Shattered Kingdoms

This wound thing is similar to an old cabal ability. I think it would be rather overpowered to give anyone that kind of ability without severe drawbacks, like being in a certain cabal, or massive massive lag.

target <weapon arm> fight over.

They're completely different in their strength, and are really only similar in the ability to target body parts. The older cabal ability instantly mangled the limb, making the next hit sever it.

My suggestion is to pick one body part at a time and give it a 3 round debuff to take 20% more damage. So for reference, if someone's arm would have normally taken 10 hits to sever, if they're wounded on that arm it would take 8 or 9.

Also, it should be clear that it already carries an innate drawback which is that you have to be a rogue to use it.

I do not think that backstabs should be able to hit everyone in a formation except m2. I think it only makes sense to backstab someone who does not have eyes on their back, so to say. As I see it, with the logic presented here, rogues should already be able to backstab everyone in a formation except m2. So, I would say leave backstab as it is.

On the other hand I really like the idea about a rogue being able to attack everyone except m2 and I think that circle stabs should be possible, somehow, which may require some rewording of the help files. BUT! Let us say that the rogue is attacking m1. He attacks with regular attacks and adds circle to the cocktail. That would be overpowered... unless the person in that position and maybe also f1 and b1 were able to direct their attacks at the rogue which would make circle stabs impossible to continue. The attacked formation will have to react fast though to prevent a squishy from getting killed though. If they are quick to react the rogue may be killed very fast on the other hand, therefore I would suggest a skill (maybe automatic that only requires you to attack someone else) to either attack another member of the formation or maybe even return to his own formation with lag involved.

But what if the rogue attacks f1? Would the rogue be able attack from an angle so that the rogue will only be facing f1 in battle while m1 and f2 cannot reach the rogue? That would be pretty cool! I don't know how the current formation is coded, but I assume that it would have to be recoded so that there would be added new columns and rows that are only available to the rogue?

I kinda like all the suggestions made, while I would like to emphasize that I do not think utility skills alone will cut it for making the rogue class viable in PvE and PvP except for surprise attacks or against newbs

A relatively simple solution to rogues would be to add a poison skill. Enabling rogues to add poison/plague/curse perhaps other things like a drain ME or PE to their weapons. Then the save balance can be looked at than that would help rogues shamans and hellion. This creates a situation where the limited resources of change can be focused helping several classes at once.

A chance to circle stab anyone in a group formation aka shadow step with a negative on the chance to hit using the level of the people standing behind them would also be interesting. Aka level 15 pet gives you a small chance to dodge (more than the base skill) a level 50 PC gives you a better chance to avoid the strike. Two level 50 PCs behind you gives you really high chance of avoiding the strike.

While I like thematically the prospect of a rogue that can poison weapons (And there's already some items in the game that provide that which are uniquely available to rogues), I think that even if rogues were to gain access to all the maledictions it wouldn't really solve their problem of adding so little to a PvE instance compared to most any other class, given that A) maledictions are already unlikely to succeed even for someone

I'm not averse to the idea in general, I just don't feel that the current form of maledictions would be much benefit for a rogue, if for no other reason than that they're hardly a benefit to the classes that already get them now.

The point is that the change to rogues to giving them maledictions would come with work on the save issue regarding those in late game content/PvP. With this idea you would help not only rogues but hellions and shamans both for the content that they are weak in which has been an issue for a while. Solving three class balance issues with one major and one minor code change rather than spending one major change to improve a single class.

As for the items that are uniquely available to rogues they are not rogue only items just the shop is behind a rogue only gate. Also because it is a builder item there was still some significant issues with using them when I last checked them.

I will concede with persuade.

I will remove shield block from the table

Instead make F minor ignore the group while dancing

Remove the effect of songs of sleep on your own group

I believe songs of sleep already ignores your group, if you are dancing? Or was that changed?

F minor ignoring your group seems like it would be just a liiiittle OP. A high damage and bash effect (technically I think F Minor still just /lags/ people hit by it, and isn't a prone effect, so it's even stronger. Also a..fortitude save?) against everyone in the room who isn't in your group?

Bards are very weak with low playercounts, because they are the complete and utter opposite of a solo class.

Bards are probably still just fine in groups of 3+.

Ok, so now NPCs are now resisting spells and upping the number of casts needed to affect them.

I don't know how else to put it, making things more difficult does not make the game more fun.

Because we have not really been implementing code toward "making things more difficult", it would be helpful if you specified which NPCs are resisting which spells. The ART of the caster you're using and how many casts you're talking about are also useful in identifying the source that may be causing the effect that you're encountering.