Looking for a meta-build (a plan for builds)

[Rhysem]

Greetings folks,

I'm looking for advice. I've been an on-and-off player and one of my gaming buddies is back in DDO, so I'm considering it. When we last burnt out I'd been playing an ES warlock and loving it. Some of the choices I've made in the past are probably non-optimal now, and that's fine. I had reasonable reasons at the time (RR wasn't a thing, ITR wasn't interesting because of the problem of playing with mates at different levels -- ETR was where it was, so I built around that) What I'm looking for is advice for where to go from here. What's my best bang for the buck in terms of building long-term character power? ITRs? HRs? RRs? ETR?

Here's where I stand:

* Premium player with most of the content/classes/races (missing gnome, might be missing a recent content pack, missing the new expansion stuff)
* Current life: Sun Elf w/ 1x Cleric, 1x Rogue, 18x Warlock @ lv 21
* Heroic PL: Barb, Bard, Fighter, Monk, Sorc, Warlock (all x1)
* Iconic PL: PDK x1
* Epic PL: Arcane Alacrity x1, Brace x1, Colors of the Queen x3, Doublestrike x3, Power over Life and Death x2
* Guild buffs: yes
* Phat gear: mostly no. One piece of greensteel (belt; conc opp; cha skills).
* Raids: not my cup of tea
* Crafting: middling skill (300), stock of 9k essences, but not a ton of the new 'speical' crafting drops from clickies

Given that state, do I ETR until I'm epic completionist? It seems like an obvious path, but completionist only helps during epics. My previous-to-RR plan had been to grab both iconic and heroic PL via ITRs, so epic completionist was the plan then since it'd help on the vast majority of xp per life. From a heroic (non-iconic)/racial perspective, I'd be better off ETRing to get the toggles that are more useful there which may not lead to epic completionist.

Unfortunately, with only one friend playing and he's playing the 1-20 TR/RR game, that leaves me a bit stuck. We used to do epics together, generally focusing on xp/min and teamsplits. That won't work while he's 1-20 and since I'm 21 and iconic I can't just TR and join him. I can certainly solo as I am, but it'll be a lot longer slog and a good chunk of what I enjoy about playing is playing with friends. If I get to 30 by the time he gets to 20 (.. or maybe he gets to 20 twice, he has a lot more free time than I do) I might be able to run a TR/RR with him.

Thoughts/suggestions? What's the bang for the buck? What's a good (fun) build to work on it as?

Things I've enjoyed in the past: light shintao monk, Swashy bard, ES warlock. I had a bow ranger back in the day but it was kinda terrible. I wanted to enjoy it but...

[SpartanKiller13]

From my perspective, if you want to play with your buddy and he's on the 1-20 train, go to 30 then ITR for two PL's and join him.

If you want your character to develop in tiny ways, maybe get an EPL or two first before ITRing. That way you'll be able to get the neat stances and useful passives, while still being fairly efficient xp wise - you'll probably be mostly through the first time bonuses available after a few epic 21-30 runs.

If you want to max your character, by all means run a huge stack of EPL's before dropping down for the RTR's. I wouldn't recommend it, however - you'll probably burn out again.

TL;DR: go play with your friend, that's worth more than the optimal past life selection IMO.

[Shaitaan]

I would also recommend you to level to 30 and then reincarnate to be able to play with your friend.

I consider playing with friend and playing a build you like to be more important then to get the perfect pastlife. Id rather get my 3rd Druid life then to be playing alone in epics cause epic pastlifes are stronger. You will get a better and better character with every pastlife and every bit of gear aquired, no matter in which order you grab your pastlifes. Just grab them while having fun, the power comes from alone, IMO.

[Rhysem]

Yeah, that was pretty much where I landed. When I'm doing epic I don't so much sniff the roses -- I hit the high xp/min quests I've ID'd and call it a night. I don't get a lot of time and I hate feeling like I'm not making any progress.

Any reco's for what I run my 1-20 as? If I can sync up with my pal I might not need to haul trapping along for the ride. If I don't, then I probably want to. I used to love monk and it looks like it got some love. I thought about a stick build too, rogue/monk/fighter(?) mix. I'd probably want to run 1-30 in reality (assuming I can convince said pal) since the first time XP is nice... no reason to leave that on the table.

I've looked through the builds thread, didn't see a lot of trap-monk there. I was thinking artie might be the way to get that, rogue's evasion isn't a big draw for a mainly-monk character.

My other thought was something bow-ish. Ranger with a splash for trap skills?

[Vish]

If you wanna run racial tr on monk,
Try out my mad monk builds over in monk forum
Basically solid Shintao or henshin, I don't do ninja
Can trap and get divine might or will
Solid for solo and reaper
Just need some trapping goggles
I'd recommend if you want to run melee