Ceric Build Advice and a general question

[DarthBeckett]

I am a fairly new player (have picked up a lot I think), but very (overly :) ) familiar with the table top version.

I am curently playing a mostly solo/small group battle Cleric, subing as both Tank/DPS and Healer. SO far I am playing a Human NG Cleric 6 with

Str 15
Dex 11
Con 10
Int 12
Wis 19
Cha 14
(28 including Enhancements, gear, and feats)

I have Enhancements
Follower of the Silver Flame (Longbow Proficiency)
Prayer of Life 1
Concentration 1
Imp. Human Recovery 1
Life Magic 1 & 2
Zealot Energy 1 & 2
Wisdom 1
Charisma 1
Divine Healing 1
Divine Vitality 1
Extra Turning 1
Scroll/Wand Master 1

Feats
Exotic Weapon Bastard Sword (personal preference)
Diehard (a huge boon so far)
Extend Spell
Mental Toughness

For skills, I have gotten a lot of them, but maxed Concentration, kept up Spot a bit, and a few ranks in UMD and Search, 1 in Tumble.

Currently using a
+2 Flametouched Fullplate (looking for Mithral)
+2 Darkwood Shield
+2 Shocking Bastard Sword of Pure Good
(other gear for Devotion 2, Haggle +3, +2 Str, +2 Wis, +1 Cha, Power 1 and a few other things.)

I am looking for advice from there, as to what would be good things to work towards.

I am F2P, and I am havine a hard time finding new quests to do, (having done all I can find multiple times, and then helping lower levels through theirs for fun).

Any advice is welcome.

Also, a question. Are there any plans for Cleric Prestige Classes? It is a bit off puting that there are none. :(

[hellfire014]

your CON is quite low for a melee character, and CHA is really only useful if you're gonna use Divine Might. If you're gonna melee, maybe switch out Mental Toughness for Toughness or Power Attack, or use it for Empower/Healing for stranger heals (and damage spells if u use them).

[DoctorWhofan]

Your CON is too low even for a regular cleric. Trust me I know. You need at least a 14 on a melee type and 12 on most ofthe other builds.

Yes, sadly we have been neglected in the PrE department. As Far as I know, no PrEs for this year planned.

[Sirea]

Hmm...ok, where to start...I guess first I'd say to keep in mind that DDO does deviate from PnP in some places, so what you are used to in tabletop may be very different here.

As far as your stats, the 10 CON could get you in trouble down the road. You're not going to have very many hit points, which effectively means at high level your melee capability will be close to none because you'll be being one or two shotted by a lot of the mobs, especially bosses, without the right gear (and even sometimes with the right gear). If this were a build you hadn't actually rolled yet I would have recommended you drop STR down to a 10 or 12 at the most and to basically dump CHA and start with a 14 CON.

As to treating CHA as a dump stat, there's only really one thing CHA is good for in DDO, and that's turn attempts. Turn Undead is pretty gimp in the game as it stands right now, and other things that use turn attempts, like Divine Vitality to restore SP to another party member, are by no means necessary to have. In fact many clerics I know only have 8 or 10 turn attempts and only the first DV enhancement.

Bastard Sword proficiency...many people who read this are going to tell you to drop it. At higher levels with a 10 CON as I said, you're going to discover very quickly that it's going to be pretty deadly for you to be in melee range of some mobs. Also at higher levels, your offensive spells, namely Blade Barrier, are going to do much more damage than you could ever hope for that Bastard sword to do. Not to mention you get instakill spells that, if you max your WIS and invest in spell pen feats, will land pretty often. If you really want to swing a weapon, pick up the Sovereign Host enhancement that grants longsword proficiency.

Diehard might seem great now, but at higher levels things will hit you hard enough to kill you outright instead of incapping you, or keep beating on you even when you are incapped, so you really want to try and avoid getting incapped at all.

Better feats to take for a cleric include most of the metamagics (Maximize, Empower or Empower Healing, Extend, Quicken, Heighten), Spell Pen/Greater Spell Pen, Toughness, Mental Toughness/Improved Mental Toughness.

As far as Cleric Prestige classes, Fernando said in his State of the Game address that Clerics will be getting their overhaul next year, sadly.

[ArgentMage]

As someone who enjoys building solo characters, I was very enamored of the
Diehard feat early on. Then along the way I discovered that improvement in play
style and additional build tweaks obviated Diehard.

I have to echo the sentiments about CON. Dump CHA, and go 14 CON.
Get Toughness. The enhancements make it very worthwhile.

Although Bastard Sword has been given new life thanks to the upcoming glancing
blows changes, it's not worth a feat on a feat-starved class like Cleric.
I would strongly suggest swapping it out for Toughness. Then, assuming you're
taking the Sovereign Host enhancements (which I strongly suggest to get
Unyielding Sovereignty), you'll have access to Dol Dorn's Champion, which gives
you basically free access to Longswords.

You asked. :D

[ivar415]

Yeah, have to pipe in too and give the death verdict to this build. Which is as it should be, it´s your first after all. :p

As a tip for your new cleric build I´d got with 14STR, 14CON, 16WIS and leave DEX at -8. CHR 12 and INT at 10 should do the job nicely. All your ability point increases go into WIS, as does the 1st human enhancement ability increase.

Turn undead is really annoyingly implemented in this game and aiming for it with a 28 points build isn´t feasible IMHO. I personally use it only on my LVL7 undead hunter Paladin, when I go 100 Favor points grinding (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=233690) in the Korthos and Harbor quests. There it works and it´s awesome, but at the mob levels nearer to yours it totally fails (when you´re lucky) or just "scares" them and the bastards start running away. But only after delivering some hefty bangs to your banana. :D

As for your skills, go here: http://ddowiki.com/page/Skill_usefulness
I´d go for max´ing concentration and investing into balance at the 1st level. Don´t spread your skillpoints out too wide. Pick 2 (apart from concentration and stay with those).

Also never waste your enhancement points on skill boosts, there´s other stuff oh so much more usefull.