I'm not using "Rogue" in the sense of "Rogue-like" - I mean skills and stats which make you nimble, evasive, and sneaky. Specifically, I'm comparing those sort of defenses to block + armor absorbtion. In DoD, it is easy to block attacks, and get your armor absorbtion value very high. One recent experiment gave me a character with a block rating of over 120 (That's a 120% chance to block!) and Armor of 30. Most of that came from equipment, a siginficant chunk came from skills, and about 15 points of block came directly from my warrior levels. Wizards get most of the block stat Warriors get, but without the skills and equipment to back it up, their block chance usually hovers around 30. Then again, wizards are supposed to be squishy! Rogues, on the other hand, get no chance to block. But Rogue levels DO increase dodge and counter-attack chance. Dodge is better than block, because it avoids 100% of incoming damage. Counter-attack chance avoids 100% of damage AND hits your opponent back. Nice! Both of these scale pretty directly with # Rogue levels, so Rogue-focused characters can pretty reliably get ~20 or 25 in each. That sounds low, but remember that all of these chances stack. 25% chance in block, counter, and dodge means you should only be hit about 42% of the time (0.75^3). Whereas Warriors only have block, Rogues have TWO great defensive abilities, so their effectiveness goes up quadratically. In fact, by focusing very heavily on skills and equipment that improve dodge/counter chance, Rogues can become nearly untouchable at high levels. This is dangerous, since the attacks which don't get dodged/countered hit for 100% damage (minus armor). At low/mid levels, unfortunately, the relatively low values in defense mean that Rogues are tremendously squishy. Even moreso than wizards, because Rogues don't have consistent ranged attacks to mitigate damage like Wizards do. So while endgame Rogues are pretty awesome with great defense and huge ranged damage potential - low and mid-level Rogues are pretty challenging to keep alive.
Burglary. Rogues now have the items to back up anything. Of course you could do without it if you had fungal or something with enough escapes. But yes stealing stuff is a really nice way to get items to back up your stats and give defensive stats early enough. If you wanted to you could steal heavy warrior armor and use that, because then even if you don't dodge you can then counter and if you don't counter you can then block, and then you have armor to mitigate it (the -nimble is rather negligible).
I've never really had a problem with Rogue-class characters being bad early, but then I don't play defensively. I play offensively. If you can murder your opponents in one hit, they never get the chance to hit you back, and your defensive stats don't matter. I'm also unafraid to drop 1000 zorkmids on Softballs on the first floor so that I have a few hundred "softeners" to throw at my opponents at range.
hehe i sometimes do the same thing with the softballs.. although half the time they just end up getting converted to lutefisk a little later on. I don't usually tithe the lutefisk though, i use it as an alternative to the spacebar when waiting for enemies to get in melee range, or waiting for area effects to dissipate.
I've tried a number of pure rogue builds on GR and have found them very difficult early on. My skills are usually: Artful Dodger, Swords, Dual Wielding, Burglary, Perception, Archaeology, and Fungal Arts. You have to pretty lucky to get to level 2 and get a slime pet. Even one on one with a diggle is pretty deadly unless you get lucky early on and get a second sword. I'm sure there are more optimal rogue builds, but I wanted to pack as many rogue skills as possible with the highest nimbleness possible.
Swap out Artful Dodger for Assassination, you'll find it makes that first level a lot easier. I'd generally swap out Perception for Tinkering as well, but that's just me.
One gripe I have about Assassination is that the Blackjack doesn't "really" put monsters to sleep. They wake up on the same turn that you hit them, even if there's no other monster in the room making noise (dunno what makes them wake up exactly), so the 10 turn sleep as stated in the wiki never happens (maybe they should differentiate between sleeping and knocked-out ... sleeping monsters wake up to noise while knocked out monsters wake up when hit). My latest build had Unarmed, Artful Dodger, Deadshot, Burglary, Assassination, Archeology, and Tinkering. I must say it was really tough starting out. More than one of any monster was hard to manage before getting the Throwing Buffalo Technique (maybe I should have taken swords, but they don't have any knockback attacks). I died a number of times before finding an Enormous Wrench in the first room (and a huge pile of chalk!!!!) with which to throttle my initial foes. Currently on the third floor, making good use of the Throwing Buffalo Technique to push around shelves, vending machines, and uber chests to funnel a monster zoo into a shooting gallery. Does anyone have tips on using the Bolts of Mass Destruction? I tried to fire one into the center of the aforementioned monster zoo before running away but the bolt hit a foe on the fringe, killed only 4 monsters, and "widened" the door by about 3 spaces. How can you shoot bolts past enemies? Do you have to do it diagonally? Use a concussion grenade to create a hole first before sending in the nuke? Also, has anyone using Deadshot at lvl 2 or 3 noticed Bleeding Out and Crippling Wound getting used from ranged attacks? I have it at lvl 2 at the moment, but have only noticed Bleeding Out get triggered from my melee attacks, and not my crossbow shots. It'd be weird if a skill that implies shooting actually didn't apply to shooting at all.
Sell them for money and buy squid bolts. Deadshot is sort of crap; that's probably why it's going away soon. And yes, it doesn't really synergize with archery, despite what it sounds like.
I use BoMD to "open" rooms up. Not a very commonly useful thing to do, but when it is, it's nice to have them. Squid bolts are better at killing masses of enemies, though.
Traps, and AOE bolts/throwables. Acid bottle bolts are great if you can get them to hit a good spot. Fungal is great for temporary tanking, too. Just scarf down all the buff fungus you can, and sit at a chokepoint.
