need to choose drow soloist build

[Raoull]

I'm working my way to 400 favor on my current toon, and since I'm now over 350 I figure I should start planning my next step.

My basic plan is I'm using my current toon (dwarven battlecleric) to learn the game and unlock drow. Then I'll make a drow character and attempt to get him to lvl 20, unlock 32 builds and TR him. (What happens if you TR without 32 builds unlocked?)

So drow is key, and my thought is that I can best exploit the stats by going with a TWF that can also use the charisma.

My main contenders right now are:

-Clonk, primarily cleric. Perhaps C17M2R1, or C17M3.
-Clonk, more even class split. Either C11M9, C12M7R1... or possibly C12M7P2
-Paladin with evasion. P18M2, P17M3, P17M2R1.....

I know that I want really good saves, which monk does to some extent, but paladin does even better. I'm not sure how much I want a Rogue level. I think I want UMD and pick locks, but I have no experience with either, so I'm not sure how key they are. I also plan on using Divine Might. It makes CHA a good stat, and seems like it would work very well with TWF. Self-healing is also key, as I can't imagine soloing without it (or tons of plat for wands/pots).

Also, I have little concern about how good I am at 20, other than wanting to be able to solo epic content enough to get tokens. (I'm assuming epic tokens just come from chests in epic lvls.... but I really have no idea.)

That... and it can't be too gear intensive. I have some stuff to inherit him from my current toon, but it isn't like I have a high lvl alt running raids to gear him up. It is likely that I'll need to solo for all my gear. (I expect to play near exclusively solo simply due to the demands of infants when I play... I don't want to have to leave a group in the lurch for a crying baby.) Some I may be able to get via AH, but I don't want to rely on that.

Since I plan on TR'ing, I was leaning toward the paladin. The cleric past life is really pretty pointless. It's even almost pointless even if you become a cleric.... but... that will take me months. So if it is thought that I'll need Blade Barrier to actually get to 20, the main goal is simply to TR at all. Having a decent past life is an after thought.

So right now I'd like to hear the wisdom of the crowds.... Would cleric really be much easier than paladin? If I went cleric would I want to be a healer/buffer that tops at C11/12 or do I need lvl 9 spells. (By my read, most cleric stuff tops at lvl 15 for a soloist as that is where heal/BB top out. The spells lv 6 and up are pretty pointless to a soloist with a few exceptions...)

Basically... traditional Clonk? Stryde style C11/12 split meleeer? or evasion Paladin?

[unbongwah]

A drow rogue / paladin is a good solo build, IMHO: pretty solid DPS, good saves, Evasion, a couple nice buffs, self-healing, max ranks in UMD. Can even be a trapmonkey too if you take more than 2 rogue levels (see below). It's not terribly gear-intensive, either: you need a +6 WIS item someday for lvl 4 spells; and you want the best rapiers you can scrounge up until you hit pally 14 and get Holy Sword; but that's about it as far as required gear goes. Downsides are you don't have great AC, you don't have enough self-healing to solo without Cure wands and/or cleric hirelings (LoH is more of an emergency panic button IMHO), and you don't get some of the better damage mitigation buffs like Blur, Displacement, Stoneskin, etc. that arcane builds do; though you will be able to UMD wands or scrolls of them eventually.

I recently posted a rogue 2 / paladin 18 build (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=3158536&postcount=10) that's solid, IMHO; it's got 11 ranks of Open Lock in addition to max UMD and can even be done without tomes if you're really trying to do this on the cheap. I've also got a rogue 5 / paladin 15 build (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=2945583&postcount=7) that's less DPS, more trapmonkey that I've been leveling (currently rogue 2 / paladin 6).

You could do a drow battlecleric, but clerics don't benefit as much from drow CHA as paladins; same with drow bards if you aren't focused on CC spells.

[redraider]

I love my Clr12/Ftr6/Mnk2 but it takes a lot of gear to make it uber. And... you have to deal with the bias against these kinds of builds if you pug at all.

I can heal rounds in Shroud, heal in ToD, run high 70's AC, hit with dual vorps or dual Lit2. Have 462 Hps and 1209 sps. It is dang near the most DDO fun you can have without breaking the CoC. :D

I can solo Sins Elite, Bastion Elite, Everything in the Shroud but Pt 4 (can't kill the Gnolls fast enough), and dang near anything else I put my mind to and not just BB kiting.

I just finished my 20th Titan and got my chattering ring and my 40th shroud will be Sat so a TR into an even more uber version is coming soon!

Long live the Rise of the Battle Cleric!

[Raoull]

So far one for pal and one for battle cleric eh?

@redraider: Do you think it will still work well without uber gear? In particular, if much of your solo ability is based on AC, that could be an issue for me....

@unbongwah: I've been leaning toward paladin (assuming BB isn't really key at higher end content), although I've been thinking getting evasion by using lvls 7 & 8 as monk. If I take monk or rogue earlier, it means that combat feats are 3 lvls behind between lvs 6 and 15. (ITWF takes a 6 BAB... so taking that at 9 pushes back improved crit and GTWF)

If I'm a Pal, will I need UMD for healing, or will wands plus LoH and USov be enough. That seems like plenty to me...
And will UMD/lock picking be worth pushing back the combat feats 3 lvls? Dunno....


The big question between my three options.... at higher lvls can I solo effectively with no BB (then probably Pal)... or would a slightly gimpy BB be sufficient (then a lvl 11/12 cleric multi maybe... ) or is a full BB absolutely necessary (in which case I'll need C15)....

After that... the rest are details. Although the Rogue or Not is a pretty big detail....

Having no experience with quests above lvl 7 makes this tough.... I've learned a ton about the game, but not that much in the grand scheme of things.

[unbongwah]

If I take monk or rogue earlier, it means that combat feats are 3 lvls behind between lvs 6 and 15. (ITWF takes a 6 BAB... so taking that at 9 pushes back improved crit and GTWF)
Yeah, that is the downside to a rogue or monk splash on a paladin build.

If I'm a Pal, will I need UMD for healing, or will wands plus LoH and USov be enough. That seems like plenty to me... At low lvls, cure wands (or cleric hirelings) + LoH + SH should suffice (if you can afford the wands, that is). But at high lvls, the rogue / paladin will be using Heal scrolls and the pure paladin will not (or at least not as soon) - guess who pulls ahead on self-healing? ;)

Also, bear in mind UMD isn't just about Heal scrolls. It's also about bypassing alignment & race restrictions on equipment. It's about using arcane wands & scrolls; getting to use Blur, Displacement, and Stoneskin on yourself definitely helps make up for so-so AC. It takes a while to make it pay off, but a lot of folks consider UMD the single most useful skill in DDO, to the point where many take a rogue splash solely to unlock it as a class skill.

And will UMD/lock picking be worth pushing back the combat feats 3 lvls?It's a tough call. For me, the extra versatility from UMD and a bit of OL plus the survivability boost from Evasion (I've basically been laughing at traps & fireballs since lvl 5 on my drow rogadin) is worth delaying the DPS feats. But...that's me. Your priorities and play style may be different.

[sigtrent]

I'm sure soloing epic can be done... but I can't imagine how a paladin rogue would manage it. The cleric... you could chug mana pots and BB kite everything I suppose. Slow and expensive but doable. (Epic tokens drop from epic quests which come at the end of the quest although I've only done a few epics. You can get shards from killing mobs and save them up for a token.) Epic really tends to favor teamwork at the moment.

So I guess that means CLONK makes for sense for your goal due to the awesome power of blade barrier and running away from stuff that wants to kill you.

[Raoull]

hmmm... sigtrent's worry is one of my main ones. If a Pal (with rogue and/or monk splash) can't solo Epic but a similarly geared out clonk would, than clock seems prefered.

I do lose some saves from my Pal... unless I clonk with a pal splash instead of a rogue one (and the feat issue doesn't affect a clonk like it does a paladin...)

And it does sound like the consensus is UMD is worth it. That does put a slight strain on stats too, as I'd need a 12 int to max UMD plus have any points left over. Not a big problem though.

So I gues I'm leaning towards battle clonk now (probalby R1C11M7 plus another either C or M)... although only leaning....

[Raoull]

Hmmm... thinking about it, if I go clonk I really can't do Divine Might. I'll have to dump CHA. With Pal I can dump WIS, but I can't really do that for cleric.... I could maybe do it if I didn't also aim for UMD, but that will take at least a 12 INT.

So the best I could do maintaining the 16 CHA is:
S10, C12, D16, W14, I12, Ch16

which is definitely less than optimal for a cleric... dumping CHA allows:
S14, C12, D16, W14, I12, Ch10... and another 2 points to either bump S or W depending on which way I wanted to go with my lvl ups....

Basically I trade in +4 damage for +2/+2, although only +1 for offhand damage....

Dunno, I think I may need to look more into paladin's ability to solo at high lvls. Divine Might clerics seem even more dependent on different stats than paladins. If you also aim for UMD and TWF (which has good synergy with DM), nothing can be totally dumped.


I'd be more willing to do UMD... but I just completed the Delera chain with my F1C6... and was taunted by 2 locked chests at the end... so that lockpicking that goes with the UMD is looking pretty nice right now....

[Raoull]

Perhaps I'm just talking to myself... but at least this is a decent place to record my musings....

I realize that I don't need to ditch DM with a cleric... if I ditch UMD instead. I could run a INT of 10 if I didn't want UMD. Then I could have S14 D16 C12 I10 W12 C16. I wouldn't be casting any DC spells, so I'd be pretty much melee with cleric for buff, heals and BB. But heals and buffs would be unaffected, and BB would work fine... although saves would be made rather often.

So now... I'm waffling between a Clonk (taking C to either 11, 12 or 15, and possibly splashing in 2 lvls of Paladin for saves) or a Paladin with RM splashes. Stats for that would probably be S15 D 16 C 12 I 12 W 8 C 16.

In both cases I have some thoughts of dropping CON to 10, as I'll definitely be getting toughness... but judging from the way people talk in these forums, that may be dumb. 20 hps and +1 Fort don't seem like that big of a deal, but if I thought I knew everything there was to know about builds, I wouldn't be posting here....

Random Divine Might question... Does extend work on it? Metamagics seem to work on other abilities rather randomly...

[unbongwah]

Honestly, I think trying to come up with any build which can solo epic content on the cheap is a mite too ambitious, especially if you don't have a lot of free time and in-game resources to devote to it. Also, I think drow make better TWF paladins than clerics: partly because pallies get more outta high CHA than clerics; partly because the extra HPs from pally helps make up for drow's lower CON. Finally, don't forget that the Holy Sword spell is a major time- and money-saver at higher levels: rather than grinding for weapons (or for money to buy weapons off the AH), you cast HS every time you play.

AFAIK, Divine Might does not count as a spell effect and therefore Extend (or any other metamagic) doesn't affect it. [Metamagics will work with Dragonmarks, which functionally count as spells.]

[ConnorMacLoad]

Honestly, I think trying to come up with any build which can solo epic content on the cheap is a mite too ambitious, especially if you don't have a lot of free time and in-game resources to devote to it.

This is what I was thinking too. Might be reaching a little too high. There are a few good drow solo builds, non of which are very good at soloing epic for cheap, from what I have seen.

Either way, hope you find a good line to take and that you are happy with it.Keep us posted.

[Raoull]

Thanks. I realize this is ambitious. And while I like a challenge, I am willing to concede where I may be just crazy.... like I was leaning towards paladin simply because the cleric past life is so lame.... but now I figure, I'll worry about that when I get to it.

So now I'm just worried about solo ability.

And while it isn't final (and probably won't be until I hit 400 favor and begin my new toon), I'm currently leaning towards the base cleric one. Compared to my pal thoughts, I'd lose UMD, and melee ability... but gain the cleric spell versatility, and even more so... Blade barrier. The way people speak of BB in these forums makes me think that there will be quite a few quests where BB kiting makes it possible, and no (poorly equipted) paladin will stand a chance in them.

Just my current leanings