Dwarf Paladin - questions, observations, etc etc

[Bombfish]

First of all, erhm hi. I come to this game with little-to-no experience with PnP D&D, though I do find the concept of the d20 system to be elegant and have previously enjoyed games that implement it (Baldur's Gate on PS2, ie).

I also say these things not having much awareness of what the 'metagame' really looks like, that is to say, I don't really know what to prepare for or expect out of the quests ahead of me (lv 8). Having thumbed through the "Revisiting DDO Paths" thread a few dozen times over the last like 2 months, I have a passing familiarity with the suggested growth pattern for a number of the pre-built characters but really have not seen or fully understood the nature of people's own creations, especially when they get into strange multi-classing that my noob brain finds strangely unintuitive (splashing Monk in a Paladin build when the class is already spread out across CHA, STR and CON? whaa?)

So yeah, my first toon is a Dwarf Paladin, I realize with the Charisma deficit it's sort of gimped from day 1 but what can I say, it was my first guy :/ Anyway, I've been trying to figure out a few things..

Greatsword or Great-axe? Seems to me that even with points in Dwarven Axe Damage/Attack, Greatswords are just better if you're going THF (which I am). Maybe it's just because I don't have all the ranks of it yet and I really try to defer to hard math over anecdotal observation. Yet I feel I have more success when swinging a Greatsword around, and if I untrain my Dwarven Axe Attack/Damage enhancements I can use those 4 points towards.. other...stuff... hrm yeah.

@ Prestige and Capstone - they all seem so bloody narrow. Right now I'm rocking Hunter of the Dead as it makes my LoH better and jives pretty well with the Necro 1 pack I picked up, but I've been told that it's common to take this PrE line at lower levels (i'm lv 8 BTW) and then eschew it for different things later on. Additionally, Capstone seems like it just makes you better at being a narrowly-focused melee character. I'm hesitant to multi-class needlessly, but just how much does one lose by forfeiting Capstone? Also, are there suggested builds that do well by ignoring these seemingly narrow PrE's altogether??

People that spend a feat on Khopesh proficiency - isn't Pally pretty feat starved already, as it has a billion Melee feats to try and have anyway? I see that Khopeshes have a high crit rate, does that really make up for spending a feat when you could already just use great- or one-handed swords?

Kind of same question as above, but on the subject of multiple Toughness feats. Of all the classes in the game that would take several Toughness feats, a class with a quick and easy almost-full-heal doesn't seem like one to burn a feat in this way. How often does Paladin really want to throw feats at Toughness when it can already self-heal like a champ?

[Dylvish]

First of all, erhm hi. I come to this game with little-to-no experience with PnP D&D, though I do find the concept of the d20 system to be elegant and have previously enjoyed games that implement it (Baldur's Gate on PS2, ie).

I also say these things not having much awareness of what the 'metagame' really looks like, that is to say, I don't really know what to prepare for or expect out of the quests ahead of me (lv 8). Having thumbed through the "Revisiting DDO Paths" thread a few dozen times over the last like 2 months, I have a passing familiarity with the suggested growth pattern for a number of the pre-built characters but really have not seen or fully understood the nature of people's own creations, especially when they get into strange multi-classing that my noob brain finds strangely unintuitive (splashing Monk in a Paladin build when the class is already spread out across CHA, STR and CON? whaa?)

Welcome to DDO!
First thing to keep in mind is when playing an MMO styled (even one as instance based as ddo), the game system will never translate well from a turn based PnP type game, so changes have to be made for playability. So dont take your lack of PnP experience to mean much here.
As to splashes / multi-classing, you will se a ton of them at these forums. Keep in mind that a great deal of the players posting them on these forums (but not nearly all) are veterans of the game, and have a heavy working knowledge of the synergies of the classes. More importantly, many of them also have access to advanced gear (from their main characters, or their chars being on 2nd-3rd time around), which makes these particular builds work (they can work without it, but with much more difficulty).
*special note: The monk splash you are noting -usually 2 monk- is for 3 things usually. 1) Evasion - an unfortunately huge thing to have in this game at the higher levels in particular. 2) Extra feat - Paladins are a feat starved class. 3) Wis bonus to AC - Paladins, even with wisdom being used as a dump stat, need it at 14 minimum later on for their spells, why not get a little AC bonus while your at it. There is a lot of synergy between the two classes.

So yeah, my first toon is a Dwarf Paladin, I realize with the Charisma deficit it's sort of gimped from day 1 but what can I say, it was my first guy :/ Anyway, I've been trying to figure out a few things..

Don't fret, it may not be as gimped as you think. Even with a low Cha, dwarves as a race are pretty forgiving to the new player, since they are so durable, and come ready for decent strength.

Greatsword or Great-axe? Seems to me that even with points in Dwarven Axe Damage/Attack, Greatswords are just better if you're going THF (which I am). Maybe it's just because I don't have all the ranks of it yet and I really try to defer to hard math over anecdotal observation. Yet I feel I have more success when swinging a Greatsword around, and if I untrain my Dwarven Axe Attack/Damage enhancements I can use those 4 points towards.. other...stuff... hrm yeah.

A n advantage you have here is, (other than the enhancements), you can swing axe or sword equally, they even share the same feats (weap focus: slashing, imp crit: slashing). Great Swords are the 'middle ground' of the great blades. They do not have the Threat Range of Falchions (falchions: 18-20, Great Swords: 19-20), and they do not have the Critical Multiplier of Great Axes (Great Axe: x3, Great Swords: x2). Its average damage is the highest however (1 more than GA, and 2 more than Falch), which can help a bit at low levels.
The reason Dwarven players tend to start favoring Great Axes, in particular once they get Improved Critical: Slashing (which makes them crit on 19-20 instead of 20 only), is because of the racial enhancements. Having +2 to hit, and +2 damage on every swing is a bigger bonus than you may thing, especially on paladins, who tend to have a harder time hitting things later in the game.
This bonus also works with your Dwarven Axes (one of the best 1handed weapons in game in a dwarf's hands) when you shield up or dual wield.

@ Prestige and Capstone - they all seem so bloody narrow. Right now I'm rocking Hunter of the Dead as it makes my LoH better and jives pretty well with the Necro 1 pack I picked up, but I've been told that it's common to take this PrE line at lower levels (i'm lv 8 BTW) and then eschew it for different things later on. Additionally, Capstone seems like it just makes you better at being a narrowly-focused melee character. I'm hesitant to multi-class needlessly, but just how much does one lose by forfeiting Capstone? Also, are there suggested builds that do well by ignoring these seemingly narrow PrE's altogether??

Never ignore a PRE if you can avoid it. They usually give bonuses on top of enhancements and feats that you already (with exceptions of course) pick up. HotD, for example, at level 12, if you pick up the 2nd tier of it, gives you immunity to Level Drains. The first tier gives you free Ghost Touch on everything you swing, and of course, the bonus to being healed. (HotD, btw, is a great spec to have up through usually 14ish, where its not terrible, but not as good since you fight less undead after that.) Chalice spec gives you free damage to all evil outsiders, just for having it!
You bring up being a 'narrowly-focused melee character'. Unfortunately, that is the game. You will never been great at ranged and melee. This game favors min/maxing, no matter how badly some of us dislike the fact. As a paladin, you will never be much of a ranged char, but you will be good at melee, and pretty damned hard to kill. The capstone does give some very nice things. If you decide to splash say, 2 levels of monk, it also gives some very nice things. You can start a thread war over which is better, and both sides will have very strong arguments. It comes down to playstyle and personal choice, you have to figure out yours.

People that spend a feat on Khopesh proficiency - isn't Pally pretty feat starved already, as it has a billion Melee feats to try and have anyway? I see that Khopeshes have a high crit rate, does that really make up for spending a feat when you could already just use great- or one-handed swords?

Ah, the Kopesh. *chuckle*
Kopeshes are currently the hands down undisputed king of min/maxing 1handed weapons. It has both a good Threat Range (crit on 19-20), and a high Crit Range (x3 multiplier). When you start factoring in feats later on, nothing touches it (without bonuses, more on that following) on single targets. Racial bonuses can make a couple of the weapons close (elves with Scimitars, Drow with Rapiers). The only arguably tied or better weapon (much debating and number throwing abounds) currently in game is the Dwarven War axe, and hey, you get the feat for that free!!.
When you factor in that racial enhancment you talked about above, a Dwarven War Axe in your hands will do 3-13 damage per hit, and be +2 to hit. Your Threat Range will not be so great though (on 20, x3 multiplier). Dwarven Axes currently get full bonuses from the Two Handed Fighting feats IF you are only using one in 1 hand, or are using axe and shield (it does glancing blows, for aoe damage).

Kind of same question as above, but on the subject of multiple Toughness feats. Of all the classes in the game that would take several Toughness feats, a class with a quick and easy almost-full-heal doesn't seem like one to burn a feat in this way. How often does Paladin really want to throw feats at Toughness when it can already self-heal like a champ?

Golden Rule: You can never. Ever. Have too much health.
That being said, Paladins as a class are feat starved, so most only wind up taking 1 toughness feat, although they may want more.


Welcome to the brotherhood of smite.

[karl_k0ch]

Ah, the Kopesh. *chuckle*
Kopeshes are currently the hands down undisputed king of min/maxing 1handed weapons. It has both a good Threat Range (crit on 19-20), and a high Crit Range (x3 multiplier). When you start factoring in feats later on, nothing touches it (without bonuses, more on that following) on single targets. Racial bonuses can make a couple of the weapons close (elves with Scimitars, Drow with Rapiers). The only arguably tied or better weapon (much debating and number throwing abounds) currently in game is the Dwarven War axe, and hey, you get the feat for that free!!.
When you factor in that racial enhancment you talked about above, a Dwarven War Axe in your hands will do 3-13 damage per hit, and be +2 to hit. Your crit range will not be so great though (on 20, x3 multiplier). Dwarven Axes currently get full bonuses from the Two Handed Fighting feats IF you are only using one in 1 hand, or are using axe and shield (it does glancing blows, for aoe damage).

fixed that for you.
DA has the same crit multiplier as a Khophesh (which is good for the Smites, especially in autocrit situations), but a smaller crit range.

[Dylvish]

fixed that for you.
DA has the same crit multiplier as a Khophesh (which is good for the Smites, especially in autocrit situations), but a smaller crit range.

Woops, thx, I hit the wrong key. I'll go back and correct that now.

[Bombfish]

Welcome to DDO!
The reason Dwarven players tend to start favoring Great Axes, in particular once they get Improved Critical: Slashing (which makes them crit on 19-20 instead of 20 only), is because of the racial enhancements. Having +2 to hit, and +2 damage on every swing is a bigger bonus than you may thing, especially on paladins, who tend to have a harder time hitting things later in the game.
This bonus also works with your Dwarven Axes (one of the best 1handed weapons in game in a dwarf's hands) when you shield up or dual wield.

Mmm, ok. Now knowing that I probably favor the Greatsword because of my character's level, I think I'll swing them for a while longer until I can get the full +2/+2 from all levels of Dwarven Axe Damage/Attack, in the mean time putting those points into extra Lay on Hands suits my preference.

You bring up being a 'narrowly-focused melee character'. Unfortunately, that is the game. You will never been great at ranged and melee. This game favors min/maxing, no matter how badly some of us dislike the fact. As a paladin, you will never be much of a ranged char, but you will be good at melee, and pretty damned hard to kill.

Yeah, I guess what I mean to say here is, none of the Paladin's PrE's seem to be as widely applicable as many of the other PrEs. Rogue Assassin, Frenzied Berserker, Arcane Archer etc... just seem to have a wider range of times when it really matters a ****. Versus Paladin's most common line of Prestige, to deal extra damage to Evil Outsiders. That's why I like HotD; if I'm being a good Paladin I'm pulling aggro and probably soaking up some damages. Lay on Hands fixes damages. HotD makes Lay on Hands (for that matter, all positive energies) heal for that much more, which means I can eat up more damages. I like healing from damages, thus I take HotD, heh. If P then Q...

Golden Rule: You can never. Ever. Have too much health.
That being said, Paladins as a class are feat starved, so most only wind up taking 1 toughness feat, although they may want more.

Yeah, I sort of figured that LoH was reason enough to ignore stacking up the Toughnesses. Although upon thinking about it I now fear Humans that multiclass for extra feats, I wonder what the record is for Stupidest Amount of Hit Points...

Welcome to the brotherhood of smite.

Aye, thx

[Dylvish]

Yeah, I sort of figured that LoH was reason enough to ignore stacking up the Toughnesses. Although upon thinking about it I now fear Humans that multiclass for extra feats, I wonder what the record is for Stupidest Amount of Hit Points...

Aye, thx

I think you will find that Dwarves and WF melee chars will hold the records for most HPs on players that decide they want to stack it up due to their racial enhancements (both get Racial toughness IV, and 2 constitution enhancments) on top of their already high starting con.

[Sani_Medicor]

I've become a huge fan of dwarven axes, because they're cheap and easy to find! The most I've payed for any of my dwarven axes is 30kpp. I found TWO of each of these for my level 12 twf dwarven bard...

+5 Shocking Burst
+1 Vorpal of Pure Good
+1 Paralyzing of Pure Good
+5 Vicious of Pure Good
+4 Metalline of Pure Good

Try to do that with khopesh, greataxes, greatswords, or any other popular weapon.

[Bombfish]

I've become a huge fan of dwarven axes, because they're cheap and easy to find! The most I've payed for any of my dwarven axes is 30kpp. I found TWO of each of these for my level 12 twf dwarven bard...

+5 Shocking Burst
+1 Vorpal of Pure Good
+1 Paralyzing of Pure Good
+5 Vicious of Pure Good
+4 Metalline of Pure Good

Try to do that with khopesh, greataxes, greatswords, or any other popular weapon.

Yeah, I like bargain hunting. It seems I'm as lousy with money in-game as I am in real life

Right now I'm doing my best to save up a bit and I've been doing lots of PUGs so I'm really just using whatever awesome thing I pull. +2 Shocking Burst Falchion? Sure, I'll put it right next to my +2 Everbright True Law Kukri, hah. Once I'm ina better financial position I think I'll go back to the axes and then take the right enhancements - although this begs another question doesn't it?

If a character has a certain weapon proficiency - in this case Dwarven Axes - is it always going to be better for that character to stick to those? Barring the odd circumstance of like, swinging DAs at skeletons, obviously you want to switch weapons there. But is there some general guideline of a player's weapon diversity? Right now I have a bunch of equipment that are kind of all over the map; falchions, greatswords, greataxes, kukris etc... I keep them for their enchantments obviously, the Everbright Kukri is for smushing acid things, Flaming Burst greatsword demolishes trolls, etc... is this pretty common, or does "The Good Player" stick to their class/race proficient weapons?

[Rusty_Can]

If a character has a certain weapon proficiency - in this case Dwarven Axes - is it always going to be better for that character to stick to those?

As a rule of thumb, dwarves perform better with axes (Greataxes, Dwarven Axes, Battleaxes and so on). This generally means Greataxes if your character is THF, Dwarven Axes if your character is TWF or S&B; anyway, this doesn't mean you cannot wield something else, if the need arises.

People stick with "racial" weapons because they plan to craft greensteel weapons; since some of those require quite a lot of time and resources, people tend to stick with their best option. As a side note, base damage for greensteel DA is 2d8 ^^.

Last but not least, some epic foes have very high AC and that +2 racial bonus to attack rolls can help.

[Bombfish]

Okay heh, I hope this isnt considered thread necromancy, it's still on the first page! I don't like opening a vajillion new threads if I don't have to, so yeah.

Been swinging the Falchion way more than the axes lately. They jive with the mechanics of the Paladin, if not the Dwarf. I suppose this is probably rather unsynergistic - Paladins play best with things that crit a lot while Dwarven weapons of choice have a relatively low threat range and Paladin doesn't directly address that like, say, Barbarian does. So if I were a Magic: The Gathering player (which I am), my inner Spike is a little peeved at me for rolling a Dwarf Paladin, heh. It's a minor issue for me, I'll get over it. However I suspect my eventual TR will see a change of some sort.

So here's a question along a similar vein. Sword and board, ***. I feel like I'm doing it weird every time I switch to S&B, and a lot of the time I just feel hindered by even doing it. Doesn't matter what I'm swinging around, Dwarven Axe or Scimitar or anything; I don't think the drop in DPS is worth the AC from the shield. Maybe my equipment sucks, or maybe I need to be looking at enhancements that encourage S&B? Does a player usually decide to stick to one mode of attack and build the character around that? I really don't think I'm getting much out of going one-handed.

[Dylvish]

Heya Bombfish,

Currently the way the game is balanced, no, as a rule players dont design characters (at least in later levels) to do a whole lot with 1handers for primary, other than maybe tank, which takes active shield blocking anyway.

The key for your build as a dwarf is, to go with Two Handed Fighting feats. You use a big 2hander (falchion, Mauls for DR/blunt mobs, later on axe, and I would STRONGLY recommend running Delaras tomb until you get the Carnifex http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Weapon:Carnifex for your dwarven bonus fun. with the 19-20 base crit range and Keen, you are getting crits on 17-20 with a X3 multiplier!!).

The synergy comes into play when you decide to break out the shield and hunker down with your back against the wall with 8 mobs around the front of you crowding to reach you. The THF feats (in particular in the upcoming U7 patch) give full bonus to that Darven Axe your slinging around, which gets glancing blows just like the big 2handers. So with full feats you will be doing 50% of weapon damage and 9% chance to proc any effects on all the glancing blows. Your a short and stocky ghetto-blade barrier.

Some day (many of us are hoping) they may make a pass at S&B, and update it to give more reasons for people to have shields while melee, but currently there just arent many other than at times the bonus ac and / or DR when active blocking.

[Bombfish]

Are you sure Improved Crit stacks with Keen?? It doesn't show up as such when I look at my own weaponry, I have a Keen Greatsword of Some Good and IIRC it didn't seem to stack.



Also - where oh where are the release notes for Update 7?? People keep quoting them and I'd really like to see jus what's coming, I don't know where to find a comprehensive list of changes

[Shishizaru]

Are you sure Improved Crit stacks with Keen?? It doesn't show up as such when I look at my own weaponry, I have a Keen Greatsword of Some Good and IIRC it didn't seem to stack.



Also - where oh where are the release notes for Update 7?? People keep quoting them and I'd really like to see jus what's coming, I don't know where to find a comprehensive list of changes

Improved Crit and Keen do not stack. (If you need sources and whatnot : http://ddowiki.com/index.php?title=Improved_Critical&)
Carniflex is naturally a 19-20 threat range. Add on keen and it becomes 17-20.


Not sure if these are up to date, but some notes on Update 7 can be found here:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=206066

[Dylvish]

Are you sure Improved Crit stacks with Keen?? It doesn't show up as such when I look at my own weaponry, I have a Keen Greatsword of Some Good and IIRC it didn't seem to stack.



Also - where oh where are the release notes for Update 7?? People keep quoting them and I'd really like to see jus what's coming, I don't know where to find a comprehensive list of changes

As Shiz said above, Imp crit does not stack with Keen. Carnifex however, is unique in that it has a 19-20 crit range to start, so with keen it becomes 17-20 (this does not show in the weapon description, but if you equip it, the stats will show as 17-20 on your character sheet because you will then have the feat that is granted by equipping the weapon active.

U7 patch notes:

http://ddocast.com/2010/09/22/update...-lammania.aspx