The dwarven defender parody

[Zoda]

So the idea is to create a self sufficient zerger using SB and stalwart defender stances, that can tank ee raids. Race choice is dwarf, so I can get constitution to damage, and the best beard around, weapon of choice is thunderforged handaxe. The build name comes from... well, imagine how this toon will look like

What to expect (on cap, geared out with endgame supplies):
- huge HP pool, really, really huge (1500-1900 in LD, 2000-2600 in sentinel)
- working saves without pally splash (and epic reflex)
- working instakill
- great melee dps: 18-20/x3 crit profile on a TF crafted handaxe before feat + headman's chop + OC + 40-50% doublestrike + SWF feat line with 70+ CON
- prr around 100 (or more with past lives)
- selfcasts Displacement and FOM, DDoor for some utility
- 27% dodge even without Blitz
- amazing running speed
- quickened/empowered Coccoon and cures and heal scrolls for selflhealing
- option to use SF pots without completely crippling you (movespeed still bearable if you drink the big one, doesn't reduce CON - so keeps dps high)
- trap skills (I wouldn't go for them without completionist and tripple arti past lives, but certainly workable without them)

Dwarf 12 bard 6 fighter 2 rogue

starting stats:
STR 17 (+6 tome required for OC)
DEX 10
CON 20
WIS 8
INT 11 (if you want trap skills)
CHA 8

Feats in random order: (7 regular + 4 fighter + 3 epic)
PA (when +3 tome hits)
IC
3 SWF
2 cleave
quicken
2 shield mastery
empower heal
overwhelming crit (at lvl 24 with +6 tome)
epic reflexes
epic thoughness - with feat swap after you get thoughness at 28 with destiny feats (drop this if you have completionist)

Destiny feats:
PTWF and Thoughness (or PSWF if you want to twist Reign)

enhancement:
18 AP dwarf - all cores, all axe stuff, throw your weight around, +2 saves vs spells
26 AP stalwart - +6 con stance, +20% hp stance, swift defense, +2 con
35 AP swashbuckler - coup, exploit weakness, 1 rank of Second Skin
1 AP warchanter - 1st core +1 con

Main Destiny: Legendary Dreadnaught (taking Anvil of Thunder - great tool) - switch to sentinel for tanking and twist 10% hamp from EA
Twists: Legendary Shield Mastery + Coccoon + Primal Scream /or/ hail of blows (+ Purity of Essence with epic completionist)

Here is a gameplay video in e/e Break in the Ice: (also shows enhancement and destiny trees for those who are interested)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=saPZwy6ao...ature=youtu.be - this was made after I capped the build first on my main

Here is an e/e Breaking the Ranks video:

You can find a couple more videos of the build on my youtube channel if interested, won't link them all individually.

Selfbuffed stats in Legendary Dreadnaught and usual zerging setup:

[serthcore]

Heh, looks like an awesome dps tank.
Having tried swashbuckler myself, the dps is great, and you bring very good defenses here.

About the extra feat i would play with empower heal or epic reflexes, going for epic reflexes if your selfhealing is good enough (which i think it should be).
Now bring it to ee deathwyrm!

[Zoda]

Heh, looks like an awesome dps tank.
Having tried swashbuckler myself, the dps is great, and you bring very good defenses here.

About the extra feat i would play with empower heal or epic reflexes, going for epic reflexes if your selfhealing is good enough (which i think it should be).
Now bring it to ee deathwyrm!

That'd be the plan, I just need to cap it

I'm thinking of taking precision (and epic reflexes) for better dps against the shadow dragon, but will see how I'll manage to keep myself topped without emp heal. Wish I had pally past lives on Zodinn...

[Maxxcore]

What order did you level your guy? And is he a 36 pt build? And what skills did you take every level?

[Zoda]

What order did you level your guy? And is he a 36 pt build? And what skills did you take every level?

Leveling order only matters if you want to get maxed intimidate, otherwise doesn't matter much. I did 1 bard 6 fighter 2 rog 11 bard. Probably taking rog first would have been more skill points but couldn't be bothered to check and I have a tendency of failing when it comes to picking alignment of split builds

Yes, it is 36 pb.

I leveled up Balance, Perform, UMD and Heal.

Update:
I'm level 20 now and got 1000+ hit points and 58 reflex with only ship buffs and nothing uber for gear, mostly ES commendation turn in stuff.

[Nayus]

Your CON will be about just as high if you go STR/DEX/CHA-based, there isn't much reason to try CON, in the end it'll be some meager HP difference to annoy whoever's helping healing you.

Then you'll learn 33% Heal Amp is 330% better than any amount of HP you can get by going dwarf. In Epics you'll take so much damage, HAMP players an incredible role for any build that can fit it.

Bulwark of Defense is a feat for +2 saves because you will not get any amount of AC with a leather and a buckler, also drop any AC enhancements you were going to take in Dwarf or Stalwart.

[Zoda]

Your CON will be about just as high if you go STR/DEX/CHA-based, there isn't much reason to try CON, in the end it'll be some meager HP difference to annoy whoever's helping healing you.

Then you'll learn 33% Heal Amp is 330% better than any amount of HP you can get by going dwarf. In Epics you'll take so much damage, HAMP players an incredible role for any build that can fit it.

Bulwark of Defense is a feat for +2 saves because you will not get any amount of AC with a leather and a buckler, also drop any AC enhancements you were going to take in Dwarf or Stalwart.

I don't have anyone healing me, I heal myself. I have hamp too, it is slotted on gear. I'd love some pally past lives, but I left them on my main.

Now that we made this clear, let me ask you how many times you tanked elite deathwyrm? I did it a bunch of times and I always wanted more hp. Except when I kited on my archer instead of tanking, but where is the challange in that... Keeping the dragon locked in position can make that raid a lot faster on elite.

On Bulwark: who gives a dayum about AC?

[Nayus]

Elite Deathwyrm I haven't, but I did tank the male dragon in Elite Peaks twice in guild runs, without cheese hiding behind rocks/trees, because my guild leader would rather fail the whole thing than doing that.

I had around 1400 HP that life, sustainable, just standing up in the harbor checking my mails, I know people who reached much higher and I wasn't focusing on that. But even with 1k4 I noticed my life bar was going up and down, back and forth, so much that white things almost came out of me. 'dat was crazy for sure....

Now say someone had 2000 HP. At 50% health something that heals for 500 with 30% amp (I assume that's your amount?) will get him to 2000*0,5+500*1,3= 1650 HP. He just took a 1000 blast.

My 1k4 HP, at half hp + 128,4% Healing Amp without past lives = 700 + 500*2,284 = 1842. I just took a 700 blast though, let's say I took a 1k blast as well.

400 + 500*2,23 = 1542.

It's 108 points lower if I take a 1k blast and if you have two thousand life points, for a total of +600 HP than I had. A higher HP would allow higher survivability if you were always able to stay at 100% health, anything less than that and you're getting healed for more, thus recovering more HP per second.

Monster DPS - Your HPS = Damage

Of course I could get insta-killed with 1k4 damage where you would have survived with 2k, but if I were a single hit point away from death when the boss used his biggest attack I would still recover better. Getting instakilled is a problem though but if you're losing 1k4 HP before you can throw a single heal then 2k HP is not the answer, that's for sure.
-------

You have 7 level-ups + 2 from Dwarf. 8 con makes 4 mod for 4*28 = 112 HP
I assume you took 3 Dwarf HP cores for +30 HP.

(112 + 30) * 1.2 modifier from Stalwart = 170 HP.

Doesn't look like you're getting +600 HP. Even if you break 2k HP it proves I could also get that value with the same effort and you know, the more HP, the better Healing Amp becomes.

[Zoda]

I have both 20 and 30 hamp on gear atm.

Dwarf gets +3 con comparerd to human not +2, not like it matters a whole lot (20 start + 2 enhancement vs 18+1). Also if you go str route, you can't start with both STR and CON maxed without gimping your other stats, so CON would probably drop to 16 and DEX wouldn't be too high either.

I was trying to create a str build, but couldn't justify going for the defender stance on str based, but I really wanted it's defensive benefits, and also it would have made me chose between divine might and evasion.

Human/helf str based is not bad, but I don't feel like I need the healamp, while I know that I will want the extra hp for elite wyrm (I hate thuder peaks beyond telling, so can't say much about that, always slacking away from channel runs, only got 2 elite runs for favor). I solod my way up to 26 (aside from an ee von5) doing only elites, and I was very pleased with the hp, often I only have to heal after the fight is over, which make coccoon a lot stronger as it gets all its ticks.

At this point getting reliable selfheal for high end ee is very easy so I guess it only comes down to playstyle if you prefer hamp or hp. For STR based I'd probably go with a different split anyway to be able to get that warchanter 1st core working, and also on STR based I would want divine might.

EDIT: 1884 selfbuffed hp wihtout yugo pot at lvl 26, I'll hit more than 2k.

[Wipey]

Can I ask you how high "character sheet" devo ( buffed ) this thing has ?
Looks cool.

[Zoda]

Can I ask you how high "character sheet" devo ( buffed ) this thing has ?
Looks cool.

Okay, so just capped and put whatever gear I had at hand on it, it is not the optimal setup. Toon has +5 CON and DEX tomes, +4 in the rest, 2 PDK, 1 doublestrike, 3 cleric, 2 rog, 1 fighter past lives (just saying so you know how those stat turned out to be like that). I have +10 con item equipped +8 dex slotted.



So far the build has been amazing, on the way to cap I solod all e/e Gianthold quests without a single death as a lvl 26, good stuff.

And I can finally play a dwarf.

[Takllin]

So far the build has been amazing, on the way to cap I solod all e/e Gianthold quests without a single death as a lvl 26, good stuff.

By solo he means that he left my come pike his runs on my gimp druid life and use the rest of his cakes XD

Seriously though, its an uber build, watching him blaze through quests while he was at 26 without top end gear was really cool.

[Ancient]

Great build, I'm really liking the 12/6/2 split. Still trying to work through the details to find what I like, but dwarf was not one I had considered... looks like it turned out very well. Thanks for posting.

[Zoda]

By solo he means that he left my come pike his runs on my gimp druid life and use the rest of his cakes XD

Seriously though, its an uber build, watching him blaze through quests while he was at 26 without top end gear was really cool.

I did that in the hopes that you'll cast jump on me in maze... well, next time I'll know better, scalebringer!

Great build, I'm really liking the 12/6/2 split. Still trying to work through the details to find what I like, but dwarf was not one I had considered... looks like it turned out very well. Thanks for posting.

Thanks!

I really prefer dwarf to other races on this build, because it has the coolest beard. On a more serious note, that's a lot of easy hp there, and I have no hamp problems whatsoever (just pulled Takllin's gimp kensai druid through an eeWGU and he fell asleep halfway it was still EZ) you get +5 saves vs spells, and did I mention the cool beard? Fully geared without completionist it has a CON score of 70, don't think str based can get there with the same split.

Planning to bang out the remaining 5 lives on my main to get completionist, then I'll do this build on him and put this toon back to it's old banker role.

[Nightmanis]

I did that in the hopes that you'll cast jump on me in maze... well, next time I'll know better, scalebringer!



Thanks!

I really prefer dwarf to other races on this build, because it has the coolest beard. On a more serious note, that's a lot of easy hp there, and I have no hamp problems whatsoever (just pulled Takllin's gimp kensai druid through an eeWGU and he fell asleep halfway it was still EZ) you get +5 saves vs spells, and did I mention the cool beard? Fully geared without completionist it has a CON score of 70, don't think str based can get there with the same split.

Planning to bang out the remaining 5 lives on my main to get completionist, then I'll do this build on him and put this toon back to it's old banker role.

Screw you Zoda you're not helping the fact that night is so gimpy...

Be interesting to see this build work as a con/cha build of a different race. Do something akin to a divine crusader swash and board. Wouldn't end up with nearly as much HP though.

[Vanhooger]

What about perform? How high will be?
Could you please post an image with ench?

Thanks

[Zoda]

Just completed a flwaless e/e WGU with this build, here are the details:
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...85#post5371685

Looks like I have no healing amp problems after all.... right?

What about perform? How high will be?
Could you please post an image with ench?

Thanks

Perform sitting on 76 atm, works fine, can be raised easily to 90ish value, but I don't see the point, was hitting everything with Coup in WGU, although some orc priests saved against Fascinate.

I won't post a ss of my enhancements, the breakdown I gave should be more than enough to figure them out.

[Ancient]

Why hand-axe over light picks? It seems that en pointe and exploit weakness would both bring bigger gains to the light pick than the hand axe.

*EDIT* Nevermind, headsman chop. I found the answer.

[Cetus]

Time for an EE devils assult solo zodanub!

Chop chop

[Zoda]

Time for an EE devils assult solo zodanub!

Chop chop

I got my greater shard from shroud the other day, so I'll skip that. Also log on coz I wanna raid.