Need advice on effective class duo

[alchustriel]

My Wife and I play DDO together, filling out our party with Hirelings as needed. We find recent changes to DDO have made the game much more friendly to smaller groups. However, we are still having some difficulty with encounters of level 9 and above. I have a level 9 Paladin (pure) and my Wife is running a Rogue 2/Ranger 7. The problem with this duo is the lack of crowd control. Encounters are starting to get larger and I am having a problem keeping the mobs off the other party members. If we had some form of crowd control, I think that would improve the situation.

I guess the question is... what is a good class duo that can perform effectively from level 9 and on? We have found that being able to disarm traps is pretty important, to avoid Hirelings becoming Orc food. We obviously need a reasonable form of healing as our experience with Hirelings healing has been less than reliable. And lastly, crowd control appears to be very important. We have rolled up several classes, but have had only minimal success on overcoming these issues.

I appreciate any suggestions, example builds etc that you may have.

Thanks in advance.

[Freeman]

IMHO, the best duo is a Warforged Barbarian and a Warforged wizard/rogue.(18/2 is the best split) You get access to high melee DPS, high caster DPS, full trap abilities, and UMD for any divine spells you want to use. With that combo, you don't actually need any hirelings. Of course, you have to have WF unlocked for that.

[alchustriel]

Thank you for your reply. Sounds interesting. I have steered clear of Warforged as they did not really appeal to me from a roleplaying perspective, but perhaps it is time to take a closer look.

Thank you very much for the suggestion.

[MystDragon]

IMHO, the best duo is a Warforged Barbarian and a Warforged wizard/rogue.(18/2 is the best split) You get access to high melee DPS, high caster DPS, full trap abilities, and UMD for any divine spells you want to use. With that combo, you don't actually need any hirelings. Of course, you have to have WF unlocked for that.

I had the opportunity to team up with a Husband/Wife duo who use this exact combination recently - a couple of really cool players.

They duo a lot of the content when they just want to play alone together and then team up when they want to mingle with more people and this combination really works effectively for them and I got to see how good a team they are.

[Freeman]

I had the opportunity to team up with a Husband/Wife duo who use this exact combination recently - a couple of really cool players.

They duo a lot of the content when they just want to play alone together and then team up when they want to mingle with more people and this combination really works effectively for them and I got to see how good a team they are.

Yep, my wife and I played a WF Barbarian and Wizard duo(No rogue levels here, but we mainly grouped with others). It was fun enough that when those two chars were capped, we rolled a new set, only this time, I got to be the barbarian and she played the wizard One of my favorite Delera's runs consisted of my WF Wizard, three WF barbarians, and a human cleric. It was one of the rare times when I heard a cleric comment that they felt kinda useless. Of course, we told him to load up some offensive spells at the next shrine, and I think he enjoyed the rest of the quest

[Failedlegend]

Me and my brother play a duo alot using a WF Fighter/Barb/Rogue 12/6/2 http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...ghlight=archon focusing on DPS and trapskill/UMD and a WF (WF was a bad idea) Cleric/Monk 15/5 for Tanking/Healing...both can self-heal (cleric and UMD) so we rarely wipe unless we get reckless. I might re-roll as Halfling Cleric/Monk 17/3 (I play way more than him so it shouldn't take to long to catch up)

[Kriogen]

Slot 1 (melee + utility):
- Ranger18/Rogue1/Monk1 (or fighter or barb). Primary damage, tank, buffs, traps/locks.
- Cleric18/Monk2 (or Fvs18). War Priest style. Primary damage (melee and magic), buffs, heals, some CC
- Paladin20 or Paladin18/Monk2 (or Rogue2). Primary damage, tank, buffs.

Slot 2 (caster + utility + backup anything):
- Bard20 or Rogue2/Bard18. Crowd Control, buffs, cure/heal, utility (traps/locks of rogue2), damage
- Rog2/Wiz18, Warforged. If Slot 1 is also Warforged. CC, damage (melee and magic), traps/locks, buffs, repair
- Cleric20 or FvS20.

Its good idea if one can do traps/locks and one is caster (arcane or divine). Its a big advantage if both can do 'damage' and both don't need 24/7 babysitter.

[alchustriel]

Thank you all for the suggestions. I will definitely try some of them out to see how they work for us.

Much appreciated.

[Lozareth]

TWF-specced 2 monk / 18 cleric or fvs and 2 or 3 rogue / 2 fighter / 15 or 16 bard. Massive amount of buffs, both can self-heal, trap skills on the warchanter, and plenty of melee ability.

[FunkyGoose]

You may want to consider a Bard/Rouge and Light path Monk Combo, both have acess to self heals and the bard has very good Crowd control, especially the virtuoso or spellsinger path. bards also have UMD as a class skill for more Offensive spells, they also both have stealth and good buffs (neither monk buffs or bard songs are affected by antimagic, so thats good!)

...So sayeth the Funk...

[Kralgnax]

Any battle-ish cleric (from a pure cleric with decent STR) Plus anything roguey will also likely work nicely for you, and merge neatly into larger groups and raids. NPC healing is, after all, pretty lame. Odds are, you can make pretty much any duo work, even without hirelings.

I'll assure you no-one knows the best duo, even assuming such a thing exists.

[entropiccanuck]

I duo with a friend a fair bit. We have two combos that work well. We started with WF fighter and wizard, which is great for most stuff, though traps are a pain though in some quests. Making the wiz a wiz/rogue would help that issue. On quests with few shrines and hard/elite difficulty this combo has trouble as it's more dependent on spellpoints.

When we unlocked drow my friend made a ranger/rogue and I'm playing a bard. Very different dynamic, but quite versatile as he can tear things up in melee or range and handle most traps/locks, while my bard is great at CC, can do some healing, does decent damage, and can UMD as needed.

[hermespan]

IMHO, the best duo is a Warforged Barbarian and a Warforged wizard/rogue.(18/2 is the best split) You get access to high melee DPS, high caster DPS, full trap abilities, and UMD for any divine spells you want to use. With that combo, you don't actually need any hirelings. Of course, you have to have WF unlocked for that.

The problem with duoing wizard and a pure barbarian is the barb will be a mana sponge at high level. Bad AC, bad saves and a bazillion hitpoints == mana drain. Much better off with a high AC melee that has intimidate, since at above 10th level the wizard will be doing most of the damage anyway. Intimidate and AC + a maximized firewall (from a element specced wizard) is a very potent combination. If a PK or FoD misses, the intimitank can pull the agro off the wizard while the spell cools down.

A mostly pally multiclass (mixed with something that has UMD and intimidate as class skills) would be better than pure barbarian, especially since the pally can LoH, heal himself, can have a very high AC and has excellent saves. A high charisma will synergize with UMD, intimidate, and pally saves. The UMD will allow you to use race and class restricted gear as well, maximizing the usefulness of the loot you pull. It will also allow you to use repair wands and reconstruct scrolls to save the wizard a ton of mana and if you get separated or one of you dies, you can both still stay up and make it to a shrine to get the other one up. With UMD you can also use resurrect scrolls, though if you take enough pally you can do that with a pally ability. Ideally the wizard will only use mana to reconstruct you when you get in trouble.

Just a suggestion... in a duo both of you should be able to be self sufficient when you need to be because sometimes one of you will die.

If it happens to the wizard, the barbarian is at 10% hitpoints and there's a bunch of mobs between you and the shrine, a pure barbarian is cooked.

[mistahnice]

in my duo experience you're going to want survivability in your dps in case your caster/healer goes down. a wf duo of 18/2 fighter/rogue with twf/sword+board and an 18/2 wizard/rogue will allow the dps to turtle up and heal himself in case the healer dies.

intimidate also works extremely well for conserving the caster's sp. instead of having to displace and kite mobs around a firewall, the caster can merely lay one down while the fighter intimidates inside the firewall while shield blocking. this means less sp consumed for healing (both the dps and the caster) and less sp needed for buffing/displacing the caster constantly.

you also can easily get a great search and disable with the caster, enough to do pretty much any elite trap, not to mention the utility that comes with UMD.

i would recommend against a barbarian as your dps, as without a caster/healer they are rather incapable solo.