First play through rogue question

[Rumpleminze]

I always love dual dagger stealth backstabbing rogues. I have searched and searched for guides to make that work but cant find much of anything... I'll play on normal so I'm sure you can make anything work, but any hints on a build for that or where to look would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for any help

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

There is no real backstabbing in this game, because Stealth skill cannot be high enough to avoid being detected by most enemies, and Stealth mode cannot be reentered during combat.

There are
https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Backstab
and:
https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Sneak_Attack

It's the latter that becomes the basis for Rogues in this game since it is easy to cause Flanked status or any of the other required status effects.

There is also only one real stealing mission in the game, and you don't need to invest into Stealth for that one. Still, sneaking past enemies and guards can be done. And avoiding battles is one way to finish the game with less than 100 kills.

[Nichtswisser]

First tip is go for Stilettos instead of daggers. It's basically the same thing but stiettos ignore some armor and there are less enemies resistant to piercing compared to slash (daggers).

Also I believe there are 4 basic ways to build a rogue. Either you go for ranged combat, go melee but use something with range like a pick and attack from behind your tanks, go tanky with shield and basically get a slightly less tanky but more offensive tank, or go dual weapons to get a very squishy glass canon that can deal alot of damage but requires a lot of micromanagement.

And it's sounds like you want the last variant. Atributes you want to focus on are "Might", "Perception" and "Dexterity". You can take out a few points from either Inteligence or Resolve to max those if you want. But a fair warning. A lot of speech checks are based on Resolve so taking a build with less than at least 16 Resolve as your main will limit you in dialogue somewhat.

Skills you want: Crippling Strike -- Weapon Focus: Ruffian -- Reckless Assault -- Two-Weapon Fighting -- Dirty Fighting -- Vicious Fighting -- Finishing Blow. Something like "Shadowing Beyond" can be useful too to get out of bad situations.

Also I found it to be useful to also have a range weapon like a pistol on my rouge and usually start combat with it. Reason is that the AI is smart enough to focus on squishy characters so that when charging in right at the start of a battle together with your more tanky melee characters the rogue usually gets more attention than he wants to^^ It's usually better to wait until your tanks engaged the enemy melee units and then use your rogue to flank or go for squishy caster in the back and a pistol enables the rogue to do some damage before that.

[Halfshell]

Originally posted by Nichtswisser:

A lot of speech checks are based on Resolve so taking a build with less than at least 16 Resolve as your main will limit you in dialogue somewhat.

This.

My advice to new players is to make your first character a 16 int, dex, resolve, perception caster (most speech seems to need ~16 of these). 'Hire an adventurer' if you want another custom guy as you won't have to worry about speech checks. You can make the entire party out of custom guys.. but alot of the fun comes from the pre-made character's dialogue. So I would recommend using 2 custom guys, and rotating between 4 pre-mades.

Main char doesn't have to be a caster, but casters get more out of these stats imo. Other choices are fighter, berserker or ranger if you want. Still, thats 8 out of the 11 classes. A debuff fighter can go a long ways toward setting up your rogue for sneak attacks and can keep them safe when you need to. While a druid or wizard start with blind and get stuck/ prone effects pretty quick. Just depends on how you want to set your rogue up.

[Rumpleminze]

Thanks for the reply all, should I just save my backstab rogue for PoE2 as it seems far more viable thier and if so what would you recommend if I wanted to play say a heavy CC type chr... like charm, summon, incopacit.. that kind of stuff.
Thanks again for the help

[Halfshell]

I assume you mean hard CC so I'll talk about that.

My favorite CCs are all Wizard spells but Fighters, Druids*, Chanters and Priests all get respectable CC as well. Chanters are all about debuffs, hard CC and summon spam (access to 4 summon types and stun, charm, paralyzed by level 6) so that sounds like what you want. High int is the most important stat for CC as it affects both AoE and duration. Next are perception so that the CC lands and dex so that you can get more actions off. Chanters also can get more chants in with high dex so they can use their 'spells' more often.

Edit: In comparison: Wizards and Druids both get two summons at all. Wizards get around 6 hard CC by the same level (they have the most debuffs though) and Druids take longer to start getting CC but get more buffs and healing. Fighters get around 3 hard CC by level 7 but they are per encounter use. Priest CC is a little weak, mostly single target stuff and debuffs.

[Cosgar]

Don't forget to keep a Cipher in your party, they have really good synergy with rogues.