Rogues Get Some Respect

GamerGod is running an article taking a look at the role of the Rogue in Dungeons and Dragons Online. In their estimation, the Rogue class finally gets to do its thing in an online game. From the article: "What rogue would be worth his salt if he didn't have any traps to disarm or locks to open? What truly sets D&DO apart from the competition is the need to find and disarm various traps, snares, and pitfalls. Again, the game's set-up and design makes this an invaluable part of game play. No regeneration of spell points results in limited heals, and no regeneration of hit points makes getting blasted with a trap actually MEAN something." Been playing the preorder Beta this weekend, and it does a surprisingly good job of recreating the PnP experience. Review upon release.

Comments

Nexus...

[SanityInAnarchy]

In Nexus, Rogues are the most overplayed class for completely different reasons.

First of all, it sounds cool, especially when you go and read in the description: "The magical fighter, unmatched in single combat."

Rogues do the most damage to a single target, knocking it down twice to three times as fast as a Warrior can. This is balanced by Warriors being capable of hitting in all four directions, and being able to actually take quite a few hits.

Rogues don't get hit much. When they do, it hurts a LOT, but usually they just don't.

Interestingly, Warriors are the ones who can detect traps, and there are a lot of them. However, traps are flawed in that most of the time, you can simply beat your way out of a trap. In fact, since most traps are ambushes, where a player gets surrounded by creatures, and Rogues have an "ambush" spell which teleports them to the opposite side of a creature, Rogues simply don't care about traps.

No, the time you want to detect traps is not to avoid them -- useless, because they can't be disarmed and only the Warrior can see them -- it's when you want to spring them, intentionally, to get a particular creature to spawn, or to get lots of creatures to spawn. For instance, the fastest way to collect Ambers is to take a Warrior into the Mythic Rabbit cave, have him (or her) find ambushes and spring them, and immediately slaughter the four creatures which spawn to surround them -- remember, Warriors have a four-way attack.

And the reason you want a Rogue in your group is to take care of single creatures, and because they aren't much of a burden -- lower max HP means it's easier to die, but it's also much easier to keep the Rogue healed, especially because if they get in trouble, they can jump out of the combat and wait for a heal. But you also want a Warrior, because they're easier to keep alive, even if it takes more mana to keep them healed, and they utimately end up dealing more wholesale damage. They also, typically, are the ones with the Taunt spell.

A full group works like this: a Poet and a Mage are up on a ledge which has only one way in, and the Poet has summoned a pet to block that way. Creatures won't aggro the pet, so it's effectively a wall, so your warrior doesn't have to taunt things away from the casters -- which is good, because Mages are at least as vulnerable as Rogues. Your Warrior is down in the pit, with a massive crowd of Mythic Rat Sentries attacking them. While there are subtler skills to being a Warrior, most of your time is spent simply holding spacebar (attack) and watching your health, so that you can use a Yellow Scroll to teleport you home if your Poet is about to let you die. The Poet and Mage usually cooperate on keeping everyone's Armor, Sanctuary, and Valor buffs on -- anything else is path-specific and entirely up to the fighters. The Mage's main job is to paralyze all creatures in the area -- which wears off after awhile. The Poet's job is to Scourge all the creatures, which doubles or triples the amount of damage dealt to them, and to keep everyone healed. And the rogue is running around the outside of the mob attacking the warrior (or not attacking, since they're all paralyzed), contributing damage and killing the weak rats (who run away) or any that get too close to the casters (since the pet won't last forever).

You can form a combination of just about any number of just about any of these, and it'll be effective. The MOST effective is a group of all four classes, but you can get away withoout a Poet if your Mage is good enough (they have their own heal spell). Rogues are nice to have around, and they're best for taking on a boss, but they're no substitute for a Warrior taking on a huge mob. Then too, Warriors can get surrounded, Rogues can't, and while the boss isn't dangerous at all, it's slower.

To me, that's good balance. A skilled player of any class is valuable enough in a unique enough way to feel worthwhile. I like the idea of TFA,