Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Has anyone built a dagger-Rogue without the Backst

I'm asking because with the change in the latest patch, it takes until level 4 before you can get a second Talent point. Backstabber has the feel of a mandatory Talent for Rogues, but that means it'll be a long time before they get anything else.

But maybe I'm thinking of this backwards: Maybe Backstabber isn't mandatory at all for Rogues. Has anyone made a Rogue which doesn't take Backstabber, and are they still pulling their weight in combat?

One way to look at it is to look at how much damage Ifan does when he doesn't back stab thanks to Vault sometime putting him in front or to the side of the enemy and you forget to reposition him.

Can you still clear the early access without it? Likely because in the current early access, weapon damage are ridiculous so using Chas and Abs unique knives for the early game to whatever Gareth have for sale, you still deal great damage even without backstab.

But if you can't backstab with your knife (which is required to use vault), you might as well just pick up a bow and shoot with it because that's pretty much the damage non-backstab knife will do, but with range and special arrow. The backstab is the only reason I don't just change Ifan into a bow user.

There's zero point of playing rogue without backstab since most of the abilities require daggers. I dislike the talent tax, too, though backstabbing IS really powerful. Ifan in both of my playthroughs by far had the best single target DPS. Probably should just nix the backstab talent and make it a feature of daggers. If necessary, the backstab damage could be toned down very slightly, and rogues would be more fun to play and more versatile with an extra talent point.

Rogue without Backstap SHOULD be possible, though likely not right now.

It would be a Spear Rogue.

It exists to mix with Warfare mind you.

True, a spear rogue/warrior would be fun. If Vault and other skills (like Sawtooth and even throwing knife) worked with spears without giving backstabs, that could possibly work. All those skills would actually thematically work pretty well with spears.

I'm not really particularly good at positioning my characters so I've just had Ifan work as a regular archer, only without many abilities. I've often felt I'm not exactly making the best use of him, but it's probably the best use I can make of him...

Well, the "vault" ability, if used first, should solve the positioning issue most of the times... And with this last patch is known by Ifan by default.

This. Can we please have this Larian? Otherwise, I'm not sure what to do with those spears I find.

I made a dagger user without Backstab last patch. Some Scoundrel abilities can Backstab even without the talent (Vault and Throwing Knife), and Backstabs cannot also crit, so they don't stack with Rage.

If you decide you want a different talent (or hate the inconvenience of getting behind targets) you can cover for Backstab with Rage instead. It makes it a lot easier to also incorporate certain powerful Warfare abilities that are difficult to Backstab with anyway, namely Battering Ram and Crippling Blow, etc.

This build would mostly be better off stacking Strength with 2 Strength weapons instead (especially since weapon abilities no longer double dip from mainstat) because Strength 1 handed weapons have higher base damages than daggers, for the same cost. For example, a lvl 6 dagger has 11-12 base, while a lvl 6 Sword does 14-16. (30% more average damage to the Sword)

However, using daggers gives access to Vault, which is pretty good, and also Mortal Blow.

So, the trade-off to use Daggers w/o Backstab is basically 30% damage lost (compared to Swords), and the only advantage is gaining access to Dagger-only skills (Vault, Mortal Blow, etc.).

Of note, the damage difference was reduced this patch (used to be 50% more using Swords, etc.), so daggers are not as bad off as they were, but Backstab is still mostly essential for Dagger using to be competitive (a sign that it should probably be a default feature of Daggers and not a talent at all).

If we assume that Rage is too dangerous to use, and that a character will be able to easily Backstab 100% of the time, Daggers will do 1.5 damage vs 1.3 damage compared to Swords. This difference is increased much more for higher quality daggers that have an increased 200% critical multiplier.

In summary, I would not recommend using daggers without Backstab. Just use Strength weapons if you hate backstabbing, but it's probably not bad enough to be nonviable.

However, using Backstab in conjunction with a good 200% critical damage dagger seems very worthwhile now.

I still dislike that any extra crit chance is mostly wasted on a Backstab build though, since Backstabs are already guaranteed to crit (thus greatly reducing the usefulness of Wits).