damnox

Hi, I know this thread is a bit old, but I thought I'd add my input for any newcomers crossing it. I've leveled multiple rogues along the years, and most of them I have done with a heavy combat (swords) oriented talent build. Although I do agree that this is the "easiest" way to level a rogue, I find it very monotone. Your fighting style will be mostly limited to: Run to Target > Sinister Strike (until target is low enough on hp) > Eviscerate, (or Slice n' Dice [if you'll be fighting multiple targets or chaining them]). You might get a Riposte or sword proc here and there, but that's pretty much it. You'll want to avoid as much down time as possible, so any CC is out of the question, unless you need to bandage up with Gouge. Where as if your talents are oriented towards combat (daggers) with some points in subtlety and some in assassination, you will have a much more diverse and interesting experience of the leveling phase. Obviously enough, you will perform much better in group combat, where attacking from behind is done easily, and your damage per energy spent will have a much greater output. Nonetheless, being that it's possible to strafe around a target and Backstab it while soloing, makes daggers that much more interesting. Furthermore, having points invested in Subtlety will enable you to grab Opportunity and then Camouflage, boosting your Backstab and Ambush damage by another significant amount (their damage is already freaking ridiculous) and making you much faster in stealth motion and enabling you to stealth in promptly manner after finishing a fight (normally, dagger rogues can kill a single mob in less than 10 seconds and have to wait for stealth's cooldown to finish). Also, being stealthy is the only thing that makes a rogue better than all other classes. It enables you to pick and choose your fights, enables you to Pickpocket humanoids (holy shit that a good money-making technique and gives you an absurd amount of healing potions [so much that you have to sell them]), and gives you the ability to Ambush a target for half of their HP (unless it's a high armor rating target, in which case Garrote is much better [but you still get the 20% damage boost from Opportunity]). I then like to get 2/3 initiative and 2/3 improved ambush (because, after bonuses from Remorseless, Malice, Dagger Spec and imp Ambush, you don't really need to have 105% chance to crit chance with Ambush). While in assassination, you still retain the same advantages as a heavy combat oriented talent spec. Remorseless attacks is a must for any rogue that's still in the leveling phase, Malice is always good to have, improved SnD is a go-to talent, Relentless Strikes is a nice plus for a single talent point investment, and 5/5 Lethality (with high crit chance %) makes a lot of sense. You won't see much difference in the combat tree except the fact that you'll be dropping riposte for 3/3 improved backstab and 2/2 Endurance. You'll still be able to get Blade Flurry, but swapping 5/5 dual wield spec and sword spec for 5/5 dagger spec. (The fact that while your leveling, your weapon damage is much lower than at level 60, a 50% damage boost on your off-hand might seem like a lot, but 50% of 20-40 damage is not that much.). The only real sad thing to lose from combat is Adrenaline Rush, but you're getting so much more from other talents that it's somewhat a good trade off. Oh and the 0.04 bonus per point of weapon skill from Weapon expertise, is just a thing for end-game players that need to deal with glancing blows from bosses, so weapon expertise is quite useless while leveling. As for fighting multiple targets at once... well, you'll need to make use of Sap. Afterwards, since both specs, combat swords and combat(mixed) daggers, utilize Blade flurry, your multiple target fighting shouldn't be affected much. I'd even say that striking a secondary target with a strafe Backstab is amazing. Also, You should strongly consider using an add-on such as Item Rack. This gives you the freedom to script main-hand weapon switching between Sword and Dagger. That way, you can start a fight with Ambush if you like, and automatically switch to swords with your next Sinister Strike. This is an excellent way to enjoy dagger abilities, while still focusing talent distribution towards a Sword spec build. Lastly, I've seen a number of comments claiming that there are more swords than there are daggers while leveling, and although this is true, you should know that there are 12 BoP swords and 9 BoP Daggers (if I recall correctly from my previous research) between levels 18 and 54. I don't think that you'll have trouble finding a dagger to use. They might be a bit harder to come by, but you really have to be lazy not to find an adequate dagger for your level. So all-in-all, yes a heavy combat swords oriented talent spec is much more efficient in terms of time and "ease of access", but, in my opinion, daggers offer a much more versatile style of play, and are a lot more fun. Personal Leveling Build: 16/21/14 Order of attribution: 2/2 Remorseless Attacks - Forces you to chain pull (adds a psychological factor to your play style). Level 11 - Combat basics 2/2 Imp Sinister Strike 3/3 Imp Gouge 5/5 Precision 3/3 Imp Backstab Level 24 - Switch to Subtlety. 5/5 Opportunity 5/5 Camouflage 2/3 Imp Ambush - Don't need more than 2 points with Remorseless Attacks active. Level 36 - Back to Combat to finish the core build. 2/2 Endurance 5/5 Dagger Spec 1/1 Blade Flurry Level 44 - Finish off with Assassination talents. These add good depth to your main abilities. 3/5 Malice 3/3 Imp SnD 5/5 Malice 1/1 Relentless Strikes 5/5 Lethality 2/3 Initiative - Get that extra combo point, but you'll probably switch builds soon for end-game content. I managed to get a few numbers written down, comparing swords and dagger main abilities with items that you normally get in the mid-range levels. I am completely ignoring attack power for all types of damage here, and only considering the weapons damage and the players critical hit chance. Dagger: Coldrage Dagger: 31-58 dmg, 29.7 dps, 1.5spd Sword: Vanquisher's Sword: 46-86 dmg, 30.0 dps, 2.2spd A Rank 6 Sinister Strike (lvl 36) will do 100% damage + 33 additional damage and will cost 40 energy. You will be able to do 5 Sinister strikes per 10 second fight A Rank 5 Backstab (lvl 36) will do 150% damage + 90 additional damage and will cost 60 energy. You will be able to do 3 Backstabs per 10 second fight. A Rank 4 Ambush (lvl 34) will do 250% damage + 125 additional damage and will cost 60 energy. You can only do 1 Ambush per 10 second fight A rank 1 Riposte will do 150% damage and will cost 10 energy. Lets say you have a base parry chance of 5% and an extra 5% from the talent, that gives you 10% chance of it ever activating. A parry will then only happen once per 10 attacks. A melee capable monster will attack once per 2 seconds. In a 10 second fight that's equals 5 strikes, resulting in 1 parry per 2 fights. So knowing this, we can calculate the amount of damage per energy point spent quite easily. A R6 SS with Vanquishers sword will hit from 79-119 and will have approximately (at that level range) 20% chance to crit. A critical hit will do 158-238 dmg. Taking the lowest possible outcome, we get 79dmg / 40 energy = 1.9 dmg per energy point. Knowing that 20% of our Sinister Strikes will land critical hits, we can add a theoretical 20% bonus to that, resulting in: 2.28 dmg per energy point. A R5 BS with Coldrage Dagger will hit from 137-177 and will have approximately (at that level range) 55% chance to crit. A critical hit will do 274-354 damage. Taking the lowest possible outcome, we get 137dmg / 60 energy = 2.28 dmg per energy point. Knowing that half our backstabs are going to land critical hits, we can add a theoretical 50% bonus to that, resulting in 3.42 dmg per energy point. A R4 Ambush with Coldrage dagger will hit from 200-270 and will have approximately (counting in Remorseless Attacks) 90% chance to crit. A critical hit will do 400-540 damage. Taking the lowest possible outcome, we get 200dmg / 60 energy = 3.33 dmg per energy point. Knowing that 9 out of 10 Ambushes will be critical hits, we can add a theoretical 90% bonus to that, resulting in 6.33dmg per energy point. Riposte with Vanquisher's sword will hit from 115-215 and have 20% chance to crit. A critical hit will do 230-430 damage. Taking the lowest possible outcome, we get 115dmg / 10 energy = 11.5 dmg per energy point. We can add the 20% bonus from critical hits, resulting in 13.8dmg per energy point. Pretty damn good, but only once per 2 fights. Let's half the dmg per energy point to compare it to our 1 Ambush per fight. Result: 6.25dmg per energy point. Lets add BS and Ambush dmg per energy point and compare to SS and Riposte dmg per energy point. BS+Amb: 3.42 + 6.33 = 9.75 SS+Riposte: 2.28 + 6.25 = 8.53 Let's go even further and imagine that a fight lasts 10 seconds. Normally I would have to make a scene for 100 hits to count in the actual critical hit chance, but while leveling 100 hits in a single fight is improbable, so lets go with 10 seconds instead. In a 10 second fight, you will hit 4.54 times with Vanquishers Sword and 6.66 times with Coldrage Dagger. For Vanquishers sword, if we take the lowest possible damage outcome of the weapon, that's 4.54 * 46dmg = 208.54dmg. If we take the highest possible damage, that's 4.54 * 86dmg = 390.44dmg. For Coldrage Dagger, if we take the lowest possible damage outcome of the weapon, that's 6.66 * 31dmg = 206.66dmg. If we take the highest possible damage, that's 6.66 * 58dmg = 386.68dmg. If we factor in the theoretical 20% crit chance for swords and 25% crit chance for daggers (combining all talents and approximate crit chances at that level) Vanquishers sword would do a total of 250.25-468.53 damage and Coldrage dagger would do a total of 258.33-483.35 damage, over the period of 10 seconds. So in the end, white damage for daggers is not to be underestimated. Note: I understand that other factors would change the outcome of every situation... but the numbers speak for themselves.

And I'm still trying to figure out what class to play.