Tempest of Pain (A build by request)

[sigtrent]

[CENTER]This build is from Sigtrent's build request thread (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=117232)

Build Name: Tempest of Pain
Author: Sigfried Trent
Requester: Staffman
Last Updated: 07/13/10

Key Words [Assassin, Tempest, Drow, Rogue]

Objectives
The request was for a rogue/ranger, favoring rogue using drow as the race. I didn’t want to use tomes to keep it accessible. I like the tempest/assassin mix as you get more versatility than a pure rogue and the extra off hand attacks help compensate for the loss of sneak attack.

Design
I often go finesse with drow rogues and rangers due to the natural synergy for dex. It gives great reflex saves and high accuracy with both ranged and melee attacks. DPS comes more from power attack and sneak attack than from brute strength and you get a superior armor class. With drow, Rapier+Shortsword is the natural weapon selection and requires less feat investment than other choices.

When you take ranger for feats, you need to front load it into the build and that’s what I do here so for the early levels you are more ranger than rogue. That turns around once you get ITWF and Tempest. I splashed monk here to even out the feats but if you don’t have monk you could take a fighter level, or shift all the feats one level forwards. Monk has a lot of benefits though including an unarmed attack mode (blunt damage for fighting undead) and the ac bonus from wisdom. You wouldn’t normally be in a stance but when unarmed you can benefit from that as well.

Final defenses are decent with improved evasion and high reflex saves being a highlight. AC is quite decent if geared out and other saves are at least decent. DPS should be a decent second tier. Rogue skills are solid if not astounding due to limited int. You probably will have a trapping set of gear and a fighting set to really shine at both.


Character Plan by DDO Character Planner Version 3.5.1
DDO Character Planner Home Page (http://www.rjcyberware.com/DDO)

Level 20 Lawful Good Drow Male
(1 Monk \ 13 Rogue \ 6 Ranger)
Hit Points: 236
Spell Points: 45
BAB: 15\15\20\25\25
Fortitude: 13
Reflex: 23
Will: 8

Starting Feat/Enhancement
Abilities Base Stats Modified Stats
(28 Point) (Level 1) (Level 20)
Strength 13 13
Dexterity 17 26
Constitution 14 14
Intelligence 12 12
Wisdom 11 11
Charisma 10 10

Starting Feat/Enhancement
Base Skills Modified Skills
Skills (Level 1) (Level 20)
Balance 7 18
Bluff 0 4
Concentration 2 25
Diplomacy 0 0
Disable Device 5 26
Haggle 0 0
Heal 0 0
Hide 6 20
Intimidate 0 0
Jump 5 11
Listen 0 2
Move Silently 7 21
Open Lock 7 31
Perform n/a n/a
Repair 1 1
Search 5 27
Spot 4 25
Swim 1 1
Tumble 4 9
Use Magic Device 4 23

Level 1 (Rogue)
Feat: (Selected) Dodge
Enhancement: Rogue Haste Boost I
Enhancement: Rogue Skill Boost I
Enhancement: Rogue Sneak Attack Training I
Enhancement: Rogue Disable Device I


Level 2 (Ranger)
Feat: (Favored Enemy) Favored Enemy: Undead
Enhancement: Ranger Sprint Boost I
Enhancement: Drow Melee Damage I
Enhancement: Ranger Favored Damage I


Level 3 (Ranger)
Feat: (Selected) Weapon Finesse
Enhancement: Elven Dexterity I
Enhancement: Rogue Faster Sneaking I
Enhancement: Rogue Improved Trap Sense I


Level 4 (Rogue)
Enhancement: Rogue Sneak Attack Accuracy I
Enhancement: Rogue Search I
Enhancement: Rogue Dexterity I


Level 5 (Monk)
Feat: (Monk Bonus) Mobility
Enhancement: Drow Melee Attack I


Level 6 (Ranger)
Feat: (Selected) Spring Attack


Level 7 (Ranger)
Enhancement: Rogue Damage Boost I
Enhancement: Ranger Energy of the Wild I


Level 8 (Ranger)
Feat: (Favored Enemy) Favored Enemy: Evil Outsider
Enhancement: Drow Melee Damage II
Enhancement: Elven Dexterity II
Enhancement: Ranger Favored Damage II


Level 9 (Ranger)
Feat: (Selected) Power Attack
Enhancement: Ranger Tempest I


Level 10 (Rogue)
Enhancement: Rogue Hide I
Enhancement: Rogue Move Silently I


Level 11 (Rogue)
Enhancement: Rogue Damage Boost II
Enhancement: Rogue Skill Boost II
Enhancement: Rogue Subtle Backstabbing I
Enhancement: Rogue Sneak Attack Training II


Level 12 (Rogue)
Feat: (Selected) Improved Critical: Piercing Weapons
Enhancement: Rogue Hide II
Enhancement: Rogue Move Silently II


Level 13 (Rogue)
Enhancement: Rogue Assassin I


Level 14 (Rogue)
Enhancement: Rogue Subtle Backstabbing II
Enhancement: Rogue Sneak Attack Training III


Level 15 (Rogue)
Feat: (Selected) Greater Two Weapon Fighting
Enhancement: Rogue Sneak Attack Accuracy II
Enhancement: Rogue Disable Device II


Level 16 (Rogue)
Enhancement: Rogue Dexterity II


Level 17 (Rogue)
Feat: (Rogue Bonus) Crippling Strike
Enhancement: Rogue Sneak Attack Accuracy III


Level 18 (Rogue)
Feat: (Selected) Toughness
Enhancement: Racial Toughness I
Enhancement: Rogue Sneak Attack Training IV


Level 19 (Rogue)
Enhancement: Racial Toughness II
Enhancement: Rogue Assassin II


Level 20 (Rogue)
Feat: (Rogue Bonus) Improved Evasion
Enhancement: Rogue Haste Boost II
Enhancement: Ranger Sprint Boost II




Play
You aren’t super squishy but you do need to watch your agro carefully since sneak attack is the lions share of your dps output. Using banishing or smiting weapons will really help in mid game and the build is excelent for that play style.

Variations
If you want to bring in tomes you could shift this to a strength based build and have a fairly even str/dex profile. As mentioned you can substitute fighter for the monk level if you don’t have monk, and shift skill points out of concentration into stealth skills or the like. Or you can go with more rogue and shift all the feats forward, dropping toughness at the end.

[EinarMal]

The haste boost does stack, I am building a Rogue 13/Ranger 6/Fighter 1 Dwarf. This build is really squishy, the Dwarf version hits about 450 hit points at level 20 and I have a 34 DC stunning blow as well which pretty much gives you sneak attacks at will if you grab agro.

Whomever requested this I would strongly consider a Dwarf over the Drow. For a really combat heavy Rogue you cannot beat a strength based Dwarf IMO.

The fighter level is totally optional, in my case I wanted toughness and stunning blow, and chose to wait for improved evasion until level 17. You could easily take out stunning blow, and go Rogue 10/Ranger 6 instead of Rogue 9/Ranger 6/Fighter 1.

[sigtrent]

I like the dwarven option as well. The requester in this case didn't have 32pt builds and its harder to do this one as a 28pt dwarf although still doable. I have a similar rogue to this one and while my HP are similarly low (around 160 at 14) he does just fine in combat. I occasionaly get myself in trouble but its pretty rare that he gets killed unless we don't have any other DPS characters in the part in which case I'll occasionaly get too much attention. Wearing fearsome armor helps a lot with this.

The fighter level makes sense. I considered it but again I wanted to stick to the request parameters and I thought I might take Dex 3 (although I didn't in the end).

Thanks for the coments!

[EinarMal]

I like the dwarven option as well. The requester in this case didn't have 32pt builds and its harder to do this one as a 28pt dwarf although still doable. I have a similar rogue to this one and while my HP are similarly low (around 160 at 14) he does just fine in combat. I occasionaly get myself in trouble but its pretty rare that he gets killed unless we don't have any other DPS characters in the part in which case I'll occasionaly get too much attention. Wearing fearsome armor helps a lot with this.

The fighter level makes sense. I considered it but again I wanted to stick to the request parameters and I thought I might take Dex 3 (although I didn't in the end).

Thanks for the coments!

Yeah I have a Drow TWF Bard who is fairly squishy, so wanted to build a tank, so naturally I built a Rogue :D

Yeah the problem with this build is the stupid high save DC on traps now (also a problem for mine). So, what I said to myself was forget it, just build a tank and do traps when you can. I actually don't have 32 pt. builds either, I am terribly lazy on favor. These are the 28 pt. stats I used if anyone is interested... I refuse to take Lighting Reflexes and other dumb feats just to disable a couple of traps with boxes on the other side.

Stats:
Str 16
Dex 16
Con 16
Int 10
Wis 8
Cha 6

Even with 10 Int my Disable/Search comes out pretty decent, and I don't care for many other skills besides UMD. That is one downside to a Dwarf and probably where I would have put the extra points into for a 32 pt. build (Cha).

Full build for anyone interested:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=134643

[Master_of_None]

Maxing balance seems like overkill on a dex-based rogue. I'm not sure what you'd want in place of it. Haggle is always useful. I'm also not sure why you want both bluff and diplomacy. I think diplomacy is the more useful, since it's AOE and instant, but in any case, one or the other should be fine.

[sigtrent]

Bluff is usefull when solo or when you want to have agro but still get in a sneak attack, and there is the idea that if one fails the other one is there for you.

Balance is something I think you can never really have too much of. You may still get knocked down but you get back up quickly compared to characters wtihout a decent balance score. It probably doesn't need to be maxed out but I'm not really sure at what range it becomes more or less automaticaly successfull.

[Amabel]

I haven't tried too hard, but from simple experimentation I'm pretty sure diplomacy works just as well solo as bluff does. It seems to shed the agro, and it doesn't matter if someone else is there to take it or not.

By the way, I have a similar build at lvl 10 now (see the original Rogue 10 / ranger 6 thread - more a discussion of concepts than a strict build). Starting stats were 14 :18 :13 :13 :9 :10 and it's been great fun to level up so far, and really starts to sing at lvl 9 with improved TWF and improved crit. Have kept tumble and jump virtually maxed, which is fun and with a half-way investment in balance don't have trouble getting up quickly if knocked down.

[master256]

How many ranks of what skills do you take at each level? Also, what are the ability scores you raise at certain levels?