I've updated the OP with Archer + Poison + Artificer, as well as adding the DW builds posted here by Flash081 and Sriep.
Novadove, I've credited you with a lot of tips in the Artificer post, so check it out and see if you can add anything else to the build I've posted.
I've also added a TIPS category, including the Stamina Regen tip for Archer Assassins.
imho, when stacking crit and crit damage so high, AP, guard & barrier penetration became insignificant.
the damage curve of stacking penetration just couldn't compare to stacking crit damage.
in my case I have sera wearing 1 armor penetration ring 20% and guard penetration ring 20% is more than enough (as much as I want her to wear crit damage rings, I cant find another 2. wearing blue 10% is gimping as compare to 20% penetration rings)
stamina regeneration definitely go for poison skill tree the 2 passives on the right below caltrops. sorry cant remember the names offhand.
Hi Heroxmatt,
yeah you got the build right there 
Got most of it from testing Varric and your tips on the thread!
So thanks for your contributions!
Yeah the Poison Passives Looked Like It Hurt and Cheap Shot are awesome. Cheap Shot even gets a bonus from the Artificer passive at the bottom, giving +10% Damage and Duration. Even the ones on the Left, like the Toxic Cloud are great.
@c3lix,
I have a tier 3 masterwork spike long bow with 3 leather and 1 cloth. (leather allows you to use lurker leather which increase cunning and greatbear pelt) I got it from the hissing wastes canyon merchant.
the 20% bonus damage after 5 sec is fade touched phoenix scale. you can farm them from the western approach near the centre. during story run, I manage to get 1. I tried to farm a 2nd which took about 200 scales to get 1 fade touch. it dpends on your luck. good luck!
@Novadove,
thank you for the great input. I tried all your tips with Sera, crafted T3 Bow and Armor and tried her on the battlefield, without a second rogue.
She totally rocks the fight, she crit's all the time and wow she can burst down Nightmare enemies in seconds. It's a bit harder to control than my T3 Knight Enhancer (the target lock is a bit jumpy and likes to unlock or jumps to another target)
Edit: A new test with Cole and his mark, I managed to do a 10k crit on a level 23 demon from a rift 
TIP FOR ASSASSIN STAMINA REGEN:
Finding yourself low on stamina often?
This tip works best using item upgrades that reduce Stamina Cost.
Using the Poison Passive, Looked Like It Hurt, Rogues regain 10 Stamina with each critical hit. Using Activated Abilities with multiple attacks compounds this regain stat. Using Assassin's Passive skill, Knife in the Shadows, any Stealth attack becomes a critical hit. So here's a basic set up, using the aforementioned Passive skills.
Archer Assassin: Stealth 20 Stamina + Leaping Shot 35 Stamina OR Thousand Cuts 65 Stamina.
= Leaping Shot has ~4 attacks of Crit to regain 40 Stamina.
= Thousand Cuts has ~6 attacks that regain 60 Stamina.
(Generally, Archer Assassins would open with Stealth + Full Draw. This is still viable. You kill the enemy, regain Stealth and Leaping Shot after, as you won't have enough for Thousand Cuts. You will after you regain stamina from Leaping Draw, however).
Typically, no, I'm actually pretty good on stamina even without using Sera on Novadove's party config. Granted, I did recently craft a fade item that helps, but even without the 20 stam on kill.
Attacks break Stealth.
On Artificer, I love dropping traps and then Leaping Shot out of the way. And then the PRETTY COLOURS from Elemental Mines!
I admit that I have not use elemental mines once yet, but sounds like I should just to see the psychedelic pyrotechnic show. :-)
when fighting dragons, the problem is AI will always place the 3 other party members together with the dragon.
to kill a dragon with artificer in 5 sec in hard mode, this is what I do.
when dragon lands, they will usually roar with heads up. during this animation, immediately activate hail of arrow, artificer's special skill. ( I only have 1 bar of mark)
after that, open with full draw, long shot, long shot, long shot, full draw. after you have depleted hail of arrow, dragon will have like what, 10% hp left and have not even lift off the ground. add a few more shot and you can have your loot.
I wont bother with explosive shot because it wastes stamina and explosive shots is used to knock down enemies to prevent them from running away.
I hope this helps.
in long fights, artificer starts to shine, giving the thrill and fun of wanting to spam more and more skills due as compare to tempest's constant worry of waiting for skills to refresh.
last night I hit 9.8k in 1 shot and 16k overall output with 1 rotation. things are getting exciting.
Egads... 9.8k in one shot, I'd be curious how that ranks as it is the hardest hit I've heard of so far. To be honest, I have not use the hail of arrows ability yet, as you pointed out a while back, that the build was a solid 'party build' and it certainly is. Even still, with a few tweaks, my last dragon in the Western Approach didn't last 4 cycles and I found that while it was going through its 'life cycle' if you will, when it takes to flight and lands again, that my party was busy chasing it down while I was doing 3500k shots, so by the time they got there, it was already on the run, two steps drop.
*EDIT: Curious if you are turning off Sera's abilities and just letting her auto attack in order to get off more shots?
At the moment, I do not have anything from sabotage, as I opted for the passives in blade that pretty much give me 100% crits on every shot (flanked or behind) so mobs around a tank are single shot drops. My party is no where near as finely tuned as NovaDove, as I lack a fair amount of specific crit equipment (and have been slow to respec/gear up other characters) and even with using Bull (or any other character in the loose slot really) is a robust party.
Only odd issue has been during farming great bears, where I've full draw shot them and had them launch off the screen to who knows where, which sucks losing the hide but kind of funny at the same time.
auto lock is blue star cursor. target again to lock on. lock on target has a yellow star cursor.
all archery skills ignore distance meaning even if it is 100m away, as long as your arrow doesn't hit any obstacles, accuracy is 100%; they never miss. not sure about leaping shots because I don't have this skill.
archery can chain lock enemies as well as rogues. start with full draw, they sleep, follow by long shot, which awakes them and explosive shot which knocks them down, follow by long shot. rinse and repeat till mobs die.
invisible rogues require manual target. normal arrow can bring them out of stealth. immediately explosive to knock them down then full draw to 1 shot them.
@Novadove
I know that about hard locking a target but, I play with controller (shame on me as PC player I know, but it is a more fluid playstyle for me) and when you lock on with controller your view gets "hard locked" too in a very flat angle behind the character like you would stay behind him and watch him over his shoulder, it's impossible to see what's going on in the battle with this view and I can't move the camera higher or back. With a mouse, you probably can zoom out with the mouse wheel, right?
Another thing I noticed, sometimes, I don't see any damage numbers from my arrows when they should hit the target - I'm not sure if they applied damage or not, if not - that would be weird.
Just wanted to say I'm enjoying this guide, particularly the Stealth/Archer/Tempest and "No Spec" builds. They're a lot more fun to me than the mages.
I got to ask a question. Once you unlock a spec will it be permanent if you start another game or do you have to go through the training again?
no damage displayed but the mob's health bar will reflect the damage dealt.
and spec is permanent. too bad for those that want to try something out but forgot to save the game.
I am rolling 1 tank 3 rogue and having a blast. mobs died without even reaching the tank.
was thinking changing to 3 rogue archer 1 mage since everything died before barrier is off. bounce tanking with barrier and stealth. 3 full draw 30k damage as battle opening instantly kills everything.
- The “No-Spec Rogue”: DW/Archer + Poison + Subterfuge
Recommended Party: Blackwall or Vivienne w/ Fire (to abuse Panic and BW’s Aggro Champion skills) and Solas w/ Ice for Shatter Combos.
This is a build that does not utilise Artificer, Assassin or Tempest. Instead, it abuses the Poison skills to deal greater damage over time and to get constant Crits via/ Stealth + Sleep Bonuses. Starting with the Poisoned Weapons side and upgrading it, then follow with Fighting Dirty.
If you are DW, from here, move down the Caltrops line and finish with the two passives, Looked Like It Hurt andCheap Shot. This will increase your Critical hit chance as it offers +6 Cunning, granting roughly 4% bonus to Crit Chance. Sneak Attack makes the most of this by giving 2% x Base Crit Chance, as well as offering +3 Cunning. So from these, you should have at least 6% bonus to Crit Chance.
With DW, move down the Twin Fangs side to Shatter Bonus with Solas. Dance of Death and Sneak Attack finish. This will allow for greater abuse of Critical Damage/Chance and with the Poison Passives, Looked Like It Hurt and Cheap Shot, you will be regaining lots of stamina and have an increased amount of Crit Damage.
If you are Archer, go down the Poison Weapons side of the Skill Tree, finishing with Explosive Toxin.
With Archer, move down the First Blood side of the Skill Tree, finishing on an upgraded Full Draw. No upgrades toLong Shot or Explosive Arrow. The reason for this, is because Pincushion leads to increased damage over time andPoisoned Weapons does continuous damage.
In Subterfuge, for both DW and Archer, stick with Stealth and move down the Easy to Miss side, picking up Sleep with upgrade and the Passive Mercy Killing. This grants auto crit hits against Panicked or Sleeping enemies, which can be abused with the mentioned Party members above. In addition, with an upgraded Sleep, you can get ~4 hits before they wake up. With Dance of Death DW Passive, you’ll have regained most of your Stamina to use Activated Abilities.
If a person is going 'No-Spec', then why not also consider the right side of daggers line for the passives? With high Cun, the crit rate and bonus damage from flank, behind or sleeping targets is quite substantial.
Also, the explosive shot extended is pretty good for staggering mobs, and if using Solas with PoTA that adds weakness, the damage adds up quick since you're shooting fish in a barrel.
I may be wrong but it is my understanding that while poison effects over time, once you hit a target, that it is, it doesn't reapply, so great for pop shooting multiple targets to spread the love around and it applies from any shot. Without speccing into a specialty, you can have both explosive poison and full explosive shot, as they do much the same, other than explosive shot having stagger.
Still curious if anyone has tested whether full long shot (lance) is capable of hitting multiple parts of a single target? If I have time I'll play with it later today, but mention it for the purposes of no spec, since you'll likely have plenty of points
out of topic but currently rolling nightmare on easy mode with immortal vivi, sera and varric with myself. all mobs die in seconds. you don't need poison. it's a waste of time pressing even 1 button
no need for tank because stealth itself is tanking. vivi spec to spirit and ice will slow/freeze mobs with full tanking gear. since varric and myself is artificer, sera refreshes our abilities. double the CD refresh. varric and myself refresh each other it's insanely fun.
the only downside is no warrior means cant break walls. but there isn't many to begin with.
Hello everyone, I'm actually looking for a rogue build that's stealthy but deadly, like a ninja build I suppose. Something that goes well with Subterfuge and Assassin (although I have yet to unlock that spec). I find that I'm usually the first target of enemies for some reason and its annoying. I want to strike & kill then disappear.
Got anything like that?
id like to see the same as Odin, kind of , something like the rogue in i had in Origins. Is that even feasible in this game? it seems much harder to create an easy to miss rogue in this game. I only play on normal but from alot of posts it seem that create a rogue like this is almost out of the question in Inquisition and the strongest ones are the Archers.
by the time a DW rogue get to his target, say 30meters away, an archer would have dealt 19k damage to the same target.
not to mention this game's mechanic is broken in that archery never miss no matter how far unless the arrow hits sand dune or tree trunks between the target.
I started out as DW rogue in origin and DAI but in DAI, it is just different and don't feel right. besides, farming is a pain in the ass for any melee characters trying to chase a deer across 1/2 of the map.
sadly, in bioware's game world, linear path map DW rogue rocks. in open world, range wins.
why bother entering stealth and backstab when one can simply one shot mobs from 100m away?
Thanks for all of the builds the non-spec build is currently tearing through enemies in nightmare.
Hello everyone, I'm actually looking for a rogue build that's stealthy but deadly, like a ninja build I suppose. Something that goes well with Subterfuge and Assassin (although I have yet to unlock that spec). I find that I'm usually the first target of enemies for some reason and its annoying. I want to strike & kill then disappear.
Got anything like that?
id like to see the same as Odin, kind of , something like the rogue in i had in Origins. Is that even feasible in this game? it seems much harder to create an easy to miss rogue in this game. I only play on normal but from alot of posts it seem that create a rogue like this is almost out of the question in Inquisition and the strongest ones are the Archers.
DW + Poison + Stealth + Assassin.
I haven't written this one up yet, but it is very viable. It isn't so much about DPS, but more about FINISH HIM moments. This is accomplished through the Assassin Passive, Throatcutter. It gives 2X DMG with every 10% Health lost on the enemy. So, a monster with 80% health lost, you'll deal an additional 16% DMG. It's more about strafing around in Stealth, waiting for the right moment to strike, as opposed to constant backstab attacks, which are difficult since the enemies swivel around a lot.
On Nightmare, higher levels, you can deal some fantastic Poison damage along with awesome AP. (~75% AP with Passives alone. This can be boosted to 100% AP with the right weapon mods).
Poisoned Weapons isn't necessary, but ninjas of old always liked to coat their weapons in deadly substances, right? 
If you don't want to get Poisoned Weapons, you can instead get the Caltrops and two Passives underneath, Looked Like It Hurt and Cheap Shot. The first gives you back Stamina after Crits, the second Sunders armour after Crits.
In DW, get Twin Fangs and Flank Attack, both upgraded. This should give you constant Stealth. Either side of Passives in the DW Tree are fantastic and would be good investing in.
Subterfuge only really needs Stealth, but you can invest in Ambush, too. Follow this line as it is very useful, as you also get Evade to leap out of danger.
Any thoughts on taking First Blood from the Archery tree even while running a melee rogue?
It's achieved the intended aim for me of squeezing an extra three numbers out (it's been especially in the early stages against bosses) but I'm curious as to other people's thoughts.
At early stages of the game, I don't see why not. Wouldn't Poisoned Weapons do much the same, though?
Maybe this is better for mid game. It requires two Skill Points, sure, but it would ultimately deal more damage throughout the fight and isn't conditional to HP. The Poison Damage deals 25% Weapon DMG over 8 seconds and then, while an enemy is poisoned, you deal an extra 25% DMG with your weapon.
The DW Passive, Bloodied Prey, is still very good for that HP reliant DMG. Especially when coupled with poison: after the first hit and Poison status effect is applied, you can deal +10%. That means, with an upgraded Poisoned Weapons you're essentially dealing 35% Weapon DMG (as opposed to First Blood's 15%) with 25% DMG from Poison itself going over the eight second period.
Even without the DW Passive, Bloodied Prey, I'd still invest in the two 2 Poison, as that has greater applications in the late game and can lead to some great passives down the line.
WEAPON AND ARMOUR MODS
Here’s a guide of TIER ONE crafting leather materials that will most benefit Rogues and where to find them.
When working with Stat bonuses, +1 DEXTERITY = 1% Critical Damage Bonus, whereas +1 CUNNING =0.5% Critical Chance.
At early levels of the game, I would recommend focusing on Crit Chance and Crit Damage buffs. Using both at the same time is ideal, however, crafting specifically for one or the other is viable. The reason for this being, most Passives that can be used in the early game are near the top of their Skill Trees. The Poison tree has Looked Like It Hurt and Cheap Shot, which gives 10 Stamina for each Crit, the DW Tree has Dance of Death which gives 50 Stamina with each kill (easier to kill with Crits).
The reason why Armour Penetration (AP) is not viable early game, is because Tier One Leathers and Cloths don't provide substantial support for this buff. In addition, the Armour Penetration bonuses in any of the Skill Trees aren't achieved until higher levels have been reached. For example, Ambush (+50% AP) can be reached after investing at least 4 Points in Subterfuge. Also, Gaps in the Armour (25%) in Assassin Skill Tree can't be reached until after Level 12.
Bleed on Hit is not useful for Archers, however, it may be useful for DW. This would require specific attention, creating both armour and weapons that have % to Bleed, otherwise, it is a waste of time since none of the passives apply this buff.
Tier One Leathers: These are all commonly found throughout the maps. Unless specifically stated, running around the map near camps will yield results.
Fennec Fur: Can be found in pretty much all areas of the maps in Haven, Hinterlands and Crestwood.
Utility: 1 DEXTERITY / Offence: I% Critical Chance / Defence: 2.5% Cold Damage Resistance
Nugskin: Once again, can be found in pretty much all areas of the maps in Haven, Hinterlands, Crestwood, Storm Coast.
Utility: 1 CUNNING / Offence: 2% Critical Damage / Defence: 1% Ranged Defence
Drufallo Hide: This can be found in the South East part of the map in Crestwood, toward the Dragon.
Utility: 1 DEXTERITY / Offence: 1 % Critical Chance / Defence: 2.5% Cold Damage Resistance
Canine Leather: Found on Mabari, Black Wolves and Hyenas. Mabaris can be found in most areas of the Hinterlands and near the water on the Storm Coast. Black Wolves are on the south side of the river in the Emerald Graves, and can also be found in the Hinterlands, Crestwood and Emprise du Lion.
Utility: 1 DEXTERITY / Offence: 2% Flanking DMG Bonus / Defence: 2.5% Cold Damage Resistance
Deepstalker Hide: Can be found in all caves in the Storm Coast, generally to the south east and north west sides of the map. Also in Crestwood.
Utility: 1 DEXTERITY / Offence: 1% Chance for Bleed on Hit / Defence: 1% Chance to Bleed Attacker on Hit
Dragonling Scales: Located in Storm Coast areas on Dragon Island on the north west side of the map. Can also be found in the Hissing Wastes, generally found on the east side of the map, and Emprise du Lion.
Utility: 1 DEXTERITY / Offence: 1% Chance for Bleed on Hit / Defence: 2.5% Fire DMG Resistance
Ram Leather: Very common around Frostback Mountains, The Hinterlands, Storm Coast, Crestwood.
Utility: 1 DEXTERITY / Offence: 2% Flanking DMG Bonus / Defence: 2.5% Cold Damage Resistance
At early stages of the game, I don't see why not. Wouldn't Poisoned Weapons do much the same, though?
I took Poisoned Weapons quite early as well since I love poison, although I do miss the vast array of poisons that DAO gave me, and only picked up First Blood because I couldn't figure out what else to get so I figured I might as well. It's been nice for squeezing out a few extra points on Twin Fangs, especially on those pesky Despair Demons.
I didn't like the look of Bloodied Prey though since Rogues aren't known for having a lot of health but I'll give it a try next time.
Also please don't let it get out that Rogues are actually powerful if you know how to use them, I like reading all the complaints.
I took Poisoned Weapons quite early as well since I love poison, although I do miss the vast array of poisons that DAO gave me, and only picked up First Blood because I couldn't figure out what else to get so I figured I might as well. It's been nice for squeezing out a few extra points on Twin Fangs, especially on those pesky Despair Demons.
I didn't like the look of Bloodied Prey though since Rogues aren't known for having a lot of health but I'll give it a try next time.
Also please don't let it get out that Rogues are actually powerful if you know how to use them, I like reading all the complaints.
Rogues have a lot of DMG Passives that rely on Health. Bloodied Prey (10%), First Blood (15% for first 20%), the Archery Tree's Full Draw (800%) and the Assassin Tree's Throatcutter (2% for each 10% Missing Health). It pretty much has you covered for every bar of Health that your target has.
If First Blood works for you - great.
It makes sense, when looking at the HP reliant DMG Passives. First Blood has you covered for the first 20% of enemy HP, Bloodied Prey has you covered for the last 20%. When you think about it, the correct opening combo should bring your target down to less than a quarter health, anyway, so that's why Bloodied Prey works out so well. Same as the Throatcutter.
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