Things you learn as Sword and Board heavy armor melee

[luvirini]

Red alert and harried in EE means one of two things:
If there is a nearby group of enemies that are not yet agroed: shield charge to agro one more group of enemies before starting to cleave
If not: start to cleave.

Most EE content is faster solo than in group as in a PUG group there is too high probability of there being a kiter(mostly monks/rangers/rogues/sorcerers) that kites some enemy that needs to be killed to advance all over the map.

Spell casters are harmless unless they cast disintegrate or magic/force missiles. They can mostly just be ignored.

Stalwart Defense and Sacred Defense are not defensive stances despite claiming to be such and thus do not count for Bulwark of Defense.

You can never have too much PRR.. though of course every additional point is less beneficial than the previous point , so around 200-250 is often good enough.

High MRR is nice too, but the shield again halving the damage is the king. So having a MRR around 100-120 is usually more than enough. (Then you see things like EE casters doing 5 points of damage)

Armor class actually matters as part of the total defense in EEs. There is a huge difference in harder EE content between AC 130 and 150 and noticeable difference between 150 and 170.

Deflect arrows should really be renamed: "reduce the annoying ranged cripple attack effects when you chase the required kill archers around" and is a nice effect to have.

4 fvs/cleric levels for Ameliorating Strike is a true easy button for sword+board DPS as most large groups of enemies in EE are easy enough that you do not need any other heals and even in harder cases it will cover most of the healing needs.

Evasion looks old fashioned as defense as it does not help at all against so many spells.

Paladin based sword and board is seriously feat starved(well, as is common for most paladin based builds)

the 30%+10% move speed bonus that you have feels SLOW if you are used to monkchers...

[PermaBanned]

Most EE content is faster solo than in group as in a PUG group there is too high probability of there being a kiter(mostly monks/rangers/rogues/sorcerers) that kites some enemy that needs to be killed to advance all over the map.EE is also faster solo thanks to scaling. As for dealing with those pesky kiters, Intim isn't a dump skill ;)

[J-mann]

EE is also faster solo thanks to scaling. As for dealing with those pesky kiters, Intim isn't a dump skill ;)

You kite it you kill it. So annoying to see people kite when it isnt in the least bit necessary. At bare minimum stop kiting it AWAY from me and TOWARD me so I can pull it off of you. What I learned as a s/b melee: Paladin 14 is necessary if you want decent damage output, otherwise your weapon profile sucks.

[EllisDee37]

Deflect arrows should really be renamed: "reduce the annoying ranged cripple attack effectsOoooo, that's a great point. I didn't think of it that way.

EDIT: Does that read as sarcastic? Apologies if so. It's not meant to be.

[luvirini]

What I learned as a s/b melee: Paladin 14 is necessary if you want decent damage output, otherwise your weapon profile sucks.

Actually I found the fighter based bastard sword build to be pretty nice, those feats allow for maximum glancing blow damage along with the cleaves and the two weapons specializations.

Two other things I forgot from the list:

Shield rush description lies: You get "wrong weapon type" if you have ranged weapon+shield in hand despite description only needed a shield. IT works fine with an empty main hand+shield though just to be confusing.

Action boost melee power is not actually an action boost as it does not gain extra uses from things that increase action boost uses. It is just a clicky like PDK past life and others.

[Singular]

You kite it you kill it. So annoying to see people kite when it isnt in the least bit necessary. At bare minimum stop kiting it AWAY from me and TOWARD me so I can pull it off of you. What I learned as a s/b melee: Paladin 14 is necessary if you want decent damage output, otherwise your weapon profile sucks.

I kite things to kill them, usually grabbing aggro because of high dps.

[Lonnbeimnech]

Don't know if you noticed, but mob agro has been messed up for a while. It's very noticeable if you have a hireling in the group since they mostly pike.
Mobs will agro on whoever they want, not the first one that hit them, not the players standing closest, not who did the most damage, just whoever. And someone else can take 90% of their HP and still not pull agro off the other player.

[DarthCaedus]

I kite things to kill them, usually grabbing aggro because of high dps.

Your DPS likely appears better than it actually is because you are kiting things around and reducing the dps of all the melees in your party.

[janave]

Kiters are pretty aweful in caster heavy party, a caster can burst an entire group of spawns (Fire dragon raid is a good example) while kiting them induces a ton of extra lag...

Mob Archers and Mages are the more annoying for S&B imo, since you need to chase them, and that usually slows down melee, stun is helpful

[Blackheartox]

The kiting sorc part is funny, a sorc properly played will burst kill before a s&b melle can approach the enemy ;)

But yea, mrr /prr made it so easy to play as melle lately (i assume this is main point that you wanted to present)

I personally when playing melle since this update dislike monkchers and shuriken builds mostly.
The ammount of kite is so annoying and they dont realize if they just piked at start the quest would be over alrdy instead of kiting around.

[luvirini]

The kiting sorc part is funny, a sorc properly played will burst kill before a s&b melle can approach the enemy ;)


They seem to be mostly magic missile-magic missile-magic missile-magic missile-magic missile-magic missile shiradis..

[redoubt]

They seem to be mostly magic missile-magic missile-magic missile-magic missile-magic missile-magic missile shiradis..

Just finished 3 arcane epic past lives on a 14sorc/4fvs/2pali. Force was my number three element of choice. For me it was more like, fireball sla, firewall, DB fireball, fireball, repeat... Lightning or force if fire didn't work, but at full draconic and both savant and FVS enhancements I had very good fire spell power and huge amounts of temp spell points. I did some time in shiradi also, but I like draconic better.

On the pali front, I just TR'd out of the sorc build and am trying a pure vanguard build. Been pretty fun so far except for the horrendously slow run speed I have so far. I cannot comment on epic yet as I'm only level 11 so far, but I'm running as you described.... I gather up mobs and exalted cleave. Very fun.

[Eth]

Mobs will agro on whoever they want, not the first one that hit them, not the players standing closest, not who did the most damage, just whoever. And someone else can take 90% of their HP and still not pull agro off the other player.

Yep. Yet, still people think highest DPS x hate = aggro.

I'm also fairly convinced that your class also has impact on what aggros you.
Helmed horrors being the obvious ones, but there are also other mobs that are more likely to chase casters first.

[FuzzyDuck81]

Deflect arrows should really be renamed: "reduce the annoying ranged cripple attack effects when you chase the required kill archers around" and is a nice effect to have.

Not only that, but boulders larger than you chucked by giants will harmlessly go "dink!" off you while they flatten the next guy.



I'm also fairly convinced that your class also has impact on what aggros you.
Helmed horrors being the obvious ones, but there are also other mobs that are more likely to chase casters first.

iirc there are a few aggo override things.. rogues with cheat death are favoured targets of maruts, and WF (presumably BF too) will always be the 1st target for rust monsters because om nom nom :)

[fmalfeas]

From what I've seen, regarding aggro

Helmed Horrors target arcane casters with a vengeance.
Quells hunt any divine, but seem to show special 'favor' to clerics, fvs, and druids.
Rusties are all about the Forged, any forged.

General attack patterns - a lot of mobs seem to prioritize clerics over rogues or fighters. In fact, if you're a 'tough' character type (monk, barb, paladin, fighter) you may need good Intimidate, or serious incite/hateboost to get the mobs onto you sometimes. However, if you can get your other party members to use Diplo or bluff to drop themselves off the top of the mob's list, shouldn't be too hard to get them onto you. Keeping them there...that can be another story.

Oh, and auras that debuff? Yeah, they draw attention from mobs. Especially the Divine Crusader aura. But the Exalted Angel one as well. I suspect that the FvS aura of menace does the same, making it harder to stay off the priority targetting list.

That's why there's things like that Magister power that turns you invis, and slams out an AoE Diplo to get everything off you fast. And the Shadowdancer one that uses Hide to get you off the priority list. (when I say priority list, I mean it puts you way down on the hatelist so you're unlikely to regain aggro quickly).

The fact that mobs don't seem to prioritize monks quickly though can make for some interesting tactics when a ninja spy is working with a Warpriest cleric though.

[Singular]

Your DPS likely appears better than it actually is because you are kiting things around and reducing the dps of all the melees in your party.

Nah, my dps is quite good.

Tbh, if there's melee in the party, I kite stuff over to them and stop - things die a lot faster with teamwork. I also use my CC spells to make stuff fall down for the melee, then position my IPS so I'm hitting stuff beyond what they are, while also adding a bit of dps to their mobs, too.

But sometimes I just pull stuff because I can do a lot of dps. If it happens repeatedly, then it's a fair bet I'm doing more dps than the melee in the party and I'll just kill the stuff quickly enough.

[Syrrah]

Another monster with specific aggro patterns: Arcana Oozes prioritise casters and big sp pools. Also because om nom nom.And Aura of Menace is indeed a hate magnet.

[LuKaSu]

4 fvs/cleric levels for Ameliorating Strike is a true easy button for sword+board DPS as most large groups of enemies in EE are easy enough that you do not need any other heals and even in harder cases it will cover most of the healing needs.


Paladin based sword and board is seriously feat starved(well, as is common for most paladin based builds)

What would a basic recommended feat and level order be for a 16 Paladin / 4 FvS with Ameliorating Strike? Do you leave out the THF chain? Cleave Feats? Only have those two? Or do you take 1 level of Fighter in there, for Tower Shields and an extra feat?

For levelling, I was thinking 1 Paladin, 4 FvS, all the rest Paladin levels, to get the healability up right off the bat.

For Heroic feats, I was thinking Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, IC: Slash, Shield Mastery, Improved Shield Mastery, and Shield Bash, with Precision added for a human bonus feat?

I know that you can get Cleave enhancements in the KotC tree, but with Ameliorating Strike using up so many APs, I didn't think you could really have much left for vanguard or Defender trees if you took up that many in KotC.

[Smythe-Tech]

21 AP for Ameliorating Strike in FvS
8 AP for Exalted Cleave in KotC (the 1st cleave up to the [3W] version)

That gives you 51 AP's to salt the goods with. You can probably drop the cleaves from levelling then.

And tbh even playing a pure 20 Paladin that doesn't dip into KotC or have the cleaves I'm not missing them much (ok I have the Divine Crusader cleave for when I'm surrounded and honestly 1 cleave is enough for me this life lol)