Marksman feels very underwhelming

[DirePenguin]

@SolidMetalKnight

I happen to agree with eliel77. I think Rogue is probably intended to be more challenging, from how many of its spec’s are flimsy or don’t deal quite as much damage point-for-point as other classes do.

Rogue is just a weak, faster running Sentinel. Sentinel has better thrown attacks. Better at melee. Better ranged attacks. And is far better defensively. Rogue is just better at getting places faster. Sentinel is a tank, standing in your face, smashing you over and over with devastating hits. Rogue is a pesky mosquito, zipping all over the place, avoiding your attempts to swat at it, while hitting you with all the spit-balls it can muster (until it run out of mana, 10 seconds later).

[SolidMetalKnight]

Maybe, but damage dealt determines how fast you gain experience and damage taken determines how often you die when hit. If you multiply these together, the mobility really factors out because although you can avoid damage, you have to avoid it for a lot longer to finish a fight. And you can’t take a hit and recover before you die the way Sentinel can.

I actually played my Judgement Sentinel and my Exploding Umbral Blade Rogue back to back, and I can say for certain there were way more encounters and scenarios where the Rogue was likely to die than the Sentinel. Given I have played every class to 50 before, I wasn’t any less familiar with it than Sentinel when I played either. At my skill level, Rogue is way more fragile and challenging to play.

[darkdeal]

@DiceDragon

Marksmen will do 100c and even 200c just fine. The problem is despite this genre being 95% singleplayer focused, and even then only say 25% or less of the players even care about ladder, they still dont want to play whatever is “weak” in the “meta” they want to play whats strong even if what they like works.

That’s because the “carrot” in these types of games are items, so players play whatever build is best at getting that carrot.

These games are designed so that the reward dictates how people should play. If the game was less about RNG loot and focused more on customization of characters in other ways, then maybe that would change.

[SolidMetalKnight]

Right, the internet is also partially to blame; People are more easily able to go find out about the other builds and perceive a bunch of fun they’re supposedly not having when they would otherwise find the less optimal build they’re playing enjoyable. Power gaming and impressing one’s friends is kind of an inevitable consequence of the social media age.

I’m not personally like that. I like playing less optimal builds and seeing what I can make them do. But I grew up in the 90’s, before the current era of tablets and cellphones, Myspace, all of that stuff. I think this is probably a big part of the explanation as to why.

In fact, I’ve often wondered if the generational gap is too wide for some of our genres to be handed off, like fighting games and ARPG’s. Steam has restored a lot of my faith that traditional PC games can continue to thrive in this environment, just like the Switch has restored my hope that traditional console games will still be around well into the future. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

[CaiusMartius]

@SolidMetalKnight

I’m pretty sure that either the devs haven’t had time to beef up Rogue, or they actually want Rogue to be harder to play as a challenge to players who like that play style.

Yeah, I think it’s sort of a combination. It does need a bit of damage boost (though more skill based than passive based I hope) because a couple of skills are extremely potent. But I also hope they keep the ‘play style’ unique.

[oompa]

Rolled Marksman as a first 1.0 char.

I played most builds/at least archetypes in beta to late game and Marksman now feels incredibly underwhelming. Survivability is just straight up garbo, dodge is a weak mechanic and damage output isn’t anywhere near good enough to compensate.