Quote Originally Posted by Dork_Forge View Post
Then what is the core of your criticism, given all the Barbarian GWM comparisons I thought it was the Rogue's damage lacking?
Under ideal conditions, rogues can do solid damage. Basically, if they're able to maintain distance and consistently hide or use steady aim, their damage racks up quickly. But it tends to be conditionally fragile - Darkness? Fog Cloud? Invisible enemy? Damage drops to nearly negligible. The barb can always not use GWM and still be attacking at net neutral in those cases.

Or if they're not given space - same deal. Fast enemies that a rogue can't stay away from, and they start having to make some very punishing choices in terms of their output. Swashbuckler can handle this the best, but that's just one subclass, and they don't have better defense than any other rogue so that kind of enemy still chews them up.

But even in the best of cases, rogue has no presence. To a quite high degree they rely on other members of the party keeping enemies off them so they can do their steady aim, hide, whathaveyou. And despite needing to jump through those hopes...rogue damage is at best competitive with straightforward melee builds. Basically, the melee guy is doing two jobs - being the distraction, and doing damage. The rogue is doing one thing, damage, but needing a distraction.

In my mind, if rogue is going to be a situational threat like that, they should be doing good damage. Like, burst damage, which is rewarded in the game WAY more than steady output.