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[SherryGold]

I'm a big fan of dagger wielding dex rogues. The sheer speed of it all plus high defense beats cunning rogue every time in my view even if their dps may not reach as high as that of the cunning rogue. Since Morrigan unlocks telechinic weapons at level 9 or so, the armor penetration advantage of cunning rogue isn't much of an advantage in my set-up. I've done it in the past and found it a pretty good set up with two mages backing them up. When the warden is a rogue, he will unlock ranger specialization first because life of a rogue at the beginning can be really difficult. That means they have a dummy tank who will provide more backstab opportunities. But when the warden is a dex rogue, Zevran will never reach his full potential, thanks to the warden taking all the best equipment for a rogue plus the best rogue armor. So, I thought I will try out Zevran as a strength rogue on this round and see how it goes.

Zevran always comes with lethality already unlocked so that's a disadvantage as a strength rogue, but it also means he can get evasion as soon as the dex requirement is met, which is pretty helpful especially when your dex isn't sky high. Since he didn't need to do any lock picking or trap disarming, I left his cunning at 16, which isn't a waste because you need them to unlock all the tactic skills. And although I didn't bother with combat stealth for him, the warden being the main mage killer, when there are two mages waiting, I could always put the both rogue on stealth and position them near the mages and go for each mage.

Zev's gear: Helm of Honnleath (for + 3 extra ammor, because his defense rating will be way down than usual), Cailan's gauntlets (15% critical/backstab bonus and +1 armor), Evon the Great's mail (health and stamina regeneration plus good armor rating), boots of diligence (+6 defense)

Weapons: mainhand - starfang, offhand - crow dagger first and then Veshialle

Accessories: spellward, ring of warrior, harvest festival ring,

With his 6 dex points boost and help with equipment, he gets 105 defense or so when raising dex just to 36.

 

My findings are as follows.

Cons: Attack definitely slower. Para runes doesn't take effect as often as when he was wielding daggers. Enemies can land hits on him much more often now. He was even grabbed by an orge once, which never happened before.

Pros: Takes a far less damage when enemies lands a hit on him. When he uses a talent, he can do some serious damage. I had him use duel weapon sweep against elites and bosses and you can really see a chunk of their health taken out with one hit. He can now knock down elites with punisher, can kill a normal orge just with a dirty fighting followed by a punisher.

 

Dps: not bad at all. He was steadily catching up with the warden while he was wielding sword and dagger, but the damage contribution rate stabilized once he got sword and axe. Attack speed probably was too slow to take advantage of much higher base damage.

 

Overall play difficulty: The team seems just as strong as two dex rogues, two mages set up. Most of the fights are over in a blink of eyes. However, I think I will stay with a sword and a dagger if I try a strength rogue again either with the warden or Zevran.

[capn233]

Seems like the biggest disadvantage as compared to warrior would be lack of deathblow, at least with respect to talent spamming.

 

As far as runes go, maybe some Hale or Dweomer might have been a good choice since you aren't autoattacking as fast.  Paralysis rune chance is only 5% IIRC.

[SherryGold]

Yes, stamina can be an issue with strength rogues. With dex melee rogues, you never worry about their stamina, they should backstab most of the time anyway and the only active talents they need are dirty fighting, riposte and duel weapon sweep. I could have unlocked all his assassin talents to give him feast of fallen, but the two middle talents wouldn't have been much use to him since I kept his cunning so low. However, he had three stamina regeneration items (his armor, his axe and he got Andruil's blessing, since the warden preferred the clinch of skillful maneuvering, and he had Wynne. So, it wasn't too bad. I haven't noticed it was much worse than for my DW warrior, and he had an advantage of resorting back to backstab or getting critical hits when the enemy is paralyzed or stunned.

I think the more obvious disadvantage was he couldn't give rally to the team, but then I insisted unlocking his ranger talent up to bear, and that's what warriors cannot do.

Another disadvantage is he could never take advantage of the night commander's armor, being a rogue and all.

I think though if I use a strength rogue again, I will carry a spare crow dagger to replace the sword in case stamina runs out.

 

I usually give him three para runes for the main hand weapon and two dweomer runes and one hale rune for the offhand weapon. This time, he still got two dweomer runes and one hale rune, but only got two para runes for his main hand with one elemental rune replacing para rune. The warden got three para runes since he could stab faster and therefore more chance of activating it. Maybe next time, I will use two elemental runes and just one para rune for the main weapon of a strength rogue.

[capn233]

Feast of the Fallen is only with backstabs IIRC, I don't know how much that would really even help in practice, especially with a fullsize talent spam build.

[SherryGold]

True, but he still did a fair amount of backstabs (One funny thing you will see when you use advanced tactic mode and switch on traitors is that the rogues will still try to get behind the enemy even when the enemy is stunned or paralyzed. It's no good telling them they have a coup de grace.) and it would have helped if I had extra daggers in the inventory (speeds are more important than base damage in backstabs, I think). His talents were mainly directed for elites, orges and golems, and bosses of course. I think whirlwinds were a bit of waste. He rarely used it and I took out a cripple from his tactics once he got punisher, to save his stamina, but yes the warrior's deathblow is better than the feast of the fallen, as it doesn't rely on the kill coming from backstabs. As for how much it would have actually helped in a fullsize talent spam build, I have no idea, either. Maybe, someone who tend to go for a strength rogue can answer the question better. 

[capn233]

Yeah I don't think Whirlwind is all that great for the stamina cost.  Same with Cripple, although on demand critical is ok for shatters.  Really seems like the best are just DW Sweep, Riposte and Flurry.  I don't like Punisher's long "cast" time, but the knockdown is useful.

 

Just mentioned Death Blow because I wondered how stamina limited this type of rogue would be.

[SherryGold]

Agreed about whirlwind and cripple. One of the things that made me nervous about trying a strength rogue was that their health will be lower than that of a warrior. Zevran had only +4 boost to health from his equipment (and unlike the warden, no fade bonus). Perhaps the warden could have been a better choice to try out as a strength rogue as he at least got the lifeguard ring. But Zevran had only one injury on that round, and that was because I didn't keep an eye on the warden and Zev during Javia fighting. Javia was dead and Morrigan was in trouble so I tried to keep her from dying and in the meantime lost sight of both rogues and failed to keep them away from the traps in time (You know those ridiculous 5XP traps you can see but can't disarm no matter how high your lockpicking skill is). Both of them managed to get themselves killed (I should have changed tactics slightly before the fight so the real culprit for that disaster was my laziness), but otherwise all the other fighting went pretty smoothly. So, I believe it is a viable build, worth trying out at least once, provided that the rogue uses auto attack when talents are not needed.