Originally Posted by
Solanu
I have a few thoughts on the current state of rogue in this game I hope you read and listen to them because as far as I can tell, you have targetted rogue to reduce it's effectiveness but left other classes the same, that isn't class balance.
Firstly skill points and skill mastery, rogue is the only class that needs dex, yet we need also str and int, the others can bypass dex entirely. At lvl 46 most people had maxed the passives that were useful to them, Str, Int, Dur, Crit, and Dex for rogues. Thats 20 skill point for war and mage and 25 for rogue. To further add to that imbalance, now the damage passive is fixed so that it stacks with nekro/toor/etc, that is an additonal 5 points. So for a rogue 30 skill points in total already used up in passives just to provide the best stats for being able to play the game to its fullest. That then leaves 16 points available at our current level, which we are supposed to use on skills that can work it both pve and pvp? Have you tried that? Aimed obviously 5/5 for rogue and if you like to pvp packs 5/5 to make pvp atleast playable. So two skills done and 6 additional points for.. 6 points.. And yet you introduce skill mastery, which uses further skill points. I can't even max the basic skill tree with 6 points let alone venture into mastery.
So in my opinion something is wrong with that system and I would highly recommended either a pve/pve skill switchout, which would atleast give me 5 skill points back. Or i would recommend having skill mastery points as a totally seperate entity to normal skill points which would atleast allow you to keep your current favorite skill build and add a couple of minor skill upgrades. That would add good value, they way you have done it feels like we have to get worse to play with the new skill masterys. Which seems ridiculous given the investment thousands of people have put into being as good as they were.
Secondly you mention that you would like to find more balance between the weapon type. I have played rogue since this game started and hope that I know a thing or two about it. If you look at the general pricing of bow vs dagger, the bows always hold higher value. That is mainly due to bow being easier to play, fighting at range with rogue armour and hp is a natural choice. They are basically a range class just like a mage. However daggers and blades have long been a part of the game and occasionally are better than the current top bows, ie, lifethief at 21 cap, arcane hooks and now the dragon daggers. That is great and it adds diversity to the class, as some people like playing dagger rogues and some are faithful bow women, never to change to dags. I having been using the arcane daggers for the last few weeks and i think they are great. But one of the things that makes them great is the stun proc, which of course only works with auto attack. So a dagger rogue has to get close enough to mobs to make this awesome weapon work and everything was working fine in that regard up until your update. Now with this massive armour reduction daggers rogues are even harder to play to the point of almost being unplayable on higher lvl elite maps.
The damage we take on those maps is so insane that you are spamming pots more than skills, and in that you know something is wrong with the game dynamic. It is bad enough that the rogue class has been mana nerfed for so long, that the average rouge burns though thousands of mana pots in a week, but now we have to burn through both mana and hp pots? Thats the point where this game becomes less fun to play, which is surely counter-productive on your end? I really hope you at least listen to this feedback and go and try playing dagger rogue in the elite orc mines. And as Zeus has said above, please don't say that we should just use rzr shield and add 10 mastery to it just to survive a map? That is not class or weapon balance, that is breaking a class and making it unplayable. Nekro is so widely available and has shield and stun protection, he makes for little need for rzr shield. So to sum up that bit, if you are seeking weapon balance, don't nerf the only thing that makes dagger rogue playable.
And lasty PVP the current state of end game pvp is that unless you are well geared you will get farmed. So players like myself have spent lots of time and effort gearing up so they can atleast have a chance in pvp (this took a while!). And for the last few weeks i have been really enjoying tdm and the class balance despite the ridiculous power of that sword, i can still win a couple one on ones vs a war, and a mage can win a few one on ones vs me if they are good. With the defense nerf, you have in one easy step invalidated all mine and many other players efforts to be good in pvp, to the point where all rogues will be farmed by both wars and mages in pvp, so they will avoid it until this is fixed. Which in case it wasn't apparent enough, decreases the desirability of this game to a massive portion of its userbase.
I really hope you listen to some of this feedback and actually try and play the game as rogue after the update. Or even come and run a couple of glintstone elite maps with me in game and we can talk about the very unbalanced damage mobs do. Or try a PVP clash with me post update, i promise you all those things are a lot less fun and balanced than they were previously.
Solanu
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