Nijay's Rogue Guide

Since your actual stats play second fiddle to the stats from cards and equipment, the most important part to your character is your skill point distribution, or skill build. Rogues usually take a Mark of Death route for the party buff and have little choice but to work with combo points to get the most DPS possible, spamming Moonlight Dance and Crescent Moon and Gangster's Paradise ad nauseum. SP usage is very low and the class can achieve very low downtime. With that in mind, let's take a look at the Thief/Rogue skill tree from the perspective of someone trying to power level a rogue by running through PvE solo. And because we are rogues, we're going from bottom-to-top to get right into the good ones first.

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20. Mark of Death
(Max Level: 5) (Recommend Level at 50: 0 or 5) (Recommended Level at 25: 0)

Mark of Death (MoD) is a great party buff, but for a soloist I raise some questions as to it's usefulness. +10% damage is great in every case, but the cooldown requires the use of Dirty Plan to reset the skill, and even then, it is only castable twice before a two-minute cooldown on both skills. Vigor can reduce this cooldown significantly and should be a fairly standard bonus stat on your equipment. However, dedicating Dirty Plan to use with this both decreases your uptime (as you are not cold-casting Gangster's Paradise between or outside of combat) nor are you maximizing your use of your highest DPS skill, Moonlight Sonata. Since debuffs go away when a monster dies, any point invested in this skill gives a soloist a boost for a limited percentage of their uptime. The calculation of DPS per point in this skill is difficult, but if you are maximizing your uptime and your DPS, the effeciency of this skill is reduced. It seems that if you are going to put any points into this buff, you should go for the full five or leave it alone due to the long cooldown and the limited duration.

In terms of balance, this skill is overpowered and may have been intended to boost the caster’s (or at least Rogue-only) damage to the target. If you are in a party, there is every reason to slap this skill across a boss’ face.

19. Moonlight Dance
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 5) (Recommended Level at 25: 3)

This attack does a flurry of reduced damage hits and a big hit at the end over the course of a few seconds. Each hit can miss or crit seperately, and this makes landing the huge hit at the end a large factor. On average, though largely depending on your crit rate, your wild flailing while holding sharp objects in both your right hand and your right hand will result in about 12.5x your base attack damage to a monster at about 20% crit rate, or dealing over 400% damage for 3 seconds. In comparison, Double Attack yields about 137% per second at 20% crit rate and Deadly Blow yields an average around 163.5% at 5 CP. Since this results in a large damage spike, you do not want to use this skill as a finisher. Instead, use it early and ideally you want this skill still on cooldown when you land a finishing blow another way.

Using Dirty Plan followed by Moonlight Dance is a damage boost of about 114% over a second casting of MoD. You should time your expenditure of CP to coincide with this skill and watch for the skill to pop (Hotkey: F) when Combo Mastery triggers to use this skill as much as possible. Unlike other attack skills that consume CP, this skill will always give some return from your CP.

One frustrating part about Moonlight Dance it that sometimes it ends with you facing away from your target. When this happens, you cannot use a skill on the target and must right-click the target or use the basic attack skill to turn and face the target again. The way the target selection works in RO2 can turn this turnabout into unfair play and often results in a loss of DPS. Cross Impact suffers from the same bug, too.



18. Unstable Doping
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 3) (Recommended Level at 25: 3)

This is a skill I often see maxed in builds, but I have a problem recommending maxing it. Since the dmg/crit buffs do not stack in any way, after the skill procs it cannot proc again for 30 seconds. I found a happy middle ground with a 12% proc, which procs often enough to be buffed for most of combat while not having those extra two skill points sitting there doing no work while the buff is active. The extra percent to power gained from potions is also frozen if you keep the potion power buff refreshed with cheap potions. If you have higher downtime, you will find a greater benefit from maximizing this skill.

17. Crescent Moon
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 5) (Recommended Level at 25: 1)

And now class, it is time for a lesson – BOOT TO THE HEAD!

The core advantage of this skill is the damage mitigation. You can have your enemies helpless for over 25% of combat. While they are on the ground, your other skills and your potions are recharging, increasing the DPS you have available while they are dealing damage. And letting you drink up. After all, if a Rogue can’t quaff with the best of ‘em, what’s the point?

Overall, judicious use of this skill will increase your uptime. Use this skill over Moonlight Dance when facing higher level enemies and vice versa when facing lower level enemies. While this will decrease your DPS directly over using a different skill to consume CP, it can also interrupt boss casting – at least Witch Leira’s. While fighting Witch Leira, she always summons skeletons early in the fight. A quick build up of combo points and the right timing of Crescent Moon can interrupt or glitch her cast and she will not attempt to summon the skeletons for the remainder of the fight.



16. Gangster’s Paradise
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 5) (Recommended Level at 25: 3)

This skill will help you simultaneously cheat death and give up eating. Apply liberally at max CP to increase your uptime dramatically. It is usually best to cast around 40% health or while between or out of combat to ensure maximized HP recovery. This skill is what will keep you on your feet and like Crescent Moon will directly decrease your DPS in exchange for more combat time which will indirectly increase your DPS.

You also get bonus points for singing Weird Al’s Amish Paradise while this buff is active.

15. Rolling Cutter
(Max Level: 3) Recommended Level at 50: 0) (Recommended Level at 25: 0)

I have no idea if Poisoning Weapon works with the AoE Thief/Rogue skills, what the range on this is, or why you would use it for anything other than mass poring genocide. Maybe you could Rolling Cutter until everything was poisoned and then smoke bomb and the poison debuff would stick, but I will leave the experimentation on this skill to others. Theoretically, this skill could be a useful party skill especially in dungeons against small aggro groups or when too much aggro is pulled and against the likes of bosses with a large escort. In the end, my build is about single-target damage – wash, rinse, and repeat, and this might pull mobs close to you and save a little time, but unless you are farming mobs 10+ levels below you, it just isn’t healthy to have up to ten(!) mobs angry at you all at once.


14. Duel Stab
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 5) (Recommended Level at 25: 1)

This skill only hits once, making it worse than Double Attack in terms of direct DPS, but the second combo point is what you’re after with this skill. Use as often as possible and consider pairing Duel Stab + Deadly Blow while waiting for other skills’ cooldowns for a quick and dirty DPS bump (about 20% more damage over using Double Attack twice.) Optionally, make this attack the finishing blow to move on to your next target with that extra point for Paradise or a faster ramp up to the dancing.

13. Smoke Bomb
(Max Level: 3) (Recommended Level at 50: 1) (Recommended Level at 25: 1)

It’s a panic button. Since this skill ends combat, use Paradise with any CP you have in the bank before going out the escape hatch. This skill has saved my life from countless bad spawns and deaths, which needless to say, boosts your uptime. Just don’t make a habit of getting into emergency situations and level 1 will bail you out as well as any other.

12. Combo Mastery
(Max Level: 3) (Recommended Level at 50: 3) (Recommended Level at 25: 3)

This skill is what lets a Rogue have the versatility of knockdown, self-heal, and frequent damage spikes and have them more often than they should. Three points in this skill far outweighs three points in Combo Training, as a single trigger can effectively give you +5 to +10 CP – up to double as much as Dirty Plan does. Watch for the buff to pop up and use a skill that would normally consume your CP right away. Similar to Unstable Doping, this buff doesn’t refresh itself with extra procs. The faster you take advantage of this, the faster you can get the buff again.

11. Dirty Plan
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 3) (Recommended Level at 25: 2)

Pocket sand!

This is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Weather you need a heal asap, a damage boost, or an extra panic button, this skill does it all. It’s like having a joker in a deck of cards – pick a card, any card, any card will do. I left this at 3 because I found I tend to save the skill in case things go horribly wrong. Still, to maximize your DPS, you would want this at 5 to use it as often as possible, possibly taking the points from Combo Training. I seem to use it more to emergency-cast Paradise, and the cooldown at level 3 seems to fit in with my rotation.



10. Meteor Assault
(Max Level: 3) (Recommended Level at 50: 1) (Recommended Level at 25: 1)

At least this limits the aggro pull to three mobs, but I am less confident that Poisoned Weaponry would work with this AoE skill. Again, I do not know any mechanics of this skill. Does this deal 17% to each of 3 targets, while Rolling Cutter would deal it’s damage divided across all targets?

With all the CP skills for one-on-one attack skills, why aren’t either of the AoE skills CP-based?

9. Cross Impact
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 1) (Recommended Level at 25: 1)

This hits only once, has an 8 second cooldown, and sometimes spins you around, causing you to miss attacks. This is an annoying skill that is poorly balanced. Doing 1% more damage on an attack over Double Attack is not inspiring.

The weakness of single-hit skills seems to point to a bug. Perhaps the dual daggers going in one hand causes a limitation where only one hit is registered instead of two in the combat system. I would think the intention was for Duel Attack and Cross Impact to deal an extra 100% damage, which would put them more in line balance-wise.

8. Poisoning Weapon
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 1) (Recommended Level at 25: 1)

The first point in this skill buys you 10% recurring damage while each additional point only buys you 1%. Take the value deal and leave this at 1. This is a buff to maintain all the time, and makes a noticeable difference especially with knockdown and self-healing skills.

7. Genocide Mark
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 1) (Recommended Level at 25: 1)

At best, this gives your party a 2% crit boost. On your own, a 2% crit boost seems underwhelming when Unstable Doping can get you ten times that boost. If you want to roll a party-buffing rogue, I guess this will be on your list of must-have skills. For the rest of the rogues out there, this is not going to be very noticeable at any level.

6. Dark Illusion
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 1) (Recommended Level at 25: 1)

This skill saves a lot of walking time by teleporting to mobs. It doesn’t always work exactly right. Sometimes you are left with your back to the mob and fail to initiate combat, but at least you still teleport. When it does work right, it does always critical, which makes this a standard procedure to initiate combat after downtime or ending combat with no CP. Note that this skill is not synergetic with Smoke Bomb.

After the 7-10-2013 patch, this skill now causes enemies to run to where you executed the skill. They sometimes glitch and execute their melee attacks from beyond melee range. If you turn fast enough and teleport from far enough away, you can take advantage of the extra time with a dagger throw.



5. Dagger Throwing
(Max Level: 4) (Recommended Level at 50: 1) (Recommended Level at 25: 1)

Good to throw while hiding for extra damage. Pull! With a long recharge, leave this at 1 and use Dark Illusion if you want a larger opening hit.

4. Combo Training
(Max Level: 3) (Recommended Level at 50: 3) (Recommended Level at 25: 1)

This skill will not always generate extra combo points but it has great synergy with Deadly Blow. If you rotate Double Attack/ Duel Attack and Deadly Blow, this skill will, in this rotation, always add when it procs (since every other attack clears your SP). The end result is a 1% damage boost in this rotation, which is largely underwhelming, but the extra point can speed up your rotation and get you to the next 5 CP payday that much faster.

3. Hiding
(Max level: 3) (Recommended Level at 50: 3 Recommended Level at Level 25: 2)

Hiding is important for reducing downtime, unlocking teleporting via Dark Illusion, and completing gather, escort, and assassination quests without having to fight any mobs. (Some escort quests will still have combat, but most NPC’s ignore mobs and vice versa.) Quest EXP is the fastest way to level and far more relevant than combat EXP from mobs. Level 1 causes you to move far too slowly and even level 2 can feel too slow. Go, go go go!

2. Double Attack
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 5) (Recommended Level at Level 25: 1)

You can pretty much spam this skill and win the game. Alternating this with Deadly Blow gives you the best DPS against higher level enemies, as you risk less CP with each two-hit rotation than if you were to build to 5 CP.

I suggest leveling up this skill to 5 pre-class change and then using a stat reset if you can get one to put this back down to level 1 in favor of the Rogue skills. Moonlight Dance will take care of anything at level 25. As you progress north of level 25, you will want to level up this skill again – not exclusively, but as a priority.

1. Deadly Blow
(Max Level: 5) (Recommended Level at 50: 5) (Recommended Level at Level 25: 1)

An always-available finisher, this gives you a slight damage boost for your CP. The criticals that come off of this skill seem massive. During the animation a rogue will usually snap off a regular attack or two - this animation is slightly longer than other attack skills, and the enemy will usually get a shot in, too. This is a filler when other skills are down or you are getting close to finishing a mob and don’t want to overkill it.

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Now for the stat build. In RO1, stats had many elements, and on the surface RO2 has a more simplified version of what a stat does. I believe it is a little more complicated than what the text states. For instance, VIT seems to add +1 HP Recovery (I have not confirmed this - it could be level-based) and for every 10 bonus points (or at levels 11, 21, 31, 41, and 51) based on your base attributes. VIT also increases the amount you heal from healing potions. I would not be surprised to learn that other stats have similar “hidden” effects.

For the Carcossa Rogue, I want to focus on Agility for critical hits and dodge since the percentage of attack damage that comes from Strength is small relative to the attack damage from your weapon and the stat bonuses from your equipment. Each point of agility translates into roughly 2.7 damage through the critical rate boost, while each point in Strength is a flat 2 points of damage. It only makes sense for DPS to raise Agility until you can raise strength twice for the cost of one Agility. Given that Rogues are going to drink a lot of pots over the course of the game, Vitality shouldn’t be ignored, and it helps with avoiding death and reducing downtime through faster HP recovery.

STR: 26
AGI: 46
VIT: 21

This stat distribution hits all the sweet spots.

To view this Carcossa Rogue, check here: http://www.ro2base.com/build/view/3703#HmvvCvChC2CKCg/26.46.1.1.21/22310629.22310609.22310601.22310600.22310599

Thank you for reading – enjoy the game!