The Ultimate PvP Rogue Guide for Ashes of Creation

Rogues are the ultimate dueling archetype and have the most versatility with all of their crowd control and utility while having sustain and good overall damage. Rogues can control the battlefield or spur it into chaos. While they have a lot in their kit it is one of the hardest archetypes to execute properly on and good awareness to seize the moment on the battlefield to turn it into you and your party's advantage.

The downfall to Rogues is large numbers. As the scale of battle increases, so does the viability of a Rogue. While they have some tools in the belt to turn large scale battles on their heads, the playstyle of Rogue becomes more supportive as the numbers increase. They don't have insane burst and their DoT is easily healed. However, the Rogue's utility and crowd control will draw enough player aggro and sneak back into the fray.

For those of you looking for a PvE specific guide, please click the link below.

Please be aware that the information provided on this guide may be out dated due to the current rapid changes being made to combat, stats, and time-to-kill by Intrepid. Guides will be updated as the significant changes settle. Thanks for your patience!

Strengths

• The only archetype that has "True Stealth".
• Best 1v1 archetype.
• Crowd control kings/queens.
• Versatility in playstyles.
• Possibly the most mobile archetype.
• Can play around diminishing returns.
• High single-target damage.

Weaknesses

• Primarily melee, lacking ranged options.
• Difficult to execute.
• Lacks high AoE damage.
• Less viable in large-scale.
• Less availability in team comps.
• Needs extended fights to shine.

Rogues have a few jobs when it comes to PvP and it depends on what kind of PvP that you're doing. There's Node Wars, Guild Wars, Caravans or just good ole World PvP. Luckily for Rogues, our build remains the same no matter what we choose to do. We have enough versatility to pick apart opponents on the battlefield when we spot a weakness to exploit.

Your main job as a rogue is to play with your team and follow up or stop engages. In team-based PvP like Node Wars, Guild Wars, or Caravans it is a big mistake to think you are the main character in the fight. You want to lock down over–extended players, use your utility for gaining off-angles, making the enemy back line and healers feel tons of pressure—or peeling your own backline to act as an anti-dive support—with your overloaded kit. You will be playing highly reactive and need to be hyper-aware of your surroundings on the battlefield. There will be big moments to follow up on a good Vine Field from a Ranger with a Feint into an AoE Kick with Advantage locking down a ton of of people for your Mages and Rangers to come in and obliterate the battlefield with AoE and finishing them all off with a nasty Shadow Cascade in one fell swoop.

While team-play Rogues are more supportive, don't be afraid to take your ones. You are one of the nastiest 1v1 archetypes, if not the best, in the game. If you find yourself out on the battlefield in a good one verse one situation you will want to capitalize on it. With the Phase 2.5 time-to-kill being extended, you won't blow someone up, but you will win any extended fight with maybe the only exception being bard as they have too much utility to survive and drag the fight on too long, but a good rogue will beat a decent bard any day. It is only at the higher levels of play that bards can utilize their kit properly to avoid you.

It cannot be understated how important it is to play defensively in areas where you can easily capitalize on the ever-changing state of the battlefield by playing in off-angles. With Grappling Hook you can traverse just about anywhere and get that eagle's eye view of the battlefield and live your Assassin Creed fantasy. You have true invisibility with Stealth and can avert most people's sight to come from unexpected angles. Only the Mage's Arcane Eye can reveal you, so you're pretty safe is you stay at an acceptable range and are on-level or above-level of your opponents. You become more visibile based on your level difference.

For a full list of all Rogue abilities, passives, and any other skills, please visit the Rogue Skill Glossary

Rogues, much like every class in Ashes, can wear any gear in the game, regardless of if it's Light, Medium or Heavy Armor. Each armor type has it's own set bonus depending on how many pieces of the set you have, however for PvE you'll find most Rogues decked out in a mix of Medium and Heavy Armor. Later down the road the best in slot gear will also be Medium Armor primarily; however, what you need to hit the stat diminishing return values that will give you the most physical power, physical penetration, crit power, attack speed, health, and defense mitigation. I will cover loosely what you should be aiming for:

• Physical Power: 190‐200
• Physical Penetration: 30%
• Crit Power: 180%
• Attack Speed: 98-100%+
• Health: 5-7k HP
• Phys/Mag Mitigation: 30-40%
• Lifesteal: 50% (Not Recommended)

**Note: Lifesteal isn't recommended because there is an RNG factor on weapon combo finishers that makes it not optimal. It is acceptable for PvE but never in PvP in it's current state.

As for weapons, much like the gear, you can use any weapon you find. There are a ton of different types of weapons; from one and two handed swords, one handed maces, daggers, to short and long bows, energy wands, energy spellbooks and starting Phase 3, there will be two handed spears, one and two handed axes, and rapiers. The goal is to just use whatever gives you the most Physical Power because of how abilities and auto attacks scale off this stat. And be careful that it is Physical Power and not Magical Power, because all weapons can be either Physical Power or Magical Power.

As for which weapon a Rogue prefers, in a perfect world Rogues will use either a Greatsword or Daggers in their primary weapon slot, which both use two hands, and in the secondary weapon slot you'll use a Longbow simply because these weapons are more likely to cap your Diminishing Returns on your stat blocks. You can be like Zybak and run an energy wand for the cooldown reduction in the weapon tree, but it will make hitting your DRs much more difficult; however you can theorycraft away as that is what makes Ashes of Creation so fun.

There are a plethora of consumables ranging from potions, to food buffs, to scrolls and much more. All of which can drastically boost your damage, all for a relatively low price. It's highly suggested that you pick yourself up some of these consumables listd below.

• Rations – Provides health regeneration over a period of 20s.
• Novice Scroll of Strength – Increases Strength(your main stat) for 3 hours. If you use a higher rarity scroll, so does the amount of Strength gained. You can only have one scroll buff active at a time.
• Fresh Salad – Gives you 275 Physical Power Rating for an hour.
• Beef Tar Tar – Gives you 851 Physical Penetration Rating
• Beef Steak Sandwich – Gives 638 Physical Power Rating and 213 Max Health.
• Apprentice Health Potion and/or Apprentice Mana Potion – These give you Health or Mana, depending on which you consume. These share cooldown with each other, so you can only use one at a time!

Below is a list of all major Rogue changes. Intrepid does many patch updates, however they don't always effect Rogues, or if they did, they were really minor like visual changes or bug fixes.

• Shadow Step should no longer get players stuck inside/under terrain
• Draining Poison Reduced from 40% mana leech to 20% mana leech
• Rogue Archetype and Dual Daggers are now available.