I find Range to be lacking and Poison Trap to be far too dominating. We need more diversity

Rogue
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Good day,

Someone suggested I cross-post this to the Rogue forums. So I will.

I’ve recently tried a few different range builds to stress test Rogue in the end-game NM pushing and have found that it is exceedingly difficult to make this viable or even suggest the playstyle over the more popular Rogue builds.

Here is my TL;DR:

Poison Trap is far too dominant in the Rogue meta because of the obscene amount of Damage Reduction/Resistance it applies throughout the board. To the extent that every viable build utilizing Rogue for pushing high end content requires the use of Poison Trap.

This makes Range play like absolute dog-crap. It feels unfun and instead of keeping a distance from enemies to kill them, we’re forced to engage close. If you want to push high NM’s as range, the solution is simple: Add Poison Trap and Debilitating Poisons and Paragon points invested into CC’d enemies Damage Reduction + Enemies Affected by Poison Reduction to your build. Voila, endgame build.

Please buff other nodes around the board to make RANGE playing more accessible and fun WITHOUT the use of Poison Trap in every high-end pushing build.

Also, no one ever uses Bow because Crossbow gives Vulnerability x2. There should be considerable efforts placed into making regular bows significantly more powerful. This may include changing how characters interact with Vulnerability, which needs to be reworked somehow. There is no such thing as “BOW” rogue. There is only CROSSBOW Rogue. The Unique’s provided are completely out-classed by comparable ilvl xbow with Vuln/Crit/Core/ Dex or All Stat.

Edit: Just to be clear, I don’t want to nerf poison trap. I want to buff other aspects so that we can have far more viability in single player and group play.

Edit: Last but not least, on the topic of Maxroll – at some point in time I was a huge advocate of them. They just push “end-game build Tier List” without any proper variance as to what this constitutes. Again, I am a huge Wudijo fan but his show case was in T39. He’s also a Hardcore player, which means instinctively he’s more protective of his playstyle.

There’s no quality control. At all. What is end-game? “speed farming T50-60” or “NM pushing to the extreme”? We need some parameters here.

That penetrating shot build on Maxroll is bait. If you use this on higher levels, you will be very unhappy. Unless you have friends to carry you, group play will replace you for other builds that are better.

This should never be the case.

I implore people to utilize Sanctuary or D4 Planner for significantly better builds.

Please keep in mind that this is for players wanting to push NM 80+

Pen shot build

Wudijo’s Low NM (70 and lower) build

Plusy (from Sanctuary Discord) NM 100 build

Now to turn any of these builds viable in the end-game there is one big common denominator: Poison Trap.

Poison Trap allows Cheat Aspect to be far more accessible earlier in the pull and creates ample opportunity to push higher. There’s another aspect which is absolutely wonderful, should you invest further into Lucky Hit which is the Aspect of Shared Misery.

It’s also worth noting that even if you chose not to invest that high, you’re still garnering 50% chance to spread which within a pack of mobs I can confirm with you it’ll spread.

By removing Dash entirely from Wudijo’s build, Pen Shot build, and replacing a few nodes (1 into Deadly Venom → 3 into Debilitating Toxins), swapping to Puncture, and using Poison Trap + Enhanced Poison Trap + Suberting Poison Trap (if you’re poison imbue – skip it if not), you’ve effectively added a crap ton of Damage Resistance to the Rogue.

In fact, I will argue that if you’re not running Poison Trap + Debilitating Toxins, Pen Boots, CC reduction / Vuln Damage Reduction / Trap Damage Reduction, then you’re not going to push very high on any build comfortably. To me pushing high is comfortably farming 85+ with some small challenges.

It is my belief that every class build should be able to push NM 85 when fully geared. With 86+ reserved for the most extreme players wishing to push their limits.

I reserve 90+ for gigantic challenges. Think of “Feats of Strength,” worthy of praise and reward.

I have near bis gear for all the builds suggested and stress-tested every one numerous times. With Wudijo’s build, the moment I reinvested my points on Paragon a bit into poison trap and DR from poison trap, the build just worked. Rapid Fire single target damage in combo with shadow step is an insanity. The rogue will poop 12-15m damage on the high end and 4-7m damage on the low end.

That’s not including the fact that I’m not optimized for Edgemaster as I’m farming a secondary Accelerating to replace the one on my bow.

Plusy’s build has cleared NM 100 and I’ve done so numerous times before and even easier after his notes, which highlights again how important Poison Trap is to the build. It’s, in my opinion, the best pushing build on the market for Rogue.

My NM 100 after fishing was about 15 minutes with 0 deaths and engaging properly.

The Pen Shot build after utilizing poison trap cleared up to 80 and then anything above became an absolute chore because the RNG of damage from Poison Imbue or Shadow Imbue EVEN into large and good pulls was so negligible. That’s not to say that these builds cannot clear (such as the 92 Cold Imbue video) but look at how much is necessary and how long in takes in comparison to just using TB Poison Trap + Imbue.

In gist: I would like for buffs in the future to really highlight other Damage Reduction aspects and legendary nodes (such as how useless Cunning Stratagem is in the present state) so that we can incorporate smoother and enjoyable playing methods without the dominance of poison traps.

Cunning Stratagem gives 6.5% on the low end and a bit more on the high end. It is absolutely negligible and useless as a legendary node. It gains much more value should you decide to use it with Poison Trap but I am tired of the solution to every build being “use Poison Trap.”

Some solutions:

Cunning Stratagem

I think this should be multiplicative, similarly to The Grandfather but on a MUCH smaller scale. For an example, I would suggest that it provides a flat 20% Multiplicative increase across the board to NON damage Combo Points. This would automatically place it into a competitive stance as an Condemnation User[s] while affording them to ability to sacrifice Poison Trap for other forms of Utility for a more well rounded play.

Poison Trap Dominance

I understand that by doing the above, that means a person could double dip into Cunning Stratagem and that would then invoke them to double dip into the Cunning + Poison Trap. The solution is simple; add the perquisite that monsters affected by traps placed by said player are provide diminishing returns or just does not stack at all.

Vulnerability

This is a hot topic. Vulnerability needs more buckets. Characters need to be able to access Vulnerability better or it should be turned into an additive. Exploit has a 20 second CD and as a Puncture Rogue, that has no affect on me. I can even spread it with Flurry. However, the sheer dominance of Vulnerability across the META cannot be understated.

Every. Class. Builds. Deep. Into. Vulnerability.

Regular Bows

Because of Vulnerability prowess, every rogue – and I do mean EVERY Rogue – will use Crossbows. Crossbow has innate Vulnerability and can roll additional Vulnerability (giving you uat least 115%+ of Vulnerability).

There is absolutely no reason in this game to take a regular bow.

Some solutions could be – Make Vulnerability with the capacity to roll up to 100% on regular bows.

Or give bows the option to have innate Vulnerability.

Or fix Vulnerability by adding more buckets into it or making it far more accessible.

I don’t have all the answer and these are just some of my opinions. I think Legendary Nodes should provide more capacity for defensive measures outside of the Poison Trap gameplay.

I hope we can talk about this more and see some positive changes.

Thank you for reading.

Below here I will include some comments from users highlighting other issues with Range Rogue.

2 Likes
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I have been working hard on a Rapidfire Rogue and it’s hard work compared to running around with Twisting Blades or even Flurry.

The zoomed in camera also doesn’t help ranged builds IMO as your effective range is beyond your vision. Not only does this make it clunky it breaks the games immersion (opposite of what Blizz wanted).

100% agree about bows, crossbows are almost always better but are far less enjoyable to use from an animation and fantasy perspective IMO.

That said Rogue has more build options that a few other classes.

3 Likes
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The primary issue isn’t so much that other builds cannot clear higher NM’s. The takeaway here is how dominant poison is in every aspect of the game that it forces other builds to comply for an easier time or spend ample time kiting and positioning.

Your statement about effective range for Pen Shot is spot on. And even then, there’s just certain mobs that completely shut down penshot.

For an example, the mobs that don’t allow you to hit them inside the circle.

Everything any build can do on Rogue, which we have a lot of – lets not say we don’t – poison imbue can do better.

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TB cant even come close to competing with anything else for nightmare pushing to be honest. rogues defense is the wrest in the game. they need to give us fortify

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I have cleared NM 100 as poison trap / imbue poison rogue TB rogue. (take a look at Plusy D4 planner on Sanctuary discord or d4builds.gg/builds/696818fc-acfe-45d2-a9c9-54d2517e50c1/)

Works well. You wont clear the first or second one but you can fish for something that works and you will clear.

Now it’s not easy, but there’s definitely ways to do so.

But I do digress; Rogue defenses are literally built into poison trap. If you are not running poison trap, you’re not pushing without jumping through hoops.

1 Like
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Yeah just a lot of truth in this topic. I’ve just come to the conclusion I just wanna have fun. Rapid fire has a lot of potential and has a really cool style with a regular bow but it is hard to ignore the vulnerability issue, everybody knows that you should go crossbow. Crossbow animation also looks dumb I just can’t do it…I’m kind of tired of using puncture but it’s the same thing it’s easy vuln and ranged.

Poison traps are way too useful and diverse but really aren’t that fun to use.

1 Like
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Agreed.

To be completely honest I love Wudijo’s new build. It’s very intuitive and fun. I love the solution of Rapid Fire and I didn’t think it at all possible to piss so much damage but the very fact that I could push it in 80’s with Poison Trap was telling.

Now the downside:

It’s slower than walking up a hill in the middle of summer with no water.

There’s a lot of player skill involved – like utilizing dash – but that is so punishing you’ll brick more keys, so instead you would take Poison Trap and solve 99% of your problems by pulling mobs into trap before engaging and keeping Aspect of Might up.

In fact, I’d argue the tree Plusy provides for his build makes the build work better by sacrificing some damage. However, Plusy’s tree works best with Poison TB/ Poison Trap.

I don’t need it to clear at the exact same speed as high meta builds. But the fact that I can breeze through an 85 with minimal effort on TB Poison Imbue / Poison Trap vs any other range build depresses me.

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So a major topic that is also brought up with this is that build diversity for ranged rogue is already incredibly small, running without combo points is a crutch that 99% of ranged builds suffer from. The only non combo build has been abusing PT and venom burst AGAIN.
Id like to also point out that if you dont run traps you essentially lose the most reliable way to apply vulnerable to enemies. Another issue that occurs from this is that now ranged builds have to rather lose an imbue slot for trap and lose atleast 3-5 skill points in place OR they have to kite twice as hard as their melee counterparts.

Rapid fire and Barrage feel like almost the exact same skill and pen shot doesnt deal the damage required to be userfull past t80.

You made an excellent idea out of cunning strategem needing some form of buff to make ranged rogue feel better. We also are forced into using shadow step over conceal because its a 4 second cd vs an 18 second cd. Even if you maxxed conceal and lose the points elsewhere its still at 14 seconds more than 3x the time. We are entirely countered by suppressor but in return have no ranged defence either?

I propose we get a passive skill that instead gives us distant damage reduction/ or possibly reflect the ranged damage back to them.

Ranged rogue can not utilize rain of arrows the ultimate made entirely for the ranged class without 1[ losing a skill slot] 2[losing a major dps tool] 3[having a massive cooldown on a skill that doesnt do half the damage or mob potential of dt] Im hard pressed to find where we beenfit from.

Over all my time in my nm80+ runs ive noticed im constantly in close range of enemies because we just lack the ability to create gaps. caltrops doesnt do its jobs effectively enough and to take it i would lose an imbue [i have 3]

All in all we didnt get a unique crossbow, we didnt get any skills that made us truly feel ranged and we didnt get anything to fix those shortcomings. I hope we can see a change soon.

1 Like
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You know what…? I completely overlooked this thought process. This is 100% true. Combo points is an absolute must a long with Expectant Aspect to get the 30% Multiplier. If you screw up the multiplier, you screw up the damage.

I hadn’t stopped to think of this.

Yeah, they need to just delete the ultimate for Range or buff how range interacts. I cannot fathom for a moment how to make this work as well or even close to well in contrast to our melee builds.

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That is funny if it is the flurry/rapid fire build as the build I’ve been working on the last few days only level 65 but got the idea from these forums with people trying 2 core skills and taking advantage of combo points

Only difference is I use cold imbue and poison traps because I can’t use dash that good…I tried caltrops and dash but I can’t make it work

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I found an alternatives to poison trap, and it is awesome, I can literally facetank almost anything, poison, supressor, ice imbuement, whatever you name it. I will still avoid standing directly on top of DOT but I can literally hit and tail the enemies 99% of the time and not afraid of dying.

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I swear my rapid fire hangs up more often on the crossbow.

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The other alternative to my understanding is poison damage period. So we can get rid of trap and use poison damage. How high have you pushed?

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can you elaborate? poison damage? i thought we are talking about how to survive higher. how is poison damage (which is bascially what poison trap is doing) is considered alt to you?

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You are offering an alternative and I’d love for you to speak about it. You claimed to have something better.

So I’m waiting for you to answer that.

I am saying that outside of general “CC effects” and applying a form of poison damage, I do not know of any way to match the survivability of poison (traps or damage) in the game.

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you can find my thread in the forum, I just posted earlier today. I thought you will see it.

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What is the highest you’ve pushed with this build?

Edit: In your build you are talking about WT4 entry. I am speaking about Nightmare Dungeon level 85+. These are mobs significantly higher than anything you’re facing.

That build doesn’t check out with anything I am capable of doing because it does not live long enough. There’s some aspects there with great synergy but it’s not what I am on about here.

To make clear, I am not speaking about monsters at level 85.

Nightmare Dungeon 85 is monsters at level 140.

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try it out, then you will know. it is very very strong as it scale with levels and it will work as long as your damage output is consistent which should be very easy with rogue.

Your argument isn’t that convincing, how do I take “mobs significantly higher than anything” as an argument? Doesn’t matter what level the monster is at, their immunity stays the same throughout. The only differences is their stats which means your damage output might not be the same but that is not the point of this discussion and everyone should have their attack/stats (high armor, DR, etc) figured out at the level they are trying to push the NMD, meaning Crit chance, procs, vuln procs, etc. I don’t recall their CC will override the barrier or the immunity bubble the higher the level you go. The density doesn’t matter either, because the bubble covers quite a big area. We are talking about mobs and elites, not bosses. Bosses wouldn’t matter, you usually just go for a glass cannon and it will work.

Most other builds seems to assume that you will make a lot of attacks and that you survive with the assumption that you can move and attack freely. But that is not true in tier 4, doesn’t matter which level you are in. This specific build addressed that problem to give you more error margin to survive CCs from a angry mob of elites.

I specifically address the most common issue of most melee build, is that their unstoppable is on cooldown, and they got CC then they are dead. This build help you to not die and have the cooldown needed at the time you needed it. This is insane since most of the time lag, internet connection will alter the timing and that is the most common death.

Something to note:

  1. if your damage output is low, then this CC immune build wouldn’t work, which is very reasonable as it just means your attack and equipment or attack isn’t prepared for that level.
  2. however if your damage is decent (with long cc preferrably), then this build is god send, as it will save you from your error multiple times
  3. it has multiple failsafe unstoppable mechanics to get you out of CC situation without you reacting to it, which is crucial as a lot of times you live or die by that precious 0.2 seconds, and further more, if you can time those trigger well, it might last more than 10 seconds if you know what you are doing.
  4. The only time this wouldn’t work is if NMD has that annoying supressor field that follow you and the dungeon has very tight corridors that sometimes spawn the butcher. The only way you can survive that one is to run away, doesn’t matter what build you are on.
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I doubt they’re going to balance around soloing High tier NM dungeons. It is sort of niche. When the enemies are 30+ levels, you’re going to get one shotted. So of course any ability which stops that will seem like a requirement to utilize. And poison trap has knockdown and CC. So it seems like a requirement. That doesn’t mean it’s a overbearing (or too dominant) skill in the classes kit. It just means it’s the right skill for that situation.

1 Like
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I’ve been playing Rapidfire + Poison + Death trap since launch. I use barriers, dash, and +3 evade boots for movement. I basically jump into a large group, drop poison trap, death trap, poison imbue, and then my trap cool downs are so fast I can basically spam poison trap and death trap back to back until the group dies. I love the gameplay. I tried Twisting Blades and also Pen Shot builds, but found them very boring.

People don’t realize how strong Rapidfire with the Repeating aspect and imbuements can be. Combine that with cool down reduction, trap cool down reduction, and trap arming time reduction and things just die. Groups get stun locked from poison trap knock down, death trap pulling them in, exposure stunning with grenades, and exposure + preparation basically removing all your cooldowns.