Runes of Magic US / AU

Introduction
Rogues, especially rogue/scouts, serve really only one function to a party: dpsing. They have little utility with only one party buff, two (very limited) cc skills, and one silencing skill. Most of their purpose comes from DPSing, but the do that well.

Don't get confused about the /scout part of rogue/scout. It is not a ranged class. You have two ranged skills that are useful to use at range in pvp sometimes, but other than that you are a close range class (meaning up and personal for all those hard hitting close range aoe's).

Two chapters ago, I wrote a guide on how to be a rogue/scout. It's time for me to update that guide.

A lot of this guide will be just re-posting and updating the old guide,but I will include new tips and tricks, new gear, new stats, different statting methods, different rotations, play styles, and how to be a rogue in the latest endgame instances. This post will be released in a partial release, and then updated later. Every time I release a new update, I will update the original thread and then write a post detailing what I've added and where.


I will not be covering Sardos castle because I hate that place.


Since the old post is still relevant up until lvl 60 or 65, I will pick up where it left off and cover lvls 65-72.


Gear

A note on Offhand damage
gear that gives offhand damage is technically the "rogue" sets but are useless. Don't get confused, just because we have an off hand dagger doesn't mean it does any damage. As i said in my old post if you are REALLY inclined to increase your off hand damage, tier your offhand weapon. You will blow $80 on a t10 offhand and potentially see your overall damage drop from the loss of physical attack.

Crit vs PA
Your main focus as a rogue is crit and pa. It used to be that you wanted to find the highest crit gear and use it, but reaching 70%+ crit rate isn't to difficult now, so sacrificing crit for Physical Attack (once you hit 70%) is an option.

How damage is calculated
AFAIK there is no know formula to give you exact damage out put (If there is, please let me know) but the general idea is this:

your damage is based on weapon dps and skill level, as well as your pattack vs the targets pdef. If you have low pattack or the target has high pdef, you wont hit as hard. After your pattack surpasses the targets pdef, you gain very little from PA. In todays endgame, this isnt really a problem. We dont reach anywhere near the boss's pdef. This means that increasing both weapon damage and attack speed increases your damage output. Remember that its weapon DPS so unlike casters increasing attack speed doesn't just let you attack more frequently, it lets the attacks actually hit harder.

On top of the damage out put a skill can have, it has a chance to crit. This crit rate is determined by the crit rate in your character window. If you have 70% crit, you will crit 70% of the time against a mob or player of your own level. A crit hit will at minimum double your damage. On top of that, %crit damage from rings, caviar sandwich, and combat master will increase how hard a critical hit hits for. If a crit hits for twice as much damage, all of your crit damage modifiers can add up to another 170% or more extra damage, making a 50k hit go upwards of 170k.

What to use and why
Generally speaking you gear will be broken up into three sets: your “hardmode” set (head, chest, boots, shoulders) which you get out of DL,Gch, Tosh-h; your normal mode set (legs, gloves, belt, earring) out of RT or some odds and ends; and your accessories. These are the most rigid parts of your gear. Your cape, bow, and off hand provide the most flexibility.


In today's game, what gear you can wear depends more on what instances you can run and what you an afford more than what level you are.


Generally speaking you want to use the Yawaka set out of rt (belt, gloves, pants, earrring), with either the Atrocity set, the Barkuds set, or the tosh hard lekani set. If you choose to use the atrocity set, use a different pair of shoulders and not the atrocity shoulders. On reni, the Lekani set is easier to get because downing the 7th boss in GCH is difficult. Its easier to finish a tosh run than it is to get a barkuds chest.


It is viable to use the gloves of vigilance (out of AC easy), a yawakabelt, a tinc earring (AC norm last boss, or EoJ), and Shints leather pants (tosh-h) in combination with an Atrocity/Barkuds/Lekani set. You sacrifice some crit, but gain physical attack.


Your accessory set should be the level 70 mem set, and either a tinc or yawaka earring. There are lots of options for your last ring: another heroic precision, a trap ring, a dilany ring to make up for some of the crit lost by breaking up your yawaka set if you choose to dothat...feel free to make your own decision here. You can also use the Aoth Strike set, for a loss of crit rate and physical attack, but a gain in %main-hand damage.


Any of the following are good offhand daggers, ordered from worst to best: Thorn of yawaka, Black Swamp Blade, Performance Throwing knife, Dagger of invasion, Night Raid, Tinc Feather. Again, any of them will do you good.


The shints secret intelligence out of Tosh-h is the current best mainhand dagger.


The lvl 70 cape bought with phirus shells gives the most crit for capes. The lvl 70 mem cape gives the most physical attack. The strike capeout of varans nightmare gives less physical attack and less crit, but you get both pa and crit on one cape.


Use whatever bow you want. If you want to stat it find a bow with more physical attack, if you want to tier it use a cross bow with more damage. This is really up to you. Tiering a bow means you lose some stats (hp and physical attack) but gain extra damage on your shot skill, awesome if you are in a position where you have to stay at range, and amazing in pvp.

Most of your gear you can get away with at +12 t6. +16 your rings, necklace, chest, and weapons. t7 your chest and off hand. either t7 or dirty t10 your bow. t10 your main hand.

SOME NUMBERS ARE COMING. Ill give you an idea of what all the gear will give you under dura, unstatted, and unplussed. For these numbers I wont look at accessories, capes, daggers, or bows.

Atrocity/yawaka
With the atrocity set, I will use the shints shoulder armor since it has the most crit of any shoulders in the game (i think? please correct me if i am wrong).

Hp 13101, pa 9310, crit 1321, damage 145

Barkud/yawaka
Hp 14290, pa 10655, crit 1391, damage 270

Lekani/yawaka
Hp 15670, pa 11421, crit 1481, damage 305

Barkud/odds and ends
Again, this consists of the barkuds set with a tinc earring, yawaka belt, leather gloves of vigilance, and shints leather leggings. For even more physical attack, you can get a leather belt of vigilance.

Hp 15380, pa 11643, crit 1227, damage 225

Lekani/odds and ends
Hp 16760, pa 12408, crit 1317, damage 260

Deeprogue's guide has some more gearing opinions, including some more sets for early on (lvl 55-60).

His recomended endgame gear set is set up is:

Quoted from "callummmoore100;531668"

Helm: Best: Lekani, 2nd Best: Barkuds, 3rd Best: Atrocity
Chest: Best: Lekani, 2nd Best: Barkuds, 3rd Best: Atrocity
Belt: Best: SC Belts (Murderous Preferably), 2nd Best: Lekani or Yawaka
Legs: Best: Shints, 2nd Best: Yawaka/Lekani
Shoulders: Best: Lekani, 2nd Best: Barkuds, 3rd Best: Tosh Vendor
Hands: Best: Shints, 2nd Best: Murderous, 3rd Best: Yawaka/Lekani
Boots: Best: Lekani, 2nd Best: Barkuds, 3rd Best: Atrocity
Cape: Best: Aoth Strike, 2nd Best: Tosh Vendor

Stats
The best statting rotation (once you reach castle stats+) is to use 3dex/pa's and 3 stam/pa's. If you can get core of the hero's use those. For example, my statting rotation is: Triumph of the bygone/eternity/hero, guardian of the bygone/eternity, core of the hero.

Edit: I realized that a str/pa eternity is more PA than a dex/pa hero. So the most pa you could get from stats is: Stra/pa eternity, dex/pa bygone/eternity, pa/hp hero, stam/pa bygone/eternity.

Dex/hp'sare acceptable filler stats to get you to end game, but after that are worthless. Avoid them if you can, but if you are trying to gear quickly don't be too afraid to use them.


I dislike stam/dex. You run short on both HP and Physical attack. Granted they are both affected by hero pots so you will see some increase when you use potions, but I still don't feel its worth it. Even as a filler stat, I would rather use Dex/hp. Even a str/pa.

remember, if you have nothing else, a dreamland stat is the same as a castle.

Dex
There is an alterantive dex build, using dex/pa, dex/hp, stam/dex of the eternity/bygone (or w/e two stats you wish to combine). A note on Dex builds by odell:

Quoted from "kynamdoan;542538"

Both dex and PA builds both work well. PA build will eke out a little more dps on end game. A dex rogue will outdps a PA rogue if the dex rogue has high enough pattk. But dex build rogues can't get high enough pattk in tosh hard that a pure PA build rogue will outdps 'em. Pure PA build rogue can get about 100k patt unbuffed, pure dex, is about 80k with vn set. The difference is, however, very small in my experience.

On Palenque the 2 top r/s in terms of PVE and PVP are Walkyria and Odell (yours truly). Instead of talking math (which has been done before and has shown that PA build rogues will do more DPS than DEX build rogues after a certain PDEF threshold which is usually the highest level hardmode instance in any given chapter) let's talk empirical observations.

Walky:
Shint T11, Tosh hard armor clean T7
Around 30k dex with hero potion, 80k pattk unbuffed (around 120-125k pattk buffed, full X runes and using keenness)
Stats 2 dex/pa, 2 stam/dex, 2 dex/hp (he's got quite a lot more hp than I do), but now has moved to 3 dex/pa, 2 stam/dex, 1 dex/hp (or 1 stam/dex, 2 dex/hp)
Something like 85k hp unbuffed (he always, always has his pet out, so i don't know for certain)

Odell:
Shint T10, Tosh chest clean T7, rest of set clean T6
13k dex unbuffed, 86k pattk unbuffed, about 138k buffed. (Skipped hero/glory statting, retired for several months before coming back in april. Also don't have potential X runes nor do i have aggression X runes, only rev X).
Stat 3 dex/pa (or 4), and 3 stam/pa (or 2)
75k hp unbuffed

Empirical observations:
Tosh hard I do about 90% Walky's dps.
Krolin hard, dps is equal.

During full burn mode at the beginning, his dps outshines mine by quite a bit due to the fact most buffs increase damage of some sort and the dex modifier helps his damage a lot. After the 15 second full burn, my dps catches up. Final 3 bosses in Tosh (the burn bosses) we usually end up with about the same dps.

Walky can solo RT plat, and i think up to tree boss in RT dia. I can't do any such thing, I run like a baby if I'm tanking anything. I'm sure he gains a lot of benefits in SW as well which I do not have, but it's very hard for me to compare. We usually end up with the same amount of kills in SW. In all instances below Tosh Hard, walky beats me in dps because my extra pattk that I have is irrelevant. I think of pattk as armor penetration, helps with the concept of why pattk build works when damage is lower than that of a dex build.

Walky also beats the living crap out of trash mobs in instances with his dex mod and their pdef being low.

In any case, Walky currently outdpses me by a little. If i gain another 5k pattk or so, we'll be about equal in end game. He will always outdps me in any instance that isn't endgame in any given chapter.

Finally, dex-based statting is MUCH cheaper than PA statting due to the overabundance of stam/dex and dex/hp stats.

Hopefully that helps illustrate the differences between the two builds. Again, I reiterate, BOTH builds are good and viable. They have different play styles and have their unique benefits.

Well well, what do ya know, we both do very well in pve and pvp. Dex rogues and PA rogues can be friends.

Personally, my current gear (aoth strike set, barkuds, yawaka gear) is heavily dex statted. I am keeping up in damage with Pdam geared players, but as I re-stat i am pulling away from this stat style. Both are viable, but I prefer pattack stats than dex. Its very much personal preference. With my current stat build though, I some times end up off tanking, especially on Annelia.

I have found that a total dex build with hero stats on 16 pieces of gear would give you 34945 pa just from stats (with 13810 dex).

A full pa build would give you 39008 pa from stats with 9206 dex.

The above numbers were taken with a hero potion and vn set in consideration. Without those, the dex build has even less physical attack.

Also dex has a minimal affect on dps: a 1k increase in dex relates to roughly a 100 damage increase. These are thorugh my own rough testings. Results may vary.

You can find my stat comparison chart here.

Instance Reqs
You can run any instance with full statted gear of previous instance
At GCh level, you can survive with 60-80k hp, and 60-70k pa. This is easily achivable with atrocity/yawaka gear that is temple/tomb statted. SC has similar (but slightly lower) reqs.

Tosh it is recommended to have 100-110k hp, with 80-100k pa. This can be reached with gch gear and bunker stats. Having blocks will go a far way in helping you reach that HP. AC has similar but lower reqs.

Runes
In my main hand I have:
wrath (damage)
raid (Attack speed)
recon (-aggro)
fatal (crit)

in my off hand i have:
block (stam/def)
potential (+all attributes)
revo(dex/pa)
recon

in all other pieces of gear i have:
revo
keeness (dex/hp)
block
potential

If I had extra gold (I have no money) I would buy aggression instead of the keeness.

blocks will make up a large portion of your hp, so try to invest in revolution and block x's
Set Skills
I generally use lion claw mark, unknown choice, and yawakas blessing.

Sometimes (if im tanking or im in an instance where i one shot mobs) i use phantom stab instead of lion claw mark.

In siege war I use escape instead of yawakas blessing.

Skills
Maxing or near maxing a skill at end levels is not a problem at all. To me, it is either level a skill all the way or not at all.

Rogue General:
-Shadow stab
-Nimble Hands
-Agility

Scout General:
-Shot
-Vampire Arrow
-Swiftness
-Speed shooting mastery
-joint blow
-throat attack

-blood arrow (this skill should only be leveled if you use a tiered bow)

Rogue Specific:
-low blow
-wound attack
-dagger mastery
-blind spot
-numbing dagger
-hide
-sneak attack
-treasure hunter
-combat master
-offhand master
-sprint
-evasion
-informer
-fervent attack
-coerce

Minor changes to what skills to level...especially scout skills. Joint blow and throat attack are well worth the levels. Blood arrow is not a useful anymore, i took it off the list of things to put tp into.

As far as tp goes, I have 130mil tp and all my rogue skills are at lvl 70.


Rotation
This time, I'm going to cover rotation before buffs. As I've learned since my last guide, keeping your rotation exactly right is important, especially when burns wear out


Without buffs your rotation should be:
shot
vamp
shadow stab (or blind spot)
low blow
wound attack
vamp/throatattack/shot/joint blow(in that order of importance) when they are up until woundattack is back up.
Once wound attack is up again, start again at shadow stab.

Some people dislike using joint blow / throat attack. In that case just drop them out. Joint blow and throat attack will do more damage than shot (with a t7 bow), but will crit more often. If you tier your bow i would recommend just sticking to shot. If you are using a t7 statted bow, use joint blow and throat attack in addition to shot and vamp arrow.

This rotation will preserve your energy so that you never run out, and give you some filler moves so your dps never drops. You will keep up good sustained dps, which is much more important than burning. Burning is nice, if you can burn a boss that is great, but there will be plenty of times where you or your group WONT be able to burn a boss, and this is where i see most modern rogues have their dps drop off. They burn great, and then suck terribly in their sustained dps.


Everyone knows the rogue/scout burn rotation. shadow->low->wound->lowblow spam->shadow->low->wound.


This is the order in which I pop all of my buffs before a boss fight:


rost wolf leg (or some other pa/pdam food)
grass land (or some physical defense food)
combat master
poison
yawakas blessing
hero pot
caviar sandwich
unknown choice
informer
instrument (you can pop buffs while playing an instrument)
strong stim (or fervent attack depending)
soldiers attack (or fire training...they share a cd, but they stack so talk it out in your group)
energy thief
deadly potion (or extinction if its an instance where I pass the pa cap)
assinss rage
strike cape

Remember, you can use instant cast buffs while playing an instrument. Just make sure that you stop using any skills when the instrument casts reaches around 1s or else the instrument will glitch. The cast bar will disappear but you will still be playing, so you can buff and play an instrument at the same time.

I also keep Frenzy Potions and I am always prepared to use fervent attack in case the boss fight goes longer than expected. If the boss isn't burned it's better to keep up speed potions than anything else, so when buffing mid fight make sure to use fervent attack and frenzy potion instead of using deadly or extinction potions. Also, if the boss doesn't die during burn phase and you use a tiered bow, use blood arrow here. Be especially careful now, if you haven't burned the boss on a strat heavy boss fight, now you have to balance that whole strat and the fact that you are losing HP and cant move out of your healers heal range.

The only thing in this rotation you might not have is soldiers attack and strike cape. everything else you should be carrying with you at all times, no excuses.

TWMXC wrote an amazing alternative guide to rogue rotations. And my old post has even more rotation suggestions. As does legless's old chapter1 or 2 guide. No one guide can cover every play style. Read as much as you can to learn more.

Quoted from "TWMXC;538547"

Keypoint #1 ALWAYS WOUND ATTACK WHEN IT IS UP. 99% of you are in love with low blow. 99% of you suck.
...
1 sec shot CD with bow: ss/lb/wa/shot/vamp/shot/jointblow/shot/wa when its up refresh or leech bleeds as needed
2 sec shot CD with xbow: ss/lb/wa/vamp/shot/jointblow/jointblow/shot/wa when its up refresh or leech bleeds as needed.

Main points Wound attack is by far your best attack, use it the second it is up ALWAYS. If you can't then you need to learn to manage your energy better. If you disagree then you suck and please don't post in this thread as I want people to learn a solid rotation not some garbage from a mediocre low blow spamming noob.

Main point 2: You should never ever ever ever ever be sitting idle waiting for energy. Use shot, vamp and JOINTBLOW when your energy is low and you are waiting for Wound Attack cooldown. For the love of god don't freak out and be like "OMG I need to attack! LOWBLOW MASH!" Cycle your scout general skills and keep an eye on energy.

A note about leeching bleeds: it works just fine, make sure there is a shadow stab or low blow bleed on the boss and wound attack still works just fine. If you are starting a boss fight late for some reason (lagged out or were afk when the boss fight started) and there is already a bleed and a grievous wound on the boss, feel free to open up with wound attack. Then go back to your rotation.

A couple of rotation notes from bleedingblack:

Quoted from "bleedingblak;542489"

Go ahead.

Be sure to include joint blow and wrist attack.

Quoted from "bleedingblak;542491"

I do my cooldowns in this order;

Informer
Unknown
Caviar
Strong stim (or fervent)
deadly pot (or crit pot)
soldiers attack (or ft)
assassins rage
energy thief
aoth strike cape
then i make sure i have my patk title on

Coerce
Coerce does work, but not the way that it used to, and not the way that people expect it to. Once the boss drops below 30% hp, the damage done by LOW BLOW increases permanently (or until the target dies, or heals, or you acquire a new target). It does not affect other skills.

Combat
While keeping up your rotation is important, if you die you become worthless to the party. Never stand in front of the boss, if the boss happens to do a frontal aoe, it will kill you. Now you are decorating the floor while your party carries you through the fight.

Also make sure to execute all strats flawlessly. Its better that a boss fight takes longer and you down a boss rather than trying to burn, messing up the strat, and wiping the group. Strat > dps.

DIYCE
It's generally not recommended to use diyce, it produces lower dps than pressing keys by hand. I do use it for executing my buffs though. The diyce in my old thread worked with (and only works with) diyce 1.4, the following diyce is only compatabile with dice 2.0.



Addons
I use quite a few addons, my favorite being nkcooldown, ikarus, simple damage log, and scrutinizer.

nkcooldown shows how long until your cooldowns are ready in a visual timeline.

ikarus is useful to how your partymembers targets so its easier to target mobs.

simple damage log and scrutinizer are great to see your own damage output and damage taken.

Macros
Here are a few macros that are super helpful as a rogue. I use the nkXtdMacro addon to show cooldowns on my macros.

Numbing Dagger


Sprint


Soilders, Charge!


Evasion


Diyce Buffs


Housekeepers
I have 1 house keeper for my physical attack buff (level 100 buff, gives me 6% pa). Make sure you buy a house keeper with battle that goes up to 100.

I also have two cooking house keepers who's affinity I keep maxed at 39. This way I can pull 100 or so caviar sandwiches from their cooking each day.

I also have a lvl 100 protection house keepr with level 80 crafting. If i need an hp buff i can use the protection, but on most days i just use it for luck potions.

Finally i have a lvl 22 crafting house keeper for Unbridled Enthusiasm.

I am considering buying a second PA house keeper, or possibly a lvl 100 crafting house keeper for god speed potions.

Relationship buffs
Keep lots of family member buffs around, the hp is nice. If you are going to get married only for the the buff, marry a tank or a healer if you can. They will like the pdef.

Pets
Get a low level holy dark pet. Read a pet guide on how to level it. That is outside the scope of this guide.

Tips and Tricks
My favorite part of being a rogue/scout is seeing how much I can substitute and live through.

Varanas Nightmare
In VN, keeping your sustained dps rotation correct is more important than burning. Also, here it is more important to spread out your burns. Use informer, energy thief, and frenzy potions as you run in. Also use substitute, and spread away from the group immediately. Sub will save you from the 45k aoe.

Don't pop buffs on the 1 add.

next round, if you choose to, use fervent attack. alternatively, save it for the two adds.

third round use sub again, and no buffs.

on the three adds, if you need to pop buffs, pop whats left, otherwise save for the last 25%.

Grafu Castle Hard
Keep bears, jugglers, and knights shadow prisoned or numbing dagger away from the group. Its better to CC mobs and not do as much damage than it is for these mobs to run into the group and wipe people.

The most important thing to remember in GCH is that whirlwind will kill you. get out of those close range AOE's.

Sub will NOT save you from the single target poison skill on the fifth boss. Don't try it.

As a r/s i am able to tank heticus when the two bears are up, but i have high dex (and consequently low pa =( ). When this is the case, we put all the rogues and the lowest dps hitters in my group so i can have an easier time holding aggro. After that I just dps it, pop evasion, sub, candy, and blade cape whenever I can.


Tomb of the Seven Heros
The burn the first boss gives you that one shots you can be sub'ed. The same applies for sword breath release on the second, and elder's battle cry on the fourth boss.

Big leeway on the 6th can and cannot be. Sometimes it works, sometimes it dosent. Sometimes you run to the other side of the room and die, sometimes you stand next to him and survive. Big leeway is a really glitchy aoe.

It is also important to note that if you have more rogues than can fit in a party, you should either have a rogue with a tier'ed bow stand back and spam shot, or have someone more skilled who is able to run in, dps, and run back to the other group fast enough.

Substitute can also absorb the hit from the battle axe so the trail of fire can be significantly shortend. Just side step a bit from the group, sub, take the hit, and come back.


Aeternal Circle
Solve the puzzles in hide. Don't just do one round and then kill the mobs, solve the whole puzzle, then hide back to the group and get ready to pull a lot of boxes.

Sprint and sub through tornadoes.

On the first boss, it might seem like a good idea to have a tierd bow so you can spam shot while avoiding the tornadoes but DON'T DO IT. Keep the group as close together as you can.

On the twin boss, im usually the only person dpsing the boss held by our off tank, since I seem to be the only rogue with negative aggro in my guild O.o; You should keep the rogues with negative aggro dpsing the off tank'ed boss, and the rest of the dps with the main tank. This isnt really much of a "tip" as it is common sense.

Krolin(world boss)Don't use vanish on this boss or he glitches.

Rakshas Temple
Most rogues can easily tank norm or bronze. Take out your recons, and if you have some high dps mages in the party, but a hatered or two.

Sub will save you from the bolgu blast.

Kawaks Tomb
Why are you even in here? Don't use tomb stats, you can start of your statting with castle+ stats, and none of the gear is worthwhile. I don't have any tips or tricks for this instance because you should never step foot in here.

Sardos Castle
If you can do SC, you can do at least the first boss of AC and get eternity stats. So there is no reason to be using bunker stats anymore, no reason to be in this instance. Maybe you want an od trap ring, but at that point its probably your last piece of gear, and you will be an experienced rogue by then (hopefully).


PVP (Siege War)
Ill try to cover how to deal with different classes. In siege, you can usually one or two shot people with low blow.
This entire section will change if and when they implement the 90% damage reduction in pvp.

Escape
Escape will keep you immune from getting feared and make you invis for 8-10 seconds in siege war. Use it to deal with fear towers

Strike Ring
Strike ring wont make you invisilbe, but it will make you immune to fear for 10 seconds.

Knights
Ignore them. They wont kill you. Probably.

Priests/Druids
Start off with sneak attack
low blow
wound
throat attack
jointblow
shot
lowblow
wound

If they still aren't dead, you should probably vanish. or their team mates killed you.

Just a quick reminder, anyone can pop immune food or buffs (or in the case of a druid, rock protection) while stunned, so don't waste throat attack if they decided to immune. Wait for it to wear off, then throat attack them.
Mages
Throat attack(or sneak attack)
lowblow
wound if you opened with sneak attack, or use shot and vamp.

Rogues
Wait for them to pop out of hide, then shadow stab or vamp. MAKE SURE YOU GET A BLEED ON THEM. Then low blow!

Scouts
Run the (expletive) away?
Or shadow prison, lowblow, joint blow/shot/vamp.

If its a scout/knight, just run away.

Wardens
If its a wd/w tank, be careful. They will have both hard hits, and high defense. These might be as difficult to kill as a s/k.

If its a wd/s, take out the chiron. The pet can one shot even a 300k pdef priest. After the pet is dead, low blow the warden.

And remember, if you fall off a cliff, Sub will not save you from fall damage <3

Reserved for future info.

Added in quotes and links to other guides including:
My old R/S chapter 3 guideTWMXC's rotation guide
Deeprogue's rogue guide
Legless's Rogue guide.

I am trying to keep the diversity of opinions In this guide up.

Also added in sections on macros, addons, and a small section on pvp. This will be it for now, unless people request more to be added or request changes. As new patches are released and things about the game change, ill make updates.

Quoted from "bleedingblak;542491"

I do my cooldowns in this order;

Informer
Unknown
Caviar
Strong stim (or fervent)
deadly pot (or crit pot)
soldiers attack (or ft)
assassins rage
energy thief
aoth strike cape
then i make sure i have my patk title on

Added this in, thank you.

Just realized that I didn't explain how crit damage works, so im adding that in right now.

Quoted from "xMagus;542528"

This is a good guide but their is an alternative way to stat a rogue for optimal DPS and that is the dex route. 4 Dex/pa and 2 stam/pa or Stam/dex. Alotta rogues overlook dex it both gives you patk and raw scaling Damage with certain skills that have dex multipliers.

Quoted from "bleedingblak;542530"

i have 67k hp unbuffed with that setup.

I live thru the newest instance and ToSH just fine

Quoted from "kynamdoan;542538"

Both dex and PA builds both work well. PA build will eke out a little more dps on end game. A dex rogue will outdps a PA rogue if the dex rogue has high enough pattk. But dex build rogues can't get high enough pattk in tosh hard that a pure PA build rogue will outdps 'em. Pure PA build rogue can get about 100k patt unbuffed, pure dex, is about 80k with vn set. The difference is, however, very small in my experience.

On Palenque the 2 top r/s in terms of PVE and PVP are Walkyria and Odell (yours truly). Instead of talking math (which has been done before and has shown that PA build rogues will do more DPS than DEX build rogues after a certain PDEF threshold which is usually the highest level hardmode instance in any given chapter) let's talk empirical observations.

Walky:
Shint T11, Tosh hard armor clean T7
Around 30k dex with hero potion, 80k pattk unbuffed (around 120-125k pattk buffed, full X runes and using keenness)
Stats 2 dex/pa, 2 stam/dex, 2 dex/hp (he's got quite a lot more hp than I do), but now has moved to 3 dex/pa, 2 stam/dex, 1 dex/hp (or 1 stam/dex, 2 dex/hp)
Something like 85k hp unbuffed (he always, always has his pet out, so i don't know for certain)

Odell:
Shint T10, Tosh chest clean T7, rest of set clean T6
13k dex unbuffed, 86k pattk unbuffed, about 138k buffed. (Skipped hero/glory statting, retired for several months before coming back in april. Also don't have potential X runes nor do i have aggression X runes, only rev X).
Stat 3 dex/pa (or 4), and 3 stam/pa (or 2)
75k hp unbuffed

Empirical observations:
Tosh hard I do about 90% Walky's dps.
Krolin hard, dps is equal.

During full burn mode at the beginning, his dps outshines mine by quite a bit due to the fact most buffs increase damage of some sort and the dex modifier helps his damage a lot. After the 15 second full burn, my dps catches up. Final 3 bosses in Tosh (the burn bosses) we usually end up with about the same dps.

Walky can solo RT plat, and i think up to tree boss in RT dia. I can't do any such thing, I run like a baby if I'm tanking anything. I'm sure he gains a lot of benefits in SW as well which I do not have, but it's very hard for me to compare. We usually end up with the same amount of kills in SW. In all instances below Tosh Hard, walky beats me in dps because my extra pattk that I have is irrelevant. I think of pattk as armor penetration, helps with the concept of why pattk build works when damage is lower than that of a dex build.

Walky also beats the living crap out of trash mobs in instances with his dex mod and their pdef being low.

In any case, Walky currently outdpses me by a little. If i gain another 5k pattk or so, we'll be about equal in end game. He will always outdps me in any instance that isn't endgame in any given chapter.

Finally, dex-based statting is MUCH cheaper than PA statting due to the overabundance of stam/dex and dex/hp stats.

Hopefully that helps illustrate the differences between the two builds. Again, I reiterate, BOTH builds are good and viable. They have different play styles and have their unique benefits.

Well well, what do ya know, we both do very well in pve and pvp. Dex rogues and PA rogues can be friends.

* EDIT: Speaking of which, maybe a dex build section in your guide would be useful or at least a section highlighting the differences because they are indeed viable.

Odell's reply is great, so I just added a quote to his post instead of writing my own less well worded idea.

Edit: ill put up a thing about using runes in gear between now and SW tonight.

Added in a section on runes

Quoted from "mnkmurphy885;542546"

I know how many times I've heard stuff said, like "Man, I dunno why you think rogues are such hot stuff, the ones we have can't keep up with the mages in party and they all have the same ToSH gear." I hate to diss my own class, but unlike mage, rogue is a class that is heavily rotation-dependent.

Rogues, even with proper rotation, can get out dpsed by a good mage or warrior. This isnt to say rogues are bad, rogues have insane dps. But that doesn't mean mages cant keep up.

Quoted from "mnkmurphy885;542546"

Rogues take a lot of crap for being an OP class. I disagree with this somewhat. Yes, they can absolutely do an absurd amount of damage- but so can a lot of classes played with skill. And being an epic rogue does actually take an absurd amount of skill.

So, my one real contribution to this guide would be this: Rogues, take heart. Yes, you get hated on a lot, but you aren't insta-OP. You can become absolutely epic, but to get that status, you will have to do a lot more than just throw on some leet gear. And just cause you're uber in PvE won't automatically mean you're uber in PvP either. Be prepared to put a lot of time into gaining the skill you'll need. But the end product of that work can be astounding, as it should be.

yes it does ive played a rogue/scout for three years, and I still learn new things (like remembering to use wrist attack on bosses >.>)

Quoted from "mnkmurphy885;542585"

I believe this. I just haven't ever seen it since Noto doesn't have a fully geared mage/warrior or warrior/x.

I do about 2/3rd of Walky's dps on average, on m/p, in ToSH. Now, he is geared better than me, he's done with the ToSH gear, he has the chest, and I don't. But I don't think even when I'm done that I'll be able to compete with him in close to at-level content, even on m/p. M/W is a different beast, and I'd like to see what a similarly geared m/w would look like next to Walky.

The sheer capacity rogue has to sustain dps means that outside of burn, rogue will always kick mages in the can. In burn, I bet a good m/w could smoke them.

That's part of the reason the "rogues are so OP, NERF EM" argument is so silly. They aren't OP- they have strengths and weaknesses just like the rest of the dps classes. We're not better or worse, we're just different.

Ive seen some amazing mage/ priests, and scouts do some great dps. Granted they heavily out gear me (tosh stats, vs my bunkers) but their output is still awesome. mage/warriors just destroy me though =(