Friends, Telarans, Rogues: You’re going to get us nerfed. More.

Some readers have already figured out that  I’m talking about Fan Out. Don’t get me wrong, Fan Out is great. It’s very useful is PvE (with some very specific exceptions). But, judging by the Rogues I see in warfronts, most of you using it in PvP are using it wrong.

One doesn’t need to spend much time in the official forums to see why VM just got tuned down. The change from 100% proc to a percentage chance based on the number of targets was actually fairly minimal. The odds are it’s still going to proc on most of our shots, just not on everyone you’re spamming.

With all the changes to Rogues on the PTS, and I’m sure they will be tweaked, I wanted to play with some of the details we’re seeing. Baneful touch was probably the most interesting change for assassins, as it’s a huge increase to poison damage, which makes the two poison talents, which were upgraded, much more potent.

This does one thing at least, it makes Poison Malice actually a decent 2m cooldown. So it motivated me to find out how to maximize Poison Damage to see how it performs and to see if a viable spec can be made from it.

As you can see from the title above, this is a levelling guide devoted to the best Calling in Rift. Ideally, the Rogue is generally the all-around bad-ass for most MMOs, and Rift makes no exception to this. There are many reasons for choosing the Rogue Calling: barbed daggers; virulent poisons; cruel projectile weapons; and stealthed trickery. The latter of these reasons might lead some to claim that you are a super ninja, but being a bad-ass, in general, is not for everyone. If you are not a bad-ass*, then please consider the Cleric or Mage callings (Warriors exempt, due to also being bad-asses).

Should you be advernterous (or crazy) enough to partake in endgame raiding in Rift, please consider the following statement:

For you, raiding is all about getting the phattest, shiniest purpz, in the shortest time possible. Be ruthless, vindictive; willing to ransack guild banks, ninja dungeon loot, and cause deception and chaos at the drop of a hat.

If you agree with the above statement, then you are probably a member of the Rogue calling. Now, you might be thinking, I knows how to play rog! 12222222222212222222212222223… done. What do I win? But there is a problem here. You do not win anything until you prove yourself. To prove yourself, you must first learn to win at DPS meters, because DPS meters are fundamentally evil. To defeat these evil DPS meters, you must first assail them with raw, button mashing crits, until all trash mobs, bosses, and members of the opposing faction have been obliterated. Only then can you win at DPS.