The wizard's staff as a knob on the end (and you can use it to trip people)

[voodoogroves]

Long time reader, first time poster.

I've been playing since the game went F2P (I'm VIP, FYI). I've leveled a number of characters so far on a few different servers and have been really enjoying trying out different concepts. Also a very, very long-time player of PNP spanning all versions; I spent way too much time on the CO boards in my 3.x days and have shied away now that we're playing 4E here at home. My first characters had a PNP-bias to them, but now I know more about DDO and what's different as well as what's possible (quicken rocks here for cheap, in PNP it's pricey, etc.). More important I think I've figured out the "pacing" of how most of the quests (at least through the mid-teems) play and am probably a much better player for that than any specific uberness of any build I've run.

Alright, long intro. Here's what I'm thinking:

Monk3/Wizard11/Fighter6 (warforged)

The basic plan is a staff-using, STR-high character with focus on combat feats, THF. It'd be a capable self-healer / buffer and drop a firewall just fine. Enhancements would include the 'forged PA, great weapon and combat DC ones, Kensai I and the fire/cold wiz stuff plus maybe some wand 1 and repair/force thrown in.

Think: Battlemage that trips/stuns.

Initial progression will be monk 1 followed by wizard 7. Getting to Wall of Fire quickly is, I think, important. It also gets the 2nd tier of resist energy fast and stoneskin with only the one level delay. Wizard bonus feats will be Extend and Maximize; monk feat probably Stunning Blow.


One possible layout would be something like this (BUT THIS IS NOT FINAL .... so don't get hung up on specifics)


1 - Monk 1 - Combat Expertise, Stunning Blow
2 - Wiz 1 - Extend
3 - Wiz 2 - Improved Trip
4 - Wiz 3
5 - Wiz 4
6 - Wiz 5 - Maximize, Toughness
7 - Wiz 6
8 - Wiz 7
9 - Monk 2 - Insightful Reflexes, Power Attack
==================
10 - Monk 3
11 - Wiz 8
12 - Wiz 9 - Empower
13 - Wiz 10 - Quicken
14 - Wiz 11
15 - Ftr 1 - Improved Crit - Blunt, THF
16 - Ftr 2 - Weapon Focus - Blunt
17 - Ftr 3
18 - Ftr 4 - ITHF, Weapon Spec - Blunt
19 - Ftr 5
20 - Ftr 6 - GTHF


Questions I'd like some feedback on are ...
* Value of trip/stun early as opposed to late-game. I'm inclined to front-load them.
* Start w/ STR 18 and INT 14 or go more blended w/ STR 16, INT 16 and some into WIS to counteract the sun-stance I'll be in? STR 18 initially would drop WIS to 4 while in the sun-stance ...
* Finishing moves or Fighter 2 sooner?
* Is improved trip worth the combat expertise tax? If not, I'd probably stick w/ stuns and work in Imp Crit slash to swap between staves (for stun) and slashing (for DPS)
* Once you have combat expertise is Improved Sunder something you should work in (since you've paid the tax)?
* How useful are trips/stuns late game ... really?


Thanks in advance.




PS apologies in advance on the formatting; not all my forum-codes seem to be working from memory ...

[Phidius]

I've got a 12 Wiz/6 Rng/2 Mnk that is an absolute blast to play, an 11 Cleric/6 Rng/2 Mnk that is the closest I'm gonna get to a healbot, and plans for a 12 Wiz/6 Ftr/2 Rog that I'll probably never get around to leveling.

While I'd love to testify to the effectiveness of these builds and how much fun they are, I'm unable to address what i see as your main question - how effective is Trip in the end game? I don't know, but I hope someone answers this for you.

I would say that unless you are really strapped for skill points, start your Int at 11-12, depending on whether you can get your hands on a +2 easily or not. 11 + 2 + 3 (AP) gives you all the Int you need to cast without wasting an item slot, and you can look forward to pulling a +3 or better Int tome to get a refund on the AP cost :D

Lastly, is there anyway you could do this with 11 Wiz/9 Mnk? Probably not, but it would be neat to get Improved Evasion on a battle wiz. Just neat, though - nothing worth obsessing over :D

Oh, and /bump

[voodoogroves]

Thanks for reply.

The reason INT was high is that I've also come to love the stealth-mage aspects as well. I've got a rog1/monk2/rest-wiz that I sneak with all the time. Nothing amuses me more than sneaking behind the beholder, holding it and then heavy-picking it to death. On this build I'd imagine a stealthy stunner or tripper ... sneak up, smack it for a trip or a stun and then beat it to death.

That said, I could drop INT to 14 easily enough and put those points somewhere else. WIS maybe, since I hate having suck saves (and INT gives me reflex).

[voodoogroves]

And you absolutely *could* do it with 6 more monk instead of fighter, just has trade-offs.

Monk gives ...
better saves
1 more WIS AP
wholeness of body
2nd tier stances
1 feat

Fighter gives ...
4 additional feats - including specialization
kensai
trip / stun DC boosts
2 more STR AP




How does the ranger play? That's likely more DPS w/ the TWF/ITWF feats while you dump DEX, right?

[Humperdink]

Anytime you have a build where a special ability or tactic is a main focus it's worthwhile to figure out the DC checks generally required in the content you want to run and then work backwards from there. I haven't checked trip DCs in a very long time. Might want to forum search or post in combat and strategies section. Not only does Improved Trip up your DC, it reduces the cooldown timer from 15 seconds to 10 seconds. You can up your tactics DC from Fighter PrE (kensai), fighter general class enhancements, and Warforged racial enhancements. The DCs needed at end game for Stunning Blow are around low 40s for 75% effectiveness in Shavarath, and probably high 30s to low 40s for Inspiration Quarter.

If you want to stay bludgeoning Mauls are going to be higher DPS than staves generally speaking and either come with Weighted. The only situation I can think of where this gap starts to close is the Rogue Acrobat PrE which increases Q-staff attack speed. Attack speed may increase with Monk levels as well, but that's something you'd have to look into as I'm not sure (don't have a Monk).

At level 11 Wizard you get two level 6 spells slots. As I peruse the level 6 spell list, you'll probably mostly want to keep those filled with Greater Heroism and Reconstruct. Going 12 levels would open up a third slot where you could put True Seeing (nice for a melee focused arcane) or Acid Fog (nice when you fights devils and such which are immune to Fire). Keep in mind GH and True Seeing can be cast from scrolls albeit for a shorter duration and cost platinum.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Category:Sorcerer_/_Wizard_spells

[Phidius]

...
How does the ranger play? That's likely more DPS w/ the TWF/ITWF feats while you dump DEX, right?

Started Dex at 15 to qualify for GTWF with a +2 tome. The ranger part was primarily for tempest and Ram's Might, but the ranger skills allowed me to keep Hide/MS pretty high too. Ranged has it's place too, so it helps to not dump Dex entirely.

He's mainly melee DPS with a lot of self healing and nifty tricks up his sleeve.

[voodoogroves]

Anytime you have a build where a special ability or tactic is a main focus it's worthwhile to figure out the DC checks generally required in the content you want to run and then work backwards from there. I haven't checked trip DCs in a very long time. Might want to forum search or post in combat and strategies section. Not only does Improved Trip up your DC, it reduces the cooldown timer from 15 seconds to 10 seconds. You can up your tactics DC from Fighter PrE (kensai), fighter general class enhancements, and Warforged racial enhancements. The DCs needed at end game for Stunning Blow are around low 40s for 75% effectiveness in Shavarath, and probably high 30s to low 40s for Inspiration Quarter.

If you want to stay bludgeoning Mauls are going to be higher DPS than staves generally speaking and either come with Weighted. The only situation I can think of where this gap starts to close is the Rogue Acrobat PrE which increases Q-staff attack speed. Attack speed may increase with Monk levels as well, but that's something you'd have to look into as I'm not sure (don't have a Monk).

At level 11 Wizard you get two level 6 spells slots. As I peruse the level 6 spell list, you'll probably mostly want to keep those filled with Greater Heroism and Reconstruct. Going 12 levels would open up a third slot where you could put True Seeing (nice for a melee focused arcane) or Acid Fog (nice when you fights devils and such which are immune to Fire). Keep in mind GH and True Seeing can be cast from scrolls albeit for a shorter duration and cost platinum.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Category:Sorcerer_/_Wizard_spells

Monk does have an attack speed increase stance - and also a STR increase stat.

So, lemme do some napkin math here for end-game target.

Conservative = 18 STR + 2 monk stance + 6 item + 5 levels + 2 AP + 1 tome = 34 w/o exceptional gear = +12 base
Fighter strategy APs = +2 tactics +1 kensai +3 warforged tactics = 6
Weighted 5 = +10

That's pretty easily a DC 38. More strength (rage, exceptional attribute boosts, +3 tomes) could get that up in the low 40s. For a trip, Combat Expertise would essentially add +4. That's a 42 on trip easily w/ a good vertigo weapon.

This thread has a good explanation: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=202057

It seems that trip is harder to resist, but a stun opens up auto crits. I'm not against carrying two thundering heavy picks of maiming or similar when I want to crit-kill. It looks like you can hit useful numbers for end-game with both.


I do like the staff simply because of the flexibility monk stances give you. Attack speed? Sure. More STR? Sure, switch stance.

[voodoogroves]

Given that the tread above says trip/stun will work on glancing blows and I'm going to slam in all the 'forged great weapon stuff, this is looking more fun. It's like greater command that scales and doesn't use SP ...

I think my questions about end-game usefulness have been answered (it is). Now my only thing to think about is what to do after level 8 when I'll be monk1/wiz7 ... it's all about what I want to get "next" in the chain.
- Level 6 spells (reconstruct, GH) - go wizard
- Evasion
- Monk finishing moves
- Fighter 2 (+1 dc to feats, +1 str)

Going w/ monk and/or fighter delays level 6 spells, but gets the combat abilities faster.

[Humperdink]

Yeah trip is a DC based upon Strength or Dex, whatever is higher. It's a tough one because it's easy to get a high trip DC but harder to get a high Str or Dex for the most part. A 40 in either stat only gives you +15 to your save roll. This is why air elementals used to be so feared before they changed their knockdown ability to a Reflex save recently and made them laughable. And of course with Improved Trip they will be laying there for a while NOT attacking you. :) Stunning Blow of course opens up auto-crits and is a Fortitude save. A lot of things out in Shavarath have a Fort save around 25-27 so a Stunning Blow of 38 will land about 50-60% of the time, hence why I recommended low 40s.

Should be a fun build. As for what character level to get while leveling keep in mind you'll get a Caster Level check on Reconstruct scrolls. As a level 8 wizard you should be at about a 75% chance to cast it successfully. Combine that with Wizard Wand and Scroll Mastery III and you'll self heal for about 160 points from each scroll 75% of the time. Also work on getting the clickie belts out of Shavarath such as the Singed Belt. This will give you three 3 minute clickies of 75% elemental damage specific to each belt. Normal Superior Potency is 50%. This will improve your damage over time AoE spells like Firewall and Acid Fog that arcane melee's tend to use. Also a high concentration skill will allow you to use scrolls and wands under fire. Evasion will let you avoid high damage spikes from AoE magic most of the time and allow you to get your scrolls off more successfully as you won't be attempting those checks versus hundreds of points of damage.

[voodoogroves]

I can twink the char w/ sup-potency staffs along the way and swap between them, weighted, vertigo or specialist (banish, disrupt) and DPS (element-or-holy-of-pure-good). One nice thing about having a high-level acrobat is I've got a bank full of quarterstaff's he's outgrown (and have been collecting caster staves). That said, a 75% clickie would be awesome - good idea. I'll need to farm some and pass them down.

I went w/ a 14 INT. Skill-wise that is a maxed concentration and balance each level. The first monk level also saw points in jump, tumble, move silently, hide and I've got some points left over to push move/hide a bit as well (and will catch up on monk 2 and monk 3).

[Dark-Star]

Advice:

40's trip DC in epic will produce little for you, certainly not worth sacrificing so much for.

You will need to check your to hit for the end game, my guess is it will be too low to the point that you will be frustrated when you get there.

WF THF enhancemnts are currently broken, they add zilch.

In general Battle Mages were in vogue (and could be quite effective) up until about a year ago. With the advent of Epic quests and raids, they cannot bring as much to groups/raids as they once could.

Personally I gave this a lot of thought (and several rerolls), and ended up with a 2monk/18 wizard staff build, WF. Tried a few variations on stats, but after a couple of painful rerolls of mid-teens characters, I have opted for maximizing int, then a balance between str and con.

Going 18 wizard and 2 monk max int allows you to be a fully functioning caster with great survivability (evasion, int modifier for relfex save, huge hit points), and okay melee dps.

You will be a far more effective "DPS-er" by casting Mass Hold Monster and beating down the CC-ed mobs with auto-crits than you will be just takng them on toe to toe. Your firewalls are much more effective, and you get two of the most important Arcane spells in Polar Ray and Otto's Irresistable Dance.

With an effective Mass Hold, you also can avoid having to spam Divine Power clickies, which for many (myself certainly included) is a royal pain to keep up. Mass Hold also works all the way through Epic, and increases not only your DPS, but everyone else's in your group.

Hope this helps, don't want you to get to 20 and be a sad pandna.

[maddmatt70]

Battle arcanes struggle at end game because there is no prestige enhancement dedicated toward them and what is worse is the developers have not outlined any plans to release a prestige enhancement for battle wizard or sorcs.

[voodoogroves]

Advice:

40's trip DC in epic will produce little for you, certainly not worth sacrificing so much for.

You will need to check your to hit for the end game, my guess is it will be too low to the point that you will be frustrated when you get there.

WF THF enhancemnts are currently broken, they add zilch.

In general Battle Mages were in vogue (and could be quite effective) up until about a year ago. With the advent of Epic quests and raids, they cannot bring as much to groups/raids as they once could.

Personally I gave this a lot of thought (and several rerolls), and ended up with a 2monk/18 wizard staff build, WF. Tried a few variations on stats, but after a couple of painful rerolls of mid-teens characters, I have opted for maximizing int, then a balance between str and con.

Going 18 wizard and 2 monk max int allows you to be a fully functioning caster with great survivability (evasion, int modifier for relfex save, huge hit points), and okay melee dps.

You will be a far more effective "DPS-er" by casting Mass Hold Monster and beating down the CC-ed mobs with auto-crits than you will be just takng them on toe to toe. Your firewalls are much more effective, and you get two of the most important Arcane spells in Polar Ray and Otto's Irresistable Dance.

With an effective Mass Hold, you also can avoid having to spam Divine Power clickies, which for many (myself certainly included) is a royal pain to keep up. Mass Hold also works all the way through Epic, and increases not only your DPS, but everyone else's in your group.

Hope this helps, don't want you to get to 20 and be a sad pandna.

Hmmm. Well, not what I wanted to hear but I appreciate the honesty.

I've got a few whatever-2-or-3/wiz-rest-INT-high builds already; was looking to do something a tad bit different. This includes one rog1/wiz17 that I frankly have never been able to rationalize rog2 for because a caster level is so completely outshining anything rog2 can provide and a rog1/monk2/wiz-rest TWFer. The first carries heavy picks for the hold-fun, but otherwise avoids melee ... the second can mix it up if needed.

Sadly, it sounds like a staff option on that route isn't really there. I love casters so much, but I suppose the monk2/fighter18 or monk2/fighter12/pal6 w/ kensai2 and possibly bladesworn are a much better bet for a tripper / stunner.

Hmm. Like I said, not what I wanted to hear ... but definitely something I'll take into consideration. A staff monk/wiz headed to more wiz I'd do INT > CON > STR and just DPS stuff at low levels because anyone can and then turn into a caster at later levels, only DPSing when spells no-worky.

[Dark-Star]

If you want a high DC tactical build, a 12ftr/8barb (WF or Dwarf) should give you the highest DC. Go twf for one vert, one weighted weapon; specialize in warhammers which have both and a x3 crit multiple. You will be a stunning/tripping fool.

[Humperdink]

I would also keep in mind that the advice Dark-Star gave is with a point of view towards Epic content. While it is certainly good advice, not all players build towards or want to play Epic content. This can lead to different build criteria. A 12wizard/6fighter/2monk or slight variations there of can certainly do quite well in end game content if you remove Epic from your goals. Not a put down on Dark-Star at all or what he had to say, just keep in mind what content you want to play and how you want to play your character in it. See Impaqt's Edtwo Ohnine build:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=217342

[Dark-Star]

I'd say that's fair.

I was responding to his questions about late game, here, or I generally wouldn't post in a thread that's more of a flavor build.


Questions I'd like some feedback on are ...
* Value of trip/stun early as opposed to late-game. I'm inclined to front-load them.
* Start w/ STR 18 and INT 14 or go more blended w/ STR 16, INT 16 and some into WIS to counteract the sun-stance I'll be in? STR 18 initially would drop WIS to 4 while in the sun-stance ...
* Finishing moves or Fighter 2 sooner?
* Is improved trip worth the combat expertise tax? If not, I'd probably stick w/ stuns and work in Imp Crit slash to swap between staves (for stun) and slashing (for DPS)
* Once you have combat expertise is Improved Sunder something you should work in (since you've paid the tax)?
* How useful are trips/stuns late game ... really?


Just didn't want to see him waste his time at 20 if Epics, raids and the gear that goes along with them are his goals.

[Humperdink]

Yeah for sure, I certainly think your input and experience is valuable and my post isn't a put down in any way. I just think sometimes long time gamers can get stuck in a rut of "all must be min/max for super elite epic content and you must pwn all or your game-fu is weak!!!11" and forget to sometimes stop and enjoy the game and be open to trying other things. That other players may not have the same expectations as them for the super grind grind or are perhaps not really into competing at the same level. That's why when people ask questions about a build like "Is this a good fighter?" I reply "I dunno, what are your expectations and goals with the character?" and try and make recommendations with that information in mind. I was trying to remind Voodoogroves to frame his expectations accordingly. :)

[voodoogroves]

I can totally feel the love ;-)


I'm sitting on a mess of DP clickies (man they are easy to come by) so I'm not so much worried about hitting things. Casters aren't on the level of "win" as they are in PNP but they are still incredibly strong.

Ah well, we'll see. I'll hold off on this a bit.