Well, the last Insane Rogue guide was...written by me back in 2020. It focused on a throwing knives/never leave stealth style of play, but I decided I would try to make the classic ninja/assassin/glass cannon style of Rogue since some folks felt that safe but very boring. I'll go into some thoughts on this Rogue after the TL:DR and stuff. Here's my guy.
Build TL:DR
Class Talents
Technique/Dual techniques: 1/2/0/0
Technique/Duelist: 1/1/1/3
Technique/Throwing Knives: 5/3/1/1
Cunning/Stealth: 5/3/1/1
Cunning/Trapping: 5/1/1/2
Cunning/Dirty Fighting: 1/4/0/0
Cunning/Poisons: 5/2/5/4
Cunning/Artifice: 2/1/1/1
Generic Talents
Race/Krog: 1/1/3/1
Technique/Combat training: 0/1/1/5/1/0
Cunning/Survival: 1/1-5/1/0
Technique/Mobility: 1/1/2/3
Cunning/Scoundrel: 2/2/2/3
Cunning/Lethality: 2/1/1/4
Wild-Gift/Mindstar Mastery: 5/1/0/0
Wild-Gift/Anti-Magic: 3/1/3/1
Rogue Thoughts
So, a while back I wrote that first Rogue guide and messing around with Rogue characters recently, it seems like it would still work. The issue with it is...well, yeah it can get pretty bland. You just kinda throw knives over and over and stuff eventually dies. Instead of playing checkers, I decided to make a Rogue that plays chess. Here, you will have the potential for INSANE damage due to a few things I've ironed out over trying a bunch of rogues recently. How much damage? Well, if you look at my character right now, you'll notice that before when we were doing about 1.2k in passive poison damage per round best case scenario...we're now at 4.2k poison...oh and 2.1k bleeding. And 1k healing. Every turn. Again, this is best case scenario but real life has it...well, actually a lot worse for the bad guys, because everyone is going to be exploding from Toxic Death and passing all the poisons out to everything around.
If I were to compare this rogue to my previous one...I felt this one was a lot stronger, a lot tougher, and a lot more button/pushy. As in, you have a LOT of options that you can choose. My two deaths were because I play like a rushing psychopath and because I was really trying to figure out how to counter the true glass cannon nature of the build, but at the end I think I've got it where I wanted it, which was reflected in me never coming close to death again. That said, if you're someone who actually takes your time playing the game (like...doesn't auto-explore everywhere like me and just rush into the open and attack everything) you shouldn't really have any issues.
The other thing this build allowed me to do was get some real-life feelings for a few of the abilities and how valuable they were in actual practice in the game. Traps always seem like they'd be a waste of time, but my god, that Purge trap can crit, and it will literally one shot rare magic users by itself. The primed poison trap is especially stupid. Why? Because it's poison stacks...infinitely. You can actually primed poison something, do some stuff, and before it runs out, snap, get the trap back (and all the other abilities you used, because why not) primed poison trap AGAIN and the poison will just keep stacking. AND when stuff pops from toxic death it'll move on...it's just...just evil. Anyway, we'll go over a lot more in the talents and build analysis.
Index
1. Cheat sheet
2. Build rationale and analysis
3. Change log
Cheat Sheet
Stat distribution priority
So this is kinda weird, you're kinda going 40% Cun/40% Dex/20% Will. Eventually you'll max out Cun, Dex, and Will. The remaining points I put into strength, but you could go Con.
Category Point Order
Artifice, Assassination, Scoundrel, Inscription.
Inscriptions
Movement, Wild, Heroism, Heroism. The double Heroism was something that helped me never die once I started abusing it properly. Effectively, you start the combat off with Heroism, you take a bunch of damage, the Krog racial ability Fuel Pain resets the first Herosim, as the first Heroism starts to run out you pop the second Heroism, you get to the end of that...then since the First one is reset you activate that again...as it gets to the end of that one fuel pain is back so one gets reset and so forth. By that point you've had whatever...20+ rounds of some ridiculous amounts of heroism (because when you activate at like -1000 health it takes that into account, so now you have one that lasts for like 20 turns and goes until -2300 health. By this point you either should have killed whatever you're fighting or you're more of a psycho than me.
Prodigies
Mystical Cunning (NOTE: Make sure to start collecting Magic+ gear early, simply so that you can meet the prereq for this), Flexible Combat. I'll just say, I know it seems like it would be super hard to get that 50 magic as an anti-magic user, but it really wasn't bad at all. I ended up with like, +57 in magic gear by the time level 25 rolled around, just take a close look at everything you pick up before transmuting, you'll find magic on the weirdest "non arcane" stuff.
Equipment priority
Nature Damage/Pen, CUN/DEX, increase crit multiplier, heal mod, phy damage/penetration, typical hated status (blind/stun). You don't need to worry too much about poison because you'll be sitting at capped nature resist forever and you'll have Anti-Magic shield for a lot of stuff.
Alchemist Quest priority
+2 generic, +2 class, 3 Cunning/Dex
I missed the class points quest!
+4 stats or +4% physical crit
Analysis and Rationale
So, why Krog? I've started to mess around with builds that focus on only one type of damage (such as my recent Ghoul/Reaver guide or my Drem/Writhing One guide) and I've found it to be pretty fun and successful. Krog has a few interesting abilities that on paper don't seem like much, but in actual application are pretty nutty. First is Wrath of the Wild. This is kinda an interesting ability because for a short time (5 turns) you have the potential to effectively add a potential stun to literally any ability you have...like fan of knives. Drake Infused Blood gives you stun resist, which is cool, an element of your choosing resist (nature in this case, so much for poisons) but more importantly than that, it adds a huge amount of nature damage to EVERY melee attack you do. Every attack. All the time. For me it was 266 extra nature damage. So each fan of knives hit? +266 nature damage to each knife. Flurry? +266 nature damage to each attack. Quickdraw knife throw? +266. Garotte? +266, etc. But weird things begin happening when you take all of these various extra attacks the Rogue can stack, add Flexible Combat, and have gauntlets that generate more melee attacks. I'll post the picture of a garotte hitting for 10k damage, but 1.5k of that was the Krog's ability. Then we have fuel pain, which at 3 points, allows an inscription to be taken off of cool down every 15 turns if you take 20% or more of your health in damage, a great boon. Finally comes Drake-Blood strike, a sweet 8 cool down smack that will be 100% nature damage and silences for 3 turns. Effectively, everything there was just very useful.
Why poisons? Poisons are just ridiculously efficient. Because so much stuff stacks on top of each other in the game, and you're often fighting what you can see right now, with 20 other guys around the corner, the toxic death passing on the poison meant that damage was occurring passively throughout the entire battle field, and it's a LOT of damage. Entire rooms are evaporated with a single fan of knives. Uniques/Bosses will pop up on your screen already at 50% health and debilitated to hell. But moreso than that, we're stacking nature only, and that's what our poisons will do, so we'll get a lot of value from our damage choice. The other thing poisons provide is options. Volatile poison is one of my mandatories, but having the option to shut down healing, talents, or heal yourself a ridiculous amount is pretty nice. The more you hate yourself, the better the poisons get, since you can change poisons at instant speed (although there is a cool down to re-apply after you take one off). In the end, I pretty much ran volatile and Leeching, because the amount of healing Leeching was providing was absolutely obscene. I'd be at -1k one round and fully healed the next.
Is the assassination tree good? So...yeah, it's good. The issue is it goes from amazing to meh. Coup de Grace is simply remarkable value for 1 single point. Being able to shut off an opponent that's 20% or less and insta-hide after is so much more valuable than I originally assumed on a small 8 CD timer. The amount of times some ridiculous oozemancer/bulwark ranboss was at 19% health and freaking regenning 300 health a turn...and just being able to say "no" and they die is fantastic. Or worse yet, having one of those with Heroism up too, so not only do you have to chew threw their DR, but a mountain of negative life too. Terrorize is weird. Like...it does what it says it does, I mean it's cool, stuff will get stunned or slowed or whatever when you pop out of hiding, which you'll be doing literally all of the time as you kill stuff, Shadow Dance, kill more stuff, Coup de Grace etc. I just think the randomness of what you get detracts from the skill. Garotte is absolutely fantastic. Pinning, an automatic unarmed attack (which obviously can proc everything else), and silence that's passive. It just happens when you stab something from stealth.
Then...we have marked for death. I REALLY wanted to like this ability, I did. The issue becomes how it operates in actual combat compared to on paper. On paper you say to yourself "hey, a bunch more damage, and after 4 turns the thing gets hit for even MORE damage, AND if it dies I get MFD back!" I floated 4 points into this skill...and I hated it. The issue on insane is there's two types of combats, really. 1 turn combats, and chess match combats. You either throw a fan of knives or flurry something and that's that, or it's a serious fight and you're going to go back and forth. The fact that Marked for Death takes a turn just to apply, and you get no immediate damage or value for it makes it a huge liability. The other issue is, I'm not exactly sure what kind of effect it is, but opponents were purging it ALL the time, which meant I just wasted an entire turn. Instead, I could have put those points into something like Venomous Strike, which generates IMMEDIATE value. Or a primed poison trap, which again, gives immediate value. Or...basically anything else. Needless to say, I don't like the ability as it is. Instead I wish it was more like Touch of Death, in that it generated some damage value up front.
Why mindstars? The thing about mindstars is you can set their damage types...and one of those types is Nature. This means that our main weapon damage is going to be nature, and our offhand weapon is going to be every bit as good as our main hand weapon for things like Lunge. I really like Thorn Grab as well, because again, it's instant value. It's an instant that's ALSO doing nature damage and it's a slow, it's nice to have.
How good is artifice? Real good. Rogues brew is obviously useful, but the amount of use grappling hook got was nuts. An 8 turn, range 4 (at just 1 point) ability that yanks stuff to you (or you to it, you can even use it on walls or objects to get around) allows for some really efficient battlefield setup. Hidden Blades will generate a lot of damage just due to flexible combat, but the real jewel is the aptly named Assassinate Master Artificer ability you can add on it. With just 1 point, with a 10 turn CD, you can strike twice AUTOMATICALLY for a bunch of unarmed damage which ignores all resistance and armor...which can proc a bunch of other stuff. This is fantastic not only for stuff that pops evasion and ends up with like...a freaking 98 defense score, but as an opener from stealth, because you're starting off the fight with guaranteed damage which can proc your gauntlets, your flexible combat, your garotte, etc. Don't sleep on it, this hits like a ton of bricks and most of all, you can COUNT on it. It's GOING to hit.
And traps. Man, I keep planning on not using traps, thinking that the setup, the circ*mstance, the availability of them and the somewhat tedious nature would be a detriment, but they're just so fun and they do SO much. I typically ran with purging (this can crit and gets ridiculous), disarming (can ALSO crit and gets ridiculous), and primed poison trap (can stack and gets obscenely stupid in it's damage potential), and just the way the game is set up, the hallways, the groups of creatures, the pathing, the ability for you to dig your own tunnels makes them do their job really well. Lure is such a stupid little thing, but man, it's great at making everything use it's alpha strike against it, or pulling stair guardians off of the stairs so you can just ninja flip over them and climb up High Peak.
Weapon Choice
You really won't be using mind-stars until a bit later in the game. Probably most reliably around level 25 or so, but as a Krog, you can dual wield any one handed weapon with 1 point in drake infused blood. You'll probably end up with daggers, but it's nice to have options. Once you unlock mindstars are you start stacking points in it, then it's all mindstars, all the time. You'll also have your throwing knives, which ARE very useful because they give you some ability to engage at range as well as a way to breeze through the first 25 levels or so if you want. You can actually just play this build like the previous one for a while if you want just so you don't have to worry about getting nuked all the time while you start getting your key abilities up and running, just staying in stealth and tossing knives and poisoning stuff.
Class Talents
Technique/Dual Techniques: 1/2/0/0
[1] Dual Strike: It's a thing that you'll use in the beginning. I'm not going to lie, you're going to have so many damn buttons you can press, this one just seems lackluster. It's good filler.
[2] Flurry: Flurry ends threats. It's a pile of attacks that will be proccing a pile of other attacks. Oh and they all get your drake infused blood. 2 points is a good value.
Technique/Dualist: 1/1/1/4
[1] Dual Weapon Mastery: Sadly we can't parry with mindstars.
[1] Tempo: Cool to get a little extra stamina. Nothing crazy.
[1] Feint: It's good when it's good, but a lot of the time it sat on my bar doing nothing. However, all this leads to...
[4] Lunge: Now we're talking. Big weapon damage with your offhand (no issues since we use mindstars) that disarms with a chance based off of our accuracy. It also gets it's cooldown reduced by 1 each time something misses us. That's pretty hardcore, because stuff is going to be missing us ALL the time thanks to a pretty beefy defense score. I've been able to chain this. Now that said, is ALL of what we went through worth it for this disarm? I used this a LOT, so I feel like it was...but maybe next time I'll save these 7 points and try them elsewhere.
Technique/Throwing Knives: 5/3/1/1
[5] Throwing Knives: Great range engagement, gives us a lot of options, and generates some sweet passive damage with quickdraw later on down the line. Oh, and fan of knives is bonkers.
[3] Fan of Knives: A great way to start pretty much any mass combat. 3 points felt good for diminishing returns and gave enough knives to fill at least 3 creatures with 5 knives each.
[1] Precise Aim: For one point, it's good at what it does. The disables are welcome and end up occurring quite a bit. They pair good with backstab as well.
[1] Quickdraw: Neat little ability. The extra knife throw is only at a 10% possibility at 1 point, but you attack so many times per turn it'll happen more than you think.
Cunning/Stealth: 5/3/1/1
[5] Stealth: I'd max it. It makes over half of the game trivial if you want it to be, which is nice. It's really needed for the whole "I'm a master assassin" vibe.
[3] Shadowstrike: 3 points felt like a good cut off for this.
[1] Soothing Darkness: 1 point is fine, you get crazy diminishing returns at 2 points.
[1] Shadow Dance: 1 points is ok here. This build is more about popping out of stealth and bodying stuff in one turn than staying in stealth forever. Coup De Grace will get you back into stealth a LOT too.
Cunning/Trapping: 5/1/1/2
[5] Trap Mastery: Options galore. In my original guide, it was my dump tree just to see if there was any value to it, it ends up being more valuable than I think, every time. The purging trap is ridiculous since it can crit (and you should be stacking your crit mod to the moon), the disarming trap, same story, and you know how dumb the poison can get. If you want though, there's the bladestorm trap which actually does ok damage and will pull some aggro or body block if you want.
[1] Lure: Something to bloop around corners or doorways to get stuff to alpha strike the poor thing for a billion damage so you can pop out of stealth and put it to sleep afterward. Every ninja needs that tree stump replacement jutsu after all.
[1] Advanced Trap Deployment: Getting a 3 range for all of your floor traps provides a ton more options for their placement.
[2] Trap Priming: I liked it for the poison trap. It's more poison that can spread, it's our beloved nature damage, it stacks with everything, and it's a beefy radius 3.
Cunning/Dirty Fighting: 1/4/0/0
[1] Dirty Fighting: It's just there to get to...
[4] Backstab: I like this because it's passive. It's just there, working quietly in the background. You're going to be throwing out so many disables and attacking so many times, it'll do it's thing.
Cunning/Poisons: 5/2/5/4
[5] Apply Poison: Poison just gets nuts. This is the base stats and the chance to apply it so max it.
[2] Toxic Death: 2 points for the radius 4 explosion. This means when the first guy dies...everyone else is pretty much dying too.
[5] Vile Poisons: The vile poisons are good and give you a lot of options, and this ups their base effectiveness and unlocks the various types. In the beginning I was rolling Volatile and Numbing. Eventually though I switched numbing for leeching and never looked back. The healing you'll get from it once you start getting some heal mod is just ballistic. Considering the mountain of HP you'll have thanks to constantly being under Heroism...once I started to play this way, nothing came close to downing me.
[4] Venomous Strike: A fantastic 7 turn nuke. The best part is, we're capable to use it in melee OR at range, which is nice.
Cunning/Artifice: 2/1/1/1
[2] Rogue's Tools: I went 2 points for the 2 physical effects removed for Rogue's Brew.
[1] Cunning Tools: Most of these are 1 point wonders for the rest of this tree. I liked grappling hook for this build. A lot of times, you want to get into melee and you don't want to necessarily use your tumble or your movement infusion. The grappling hook is just great at positioning. Sadly, it doesn't appear that forced movement can make a creature pop a floor trap though.
[1] Intricate Tools: I choose the Hidden Blades here. It's got a 4 turn cool down, but it really helps for the "pop out of stealth and one shot something" since it's an extra attack that can proc more stuff. But, it's real value is...
[1] Master Artificer: ...using this to select "assassinate". An auto-hitting, ignore everything, 241% freaking double tap that can also proc everything else. Loved it, used it all the time.
Technique/Assassination: 1/1/4/0
[1] Coup de Grace: Super value for 1 point. +50% damage if the creature is at 30% health or less, or "you die" if it's at 20% health or less. Sounds situational, but it's fantastic in practice because it's a good base damage at 125%, it's hitting with both weapons, and the save is a physical save against your ACCURACY. Which will end up being stupidly high with this build anyway.
[1] Terrorize: It's passive...it does some stuff, it's mostly there to get to...
[4] Garrote: The quintessential master assassin ability. Putting a wire around someone's neck while giving them the "shhhh...nothing personal kid..." speech as they take a boatload of damage is very welcome. 4 points means you can chain it indefinitely and gives a 4 turn silence. Welcome to mages simply being lootbags.
[0] Marked for Death: I don't like it. If it was instant, it would be worth it. Or if it did some weapon damage up front, but as a "you get no damage now for this thing that has a massive cool down and could get purged but if it doesn't you'll get some damage later" you're better off putting your points in other stuff that will give you damage NOW.
Generic Talents
Race/Krog: 1/1/3/1
[1] Wrath of the Wilds: Neat little ability, turns any melee attack into a potential stunning attack. It's instant and lasts 5 turns, nothing wrong with that.
[1] Drake Infused Blood: Glorious, stun resist, an element of your choosing resist, and that element as bonus damage that scales pretty nicely. You can change it throughout your life, so if you really want to just kinda walk over Urkis for instance, you could choose lightning and probably end up with a 70% lightning resist with some gear when you fight him.
[3] Fuel Pain: Once every 15 turns if you get hit for 20% or more of your life, one of your infusions comes off cool down and you get rid of infusion saturation. Pretty sweet, good for heroism for days. 3 points for the 15 turn cool down.
[1] Drake Blood Strike: A big smack on a 8 turn CD that's all nature damage and silences. Nice to have another silence option against mages. Silence also counts for backstab which is cool.
Technique/Combat Training: 0/1/1/5/1/0
[0] Thick Skin: I wish I had the points for it. But hey, glass cannon and all that. Well that and healing our entire health bar every turn.
[1] Heavy Armor Training: 1 point for gauntlets and boots and stuff.
[1] Light Armor Training: 1 point for your robes that you'll end up in.
[5] Combat Accuracy: With scaling you could go less and maybe put a few points into thick skin or device mastery, I just went balls to the wall here since so much stuff relies on our accuracy.
[1] Dagger Mastery: We'll be throwing daggers and we'll have quick draw and stuff. You could go 0 but 1 point gives you quite a bit of value.
[0] Weapons Mastery: Nope.
Cunning/Survival: 1/0-5/1/0
[1] Heightened Senses: Just to get to...
[0-5] Device Mastery: This can be amazing...unless you're like me and never find a single freaking ring of speed. Or Eden's Guile at the end of the game...yay.
[1] Track: Hopefully you can get it through an escort...unless you're like me and never get that opportunity. Luckily I had it on my gauntlets.
Technique/Mobility: 1/1/2/5
[1] Disengage: 1 point. I used it a few times, most of the time you'll have better options.
[1] Evasion: It was fine. 1 point just seemed like enough and we'll be using a lot of generics.
[2] Tumble: I've always loved this ability. It's instant, 2 points gets you a 3 range and an 8 turn cool down...it's just perfect for battlefield management or as a way to get into a position where you can movement infusion to nope out of there.
[3] Trained Reactions: It negates a boatload of damage and it's like...the only passive defense rogues get if they're not in stealth 24 hours a day. 3 points for diminishing returns.
Cunning/Scoundrel: 2/2/2/3
[2] Lacerating Strikes: Lots of diminishing returns on this. 2 points seemed to be a good breaking point.
[2] Scoundrel's Strategies: Cool for what it is. Looks like it got nerfed a bit though, 2 points is a good break point.
[2] Misdirection: Does a lot of stuff. 2 points for diminishing returns. If nothing else, it gives you a very nice chunk of defense score.
[3] Fumble: 3 points for diminishing returns. Big fan of this, we end up attacking a LOT so it stacks pretty fast.
Cunning/Lethality: 2/1/0/0
[2] Lethality: More critical % and more critical damage. Fast diminishing returns after 2 points. Also makes your throwing knives use cunning instead of strength, interestingly.
[1] Expose Weakness: 1 point was enough. Mainly it's 30% all damage pen on a stick.
[1] Blade Furry: I mean extra attack speed is sweet. Really though I used it more for the "attack an extra adjacent opponent for 100% weapon damage". More attacks is good.
[4] Snap: This is "reset basically everything you have" which is pretty nice. 4 points gets you 7 tier 4 talents, and that's pretty much everything. Venomous strike, flurry, lunge, shadow dance, primed trap, Rogues Brew...I don't like not attacking in a turn...but getting literally EVERYTHING off of cool down is really...really good.
Wild-Gift/Mindstar Mastery: 5/1/0/0
[5] Psiblades: It's your main weapon damage, max it.
[1] Thorn Grab: It's an instant that does nature damage over time and has a long lasting slow effect. That's pretty sweet, it's basically just a free thing you can do in a round.
[0] Leaves Tide: I DO like this ability, but we're just doing a ton of other stuff with our turns.
[0] Nature's Equilibrium: Does a ton of weapon damage and has a heal attached. I could see going 5/1/1/1 in this tree if you can spare the points.
Wild-Gift/Anti-Magic: 3/1/3/1
[3] Resolve: Nice bonus resists, 3 points for the extra resolve bonuses.
[1] Antimagic Zone: It's ok, our mindpower and physical power isn't sky high though.
[3] Antimagic Shield: One of our main active defenses.
[1] Mana Clash: Drains magic stuff and gives us some equalibrium back, but the big benefit is after killing Urkis this also removes 4 magical effects. Pretty sweet.
Prodigies
Mystical Cunning: I built a Rogue without this, and one with this just to kinda see. Get it. It's just that good. The poisons are going to be doing a ton of work, and being able to poison everything, and the entire poison tree getting stupidly enhanced as well as getting your venomous strike on a 30% less CD is ridiculous. Oh, and it bonkerizes your traps too. As I've said, just take the time to look at everything each zone to start collecting that + magic gear so you can meet the 50 magic requirement. You CAN take this, even if you're anti-magic, you just won't be able to use the gravity trap. But hey, you'll get the purging trap, which is freaking nuts.
Flexible Combat: This is basically a 50-100% damage increase for you. The build has so many attacks and so many procs that flexible combat will be generating a metric ton of additional damage.
Inscriptions
Infusions
Movement: I use this on almost every character that isn't undead. In the early game it keeps you alive, and in the late game it's good because positioning will make you do a ton more damage and it's still good for keeping you alive. The Rogue wants movement, and this build wants INSTANT movement.
Wild: The Rogue doesn't have a lot of ways to clear out effects, so it's kind of necessary.
Heroism: Your death insurance. It's instant, and you can stack one after another thanks to fuel pain. It will basically double your health pool.
Heal: You'll probably run this until you can find a good Heroism. I used a heal probably until level 30 or so. Once you get your two heroisms and 3 points in fuel pain, you should be set.
Changelog
1/15/22: Guide created.
Notes
And so here we are, a classic "big damage" bursty master assassin that basically relies on one type of damage and can stack it to stupid levels. Unlike the previous rogue build which you can play with one finger while sipping a scotch, this is more like playing street fighter 2. You get in there, judo chop everything to death while dancing around with your light sabers and making everything vomit up it's own stomach thanks to your simply stupid amounts of nature/poison damage.
