Questions about Plating

[Myrddinman]

Hey Folks! I'm a first time Warforged poster here and I must say that i really am seeing the light about how awesome this race really is. So here's my question:

When would be a good time to swap out of Mithril Plating to Composite? I've built this character for soloing mostly and for some limited duoing with friends. I'm currently at 5 Wiz/3 Ranger/2 Monk (going for 12/6/2) and use spells for repairing and buffing. My AC is 26 and at full buff (Shield/Barkskin/Cats Grace/CE/Haste) is 40.

I've certainly made some mistakes with this build:
-Not sure whether Combat Expertise (CE) is worth it at this point and I usually have it turned off most of the time
-Went Dex based and took Weapon Finesse (swapped for CE later) once I found a strength stat item and enjoy the flexibility of different weapons
-Thinking Power Attack (PA) would be more advantageous and could swap Mithril for it (at least I think I can, even if I didn't have a base strength of 13 at level 1, but now do)
-I've already swapped a few feats, so the price would be rather high and I really don't want to waste it

Some of this I can address when Greater Reincarnation is released, but who knows when we'll see it.

So what do you guys think? Should I swap Mithril for PA?

[Ardkor]

Hmmm...are you planning on fighting hand-to-hand a lot as a caster? (as I understand your build, you are going 12 wiz/6 ranger/2 monk?)

Power attack is most useful to a 2-handed weapon fighter, not so much to a caster type.

Have you reduced the arcane spell failure chance to zero on your Mithril Plating (thru enhancements)?

You could probably drop Mithril altogether and gain a more useful feat plus some enhancement points (as you only need 1 AP to offset the ASF of Composite Plating).

[Phidius]

Here's a link to my version of your build.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=214937

I recommend swapping Mithral for PA. My build is strength based rather than dex based, yet still gets a +7 dex bonus. With Mithral, you get +3 more AC, but are limited to a +5 dex bonus. In addition, Mithral requires you to spend valuable AP to reduce your spell failure to 0.

I'd imagine that if you're dex based, you're gonna have more than +7 from your dex bonus.