Dwarven TWF Build with Rogue Splash Please?

[Thuddczar]

Hi all, I've been searching for something for a couple of days now, and I'm unable to find it. Here's what I was hoping to find:

Assuming the following:

32 Point Build
Veteran Status (starting level 4)
+2 Major Tome (all stats +2 used at level 7)
TWF
Level 20 Build
Rogue Splash (18 Barb/2 Rogue)
Dwarf (Absolutely must be a Dwarf)

If anyone knows a link to a proven, very good build that fulfills the above, I would be VERY GRATEFUL. To hear people talk in game, one would think 18Barb/2Rogue Dwarven Barbs were everywhere, but I haven't found a single build while looking in any of the forums. Was hoping to find a build by Aranticus or Shado, but haven't been able to, as they seem to prefer warforged (or pure barbs) for their builds.

Anyone? I'm itching to make this character, but I just can't (and won't) trust it to myself - I'm not good at builds. What I really need is a complete build with enhancements, skills and other suggestions.

Thanks for any help here!


---Thuddczar

[Gnorbert]

Anyone? I'm itching to make this character, but I just can't (and won't) trust it to myself - I'm not good at builds. What I really need is a complete build with enhancements, skills and other suggestions.

Thanks for any help here!


---Thuddczar

Does your mommy dress you in the morning too? sorry for the troll post but ... come on. Are you looking for someone to play the character for you as well? Do you follow online walkthroughs for each quest?

Dwarf - rogue at level 1 max UMD/DD/Search/Open Lock/Balance/Jump/Tumble/Spot
Str: 18
Dex: 15
Con: 16
Int: 10
Wis: 8
Cha: 6

Spend Barb level skill points on 2 UMD, 1 jump, 1 Intim (if you don't want Intimidate then pick a lesser rogue skill to dump this point into... Open Lock can get by with half ranks each level)

Take second rogue level at level 8 after getting frenzied zerker I and max out whichever rogue skills you want. You'll have enough to max out DD and put I think 2 points into search.

Feat progression
1: TWF
3: Power Attack
6: Cleave
9: ITWF (after using that Tome)
12: GTWF
15: Imp Crit: Slash (using dwarven axes correct?)
18: your call... toughness maybe

Enhancements: Take Frenzied Berserker requirements then take Constitution and other rage enhancing enhancements.


that's basically it. Rogue skills will be a bit lacking. If you want more rogue skills then drop Con by 2 points and put them into Int. Then use each Barb level to put 2 UMD, 2 DD, 1 Jump and alternate between DD and Search each level. Then at 8 with second rogue level top off DD and Search. And continue alternating with later barb levels.

EDIT: at work so I might have been irritated by stupidity here and not in your post...

[Thuddczar]

Does your mommy dress you in the morning too? sorry for the troll post but ... come on. Are you looking for someone to play the character for you as well? Do you follow online walkthroughs for each quest?

GNORBERT,

Please forgive me for having only played this game for 8 days and not knowing how to build a character.

Your comment about my "mommy dressing me in the morning" and having someone play my character was really out of order.

It never occurred to me that by asking for a build (which I have seen MANY others do in these forums), I'd have someone making comments involving my MOTHER, who incidentally passed away in 2005.

Please, just ignore me. I would be grateful for that, rather than any further insults.

[tc12]

Consider 19 Ranger / 1 Rogue for your Dwarf.

Still 2WF & Evasion. Still awesome DPS. Less HP but you could maintian full rogue skills (search/disable) along with UMD. Rangers have great self-buffs too. If you end up soloing this may be a better option.

Just an option.

[Thuddczar]

Consider 19 Ranger / 1 Rogue for your Dwarf.

Still 2WF & Evasion. Still awesome DPS. Less HP but you could maintian full rogue skills (search/disable) along with UMD. Rangers have great self-buffs too. If you end up soloing this may be a better option.

Just an option.

TC12, thanks - originally, I WAS going to try to do a dwarven 18ranger/2monk. If you've looked at Aranticus' build for the "Floating Leaf", I wanted to do that with a dwarf, but apparently the dex issues with a dwarf and other racial characteristics seemed to argue against a dex fighter. I gave up on that, and resigned myself to making a Barb because everyone told me dwarves made better barbs than rangers.

I can see where UMD (for wands) would be helpful. If I did an 18Barb/2Rogue, couldn't I get the UMD with the 2 levels of Rogue? I was also told that the evasion of rogues would help make the Barb take less damage. I don't know that from personal experience, but it's what I've been told.

I guess my "problem" is that I want to play some sort of TWF Dwarf whose melee dps is as good as a Warforged or Elf's, and that seems to be tough to do. Every time I come across some sort of supposedly great, proven build in these forums, it tends to be for Elves or Warforged. I'm playing a TWF Elf Ranger/monk right now, and while it's great, I really don't like playing the character because I just can't get into playing an elf. (No offense to the elves here - I know most people don't like playing dwarves.)

Anyway, thanks for the help and advice - I am learning.

[tc12]

originally, I WAS going to try to do a dwarven 18ranger/2monk. If you've looked at Aranticus' build for the "Floating Leaf", I wanted to do that with a dwarf, but apparently the dex issues with a dwarf and other racial characteristics seemed to argue against a dex fighter.

Dwarves make great Rangers, they are just STR-based not DEX. And they focus on all-out damage not AC. My Dwarf ranger is currently 16 Ranger / 2 F / 2 rogue, but if/when they release it I'll do a Lesser +3 and make him 19 Ranger / 1 Rogue. I'll make a minor stat tweak too, thinking 17 14 16 12 11 6.

I gave up on that, and resigned myself to making a Barb because everyone told me dwarves made better barbs than rangers.

There's nothing wrong with that either. Take a deep breath and ignore whether Gnorbert got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning -- I think the stats & feats he recommended for you would be great for what you want too.

I can see where UMD (for wands) would be helpful. If I did an 18Barb/2Rogue, couldn't I get the UMD with the 2 levels of Rogue? I was also told that the evasion of rogues would help make the Barb take less damage. I don't know that from personal experience, but it's what I've been told.

At 20th, you can have 23 ranks of UMD skill base. 4 for GH alone and you can UMD most race restricted items out there. That alone will be of more benefit than you realize. As a new player you won't be able to outbid vets on the auction house for your gear, but RR items are often a bit cheaper. (And of course the RR stuff you loot.) You can swap on +6 CHA items and there's an easily obtainable necklace from a level 6-ish quest (The cartouche from Delera's). That's 6 more, taking you to 32. Rogue boost has limited uses but gets you to 34. After that you're looking at raid loot to get to a better to no-fail use of Heal scrolls (UMD: 40).

I mention that as wands stop being very useful in your teen levels. They take a long time if you're down 300 HP, and won't do enough healing for in-melee use. (Besides a DPS character is rarely better off trying to stop and heal themselves mid-battle.)

I guess my "problem" is that I want to play some sort of TWF Dwarf whose melee dps is as good as a Warforged or Elf's, and that seems to be tough to do. Every time I come across some sort of supposedly great, proven build in these forums, it tends to be for Elves or Warforged. I'm playing a TWF Elf Ranger/monk right now, and while it's great, I really don't like playing the character because I just can't get into playing an elf. (No offense to the elves here - I know most people don't like playing dwarves.)

Elves don't really have any DPS advantages over Dwarves. They have racial weapons which have nice crit ranges (rapiers or scimitars.) But Dwarves (and WF) have a +4 CON advantage over them so have that advantage on non-AC builds. WF have one real advantage in DPS, their racial power attack enhancements. Un-enhanced PA is -5 to hit with a 1H weapon / +5 damage. Barbs can increase this (+3/-3 more), and so can WF. For WF Barbs they can do both.

Dwarves get racial damage bonused to Axes, and get to use Dwarven Axes with no feat required. This is very nice on Barbs or Rangers who have limited feats. For an evasion Barb, Dwarves are a good choice over WF in that they get +5 to their saves vs spell, to avoid that area spell damage (AoE). I think they're a better choice than WF or Elf for a Barb X / Rogue 2. Now WF have a ton of racial niceties too, and if you wanted a 2H pure Barb I think WF is better.

Now just to make it interesting for you, there's a third path to a high-DPS Dwarven 2WF character -- F12 / Ranger 6 / Rogue 2. At fighter 12 you get the kensai II enhancement, which is very powerful. Ranger 6 of course gets you the tempest 10% 2wf speed boost. And the / 2 Ro does the same thing it does on the Barb build.

Really any of those 3 paths to Dwarven 2WF butt-kicking will work just fine for what you want. As I think I mentioned earlier, the Ranger will allow you to maintain trap skills and UMD, so if you don't yet have any character with rogue skills maybe that's a factor. If not, the Barb may be better for character diversity given you have a ranger already.

Good luck

TC

[Hanam]

If you have only played this game for 8 days, I highly recommend you do NOT multiclass. Just make a pure THF dwarf Barb. Much easier and MUCH cheaper.

[Thuddczar]

Now just to make it interesting for you, there's a third path to a high-DPS Dwarven 2WF character -- F12 / Ranger 6 / Rogue 2. At fighter 12 you get the kensai II enhancement, which is very powerful. Ranger 6 of course gets you the tempest 10% 2wf speed boost. And the / 2 Ro does the same thing it does on the Barb build.

TC12,

Thanks for your useful and enlightening response here.

I am really, REALLY liking the build you suggested above. Here's why: Building more into the Ranger tree with STR for all out dps and less AC (than my elf) really seems like a win/lose proposition, when I sort've have win/win with the elf who does great DPS AND has great AC.

However... I can see the F12 /Ranger 6/ Rogue 2 build really taking advantage of the dwarf's racial characteristics, offering a bit more ruggedness, and still putting out good DPS in a TWF style.

I am not aiming to disarm traps - when I run quests with a rogue and watch him or her disarming the traps, I am always sitting there thinking "I am SO glad I am not doing this. I wouldn't enjoy this at all." BUT... you mentioned UMD... for wands... now THAT I do care about. I don't want to become a cleric's nightmare (in terms of being a healing mana-sink) and I would greatly appreciate a build which could offer me a bit of autonomy when it comes to keeping myself healed. I realize, as you said, wands begin to peter out in the teens, but I suppose by then I'll have come up with some strategy to deal with that, or, hopefully, I'll be grouping with a healer on a regular basis.

I made a barb last night using Shade's THF template and I'm just not sure I like the whole "rage" dynamic. I have never liked toggles which leave me in a somewhat compromised state after they expire.

So... my questions, if you would indulge me a bit further, are:

What is the F12/Ranger 6/Rogue 2 build called? Does it have some sort of name?

What is its role in end-game?

Are you aware of any builds you would recommend or for which you could provide a link?


Again, thank you for taking time to address my questions - I greatly appreciate it.

[Gnorbert]

GNORBERT,

Please forgive me for having only played this game for 8 days and not knowing how to build a character.

Your comment about my "mommy dressing me in the morning" and having someone play my character was really out of order.

It never occurred to me that by asking for a build (which I have seen MANY others do in these forums), I'd have someone making comments involving my MOTHER, who incidentally passed away in 2005.

Please, just ignore me. I would be grateful for that, rather than any further insults.

You're right, I was a jerk there. My apologies, I just took your post in a different way.

The F12/Rgr6/Rog2 is a very potent build, but it's relatively resource intensive. I have to echo sentiments that a pure class build would be a smart move at first. However, if you're prepared to maybe buy a +2 dex tome to make it work then it will be a very strong front line combatant. You will develop a little slower than some who are backed by rich high level characters for twinking, but it should be a blast to play so you won't mind that much. Little squishier at first if you are taking feats to race towards tempest early since you won't have room for toughness at the start.

Enjoy and good luck.

[Vanshilar]

Well if you already know what you want (dwarf 18 barb / 2 rogue) then I'm not sure what else you're asking everyone for. Part of the fun of the game, I think, is also crafting your own builds and relying on what suits you the best, rather than just copying someone else's build that may be more suitable to their own playing style. For example, many builds I see take toughness very late, whereas I prefer to take toughness very early on to be able to deal with PUGs and as a measure of safety, even though it means that my DPS feats come later. So for you I'd recommend reading up on the methodology people use in making a build, and then try to design your own.

The 12 fighter / 6 ranger / 2 rogue build, well, there's a variant called the "monster" build that uses 2 monk instead of 2 rogue:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=172630

Other than that, it's a fairly popular build. However, if you thought rage was bad, keep in mind that a lot of the DPS is based on fighter haste boosts, which lasts 20 seconds and have an additional 10 second cooldown after the boost ends, so you'll be managing that often during a fight; contrast that with a barbarian rage which, while lasting under a minute initially, will last longer than 2 minutes per use once you're levelled up, so it's much more "fire and forget" than fighter haste boost. Keep in mind that rage early on is very short and has a fatigue "cooldown" period, but later on, it will lengthen as you put some points into extend rage, and also as your con increases through barb enhancements or equipment. Once you get high enough (barbarian level 17), there's no more fatigue, while before then, you can look for a lesser restoration clickie (or lesser restoration potions) to get rid of the fatigue.

Also, heavily multi-classed characters like the monster (as opposed to a 18 barb / 2 rogue build where the rogue is just a splash) are very much more complicated to set up, and easy to get wrong. They're much less forgivable and take more finesse, whereas a straight pure class (like pure barb) is much easier to play. Other than the 19 ranger / 1 rogue suggested earlier, there's also a 18 ranger / 1 rogue / 1 whatever variant, where a popular one (the "exploiter") uses a level of monk as the whatever, and has full trap skills:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=168687

You mentioned you're not looking for trap skills, but don't discount them too much, as they can get you into a lot of groups. Melee DPSers like the fighter, barbarian, or ranger are a dime a dozen, but many times a group will just be waiting around for someone with trap skills to show up (or also, for a healer to show up) so they can do a quest.

[tc12]

Building more into the Ranger tree with STR for all out dps and less AC (than my elf) really seems like a win/lose proposition, when I sort've have win/win with the elf who does great DPS AND has great AC.

If you're elf is DEX based you're likely not doing "great DPS" compared to the other build options being discussed here. Good DPS? Sure. Also note you will need a lot of very good equipment for your elf's AC to be as useful at upper level content as it is now. 60+ AC will probably mean you need to run with combat expertise on for example, and that means you're not using Power Attack as you'd be using instead on the STR-bases builds. Or you'll need to be grinding for several pieces of raid & crafted gear to get a high-enough AC without CE. Meaningful AC is just easy at low-levels (say <12th) which is why your DEX build seems so great now. It will get harder to maintain an effective AC later. Anyway not here to talk your existing build, just wanted to point out some possible flaws about how you're thinking here.

However... I can see the F12 /Ranger 6/ Rogue 2 build really taking advantage of the dwarf's racial characteristics, offering a bit more ruggedness, and still putting out good DPS in a TWF style.

See here you're saying "good DPS" when there's no question any of these STR-based builds will be more DPS than your DEX ranger...

I am not aiming to disarm traps - when I run quests with a rogue and watch him or her disarming the traps, I am always sitting there thinking "I am SO glad I am not doing this. I wouldn't enjoy this at all."

OK so that means no advantage to ranger/rogue if you don't care about the rogue skills other than UMD. Cool. You'll get UMD/Evasion with the /2 rogue on the others.

BUT... you mentioned UMD... for wands... now THAT I do care about. I don't want to become a cleric's nightmare (in terms of being a healing mana-sink) and I would greatly appreciate a build which could offer me a bit of autonomy when it comes to keeping myself healed. I realize, as you said, wands begin to peter out in the teens, but I suppose by then I'll have come up with some strategy to deal with that, or, hopefully, I'll be grouping with a healer on a regular basis.

Wand use will definately help you level up. And getting RR gear is very useful too at all levels.

I made a barb last night using Shade's THF template and I'm just not sure I like the whole "rage" dynamic. I have never liked toggles which leave me in a somewhat compromised state after they expire.

You do know that it takes only a single Lesser Restoration potion to remove that post-Rage fatigue, right? Assuming you went Dwarf. (WF don't suffer fatigue so have no post-rage effect.) Regardless later your rages will last long enough that you'll chain them to be essentially full-time or "perma-rage" as some like to call it. There are lots of classes and effects that are quite useful is short-term "clicky" use. The Kensai's main power is the +8 STR "surge", which is 5x 1-min clickies. Give the Barb more time, it'll grow on you. A 2H character Barb could be good for you as a second character as later you'll only need one greataxe of each type instead of 2. When you start the shroud and go OMG, I need 48 large ingredients to craft 2 weapons for my ranger?! At that moment you'll be glad for a character that only needs a single weapon to compete less for building up your inventory of crafted items.

So... my questions, if you would indulge me a bit further, are:

What is the F12/Ranger 6/Rogue 2 build called? Does it have some sort of name?

What is its role in end-game?

Are you aware of any builds you would recommend or for which you could provide a link?


Again, thank you for taking time to address my questions - I greatly appreciate it.

Role... For all of these your role will be to kill stuff as fast as possible. You take stuff down as fast as possible. You'll have a ton of HP (and Evasion too if you go with the /2 rogue in these builds) to take some hits giving the healer time to get to you. Really a well built and well played DPS character isn't something any healer worries about.

Builds... Impaqt's here is a good start: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=212559
It's Elf and full rogue skill though so needs a few changes for you. As a Dwarf & no trap skills, I'd go something more like 17 15 16 10 11 6 for stats. From his feat list you'd drop force of personality and probably put in Power Attack there instead of later. If you're only looking for wand and RR-item level UMD you could either drop SF: UMD altogether or maybe better take it where shown and swap out later once you're UMD is mid-20s without it. Kind of personal preference what you'd like to take in its place. If you can afford them you could go Khopesh for a bit more damage, though Dwarven axes will be cheaper for you and still fine. Tactical feats are an option here too. A mostly-fighter build has a ton of feats so you can play a couple here. Anyways cross-reference this build with the Monster (which I haven't looked at in a long time) and tweak for your own flavor. It's kinda hard to go wrong here once you have the stats and leveling planned -- on that note Impaqt's went rogue at 1st and 14th, you probably want your second rogue level sooner, like 8-10ish. Can be painful to wait too long for evasion, and on a non-trap build optimizing skill points isn't so much an issue. (Do plan them first though.)

Anyway, like others said I pure class may be better for your for now, and I think you should give the 2H barb a bit more time before moving on to something like this, even if just for simpler equipment needs while you're building your "stable" of characters up.

Good luck.

TC

[tihocan]

Hmm, dwarves make great rangers. If you want to play a dwarf ranger, go for it

[sly_1]

...OMG, I need 48 large ingredients to craft 2 weapons for my ranger?! At that moment you'll be glad for a character that only needs a single weapon to compete less for building up your inventory of crafted items.

This is sage advise. Few noobies realize the vast amount of grinding required to make just 1 tier 3 fully pimped out shroud weapon, making 2 is just insane. Never mind all the other gear you need to grind for to make a viable character!