Dunno if this is the right place for it, but I crafted a few ideas to get the Rogue skillset up to par (currently only 9 skills). Here's what I came up with: Robbery: 1: Nimble Fingers -- you have a 5+Nimbleness% chance to steal some gold (as per Potion of Gold) from an enemy on a melee attack. 2: Break the Chest(bone) -- You never pulverize a chest, and you gain a +10 critical chance against sleeping or stunned opponents. 3: Graverobber -- Action. Destroy a corpse. 50%: gain a small pile of gold (as per Potion of Gold). 10%: gain a random item (as per opening a normal Chest.) 40%: Nothing. 4: Professional Pilferer -- All randomly generated loot is generated as though you were 1 floor lower in the dungeon. Silver Tongue 1: Ventriloquism -- Action. Recharge: 12 turns. All monsters not currently adjacent to you lose awareness of your existence and cannot become aware of you for 4 turns. 2: Shriek Like A Girl -- Action. Recharge: 12 turns. Stun all monsters within 3 squares for a number of turns equal to your Rogue level. Alert all monsters within 10 squares to your presence. 3: Conniving Bastard -- Action. Recharge: 40 turns. 10+(10*Silver Tongue level)% chance to turn a monster (as per the top-level Psionics skill). 4: Scary Mo-Fo -- Whenever you Critical on an opponent, inflict a 3-turn Fear effect (the enemy moves away from you and doesn't attack for 3 turns.) 5: Imitate Darafon -- Action. Recharge: 32 turns. Put all enemies within 2 squares to sleep. This ability is irresistable. 6: Talk Yourself Into It -- Action. Recharge: 100 turns. Recharge all your other timed abilities instantly. Lucky Devil 1: Roguish Luck -- You gain +1 to Critical Chance, Enemy Dodge Reduction, Dodge Chance, Block Chance, and Counter Chance. 2: Lucky Find -- Each time you open a chest, you have a 1%*(Savvy^1/2) chance of finding an artifact rather than a normal item. 3: Blind Luck -- Gain stats as per a Rogue level, but gain access to 2 random level 1 skills (that you don't already have). 4: Fortune Favors the Bold -- Whenever you are low on health (bloodied), gain +6 Block Chance, Dodge Chance, and Counter Chance. 5: Devil's Own Luck -- Any time an Anvil of Krong could curse your gear, there is no effect instead. Your gear has a 50% chance to resist Corruption. Dagger Proficiency 1: The Pointy End Goes In The Other Guy -- +2 Critical Chance, +1 Counter Chance, +1 Slashing Damage. 2: But First, It Goes In The Poison -- 18% chance to proc a DoT dealing Toxic damage equal to 1+(Savvy*.15) damage/turn for 4 turns. Also, +1 Piercing damage and +2 Block Chance. 3: Scholar of Stab -- +3 Enemy Dodge Reduction, +1 Piercing damage, and +1 Critical Chance. 4: Faith of the Blade -- Action: Recharge 9 turns. Make a melee attack on any creature in LoS. Also +1 Piercing damage and +2 Dodge Chance. 5: Razor's Edge -- Passive: Bleeding Out; Crippling Wound (like all other profs.) +2 Critical Chance, +1 Slashing Damage. 6: Stabby Savant -- +1 Piercing Damage, +5 Enemy Dodge Reduction, +2 Counter Chance, +2 Critical Chance Any thoughts?
Any ability that operates on corpses should have no cooldown but non-guaranteed success. Otherwise optimal play requires lingering around the corpse waiting for your ability to recharge. Silver Tongue seems rather weak to me in general. Having monsters forget about you is not very useful unless you can guarantee it for awhile (c.f. invisibility), stunning monsters for one turn has null utility since you spend a turn using the ability (and if you meant 2 turns, it'll still rapidly end up being resisted by everything). Fear is worse than useless since you want the monsters you're hitting to stay in melee range, sleep is almost pointless as everyone wakes up as soon as you hit anyone (and again, they'll resist it 100% of the time pretty quickly). A skill that recharges other skills has been suggested from time to time; I tend to think that needing 6 skillpoints and 200 turns to recharge it is a bit steep, but it's hard to say.
Thanks for your comments! Skill trees edited to reflect your insight. I kept the Fear effect because I view anything that lets you gain range on an enemy 'for free' as a good thing, especially since it lasts enough turns that you'll be able to kill most any mob your level with ranged weapons (3 turns of them running + 3 turns for them to run back). Also adding a third tree just because I had more time in the W.C. to think up something else cool.
Oh yes and ventriloquism would become useless to a rogue really. I have to stand directly next to monsters for about 3 turns before they'll notice me, though that might have changed with 1.06's mods to sneakiness. And lucky devil would start to get to the point of being really op as you gained rogue levels. It would give you mass artifacts because of the % based of savvy. That and you can't get negative artifacts from krong. Try using this with archaeology and watch the pure op.
I like Robbery though I feel by the time you'd get the last ability (I doubt you would rush into it since they don't give you much fighting advantage) you'd already be down pretty far. Silver Tongue is... complicated. I like some of the skills, especially number 2 and 5, and I'm against skills just for stats (like 4) even though I realize we already have some in the game right now. Lucky Devil is by far my favorite, but #3 is pretty worthless IMO. Lucky Find would need a cap to keep it from becoming OP like Null said. Maybe not scaling, just a flat... 5%? Nice ideas.
Thanks for commenting, Daynab. As to your comments: Robbery -- yeah, you'd probably be pretty low, but the way the gear scales, the effect is slightly larger the lower you are anyway. Silver Tongue -- I originally had a 6-level skill tree there, but I thought the recharge ability deserved a 7-th tier skill and I wasn't creative enough to come up with another diplomacy-bluff-intimidate based power on the spur of the moment. Then, I looked at the other skills and noticed that there are only 6 levels of skill tree. Oops! So I just ditched that level altogether. Lucky Devil -- #3 is one of those things that could be worthless, could be awful (getting Vampire on a build not made for it), or could be amazing (rolling up Astrology and Fungal Arts on a melee beast.) I've edited Lucky Find to scale much more slowly (based on the square root of Savvy, so even at level 20+ with gear, you'd almost never breach 8%.) Also, I'm adding one last tree: I figured Rogues needed SOMETHING that would let them melee in-class, and I noticed that there are already Daggers in-game, so I figured they'd be the perfect thing to expand loot-wise and add a Rogue skill tree for.
I like it, and #4 is actually a pretty great idea, but I feel like #6 or the whole tree needs a major ultimate skill of some type. Either that or larger stats, cause +1 counter is 1% so it's minimal. Same for EDR. Also I do suggest another attack bonus on the first skill to put it in line with the others since you don't do much damage at first.
Well, none of the other weapon proficiency trees end with a major ultimate skill; they all end with a "huge pile of bonuses". But to that end, I've edited in a few more points of defense and one more point of damage overall to bring it up to par. I also tweaked Imitate Darafon to make it completely irresistable (since Sleep isn't that brutal of an effect to begin with) but take 3x longer to recharge.
