Advice sought on tanking fighter

[kren.cooper]

Hi everyone.

Here's the scenario - I play regularly with my wife and friend, and normally no-one else in our group. I play the fighter tank, my wife the priesty healer and our friend the buffing bard/rogue. We only ever play the characters together, and always travel as a group. At the moment, we've all just got past level 6 and are grinding away in Tangleroot Gorge and Searing Heights looking for rares and slayer kills, while deciding which chain to do next.

I've come up with this as a build, and would appreciate criticism on it - I've tried to make sure I can maintain a decent amount of HP, take the prestige enhancements, keep my core skills up and focus on my chosen weapons (blunts, warhmammers in particular).

I'd still regard myself as a very new player, so if you have suggestions to change, or want to point out wasted skill points I'd appreciate it if you can tell me why, as well as what - or link to a thread where I can see what I've done wrong.

I do have the 32pt build available, and at the moment my notable items are a CON+3 belt and the Angers Step set giving the +1 STR, a set of +4 full plate and a +4 shield (giving 30AC at level 6 I believe). HP unbuffed are 159 at the moment.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Character Plan by DDO Character Planner Version 3.10
DDO Character Planner Home Page

Kaacey Farpeak
Level 20 Lawful Good Human Female
(20 Fighter) 
Hit Points: 414
Spell Points: 0 
BAB: 20\20\25\30\30
Fortitude: 17
Reflex: 7
Will: 7

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
Abilities        Base Stats          Modified Stats
(32 Point)       (Level 1)             (Level 20)
Strength             17                    25
Dexterity            10                    10
Constitution         17                    19
Intelligence          8                     8
Wisdom               10                    10
Charisma             10                    10

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
                 Base Skills         Modified Skills
Skills           (Level 1)            (Level 20)
Balance               0                     9
Bluff                 0                     0
Concentration         3                     4
Diplomacy             0                     0
Disable Device       n/a                   n/a
Haggle                0                     0
Heal                  0                     0
Hide                  0                     0
Intimidate            4                    33
Jump                  7                    12
Listen                0                     0
Move Silently         0                     0
Open Lock             n/a                   n/a
Perform               n/a                   n/a
Repair               -1                    -1
Search               -1                    -1
Spot                  0                     0
Swim                  3                     7
Tumble                n/a                   n/a
Use Magic Device      n/a                   n/a

Level 1 (Fighter)
Feat: (Selected) Luck of Heroes
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Stunning Blow
Feat: (Human Bonus) Weapon Focus: Slashing Weapons
Enhancement: Fighter Armor Class Boost I
Enhancement: Fighter Critical Accuracy I
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Stunning Blow) I
Enhancement: Fighter Intimidate I


Level 2 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Weapon Focus: Bludgeoning Weapons
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Sunder) I
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Trip) I
Enhancement: Fighter Strength I


Level 3 (Fighter)
Feat: (Selected) Toughness
Enhancement: Human Improved Recovery I
Enhancement: Racial Toughness I
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness I


Level 4 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Weapon Specialization: Bludgeoning Weapons
Enhancement: Fighter Intimidate II


Level 5 (Fighter)


Level 6 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Shield Mastery
Enhancement: Fighter Stalwart Defender I
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Stunning Blow) II
Enhancement: Fighter Strength II


Level 7 (Fighter)
Enhancement: Fighter Armor Class Boost II
Enhancement: Fighter Item Defense I


Level 8 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Greater Weapon Focus: Bludgeoning Weapons
Enhancement: Racial Toughness II
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness II


Level 9 (Fighter)
Feat: (Selected) Least Dragonmark of Sentinel
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Stunning Blow) III


Level 10 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Improved Critical: Bludgeoning Weapons
Enhancement: Fighter Armor Class Boost III
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Trip) II


Level 11 (Fighter)
Enhancement: Fighter Critical Accuracy II
Enhancement: Fighter Warhammer Specialization I


Level 12 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Greater Weapon Specialization: Bludgeoning Weapons
Feat: (Selected) Lesser Dragonmark of Sentinel
Enhancement: Fighter Stalwart Defender II


Level 13 (Fighter)
Enhancement: Human Adaptability Strength I
Enhancement: Fighter Strength III


Level 14 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Power Critical
Enhancement: Fighter Item Defense II


Level 15 (Fighter)
Feat: (Selected) Greater Dragonmark of Sentinel
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness III


Level 16 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Superior Weapon Focus: Bludgeoning Weapons
Enhancement: Human Greater Adaptability Constitution I
Enhancement: Racial Toughness III


Level 17 (Fighter)
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness IV


Level 18 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Improved Shield Mastery
Feat: (Selected) Toughness
Enhancement: Fighter Stalwart Defender III
Enhancement: Fighter Warhammer Specialization II


Level 19 (Fighter)
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Stunning Blow) IV


Level 20 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Power Attack
Enhancement: Fighter Weapon Alacrity
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Sunder) II

[Yajerman01]

IMO if your going to go 17 str and con, might as well go 16 str 16 con, save the 6 points and invest them into INT and Dex. You dont need your cha at 10 and can leave it at 8. your stats can look closer to this:

16
14
16
12
10
8

By upping your dex to 14 it will allow you to achieve max dex bonus in a +5 mithrall Fullplate. (+5 to your AC with a dex score of 20)

Putting your Int to 12 will allow you to aquire a +1 Int tiome in the future so you can unlock Combat Expertise to add to your "tanking" when you need additional AC (+5)

thats all i can think of off hand.

EDIT: two feats id get rid of 1. Luck of the heroes and Power cirtical.

Take Power attack earlier on and subsitute 1 of those feats with Combat Experities (CE) and maybe improve trip since you appear to specialize in fighter tactics


all skill points can be dumped into Balance/Intimidate/(UMD if feasable) and Spot, extra into jump.

I say jump next to last becasue you can use the spell jump to compensate for it, you cant compensate balance which you need if you wanna keep on your feat. Intimidate is self explanatory, it doesnt look like your going to have UMD so go for spot (allows you to see hidden monsters better)

[Aranticus]

you have no thf or twf feats. drop some redundant feats and pick these up. you have no AC what so ever in terms of enhancements (armor mastery). a stalwart greatest asset is to bring AC high enough to avoid most damage. this is going to seriously impact your ability to tank. there is also the redundant critical accuracy enhancements which only a kensai need to take. with your low dps and the lack of intimidate (feats and enhancements), how are you going to be able to tank? more importantly, you really like stunning blow. i suggest you go kensai if you like tactical feats

[kren.cooper]

@Yajerman01

Thanks. As I've already got the character to level 6, and we're playing fairly on a regular basis now, I don't think I can re-roll the character, so I'll have to live with the stats I have. In hindsight, yes, I'd have dropped the charisma and taken points elsewhere. The Luck of Heroes was to try and give a boost to will saves to stop all those dammed kobold shamens casting fear, command and other such spells with quite such horrific effects.

@Aranticus

Nope - I don't have THF or TWF feats - I always use a shield and a one handed weapon - mostly warhammers. I've put points into intimidate at every level so far, with the rest of my mighty 2 skill points going into balance to recover from ebil worgs and their improved trips. I normally have trip, sunder and stun bound to my 1-3 keys, and use them on mobs in rotation to try to incapacitate them to get crits on them, or to make them easier to hit, along with spamming Intimidate whenever possible. Maybe I'm channelling too much into this from WOW style tanking, but that seemed like a reasonable idea to me..

[Canitank]

Maybe I'm channelling too much into this from WOW style tanking, but that seemed like a reasonable idea to me..

You're gonna regret making this statement! lol j/k
good luck with your build

[Aranticus]

@Yajerman01

Thanks. As I've already got the character to level 6, and we're playing fairly on a regular basis now, I don't think I can re-roll the character, so I'll have to live with the stats I have. In hindsight, yes, I'd have dropped the charisma and taken points elsewhere. The Luck of Heroes was to try and give a boost to will saves to stop all those dammed kobold shamens casting fear, command and other such spells with quite such horrific effects.

iron will gives a +2 to will saves, bullheaded gives +1 and it helps intimidate

@Aranticus

Nope - I don't have THF or TWF feats - I always use a shield and a one handed weapon - mostly warhammers. I've put points into intimidate at every level so far, with the rest of my mighty 2 skill points going into balance to recover from ebil worgs and their improved trips. I normally have trip, sunder and stun bound to my 1-3 keys, and use them on mobs in rotation to try to incapacitate them to get crits on them, or to make them easier to hit, along with spamming Intimidate whenever possible. Maybe I'm channelling too much into this from WOW style tanking, but that seemed like a reasonable idea to me..

you still do not get it. there are times when you will not be tanking, ie when you face a caster boss. so what do you do? you want to get the most dps possible and this is something your build cannot do

as to tactical feats, kensai gives a bonus to them, yet you made a stalwart. this is redundant. by going kensai, you get an additional +3 to your stun and make it harder to resist

read my guides. it will help you to understand how things work in ddo

[kren.cooper]

I have read your guides (and very good they are too), but I still don't see why I "don't get it".

Are you saying that against that caster boss, I should be dropping the one handed weapon and shield, grabbing a two hander or 2nd 1 hand weapon and then going to fight it? And that I should put a bunch of feats/enhancements to support this? And more importantly, that it won't weaken my tanking abilities too much by not concentrating on them and taking the Kensai path rather than the Stalwart?

It just seems to me that to reach that caster boss, we'd have had to fight past X groups of mobs, and in each of those fights, I'd want to be using 1H+Shield to mitigate damage and keep my wife sane, while our bard/rogue whittles away at the mobs flanks. As such I'd want to have the Stalwart type enhancements to support the higher AC bonuses and abilities. Yes, I see your point that if I had a Kensai and gained +3 to my trips/stuns that they'd be more effective - but I'd lose the bonuses from the Defender line. I take it from your comment that you feel that this is worth doing then?

[Aranticus]

at the lower levels, there is no doubt the shield is useful but as you level up, sword and board ac becomes less useful until you can acquire raid loot and other comparative gear. a sword and board character does extremely well against trash mobs from L1-L10. after that AC becomes stagnant while the to hit of mobs greatly increase as you enter gianthold. a 40 ac in gianthold is equivalent to 0. in such situations, you are sustaining the same damage while dealing less than 1/2 the damage if you were to pick up twf or thf. so the question is why are you still holding on to the shield

as you level up, you will find that raids are the uberz. in most raids, its just 1 huge dps fest, again using sword and board means less dps. a fighter has 18 feats, using 3 for thf or twf is not a huge investment. it gives you the flexibility to choose between tanking and dpsing. even the other vets on this thread will give you the same advice

kensai or defender, its really up to your choice what you want. do you like AC more or do you like stunning blow/dps more. answer that question and you will know what you want

[kren.cooper]

Ahh, now that makes more sense.

The three of us are probably never going to be raiding due to our schedules. We're in the UK, so several hours ahead of server time, and we normally play from about 8-11pm GMT... so I doubt we'd fit in with most stuff. We're also not hugely interested in the whole raiding/grinding scene (though we like nice loot as much as the next person).

So, if at level 10, I used a DEX tome to raise my dex enough to allow TWF, and look at getting OTWF soon after, and plan on using a pair of warhammers (still want to stick with my chosen weapon favourites), that should boost DPS sufficiently do you think? And the loss of AC from the shield won't actually matter that much because stuff will still be hitting me on anything but a 1 based on their rising BAB?

If so, then this is my re-jigged plan, going Kensai instead of Protector and taking the new feats.

Character Plan by DDO Character Planner Version 3.10
DDO Character Planner Home Page

Kaacey Farpeak
Level 20 Lawful Good Human Female
(20 Fighter) 
Hit Points: 428
Spell Points: 0 
BAB: 20\20\25\30\30
Fortitude: 16
Reflex: 10
Will: 8

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
Abilities        Base Stats          Modified Stats
(32 Point)       (Level 1)             (Level 20)
Strength             17                    25
Dexterity            10                    16
Constitution         17                    17
Intelligence          8                     8
Wisdom               10                    10
Charisma             10                    10

Tomes Used
+4 Tome of Dexterity used at level 6

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
                 Base Skills         Modified Skills
Skills           (Level 1)            (Level 20)
Balance               0                    12
Bluff                 0                     3
Concentration         3                     3
Diplomacy             0                     0
Disable Device       n/a                   n/a
Haggle                0                     0
Heal                  0                     0
Hide                  0                     3
Intimidate            4                    25
Jump                  7                    12
Listen                0                     0
Move Silently         0                     3
Open Lock             n/a                   n/a
Perform               n/a                   n/a
Repair               -1                    -1
Search               -1                    -1
Spot                  0                     0
Swim                  3                     7
Tumble                n/a                   n/a
Use Magic Device      n/a                   n/a

Level 1 (Fighter)
Feat: (Selected) Bullheaded
Feat: (Human Bonus) Luck of Heroes
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Stunning Blow
Enhancement: Fighter Armor Class Boost I
Enhancement: Fighter Critical Accuracy I
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Stunning Blow) I


Level 2 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Weapon Focus: Bludgeoning Weapons
Enhancement: Fighter Attack Boost I
Enhancement: Human Improved Recovery I
Enhancement: Fighter Strength I


Level 3 (Fighter)
Feat: (Selected) Toughness
Enhancement: Racial Toughness I
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness I


Level 4 (Fighter)
Ability Raise: STR
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Weapon Specialization: Bludgeoning Weapons
Enhancement: Fighter Attack Boost II
Enhancement: Fighter Critical Accuracy II


Level 5 (Fighter)
Enhancement: Human Adaptability Dexterity I


Level 6 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Power Attack
Feat: (Selected) Toughness
Enhancement: Fighter Kensei I
Enhancement: Fighter Strength II


Level 7 (Fighter)
Enhancement: Fighter Attack Boost III


Level 8 (Fighter)
Ability Raise: DEX
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Greater Weapon Focus: Bludgeoning Weapons
Enhancement: Kensei Warhammer Mastery I
Enhancement: Fighter Critical Accuracy III
Enhancement: Fighter Warhammer Specialization I


Level 9 (Fighter)
Feat: (Selected) Two Weapon Fighting


Level 10 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Oversized Two Weapon Fighting
Enhancement: Fighter Strength III


Level 11 (Fighter)
Enhancement: Human Improved Recovery II


Level 12 (Fighter)
Ability Raise: STR
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Greater Weapon Specialization: Bludgeoning Weapons
Feat: (Selected) Toughness
Enhancement: Kensei Warhammer Mastery II
Enhancement: Fighter Kensei II


Level 13 (Fighter)
Enhancement: Human Greater Adaptability Strength I
Enhancement: Racial Toughness II


Level 14 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Cleave
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness II
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness III


Level 15 (Fighter)
Feat: (Selected) Shield Mastery
Enhancement: Fighter Armor Class Boost II


Level 16 (Fighter)
Ability Raise: STR
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Superior Weapon Focus: Bludgeoning Weapons
Enhancement: Fighter Armor Class Boost III
Enhancement: Fighter Warhammer Specialization II


Level 17 (Fighter)
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness IV


Level 18 (Fighter)
Feat: (Selected) Toughness
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Two Weapon Defense
Enhancement: Kensei Warhammer Mastery III
Enhancement: Fighter Kensei III


Level 19 (Fighter)
Enhancement: Fighter Armor Class Boost IV
Enhancement: Human Versatility I


Level 20 (Fighter)
Ability Raise: STR
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Improved Sunder
Enhancement: Fighter Extra Action Boost I
Enhancement: Fighter Haste Boost I
Enhancement: Fighter Weapon Alacrity