Do you want to play a Rogue, but Dual Wielding is 1 too many weapons for you? Or perhaps the thought of wielding tiny slivers of pointy metal just doesn’t quite have the kind of … impact you’re after? Or is your “class fantasy” a bit more “backstabbing with Ballistas” rather than “jumpy jump”?
Regardless of the answer to any of those questions, what could be more Rogue-y than a Terror Mace?!?!?!
Ignore those blind un-believers like @Heavy & @KissingAiur, they know not the sublime elegance of beating the **** out of mobs with a weapon that masses more than a baby Elephant! Why kill something with a thousand cuts when you could just turn it into a bloody smear on the floor!
And lets face it, you’ve probably never used a Terror Mace before…
Now all of that’s out of the way, the important things.
- Can you do it? Yes.
- Should you do it? Probably not.
It does work, but it’s a bit gimmicky & you’ll probably get more effectiveness out of a normal dual wield build since there is no support for 2-handers for the Rogue.
Pros:
- Terror Mace
- Lots of stuns
- Fast hits because Flurry
- Life on hit
- You can still use Shadow Cascade
- You’re different to everyone else
Cons:
- No support in the passive tree.
- Limited number of skills you can use because it’s not dual wield
- The devs hate you because you’re different to everyone else
Updates
08/12 - Dragon Emperor video uploaded
07/12 - Harton video uploaded
How it works
So, Flurry hits fast & while it does care about your weapon’s attack speed, it’s really really fast even with a slow weapon. Making it channelled just makes it faster (by removing the time between finishing one set of Flurry & starting the next.
I’m also using Shift to cast Shadow Cascade which does a decent amount of damage because Terror Mace.
Skills
Flurry
One of the few skills that can be used not-dual wielding.
Personally, I went for channelled, then up to the mana on hit (which makes it sustainable), then down to Shockwave for more AoE. I then went for more crit multi & finally Adrenaline, if you want more attack speed, take 1 point out of Incision & put it into Relentless (more attack speed), or Vile Tactics (for poison/bleed & phys resist shred).
The only downside of Flurry/Shockwave, is that the added AoE is placed outside the normal Flurry hit, so no double-hits like with Rive/Indomitable.
Smoke Bomb
This is what I went for if you don’t go Apostacy (converts dodge chance to glancing blow), I’m currently trying out Aspostacy & I think I’d probably take hte points out of Rapid Concealment/Shrouded in Darkness & put them into Generosity (1), Enfeeblement (1) & Moonlight Bomb (3) for more oh-shit defence. Silver Shroud from Smoke Bomb stacks with the Argent Veil passive.
Shadow Cascade
Why should all those dual wielding Rogues have all the fun? Though Shadow Cascade requires dual wielding to cast, we can use it via the node in Shift that casts it.
The nodes taken are for more damage, more area, more crit multi & a small amount of armour shred.
You could go with Dagger Dance, but the daggers are throwing attacks so don’t scale with your big beefy Terror Mace.
Shift
nothing particularly surprising here. We want to proc Shadow Cascade at the end of Shift (since that’s the only way we can have it cast), and since Velocity/Head Trauma don’t affect channelled skills, we can’t go that way :(.
I picked up Shadowslip because who doesn’t like i-frames, Consumed by Shadow and Rebound because I was running out of things to take that would be actually beneficial…
If you want to use Acid Flask, you can go with Parting Gift/Arrival Gift instead of Consumed by Shadow/Unseen Strike.
Alternatively, if you wanted to use Shurikens, you can put points in Sleight of Hand instead.
Decoy
This is very useful & every Rogue should use it (probably along with Smoke Bomb IMO). Not only does it taunt mobs for 3s but it can also apply Frailty & up to 21 stacks of Armour Shred to most of the screen (24 if you don’t take Shrouded Core). Those Armour Shred stacks last 7 seconds & the skill has an 8s cooldown. They can also be “buffed” with the Hooked Blades passive towards the top of the Blademaster passive tree for an additional 25% effect (takes it up to effectively 26 stacks of Armour Shred for 7s!)
Honourable Mentions go to Shurikens (especially the Chakram node for damage & Abrasive Arsenal node for phys resist shred). You’ll probably want to go with 3 points in Alacrity, 4 points in Abrasive Arsenal, 1 point in Thin Shurikens, 1 in Blade Shield, 4 in Ethereal Blades, 4 in Floating Blades & 3 in Bladed Armour. That’ll give you 4.8s of 2 stacks of phys resist shred per hit x5 hits (ie, 10 stacks of shred minimum on a boss) every 3s (if you use Shift on cooldown).
Passives
I’m only 72 at the moment & still playing about with the passives, so this is what I have at the moment. I am trying out Apostacy to convert my dodge chance into glancing blow for 35% damage reduction (& less spikey DR at that), if that feels good, I’ll put more points in the base tree to get Thiefguard for more life & life on glancing blow.
Rogue
Since we won’t be dual wielding, that puts some constraints on what passives to use (such as no Weapons of Choice ). So I went with:
- Swift Assassin, attack speed + base damage (not much, but more = better)
- Guile & Evasion to unlock
- Dodge & Parry, for dodge & glancing blow
- Agility, for haste on hit & 1.5% increased damage per 1% movement speed.
Notable nodes I didn’t take:
- Lethal Cadence, it’s a bit clunky with a channelled skill since it affects the entire channel when it procs (on each third channel…)
- Sapping Strikes, since converting Flurry into a channelled skill adds a mana cost, this won’t give any benefit, though Coated Blades might since it’ll add an additional +5 mana (per point) on to the initial cost & give us 10% more damage per point. This might be a good idea!
Marksman
Yes, we are putting points into the Marksman tree because a)mobs with dodge are cancer & b)crit vulnerability is brokenly awesome with a skill that hits as fast as Flurry.
Bladedancer
We’re basically picking up most of the non-dual wielding nodes that we can.
- Cloak of Shadows, +dex & glancing blow
- Once, added damage & dodge
- Shroud of Dusk, chance to gain dusk shroud when hit plus health
- Veil of Night, for the attack speed, we don’t benefit from the dusk shroud chance since that is “on use” of a melee skill which for us means whenever we start channelling that counts as 1 use
- Scarlet Stream for increased damage & some bleed chance & to unlock…
- Crimson Shroud, I’ll max this if I have the points (because of Cloaked Reaper), it gives you less DoT damage taken & some more bleed chance
- Apostacy, trying this to see what it’s like, converts all dodge chance into glancing blow at x2 rate. So if you have 50% chance to dodge, that gives you 100% chance to glancing blow… Not sure if it’ll be a good idea or not, it’ll be more consistent damage reduction, but less of it.
- Blood Dance, for leech
- Asuvon’s Pact, we’re on max hp most of the time so this is increased damage…
- Argent Veil, if you take a big hit (>30% of your hp), you get x stacks of Silver Shroud, this then causes you to always dodge the next hit (even with Apostacy) and you then gain x00 ward, I’ll probably max this
- Cloaked Reaper, life on hit per stack of Dusk/Crimson/Silver Shroud when you hit a boss or when you kill a normal mob
- Hooked Blades, for armour shred chance & increased effect of Armour Shred, to be maxxed
- Critical Eye, 1 point to unlock…
- All In, more crit multi (75% at max) since all of our hits are crits…
If Apostacy feels good, I’ll try & put more points into the Rogue tree to unlock Thiefguard, probably 8 points in Steady Hand & 1-2 in Evasion (& 1 in Sapping Strikes), then 8 in Thiefguard & possibly 8 in Coated Blades.
Gear
Well, stuff to not die…
The best 2-handed mace (obviously), with flat added phys damage, attack speed, melee stun & probably health on melee hit (or frailty on hit or inc stun chance).
Everything else is the usual stuff, cap your resists, get lots of hp (especially if you’re going dodge, 'cause getting 1-shot by Rahyeh is annoying).
I’ll post some more details on this later.
Video
Rahyeh -
Formosus -
Lagon -
Harton -
Dragon Emperor -
