Make DoT a viable endgame for Rogue

Rogue
1

Here is my humble suggestion on how to make DoT viable on Rogues; to me the best DoT damaging skill is puncture but in its current form it’s way too underpowered.

  • Mutilate node of Puncture
    Actual mutilate: instead of applying bleed, the third puncture hit consumes all stacks of bleed on the target causing them to deal damage immediatly.
    New mutilate: instead of applying bleed or poison, the third puncture hit causes all stacks of bleed and poison on the target to deal damage immediatly but doesn’t remove the stacks.

  • Penumbral Ambush node of Puncture
    Actual Penumbral Ambush: several mirages appear attacking in the same direction as you ; mana cost +15
    New Penumbral Ambush: mana cost +3

  • Puncture passive:
    Actual Puncture passive: puncture has 30% chance to apply bleed ; bleed inflicted by puncture have 30% increased duration
    New Puncture passive: puncture has 30% chance to apply bleed and poison ; bleed and poison inflicted by puncture have 30% increased duration

  • Prefix modifications
    New 1x4 idol prefix: +(1-3)% duration on bleed and poison inflicted with Puncture OR (10-20)% increased duration on bleed and poison inflicted with Puncture whichever is easier to implement
    New Helmet prefix: +(3-5)% duration on bleed and poison inflicted with Puncture OR (25-35)% increased duration on bleed and poison inflicted with Puncture whichever is easier to implement
    New Body Armour prefix: +(5-7)% duration on bleed and poison inflicted with Puncture OR (40-50)% increased duration on bleed and poison inflicted with Puncture whichever is easier to implement

I hope that a Dev drop by this post one day and uses this input to make DoTs a viable endgame option.

2

First question.
What exactly means “viable” to you?

I am genuienly interested.

Secondly
May i ask how much did you play rogue as already and LE in general?
It is really interesting sometimes for me to get a bit of background, from what type of player suggestions come.

First of i want to say: I don’t think anyform of Ailment Rogue is “not viable”

Ailments are super strong and can be scaled immensely, especially with rogue, because rogue has some of the strongest idols for Ailment scaling. (Like penetration and global dmg, just to name a few)

Some things i want to touch on.

First off making it avaialble for poison and bleed would be bring.
I really like how alot of classes (not only rogue) have alot of different interactions for bleed and poison.
If all of those special mechanic would becoem avaialble t oboth, it would be too streamlined IMO.

This would take away half of it’s theme and would be totally busted.
If you really would prefer a node that deals bursty damage but doesn’t remove stacks the burst would need major reductions.
But i really like that this node has a noticeable impact on how you project damage onto mobs. Nodes that make gameplay feel different should be always like this.
Your suggestions would just make it a bit less special and more boring.

This would be totally broken.
This node is meant to make puncutre (an already baseline amazing AoE skill) to a true AoE powerhouse, but restrict the singletarget use. Because there is no way to sustain that amount of mana costs. (Which is the goal)

Anything below 10 extra Mana cost would be sustainable for a pretty long window and this should not be a thing for a node that transform a skill into an AoE screen clear.

+15 Mana Cost is 100% justified

Same as my first point, this would streamline puncture into being equally strong for bleed and poison, which would make it boring.

Puncture is meant to be a bleed-centered skill, with some poison support.

But the poison part is more meant for being a support skills in conjunction with other poison skills (via Efficacious Toxins) or a AoE Poison Clear tool via Scalebane

I would never say, more affixes is bad, so i could totally see somethign simialr being implemented some day.
But rogue certainly does not need this, there are so many other options already that boost ailment dmg (especially on Idols)

Also if they implement stuff like this, i would not want to basically have the 3 same effects on idols, body and helmet.

LE affixes are often times very exciting, because they aavailability is very limited.
I rather have strogner affixes that are only available on certain gear pieces and compete with other interesting stuff.

If you have to many afixes on too many slots, is way harder to make interesting stuff, because way less affixes compete with each other.

just to make it clear again. I think Ailment Rogue is in a perfect spot.

1 Like
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I dunno about this one. I think it’d be easier to make poison puncture more viable by not locking the poison conversion behind this one.

4

15 is too much. 3 is too low.
Multishot (10 Mana) & Detonating Arrow (8 Mana) are probably the best AoE skills for Marksman right now.
Reducing Penumbral Ambush to a 10 Mana cost node would be fair enough (or making it a 2 pointer node with 5 Mana and one Mirage or 10 Mana for two Mirages. Multi and DA are burst attacks that can easily one shot trash mobs and you have no mana issues while mapping. A skill that is focused on stacking ailments like Puncture (no matter Bleed or Poison) should at least feel rewarding applying the stacks. I can do so much more dmg with Bleed Puncture compared to the poison version just because of the non mana issue and high attack speed. Bleed Puncture has the highest attack speed rate for any Marksman Build (Frenzy+Obsidian Bow+Attack speed nodes on passives). I know the Poison version should help with the clearing issues. But DA ,Multi & HoA are currently doing a better job with one simple click.
Cinder Strike Ignite costs 0 Mana (even with Burning Daggers once you scale Sapping Strikes).
Flurry is a 0 Mana Skill with ailment support.
Poison DA is a 8 Mana skill with better AoE once you skill the Barrage node.
Bleed Puncture is 0 Mana.
It’s not like you cast the poison Puncture version and clear everything infront of you. There is still the Hitbox ‘‘problem’’ that doesnt allow you to hit everything forcing you to cast it multiply times if you don’t position yourself correctly.

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5

Endgame viable means able to clear level 100 echoes with 5-10 strong modifiers added.

136 played hours in LE ; all of them played as a Marksman. Thousands of hours on other ARPGs. That sounds a bit discriminative to judge my opinion solely on those facts but let’s see what you plan to make of these numbers.

I said endgame viable, not viable only.
Show me a puncture build that easily deals with a level 100 timeline “ending the storm” or “The age of winter”

That’s fine by me, you want to keep the puncture fantasy being a bleed only skill; I have no issues with that. I just think the current implementation of puncture lacks endgame viability.

Pure-DoT-Puncture lacks the damage to easily clear endgame content. This buff would raise the power of puncture to the level of Multishot or Hail of Arrows or Detonating Arrow. 3 extremely strong builds that surpass by a mile the power of any pure DoT build.

On one hand you have Multishot, a “two screens away” clear screen that shots typically 13 projectiles, costs 6 mana per cast (assuming Drelkor’s Compass ; can be further reduced with Efficient Draw node from Multishot spell tree). On the other hand, you tell me that puncture, a 3 piercing projectiles with limited AoE clear (shots in lines vs in a cone) has a 15 Mana Cost for a spell that scales off attack speed and according to you the “+15 Mana Cost is 100% justified” ?? If multishot defines the standard for an AoE clear screen, then Puncture mana cost is absolutely extravagant!

I’m fine with that appraoch. You seem to care a lot about respecting the fantasy of a skill lore if I may say and I respect that. But that skill needs a huuuuuge buff to compete with the other 3 top builds of marksman.

The approach I suggest to enable endgame viability for Puncture is to have it scale with attacks speed and increased DoT duration. To me puncture physical penetration is not enough to make it endgame viable in its current state.

Have you ever tried a Multishot build?

  • Idols 1,2,3,4: damage per arrow with multishot
  • Helm prefix 1: damage per arrow with multishot
  • Body Armour prefix 1: damage per arrow with multishot

You didn’t convince me. Yet.

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That’s an interesting take. Where would you put the poison conversion node then?

7

Don’t forget Drelkor’s Compass reducing Multishot by an additional 4 mana. You’re probably right, 3 mana is too low; maybe I’m taking it too far. But I’m accounting for the fact that DoTs scale off attack speed so in a pure DoT Puncture build, you might want to build as much attack speed as possible. I’m thinking the sweet spot is between 3 to 6 mana honestly.

You nailed it bro! That’s why I think Puncture needs a buff to become endgame viable.

I totally agree with this!

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Puncture is a more multiplier, so 4x puncture penetration idols would give 20-48% more damage.

9

I understand that. My point is more on the other buffs to Puncture (skill tree - Mutlate - Penumbral Ambush). Idols and prefixes I listed are more of a supporting aspect of the aforementioned buffs.

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Upper left would be the most natural since it’s where the bleed/poison nodes are. I’d connect it to either of the poison nodes up there.

The other alternative would be off of the armor shred node since phys shred gets converted to poison shred.

I recognize that these are pretty boring suggestions, and appreciate that devs are trying to make poison puncture come with its own unique flavor. It’s just that the way it’s being done is so at odds with how DoT builds currently work.

11

Yes and as i stated i don’t like this appraoch, i would rather have a slightly rarer and stronger affix on just a specific slot that is competing with other interesting stuff.

So i talked with @TriKster a bit and i changed my mind.

Yes +15 mana is too much, so bringing it closer to MS or DA, so like 8-10 mana would be ok.
But this node still needs to be heavily mana taxing.

I am not here in the forum to “convince” other people.

I am here to share my thoughts and we may disagree on alot of point and that’s fair.

I think Pucture as a Ailment skill is fine.

Since i haven’t played a Ailment Rogue in a long time i can’t say how well it performs in the recently changed empowered timelines, but since i don’t really like that playstyle i will not be able to

Also the definition of “easily” may be a big factor here.

All i can say, this is easily possible :smiling_imp:

12

Makes sense. I like the idea of putting off the armor shred node. I also hate that if you want to play poison puncture it’ll make puncture costs mana ; seems unjustified to me.

Do you have any idea how to give a constructed feedback to the devs in hope that they can implement it in the next release?

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So if I understand correctly you would rather have “damage per arrow with multishot” only on idols for instance and not on the other two and you’d make it 3 times stronger? Would you still have other support prefixes on helm and body armour for multishot or you’d pick from other existing prefixes?

I’m glad I was able to … I mean I’m glad TriKster was able to convince you :innocent:

Don’t forget Drelkor’s Compass unique bow that reduces mana cost by 4 in MS builds. Puncture typically scales with attack speed ; to me the taxed mana cost for AoE should be below the mana cost of MS or DA.

We might be going off topic a bit but that’s an interesting conversation regardless. You convinced me with not adding poison stacks to Puncture default skill. You seem to have changed your mind on the mana cost of the Penumbral Ambush node. On forums we usually disagree on a lot of things and that’s fine. However on the things we agree or on the things we converge after debating there’s something that should be done with those agreements. Especially on a forum thread that’s called “Feedback and suggestions”.
Don’t you think that the few points we commonly agreed on should be used as food for thoughts by the devs?

There is a little contradiction in those two sentences. Making a strong statement in the first sentence and recognizing the inability to be able to back that up in the second. Anyway, disregard this comment, I don’t think anything good would come off that specific discussion.

You are right, I made the cardinal mistake of giving you an easy way out of convincing me :yum:

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Poison rogue can hit multimillion DPS idk what you’re on about.

Maybe bleed puncture is weak? Haven’t tried playing it.

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Show me a build that does that. Maybe the title of this topic is inacurate and I should change it to Puncture only.

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How do you deal with the 15 mana cost on poison puncture?

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A single affix that is 3 times as strong might be a bit much, but yeah a slightly stronger affix on one of the slots(perferably helmet, since that’s the slot where +X level to MS is located) and giving the other slots something else entirely, that does not necessarily mean something for Multishot.

And if you do that, you could put another MS affix on the helmet, that boost other characteristic of MS. Maybe additional arrows, this way you could only take only 2 out of 3 good affixes for MS (Level, Dmg per arrow, additional arrows)

I just like to have multiple different tools that compete with each other for specific skills and then you need to change or adapt your build depending on what you want or maybe when you dropped a good helmet with some of those affixes already, you can adapt your build towards that.

Yeah of course the Unique Bow is a big part of this, since it has -Mana Cost and is the slowest Bow Base with the highest base damage, which is very synergistic.

Of course edge cases and specific uniques always need to be a part of a discussion, to see “the whole picture”, but discussing something like mana costs should also be done by looking at the base skills.

I am sure Puncture with 8-10 Mana Cost would feel alot smoother and if you need to counteract the mana cost, you still can build towards that with Mana efficiency and mana regeneration or use a spender/filler build.

I agree and i can 100% asure you, teh devs read all of this.

What or if they do something with this, is totally up to them.

There might be even something we don’t see here and the devs considered already.
But occasionally a dev might even hop into the discussion and give some thoughts, but they usually try to avoid that, since a dev comment in a discussion can heavily impact the direction fo a discussion.

The thing is, i played soooo many builds and i have a pretty good feeling how well a build that i am playing is performing.

At the time i played that build, it did felt decent, not the best and not the worst and i have not pushed it to it’s limit.

The old empowered timelines were very much easier than the current ones, but i have no doubt, that the build i played a few month ago, would not have “issues” in the new empowered MoF.

I was thinking about doing it just because you said:

Usually i like “challenges”, but i really don’t feel like to prove anything to someone.
Especially since i don’t enjoy that playstyle.

18

Are you playing sich a build yourself currently?

Where do these numbers come from? Dummy damage after hitting the dummy for 20 seconds without moving a bit? What’s your gear?

Maybe you can show a clip of your build doing an empowered timeline.

Ailment build rely on stacking ailments with high chances and high attack speed. Often if you get all that to have a decent dummy damage in the real game you need to m8ve a lot. Especially in the higher timelines you need to actively avoid damage by moving (even more so in Arena). So you don’t get that many stacks on enemies because the ailments can’t stack while you move and stop attacking.

Your statement looks like you have seen a click bait guide title somewhere and asume that this numbers are easily achievable for everybody without any effort. In most cases this is not possible.

Maybe I’m wrong. If you are running such a build that took you around - let’s say - 40 hours - without editing your save files - my apologies!

19

Poison conversion node
I doubt my suggestion is something that could make it into the next release because it’ll involve graphically restructuring the skill tree. My guess is the devs will only want to do something like that when they work on the unused bottom half and underused upper right of the skill tree.

As for constructive feedback, it would come down to how 15 mana is too costly for a skill that needs to be spammed to build up enough poison stacks to function, and how the attack speed penalty from the previous nodes also makes it harder to build stacks.

If the devs are willing to rework the bottom left side (charge up branch), think it’d make a decent alternate home for a poison build. Could have nodes that let you do multi-level charge attacks with each charge level applying more stacks of poison at once, and have the charge time be faster based on your attack speed.

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That’s what the forum (& this thread) is for.