Celtic Heroes

I expect to really start a firestorm in the rogue forum. This is what happens when a mage main starts playing his rogue more.

I assume a one minute fight.

In solo play sneaky is only cast once while poison weapon is used for every auto hit. If you spam all other attack skills there are only 10.5 ticks left to auto. (You get this with a stop watch recording the cast, recover and duration time for each skill. (In a group you get 1.3 sneakys but only if you don’t have agro, but you can poison the tank.)

So if I want to put points into a skill how much damage am I getting per point spent?
Well you ignore base damage since that is a gift and only look at the extra damage you get per point. For my toon at the time I did the research I got 27 sneaky per point and 1.5 poison per point.

So If I only get one auto per tick (this makes it easier to adjust for your preferred weapon) my poison does 16 pts damage in a two min fight for each skill point. But, Sneaky only does 27 damage per point while soloing. But if the fight lasts 100 seconds or more, poison catches up and does more since you can’t sneaky again.

If in a group as long as the tank can hold agro I get off more sneakys so 35 damage per point but 31 damage for poison because I buffed the tank. If I can poison a third person like a ranger it goes to 46 and just gets better, but can never do more sneaky because of the 45 sec refresh.

We could conclude that:
In solo mode sneaky is only better than poison if the mob can be killed in less than 100 seconds.
In group mode they are about even if I only poison one more person, but, if I buff more, then poison rocks. It just doesn’t look so impressive.

I hope this made sense but I made one assumption that is actually stupid.
I said you get 10.5 ticks left to auto and assumed you only land one hit in that 5 seconds.
That is a very slow weapon. I went to the pactice dummys and got off 55 punches in 60 seconds or about 5 punches per tick.
Or with 20% haste gloves and a finepoint dagger its 3.6 hits per tick.
With a connach spear unhasted its 1.3 hits per tick.
All you need is a weapon combination that gets you 1.8 hits per 5 seconds and poison will always out dps sneaky per skill point.

Small edit- unless the thing you are fighting is so weak you kill it in less than 20 seconds.

We could conclude that:
In solo mode sneaky is only better than poison if the mob can be killed in less than 100 seconds.
In group mode they are about even if I only poison one more person, but, if I buff more, then poison rocks. It just doesn’t look so impressive.

I only got to L56 before I stopped Rogue (running out of energy lol) so can't really comment on this

But at what level does a Rogue fight (solo, +1-3 lvl, 1 star mob) last longer than 90 seconds?

At 56, I was still able to take off 30-50% of L60 mob (fairy) morale after Sneaky + Fast. @ 56, that's with boar dagger lol and a sharp rondell (cata vendor) and no lux or warden gear.

Edit: corrected level.

But at what level does a Rogue fight (solo, +1-3 lvl, 1 star mob) last longer than 90 seconds?

Remember thats only if you are using something slow like a tank using a hammer.

I started working this because of 4 star mobs. How many times can you cast rend in a fight? it only has a 15 sec duration. If you are using knuckle blades and haste gloves then by the time that second rend is over, if its not dead then you should probably switch to to poison rather than sneaky.

no poison is not better than sneaky because sneak does so much dmg as a first hit, at a higher level poison IS more effective than quick strike because qs only hits for about as much as auto attack, and a maxed poison adds 50ish poison damage per swing and is also castable on other group members making it a more effective dps skill

no poison is not better than sneaky because sneak does so much dmg as a first hit, at a higher level poison IS more effective than quick strike because qs only hits for about as much as auto attack, and a maxed poison adds 50ish poison damage per swing and is also castable on other group members making it a more effective dps skill

But sneaky does a lot at level 1 skill. Its the extra points that I am looking at. if you have points to max both then great but if you have to choose between the two....

Also quickstrike hits 6 times per min and is an instantaneous cast. if spamming quick how many autos do you loose? Ive tried timing it and I dont think you loose any autos.

put the points into sneaky first, every qs you cast, you lose an auto attack(i do using haste gloves and frozen dagger anyways) so until i get my hands on a grand royal or dragon qs ring i feel that poison is offering better dps than qs

at a lower level it is debatable, i also am not so familiar with lower leveled rogue mechanics post update 3

no poison is not better than sneaky because sneak does so much dmg as a first hit, at a higher level poison IS more effective than quick strike because qs only hits for about as much as auto attack, and a maxed poison adds 50ish poison damage per swing and is also castable on other group members making it a more effective dps skill

But sneaky does a lot at level 1 skill. Its the extra points that I am looking at. if you have points to max both then great but if you have to choose between the two....

Also quickstrike hits 6 times per min and is an instantaneous cast. if spamming quick how many autos do you loose?

Ah, I think I see. Good question, tho numbers would be good to see. I never thought to leave Sneaky at L1.

Personally, i use both skills, but overall I'd have to give it to poison weapon, with both of them maxed (30/30) and using a +5 sneaky ring, i still find poison more effective because of the long term buff effect, the poison damage i basically un-resist able by any mobs, where as the sneaky attack is inaccurate and i only hit about 30% of it's maximum capability. Sneaky attack also uses a hell of alot of energy compared to some of the other skills.

My skills are currently: Posion weapon, Sneaky attack, Fast reflexes, Distract and smokebomb, but i plan to drop sneaky when I reach level 150.

Roberts, Sulis - level 148.

no poison is not better than sneaky because sneak does so much dmg as a first hit, at a higher level poison IS more effective than quick strike because qs only hits for about as much as auto attack, and a maxed poison adds 50ish poison damage per swing and is also castable on other group members making it a more effective dps skill

But sneaky does a lot at level 1 skill. Its the extra points that I am looking at. if you have points to max both then great but if you have to choose between the two....

Also quickstrike hits 6 times per min and is an instantaneous cast. if spamming quick how many autos do you loose? Ive tried timing it and I dont think you loose any autos.

Quick strike is a waste of time in my opinion, sure, it's a instantaneous cast, but most of the time i hit lower than the auto, and even if you do hit more damage you gain little to nothing because it slows down your auto attack.

Try to stick to more of the buff skills, they help long term and you should find them useful when leveling.

i still like sneaky because of the large damage headstart on a mob, and yes poison definately works better than qs