DDO Party of 3 - Best characters to use?

[CrypticAzn]

There's 3 of us who are constantly playing DDO together as a party, only we haven't made it past lvl3 together because we get our butts handed to us in quite a few quests (and in the wilderness), even with 2 of us bringing in hirelings and the 3rd bringing in a summoned monster.

Our party consists of a rogue/monk, fighter WF, and drow cleric, with hirelings of a cleric, wizard (or sorcerer), and/or barbaric types. Since there's no rogue hirelings in-game (other than the pricey DDO store ones), we figured one of us has to have a bit of rogue. In order to survive, we definitely need someone with strong healing. And in order to make it through a crowd of bad guys, we need muscle.

So for the umpteenth time we're considering starting over with new characters, and right now we've decided that having multiclassed characters could be part of what's hurting our party (someone's gotta disable traps)... and having a healbot-only drow cleric who can't defend themselves nor do much in a fight (while the other 2 are in battle) is also hurting us. So right now we're thinking that there's no way around it -- we need a pure rogue and we need a battle cleric. The 3rd person will have to be some type of fighter or barbarian, "the muscle" of the group, if you will, although we don't expect them to go at it alone, especially if the cleric can go on the offensive. (Right now getting our cleric to go defensive is hard enough.)

My question is -- Do you have any recommendations as to what race/class/roles/feats/skills a party of 3 should consider, so that we can actually take on quests and progress all the way to the last lvl of DDO? We were thinking of making a dwarf battle cleric as one of the characters, but not sure if that would be the best. Halflings with a heal dragonmark is quite enticing, but then leaves the cleric a bit on the weak side for defensive or offensive purposes, I think. WF have nice immunities but their WIS sucks so not sure about making a WF cleric... Any ideas on what 3 characters we should create?

[bryanmeerkat]

I am thinking its your builds/playstyle more than anything else thats causing problems .

But for what its worth

Wiz/Rogue 18/2 WF
Cleric 20 Human
Melee DPS 20 prob - half orc

or wiz/rogue warforged
wiz x2 warforged

Your cleric should not be nannyboting though , high wis build should be able to do crowd control pretty nicely

[katana_one]

Wiz/Rogue 18/2 WF
Cleric 20 Human
Melee DPS 20 prob

I was thinking something along these lines, as well. You only need a Rogue splash to be able to take care of traps and locks for the majority of the game.

For what it's worth, I have a static group that is now down to 3 players (other 3 had to drop for one reason or another). We're down to a pure Rogue, a pure Fighter, and a pure Cleric, and we're doing okay at level 8 running content as close to level as we can. What we miss most is the arcane firepower. If the pure Rogue had instead been rolled as a Wiz/Rog, we would have everything covered.

[ArloOne]

I would go all warforged.

1- Wizard/Rogue
1- Barbarian
1- Sorcerer

My wife and I have 2-manned just about every quest you can think of with the wiz/rog and barbarian.

Basically, Keep your barbarian repaired, little crowd control here and there. And excellent trapping.

Just my 37 cents.

Good luck and have fun!

[DeathsApprentice]

Since you have warforged unlocked, I would recommend at least one of you to be a WF wizard rogue.
Take the rogue as the first level (for the skill points) and take advantage of your high intelligence to keep search, open lock and disable device maxed (even though they're cross classed).
Take the second rogue level at about level 9, pump a lot of skill points into UMD (so you become able to use divine scrolls). You also gain evasion and you can choose a feat. That feat should then be 'insightful reflexes' which lets you add you int-modifier to you reflex saves. Level the rest of the way as a wizard.

However, if you're struggling to beat the low level quests, the problem may very well be something else than your builds.
The Korthos and harbor quests are pretty easy. I suggest you run the Korthos quests a couple of times, until you get a better 'feel' for the game. And they give decent starter loot. (Make sure to get the goggles of insight, they rock at lower levels. The Anger's Step set is also pretty good)

PS: At low levels the best way a WF wizard is able to contribute to a party is Master's Touch, Bull's Strength, a repair spell and a Greataxe. Your SP total is too low to cast your way through a dungeon.

[Seihan]

I play with a static 3 man team several times each week and we had the same concerns in filling out the class/roles of such a lean team. We run each quest at lvl on Normal mode and if that doesn't get us to the next lvl we go back and repeat our favorite ones on Hardmode. We've had success so far with this line up...

THF Paladin
Ranger DPS/Traps (splashing rogue and fighter)
Sorceror DPS/cc

We're only lvl 7 now, so time will tell if this line up has staying power in higher levels. We tried a team with a cleric first but felt we needed more dps from each memebr so we switched the healing role to Paladin. The Paladin healing abilities along with heal wands has been good enough so far. The Ranger can easily handle all traps and can heal with no-fail wands too. We chose Sorc over Wiz for the deeper spell point pool; when we tried running with a Wiz, running out of mana too fast was an issue.

I dunno if this is good advice or not, but it's what we're doing. The team covers all roles and has certainly been fun for us to play. Good luck with yours^^

[CrypticAzn]

We're noobs at the DDO thing, so yeah - I'm sure our builds/playstyle has a big part as to our butt-whooping capabilities. We find playing on "normal" to be too easy most of the time, but playing on "hard" is really getting us killed.

One of us is a pen-and-paper RPGer and long-time gamer, so he prefers completing quests in full, not just ransacking the place. He's our rogue/monk, although he's been a rogue/other class in the past because we really need a trap person. His disable traps is at +11 I believe (base INT was 16 when we started at lvl1), and he's still breaking rather than disabling traps 80% of the time... so then we're trying to get through it anyway, or find another way around, and we end up dying anyway.

The other player's is the opposite; he's reckless and likes to storm through and kick butt and take all the loot! He's our WF who likes playing as a fighter or barbarian, or anything that he deems "invincible". LOL

The last one is moi -- the only chica in the group, and I'm probably the noob of the group, the weakest link. I'm more of a slow, offline player -- like Guild2, VTMB, Oblivion, and yes TS3 too... but it's been fun playing DDO with the guys, at least, until they get frustrated from dying. ;-)
I'm pretty flexible to do whatever role the other 2 need (which was a cleric), but I am a mix of the 2's style -- sometimes I try to get in on the action & help out cuz I hate seeing my party struggle, other times -- especially when they aren't watching their HP and I'm less than 1/2 in mine, I find a safe spot to stand in so I can start healing them like crazy.


Our top 3 killers in DDO have been big crowds (like the WF mercenaries), having a dead/incapacitated cleric who has no STR to fight but tries to anyway, traps that often fail to disable, and of course, having hirelings that "attract attention" from bad guys, or hirelings who run through traps and into bad-guy crowds alone because we forget to control/command them. ;-)

[Dartwick]

Well I would plan on running with 3 hirelings - 2 of the hirelings being clerics(2 cleric NPCs works rather well in my experience on most quests.) and one being a barb.

For your toons I would do 1 sorc or wiz, 1 barb or kensai type and one rogue/fighter split type.
You can easily get improved evasion max search max traps and max diable with 13 rogue.

Let the 2 melees control the the healers and lets the caster control the hireling barb. Once you are used to the hirelings you should be able a rather competent group.

[stoerm]

You could optimize but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the class or race selection you have there.

I'd suggest it's more to do with builds, equipment and play style. I started off with a Defender of Syberys prebuilt cleric and he was brilliant in the lower levels. Not knowing any details, I'll hazard to point out possible problem areas (sorry if this is patronizing):

- Cleric and Monk/rogue are not survivable and draw too much aggro
- Monk is min-maxed (neglected Wis and has low AC)
- Fighter doesn't benefit enough from divine heals and cannot keep aggro
- General aggro management: draw too many monsters at a time
- Not self sufficient enough

Ways to improve:

- Cleric needs to beef up with higher Con & AC. A cleric should help in melee at low levels as you say, but this requires survivability.
- Monk/rogue and cleric should not be the first into battle! Let the fighter get aggro. Note: neither monk nor rogue are front like battle classes!
- Fighter should use and invest in Intimidate skill & items
- Monk/rogue and cleric conversely can use Diplomacy
- WF should get healer's friend I
- All should buy heal/repair, buff and remove condition X potions
- Get one each of the bracers from Cannith Crystal. Cast Aid, then select spear bane or axe bane according to the fight.

If you decide to reroll, good options include a dwarven cleric or a tough FvS (eg. WF) for a healing. Don't get a barbarian for a small group. Wiz, sorc or bard are great for crowd control. Charm = easy button for Misery's Peak. My favorite is WF wizard, easy to build: maximize Int and Con, put rest in Str. At lowest levels use the Master's Touch and get Molin's Axe from Collaborator.

Lastly, you don't *have* to disable any traps.

[stoerm]

A few comments based on your last message:

- 16 Int on a monk/rogue means he has barely any points left for the most important monk stats: Dex, Wis and Con.
- Big crowds require crowd control: Intimidate, stun, charm, fascinate, command, hold monster etc. Note that charm and fascinate are the only ones in that list your group can't get.
- You can make big crowds smaller: approach slowly and try to draw a few at a time. The rogue can invest in Bluff.
- If your invincible fighter draws too many monsters tell him to calm down.
- Conserve your spell points as a cleric. They don't need to have full bars, just maybe 50-75%. Tell them to top up with potions if they want full bars.

[AMDarkwolf]

also send the rog over to the ah, tell him to find the best +Search, disable, spot goggles he can find(also shows up on rings, but at lv 1-7 or so, the goggles are very cheap, can prob get all 3 for 1k plat max) Also there is NO EXCUSE to ever not have his trap skills maxed. I don't care what he says, he has NO excuse(LOL Lecturing) You can sneak around with -10 in move silent and hide in shadows if you know how, watch what the mobs do, etc. So no point investing in these unless he wants to go assassin... which he does not since he has monk splash in there.(Also did he go rog first level or splash it later? if not, reroll, will be worth it for the extra points)

Cleric(you) do NOT go 'battle cleric' because thats a dead end road for the non-filthy rich well geared and able to tweek players. Stay a caster, right now its lame land cuz u just don't have the sp and skills to make it work, but there are some. A well placed soundburst can save your group, as can a command(later greater command, comet fall, etc will make it very fun for you.. just don't forget to toss out a cure when needed ) Focus on wis and con, and get a fair bit of str so u can carry your junk/armor without being burdened. Cha is useful as well, although prob not quite as important as wis(your casting stat, what mobs will use to 'resist' your spells, the higher, the less chance they will resist) and con(your health.more Health, longer u stay alive, longer u stay alive, more cures u can toss out before you need one yourself)

The fighter.. idk with this one, hard to say without knowing what he is, but a str/con build using a big axe/sword would do very well. Can swap to shield when he wants to intim(not needed, only shield when its too many mobs to handle at once, rest of time can swing his big weapon around happily killing stuff before it hurts him) With a str/con build, should have no problems with hp.


For all of you: Find yourselves the best + stat items for : Con(all of you) dex(rog) str(all of you, mostly fighter) wis(you, the cleric, and maybe the rog since he splashed rog) - Don't buy the 'best' u can, but make sure your stats are even (so if u got 15 wis currently, get yourself a +1 or +3 item, a +2 item won't do more for you than a +1 will) And also try to find the best false life item you can wear.

Again: For all of you. Stock up on potions. Resists potions, +stat potions(for the stats that are not as 'important' such as int, dex, etc. Use as needed when rog needs to disarm/search, etc) You can find these in center of market, and later(when your above 7) in the 12 tower. Heroism, resist, stats, neut poison, remove blindness, etc make sure you all have 15-20 of these on you at all times. Try to also have the fighter and rog carry 50+ cure pots(to lessen your cost in sp)

I hope this helps a little, and i also hope u stick with the game and i get to see you running epics somday. Well.. if they make epics fun

[Spiderwight]

Wiz/Rog, Cleric and Paladin - all can heal (via UMD in the Wiz/Rogue's case), the cleric can be a reasonably melee DPS or offensive caster without gimping their ability to heal, and the Paladin does most of the hitting.

Wiz/Rogue, Sorc and Barbarian if you're all Warforged. The Barb can't heal, but both of the others can Repair merrily away. (WF synergise better with Barb than Paladin.)

Hirelings do let you fill in the blanks very easily, though. Don't feel you have to build a perfect team if you'd enjoy playing something other than what the perfect team recipe needs.

[Tumarek]

Wiz/rogue maybe dwarf / WF -> traps and Arcance DPS, CC, summons
Battlecleric/fvs horc -> Meele DPS and Healing, summons, buffing
Fighter/barb Bard human -> Meele DPS and CC and healing and buffing and...

[Lord_WC]

3x WF wiz/sorc.

Makes quests go pretty fast. Splitting up is not an issue, everyone can heal everyone, traps are avoidable. Just make sure you agree on who will be throwing the fws

[Dendrix]

Try a Halfling only party. You ALL agree to take the halfling dragon marks at 1st, 6th and 12th level. These give you all a bunch of healing power that should be enough for quests.
You all buy some extra uses of your dragon marks with your enhancements.

Then you all play whatever classes you each want.

Con 14 as a minimum on all characters before you assign other statistics.
Aim for 16's on one or two other primary statistics (18's cost too many points and force too many other compromises. Pushing a 16 to an 18 costs 6 points, that could push an 8 to a 14 instead)
Cha 8, Dex 8 and Wis 8 are fine. Really. Honestly. Unless you have a need for such statistics based on your class dump stat them.
Don't neglect strength - even on a caster, ray of enfeeblement really punishes you and it's used all the way throughout the game.

If one of you is an arcane, Masters Touch, is a spell that grants proficiency in a held weapon, like a greataxe.

All of this will give you a "feel" for DDO what is and what isn't necessary, play these characters until you are 8-12th level, and now you know what it's all about. Retire them, and start up new proper characters, or use lesser reincarnates and fix build problems.

Loot every box and barrel you come across, drink the potions you find and use them to help you succeed in your missions.

[Missing_Minds]

Way back in the day, before you could buy resist 20 pots, stone skin wands, hirelings, there was no dungeon scaling or alerts, and the cap was 10, there was no AH, and the enhancment system was not what we have now....

Aka game was much harder back then.... We didn't have the flowing plat that we have now, let alone 10k plat to unlock your hole WAS an accomplishment.

A party of a gimped drow fighter (AC was not the best, let alone HP were not as high as they could have been.), rogue, and bard trioed everything but von 5/6, titan (both ending parts), tempest spine, and xoriat cipher. normal/hard/elite.

Given everything we have now... should be a cake walk where the biggest issue is elemental resists.

-------------------------------------

rogue/monk, fighter WF, and drow cleric

Your party shouldn't have any issues, honestly, other than healing.

The r/m needs to concentrate on trap skills. All should get heavy fort asap. The cleric being a heal bot should have high wisdom which also means strong crowd control spells. USE them.

WF should top self off with pots and the r/m should be UMDing repair wands to help. WF also needs to learn to intimidate so that the r/m can get sneak attack a lot. WF getting speced for tactics such as trip and stunning blow will also help. R/M needs to have trip hot barred as well. They will fail their checks.

Learn tactics, and learn how each other plays. Work as a team and you shouldn't have too many issues. Honestly, I'd expect your trio to have less issues than what my trio did. Given what you've posted so far, team work sounds like your biggest issue unless your r/m didn't spec for traps at all. Then, yeah.. you are toast. Multi classing smartly there won't hurt that character too much at all.

[SplitCrow]

I've been duoing with a friend of mine. 2 Wizards - 1 clr (DVs) and 1 tank hireling and we each summon pets. Once we hit level 6 we also had a skellie pet to summon (Pale Master enhancement). 2 of us, 8 fighters on our side. Often we swap out the tank hireling for a bard if the bard we can buy at that level has good group buffs. This will get more powerful as we level higher (lvl 12, in particular), but I don't want to side-track your discussion.

We're running quests at-level right now and having no trouble, except red/purple names (VoN 3 while level 9 was nuts with the Marut, unexpected magical barriers (trapping hirelings and pets out) and the named beholder but we did it...) and when our pets get stupid (10% of the time).

Howevers:
We are 32 point builds which makes it easier.
We've been playing for a while and know the spell combinations that succeed.
We are only 2 with 2 hirelings so the dungeons scale to 4-people. I think your team doesn't benefit from scaling as with 3 people and 3 hirelings the dungeon would scale to 6.


Other ideas:
-Don't summon hirelings for each of you. Maybe just whoever has the least to do in combat could use a hireling - this means the dungeon scales to 4 people instead of 5 (or 6 if all of you used hirelings).

-While a splash or rogue is excellent for getting through traps and maximizing dungeon/loot exploration, jump, speed and feather fall will get you through 50% of the traps. The other 50% of the traps...well, cross your fingers and run like heck!

-Get lots of clickies - the "defend the crystal" quest in Korthos rewards you with an Aid clickie. If each of you have a few of those, it could prevent many deaths...it is a great way for a non-caster to bring someone up from incap.

-Kill casters first (jump buff to get over the front line and hack down the casters, or use a spell that has a fortitude save).

-1 of you should be something that does high damage without mana (ftr, barb, monk, etc) while the other 2 of you could spend your time crowd controlling and buffing this damage dealer.

-There are many other options but most would require plat and/or ddo points - not always easy for the casual gamer newly arrived on Korthos.

Have a wonderful time. I've been grouping in 3s and 2s since the game was first released (with a few breaks here and there) and think there is more fun to be had that way.

Happy hunting,

Split

edit:
PS that signature is from back when the level cap was 10...a few years back. I can't be bothered to update right now. Most of those characters have been purged but their memories live on in my signature, anyway.

[Kmnh]

1 pure wizard archmage, 1 18/2 wiz/rogue pale master, 1 all out dps sorcerer. Dungeon scaling makes nuking easier

[katz]

i know its all probably been said before, but i mostly just skimmed. here's a short version:

monk/rog *can* be a good class combo if you're planning for it, and aiming toward ninja spy/assassin type thing, but otherwise you're spreading yourself thin by needing every stat, and is not a good beginner build. a wiz/rog would be a much better option... you need the int anyway, and if you go warforged, you are immune to alot of things that hurt you (poison, disease, level drain, drowning, etc) and you can heal yourself.

cleric with monk splash can be fun. the classes go well together. you need the wis anyway. a low level cleric in a robe can swim and jump much better than one in full plate, but with a monk splash you havn't given up a smidge of AC for it. (and before someone starts crying about AC not meaning anything,... it may not at the end game, but we're not talking about the end game right now, are we? :-P )

bruiser can be about anyone... fighter, barb, or even paladin. 28 pt build paladins are very very tough to stat out correctly, and don't try to go twf with one, but a paladin *can* be an incredibly tough char to kill...

TL;DR version... i recommend for your group a:
wiz/rog for firepower and rogueing skills
cleric/monk for heals, just don't neglect the str and con too badly (straight up cleric can work too, just again, watch the str and con. especially with drow)
someone beefy - barb,fighter, or paladin. don't sword and board it. thf or twf (except pallie. thf all teh way). you won't need a "tank" at that low a level, but DON'T NEGLECT INTIM. use it, love it.a mob beating on you instead of the cleric saves both your lives, because then they can heal you without being beat on interrupting their spells.

[AcesWylde]

For what it's worth, I have a static group that is now down to 3 players (other 3 had to drop for one reason or another). We're down to a pure Rogue, a pure Fighter, and a pure Cleric, and we're doing okay at level 8 running content as close to level as we can. What we miss most is the arcane firepower. If the pure Rogue had instead been rolled as a Wiz/Rog, we would have everything covered.

Our guild started as a 5 man static group, but we only have 2-3 usually active lately, and out of all our multiple characters, no one has played arcane much. Our main characters level all the way to 20 without both arcane fire power, or even a dedicated healer, just hirelings. You just have to learn to play smart.

Don't zerg, don't agroo too much at once, clear everything as you go, don't run through traps, etc. And everyone needs to be somewaht self sufficient. Potions are your best friend at lower levels. Healing pots are a must for everyone, even healers, but not only that, acid/fire resist, remove curse/disease/poison/blindness, barkskin, heroism, rage, etc.

As far as class mixes, the most important thing is to play what you enjoy, and adjust your playstyle accordingly. Don't be afraid to fail at first, each of you try different, classes out to find out what you like, and don't be afraid to ask for help learning the ropes. Find someone with more experience to run with you a couple of times to show you around and make suggestions. Heck, if you're in Orien, look me up and I'll run with you sometime, I don't have any low level toons atm, but I can always make a new one, LOL.

As an addendum, most quests can even be completed without a rogue, but I wouldn't recommend it. You'd miss out on a lot of optional, and some of the traps can be murder if you're not careful. And there are a lot of really fun rogue splash builds out there.