Predator - Full Warforged FvS

[axlett]

Predator: The full Favored Soul Melee/Healer who casts some offensive spells when it suits the situation.

*This build is very influenced by Sirgog's Soul Survivor
*Fixed with suggestions from comments

Melee: Full Favored Soul with greatsword spec and power attack, plus 14 DR (10 FvS, 2 Adamantine body, 2 ENH
Healer: Maximize and Empowered healing spells, possibly with a potency scepter when needed as a full healer
Offensive Spells? Not too many, decent wisdom just for decent DCs on things like Blade Barrier and Comet Fall. Or you could just blow all your mana right before a shrine for fun

Character Plan by DDO Character Planner Version 3.8.0
DDO Character Planner Home Page

Level 20 True Neutral Warforged Male
(20 Favored Soul)
Hit Points: 372 Itemless and Unbuffed
Spell Points: 1951 Itemless and Unbuffed
BAB: 15\15\20\25\25
Fortitude: 17
Reflex: 12
Will: 16

Starting
Abilities Base Stats (32 Point) (Level 1)
Strength 15 Base + 5 Levels + 2 Tome + 6 Item + 2 EXC = 30 easy
Dexterity 8 + 2 Tome + 6 Item (Likely wont use often) = 16
Constitution 16 + 2 Tome + 2 ENH + 6 Item + 2 EXC = 28
Intelligence 10
Wisdom 14 + 2 Tome + 2 ENH + 6 Item + 2 EXC = 26
Charisma 12 + 2 Tome + 6 Item + 2 EXC + 2 Cap = 24

Tomes Used
+2 Tome of Strength used at level 7
+2 Tome of Dexterity used at level 7
+2 Tome of Constitution used at level 7
+2 Tome of Intelligence used at level 7
+2 Tome of Wisdom used at level 7
+2 Tome of Charisma used at level 7


Skills
Concentration
UMD = 15 base + 8 CHA + 3 Cartouche + 2 Head + 4 GH = 32, Which should provide no fail Fireshield scrolls, which is why we get UMD in the first place
add Balance if +2 int tome obtained

Level 1 (Favored Soul)
Feat: (Selected) Adamantine Body
Feat: (Diety) Favored by the Lord of Blades


Level 2 (Favored Soul)


Level 3 (Favored Soul)
Feat: (Selected) Toughness


Level 4 (Favored Soul)


Level 5 (Favored Soul)
Feat: (Favored Soul Bonus) Energy Resistance: Fire


Level 6 (Favored Soul)
Feat: (Selected) Maximize


Level 7 (Favored Soul)


Level 8 (Favored Soul)


Level 9 (Favored Soul)
Feat: (Selected) Power Attack


Level 10 (Favored Soul)
Feat: (Favored Soul Bonus) Energy Resistance: Cold


Level 11 (Favored Soul)


Level 12 (Favored Soul)
Feat: (Selected) Quicken


Level 13 (Favored Soul)


Level 14 (Favored Soul)


Level 15 (Favored Soul)
Feat: (Selected) Empower Spell
Feat: (Favored Soul Bonus) Energy Resistance: Electricity


Level 16 (Favored Soul)


Level 17 (Favored Soul)


Level 18 (Favored Soul)
Feat: (Selected) Heighten Spell


Level 19 (Favored Soul)


Level 20 (Favored Soul)

Enhancements
Enhancement: Favored Soul Ascendency: Lord of Blades
Enhancement: Bladesworn Transformation
Enhancement: Favored Soul Greatsword Specialization I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Greatsword Specialization II
Enhancement: Racial Toughness I
Enhancement: Racial Toughness II
Enhancement: Racial Toughness III
Enhancement: Favored Soul Smiting I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Smiting II
Enhancement: Favored Soul Smiting III
Enhancement: Favored Soul Life Magic I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Life Magic II
Enhancement: Favored Soul Life Magic III
Enhancement: Favored Soul Life Magic IIII
Enhancement: Favored Soul Energy of the Scion I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Energy of the Scion II
Enhancement: Favored Soul Energy of the Scion III
Enhancement: Favored Soul Wisdom I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Wisdom II
Enhancement: Favored Soul Toughness I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Toughness II
Enhancement: Favored Soul Toughness III
Enhancement: Favored Soul Toughness IV
Enhancement: Warforged Constitution I
Enhancement: Warforged Constitution II
Enhancement: Warforged Damage Reduction I
Enhancement: Warforged Damage Reduction II
Enhancement: Favores Soul Angel of Vengeance I
Enhancement: Favores Soul Angel of Vengeance II
Enhancement: Warforged Healer's Friend I
Enhancement: Warforged Healer's Friend II
Enhancement: Favored Soul Wand and Scroll Mastery I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Wand and Scroll Mastery II

80 AP

Thanks for reading

[donfilibuster]

Does this predator have the Archon PrE? You know, like the predator's laser gun on the shoulders
Some people definitely calling a lantern fvs the predator. Run with invis and will only be missing the heat vision.

[axlett]

Bump...

[AylinIsAwesome]

You don't need to have 26 CHA in the end.

Drop the 2 enhancements in it and pick up more Life Magic instead. 29 SP isn't worth 6 AP.


Also, is it really worth it to you to have WIS so high? At most you'd have a DC of around 31* since you aren't maxing your WIS, and I can't really say what sort of benefit you'd get out of that. With a 40 mobs often save in Epics, and saves are going up in U9, so...

I think having those stat points in other places, and dropping the APs on WIS would probably be beneficial. BB is useful regardless what your DC is, and Divine Punishment is also good.


*: Spell DCs

10 Base
8 WIS bonus (26 WIS)
9 Heighten
2 Item
2 PrE
=31

[voodoogroves]

Yeah, I'm also going to chime in on way too much WIS. Put those points into INT or STR.

[axlett]

About WIS, yeah, I know I should probably dump it, but I want to try something different. And I probably wont be running many epics, its just a bit of a flavor build since i like to use offensive casting occasionally, but thats because I'm a dork

[Cardtrick]

About WIS, yeah, I know I should probably dump it, but I want to try something different. And I probably wont be running many epics, its just a bit of a flavor build since i like to use offensive casting occasionally, but thats because I'm a dork

It's high enough to be somewhat useful, as long as you don't count on it always working, and you target the weak saves. Not in most epics, but in certain other quests. Stealer of Souls comes to mind especially as a quest where a divine with Destruction or Implosion can really shine against the elementals.

And, of course, it helps with blade barrier and kiting trash.

It's not high enough that you can rely on offensive casting as your primary contribution, but I think it is enough to be situationally useful.

[jakeelala]

yeah it's funny, a lot of people in this game will tell you it's all or nothing.

You can use offensive cleric spells in a lot of quests with 14 starting wisdom. If you wear a +6 item, take the enhancements, get the exceptional somewhere, your DC will only be 2 less than someone starting with 18. It's NOT the end of the world. ANd for things like comet fall and BB, it still works great.

Don't believe everything you read on the DDO forums.

[Tobril]

I think you'll want at least the majority of the main healing line. (vs just 2 ranks)

Also, with adamantine body you are going to suffer arcane spell fail due to armor. This is an OK build decision, just realize that those fireshield and whatever other scrolls you use are not going to be 100%.

[axlett]

ok, thanks for the advise guys. Just rolled the character and he's a lot of fun to play

[AylinIsAwesome]

yeah it's funny, a lot of people in this game will tell you it's all or nothing.

You can use offensive cleric spells in a lot of quests with 14 starting wisdom. If you wear a +6 item, take the enhancements, get the exceptional somewhere, your DC will only be 2 less than someone starting with 18. It's NOT the end of the world. ANd for things like comet fall and BB, it still works great.

-2 for starting with 14 vs. 18.
-2.5 for not upping WIS at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20
-.5 for not being Helf or Human (stacking +1 WIS)
-2 to a single school for no focus feats
= -5 to all schools, except -7 to one (likely Evocation).

That's a lot different that just -2 DC.

Don't believe everything you read on the DDO forums.

One could easily say the same about your post...

[fyrst.grok]

Think you should go balance in stead of jump.

Can tell you mine got a hell of a lot better when I made the switch.. Then again I started with 15 int for skills and dumped wisdom.

mine

str 16 (currently 30 with +7 item, 5 level ups and a +2 tome)
dex 8
con 16 (currently 26 with 2 enhancements, 2 tome, 6 item)
int 15 (+1 tome at level 3 to get it even)
wis 6 (currently 14 with 2 tome, 6 item)
chr 13 (currently 22 with 1 enhancement, 6 item, 2 capstone)

skills:
concentration
umd
balance
intimidate (not worth it really, but nice for trash.. Dunno about U9 tho)
jump

feats:
empower healing
maximize
power attack
imp. crit
quicken
extend
toughness

He's a nice allrounder.. Might switch extend for adamantine body or improved dr to avoid arcane spell failure.. not sure if it applies to scrolls too, never checked.

don't know what his sp and hp are like without items, but with them he's at 2800+ sp and 500+ hp

[Cardtrick]

-2 for starting with 14 vs. 18.
-2.5 for not upping WIS at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20
-.5 for not being Helf or Human (stacking +1 WIS)
-2 to a single school for no focus feats
= -5 to all schools, except -7 to one (likely Evocation).

That's a lot different that just -2 DC.

Now you're comparing against a max-DC OCC FVS, though. No one's trying to say that this build is going to out-cast a build like that. But your own numbers help support the idea that at 14 Wis isn't a waste, and it will be high enough to allow situationally useful offensive casting. This build will be 5-7 DC below a maximally built caster. That's a lot lower, but at least in the same range.

Spells with saves will fail more, and will have to be used wisely (cast energy drain first and pick your targets -- not going to succeed with fort-save instant kill spells against melee enemies, probably, but should have a good chance against casters). But it's high enough to be useful. If nothing else, it's high enough that most enemies will have to roll something more than a 1 to save against blade barrier, so there's a nice kiting DPS boost.

[jwdaniels]

-2 for starting with 14 vs. 18.
-2.5 for not upping WIS at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20
-.5 for not being Helf or Human (stacking +1 WIS)
-2 to a single school for no focus feats
= -5 to all schools, except -7 to one (likely Evocation).

That's a lot different that just -2 DC.



One could easily say the same about your post...

And a -5 to a DC is a 25% greater chance that the mob will save (or maybe slightly less if it started as 20 only)- it still works 3 out of 4 times which isn't enough to rely on as a primary contribution, but is still useful.

[AylinIsAwesome]

Now you're comparing against a max-DC OCC FVS, though.

As opposed to one that started with 14 WIS, 15 STR, and then pumped WIS over STR? o_O

No one's trying to say that this build is going to out-cast a build like that.

I was responding to the claim that it'd only be 2 DC behind.

But your own numbers help support the idea that at 14 Wis isn't a waste, and it will be high enough to allow situationally useful offensive casting. This build will be 5-7 DC below a maximally built caster. That's a lot lower, but at least in the same range.

Some spells will get a benefit out of it, yes. Namely Blade Barrier, perhaps Implosion, maybe something like Firestorm.

But this isn't a case of, "either get the extra benefit, or don't without gaining anything else". It's a case where dropping the 6 AP in FvS WIS 2 will let the OP pick up the rest of Life Magic (which is very important), and the ten ability points spent in WIS could instead be spent bringing STR up to 18 and still leaving 2 points left over.

Is having slightly stronger Blade Barriers worth -2 damage/to-hit and -20% on healing spells? I'd have a really hard time justifying that, especially since against mobs with low Reflex Saves BB works decently well anyway.

[Cardtrick]

And a -5 to a DC is a 25% greater chance that the mob will save (or maybe slightly less if it started as 20 only)- it still works 3 out of 4 times which isn't enough to rely on as a primary contribution, but is still useful.

That's actually not true. The D20 system gets very complex, especially with numbers as inflated as those we hit in DDO.

Let's call Player Alpha the offensive caster with the maxed DC. And let's call Player Beta the hybrid character with the -5 to DC. There is actually no situation in which Beta's enemies have a 25% better chance to save than Alpha's. There's way more variation than that, depending on how good the enemies' saves are. First, consider the 2 extremes:

Let's say Alpha has exactly high enough DC for the enemy to save only on a natural 20. That's the worst-case scenario for this comparison: Beta's enemies can save on a 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, or 20 -- in this case, that's a 600% greater chance that they save.

On the other hand, say that the enemy's save is so high that Alpha can only succeed when the enemy rolls a natural 1 (certain epic enemies, for example). Then Beta, also, succeeds only when the enemy rolls a natural 1. So in this case, Alpha and Beta have exactly the same chance of success.

The same goes if the enemy's save is so low that both Alpha and Beta succeed unless the enemy rolls a natural 20 -- once again, they have exactly the same chance of success.

For everything in between, it varies. For example, let's say Alpha's DC is high enough that the enemy has to roll a 15 or above to succeed. In that case, Alpha's spell fails on 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 -- 6/20 rolls, which is a 30% failure rate. Now, Beta's enemy has to roll a 10 or above (5 lower). That's 11/20 rolls, which is a 55% failure rate. In this case, Beta's failure chance is 55/30, or ~183% higher than Alpha's.

[Cardtrick]

I was responding to the claim that it'd only be 2 DC behind.

Ah, sorry -- missed that.

But this isn't a case of, "either get the extre OP pick up the rest of Life Magic (which is very important), and the ten ability points spent in WIS could instead be spent bringing STR up to 18 and still leaving 2 points left over.

Is having slightly stronger Blade Barriers worth -2 damage/to-hit and -20% on healing spells? I'd have a really hard time justifying that, especially since against mobs with low Reflex Saves BB works decently well anyway.

I agree with you on this, personally. My warforged FVS build has a 6 starting wisdom. My personal preference is to focus my builds a bit more.

But I take issue with the idea that it's all or nothing -- the OP's wisdom is high enough to be useful. This isn't like when someone whose end-game build is going to top out at 30 AC takes Dodge, where it literally adds nothing to the character. This is 5-7 points lower than a maxed offensive caster, which is in the range where gear can make up a lot of the difference, and enough spells will land to be worthwhile.

The -20% on healing spells is a real issue, and that's definitely not worth the increased spell DCs -- but it's only enhancements. Those can be easily respecced. The OP took 2 separate toughness enhancement lines up to the 4th tier, so there's a lot of APs there that could be moved away at the expense of a few HP. Alternately, or in addition, the +CHA enhancements aren't doing much, and could be swapped out. But dropping wisdom is definitely not the only way to fix the Life Magic issue.

As for whether -2 damage/to-hit is worth the increased DCs for offensive casting . . . well, again, I don't think so myself, but it's not obviously or definitely wrong. It's a very reasonable tradeoff to make for increased versatility.

[AylinIsAwesome]

Ah, sorry -- missed that.

Np.

I agree with you on this, personally. My warforged FVS build has a 6 starting wisdom. My personal preference is to focus my builds a bit more.

But I take issue with the idea that it's all or nothing -- the OP's wisdom is high enough to be useful. This isn't like when someone whose end-game build is going to top out at 30 AC takes Dodge, where it literally adds nothing to the character. This is 5-7 points lower than a maxed offensive caster, which is in the range where gear can make up a lot of the difference, and enough spells will land to be worthwhile.

The -20% on healing spells is a real issue, and that's definitely not worth the increased spell DCs -- but it's only enhancements. Those can be easily respecced. The OP took 2 separate toughness enhancement lines up to the 4th tier, so there's a lot of APs there that could be moved away at the expense of a few HP. Alternately, or in addition, the +CHA enhancements aren't doing much, and could be swapped out. But dropping wisdom is definitely not the only way to fix the Life Magic issue.

As for whether -2 damage/to-hit is worth the increased DCs for offensive casting . . . well, again, I don't think so myself, but it's not obviously or definitely wrong. It's a very reasonable tradeoff to make for increased versatility.

Not being able to take full Life Magic is the main issue to me here, and the main reason I suggested dropping WIS in the first place. Compared to the other enhancements chosen, the WIS ones do the least about for the build (after the CHA ones anyway, which I already suggested dropping), and are thus the logical choice to get rid of.

Just dropping CHA though won't fix it since it'll take 7 AP to max it and the OP would only get 6 back from dropping the CHA enhancements.

I know it's not entirely wasted, and the OP could get some use out of it, but I really don't think it'll be greater than the amount given up in other areas to get it.

[Cardtrick]

Just dropping CHA though won't fix it since it'll take 7 AP to max it and the OP would only get 6 back from dropping the CHA enhancements.

I know it's not entirely wasted, and the OP could get some use out of it, but I really don't think it'll be greater than the amount given up in other areas to get it.

I would drop Cha I, Cha II, and one of the Toughness IV enhancements. That gets you 10 APs. Then grab Life Magic 3, Life Magic 4, and the first 2 tiers of Wand and Scroll Mastery. I am absolutely in love with Wand and Scroll Mastery on any class that can take it.

On an unrelated note, OP, I think you should probably take Toughness earlier. Maybe Toughness at level 3, Maximize at level 6 (so you still qualify for AoV), then bump Power Attack back to level 9 and Quicken to level 12. I think that puts the feats closer to the levels where they'll be useful to you. Also, you might want to swap Maximize and Empower -- they both qualify for AoV, and Empower is likely to be more useful earlier when your SPs are scant.

[AylinIsAwesome]

I would drop Cha I, Cha II, and one of the Toughness IV enhancements. That gets you 10 APs. Then grab Life Magic 3, Life Magic 4, and the first 2 tiers of Wand and Scroll Mastery. I am absolutely in love with Wand and Scroll Mastery on any class that can take it.

If keeping WIS is mandatory, I think Healer's Friend 2 would be the next one I'd drop. I played around with that Llama for a few days on my WF FvS when I took AoV...

The end result will be 101% healing amp instead of 117% (with Healer's Friend 3), which I can live with.

On an unrelated note, OP, I think you should probably take Toughness earlier. Maybe Toughness at level 3, Maximize at level 6 (so you still qualify for AoV), then bump Power Attack back to level 9 and Quicken to level 12. I think that puts the feats closer to the levels where they'll be useful to you. Also, you might want to swap Maximize and Empower -- they both qualify for AoV, and Empower is likely to be more useful earlier when your SPs are scant.

I agree here.

I don't feel the need for Quicken before 12, and I also think early Toughness is good.