2nd life Fighter attempting 1-32 on R1 with a group – general tanking questions

[Bjond]

What is the point of having many past lives?

Increased depth and power for the character. In order of usefulness, it's

Epic PL > Iconic PL >> RXP >> (specific) Heroic PL >> Racial PLs​

Racials are the odd one there. They do almost nothing at first, but once you accumulate a TON, they open up new build options that are impossible without them. So, with "enough" racials, they can be the most powerful. They're just very VERY time-consuming to acquire compared to the others (takes years to get enough).

Epic PLs are huge; eg. DS+9 PRR+36 Absorb+15 HP+180 and Destiny Points + uh, "lots". Epic PL bonuses fully apply from L1 and stack with everything.

My context: we’re a first life group. Questing is boring on anything less than elite or R1 (depending on the quest).

What content are the powerful people doing, and why?

More general experience with the quests and game will open up higher reaper for you. I'll typically level on R1 in heroic (solo or grouped because reaper doesn't pay in heroic), but I know folks that level R7+ in heroic for fun.

Epics I'll level on R4 solo or higher if grouped and people want it. That's unusual, since higher reaper is often more work than it's worth sub-cap.

At cap, I'll group for R8+ or solo R4~R6 for RXP, bank sagas (save the reward), then ER back to 20 (collecting 1x EPL), eat the saga XP rewards to quick-level back to 26'ish, then quickly cap and full TR back down to 1 (collects 1x IPL + 1x HPL or another EPL + 1x HPL or RPL).

I far FAR prefer Iconics to anything else. Iconics start at L15 and the PLs are like Epic PLs in many ways. Some are quite broadly useful on all builds (PRR, MRR). So, I'll get 1xRXP saga set on high reaper, 1x EPL, 1x IPL, 1x HPL out of an iconic life.

My main goal, though, is to build raid-useful characters. Once I have all four of my raid characters "current" enough to suit me, I stop playing DDO sub-cap and only log in for raids. When a character gets dangerously out of date I rebuild, relevel, and park it at cap again.

My DDO play is contrary to design. It's intended to be a continuous TR hamster wheel and most of the folk I know play it that way. More typically, raids are done casually when people are at cap then not again until they re-cap after TR and usually not with a raid-build. After years of this, they produce a character that essentially "has it all" for PLs. Then they raid-park that character and start over with a new character.

I skipped all but the most valuable wheel spinnings and went directly to raid-parking.

 

[Kirilh]

LOL, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much for that (much needed) perspective.

Another n00b question, if I may…

I have concluded that group’s fighter will take the two-handed fighting line of feats, focus on the Kensei tree, and Max intimidate. What tankie feats should he take to make sure he can be tankie when required?

I am looking at:
Shield Mastery
Improved Shield mastery
Greater Shield Mastery
Heavy Armor Combatant
Heavy Armor Master

Am I missing something, or proposing something that isn't worth it?

Also considering Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack for the fun/useful charges! I foresee great synergy with intimidate. Though, is that a good investment? Can he get an equivalent ‘charge’ power via Enhancements?

 

[Bjond]

LOL, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much for that (much needed) perspective.

Another n00b question, if I may…

I have concluded that group’s fighter will take the two-handed fighting line of feats, focus on the Kensei tree, and Max intimidate. What tankie feats should he take to make sure he can be tankie when required?

I am looking at:
Shield Mastery
Improved Shield mastery
Greater Shield Mastery
Heavy Armor Combatant
Heavy Armor Master

Am I missing something, or proposing something that isn't worth it?

Also considering Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack for the fun/useful charges! I foresee great synergy with intimidate. Though, is that a good investment? Can he get an equivalent ‘charge’ power via Enhancements?

Absolutely take Spring Attack. One of the toughest things for a melee (tank or not) is pulling agro on something far away. Spring helps a LOT that way.

I'd skip the shield mastery line unless you intend on making a vanguard. For that you level as 2H, then take Shield Specialist at cap and swap to bastard swords, though fighter does have enough feats it can take both and use bastards while leveling.

Placing 6 AP in Stalwart tree for the defensive stance should be enough "defense" for R1s -- especially with a team.

Hmm. If 2H and tanky is your thinking, Dragon Lord (Fighter Archetype) with 6 AP in Stalwart can get a 15x4 profile using any Falchion plus LOTS of great tactical CC that will help a great deal in quests. It also includes a leap at T5, so you can use feats for dps instead of spring attack.

The nice thing for a newbie on 2H'ers is that you can get a nice *free* Falchion at L10 and L29 from Ravenloft -- just run up to an NPC and he'll give it to you. Plus for L20, you can use any of the easy upgrade Falchions (salt or keep on borderlands).

 

[Matuse]

LOL, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much for that (much needed) perspective.

Another n00b question, if I may…

I have concluded that group’s fighter will take the two-handed fighting line of feats, focus on the Kensei tree, and Max intimidate. What tankie feats should he take to make sure he can be tankie when required?

I am looking at:
Shield Mastery
Improved Shield mastery
Greater Shield Mastery
Heavy Armor Combatant
Heavy Armor Master

Am I missing something, or proposing something that isn't worth it?

Also considering Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack for the fun/useful charges! I foresee great synergy with intimidate. Though, is that a good investment? Can he get an equivalent ‘charge’ power via Enhancements?

Dodge, Mobility, and Spring Attack are, to me, auto-selects for any melee class that has enough feats for them - which a fighter definitely does.

They give a big chunk of dodge, and Spring Attack is insanely useful. Even if you never actually attack anything with it ever, the leap ability it provides is a can't miss ability for puzzle solving, battlefield traversing, and taking shortcuts.

 

[Jasparius]

Dodge, Mobility, and Spring Attack are, to me, auto-selects for any melee class that has enough feats for them - which a fighter definitely does.

They give a big chunk of dodge, and Spring Attack is insanely useful. Even if you never actually attack anything with it ever, the leap ability it provides is a can't miss ability for puzzle solving, battlefield traversing, and taking shortcuts.

Spring Attack over Whirlwind ? Dire Charge closes the gap nicely plus has stuns.

The movement side of it, I found I rarely used and ended up swapping it out.

 

[Matuse]

Spring Attack over Whirlwind ? Dire Charge closes the gap nicely plus has stuns.

The movement side of it, I found I rarely used and ended up swapping it out.

Dire charge is many, many levels away.

 

[Zaszgul]

LOL, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much for that (much needed) perspective.

Another n00b question, if I may…

I have concluded that group’s fighter will take the two-handed fighting line of feats, focus on the Kensei tree, and Max intimidate. What tankie feats should he take to make sure he can be tankie when required?

I am looking at:
Shield Mastery
Improved Shield mastery
Greater Shield Mastery
Heavy Armor Combatant
Heavy Armor Master

Am I missing something, or proposing something that isn't worth it?

Also considering Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack for the fun/useful charges! I foresee great synergy with intimidate. Though, is that a good investment? Can he get an equivalent ‘charge’ power via Enhancements?

Not critiquing here, just offering some perspective and some baseline.

You may want to look at light armor (PRR = BAB) instead of heavy (PRR = 2*BAB). The difference in PRR will max out at 25 (barring specialization feats), which is not a lot compared to what you get from items, enhancements, reaper points, etc, and heavy armor is difficult to get max dodge with. By level 34 a 1st life fighter in (easy-to-get gearset) light armor could have 200ish PRR, vs 225ish (+some extra for optional feats) in heavy, 235ish with a large shield (+some additional extra for optional feats). Just to offer some baseline, in case you thought light armor might not be able to get more than say 100 PRR at cap, and try to make it easier to weigh the value of 1 feat against x PRR.

Dodge is a powerful defensive stat and a lot easier to get than things that raise armor MDB (you'll have 5 dodge just from 2 feats, and then there are class/race enhancements, 9 from reaper points, plus gear that offers standard/insightful/quality bonuses).

The main reason for heavier armor is go beyond the MRR cap of lighter armor (cloth = 50, light = 100, medium & heavy = no cap). It's not as easy to get MRR as PRR, which makes it harder to outweigh the loss of dodge. If you lose 10 dodge to get an extra 10 MRR above light armor cap, that's usually a bad trade. Though you may find value in swapping armor types for some quests where MRR is more important than dodge.

If your reflex save is strong, there are multiple ways to get Evasion from epic destinies without multiclassing, which only works in light armor or cloth.

Personally, I run all my melees in cloth usually until L18 or as late as L23, depending on how soon the build can get MDB equal to its dodge (I don't care about the 50 MRR cap in heroics, 50 is plenty unless your saves are really bad). Low level armor has bad MDB, making it easy to lose the majority of your dodge in heroics.

At any rate, building can be quite complex! But that's a lot of the fun.

 

[Col Kurtz]

someone prob mentioned but just in case> Do Epic Past Lives as well as you go

you'll need Tokens of the Twelve (they drop only in older quests) to buy heroic hearts without spending ddo points/ cash

Epic past lives are a much faster power creep to obtain and very beneficial
*examples> 3 epic martial doublestrike >+9% ,or 3 epic Arcane for +9% crit chance to elemental spells.

Epic is different animal for newer players, but it's not too difficult... you don't have to push too fast/many players did Hard difficulty the 1st run through Epic. After that you'll be way better equipped and have the knowledge needed to push it to higher difficulty.

there's a ton of older equipment that can be upgraded to lvl20 for your epic runs...popular choices are Desert Sands and Saltmarsh stuff