Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Melee rogue still needs work.

I'll start by saying I'm a big fan of all the new starter class presets and the new abilities. That being said, the rogue still need work. The invisibility, poison stab, and retreat skills are all great. The problem is there's no progression for it. There's still nothing in the Ranger skill tree for the rogue. You're almost better just going way of the warrior and playing a stealth warrior and calling it a rogue. Unfortunately thanks to the way stats and ap work that means having to go str and you cannot really do an effective melee dex build.

Warrior ranger hybrid works pretty good with spears and bows, the warrior skills aren't really balanced well for low damage double hitting weapons like the daggers though.

You're quite correct that there's no progression, but the upside is that the lack of higher-level skills means that the Rogue doesn't have to invest more points.

That does not mean that the Rogue is dull to play. Those three starting skills are fantastically useful in combination with each other.

The D:OS Rogue is most certainly a glass cannon. Give the Rogue an up-to-date dagger, and the few skills they do have makes them fantastic at burst damage, much faster than a warrior. The weakness is that they can't take hits well, so look for +CON items for them, it's a huge help.

Guerilla gives a huge increase to damage when attacking from Sneak. Normally, it's hard to Sneak in the middle of battle, which is where the Rogue's Invisibility skill comes in handy. Turn invisible, move behind the enemy, Sneak, and wait a turn to save AP. You'll probably still be invisible when it's your turn, at which point you attack their soft, vulnerable back. It does massive damage.

I have 8 DEX - not much at level 7. A Push Dagger is listed as doing 22-36 damage (per hit, daggers can hit twice). If you land a Sneak Attack, you can do 192 damage. TWICE. It does take 6 AP to prepare this attack, but that's 384 damage for the cost of 2 AP to perform the attack. Sometimes, still on the same turn, you can re-enter Sneak mode and have enough AP to do a second sneak attack.

"Dull to play" is not the opposite of "efficient", and vice versa. Power is not the issue here.

Melee rogues have no progression other than "up-to-date dagger(s)" and tend to become invisible warriors and/or invisible spellcasters, with the occasional sneak attack. I had tried to create a rogue-ish character on the previous alpha build when the preset was introduced and never succeeded in doing so. Melee rogues can't exist as of now, they will inevitably become invisible warriors and/or mages due to lack of dagger/rapier oriented skills or melee way of the ranger skills.

Honestly, right now, if I had to try another build around sneak attack, I'd probably go either full ranger, get a crossbow as fast as possible and just range sneak attack, or go for a 2 handed strength based melee build with flurry, in both cases picking the invisibility spell at creation and never bothering equiping daggers.

Rogue archetypes have no real game mechanic associated with the concept as of now aside from sneak, pickpocket and lockpick, which makes the rogue type just a name on a starting preset.

If melee rogues are to exist, they will need a Way of the Thief/Assassin/Sneaky Slippery Backstabber ability (you name it), and dagger/dexterity/rapier exclusive skills. As long as they don't, they're stuck to being warriors with a dagger. It is always possible to make sneak attacks only available to daggers but that wouldn't solve anything really.

True facts, Maali. I'd think maybe some rogue-y CC moves like maybe a sand attack or a heavy bleed and slow when using a dagger etc. and associating it with "Way of the Highwayman" or something similar like that.

Remove Repair, add Way of the Rogue, no one will complain

Fair points, Maali. There's no disputing them. I guess I just don't mind playing an invisible warrior with a dagger, but you're right that there's not much else for a Rogue to do.

There are plenty of status-effect inducing skills and abilities, but the Rogue can't afford to get them. All the magic spells require 7 INT minimum. There are no Way of the Warrior skills until WotW Rank 3, which is 6 ability points.

Unfortunately, it's looking like additional Skills, Abilities, and Talents will have to wait until after the release, and I'm not sure that they'll be changing how the abilities work (because that would almost certainly affect saved games).

Pretty much But then also durability poof or make repairs a simple "pay 5% of value per point" thing with no degradation.

In fact, high quality repairs should boost stats, not reduce them.. but that's just me ,P

And when we are talking about rogues, rogues should be able to have highly advanced poison control skills (turn poison against enemies normally immune, their own immunity to it by default, etc.) And of course, should have a boost to crit chance 100% when ability triggers that can stun and introduce bleed.

There would be a lot of things that a rogue should be able to do that are currently imo missing. But when we talk about the rogue, I am surprised nobody complained about the cleric and how that's absolutely not a *cleric* in the DnD sense at all ;P

I'm fine with durability being gone. But if not the best suggestion I heard was adding what repair does to crafting (and in a modified not permanent durability loss way), making it a bit more interesting as a result too, which doesn't hurt it.

Also, they will *try* not to break saves between beta updates till release. But I can't be the only one who definitely doesn't expect that possible and we'll see atleast 1 saves wipe before retail (who does it again)?

The Cleric preset is a mace oriented warrior with a heal spell available from the start. Sure it's not really a DnD cleric, but close enough. You get a good amount of strength and intelligence that easily enables picking either from warrior or mage skills, as well as gear. Progression is there, you can have a cleric in the sense battlefield healer/buffer quite well. Rogues get a starting preset, and then have to become something entirely different as they progress.

Frankly, I don't mind not having a melee rogue, but it feels strange to have the possibility to choose a rogue start setup just to realize later on that it's not actually a real thing, and all you really picked was the ability to turn invisible for 3 turns (which will probably be available through a skillbook somewhere).

Thing is... your healer and resurrection dude should probably not be a melee character in this game. Imo it has too strong a magic and ranged weapon focus for any melee class to be viable in fights... especially as most mobs can cause some kind of AOE effect that can be midly annoying or extremely evil if you kill them with melee. (Ghouls!!!) So basically you end up needing a TANK (Madora?) and several very heavy hitters (optimally an archer and a mage ,p)

Rogue can use spiffy DEX req weapons but that's it. He won't survive the majority of fights if he gets close enough for melee. And if he is invisible, someone else (more important?) gets spiced with arrows instead. And you still need a str character build to move crates and objects around that you can't teleport (which can be pretty important)

So you see... I simply don't see melee characters as a viable class currently.... a melee rogue would be so weak and brittle he'd die from being looked at.

Melee warriors work perfectly fine, and playing a (melee) cleric build right now, I assure you it also works pretty well too. I gave up Madora and picked lone wolf instead. Never had a reason to regret that choice so far.

He does, as I discovered after level 4. I build my Rogue pretty much with equal points into DEX and SPD, but at that point you need to give him 2 or so points into CON to keep up with the damage you take. Getting it from gear is a good idea, but you may want to put a couple points into base CON.

The trick with the Rogue is to plan and carefully time the use of his starting skills. Luckily they have fairly low cooldowns and low AP cost compared to magic. Tactical retreat is great to move to the enemy rear lines, at which point you enter Sneak mode and become walking death. You can do massive damage from a backstab in sneak mode. If you get surrounded, Invisibility can get you out.

Mmm, maybe smth like way of the rogue?

Rogues should really get a melee attack bleed damage Skill. Of course that wouldn't help a lot since 90% of the enemies in Cyseal are undead. I'm trying to think of a sensible melee skill that would be effective on the undead.

If the INT requirements were gone from spellbooks, they could possibly learn some low level magic that inflicts status effects, which might help, but then again maybe not.