Archer / Illusionist Build Advice

[Gedov]

Hi, all. I typically enjoy sneaky type characters but I just unlocked the Drow race on one server and am looking for input on a Ranger/Wizard idea. This is a character idea I used in NWN and am thinking about trying it out here. I had a look through many build ideas but didn't find what I was looking for. My apologies if it's out there and I didn't see it.

The idea is to have a ranger with good ranged skills, supported by enough Wizard levels to use spells for crowd control/immobilization and self-buffs. Right now I'm leaning toward Drow Ranger(15)/Wizard(5). As I understand it, that would give one extra Favored Enemy and access to level 3 spells. With Drow race I can easily get high enough Dex and Int to make the class at least usable. He won't need huge damage from the Wizard spells -- just enough to slow or immobilize enemies and self-buff.

Has anyone done a build along these lines who can provide some advice? Thanks very much.

[Fungi]

You are not going to have high enough dc to make any of your cc stick unless you go pure wizard. I have tried an illusionist build and the spell selection is just to poor to make it work. You can still get the same type of play style with a high umd and scrolls of invis ect if you just want to be illusive.

[idle1]

Unless you go mostly wizard, you'd be better suited with going bard as an illusionist idea since they make way better multiclassed casters with fighting. You get invis, haste and all the buff goodness of wizard spells, and songs for cc to slow em down. (I'd go virtuoso, and pretend the song is an illusion and can force a mob to dance with virt 2 all while it wont gimp your archery or melee idea like a wizard splash would since you cant mix dc on spells and damage.

12 bard/8 ranger/2 rog or 11+ranger/X bard.

[unbongwah]

I had a look through many build ideas but didn't find what I was looking for. My apologies if it's out there and I didn't see it.

You're not finding it because what you want is largely unworkable in DDO:

• There are only a handful of Illusion spells and the only CC one you get with wiz 5 is Hypnotic Pattern. With so few wiz lvls, though, your DCs & Spell Pen will be so low that it will be practically useless. The -3 Will saves will always proc, but that's about it. Changing spell schools won't help either; the basic problem is CC spells tend to be all-or-nothing in DDO, so if you don't specialize in them, you're usually just wasting SPs casting them.
• Only a handful of ranged builds are really considered viable these days and a heavily-multiclassed drow ranger isn't one of them.

IMHO, a better choice for "archer with CC abilities" is my Bardcher: full set of archery feats, buffs, heals, CCs with songs (go Virtuoso to really capitalize on this); and doable (if tricky) as a 28-pt elf. I need to get around to tweaking it for U14 and epic levels, though...

[Havok.cry]

Ive actually been thinking about this for a while. I would reccomend doing a 11 ranger 9 wizard split actually. 11 ranger gets you all the free feats so for multi classing you can get by without more. 9 wizard gets you higher DCs and if you pick up archmage it gets you the second tier of SLAs. For a multi class build I would reccomend you don't go with illusion, but instead conjuration. The reason is twofold. First is spell penetration, every level of wizard you dont have will make it less likely for spells to land on your enemy, conjuration however has CC effects that are un affected by spell resistance. The second is that is (IIRC) meshes better with a ranger's own CC effects. IIRC spiked growth and the new entangle are conjuration.

Also I would do helf instead of drow for arcane archer access

Requisite warning: your DCs may never be high enough to be good in end game content. This is because you will not be able to highten your spells to the same DCs that a pure wizard can.

Here is what I might do

Helf 32pts
Str 14 level ups here for weapon damage
Dex 16 level ups here for bow to hit
Con 14
Int 16 level ups here for DC
Wis 8
Cha 8

Normal feats
1 point blank shot
3 weapon focus ranged
6 toughness
9 precision
12 improved critical ranged
15 heighten
18 empower healing
21 maximise
24 empower or quicken

Wizard feats
1 mental toughness
5 spell focus conjuration

Free ranger feats
Bow strength
Rapid shot
Precise shot
Many shot
Improved precise shot
Two weapon fighting
Improved two weapon fighting
Greater two weapon fighting

That is what I would do, hope it helps.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Well, whatever you do, don't read my signature!

[Talon_Moonshadow]

But on a more serious note....


This idea comes up often, but it has some problems in DDO.

In DDO, to reliably cast offensive spells and get monsters to actually fail their saving throws from them requires just about the maximum in you rcasting stat. (For wizards that would be Intelligence)

And

spell penetration (against spell resistance mobs.)

and ... just about every possible feat, item, etc....... at the highest levels of play on the hardest difficulty settings. (and then some to please some groups of people)



so..... that means that a character with only a few levsl of Wizard is most likely going to be very disapointed in his ability to cast offensive spels and get monsters to actually be effected by those spells.


Add to this that there are extremelly few Illusion spells in DDO anyway....


But that doesn't mean that a Rgr15/Wiz5... or some other similar idea will not work at all....
it does work.
You just have to understand what it works at, and/or build the toon in a way to make it work the way you want it to. (within the limits of DDO0





What "I" did, was to forget all about offensive spells, and use my Wizard spells for buffs.

My character is stealthy, fights... ok.... (wish I did more DPS though. )
Can self cast Blur, Displacement, and Invisibility (illusion spells)
Plus Haste!
and even has some ok, sneak attack damage.

An Elf or Half Elf could still get full Arcane Archer enhancements with a Rgr/Wiz build.
Plus take enhanceents to reduce arcane spell failure in armor.






anyway, lots of different ways to go about getting what you want.

Just go pure Bard is one option. (and probably the safest.)

Or pure Wizard. My Drow Wizard 20 can reach a 60+ Move Silently skills.
an Elf or Half Elf Wizrd could also be an Arcane Archer. (although a lvl 20 Wizard really has no use for a bow...... like.... ever!)

if going for a multiclassed Wizard, I "do" recommend combining with Rgr somehow.
I've considered a whole bunch of combinations...
Rg11/Wiz9
Rg15/Wiz5
Wiz12/Rgr6/Mnk or Rog 2
Rgr11/Wiz7/Ftr or Rog2 (maybe even Brd 2)
Rgr12/Wiz7/Ftr or Rog or Brd 1.
Some combinations with Mnk6.

lots of ways to go about it.

[unbongwah]

Requisite warning: your DCs may never be high enough to be good in end game content. This is because you will not be able to highten your spells to the same DCs that a pure wizard can.

My lvl 21 bard with mediocre gear has a self-buffed Fascinate DC of almost 70; my lvl 18 Virtuoso is even higher IIRC. Good luck getting your Conjuration DCs on a heavily-MCed rgr / wiz anywhere close to that. True, Fascinate is a "soft" stun and doesn't work on some things which Web will; but I'd rather have a reliable AoE mez like Fascinate than a low-DC CC spell which rarely works past a certain level.

I'm fine with multi-classed flavor builds; but this is a flavor build where one of the core concepts (i.e., CC spells) simply won't work very well.

[Gedov]

Thank you for the replies, everyone. I do like the look of the Bardcher in terms of being a 'powerful' character; but, must admit that I enjoy 'flavor' builds quite a bit so am still more likely to toy around with Rgr/Wiz. It sounds like 11/9 might be a better way to go than 15/5. But, at least I have some ideas now to throw at the character planner to see what it looks like.

Thanks again for all the input. I'll definitely give this class combination a try, even if just for kicks.

[idle1]

One option you might want to try if you really want to try wizard and (some) damage is an evo archmage with at least 12 levels of wizard. Ideally you'd want more so say 18/2 ranger. But there are a few spells you can take advantage of that have no save. Magic missile+chain missile, maxed/empowered, the 2 dots, ice storm, acid dots+fog, polar ray/dragon bolt, and a few others. The damage will lower off as get close to cap but if you went with 18 levels of wizard, the damage would be fine for solo and bosses. And you can put all your focus on str/dex so you can be an archer too. Not sure about feats other than mental toughness, max/empower and spell focus evo x2 some of which can be taken as wizard feats.

[Havok.cry]

My lvl 21 bard with mediocre gear has a self-buffed Fascinate DC of almost 70; my lvl 18 Virtuoso is even higher IIRC. Good luck getting your Conjuration DCs on a heavily-MCed rgr / wiz anywhere close to that. True, Fascinate is a "soft" stun and doesn't work on some things which Web will; but I'd rather have a reliable AoE mez like Fascinate than a low-DC CC spell which rarely works past a certain level.

I'm fine with multi-classed flavor builds; but this is a flavor build where one of the core concepts (i.e., CC spells) simply won't work very well.

Oh no worries, I completely agree that your bardcher would be vastly superior to any multiclassed ranger wizard. My post was just trying to give him something as close to what he asked for as I could.

[Havok.cry]

One option you might want to try if you really want to try wizard and (some) damage is an evo archmage with at least 12 levels of wizard. Ideally you'd want more so say 18/2 ranger. But there are a few spells you can take advantage of that have no save. Magic missile+chain missile, maxed/empowered, the 2 dots, ice storm, acid dots+fog, polar ray/dragon bolt, and a few others. The damage will lower off as get close to cap but if you went with 18 levels of wizard, the damage would be fine for solo and bosses. And you can put all your focus on str/dex so you can be an archer too. Not sure about feats other than mental toughness, max/empower and spell focus evo x2 some of which can be taken as wizard feats.

With the right gear and epic destiny selection, you can actually cap the damage spells on a multi-class caster. I'm planning on doing my archer-completionist's life as a 12 evo archmage 6 monk 2 ranger.

[wax_on_wax_off]

Thank you for the replies, everyone. I do like the look of the Bardcher in terms of being a 'powerful' character; but, must admit that I enjoy 'flavor' builds quite a bit so am still more likely to toy around with Rgr/Wiz. It sounds like 11/9 might be a better way to go than 15/5. But, at least I have some ideas now to throw at the character planner to see what it looks like.

Thanks again for all the input. I'll definitely give this class combination a try, even if just for kicks.

A bardcher is not powerful by any means, it is definitely in the realm of flavour but it is the sort of flavour that can be accepted into groups and actually contribute.

Hard and fast rules to live by:
- If you want to go archery then you need either 18 ranger levels or elf/half-elf race to access Slayer Arrows/Arcane Archer PrE
- Don't expect to be able to use any offensive spell with less than 7 wizard levels and even with this much your spell point pool will be so little and the damage output of your spells will be so low that there just won't be any points
- 12+ caster levels is a reasonable starting point for situational offensive casting (due to a combination of access, spell point pool and caster levels)

I'd encourage you to try a ranger arcane archer. Either 18 ranger/1 rogue/1 fighter or monk or 20 ranger. Max out UMD and you can emulate all the best spells that 5 wizard offers and more. That many ranger levels gives some decent spells, even 2 offensive spells that slow or snare an enemy though you'd need to invest in wisdom to get use out of them and even then they'd only be useful vs specific enemies in non-elite content.

[Gedov]

Just thought I'd post a follow-up in case anyone is interested.

I came up with a rough plan in the character planner, played him to level 4. Then deleted him, went back to the planner and played him to level 5. Then deleted him, went back to the planner and he's now at level 3. I think I'll keep this one, though I'm still undecided on all of the enhancements I want to take.

Overall, this character (Drow Ranger/Wizard) is a lot of fun to play. He's pretty squishy and big fights take some planning, but overall a joy to play. Up to this point his main means of operating is bow damage, using spells like grease and obscuring mist to delay and confuse the enemy. It's actually pretty funny watching kobolds scramble around looking for me, only to end up in a grease trap with arrows pelting them in the back.

If anyone out there was thinking of trying something like this char, I recommend it for enjoyment, if not for uberness. Thanks again to all who provided such useful input -- all of that input went into coming up with the basic plan for the character.