Reasons not to take rogue levels as solo player

[ArcadioX]

Hi,

I'm a newb to the game so I apologize if the question sounds stupid but I'm genuinly interested.

I'm an avid solo player, I like being able to play through everything there is without the need for the group. I have several characters planned and every one of them has one or two levels of rogue in the mix to deal with the traps. Is there a reason not to put one or two levels of rogue as a solo player? Are traps maybe less of a nuasance later on?

Thanks!

[Taebrythn]

nah traps are always around and can still kill some people. what you can learn is how to avoid them. there are a few ways to do that like hp and/or saves as well. from playing the game for 14 years i had learned how to deal with them and i won't say it's easy sometimes. usually if you watch the pattern and listen for them. that is the real advice.

the one thing is never to watch them because sometimes the graphics might not match the sound. like i would rather move through spikes when their up. lava for example you NEVER want to jump in it. each time you do you take more damage or have to make more saves so better route is to swim it.

[drunken.dx]

Pros:
-2 levels of rogue on build that wears light or no armor gives evasion, which is GG feat.
-trap disarm (up to 30% xp bonus, nothing to sneeze at)
-opening locks, number of quests have bonus loot/XP/whatever behind locked doors.

Cons:
-loss of up to 2 levels in your main build, if it uses rogue levels good, but most often it's not
-unless i'm mistaken rogue does not get 1 BAB each level, which is bad for martial classes

Those are some of points (there is more but I kept it simple)

Experienced player can offset most of those issues, but it usually requires some hoop jumping and sacrifices.

in the end it's up to you whether you wanna trade things you lose for couple of rogue levels.

I've seen people taking 2 rogue levels JUST for evasion (AFAIK only other class that gets evasion is ranger at lvl 9 and even Dark hunter does not get it, and in epic levels there is shadowdancer ED that can get you evasion in high epics)

[ArcadioX]

Thanks for the replies guys, they're very informative.

What do you think about adding even more rogue levels, like 5 to enable entire rogue enhancement trees? Like 5 rogue/15 fighter or 5 rogue/15 wizard? Am I going to just hamper myself with so many levels in rogue?

Again, I'm sorry if this sound stupid, I don't know shaite yet about those heroic/epic levels, reincarnations and such, I'm just trying to have fun.

[drunken.dx]

My suggestion would be to go pure if you're on first life.
and if quest proves to difficult just run it on hard, since most traps are not even remotely as lethal on hard

then, as you become more familiar with game, you can start experimenting with builds and going on harder difficulties

I forgot to mention that for some classes that do not use int, you need to know EXACTLY what's you're doing or you gonna have rogue that can't disarm traps

that's why i recommend going pure at least first life, so that you get familiar with game first.

[Taebrythn]

so multiclassing can be rough if you have no idea what you're doing. it's always good to ask questions look at builds or even look at the ddowiki. i think all of it is nice to know or helpful for those that are new. asking is for sure a good thing to do because they could point you to your answer faster.

ddowiki will never be able to give you tips but information like what you get from a class or where an item drops etc. it can be about a quest, spells, monsters or even updates. i like to use all available resources. another thing you can do is google Maetrims character builder and practice your builds. ddo forums on main site also have a lot of builds or more people to help you. Steam ddo is just a small fraction of the actual ddo players.

[NavFamG]

Originally posted by ArcadioX:

What do you think about adding even more rogue levels, like 5 to enable entire rogue enhancement trees? Like 5 rogue/15 fighter or 5 rogue/15 wizard? Am I going to just hamper myself with so many levels in rogue?

You'll probably find that what you lose from your main tree (fighter, wizard etc...) is NOT off set by what you gain from those extra rogue levels.

If you really want to do it, you need to look at what you'd gain from the rogue tree (specific feats you want) vs what you might not be able to get from your main tree.

For example a rogue / wizard (because I have one) I do a 2 weapon rogue with the skeleton knight from that wizard tree and play him as a melee character, only using the wizard spells for long range attacks (in place of a bow) and the defense spells like shield you can cast on yourself. Now for ever rogue level I'd take, that would mean 1 LESS level my skeleton knight could get and there's really no good rogue feat that would make up for that.

[ArcadioX]

All right, thank you once again for your replies.

I decided to buy Vistani Knife Fighter tree in ddo store and go pure rogue, I'll see where that takes me. I'll leave multiclassing for later on.

I probably should create new thread for this but I have one more questions: Is VIP worth it, or should I support the devs by buying ddo points instead? Having Elite difficulty enabled from get go without the need for completing dungeons on easier difficulties seems like a great addition and ddo points themselves seem to be a bit pricey, compared to the price of VIP.

Thanks.

[NavFamG]

Originally posted by ArcadioX:

Is VIP worth it?

I've been playing since the game first went F2p back in 2009 and have never run a sub, just bought points from time to time.

For a new player you have 76? (last time I counted) free lvl 1 to 10 dungeons and another 25? lvl 11 to 20. More than enough to play with, learn the game and see if you really like it. VIP doesn't include the expansions so all it would do (beyond the 500 pts a month) is up those numbers, give you more character slots etc... nothing you can' t do without while learning the game.

Originally posted by ArcadioX:

Having Elite difficulty enabled from get go without the need for completing dungeons on easier difficulties seems like a great addition

For a brand new player, learning the game .... NO, it's not a great addition and you might end up dropping the game out of frustration.

Yes it's a pain having to do each dungeon 3 times especially if you're doing them all in a row. before moving on to the next dungeon. Instead, You do all the level 1's on normal, go back and do them on hard, then on elite or put the elites off until you've done the lvl 2's on hard. Etc... etc.... etc.... That way you've spread out the dungeon repeats.

Will you over level? Yes, big deal.

Now you're talking about playing a pure rogue, first time through while learning the game. Odd's are you'll see a bunch of deaths JUST ON THE NORMAL setting. With that in mind, guess how an Elite run's going to go?

In case you don't know:
Normal - on level
Hard - 1 level harder
Elite - 2 levels harder (so basically you're taking your level 1 rogue into a level 3 dungeon).

[ArcadioX]

I do in fact play that way, as in doing a dungeon on every difficulty befory moving on. For some reason it ocurred to me that it's the way it "should" be played, but I think I'll change my strategy and just focus on playing through whatever's available to me on normal for the first time. It's a bit exhausting, doing the same dungeon three times in a row, especially longer ones, and I don't want to drop the game from burnout.

I'll take your advice and spend my funds allocated to this game on points from time to time instead of buying VIP. Actually, being able to unlock packs one by one simply by playing the game seems like much more fun than having them handed to me as part of a VIP, now that I think of it.

I'll stick to rogue, I enjoy this class atm. If worst comes to worst I'll just create a new char, no big deal.

Thank you for a very informative post, I appreciate it.

One more question, if you don't mind: do tomes of ability make the game much easier later on? Are they necessary to progress?

Thanks!

[Doug]

OK. Those are three unrelated questions. Definitely better to have three unrelated threads so the answers and the questions to which they apply would be clearer.

Rogue splash
There are a number of issues with splashing Rogue.

The first is that you will lose access to the capstone for your primary class (the L20 Core Enhancement in one of your Class Enhancement Trees). If you plan to Reincarnate when you hit L20, this might be trivial. If you plan to run into Epic levels, you'll quite likely regret the loss.

Next issue is skills. Rogues need to keep three skills maxed to be effective, and what works at low levels becomes harder to maintain at higher ones. Those skills are Spot (to know there's a trap), Search (to find the box), and Disable (to interact with the box and render the trap harmless). On your non-Rogue levels, these skills can still reach the same maximums, but they become cross-class: the 3 Skill points it would take to keep them relevant on a Rogue level double to 6. To maintain that, you need a class with a lot of Skill points per level, a high Int, or both.. preferably both, since your Int bonus also directly contributes to two of your trapping skills (Search and Disable).
This is where your third question intersects: An Int tome boosts your skill points per level, making it easier to maintain your trapping skills (and at the same time whatever skills your other class requires).

Next is gear. As you get higher in level, high trapping skills and Int become insufficient. Higher difficulties exacerbate the problem. You need specific trapping gear with bonuses to the three skills. And you need to decide whether you'll wear that gear all the time (filling gear slots that could otherwise help with survivability or the viability of your other class) or swap back and forth (risking, for example, forgetting to replace your trapping gear before your next combat).

Then Enhancements: You have a total of 80 Action Points (AP) on your way to L20. If you find you come up slightly short on your trapping skills, you can boost them with certain Enhancements.. but again, that means fewer AP for other things AND quite likely a delay in getting those other Enhancements.

Then there's the usual discussion about multi-classing in general: It's a high-order skill to multiclass and make an effective toon, rather than trading off important abilities for ones that won't serve you as well as you think, or that won't reach their peak until you're near cap or other risks you can't foresee without a fair bit of experience building toons.

Then there's armor: Rogues need to wear Light or Cloth Armor (and no shield bigger than a buckler) to be able to Evade spells and traps. If the trap box is on the far side of (or in the middle of) a trap (more common at higher levels), it matters whether or not you have effective Evasion. And Evasion is based on Dex, but you otherwise don't really need it. So you can expend a Feat for Insightful Reflexes, to use Int for Reflex saves.. but that's one less feat for something else and possibly again delaying other feats. If your other class is a caster, no big deal on the armor. But if it's a melee class, you may be making yourself much more vulnerable in combat in order to try to bypass traps.

Then there are the other options: Heavy armor and shield allow you to 'tank' trap damage. MRR will reduce magic trap damage and PRR will reduce physical trap damage. High HP will let you simply take trap damage on the chin, as it were (barbarians, for example). High Jump and possibly a movement skill that lets you zoom forward can get you past/over a lot of traps (if you know they're there). And, quite frankly, a lot of traps can simply be timed (again, once you know they exist).

This is a lot, but it's far from an exhaustive list of the issues. It's really just a few off the top of my head. Can you make an effective Rogue splash for traps? Absolutely. Will you give something up for that? Yep. Is it worth it? Only you can decide that. But be aware that trap difficulty isn't linear. Almost any toon can get traps with almost no specific focus on it at low levels, but the higher the level, the more you want/need to stack skills, gear, stats, enhancements, buffs, etc in order to reliably get traps.

[Doug]

VIP

There's a thread here called, "Everything that's wrong with DDO.. from a FAN!" or words to that effect that specifically tackled the math on the F2P/Premium vs VIP question. Feel free to find it and peruse it. It's some years old, so things have only gotten more one-sided.

But there are basically two elements to the question of whether or not to subscribe.
First is the question of relative cost: How long would you have to play DDO as a VIP for it to cost as much as it would for a Premium player to buy all the perks a VIP gets included in their sub. That answer is difficult, mathematically, because you could conceivably decide you never wanted some of those things. But even conservatively, the answer is measured in years of subscription. If you took the $$ that it would take for a Premium player to buy all the things a VIP gets and used it instead to subscribe, you'd probably have a 5 year subscription or more. And if you stopped playing within that 5 years (or the game shut down), the VIP would come out ahead.

The second element is time. That VIP gets access to everything from their very first subscription payment. Yet they pay for it over months and or years. By contrast, the Premium player either has a very high up-front cost.. or they don't have access to a lot of things for quite some time, thereby making the game less fun, more frustrating, and much more likely to eject them.

The third, more minor, element is that the VIP gets a few perks that you can't ever buy, like an across-the-board 10% XP bonus and faster movement in public areas, first-run Elite/Reaper quest opens on first and second life toons, and the like.

The decision of whether to play entirely as a F2P and never spend a dime, to play as Premium and only buy what you want when you want it a la carte, or to subscribe as a VIP is an entirely personal one. But mathematically, VIP is the better choice in terms of a straight cost/benefit analysis... unless you foresee yourself playing the game for a half dozen years or more. And even then, the fact that it provides access to everything up front is still a major benefit.

[Full Disclosure: I myself have never subbed. But I started playing a very long time ago, when there was a lot less content, races, classes, etc and therefore the tradeoff was different. And over time I've mostly bought the new stuff with the DDO Points I've farmed. But trying to do that with the new stuff AND catch up on the huge volume of existing content would require a LOT of playtime.]

[Doug]

Originally posted by ArcadioX:

One more question, if you don't mind: do tomes of ability make the game much easier later on? Are they necessary to progress?

Ability tomes are not required. However, they do affect EVERYTHING. Skills, To-hit, spell DCs, Ki, saves.. it's hard to list the effects because they're so pervasive. And if you're intent on a Rogue splash for traps, the additional Skill points AND Int bonus will help considerably, to use an example specific to your initial question. And the value of a tome is greatest when you're least likely to have it: on your first-life toon.

The in-game Store offers a once-per-account item from the 10th Anniversary of F2P (iirc) that includes a +8 Supreme Tome plus a couple of other items for less than the cost of the Tome alone. Idk if your account had to have been around when it was initially offered for it to be available, or if it's available to new accounts, but if it's there, that's your best option for your primary toon. But.. if you do invest in an Ability Tome, don't delete that toon.. even if you built it badly. ;)

[CRCGamer]

For a first life character avoid the 2 rogue splash unless you are doing some specific builds that have a low bar to maintain the skills. A good example of this would be taking two levels of rogue to start and then going eighteen straight levels of dark hunter which is the alternative progression ranger class. At which point you can take Shadowdancer in epics to net improved evasion. But all the dark hunter levels maintain many of the rogue skills as being within class.

I've done a rather successful 12 fighter/8 rogue build in the past that started as a rogue, and then went an additional level of rogue after sets of four fighter levels to maintain skills until I'd gotten all 12 fighter levels and then polished off with rogue. Very doable as a first life Drow. And you utilize part of the assassin tree alongside a smidgen of Drow racial for poison imbue dice. The fighter levels give you a ton of durability and a very good source of self-healing via Second Wind when UMD isn't enough to no-fail Heal scrolls yet. Late game viability for such a build is munching a lesser heart once you are in range for epics and rebuilding around VKF supported by some Kensei and Assassin tree picks. This does require you to have access to Vistani Knife Fighter. But using a prestige tree that isn't class locked is a very good way to lay hands on a capstone bonus for multi-class builds.

[ArcadioX]

You are right, I should have made separate threads for my questions but wow, thanks Doug for such profound answers to my questions. I gave you treasure reward, I hope you enjoy it lol.

That's a lot of info from you guys and from what I understand, to boil it down, splashing rogue levels on first toon isn't such a great idea as I first thought. First I'm most likely not experienced enough to do it properly. Second, maybe it's not such a bad idea to learn how to avoid traps on my first toon, then maybe make a trapper later on. I think I'll try barbarian maybe, to learn how to avoid traps with huge hp pool as a plan B? IDK, as I said, it's a lot of info to digest.

Once again I truly appreciate all your profound answers to my newb questions, they helped me a lot. I hope yall have a great day. Cheers!

[Doug]

Originally posted by CRCGamer:

I've done a rather successful 12 fighter/8 rogue build in the past that started as a rogue, and then went an additional level of rogue after sets of four fighter levels to maintain skills until I'd gotten all 12 fighter levels and then polished off with rogue. Very doable as a first life Drow.

Really? Fighters inherently get only 2 Skill points per level. Rogue skills require 6 to keep up on the Fighter levels when they're cross-class. With a high Int, that's doable, but it means you're not investing in many other Skills (or stats, for that matter). With no Int Tome and a 20 starting Int, that means you get 7 skill points on each Fighter level until L8, when it pushes up to 8 skill points if you take all your levelups in Int. That means that you get 1 or at most 2 skill points to invest in anything OTHER than those three trapping skills on Fighter levels. If you only start with an 18 Int, it's even worse than that. Doable? Yes. "Very" doable? Not convinced.

Note that you can make it slightly better if you come closer to alternating the levels after L6 when you're at 2 Rogue/4 Fighter. That way, you can skip investing in Rogue skills on Fighter levels entirely and top them up on the Rogue levels. However, that pushes the Fighter abilities off somewhat.