Rogue currently has a huge problem. Dark Shroud and Umbrous Aspect

Rogue
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There are two main playstyles for Rogue. Melee or Ranged.
Playing ranged Rogue is safer by nature because while most games design ranged playstyles or characters with certain weaknesses or downsides to not make playing melee less appealing, Diablo 4 doesn’t really give any incentives to play melee over ranged. You could argue that the Sturdy passive being ‘‘Close Damage Reduction’’ is better on melee builds, but not really since it’s still good on ranged because Distant Damage is not as prevalent as Close Damage, at least in my experience so far.

The Umbrous Aspect, a Defensive Aspect, reads:
Lucky Hit: Critical Strikes with Marksman Skills have up to a [40-60]% chance to grant a free Dark Shroud shadow.

This Aspect was buffed today 27-06-2023 in the 1.0.3 Patch.
Lucky Hit Chance to gain a Dark Shroud increased from 30-50% to 40-60%.

Dark Shroud reads:
Cooldown: 20 seconds.
Surround yourself with up to 5 protective shadows. Gain 8.0% Damage Reduction per active shadow. Each time you take direct damage, that damage is reduced and a shadow is consumed.

Enhanced Dark Shroud: Dark Shroud’s shadows have a 10% chance to not be consumed.

After enhancing Dark Shroud, you may also Upgrade it, to get the following effects depending on the upgrade you selected. You may only choose 1 of these:
Countering Dark Shroud: While you have at least 4 active shadow from Dark Shroud, gain 8% [+] Critical Strike Chance.
Subverting Dark Shroud: Each active shadow from Dark Shroud grants you 4% [+] increased Movement Speed.

What does this mean?

This Aspect gives you a 7th skill for free if you mostly use Marksman Skills. Most melee builds run Puncture, which is a Marksman Skill, but you cast it as little as possible because it’s a basic skill, and even less and less with more gear. Also the Dark Shroud shadows are only granted on crits.
Dark Shroud by itself is the best defensive tool that the entire Rogue class has. It gives a maximum of 40% Damage Reduction at full stacks, potentially improved even further to 60% if using the Defensive Enshrouding Aspect.

Enshrouding Aspect reads:
Gain a free Dark Shroud shadow every 3 seconds when standing still. Each Dark Shroud shadow grants [2.0-4.0%] increased Damage Reduction).

This not only further improves the Damage Reduction, but it also gives a small quality of life on maintaining the stacks too.
And you can get even more Damage Reduction and bonuses if you invest more points in Dark Shroud/its upgrade nodes.

This makes playing melee WAY less appealing at the high end, and it WILL make playing ranged mandatory if you have any desire to do any sort of high nightmare dungeon pushing.

How can we fix this?

Very easy. Make Umbrous aspect proc on Core Skills instead of on Marksman Skills.
There is 0 reason to make ranged builds have 60%+ more damage reduction than melee builds, or to force melee builds to slot Dark Shroud to have something that ranged builds get basically for free without slotting it.

Bonus Topic:

The Precision Key Passive reads:
Critical Strikes with Marksman Skills grant you Precision. You gain 4% [x] increased Critical Strike Damage per stack of Precision, up to a maximum of 20% [x].
When you reach maximum Precision, your next Marksman Skill is a guaranteed Critical Strike that deals 40% [x] increased Critical Strike Damage, then consumes all stacks of Precision.

Judging by the way this is worded, you can potentially waste your fully stacked buff on a Basic Skill since it’s a ‘‘Marksman Skill’’. This is terrible if this is the case.
It should read ‘‘your next Marksman Core skill is a guaranteed Critical Strike’’.
I am not sure if this currently works this way or not, so I will give the devs the benefit of the doubt.

6 Likes
2

I highly recommend you try with a Rapid aspect on your Xbow instead of Bladedancer’s everyone is apparently running, and to reconsider this statement

3

Why would you want to run Rapid on a build that barely needs to cast a basic skill?

4

You mean accelerating?

1 Like
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That’s not what you said

You said Rogues want to use their basic skill as little as possible, you didn’t mention that one single copypaste build that seemingly never wants to use Puncture

Rapid Offensive can almost double your basic attack speed

i.e. the problem is not Dark Shroud, the problem is your fragile build that crumbles because apparently you refuse to use your basic skill

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I mean any build wants to use basic skills as little as possible. Because they do low damage.
It’s ideal to not even slot your basic skill at all if you can get enough resource generation to just spam your damaging skills. The only use Puncture has outside of being a filler is the slow and the vulnerable debuff. And you get both of those effects from other sources. Therefore if you can get away with not using it, you don’t.

Why would you want to use a basic skill more than it’s needed to use your actually damaging skills?

Also, how is my ‘‘fragile build that crumbles because I refuse to use my basic skill’’ in any way related to survivability, which is the topic of the post?

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Not to detract too much from your main suggestion: what are your thoughts on the speed aspect of dark shroud vs that of the crit? Main maxroll build for pen rogue has us going the movement speed route, but I think the crit might be a better play with increased damage, more procs of umbrous, and more precision stacking. Thoughts?

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Depends on the content you are doing.
I personally believe that when deciding something about damage vs speed, you only go damage if you really need it. If you pick speed and the mobs and the bosses in your nightmare dungeons are still dying in a couple of seconds, keep speed.
If you are pushing tiers and you feel like you could benefit from the damage, go damage.

Think about it like this. When stuff starts taking longer to die, more damage equals more speed, because the fights get shorter. It’s pointless to invest more on speed if you spend more time fighting stuff than moving long distances.

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Rogue is a hybrid class. Not a melee OR Range class. The class can do both.

If you spec with no marksman, no generator and melee only. that’s your choice. But however you design a build you have to deal with the benefits and disadvantages.

2 Likes
10

So basically you are saying that pure ranged being considerably tankier than pure melee for no reason is fine?

1 Like
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No I’m saying there is no such thing as PURE range or PURE melee on this class. Because using melee abilities does not stop the player from using Marksman abilities as well.

If there was a “locked” in path for Melee or Range. For example if you choose melee you can’t use any marksman abilities. Then you might have a argument. But that’s not how the class functions. It is a hybrid/multi-class. It can use both range and melee equally well on a single build.

1 Like
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You are making the argument that there is no such thing as pure range or pure melee while at the same time saying that you can play whatever you want.

So if I want to play full melee, I should just accept the fact that I will get one shot on hard content? While someone that wants to play full ranged or melee + ranged(which is not gonna be viable in any hard content btw) will have a way easier time?

Why gatekeep damage reduction behind a certain type of skill, in this case a ranged skill? Why not make Umbrous proc on both melee and ranged?

You don’t think being forced out of playing full melee is a bad thing? I am not even making an argument about making melee better, I am making an argument about making melee as good as ranged/hybrid.

The current design of Umbrous is gonna kill build diversity at the top end.

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People are not running the imbuement potency oh the xbow?? Since imbuement the main source of damage.

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Twisting Blades builds run Bladedancer’s on crossbow

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Good question, all the profiles i’ve checked - and i checked a lot, in pve and pvp, have TB aspect on Xbow

I don’t even run imbuements

The game’s barely a few weeks old and so many people are convinced all the best builds have already been found

And even if it were somehow the case, there’s still a great range of viable builds before that

Everyone’s jumping on the obvious broken stuff and then cry everywhere when it gets nerfed, as it should, because they have no idea what else to do until their favorite youtuber tells them the square shape goes into the square hole

1 Like
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I’m saying you’ve made a build which is sort of specific. In that you’ve decided to omit a major chunk of this classes mechanics. Including not using a basic skill (which would’ve procced this aspect). And you’re not using any marksman core skills either (which also would’ve procced the aspect). And your’e expecting the developers to balance the game around your specific build? good luck with that.

As for melee+range not being viable in end game. That’s a bold claim considering the game is 3 weeks old.

2 Likes
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All good builds are specific. You understand the concept of synergy, right?

I also use a basic skill, I never claimed to not do so. I just stated the fact that you use it as little as possible, and some builds don’t use one at all.

And even though I use a marksman skill, I hope that I don’t have to tell you that spending half the time I am in combat spamming Puncture fishing for crits on a basic skill to build Umbrous stacks would not be very good.

I don’t want devs to balance around my build. I want devs to balance around bringing a very common playstyle up to the standard of the other common one.

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18

If you’re spamming puncture fishing for crits you are doing it wrong. You are now irrelevant and have literally no clue what you are talking about or doing with your class and build.

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Well if the aspect doesn’t suit your playstyle then it doesn’t suit it. You have to try something else. There’s plenty of other aspects. That is how the game works. if every aspect was viable for every single playstyle then you end up with homogenization. Where every build is basically doing the same thing. There’s also the option to just slot in a core marksman skill such as barrage instead of puncture. But again it seems you have a specific build in mind and you don’t want to change that. So you’re expecting the developers to change the game for you instead.

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I said that doing that is literally not good. Can you not read man?

So it’s fine that the best defensive aspect the class has only works for the half of the class that is naturally better at defense when it could easily work with the other half too? Got it.
My build is not even that specific. it’s very similar to any twisting blades setup.
Go watch Smoke’s tier 100 nightmare dungeon clear with twisting blades. Probably would have been easier for him if Umbrous was not ranged specific.

Having two spenders is not good for hard content. You can’t invest in two spenders on a good build. That’s just how synergy works on an rpg. With that logic you could put all your points in different core skills and use them all. Probably not as effective as focusing on a single core skill and building around that.

Also there’s no melee-focused defensive aspect equivalent that could fill the gap. No other defensive aspect comes even close to being as good as Umbrous. It literally gives you a free 7th skill. I don’t think it’s fair to say ‘‘just deal with it and use something else’’.

Apparently advocating for fair balance for the sake of endgame build diversity is expecting the developers to change the game to appeal to my build. Lol.

1 Like