EQ:Rogue  

Overview

Rogues are one of the premier melee DPS classes. They are situationally the highest DPS class, although in some cases berserker will clock in ahead of them. Rogues do need to be able to reach the back of the mob to cause their best damage, but in most cases, this is not a problem.

Rogues receive a number of burst DPS utilities, meaning that they can temporarily achieve an amount of damage much higher than their average. Rogues also have the Razorarc line, allowing a powerful first hit at the cost of endurance. High level rogues consistently using their disciplines ("discs") and abilities can use quite a lot of endurance, but have the Second Wind line of discs to help them regenerate endurance.

In addition to their damage-dealing abilities, rogues have several other class-unique abilities.

They can develop their abilities to Sneak and Hide to very high levels. Other skills include crafting and applying poison to their primary weapon, sensing and disarming traps, picking pockets, and picking locks for doors that may or may not have a key.

A rogue with highly developed skill levels for Sneak and Hide, coupled with their Shroud of Stealth alternate ability, this allows them to make fantastic scouts and corpse-draggers. This is primarily due to not relying on spells or potions that specialize in keeping the user invisible to either living or undead mobs. Additionally, mobs that would normally see a character using a spell or potion are much less likely to see a sneak/hidden rogue.

There are a variety of poisons that a rogue can create through the unique, class-related skill Make Poison: snare poisons, direct damage poison, and death-over-time poisons are the most common.

Most traps are not visible. If a rogue is actively attempting to detect trap, and one is within the range of a rogue's ability to find, he will be pointed in the direction of the trap. Once a trap has been sensed, it can be disarmed. This can be helpful in parts of Ssraeshza Temple, or LDoN instanced zones.

The pickpocket ability only allows the rogue to steal items that are not no-trade and coins, and can only be used on NPCs. A more highly developed ability to pickpocket reduces the chance that the NPC will catch the rogue, which can be very helpful in the rogue 1.0 epic.

The need for the ability to pick locks has been significantly reduced after the Kunark and Luclin expansions. Certain locked doors, such as the entrance to The Ruins of Old Paineel, the entrance to the city of Paineel, or the doors in Charasis, can be opened by a rogue with a lockpick set and a sufficiently high enough skill. There are certain zones, such as the City of Mist or Vex Thal, that require a rogue's ability to pick locks, as there are no keys.

Skills

Rogues may also develop their abilities in tradeskills and non-native languages.

Sneak/Hide

The ability to sneak and hide simultaneously while unseen through high level zones is something that makes a rogue very popular for scouting. They are able to pass by both living and undead creatures unseen and unscathed to check on raid encounters that may reside beyond a ranger's ability to track from a safe location, or to drag corpses during a raid where summoning them isn't viable.

While non-rogue wood elves and Halflings are able to develop some ability to sneak and hide, they are limited to a cap of 50. Rogues develop their abilities in Sneak and Hide equivilant to their caps for weapon skills. At lower levels, sneaking causes rogues to walk or run very slowly. At level 51, you begin to speed up (gradually with each level) to an unnoticable difference at level 60.

Even with a well developed ability with both skills, there are still a number of NPCs that can see a sneak/hidden rogue, such as liches and banshees in Plane of Hate or skeletons in Acrylia Caverns. However, rogues can obtain the Shroud of Stealth AA. This is a passive ability that enhances the hide ability, and greatly reduces the number of NPCs that can see you.

Sneak and Hide can be broken in many of the same manners that an invisibility spell can be dropped. If a rogue is hit by an area-of-effect spell, conventional trap, attacks an NPC, or is attacked, he ceases to hide. Sneak must be broken (dropped) manually. However, a rogue that is sensing and disarming a trap before it has the chance to "go off" will not become visible. With mob-spawn traps, where simply crossing a certain part on the floor causes mobs to spawn, Hide is not dropped when the mobs spawn. As these types of traps are undetectable, one must simply remember their locations. Mob-spawn traps are happily limited to Akheva Ruins and Vex Thal.

Rogues may also want to strongly consider obtaining the Escape AA. This alternate ability completely clears a rogue's aggro from any mobs. This can be a life saver in the rare occasions that a higher level rogue simply forgets to sneak and hide while scouting, especially in raid areas. It is important that a rogue both sneak and hide immediately after escaping, as to remain unseen after clearing aggro. It has a 72 minute reuse timer, but this can be reduced through other AAs.

Evade

Rogues are able to employ hiding during battle into another unique ability: evade. While this is not a skill in the sense of a monk's ability to feign death, the result is similar: it reduces aggro generated by the rogue. This is very beneficial if the group's tank temporarily loses aggro on a mob.

Using Evade

Evade becomes available as soon as Hide does, and isn't actually a skill itself, but rather, you evade by using the Hide ability during battle.

To evade, simply press the hide button while your character isn't moving (without AAs to enable hiding while moving).

• Upon a successful Evade attempt, the rogue will see the message "You have momentarily ducked away from the main combat."
• Upon a failed Evade attempt, the rogue will see the message "Your attempts at ducking clear of combat fail."
• The rogue's success rate is dependent on the skill level of their Hide ability.

When to Evade

When exactly a rogue should use Evade is up for debate. You will likely find yourself using evade differently depending on the encounter and your tank's ability to hold aggression. Here are some possible scenarios:

Save it:

• Save evade for when the mob turns on you, that way it will always be available for that "Oh sh*t!" moment when the tank temporarily loses aggro.
• When using this technique, it is best to wait a few seconds before re-attacking, allowing the tank time to reestablish hate.
• You may have to evade multiple times in a row to lose aggro.

After a big hit:

• Only use evade every time you land an exceptionally hard hit (crit poison procs, multiple poison procs in a row, twin procs, double/triple crit backstabs), effectively negating large increases in your total hate, and preventing the mob from turning on you.
• You will prevent the mob from turning on you most of the time, but will likely still see yourself with aggro every once in awhile.

Periodically:

• Through pure experience you learn to know when it has been long enough since your last evade, and only evade often enough to keep yourself just below the tanks spot on the hatelist.
• Ideally you evade just often enough to never steal aggro from the tank but not so often that you lower your total dps by sitting out of combat too often.

Spam Macro:

• Make a fully-automatic evade macro (see Macro below) that allows you to stop attacking, evade, then begin attacking again all in one button press, almost instantaneously. Just spam this, lowering your hate number some each time.
• This may allow you to stay lower on the hatelist than is actually necessary.
• Because you are always waiting on the reuse timer, evade may not be available for that "Oh sh*t!" moment when the tank, for whatever reason, has temporarily lost aggro. (could lead to death)
• Though it seems to work instantaneously, the macro does actually take time to complete. This can be seen when spamming the macro as fast as you can: you will barely be able to get a swing in. Passively spamming the macro will very likely reduce your total dps, though by how much is unknown (it may or may not be a noteworthy amount.)
• It is also possible that each time you press the macro, the act of turning off auto-attack and turning it back on resets your current weapon swing and lowers your overall dps. Passively spamming (pressing the auto-macro when it won't trigger an evade) could have an impact on your total number of swings.
• i.e. You normally swing every .4 seconds, and at the moment are .3 seconds into your next swing, but press your macro, and reset your current swing back to .0. You now have to wait another .4 seconds before you swing again, for a total of a .7 second swing. (Only speculation)

Tips

• Rogues are not tanks and lose a substantial amount of dps every time the mob turns to attack them. Attacking from behind prevents the mob from using defensive skills against your weapon swings (riposte, evade, etc.), not to mention you only get max backstab damage from the back. Valuable rogues will find the right balance between evading and doing great amounts of damage.

• Be patient. When the mob is bouncing between you and the tank, or you just can not seem to get the mob off of you, it's best to evade and stop attacking. Let your tank beat on the mob for an extended amount of time, even after he gets the mobs attention, before reengaging the target. If you don't give the tank a chance to get ahead of you on the hatelist, he may never get aggro back from you in time to prevent your death (or a substantial loss in dps).

• After evading, if you don't wait long enough, and proc a poison dd or do a hard hit immediately after losing agro, you will most likely find yourself with agro again.

• Evading is a good way to get skill ups for Hide. Combine Hide, pickpockets, disarm, begging, or sneak in a one click skill-up macro whenever you evade.

• Pass it on! Many rogues do not know about evade because it is not an openly advertised skill. You can't learn it at a rogue GM, there's no tome for it, and there's no button that says "Evade". If you see a rogue that is having a hard time with aggression, they may not know about it. It couldn't hurt to mention it nicely. You might actually help them. A lot.

• Don't not evade! Now that you know how to use it, use it! Often!

Playable Races

Secrets of Faydwer Disc Info

• 80 - Tome of Fadelure Rk. II
• Faction: Bertoxxulous's Chosen
• Faction Level: Kindly
• Merchant: Lanika Shadestepper
• Zone: Hills of Shade
• Location: 285, -550, 50

Weapons of Interest for Rogues

• Locustlure This weapon procs a slow:
• Effect: Walking Sleep
• 1: Decrease Attack Speed by 23% (L13) to 35% (L60)
• 2: Increase Disease Counter by 6

• Obtenebrate Short Sword This weapon procs a snare:
• Effect: Dooming Darkness
• 1: Decrease Hitpoints by 20 per tick
• 2: Decrease Movement by 48% (L27) to 59% (L48)

• Fabled Obtenebrate Short Sword Fabled version with an even better snare:
• Effect: Festering Darkness
• 1: Decrease Hitpoints by 50 per tick
• 2: Decrease Movement by 60%

External links

• The Safehouse
• The Allakhazam Class Forums
• Rasper's List of Rogue tomes 76+, including where to get them
• EQ trader's Make Posion page
• Allakhazam's Listing of all rogue tomes
• Awesome and regularly updated guide on In game commands, hotkey setups and other great stuff
• Excellent and to the point Rogue 1.0 Epic walkthrough