Rogue

There are several viable builds for CQ, but which one is right for you? Well, I may not have the answer, but I'd like to offer you the premise of my dex/attack speed build, be it to follow or use as an aid to making your own perfect build. This build sacrifices a bit of strength and stamina in order to hit the kinds of attack speeds rivalled only by a warmage, and dreamt of by your typical fighter. Whilst it can suffer a little in the mid game, the end results are very fun if you like to see lots of numbers, whilst allowing you to experiment with other builds too.

Note that to save confusion, and in line with what I believe is the eventual direction of the CQ stat, I will use the term haste to exclusively mean the spell. When referring to the item stat or your total attacks, I will be calling it attack speed.

Feel free to shoot me any questions or comments in game.

Melanosol (talk) 02:43, August 16, 2012 (UTC)

=Features=

Pros

 * 1) High armour, high damage.
 * 2) Can use more or less mana depending upon how fast you want to kill.
 * 3) Flexible with other builds.
 * 4) Numbers everywhere!

Cons

 * 1) Uses a lot of consumables on harder mobs if luck goes against you.
 * 2) Bad luck, especially if coupled with negligence, can result in one-round deaths when undergeared.
 * 3) Somewhat item dependant, due to lack of base stats outside of dexterity.
 * 4) Riposte won't hit as hard as a strength build

=Skill Investment=

Mirror Images
In spite of the attack speed focus, this is your big spell for most of the game. It takes the position of primary defensive spell, with an incredibly cheap casting cost and the potential to make you take 0 damage per fight. See here for proper use of this. Raise this high enough early to enable you to make somewhat reliable casts of 4 images, so that you can remain unharmed for 1-2 rounds against 1-2 enemies. Later on, it helps to raise it to a 10 image medium, which is around the Stupid level.

Shield
I've placed this above haste because it also has a somewhat mandatory use, though the points required in it is significantly less than with mirror images. I generally keep it on par with Haste. You only need to use this when fighting red mobs that you know have the chance to kill you in a single round, particularly if your mirror images is still low. Think of it as your safety net.

Haste
Hello, bad boy. Damage feels low? Slap this bad boy on. Need to drain some mana to berserk? Hellloooooo nurse! You can somewhat ignore this until you have a decent amount of intelligence, given the very hefty cost of this. Note that this isn't just an offensive spell, however. Against harder mobs, especially once you have lifesteal, proper use of this can provide just enough bonus damage and healing to save your ass. The formula for Haste is subject to change and unknown; The duration is variable per cast, as is the amount of haste on a round-for-round basis. You'll want it maxed eventually, but the time is completely down to you, your intelligence and willingness to use consumables.

Berserk
I feel dirty leaving this to position four, especially as this should be one of the first skills you pick up. However, ranking this up is entirely optional. Personally, as with all sources of damage, I would leave levelling it higher until you're happy with your survival. Note that the beauty of this skill is that it uses up your REMAINING mana, meaning it can also be a completely free cast if you're out. Secondly, once activated it remains on for the entirety of the fight. As such, when you're having to drink/smoke in fights, you can consider this a flat out passive damage boost.

Heal
Completely optional, but worth a few points. To begin with it'll only heal a small amount, for a mediocre cost, but around level 30-40 when you're rolling in experience and losing health faster than mana, feel free to dump some points here to scale it up. In particular, it can be of use for when your health is higher than your consumables, but your mana isn't, so it pays to burn mana to stock up the health a little. Late game however, you'll almost never use it

Weapon Skills
These are the bread and butter of any melee build. If you're not hitting, you're not hurting, and you're dead. There are two ways you can go about these; First off is the normal method, which is just a case of levelling the appropriate skill for your best weapon. This works perfectly fine, and means you're ready for anything that may come out in future. I had four skills maxed by the time I hit the 40s.

The other method is to pick one weapon to try and stick to the whole way, which at present time would be recommended to be maces due to them having the best end game weapons at time of writing. This will save you a fairly sizeable net sum of experience over the levelling course, but means you're dependant upon farming very specific weapons and may be weaker at certain points in terms of raw damage.

In either case, use personal judgment on how and when to raise it. As nice as the damage is, you need to survive. But surviving is useless if you can no longer hit.

Dodge
This was my highest levelled defensive the whole way through, and the first thing maxed after my weapons. A 0 cost, always active chance to avoid attacks? Yes please. Work it.

Parry
When your dodge costs more than your parry, raise this. It does the same thing as dodge, but costs more per point. When you're happy with your defensive spells, max this.

Block
I don't recommend going the shield route, but if you want to or feel it necessary at any point, then you will want to focus points in this. It works as per dodge, so level it on par with dodge and parry based upon whatever is currently cheapest.

Riposte
Passive chance for extra strikes? Hell to the yes. It's worth taking a few points early, just to get it activated, but you won't really want to pump it until later. It can be funny in combination with high amounts of attack speed, seeing yet more attacks pop up and hurting targets other than your primary. Level it at your descretion, but I would place it around equal to berserk or haste once your defenses are solid.

Battle Mastery
As strange as it might initially appear to have this placed so low, it is solely because of the cost. It is incredibly cost inefficient when compared to just focusing on the weapon skill you're currently using, especially at later levels when you're looking at over 50 million per raise. What it does however is insanely useful, particularly in the end game areas where the mobs all have strong defenses. Level it whenever it's cheaper than your current weapon, and then later on when you want more offense and your defense is fine.

Fire Shield
Last but not least, fire shield. Feel free to grab a few points at the same time as the shield spell, simply for the purposes of coefficiency. I would recommend this to be one of the very last things you decide to level however, especially given the situational use of shield later on.

=Stat Distribution=

Strength
Each point provides a bit more damage, and an additional 2 carrying capacity. Whilst the capacity increase would be nice earlier on, it's not worth spending on from the start solely for that purpose considering the copious amount you'll gain from gear later on. Note that the actual formula for strength to damage is unknown and marked subject to change, meaning it is impossible for players to currently calculate exactly what each point will give you and continue to give you. Probably joint second for a place to put points.

Stamina
Each point provides 5 health and a slight increase to regeneration out of combat. You want enough to survive some harder blows, but the AC from dex will also provide that. This stat is available in large amounts later, so whilst an absence here might strain you a little early, it will pay off later. Keep in mind it isn't overly beneficial to have more health than the best consumable. This ties with strength for joint second.

Dexterity
This is what you want, this is what you live, this is what you breathe. Each point is worth 4 AC and 2% haste. The ONLY stat that offers both offense and defense in the same place, and that's the beauty of it. By the time you're level 47 you'll be able to have this at a base 50, for a passive 200 AC and 100% haste. That's more than some people have geared. If you're willing to go through a slightly more difficult mid game, this is when you'll be thankful for it.

Intelligence
Whilst ranking it fourth, it's actually a really useful stat. Early on, you'll be tempted to get some so you can lay down some spells, but if you can, refrain. Later on, you really won't need much other than to simply use slightly less consumables perhaps. Just let your gear offer this and you'll do just fine in the end. If you're suffering mid game, just wear a couple of intelligence pieces for a while.

=Play Style=

Pay attention. Seriously. You may be able to just ignore everything but the attack button at the start of the game, you're going to want to learn to judge the enemy mob capabilities, when to gamble with your health and when to play it safe, and when to cast what.

Once things start picking up and you're having to use skills, the general principal is as follows. Keep up Mirror Images. For most of the game, your enemy won't get more than 2-3 attacks per round, so you want to try and have a minimum of 3 images per round on harder mobs. If you know you can happily survive a hit or two, then just let it run out normally. Against groups of mobs, if your images easily hits a high enough figure to make that amount multiplied by the amount of enemies, then you're sorted. If it doesn't, and you feel death is a genuine possibility, it's time to use Shield. The big catch with using Shield is that, on top of the large up-front cost, you're also paying 5 mana per round. Coupling that with the 5 per round of Mirror Images if you're needing to recast it each round, you're going to find it draining fairly quickly. Whatever you do, do NOT allow yourself to fight with less than 5 mana available, as doing so will cause shield to end (unless you have few enough enemies left that you're happy for this to occur) and thus result in repaying the hefty cost. The plus side to this is that when you're low on mana, instead of drinking/smoking your mana back up, you can use Berserk free of the guilt wasting mana.

In the late game, or if you've decided to level/stack some intelligence, it's time to throw in haste. It becomes primarily of use on harder mobs when you just want to end the fight as quickly as possible, which will usually occur when your biggest problem is health rather than mana. The secondary benefit to using haste is that you can use up your initial mana pool sooner in the fight, meaning for an earlier berserk and thus ending it sooner. As indicated there, the other use for it is just when you're happy to get through more consumables in order to kill as fast as is possible when grinding for experience rather than money.

Eventually you'll know what does and doesn't work for you, your goals and time, and just pick your combat spell useage accordingly.

=Gearing=

Dual Wield or Shield?
The general consensus is that dual wielding is the way to go, and I do agree, but that does not mean that shields are not an option. They offer you an additional defensive skill, more AC and opens up the option to swap to and fro with other builds.

From a mechanical stand point, using a shield gives a 30% damage boost to your weapon. Quite frankly, that's not bad at all! Dual wield however benefits from having twice as many attacks, since each weapon receives the same benefit from attack speed. Keep in mind that Riposte will only grant one retaliatory attack however, so that skill will deal greater damage with a shield.

You can compare the stats for each option in the gear section below. Note that there is currently no shield close to Ganonsmasher in total stat itemisation, which currently means a heavy statistical skewing towards dual wield in the end.

Basic Principles
In the early game, just take the highest stats available to you. In fact, that as a technique works for most of the game.

Later on you'll have to start making choices between items of comparible damage and AC, with differing stats. As should be apparent already, you want to get attack speed and dex, but there's a lot more to it than that. First off, life steal is the most game changing stat when you first get access to it. Once you have it, you'll find yourself using consumables far less often, and being able to gamble a lot more. Additionally, it'll cause Mirror Images to act as a heal, as if you can avoid taking damage, whilst gaining health back from all the damage you deal, you can recover a full bar per round.

It should go without saying that you will also want to balance up enough strength to carry your items and consumables, enough stamina to actually survive the blows that get through, and the intelligence required to be able to cast a full round of spells.

Example Builds
Note that stats will be tallied for a player of 44+ with 50 base dexterity and 3 of all other stats. You might find that rather than trying to swap around gear too much to balance stats, you would rather just plan ahead and distribute some points slightly differently to achieve the same result. That's absolutely fine! It'll work regardless, and you can just alter the stats in notepad to see how well it will result.

Shield damage will have the 30% modifier added, though given we do not know the formula to add the 30% to the strength modifier, that will go sadly unrepresented.

Dual Wield: Maximum Attack Speed
Total average damage before strength: 742

Dual Wield: Balanced
Total average damage before strength: 664

Shield: Maximum Attack Speed
Total average damage before strength: 494

Shield: Balanced
Total average damage before strength: 412.1