Daxeguard is my favorite build and playstyle of all time. I'm a paladin fanboy, I've enjoyed trying to push paladin to the limits since Ravenloft when I first stepped my feet into the high skulls endgame. Over the years I've played and spent months on different paladin builds of all the different melee fighting styles. Daxeguard was what I was maining before the epic destiny revamp and I enjoyed it so much I purchased 6 wishes of memories just so I could keep playing it. Unfortunately, the epic destiny revamp caused the racial AP requirement to go from 4 rAP to 12 or 11+1 rAP/uAP. That's too rich for my hamster wheel avoiding self and actually caused me to leave the game for about a year and a half among other issues, but I've updated my build for U59 and have made other more accessible vanguard builds that I hope others can enjoy.
The Daxeguard provides on demand burst windows by chaining adrenaline and exalted smite together fast enough that you maintain full uptime on crusade. T5 Divine Crusader's Mighty Crusade causes smite to grant crusade for 4 seconds and paladin's exalted smite has a cooldown of 3 seconds. This basically allows us to buff damage as much as Turn the Tide whenever we want to without needing to dedicate our epic strike to consecration and instead use adrenaline. Which by the way, pairs perfectly with exalted smite, shield attacks, and divine sacrifice. You become the holy Whack-A-Mole, giving heretics a one way yeet to Baator. This is not unique to vanguard but it's the playstyle the build used to have a unique niche with. The old epic destinies had an adrenaline with a much shorter cooldown but required a very high rate of procs to recharge fast enough to spam. Daxeguard was unique where it benefitted from all the THF specific buffs of FotW and had an attack speed fast enough to sustain an adrenaline smite spam. Nowadays I play a SWF pally and can only adrenaline every 3rd smite but it's still a fun playstyle for paladin.
Daxeguard
Paladin 20
Lawful Good Dwarf
Stats
. . . . . . . .36pt . . Tome . . Level Up
. . . . . . . .---- . . ----. . .--------
Strength. . . . 18. . . .+8. . . .4: STR
Dexterity . . . 10. . . .+8. . . .8: STR
Constitution. . 18. . . .+8. . . 12: STR
Intelligence. . .8. . . .+8. . . 16: STR
Wisdom. . . . . .8. . . .+8. . . 20: STR
Charisma. . . . 13. . . .+8. . . 24: STR
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28: STR
Feats
.1. . . . : Two Handed Fighting
.3. . . . : Dodge
.6. . . . : Improved Two Handed Fighting
.9. . . . : Improved Critical: Slashing
12. . . . : Greater Two Handed Fighting
15. . . . : Mobility
18. . . . : Spring Attack
21 Epic . : Overwhelming Critical
22 Destiny: Doublestrike
24 Epic . : Shield Mastery
25 Destiny: Perfect Shield Mastery
27 Epic . : Precision
28 Destiny: Embodiment of Law
30 Epic . : Epic Damage Reduction
30 Legend : Scion of: Ethereal Plane
31 Destiny: Shield Mastery Specialty
.1 Deity. : Follower of: Olladra
.6 Deity. : Luck of Olladra
Personally, I level my vanguards as a normal THF paladin and then swap to SnB at endgame. The way that the attack speed and crit profile is so backloaded into the vanguard tree as well as the shield mastery feats being very restrictive to grab while leveling rather than specialization at 31 just makes the leveling process as a SnB awful. You don't need the CC from shield smash so just stick with SoS til cap. Onatar will give higher dps with the MP clicky but personally I just enjoy having a heal in R10s. Spring attack is also another personal choice, the deity feats are a decent option as well since daxes should be receiving the +2 hit/damage perks as a martial weapon for dwarves.
Spells
Spells are pretty basic, you want to make sure you keep up prayer for yourself and the group, don't forget to hit the tank as well! Same goes for primal scream. Break enchantment is handy to clear certain ground effects like the dog puddles in LoB.
Enhancements (Spent: 80 +11r +1u / Max: 80 +11r +1u AP)
Knight of the Chalice (41 AP)
The reason for this AP split is that divine retribution is by far the fastest smite generation available. With DC's endless smiting and Lindal's belt, smite generation becomes 1.5 per minute and an additional 2 per minute if retribution is used on cooldown. This translates to about a 23% uptime on crusade even when the smite pool is completely empty. So whenever there is downtime like waiting for the SiC optional to be completed, use retribution just to regenerate more smites. Ascendancy stacks are also very powerful and very relevant in the current raiding scene. So our T5 is in KoTC, and the KoTC's capstone is not only stronger than vanguard's due to the extra ascendancy stacks and 3% damage buff for the party, but it also leaves 8 AP for haste boost in VKF and 31 AP for vanguard which neatly provides the full critical profile of the shield and 15% attack speed. 12 AP in dwarf grants favored weapon with daxes, this build specifically is built around daxes rather than bswords because daxe's extra multiplier works much better with adrenaline. I also pickup MP action boost in addition to haste boost because paladin's have a lower amount of action boosts and without the LD t5 you'll run out of haste boosts in long raids/quests.
Destinies (Spent: 71 (48 +23pdp) / Max: 63 (40 +23pdp) AP)7
Divine Crusader (37 AP)
This build could certainly go T5 in LD or FoTW but I wanted to lean into the paladin and shield strengths. The fort and AC debuffs from improved/divine sundering is a huge benefit to a raid group along with providing the crusade buffs. I typically build for raiding so that is the reason for grabbing the threat reduction from shadowdancer. The nightshield is also a nice convenience since using the shield belt clicky will erase the extra smites/lohs from Lindal's belt. In raids outside of reaper and even in lower skulls all dps need to prioritize threat reduction or they just become a liability to the group and get flamed in voicechat. Little known fact, when a qstaff is used as a clicky it uses your caster levels if it is higher than the original item's. This means that a heroic GS qstaff with displacement gives me 2:36s of displacement per charge and they are super cheap to make as opposed to LGS clickies. This fun trick works for true seeing as well by using stave of the seer for a 26 minute buff. That's why I use axiom of faith to get qstaff as a favored weapon so I don't lose my ascendancy stacks when rebuffing.
Gearing
This gearset is fairly well rounded, trying to squeeze as much offense and defense as possible. You can go a little further with replacing the slavers ring with an elemental ring of acid and then filling the Fort/Resist with augments and a different dino weapon proc. The positive spellpower is just for CSW topping off. If you end up using consecration just slot a combustion augment in the shield.
Filigrees
This is what I run for filigrees. I'm used to using a lot of weapon swaps and the improvements to lag have made them much, much smoother than they were in Ravenloft era. My "Main" weapon has prowess/sanctified fervor while my "Boss Beater" drops the sanctified fervor for threat reduction and increased MP from dreadbringer. I also use a dino affirmation daxe for my exceptional charisma 2 + charisma filigrees trance swap. If you only run one weapon then I would suggest using the "Main" but change out the 2 dreadbringers for treachery MP/Threat reduction for raids.
That's the Daxeguard, hard hitting and relatively sturdy. You'll want to focus and take out high priority targets like reapers and champs. You can stunlock anything by simply knocking them down with adrenaline and shield smash is your backup CC if you need to lock down another target for later. Always buff adrenaline before an encounter because if you time it right you'll get 2 adrenalines to start the fight in rapid succession. Ideally you'll open with an adrenaline'd shield rush which is a +3W shield attack as opposed to lead the charge which is a mainhand attack then follow up with an adrenaline smite.
While I love vanguard and SnB dps, I'll be the first to admit that it is the most neglected playstyle and there is no niche that it can fulfill that something else doesn't do better. It used to have great synergy with the old FoTW due to the adrenaline spamming and recharging, a SWF daxe could somewhat come close but lost out on the THF bonuses and it was a huge investment just to get to around 95% strikethrough. Now with THF specialization a SWF daxe build just simply overshadows vanguard in every aspect and also has the benefit of being able to swap to a knight's training weapon mid combat to change to a single target DPS focus which a vanguard cannot do because they entirely lose their +.6 ability modifier when changing out of a 1.5 hander.
The issue with vanguard is that the entire fighting style is locked behind 31-41 AP spent in vanguard and 18-20 class levels just to get the fighting style functional. The defenses of wielding a shield are relatively small for a vanguard, it's a small amount of AC which can be gained through items and it becomes 25 PRR at 31 with shield specialization which is comparable to the 22 PRR/MRR from 31 AP in VKF which also gives the same amount of doublestrike as well as haste boost. The dps is so backloaded with vanguard that through heroics you're much better off using a THF because it shortens the amount of time you're in combat and it also frees up AP to be spent in SaD when the threat generation doesn't matter. The defenses of a shield that actually scales well into endgame is that doubling of MRR on reflex saves which is nice but with evasion being so easily accessible through shadowdancer and the huge defensive boost of high dodge on light armor it quickly gets overshadowed. The other aspect is the shield AC when it gets doubled by US T2 Shield prowess and SaD's T4 Reinforced defense (Realistically T5) but due to SnB already being behind in DPS you can't afford to invest that amount of AP for such a meager increase in defenses because you're already playing catchup. If you want a "tanky DPS" then just play a barbarian Occult Slayer with their high HP pool, damage reductions, temp HP, and improved uncanny dodge or a number of other tanky builds.
So how could vanguard and Sword & Board be fixed? I think the best way to solve this style's issues is to take an approach that mirrors swashbuckling's relationship with SWF. SnB should be a viable fighting style even outside of vanguard the same as SWF is without swashbuckling, swashbuckling merely enhances it for a number of builds but isn't required. The fighting style speed increases should be moved to the shield mastery feats and vanguard should have a stance that frontloads some of the strength like critical profile, secondary shield bash and added defenses like 25 PRR/MRR. In order to not upset the tank meta this stance should drop whenever you actively block and while I hate to suggest it, it may even need an induction time. The vanguard cores should then offer ability modifier to damage increases in place of the speed increases, it's very sad to have a 1X ability modifier on your mainhand when you don't have the attack speed of a TWF.
I plan to update the following posts with other vanguard builds that don't have the racial AP restriction and focus on different goals. For questions or the ddobuilder file you can reach me on discord at Hammatimes#3719
The Daxeguard provides on demand burst windows by chaining adrenaline and exalted smite together fast enough that you maintain full uptime on crusade. T5 Divine Crusader's Mighty Crusade causes smite to grant crusade for 4 seconds and paladin's exalted smite has a cooldown of 3 seconds. This basically allows us to buff damage as much as Turn the Tide whenever we want to without needing to dedicate our epic strike to consecration and instead use adrenaline. Which by the way, pairs perfectly with exalted smite, shield attacks, and divine sacrifice. You become the holy Whack-A-Mole, giving heretics a one way yeet to Baator. This is not unique to vanguard but it's the playstyle the build used to have a unique niche with. The old epic destinies had an adrenaline with a much shorter cooldown but required a very high rate of procs to recharge fast enough to spam. Daxeguard was unique where it benefitted from all the THF specific buffs of FotW and had an attack speed fast enough to sustain an adrenaline smite spam. Nowadays I play a SWF pally and can only adrenaline every 3rd smite but it's still a fun playstyle for paladin.
Daxeguard
Paladin 20
Lawful Good Dwarf
Stats
. . . . . . . .36pt . . Tome . . Level Up
. . . . . . . .---- . . ----. . .--------
Strength. . . . 18. . . .+8. . . .4: STR
Dexterity . . . 10. . . .+8. . . .8: STR
Constitution. . 18. . . .+8. . . 12: STR
Intelligence. . .8. . . .+8. . . 16: STR
Wisdom. . . . . .8. . . .+8. . . 20: STR
Charisma. . . . 13. . . .+8. . . 24: STR
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28: STR
Feats
.1. . . . : Two Handed Fighting
.3. . . . : Dodge
.6. . . . : Improved Two Handed Fighting
.9. . . . : Improved Critical: Slashing
12. . . . : Greater Two Handed Fighting
15. . . . : Mobility
18. . . . : Spring Attack
21 Epic . : Overwhelming Critical
22 Destiny: Doublestrike
24 Epic . : Shield Mastery
25 Destiny: Perfect Shield Mastery
27 Epic . : Precision
28 Destiny: Embodiment of Law
30 Epic . : Epic Damage Reduction
30 Legend : Scion of: Ethereal Plane
31 Destiny: Shield Mastery Specialty
.1 Deity. : Follower of: Olladra
.6 Deity. : Luck of Olladra
Personally, I level my vanguards as a normal THF paladin and then swap to SnB at endgame. The way that the attack speed and crit profile is so backloaded into the vanguard tree as well as the shield mastery feats being very restrictive to grab while leveling rather than specialization at 31 just makes the leveling process as a SnB awful. You don't need the CC from shield smash so just stick with SoS til cap. Onatar will give higher dps with the MP clicky but personally I just enjoy having a heal in R10s. Spring attack is also another personal choice, the deity feats are a decent option as well since daxes should be receiving the +2 hit/damage perks as a martial weapon for dwarves.
Spells
- Bless (4), <Any>, <Any>, <Any>
- Righteous Command (8), Angelskin (10), Remove Paralysis (16), <Any>
- Prayer (11), Remove Curse (12), Magic Circle Against Evil (19), <Any>
- Holy Sword (14), Zeal (15), Cure Serious Wounds (19), Break Enchantment (20)
Spells are pretty basic, you want to make sure you keep up prayer for yourself and the group, don't forget to hit the tank as well! Same goes for primal scream. Break enchantment is handy to clear certain ground effects like the dog puddles in LoB.
Enhancements (Spent: 80 +11r +1u / Max: 80 +11r +1u AP)
Knight of the Chalice (41 AP)
- Slayer of Evil, Courage of Heaven, Slayer of Evil II, Improved Courage of Heaven, Slayer of Evil III, Champion of Good
- Extra Smites III, Shieldbreaker III
- Adept Combatant, Divine Might III, Critical Mastery I, Action Boost: Power III
- Holy Combatant, Divine Sacrifice: Melee I, Exalted Smite: Melee III
- Knight's Training, Censure Demons, Vigor of Life
- Ascendency, Censure Outsiders, Vigor of Life, Holy Retribution: Melee
- To the Fore!, Shield Combat I, Vicious Shield I, Shield Combat II, Vicious Shield II
- Shield Specialization, Shield Smash III, Unbalancing Shove I
- Shield Specialization, Stunning Shield III, Missile Shield III
- Follow Up III, Fatal Bulwark
- Vanguard Armor Mastery III, Shield Charge III, Myrmidon's Edge I
- Dwarven Toughness
- Dwarven Weapon Training: Axe Training, Dwarven Armor Mastery III
- Dwarven Tactics II, Dwarven Weapon Training: Axe Training
- Dwarven Weapon Training: Axe Training
- Knife Expertise
- Undead Hunter, Mist Stalker, Acrobatic I
- Haste Boost III
The reason for this AP split is that divine retribution is by far the fastest smite generation available. With DC's endless smiting and Lindal's belt, smite generation becomes 1.5 per minute and an additional 2 per minute if retribution is used on cooldown. This translates to about a 23% uptime on crusade even when the smite pool is completely empty. So whenever there is downtime like waiting for the SiC optional to be completed, use retribution just to regenerate more smites. Ascendancy stacks are also very powerful and very relevant in the current raiding scene. So our T5 is in KoTC, and the KoTC's capstone is not only stronger than vanguard's due to the extra ascendancy stacks and 3% damage buff for the party, but it also leaves 8 AP for haste boost in VKF and 31 AP for vanguard which neatly provides the full critical profile of the shield and 15% attack speed. 12 AP in dwarf grants favored weapon with daxes, this build specifically is built around daxes rather than bswords because daxe's extra multiplier works much better with adrenaline. I also pickup MP action boost in addition to haste boost because paladin's have a lower amount of action boosts and without the LD t5 you'll run out of haste boosts in long raids/quests.
Destinies (Spent: 71 (48 +23pdp) / Max: 63 (40 +23pdp) AP)7
Divine Crusader (37 AP)
- Just Cause, Confront any Foe, Weather any Blow, Sunder Evil
- Divine Smite, Spear of Light II, Divine Sundering III
- Endless Smiting III, Holy Mantle, Bulk Up III
- Strike with Poise III, Axiom of Faith (Staves)
- Heavenly Presence, Blessed Strikes III, Rend Armor
- Mighty Crusade, Bring Down Wrath, Law of the Divine, Blessed Blades, Beckon Divinity
- Die Hard, Die Harder, Die Hardest, Be the Whirlwind
- Epic Strike: Adrenaline III, Enduring III
- Fear My Vengeance III, Primal Scream
- Wild Weapons: Double Strike III, Fury Selector: Furious III
- Wade Through: Double Strike III, Force Selector: Overwelming Force III
- Shadow Training, Step Through Shadow
- Stealthy I, Cover of Darkness III
- Dance in the Dark I
This build could certainly go T5 in LD or FoTW but I wanted to lean into the paladin and shield strengths. The fort and AC debuffs from improved/divine sundering is a huge benefit to a raid group along with providing the crusade buffs. I typically build for raiding so that is the reason for grabbing the threat reduction from shadowdancer. The nightshield is also a nice convenience since using the shield belt clicky will erase the extra smites/lohs from Lindal's belt. In raids outside of reaper and even in lower skulls all dps need to prioritize threat reduction or they just become a liability to the group and get flamed in voicechat. Little known fact, when a qstaff is used as a clicky it uses your caster levels if it is higher than the original item's. This means that a heroic GS qstaff with displacement gives me 2:36s of displacement per charge and they are super cheap to make as opposed to LGS clickies. This fun trick works for true seeing as well by using stave of the seer for a 26 minute buff. That's why I use axiom of faith to get qstaff as a favored weapon so I don't lose my ascendancy stacks when rebuffing.
Gearing
This gearset is fairly well rounded, trying to squeeze as much offense and defense as possible. You can go a little further with replacing the slavers ring with an elemental ring of acid and then filling the Fort/Resist with augments and a different dino weapon proc. The positive spellpower is just for CSW topping off. If you end up using consecration just slot a combustion augment in the shield.
Filigrees
This is what I run for filigrees. I'm used to using a lot of weapon swaps and the improvements to lag have made them much, much smoother than they were in Ravenloft era. My "Main" weapon has prowess/sanctified fervor while my "Boss Beater" drops the sanctified fervor for threat reduction and increased MP from dreadbringer. I also use a dino affirmation daxe for my exceptional charisma 2 + charisma filigrees trance swap. If you only run one weapon then I would suggest using the "Main" but change out the 2 dreadbringers for treachery MP/Threat reduction for raids.
That's the Daxeguard, hard hitting and relatively sturdy. You'll want to focus and take out high priority targets like reapers and champs. You can stunlock anything by simply knocking them down with adrenaline and shield smash is your backup CC if you need to lock down another target for later. Always buff adrenaline before an encounter because if you time it right you'll get 2 adrenalines to start the fight in rapid succession. Ideally you'll open with an adrenaline'd shield rush which is a +3W shield attack as opposed to lead the charge which is a mainhand attack then follow up with an adrenaline smite.
While I love vanguard and SnB dps, I'll be the first to admit that it is the most neglected playstyle and there is no niche that it can fulfill that something else doesn't do better. It used to have great synergy with the old FoTW due to the adrenaline spamming and recharging, a SWF daxe could somewhat come close but lost out on the THF bonuses and it was a huge investment just to get to around 95% strikethrough. Now with THF specialization a SWF daxe build just simply overshadows vanguard in every aspect and also has the benefit of being able to swap to a knight's training weapon mid combat to change to a single target DPS focus which a vanguard cannot do because they entirely lose their +.6 ability modifier when changing out of a 1.5 hander.
The issue with vanguard is that the entire fighting style is locked behind 31-41 AP spent in vanguard and 18-20 class levels just to get the fighting style functional. The defenses of wielding a shield are relatively small for a vanguard, it's a small amount of AC which can be gained through items and it becomes 25 PRR at 31 with shield specialization which is comparable to the 22 PRR/MRR from 31 AP in VKF which also gives the same amount of doublestrike as well as haste boost. The dps is so backloaded with vanguard that through heroics you're much better off using a THF because it shortens the amount of time you're in combat and it also frees up AP to be spent in SaD when the threat generation doesn't matter. The defenses of a shield that actually scales well into endgame is that doubling of MRR on reflex saves which is nice but with evasion being so easily accessible through shadowdancer and the huge defensive boost of high dodge on light armor it quickly gets overshadowed. The other aspect is the shield AC when it gets doubled by US T2 Shield prowess and SaD's T4 Reinforced defense (Realistically T5) but due to SnB already being behind in DPS you can't afford to invest that amount of AP for such a meager increase in defenses because you're already playing catchup. If you want a "tanky DPS" then just play a barbarian Occult Slayer with their high HP pool, damage reductions, temp HP, and improved uncanny dodge or a number of other tanky builds.
So how could vanguard and Sword & Board be fixed? I think the best way to solve this style's issues is to take an approach that mirrors swashbuckling's relationship with SWF. SnB should be a viable fighting style even outside of vanguard the same as SWF is without swashbuckling, swashbuckling merely enhances it for a number of builds but isn't required. The fighting style speed increases should be moved to the shield mastery feats and vanguard should have a stance that frontloads some of the strength like critical profile, secondary shield bash and added defenses like 25 PRR/MRR. In order to not upset the tank meta this stance should drop whenever you actively block and while I hate to suggest it, it may even need an induction time. The vanguard cores should then offer ability modifier to damage increases in place of the speed increases, it's very sad to have a 1X ability modifier on your mainhand when you don't have the attack speed of a TWF.
I plan to update the following posts with other vanguard builds that don't have the racial AP restriction and focus on different goals. For questions or the ddobuilder file you can reach me on discord at Hammatimes#3719
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