Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Rogue is pointless, just a gimped ranger

Could someone please tell me what the point of the rogue is? I'm playing one while a friend is playing mage, and it seems to me after playing a fair amount of the game that the rogue is just a severely ineffective Ranger. Since charm and silence upgrades are all tied to the Ranger tree, which is all range combat based, there is no point to choosing the rogue preset except to gimp yourself at the outset of the game. It seems that picking the Ranger(survivor) is an infinitely better choice. Am I wrong?

I believe this thread belongs to alpha forum.

It does belong in the alpha forum, but I'll answer anyway.

You are quite correct that the rogue preset (being a sneaky, evasive, melee-focused type) doesn't have a lot of use for the Way of the Ranger ability. I've suggested adding a "Way of the Rogue" ability, and alternate requirements for the abilities, so skills would require EITHER "Way of the Ranger" Rank X OR "Way of the Rogue" Rank X. (That would also help for other classes, so Air Mages and Ranger/Rogues could use Resurrect, and Fire Elementalists could use Phoenix Dive.

Ignoring the skill requirements, A rogue is pretty effective with the dagger's backstab. I haven't played one yet, but judging by what enemy rangers can do, I think that daggers now have a chance to inflict bleeding on enemies.

YOu have the same problem with the Warrior. While mages have the element-based paths. All other classes only have one choice.

There should be other "Path of "-Variants...

There's an ability that let's you backstab with a weapon other than a dagger. Never tried it but it sounds that it would be good. My co-op partner and I did the rogue thing and she ultimately turned into a ranger too with some lockpicking.

The warrior for me is a beast if spec'ed right with the right gear (gear is everything for the warrior it seems). I'm doing 60-70 damage against level 5 baddies and much more to lower ones.

Daggers do not randomly inflict bleed. Also any class can backstab if positioned correctly. The ability you are thinking of is assassin (which let's you use non-daggers for backstabs).

Anyway, I'm not saying that the "rogue" can't do some damage if positioned properly, I'm just saying that the Ranger does the exact same thing (i.e. Has the escapy smoke cloud ability and can backstab just as hard as the rogue) plus the added utility of actual ranged attacks and having already speced into Ranger can learn the charm and silence skills as soon as you get to town. I agree, without a "way of the rogue" skill path focused on the melee aspects of the class, there is no reason to do rogue instead of Ranger. Hope they tweak this in alpha.