Act 1 Rouge Review

PTR Feedback
1

I was going to do a full merc write up but I seem to make walls of text so I’m splitting Rouges off.

A2 Might merc lvl 84: Eth Insight Colossus Voulge 560-3022 no aura, 870-4904 w/ aura - this is stated damage for use as a reference, everyone knows how the A2 mercs work.

A1 Cold Elly Lvl 84: Windforce 224-1681 w/ Fanat 395-2959 Cold arrow lvl 29 130-138 cold damage Freezing Arrow lvl 10 596-636 cold Damage Freeze for 2 sec

A1 Fire Olena Lvl 84: Windfore 224-1681 w/ Fanat 395-2959 Fire Arrow lvl 29 458-522 Exploding Arrow lvl 16: 683-793

I put a Windforce on her and she is about half the damage of a standard A2 merc with roughly equivalent gear. That alone shows the main problem. To get close to the damage I have to run her with a Zealot and max Fanaticism. I wanted to try a Mist bow on her but I could not find an elite base bow to make it in. A2 mercs give party wide benefits, all the time. The party buff coming from the Rouge is not used that often. Ideally the A1,3 and 5 mercs would do better damage while the A2 merc would give party benefits. As is, A2 has damage and party buffs.

I do get it that a ranged damage dealer should be a bit behind melee in damage, but half? I also regularly run one on my Zealot and in P1 she cleans things up nicely. I can’t complain about the damage she puts out once I get her to the fastest frame rate attack so I acknowledge that more damage would be pretty strong. But when compared to what you get from A2, she falls short.

The main problem is the lack of damage, but this is a problem overall with bows/Bowazon. You just don’t get the damage needed unless you’re using a Faith Bow with a Might merc. To improve this I would start by looking at the base overall damage/damage calculations for bows. Making bows/crossbows stronger from the bottom up may just fix both the Rouge and Bowazon.

Cold - I really like the new Freezing arrow, I do wish she would use it more.

Fire - considering the Utility of the Cold Rouge the extra damage from the fire skills seems miniscule. I’m assuming there is a 25% chance to use Exploding and a 50% chance to use Fire Arrow, I would reverse that and give it a 50% chance to use Exploding, or add a few more levels to the fire skills so they deliver more. Cold Rouge has utility, the Fire Rouge is supposed to be damage in this set up. The damage is not more significant than the cold Rouge, giving no reason to use Fire over Cold.

Inner Sight - not used regularly enough per the chart master Milox she is using it 3.8% of the time, that should really be moved to 5-10% of the time. Inner Sight is a massively useful skill, the increased radius is nice but we can clean up monsters relatively quickly and move on.

edit: thanks Milox for the numbers.

3 Likes
2

I second this. I was massively disappointed in Rogues in PTR, based on hopes of usefulness.

3

Agree, the new changes to mercenary are intresting but the reality is that act 2 mercenaries are still the way to go for the majority of build (since they have auras and they can provide Conviction thanks to Infinity Runeword).

To make other alternative really viable they can:

  • give intresting auras to other mercenary (for example fanaticism to Act1 merc or resist fire to act 3 fire mercenary)
  • give other mercenary the possibility to use conviction aura allowing infinity runeword also in bow or other weapon
  • create new runeword to give other mercenary the conviction aura or a good chanche to cast lower resist
  • strongly increase ac1, act3 and act5 merc damage to make them more attractive compared to the standard act2 might merc

To summarize, there must be VIABLE alternatives to act2 merc with infinity or every smart player will still use act2 merc

4

I like these three. Infinity in a bow would create some interesting options and allow a Rouge more places to shine. I don’t like giving inherent arua’s to all mercs I think they can do better than that.

My favorite bow to use on a Rouge is Witchwhild for the amp proc. I would love to have more bows that proc curses on attack. I would love to have a bow that procs skills like Delirium, that would be a great benefit to melee attackers.

I feel in the end the A1, 3, and 5 mercs need to win out on base damage vs the party support A2 offers. This may be not be possible wihout nerfing A2 and that is a bad thing in the first place.

5

Chances of casting skills at lvl 69 are:
Fire: exploding arrow: 111/263 = 42,2%
fire arrow 67/263 = 25,5%
inner sight 10/263 = 3,8% (lvl 22 should last 92 seconds)
normal attack 75/263 = 28,5%
Cold: has the same values

inner sight seems a bit low. the area boost is really nice (something like from 8 yards to 18) but the cast chance should be something around 10% or so

6

agree’d I was just thinking that.

You sure the exploding arrow is 42% and fire is at 25%. It seems the other way around by the way it’s used.

7

its at lvl 69 at lower levels it should be lower. but take a look for yourself:

[Album] Hirelings.txt
1 Like
8

Everyone, Mr Llama has put up a new survey, make sure to fill it out. it includes a section for mercs:
https://forms.gle/xFstdWN4AUx7bXsz6