Rogue class concept (how to make it playable in group activities?)

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Corridors lead and open up to rooms, so rogues can just wait behind a corner in stealth and then ambush the incoming parties by targeting specific enemies.

Also, if just a few aoes can kill a character from full hp, who's also supported by healers and is probably highly defended against magic attacks - Intrepid will have completely failed their balancing design.

Also also, if Intrepid succeed at their design goal for party compositions, 20 people would mean 2 (maybe 3) mages. And even if a double mage setup is viable, that'd still be 5 at most (cause the remaining 4 chars would need to have supports to not die immediately). And here we go back to my second point - if a few aoes can remove a character then Intrepid failed at balancing.

How exactly does a Rogue fail their purpose in modern PvP?

Please note that my experiences are 'old MMOs', 'BDO', and MOBAs/Team Shooters.

In all the games I experienced, the only Rogues that end up being 'useless' are the ones who only build to actually always successfully fully assassinate targets.

Much like a Sniper, the power of a Rogue in the games I have played is the threat of them, the 'lines they cut off', the 'strategies they nullify without actually even trying to kill anyone or being there'. The 'point' of Rogue in my experience playing it is to make the opponent worry that you can kill them, and disrupt them, not actually always manage to kill them because other people usually finish them off anyway.

In this approach, the Rogue/Flanker is very often an integral part of the teamfight. Even if they are 'squishy' once their defenses do drop, they're a hard-to-kill distraction that opens up options for CC and 'makes the enemy turn around'.

This is even true in BDO with its abysmal TTK (not so much so in Node Wars, but generally).

The more people involved, the more effective this type of Rogue tends to be.

But this isn't a counter to anyone's point. This is just 'I don't know what happens to them in modern MMOs apparently so I need to be filled in'. I could see a game with a lot of AoE being a problem for them, but only if the AoE is cheap, which doesn't seem like it would be the case in Ashes.

Azherae wrote: »

Much like a Sniper, the power of a Rogue in the games I have played is the threat of them, the 'lines they cut off', the 'strategies they nullify without actually even trying to kill anyone or being there'. The 'point' of Rogue in my experience playing it is to make the opponent worry that you can kill them, and disrupt them, not actually always manage to kill them because other people usually finish them off anyway.

Yep, pretty much. A stealthed rogue "somewhere around" is way scarier than "that one rogue behind our enemy lines that has his gapcloser on cd rn". Our tanks in L2 had agro macros for super dangerous rogues and were always keeping their eye on their healers, because that's where the rogues were expected to appear out of nowhere.

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A standard group in Ashes is 8.

If you are talking about 'subgroups within a mass PvP situation even if you made the groups smaller, you'd put the Rogues in the groups with the tactical intent of using them.

I don't assume you are talking about tactic-less mass activities.

Your options for heavy/primary DPS in Ashes are Mage, Rogue, Fighter, Ranger, Summoner spec'd to that.

Rangers will get countered by mechanics that block frontal damage with a tradeoff of them being in less danger.

Mages will get countered by magic resistances, evasions, and speed, or just killed by... the enemy Rogue probably.

Fighters are great but usually you'd see them coming, I can see Fighters being chosen over Rogues somewhat consistently for mass fighting, true.

Summoners, who knows. In the games I play normally my Summoner's job is to hit things AFTER I distract them, which means technically they need the Rogue with them more.

Rogues would still do the same thing, so if that's what you needed you'd bring one. Rogue + Ranger in particular is very effective in my experience, so I don't know what would make it undesirable relative to the options.

Could you go into more detail, perhaps? I'm serious when I say that I haven't played a single game where the problem you describe comes up, and that's not hyperbole, and I do play a lot of bad game to study this sort of thing. Of all the balance issues I have seen and been frustrated by, I just haven't personally ever seen this specific one, so I need more explanation...

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From 3:27 onwards a fight is happening in a "corridor" with walls to stand behind and exists to fall back on. This is a mass pvp (21 parties on just one side) before a world raid boss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL7_QX23dtg

Rogues could stand near the walls to avoid the majority of the first aoes, pick their targets correctly and then use their gap closers to attack those exact targets to try and kill them asap. This would be my approach to this kind of fight. The video shows a different approach due to a particular alliance-wide protective ability.

I expect to see a fairly similar environment design in AoC's dungeons, with maybe even more places to hide yourself.

And here's a direct perspective of 2 top daggers on a server (archer and fighter parties respectively from what I can see). Fighting in daily party vs party, gvg and mass pvp. High mobility, gap closing and stealth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQYUI3hVZjk

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This might come as a shocker, but experience can be different. In my experience of playing L2 for 12 years on those same chronicles, rogues were always present in all of those activities. I played as a rogue multiple times and was present in all of those activities and my friends mained rogues for several years and did the same.

I can't speak to AA's gameplay or party setup, but if L2 experiences can differ, I'd assume that AA's can too.

[quote="Vargos;c-394174"But in reality, considering the situation when you don't have a constant party (with which you constantly play), it was always difficult to find a party for a dagger during leveling[/quote]
I guess this is the difference in our experience. I always had a constant party. I don't recall not playing with one in L2, no matter the server rates. And usually the lower the rate the higher the requirement for you to be in a const. Hell, even on some x1-5k servers I pretty much always played with at least a few people and we'd quite often go triple threat of 3 daggers.

The gameplay in mass pvp was always about your positioning and movement. The enemy can't hit everyone on your side, so your job is to not be the one hit for the longest time. Yes, earlies chronicles definitely made that job waaay harder than it should've been, but that's one of the things I expect Ashes to avoid.

Gap closers, movement abilities and good stealth will give rogues enough tools to be very useful in mass pvp. Outside of that, as I said before, I'm against any additional masspvp/pve tools on rogues, because that would dilute the archetype and blur the differences between all the archetypes too much.

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Then the only thing you should worry about is whether Intrepid is successful with their goal, cause they're already thinking of making everyone useful. They haven't forgotten rogues, nor any other archetype.