Who knew the most fun I have had in a long time playing melee Rogue is with a Marksman build. Was messing with theory crafting the Jelkhors and for once an idea actually works and can push end-game corruption and deals damage at a decent rate.
Thought I would post this here for anyone who hasn’t discovered these interactions themselves yet. Old LE masters have probably used this already, so its more for those who havent considered it.
Not going to do a build guide specifically because there are lots of ways to skin this cat and I am still messing with the build, but thought I would drop some interesting interactions:
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Dual Jelkhors daggers with melee converted Detonating arrows is fantastic fun with crit based Lightning & Lightning tendrils with shock on hit. It clears trash mobs fast and almost screen wide, and shocks/stuns those that are left standing - increasing the potential damage on the subsequent hits meaning nothing survives for long, even bosses. One dagger is lacking in oomph, but you can make it work with another dagger substitude till you find two. Melee attack speed is important to balance against denotation time for best effect.
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Foot of the Mountain solves the annoying problem with Dodge being an all or nothing defensive mechanic by converting it into Endurance for an easy 60% on your entire health pool WHEN you are standing still and actually using melee which is a prefect situation. Obviously this item could work for other Rogues and any class with a way of getting decent amount of dodge.
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Stacking Defensive mechanics is very effective with Smoke Bomb, Shift with Decoy for some strategic cover debuffing and a little boost to endurance threshold if you need it. By stacking dodge (via normal passives/affixes and shrouds) as normal for a Rogue and using it when moving between mobs with Shift (immunity) and running (-25% damage movement passive) you can easily have 70%+ dodge & damage reduction which is then converted into Endurance the split second you stop moving to attack. So for once, you dont feel like the RNGods are going to hit your Rogue with a ton because you missed the Dodge. In fact, facetanking things you would previously kite around is now possible. And dont forget Glancing blow - with the stacked shrouds you can easily have 70%+ glancing blow chance to help out in those moments you need to reposition for melee.
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Shurikens converted to lightning have a dual role, some added armour through the usual Blade shield (minimal additional defence unless you spend some affixes accordingly) but more importantly, you can have permanent 10 stacks of shock on any mob you are attacking - I have regularly found that combining Shurikens & Lightning tendrils, virtually every mob on the screen is shocked constantly (if they are not dead already). Obviously having it proc on Shift is also a great way to keep it up almost constantly although facetanking does require manually tapping it every so often.
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Important requirement of this build is health leech - from Smoke Bomb and some normal health leech from affixes/passives/blessings and even a heart amulet if you can fit it in. In smoke bomb, I have 30% melee leech which has turned out to allow me to facetank those Dominion Bosses in an Ambush echo (only tested on 125 corruption at the time).
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Critical Vulnerability from the Marksman tree combined with the flat crit on the daggers (with some idols) means that every hit you do is almost guaranteed a crit and Detonating arrow does excellent explosion damage when crit.
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Mobs, especially trash ones are not even worth your time. Bosses allow for a lot of debuff stacking and give you something to whack hard enough that your health leech and endurance virtually allow you to facetank a lot of what a normal Rogue would not be able to do.
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Achilies Heel of this build - is you must be attacking at all times but standing still. Also, because of how LE has implemented the “Move to Melee Attack Enemies” setting, means that you have to tap tap whatever mouse button/key you want to use for DA… Its fine to hold it down when you are surrounded but if you are even slightly out of range, its a problem and remember the boots dont kick in if you are moving and you dont heal unless you are actually hitting something - so its a catch 22. There are some situations where multiple ranged mobs or aoe type attacks can be a problem because you are killing trash mobs too quickly to benefit from the health leech that would allow you to ignore them and moving reduces your defence unless you plan it. The best way to play is to shift to each pack of mobs until you have reached a boss and then use decoy/shift when you need to reposition.
Its great fun and I am sure I could fine tune it much more - not sure that I will push arena or corruption to test everything, but I have a feeling that with a few more tweaks it could do very well with any end-game content. (havent tried T4s yet).
Anyway. Thought I would post it for those that hadnt figured any of this out yet.