The Enlightened Flame Knight- New War/Sorc build, looking for possible improvements

[Sarnoksis]

I originally was trying to use wizard, but stumbled across the Sorc's Fire Savant tree, and it gave me an idea... I'm not entirely certain if it's been done yet.. but it's a solid build, and i feel like it could probably do better starting as maybe a pally.. but all in all it's a good build for a team. Not so much solo, it's more or less for damage and fire lol. I tested it with mostly the starting fighter gear. The only things I recall replacing were the shield, the helmet, and the gloves for more spell powers. He did really well, and he had no problem with staying alive, i put enough points in umd to make sure of that inbetween fights. Im not sure if it will be constant throughout the higher levels tho.

Also, I only went as far as level 15 with the enhancements, cause from there on out its whatever floats your boat, and plus you'll get an idea of the desired end game by looking at the epic and higher feats... towards late game im looking for a little bit more survivability. The damage is nice if you're alive long enough to do it. This build isn't 100% and i feel like it could be better.. So Im looking for good input to maybe help give it a little more umph and make it more solid than it already feels. Took me a good 4 hours to come up with this through in game testing.. this is my first lone wolf build, i usually combine ideas with my dad.

Anyways, the greatest thing about this is the SLA's you get from the Savant tree, the low mana cost, the metamagics are mana-cost free, AND spell power increases its damage a ton. The warlock side is more or less flavor for me, I like the idea of casting spells while the aura chews em up with a little help from the sword and board to top the cake.

Let me know what you think.

Enlightened Flame Knight
14/5/1 Warlock/Sorcerer/Fighter
True Neutral Purple Dragon Knight


Level Order

1. Fighter . . . . 6. Sorcerer . . . 11. Warlock. . . . 16. Warlock
2. Sorcerer. . . . 7. Warlock . . . .12. Warlock . . . .17. Warlock
3. Sorcerer. . . . 8. Warlock . . . .13. Warlock . . . .18. Warlock
4. Sorcerer. . . . 9. Warlock . . . .14. Warlock . . . .19. Warlock
5. Sorcerer. . . .10. Warlock . . . .15. Warlock . . . .20. Warlock


Stats
. . . . . . . .32pt . . Level Up
. . . . . . . .---- . . --------
Strength. . . . 12. . . .4: CHA
Dexterity . . . 10. . . .8: CHA
Constitution. . 14. . . 12: CHA
Intelligence. . 16. . . 16: CHA
Wisdom. . . . . .8. . . 20: CHA
Charisma. . . . 16. . . 24: CHA
. . . . . . . . . . . . 28: CHA

Skills
. . . . . F .S. S .S. S .S. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W
. . . . . 1 .2. 3 .4. 5 .6. 7. 8. 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
. . . . .------------------------------------------------------------
Spellcr . 2 .3. 1 .1. 1 . . 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 2. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 23
UMD . . . 2 . . 1 . . . . . 5. 1. 1. 2. 1. 1. 1. . . . . . . . . . . .15
Concent . 2 .1. . .1. 1 . . . .2 . . . .2 . . . .2 . . . .1 . . . . . 12
Heal. . . 2 . . ½ .1. ½ .½. . .1 .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ . . 11
Bluff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. . .1 .1 .1 . . 1. 1. . .1 .2 .2 .11
Balance . . . . . . . . .2. . . . 1. 1. . .1 .1 . . 1. 1. 1. 1. . .1 .11
Swim. . . 4 . . . . . ½ .½. . . . . . . . . . . .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .1 .½ . 9
Jump. . . 4 .1. 1 .1. 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
. . . . .------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . .24 .6. 6 .6. 6 .6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6


Feats

.1. . . . : Force of Personality
.1 PDK. . : Shield Mastery
.1 Fighter: Improved Shield Bash
.3. . . . : Insightful Reflexes
.6. . . . : Maximize Spell
.7 Warlock: Pact: Fiend
.9. . . . : Empower Spell
12. . . . : Extend Spell
15. . . . : Mental Toughness
18. . . . : Enlarge Spell
21 Epic . : Quicken Spell
24 Epic . : Master of: Fire
26 Destiny: Epic Spell Power: Fire
27 Epic . : Intensify Spell
28 Destiny: Epic Arcane Eldritch Blast
29 Destiny: Deific Warding
30 Epic . : Epic Eldritch Blast
30 Legend : Scion of: Plane of Fire


Spells

Warlock
Nightshield, False Life, Command
Blur, Scare, Rage
Displacement, Stoneskin, Fire Shield
Protection from Elements, Evard's Black Tentacles, Binding Chain
Finger of Death
Sorcerer
Protection from Evil, Expeditious Retreat, Grease, Jump
Knock, See Invisibility

Enhancements (59 of 80 AP)

Fire Savant (35 AP)
Fire Savant, Fire Affinity
Burning Hands III, One with the Inferno III, Conflagration III
Efficient Maximize III, Pierce Fire Resistance III
Charisma
Scorch III, Fire Guard, Charisma
Fireball III

Enlightened Spirit (21 AP)
Eldritch Aura, Aura of Courage, Shape Vestments
Resilience of Body III, Spiritual Defense III
Spiritual Bastion III, Power of Enlightenment III
Eldritch Burst III, Charisma
Brilliance

Tainted Scholar (3 AP)
Tainted Spellcasting
Strong Pact

[cru121]

It seems that you want to focus on Fire Savant SLAs to deal damage. However, you have only 5 sorcerer levels. Your Fireball SLA will deal 7d6 base damage.

Meanwhile, if you look further at the enlightened spirit tree, there's a SLA that deals 10d6 base damage + your eldritch blast damage. There's also Shining Through, giving you further survivability boost.

If you want an easy-to-play build that combines Sorcerer and Warlock, consider reverse split instead. Take 5-6 levels in Warlock and take tier 5 enhancements in Enlightened Spirit.

[unbongwah]

Your Savant SLAs may be super-cheap SP-wise, but with only 5 sorc lvls they'll also be super-weak compared to what a purer sorc with Master of Fire can put out. Remember that MoF boosts your max caster level for those spells, but it doesn't actually boost your caster level. Meanwhile on the warlock side, you're giving up 2d6 EB dmg and 3d4 Pact dmg, plus whatever you might've put into TS to boost Pact dmg instead of taking Fire Savant, plus not having lvl 18 ES core (reduces aura proc rate from 3 to 2 secs).

You didn't list EDs, so I don't know what your goal is there. But the only way I could see this build being viable is Shiradi, relying on its procs to do the heavy lifting of your DPS.

[Sarnoksis]

I've already made an ES specific pure warlock build.. as far as viable goes, this build isn't half bad.. been looking at and testing cleric/sorc versions and other war/sorc versions of this build that seem to better in their own ways.. im not so much focusing on the warlock for the ES, it's more or less for close encounter support, from the pact damage. The eldritch aura base damage is decent enough, and i feel like i could just replace the aura with an actual blast, like the chain one.. but that would defeat the purpose of shield proficiencies and being able to use weapons for even more flamesss.

The purpose of this was to combine the Pact: Fiend with the Sorcs Fire Savant SLA's in a way that is simple and only requires the extra pact damage from warlock levels and fire spellpower, not entirely certain if this makes sense. Considering im only able to start at level 15 with it.. I have yet to get the entirety of the enhancements and/or feats that would work best. I'm no where near the point of achieving an Epic Destiny or whatever it's called, this is more or less a theory.. but as of right now, i've had no trouble, outside of trapfinding, playing with this builds style of dps.

Also, I probably should have been more descriptive.. I made this super early this morning at like 2am est running on 24 hours of no sleep lol. Some good suggestions.. also unbongwah, about the caster level stuff, i got heighten, does that stack with the caster level increase you mentioned from MoF? and in what way does it become weaker besides the 1 less caster level? or did i just misread xD and id have to dump warlock for more sorc in order to get MoF wouldn't I, but id initially be losing the point of even having warlock.. is there a way to substitute the pact damage i get for something more important/useful?

Thanks for the input so far!

[unbongwah]

Your caster level is based on the number of class levels you have (plus various PrE etc. bonuses); the max caster level of any given spell depends on the spell itself (plus any bonuses you receive from your PrE etc.). So you always want your caster level to be at least as high as your spells' MCL, otherwise you're not getting the full effect from them that you could.

So on a pure Fire Savant, your CL for sorc fire spells would be 20 (sorc lvls) + 6 (Fire Savant cores) = 26; another +5 if you're using an Arcane ED (Draconic generally being the best choice). On your build, your sorc spells' CL will be 5 (sorc lvls) + 2 (FS cores) = 7. Now at level 15, you actually might not notice the difference for the first two SLAs, since their MCL is 5 to start. But when you get to epics, a pure fire sorc w/Master of Fire will get:

Burning Hands & Scorch: MCL 5 base + 4 FS cores + 10 MoF = MCL 19
Fireball: MCL 10 base + 4 FS cores + 10 MoF = MCL 24


Now you'll find your SLA output to be far behind what a pure sorc can put out, because you can't come close to that MCL.

There are Shiradi builds which don't care about CLs or MCLs; they only care about pumping out as many cheap spells as possible (preferably without saves like Magic / Chain Missile) to max out the Shiradi proc chances. But those builds are fairly advanced and based on exploiting specific synergies between spells, PrEs, and Shiradi.

[Sarnoksis]

Your caster level is based on the number of class levels you have (plus various PrE etc. bonuses); the max caster level of any given spell depends on the spell itself (plus any bonuses you receive from your PrE etc.). So you always want your caster level to be at least as high as your spells' MCL, otherwise you're not getting the full effect from them that you could.

So on a pure Fire Savant, your CL for sorc fire spells would be 20 (sorc lvls) + 6 (Fire Savant cores) = 26; another +5 if you're using an Arcane ED (Draconic generally being the best choice). On your build, your sorc spells' CL will be 5 (sorc lvls) + 2 (FS cores) = 7. Now at level 15, you actually might not notice the difference for the first two SLAs, since their MCL is 5 to start. But when you get to epics, a pure fire sorc w/Master of Fire will get:

Burning Hands & Scorch: MCL 5 base + 4 FS cores + 10 MoF = MCL 19
Fireball: MCL 10 base + 4 FS cores + 10 MoF = MCL 24


Now you'll find your SLA output to be far behind what a pure sorc can put out, because you can't come close to that MCL.

There are Shiradi builds which don't care about CLs or MCLs; they only care about pumping out as many cheap spells as possible (preferably without saves like Magic / Chain Missile) to max out the Shiradi proc chances. But those builds are fairly advanced and based on exploiting specific synergies between spells, PrEs, and Shiradi.

Forgive me, I understand everything you're saying, just a little confused still on max caster levels.. so when it says "max caster level of 10" it can still be increased by other things like the cores from Fire Savant? If so, then i did gimp myself in the long run. Thanks, i never really paid attention to that, cause i thought the spells wouldn't get any stronger on their own, which is why i thought I had to rely on pact damage and spell power, but I probably should have studied the sorc more before I slammed levels into warlock.. ive been playing warlock builds alot, so i guess im just being biased.. time to break outta that shell xD plus ive always wanted to try a decent sorc.

Anyways, thanks for the help, ill work on a more solid version thats purely sorc, any advice on the feats I should take that would help me sustain in battle, as far as spellpoints/damage/healing or something? Or should I rely on my UMDs?

[Kadrios]

Forgive me, I understand everything you're saying, just a little confused still on max caster levels.. so when it says "max caster level of 10" it can still be increased by other things like the cores from Fire Savant? If so, then i did gimp myself in the long run. Thanks, i never really paid attention to that, cause i thought the spells wouldn't get any stronger on their own, which is why i thought I had to rely on pact damage and spell power, but I probably should have studied the sorc more before I slammed levels into warlock.. ive been playing warlock builds alot, so i guess im just being biased.. time to break outta that shell xD plus ive always wanted to try a decent sorc.


Essentially, spells have both a caster level, and a max caster level. The caster level is equal to your level in the relevant spellcasting class (in this case 5), plus any bonuses proved by Epic Destinies or Enhancement Trees (for example +2 from fire savant), whereas the max caster level is set by the spell, and occasionally increased by enchanment trees, and the new Master of ... feats (such as master of Fire). by only having 5 levels of sorcerer you are missing out on 3 caster levels worth of damage (i.e. 3d6 fire damage) from fireball, ignoring the additional increases to caster level and Max caster level that the higher level fire savant cores provide. Additionally, since you've taken Master of Fire, your max caster level is increased by +10, (so max 15 for scorch and burning hands, and 20 for fireball), but your actual caster level is still only 7.



Anyways, thanks for the help, ill work on a more solid version thats purely sorc, any advice on the feats I should take that would help me sustain in battle, as far as spellpoints/damage/healing or something? Or should I rely on my UMDs?

In general, fleshie arcanes have very few heroic sources of self healing (unless they are PM wizards, or bards of course), so scrolls, wands and pots are your only real options. Shining Through mostly solves that issue for Warlocks, but you've only taken ES as far as tier 4.

If you're planning to be doing mix of melee and SLAs, you might find Arcane Warrior and better level 29 feat than deific warding.

One final thing, If you're planning to use the basic PDK gear initially, you're going to need to need to spend some AP in EK to mitigate the AFK from your armour and shield.

[Sarnoksis]

Essentially, spells have both a caster level, and a max caster level. The caster level is equal to your level in the relevant spellcasting class (in this case 5), plus any bonuses proved by Epic Destinies or Enhancement Trees (for example +2 from fire savant), whereas the max caster level is set by the spell, and occasionally increased by enchanment trees, and the new Master of ... feats (such as master of Fire). by only having 5 levels of sorcerer you are missing out on 3 caster levels worth of damage (i.e. 3d6 fire damage) from fireball, ignoring the additional increases to caster level and Max caster level that the higher level fire savant cores provide. Additionally, since you've taken Master of Fire, your max caster level is increased by +10, (so max 15 for scorch and burning hands, and 20 for fireball), but your actual caster level is still only 7.



In general, fleshie arcanes have very few heroic sources of self healing (unless they are PM wizards, or bards of course), so scrolls, wands and pots are your only real options. Shining Through mostly solves that issue for Warlocks, but you've only taken ES as far as tier 4.

If you're planning to be doing mix of melee and SLAs, you might find Arcane Warrior and better level 29 feat than deific warding.

One final thing, If you're planning to use the basic PDK gear initially, you're going to need to need to spend some AP in EK to mitigate the AFK from your armour and shield.

Thanks for the clear up, I see where the flaws are now. Didn't realize how big of a difference caster levels made. So every caster level adds like 1 die to the damage right?

[unbongwah]

So every caster level adds like 1 die to the damage right?
It depends on the spell. If you look at Burning Hands (http://ddowiki.com/page/Burning_Hands), it's (1d2 + 2) per caster level, with a base MCL of 5 (5d2 + 10). So it scales linearly with CL; the pure fire sorc w/Master of Fire that I described would hit MCL 19 for 19d2 + 38 for avg base dmg of 66.5. Which might not sound like much, but remember that's before Spellpower is applied; endgame with all metamagics (Maximize+Empower+Intensify), you're probably ~900 Spellpower for 665 dmg per cast; more if you include temp Spellpower bonuses like action boost or Arcane Insight.

OTOH, Wall of Fire (http://ddowiki.com/page/Wall_of_Fire) is "2d6 plus caster level" (base MCL 15), so it starts out as 2d6 + 8 (level 4 spell so can't cast before sorc lvl 8) and goes up to 2d6 + 21 with fire Savant bonuses (+6 CL & MCL from cores). So you still want to max out its CL, but it does +50% dmg over its baseline dmg, not 19x more dmg like Burning Hands does going from CL:1 to CL:19. This is also why some DPS spells start out really weak but grow a lot more powerful as you level; while other spells start out powerful but their DPS goes up a lot more gradually.