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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WalterKovacs" data-source="post: 5362495" data-attributes="member: 63763">The Sneak's Trick works best as an "attack first, move second". If you use it to move first, it just gives you combat advantage from the attack, since attacking ends the hidden condition, but hiding after the attack benefits you until the following turn (where you either stay hidden, or attack). On Thug's Trick, being flanked by a rogue is ussually not a good thing for a monster to do, so it would normally try to shift out of it (technically it doesn't "know" the rogue can make an O/A against it if it does shift) although it would try to do so in a way that would make it difficult for the PCs to get back into a flank again (if the monster had allies nearby, shifting next to one of them would cover at least one of their sides from being flanked, etc). Ultimately, the potential OA is a lot like Fighter powers that boost the OA ... it depends a lot on how the DM plays the monsters. Some DMs provoke OAs (or invoke the fighter's interupt attack) often enough for it ot matter, others avoid them so often, that you would never get to use it. Many will take the power anyway, as on the off chance they get to make the attack, the rules for sneak attack would allow them to apply their sneak attack all over again. As for the point buy spreading, etc ... many players will go with Dex/Cha or Str/Dex for their thieves, especially since there are more races to easily support it (just from Essentials there is the halfling and the drow for the first, and the half-orc for the second, and there may be more later). For those ones, not only will they have one trick especially suited for them, but they also have many utility powers and feats from the older rogue stuff that support their secondary stat. For those going with "non-traditional" builds (Dex/Wis is also useful for a scouting rogue since a high perception to go with high stealth/high thievery can help in scouting ahead, finding traps, etc). In those cases, ignore the secondary stat specific tricks, and turn to the non-stat dependent utilities, and skill power utilities [or multiclassing]. EDIT: On the "I get Combat Advantage" front ... it's important to recall that, unlike their non-Essential bretheren, the Theif Rogue has no access to the dailies and encounter powers that it used to use to sometimes get extra combat advantage. Since many of the rogues I DM'ed for went with daggers (most of the damage is coming from sneak attack, so why go for a point of two on average of extra damage in exchange for lower accuracy?) and, because of that, they didn't care much about multiple weapon damage, instead picking for effects. Thanks to many of those effects, they had combat advantage every turn. The Thief Rogue still has access to utilities (some of which allow them to get combat advantage), and their allies can provide effects as well (dazing, knocking prone, flanking, etc), but, while it isn't hard to get combat advantage most of the time ... when you are in a position to not be able to get it... your striker suddenly stops being a striker. Any means to get combat advantage is a very useful backup for any rogue. It's not so much that it's hard to get C/A, but that it's very hard in those instances where you can't get it easily.</blockquote>

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