Ashes of Creation Rogue Guide for Beginners

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The Rogue class in Ashes of Creation is a quick, close-combat assassin who relies on smart positioning, applying bleeding effects, and powerful surprise attacks from Stealth. This guide is designed for new players in early access who want to level up alone – from level 1 to 10 – without feeling vulnerable. It provides a straightforward talent build and an easy-to-learn, yet effective, combat rotation.

This guide focuses on playing alone, but the skills and strategy work just as well when playing with a group. If you’re good at quickly defeating enemies on your own, you’ll be able to do the same for bosses with your team.

Rogue Basics: What Makes You Different

Rogue stands out from other melee classes in three ways:

  • Advantage: a unique buff that powers up certain skills
  • Ambusher: bonus crit chance from behind
  • Stealth: a vanish style stealth that also heals with the right talent

Combat in this class focuses on targeting enemies and using a six-hit weapon combo. The final hit is a powerful finisher, and specializing in daggers allows that finisher to become even more potent, adding effects like Bleed to your attacks.

Rogue levels fastest when you:

  • Fight from behind as much as possible
  • Keep your weapon combo rolling
  • Stack Bleed, Hemorrhage, and Poison on targets
  • Abuse Stealth resets when you overpull

Core Mechanics You Need to Turn On

Before you even swing your daggers, change one option:

System → Gameplay → Combat → Auto Attack: Enabled

Set it so that auto attack:

  • Starts after you use a melee ability
  • Keeps attacking without you holding the button

Flurry is useful because it doesn’t break your attack sequences, and when automatic attacks are turned on, you can seamlessly include it in your combos without losing your final, powerful hit.

Watch the weapon icon on your bar:

  • It cycles through different visuals as each swing fires
  • The yellow glow at the end is your finisher
  • When that hits, you have a chance to trigger your Deadly Finisher Bleed

That visual rhythm matters once you are playing around Bleeds and Hemorrhage.

Level 1–10 Skill Order

Here is a straightforward order that gives you serious damage and sustain as early as possible.

Level 1:

  • Stab
  • Stealth

Level 2:

  • Take Flurry
  • This gives you three charges and an attack speed buff
  • Does not interrupt your weapon combo

Level 3:

  • Take Lacerate
  • In the dagger tree, unlock:
    • Deadly Finisher: Bleed
    • The three chance nodes to reach 55% Bleed chance on the finisher

If you use Lacerate on an enemy that’s already bleeding, it will cause a more powerful effect called Hemorrhage. Both Bleed and Hemorrhage build up damage, and stacking them together is key to dealing a lot of damage.

Level 4:

  • Take Acrobatic Strike
  • Use it to flip over enemies and lock their facing so you can chain more Backstabs
  • Grants Advantage when used on a target facing you

Level 5–6:

  • At five points in the class tree, you unlock the upper row
  • At level 6, take Thrash

You can use Thrash up to three times in a row, but you need to use a different ability after each use. Combining it with Flurry allows for a fluid and continuous attack sequence.

  • Thrash → Flurry → Thrash → Flurry → Thrash

This combo is the backbone of your early damage.

Level 7:

  • Take Soothing Shadows
  • Heals you each time you enter Stealth

This is your sustain engine while you move between pulls.

Level 8:

  • Take Doublestrike
  • Copies your last Stab or Lacerate

Use it either to Double Backstab from behind or double Lacerate for guaranteed Hemorrhage.

Level 9:

  • Take Foreshadowing
  • Gives Guile, boosts evasion on your next finisher, and grants Advantage

This makes your early openers a bit safer and smoother, but it is a stepping stone.

Level 10:

At 10, you pivot into a poison-based setup:

  • Swap the point from Foreshadowing into Withering Poison
    • Reduces enemy attack and cast speed by 25%
  • Take Sap

Sap drains up to 10 stacks of Poison from your target, turning them into a powerful Necrotic damage-over-time effect. You’ll then heal for the full amount of damage that Necrotic effect deals.

When you’re using Poison, Lacerate, and Dagger Bleed, the Sap ability makes your damage-over-time effects deal damage and significantly heal you at the same time.

Your Level 10 Single Target Rotation

With the talents above, here is a clean loop for soloing normal mobs:

Opener

  1. Stealth as you move in
    • Heals you if you have Soothing Shadows
    • Grants Advantage
  2. Get behind the target
  3. Backstab (Stab from behind)
  4. Activate Withering Poison
  5. Thrash → Flurry → Thrash → Flurry → Thrash
  6. Use Acrobatic Strike to flip behind again and lock their facing
  7. Backstab a second time
  8. Double Strike to copy that Backstab if it is up
  9. When your dagger finisher procs Bleed, press Lacerate
    • Target now has Bleed and Hemorrhage
  10. Once you have several Poison stacks, press Sap
    • Converts Poison stacks into Sap Necrotic damage
    • Heals you for all Sap damage dealt

Okay, so after this, you just keep doing what you’ve been doing – repeating the steps! But if you’re up against a really tough enemy that can take a lot of damage, you’ll want to mix things up a bit by…

  • Kick to interrupt big abilities or heals
  • Acrobatic Strike again to stay behind the target

Positioning: Living Behind the Target

Rogues rely heavily on abilities like Ambusher and Backstab for damage, so how you move and position yourself is crucial for maximizing your damage output.

Key habits:

  • Always try to stand behind enemies
  • When they swing or cast a big frontal ability, sidestep around their back
  • Use Acrobatic Strike or Kick to lock them facing away from you
  • Practice circle strafing to land Backstabs even without hard CC

If you have a tank in your group, dealing damage is simpler. Position yourself behind the boss, maintain your regular attack pattern, and rely on the Ambusher’s critical hit bonus to help maximize your damage output.

Escaping Bad Pulls with Stealth

You will overpull. Ashes has a pretty punishing aggro radius in some camps.

Rogue handles this better than most classes thanks to Stealth:

  1. Sprint away from the pack
  2. Mount up as soon as you can
  3. Find a corner or terrain that breaks the line of sight
  4. Dismount and press Stealth as soon as you are out of vision

If you successfully interrupt enemy attacks, you can reset the fight. You can also quickly press Stealth twice to use Soothing Shadows for extra healing before starting the fight again.

Consumables and Money Management

Glint

  • Treat Glint as temporary currency that can drop on death
  • Combine it into larger pieces for space
  • Sell it in town as soon as possible to convert it into a safe coin

Priority Purchases

  1. Rations: constant food regen between pulls

2. Health Salves: long heal over time, which stabilizes you in bad fights


Apply healing salves as soon as possible. If a battle is getting difficult or you need to create distance, use a salve so its healing effect continues while you move and reposition.

Weapon Builds

Dagger

  • Deadly Finisher: Bleed
  • 3x chance nodes for 55% proc
  • Bleed damage nodes
  • Keen Edge for crit chance

Then choose:

  • Crit Power and Penetration for aggression
  • Or Crit Avoidance and Disable Power if you want more safety and stronger CC

Bow

You mostly use your bow to pull mobs from safe angles.

Suggested bow build:

  • Stagger and its chance node for lower enemy evasion
  • Penetration for a bit more damage
  • A utility active like Refreshing Followthrough for mana sustain

You don’t need to use a complex sequence of attacks. Simply mark your enemies, move them to a secure location, and then switch to your daggers.

Stamina Tree for Rogues

For solo PvE, the sprint path is more useful than the dodge path.

Recommended setup:

  • Escape Velocity maxed. This allows you to sprint faster the longer you stay in combat
  • Focused Sprint maxed. This gives up to 50% CC resistance while sprinting
  • Second Wind allows you to recover stamina when you stop sprinting
  • One point in Evasive Maneuver gives extra evasion after a successful dodge
  • Max Recuperation lets you regain stamina when you dodge successfully
  • Finish Evasive Training

Don’t use the Springstep ability when leveling up in PvE. It can make you jump too far, putting you out of melee range and making enemies take longer to defeat.

Early Gear Priorities

You can comfortably reach 10 in starter weapons, but if you get drops or quest rewards, look for:

  • Dex and physical power
  • Solid physical defense
  • Mixed armor like Riverstalker pieces that give Dex plus a blend of physical and magic defense

Don’t spend your resources on making items or expensive upgrades right away. It’s better to focus on getting food and healing items, as they’ll be more helpful than slightly improving your weak equipment.

Wrapping Up

From 1 to 10, Rogue is all about:

  • Clean Stealth openers
  • Thrash + Flurry chains
  • Bleed into Hemorrhage
  • Poison into Sap for sustain

Staying close to your enemies and positioning yourself behind them makes it easy to defeat creatures at your level, and you can even manage slightly tougher ones if you’re careful. If a fight goes wrong, you can quickly hide using Stealth and then escape using Sprint, making it one of the safest ways to get out of a bad situation.

With these in mind, you’ll be able to tackle any challenge Ashes of Creation throws at you.

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2025-12-14 12:39