Nova Shiradi - Palemaster Supremacy Shiradi build

[Ancient]

Nova Shiradi
Nova Shiradi is an EE capable AOE DPS Tank build.

I am the first into a room, I get the initial agro of nearly everything in the room and kill quite a bit of it quickly. The build doesn't have tha tanking power of a true dedicated tank, nor does the build have the sheer killing power of a top line AA/ Instakill/ Draconic Sorc/ Blitzer/ Assasin build... but it out survives all of those save the AA... and only if the AA is in the hands of a talented player (My survival depends much more on my build than on my play skill). Nova Shiradi combines aspects of a standard shiradi build with aspects of my Nova Shiradi FVS build. The result is a very survivable build with solid (if not great) dps.

Background reading

• Grandmaster Scourge was the shiradi build i posted just after the enhancement pass went live. At the time, it was new and novel to me to have a shiradi wiz with the grandmaster stance. Over time, I have found that to be less and less of a defining factor for the build. The biggest defining factors are 1.) Wraith form + Dodge 2.) Arecane Supremacy 3.) Nova Shiradi style ED offensive twists.
• Nova Soul was a pre-enhancement pass direct damage FVS build. The angel of vengence PRE was used to boost fire/force/light damage and energy burst/boulder toss/wild shots was used to increase the offensive punch. Post enhancement pass, 2 levels of FVS still provide a significant boost to fire/force/light and Nova Shiradi continues the use of the same ED SLAs. The NovaSoul thread provides good background on layered defenses (still applies) and some numbers on Energy Burst/Boulder Toss/Wild Shots.
• Just Shiradi was a build write up by CDR. It is an excellent write-up and has some great information. It is a little dated now, and I have come to some different conclusions than CDR... but I recommend you read both and decide what playstyle is best for you.

Build Details
Any Race 16 Wiz/2 Monk/2 FVS
I actually recommend human, although if you are not sure... Robot is the safe fallback if you wish to not fully commit to undead form.

• 2 Monk provides nice class saves, movement speed, dodge, evasion, 2 extra feats and the Henshin mystic core 1.
• 2 FVS provides mana procs, crit chance, spell power and some nice class saves.

Alignment: Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral

Starting stats:
Max Int
Enough into dex so that your tome (if any) will get you to 13.
Rest into con.

Level ups
Enough into con to reach 21 after the tome points (if any).
Rest into int.
With a 36 point build and +3 tomes, you can max int/con and put all levelups into int. I switched to int for levelups not because I suddenly care about DCs, but because I gravitated towards being reflex save freak. From a survival standpoint, more reflex seemed to help more than a small increase in hitpoints.

Feats
7 Normal

Enlarge - For the force SLAs, this is amazing, especially in EE
Insightful Reflexes
Maximize
Quickness
Adept of Forms
Master of Forms - This must be the lvl 12 or 15 feat
Gransmaster of Forms - This must be the lvl 18 feat

2 Monk Bonus

Toughness
Dodge - If you have enough dodge from other sources, deflect arrows is a viable alternative

4 Wiz Bonus

Empower
Mental Toughness
Improved Mental Toughness
Extend

5 Epic

Epic Toughness
Epic Mental Toughness
Epic Skill Focus Spell Craft
Ruin
Hellball

If you have an extra feat from human, pick completionist if you have it or deflect arrows if you do not. I would grab all the metas you can early on to help level through heroics with SLAs and get deflect arrows later on.
If you are leveling this through heroic, I recommend the intial feats be maximize/empower/enlarge to get the most out of the force SLAs. The easiest level path is 7 wiz, 2 monk, 2 fvs, rest wiz. You have to deal with being in zombie form for a while, but magic missile doesn't have a save anyways.

Skills

Spellcraft
Heal (for neg energy)
Perform (Several Shiradi Proc's are sonic damage)

Put the rest wherever you want, but it is a lot of points just to cover the basics

Enhancements
Angel of Vengence (11 points)

Core 1 - Font of Power (1 point)
Teir 1 - Scourge (3 points)
Teir 1 - Smiting (2 points)
Teir 2 - Smiting (2 points)
Teir 2 - Just Reward (3 points)

Pale Master (21 points)

Core 1 - 4
Tier 1 Deathless Vigor (6 points)
Tier 1 Negative Energy Conduit (3 points)
Teir 1 Spell Crit Neg (2 points)
Teir 1 Skeletal Knight (2 points)
Teir 2 Spell Crit Neg (2 points)
Teir 3 Spell Crit Neg (2 points)

ArchMage (32 points)

Core 1 MM SLA
Core 2 Gust SLA
Core 3 Chain Missile SLA
Core 4 Fire Shield
Teir 1 Spell Crit Elemental and Force (2 points)
Teir 1 Traditionalist Caster (3 points)
Teir 1 Wand and Scroll Mastery (1 point, filler)
Teir 2 Improved Quickening (4 Points, mostly just filler)
Teir 2 Spell Crit Elemental and Force (2 points)
Teir 3 Spell Crit Elemental and Force (2 points)
Teir 3 Intelligence (2 points)
Teir 4 Spell Crit Elemental and Force (2 points)
Teir 4 Intelligence (2 points)
Teir 5 Arcane Supremecy (2 points)

Eldritch Knight (11 points)

Core 1
Core 2
Teir 1 Battle Mage (3 points)
Teir 1 Improved Mage Armor (3 points)
Teir 2 Improved Shield (3 points)

Henshin Mystic (1 point)

Core 1

Remaining Points
There are two main paths to spend the remaining points.

• With Dodge Equipment: Spend the remaining points in eldritch knight to get to core teir 3 (for +10 force spell power).
• Without Dodge Equipment: Drop a level of deathless vigor (2 points) and put 3 points into bone armor (+3 dodge) and 4 points into ninja spy (1 core, 3 Acrobatic). My current incarnation has max dodge using a single mobility item and the haste spell.

[Ancient]

Primary Desinty: Shiradi
Points / Desc
2 Wisdom (Twisting stay frosty is less damage than twisting wild shots.)
3 Wild Shot (this is great! buggy, but great!)
3 Fey Form
2 Prism
2 Rainbow
2 Double Rainbow
2 Elemental Absorption (wish I had more points here)
3 In the Weeds
3 Nerve Toxin
2 Audience with the Queen
Lots of ways to do this, this is just how I did it

Twists

• Twist 1 - The heavy hitter: I typically use energy burst (fire) although lately I swap this out for tsunami when I'm facing a heavy fire resistnt environment such as the shroud.
• Twist 2 - A little defense: I have switched to usually carrying embrace the light (30% light dmg reduction) and only using unearthly reactions/energy sheath on rare occasions.
• Twist 3 - More offense: Since wild shots is native to shiradi, boulder toss finishes out my ED SLA twist offense.

As I ETR through other epic destiny spheres, I'll list the destiny configurations here too

[Ancient]

Equipment
A few notes about my equipment.

1. This is what I have, not what is optimal.
2. I am in pursuit of epic completionist, so all of my non-weapon gear is ML 20. Higher level gear would only add more power
3. Yes, I like slots

My Current Gear

• Head: Crafted Intelligence 6 / Enchantment Save Slotted 30 Sonic Resist and 11 Spell craft
• Eyes: Green Steel - Con opp, cha skills and blindness immunity.
• Neck: Torc - My preccccious!
• Trinket: Blasting Chime (Weaken Construct, Sonic Lore VI, Resonance +90, Cacophonic Guard, Evocation Focus II, Anthem, Inherent (10) Sonic Resistance) Slotted with 6 Resistance and 11 Perform
• Body: Crafted Mobility / Flexible Fire Absorption 33% slotted with 30 hp
• Cloak: Cloak of Flames (Combustion +90, Fire Lore VI, Heightened Awareness IV, Fire Absorption 20%, Fire Shield (Hot), Inherent (10) Fire Resistance) slotted with Good Luck +2 and 20 Vitality
• Wrists: Bracers of the Sun Soul (Wisdom +7 Insightful Constitution +2 Parrying VIII Way of the Sun Soul) with alchemical +1 saves
• Belt: Green Steel - Mineral 45 hp.
• Ring: Crafted Charisma 6/ Flexible Void Lore V slotted with 30 Electric Resist and Masters Gift
• Ring: Guardian's Ring the 19 version ( Sheltering +24 PRR) slotted with 30 Cold Resist
• Hands: Crafted 6 Str / Flexible Electrical Absorption 33% slotted with 30 Fire Resist and 11 Heal
• Feet: Rock Boots (Corrosion +90, Acid Lore VI, Stone Prison Guard, Earthgrab Guard, Immunity to Slippery Surfaces, Inherent (10) Acid Resistance) slotted with 30 Acid Resist and 6 Con
• Cosmetic Armor: Wilderness: Medium armor with +120 glaciation (ice skating recipie)
• Cosmetic Hat: Bunny hat with +10 cold resist

I use several quarterstaves, but they all have kinetic lore and force spell power, sonic power too if I can get it.

Starter/Farmable Equipment

• Wrists: Bracers of the Sun Soul are easy to get turn-in and offer a valuable +4 insight bonus to saves.
• Docent: Quorforged Docent of Battle (upgraded) is a good starting point for a docent
• Trinket: Blasting Chime (Weaken Construct, Sonic Lore VI, Resonance +90, Cacophonic Guard, Evocation Focus II, Anthem, Inherent (10) Sonic Resistance) Slotted with 6 Resistance and 11 Perform
• Cloak: Cloak of Flames (Combustion +90, Fire Lore VI, Heightened Awareness IV, Fire Absorption 20%, Fire Shield (Hot), Inherent (10) Fire Resistance) slotted with Good Luck +2 and 20 Vitality
• Feet: Rock Boots (Corrosion +90, Acid Lore VI, Stone Prison Guard, Earthgrab Guard, Immunity to Slippery Surfaces, Inherent (10) Acid Resistance) slotted with 30 Acid Resist and 6 Con
• Ring: Guardian's Ring the 19 version ( Sheltering +24 PRR) slotted with 30 Cold Resist

I'll add more as I think of it, but the most critical thing is to get your stats/saves covered. The elemental resists/skills/absorption are all upgrades to increase damage or survival.

[Ancient]

Spells

• Level 1: Magic Missile, Jump, Protection From Evil, Sonic Blast, Expeditious Retreat
• Level 2: Invisibility, Blur, Knock, Energy Resists, Scorching Ray
• Level 3: Haste, Rage, Displacement, Chain Missile, Water Breathing
• Level 4: Negative Energy Burst, Death Aura, Dimension Door, Ice Storm, Force Missile
• Level 5: Niac's, Eladar's, Teleport, Cyclonic Blast, Break Enchantment
• Level 6: Greater Heriosm, True Seeing, Disintegrate, Reconstruct
• Level 7: Finger of Death, Greater Teleport, Otto's Sphere of Dancing, Delayed Blast Fireball
• Level 8: Polar Ray, Black Dragon Bolt (Wiz King!), Greater Shout

Spells in red are ones I hardly ever cast/use

Details
Level 1

• Magic Missile: Fundamental single target offense for a shiradi.
• Jump: Max jump = movement/mobility = survival
• Protection From Evil: This is a great defensive buff
• Sonic Blast: Area of effect breakables

Level 2

• Invisibility: This is useful for moving through areas without fighting the mobs.
• Blur: I carry this for non-casters who don't have lots of displace clickies
• Energy Resist: I carry this for situations where someone loses ship buffs and does not have resists on their gear.
• Scorching Ray: This is solid multi-hit/no-save direct damage spell. I should use it more than I do.

Level 3

• Haste: is a movement buff, reflex save buff, dodge buff. I keep it up all the time.
• Rage: is a hp/str buff, I keep it up most of the time in quests
• Displacement: is a 50% miss chance for most opponents. This is important!
• Chain Missile: My favorite shiradi offensive spell...

Level 4

• Negative Energy Burst: Your max/emp/quickened panic button. Everytime you cast it, you did something wrong (earlier...).
• Death Aura: One of the most efficient heals in the game.
• Dimension Door: Quality of life / zerg empowerment
• Ice Storm: Great spell! No save offense + crowd control. I use it when things get "interesting" or on boss mob DPS mana dumps.
• Force Missile: Another bread and butter force pew pew spell. I use this as filler if there are no epic destiny SLAs to fire.

Level 5

• Niac's: A no-save dot for boss DPS
• Eladar's: A no-save dot for boss DPS
• Teleport: Quality of life because I want to be there... now

Level 6

• Greater Heroism: I keep this buff up all the time, +4 skills and +4 saves is important.
• True Seeing: This is for non-casters who sometimes need this buff.

Level 7
I suppose I use greater teleport a bit... probably should get used to finger of death, but I have a DPS mindset

Level 8

• Polar Ray: Good offense when lower level spells won't cut it.
• Black Dragon Bolt: Good offense when lower level spells won't cut it and neither will cold damage.

Not much on crowd control, I survive through my personal defenses rather than relying upon mobs failing a save. Almost no instakill or anything that requires a save, I apply that build/equipment flexibility towards survival, spell power and spell crits.

[Ancient]

Offensive Strategy
Opening Attack Chain
My opening attack chain is almost always:

1. Chain Missile (Spell, No Metas) ->
2. Chain Missile SLA (Full Metas) ->
3. MM SLA (Full Metas) ->
4. Chain Missile (Spell, No Metas)

This means that half my opening salvo have full metas including quicken (quickened wiz = unquickened sorc speed). The problem is that at this point, the SLAs are not ready to go again. This is when I switch to NovaSoul style offense.

Having agro'd just about anything nearby, I hop into the middle of the fray (with enough defense to survive doing so) and...

1. Energy Burst
2. Target something in front of me, and jump backwards like a kobold
3. Wild shots through the crowd (hitting up to 4 targets)
4. Boulder toss some random survivor

I'm now ready to repeat my opening salvo of 3 chain missiles and a magic missile. Some things to note:

• The opening salvo is very likely to trigger arcane supremacy if it is off timer. Arcane supremacy provides 10 seconds of +25% crit chance and +1 crit multiplier. Nova Shiradi already has a high crit chance, and getting a +1 multiplier is a significant boost to damage. The SLAs and arcane supremacy is enough that I can still kill effictivly even outside the shiradi destiny. When inside shiradi, the standard shiradi offense if the "filler" inbetween using the NovaStyle SLA offense. Think about it... the standard level of Shiradi offense is my "filler"...
• Chain missile has more proc chances than magic missile. Any time I read someone talk about spamming magic missile... I wonder why. Other than very rare cases where I need to surgically remove a specific threat, I don't care who I'm attacking. They are all going to die... soon.

Mana Dump DPS/Boss
When I want to go full out DPS, I add the two level 5 dots (Niac's/Eladars) as well as ice storm to the mix. If it is just the boss by itself, then I fall back to a single target attack chain using SLAs whenever they are up. If there are adds, then I switch to the chain missile attack chain. In cases where there is exactly two opponents, I often target the minion and do the chain missile chain but switch to the boss for SLAs/dots.

[Ancient]

Defense
Layered Defense
The first layer of defense is passive healing. If you have death aura active, then in order to kill you, an opponent has to out damage the 60ish hp a tic healing. Every layer of defense can multiply the effective amount of healing. For example, a miss rate of 66% means effectively triples the healing. A 20% damage reduction from PRR again multiplies the effective healing. The same is true for elemental resistance against spell damage.

The second layer of defense Chance to miss

• Incorporal - 25% - Wraith form provides this, +100% fort and some immunities
• Displacement - 50% - I keep it up... all the time.
• Dodge - 25%

The combined chances to miss helps provide the initial layer of defense. Often, an opponent will simply not hit enough to overcome the passive healing from death aura.

The third layer of defense is PRR. Even with all of the above chances to miss, you will get hit sometimes... and on occasion the enemy will get multiple hits in a row. Your PRR decides how big those hits can be for you to survive them. The guardians ring is a great source of PRR as is the shield SLA from the Eldritch Knight. I plan to grind all 12 divine destiny ETRs as well as 3 purple knight ETRs to "someday" end up with a very solid PRR. In the meantime, just the guardian ring and the shield SLA added quite a bit to my survivability.

The most important layer of defense:
The player. Regeneration is healing over time. This means that controling the flow of the battle plays a significant role in surviving the battle. If you take 200 hit points of damage in one shot, many builds would need an instant heal to quickly get away from deaths door. With Nova Shiradi, if you know you can avoid damage for four seconds... then you can shrug it off and keep fighting. In Epic Elite, there are situations that can do lots of damage in a quick amount of time. Using movement, jumping and positioning in the environment allows a Nova Shiradi to respond to many of these situations without expending extra resources to recover. Less resources spent trying to spike heal to survive means more resources to spend winning the quest. When running for its life... a Nova Shiradi only has to run for 4-6 seconds

SO KEEP MOVING! You don't have to be in melee range, you don't have to line shots up, most of the time... you don't even care which opponent you have targeted.

But light damage!
Your life will change when you get an unsuppressed Pale Lavender Ioun Stone. Having this as a quick swap turns spell heavy fights into an entirely different experience. Until you can get one, your best bet is to play cat and mouse to prevent an opponent from stacking multiple divine punishments on you. Try to single target light casters first, and if you know it is a light heavy quest then don't be afraid to twist in embrace the light. If you do find yourself under light based attacks, don't be shy to use maximized/empowered/quickened negative energy burst... start early, use it often and keep your health up.

[Ancient]

Wiz v.s. Sorc
After the intial enhancement pass, it seemed like forum opinion was doom and gloom for the sorcerers. Now it has swung the other way and I have seen many people proclaim that sorcs make the best shiradi pew pew casters. Sorc's are powerful and have many options... but I still like wiz best. Here is why:

• I can be a wraith... I'll cover this in detail below.
• I don't spam magic missile... I spam chain missile! As long as there is at least two mobs, chain missile is more procs per cast. In attack chain of CM->CM->MM->CM , two of have free metas including quicken and enlarge. I attack rooms of mobs, very rarely do I attack a specific mob. When a shiradi is attacking with chain missile, the next mob to die will usually be... "the other one". When the battle has thinned down to just a few mobs, I may be specific in which one I target. But when the room is full, I let the dice figure it all out. By opening with 3 out of my first four spells being chain missile, I'm getting more procs than a sorcerer. By two of them being quickened for free, I'm only slower on two of those casts. Yes, the sorc could quicken everything, or cast meteor storm... but that increases the mana spent by a huge amount. When the room is thinned out, I do switch to the single target attack chain... and my dps does drop. But at that point, the battle is won and that is just cleanup.
• Arcane supremacy! This is a very underrated ability. It is not as random as it seems. If arcane supremacy is ready to go, then the opening sequnce of 3 chain missiles and magic missile is (3X8)+5 procs = 1-(.93^29) = 87.8% chance for arcane supremacy proc. Once I have arcane supremacy, I switch to destiny level offense: Energy Burst -> Wild Shots -> Toss boulder. With +25% chance to crit, crits happen a lot. With +1 crit multiplier, crits hit hard.
• Force is more universal than elemental: Force is resisted less often. Most of the shiradi damage comes from the core procs which are force/sonic, and force improves my destiny attacks (wild shots and toss boulder). More force spell power and more force crits means better synergy with shiradi and my epic attack twists.
• Fire shield SLA. I try to keep fire shield running all the time. Combined with my gear/destiny, I have solid absorption for fire/electrical/cold. Fire shield also burns webs (or so I'm told). While a sorc could in theory scroll cast fire shield, it would involve equipment swapping, have a shorter duration and simply not have the quality of life that a cheap quickened/extended SLA can provide.
• The splash: A sorc has to chose between FVS (spell power/mana procs), Monk (Evasion/Dodge) or Paladin (Saves). The free wiz feats lets me spend normal feats on the monk stances so I can have acceptable EE saves without the paladin splash. If I was willing to give up using some destiny twists for offense, I could get the saves even higher... but I have found that the increased kill speed seems to help my survival more than pushing saves from good to great.

Wraith v.s. Robot
Robots are great, but here is why I ended up with a preference for wraith form:

• Defense: Wraith form is 25% incorp as well as a hefty bonus to balance and allows passive healing (death aura). Undead form also grants immunities against certian magical will type attacks. Passive healing not only keeps me topped off, it also heals when I'm not able to (knocked down, stoned, afk, typing in guild chat...). The two concerns typically voiced about palemasters are light damage (pale lavendar ioun stone for when it is bad) and burst healing (reconstruct does more, but I need fewer neg energy bursts and they are good enough for me when I do).
• Mana Efficiency: Since I mostly run epic elites, I decided to get rid of my torc. I noticed that I was using spell pots faster than I was getting them, so I switched back to using the torc. I once again hardly ever use spell pots. This completely contradicted what I had read and believed about torc in epic elite... till I figured out the key difference. Most people base their math off the cost of reconstruct. A palemaster has a much more efficient heal! Extended Death Aura costs 35 spell points and heals for longer than 140 seconds worth of tics that average higher than 50. To keep it simple, that is 100 hp per spell point. I have read that a torc averages 3.375 SP per hit. Torc spell point regen depends on 3 things: 1) Getting agro (NOT A PROBLEM!) 2) Surviving the hit (Usually not a problem) 3) Healing the hit for less sp than what is gained (This is where death aura makes it work).
• Focused DPS: Most comparisons of DPS look at spell power, casting time and perfect world factors. In reality however, mobs fight back. A wraith build has more defense and has passive healing. The combination of these two means that there are many occasions where a non-wraith has to stop and heal while the wraith continues to cast. If you are the type that sits in the back and snipes... it may not happen much. If you are the type (like me) who "arcane barbarian" makes sense... then a wraith build can allow you to cast more often which translates to more DPS.
• Flexibility: With a few "1 point wonder" exceptions, points spent in the warforged tree and/or ninja trees do not do much for spell power. This is why I'm an advocate of getting arcane reduction from Eldritch Knight rather than Inscribed Armor, and why 3 for 3 dodge in the palemaster tree is superior to 4 points for 3 dodge in the ninja spy tree. I am currently down to no points at all in the warforged tree, and I almost never leave wraith form. This places me at a point where have more options. Options to get an extra feat/skill point by being human, or to pick up other iconic past lives because I don't HAVE to be a robot. I also don't have to worry about feather fall items or deathblock items which gives me more freedom with equipment choices.

Why not 4 levels of FVS?
I like the 4 FVS splash, but I don't think that it is right for this build.

• Enhancement Points: This build is already very tight on enhancement points. It would require almost all of the enhancement points to get arcane supremacy, wraith form and teir 4 AOV.
• Level 8 spells: I don't really like any of the high level arcane spells, but there are monsters that are immune to lower level spells. By having access to the higher level spells, you have an answer. Without those spells... I'm not sure what you do besides ask someone else to kill them
• The level 15 feat: The first feat most people would probably cut from this build is enlarge. That would be a mistake (IMO). The force SLAs have a short range and having enlarge lets me use them from a distance. More often than not, my reason for using them from a distance is not for me to be safe... it is to grab agro early on so the rest of my party is safe! There are however a few quests where having long range attacks is a game changer.

Rogue instead of monk?
Absolutly! As I indicated in my opening, the grandmaster stance is not so much a defining part of the build. In a strange way, dropping monk actually frees a feat! (You gained two feats, but spent 3 on stances). The pain is:

• A significant hit to saves by losin the saves bonus from water stance. Fort and will saves take a second hit because rogue saves are not as good as monk saves for these two. Will saves take a THIRD hit because water stance was also +wisdom.
• A loss of 8 dodge points (4 from flurry of blows, 4 from water stance)
• A loss of some movement speed

If you are playing on epic elite, the loss in saves is probably going to hurt. If you play a lot of epic hard... the extra utility from the rogue might be worth the trade. You would have one more feat to spend, I would recommend either mobility (for more dodge) or deflect arrows. If you are human, you could possibly go dodge/mobility/spring attack to recoup some of the lost dodge.

[Ancient]

Videos
EE Von3 Solo

Other stuff
Lead shadow dragon raid in kills
Tied for second in deaths

[Ancient]

This is reserved, just in case I have something else.

[markel2011]

Awesome guide!
Makes a lot of things clear for new people like me.
2 questions:
1. I assume most of the gear you use require some raiding or high level crafting right?
2. Spells you use: Invisibility, Blurr, Rage, Heroism - are this for other party members or some kind of twisted personal use i cant even imagine? ;o

P.S. After some thinking - might you be so generous and recommend some obvious pieces of equipement that can be farmed solo?

[GreyPawn]

Great build, Ancient. Really, really epic! Kudos for an in-depth look at this.

Question for you: it looks like you are a Warforged in the video you posted. I'm sorely tempted to try the build out, but your write-up indicates you'd roll a Human over a Warforged instead. Are there any potential drawbacks to doing that, in your opinion?

And what are your thoughts on U21 beating down Shiradi with the adrenaline and radiant forcefield procs? Currently running an 18Wiz/2Monk variation on CDR's Just Shiradi build, and have had to deal with more than a few people in pug raids screaming about turning off Prism.

Thanks in advance! And again, truly awesome build here.

[slarden]

Nice build. I like this variation and may try it. I am currently running a Wiz 14/fvs 4/monk 2 after recently playing a sorc 16/ 2 monk / 2 pal

The # of levels of favored soul is something that will continue to be debated. I tend to favor the 4 fvs levels because I think 4% crits + 1 net caster level outweighs the level 8 spell. Your point about a few bosses being immune is true, but it's no different than a water savant against cold-immune creatures. There are options, they are costly from an SP perspective. My feeling is those enemies are not in difficult content so I won't plan my build around them. I won't bother soloing quests like Wiz King or Zawabi's revenge

Your point about enlarge is even better, especially considering the goal of your build. I may give that some serious thought. My feats match yours except I take lightning reflexes/completionist instead of toughness/epic toughness. I might consider dropping completionist for enlarge @ level 28 to try it out.

I switch between energy burst and sense weakness for my first twist situationally. When the new ED comes out it will be possible to have both in plus two tier 1 twists for saves/boulder toss. I won't have enough past lifes to pull it off, but I know others will.

The level 27 feat is a tough choice between ruin and epic reflexes, but I agree with your epic reflexes choice,esp since a reflex save of around 80 is easily achievable with that build. Plus Ruin is just so expensive. If it was an SLA with free metamagic I might consider it.... might....

Again great build, explanation and ideas.

[Ancient]

Question for you: it looks like you are a Warforged in the video you posted. I'm sorely tempted to try the build out, but your write-up indicates you'd roll a Human over a Warforged instead. Are there any potential drawbacks to doing that, in your opinion?

The biggest drawback is that human is a 100% commitment to wraith form, while a robot can go back to being a robot and still have self healing.

And what are your thoughts on U21 beating down Shiradi with the adrenaline and radiant forcefield procs? Currently running an 18Wiz/2Monk variation on CDR's Just Shiradi build, and have had to deal with more than a few people in pug raids screaming about turning off Prism.

You can live with them turned off. I believe (no proof) that the majority of the damage comes from the epic SLAs and the core shiradi procs (force/sonic). I do notice a slight decrease in kill speed without prism... but there have been many play sessions where I forgot to turn them on for hours and didn't even notice.

[Ancient]

The # of levels of favored soul is something that will continue to be debated. I tend to favor the 4 fvs levels because I think 4% crits + 1 net caster level outweighs the level 8 spell

You cannot have wraith form, arcane supremacy the 4% addtional crits and +1 net caster level I wish it was possible.

Arcane supremacy costs 2 with 30 points of pre-reqs = 32
Wraith form costs 1 with 20 points of pre-reqs = 21
Aov Intense Faith is 3 levels at 2 points each plus 2 more points for criticals with 20 poins of pre-reqs = 28.

32+21+28 = 81

If you want 4 FVS, I would pick the last 2% criticals over the extra level and just break even on levels. Arcane supremacy is too good to miss.

With that approach, you would have a whole point left to spend!

[Acaios]

i`ve been grinding PLs at the moment on my toon to be an end life caster, so what i`ll say are not from actual playstyle, just some ideas i have. i wanted to become a wf (or bf) toaster of vengeance, but recently, the Wiz version of it, kinda attracts me (evasion!).
anyway, my ideas are:

1)3lvls of monk, instead of 2.
from what i see in wiki, monks get the feat fast movement in the 3rd lvl (and every next 3 lvls), as opposed to what you claim. i dont know though, if they get some innate non-listed increase in movement speed at lvl1. other than that, unfortunately 3rd lvl doesnt increases saves, dodge or ac. but it increases by 1 tha BAB (i`ll explain later why i mention it)

but most importantly, align with heavens. since u are already in water stance, centered, and u have ki generation, then why not buff urself with a -25% spellpoint discount, once every minute? which would potentially benefit also other party members if they`re close (other arcanes,divines, even melees/ranged cocoon users)

i know, that the 2fvs builds are super efficient in mana conservation, but less sp cost means more potential to spam other spells too.

edit: after some calculations, that might not be as good as i had in mind at first. it takes 30ki to activate it, while you regain 10/min. although you get some free initial ki when you enter a quest or shrine, but you cant spam it every minute. unless u hit the last alive mob and get the remaining ki that way.

2) why a staff and not two weapons?
core 1 of ninja spy makes shortswords ki weapons. which look a bit better than kamas (although the thunderforged arent really nice, ffs)

my initial thoughts (when i had in mind the toaster of vengeance build), were to have a force specced on 1 hand, and a fire specced on the other (thunderforged).
before i had seen the thunderforged, i was also looking into the off hand to be balizarde + a planar focus + sages goggles

another idea is on the off hand to have an t3 fire alchemical shortsword (fire and sonic specced - or negative if PM) for arcane augmention, which affects the number of missiles of your chain missiles, which seems that you spam in the beginning a lot. and also affects other spells, like buffs duration, death aura`s caster lvl, energy burst,etc

btw, sorc`s cooldowns and casting speed make them (or at least me, on my 1st life) use 2 spells: scorching ray (which can damage for 1k with all that crit chances) and chain missiles. rinse repeat. without waiting. i only used magic missile on bosses, instead of chain missiles, which made the cycle even quicker.

3) the 1st 1-hander, could have been a thunderforged returner shuriken, (still force spellpower specced), and utilize the pin and/or ottos whistler. i havent tested it in very much extend, but from a few shots that i made on another toon (pure PM) i was having problems with my 'attack' being low to land the hit. shiradi gives a +10 bonus (when u stack it) to ranged attacks. and i guess that could be worked better, and definitely needs more tests. but it`s nice for eTor when u cant nerve venom the giants. or pin vs undead. and besides the added CC, the mob is taking extra damage.
now that double rainbow sucks, it might be a nice oportunity to spend some points on them and run some tests.
using a shuriken would make you lose nothing vs any other 1handed. unless u go 3monk, which would require to switch to melee weapons to charge the finisher.

edit: enlarged otto`s irresistable dance. why are you not using it?

[Ancient]

Thank your the feedback!

1)3lvls of monk, instead of 2.

That is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what you get is worth what you give up.

2) why a staff and not two weapons?

The main two reasons are 1.) Traditionalist caster is +10 spell poower and the caster staves give multiple spell power bonuses. One advantage of two weapons would be the ability to get one more additional lore item. Since shiradi procs are many damage types, it helps to have as many lore items as you can.

3) the 1st 1-hander, could have been a thunderforged returner shuriken, (still force spellpower specced), and utilize the pin and/or ottos whistler

I'm tight on shiradi points, I have toyed with the idea of skipping colors of the queen to get a few more things... but every now and then colors really saves the day.

As far as a throwing hybrid, I've tried some of those and I personally seem to have more success just spamming direct damage spells to kill quicker.

[Arzoc]

As stated, I don't have FvS unlocked as I just returned and am on a new server starting fresh(loving it, by the way). Anyway, since I'm lacking that, should I just go 18/2mnk or is there something else that might be useful for another 2 level splash? Thanks for this guide, gave me some direction after learning my first life wiz can't do all I wanted it to initially

[Ancient]

Where are you taking the build, just heroics or up through epics?

I have seen some 18 wiz/2 monks do very very well even in epics, but they tend more towards DC casters than pewpew spammers.

I'm not a favor genius, but I wonder if you could go 16/2 and reach the 2500 favor needed for FVS.

[Cardtrick]

I'm not a favor genius, but I wonder if you could go 16/2 and reach the 2500 favor needed for FVS.

A VIP or anyone with access to most packs definitely can. I typically top out a heroic 3rd+ life around 2200 favor, but that's with repeating some quests and without specifically farming for general favor (I do go out of my way early on to get Coin Lords and Kundarak favor as early as possible for inventory/bank space).

More than likely, you'd get to the 2500 favor after already earning enough XP to cap -- but that's not really a problem, since you can always hold levels indefinitely. It does mean "wasting" some XP -- especially on a first life character who really doesn't need much to cap.

[Arzoc]

A VIP or anyone with access to most packs definitely can. I typically top out a heroic 3rd+ life around 2200 favor, but that's with repeating some quests and without specifically farming for general favor (I do go out of my way early on to get Coin Lords and Kundarak favor as early as possible for inventory/bank space).

More than likely, you'd get to the 2500 favor after already earning enough XP to cap -- but that's not really a problem, since you can always hold levels indefinitely. It does mean "wasting" some XP -- especially on a first life character who really doesn't need much to cap.

Ok, if the FvS is critical to the build I can look at farming it up at the end. I do have access to about everything, not VIP but have most, missing a couple of packs around the 8-10 range (Threnal and Restless I think?). I'm first life so it'll take some farming on my part, we'll see how much I enjoy (don't hate) doing it and go from there. Thanks for the quick input both of you

Edit: Oh, and this'll go all the way up if I can, I never really got to play MotU and High Road after I bought them