Advice on Modifying Tihocan's Warpriest Build?

[Twidger]

I've played the build as posted here: http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=75 to 9th or 10th level, and it worked really well. I've changed servers and am now thinking of making a new Warpriest, but slightly modified.

The goal is pretty much the same: Melee capability through lower levels, while retaining good casting and healing capability. I'll very likely do a +1 res to drop the Fighter level after cap and go for offensive casting/healing instead.

This will be a 32 point Veteran build.

Race: Human. For extra feat, and because Half Elves just don't look right to me.

Attributes:

STR 16
DEX 8
CON 14
INT 8
WIS 18
CHA 8

I just dropped DEX to 8 and CON to 14 to get WIS up to 18. I'm not sure why the original build had the 2 pts in DEX. I'm assuming they were left over after buying up the CON to 16. However, as far as I played my original Warpriest, I never had my health dip low enough for the +1 HP/ level to really matter. I think with careful play, and good items, the 14 should be fine for leveling.

Feats:

Human Bonus: Toughness
1) Empower Healing
3) Extra Turning
4) Power Attack (Fighter bonus)
6) Maximize
9) Quicken
12) Improved Critical: Slashing
15) Spell Penetration
18) Greater Spell Penetration

The Extra Turning is simply for blowing stuff sky-high while I grind through the lower to mid level undead-filled quests. It's a candidate for the Fred feat swap, if I can figure out what else to put there. I took out Extend for it, since Extend doesn't work on Blade Barrier anymore, and isn't really needed for buffs.

I dropped THF, since I keep reading that it's not worthwhile to take less than all three of the line. Power Attack and Improved Crit are pretty much the biggest melee boosters besides the THF/TWF lines, so they got in. Took fighter at 4, so the PA is a little early to be useful, but I wanted my martial proficiencies coming off the vet airship.

Empower Healing is for Radiant Servant, and Heal. Maximize is taken before Radiant Servant, because Maximized bursts are huge fun in Delera's. Quicken is for use a little later, but had to take IC at 12th due to low BAB.

As to the last two feats: I've read people suggesting Spell Penetration feats AND Spell Focus: Evocation for Blade Barrier use. I'm not really sure which is the better path? Any suggestions are welcome there.

I'll probably use my Fred swap for Spell Focus: Evocation, so I guess the question is whether to do two spell pen feats or two spell focus feats (and one of the other)?

Enhancements will follow along the same lines as in the original build. Plus, they're easily reset anyway.

Thanks in advance to anyone taking time to read this.

[Luckness]

I think you're conflating the value of the THF and TWF feat lines. For THF (two-handed fighting), the increases are incremental, and you could benefit from taking one, two or three on a two-handed melee build. For TWF, the increases are also incremental. It's just that they're oh-so-very-important: your offhand has a native 20% chance to happen with every mainhand swing, and it goes up to 40%, 60%, and 80% with the feats. Therefore, people reason that you're better off swinging a 2 hander unless you are going to take all three TWF feats. Even then you're often better swinging a 2-hander until you actually acquire the TWF feats.

For a battle cleric you'll probably be stretched thin on ability scores if you try for TWF (minimum starting DEX of 15 with a +2 tome), as well as feat starved (3 feats to be very useful), so THF is a good choice.

[Twidger]

I was thinking IC:Slashing and Power Attack will probably work out better than taking THF and ITHF. I'll still be using two handers, just putting the feats to IC and PA instead of the THF line.

[Maelodic]

I was thinking IC:Slashing and Power Attack will probably work out better than taking THF and ITHF. I'll still be using two handers, just putting the feats to IC and PA instead of the THF line.

PA and IC are way more feat-efficient than the THF line, so keep those.

I'm basically doing the same thing, melee earlier levels, casting/healing/melee higher levels, and I'm thinking spell penetration would benefit more using insta-kill spells, and do spell focus if you'd rather go for damage spells.

Then again, I'm just a biddy cleric, I wouldn't know.

[Luckness]

I was thinking IC:Slashing and Power Attack will probably work out better than taking THF and ITHF. I'll still be using two handers, just putting the feats to IC and PA instead of the THF line.

Imp Crit: Slashing is wonderful, as is Power Attack. (Power Attack is -not- wonderful if you don't have sufficient attack bonus to spare, and this -could- be a reason for taking Power Attack later on...)

I was referring to this statement:

I dropped THF, since I keep reading that it's not worthwhile to take less than all three of the line.

The reason people say that the TWF feats are all-or-nothing, besides that they vastly improve TWF dps, is that you would otherwise do more DPS swinging a two-hander. Meanwhile, if the two-hander is your method of DPS, here is what the THF feat line gives you.

Takes glancing blow damage from its base of 20% and up to 30%, 40%, and 50% of weapon damage.
Gives you a 3% / 6% / 9% chance of glancing blows triggering weapon effects.

While the first thing I think of when hearing glancing blows is AoE / splash damage, I must also remind myself that glancing blows apply to the primary target. Each tier of THF feat is at least a 7% dps increase. (And unlike power attack, this comes at no cost to your chance-to-hit and also allows you to do substantially more "AoE" from swinging your weapon.)

Here is my suggestion for feats.

Human Bonus: Toughness
1) Empower Healing
3) Two-Handed Fighting
4) Power Attack (Fighter bonus)
6) Maximize
9) Improved Two-Handed Fighting
12) Improved Critical: Slashing
15) Greater Two-Handed Fighting
18) Quicken

If you want to get Quicken earlier, you can do so in several ways... one way is to drop Power Attack and make THF your Fighter bonus.

Pick up the Spell Penetration feats when you drop your melee ones. That's how I see it, anyway.

[Twidger]

Thanks, Luckness. Your feat progression does make more sense. I don't suppose it matters if I take the spell pen if I'm going to take them last anyway, and respec more towards caster later.

[Twidger]

After thinking more about the heavier melee feat focus, I was wondering:

Which would be more effective: Staying with 18 WIS and putting level ups into it, or switching to 18 STR (and 16 WIS) and putting the level ups into STR?

It seems that keeping the WIS maxed would be preferable at the higher levels, but with the heavy melee feats, I wonder if there would be a problem meleeing without pumping STR for to hit and damage?

One or the other is going to take a hit, so I guess the question is which is the smaller hit to take for effectiveness in soloing? (I'm pretty sure either route will still allow decent healing ability, even if going for STR may mean using more consumables, so grouping wouldn't be hurt much by it. I'm building the character mostly as an alt to play when I'm not able to group, as I'm recovering from surgery and may have more surgery to come, so can't always commit to a group. That's why the respec to caster/healer later, when I'm going to be grouping more.)

[TheDjinnFor]

I think you're conflating the value of the THF and TWF feat lines. For THF (two-handed fighting), the increases are incremental, and you could benefit from taking one, two or three on a two-handed melee build.

The third feat of the THF chain is worth almost double the first two feats combined thanks to an increase in the number of glancing blows you get (without GTHF, you deal glancing blows on the first and fourth attack in your attack sequence; with it, you also deal glancing blows on your third swing).

There's really little point in taking the THF chain if you can't take the third one, since the DPS increase is relatively minor from 0 feats to 1 feat, and from 1 feat to 2 feats.

[Chette]

After thinking more about the heavier melee feat focus, I was wondering:

Which would be more effective: Staying with 18 WIS and putting level ups into it, or switching to 18 STR (and 16 WIS) and putting the level ups into STR?

It seems that keeping the WIS maxed would be preferable at the higher levels, but with the heavy melee feats, I wonder if there would be a problem meleeing without pumping STR for to hit and damage?

One or the other is going to take a hit, so I guess the question is which is the smaller hit to take for effectiveness in soloing? (I'm pretty sure either route will still allow decent healing ability, even if going for STR may mean using more consumables, so grouping wouldn't be hurt much by it. I'm building the character mostly as an alt to play when I'm not able to group, as I'm recovering from surgery and may have more surgery to come, so can't always commit to a group. That's why the respec to caster/healer later, when I'm going to be grouping more.)

Wisdom based and strength based clerics are two completely different entities, and it is very hard to be good at both casting and melee without a lot of good gear. I would recommend picking one and focusing your stats and feats around it.

If you want to do a lot of casting, go with 18 wisdom and put all level ups there. Take feats that are important to casting, as opposed to those that are important for melee (i.e. spell focus evocation and empower spell instead of power attack and improved critical)

If you want to do a lot of meleeing, go with 18 strength and reduce wisdom to maybe 14. Put the rest of your points in constitution and charisma.

Once you have played this character to cap and have obtained some raid and/or epic gear, you might want to consider some sort of build that can melee and heal, but not only does being effective at both of these tasks require gear (boosting your to-hit as well as boosting your casting capabilities) it also takes a lot of player experience and skill in order to do well.

Just my two cents, play your character however you think you will have the most fun

[Alektronic]

The third feat of the THF chain is worth almost double the first two feats combined thanks to an increase in the number of glancing blows you get (without GTHF, you deal glancing blows on the first and fourth attack in your attack sequence; with it, you also deal glancing blows on your third swing).

There's really little point in taking the THF chain if you can't take the third one, since the DPS increase is relatively minor from 0 feats to 1 feat, and from 1 feat to 2 feats.

He is referring to the added benefit of an extra glancing blow on the 3rd animation I think. In addition to the incremental 10% base dmg + 3% glancing blow dmg. Compare to the TWF chain which gives +20% increment for proccing offhand strike each attack.

Not saying it's pointless to take only the first two feats of the THF chain, but it's a big jump ur missing by dropping gTHF.

EDIT: added a link for reference.

[Twidger]

Wisdom based and strength based clerics are two completely different entities, and it is very hard to be good at both casting and melee without a lot of good gear. I would recommend picking one and focusing your stats and feats around it.

In the original build, the feats are kind of split up between the two, with a bit more toward casting, and level ups are going to WIS, though the WIS is lower and CON higher than what I was looking at here. That build seems to focus on going melee at lower levels, then leaning toward casting at higher levels.

I was thinking more of evening out the leveling curve by leaning more toward melee, with the feat distribution that Luckness suggested. If I'm going to go that route, are you saying that I won't be able to heal a normal six man group adequately? I probably won't raid on this build, and if I do, I'll just do a respec to a caster/healer build.

If you want to do a lot of casting, go with 18 wisdom and put all level ups there. Take feats that are important to casting, as opposed to those that are important for melee (i.e. spell focus evocation and empower spell instead of power attack and improved critical)

I'll probably go for mostly melee, and blade barrier kiting if it's a viable approach to leveling. I didn't get the original build up to BB level, but just exploding undead and meleeing the non-undead seemed to work out ok at lower levels. (Got it to 9 I think.)

If you want to do a lot of meleeing, go with 18 strength and reduce wisdom to maybe 14. Put the rest of your points in constitution and charisma.

Any benefit to the CHA besides extra Turns? I could see dropping WIS some being beneficial to allow more radiant servant bursts when going through undead content, but would the hit to WIS hurt later with blade barrier? I've read that stats don't contribute much to spell points, so I'm guessing that won't be an issue?

Once you have played this character to cap and have obtained some raid and/or epic gear, you might want to consider some sort of build that can melee and heal, but not only does being effective at both of these tasks require gear (boosting your to-hit as well as boosting your casting capabilities) it also takes a lot of player experience and skill in order to do well.

I'll be capping my Ranger first, so this will mainly be a character to play when I just want to relax and do some soloing. I also want to play a Cleric to cap to learn the Cleric spell list so that I can do a favored soul later. I doubt I'll be raiding with it. If I do, I'll go for a more casting-focused build, and likely come back with more silly questions at that time.

Just my two cents, play your character however you think you will have the most fun

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

(And thanks to the other responses in the thread too!)

[Alektronic]

In the original build, the feats are kind of split up between the two, with a bit more toward casting, and level ups are going to WIS, though the WIS is lower and CON higher than what I was looking at here. That build seems to focus on going melee at lower levels, then leaning toward casting at higher levels.

Any benefit to the CHA besides extra Turns? I could see dropping WIS some being beneficial to allow more radiant servant bursts when going through undead content, but would the hit to WIS hurt later with blade barrier? I've read that stats don't contribute much to spell points, so I'm guessing that won't be an issue?

A base charisma of 14+ will unlock the divine might enhancements. This ability gives you a bonus 2, 4, 6, 8 dmg at base char of 14, 16, 18, 20 for one minute for use of one turn. In other words, 2 points in char (past 14) will benefit you more than 2 points in str if and only if you are still hitting on a 2.

Wis is good for CC casting (command, destruction, symbol, etc...). BB, however, is still VERY useful, even with no wis. Example, my wis dumped FvS still uses BB + Maximize to kite and kill trash when soloing in epics. By wis dump, I mean I started with 8 wis, and currently wear no wis item and don't have heighten. As for wis scores in between dump and maxxed, idk. Obviously, you can't BB everything, but it still is very useful even w/out maxxed wis.

[Twidger]

I've looked over the Divine Might enhancements before, when I was trying to figure out why the original (tihocan's) build skipped them (low CHA).

My thoughts on that were that it looks a little complicated for a newbie to sort out the numbers, especially when lacking information on possible gearing at higher levels.

For instance, when trying to figure out my end stats, I usually only factor in level ups, enhancements from race or class, up to a +2 tome (+3 and +4 seem pretty difficult to obtain, never see on auction so assume would take up to a long amount of play time to see a drop), and a generic +6 item (or +5 if the final stat would be uneven with +6). But I would have no idea how much +hit for example, is available on gear or how many types of bonuses it comes in for stacking purposes.

Likewise, I'm not figuring in raid gear* from the static loot list as I probably won't raid on this build. There also comes into play the gear slot balancing act. If I want to give up stuff in the build (stats, feats, enhancements, etc.) and make up with it in gear, then that's probably a gear slot that I don't want to be swapping in and out a lot. It's not an area I'm familiar enough with to quickly figure out what I'm doing.

I think in the end I just came to the conclusion that pumping STR would probably be the easier route to hit/damage over going for the Divine Might. Plus, on 32 pts, it seems hard to go for higher levels of DM. DM II may be doable with a +2 tome if I lower some other stats, but as I said, I'm incapable at this stage of calculating the cost/benefit of such a choice.


*The non-raid gear, of course, I look over.

[Chette]

Any benefit to the CHA besides extra Turns? I could see dropping WIS some being beneficial to allow more radiant servant bursts when going through undead content, but would the hit to WIS hurt later with blade barrier? I've read that stats don't contribute much to spell points, so I'm guessing that won't be an issue?

The extra Cha is for the extra turns. Wisdom is mostly an all or nothing stat. Having a moderate amount of wisdom isn't much better than having a low wisdom, and will only net you about 25 extra SP per bracket. On the other hand, a Cha bracket will get you an extra burst, which is the "equivalent" of about 50-80 sp worth of healing. Additionally, with high enough charisma you can get access to divine might, which adds a bonus to your hit and damage using up a turn of undead.