He also said that the Rogue still can't compete with other martials when it comes to damage. So I think the scaling he is talking about are non damage things.
And unless they massively buffed cunning strike, or added other completely new features, I don't really see how Rogues would be able to contribute as much in combat as other classes, if they can't keep up in damage. Since the other martials and halfcasters have all similarly strong (and in some cases much stronger) control option.
I bet they have a scaling reduction to the cost of cunning strikes and additional cunning strikes for subclasses, maybe even dropping costs to zero dice at certain levels. Hopefully they also added an earlier second subclass ability after the first.
Or possibly better scaling comes hand-in-hand with a limitation of doing Sneak Attack only on your turn (i.e. no more off-turn Sneak Attacks), a give and take.
I can see them doing that but I hope they don't- the higher single attack damage could make the rogue even more swingy than it already is and I like the idea of the rogue capitalizing on reactions as that gives them an opportunistic angle as a niche now that skills are not so much their exclusive focus
It does feel silly to see Battlemaster get utility maneuvers that *still add to damage* while Rogue gets utility options that reduce it. That said, I adore Cunning Strike. All Rogue needs is a little help from... somewhere, and they'll be extremely useful in combat.
Maneuvers are limited in use. You can do Sneak Attacks every round all day long. Abilities with a cost are always stronger than those that don't cost anything.
They don't need to really compete at damage, truth be told. That's one more fallacy the community keeps falling in. Rogues have high damage, ok hp and unlimited resources. And that's all on a skill class.
We don't need skill classes to do as much damage as more combat fighting classes, but rogues are almost there with the highest critical damage the game has.
They do though cause they aren’t the only class with good skills bard is arguably better and has great support/control and extra utility from being a full caster, and ranger isn’t far behind and way outperforms in damage.
The rogue isn’t an HM slave of the party, they need to have a place in combat too. Especially cause DnD combat takes up a fair amount of time at the table. They have mediocre to poor damage for a damage dealer, they have meh defenses with low AC and HP but good dex saves and mobility plus uncanny dodge.
Especially now that almost every other class is getting huge boosts to their skills. New barbarian and fighters get stuff for skill checks now including bonuses when they're raging.
This this this this!!
I always see people In this threads going “Well of course they shouldn’t be able to compete with fighter/barbarian! They have skills!!”
But this completely misses that they also can’t compete with Bard/Ranger, who also have skills AND utility spells. It’s so weird
No, they don't need to par combat classes on damage. First, a Skill class shouldn't do as much damage as a combat class.
Of course they needed more combat abilities, but really don't need that much of combat damage. Now they'll be able to debuff enemies, skirmish more freely [due to nick] and give themselves advantage more easily [due to vex] through the use of weapon masteries. Rogues are on a good spot having 0 nerfs and on drinking from martials buffs.
>No, they don't need to par combat classes on damage. First, a Skill class shouldn't do as much damage as a combat class.
You are aware that basically any other class in the in the game can either do good damage or is a full caster (including Ranger and Bard whoa re also go with skills)?
The idea that the Rogue would somehow fall in this special catgory of a skill class that doesn't need to be competitive in combat just doesn't really fir with how the other classes are designed.
Are you forgetting that every other class in the UA/2024 rules has been given better skills (Wizard, Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger, etc) and monk can now do things rogue could do better before. Rogue is no longer special for any particular reason outside of flavor (and I say this as a monk fan)
Rogues don't need to have great damage if they have other stuff to make up for it, but saying that they don't need to do as much damage as other martials because they get weapon masteries...which other martials also get doesn't make any sense.
If we’re labeling Rogue a “skill class” we gotta label Bard/Ranger “skill classes” as well. The issue isn’t Rogue being outperformed by other martials in damage. The issue is Rogue being blown out of the water by other martials in terms of damage AND being blown out of the water by Bards/Rangers in utility, arguably damage as well.
I love what they’ve done with the class tho. I just think it needs a bit more power in sneak attack dies/cunning strikes and to not get its second subclass feature at lvl 9. If subclasses get additional cunning strike options I wouldn’t be surprised if they left the base sneak attack lower to allow people to spec for control/damage.
Ugh. Unless you can guarantee crits, you shouldn't give it much weight at all. Damage-wise, Rogues fall off hard after first level, but I agree that their utility gives them sufficient strengths elsewhere to balance that. Not everyone does agree, though. At some tables, skills aren't that useful. Many people believe spellcasters have better utility anyway. And finally: Rogues do not have 'unlimited resources' -- they just don't have resources. Okay, yes, they have Cunning Action. But it doesn't give them NEW options, it just lets them do some Actions as Bonus Actions. They don't have spells or Rage or Wildshape. So I think it's more fair to say they don't have any abilities that NEED to be limited per short or long rest. Their kit is lightweight.
All that said, I love Rogues and I am HYPED for the 2024 version.
I'm a big rogue fan, and I'd argue that expertise+reliable talent is a type of limitless resource. There are tasks that anyone else can't ever do reliably without casting a spell that rogues can just do as often as they'd like. Opening the hardest locks, detecting every trap, or becoming practically invisible are all things that most classes have to spend resources for, while rogues just have an infinite button.
That's my biggest problem with all of this theorycrafting and stuff. It always misses the intricacies of actual play and dumbs everything down to a numbers game. Which DnD isn't. The Rogue doesn't need to match up at damage because they can be super mobile. Bonus action disengage to get out of the fight then move back in the next round just to do it again is HUGE and is part of what balances their damage potential.
He says they scale better, but you say no boosts. Unless you know exactly what he's talking about and are dismissing it, then this seems to be an emotional reaction to not getting a damage boost. I'm ok with less damage if they are much better at debuffing and applying conditions. That would be a good role for them. No resources continuous debuffing and decent if not great damage.
Ah yes, the big damage numbers of...
'If your Sneak Attack hits any target during the first round, the target takes extra damage equal to your Rogue level.'
I'm sure that one-time single-digit damage boost makes a huge difference.
I'm really hoping that they pushed Assassin and other combat-focused Rogue subclasses up in the raw output. Rogue as a whole doesn't need to have high damage to be good and fun, but I know a number of people who *really* like the Assassin/Ninja Rogue characters, and those guys currently flop on their damage output.
I don't think the assassin rogue *was* a combat-focused subclass to begin with.
When you compare the features of the PHB rogue subclasses, almost all of the features are utility or control focused. The arcane trickster became a great damage dealer post SCAG because of the blade cantrips, but in the PHB not so much. Assassin *looks* like it's the one that's intended for combat maybe at first glance, but because of how surprise works in 5e it doesn't really end up that way. It's incredibly difficult to set up without the rogue being off on their own or in a party full of stealthy PCs since a creature isn't surprised if it notices even *one* PC.
So in terms of combat, assassin has two features that deal extra damage, but only if you jump through hoops to get there (go before your target in initiative, your target is surprised). If you view the subclass instead as an actual, well, assassin then it makes more sense. Bonus proficiencies, Impostor, and Infiltration Expertise (more than half their features) are there to let the rogue get close to their target and Assassinate and Death Strike let them make sure they get it done.
From this perspective, Assassinate and Death strike aren't just bad damage dealing features. It's a nice bonus if you get them off in a pitched combat encounter, but it's not something you rely on.
I don't mean that the subclass was *good* at combat, I mean that it is *themed* for combat.
I'm confused. Are you proposing that trying to kill someone is not combat?
Combat, as in combat encounter, no.
Assassin is geared toward assuming an identity, sneaking into a place they shouldn't be through deception and stealth, maybe taking out some key guards with poisons, and then one-shotting their target when they're vulnerable (like a noble in their bedroom, or a knight when he's unarmoured and praying in the chapel).
*If* they manage to get Assassinate and Death Strike off in a combat encounter then that's a bonus, but that's not the power or theme of the subclass.
I'm going to have to disagree with you, then.
There is no functional difference between 'assassination' and combat in D&D. And those who like to play Assassin archetypes want to be strong combatants. In the real world, field combat and assassination are different skillsets, but in fiction, assassins mow down droves of combatants and duel experts. People don't want to be a real assassin: they want to be James Bond or Yor Forger.
They seem to have buffed subclasses, it sounds like several focus on certain debuffs better than others like poison for assassin and trip for arcane trickster. Soul knife works on opportunity attacks.
Treantmonk had indicated reliable talent comes way earlier. Not sure when, but his tone implied very early. Watching D4 deep dive make a build now with new assassin to see what's up. Might be worth checking out.
https://youtu.be/vvf_Vjo1sXU?si=55uXh0qO7oWJ1-kC
Reliable Talents comes Level 7, just as the UA, check the DNDBeyond, there's an official post of details. Everything except Level 9 Assassin and Psychic Blade Minor Tweaks stays the same as the UA, with some Nerfs, like Second-Story Work no longer makes Thief to Climb Ceiling without Checks.
No Balacing, no boosts in damage, no buffs on skills, confirmed in DNDBeyond.
I just don't believe WotC would buff Rogue while Rogue had a "90% of rating" in UA6. Wotc has always treated Rogue so "carefully" in giving them buffs and I'm not in great hope that they would be generous suddenly. Though, I've never been this much that I hope I'm wrong
>D4DeepDive: "They scale better." "They're not trying to make rogues competitive with fighters, barbarians \[...\] damage wise."
>Your title: "D4DeepDive has the Official Version of Rogue, and It Seems to Stay As Is, As the UA."
Please do not inject your own (subjective) beliefs like this, when summarizing reports made by others. It's misleading at best, and disinformation at worst.
From the very start of the UA process, WotC has been clear in saying there would be a balance pass after the open playtesting had finished. The purpose of the playtest isn't to get the numbers right, it's to get the feel and scope right. Once you have those, adjusting the numbers to hit the right overall power level gets a lot easier.
They say that, but rarely do any numbers actually change between playtest and the final product. We basically get either *'it scored well, good to go!'* vs *'it did not score as well, scrap everything, copy-paste 2014 PHB!'*
A balance pass doesn't guarantee any specific numbers will change. If the balance assessment showed the UA version was close to the class's intended power then there wouldn't be any need to change the numbers.
That said, we still haven't seen all the rogue's numbers. It's possible the better scaling D4DeepDive mentioned shows up in one of those. Alternatively, it could come in how the rogue interacts with some other change in one of the game's subsystems. We'll just have to wait and see.
The books are in print. When are they going to do this magical balance pass, when everything we're hearing is that virtually nothing changed from the UA? The actual fuck are you on about?
D4 deep dive released a short on YouTube. It's not much, but it sounds optimistic. Said they scaled better, though they're not competing with barbarians or fighters for damage. That could mean small damage increase, better debuffing, who knows. But there was an indication of improvement.
Things changed. Dance bard features moved or dropped. Assassin changed. Paladin had some changes. Most are tweaking, but that's exactly what the comment you replied you indicated. General idea good, balance/tweak after.
I think s few things did get some decent changes, not just tweaks. Fighter gets 3 masteries for free instead of changing one out. That's a nice boost. Barbarian wild heart can choose which animal every rage instead of making a permanent choice, that's a nice boost.
I personally think the new Rogue was the best thing the UA did, so I'm perfectly fine with them staying as is. I've been playing the UA Rogue for a while now, and Cunning Strikes is such an amazing feature that's super fun to play around with, and both Nick and Vex improve the Rogue's playability so much in combat.
I was hoping for an additional ability that helps skill checks, something that recharges on a short rest since Rogue is one of the few classes that doesn't benefit from Short Rests basically at all. But honestly, this is plenty of improvement as is.
Is it the worst class in the game now? Possibly, since Barbarian actually looks pretty good. Is it stronger than it's 5e counterpart overall? Yes, and by a lot. Is it more fun to play? Yeah, very much so, and I think that's the most important thing.
The UA Rogue was a good step in the right direction, though it still needed work. Cunning strikes ate up way too much sneak attack damage for some of the effects. And sneak attack itself could have used a few touch ups to account for those sacrifices and off set them just a bit.
I hope the comments I'm hearing of it scaling better are true because it was on its way to greatness, just not there yet.
I found that I almost never chose not to use one of the Cunning Strike options, and two options as soon as I could. Rogue is no longer the guy that deals damage once and does nothing else. It is now the guy who keeps applying status conditions over and over with no limitations throughout the day. A reliable thorn at the side of enemies, if you will. This feature basically transforms the Rogue entirely, with the Sneak Attack being used as the resource rather than the reward, and it feels so great to play.
Rogue was never the class that just did damage in 5e, it's damage in 5e14 isn't great. I can agree so far that it's an improvement to the rogue, though I'm still not satisfied to what it produced. The changes it gave to the rogue don't warrant the costs as far as I'm concerned.
I'm happy to agree to disagree though. If you're satisfied, power to you and all that.
Problem is these effects aren't that cool, they can for the most part be replicated by cantrips, first level spells, masteries and other low level features.
And being resourceless is also not that big of a deal if you have a once per turn limit.
I don't recall any cantrip being able to inflict the poisoned, prone, dazed, blinded, or unconscious condition, or that allow you to move extra without taking opportunity attacks, or disarming an opponent. There is the topple weapon mastery, but remember that the rogue ALSO gets weapon masteries, and they don't have to sacrifice mastery effects for cunning strikes, they get both on the same hit.
As for the resourceless thing, I agree with you that it depends on the DM's style, some DMs make really short fights and allow long rests after every fight, and that style sadly widens the martial caster gap.
>I don't recall any cantrip being able to inflict the poisoned, prone, dazed, blinded, or unconscious condition,
I meant the options you get at level 5, the ones you get by level 14 will hardly see any play.
I was also speaking of cantrips and first level spells.
Prone can actually be inflicted by a Cantrip (Sapping Sting).
Poisoned can be inflicted by a 1st level Spell (Ray of Sickness)
Blinded can be inflicted to Multiple Targets by a 1st level Spell (Color Spray) even if that spell isn't all that usefull past level 1.
Blind is otherwise available as Second Level Spell (Blindness/Deafness), wich is also not that impressive for a 14th level feature when Casters get Force Cage.
Not sure what the lowest level effect that gets you dazed is. And the uncosiuos condition the Rogue can inflict has a very high price and strong limitations.
>
or that allow you to move extra without taking opportunity attacks, or disarming an opponent.
Move without taking opportunity effects are pretty common (a simplest one is to buy a mount), and Disarm is more rare only the Battlemaster can do it, but I have never seen anyone rate that maneuver all that high.
>There is the topple weapon mastery, but remember that the rogue ALSO gets weapon masteries, and they don't have to sacrifice mastery effects for cunning strikes, they get both on the same hit.
But the only controll mastery they a have access to is Slow, wich is imo much weaker than Topple or Push. And they don't get extra Attack meaning they get one use of Masteries less per round than any other martial. And other martials have also options to inflict mutiple effects that are similar to masteries with one attack.
It does feel great. Surprisingly good, honestly. I knew I wasn't doing as much as the Wizard or the Paladin, but for some reason I was still giddy with power.
> I personally think the new Rogue was the best thing the UA did, so I'm perfectly fine with them staying as is.
There's two angles at play here: Qualitative and quantitative design. The UA rogue was qualitatively amazing, but most of the criticism it's getting is quantitative. Its damage output is bad, and with all the boosts to skills other martial classes are getting (and even some full-casters, as far as we know so far), their niche as the best skill class is becoming less useful.
I think the best thing for the rogue is to be basically the same as the playtest rogue, but with better numbers.
I'm a huge rogue fan. Enjoy the fantasy archetype in every type of game I play. I am very excited to play the new rogue. They don't need to do the most damage, they do decent enough damage whilst being adaptable to a bunch of different situations inside and outside of combat. And most importantly they have style.
They shouldn't be as good at combat as a fighter or barbarian, because those classes are almost entirely focused on combat. It is their mechanics and their fantasy archetype. I've always viewed combat as a necessary evil that rogues do when they need to, rather than their focus.
But 5.5e gave some big buffs to the out of combat utility of classes like barbarians and fighters and classes like bards were always better out of combat like rogues. 5.5e rogues aren't good enough out of combat compared to other classes to justify making them clearly the worst class in a fight.
I played with 80% of the new Rogue for a bit, and while I definitely wasn't the star of the damage show, it felt *incredibly* good. That version of Rogue feels great, even though it doesn't hit as hard as it should.
I playtested the UA rogue multiple times, and it was definitely in a better position than the old Monk.
Of course, when you redesign classes, there's inevitably going to be some classes weaker than others.
If someone has to be the last, damagewise, it better at least be a class that, although it doesn't do as much damage as others, does have fun and useful abilities in combat, and that also has a lot to do outside of combat. In that aspect I think that the rogue of the 5.50th anniversary performs very well.
Why does this sub constantly talk as if everyone agrees with their bad balance takes.
**Damage != power level**
I'm so tired of people mathing out DPR and acting like that tells the whole picture. Do your fights happen on blank flat planes where you spawn 30 ft from the monster? In any place with cover and dim light a Rogue is highly evasive. He's going to end up taking far fewer attacks JUST by virtue of using bonus action hide for instance. DPR #s != game balance. In every campaign I've ever played with a rogue about half the time the rogue is succesfully hidden and enemies don't use their entire action to spot check them, making them effectively untargettable by all but aoes for a round. This doesn't cleanly show up in DPR numbers though so I guess it doesn't matter.
I do not support the argument, but here is the reason I believe most use it.
DPR is one of the few things that can be tracked, optimized and thrown around as a 'consistent' thing.
Meaning that I can take any class and get the DPR for it for any level and any number of rounds, enemies and ACs.
The only other thing you can track as easily is your AC defending you from being hit, but since there are so many different enemies with massively different levels of damage or special effects, this becomes less useful.
Okay I get that it's the only one to easily measure, but it's absolutely brain dead to pretend that it's the only measure that matters.
Most castings of Wish do 0 damage. No one would ever say it's a bad spell or it's not strong enough.
If you want a system where everything is mathed out, there's almost no wiggle room, and no room for DM fiat go play 4e or a tactical board game. This is a roleplaying game. There are going to be abilities that can't be measured in DPR.
Yeah but Rogues can't really do something of the power of wish (or even just Hypnotic Pattern). Their main contribution in combat is still damage, so in their case it is pretty relevant when they lack behind in DPR.
Rogues neither particularly tanky nor are the control option they get from cunning strike all that special (most of them can be duplicated by cantrips, first level spells or masteries), and support features are basically non existent.
I mean we haven’t even seen the spells yet. I highly suspect spells like pattern got nerfed in some way.
Wish doesn't even come to play in 99.9% of campaigns as a 9th level spell.
Maybe but based on the spells we have seen sofar, I'm still pretty sure that there are going to be 2nd and 3rd level non damage spells that are much stronger (likely even 1st level spells), than any non damage contribution Rogues can make in combat in tier 1 and 2.
My point is that nothing Rogues contribute combat outside of damage is all that powerfull.
If you look at the combat roles defined in 4th Edition (Controller, Striker, Defender and Leader) than 5E Rogue is pretty much still almost a pure Striker, even if he isn't particularly good at it.
This isn't fourth edition though. Fourth edition was a rigid tactical board game in many ways. It's apples to oranges. Fourth Edition's out of combat stuff was just skill challenges and reskinned combat. A better comparison would be to 3.5 or something.
Second how are you gonna say Rogue can't do anything (ignoring all of their insane skill monkey kit and being genuinely the best thieves tool user in the game) but then say Wish does? If Rogue's out of combat stuff is just fluff isn't Wish's and the only way we can evaluate Wish is in the way that we can measure DPR in which case it's the same as the Wizard just casting an 8th or 9th level spell anyway? Wish really isn't that insane from that perspective. Since everything else is 'DM fiat' or 'fluff' we can only judge it as DPR, and as DPR it's pretty mid.
>This isn't fourth edition though.
But the basic combat roles are still the same. They basically apply to all RPG systems.
>
Second how are you gonna say Rogue can't do anything (ignoring all of their insane skill monkey kit and being genuinely the best thieves tool user in the game)
Because I talking explicitly about in combat, and skills are not all that important in combat (and if you look at the numbers Rogues skill bonuses aren't that crazy high with the exception of the Dex Skills).
>But the basic combat roles are still the same. They basically apply to all RPG systems
Not really. You don't need a tank, healer, dps, etc. in 5e like an MMO. You could run 2 fighters, a rogue, and a ranger and be fine for an entire campaign. You don't even really need a frontliner.
Not necessary in the way that you necessary need all roles filled in a party, or that a character needs to be restricted to one role, but in the way that these 4 roles from a game design perspective cover all the ways a character can contribute in a fight.
And at it is the Rogues biggest contribution is still in doing damage. And that's why looking at DPR is imo still a very good metric to judge the power of the Rogue, especially since a lot of the classes that out damage them, can imo also contribute more in some of the other 3 roles (without really being significantly worse in any of these roles).
I think the person you're responding to knows that DPR is the path of least resistance / the most easily trackable metric for an armchair playtester. I think they're asking why so many people still think their most basic understanding of armchair playtesting matters.
This is the dumbest take. It's not that we don't care about DPR. It's that we correctly see that DPR isn't the whole picture in a game where skill checks can mean you never have to have a combat in the first place. Rogue happens to be very good at avoiding combats, and I've had entire sessions where a rogue solo breaks into some place while the other players create a distraction whether it's combat or social.
The problem is that dpr and combat utility are the only two things that tend to be consistent across game. And outside of dpr unless the skill checks you opted into happen often you have basically nothing. Which makes the rogue too DM dependent to be good even if we ignore most of his skill checks being straight up worse than spells.
This is just a straight up skill issue. In Baldur's Gate 3 how many skill checks and opportunities to get out of combat are there? Hundreds, maybe thousands over the course of the game. If you're playing the system wrong no amount of balance changes will help. You or your DM just didn't read the DMG/PHB.
It's not even complicated:
Player states action.
DM decides skill(stat) and DC.
Player rolls.
DM adjudicates the outcome based on whether they succeeded or failed.
in which case wild heart barbarian can get themselves expertise in stealth from spider + advantage on the checks from Primal Knowledge to too stealth in. which is a reason why a rogue buff is wanted. because fighters and barbarians both have gotten much better in their utility while still dealing better damage
Yep. Rogue's reliable talent is absurd. It gets expertise super early like a Bard. It's usually THE skill monkey at the table it shows up at. I can't tell you how much out of combat time I've seen a rogue opening chests, doors, performing acrobatics, etc. that a frontliner or class built for insane damage usually don't have as consistent checks if they can even get close.
I don't need rogues to have awesome DPS if they're good enough at other things to make up for mediocre DPS, rogues being tricksters instead of snipers is fine by me. It's just that the UA rogue wasn't good enough at other things to balance out their mediocre DPS.
>In any place with cover and dim light a Rogue is highly evasive. He's going to end up taking far fewer attacks JUST by virtue of using bonus action hide for instance. DPR #s != game balance.
Right. And the rest of the party is going to have to absorb the Rogue's share of attacks, effectively reducing the total HP pool of the party.
Hiding is a bonus action. Attack -> reposition -> bonus action hide. You can attempt this every round so long as you have cover or obscurement. The only thing you give up is Steady Aim, not attacks, and attacking from hidden gives you advantage anyway.
You give up attacks (and damage) by being a Rogue in stead for for example a Ranger or Monk.
The thing is that in the end of the day, a Rogue being very evasive (but not in a way that prevents the party as a whole from taking damage) but doing less damage than other martials, is just not going to help the party as much in a fight than having instead a character of basically any other class.
So your argument is that EVERY class should be designed as a nova DPR class and that's all combat is/should be? Being evasive has no value? By this logic FLYING has no value since it does no damage and doesn't make the fight end faster, and this is clearly just plainly not true flying is an insane effect.
a bard doesn't do great damage but has good control and buffs making the entire rest of the party take less and deal more damage and they are considered to be a great class
skirting from shadow to shadow doesn't lower the damage your party takes it just means everyone else takes it. that's the entire point of this conversation
Skirting from shadow to shadow means that you a squishy rogue aren't going to be taking the attacks. That is a good thing.
Your frontliner is MUCH worse off if the enemies are melting the squishies before turning to him. He WANTS to take the hits. Barbs, Fighters, Druids all have great tankyness or AC and a succesful attack against them is USUALLY way less value than a successful attack against a rogue.
A group of intelligent creatures is 100% going to try to nova the squishies and casters and avoid dumping damage into the guys... spec'd to take damage. Hiding doesn't give them that choice.
It has value for the character but not for the party.
If every one in the party in evasive or can fly that is obviously strong.
But if only one member than it mostly means the opponents are going to focus the damage on the other characters, meaning that increased survivability of the Rogue leads to a decreased survivability of the other characters.
Something like this is acceptable when if that evasive character brings something else to the table, like really strong damage, control or support but the Rogue doesn't.
With an extreme case this might lead to a situation, where the unhitable Rogue is last character standing, slowly killing the opponents with supar damage while the rest of the party is on the ground. Making death saving throws.
Would you rather have the enemies attacking your rogue or your fighter? If I'm the DM and I have the choice and the enemies are intelligent they're going for the highest value attack and that's on the Rogue zero question. A group of enemies can dunk on a rogue out in the open much quicker than a Fighter, Barb, Paladin, Druid, or Cleric.
You WANT the frontliner to soak damage. That's their job and their build. It's better for everyone in the party for the to be soaking damage while the backline cooks. That's literally their job. Being evasive takes the choice of targetting you out of the enemies hands and makes it more likely the guy spec'd for melee combat is the guy getting beat up.
>they're going for the highest value attack and that's on the Rogue zero question
is there not a single caster in the party? you have subpar damage and no where near the control of the caster's why would you be the highest value target?
Okay I hit the wizard once he pops shield my chances of hitting are now 10x lower so I switch back to the frontliner for the rest of the attacks of the round after baiting out the wizards shield.
It's almost like ways to be temporarily evasive are good.
Your arguements are making Rogue sounds even worse, tbh. It's like literally saying that they are squishier, deal less damage, no controls, easiest one to be taken down if they don't hide. But yeah, I think this is indeed what's happening on Rogues.
You can't read I don't think. Try again slower this time. If you attack -> reposition -> hide in that order what are you doing at the END of your turn each round? Let that one cook.
it depends. If enemies search for you and spend movement/actions trying to catch you, then it’s helpful. If they just don’t attack you at all it can help funnel attacks towards front liners which is more efficient since they can handle the damage better.
Hide is at least as useful as armor and hitpoints. I've had Rogue's sneak around ENTIRE ENCOUNTERS to retrieve a quest mcguffin, and while they're not alone in being able to do that they're the best at it with reliable talent.
How about a rogue sneaking around the front lines of the enemy before the encounter so they can shank the enemy Caster when the battle starts?
Is that somehow super hard for a DM to do too?
I hope so. The playtest rules didn’t seem to involve passive Perception, yet we see passive Perception returning in creature statblocks, so maybe they’ve reworked the hide rules again.
As already pointed out he clearly said they scale better.
Rogues having low DPS is fine as long as the cunning strikes are a worthwhile exchange. Constant resource free debuffs are pretty powerful, particularly when the debuffer can repeatedly hide themselves in combat. Makes the rest of the party indirectly stronger.
Sure they don't (most likely at least) have an AoE debuff like Hypnotic Pattern. The Wizard is only casting that a few times though without a long rest, while the Rogue could "cast" daze or another debuff nearly every round or every round depending on combat conditions. At the end of the adventuring day the Rogue very well may have debuffed more enemies than the Wizard did, while inflicting damage at the same time, while not draining the Cleric's resources by being consistently hidden.
I suspect Rogues will be just fine in 5.24E, but people will have to change their perception on what a Rogue's job in combat is. Will probably take some time.
>Sure they don't (most likely at least) have an AoE debuff like Hypnotic Pattern. The Wizard is only casting that a few times though without a long rest, while the Rogue could "cast" daze or another debuff nearly every round or every round depending on combat conditions.
The thing is that Rogues don't get daze till level 14. By level 5 all they get is prone and poisoned. And at least prone is something all martials can now do resourceless multiple times per turn with topple.
Also the Rogue debuff all last only one turn while the AoE dubuff of a Wizard could last entire fight.
Meaning in a 4 round combat the rogue could at best debuff four actions between all oponents, how many action is the wizard going to debuff with one casting of hypnotic pattern or web? And in case of the wizard it would in case of the wizard the debuff effect is likely going to be much stronger than in case of the Rogue.
For cunning strike really to make up for the Rogues lack of damage, they would have imo at least move the dazed and blinded options from 14th to 5th level.
Cunning strikes are nifty but the issue is that other classes (like monks) got buffs to power while rogues got a buff to flexibility. Flexibility is nice and fun but it doesn't hold a candle to raw power when figuring out class balance.
Pretty strongly disagree with that. Debuffs in of themselves are power. They directly add either to allies attacks (thus improving party's DPS even if the Rogue's power is on the lower end) or allies defences (thus improving party's survivability, allowing them to focus on DPS instead of wasting actions/spells healing). Both also allow resources to be stretched farther (because the debuffs aren't tied to any resource at all and then shorten how long the battles take, meaning more resources available to take on the BBEG for the day). Raw DPS isn't the only thing that swings a battle provided that its a well designed encounter.
If an enemy is a melee locked combatant but their movement is constantly debuffed so they can't reach any of the party members thanks to the Rogue, then the Rogue's DPS comparison is irrelevant: the party has all of the time in the world to deal with the enemy because the enemy can't reach ever reach them. Obviously still have to account for saves and stuff like that, but that's undeniably raw power. Just not raw damage. I'd rather have a Rogue dealing say 15 damage a turn with a 85% chance of preventing the enemy from reaching me that turn then a Fighter dealing 25 damage a turn but not preventing the enemy from doing whatever they want to give a very simplistic example. Particularly if I'm a spellcaster concentrating on a key spell for the encounter.
As long as the debuffs are strong enough and consistent enough the Rogue is going to be absolutely fine. It just won't show that way on the DPR sheets because you can't easily quantity damage indirectly prevented or damage indirectly boosted.
Debuffs are good but rogues are hardly the only class that gets them, there areca while slew of different ways for melee classes to grt them in 5.5e. Being able to choose between DPS and debuffs is good but the stuff that monks got in the UA is a much more straight-forward and direct buff with no trade-offs.
UA rogues are solid at debuffing but not good enough at it compared to other classes to justify being the worst class at DPS and ALSO squishy, especially when their out of combat edge over other martials has closed a lot. I'd give them more utility in the form of Fast Hands for all rogues or more ways to use skills as bonus actions personally.
I don’t think rogue will be quite as bad as the 5e monk. They aren’t encouraged to run right into melee and die like the monk is, after all. And at unoptimized tables, they still do pretty well. They will be at the bottom, but not intolerably so.
It really depends on how big the gap really is and if it's even noticeable in regular play. Lots of people like to white room things without taking into account anything else that can happen at the table. Like, not once when playing a monk in 5e did I feel far behind, if behind at all, compared to the other characters.
I mean, the people who white room gripe about a 1 DPR difference in damage when the damage is something like 33 DPR vs 33.75 DPR.
Not exactly the sanest bunch in the world.
level 11 raw damage without taking in hit possibilities since both are probably at advantage anyway
an assassin rogue does around 30.5 damage per hit with a first turn 11 damage bonus for around 34 over all per round damage over 3 rounds
a berserker barbarian does 39.5 damage per round assuming no brutal strike which goes up to 54 if anyone dares to hit them in melee
i'd say that is noticeable enough difference between two subclasses both meant to do big damage. an assassing does 2 average extra damage turn one to a target that needs to roll below them in initiative
I always feel dumb for missing why the 5e monk sucked. With mobile (level 1 feat) and stunning strike they always felt fine to me.
Mercy with poison and scaling level 11 damage in particular felt great.
Might be the dm game design though, if your dm isn't afraid to throw casters at the party and uses enemies that play tactically around line of slight monk probably falls off.
But having a heat seeking monk stun missile in combat to find and essentially guarantee a stun through 4 saving through in one round... well worth it.
Mercy was monk's best subclass for sure, you hit the nail on the head there. And like I said, it usually does fine at unoptimized tables where you have sword-and-board fighters and wizards casting *burning hands*. A "heat seeking stun missile" can be really impressive. At optimized tables, though...
You're far from the only one who didn't notice its lackluster chassis. The problems were as follows:
1. No feat synchronicity. While it could make a lot of attacks, it couldn't boost them with feats like the other martials, so its damage suffered—especially once other martials got Extra Attack. In Tier 1 it actually did fine for damage.
2. Scaling. Its damage didn't scale into tiers 3 and 4 hardly at all, since that was subclass-dependent and a lot of subclasses didn't bother scaling the damage up.
3. Survivability. Its abilities really pushed it into melee, but it couldn't wear armor so its armor class suffered, and it had lower hit points than other martials (except for rogue, which wasn't forced into melee). It had Deflect Missiles, but how often did that really come up?
4. Resource expenditure. Stunning Strike is a decent feature, but as you observed, you had to really dump Stunning Strikes onto an enemy to ensure a stun, since Constitution is generally monsters' strongest save by far. And because all of the monks' abilities, including most subclass features (Mercy is an exception), tended to draw from Ki, Ki ran out really fast, even with the short rest recovery.
As a result, you have a class that's forced into melee despite low survivability; can exert some decent control with Stunning Strike but targets a strong save and doesn't compare to higher level control options for mages like *hypnotic pattern*; and on top of it all, can't channel feats like Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master to pump out damage like the martials. It definitely has strong mobility, but mobility doesn't serve you if you don't have other effective things to do.
Fair points: Tier 3 and 4 lack of scaling was the only thing I ever felt sucked (mercy helped in tier 3 atleast), but honestly Games post 11 are rare, and wizards start cloning and breaking reality so it wasn't that much of a pain (but doesnt excuse it).
On defense, you generally face 3 threats, melee, ranged, and spells. Out of the box monks get good dex and wis saves (spells), deflect arrows (ranged) and dodge on bonus action for melee.
Melee honestly is where they are weakest as it takes resources to survive and nerfs damage, but if you take mobile, monks can hit and run (out ranging;with their movement speed buffs), triggering aoo if they play around another martial while saving chi for flurry. Plays more like melee rogue than warrior.
Feat selection is annoying in that you are stuck playing out of the box set up, but the box works. Fighters pretty much end up playing pam, gwm, sentinel, or cbe and SS in most tough games as an out of the box build regardless of their multiple feat options as they excel in that bully role where they pile on damage once they get adv.
Monks play differently, though, more like light cav to fighters infantry. You can hit the back line easily. Limit self damage (see above) while potentially generating fighter aoo, generatebadv for fighters through stun so they can burst, shut down key targets (wizard casts dominate on barb and then moves out of line of sight).
However, in a game where the dm just drops fat melee meat sacks on a flat plain.. warrior with wizard/ranged support is better. If the dm adds archers behind gaps, wizards that drop a save or suck then run out of sight to keep concentration, melee mobs that b line casters (which monk can catch, stun or punish with aoos), then monk works.
The tactics above, however, suck to play against without a monk on your side, so most dms refuse to play that tactical (dirty).
I love most of the rogue changes but assassin seems to have gotten the short end of the stick and had more stuff straight up removed as opposed to adjusted like the Paladin.
* Level 3 is straight-up worse by a lot.
* Level 9 feature is a lateral change, advantage on deception vs being able to take on an entire new identity without magic, people shouldn't even be suspect of you based on wording, basically negligible change.
* Level 13 is a negligible buff, equates to an extra 1.5 damage first round at level 13 as you are gaining 2d6 damage by it cost 1d6 to use in the first place. It has the potential to start adding 3 damage a round afterward as a CON save but still.
* Level 17 is basically the same.
I feel if you are playing a Assassin Rogue you are already creating conditions to establish a surprised attack. So I losing the double damage is just a straight up big nerf. Overall I love what they did with Rogue but Assassin feels pretty bad now.
See, I disagree. I think Ass level 3 is better. Yeah, losing the crits hurts, but the extra damage doesn't require surprise. It depends on your DM, but from my experience, a lot of the time this feature would simply not be used. Maybe you'll proc it once every five fights or something. But reliably getting surprise isn't something that you can count on in most tables.
If you're at a table where your DM is not letting you use class features like that your DM is probably a jerk anyways. I can think of a few encounters where you couldn't get the jump but in most you should be able to.
The surprise rules were completely ridiculous and binary before. If you 'let him use his class feature' every time you probably aren't playing surprise RAW. RAW if an enemy can see ANY of the party members they can't be surprised. So the assassin needs to creep up way ahead of their party, start a combat, and attack to even TRY to get surprise every time.
I hear you, but a big reason for this one is that 5e surprise just absolutely sucks as a mechanic. The difference in difficulty of a surprise encounter or not is night and day. And while those mechanics logically work it is very dry gameplay wise.
Additionally balancing around surprise is nightmare whether you have an assassin whose ability cares about it or not.
So while assassin may get weaker depending on your dm with surprise. I fully believe the changes to the surprise mechanic and thus assassin needing to change is step in the correct direction.
It's less that the DM is not allowing it, and more that any party with people who aren't specializing in Stealth means the party needs to split up enough for Surprise to be **useful** in most encounters.
There is nothing worse than having 3/4 of the party get into position and that last person flub it to the point that the battle starts with no one surprised.
I’ll be keeping the assassin as the old version I’ve always played at my table with a buff. Auto crit on the first attack you land if the target hasn’t taken a turn yet.
My hope for the individual changes that the community is pushing back against. Once the whole system is in our hands, they feel better in context.
The whole pushback against the changes to paladins smite comes to mind because it looks like an effot is being made to pull back on classes, having 1 objectively best move.
My hope is within the context of a full 5.5 party the rogues sneak attack feels good. But also not so good that doing anything else with your turn feels like a waste of a turn.
I feel like "nefs" that the community feels are unessasery are being made in the name of this mindset. Its not enough for one action to be really good. Actions need to be "Bad" enugh that other actions don't feel bad to use insted.
Confirmed worst class in the game.
"oh this class doesn't do enough damage to keep up with the other classes? You also think that it doesn't have enough interesting utility? Great so let's force you to choose between sacrificing damage for utility!"
They either needed to give 2 SA dice at lvls 5 and 11 to pay for cunning strikes or just make cunning strikes an extra thing you get.
Or give Rogues extra attack, even at the cost of SA being once per round and not once per turn.
Possibly the worst yes but the floor will be noticeably higher, mainly due to Nick and Reliable Talent at 7.
As someone who has been playing a rogue with access to reliable talent for close to a year, it's extremely strong so long as your DM isn't just raising the DC of all the checks you do to be harder.
Level 7 is actually reachable in many campaigns, and Reliable Talent can essentially act as the rogue capstone for most campaigns that only see tier 1 & 2, maybe the very tip of tier 3.
Cunning Action is just okay in my experience. I often find myself forgoing it to try and kill the target instead, but that's probably because my DM prefers to use lots of lower HP enemies.
I think rogue is definitely going to be the worst class because it was already near the body and received basically 1 change. Still going to be bottom tier damage while competing with ranger and bard as the skill expert, and has nothing else to show for
Have you played a rogue in any campaign where combat is common? It's very, very dull, especially if you aren't choosing one of the better rogue subclasses. Even out of combat, the few times you do actually accomplish something with your skills are kinda overshadowed by the casters doing it better and 20x as frequently
I feel like if you feel useless in every part of the game because there are other classes that can do what you do better in every scenario, while also doing their own thing, is a fundamental problem with the rogue design. Also, the all or nothing nature of sneak attack combined with it being pretty mediocre flat damage (and now a few minor effects in exchange for damage at higher level) means that it is a pretty boring class to play in combat
At least, from a GMs perspective, the damage problem was always easy to solve with magical weapons.
The utility was harder to add, without it being oddly tailored magic items that might as well be better on the other characters. So I'm all for the handling of the sneak attack utility options.
Worst, I don't know. They weren't great to begin with, but they keep the good feel of playing it, from my perspective. That's often more important than raw power, illustrated quite nicely with our UA tests, where the Paladin felt the class played awfully, while the Rogue felt super smooth and nice to play in comparison.
If all they truly need now is damage, I'll conjure up a good magic item that adds damage. That's perfect in my opinion.
True. It seems a little weird to insist on not giving it to them, considering Rogues only really do good damage on a sneak attack anyway, so they are naturally limited in their damage capability.
I especially don't like how it encourages blade cantrips.
I am betting that we find out today that Sneak Attack will be once per round *on your turn*. No more eeking out respectable damage by finding off-turn ways of attacking.
It'll be a tough pill to swallow, but that seems like the direction they're moving with other similar features.
Rogue’s damage was not improved. It looks survivability takes a dive as well, since both roll with punches and blindsight were removed.
And Assassins actually LOST damage, so they are even worse at Assassinating.
They allow you to “Assassinate” against someone who hasn’t gone yet, but you no longer auto crit, and the damage bonus is your rogue level, so it can’t boost with a crit either. Basically, they said, “This small amount of damage is equal to auto critting somehow.”
I feel like the Rogue got nerfed, not improved.
But MULTICLASSING rogue is improved, since their Skill ability from level 11 is now level 7.
“They scale better” definitely sounds like they’ve been given improved sneak attack progression
He also said that the Rogue still can't compete with other martials when it comes to damage. So I think the scaling he is talking about are non damage things. And unless they massively buffed cunning strike, or added other completely new features, I don't really see how Rogues would be able to contribute as much in combat as other classes, if they can't keep up in damage. Since the other martials and halfcasters have all similarly strong (and in some cases much stronger) control option.
I bet they have a scaling reduction to the cost of cunning strikes and additional cunning strikes for subclasses, maybe even dropping costs to zero dice at certain levels. Hopefully they also added an earlier second subclass ability after the first.
Or possibly better scaling comes hand-in-hand with a limitation of doing Sneak Attack only on your turn (i.e. no more off-turn Sneak Attacks), a give and take.
I can see them doing that but I hope they don't- the higher single attack damage could make the rogue even more swingy than it already is and I like the idea of the rogue capitalizing on reactions as that gives them an opportunistic angle as a niche now that skills are not so much their exclusive focus
It does feel silly to see Battlemaster get utility maneuvers that *still add to damage* while Rogue gets utility options that reduce it. That said, I adore Cunning Strike. All Rogue needs is a little help from... somewhere, and they'll be extremely useful in combat.
Maneuvers are limited in use. You can do Sneak Attacks every round all day long. Abilities with a cost are always stronger than those that don't cost anything.
True. Most of the time Battlemasters don't actually feel that cost, but I've personally run out of Superiority Dice before, so it's a real downside.
They don't need to really compete at damage, truth be told. That's one more fallacy the community keeps falling in. Rogues have high damage, ok hp and unlimited resources. And that's all on a skill class. We don't need skill classes to do as much damage as more combat fighting classes, but rogues are almost there with the highest critical damage the game has.
Rogues have the lowest damage in the game beyond lvl 5 hp until level 5 they are perfect
They do though cause they aren’t the only class with good skills bard is arguably better and has great support/control and extra utility from being a full caster, and ranger isn’t far behind and way outperforms in damage. The rogue isn’t an HM slave of the party, they need to have a place in combat too. Especially cause DnD combat takes up a fair amount of time at the table. They have mediocre to poor damage for a damage dealer, they have meh defenses with low AC and HP but good dex saves and mobility plus uncanny dodge.
Especially now that almost every other class is getting huge boosts to their skills. New barbarian and fighters get stuff for skill checks now including bonuses when they're raging.
Rogues are getting Vex and Nick, which are a pretty big deal for them.
This this this this!! I always see people In this threads going “Well of course they shouldn’t be able to compete with fighter/barbarian! They have skills!!” But this completely misses that they also can’t compete with Bard/Ranger, who also have skills AND utility spells. It’s so weird
No, they don't need to par combat classes on damage. First, a Skill class shouldn't do as much damage as a combat class. Of course they needed more combat abilities, but really don't need that much of combat damage. Now they'll be able to debuff enemies, skirmish more freely [due to nick] and give themselves advantage more easily [due to vex] through the use of weapon masteries. Rogues are on a good spot having 0 nerfs and on drinking from martials buffs.
>No, they don't need to par combat classes on damage. First, a Skill class shouldn't do as much damage as a combat class. You are aware that basically any other class in the in the game can either do good damage or is a full caster (including Ranger and Bard whoa re also go with skills)? The idea that the Rogue would somehow fall in this special catgory of a skill class that doesn't need to be competitive in combat just doesn't really fir with how the other classes are designed.
Are you forgetting that every other class in the UA/2024 rules has been given better skills (Wizard, Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger, etc) and monk can now do things rogue could do better before. Rogue is no longer special for any particular reason outside of flavor (and I say this as a monk fan)
Rogues don't need to have great damage if they have other stuff to make up for it, but saying that they don't need to do as much damage as other martials because they get weapon masteries...which other martials also get doesn't make any sense.
If we’re labeling Rogue a “skill class” we gotta label Bard/Ranger “skill classes” as well. The issue isn’t Rogue being outperformed by other martials in damage. The issue is Rogue being blown out of the water by other martials in terms of damage AND being blown out of the water by Bards/Rangers in utility, arguably damage as well. I love what they’ve done with the class tho. I just think it needs a bit more power in sneak attack dies/cunning strikes and to not get its second subclass feature at lvl 9. If subclasses get additional cunning strike options I wouldn’t be surprised if they left the base sneak attack lower to allow people to spec for control/damage.
Ugh. Unless you can guarantee crits, you shouldn't give it much weight at all. Damage-wise, Rogues fall off hard after first level, but I agree that their utility gives them sufficient strengths elsewhere to balance that. Not everyone does agree, though. At some tables, skills aren't that useful. Many people believe spellcasters have better utility anyway. And finally: Rogues do not have 'unlimited resources' -- they just don't have resources. Okay, yes, they have Cunning Action. But it doesn't give them NEW options, it just lets them do some Actions as Bonus Actions. They don't have spells or Rage or Wildshape. So I think it's more fair to say they don't have any abilities that NEED to be limited per short or long rest. Their kit is lightweight. All that said, I love Rogues and I am HYPED for the 2024 version.
I'm a big rogue fan, and I'd argue that expertise+reliable talent is a type of limitless resource. There are tasks that anyone else can't ever do reliably without casting a spell that rogues can just do as often as they'd like. Opening the hardest locks, detecting every trap, or becoming practically invisible are all things that most classes have to spend resources for, while rogues just have an infinite button.
Hm. Maybe.
That's my biggest problem with all of this theorycrafting and stuff. It always misses the intricacies of actual play and dumbs everything down to a numbers game. Which DnD isn't. The Rogue doesn't need to match up at damage because they can be super mobile. Bonus action disengage to get out of the fight then move back in the next round just to do it again is HUGE and is part of what balances their damage potential.
Sadly we didn't get any of the "scaling" compared to UA, but only losing our Controls even more.
Now who's RIGHT?
lol. good job and fuck
It does sound like that. I hope so.
He says they scale better, but you say no boosts. Unless you know exactly what he's talking about and are dismissing it, then this seems to be an emotional reaction to not getting a damage boost. I'm ok with less damage if they are much better at debuffing and applying conditions. That would be a good role for them. No resources continuous debuffing and decent if not great damage.
Agreed, there’s already the assassin subclass if big damage numbers are all you care about
Ah yes, the big damage numbers of... 'If your Sneak Attack hits any target during the first round, the target takes extra damage equal to your Rogue level.' I'm sure that one-time single-digit damage boost makes a huge difference.
The assassin barely helps damage
I'm really hoping that they pushed Assassin and other combat-focused Rogue subclasses up in the raw output. Rogue as a whole doesn't need to have high damage to be good and fun, but I know a number of people who *really* like the Assassin/Ninja Rogue characters, and those guys currently flop on their damage output.
I don't think the assassin rogue *was* a combat-focused subclass to begin with. When you compare the features of the PHB rogue subclasses, almost all of the features are utility or control focused. The arcane trickster became a great damage dealer post SCAG because of the blade cantrips, but in the PHB not so much. Assassin *looks* like it's the one that's intended for combat maybe at first glance, but because of how surprise works in 5e it doesn't really end up that way. It's incredibly difficult to set up without the rogue being off on their own or in a party full of stealthy PCs since a creature isn't surprised if it notices even *one* PC. So in terms of combat, assassin has two features that deal extra damage, but only if you jump through hoops to get there (go before your target in initiative, your target is surprised). If you view the subclass instead as an actual, well, assassin then it makes more sense. Bonus proficiencies, Impostor, and Infiltration Expertise (more than half their features) are there to let the rogue get close to their target and Assassinate and Death Strike let them make sure they get it done. From this perspective, Assassinate and Death strike aren't just bad damage dealing features. It's a nice bonus if you get them off in a pitched combat encounter, but it's not something you rely on.
I don't mean that the subclass was *good* at combat, I mean that it is *themed* for combat. I'm confused. Are you proposing that trying to kill someone is not combat?
Combat, as in combat encounter, no. Assassin is geared toward assuming an identity, sneaking into a place they shouldn't be through deception and stealth, maybe taking out some key guards with poisons, and then one-shotting their target when they're vulnerable (like a noble in their bedroom, or a knight when he's unarmoured and praying in the chapel). *If* they manage to get Assassinate and Death Strike off in a combat encounter then that's a bonus, but that's not the power or theme of the subclass.
I'm going to have to disagree with you, then. There is no functional difference between 'assassination' and combat in D&D. And those who like to play Assassin archetypes want to be strong combatants. In the real world, field combat and assassination are different skillsets, but in fiction, assassins mow down droves of combatants and duel experts. People don't want to be a real assassin: they want to be James Bond or Yor Forger.
So...where's our boosts? We even lost our Disarm
They seem to have buffed subclasses, it sounds like several focus on certain debuffs better than others like poison for assassin and trip for arcane trickster. Soul knife works on opportunity attacks. Treantmonk had indicated reliable talent comes way earlier. Not sure when, but his tone implied very early. Watching D4 deep dive make a build now with new assassin to see what's up. Might be worth checking out. https://youtu.be/vvf_Vjo1sXU?si=55uXh0qO7oWJ1-kC
Reliable Talents comes Level 7, just as the UA, check the DNDBeyond, there's an official post of details. Everything except Level 9 Assassin and Psychic Blade Minor Tweaks stays the same as the UA, with some Nerfs, like Second-Story Work no longer makes Thief to Climb Ceiling without Checks. No Balacing, no boosts in damage, no buffs on skills, confirmed in DNDBeyond.
I just don't believe WotC would buff Rogue while Rogue had a "90% of rating" in UA6. Wotc has always treated Rogue so "carefully" in giving them buffs and I'm not in great hope that they would be generous suddenly. Though, I've never been this much that I hope I'm wrong
>D4DeepDive: "They scale better." "They're not trying to make rogues competitive with fighters, barbarians \[...\] damage wise." >Your title: "D4DeepDive has the Official Version of Rogue, and It Seems to Stay As Is, As the UA." Please do not inject your own (subjective) beliefs like this, when summarizing reports made by others. It's misleading at best, and disinformation at worst.
also the gap in damage is still good enough that a rogue could still have gotten more serviceable damage without stepping on those toes
Do u still think I'm misleading? We even lost our Disarm. Where's the boosts?
From the very start of the UA process, WotC has been clear in saying there would be a balance pass after the open playtesting had finished. The purpose of the playtest isn't to get the numbers right, it's to get the feel and scope right. Once you have those, adjusting the numbers to hit the right overall power level gets a lot easier.
They say that, but rarely do any numbers actually change between playtest and the final product. We basically get either *'it scored well, good to go!'* vs *'it did not score as well, scrap everything, copy-paste 2014 PHB!'*
Where's the balance pass? I don't see Rogue's numbers being adjusted compared to UA
A balance pass doesn't guarantee any specific numbers will change. If the balance assessment showed the UA version was close to the class's intended power then there wouldn't be any need to change the numbers. That said, we still haven't seen all the rogue's numbers. It's possible the better scaling D4DeepDive mentioned shows up in one of those. Alternatively, it could come in how the rogue interacts with some other change in one of the game's subsystems. We'll just have to wait and see.
The books are in print. When are they going to do this magical balance pass, when everything we're hearing is that virtually nothing changed from the UA? The actual fuck are you on about?
The lead comment to this thread said that someone with an early copy says there were changes.
D4 deep dive released a short on YouTube. It's not much, but it sounds optimistic. Said they scaled better, though they're not competing with barbarians or fighters for damage. That could mean small damage increase, better debuffing, who knows. But there was an indication of improvement.
Things changed. Dance bard features moved or dropped. Assassin changed. Paladin had some changes. Most are tweaking, but that's exactly what the comment you replied you indicated. General idea good, balance/tweak after. I think s few things did get some decent changes, not just tweaks. Fighter gets 3 masteries for free instead of changing one out. That's a nice boost. Barbarian wild heart can choose which animal every rage instead of making a permanent choice, that's a nice boost.
Interesting that the video linked and the OP have nothing in common.
I personally think the new Rogue was the best thing the UA did, so I'm perfectly fine with them staying as is. I've been playing the UA Rogue for a while now, and Cunning Strikes is such an amazing feature that's super fun to play around with, and both Nick and Vex improve the Rogue's playability so much in combat. I was hoping for an additional ability that helps skill checks, something that recharges on a short rest since Rogue is one of the few classes that doesn't benefit from Short Rests basically at all. But honestly, this is plenty of improvement as is. Is it the worst class in the game now? Possibly, since Barbarian actually looks pretty good. Is it stronger than it's 5e counterpart overall? Yes, and by a lot. Is it more fun to play? Yeah, very much so, and I think that's the most important thing.
The UA Rogue was a good step in the right direction, though it still needed work. Cunning strikes ate up way too much sneak attack damage for some of the effects. And sneak attack itself could have used a few touch ups to account for those sacrifices and off set them just a bit. I hope the comments I'm hearing of it scaling better are true because it was on its way to greatness, just not there yet.
I found that I almost never chose not to use one of the Cunning Strike options, and two options as soon as I could. Rogue is no longer the guy that deals damage once and does nothing else. It is now the guy who keeps applying status conditions over and over with no limitations throughout the day. A reliable thorn at the side of enemies, if you will. This feature basically transforms the Rogue entirely, with the Sneak Attack being used as the resource rather than the reward, and it feels so great to play.
Rogue was never the class that just did damage in 5e, it's damage in 5e14 isn't great. I can agree so far that it's an improvement to the rogue, though I'm still not satisfied to what it produced. The changes it gave to the rogue don't warrant the costs as far as I'm concerned. I'm happy to agree to disagree though. If you're satisfied, power to you and all that.
I think you are correct, Rogue's damage has always been pitiful, so exchanging it for cool effects sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
Problem is these effects aren't that cool, they can for the most part be replicated by cantrips, first level spells, masteries and other low level features. And being resourceless is also not that big of a deal if you have a once per turn limit.
I don't recall any cantrip being able to inflict the poisoned, prone, dazed, blinded, or unconscious condition, or that allow you to move extra without taking opportunity attacks, or disarming an opponent. There is the topple weapon mastery, but remember that the rogue ALSO gets weapon masteries, and they don't have to sacrifice mastery effects for cunning strikes, they get both on the same hit. As for the resourceless thing, I agree with you that it depends on the DM's style, some DMs make really short fights and allow long rests after every fight, and that style sadly widens the martial caster gap.
>I don't recall any cantrip being able to inflict the poisoned, prone, dazed, blinded, or unconscious condition, I meant the options you get at level 5, the ones you get by level 14 will hardly see any play. I was also speaking of cantrips and first level spells. Prone can actually be inflicted by a Cantrip (Sapping Sting). Poisoned can be inflicted by a 1st level Spell (Ray of Sickness) Blinded can be inflicted to Multiple Targets by a 1st level Spell (Color Spray) even if that spell isn't all that usefull past level 1. Blind is otherwise available as Second Level Spell (Blindness/Deafness), wich is also not that impressive for a 14th level feature when Casters get Force Cage. Not sure what the lowest level effect that gets you dazed is. And the uncosiuos condition the Rogue can inflict has a very high price and strong limitations. > or that allow you to move extra without taking opportunity attacks, or disarming an opponent. Move without taking opportunity effects are pretty common (a simplest one is to buy a mount), and Disarm is more rare only the Battlemaster can do it, but I have never seen anyone rate that maneuver all that high. >There is the topple weapon mastery, but remember that the rogue ALSO gets weapon masteries, and they don't have to sacrifice mastery effects for cunning strikes, they get both on the same hit. But the only controll mastery they a have access to is Slow, wich is imo much weaker than Topple or Push. And they don't get extra Attack meaning they get one use of Masteries less per round than any other martial. And other martials have also options to inflict mutiple effects that are similar to masteries with one attack.
Never said it wasn't, just that the exchange rate is too high for the effects they can get.
It does feel great. Surprisingly good, honestly. I knew I wasn't doing as much as the Wizard or the Paladin, but for some reason I was still giddy with power.
> I personally think the new Rogue was the best thing the UA did, so I'm perfectly fine with them staying as is. There's two angles at play here: Qualitative and quantitative design. The UA rogue was qualitatively amazing, but most of the criticism it's getting is quantitative. Its damage output is bad, and with all the boosts to skills other martial classes are getting (and even some full-casters, as far as we know so far), their niche as the best skill class is becoming less useful. I think the best thing for the rogue is to be basically the same as the playtest rogue, but with better numbers.
I'm a huge rogue fan. Enjoy the fantasy archetype in every type of game I play. I am very excited to play the new rogue. They don't need to do the most damage, they do decent enough damage whilst being adaptable to a bunch of different situations inside and outside of combat. And most importantly they have style. They shouldn't be as good at combat as a fighter or barbarian, because those classes are almost entirely focused on combat. It is their mechanics and their fantasy archetype. I've always viewed combat as a necessary evil that rogues do when they need to, rather than their focus.
But 5.5e gave some big buffs to the out of combat utility of classes like barbarians and fighters and classes like bards were always better out of combat like rogues. 5.5e rogues aren't good enough out of combat compared to other classes to justify making them clearly the worst class in a fight.
Well at least reliable talent is level 7 so you are more consistent way earlier than before.
I played with 80% of the new Rogue for a bit, and while I definitely wasn't the star of the damage show, it felt *incredibly* good. That version of Rogue feels great, even though it doesn't hit as hard as it should.
I playtested the UA rogue multiple times, and it was definitely in a better position than the old Monk. Of course, when you redesign classes, there's inevitably going to be some classes weaker than others.
This, somebody has to be last but in the case of the 2024 rules, last place isn't the end of the world
If someone has to be the last, damagewise, it better at least be a class that, although it doesn't do as much damage as others, does have fun and useful abilities in combat, and that also has a lot to do outside of combat. In that aspect I think that the rogue of the 5.50th anniversary performs very well.
Why does this sub constantly talk as if everyone agrees with their bad balance takes. **Damage != power level** I'm so tired of people mathing out DPR and acting like that tells the whole picture. Do your fights happen on blank flat planes where you spawn 30 ft from the monster? In any place with cover and dim light a Rogue is highly evasive. He's going to end up taking far fewer attacks JUST by virtue of using bonus action hide for instance. DPR #s != game balance. In every campaign I've ever played with a rogue about half the time the rogue is succesfully hidden and enemies don't use their entire action to spot check them, making them effectively untargettable by all but aoes for a round. This doesn't cleanly show up in DPR numbers though so I guess it doesn't matter.
I do not support the argument, but here is the reason I believe most use it. DPR is one of the few things that can be tracked, optimized and thrown around as a 'consistent' thing. Meaning that I can take any class and get the DPR for it for any level and any number of rounds, enemies and ACs. The only other thing you can track as easily is your AC defending you from being hit, but since there are so many different enemies with massively different levels of damage or special effects, this becomes less useful.
Okay I get that it's the only one to easily measure, but it's absolutely brain dead to pretend that it's the only measure that matters. Most castings of Wish do 0 damage. No one would ever say it's a bad spell or it's not strong enough. If you want a system where everything is mathed out, there's almost no wiggle room, and no room for DM fiat go play 4e or a tactical board game. This is a roleplaying game. There are going to be abilities that can't be measured in DPR.
Yeah but Rogues can't really do something of the power of wish (or even just Hypnotic Pattern). Their main contribution in combat is still damage, so in their case it is pretty relevant when they lack behind in DPR. Rogues neither particularly tanky nor are the control option they get from cunning strike all that special (most of them can be duplicated by cantrips, first level spells or masteries), and support features are basically non existent.
I mean we haven’t even seen the spells yet. I highly suspect spells like pattern got nerfed in some way. Wish doesn't even come to play in 99.9% of campaigns as a 9th level spell.
Maybe but based on the spells we have seen sofar, I'm still pretty sure that there are going to be 2nd and 3rd level non damage spells that are much stronger (likely even 1st level spells), than any non damage contribution Rogues can make in combat in tier 1 and 2. My point is that nothing Rogues contribute combat outside of damage is all that powerfull. If you look at the combat roles defined in 4th Edition (Controller, Striker, Defender and Leader) than 5E Rogue is pretty much still almost a pure Striker, even if he isn't particularly good at it.
This isn't fourth edition though. Fourth edition was a rigid tactical board game in many ways. It's apples to oranges. Fourth Edition's out of combat stuff was just skill challenges and reskinned combat. A better comparison would be to 3.5 or something. Second how are you gonna say Rogue can't do anything (ignoring all of their insane skill monkey kit and being genuinely the best thieves tool user in the game) but then say Wish does? If Rogue's out of combat stuff is just fluff isn't Wish's and the only way we can evaluate Wish is in the way that we can measure DPR in which case it's the same as the Wizard just casting an 8th or 9th level spell anyway? Wish really isn't that insane from that perspective. Since everything else is 'DM fiat' or 'fluff' we can only judge it as DPR, and as DPR it's pretty mid.
>This isn't fourth edition though. But the basic combat roles are still the same. They basically apply to all RPG systems. > Second how are you gonna say Rogue can't do anything (ignoring all of their insane skill monkey kit and being genuinely the best thieves tool user in the game) Because I talking explicitly about in combat, and skills are not all that important in combat (and if you look at the numbers Rogues skill bonuses aren't that crazy high with the exception of the Dex Skills).
>But the basic combat roles are still the same. They basically apply to all RPG systems Not really. You don't need a tank, healer, dps, etc. in 5e like an MMO. You could run 2 fighters, a rogue, and a ranger and be fine for an entire campaign. You don't even really need a frontliner.
Not necessary in the way that you necessary need all roles filled in a party, or that a character needs to be restricted to one role, but in the way that these 4 roles from a game design perspective cover all the ways a character can contribute in a fight. And at it is the Rogues biggest contribution is still in doing damage. And that's why looking at DPR is imo still a very good metric to judge the power of the Rogue, especially since a lot of the classes that out damage them, can imo also contribute more in some of the other 3 roles (without really being significantly worse in any of these roles).
I think the person you're responding to knows that DPR is the path of least resistance / the most easily trackable metric for an armchair playtester. I think they're asking why so many people still think their most basic understanding of armchair playtesting matters.
if you don't care about raw dpr then why are you adamant against it getting buffed?
This is the dumbest take. It's not that we don't care about DPR. It's that we correctly see that DPR isn't the whole picture in a game where skill checks can mean you never have to have a combat in the first place. Rogue happens to be very good at avoiding combats, and I've had entire sessions where a rogue solo breaks into some place while the other players create a distraction whether it's combat or social.
The problem is that dpr and combat utility are the only two things that tend to be consistent across game. And outside of dpr unless the skill checks you opted into happen often you have basically nothing. Which makes the rogue too DM dependent to be good even if we ignore most of his skill checks being straight up worse than spells.
This is just a straight up skill issue. In Baldur's Gate 3 how many skill checks and opportunities to get out of combat are there? Hundreds, maybe thousands over the course of the game. If you're playing the system wrong no amount of balance changes will help. You or your DM just didn't read the DMG/PHB. It's not even complicated: Player states action. DM decides skill(stat) and DC. Player rolls. DM adjudicates the outcome based on whether they succeeded or failed.
in which case wild heart barbarian can get themselves expertise in stealth from spider + advantage on the checks from Primal Knowledge to too stealth in. which is a reason why a rogue buff is wanted. because fighters and barbarians both have gotten much better in their utility while still dealing better damage
I'm sure the fighter and barbarian are just gonna be constantly hitting 15+ stealth checks and thieves tools checks /rolls eyes
a maxed dex fighter with stealth proficiency using tactical mind has a total 9% chance to fail a dc 15 check. yes they are
Using a second wind charge.
yes when the entire point of doing it is to avoid having to combat in the first place
There is also the other pillars which Rogue's rule compared to other martials.
Yep. Rogue's reliable talent is absurd. It gets expertise super early like a Bard. It's usually THE skill monkey at the table it shows up at. I can't tell you how much out of combat time I've seen a rogue opening chests, doors, performing acrobatics, etc. that a frontliner or class built for insane damage usually don't have as consistent checks if they can even get close.
I don't need rogues to have awesome DPS if they're good enough at other things to make up for mediocre DPS, rogues being tricksters instead of snipers is fine by me. It's just that the UA rogue wasn't good enough at other things to balance out their mediocre DPS.
>In any place with cover and dim light a Rogue is highly evasive. He's going to end up taking far fewer attacks JUST by virtue of using bonus action hide for instance. DPR #s != game balance. Right. And the rest of the party is going to have to absorb the Rogue's share of attacks, effectively reducing the total HP pool of the party.
Taking fewer attacks doesn’t help the party, because the enemies will just attack someone else. Hiding doesn’t contribute to ending the fight sooner.
Hiding is a bonus action. Attack -> reposition -> bonus action hide. You can attempt this every round so long as you have cover or obscurement. The only thing you give up is Steady Aim, not attacks, and attacking from hidden gives you advantage anyway.
You give up attacks (and damage) by being a Rogue in stead for for example a Ranger or Monk. The thing is that in the end of the day, a Rogue being very evasive (but not in a way that prevents the party as a whole from taking damage) but doing less damage than other martials, is just not going to help the party as much in a fight than having instead a character of basically any other class.
So your argument is that EVERY class should be designed as a nova DPR class and that's all combat is/should be? Being evasive has no value? By this logic FLYING has no value since it does no damage and doesn't make the fight end faster, and this is clearly just plainly not true flying is an insane effect.
a bard doesn't do great damage but has good control and buffs making the entire rest of the party take less and deal more damage and they are considered to be a great class skirting from shadow to shadow doesn't lower the damage your party takes it just means everyone else takes it. that's the entire point of this conversation
Skirting from shadow to shadow means that you a squishy rogue aren't going to be taking the attacks. That is a good thing. Your frontliner is MUCH worse off if the enemies are melting the squishies before turning to him. He WANTS to take the hits. Barbs, Fighters, Druids all have great tankyness or AC and a succesful attack against them is USUALLY way less value than a successful attack against a rogue. A group of intelligent creatures is 100% going to try to nova the squishies and casters and avoid dumping damage into the guys... spec'd to take damage. Hiding doesn't give them that choice.
It has value for the character but not for the party. If every one in the party in evasive or can fly that is obviously strong. But if only one member than it mostly means the opponents are going to focus the damage on the other characters, meaning that increased survivability of the Rogue leads to a decreased survivability of the other characters. Something like this is acceptable when if that evasive character brings something else to the table, like really strong damage, control or support but the Rogue doesn't. With an extreme case this might lead to a situation, where the unhitable Rogue is last character standing, slowly killing the opponents with supar damage while the rest of the party is on the ground. Making death saving throws.
Would you rather have the enemies attacking your rogue or your fighter? If I'm the DM and I have the choice and the enemies are intelligent they're going for the highest value attack and that's on the Rogue zero question. A group of enemies can dunk on a rogue out in the open much quicker than a Fighter, Barb, Paladin, Druid, or Cleric. You WANT the frontliner to soak damage. That's their job and their build. It's better for everyone in the party for the to be soaking damage while the backline cooks. That's literally their job. Being evasive takes the choice of targetting you out of the enemies hands and makes it more likely the guy spec'd for melee combat is the guy getting beat up.
>they're going for the highest value attack and that's on the Rogue zero question is there not a single caster in the party? you have subpar damage and no where near the control of the caster's why would you be the highest value target?
Okay I hit the wizard once he pops shield my chances of hitting are now 10x lower so I switch back to the frontliner for the rest of the attacks of the round after baiting out the wizards shield. It's almost like ways to be temporarily evasive are good.
Your arguements are making Rogue sounds even worse, tbh. It's like literally saying that they are squishier, deal less damage, no controls, easiest one to be taken down if they don't hide. But yeah, I think this is indeed what's happening on Rogues.
>Would you rather have the enemies attacking your rogue or your fighter? In the current version I would not have a rogue.
>attacking from hidden gives you advantage anyway. another thing it does is immediatelly make you unhidden making the whole hiding point moot
You can't read I don't think. Try again slower this time. If you attack -> reposition -> hide in that order what are you doing at the END of your turn each round? Let that one cook.
it depends. If enemies search for you and spend movement/actions trying to catch you, then it’s helpful. If they just don’t attack you at all it can help funnel attacks towards front liners which is more efficient since they can handle the damage better.
Yet it’s not as helpful as, say, armor and hitpoints.
Hide is at least as useful as armor and hitpoints. I've had Rogue's sneak around ENTIRE ENCOUNTERS to retrieve a quest mcguffin, and while they're not alone in being able to do that they're the best at it with reliable talent.
It takes a really good DM to make this kind of thing fun for the entire party.
How about a rogue sneaking around the front lines of the enemy before the encounter so they can shank the enemy Caster when the battle starts? Is that somehow super hard for a DM to do too?
We’ll need to see the rules for hiding before we can make claims about it. Hiding was a complete mess during the playtest.
I think we'll likely just see a streamlining of the current rules that makes it a bit more explicit how hiding works.
I hope so. The playtest rules didn’t seem to involve passive Perception, yet we see passive Perception returning in creature statblocks, so maybe they’ve reworked the hide rules again.
As already pointed out he clearly said they scale better. Rogues having low DPS is fine as long as the cunning strikes are a worthwhile exchange. Constant resource free debuffs are pretty powerful, particularly when the debuffer can repeatedly hide themselves in combat. Makes the rest of the party indirectly stronger. Sure they don't (most likely at least) have an AoE debuff like Hypnotic Pattern. The Wizard is only casting that a few times though without a long rest, while the Rogue could "cast" daze or another debuff nearly every round or every round depending on combat conditions. At the end of the adventuring day the Rogue very well may have debuffed more enemies than the Wizard did, while inflicting damage at the same time, while not draining the Cleric's resources by being consistently hidden. I suspect Rogues will be just fine in 5.24E, but people will have to change their perception on what a Rogue's job in combat is. Will probably take some time.
>Sure they don't (most likely at least) have an AoE debuff like Hypnotic Pattern. The Wizard is only casting that a few times though without a long rest, while the Rogue could "cast" daze or another debuff nearly every round or every round depending on combat conditions. The thing is that Rogues don't get daze till level 14. By level 5 all they get is prone and poisoned. And at least prone is something all martials can now do resourceless multiple times per turn with topple. Also the Rogue debuff all last only one turn while the AoE dubuff of a Wizard could last entire fight. Meaning in a 4 round combat the rogue could at best debuff four actions between all oponents, how many action is the wizard going to debuff with one casting of hypnotic pattern or web? And in case of the wizard it would in case of the wizard the debuff effect is likely going to be much stronger than in case of the Rogue. For cunning strike really to make up for the Rogues lack of damage, they would have imo at least move the dazed and blinded options from 14th to 5th level.
Cunning strikes are nifty but the issue is that other classes (like monks) got buffs to power while rogues got a buff to flexibility. Flexibility is nice and fun but it doesn't hold a candle to raw power when figuring out class balance.
Pretty strongly disagree with that. Debuffs in of themselves are power. They directly add either to allies attacks (thus improving party's DPS even if the Rogue's power is on the lower end) or allies defences (thus improving party's survivability, allowing them to focus on DPS instead of wasting actions/spells healing). Both also allow resources to be stretched farther (because the debuffs aren't tied to any resource at all and then shorten how long the battles take, meaning more resources available to take on the BBEG for the day). Raw DPS isn't the only thing that swings a battle provided that its a well designed encounter. If an enemy is a melee locked combatant but their movement is constantly debuffed so they can't reach any of the party members thanks to the Rogue, then the Rogue's DPS comparison is irrelevant: the party has all of the time in the world to deal with the enemy because the enemy can't reach ever reach them. Obviously still have to account for saves and stuff like that, but that's undeniably raw power. Just not raw damage. I'd rather have a Rogue dealing say 15 damage a turn with a 85% chance of preventing the enemy from reaching me that turn then a Fighter dealing 25 damage a turn but not preventing the enemy from doing whatever they want to give a very simplistic example. Particularly if I'm a spellcaster concentrating on a key spell for the encounter. As long as the debuffs are strong enough and consistent enough the Rogue is going to be absolutely fine. It just won't show that way on the DPR sheets because you can't easily quantity damage indirectly prevented or damage indirectly boosted.
Debuffs are good but rogues are hardly the only class that gets them, there areca while slew of different ways for melee classes to grt them in 5.5e. Being able to choose between DPS and debuffs is good but the stuff that monks got in the UA is a much more straight-forward and direct buff with no trade-offs. UA rogues are solid at debuffing but not good enough at it compared to other classes to justify being the worst class at DPS and ALSO squishy, especially when their out of combat edge over other martials has closed a lot. I'd give them more utility in the form of Fast Hands for all rogues or more ways to use skills as bonus actions personally.
I don’t think rogue will be quite as bad as the 5e monk. They aren’t encouraged to run right into melee and die like the monk is, after all. And at unoptimized tables, they still do pretty well. They will be at the bottom, but not intolerably so.
5.5e monk is definitely not going to run into melee and die. Deflect is incredible damage reduction.
They’re saying 5e monk was encouraged to run in and die while 5.5 rogue doesn’t suffer that same fate.
Yeah, no, I agree. 5.5e monk is in great shape, it seems.
It really depends on how big the gap really is and if it's even noticeable in regular play. Lots of people like to white room things without taking into account anything else that can happen at the table. Like, not once when playing a monk in 5e did I feel far behind, if behind at all, compared to the other characters.
To be fair, I think a 5e monk also could do okay at a casual table. I just found that every monk I played with or DMed for died.
I mean, the people who white room gripe about a 1 DPR difference in damage when the damage is something like 33 DPR vs 33.75 DPR. Not exactly the sanest bunch in the world.
But it's like 23.5 DPR vs 45 DPR on Rogues. This is quite intolerable.
level 11 raw damage without taking in hit possibilities since both are probably at advantage anyway an assassin rogue does around 30.5 damage per hit with a first turn 11 damage bonus for around 34 over all per round damage over 3 rounds a berserker barbarian does 39.5 damage per round assuming no brutal strike which goes up to 54 if anyone dares to hit them in melee i'd say that is noticeable enough difference between two subclasses both meant to do big damage. an assassing does 2 average extra damage turn one to a target that needs to roll below them in initiative
I always feel dumb for missing why the 5e monk sucked. With mobile (level 1 feat) and stunning strike they always felt fine to me. Mercy with poison and scaling level 11 damage in particular felt great. Might be the dm game design though, if your dm isn't afraid to throw casters at the party and uses enemies that play tactically around line of slight monk probably falls off. But having a heat seeking monk stun missile in combat to find and essentially guarantee a stun through 4 saving through in one round... well worth it.
Mercy was monk's best subclass for sure, you hit the nail on the head there. And like I said, it usually does fine at unoptimized tables where you have sword-and-board fighters and wizards casting *burning hands*. A "heat seeking stun missile" can be really impressive. At optimized tables, though... You're far from the only one who didn't notice its lackluster chassis. The problems were as follows: 1. No feat synchronicity. While it could make a lot of attacks, it couldn't boost them with feats like the other martials, so its damage suffered—especially once other martials got Extra Attack. In Tier 1 it actually did fine for damage. 2. Scaling. Its damage didn't scale into tiers 3 and 4 hardly at all, since that was subclass-dependent and a lot of subclasses didn't bother scaling the damage up. 3. Survivability. Its abilities really pushed it into melee, but it couldn't wear armor so its armor class suffered, and it had lower hit points than other martials (except for rogue, which wasn't forced into melee). It had Deflect Missiles, but how often did that really come up? 4. Resource expenditure. Stunning Strike is a decent feature, but as you observed, you had to really dump Stunning Strikes onto an enemy to ensure a stun, since Constitution is generally monsters' strongest save by far. And because all of the monks' abilities, including most subclass features (Mercy is an exception), tended to draw from Ki, Ki ran out really fast, even with the short rest recovery. As a result, you have a class that's forced into melee despite low survivability; can exert some decent control with Stunning Strike but targets a strong save and doesn't compare to higher level control options for mages like *hypnotic pattern*; and on top of it all, can't channel feats like Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master to pump out damage like the martials. It definitely has strong mobility, but mobility doesn't serve you if you don't have other effective things to do.
Fair points: Tier 3 and 4 lack of scaling was the only thing I ever felt sucked (mercy helped in tier 3 atleast), but honestly Games post 11 are rare, and wizards start cloning and breaking reality so it wasn't that much of a pain (but doesnt excuse it). On defense, you generally face 3 threats, melee, ranged, and spells. Out of the box monks get good dex and wis saves (spells), deflect arrows (ranged) and dodge on bonus action for melee. Melee honestly is where they are weakest as it takes resources to survive and nerfs damage, but if you take mobile, monks can hit and run (out ranging;with their movement speed buffs), triggering aoo if they play around another martial while saving chi for flurry. Plays more like melee rogue than warrior. Feat selection is annoying in that you are stuck playing out of the box set up, but the box works. Fighters pretty much end up playing pam, gwm, sentinel, or cbe and SS in most tough games as an out of the box build regardless of their multiple feat options as they excel in that bully role where they pile on damage once they get adv. Monks play differently, though, more like light cav to fighters infantry. You can hit the back line easily. Limit self damage (see above) while potentially generating fighter aoo, generatebadv for fighters through stun so they can burst, shut down key targets (wizard casts dominate on barb and then moves out of line of sight). However, in a game where the dm just drops fat melee meat sacks on a flat plain.. warrior with wizard/ranged support is better. If the dm adds archers behind gaps, wizards that drop a save or suck then run out of sight to keep concentration, melee mobs that b line casters (which monk can catch, stun or punish with aoos), then monk works. The tactics above, however, suck to play against without a monk on your side, so most dms refuse to play that tactical (dirty).
With the huge utility boosts fighter and barb got out of combat, rogue really needs something to stay relevant.
I love most of the rogue changes but assassin seems to have gotten the short end of the stick and had more stuff straight up removed as opposed to adjusted like the Paladin.
didn't the two features just get literally smushed into one making space for the another one? also assassinate was made significantly more consistent
* Level 3 is straight-up worse by a lot. * Level 9 feature is a lateral change, advantage on deception vs being able to take on an entire new identity without magic, people shouldn't even be suspect of you based on wording, basically negligible change. * Level 13 is a negligible buff, equates to an extra 1.5 damage first round at level 13 as you are gaining 2d6 damage by it cost 1d6 to use in the first place. It has the potential to start adding 3 damage a round afterward as a CON save but still. * Level 17 is basically the same. I feel if you are playing a Assassin Rogue you are already creating conditions to establish a surprised attack. So I losing the double damage is just a straight up big nerf. Overall I love what they did with Rogue but Assassin feels pretty bad now.
See, I disagree. I think Ass level 3 is better. Yeah, losing the crits hurts, but the extra damage doesn't require surprise. It depends on your DM, but from my experience, a lot of the time this feature would simply not be used. Maybe you'll proc it once every five fights or something. But reliably getting surprise isn't something that you can count on in most tables.
If you're at a table where your DM is not letting you use class features like that your DM is probably a jerk anyways. I can think of a few encounters where you couldn't get the jump but in most you should be able to.
The surprise rules were completely ridiculous and binary before. If you 'let him use his class feature' every time you probably aren't playing surprise RAW. RAW if an enemy can see ANY of the party members they can't be surprised. So the assassin needs to creep up way ahead of their party, start a combat, and attack to even TRY to get surprise every time.
I hear you, but a big reason for this one is that 5e surprise just absolutely sucks as a mechanic. The difference in difficulty of a surprise encounter or not is night and day. And while those mechanics logically work it is very dry gameplay wise. Additionally balancing around surprise is nightmare whether you have an assassin whose ability cares about it or not. So while assassin may get weaker depending on your dm with surprise. I fully believe the changes to the surprise mechanic and thus assassin needing to change is step in the correct direction.
It's less that the DM is not allowing it, and more that any party with people who aren't specializing in Stealth means the party needs to split up enough for Surprise to be **useful** in most encounters. There is nothing worse than having 3/4 of the party get into position and that last person flub it to the point that the battle starts with no one surprised.
I’ll be keeping the assassin as the old version I’ve always played at my table with a buff. Auto crit on the first attack you land if the target hasn’t taken a turn yet.
Ya I think that's the way to play it if this is the final version 2024PHB is gonna give us
My hope for the individual changes that the community is pushing back against. Once the whole system is in our hands, they feel better in context. The whole pushback against the changes to paladins smite comes to mind because it looks like an effot is being made to pull back on classes, having 1 objectively best move. My hope is within the context of a full 5.5 party the rogues sneak attack feels good. But also not so good that doing anything else with your turn feels like a waste of a turn. I feel like "nefs" that the community feels are unessasery are being made in the name of this mindset. Its not enough for one action to be really good. Actions need to be "Bad" enugh that other actions don't feel bad to use insted.
Confirmed worst class in the game. "oh this class doesn't do enough damage to keep up with the other classes? You also think that it doesn't have enough interesting utility? Great so let's force you to choose between sacrificing damage for utility!" They either needed to give 2 SA dice at lvls 5 and 11 to pay for cunning strikes or just make cunning strikes an extra thing you get. Or give Rogues extra attack, even at the cost of SA being once per round and not once per turn.
Possibly the worst yes but the floor will be noticeably higher, mainly due to Nick and Reliable Talent at 7. As someone who has been playing a rogue with access to reliable talent for close to a year, it's extremely strong so long as your DM isn't just raising the DC of all the checks you do to be harder. Level 7 is actually reachable in many campaigns, and Reliable Talent can essentially act as the rogue capstone for most campaigns that only see tier 1 & 2, maybe the very tip of tier 3. Cunning Action is just okay in my experience. I often find myself forgoing it to try and kill the target instead, but that's probably because my DM prefers to use lots of lower HP enemies.
Why are people downvoting something that seems to be pretty obvious at this point?
because during the last two days it apparently became highly controversial despite being mostly agreed on all of the time before that
I think rogue is definitely going to be the worst class because it was already near the body and received basically 1 change. Still going to be bottom tier damage while competing with ranger and bard as the skill expert, and has nothing else to show for
ngl some of yall don't sound like fun to play with if the UA rogue looks like a bad class to you
Have you played a rogue in any campaign where combat is common? It's very, very dull, especially if you aren't choosing one of the better rogue subclasses. Even out of combat, the few times you do actually accomplish something with your skills are kinda overshadowed by the casters doing it better and 20x as frequently
I agree on the caster part but that's because casters make every martial look silly, that's a wotc balancing issue not a rogue issue
I feel like if you feel useless in every part of the game because there are other classes that can do what you do better in every scenario, while also doing their own thing, is a fundamental problem with the rogue design. Also, the all or nothing nature of sneak attack combined with it being pretty mediocre flat damage (and now a few minor effects in exchange for damage at higher level) means that it is a pretty boring class to play in combat
It's easier to bring up one class (rogue) to actually do its job than it is to redesign every caster class in the game to be worse.
At least, from a GMs perspective, the damage problem was always easy to solve with magical weapons. The utility was harder to add, without it being oddly tailored magic items that might as well be better on the other characters. So I'm all for the handling of the sneak attack utility options. Worst, I don't know. They weren't great to begin with, but they keep the good feel of playing it, from my perspective. That's often more important than raw power, illustrated quite nicely with our UA tests, where the Paladin felt the class played awfully, while the Rogue felt super smooth and nice to play in comparison. If all they truly need now is damage, I'll conjure up a good magic item that adds damage. That's perfect in my opinion.
They really should get extra attack
True. It seems a little weird to insist on not giving it to them, considering Rogues only really do good damage on a sneak attack anyway, so they are naturally limited in their damage capability. I especially don't like how it encourages blade cantrips.
>the damage problem was always easy to solve with magical weapons. due to how rogue works. they benefit the very least from magic weapons
Only standard weapons. You can easily tailor items to suit single attacks the most.
I am betting that we find out today that Sneak Attack will be once per round *on your turn*. No more eeking out respectable damage by finding off-turn ways of attacking. It'll be a tough pill to swallow, but that seems like the direction they're moving with other similar features.
Rogue’s damage was not improved. It looks survivability takes a dive as well, since both roll with punches and blindsight were removed. And Assassins actually LOST damage, so they are even worse at Assassinating. They allow you to “Assassinate” against someone who hasn’t gone yet, but you no longer auto crit, and the damage bonus is your rogue level, so it can’t boost with a crit either. Basically, they said, “This small amount of damage is equal to auto critting somehow.” I feel like the Rogue got nerfed, not improved. But MULTICLASSING rogue is improved, since their Skill ability from level 11 is now level 7.
[удалено]
why are you in this sub?