Rogue QuestionsFollow

I have just begun to lvl the rogue that has been spinning for longer than i can remember, i would like to know a couple of things before i get past 20 so that i don't apear a complete newb.

1. what is the correct coding for evasion hotkey? I know it is atk off , hide , atk on but what would it look like on a hotkey, is there a /pause line between abilities etc.

2. is there a Safe way to Raise Pick pocket?

3. is there a quick way to raise backstab <lvl 13 and only 1 increase in skill>

4. should i go with 2 piercers or take a better 1hs weapon for offhand?

5. is it worth me taking up Poisoning? is it expensive and a money sink or is it truely worthwile <i imagine that it will gain aggro which is not a rogues best friend>

You have sneak in your evade key?!

Anyway: look on which hotkey your hide-skill is located. Create a macro which looks like:

line 1: /attack off
line 2: doability <number of your hide-skill button>
line 3: /attack on

No pauses needed.

Don't forget to stand still while evading. Move and hide don't mix. A well executed evade will give you a "You have succesfully moved out of battle "(or something like that) message.

2. is there a Safe way to Raise Pick pocket?
Hotbutton your pickpocket ability and use it during combat. You could put it into your evade-macro, but a faild pp attempt will GAIN you aggro, which you don't want, of course.

Secondly: people in your (pickup) group will start ******** over stolen loot and cash. Trust me on that one. Offer to be the ML and do your job correctly. Keep your pp'd cash, words, gems and in a seperate bag (at least, that is what I do) and sell and split when your group breaks up. Rogues don't need to sit down for mana, pull and whatnot, so you have enough time during fights to be the main looter.

3. is there a quick way to raise backstab <lvl 13 and only 1 increase in skill>
Other then always keeping a piercer in primary and hit your backstab button the second it pops, no. You should have no problems in maxing your bs-skill every level.

4. should i go with 2 piercers or take a better 1hs weapon for offhand?
This is my opinion.

5. is it worth me taking up Poisoning? is it expensive and a money sink or is it truely worthwile <i imagine that it will gain aggro which is not a rogues best friend>
No idea, I yet have to start with poison making myself. You can find a lot of information here.

Hope that helps )

No need, Jophiel.

Hi! I play a rogue as one of my alts and I wanted to weigh in on a couple of these topics.

1) Pickpocketing -- follow around an orc pawn and pick his pockets till he gets mad, then kill him. My 36 rogue has PP of 160 doing that.

2) Evasion hotkey -- I just have "attack off" then /doability #X (where X is your slot for hide). Sometimes you do not want to immediately re-attack the mob. This works very well in LDON.

One other rant, start on your Sense Traps, and Disable Traps as soon as you can. I grouped (with my druid alt) with a 31 rogue who "didnt do traps" the other night in LDON. 90% of the real good loot is in boxes, barrels etc. My 36 rogue has Sense Traps up to 165 and Disarm Traps at about 135. You do NOT have to be near a trap to do this just make a hotkey and link it to your left (or right) directional arrow, and as you move around it will do both. Good luck......

Vulfgang Valarson
Paladin of 46 winters

Edited, Fri Jan 2 16:14:08 2004 by Vulfgang

I am not 100% positive on the knock back, if it happens at exactly the same time, but definitely if you get knocked back just before you hit evade, it still works.

It is like casting intteruption from movement. If you have been moving and do not turn afterwards, even though you are no longer moving, the spell is still interupted, as is the hide.

It definitely helps when you are low on health and trying to get out of the melee range, you can keep moving out of range even while evading (assuming that the sneak sticks, it does almost always for me).

Binding Sense Traps to movement/Evade keys is a pain in LDoN unless you enjoy spinning around to look at traps during combat or while trying to move. Disarm works well since the worst you get is a "no trap" message. You could, of course, just change your keys each time you enter a LDoN, but since that's mainly all my rogue does, it's not worth it to me to play with my key assignments that constantly.

You have two sets of movement keys. I just use the Num Lock side when I am into a LDoN, and the regular 4 keys for regular movement =)

P.s. No evading while moving, unless you have the Nimble Evasion AA's. Sorry.

Touché

As for poison, my understanding is that pre-PoP poisons, it's a major pain in the *** with minimal benefits. Expensive, pain to farm components, and poisons don't stack so you're stuck lugging around backpacks full of poisons that may or may not strike and may or may not be resisted anyway. The PoP poisons though do stack so it becomes much more useful later on (which, of course, means slogging through the early poisons to reach that point).

Edited, Sat Jan 3 12:13:13 2004 by Jophiel

Phewwww..

I was dreading the verdict of the master :)

Poision is pretty useless right now. Until you do a quest on par with the grandmaster seal, you will not be able to make stackable poisons. That means if you devote 3 10 slot bags to poison, you only get 30 attacks with it. Further, each poison is only a one shot deal, it is only on your weapon for one attack, so that is 30 total attacks during which you gain the benefit. It takes time to apply each poison, mitigated by your apply poison skill, which you will also need to practice extensively, if interested.

As if to mitigate this, it is really easy to skill up make poison. I would say it is the easiest "trade-like" skill to grandmaster, because you can buy it at your guildmaster in PoK. If interested, do this now before it gets nerfed. I would get to, say, high 170's at least by conventional means and then just buy the darn points. It will be cheaper than skilling up, even with 250 dex. Get a geerlock, make your trophy. That alone may be worth it for the seal and the weight free bag.

To directly answer if poison is useful, all I can say is without the grandmaster vial (and thus stackable poison) it is basically totally impractical.

Lastly, on pickpockets, which you will need to get up for your epic, find any low end mob with pockets. Get its attention with beg or perhaps pickpocket. Run it to a very secluded area. Turn your back on it (so you don't riposte it to death). Then just mash pickpockets every 6 seconds, or whenever it pops up. Even when the pockets are empty, you will in fact get skillups.

In LDoN, I bind disarm traps only to my evade key. (I used to bind both disarm and sense traps to my evade key, until both were maxed, but LDoN wasn't around then). Anyhow, I keep disarm on with evade so that I can continually be disarming a trap if we are fighting near it. I have to have a separate hotbutton for sense traps because obviously you don't want to be turning to face the traps constantly.

When I was skilling up a couple years ago, both sense and disarm traps could go up anywhere, so you don't have to find a real trap to get them up. I don't think this is nerfed yet. I remember I had them maxed when Luclin came out, and there are actually traps in Echo Caverns (near the needelites?) which I could disarm. I was so happy finally to be able to use them.

I think all your rogue skills will increase faster with Dex. So I'd advise dex gear if your, say, backstab isn't going up very fast. Eventually it will and you'll have no trouble keeping it maxed. I recommend keeping a 1-h-slashing weapon around to keep that skill up, too, even if your best 2 weapons are both piercers, just in case you get a really nice offhand weapon later, perhaps a defender's lightblade.

On the length of the /pause command for your evade hotbutton, 10 is *long*. I typically set it at 6 if I'm worried about getting aggro and I don't have troubles, but obviously it is really based on how much aggro your tank is generating. With a really good tank I can set it to 4 and still not get aggro. Obviously, you want to do as much damage as you can without turning the mob on you, and each during each pause you are not attacking. Each number is (I think) one tenth of a second (please correct me if I'm wrong, is it 1/6th?) so if you can get away with, say, 5, I would do it.

Also, when you are young, I imagine it can be pretty easy to powerlevel without getting hit much, but its a really good idea to try to keep your defensive skills up. If you're like level 13 or something you may be able to solo a bit in the Warrens or similar without too much risk. Even if you die a few times, you can bind right outside and the exp loss at that level is not major. I enjoyed the Warrens, once it achieved its present very uncrowded state, because I could build faction with Paineel and Erudin and get the kobald molars for quests (turn in at Erudin if you can) and other pretty nice loot. During downtime I would practice my bind wounds and fishing. Also since you are soloing, you can pickpocket on your evade key.

If you are going to work on make poison, say, just pay some shaman in PoK to buff you. I virtually never have a problem finding one willing, for the right price. Its going to save you lots of money in the long run.

never been a rouge but i thought i read somewhere once that you can pickpocket priest of discord in kel safely or someone in PoK