Mechgraber
Well-known member
I often get asked about my build, so here it is. This is basically me being lazy and having a single place to link rather than explaining it many times. I'll detail everything from the feats to the items and also, more importantly, explain both why I chose everything and how to play it: two things often overlooked by these types of posts. I initially tried the “forum export” of the builder, but will instead write this out by hand so it flows better and is clearer.
It’s a nice mix of four things:
Class: 20 Paladin. 15/5 Dragon Lord is interesting, but generally for shield builds you want to stay pure. The capstone of KoTC is excellent and you want a lot of points in Vanguard.
Alignment: Lawful Good (no prizes for guessing that)
Race: Aasimar. This gets 60 racial healing amp (if you have the points), and either more defenses or offenses as you prefer. Plus either tower or bastard sword proficiency.
Other options:
Dwarf for the massive amounts of tankiness/rad shield spell, you’d probably use the FOM axe though
Eladrin for the 37% dodge wings for 5x10 seconds...wings complement the lack of mobility of paly well, and 50 seconds can be an eternity.
Half Orc for more damage, auto crits, etc.
Shifter for the nice synergy with rages. But the beasthide shifter is what you'd want, and you can't cast renewal while raged unless you dip into draconic, which probably isn't worth it. Still, it's a strong tree.
Tabaxi eh not that good but this is what I currently am for the past life
Warforged/Bladeforged for the self repairs and melee power
Action points are VERY TIGHT (see below, 41+31+8=80) so for a first lifer it almost doesn’t matter much what race you pick, as you’re not gonna put any points in there (maybe a handful if you get universal/racial tomes)
Stats: Str 18 Dex 8 Con 16 Int 12 Wis 10 Cha 14, all levels to strength, +8 Univ Tome
28 Point build: Str 16 Dex 13 Con 14 Int 11 Wis 11 Cha 14
(if you can get ahold of a +2 dex tome before lvl 27 which should be doable with favor, can lower dex to 11, wis to 10 and bump strength to 17)
Feats:
Level 1: THF (for leveling as a 2 hander), later switch to Improved Shield Bashing
Aasimar Fallen Bond (Protector also OK for more defenses)
Sovereign Host for the BIG heal (this WILL save your arse in r6-8s...r10 it’s not actually a full heal)
Level 3: Power Attack (for leveling as a 2 hander), later switch to Quicken (a must for any paladin IMO, but not as needed for leveling)
Level 6: Shield Mastery, Unyielding Sov (only choice)
Level 9: Improved Critical: Slashing (pretty basic stuff)
Level 12: Improved Shield Mastery
Level 15: Greater Shield Mastery
Level 18: Flexible Feat (Bastard Sword Prof if not an Aasimar with a lot of racial points, possibly tower shield proficiency if you have one of those you’ll use, maybe weapon focus. Probably won’t have the DCs for stunning blow. I didn’t.)
Level 21: Overwhelming Critical (impossible to pass up on)
Level 22: Perfect Shield Mastery (very strong)
Level 24: Eerie Aim (+10 to hit is very noticeable in endgame)
Level 25: Perfect Two Handed Fighting (this is semi-disposable, you can maybe go for doublestrike, elusive target, crush weakness...30% strikethrough is kinda just OK when you have 5 AOE attacks. Shield stun doesn't strikethrough, sadly.)
Level 27: Precision (better than power attack much of the time, when you rage-heal you DO need to turn this back on though! Could also potentially go combat expertise if you want more AC)
Level 28: Embodiment of Law (for T5 Crusader mostly, that’s several hundred extra damage per hit)
Level 30: Arborea and Epic Damage Reduction (force of personality is OK, but do you REALLY need more saves? Epic fort isn’t a bad idea either as a 1 vs disintegrate or horrid wilting in high skulls is usually game over...have even toyed with the idea of wellspring of power, 150 spellpower and +20% crits isn’t bad for healing during tough fights)
Level 31: Two Handed Specialty (this or shield specialty if you went that route)
Level 33: Patience (hotly debated but worth it for this build I think...but with all the procs on hit/imbue it's not essential)
Level 34: Deific Warding (Titan’s blood probably better if you can’t fit in 10-20% legendary HP. Legendary toughness also might not be a bad idea, I haven’t ran the numbers on +10PRR/MRR vs 100 hp)
Note that for perfect shield mastery (which is quite good), you NEED shield mastery, but for perfect two handed fighting, you DO NOT need two handed fighting. This is why I take only two handed fighting and not the whole line, then swap out two handed fighting before taking two handed specialty. It saves you a feat compared to trying to take the entire two handed fighting line, shield mastery (to qualify for perfect shield mastery), and shield specialty. You can do that if you’re a first lifer though, as losing a feat might be worth easier leveling. Feats aren't super tight on this build.
Skills:
In order of importance: Maxed Intim, Heal, Diplo, Bluff (11 ranks), UMD (7 ranks), with of course a point in tumble.
Intimidate is very useful as you are often the tankiest character around.
But you aren’t ALWAYS the tank, so diplo can be useful. I think you can even diplo a doom onto your werewolf or dino, and they take a second to change agro which is nice.
Heal bumps up your self healing a bit (~5%)
Bluff is to pull reapers or other annoying critters, mostly when soloing.
Enhancements: (The FUN stuff!)
Aasimar (19 points):
If you have limited points, prioritize heal amp and fight the wicked, cores are also pretty good.
Knight of the Chalice (41 points)
This is a fantastic tree, with lots of AOE cleaves, regenerating smites for nice burst damage, the trance, the imbue, 60 heal amp and immunity to energy drain.
Vanguard (31 points)
2 second deflect arrows is amazing, +3 max armor bonus for dodge is great, stunning shield is just about no-fail at endgame, Everything but the capstone and tier 5, basically. You miss out on 5% attack speed, but....
Vistani (8 points)
Pretty much entirely for 30% haste boost. With 2/3rds uptime it’s worth dumping 5% attack speed, in my opinion. Even in longer raids like solo elite LVOD or hard LChrono there are times where you can chill a bit, but also times where you really want burst DPS. This is that. Slow and steady does not win the race in DDO, at least not always.
If you’re a pure first lifer, that’s exactly 80 points. Perfection. If you have a +2 universal tome, you can do whatever you want with the remaining 2 points. Leave them unspent for the ultimate flex on the mobs, I suppose. I put 1 into the racial tree and 1 into harper agent. An extra LOH in sacred defender isn't a bad idea either.
Iterations: I’ve ran with 41 in vanguard and 31 KotC before and prefer this without much doubt. Shield Rush has a great DC and is effective, but when you already have a lot of CC it’s not vital at all and I don’t miss it. You CAN even go vanguard capstone and KotC tier 5, but then you can’t get haste boost from vistani, and you end up taking a LOT of filler in vanguard. It’s a good tree, but taking 41 points without any tier 5 is a bit underwhelming.
Epic Destinies:
Divine Crusader (37 points)
This tree is basically made for a build like this, with extra shield bashes, more and better (and healing!) smites, and getting that little bastard Ignition as a favored weapon (Level with a greatsword!). Auto consecrate at 50% hp is VERY good for both you and the party. There’s a pretty good amount of flexibility here, this is just my preference, you might pick up true seeing/blindness immunity here, or more saves/fort, or improved sunder. Very little bad stuff here.
A pretty obvious choice for tier 5. If you were tanking a lot I guess you’d go Sentinel, but if you’re tanking a lot then just build a real tank, it’ll be way better. You can maybe dump the epic moment if you solo a lot, it won’t see much use. If only you could res yourself...
Fury of the Wild (24 points)
This is mostly for 2 things: Quick cutter (my epic strike of choice), and the melee-power-scaling-heal “spell” that you get with primal scream or rage. They’ll hit for ~6-7k in town.
Unyielding Sentinel (22 points)
This is mostly for renewal. Also gets more PRR, AC, and situationally the shield throwy thingy is very useful. This is probably where you’d take points out of if first life. You can still get renewal, you’ll just miss out on PRR/AC/HP/Melee Power.
Other options are EA for wings/healing, Draconic for Rage Casting (particularly if shifter), Macrotechnic for more AC, and Dreadnaught for overall damage.
Full Enhancements/ED located here (could only fit 5 images)
Spells:
Only really important ones:
Level 2 Righteous Command, Angelskin
Level 3 Prayer, Cure Moderate
Level 4 Cure Serious, Zeal, Holy Sword, Break Enchantment (breaks Chrono debuff)
SLAs:
Cure Disease is nice for party member neg levels or clearing rage fatigue
LOH is a nice fat fast heal
Renewal will tick for 600-800ish out of reaper
Healing hands not as fat heal but still OK, it’s a fast cast.
Gear:
Weapon: Ignition Bastard Sword (FOM, vecna raid)
Love this weapon, the auto-slow, paralyze (100 DC) and unleashed storm (110 DC) go off all the time, and slay living procs occasionally. When fully upgraded you get the nice extra para proc, debuff (10 stacks of -1 AC, -1 Will Save and -1% fort helps a lot) and massive elec damage. I slotted deconstructor and a 9d6 cold ruby (open to suggestions here!). This weapon is not really all that negotiable, without it the build will really suffer in terms of crowd control. You'll notice most of the yellow (CC) in this post is from this weapon. If you go legendary thirteen (hidden hand last quest) or dino bone (IOD) it’s not the end of the world, but it'll be worse overall. (Dino is probably better boss dps anyway actually due to debuffs).
EDIT: have since crafted an Attuned Bone Bastard Sword with Meltscale/Meltfang/Flameclaw/Melthorn, and I'm glad I did, as it's a better boss beater for sure. Filigrees the same for the first 7 slots, but last 3 are city's beacon for the MRR/PRR procs. I estimate they have ~5% chance to proc per swing and it has no cooldown so are up fairly often.
Shield: Golden Age Large Shield (Ettercap quest, Myth Drannor)
This is a tough pull (hardest item out of the bunch BY FAR), but 15% hp and guardbreaking is a combo not found anywhere else. You can go for the large fallen instead (and give up guardbreaking) or fallen tower (but you’ll want proficiency) for 20% HP. Colossus from FOM is also in the discussion for having guardbreaking, the auto daze on crits is that good. In that case you’ll want 10% hp from titan’s blood or augment (3x raid or solar). I have a Positive +153 spell power ruby slotted, and I think lifetaker.
The rest of the gear, the overall idea is to use:
Sora Katra Upgraded Set (+25 universal spellpower, +30 PRR, +3 to hit, +3 to damage, +3 imbue dice +3 stats, +15% helpless damage...7 “set” bonuses for 3 items? WOW. )
And
Devil’s Infernal Dance Set from Vecna (+15% doublestrike/shot, +30% fort bypass, +15 melee/ranged power, +3 stats [overlap]) You could in theory use MD armor/helm/cloak and put augments in them, if you have them. I do, but I don’t think the MD setup is significantly better apart from maybe AC, and I'm not sure I want to farm out that helm, plus my current helm has some nice reaper/curse benefits that are unlikely to be replicated.
That’s the artifact set bonuses. These are all fairly easy farms, especially the Katra’s, they are very generous with the drop rates there. Then the profane augments are filled out with MD stuff (heal amp, MRR, PRR, melee power) as well as artifact MRR.
Goggles: Goggles of the Berserker (Secrets of the Red Wizards, Myth Drannor)
Enhanced Bloodrage goes off a LOT, and 10 melee power, 5 damage and 8 con are all fantastic. I slotted an emerald of greater rage for +3 rage charges and +20 heal augment and solar 30 MRR.
Helm: Uni Champion’s Helm (Party 101, Vecna)
Tons of great basic stats here, you get your accuracy, damage, seeker and armor piercing all in one nice package. I put in a swordcrossed topaz to get doublestrike in there as well, plus festive +2 strength. Was also lucky enough to have a +3 reaper power bonus and +2 attack/damage curse, so this item (and set) isn’t going anywhere.
Necklace: Crippling Strikes (Portal to Below, Myth Drannor)
Combat/Profane combat mastery, plus crippling (hard to tell how often it procs, due to already having auto slow on the sword). I tossed in a sapphire of stunning, globe of true imperial blood for +1 exp all stats and +30 lunar MRR. This spot is pretty flexible, realistically you’re not going to get sunder/trip DCs so combat mastery isn’t useful, it’s mostly for the profane. Storna’s Pendant from the rat quests for the +3 profane stats might allow the ram’s might belt from the same pack to be used, but I don’t really want to swap gear at this point. Cranium Sphere for +3 qual con/fort/+15 con also isn’t a bad option especially with MD armor.
Trinket: Night Hag’s Heartstone (Siegebreaker, Droaam 2)
Super easy to get (and is the only BTA minor artifact as far as I'm aware), so you can swap this for other filigree sets if you want in a pinch. It’s a caster item so the stats on it are fairly useless, but it completes the Sora Katra set. You COULD go double Katra ring and either this OR gloves but I like having the other ring slot open. I put in essence of the champion of the twins for the heal, crystillized unicorn tear for the temp hp proc and festive +2 cha. I was lucky enough to get a true seeing curse.
Cloak: University Duelists (Taken in Hand, Vecna)
Rounds out your offensive stats with quality attack/damage and insightful armor piercing/doublestike. I put in deflection to AC and festive con +2 augs. If you don’t have many reaper points/past lives or are doing mostly non reaper content, put dodge instead of deflection. I hit cap barely without it. If you get even 1-2% more dodge that's probably better than 10 AC.
Belt: Strap of Savviness (Oghma’s Song, Myth Drannor)
Insightful charisma +6, profane all stats +3 and +15 exceptional heal amp on the side, great item here. I put in a +57 heal amp aug, +14 con aug and +30 lunar PRR
Ring 1: Faith and fortress is a good option as well here for quality PRR +9 and quality MRR +20. If you go the MD armor/cloak/helm route this is also handy for the fort. Legendary demonheart emerald here for another hp proc.
EDIT: This was initially the acid ring from MA but I think this is a better option, then I put the acid proc on a dino sword for boss beating.
Ring 2: Katra’s Razor Wit (Diplomatic Impunity then upgraded at the cauldron)
This ring isn’t that good, it’s mostly for the set. Gets you +14 charisma at least. I put in good luck +3 and swiftness augs.
Gloves: Maenya’s Iron Fists (I think Eyes of Stone, then cauldron)
Also not that great but they complete the set. Gets +14 strength too. Resistance +11 and Melee power aug, in they go.
Boots: Greaves of Season’s Warding (Portal to Below, Myth Drannor)
+37% fire, acid, cold AND elec absorb is super nice in almost all content. Even on highish MRR builds, this is noticeable. Dethek Runestone essence goes in for yet another proc, +48 vitality HP and lunar healing amp.
Bracers: Unseen Ass (you guessed it...Portal To Below, Myth Drannor)
At least all the Portal items listed are common. Improved Deception is quite nice, can hit no-fail bluff without any swaps, and deception is nice extra damage sometimes. Insightful strength, natural armor and Profane MRR in here. Bracer’s of the Battlerager (MD raid) are a good option for more fort, and the Flourishing Fauna bracers have +3% qual doublestrike and true seeing.
Armor: Uni Bulwark Plate (Vecna denied...Vecna)
PRR, fort (something the MD armors glaringly lack), parrying +6 and constant FOM are all great. Insightful con aug and extra action boost aug here (legendary moment to legendary moment). I was lucky enough for a mythic 4 so I reaperized this armor for a bit more AC/PRR.
Overall, it's not a bad gear farm whatsoever, Vecna droprates are pretty good, the quests are fast (could even go medium armor if you pick that up first, slapping a set on them is very cheap), there are no MD rares apart from that Golden shield and a lot of the items come from portal so you can triple up on drop chances. The goggles you can just bring a wand of fireball and go right for the boss for 8 runs in about 15 minutes.
Faith and fortress is a worm item but it's not rare, and I consider that ring slot to be quite flexible so slot whatever you prefer. The Sora Katra set is a pretty easy one overall, you can get the base items easily and the upgrade path is also fairly fast. The artifact is probably the single easiest one to get in the game, just blaze through siegebreaker without any ops, and kill all the bosses at the end for 2 chests with a shot at it. There's a grand total of 1 raid item so it's a somewhat beginner friendly build, the limiting factor is probably going to be finding the lunar/solar augments, but there aren't any rare ones in the build either (you get those stats through the Sora Katra route).
Gear Swaps/Clickies:
-Spell Absorb (2 headed Platinum piece, pale lav ioun stone, magestar, jeweled cloak, phiarlan mirror cloak, mantle) never die to a caster again! That’s 110 spells and 50 spell levels absorbed. If a boss is a caster you will have your way with them and there’s absolutely nothing they can do about it. You will NEVER EVER die to a caster boss, and the game AI doesn’t really know enough for them to start meleeing really, they’ll just keep casting and dying.
In the two headed plat piece I have dark diversion and treachery for -70% threat. Even at 0% threat there’s a chance you’ll rip agro against many tanks, and so it might be worth the slight annoyance. You’ll be fairly tanky but flipping bosses is usually not the best.
-Displacement Clickies (rarely used but occasionally useful)
-Heart of Suulomades (mostly for...well...Suulomades, but even on LH solo I didn’t use this, I just watched for curses. Curse ward helps too. I DID use it on LE when the orthons spawned at the end.)
-FF trinket swap (best to have off 95%+ of the time for faster twitching)
-Crafted Sonic Absorb/Resist Trinket (mostly for loud dinosaurs)
-Severed Tentacle (5x per day 1min +6 str? Yes please)
-Stablestone (random absorbs)
-Epic Dusk Heart (mass deathward, mostly for party members)
-Dino/Werewolf Summons (they die fast in high skulls but still sometimes useful as a distraction)
-Crafted Search/Insightful Search/Int Helmet and Manual of Stealthy Pilfering (Can hit ~90 search, enough for some secret doors)
-Repulsor Boots (These have saved my arse when chained, but usually is just to skip ahead in some quests)
-Heroic Time Sensing Goggles (anti-slow)
-Planar Gird GH Clickie (saves are probably no-fail anyway but sometimes the skills help)
-ERSS/LRSS (8 major pots...on a paladin they don’t see much use but occasionally handy in long raids)
-Hood of Unrest (This DOES see a lot of use, gets dodge from 11% to 61% for 25 seconds, this is situationally EXTREMELY useful, like when orthons spawn in LVOD or some other high damage mitigation situation)
Scrolls and Potions:
Fireshield (with the boots and past lives, gets to around 80% absorb)
Tenser’s (only a minute...but sometimes a minute is all you need, am I right?)
Commendation Potion of Prowess (+2 attack/damage, always on when pushing difficulty)
Commendation Potion of Spellpower (only on if really the edge of what I can handle)
Superior Ardor [house J] (another 25 spellpower when needed, only 3min though)
Str Yugo Pots (rarely use, again only when things are borderline)
Filigrees:
10 in Ignition
Raid: Purity/Touch of Grace, Sucker Punch/One Against Many, Bravery Throughout/Shattered Device
Non-Raid: Prowess Melee Power, Strength, PRR, Attack/Damage
That fills out your prowess set. Some people hotswap that but I play with 250-500 ms latency and I don’t have time for that. It’s a loss of DPS for me and more importantly, a pain in the rear end.
You then have 3 slots to play with. If pretty casual you don’t even have to grind them out or use sparks at all, it’ll still perform well. I went with shattered device melee power (non rare, seems they’re not dropping?) to get the 3rd tier in that (+3 doublestrike), then dreadbringer melee power/tactics.
4 in artifact
Raid: Purity/Touch of Grace, Sucker Punch/One Against Many, Bravery Throughout/Shattered Device
Non-Raid: Prowess Melee Power
So in all this gets you 45 heal amp, 18 MRR, 24 PRR, 5 strength, 48 Melee Power if I added those up correctly, plus some odds and ends like +2 action boosts, +3 attack/damage and +1 saves.
It’s a balance between heal amp, defenses and offenses, mostly. If you want to get more tanky you could certainly prioritize con or even AC here though. The world is your Ostridge, as they say.
I do have a greatsword with a sanctified fervor swap: 1 minute is enough that it’s worth 25 melee power. It’s important that this is a favored weapon, so that you don’t lose stacks of ascendency if you’ve been slapping around some demons or whatnot. You know how it be.
I also have a 4 piece electrocution swap in another Night Hag’s heartstone, and am building a 5 piece blood feast dino throwing dagger with brighthorn. Going into big fights, can equip that, rage, then toss that into an orc butt or something for a tasty 2.4k temp hp going into combat. Hey, it’s honest work.
You can also build out a charisma filigree weapon for trance but personally I can’t be bothered to really maximize that, at least not yet.
Total self-buffed long term playable (not including burst clickies, tensors, store/rem pots, a bardbot giving you a backrub, etc) stats for the current Tabaxi version in reaper:
281 healing amp, 590 pos spellpower, 165 damage/207 attack, ~4800 hp, 374 PRR, 207 MRR, 273 AC, 332ish melee power. Solid numbers across the board but not really excelling in any one area.
First life will be quite a bit lower but will still be serviceable, with something like ~35 reaper points you’ll have ~220 heal amp, ~400+ pos spellpower, ~155 damage/~175 attack, bit over 3000hp, ~300 PRR, ~170 MRR, ~150 AC, ~300 melee power. I wouldn't expect solo r8-10s but it should do great in low skull solos and mid skull pugs.
The Aasimar version will have significantly more heal amp, slightly more melee power and strength, a bit less charisma, dodge and sneak attack. Overall, it’s a better choice.
Yes yes that’s nice, but what can it DO?
Solo LN FOM, LH Chrono, LE LVOD. Most legendary quests on r8. Of course this is the forums where everyone solos r10 without trying but I’m happy with how things have gone.
Playstyle/Strategy:
This will obviously vary a bit based on which content you’re playing. Generally when in a group, just follow with everyone and kill stuff, throwing heals if needed especially if r10 and the healer takes damage.
When soloing, you can bluff-pull enemies that you really don’t want to fight with packs of mobs, namely vengeance reapers, but also sometimes dooms. This might include some casters as well, maybe you just want to pull that soul of cruelty caster and smack it with your shield before diving into the fray.
That being said, it’s often better to agro the mobs and pull them around the corner. Don’t get surrounded, you don’t have the defenses to be a real tank. Just because you’re a paladin doesn’t mean you have to be an idiot. The general rotation of attacks is leading off with quick cutter, that’s a 13-20 crit range, twice, meaning that more often than not you’ll crit on one of the attacks and proc the no-save guardbreaker. Strike early and often, once something is slowed with the salt proc it's just a sitting duck for you to run around and avoid their attacks. And the mobs are always salty. That’s the followed by your 4 pally cleaves, the order doesn’t matter a ton but make sure you do exalted smite before holy retribution so you get the smite back. Only use 1-2 exalted smite for easy fights, for tough fights you want all your smites so you can spam them.
You have a lot of heals at your disposal, keep renew up as much as possible, it’ll only tick for like 100 or so in r8 but it adds up over a fight. Primal scream when you need to, and only dig into the rages/lay on hands when really needed. When you rage/unrage, either use remove disease or primal scream after it. You also have your 10k sov heal, but that’s a 10 minute cooldown so that’s mostly an “oh snap” button. It’ll be a max heal in r8 or close to it. R10 it’s kinda underwhelming but still your strongest heal. Then you have cure serious/moderate, these are mostly used between fights or on party members. You can hit 550-600 pos spellpower but without AOE heals you’re not really a raid healer.
Rednames, if they’re a caster just spell absorb and enjoy. If trinket swapping you can do double Katra's instead of the faith and fortress ring to keep your set bonus, but I often don't bother. Cloak swapping WILL drop your DPS but in something like the WPM endfight that might be needed. Better alive with 20-30% less dps than dead. Ranged, deflect arrows takes care of most of the pain and in general rangers just don't hit that hard. Get in their face, get behind them, make them regret shooting at you. Melee, you’ll want to move around a lot, trying to get them to miss not due to AC/dodge (you don’t really have either) but from you not being there. You can quick cutter as a “drive by” without much risk to yourself once you get the hang of it. R6 and under you can probably heal through most melee bosses, but 7,8,9+...probably not, especially skullguards or bardbarians or ettercaps that hit hard.
Note that if an enemy has both a ranged AND melee attack (trolls, medusa, etc) you almost always want them shooting you rather than smashing you. So you can run away, get them to swap to ranged, then run in and quick cutter them, then run away just as they swap to melee, wait for them to swap back to ranged, and repeat. Not really needed on lower difficulties but when soloing higher skulls you have to get creative on a melee character.
Reapers and Casters and Champs, Oh My!
High priority targets are fire/water elemental or caster champs (soul of cruelty, demon soul, skyborn and other dot-giving ones in particular), anything that does force damage especially without a save (like Nothics or arcane zapping constructs) and just in general anything that has high offense but low defense. You have spell absorb and magic missle immunity but you want to save the spell absorb for rednames or vengence reapers whenever possible, so the casters out first. Also high priority are archeron or beast mark melee champs. They'll bypass your fort and that's not really a fun time. In my experience even with ~220-240% fort you won't get crit unless it's a special situation.
Fear reapers have to die early, you can stay near them and still kite slightly around them without getting dotted.
Vengeance reapers, you actually CAN survive standing in a circle with ~220 MRR and 5k hp on r8, but in general don't do that. Also they'll cast horrid wilting for 2k+ damage even if you save so a good general rule of thumb is kill them last but have spell absorb on, while avoiding the circles. Probably the worst possible reaper in some situations when solo.
Dooms, hood if you need to (depends on shrine availability and upcoming bosses) but in general on r8 you can get one down if you are mobile and heal occasionally while kiting it. You can also kite it around trash, hitting it while it tries to reposition.
Famine/despair/carnage are not particularly noteworthy. Plague you'll want to kill before those, but probably after fears or casters.
For soloing r10, I think you’re probably better off with something that is either ranged, or has uncanny dodge, or perhaps leaning on barbarian with more rage charges and blood feast. It’s rarely trash that’s the issue, it’s hard hitting melee red names and not being able to self heal. That or using a hire, I keep one at the entrance for lag deaths but I consider it not exactly "solo" if you have a hire (or several, in some cases) healing you through anything and everything. But that's just my take on things.
The most DPS? Nope. Someone with a “pure” dps build will do noticeably more damage. An SDK DL will probably clear the room before you even get there, not to mention the crossbow users. But it’s enough to make the content still go by fast enough. It’s roughly 25k sustained dps from what I’ve seen when going all out, which is pretty decent for not using an epic moment.
The tankiest? Nope. A “real” tank will have many more HP, a bit better PRR and MRR, and loads more AC. Probably a lot more threat, too. But you can survive better than the typical melee for sure.
The CC...iest? Nope. Bard or some other arcane caster is better. But you’ll find that with ignition and guardbreaking in particular plus the para procs, things have a habit of just...not moving very much. And if it is, slap it with your shield and see how it fares against that. Even works on reapers, undead, constructs.
Build weaknesses?
-It’s pretty slow in terms of movement speed, overall. If you are looking for a life to farm out items fast...this probably ain’t it. You CAN trade haste boost for sprint boost but that’s a bit icky as well.
-Not enough AC to lean on it in hard content. You can maybe tank a low skull LVOD or similar with a good healer (after all, the build soloed elite) but higher skull raids probably just aren’t happening, you don’t have the AC or HP. For the AC route you can go for the MD armors, bit of a brutal farm but would definitely provide noticeably better protection.
The “final frontier” for this build is probably AC: trash doesn’t pose a threat, nor do spellcasting bosses, it’s really only melee rednames that are trouble. And getting from the current ~280-285 into the 300s would likely be of help.
In summary, there's content you can heal through, content you'll have to get creative with, and content that is just not happening, it's just that balance between your offenses (how long does it take to kill stuff), defenses (how much damage do you take) and healing (how fast/much can you get that HP bar back up) all of which tilt away from you with each skull. I've tried to balance all three of those, along with crowd control, with this build.
There are, of course, probably other ways this could be improved and optimized. Building and gearing a character is complex and there’s a distinct likelihood that I’ve overlooked something, so let me know if anything comes to mind!
It’s a nice mix of four things:
- Self Healing (6k primal/rage melee power heals, 10k sov, LOH, renewal, smites)
- Defense (Highish PRR/MRR, absorbs, high saves,
- Offense (not top tier but plenty of damage, ~25k/sec)
- Crowd Control (para weapon, no save auto slow, no save guardbreaking, 120+ DC shield smash)
Class: 20 Paladin. 15/5 Dragon Lord is interesting, but generally for shield builds you want to stay pure. The capstone of KoTC is excellent and you want a lot of points in Vanguard.
Alignment: Lawful Good (no prizes for guessing that)
Race: Aasimar. This gets 60 racial healing amp (if you have the points), and either more defenses or offenses as you prefer. Plus either tower or bastard sword proficiency.
Other options:
Dwarf for the massive amounts of tankiness/rad shield spell, you’d probably use the FOM axe though
Eladrin for the 37% dodge wings for 5x10 seconds...wings complement the lack of mobility of paly well, and 50 seconds can be an eternity.
Half Orc for more damage, auto crits, etc.
Shifter for the nice synergy with rages. But the beasthide shifter is what you'd want, and you can't cast renewal while raged unless you dip into draconic, which probably isn't worth it. Still, it's a strong tree.
Tabaxi eh not that good but this is what I currently am for the past life
Warforged/Bladeforged for the self repairs and melee power
Action points are VERY TIGHT (see below, 41+31+8=80) so for a first lifer it almost doesn’t matter much what race you pick, as you’re not gonna put any points in there (maybe a handful if you get universal/racial tomes)
Stats: Str 18 Dex 8 Con 16 Int 12 Wis 10 Cha 14, all levels to strength, +8 Univ Tome
28 Point build: Str 16 Dex 13 Con 14 Int 11 Wis 11 Cha 14
(if you can get ahold of a +2 dex tome before lvl 27 which should be doable with favor, can lower dex to 11, wis to 10 and bump strength to 17)
Feats:
Level 1: THF (for leveling as a 2 hander), later switch to Improved Shield Bashing
Aasimar Fallen Bond (Protector also OK for more defenses)
Sovereign Host for the BIG heal (this WILL save your arse in r6-8s...r10 it’s not actually a full heal)
Level 3: Power Attack (for leveling as a 2 hander), later switch to Quicken (a must for any paladin IMO, but not as needed for leveling)
Level 6: Shield Mastery, Unyielding Sov (only choice)
Level 9: Improved Critical: Slashing (pretty basic stuff)
Level 12: Improved Shield Mastery
Level 15: Greater Shield Mastery
Level 18: Flexible Feat (Bastard Sword Prof if not an Aasimar with a lot of racial points, possibly tower shield proficiency if you have one of those you’ll use, maybe weapon focus. Probably won’t have the DCs for stunning blow. I didn’t.)
Level 21: Overwhelming Critical (impossible to pass up on)
Level 22: Perfect Shield Mastery (very strong)
Level 24: Eerie Aim (+10 to hit is very noticeable in endgame)
Level 25: Perfect Two Handed Fighting (this is semi-disposable, you can maybe go for doublestrike, elusive target, crush weakness...30% strikethrough is kinda just OK when you have 5 AOE attacks. Shield stun doesn't strikethrough, sadly.)
Level 27: Precision (better than power attack much of the time, when you rage-heal you DO need to turn this back on though! Could also potentially go combat expertise if you want more AC)
Level 28: Embodiment of Law (for T5 Crusader mostly, that’s several hundred extra damage per hit)
Level 30: Arborea and Epic Damage Reduction (force of personality is OK, but do you REALLY need more saves? Epic fort isn’t a bad idea either as a 1 vs disintegrate or horrid wilting in high skulls is usually game over...have even toyed with the idea of wellspring of power, 150 spellpower and +20% crits isn’t bad for healing during tough fights)
Level 31: Two Handed Specialty (this or shield specialty if you went that route)
Level 33: Patience (hotly debated but worth it for this build I think...but with all the procs on hit/imbue it's not essential)
Level 34: Deific Warding (Titan’s blood probably better if you can’t fit in 10-20% legendary HP. Legendary toughness also might not be a bad idea, I haven’t ran the numbers on +10PRR/MRR vs 100 hp)
Note that for perfect shield mastery (which is quite good), you NEED shield mastery, but for perfect two handed fighting, you DO NOT need two handed fighting. This is why I take only two handed fighting and not the whole line, then swap out two handed fighting before taking two handed specialty. It saves you a feat compared to trying to take the entire two handed fighting line, shield mastery (to qualify for perfect shield mastery), and shield specialty. You can do that if you’re a first lifer though, as losing a feat might be worth easier leveling. Feats aren't super tight on this build.
Skills:
In order of importance: Maxed Intim, Heal, Diplo, Bluff (11 ranks), UMD (7 ranks), with of course a point in tumble.
Intimidate is very useful as you are often the tankiest character around.
But you aren’t ALWAYS the tank, so diplo can be useful. I think you can even diplo a doom onto your werewolf or dino, and they take a second to change agro which is nice.
Heal bumps up your self healing a bit (~5%)
Bluff is to pull reapers or other annoying critters, mostly when soloing.
Enhancements: (The FUN stuff!)
Aasimar (19 points):
If you have limited points, prioritize heal amp and fight the wicked, cores are also pretty good.
Knight of the Chalice (41 points)
This is a fantastic tree, with lots of AOE cleaves, regenerating smites for nice burst damage, the trance, the imbue, 60 heal amp and immunity to energy drain.
Vanguard (31 points)
2 second deflect arrows is amazing, +3 max armor bonus for dodge is great, stunning shield is just about no-fail at endgame, Everything but the capstone and tier 5, basically. You miss out on 5% attack speed, but....
Vistani (8 points)
Pretty much entirely for 30% haste boost. With 2/3rds uptime it’s worth dumping 5% attack speed, in my opinion. Even in longer raids like solo elite LVOD or hard LChrono there are times where you can chill a bit, but also times where you really want burst DPS. This is that. Slow and steady does not win the race in DDO, at least not always.
If you’re a pure first lifer, that’s exactly 80 points. Perfection. If you have a +2 universal tome, you can do whatever you want with the remaining 2 points. Leave them unspent for the ultimate flex on the mobs, I suppose. I put 1 into the racial tree and 1 into harper agent. An extra LOH in sacred defender isn't a bad idea either.
Iterations: I’ve ran with 41 in vanguard and 31 KotC before and prefer this without much doubt. Shield Rush has a great DC and is effective, but when you already have a lot of CC it’s not vital at all and I don’t miss it. You CAN even go vanguard capstone and KotC tier 5, but then you can’t get haste boost from vistani, and you end up taking a LOT of filler in vanguard. It’s a good tree, but taking 41 points without any tier 5 is a bit underwhelming.
Epic Destinies:
Divine Crusader (37 points)
This tree is basically made for a build like this, with extra shield bashes, more and better (and healing!) smites, and getting that little bastard Ignition as a favored weapon (Level with a greatsword!). Auto consecrate at 50% hp is VERY good for both you and the party. There’s a pretty good amount of flexibility here, this is just my preference, you might pick up true seeing/blindness immunity here, or more saves/fort, or improved sunder. Very little bad stuff here.
A pretty obvious choice for tier 5. If you were tanking a lot I guess you’d go Sentinel, but if you’re tanking a lot then just build a real tank, it’ll be way better. You can maybe dump the epic moment if you solo a lot, it won’t see much use. If only you could res yourself...
Fury of the Wild (24 points)
This is mostly for 2 things: Quick cutter (my epic strike of choice), and the melee-power-scaling-heal “spell” that you get with primal scream or rage. They’ll hit for ~6-7k in town.
Unyielding Sentinel (22 points)
This is mostly for renewal. Also gets more PRR, AC, and situationally the shield throwy thingy is very useful. This is probably where you’d take points out of if first life. You can still get renewal, you’ll just miss out on PRR/AC/HP/Melee Power.
Other options are EA for wings/healing, Draconic for Rage Casting (particularly if shifter), Macrotechnic for more AC, and Dreadnaught for overall damage.
Full Enhancements/ED located here (could only fit 5 images)
Spells:
Only really important ones:
Level 2 Righteous Command, Angelskin
Level 3 Prayer, Cure Moderate
Level 4 Cure Serious, Zeal, Holy Sword, Break Enchantment (breaks Chrono debuff)
SLAs:
Cure Disease is nice for party member neg levels or clearing rage fatigue
LOH is a nice fat fast heal
Renewal will tick for 600-800ish out of reaper
Healing hands not as fat heal but still OK, it’s a fast cast.
Gear:
Weapon: Ignition Bastard Sword (FOM, vecna raid)
Love this weapon, the auto-slow, paralyze (100 DC) and unleashed storm (110 DC) go off all the time, and slay living procs occasionally. When fully upgraded you get the nice extra para proc, debuff (10 stacks of -1 AC, -1 Will Save and -1% fort helps a lot) and massive elec damage. I slotted deconstructor and a 9d6 cold ruby (open to suggestions here!). This weapon is not really all that negotiable, without it the build will really suffer in terms of crowd control. You'll notice most of the yellow (CC) in this post is from this weapon. If you go legendary thirteen (hidden hand last quest) or dino bone (IOD) it’s not the end of the world, but it'll be worse overall. (Dino is probably better boss dps anyway actually due to debuffs).
EDIT: have since crafted an Attuned Bone Bastard Sword with Meltscale/Meltfang/Flameclaw/Melthorn, and I'm glad I did, as it's a better boss beater for sure. Filigrees the same for the first 7 slots, but last 3 are city's beacon for the MRR/PRR procs. I estimate they have ~5% chance to proc per swing and it has no cooldown so are up fairly often.
Shield: Golden Age Large Shield (Ettercap quest, Myth Drannor)
This is a tough pull (hardest item out of the bunch BY FAR), but 15% hp and guardbreaking is a combo not found anywhere else. You can go for the large fallen instead (and give up guardbreaking) or fallen tower (but you’ll want proficiency) for 20% HP. Colossus from FOM is also in the discussion for having guardbreaking, the auto daze on crits is that good. In that case you’ll want 10% hp from titan’s blood or augment (3x raid or solar). I have a Positive +153 spell power ruby slotted, and I think lifetaker.
The rest of the gear, the overall idea is to use:
Sora Katra Upgraded Set (+25 universal spellpower, +30 PRR, +3 to hit, +3 to damage, +3 imbue dice +3 stats, +15% helpless damage...7 “set” bonuses for 3 items? WOW. )
And
Devil’s Infernal Dance Set from Vecna (+15% doublestrike/shot, +30% fort bypass, +15 melee/ranged power, +3 stats [overlap]) You could in theory use MD armor/helm/cloak and put augments in them, if you have them. I do, but I don’t think the MD setup is significantly better apart from maybe AC, and I'm not sure I want to farm out that helm, plus my current helm has some nice reaper/curse benefits that are unlikely to be replicated.
That’s the artifact set bonuses. These are all fairly easy farms, especially the Katra’s, they are very generous with the drop rates there. Then the profane augments are filled out with MD stuff (heal amp, MRR, PRR, melee power) as well as artifact MRR.
Goggles: Goggles of the Berserker (Secrets of the Red Wizards, Myth Drannor)
Enhanced Bloodrage goes off a LOT, and 10 melee power, 5 damage and 8 con are all fantastic. I slotted an emerald of greater rage for +3 rage charges and +20 heal augment and solar 30 MRR.
Helm: Uni Champion’s Helm (Party 101, Vecna)
Tons of great basic stats here, you get your accuracy, damage, seeker and armor piercing all in one nice package. I put in a swordcrossed topaz to get doublestrike in there as well, plus festive +2 strength. Was also lucky enough to have a +3 reaper power bonus and +2 attack/damage curse, so this item (and set) isn’t going anywhere.
Necklace: Crippling Strikes (Portal to Below, Myth Drannor)
Combat/Profane combat mastery, plus crippling (hard to tell how often it procs, due to already having auto slow on the sword). I tossed in a sapphire of stunning, globe of true imperial blood for +1 exp all stats and +30 lunar MRR. This spot is pretty flexible, realistically you’re not going to get sunder/trip DCs so combat mastery isn’t useful, it’s mostly for the profane. Storna’s Pendant from the rat quests for the +3 profane stats might allow the ram’s might belt from the same pack to be used, but I don’t really want to swap gear at this point. Cranium Sphere for +3 qual con/fort/+15 con also isn’t a bad option especially with MD armor.
Trinket: Night Hag’s Heartstone (Siegebreaker, Droaam 2)
Super easy to get (and is the only BTA minor artifact as far as I'm aware), so you can swap this for other filigree sets if you want in a pinch. It’s a caster item so the stats on it are fairly useless, but it completes the Sora Katra set. You COULD go double Katra ring and either this OR gloves but I like having the other ring slot open. I put in essence of the champion of the twins for the heal, crystillized unicorn tear for the temp hp proc and festive +2 cha. I was lucky enough to get a true seeing curse.
Cloak: University Duelists (Taken in Hand, Vecna)
Rounds out your offensive stats with quality attack/damage and insightful armor piercing/doublestike. I put in deflection to AC and festive con +2 augs. If you don’t have many reaper points/past lives or are doing mostly non reaper content, put dodge instead of deflection. I hit cap barely without it. If you get even 1-2% more dodge that's probably better than 10 AC.
Belt: Strap of Savviness (Oghma’s Song, Myth Drannor)
Insightful charisma +6, profane all stats +3 and +15 exceptional heal amp on the side, great item here. I put in a +57 heal amp aug, +14 con aug and +30 lunar PRR
Ring 1: Faith and fortress is a good option as well here for quality PRR +9 and quality MRR +20. If you go the MD armor/cloak/helm route this is also handy for the fort. Legendary demonheart emerald here for another hp proc.
EDIT: This was initially the acid ring from MA but I think this is a better option, then I put the acid proc on a dino sword for boss beating.
Ring 2: Katra’s Razor Wit (Diplomatic Impunity then upgraded at the cauldron)
This ring isn’t that good, it’s mostly for the set. Gets you +14 charisma at least. I put in good luck +3 and swiftness augs.
Gloves: Maenya’s Iron Fists (I think Eyes of Stone, then cauldron)
Also not that great but they complete the set. Gets +14 strength too. Resistance +11 and Melee power aug, in they go.
Boots: Greaves of Season’s Warding (Portal to Below, Myth Drannor)
+37% fire, acid, cold AND elec absorb is super nice in almost all content. Even on highish MRR builds, this is noticeable. Dethek Runestone essence goes in for yet another proc, +48 vitality HP and lunar healing amp.
Bracers: Unseen Ass (you guessed it...Portal To Below, Myth Drannor)
At least all the Portal items listed are common. Improved Deception is quite nice, can hit no-fail bluff without any swaps, and deception is nice extra damage sometimes. Insightful strength, natural armor and Profane MRR in here. Bracer’s of the Battlerager (MD raid) are a good option for more fort, and the Flourishing Fauna bracers have +3% qual doublestrike and true seeing.
Armor: Uni Bulwark Plate (Vecna denied...Vecna)
PRR, fort (something the MD armors glaringly lack), parrying +6 and constant FOM are all great. Insightful con aug and extra action boost aug here (legendary moment to legendary moment). I was lucky enough for a mythic 4 so I reaperized this armor for a bit more AC/PRR.
Overall, it's not a bad gear farm whatsoever, Vecna droprates are pretty good, the quests are fast (could even go medium armor if you pick that up first, slapping a set on them is very cheap), there are no MD rares apart from that Golden shield and a lot of the items come from portal so you can triple up on drop chances. The goggles you can just bring a wand of fireball and go right for the boss for 8 runs in about 15 minutes.
Faith and fortress is a worm item but it's not rare, and I consider that ring slot to be quite flexible so slot whatever you prefer. The Sora Katra set is a pretty easy one overall, you can get the base items easily and the upgrade path is also fairly fast. The artifact is probably the single easiest one to get in the game, just blaze through siegebreaker without any ops, and kill all the bosses at the end for 2 chests with a shot at it. There's a grand total of 1 raid item so it's a somewhat beginner friendly build, the limiting factor is probably going to be finding the lunar/solar augments, but there aren't any rare ones in the build either (you get those stats through the Sora Katra route).
Gear Swaps/Clickies:
-Spell Absorb (2 headed Platinum piece, pale lav ioun stone, magestar, jeweled cloak, phiarlan mirror cloak, mantle) never die to a caster again! That’s 110 spells and 50 spell levels absorbed. If a boss is a caster you will have your way with them and there’s absolutely nothing they can do about it. You will NEVER EVER die to a caster boss, and the game AI doesn’t really know enough for them to start meleeing really, they’ll just keep casting and dying.
In the two headed plat piece I have dark diversion and treachery for -70% threat. Even at 0% threat there’s a chance you’ll rip agro against many tanks, and so it might be worth the slight annoyance. You’ll be fairly tanky but flipping bosses is usually not the best.
-Displacement Clickies (rarely used but occasionally useful)
-Heart of Suulomades (mostly for...well...Suulomades, but even on LH solo I didn’t use this, I just watched for curses. Curse ward helps too. I DID use it on LE when the orthons spawned at the end.)
-FF trinket swap (best to have off 95%+ of the time for faster twitching)
-Crafted Sonic Absorb/Resist Trinket (mostly for loud dinosaurs)
-Severed Tentacle (5x per day 1min +6 str? Yes please)
-Stablestone (random absorbs)
-Epic Dusk Heart (mass deathward, mostly for party members)
-Dino/Werewolf Summons (they die fast in high skulls but still sometimes useful as a distraction)
-Crafted Search/Insightful Search/Int Helmet and Manual of Stealthy Pilfering (Can hit ~90 search, enough for some secret doors)
-Repulsor Boots (These have saved my arse when chained, but usually is just to skip ahead in some quests)
-Heroic Time Sensing Goggles (anti-slow)
-Planar Gird GH Clickie (saves are probably no-fail anyway but sometimes the skills help)
-ERSS/LRSS (8 major pots...on a paladin they don’t see much use but occasionally handy in long raids)
-Hood of Unrest (This DOES see a lot of use, gets dodge from 11% to 61% for 25 seconds, this is situationally EXTREMELY useful, like when orthons spawn in LVOD or some other high damage mitigation situation)
Scrolls and Potions:
Fireshield (with the boots and past lives, gets to around 80% absorb)
Tenser’s (only a minute...but sometimes a minute is all you need, am I right?)
Commendation Potion of Prowess (+2 attack/damage, always on when pushing difficulty)
Commendation Potion of Spellpower (only on if really the edge of what I can handle)
Superior Ardor [house J] (another 25 spellpower when needed, only 3min though)
Str Yugo Pots (rarely use, again only when things are borderline)
Filigrees:
10 in Ignition
Raid: Purity/Touch of Grace, Sucker Punch/One Against Many, Bravery Throughout/Shattered Device
Non-Raid: Prowess Melee Power, Strength, PRR, Attack/Damage
That fills out your prowess set. Some people hotswap that but I play with 250-500 ms latency and I don’t have time for that. It’s a loss of DPS for me and more importantly, a pain in the rear end.
You then have 3 slots to play with. If pretty casual you don’t even have to grind them out or use sparks at all, it’ll still perform well. I went with shattered device melee power (non rare, seems they’re not dropping?) to get the 3rd tier in that (+3 doublestrike), then dreadbringer melee power/tactics.
4 in artifact
Raid: Purity/Touch of Grace, Sucker Punch/One Against Many, Bravery Throughout/Shattered Device
Non-Raid: Prowess Melee Power
So in all this gets you 45 heal amp, 18 MRR, 24 PRR, 5 strength, 48 Melee Power if I added those up correctly, plus some odds and ends like +2 action boosts, +3 attack/damage and +1 saves.
It’s a balance between heal amp, defenses and offenses, mostly. If you want to get more tanky you could certainly prioritize con or even AC here though. The world is your Ostridge, as they say.
I do have a greatsword with a sanctified fervor swap: 1 minute is enough that it’s worth 25 melee power. It’s important that this is a favored weapon, so that you don’t lose stacks of ascendency if you’ve been slapping around some demons or whatnot. You know how it be.
I also have a 4 piece electrocution swap in another Night Hag’s heartstone, and am building a 5 piece blood feast dino throwing dagger with brighthorn. Going into big fights, can equip that, rage, then toss that into an orc butt or something for a tasty 2.4k temp hp going into combat. Hey, it’s honest work.
You can also build out a charisma filigree weapon for trance but personally I can’t be bothered to really maximize that, at least not yet.
Total self-buffed long term playable (not including burst clickies, tensors, store/rem pots, a bardbot giving you a backrub, etc) stats for the current Tabaxi version in reaper:
281 healing amp, 590 pos spellpower, 165 damage/207 attack, ~4800 hp, 374 PRR, 207 MRR, 273 AC, 332ish melee power. Solid numbers across the board but not really excelling in any one area.
First life will be quite a bit lower but will still be serviceable, with something like ~35 reaper points you’ll have ~220 heal amp, ~400+ pos spellpower, ~155 damage/~175 attack, bit over 3000hp, ~300 PRR, ~170 MRR, ~150 AC, ~300 melee power. I wouldn't expect solo r8-10s but it should do great in low skull solos and mid skull pugs.
The Aasimar version will have significantly more heal amp, slightly more melee power and strength, a bit less charisma, dodge and sneak attack. Overall, it’s a better choice.
Yes yes that’s nice, but what can it DO?
Solo LN FOM, LH Chrono, LE LVOD. Most legendary quests on r8. Of course this is the forums where everyone solos r10 without trying but I’m happy with how things have gone.
Playstyle/Strategy:
This will obviously vary a bit based on which content you’re playing. Generally when in a group, just follow with everyone and kill stuff, throwing heals if needed especially if r10 and the healer takes damage.
When soloing, you can bluff-pull enemies that you really don’t want to fight with packs of mobs, namely vengeance reapers, but also sometimes dooms. This might include some casters as well, maybe you just want to pull that soul of cruelty caster and smack it with your shield before diving into the fray.
That being said, it’s often better to agro the mobs and pull them around the corner. Don’t get surrounded, you don’t have the defenses to be a real tank. Just because you’re a paladin doesn’t mean you have to be an idiot. The general rotation of attacks is leading off with quick cutter, that’s a 13-20 crit range, twice, meaning that more often than not you’ll crit on one of the attacks and proc the no-save guardbreaker. Strike early and often, once something is slowed with the salt proc it's just a sitting duck for you to run around and avoid their attacks. And the mobs are always salty. That’s the followed by your 4 pally cleaves, the order doesn’t matter a ton but make sure you do exalted smite before holy retribution so you get the smite back. Only use 1-2 exalted smite for easy fights, for tough fights you want all your smites so you can spam them.
You have a lot of heals at your disposal, keep renew up as much as possible, it’ll only tick for like 100 or so in r8 but it adds up over a fight. Primal scream when you need to, and only dig into the rages/lay on hands when really needed. When you rage/unrage, either use remove disease or primal scream after it. You also have your 10k sov heal, but that’s a 10 minute cooldown so that’s mostly an “oh snap” button. It’ll be a max heal in r8 or close to it. R10 it’s kinda underwhelming but still your strongest heal. Then you have cure serious/moderate, these are mostly used between fights or on party members. You can hit 550-600 pos spellpower but without AOE heals you’re not really a raid healer.
Rednames, if they’re a caster just spell absorb and enjoy. If trinket swapping you can do double Katra's instead of the faith and fortress ring to keep your set bonus, but I often don't bother. Cloak swapping WILL drop your DPS but in something like the WPM endfight that might be needed. Better alive with 20-30% less dps than dead. Ranged, deflect arrows takes care of most of the pain and in general rangers just don't hit that hard. Get in their face, get behind them, make them regret shooting at you. Melee, you’ll want to move around a lot, trying to get them to miss not due to AC/dodge (you don’t really have either) but from you not being there. You can quick cutter as a “drive by” without much risk to yourself once you get the hang of it. R6 and under you can probably heal through most melee bosses, but 7,8,9+...probably not, especially skullguards or bardbarians or ettercaps that hit hard.
Note that if an enemy has both a ranged AND melee attack (trolls, medusa, etc) you almost always want them shooting you rather than smashing you. So you can run away, get them to swap to ranged, then run in and quick cutter them, then run away just as they swap to melee, wait for them to swap back to ranged, and repeat. Not really needed on lower difficulties but when soloing higher skulls you have to get creative on a melee character.
Reapers and Casters and Champs, Oh My!
High priority targets are fire/water elemental or caster champs (soul of cruelty, demon soul, skyborn and other dot-giving ones in particular), anything that does force damage especially without a save (like Nothics or arcane zapping constructs) and just in general anything that has high offense but low defense. You have spell absorb and magic missle immunity but you want to save the spell absorb for rednames or vengence reapers whenever possible, so the casters out first. Also high priority are archeron or beast mark melee champs. They'll bypass your fort and that's not really a fun time. In my experience even with ~220-240% fort you won't get crit unless it's a special situation.
Fear reapers have to die early, you can stay near them and still kite slightly around them without getting dotted.
Vengeance reapers, you actually CAN survive standing in a circle with ~220 MRR and 5k hp on r8, but in general don't do that. Also they'll cast horrid wilting for 2k+ damage even if you save so a good general rule of thumb is kill them last but have spell absorb on, while avoiding the circles. Probably the worst possible reaper in some situations when solo.
Dooms, hood if you need to (depends on shrine availability and upcoming bosses) but in general on r8 you can get one down if you are mobile and heal occasionally while kiting it. You can also kite it around trash, hitting it while it tries to reposition.
Famine/despair/carnage are not particularly noteworthy. Plague you'll want to kill before those, but probably after fears or casters.
For soloing r10, I think you’re probably better off with something that is either ranged, or has uncanny dodge, or perhaps leaning on barbarian with more rage charges and blood feast. It’s rarely trash that’s the issue, it’s hard hitting melee red names and not being able to self heal. That or using a hire, I keep one at the entrance for lag deaths but I consider it not exactly "solo" if you have a hire (or several, in some cases) healing you through anything and everything. But that's just my take on things.
The most DPS? Nope. Someone with a “pure” dps build will do noticeably more damage. An SDK DL will probably clear the room before you even get there, not to mention the crossbow users. But it’s enough to make the content still go by fast enough. It’s roughly 25k sustained dps from what I’ve seen when going all out, which is pretty decent for not using an epic moment.
The tankiest? Nope. A “real” tank will have many more HP, a bit better PRR and MRR, and loads more AC. Probably a lot more threat, too. But you can survive better than the typical melee for sure.
The CC...iest? Nope. Bard or some other arcane caster is better. But you’ll find that with ignition and guardbreaking in particular plus the para procs, things have a habit of just...not moving very much. And if it is, slap it with your shield and see how it fares against that. Even works on reapers, undead, constructs.
Build weaknesses?
-It’s pretty slow in terms of movement speed, overall. If you are looking for a life to farm out items fast...this probably ain’t it. You CAN trade haste boost for sprint boost but that’s a bit icky as well.
-Not enough AC to lean on it in hard content. You can maybe tank a low skull LVOD or similar with a good healer (after all, the build soloed elite) but higher skull raids probably just aren’t happening, you don’t have the AC or HP. For the AC route you can go for the MD armors, bit of a brutal farm but would definitely provide noticeably better protection.
The “final frontier” for this build is probably AC: trash doesn’t pose a threat, nor do spellcasting bosses, it’s really only melee rednames that are trouble. And getting from the current ~280-285 into the 300s would likely be of help.
In summary, there's content you can heal through, content you'll have to get creative with, and content that is just not happening, it's just that balance between your offenses (how long does it take to kill stuff), defenses (how much damage do you take) and healing (how fast/much can you get that HP bar back up) all of which tilt away from you with each skull. I've tried to balance all three of those, along with crowd control, with this build.
There are, of course, probably other ways this could be improved and optimized. Building and gearing a character is complex and there’s a distinct likelihood that I’ve overlooked something, so let me know if anything comes to mind!
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