Ranged Daggermaster?

[Starfox]

I have a rogue/daggermaster in my game, currently at 16. She is a sneak thief, her basic tactic is to throw a dagger, then hide behind a corner in order to get combat advantage. This has been working decently so far, but I feel her damage is lagging as a striker. At the moment, it is a little hard to compare becasue she is the only striker in the group, but at levels 10-15 we had a Sorcerer who consistently outdamaged her and a warlock that did about the same damage but outcontrolled her. She is currently being outdamaged by the fighter.

I'm starting to think its the melee focus of the Daggermaster path that's causing this, at least in part, and am considering expanding or making a variant of the daggermaster for this character. Its pretty small tweaks, but I'd like input on the ideas from the community.

Daggemaster in the Compendium as a reference for those who subscribe to DDI.

First Proposal: Melee or Ranged
The easiest change would be to make both Critical Opportunity and Deep Dagger Wound into Melee or Ranged.

Second Proposal: Critical Opportunity on Miss instead of on Crit
However, I also use a house rule that halves monster's hit points in return for more monsters (or more damage as an alternate option), so a critical hit is quite likely to defeat a normal monster in one hit. Also, I feel the Daggermaster is too focused on critical hits; it might be more interesting to have it activate on a miss instead. Like this:

Requirement: You must be wielding a dagger and have scored a miss with a dagger against an enemy during this turn.

Note that in this character's case, she almost never misses - she started with an 18 Dex and has focused on accuracy her whole career. Statistically, critical hits should be more common than misses, but the player is not lucky with dice.

 

[Mentat55]

I am surprised. The rogue tends to keep up with the ranger as one of the top two damage dealers in the game. If you are hitting often and with combat advantage, you should be triggering your Sneak Attack, and coupled with your higher critical range, should be doing good damage just on that basis. The extra attack from Critical Opportunity only occurs (at best) once per encounter, so that and the daily really shouldn't affect your damage output much, especially if you have good ranged encounter and daily rogue powers.

Also, going into melee sometimes, especially if you are tangling with squishier lurkers, artillery, and controllers, probably wouldn't be a bad idea.

What feats and items do you have?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

While Critical Opportunity and Deep Dagger Wound are nice powers and it would certainly benefit her to have them work at range I don't see that as really changing her damage output significantly.

Its a bit hard to say about "critical on miss", its going to be a peculiar sort of thing and it feels like it introduces a set of perverse incentives. In any case if she only misses once in a while I doubt its going to have a big impact on her damage output either. In fact it seems like her choice will be attack easy targets and not get crits or attack harder to hit targets and get a crit now and then. I guess it depends on exactly how it works, but I would have to assume such a crit would do ONLY crit effects (otherwise how does the character effectively EVER miss?).

Truth is ranged dagger fighting is a bit sub-par. Its a fine tactic and has a place in the rogue's repertoire of tactics, but if you REALLY want to seriously harm things, close to melee and rip into them. Without knowing the character's full stats etc its hard to say why her damage output is low either. In fact it may not BE all that low objectively. You're measuring against 2 other PCs and its quite possible those characters are just super tricked out damage dealers and her character is just middle-of-the-road generally good but not optimized.

A really optimized ranger can be scary indeed. A really damage optimized fighter can definitely compete with all but the most tricked out strikers. Of course these super optimized characters probably have weak points as well that a more generalist build doesn't. Just the fact that the rogue is probably good at both range and melee for one thing.

 

[Starfox]

What I mean is that Critical Opportunity would give an extra attack on a miss instead of on a critical hit. But that rewards bad accuracy, which is the opposite of what the daggermaster is about, so it might be a bad idea.

 

[Witchfinder General]

I play the fighter in question. See below for build. Relevant campaign rules include 25 point build, variant fighter skill list, human variant races (both fighter and rogue have +2 Dex, +2 Any).
[sblock]
====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Nathaniel, level 16
Human, Fighter, Pit Fighter
Fighter Talents: One-handed Weapon Talent

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 22, Con 14, Dex 16, Int 9, Wis 20, Cha 12.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 16, Con 13, Dex 15, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 11.


AC: 35 Fort: 31 Reflex: 27 Will: 28
HP: 129 Surges: 11 Surge Value: 32

TRAINED SKILLS
Heal +18, Athletics +19, Endurance +19, Dungeoneering +18, Perception +18, Nature +18, Acrobatics +16

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Arcana +7, Bluff +9, Diplomacy +9, History +7, Insight +13, Intimidate +14, Religion +7, Stealth +11, Streetwise +9, Thievery +11

FEATS
Human: Toughness
Level 1: Action Surge
Level 2: Weapon Focus (Heavy Blade)
Level 4: Mounted Combat
Level 6: Skill Training (Endurance)
Level 8: Skill Training (Acrobatics)
Level 10: Human Perseverance
Level 11: Heavy Blade Opportunity
Level 12: Armor Specialization (Scale)
Level 14: Action Recovery
Level 16: Paragon Defenses

POWERS
Bonus At-Will Power: Cleave
Fighter at-will 1: Tide of Iron
Fighter at-will 1: Footwork Lure
Fighter encounter 1: Passing Attack
Fighter daily 1: Comeback Strike
Fighter utility 2: Shielded Sides
Fighter encounter 3: Sweeping Blow
Fighter daily 5: Rain of Steel
Fighter utility 6: Strong Focus
Fighter encounter 7: Come and Get It
Fighter daily 9: Shift the Battlefield
Fighter utility 10: Into the Fray
Fighter encounter 13: Storm of Blows (replaces Passing Attack)
Fighter daily 15: Quicksilver Stance (replaces Comeback Strike)
Fighter utility 16: Iron Warrior

ITEMS
Boots of the Fencing Master (heroic tier), Iron Armbands of Power (heroic tier), Potion of Healing (heroic tier) (5), Light Shield, Celestial Charger, Vicious Longsword +4, Starlight Goggles (heroic tier), Strikebacks (heroic tier), Belt of Lucky Strikes (heroic tier), Potion of Vitality (paragon tier) (2), Steadfast Amulet +3, Dwarven Wyrmscale Armor +4
[/sblock]

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Doesn't seem like an unusually damage optimized fighter to me. More middle of the road solid defense and he can dish out some good solid hits when he needs to kind of fighter. I guess I'm not sure why an average DM rogue wouldn't easily top his damage output in most situations.

I don't think the problem is mechanical really. I guess the questions are is the rogue somehow significantly deoptimized? A selection of powers, feats, and items that just don't synergize at all well together could be part of it. Perception? Sometimes people get the idea in their head that they "miss all the time" or "don't do much damage" but if you actually add it up its usually not true or its just a character that is very slightly below expectations. People are funny, they really remember when things don't go well for them and forget the time they one-shotted the big nasty. You could run some DPR calculations, I'm not real fond of them overall but it will tell you if the character has serious problems.

Maybe also check the rogue handbooks on charops. They do a pretty decent job rating the various powers (take with a grain of salt). When you have a character with EVERY power rated "purple" or "red" its usually a clue that the character will underperform. Especially if they avoided all the better combat boosting feats.

 

[Starfox]

The problem is very much the daggers d4 damage. High [W] powers become pretty worthless, leading to a focus on low-damage utility powers.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The problem is very much the daggers d4 damage. High [W] powers become pretty worthless, leading to a focus on low-damage utility powers.

Not really. Dagger Master is pretty well known as one of the highest potential damage output PPs out there. You don't focus on W, which really becomes less and less significant for most characters as you go up in levels. Its crit damage output and general static damage bonus plus ways to get extra attacks every round that pushes damage up to high levels.

The rapier is the highest damage weapon you can employ as a rogue and it has been pretty well demonstrated a rapier focused rogue build will have practically identical damage output numbers compared to a dagger rogue.