Looking for WF fvs help

[Frostwhisperer]

Greetings, forum people.

I wanna roll a WF melee fvs.
I think I already have the stats down: (18 str, 18 con 12 cha), but my problem lies with feats.

Firstly: I'm not sure or I want the THF line or not. I move around when I fight and you don't get glancing blows when you move

Secondly: Empower healing, empower or maximize? I'm not sure

Thirldy: Extend: Yay or nay?

Thanks for your help in advance

[THOTHdha]

Firstly: I'm not sure or I want the THF line or not. I move around when I fight and you don't get glancing blows when you move
In order to cast divine spells effectively there is really no room for the THF feats. And if you don't plan to be an effective caster in addition to your good-but-less-than-optimal melee damage, then why would you be doing FvS?


Secondly: Empower healing, empower or maximize? I'm not sure
This one is less clear cut. Good arguments could be made either way. My personal opinion is that even with low DCs it is still handy to toss out maximized Blade Barriers in some situations. The opposite point of view would be that only Empowered Healing works with Heal and Mass Heal.


Thirldy: Extend: Yay or nay?
Absolutely get Extend. And quicken too. You will need Extend to take full advantage of all of the divine buffs that allow you to deal reasonable damage.

[Khayvan]

I followed much of Melkor's advice in his build thread here: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=211596

I skipped the THF feats completely, as he did, and can't say I ever missed them. To be fair, when I built mine THF was much less worthwhile than it is now, but I still can't see the added damage being worth the metamagics I'd have to give up for it. And, as you say, I move around a lot. DDO combat forces a lot of movement, with the major exception of raid boss fights, so the advantage of the THF line is situational.

I have Empower Healing and Maximize both. No Empower. I consider Maximize a must, and when it came down to choosing between EH and Empower, EH costs less than Empower for the Cure spells and works on 2 spells I cast all the time, Heal and Mass Heal, whereas Empower only affects 1 spell I usually cast, Blade Barrier. If you dump WIS and cast no offensive spells, or only BB, then Empower just doesn't offer enough for my money.

Extend is a very handy feat. While leveling it was invaluable to prevent having to recast buffs. At cap I don't need it anymore for my 20 min. buffs but I still find a lot of use for it on Divine Favor, Divine Power, Recitation and Holy Aura. I could do without it if I had to but I honestly don't know which feat would offer me more than it does.

My feat breakdown:

1) Adamantine Body -> swapped to Empower Healing later
3) Toughness
6) Extend
9) Quicken
12) IC: Slashing
15) Maximize
18) Power Attack

On the subject of stats, I started with an 18 STR but when I LR'd I dropped that to a 16 and used the extra points on a 12 INT and a little DEX. I like having Concentration, Balance and Jump as skills and that works better for me than the extra point of hit and damage, but of course YMMV.

Hope that helps some.

[Frostwhisperer]

I followed much of Melkor's advice in his build thread here: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=211596

I skipped the THF feats completely, as he did, and can't say I ever missed them. To be fair, when I built mine THF was much less worthwhile than it is now, but I still can't see the added damage being worth the metamagics I'd have to give up for it. And, as you say, I move around a lot. DDO combat forces a lot of movement, with the major exception of raid boss fights, so the advantage of the THF line is situational.

I have Empower Healing and Maximize both. No Empower. I consider Maximize a must, and when it came down to choosing between EH and Empower, EH costs less than Empower for the Cure spells and works on 2 spells I cast all the time, Heal and Mass Heal, whereas Empower only affects 1 spell I usually cast, Blade Barrier. If you dump WIS and cast no offensive spells, or only BB, then Empower just doesn't offer enough for my money.

Extend is a very handy feat. While leveling it was invaluable to prevent having to recast buffs. At cap I don't need it anymore for my 20 min. buffs but I still find a lot of use for it on Divine Favor, Divine Power, Recitation and Holy Aura. I could do without it if I had to but I honestly don't know which feat would offer me more than it does.

My feat breakdown:

1) Adamantine Body -> swapped to Empower Healing later
3) Toughness
6) Extend
9) Quicken
12) IC: Slashing
15) Maximize
18) Power Attack

On the subject of stats, I started with an 18 STR but when I LR'd I dropped that to a 16 and used the extra points on a 12 INT and a little DEX. I like having Concentration, Balance and Jump as skills and that works better for me than the extra point of hit and damage, but of course YMMV.

Hope that helps some.

Yes it does. Thanks

[aristarchus1000]

I followed much of Melkor's advice in his build thread here: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=211596

I skipped the THF feats completely, as he did, and can't say I ever missed them. To be fair, when I built mine THF was much less worthwhile than it is now, but I still can't see the added damage being worth the metamagics I'd have to give up for it. And, as you say, I move around a lot. DDO combat forces a lot of movement, with the major exception of raid boss fights, so the advantage of the THF line is situational.

I have Empower Healing and Maximize both. No Empower. I consider Maximize a must, and when it came down to choosing between EH and Empower, EH costs less than Empower for the Cure spells and works on 2 spells I cast all the time, Heal and Mass Heal, whereas Empower only affects 1 spell I usually cast, Blade Barrier. If you dump WIS and cast no offensive spells, or only BB, then Empower just doesn't offer enough for my money.

Extend is a very handy feat. While leveling it was invaluable to prevent having to recast buffs. At cap I don't need it anymore for my 20 min. buffs but I still find a lot of use for it on Divine Favor, Divine Power, Recitation and Holy Aura. I could do without it if I had to but I honestly don't know which feat would offer me more than it does.

My feat breakdown:

1) Adamantine Body -> swapped to Empower Healing later
3) Toughness
6) Extend
9) Quicken
12) IC: Slashing
15) Maximize
18) Power Attack

On the subject of stats, I started with an 18 STR but when I LR'd I dropped that to a 16 and used the extra points on a 12 INT and a little DEX. I like having Concentration, Balance and Jump as skills and that works better for me than the extra point of hit and damage, but of course YMMV.

Hope that helps some.

Great advice all around, +1 rep. I've been playing a WF FvS for over a year now, although I struggled with leveling initially, and wanted to comment on the feat order.

Adamantine body early, this is fantastic until about level 10. I'd also recommend getting Power Attack early, since it's really powerful for first 10 levels, as long as you are careful to max out your To-hits (best + weapon possible, Anger's Set, Insight Goggles, Heroism clickies/pots, Aid clickies/pots, Bulls Strength then + str item). I led a number of groups in kills, sadly enough.

I also found that I struggled through earlier levels until I got empowered healing. The WF negative healing makes self-healing a chore early on (compared to my other favored souls). With empowered healing, it was much easier to heal fast enough to keep fighting.

You want to have, if possible Extend/Maximize/Quicken by level 12. You will want to swap out Adamantine body by this point. You can even consider dropping Empower Heal, since you won't need it as much once you have the Heal spell (level 6 spell). Use the free swaps, or use Fred... swapping feats until level 12 is relatively cheap.

Even with a starting Wis score of 6, your blade barriers will tear up most of Gianthold (terrible reflex saves) and Necro (undead have no reflexes, duh), making a lot of content from 12-16 really easy and fast. Even as a strength based WF FvS, I was soloing like a caster most of these levels, except I had plenty of muscle to kill off the mobs that refused to follow me through Blade Barriers. I found it actually easier to solo then with my evoker FvS because of the melee ability to kill off casters, evasion mobs, etc.

So in summary, I would recommend:
1) Adamantine Body -> swap to Maximize at 12
3) Power Attack
6) Empowered healing -> swap to toughness at 12 if you need it
9) Extend
12) Quicken
15) Toughness or Empowered healing depending what you did with level 6 feat
18) IC:Slashing

Hope this helps.

[NeutronStar]

1) Adamantine Body -> swapped to Empower Healing later
3) Toughness
6) Extend
9) Quicken
12) IC: Slashing
15) Maximize
18) Power Attack


These are the feats I took except I kept Adamantine Body. I did not take them in that order though.

As for my stats, I started with an 18 Strength and a 20 Con (Yes, I used 16 build points in each). All the rest of the stats, I left at starting values including Charisma which started at a 6.

[Phinaar]

I found that with a FvS you can't really melee that well at higher levels...mobs have too many hitpoints...

So I balanced things out: started with 16 STR, 14 WIS, 16 CON...I put only two level up points into STR, the rest went into WIS...

Anyway, I ended up having 26 STR, 26 WIS, 26 CON and 18 CHA...over 420 HPs and that with mediocre items (no shroud or higher quests items).

Oh, and I picked up Heighten instead of Extend for the extra DCs on the BB.

I wound up with a build that could cast any spell (offensive, crowd control, etc.) and be able to hit reliably over 90% of the time...the melee part of the character was only used (after level 16) to clean up after the BB and Cometfall did their damage.

Oh and not to mention that I could do one side of VoN levers / rune by myself :)

As weapons I only used one: +3 Greater Potency VII Greatsword...as I said, I found that my meleeing capabilities started diminishing around level 16 anyway, so I didn't really need anything else.

[Jeromio]

I found that with a FvS you can't really melee that well at higher levels...mobs have too many hitpoints...

So I balanced things out: started with 16 STR, 14 WIS, 16 CON...I put only two level up points into STR, the rest went into WIS...

Anyway, I ended up having 26 STR, 26 WIS, 26 CON and 18 CHA...over 420 HPs and that with mediocre items (no shroud or higher quests items).

Oh, and I picked up Heighten instead of Extend for the extra DCs on the BB.

I wound up with a build that could cast any spell (offensive, crowd control, etc.) and be able to hit reliably over 90% of the time...the melee part of the character was only used (after level 16) to clean up after the BB and Cometfall did their damage.

Oh and not to mention that I could do one side of VoN levers / rune by myself :)

As weapons I only used one: +3 Greater Potency VII Greatsword...as I said, I found that my meleeing capabilities started diminishing around level 16 anyway, so I didn't really need anything else.

What mobs do you mean? For a WF FVS with strength 36-40 + power attack (with enhancements) + Min2 or Lit2 GS (or eSoS), regular high level quests like in IQ and Amrath is like Korthos all over. :)
I can agree with epic quests, but it's the same problem for any melee, and the problem is usually solved with auto-crits and woo-woo-sticks.