Are rogues ever good?

[Terry Hesticles]

They dont seem to do tons of damage, and the second they are in range, every enemy rushes them down and brutalises them..

[Sly_Boots]

By the mid-game they're one of the strongest classes in the game imo - once they've progressed to the assassin veteran class and have unlocked a few key abilities (like fan of knives for incredible aoe damage). Their ability to stack crazy poison damage in particular is so useful particularly in boss fights later in the game.

[Adi]

Shadowstep also becomes verrrry spamable once you have the SP (especially if you have a way to easily restore their SP), letting them just teleport around to hit whoever they want, block off enemy movement, and be almost invincible while doing so. And it even adds some extra damage too.

[Inzu]

They start off a bit slow but they definitely take off in the late game - although at that point you will have transitioned to assassin or reaper. They aren't tanks so they should keep to the shadows. Striking and fading back unless you're fighting enemies without "Truesight" - which is most of the early enemies. Then they can block off choke points by serving as invisible blockers.

That being said, you can still get hammered by AOE so don't put an enticing target next to them.

Also, their stat growth is the most balanced of the starting classes, so if you're building to a certain class and need to improve stats on multiple attributes that aren't normally paired they are a decent choice.

[GameDragonZero]

I find Rogues fluctuate. Early on they're not bad, they get a bit more challenging, then later in the game you're a hidden status-inflicting machine. They take some subtletly though.

[Blood Flowers]

The answer is that it depends on the difficulty level that you are playing on. Rogue seems very underwhelming on Very Hard, but probably significantly better on lower difficulties. This is for three reasons primarily: on higher difficulties the enemies have more accuracy making dodge significantly less effective, they have more health making actually triggering sneak attacks more important (and even then the enemies don't always die due to low strength scaling on rogues/assassins), and the enemies deal more damage meaning if you can't get your rogue to safety on the same turn they are liable to be one-shot.

Rogues do happen to be very good as a precursor to the Bard class. It's generally one of my priorities to make a Rogue with high Dexterity + Willpower + Willpower growths + Born Leader and pivoting it into a Bard ASAP.

Assassin upgrade seems relatively weak too compared to the other advanced classes. The passive that you gain (50% extra critical chance against foes under 20% hp) seems incredibly useless since anything under 20% hp was probably going to die anyways regardless of whether or not you get a critical. Personally I'd like to see that passive get changed to making your physical attack bonus scale of dexterity instead since dexterity on rogues/assassins is an otherwise pretty underwhelming stat.

I will admit assassin is fairly decent once you get to a much higher level (16+), however carrying a rogue until that point is fairly painful. Moreover, they still get outdamaged against single targets by Knights and are worse at mobile killing than the swordmaster. Even the unique character (Misasa) they give you is better off swapping to Monk then Swordmaster than doing Assassin then Reaper.

The main advantage to having a rogue is mobility in the early game to try to kill a priority target before you get access to Rush. This functions well in compositions that are designed to never allow the enemies to attack you, however it tends to get outshone by Archers/Mages.

[Gui]

I'm level 10-11 and my Assassin is underwhelming indeed. Despite dodge up by 50 with the skills she gets hit often and her Frail trait doesn't help (starting character, unlucky roll I guess).
But she has the potential to do lots of damage and DoT with Bravery, good for tough foes that need to be attacked by several characters.
I keep her away from basic mobs if she's not 100% safe from being attacked.

[Bumfight Sparkle]

rogues are probably strongest class, they have best growth, they deal insane dmg and don't get dmg at all, you just need to spam shadowstep at the end of their turn, they do vurn a lot of sp tho. also, prioritize strength over dex.

[Jahws]

Using the unique character best built for Rogue / Assassin stuff, she put in serious work against end-game bosses for me. (Note: comes with a skill that converts some Dex into physical attack!) Built well and stocked up on Bravery, she can completely nuke the biggest nasties in the game. She took out over 75% of the final boss's total health within a single turn and did similarly, if not better, with other optional end-game bosses. (I did make heavy BP use in these cases, but I certainly had some left over each time.)

I'll admit, I did wait quite a while before finally using the "Slay" skill for the first time. It was against one of those optional end-game bosses, the boss was around 1/2 HP visible... and Slay instantly dealt the full remaining damage, plus some. 1500ish HP damage, if I recall correctly. Absolutely beautiful boss-slaying numbers. (In case of questions, this was using a sneak-attack focused build.)

Note that the game doesn't seem to predict crit damage OR the "+3% per 1% lost HP" aspects of Slay or similar skills in the damage-prediction UI - it won't look like it'll do anywhere near that much. Let it rip and you'll be quite pleasantly surprised!

Not against a boss? Who cares? She can dash about the battlefield picking off three or so isolated baddies per turn without too much trouble if you spend some bravery. If you use the unique Assassin top-tier class, it comes with a built-in, no skill-points-required skill that auto-refunds and resets its own cooldown when you kill an enemy with it. It's fantastic for cherry-tapping enemies that have a "last stand" (1 hp remaining) mechanic - allowing you to keep the kill count up even when that mechanic is present.

[GuyInFreezer]

I think rogue tree can be worth (at least in normal, haven't tried anything higher yet) if only for the T3 class. The BP40 skill is absolutely insane for cheesing quest objectives because you can teleport anywhere on the map instantly and you stay hidden for 3 turns.

[Tuidjy]

Reapers are insane killing machines, but even (sadistic) assassins can run killing streaks up into the double digits per turn, as long as they start with a full SP tank and bit of BPs.