Titan Quest Anniversary - ROGUE Mastery Guide for Beginners

 This is an improved updated version of an old guide i uploaded on my YouTube channel some time ago. This text version has corrected a couple of mistakes i did in the video and includes Atlantis' skills too. Regardless, the video is still 98% valid so in case you prefer to watch the video guide please CLICK ME!

 

 CALCULATED STRIKE
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 This skill can be used with all types of weapons except for staves. The 100% chance to pass through enemies means that when you use this skill with bows or thrown weapons, the projectiles will always pass through enemies and hit other enemies beyond the first ones.

 This skill has 3 charge levels, this is how it works, you attack once, you attack twice,
you attack a third time but only your 4th attack activates this skill. The charge levels do not affect your attack in any way, the damage numbers that we see in this skill work only with the 4th attack.

 The great thing about this skill is that it adds a flat amount of piercing damage to your attack which gets buffed by the % of pierce damage as well. This means that if your attack already deals some piercing damage (or any other type of damage) then the flat number of this skill is added to the attack and affected by the "% to pierce damage". This is a great skill and sometimes it is good to use it even if you do not deal pierce damage with your initial attacks. (The "+% Damage" buffs only physical damage, also percentages to pierce damage from other sources can buff the flat pierce damage of this skill).

LUCKY HIT
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 This addon is a nice addition to Calculated strike. The 44% chance of one of the following means that everytime Calculated strike triggers which is every 4th attack, one of these 3 stats have a 44% chance to affect the attack.
 So, the attack will deal physical damage as well if this one triggers, other times it will only get a buff to its pierce damage output or maybe it will apply bleeding damage over time. Remember this detail, 44% means that the chance to get this addon triggered is less than 1 out of 2 attacks of Calculated strike.
 If the skill had 100% chance for one of the following to trigger, then all of the Calculated strike attacks would trigger and randomly activate one of these 3 stats.

ANATOMY
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 This is a very simple skill, it only buffs our bleeding damage output by a percentage. It works with all skills/spells/weapon attacks that apply flat bleeding damage to enemies, it also stacks with percentages of bleeding damage from other sources additively.  

BLADE HONING
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 This is a nice skill but it won't work with some types of weapons. It works only with bladed weapons such as swords, thrown weapons, axes and spears. Bows are not compatible. The best thing about this skill is that it affects allies as well so when you play multiplayer there are good chances that you will help your party grow stronger with this one.
 But, if you are not using any weapons that have a pierce ratio of their own, then this skill is useless. Yes, it adds some pierce damage to your attacks with weapons only, but the number of flat damage is very small. Especially if you don't have any other flat numbers of pierce damage from equipment then it is totally worthless.
 Another detail to remember is that the good buff to pierce ratio that this skill provides is not an additive one, it is multiplicative. This means that for example, if your weapon has a 20% pierce ratio and you get from this skill +40% increased pierce ratio, then your pierce ratio will not be 60%, it will be only 28% because it is not additive.

OPEN WOUND
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 This is a very simple skill as well. It only adds a fixed 33% chance for your attack to deal an amount of flat damage over time. This amount doesn't buff any other bleeding damage that you probably deal already with your attacks because it is not a percentage, it is a flat number but as a flat number it is added to the attacks with your weapons and it works at the same time with flat numbers of bleeding damage that your attacks already do. In a simple word, we could say that it stacks (but not constantly).

LETHAL STRIKE
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 Lethal strike skill is one of my favorites. This is a single hit that buffs the physical and pierce damage of your weapon's attack. It doesn't add any damage to your attack it only increases the damage of your attack by these percentages of more damage. This is why you should remember a very important detail which is this one: if you plan to use this skill at its maximum potential, then avoid using any physical to elemental conversion items or skills like the Transmutation skill of Rune mastery.

 To better understand why you should avoid it, here is an example: if I use the Transmutation skill and along with it equip an item which converts physical damage to elemental and have 100% conversion, then this means that I deal absolutely no physical or pierce damage with my weapons unless I get flat numbers of physical and pierce from other skills or items. So, if I don't deal any physical or pierce, then this skill is useless, if I deal physical or pierce coming from other sources and not from my weapons base physical damage and pierce ratio, then I am not utilizing Lethal strike at its best.
 To get the maximum possible benefits from this skill, do not convert any physical to elemental damage, avoid it 100%.

MORTAL WOUND
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 This addon to Lethal strike is a nice skill, it adds 3 seconds of stun to enemies hit but this number won't increase when you level up this skill. But if you use some gear out there that increases the duration of stun, this skill would benefit from that.
 The other stats of this skill are percentages of bleeding and poison damage. For these to work, you have to already be dealing these 2 types of damage with your attacks because these are not flat numbers of damage, they do not add any damage they rather increase the damage that comes from your attacks. 

 If you don't deal any damage of these 2 types with your attacks do not use the skill unless you want to add the stunning effect to Lethal strike. If you decide to only add the stun effect then put only 1 skill point on this skill and then put no more because the duration of stun is the same at all levels of the skill.

BLADE BARRIER
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 This skill exists only in Atlantis dlc and you don't have access to it without Atlantis. It is a very nice AoE skill which means Area of Effect. We call it like this because it hits multiple enemies at the same time while having a radius of effect, not just a single enemy.
 The duration and meter radius of the skill always remain the same, they do not change by leveling up the skill but the damage numbers do change. It is very interesting that even though usually when we see damage over time stats on other skills and items having a duration of the type “over 3 seconds”, this one has a different one which is “bleeding damage per second”.
 This means that the duration of bleeding damage is always 10 seconds, as long as the skills overall duration and it also means that every second it will be dealing the X amount of damage.
 A final thing to remember is that this skill also borrows offensive effects from other items and it uses them on enemies. Such effects would be for example, poison damage over time that your amulet would provide, or instant elemental damage that your rings, or artifact or armor items would provide, life leech over time, attack damage converted to health e.t.c.
 The only item slots that stay out of this is the shield and main weapon slots. Blade Barrier will not use any stats from your shield and weapon, it will use from all other slots. This ability turns this skill into a slaughtering machine, literally.

THROWING KNIFE
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 This one is a skill that relies on 2 types of speed. Casting speed to throw the knives even faster and projectile speed for the knives to travel faster. Remember that the stat % Total Speed does not increase projectile speed, it only increases Attack, Casting and Movement speed.
 This is one of the most powerful skills in the game one would say and the main reason for this is because it has the same ability as Blade Barrier skill, the ability to use offensive effects from other items and skills as well!
 A super important detail to remember is that this skill has some recharge time which gets reduced by just increasing the level of the skill. If you take the skill to plus 4 levels then the recharge time will drop to zero and you will be able to cast it all the time!
 It also deals damage of its own of course, some piercing damage and bleeding over time but to get the most out of it you need to use its addon.

FLURRY OF KNIVES
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 This addon will increase the pierce damage of the skill and the most important, it will increase the number of projectiles from 1 to 5 so now Throwing Knives releases 5 projectiles instead of one and all of these projectiles use the full amount of damage and effects as the single projectile of the skill without this addon active! Now, this is true power!

DISARM TRAPS
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 Very simple skill, it increases the damage you deal to these 2 races of enemies, Devices and Construct and at the same time it reduces the damage you receive from them, it is a win win (only for you) situation. By the way it increases all types of damage against these races, not just physical so just use it!

LAY TRAP
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 This skill is a trap, it is not a pet (technically it is a pet) but it benefits froms bonuses to all pets that we get from gear! So, if you want to make a build with this skill being the protagonist, then you need to use items that provide bonus to pets, skills affecting allies and pets work on this skill too.
 You can have up to 3 traps on the battlefield at any one time and don't forget that they have limited life time and some health points which means they can be destroyed by enemies. It releases one projectile that deals piercing damage. The recharge time of this skill doesn't get reduced by leveling up but we can reduce it if we use its addon...

RAPID CONSTRUCTION
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 For each level up of this skill, we reduce its recharge time by 1 second and its energy cost by 5% and at level 8 we gain minus 8 seconds recharge time. But, if we take the skill up to plus 4 levels then at level 12 it will have no recharge time because it works in a similar fashion to Throwing Knife skill. So, playing with Lay Trap as the main skill of a build means that you need to find items with plus to all skills so you can get all your skills of this mastery to plus 4 levels.

IMPROVED FIRING MECHANISM
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 This skill is very easy to understand. It adds more projectiles to the attacks of Lay Trap and increases the pierce damage of the skill. Just remember that the number of projectiles here shows how many projectiles the skill now throws, not how many are added to the skill. (The skill adds projectiles but it shows the total number of projectiles, not how many it adds, if it shows 4 then it adds 3 +1 from the base skill).

ENVENOM WEAPON
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 This is one of those skills that you activate once and they stay on until you die, usually. It reserves some of your energy so you can not use other skills that would probably require even more energy than what you have when it is reserved and it costs energy per second so if your energy depletes totally, then the skill stops working.
 The good news is that this skill always costs only 1 energy point per second so this shouldn't be a problem for you. The super good news though is that since this skill provides flat poison damage to your weapon attacks, it also works with the Throwing Knife and Blade Barrier skills so if you play with those skills, remember to use it.

NIGHTSHADE
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 This addon is pretty straight forward. It increases the poison damage of the skill and it slows down enemies that it hits which mean that enemies now move and attack slower than normal. Remember that this "+% poison damage" of this addon, works globally with all attacks and spells of your character that deal poison damage, not just with this skill.


TOXIN DISTILLATION
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 This addon again increases the poison damage of your weapon attacks and spells but it also increases the duration of poison so now the poison effects lasts more on the enemies. The great thing about this duration buff is that it has no limit, you can stack it with other sources like items that increase the duration of poison damage and make some very nice or nasty if you'd rather, builds!

MANDRAKE
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 This addon provides crowd controlling effects. When you hit a single enemy with your weapon attack it is of course not that useful, it is best to use it with Area of Effect attacks that hit multiple enemies with your weapon such as the skill Spear Dance of Hunting mastery. But, don't forget, this addon works with Throwing Knife and Blade Barrier skills, both are AoE skills and super powerful as well! By using AoE attacks you can crowd control bigger crowds with Mandrake so it is a great addition to Envenom Weapon as it can make battles easier to you!

FLASH POWDER
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 This is one more crowd controlling skill which is very similar to Mandrake. The big difference is that we can cast this one on its own, it is not an addon and it also has some recharge time before we can cast it again. But, as with all other skills from masteries, we can reduce the recharge time of this one with items that provide reduction to recharge time of skills. This skill is very useful especially when you get surrounded by enemies and you want to avoid their attacks when you don't have very good defenses. It can save your life so use it wisely. If you take it up to plus 4 levels, it will have 85% to crowd control enemies and the meter radius will increase to 10.4.

POISON GAS BOMB
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 This is a very nice and nasty attack. You throw some bottles of poison to enemies, they explode and apply the effects that we see in the description of the skill. Remember that this is a projectile attack so the travel of the projectiles increases if you get a buff to projectiles' speed from skills or items!
 The type of damage of this skill is poison over time and it also slows enemies down so it makes things easier for you. It is a good skill on its own but it becomes a great skill if you use the addons that come with it.

SHRAPNEL
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 When you level up this skill the meter radius and number of fragments do not change, they are fixed. These fragments will apply bleeding damage over time on enemies hit by them and they will do piercing damage as well. It is a nice skill which turns Poison Gas Bomb to an AoE skill and helps killing but also triggering more enemies faster.
 This skill would be most effective if you could cast it on enemies under the effect of skills like Study Prey and Flush out which reduces their resistances to the types of damage of this skill, so they would now receive more damage from this one.

POISON MAYHEM
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 This came with Atlantis dlc and it is one of the most amazing skills ever in video  games, at least in my personal opinion! It adds more Poison bombs to the initial skill and now instead of one you throw the number that you see here plus the initial bomb!
 If you increase this skill to level 8 it will add 3 projectiles but if you take it up to level 10 it will add one more so you will always throw 5 bottles of poison instead of one, we are talking about true power here!
 But this is not all this skill does. It also provides a chance for enemies to be feared and also to get impaired aim to their ranged attacks. Impaired aim is a great thing because it means that archers or other projectile users from a distance will miss their target which happens to be you and this helps with your survivability.
 The Fear effect some times is not that good. Enemies under this effect run away and if you throw bombs at them and this triggers there is a chance that they will run away and the other effects like poison or bleeding damage will not work on them. So, a good way to use this skill would be in combination with Earthbind. You first cast Earthbind which has a huge radius of effect and after this one immobilizes them, they can not run away so now you throw bombs at them and things work out much better this way.
 If you want to see this amazing skill in action take a look at "The Defiler" build in this video, that build is crazy and one of the reasons for that, is this Poison Mayhem skill!