Detailed Analysis of Balance and Playstyle: Rogue

[ricky.brooks]

These are my opinions of the rogue from my experiences.

Styles:
Assassination School
This style has a good "feel" to it, and definitely encourages a more cautious and tactical play-style, which is what I think you were going for.

This style feels slightly under powered. This is mostly due to Distraction, which sucks up most of the cards and is prohibitively expensive. Plan Ahead and Killing Blow are interesting, but the gain 2 -> spend (and cap) 3 mechanic is slightly abrasive. It feels like wasted resources, and it almost guarantees that half the Killing Blows will be wasted cards. Hide is a very powerful card that is shared with Street School, making it feel less special. It seems like a better fit here. That said, it could use a sexier name. Maybe something like "shadow meld?"

I recommend decreasing Distraction's cost (possibly on the Chain, but you might be going for a certain feel there). Increase the Rogue's tactics cap, and make Killing Blow spend all resources, similar to the Warrior's Holy Blade. Finally it would be nice to have a couple other items utilize tactics, both gaining and spending. Maybe a rapier or main gauge? Tactical Explosives?

Swashbuckling School
This is my favorite Rogue style to play. It has a very offensive "throw caution to the wind" feel, which is great!

It's balance appears slightly above average to me. This is mostly due to Dodge Attack, which is ridiculously over-powered. It is an answer to nearly every problem in the game, and having such a powerful defensive card in an offensive build is odd. It completely over-shadows Acrobatics, which is almost always discarded due to the offensive nature of the style. Lunge and Flurry of Attacks are both iconic cards that really make the "feel" of this style. They could also use sexier names.

I recommend swapping one of the Dodge Attacks for another Acrobatics. Raise Acrobatic's base cost to 4 and lowering its chained cost to 1. Increase Dodge Attack's cost to 4/3. Might also consider adding or changing an ability to block instead of dodge, to allow more interesting deck building.

Street School
This style's feel is less attractive to me. It's more puzzle-like than the others, which makes it distinctive, especially during the defense round. I'm not sure why it didn't click for me. Maybe because it doesn't have any really iconic "big" cards aside from Hide, which is shared with Assassination.

I won't comment on balance, as I've played this only a few times early on. As mentioned above, I don't like that Hide is shared with Assassination School, and the global effects of it make it anti-synergystic with the defense cards.

I recommend replacing Hide with something single-targeting, and leave the group work to the awesome Counter Grab and Trick Dodge.


Primaries:
Dagger/Assassins Blade
These overlap in functionality and I'd like to see them have more differentiation. They feel mostly good in both mechanics and balance, obviously synergizing with stealth/stun builds. The Weaken effects seem odd here, since that works best with a block strategy, but neither Assassination or Street styles play well to blocks.

Blink Dagger
This one is a lot of fun, and playing with distance as a Rogue leads to interesting defensive and offensive decisions. The bonus to defenseless targets seems superfluous here. I'd like to see bonuses to Blink Jab against ranged opponents. I'd also like to see some other rogue items which affect range.

Broad Sword/Short Sword
These overlap extremely tightly, with the Broad Sword being the obviously better choice. Broadsword is probably overpowered. This might be a better place for a weapon that adds weakness, to provide a more defensive option, or vulnerability. Maybe a Scimitar or Rapier?

Wolf Claw
Very fun weapon. Love the decisions around when to use Mangle or save it for empowered Tears. Seems balanced. No changes recommended.

Cursed Dagger
Interesting weapon with some great risk/reward mechanics. Feels a bit powerful for a careful assassin, but difficult to use well. Multiple Vampire stabs feels a bit abrasive, since they will often be discarded. Maybe replace one with some sort of a soothing card that is cheaper, but only reduces the teeth?

Fairy Sword
Another interesting weapon with some great decisions about when to push for Fairy Realm and when to try to buy an extra round waiting. Seems overly powerful, unless facing armor, which seems to balance it out. Collapsing Stab seems a bit expensive for its damage.

Scourge
I haven't used this one too much, but it seems very weak. It seems like it might good use against mushrooms, but even that is dubious. The damage per card is just too low, and stun is too unreliable, especialy against bosses. This might be another good spot for weakness.


Secondaries:
Bag of Tricks
Interesting play with the randomness of Fairy Bombs and the single-target disabling of Pixie Dust. Seems powerful, but risky, which is fair. The Caltrops seem out of place, since the rest of the cards here encourage either target elimination or disabling, and caltrops encourages blocking.

Bare Rouge
Seems weak and boring. Arm Parry is cheap, but too weak to be any real use. Cheap Trick is actually really good for it's cost, but not enough to make up for Arm Parry.

Bone Blade
This one was a bit weak and disappointing. I wasn't able to find a way to make the weaken effects work well enough against later enemies. I think that might be able to be solved by more support from other cards. It just isn't able to handle weakening and blocking on its own.

Buckler
A bit boring. Seems fine on balance. Buckler Block works well with many primaries.

Cursed Disk
Very cool secondary, but a bit weak. Love trying to find opporunities to use Disk Parry to power Disk Throw. Often have to discard Disk Throw though, which is disappointing. Maybe replace one with a less expensive melee card?

Off Hand Dagger
The extra Jabs work well with stealth builds, but Block Jab is pretty hard to use to its advantage. Similar to Boneblade, but with even less of an ability to hold its own. Maybe increase it's chain block and cost?

Throwing Knives
Seems a little under powered, but provides ranged damage that is often missing. Multiple Throw is way too expensive for its damage. I recommend upping the damage to 3/5 and lower the chain cost by 1.


Armors:
Wind Cloak / Mountain Cape
These are very similar, and I would like to see them differentiated a bit more. Both seem a little overpowered in all builds.

Harpy Cloak
Although similar to the above 2 items, it's different enough that it deserves its own category! Also a bit overpowered. Provides an answer to distance enemies that is often lacking, and some extra stun, which is nice on dagger Rogue builds.

Leather Jacket
Seems just a tad underpowered. Provides much needed support to blocking Secondaries. Maybe make the single block a +3 instead of +1.

Brigand Armor
Like Leather Jacket, except that it's completely useless.

Fairy Mask
This is the most balanced of the "see invisible" items.

Black Cloak / Shadow Cloak
These are extremely similar and I'd like to see me differentiation. Shadow Cloak is much better and way over-powered. Starting hidden 3x as many times, and being able to hide from everyone again every combat makes it a no-brainer for both Assassination and Street Rogues.


Trinkets:
Royal Elixir
Please nerf. It's so good I don't feel like it's at all reasonable to bring anything else into the trinket slot, expect maybe Smoke Bombs for stealth builds. As such, most of my explanations below are given with little to no experience.

Smoke Bomb
Extremely over powered utility item for cautious stealth builds. More reliable than Bone Charm, and better. This with Shadow Cloak allows a full extra round of all stealth every battle, with potential to spike to 3 rounds. The only disadvantage to this is that Royal Elixir exists.

Bone Charm
Fun item with a very powerful ability that can rarely be used. Seems balanced compared to Smoke Bomb. Would like to see items in other areas that use Souls so that this can be a competing resource.

Garrotte
Useful item for increasing card draw on stealth/stun builds. Might be slightly above average in power.

Dragonstick / Secret Knife
These are very similar and would like to see differentiation. They might be a little under powered. Used Secret Knife for awhile, until I got Royal Elixir. Dragonstick seems weaker due to cooldown, but havent' actually used it due to Royal Elixir.

Lucky Penny
Would be fun to try. Seems like it could be useful, if risky.

Magic Mushrooms
This would be very useful for anyone but a Rogue, but Stamina is just too important. Stamina is important for a Fighter too, but they have the ability to hunker down for a couple rounds and catch their breath. That said, I haven't actually tried them.

Sharpening Stone
This seems a little weak. It does provide slight boost to fighting armored enemies, which the Rogue desperately needs, but not enough. Maybe make it 2 penetration per attack? The activated ability is also very weak.

Spider Poison
This one is very weak. Maybe make is affect multiple attacks?


Bags:
Obsidian Shards
These are fun, and provide a nice bonus to fighting armored enemies. Seems balanced.

Poison Darts
Seem a little underpowered, but provide a nice ranged option.

Slime Jars
Removing all Armor is a very cool ability, but the cooldown is too costly since armored enemies often come in bunches.

Stranglevine Seeds
I haven't had a chance to use these yet. Seem interesting, but not sure how the charges work from the description. If they are normal defense blocks, then 3 is probably too weak to be effective in later stages. If it works like Rangers hideout, it might be pretty powerful support for blocking builds.

Dwarven Bombs
Should be changed to Bosseater Bombs. These are the most powerful bag, unless you're using a Stealth build. The damage, aoe, stun, and free triggering of chains are all very powerful in themselves. Recommend reducing charges to 2.

Gas bombs
As above, but for stealth builds. Enables extremely cautious playstyles. This is also the only primarily defensive bag in the game.

Poison Kit
Need to use this more. Seems like it could be very powerful on an inexpensive swashbuckler build, but the number of status and stun immune enemies always scares me away.

[eidolon232]

Thanks for taking the time for such a detailed review.
As for the Styles, while initially being a big fan of the Swashbuckling School (starting the game with a massive Flurry of Attacks chain), I have gained more and more respect for Hide: As long as you are not being preassured by enemies that do something bad every turn (spawning / draining HP), Hide actually ready draw 4 cards, gain 10 energy and supercharge your daggers.
It doesn't matter that your dodge/block cards suck if the enemy can't see you at all.

As a sidenote: Plan Ahead works with Efficient Ambusher (not only by not removing your discount, but also allowing you to use some of the other card draw effects that are free when chained) and your AoE attacks.

[Samseng Yik]

Compare to fighter.
Rogue weapon feel more refreshing and easier to use.
Spider poison maybe make it 2 hit per consumption.
Cloak completely agree with you where armor mostly garbage.
Recommend Distraction get 1 tactic on use.
Sharpening stone should last more hit in order to on par to other. 6? 9?
Throwing knife(non card) . Maybe make a small armor piercing and undodgable.
Caltrops actually has insane synergy with increase damage taken. Casting this 2 times will make enemy with 6 increase damage taken take 2 times 7 damage.

[Gwim]

Great analysis! Lots of good feedback and ideas.
I'll give a better answer over the weekend once I have the time. ;)

[eidolon232]

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

These are my opinions of the rogue from my experiences.

Styles:
Assassination School
This style has a good "feel" to it, and definitely encourages a more cautious and tactical play-style, which is what I think you were going for.

This style feels slightly under powered. This is mostly due to Distraction, which sucks up most of the cards and is prohibitively expensive. Plan Ahead and Killing Blow are interesting, but the gain 2 -> spend (and cap) 3 mechanic is slightly abrasive. It feels like wasted resources, and it almost guarantees that half the Killing Blows will be wasted cards. Hide is a very powerful card that is shared with Street School, making it feel less special. It seems like a better fit here. That said, it could use a sexier name. Maybe something like "shadow meld?"

I recommend decreasing Distraction's cost (possibly on the Chain, but you might be going for a certain feel there). Increase the Rogue's tactics cap, and make Killing Blow spend all resources, similar to the Warrior's Holy Blade. Finally it would be nice to have a couple other items utilize tactics, both gaining and spending. Maybe a rapier or main gauge? Tactical Explosives?

Sure the dodge cards of the Assassination School are worse than in the other 2 Schools, but you also have the most proactive cards and card draw. With some complementery cc effects from your secondary weapon, you can end each turn with all the enemies defenseless.

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Swashbuckling School
This is my favorite Rogue style to play. It has a very offensive "throw caution to the wind" feel, which is great!

It's balance appears slightly above average to me. This is mostly due to Dodge Attack, which is ridiculously over-powered. It is an answer to nearly every problem in the game, and having such a powerful defensive card in an offensive build is odd. It completely over-shadows Acrobatics, which is almost always discarded due to the offensive nature of the style. Lunge and Flurry of Attacks are both iconic cards that really make the "feel" of this style. They could also use sexier names.

I recommend swapping one of the Dodge Attacks for another Acrobatics. Raise Acrobatic's base cost to 4 and lowering its chained cost to 1. Increase Dodge Attack's cost to 4/3. Might also consider adding or changing an ability to block instead of dodge, to allow more interesting deck building.

Relying on stun (which doesn't work against a good number of enemies) and dodge cards means that you will need to reserve more energy for your defense than the Hide builds. More notably when it comes to discarding cards for the next draw 2/3 effect you need to get a good feeling whether it is time to discard offensive or defensive cards and what to do if you don't draw the appropriate cards.

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Street School
This style's feel is less attractive to me. It's more puzzle-like than the others, which makes it distinctive, especially during the defense round. I'm not sure why it didn't click for me. Maybe because it doesn't have any really iconic "big" cards aside from Hide, which is shared with Assassination.

I won't comment on balance, as I've played this only a few times early on. As mentioned above, I don't like that Hide is shared with Assassination School, and the global effects of it make it anti-synergystic with the defense cards.

I recommend replacing Hide with something single-targeting, and leave the group work to the awesome Counter Grab and Trick Dodge.

I have to agree that Hide feels rather odd in the School with 4 Dodge cards that can deal with multiple enemies.

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Primaries:
Dagger/Assassins Blade
These overlap in functionality and I'd like to see them have more differentiation. They feel mostly good in both mechanics and balance, obviously synergizing with stealth/stun builds. The Weaken effects seem odd here, since that works best with a block strategy, but neither Assassination or Street styles play well to blocks.

Weaken at least gives those daggers a defensive function vs enemies that are immune to stun/unaware.

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Blink Dagger
This one is a lot of fun, and playing with distance as a Rogue leads to interesting defensive and offensive decisions. The bonus to defenseless targets seems superfluous here. I'd like to see bonuses to Blink Jab against ranged opponents. I'd also like to see some other rogue items which affect range.

It is also quite buggy right now (hitting all enemies for 0 and triggering contact damage / poison effects).

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Broad Sword/Short Sword
These overlap extremely tightly, with the Broad Sword being the obviously better choice. Broadsword is probably overpowered. This might be a better place for a weapon that adds weakness, to provide a more defensive option, or vulnerability. Maybe a Scimitar or Rapier?

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the Broad Sword supposed to be the larger of these two weapons? So wouldn't it make more sense if the Broad Sword deals more damage in exchange of being harder to handle (= chainbreaker)

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Wolf Claw
Very fun weapon. Love the decisions around when to use Mangle or save it for empowered Tears. Seems balanced. No changes recommended.

The dangerous part about this weapon is that as a Swashbuckler (subclass), Flurry of Attacks makes your Tears cost no energy at all.

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Cursed Dagger
Interesting weapon with some great risk/reward mechanics. Feels a bit powerful for a careful assassin, but difficult to use well. Multiple Vampire stabs feels a bit abrasive, since they will often be discarded. Maybe replace one with some sort of a soothing card that is cheaper, but only reduces the teeth?

The problem here is that you can't really be too carefull with this cards, since your Hunger will constantly increase and not killing something to keep your Hunger low just means that you are forced to use other ressources to deal with them.

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Fairy Sword
Another interesting weapon with some great decisions about when to push for Fairy Realm and when to try to buy an extra round waiting. Seems overly powerful, unless facing armor, which seems to balance it out. Collapsing Stab seems a bit expensive for its damage.

One thing worth noting about the Fairy Realm mechanic is that you need to actually leave the Fairy Realm if you want to make your enemies unaware over multiple turns.

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Scourge
I haven't used this one too much, but it seems very weak. It seems like it might good use against mushrooms, but even that is dubious. The damage per card is just too low, and stun is too unreliable, especialy against bosses. This might be another good spot for weakness.

When you use it with the Fairy Bag as your secondary equipment, you can deal a ton of damage with this card.

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Secondaries:
Bag of Tricks
Interesting play with the randomness of Fairy Bombs and the single-target disabling of Pixie Dust. Seems powerful, but risky, which is fair. The Caltrops seem out of place, since the rest of the cards here encourage either target elimination or disabling, and caltrops encourages blocking.

Caltrops deals increased damage to vulnerable (Fairy debuff) enemies. So a Pixie Dust -> Pixie Caltrops -> Fairy Bomb hit on the same enemy will end up dealing 4+5 damage to that enemy.

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Bare Rouge
Seems weak and boring. Arm Parry is cheap, but too weak to be any real use. Cheap Trick is actually really good for it's cost, but not enough to make up for Arm Parry.

With Cheap Tricks as a cheap card draw / chain enabler, you can simply use them to maximize the damage during your turn. If you are adding 2 free cards that give you 2 cards each, but you are also adding 2 bad cards, you are basically playing with a smaller deck, drawing your key cards more frequently (charge attacks, mass card draw, cards that replenish your energy).

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Bone Blade
This one was a bit weak and disappointing. I wasn't able to find a way to make the weaken effects work well enough against later enemies. I think that might be able to be solved by more support from other cards. It just isn't able to handle weakening and blocking on its own.

Buckler
A bit boring. Seems fine on balance. Buckler Block works well with many primaries.

Off Hand Dagger
The extra Jabs work well with stealth builds, but Block Jab is pretty hard to use to its advantage. Similar to Boneblade, but with even less of an ability to hold its own. Maybe increase it's chain block and cost?

#idontwantit

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Throwing Knives
Seems a little under powered, but provides ranged damage that is often missing. Multiple Throw is way too expensive for its damage. I recommend upping the damage to 3/5 and lower the chain cost by 1.

Even if you only get ranged damage from your secondary weapon, this card is not my first choice for that purpose, since the Fairy Bag can deal increasing damage and make bigger enemies unaware, so that you can hit them with your heavy melee attacks in the future.

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Cursed Disk
Very cool secondary, but a bit weak. Love trying to find opporunities to use Disk Parry to power Disk Throw. Often have to discard Disk Throw though, which is disappointing. Maybe replace one with a less expensive melee card?

Why do we need so many different ressources?

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Armors:
Wind Cloak / Mountain Cape
These are very similar, and I would like to see them differentiated a bit more. Both seem a little overpowered in all builds.

Speaking of diffenentiating: Many of the items have this "a bit of everything" feeling where they provide energy , health, possibly a third effect and 3 other effects on activation. Can't we get fewer but stronger effects?
Also: Why not add items without activations or unlimited activations?

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Harpy Cloak
Although similar to the above 2 items, it's different enough that it deserves its own category! Also a bit overpowered. Provides an answer to distance enemies that is often lacking, and some extra stun, which is nice on dagger Rogue builds.

Leather Jacket
Seems just a tad underpowered. Provides much needed support to blocking Secondaries. Maybe make the single block a +3 instead of +1.

Brigand Armor
Like Leather Jacket, except that it's completely useless.

+1

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Fairy Mask
This is the most balanced of the "see invisible" items.

The Wizard's Fairy Familiar used to make enemies unaware as well...

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Black Cloak / Shadow Cloak
These are extremely similar and I'd like to see me differentiation. Shadow Cloak is much better and way over-powered. Starting hidden 3x as many times, and being able to hide from everyone again every combat makes it a no-brainer for both Assassination and Street Rogues.

While both being awesome cards, the unaware bonus isn't really that important for the Street Rogue, given the good CC Dodge cards.

I pretty much agree on the entire Bags & Trinkets sections.

Originally posted by ricky.brooks:

Bags:

Dwarven Bombs
Should be changed to Bosseater Bombs. These are the most powerful bag, unless you're using a Stealth build. The damage, aoe, stun, and free triggering of chains are all very powerful in themselves. Recommend reducing charges to 2.

Gas bombs
As above, but for stealth builds. Enables extremely cautious playstyles. This is also the only primarily defensive bag in the game.

If you don't use a Swashbuckler, Unaware is more valuable vs ranged opponents than stun, since you can let them get to melee range. It also works against most boss monsters, so you can clear the field before you have to worry about the big guy.

[FlyingPinkPony]

I don't think I agree with your general assessment of Rogue's balance. It's tough for me to look at Rogue and not highlight Swashbuckling Schools "Flurry of Attacks" and Bag of Tricks secondary are really overpowered.

Flurry of Attacks is a draw 2, energy 1 to 3 card. This is pretty scary broken and leads to a lot of deck cycling and basically lets you perma cycle your deck.

Bag of Tricks's Pixue dust is also pretty OP being a free cycle tied to the universally powerful unaware mechanic and a massive damage bonus to boot. Caltrops also seem to be able to stack infinitely, which seems inconsistent with some other defensive tools, but can get pretty absurd with how many times I can cycle my deck.

Anytime cards are added that are completely resource free to resource positive it can make the game balance incredibly brittle, particulalry on a character as cycle heavy as the Rogue it's really easy to break them and give them basically infinite deck cycling. The cards mentioned above are simply too resource efficient.

[ricky.brooks]

Originally posted by FlyingPinkPony:

I don't think I agree with your general assessment of Rogue's balance. It's tough for me to look at Rogue and not highlight Swashbuckling Schools "Flurry of Attacks" and Bag of Tricks secondary are really overpowered.

Flurry of Attacks is a draw 2, energy 1 to 3 card. This is pretty scary broken and leads to a lot of deck cycling and basically lets you perma cycle your deck.

Bag of Tricks's Pixue dust is also pretty OP being a free cycle tied to the universally powerful unaware mechanic and a massive damage bonus to boot. Caltrops also seem to be able to stack infinitely, which seems inconsistent with some other defensive tools, but can get pretty absurd with how many times I can cycle my deck.

Anytime cards are added that are completely resource free to resource positive it can make the game balance incredibly brittle, particulalry on a character as cycle heavy as the Rogue it's really easy to break them and give them basically infinite deck cycling. The cards mentioned above are simply too resource efficient.

Flurry of Attacks is a very powerful card, and so is Plan Ahead, as Eidolon mentioned. I'm not so sure that the idea of an infinite cycle is broken in and of itself. This is a game where really all strategies have to be some form of "flawless" in order to be successful, and the infinite draw is no worse than impenetreble defense, or just killing everyone before your resources run out.

All of these strategies are problematic only when they are so reliable they are almost impossible to break. There might be an argument that Flurry of Attacks does this, but I'm finding that only with the luckiest of draw orders can I keep constant progress without dwindling my stamina due to inefficiencies, such as drawing defense cards with flurry, double flurries in a row, chain-breakers, etc.

Pixie dust is powerful, I agree, but the randomness of fairy-bomb counter-acts it a bit. I think that the pixie dust needs a higher cost. It's actually so good it might be a viable strategy to just discard every fairy-bomb and play with just the pixie dust on a stealth build.

[Samseng Yik]

I do agree Bags Of Trick give insane offensivive bonuses.
It might need some nerfs.
The card recycling and the damage bonus plus unaware with low stamina all bonus together really insane.

1 super withness with Bags Of Trick though. None of the card is defensive.
This is not a problem 90% of the Rogue gameplay.
Only very few niche areas will cause problem to rogue.

Yes it need some nerf.