Weapon advice

[Pikeman]

I have been playing DDO now for about 6 months and I am still working on getting my first character to 20. He is currently at level 15 (paladin) and seems to have hit "the wall". It is not terribly surprising, as i did not know what I was doing when I created him, but I have managed to get by (mostly soloing) until just recently. I am not looking for a bunch of build advice (I think I have figured out most of my problems and am correcting them with other characters), but rather I was hoping someone could give me a clue about weaponry.

I recently switched from sword and board over to THF in an attempt to boost damage (and seeing as I can't seem to manage a useful AC, even with the shield, for current quests anyways). Running around in the Demon Sands my current main weapon seems to be fine (+5 Holy Greataxe with Puregood). I tend to score between 35 and 65 damage per hit with it (these are relatively "normal" hits, not crits or smites). I thought this was pretty good. Then last night I joined a group doing gianthold rares and walk-ups. These guys were amazing. Everything they touched seemed to get paralysed and/or die in a couple hits. In comparison, if left alone with a mob I would whack at it 20 or more times before it would die. I had to leave the party out of sheer embarassment. I have no interest in piking. In the party chat one of the group members said that they do about 120 damage per hit on average. Again, these are all comparable level (at or about level 15). How is this possible? I can only hit those numbers with crits and smites. Even fully buffed I cannot approach those numbers with my "average" hits. Also, in the two walk-up quests that we ran, all of the mobs seemed to have DR for my weapon that I was just barely able to overcome (but still with a few yellow zeros floating by). In short, what am I doing wrong?

[DragonMageT]

Do you have Power Attack ? If not, get it.

Those toons could have been running around with greensteel Mineral 2 weapons (bypassing DR).
Were the others TR'd toons? could explain it.

paralyzed - they could have rapiers and TWF. Paralyzers and Banishers best choice is Rapiers.
I know your THF but you didn't give details about other players.

Those are just a few possible reasons that come to mind, I am sure there are others.

[Pikeman]

Do you have Power Attack ? If not, get it.

Those toons could have been running around with greensteel Mineral 2 weapons (bypassing DR).
Were the others TR'd toons? could explain it.

paralyzed - they could have rapiers and TWF. Paralyzers and Banishers best choice is Rapiers.
I know your THF but you didn't give details about other players.

Those are just a few possible reasons that come to mind, I am sure there are others.

Thanks for the response.

Unfortunately I do not know about the details of these other players' builds/gear. I didn't want to pester them with questions at the time (and also didn't want to call attention to how I had contributed next to nothing during the group - other than a lot of non-productive axe swinging).

By the way, yes, I have Power Attack, but I tend to only use it when running quests that are quite a bit under-level I have difficulty landing hits when it is running sometimes. Even with it running (and when able to hit with it) I am no where close to the damage per hit output that these guys claimed.

I will admit that I have no idea about greensteel weapons. Should I have these by now?

[DragonMageT]

On PA, if you are having troubles hitting, then make sure to get the proper buffs,
like Greater Heroism, Rage, any buff to increase your to hit.

On Greensteel weapons, yes at Level 15 you should start looking into getting them.
Do a google or search the forums, it's been heavily covered (Shroud weapons).

You can also do a search on bypass DR, to find the correct weapon to bypass a monster's DR.
It has also been covered.

A Paladin will not do as much damage as say a Barb / Fighter (in your example).
You only have 28pts to go to 4 stats (Str, Con, Wis, Cha), they only concern themselves with 2 (Str and Con).

And last but not least, you should have asked. Many players don't mind giving tips to others.
Something like "Man, you guys are awesome, how are you doing that?"
You learn and boost their ego's

[Pikeman]

On Greensteel weapons, yes at Level 15 you should start looking into getting them.
Do a google or search the forums, it's been heavily covered (Shroud weapons).

Good to know. I had been considering greensteel as elite/endgame gear that the level 20's grind for. Hadn't considered that it would be common or expected at 14/15.

Thanks

[nbennet]

Paladins are ahead of the other melee in terms of grinding out weaponry to bypass DR because they have the Holy Sword spell:
http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Spell:Holy_Sword

This spell should take care of many of your DR bypassing needs until your are able to grind out a Greensteel item (Minerall II).

Also, since a lot of the endgame focuses on fighting Evil Outsiders, the Knight of the Chalice prestige enhancements can be very useful.