Doing xmax x10 with rogue. What early game skills are most exploitable?

[Manick2005]

I'm not quite sure what mastery I want to take with Rogue, but I do know I want rogue to be the focus of my build. Warlock sounds very tempting, as I've never played anything like it before. Assassin sounds good too but I'm less tempted to want to play a melee character unless it's really more about the traps than anything. A lot of builds I see for some reason seem to focus on pumping your masteries every level to get the highest tiered skills as early as possible. But what lower tiered skills can be really useful for me at early levels? I figure, its better to max a lower tier skill first, and then respec later so I can redistribute those skill points once I get high enough level to have both 32 into Rogue mastery, and max many of the most important skills. That being said, traps are relatively high on the tier tree, so its a little difficult to just simply throw 1 point into traps then keep climbing up the mastery tree. It leaves me with very little in my arsenal, making me very weak early game. So what skills should I temporarily focus on, until I get high enough level to reallocate my points into my Rogue mastery and then get the higher tiered skills?

If I go warlock, I figure the best thing for xmax would be to get Flash Powder, and focus on the Poison Bomb skills, and basically keep away from mobs and throw them down on every CD. Any other ideas besides this? I'd really appreciate your help.

[Nightmare14]

If you want to use low tier skills that'll be useful early then nature warfare dream or spirit is the way to go

the first 3 are probably better ones to choose rogue offers little on low tier and rogue mastery is more of a support mastery unless you focus on traps and/or knives

main use of rogue (that isn't a trapper) is crowd control via the synergies of the envenom tree

if you go warlock you get excellent crowd control via the fumble attacks/confusion/slowing effect skill of the envenom tree with tenrion but damage will be rather low so battles will be drawn out especially in higher difficulties but you will be very survivable against mobs

[essjayehm]

OK, I have done this about 11 or 12 times now (I play "HC" so if I die, it's start-over time) with a Corsair (Rogue / Defence). But the simple answer is do not put any points in the low-tiered skills for a Rogue in xmax.

At level 1, you put one in Calculated Strike and that is your LMB and main damage-dealer for now. Climb the mastery, and get 3 or 4 points in traps ASAP... (on RMB, obv). From here, pump 2 points in Mastery, and one in traps until you get rapid construction, and then you stop putting points in the trap base skill, and do 2:1 mastery:RC until you max RC. The most important affix that I found (offensively) at this point, is -recharge... so if you get an early ...of Rumination (~13 recharge), you will be tossing out level 6 or 7 traps every second, and "protecting" your traps is not an issue anymore, as you can just throw out tons of them, and they kill faster than they get killed (unless you toss them into the middle of a pack....). Level 17 looks like this <link>. Now Rogue is done and you can work on your other mastery for Act 2. Getting the poison or knife skills is a personal decision, but I prefer just leaning heavily on the traps for Normal.

The ultimate second mastery for a trapper will be Warfare, and with the Battle Standard adding 100's of base damage to the traps makes them killing machines in Legendary (because they fire so many projectiles so fast), where you typically need a debuff skill for the Traps to kill fast enough to be a viable focus for your strategy. Of course, Hunting gives you Study Prey, which I believe would be the second best secondary for a trapper. <unsure, only ever played corsairs>
If you are interested in the Warlock, then you have Ternion and Arcane Lore to spread your poisons and debuffs (slowing, and reduced resistance most important), and Visions of Death is much better crowd control than Flash Powder if you over-aggro and pull a hero or super-tough enemies into the fray. But, again, I don't have personal experience with Warlock, so a quick search should give you lots of info that I cannot.

Good Luck!

[Shalie]

essjayehm has some good advice for starting a trapper Assassin.

If you want to go the poison Warlock route, you could max Envenom Weapon at the start. Start with a bow, as ternion will be too energy intensive. You also get early access to venom sacs from the spiders in Act I, which stacks with EW.
When the poison damage starts to lose it's power you can rebuy the points for higher skills. You will have a high enough level by that point.

[JerryM]

http://www.titanquest.net/tq-forum/t...-Trap-Assassin
This could be useful for the type of play I think you are looking for.