Trickster Rogue: Do You Even Stealth?

In this part of my Trickster Rogue guide (Part 1 & 2). I will show you a picture of my feat tree and then explain what you should do and what you shouldn’t do. I will go ahead and explain which powers I use. The heroic feet tree part will always look the same regardless of your build by the way.What does the Saboteur do?

The Saboteur gains a tremendous amount of buffs through his feats while in stealth. Sadly, most players think they should use “Gloaming Cut” as main At-Will, a huge mistake in my opinion. It doesn’t deal that much damage and it is also very slow.

Stealth in general is only another resource on the Trickster Rogue that you should actively consume. Not only consume: BURN IT! As soon as your stealth meter is up again use all of it as fast as possible. The At-Wills of our choice are always Sly Flourish and Duelist’s Flurry and you always go after the target with the most Hit Points. We start the Duelist’s Flurry and after the first hit we go in stealth. If you have 10 stacks of Bleeding you change to Sly Flourish and only use Duelist’s Flurry occasionally to maintain max stacks.

The reason is simple: Sly Flourish deals more damage than Duelist’s Flurry if you can’t get to 10 stacks of Bleeding. That is one reason most Trickster Rogues underperform. They always want to Flurry their target, while they need 10 stacks of Bleeding to optimize their DPS. So you can go by the rule of thumb: If you CAN’T Flurry your target at least three times until it dies, use Sly Flourish. You and your group also get 5% more damage from the effect “Broken Armor” in that case. As many of the attacks as possible should be performed while stealthed.

How do you get Stealth back properly?

The Saboteur capstone can be activated every 15 seconds. If you use a damage dealing encounter power you get your stealth back. But every 15 seconds is not enough. You need the Daily “Lurker’s Assault” and the Class Feature “Invisible Infiltrator”. Not only does Lurker’s Assault refill your Stealth Meter instantly, it does also refill it much faster for a short period after the initial effect. Let us look for a moment what happens if you activate Lurker’s Assault with the build.

Through our feats and powers we gain:

• Arterial Cut: +15% Critical Severity while in stealth
• Vicious Pursuit: +5% damage for an already attacked/damaged foe
• Shadowy Opportunity: +75% additional weapon damage as piercing damage while in stealth
• Ambusher’s Haste: +25% additional damage while in stealth (diminishes with the stealth meter)
• Lurker’s Assault: +30% damage while active. Teleports you directly to the target foe and quickly refills your stealth meter.
• Invisible Infiltrator: +20% additional damage for 5 seconds. Refills the stealth meter.

You at least double your damage with this combo and add critical hits while in stealth. So the purpose of this build is to go in and stealth and out of it as fast as possible.

What are your other Powers?

Your second daily power is “Whirlwind of Blades”. It’s best used when stealthing into a big group of monsters. Use Whirlwind and then “Smoke Bomb”. If you hit five monsters you’ll double your power and gain the damage bonus from “Invisible Infiltrator” and your feats. The Smoke Bomb AoE damage will then fully benefit from these bonuses. You will deal a good amount of damage and also CC the monsters in the area, which should help your teammates.

The other two encounter powers are “Impossible To Catch” and “Dazing Strike”. ItC can counter big incoming hits and “Dazing Strike” works really well with the Saboteur capstone. It has a small cooldown and if the capstone is not activated by the “Smoke Bomb” you can use “Dazing Strike” as follow-up. Just like “Smoke Bomb” the applied CC is very helpful for your group.

If you face a boss, simply swap “Dazing Strike” for “Wicked Reminder”. The DPS gain from the debuff is great. Don’t use it on regular monsters between bosses though. They don’t live long enough for the group to take the full advantage from the power. If you are confident enough that you don’t need “Impossible To Catch” you can also use “Shadow Strike” as additional source of stealth. It doesn’t interfere with the capstone.

Some more utility

And that’s mostly it for the Saboteur! Since you go in and out of stealth as often and fast as possible, you are going to activate some more feats that shouldn’t go unmentioned:

• Cunning Ambusher +6% damage after leaving stealth
• Shady Preperations: -10% cooldown if you enter stealth
• Flashing Blades: +5% damage if your Stealth Meter isn’t full

And that’s it! You will deal a decent amount of damage with this build. It is the second strongest DPS build for a Trickster Rogue available and in my opinion very fun to use as well. Next time we will go into detail about a typical Scoundrel build.