Build:Basic Rogue

Full Build Details
Strengths

This build utilizes mobility and stun locking tools to control single targets and allow you to methodically remove targets from fights while using parries to defend yourself from counter attack. This build boasts remarkable spike damage and damage control via parries, so despite being lightly armored, you tend to go through fights unscathed. Because you have so many ways of dealing impact damage and bonus impact damage, enemies will constantly be stumbled or knocked down, allowing you to manage and dance around them at your leisure before finishing them off. Most beast, humanoid and scourge type enemies are mince meat with this build.

Your discipline sources give you fairly convincing raw damage, and limited upkeep costs mean that you don't really have much in the way of expenses.

Weaknesses and match ups of note:

While this build is pretty reliable and manages most enemy types very well and doesn't require any magic, it struggles pretty badly against Walking Hives, as you don't have any way to interact with them unless you take Mercenary or Hunter to snipe them. Your damage against ghosts gets better as the game progresses, and by the time you finalize the build, you can manage them just fine. Golems are a strange point of annoyance, as they are immune to most of your debuffs except for pain, but attack so frequently they'll waltz into your parries more reliably than humans. Just be careful and you can manage pretty much anything.

Pressingly, while you dominate most mages, mages punch back into you very very hard, and because we want to avoid heavy armor to manage our stamina costs from constantly casting skills, sprinting and rolling, we don't really bother taking extra resistances. It's a matter of being careful whenever possible with them and making sure you're confident in your attack before you commit to it against them.

Try not to use Dagger Slash unless you have to or feel comfortable with it. While cheap and relatively damaging even with a shiv, it actually has fairly embarrassing execution time relative to the dagger special skills which do substantially more damage with faster animations.

Perfect Strike VS Master of Motion

Perfect Strike's damage is relatively low compared to the rest of our skills so while it's still good, it can help if you intend to free up skill slots for another breakthrough, or just enjoy having utility quick slots. However in the early game, Perfect Strike will do more damage and help alleviate some reliability issues punching through blocks that Puncture has, or it will help if you want an extra source of Pain in case Brand's 66% doesn't seem to be cooperating.

Master of Motion isn't bad but isn't super useful. Because we're relying on being mobile and evading or parrying most of the attacks incoming, you really won't feel the extra resistances or impact resistance. It's a nice cushion but because it doesn't protect you from your biggest weaknesses, damage over time and magic, you're not that excited about it either.

TAKE FLASH ONSLAUGHT

Flash Onslaught however, is much better than Counter Strike, as we already map two parries on our hotbar, and we don't need the extra damage, so having a source of reliable AOE and Confusion is nice. It's far too passive to have this many counters, and you'll find often that you tend to finish targets in one counter, or you can use Sweep kick to set up a higher damage punish than Counter Strike while getting additional benefits.

Stealth Training Vs Pressure Plate Expertise

Pressure Plate Expertise is a much more reliable skill than Stealth Training, but it can be resource intensive and some fights or enemies won't let you set up traps against them because you must make them aware via dialog or you must go down a ledge to interact with them. Stealth Training will let you backstab without setup and basically waltz on top of people to start fights, but it doesn't do much if your target decides to randomly turn around and like Pressure Plate Training, if your opponent is aware of you. Neither of these is actually very good in the late or post game content, so pick the one you like more.

Third Breakthrough Options

For your third Breakthrough, Hunter is the natural one but it doesn't really provide a lot of synergy outside of extreme circumstances because you're not very proactive in fights. The AOE from Predator's Leap and Feral Strikes can help alleviate some problems with how single target focused you are in a pinch, but your game plan is to try to create the perfect scenario to bypass or break someone's guard in a swift string to use you use your dagger and pick off targets one by one, so unless you've weakened the targets or have a coop partner who can profit off your attacks, you often chip enemies into range for Flash Onslaught or a few regular attacks, or leave them with too much HP to avoid simply using your high damage combos anyway. Axes work a little better as their move-set tends to be more aggressive, but the Pain in the Axe is a much less powerful weapon than Brand, both because it lacks the additional chill debuff for bonus damage but only has a single native element type, forcing you to rely much more on your Dagger skills or Perfect Strike to finish off ethereal or physical resistant targets. While clubs can be used in the early game, they're a little too slow to be reliable for what we're doing.

While this build doesn't use magic, you have room for a magic mastery, particularly Rune Magic with Internalized Lexicon. However because you're going to be burning a lot of stamina, you probably want to mess around with armor choices if you go this route. While Rune magic is universally good, the spells you're most interested in are Runic Lightning and Runic Trap as they alleviate your biggest problems of indirect damage without tying up your offhand.

Anything is fine really, but you want to avoid anything that ties up your offhand. The entire selling point of Rogue is the dagger and without the dagger, you've spent a breakthrough point for the luxury of not having to cut off your backpack. There's probably better builds for what you're trying to do.

Armor choice

Any armor is fine but you preferably want stamina reduction and mobility. The Entomber set has the best rounded stats, movement speed, and stamina reduction that you can take without taking crippling stat debuffs or relying on Legacy Chests.

Combos
The reason why this build uses the Manticore's dagger is to improve your damage over time substantially. On top of just being a good dagger, Brand applies Pain, and Serpent's Parry converts that to Extreme Bleeding, and the Manticore dagger applies extreme poison. That's 4 damage per second guaranteed, and another .41% of your target's HP on top of that. This gives you the edge in unfamiliar fights, and for the most part it'll work pretty well but be wary of ghosts or machines. You'll want to avoid using Serpent's Parry against them, because you actually lose damage from losing the pain effect.

This is notably important in multiplayer, where your damage combos are less reliable thanks to the extra 50% HP and 75% impact your targets will have, as the roughly fixed damage will do quite a lot for conserving their resources.

Flash onslaught and Brand combine to activate fully Opportunist's stab, and while this will disable your focus, if you have either Discipline or Focus available, this can be a massive damage payout for a relatively small cost, and it will usually end a fight on it's own. If you took it, Perfect Strike can be used instead of the Brand's normal strikes for some extra consistency.

A common setup against very persistent, fast attacking enemies, Brace sets up Sweep kick which should knock down most targets. With the addition of the discipline buff, and any other debuffs you may have, this will likely kill most non-boss targets or put them low enough where you can whittle them away with your other skills or pop them with Flash Onslaught or Serpent's Parry safely. The reason why brace is used over Serpent's Parry for this set up is that you recover out of Brace faster, so you can more reliably catch targets with quick stagger animations and to enable discipline for a higher net damage. Serpent's Parry also converts Pain into Extreme Bleeding, which while generally desirable, actually will result in less damage for this back stab setup, because you don't want to apply damage over time, you simply want to erase them from the timeline.

You can play around with a few more as some skill combinations are flexible or can change with the context of a fight, and one of the bigger advantages is that you will usually have options to cycle through at any given point.