So at this point I’ve gotten 2 rogues to about level 50 or so. One Bleed Dancer one Marksman. I will say In general, they feel pretty good to play. I like the Blade dancer trees, I feel like it has good support for a lot of damage types and some cool unique play styles. Marksman however, feels like it’s about 70% there.
Marksman
The individual skill trees are good, lots of variety there for most of them. Can see 3-4 builds coalescing at this time. I will say the over all talent tree for marksman feels like it REALLY lacks support for a poison based build. MOST of the tree feels crit based, and that’s fine and all, but it basically has 1 node that directly supports a poison playstyle, and a few that do so by virtue of increasing attack speed. It’s a bit underwhelming. I’d like to see more for poison in there. Additionally in reference to poison. I really hate the placement of the Scalebane node in the Puncture skill tree. I don’t think it Meshes well with the mirages from penumbral ambush, or the mana cost. I love that it’s an option for the skill, but its placement and the penumbral ambush skill in general, feels pretty “Tacked on”. Additionally there’s no reduced mana cost anywhere on the tree for puncture so it’s a bit rough given how screwy mana can be in this game.
Bleed Dancer
I’ve been playing a Bleed focused Blade dancer, it’s pretty solid. I can definitely see the support for a mirage or combo based build. The bleed build works pretty great with a combination of Shift puncture shadow cascade and Shurikens. Lots of throwing and bleeding and goodness. There’s also good support on the main tree for bleeding and throwing attacks. I like how this one works out. I would like to see a bit more support for “Dark daggers” they seem like a really cool mechanic, but they’re not on too many skills, and they’re kind of a low amount. What would be really cool would be to have almost all of your skills give a charge of the 4/5 charges you need. Then you could combine this with the Flow mechanic on the tree, and REALLY pay off on a big 4th/5th hit that consumes Flow and Blows up your dark daggers. The couple skills that have dark daggers are all good skills it feels like, but they’re in such awkward places on those trees it looks like there wouldn’t be a ton of synergy in builds.
I would like to add. It’d be really cool if there was less Dagger/sword nodes in blade dancer and more generic nodes. I get that it’s kinda sort of flavorful, buuuut honestly it feels a bit more like forcing those weapons. It would be pretty cool to be able to use like a pole-arm and be a sort of kung fu monk type character dancing around gracefully stabbing people with that. Maybe make the poison/bleed nodes a bit more generic? There is that poison themed unique spear, would be pretty cool to be able to build around that in a poison build (since it feels pretty crap to use that unique as a primalist).
I found my best bet with acid flask was to get the pools, then have them drop from shift, and so I can dash in, stand in the pool from the flask, and stack a shitton of poisons with flurry since the pool gives up to 100% global poison chance if you stand in it, combined with the poison res shred.
My current build is Shift for mobility, to drop acid vials, a little bit of healing, and to make 1 shadow.
Synchronized strike mainly for the extra shadows. that’s all I really use it for. I’ve put some points into crit because I don’t have the mana pool to double its cost even with mana reduction (Btw can I just say mana management is kinda ass so far).
Acid flask - Pools and poison shred, basically taking the entire bottom left of the tree, Also ran up to grab the fan of 3 flasks. With the poison pool this really racks up a lot of poisons.
Lethal Mirage- This is for the poison/blind cloud in the lower right, and also turning shadows into mirages for bonus damage and the chance to have mirages turn back to shadows.
Flurry- Basically everything on the bottom part of the tree. All the poison stuff and the Adrenaline rush stacks. Combined with standing in poison pools this puts a ton of poisons on enemies, and has a 40% chance to shred poison res on the 3rd hit. The fast attack speed of this, really helps overcome the Less attack speed on Draalsting.
I would like to use more skills but all the rest of them either require dual wielding or bows. (well puncture works ok ish but the mana management on the poison build for it is abysmal).
Yeah, mine is only like level 27, the 3 flasks were a huge qol
Decoy totem is also insane qol and good dps - must have for any rogue build imho. After you get the 2nd charge for it, it’s simply amazing.
Shift with a 1.5 sec haste after it is also really good, love the mobility.
I’ll check some of your ideas, too, cheers!
Flurry, btw, seems another must have skill for any Rogue build. So, basically, shift -( prolly flurry) and decoy totem are must have. Which leaves us with 2 skills to use. I’m checking ballista with other builds, too, we’ll see.
I definitely love the flexibility the trees have and some of the insanely uniques ideas, like the tripwire ballista and the pulling hook ones, lol!
So I haven’t really seen a need for Decoy totem. it looks like I guess you could get the Poison node to replace the explosion and that might be pretty ok I guess? just more things throwing out your acid flasks. It seems decent. I would struggle to find a place for it in my build though. I guess I could replace Lethal mirage with it and that might be ok, but I like the sound of the blinding poison smoke more. If I put it anywhere that’s where it’d go I guess.
Next blademaster I do is a dual dagger throwing based poison attempt. Gonna use shuriken as my default attack since you can get 0 cost pretty easily with ring mods for throwing attacks. Then Dagger Dance Shadow cascade and acid flask. Also maybe smoke bomb. Obviously Shift is just core on literally every build. that mobility is too valuable.
