What is the worst "logical" build you can think of?

[glmfw1]

Planning for future TRs, I was looking through the various races, classes and enhancement trees.
Some Races and Classes have useful synergies (e.g. gnome, artificer, rogue-mechanic all have crossbow potential) while other classes don't have synergies from one tree to another.
There are good race/class combos, optimal class mixes, and optimal numbers of levels to take in multi-class combos to gain maximum impact.
But what would happen if we did the opposite, choosing classes that don't really work well together, races that don't give them extra benefits, made the wrong level splits... all while making seemingly logical choices from the character's perspective.
What combinations can you think of that a DDO Character might come up with, that make sense to them but just wouldn't work in practice?

[Xanthrawl]

Any Warforged. :-(

[Riddle_of_Steel]

In most cases you need to think like a PnP player who moved over.

So for example let's say you wanted a Melee battle cleric with strong buffing and occasional spell Damage ability. You might think a Half-Orc Cleric (9) Wizard (7) Fighter (4). Think about it you get Raise Dead, you get Stoneskin (and fireball for the LOL's of course) and weapon specialization so you are set.

Sounds reasonable but my God in DDO's world sure it could "work" but almost anything would be better. Hell dropping a level of cleric and taking an extra level of fighter would be better so you could at least take a fighter tier 5 enhancements.

But for sure that split sounds good, even workable but you'd be better off as a h-elf pure fighter with a pally dillante feat or even a pure Dragonmarked Halfling fighter (still bad choices but less bad).

I bring this one up mainly because I bumped into that player back in the day, dropped them a couple of tomes to fix some stat issues they had (of course back when you found 1-3 +2 tomes a life before they heavily monetized tomes) and gave them some "it's DDO not Dungeons and Dragons" advice.

[Riddle_of_Steel]

Any Warforged. :-(Gotta disagree there. My warforged Arty is hella fun and a solid build!

[AbyssalMage]

What combinations can you think of that a DDO Character might come up with, that make sense to them but just wouldn't work in practice?
Huh? They all work at some level.

Even DC based Half-Orc Sorcerer even works once you have the gear.

[fmalfeas]

Traditional summoner conjurer/druid. In tabletop, they're immensely powerful. In DDO, they have to run on Casual.

[Selvera]

What is undoubtedly the worst character build which I played to date was a Eldritch swashbuckler. And yet I thought it would be good enough to actually TR into the build and level it up far enough that I didn't want to spend the money to get an lesser heart of wood to TR out of it.

So Selvera; what could have possibly have possesed you to think a build like that could have worked?
Well, it comes down to my belief at the time that charimsa to damage in swashbuckler would combine well with charisma as a casting stat for sorcerers; while the universal spellpower boosts from Eldrich Knight would buff up the swashbuckler's sonic damage on critical hits as well as the elemental damage on every attack with a fast attackspeed of single-weapon-fighting. I knew it wasn't going to be a power build, but I thought there was enough synergy there to make a workable character. Swashbuckler only takes 3-4 levels to be effective, which would leave me 16-17 levels of sorc, (elemental imbues only care about sorc levels, not investment in the EK tree). So I could take primarily melee enhancements in bard, and sorc levels for powerful spells and elemental imbues.

What went wrong?
For one, I didn't plan out the build in a build-planner app beforehand, so I overlooked some details such as minimum BAB to take some key feats. Turns out that multiclassing a class with 1/2 BAB with a class that has 3/4 BAB ends up wanting when it comes to required melee feats. This resaulted in me not having Greater Single Weapon Fighting until epics, and I didn't even have improved single weapon fighting until level 15 or 18. This is a significant problem for any swashbuckler build.
Secondly; I discovered that elemental imbues do not scale with spellpower, so I wasn't doing +12d4 damage per attack, I was doing +3d4 damage per attack.
Thirdly; I had planned on using orbs in the offhand, and wearing robes. This might sound pretty swashbuckler-y and sorcerer-y in theory; but it turns out that running a melee with effectively no AC and no PRR, and no free 10% dodge (on someone who doesn't have AC or PRR or dodge pastlives); is rather painful. I certainly had not planned out arcane spell failure, but I think I did end up in light armor at some point.

So by the time these flaws in the build became glaringly apperent, I was level 10+ and fixing it on a multi TR'd character isn't super easy (I think that was her 3rd or 4th life). So I resorted to dropping down difficulties and/or leaching xp off of people who had competent builds until I got to level 20 (sort of playing it like a watered down sorcerer with less damage). That's also the life where I learned that any build can survive EH dailies if you just go into draconic and use the SLA's there with moderate spellpower.

[Ralmeth]

A transmuter focused Wizard...My last PnP character was from 2nd edition, and he was a Dual Classed Fighter 7 (Fighter first) / Magic User 13, with a focus on transmutation spells. The build worked great as the 7 levels of Fighter gave him good hit points, and the ability to melee competently. The Magic User (now Wizard) of course was pretty powerful once he started getting up in level. The transmutation focus was to mess with the DM and bypass as much as possible. However in DDO transmutation has been neutered, rightfully so, as otherwise it would be THE spell school of choice that could be used to cheese your way to a quick victory in most quests...Think: Cast DDoor straight to the end, cast passwall under the red name and when they fall in, dispel passwall, collect loot and XP.

[LeoLionxxx]

Off the top of my head:

Warforged
12 lvs of Sorcerer, for nuking things and healing with repair spells
6 lvs of barbarian, for HP and survival; turns on rage in emergencies
2 lvs of Druid so he can turn into a bear, for the CON boost and fun

Seems pretty terrible to me :cool:

[mr420247]

Epic wf dps caster ya thats bout the worst there is

Aasimar cleric or human clonk maybe is the new op

Frog implosion undeath 2 destructions and maybe a r10 epic turn undead

[Kulothar]

During Beta my toon was a WF Cleric. At this time WF had all of the defects and none of the benefits. The consept was that the caster could heal me while I healed the group. The reality was all of my sp and plat went to heal myself.

[mr420247]

I rem playin the heal bot all wf barb teams screaming heal meeeh fun times

[cdbd3rd]

Soloist Enchanter. :)

[glmfw1]

What is undoubtedly the worst character build which I played to date was a Eldritch swashbuckler...

Awesome :)

[glmfw1]

During Beta my toon was a WF Cleric. At this time WF had all of the defects and none of the benefits. The consept was that the caster could heal me while I healed the group. The reality was all of my sp and plat went to heal myself.
I've always wondered at WF hirelings with healing powers... great for keeping you alive until they die because healing them takes so much effort!

[glmfw1]

Huh? They all work at some level.

Even DC based Half-Orc Sorcerer even works once you have the gear.

But if (s)he multi-classed as a Cleric (for some healing power, because Clerics get heals by default) and Fighter (for melee ability), because Sorcs are too squishy, and went for an 8/7/5 split (meaning (s)he was quite good and each thing) in theory, then you get a nice mix of lack of stat synergy (Cha/Wis/Str) and can accidentally gimp the fighter levels by picking deity based on nature of the faith or lvl 6 feat rather than favoured weapon.
Rolling dice for stats PnP style could still make this work (I once had a level 1 with 4 18s, a 16 and a 12 due to incredible luck on roll 4d6 and drop the lowest 6 times), but with point-buy, the gearing to get the right stats/skills etc to make it viable would be horrendous!

[Pyed-Pyper]

sun elf cleric

[mr420247]

Sun elf clerics make real clerics mad ok intel ups no wis no charisma

Sdks suck but they don't make me mad

Give sdks level drain immunity or harm necro heals vampirisim they would be fun

[Xanthrawl]

Gotta disagree there. My warforged Arty is hella fun and a solid build!

Mine was too, before Reaper. RIP Warforged.

[glmfw1]

sun elf cleric
As a Gold (Sun) Elf Cleric (Morninglord) of Lathander in PnP, I had a ton of background info to explain why I was worshipping a human God rather than an elven one (it made sense, given some bits of Realmslore, but I was still an unusual case). As the Pool of Radiance computer game had the "Blade of Lathander" as a weapon, the DM ruled that I could use a Longsword as my main weapon and still be true to my faith.
Roll on DDO and they have taken Class abilities from the Morninglord speciality priest kit/prestige class and put them into the racial tree of a group of elves whose favoured class is Wizard, then made them Morninglords of Amaunator, despite Morninglords who apparently got spells from Amaunator (formerly dead sun god) during the thing between 3.5 and 5 still following him as Lathander (god of the dawn). As elves, they got left with their racial proficiencies in rapiers longswords and bows, but got given Heavy Maces in their racial tree. Elves have long enough racial memories to not even think of him as "Amaunator" and humans should be saying "why can't we be clerics of one of the most popular human Gods?".
All in all, probably the most nonsensical and least iconic bit of deliberate character design work in DDO.

[cpw_acc]

Soloist Enchanter. :)

I went one better with a soloist "enchanter" mainly focused on the Eldritch Knight tree.

I think my idea was some kind of "mage-knight" who could hypnotise/hold/charm etc its enemies while hitting them with my eldritch-enhanced weapons etc.

It didn't work. I just ended up as a pretend fighter with no hit points or armour class!

[HastyPudding]

Cleric/wizard focusing on necromancy and the dark disciple tree. It seems like a good idea and has wonderful synergy but fails when you realize your caster levels will be terrible, you'll have low spell penetration, you're next to useless vs undead, and you need both wisdom and intelligence to do things. Dark disciple is interesting, but hideously flawed in practice. A pure/near pure death domain cleric or a pale master wizard would be infinitely better.

Also, any 'wizard vampire unarmed' build. I've never seen any sort of vampire build that was worth a party slot.

[Scrapco]

We were having fun for a while coming up with terrible builds for each other when levelling got boring. Various incarnations of druid/arti are pretty good... stuff along those lines.

[glmfw1]

It didn't work. I just ended up as a pretend fighter with no hit points or armour class!

That is an amazing description :) I feel for you.

[glmfw1]

We were having fun for a while coming up with terrible builds for each other when levelling got boring. Various incarnations of druid/arti are pretty good... stuff along those lines.

I imagine you would need to introduce a limping animation for Wolves/Bears to account for the runearm transformed into part of one paw!

[Scrapco]

I imagine you would need to introduce a limping animation for Wolves/Bears to account for the runearm transformed into part of one paw!

Druids can't use runearms. :D

[glmfw1]

Druids can't use runearms. :D
Hmmmm... Not even Corruption of Nature :( Bad restrictive class design - I want limping bears!

[Tilomere]

We were having fun for a while coming up with terrible builds for each other when levelling got boring. Various incarnations of druid/arti are pretty good... stuff along those lines.

May the troll (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/495642-Bear-Build?p=6092931&viewfull=1#post6092931)be with you.

[Niminae]

In most cases you need to think like a PnP player who moved over.

So for example let's say you wanted a Melee battle cleric with strong buffing and occasional spell Damage ability. You might think a Half-Orc Cleric (9) Wizard (7) Fighter (4). Think about it you get Raise Dead, you get Stoneskin (and fireball for the LOL's of course) and weapon specialization so you are set.


Oh no, it gets much worse than that. I played a CoDzilla ('Cleric or Druid Godzilla,' I didn't invent the term so don't blame me) in PnP, and had hoped to do the same in DDO when I started. I didn't know about the wiki when I started, and I didn't know that the full PnP spell list was not a part of DDO. There just isn't the spell support for a CoDzilla to exist in DDO. So I ended up with a L30 Cleric built entirely around melee damage, and it was really hard to kill but slow as molasses to get through a dungeon. And any mob that had some self-heals was just beyond the capability of the DPS I could output.

When they gave out the 2 +5 hearts after some Update where they tweaked a lot of enhancement trees and more (was that Armor Down? I don't recall) I swapped in 2 Fighter and 3 Paladin for more Feats and better saves. That helped a lot, but it was still a low DPS build. I gave it up as a bad idea. That was before the changes to Kensai and the addition of Domains, and so the build could be better today. But it still seems sub-par to me. If I were to do it again, and I won't because I'm just completely turned off on the concept, I'd probably want 6 Fighter and War Domain.

[Ew_vastano]

i tried to build vast into a dual dwarven waraxe weilding monk
5 fighter (for capstone)
9 monk
6 ranger
dwarf race
seemed an awsome idea
however she sucked
tred her back to monk almost straight away

[Vish]

Oh no, it gets much worse than that. I played a CoDzilla ('Cleric or Druid Godzilla,' I didn't invent the term so don't blame me) in PnP, and had hoped to do the same in DDO when I started. I didn't know about the wiki when I started, and I didn't know that the full PnP spell list was not a part of DDO. There just isn't the spell support for a CoDzilla to exist in DDO. So I ended up with a L30 Cleric built entirely around melee damage, and it was really hard to kill but slow as molasses to get through a dungeon. And any mob that had some self-heals was just beyond the capability of the DPS I could output.

When they gave out the 2 +5 hearts after some Update where they tweaked a lot of enhancement trees and more (was that Armor Down? I don't recall) I swapped in 2 Fighter and 3 Paladin for more Feats and better saves. That helped a lot, but it was still a low DPS build. I gave it up as a bad idea. That was before the changes to Kensai and the addition of Domains, and so the build could be better today. But it still seems sub-par to me. If I were to do it again, and I won't because I'm just completely turned off on the concept, I'd probably want 6 Fighter and War Domain.

The worst logical build I can think of is warpriest
Sounds good, fighting cleric and all that,
But they are so bad,
That they don't even exist

[boredGamer]

The worst logical build I can think of is warpriest
Sounds good, fighting cleric and all that,
But they are so bad,
That they don't even exist

I was going to posit something similar. *nearly* every caster based melee I have ever seen has been terrible. I definitely think that for wiz/sorc. Was nearly going to say cleric but I have seen a *few* that weren't terribad (compared to other melee, in dps/usefulness, not counting the fact that in theory they could heal the whole party at the same time, except it seems like they never do. And they always seem to forsake things like BB. Not sure why? Just because you've decided to melee doesn't mean you shouldn't use amazing AOE/spells available to you).

Man the formatting of this post sucked. Too bad.

[glmfw1]

Just because you've decided to melee doesn't mean you shouldn't use amazing AOE/spells available to you).
That's what my FvS is trying at the moment. Warsoul, with decent investment into AoV... If there's a large number, pull them in to melee through a blade barrier, Stun them and blind them with Holy Smite and Soundburst, then slash and flamestrike them to death. Melee ability is decent enough to take down the ones or twos fast, leaving a decent number of SP for major blasting when there are big numbers. It probably isn't the most efficient way to do things (maybe it is, who knows) but it's fun :)

[Scrapco]

I was going to posit something similar. *nearly* every caster based melee I have ever seen has been terrible.

I whipped up some twf (dual dwaraxe) eldritch wraith dwarf monstrosity one time. It was great in my head, but you lose proficiency when you're undead, and it all went downhill from there. :) Needed about five more feats and two hundred enhancement points to be any good.

[fmalfeas]

I was going to posit something similar. *nearly* every caster based melee I have ever seen has been terrible. I definitely think that for wiz/sorc. Was nearly going to say cleric but I have seen a *few* that weren't terribad (compared to other melee, in dps/usefulness, not counting the fact that in theory they could heal the whole party at the same time, except it seems like they never do. And they always seem to forsake things like BB. Not sure why? Just because you've decided to melee doesn't mean you shouldn't use amazing AOE/spells available to you).

Man the formatting of this post sucked. Too bad.

Well, last battlecleric I ran, I forsook BB for a simple reason.

All my spellpower and spellcrit was Positive, Light, and Fire. With no Force spellpower to speak of, and no force spellcrit, a BB would have to be meta'd to the gills to be more than a complete joke. And that would mean I either had to be ConOpp/Torc'd and taking hits that were minor, or chugging a lake worth of SP pots.

So instead, I used Holy Smite, Sunburst, Firestorm, and Flame Strike.

[Xyfiel]

Two worst builds I seen in game:

Buff Sorcerer. Cap was 14 or 16. Back when haste, resists, displace, GH, and stoneskin were desired. The buffs were great to a party but it didn't do anything else.

Max charisma FVS. Cap 20. No melee, no damage spells, no CC. Just buffs and heals. Meanwhile my Fvs was healing, doing cc, and getting a lot of kills with BB. They tried to convince me to change builds because "I skip most shrines I have so many spell points."

[janave]

Harper as main tree + any class.
Eldritch Knight as main + any class.
Most build that attempt to spend most points in racial enhancements.
Melee Ninja Spy builds
Primary healers outside of raids

bonus: any stealth build

[Trig_of_Cowtown]

Primary healers outside of raids

Tell me about it. I used the recent Veteran event to create a priest and went into the radiant servant tree to be a good healer and took air domain for the SLAs.

Man, I end up in melee a lot.

The healing is saving my butt but combat seems to be slow. Maybe that's just me and being new to the class. I'm going to try grouping with other players and see how it goes.

But right now, I have to agree with you. Primary healers are not good soloing builds.

I just wanted a character who could help out the guild. :(

[xveganrox]

In most cases you need to think like a PnP player who moved over.

So for example let's say you wanted a Melee battle cleric with strong buffing and occasional spell Damage ability. You might think a Half-Orc Cleric (9) Wizard (7) Fighter (4). Think about it you get Raise Dead, you get Stoneskin (and fireball for the LOL's of course) and weapon specialization so you are set.

Sounds reasonable but my God in DDO's world sure it could "work" but almost anything would be better. Hell dropping a level of cleric and taking an extra level of fighter would be better so you could at least take a fighter tier 5 enhancements.

But for sure that split sounds good, even workable but you'd be better off as a h-elf pure fighter with a pally dillante feat or even a pure Dragonmarked Halfling fighter (still bad choices but less bad).

I bring this one up mainly because I bumped into that player back in the day, dropped them a couple of tomes to fix some stat issues they had (of course back when you found 1-3 +2 tomes a life before they heavily monetized tomes) and gave them some "it's DDO not Dungeons and Dragons" advice.

A 3.5 PnP player who played a build like that would definitely be doing it for role-playing/flavor reasons (although level 20 isn't really a thing in PnP, I mean the big splits in general), unless they were expecting to be able to take some prestige class or use some obscure broken supplement feat/spell. Someone who min-maxed in PnP would probably go pure Wizard/Cleric/Druid, or maybe Sorcerer/Warlock if they had a specific build in mind... which would be a pretty solid choice for a first life 60-80% of the time, I'd say.

That build might be in better shape than my first toon was.. Gotta keep Cleric below level 7 and Wizard below level 11 to prevent Divine Power/Tenser's Transformation, wouldn't want them to hit anything... But Fighter 5 enhancements are good enough to make it into a salvageable self-buffing/healing repeater build with a feat swap or two. Hmm... How about a powerful wizard who can self-heal while also investing his vast skill points into being able to charm, bluff, diplomacy, or fascinate his way out of any situation? After all, non-combat solutions are an option in PnP, and even at 20 your top ability score might be 24 or even 26 with a generous DM, so it makes sense to spread things out a bit. Wizard 8/Bard 6/Cleric 6 could have it all -- and between their respected position in their church, bardic college, or wizard-y organization (if applicable -- but what PnP game world *doesn't* have one) they'll have access to all sorts of things, not to mention Bardic Knowledge and skill Knowledge ranks. And for whatever talking can't get you out of, your fireballs, connections, and legion of Leadership followers cab. At 21 you'll ascend to Godhood: Epic Leadership (in addition to essentially making you the leader of one of the most powerful armies in the game world) will give you a loyal level 18 character of your choice. There's a lot you can do with that, but keeping it simple, your new Wizard advisor has two Wish spells permanently prepared for you each day. If you plan on dominating the entire world, though, a Lawful Evil Cleric would be a better choice, since his deity will be only too happy to grant miracles that help your army conquer and enslave the world (oh, yeah, you should probably turn evil around now -- after all, you're going to become a Lich at 21, or if you can wait long enough, a Demilich or Dragon and then Dracolich at 25/23). By 25 you're immortal. Even the staunchest Paladin will be corrupted by your dominant will -- and if some divine miracle prevents that, slaughtered by your vast army. If by some other miracle a well-equipped party of half a dozen adventurers sneak through your defenses, your minions, your vast collection of traps and plundered magical items, the moment they come within 300 feet of you you can absorb all six, instantaneously consuming their souls [RAW: doesn't even cost you a swift action] -- although you might take a moment to laugh at their pitiful Death Wards [RAW: demilich's supernatural Trap the Soul effects aren't blocked by Death Ward]. For their sake, hopefully they're attacking you at moment you take 25, because from then on you can summon Hezrous (if you went chaotic evil) or Bebiliths (if you went lawful evil) at will, as often as you want (but no more than once per round) -- and hopefully they haven't waited a week, because by then you'll have (at no cost, through a daily supernatural ability) accumulated an army of 14 Hezrou or Marilith bodyguards. Although if you want a bit more variety you might prefer grabbing some Ancient Wyrm Dragons as allies or bodyguards through your 2+ Gate spells per day. Those bard levels and all the skill points you poured into bluff and diplomacy are definitely going to help in negotiations -- pick some of the dumber types and they'll end up working for a quarter of the loot of any foolish would-be assassin who tries to stop you. After a few days, your forces are probably strong enough to go have a face to face with your deity. You're pretty evil -- and immortal, and commanding an army that no prince of the nine hells could hope to stop -- so the negotiation will end in either deicide or enslaving a God.

... and this is why epic levels are usually a bad idea. That's all SRD20, by the way.. if you throw in even the most conservative supplements things get a lot crazier.

OTOH that build in DDO is probably either given up and TR'd or piking in Unyielding Sentinel while a hireling drags them through Epic Casual.

[glmfw1]

...piking in Unyielding Sentinel while a hireling drags them through Epic Casual.

I need to turn off my Bravery Bonus some time and try that to see how successfully the hirelings can do it :)

[Chai]

I'd go with the classic: Fighter/Magic User/Thief.

My close second would be a Cleric/Thief - worships whatever the closest thing to a god(dess) of mischief is in DDO.