Hi all,
Following up my Warrior equipment guide with one for the Rogues.
Link here
Transcript below:
INTRO
Hello and welcome to my guide for selecting equipment for your rogues. I consider rogues to be the most gear dependant classes in the game, so unfortunately you may not be able to unlock their full potential without getting a few high level drops.
Rogues are typically high single target dps classes with low health, also known as glass cannons. Rogues utilize passives such as Easy to Miss and Sneak Attack as well as the ability Steath to avoid detection and to deal massive critical damage when flanking enemies. Their survivability comes from evasion and disabling abilities such as knockout bomb and leaping shot as opposed to health and armor bonuses.
Due to their already high critical hit chances through the passives 'knife in the shadows' and 'sneak attack', we won't be looking to boost this stat. We will be looking at increasing critical damage and Dexterity to maximize the damage output of our rogues, as well as increasing survivability through raw damage. Remember, you can't be killed by something if its already dead.
RINGS
With all my rogues, I try and offset their low health values with at least one heal on kill ring. You shouldn't get hit a lot, but a few stray arrows can floor you if you aren't careful. If you don't have a constant healing through kills, you may find yourself treading on very thin ice by the end of the zone.
The Assassin and the Alchemist will benefit the most from the ring of critical damage as their second ring. With the passives 'I was never here', sneak attack and Knife in the shadows, you will be critical hitting almost 100% of the time, so its best to use the critical damage ring, which grants up to 20% additional critical hit damage, to maximize the damage you will be dealing.
The hunter will find the Ring of Flanking, (which grants up to 20% damage from the flank), particularly useful since you will almost always be attacking from the flanks assuming you choose a stealth build. Unfortunately the hunter doesn't have the passives 'I was never here' or sneak attack, so it will not be hitting nearly as many critical hits as his dual dagger counterparts. If you don't have a ring of flanking then a ring of attack would be a good alternative.
The Archer is the only character I actually recommend an ability ring as a first choice. The Long Shot ring is surprisingly good on him. It grants 30% extra damage, and given the upgraded version can hit multiple targets for high damage, the 30% gain can often result in multikills from a single shot.
Archers have a unique passive which grants 0,5s cooldown reduction per critical hit that is scored by anyone in your party, so the ring of critical chance is a good alternative here, though you do have passives And Take them down and Mercy Killing so critical hits arent exactly hard to come by.
AMULETS
The Amulet of Stamina is the best choice for Archers and hunters using Full Draw, especially when using the double full draw. The double full draw will usually drain all your stamina due to its 65 stamina cost, meaning you can't follow up that quickly with a second ability. Ill link a tutorial for the double full draw for those who don't know what it is.
Assassins with Death Blow will also benefit from the amulet of stamina. Deathblow doesn't trigger the Dance of Death passive that restores 50 stamina whenever you kill an enemy and it is also bugged and can occasionally consume all 100 stamina so this often leaves you high and dry when chaining abilities together.
Alchemists with the upgraded version of Elemental mines will gain 10 extra mines when using the amulet of stamina. This is very useful as im sure you can imagine, so its worth noting.
Another great option for all rogues is the Amulet of Cooldown as rogues yield their huge damage outputs from their abilities, so having these off cooldown as soon as possible will always be desirable in all situations. Alchemists using flask of fire or will find this amulet particularly useful as it is a core ability that the rest of the kit is usually build around. Assassins using hidden blades will also enjoy the faster cooldown on what is a guaranteed instant kill on most enemies.
If you don't have either of these amulets, then the amulet of dexterity or cunning are good alternatives.
BELTS
Since rogues are relatively glassy characters, I recommend equipping a Belt of Health to absorb the additional arrow or two. The belt of fire resistance is surprisingly useful aswell, as fire attacks from Rage Demons, wraiths, spellbinders, mages and the venatori commander can be devastating to a rogue.
CRAFTING AND UPGRADES
Weapons upgrades should prioritize critical damage, dexterity and constitution. For the bows the best choice is the Rugged Bow Grip, since the metal slot can grant you a bonus to constitution and the leather slot will grant you more dexterity.
For the daggers, I recommend the Three-Edged Dagger Grip, as the leather slots can grant you both extra dexterity and increased critical damage. I recommend using the highest materials tier in order to maximize your bonuses.
For Armor upgrades you'll want to choose the highest cunning upgrades possible. Ranged defense and magic defense upgrades are good alternatives to this aswell.
WEAPONS
Ill split this into two sections, bows and daggers. Ill start with the bows.
For the Archer the best choice would be either Punched by the Maker or the Longbow of the Griffon. Punched by the Maker gives you increased critical chance and a 10% chance to proc Walking Bomb for 5 seconds. The Longbow of the Griffon technically has the highest base damage amongst the bows due to its special effect of firing 3 shots in a cone. If all 3 shots connect you will get 3 shots hitting at 150 base damage each. However, the archer generally suits a more long range playstyle, so the increased critical damage from punched by the maker makes it a superior choice.
On the flip side, Longbow of the Griffon is a lot better suited to the Hunter, as the more Close quarter combat playstyle of this class enables the three shots to connect with a single target when in melee range or multiple targets when firing at a group.
Another excellent choice would be the Trepanner's Requital because of its unique explode on kill ability. When combining this bow with a cloaked full draw, you can eliminate multiple enemies in a single shot, as the explosion damage is calculated by the damage of the killing blow, meaning if your full draw hits for 8000 damage which is perfectly reasonable, the resulting explosion will deal 6000 damage to each enemy close by.
If you don't have any of these uniques, there is several rare and common bows you can use. Assuming your bow has over 130 base damage, you will be able to get enough stopping power to trivialize threatening.
Lets move onto Daggers.
If you want to **** out obscene amounts of damage with the assassin, you will need high level unique daggers. You can manage perfectly fine with anything with over 100 base damage though, so do keep that in mind.
The Blade of Red birth boasts the highest DPS in the game with 445 when slotted with a superb rune. Agony has a monstrous 31% critical damage bonus while the Wicked grace dagger has a slightly less monstrous 14%. All three of these daggers are the highest damage weapons the assassin can use, so if you have two of these, congratulations you lucky little ****. If you only have one, then make sure you place it in your main hand which is the left slot when in the inventory screen.
The Alchemist can manage with slightly lower level daggers. She will benifit from daggers with unique traits more than raw dps, especially when using elemental mines. due to their staggering amount of hits, Each mine detonated counts as a hit, so when you are blowing up mines like a popcorn machine, each mine counts as an independant hit.you can often get multiple procs of your special ability.
One other nice trick is to use Lady Jocastas revenge. This dagger has a heal on hit ability, meaning if you die with mines active, it only takes a single enemy to walk over one to self revive.
One last point before I wrap up. I have had a few users asking me if AoE daggers are worth it. Short answer, No. Long answer, noooooo. The aoe is very small and its just not worth the damage cut in my opinion. The animations are pretty nice though, so the only reasons you should ever use them is to either appreciate the fact that someone coded these animations or you have no dagger with higher base damage.
This concludes my Rogue equipment guide. I have a few projects im working on at the moment so you may not see the mage guide for another couple of weeks, but rest assured, its being made. Thanks for watching, goodbye.
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