Evoker/CC Favored Soul in Plate?

[KoobTheProud]

I'm thinking about taking enough enhancements in Warpriest to get to Divine Power at T5 (32 pt investment) for the full BAB for Plate. That means I won't be getting any of the T5's in Angel of Vengeance. I'm running full Wisdom build with Charisma 12, Strength 8 and Dex 8 as the dump stats at this point.

Feats planned atm are Maximise, SF: Evo, Empower, Heavy Armor, Spell Pen, Quicken and Heighten. The FvS is a Drow for RP reasons and will ultimately be a Sun Elf in the last life whenever that is. At Epic levels I'm planning to take 21 Arcane Insight, 24 Embolden Spell, 26 Epic Spell Power (Force), 27 Ruin, 28 Epic Spell Power (Light or Positive), 29 Deific Warding or Arcane Pulse, 30 Greater Ruin, Scion of the Plane of Air or Scion of Celestia. If I go SP Positive on 28 I will probably go Celestia on 30 otherwise PoA for the Evo DC's.

I'll be in Exalted Angel with twists to get as much Spell Pen and Evo Focus as possible. I'll also have Empyrean Magic in the mix with an extra 1st level twist mixed in also, although I'm not sure which one.

Is this going to work for Epic CC with Soundburst and Greater Command? Will Implosion function ok? I'm planning to solo most of the time so scaling will be minimal.

[Tlorrd]

If you are going to be a caster ... AoV T5 is way better than WP T5 just for the divine power.

AoV T5
- all three enhancements are $$ ... spell resistance debuff to mobs, evo dc bonus, and increased caster levels for DPS on your stunned/commanded mobs.

These seem must have for FVS caster rather than warpriest.

Divine power can be cast for > 2min duration right before you go into battle and you'll receive its benefits.

[KoobTheProud]

That sounds like the best solution. I'm used to scrolling buffs like that and the duration would be a problem but I think Divine Favor actually might be in the best 4 spells at 4th level for the build I'm doing.

[KoobTheProud]

OMG, level 11 is driving me nuts. No Blade Barrier yet and Holy Smite is a mana hog given the damage it does and I hate working with a hireling in active combat because they keep blocking targets as I move around.

I'm doing the Evoker T5 build instead of Warpriest but I took Heavy Armor anyway and am using it plus a Tower Shield with Master's Touch for defenses. That part is not so bad but the DPS is just terrible right now.

Ok, rant off- I'll get to Blade Barrier at some point but I'm thinking the rest of heroics are going to really suck because all it will be is Blade Barrier kiting if I want to do Elite instances. Hopefully Exalted Angel will make this all worthwhile in Epics because I can see real options there.

[Atremus]

Prior to Blade Barrier, leveling is real rough. You have no real options for SLA's and the damage/sp ratio is excruciatingly horrible. I haven't done a heroic Divine life since SunElf so I can't even give you a suggestion for work arounds.

Did you farm out ShadowCrypt to cut down on the pain in Heroics? I sort of miss that quest and xp.

Did you estimate your EVO DC? I am at 82 EVO currently (Potting) and my Implosion isn't as reliable as I want for R1/Elites. I am thinking about TRing my SunElf over to DG to get my EVO up near 90 to get better reliability out of Divine Wrath and Imp. Drawback is I lose a lot of Light Spell power and Spell Pen.

[KoobTheProud]

Prior to Blade Barrier, leveling is real rough. You have no real options for SLA's and the damage/sp ratio is excruciatingly horrible. I haven't done a heroic Divine life since SunElf so I can't even give you a suggestion for work arounds.

The methods I'm using for DPS right now are Searing Light + Nimbus of Light against ranged mobs, cutting down archers and casters fairly quickly, that part is ok. It's the packs of melee mobs where the choice is either autoattack + Holy Smite + circle kite or Greater Command + Searing Light/Nimbus of Light the ones that resisted and then melee whack-whack-whack on the sitting mobs after that which takes forever.

I'm actually ok with the overall setup but it is very slow compared to the process once Blade Barrier comes into play and it's been slow since about level 9 or so.

Did you farm out ShadowCrypt to cut down on the pain in Heroics? I sort of miss that quest and xp.

I did Shadow Guard and then went and did other quests until I hit 11. I'm not all that big on running stuff that the bravery bonus won't apply too so maybe next life. I switched off onto the Laughing Knives chain this time around and just never got back to the Shadow Crypt series. I might pause bravery bonus and go back to it if I start to feel really hung up on the stuff opening up now.

Did you estimate your EVO DC? I am at 82 EVO currently (Potting) and my Implosion isn't as reliable as I want for R1/Elites. I am thinking about TRing my SunElf over to DG to get my EVO up near 90 to get better reliability out of Divine Wrath and Imp. Drawback is I lose a lot of Light Spell power and Spell Pen.

This is going to be a work in progress for the next couple of lives. I have trouble getting DC up above mid to high 70's at endgame because Cannith Crafting is not maxed yet and I have no guild buffs and I hate relying on things like pots to make up the difference. I suspect I will work it out this time and get to a reasonable stopping point. I still have 3 Sorc lives to go for the +3 Evo DC's also.

I'm fairly sure I am going to go past 20 before I TR this time around. I've never had an Exalted Angel Favored Soul and I want to play around with that some. I might even make it to cap for an ETR/TR.

The other thing that's interesting is that I took Maximize and Empower early on but I haven't used either of them yet for anything. I think next life I will take something really useful for the early lives, like Improved Crit - Slashing, and then swap it out with the free swap from Lockania when I hit 12 for Blade Barrier. Carrying around 2 useless feats for 11 and 8 levels hasn't helped things any from the DPS perspective.

[Atremus]

I really enjoy my FvS. The only thing I would really like to see is another SLA to help in the DPS department.

Divine Wrath is a beautiful thing

[Jasparion]

I really enjoy my FvS. The only thing I would really like to see is another SLA to help in the DPS department.

Divine Wrath is a beautiful thing

FVS needs at least a couple. As others said above, the game is really tough until level 12. Especially on Elite.

But once you get BB its easy. Once you get Wings its cake.

[KoobTheProud]

I'm looking forward to wings to help me get around known or likely trap spots. No Evasion has been tough also in the early lives.

On the SLA front I'm conflicted. I feel like single-target DPS at ray range is ok and would be very OP if I had Searing Light and Nimbus of Light fully meta'd as I would if SLA's were available. AoE DPS in the absence of Blade Barrier is just subpar by any definition but BB will take care of that when it arrives at 12.

I'm a bit worried that if FvS gets effective SLA's it will vault up above every other class but Warlock and the power surge will continue. I do want to see Favored Soul buffs however I want the healing tree as a priority over offensive buffs. Obviously the single target SLA's will not continue to scale well in the late teens and this may be a problem if the mana pool does not expand alongside the need to meta some of the single target damage.

In Epics I will use Sun Bolt as Divine Wrath as part of the rotation and that will make up some of the SLA deficit at the levels when other spells do not scale well.

[Atremus]

FVS needs at least a couple. As others said above, the game is really tough until level 12. Especially on Elite.

But once you get BB its easy. Once you get Wings its cake.

I don't disagree about Heroics. I haven't leveled a lowbie FVS since the introduction of Iconics. My comment about the SLA was more directed at Epics. I should have written my original post more clearly.

[KoobTheProud]

I'm thinking maybe a single target SLA before Sun Bolt makes some sense. I would put it T5 in the Angel of Vengeance tree so that it became available at the point that FvS single target DPS slows down some, at 12 or so. There are only 3 enhancements in T5 Angel of Vengeance as it is and adding a single target SLA that allowed for cheap metamagic would not be too powerful if it had a standard 6 second cooldown like most of the single target SLA's.

Then in Epics you'd have that plus Sun Bolt at 12 seconds alongside un-meta'd single target SLA's to do damage, which would mean no absolute necessity to take Ruin/Greater Ruin/Arcane Pulse etc. That would make the healing based Epic Feats easier to squeeze in also.

[KoobTheProud]

After experimenting with Darkfire I'm torn on which way to go with the build at this point. It's a DC first DPS second caster build with maxed Wis and then Con and Cha as secondaries and Int as the tertiary.

I took Heavy Armor, Maximize, Empower, Spell Penetration, Spell Focus: Evocation, Quicken, Heighten and Enlarge so far through 21.

My setup prior to the Darkfire change was 39 Angel of Vengeance, 41 Warpriest with T5's in AoV and the capstone in Warpriest. It was a very strong defensive build with decent offensive potential that went way up when Banishment was in play. I was using Searing Light (un-meta'd) to pull stuff into Blade Barrier and then lining up Sun Bolt to do the most possible damage, with Destruction used to take out casters and archers quickly. For red names and champs I was stacking up Divine Punishment (un-meta'd) and kiting them through the BB when possible. When the targets were right I'd just pop Implosion and run into a pack and watch them all go away one by one.

The one hassle, was that some boss fights, mainly the ones with adds spawning, were really hard to get down quickly and I had real trouble in them. The end fight in A New Invasion is a good example. Very hard fight to get through at level on Elite when you don't have a fast strong single target DPS and when the adds appear to be immune to Implosion and Destruction. Also no Banishment because they're in their home plane.

So I switched over to a 37 AoV, 31 Warpriest, 12 Drow build to incorporate Darkfire and that end fight became manageable although still very tough with a high failure potential. My defenses are definitely worse and I lost Inflame in the process.

It's like for 95% of the content I solo Darkfire is overkill but for the other 5% it's probably the main reason I can do the content. Not sure what to do about that. It gets expensive switching around enhancements over time.