "clean tagging" the 1 or 2 remaining and run them back to camp. Just make sure the monk knows what you're doing.

[enjchanter]

you should also invest in a Staff of Forbidden Rites so you are able to sneak past mobs and rez your cleric saving your group countless minutes of recovery time

[jolanar]

--Hide makes you invisible to everything from all directions, but some specific mobs can see through it. Some notable examples include: All ToV named mobs, all VP named Dragons, many Flurry drakes in ToV (but not all), Fire Giants in Sol B, a guard on the stairs to Emperor Crush in Crushbone, and some oozes in howling stones.



Can add the Ghoul Assassin and also some but not all Sonic Bats in Sol B to that list

I always thought it was neat that Gnome Rogues can have more tradeskills than any other class/race combination with both Tinkering and Make Poison.

Rogues also start with a class specific language called Thieves Cant. It can be learned by other classes but only a Rogue betraying its class and teaching it.

[Tnair]

Can add the Ghoul Assassin and also some but not all Sonic Bats in Sol B to that list

I always thought it was neat that Gnome Rogues can have more tradeskills than any other class/race combination with both Tinkering and Make Poison.

Rogues also start with a class specific language called Thieves Cant. It can be learned by other classes but only a Rogue betraying its class and teaching it.



iirc its spefically the roaming sonic bat thats the placeholder for guano harvester, never had another bat cause problens while lava bathing

[Penish]

root pulls with poisons, neat juk n such

[Botten]

Note for rogue soloing: You can hide/sneak behind a mob, and try to intimidate over and over until you get a resist or success ( "not scaring anyone" result doesn't drop hide, nor aggros ). This means, if you have applied a snare poison, you can ususally get the mob feared and then hit it with a snare poison, and then backstab and melee it while it is feared. Helps a lot to have SoW or JBoots when doing this. This tactic can give you a bit of a boost in dps before the mob starts hitting you, which can make the difference. So this Intimidation skill isn't as ridiculously useless as everyone thinks.

If soloing you can get a backstab off (it is fun): https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=164835

When solo leveling consider the following:
Canyoneer Pike (You can camp this on an ult) Procs at level 5
Locustlure (Not terribly helpful still good)
Glaive of Marltek and Ball of Burlap Yarn (good for pocket snares - easy quest)
Barbarian Rogues are the only rogues with slam (but get a Flayed Barbarian Hide Mask and you can slam with any race of rogue.)

Poisons are look down on as more of a gimmick but in soloing they can be fun:
https://wiki.project1999.com/Skill_Make_Poison

Halfling rogues level the fastest due to racial exp bonus.

[Toxigen]

locustlure should be in every rogues bag for sure

[jolanar]

I found locustlure to be underwhelming for solo. Offhand proc ratio often not even worth the extra riposte damage for a 17 attack speed weapon. Plus if I am soloing I am opening with Spine Break for the most part.

Keep it in my bag for the occasional gimmick fight, but for straight grinding it's meh. I guess it's good if your group has no other slow.

[Cecily]

It's a trash item most of the time that's occasionally useful for a raid slow.

[Tnair]

canyoneers pike is one of the rarest drops in the game, a very rare drop from a rare spawn

slam shares a cooldown with backstab

poison is applied to weapon slots, but only procs when a piercing weapon attacks. this means you can save a poison for later if you equip slashing or blunt weapon instead. admittedly i only ever used this once in the wild, to split a low level spawn without dropping sneak or snaring the intended target before i got it away from its friend. in theory you could keep a target Spine Break'd multiple times in a solo fight if you backed off when it procced and rooted the mob, reapplied another spine break, and used non-piercing weapons until the first spine break wore off.

throwing weapons are garbage compared to bows, except for special mention throwing boulders if you are a barbarian rogue. they are horribly inefficient to collect but have resulted in at least one rogue Best of the Best pvp winner, being a barb rogue throwing 200 damage rocks that can crit from behind

[Toxigen]

Keeping a locustlure bagged can keep a group going if you lose your slower.

Its worth having.

[Jimjam]

I found locustlure to be underwhelming for solo. Offhand proc ratio often not even worth the extra riposte damage for a 17 attack speed weapon. Plus if I am soloing I am opening with Spine Break for the most part.

Keep it in my bag for the occasional gimmick fight, but for straight grinding it's meh. I guess it's good if your group has no other slow.

Locustlure shines best when you’re fighting a hasted mob with no easy way to slow / dispel. Even then it is a gamble.

[7thGate]

throwing weapons are garbage compared to bows, except for special mention throwing boulders if you are a barbarian rogue. they are horribly inefficient to collect but have resulted in at least one rogue Best of the Best pvp winner, being a barb rogue throwing 200 damage rocks that can crit from behind

Jayya can't use them, but I did note its not too bad to farm them off the Ice Giant Diplomat. Not very fast, but low effort and easily soloable with small amounts of time playing and large AFK stretches.

[WarpathEQ]

I personally found the locustlure useless on either of the rogues I leveled whether I was moderately geared or ultra twinked. From a solo standpoint the amount of damage I mitigated by the time it proc'd was offset by the drop off in DPS from using better ratio weapons resulting in longer fights and more overall damage taken. From a grouping standpoint this would be magnified as the group is killing mobs faster leading to less proc's per mob and less damage to mitigate.

Additionally using in your main hand to increase proc rates is impacted even more in groups by losing a high dmg main hand for backstabbing

[zelld52]

I found locustlure to be underwhelming for solo. Offhand proc ratio often not even worth the extra riposte damage for a 17 attack speed weapon. Plus if I am soloing I am opening with Spine Break for the most part.

Keep it in my bag for the occasional gimmick fight, but for straight grinding it's meh. I guess it's good if your group has no other slow.

Open fight with spine break, switch to locustlure to proc longer duration slow.

Worked really well for me soloing the barbarians in qeynos at 59

[Tnair]

I personally found the locustlure useless on either of the rogues I leveled whether I was moderately geared or ultra twinked. From a solo standpoint the amount of damage I mitigated by the time it proc'd was offset by the drop off in DPS from using better ratio weapons resulting in longer fights and more overall damage taken. From a grouping standpoint this would be magnified as the group is killing mobs faster leading to less proc's per mob and less damage to mitigate.

Additionally using in your main hand to increase proc rates is impacted even more in groups by losing a high dmg main hand for backstabbing

I found this to be the majority of rogue proc tools unfortunately ... I had hopes for collecting effects via weapon procs, but yea anything you'd want to proc during the fight is offset by the target just dying slower instead. Got to a point where the only one I kept was my trusty Cat O Nine Tails from Kerra Isle, so I could buff my own agility to carry more loot.

[Garnaak]

I found this to be the majority of rogue proc tools unfortunately ... I had hopes for collecting effects via weapon procs, but yea anything you'd want to proc during the fight is offset by the target just dying slower instead. Got to a point where the only one I kept was my trusty Cat O Nine Tails from Kerra Isle, so I could buff my own agility to carry more loot.

I guess it depends on the makeup of group. I have been in groups with no slower, where using locustlure until proc was enough to help the cleric from going oom. Sure, some dps was lost, but pulls could be continuous with no downtime. More of a leveling tool than something to keep around endgame.

[Toxigen]

I guess it depends on the makeup of group. I have been in groups with no slower, where using locustlure until proc was enough to help the cleric from going oom. Sure, some dps was lost, but pulls could be continuous with no downtime. More of a leveling tool than something to keep around endgame.

this

[maxtorps]

Anyone willing to be on the podcast and has a rogue please book yourself in!