Lacci´s Road to completion

[Lacci]

Greetings.
I had the idea to document my journey through the classes here, to keep me motivated, to give out some ideas for chraracter builds and make mistakes so you don´t have to
A few things in advance: I play this in a somewhat casual fashion, so my character builds are not really optimised and aren´t meant as a guide for beating high reaper levels, in fact I don´t play reaper at all. I don´t have any +8 tomes, only tomes that I unlocked through gameplay, and Lacci will stay a Gnome on all the lives. Yes, even when I will do my Barbarian live
Also, I already did my first two lives before the new forum went live. I started out as an Artificer, which I didn´t like as much as I had hoped, so I did my first TR as a Wizard. At first I tried the Necromancer/Palemaster and later changed that to a Feydark Illusionist, which I liked much more. That´s when I had the idea to go ahead and try for all the other classes on this toon. So my next stop was Paladin, a class which I haven´t really tried at all.

So, without further ado, let me introduce you to Lacci:

With my Paladin, I wanted to go for a full Warhammer/Tower Shield build, so I invested lots in defense.

Here´s the enhancements:

And my epic destinies:

For feats I went with all the shield mastery feats, weapon focus and improved critical for bludgeoning weapons. Also:

Improved Shield Bash
Knights Training
Bulwark of Defense
Beloved of the Divine
Holy Strike
Blinding Speed
Embodiment of Law
Scion of Arborea
Deific Warding

This whole build really surprised me as I had a lot more fun than I expected, usually I don´t like paladins in games like this.
But the resistances, immunities and buffs made this really enjoyable to play. Not the best damage output, but quite resilient, so far I had no problem with tanking stuff in epic normal raids, but granted, I`m not much of a raider, just did a handfull of them...
This is also my first toon to reach 5000 favor, which gave me +5 CON tome.

I don´t want to post my full equipment here, but the weapon is a Legendary Stormreach Guardians Hammer with enlightened step filigrees.

Right now, I´m still considering my next TR, in my top 3 now are: Monk, Blightcaster or Dark Hunter. Can´t really decide...
Well, that´s it for now, if you see me standing around on Cannith, feel free to say hello...
Also, any questions, comments, ideas and votes for the next TR are most welcome

 

[Lacci]

OK, I decided on the Dark Hunter as my next life and started that over the weekend.

I always wanted to do something with the falconry tree, so I tried to mix that up into the dark hunter tree and go with a wisdom based build. Fiddled around with it in the character planner, but in the end I found that it was too messy, too much stuff I rather wanted from the Tempest tree and I didn´t have enough points to get everything I wanted.
So then I went with the classic DEX-based dual scimitar wielding ranger.
At the moment, I`m up to Lvl 7. So far, the dark wolf feels a bit useless, haven´t found a single collar yet and that early on, I don´t have any way to keep the wolf alive on elite difficulty, it´s like he looses half his health in every fight. It got a bit better if you bring along a hireling healer. Also, what I find weird: The wolf is basically a 1:1 copy of the druid pet with a different skin, he has the same abilities, but for some reason, you don´t get an ability to revive it or to dismiss it (but he seems to auto-revive after a rest).

The bleed imbue is a bit strange as I expected it to be its own damage type and show up with a little blood-drop symbol or something like that, but it rather seems to be untyped damage, so it´s a bit hard to tell whether you´re getting bleed damage, a double strike or a sneak attack.
I might switch that later to the electric imbue from the tempest tree.

One other thing that starts to annoy me is that apparently, rangers only get light armors to choose from as quest rewards. I usually have like 5 light armors for every quest reward, but never mediums...

 

[Lacci]

Few things I have to add: For some reason I thought the Druid had an ability to dismiss his wolf, but that´s not the case. Just like the druid, the dark hunter CAN dismiss the wolf by right clicking on its portrait...

Also, I totally forgot the option of crafting handwraps into collars. After running the feydark chain and getting a pair of ferrocrystal handwraps, I remembered that and turned them into a nice collar.

Another thing: Although I´ve been playing this game for over a decade now, I never knew that there is a gameplay option to turn on/off "quest rewards based on class", so now hopefully I´ll get some medium armors to choose from.

 

[Thulsadoom]

Thats Great and have fun on your journey. Love to see people not worrying about being optimized and just enjoying the DnD part of the game. Have fun

 

[seph1roth5]

Don't know that I've ever dismissed a wolf on purpose, but have you tried right-clicking on their UI bar, or is that what you meant by portrait? I have different UI settings so I don't see my pet/companions HP or anything like that.

 

[Lacci]

Short life sign here. My progress has slowed down somewhat. That´s got to do with the recent AI changes in the last update, where many mobs now circle around like crazy making it a bit miserable for melee combat. Also, as I have read in another thread, "bleed the weak" doesn´t scale with melee power as it seems. That was no problem in the first 10 levels, but starts to show now.
I´m currently at lvl 17 and fighting large hordes becomes a bit tedious. I did "Archons Trial" recently and some of the portals spawn enough mobs to immediately trigger an orange dungeon alert.
While the dark hunters single target DPS is decent, he lacks AOE and chasing the circling mobs in melee gets annoying fast.

 

[Stormlordrising]

I wish I thought of this. I am on my first completion journey myself. I am starting with all the archetypes going to level 20 and reincarnating. I started with Dark Apostate which went really fast, and I really enjoyed it. After that, Sacred Fist again seemed really fast, and enjoyed it. Next Dark Hunter which I enjoyed playing but I dont think it was as fast as the first two. Acolyte of the Skin so far has been my least favorite and took the longest. I am now playing a Blight Caster which is a blast to play but I have been doing other things than playing. I am thinking of a Stormsinger next and maybe a melee archetype will be released by the time i am finished with it. I try to run the same quest every time so I have a good feel: All Keep on the Borders quest, almost all the harbor quest, the quest chain in the marketplace, Catacombs, Feywild, Isle of Dread, Bavoria, Menechtarun, Sharn, and then Evenstar.

 

[Lacci]

So, my progress has slowed down a lot, but eventually I reached lvl 32.
To help with the AOE damage, I tried the whirlwind attack feat (never used that before so I figured now would be a good time to try it out)
And while it takes some getting used to, it really helped a lot. The damage numbers aren´t super high, but you can still move around while using it.
I also took "Dance of Death" from the tempest tree, and with those two I got decent AOE damage.
Another game changer was the switch from "bleed the weak" to tempest´s electrical imbue.

But all in all, the Dark Hunter was so far my least favorite class to play, which is why I´ll quickly start the next life which will be a Monk.
I´ve never played a monk before, so I´ll orient myself on this build here: https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/handwraps-monk-build.403/

I won´t be able to copy it, as I´m missing many build points, tomes and equipment for that, but I´ll try something like that... handwraps, stunning fist, some healing.
But I don´t play reaper, so if I can achieve maybe 50% of that build, I´ll probably be fine.

 

[Lacci]

Oh well, at this speed, it will take me another decade
So, I officially finished my monk life on the weekend, after hitting another 5000 favor reward.
I must say, this monk life was the most enjoyable leveling experience I had in this game so far. You get so many resistances and immunities, self-healing, good saves, the movement speed alone ...
Paired with the falconry tree, there is also lots of CC.

So here is what I ended up with (ship buffs only):

Unfortunately, I didn´t find any endgame wisdom item, so this is without a +wisdom enhancement. But still, this build worked pretty well.
This is also without any filigrees and only with very few augments.

These are the enhancements and destinies I went with:

Feats I picked up (don´t remember the exact order):
Whirlwind attack
Swords to Plowshares
Dodge
Mobility
Spring Attack
Precision
Improved Critical (Bludgeoning)
Crush Weakness
Doublestrike
Elusive Target
Embodiment of Law
Improved Martial Arts
Overwhelming Critical
Vorpal Strikes
Scion of the Astral Plane

I mainly used whirlwind attack, stunning fist and diving attack strike.
Again, it was a lot of fun and played very well, this was the first toon I was able to run everything on elite with, but now I have to move on. My next life will most likely be a blightcaster, as I skipped that the last time.

 

[Lacci]

OK, so as much fun as the Monk was, I am hating the Blightcaster. I´m up to lvl 24 now. I went full in on the blightcaster tree and picked Draconic and Primal Avatar for the epic destinies.
The first few levels were a challenge due to a lack of healing, but around lvl 7 or 8, things got rather easy with temporary HP after you kill anything.
So, basically, gameplay is aggro as much as I can, cast 2-3 AOE dots, shield block and watch everything die. It works pretty well but is quite boring.
But what really kills the fun for me is a certain bug that I already had on my other (cold) druid, but which happens way more often with the blightcaster: I can´t recreate it 100% but it seems to happen when I shield block while casting a DOT or having active DOTs on an enemy. The druid seems to be locked out of interacting with anything in the game world, I can´t click on doors, chests, levers, etc.
After casting another spell, it works again. As I said with the blightcaster this happens like once every minute or so. And while I can just cast a 1 SP SLA to get rid of it, it´s extremely annoying.
Another thing, not sure if it´s directly related to the blightcaster or simply lag, but I hadn´t experienced it this badly: Many spells just vanish into thin air, I target an enemy, press the button, I pay the SP, the animation and sound play, but there is no spell. It sometimes also happens when I target myself with a spike growth. Sometimes the spell is cast at my location, sometimes nothing happens (and no, it´s not due to failed concentration checks)

So, the blightcaster seems to be quite a strong build, but I can´t really enjoy it and I actually thought about an early TR without my usual epic TR first ...

 

[Lacci]

I got rid of the blightcaster as soon as I hit lvl 32. So to change things up, I started my next life as a rogue mechanic.
This is something I always wanted to do as this generally fits my kind of playstyle.
I am going for an INT build with great crossbows. It seems to me like repeating crossbows are better, but I already did that with my artificer and the sound of these things drives me crazy, so great crossbows it is this time.
Here is the plan for feats:
1 - Point Blank Shot
3 - Rapid Reload
6 - Precise Shot
9 - Weapon Focus: Ranged
10 - Improved Evasion (Rogue)
12 - Improved Crit: Ranged
13 - Slippery Mind (Rogue)
15 - Precision
16 - Skill Mastery (Rogue)
18 - Power Critical
19 - Defensive Roll (Rogue)
21 - Eerie Aim
22 - Pierce Adamantine (Might change this for Holy Strike)
24 - Overwhelming Crit
25 - Doubleshot
27 - Watchful Eye
28 - Harbinger of Chaos
30 - Combat Archery
30 - Scion of Ethereal
31 - Legendary Aim
33 - ?
34 - ?
No idea what to take at lvl 33/34, I´ll possibly TR again at lvl 32 ...

I started this on friday and am at lvl 7 currently.
One thing is confusing for me are which enhancements work with this build. I found out that inqusitive enhancements that state "light or heavy crossbows" like the imbue don´t work with great crossbows.
Other than that, the only other imbue I can get is the poison one from the assassin tree and I´m not sure if it´s worth taking as many mobs are immune to poison.
So for that reason, I´m not sure if I´ll even go for any imbue stuff, and might also replace Harbinger of Chaos as well.
I invested some in harper to get INT for to-hit, some in inquisitive to get summon bolts (at least in the beginning) and some in vistani to get more doubleshot (core 3). I spent 7 points in gnome racial to get permanent blur and +2 INT, the rest went into the mechanic tree.
Not sure if Horizon Walker works, as many things only work with bows.

As for destinies, I´ll go all in on Shiradi, some into Shadowdancer to get Shadowstriker and all of the cores. The rest for now goes into fury of the wild for more HP and ranged power.

I´m really curious to see how this build works out. I guess, I´ll have some trouble with healing and as I´m mostly playing solo, I won´t be utilizing sneak attacks very well. I might switch to the Fury of the Wild mantle for healing, not sure if that´s going to work out...

 

[Stoner81]

Stick with a repeater until you can get the tier 5 enhancements from the Mechanic tree. There is one that grants a lot of alacrity with Great Crossbows which helps a lot.

Stoner81.

 

[Lacci]

Well, I think it´s time to move on to the next one. The rogue mechanic was fun and I really like playing with a great crossbow.
Did some minor adjustments to the plan above. Fortification bypass was really nice to have (116%) and I tried to maximize crits.
I used the legendary Rumbling Thunder as my weapon, though didn´t unlock enough sentient slots for any filigree sets, so I just played without them.
As additional feats I picked up deific warding and titans blood, to help a bit with defense...

Luckily, in this life I got enough DDO points to buy a supreme +8 tome when they were on sale, so this will make the next builds a bit easier.
The next build will be an Alchemist. I bought that class on sale a while ago but never played it...
It will be a vile chemist, and I´ll go for single weapon fighting with dagger and orb I think.

This is the plan for now:


Character name: Lacci
Classes: 20 Alchemist, 10 Epic, 4 Legendary
Race: Gnome Alignment: True Neutral

Start Tome Final HP: 1117 Displacement: 0%
Str: 10 8 18 Unc Rng: -10 Incorp: 0%
Dex: 8 8 16 PRR: 28 AC: 34
Con: 18 8 26 MRR: 11 +Healing Amp: 10
Int: 20 8 50 Dodge: 2/25 -Healing Amp: 0
Wis: 8 8 18 Fort: 0% Repair Amp: 0
Cha: 8 8 18 SR: 0 BAB: 20
DR:
Immunities: Natural Poison, Magic Missiles, Fear

Heroic Past Lives
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Past Life: Artificer
Past Life: Druid
Past Life: Monk
Past Life: Paladin
Past Life: Ranger
Past Life: Rogue
Past Life: Wizard

Epic Past Lives
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Past Life: Divine Sphere: Power Over Life and Death
Past Life: Martial Sphere: Doublestrike(3)
Past Life: Primal Sphere: Colors of the Queen(3)


Class and Feat Selection

Level	Class	Feats
1	Alchemist(1)	Standard: Single Weapon Fighting
2	Alchemist(2)
3	Alchemist(3)	Standard: Spell Focus: Conjuration
4	Alchemist(4)	Alchemist Bonus Feat: Battalion Brew
		Intelligence: +1 Level up
5	Alchemist(5)
6	Alchemist(6)	Standard: Greater Spell Focus: Conjuration
7	Alchemist(7)
8	Alchemist(8)	Alchemist Bonus Feat: Insightful Courage
		Intelligence: +1 Level up
9	Alchemist(9)	Standard: Maximize Spell
10	Alchemist(10)
11	Alchemist(11)
12	Alchemist(12)	Standard: Accelerate Spell
		Alchemist Bonus Feat: Liquid Luck
		Intelligence: +1 Level up
13	Alchemist(13)
14	Alchemist(14)
15	Alchemist(15)	Standard: Improved Single Weapon Fighting
16	Alchemist(16)	Alchemist Bonus Feat: Alchemical Studies: Pyrite
		Intelligence: +1 Level up
17	Alchemist(17)
18	Alchemist(18)	Standard: Greater Single Weapon Fighting
19	Alchemist(19)
20	Alchemist(20)	Alchemist Bonus Feat: Advanced Alchemical Studies: Pyrite
		Intelligence: +1 Level up
21	Epic(1)	Epic Feat: Epic Spell Focus: Conjuration
22	Epic(2)	Epic Destiny Feat: Epic Spell Power: Poison
23	Epic(3)
24	Epic(4)	Epic Feat: Master of Spell Vials
		Intelligence: +1 Level up
25	Epic(5)	Epic Destiny Feat: Perfect Single Weapon Fighting
26	Epic(6)
27	Epic(7)	Epic Feat: Embolden Spell
28	Epic(8)	Epic Destiny Feat: Channel Power
		Intelligence: +1 Level up
29	Epic(9)
30	Epic(10)	Epic Feat: Wellspring of Power
		Legendary Feat: Scion of the Plane of Earth
31	Legendary(1)	Epic Destiny Feat: Spell Specialty: Evocation
32	Legendary(2)	Intelligence: +1 Level up
33	Legendary(3)	Epic Feat: Intensify Spell
34	Legendary(4)	Epic Destiny Feat: Titan's Blood

Granted Feats
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evasion
Magical Training
Magical Training
Eschew Materials
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Enhancements: 80 APs, Racial 3
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gnome - Points spent: 6
Core1 Perseverance I
Core2 Intelligence I
Core3 Perseverance II
Core4 Intelligence II
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bombardier - Points spent: 8
Core1 Alchemical Resistance
Tier1 Arcane Knowledge - 3 Ranks
Tier1 Spell Critical: Elemental and Poison I
Core2 Arcane Oil
Tier2 Elemental Defenses - 1 Ranks
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vile Chemist - Points spent: 43
Core1 Poisoner
Tier1 Deadly Poison I
Tier1 Alchemical Accuracy - 3 Ranks
Tier2 Stone of the Subliminal
Tier2 Deadly Poison II
Core2 Poisoned Coating
Tier2 Venom Affinity - 3 Ranks
Tier2 Poisoned Attack: Poisoned Strike - 3 Ranks
Core3 Hidden Blades
Tier3 Ability I: +1 Intelligence
Tier3 SLA: Wave of Poison - 3 Ranks
Tier3 Deadly Poison III
Tier3 Toxic Augmentation
Core4 Hidden Blades II
Tier4 Deadly Poison IV
Tier4 Ability II: +1 Intelligence
Tier4 Venom Affinity II - 3 Ranks
Core5 Hidden Blades III
Tier5 SLA: Greater Wave of Poison
Tier5 Fatal Poison
Tier5 Contaminated Strikes
Tier5 Better living through chemicals: Chemical Body
Core6 Venom's Grip
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Feydark Illusionist - Points spent: 26
Core1 Find Familiar: Fox
Tier1 Feydark Explorer - 3 Ranks
Tier1 Study the Arcane - 3 Ranks
Core2 Ability I: Intelligence
Tier2 You've Got My Back
Tier2 Reality Bulwark - 3 Ranks
Core3 Greater Color Spray
Tier3 Ability I: Intelligence
Tier3 Magical Attunement I
Tier3 Spell Penetration - 1 Ranks
Core4 Ability II: Intelligence
Tier4 Ability II: Intelligence
Tier4 Be My Eyes
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Epic Destinies: 71 Destiny Points
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Magus of the Eclipse - Points spent: 14
Core1 Touched by the Moon
Tier1 Cloak of Silver - 3 Ranks
Tier1 Imperceptible Casting - 2 Ranks
Tier1 Self or Summons: Impregnable Mind - 3 Ranks
Core2 Deepening Arcana
Tier3 Magus Spell Focus: Evocation - 3 Ranks
Core3 Nullmagic Aura
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Draconic Incarnation - Points spent: 22
Core1 Draconic Bloodline: Draconic Bloodline: Black
Tier1 Arcane Studies - 3 Ranks
Tier1 Dragonhide - 3 Ranks
Tier1 Dragon Scales - 2 Ranks
Core2 Draconic Heritage I
Tier2 Coalescence - 3 Ranks
Core3 Elemental Blood
Tier3 Arcane Spellsword - 3 Ranks
Tier3 Draconic Spell Focus: Conjuration - 3 Ranks
Tier4 Pull from the Wellspring
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Primal Avatar - Points spent: 35
Core1 This is your Nature: Thorn
Tier1 Primal Spell Selection I: Carrion Swarm
Tier1 Well Weathered - 3 Ranks
Tier1 Nature's Friend: Spider of the Deeps
Tier2 Thrive
Tier2 Spirit Boon: Mind - 2 Ranks
Tier2 Mantle of Nature: Thorn - 3 Ranks
Core2 Now Grow: Sky
Tier3 Spell Focus: Conjuration - 3 Ranks
Tier3 Shared Mantle
Tier3 Evergreen - 3 Ranks
Core3 Weathering the Elements
Tier4 Improved Metamagic: Maximize - 3 Ranks
Tier4 Nature's Reach - 3 Ranks
Core4 Regrowth
Tier5 Ancient Wisdom - 3 Ranks
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Lacci]

Ah well ... my Alchemist reached lvl 34 a week or two ago. I kept playing her for a while, but in the end I decided to move on...
Alchemist was kind of fun, did a lot of imbue damage, multi vials are decent for nuking stuff and there are nice utility spells like buffs and melt lock.
Also, greater color spray from illusionist tree worked well.
What surprised me was that I wasn´t running into any SP problems in the end, which was a bit problematic early on. But I think I ended up with 4300 SP, and was also getting temp SP, so at lvl 30+ I was running three metamagics all the time without ever running out of SP.

I decided to go the poison route, which was good when it worked, but got a bit annoying because you basically have to strip immunity from lots of enemies first and reapply it every 20 seconds or so...
Also it seemed like the vial impacts are bugged on certain surfaces and they just don´t do anything.
I decided against farming end game gear and instead move on to the next build, which will be:
A Fighter !

I always wanted to try some build with Bastard Swords as I have never used them before.
Personally I like to play sword&board characters, so the idea of getting strikethrough and shield bashes at the same time sounded cool.
I thought about trying that as a dragonlord, but in the end, the amount of bonus feats from Fighter to get all the two-handed and shield mastery feats won.
I was busy on the weekend and already leveled this toon to lvl 9. It was a bit tedious in the beginning because of a lack of healing and simply dying to certain traps, but at lvl 5, it became a lot of fun.
I´m not sure if this will work at epic and legendary levels but we will see. I guess traps will remain a problem and the she will probably depend on using a hireling for healing.

 

[Lacci]

I´m not sure if this will work at epic and legendary levels but we will see. I guess traps will remain a problem and the she will probably depend on using a hireling for healing.

Well, I have proven myself wrong over the weekend. I´m quite surprised how well this toon is working. I´m lvl. 25 now and I´ve been running most epic elite quests without a hireling healer. I am using the past life healing stance and the Fury mantle for passive healing. Paired with the overall tankiness of the build, this is actually enough to keep me alive in most quests. If it gets a bit hairy, I still have second wind.
I also went in to try tactics feats (trip and stunning shield) and they work surprisingly well even in epics, didn´t think I would be able to stun reapers with a shield blow, but it works.
Another thing that was a real game changer was Quick Cutter. I only ever used adrenaline as epic strike before so I thought I should try Quick Cutter this time as I was missing any cleave attacks and didn´t want to use 1-2 feats on that.
So usually I´ll run into a group of mobs, trip them, then use Quick Cutter, stun whoever gets up first, and repeat.

Of course this won´t win any DPS trophies, but it´s a lot of fun. Traps are still a bit of a problem, but most of them I can just tank. Spell Wards are annoying as hell though, as my saves suck. Another annoying thing is level drain. I´m not sure if I can fit any immunity to that into the build, I think I would have to give up too much important stuff to get Shadowdancer in there...

 

[Frisson]

This is a lovely idea for a thread. Looking forward to following your journey, and possibly learning a thing or two.

Also: gnomes FTW!