Two friends coming in - Looking for advice

[VileSin]

I've played a bit (level 10ish) but that was about a year ago. Buddy of mine as never played but we're going to give it a shot. He's looking to play a fighter or barb - he'd be ok with tanking. I'm up for playing anything since we'll be running together. Was looking for suggestions from you forum posters on help picking a couple classes that work well together. We have no DDO Store purchases and don't plan on it until we decide whether we enjoy the game or not. (Mostly him.)

And of course, a huge help with all this would be some good builds to go along with the suggestions...

Thanks!

[FrozenNova]

There's a great deal of conjecture as to what represents the best pair of duo-only builds.
The outcome is ultimately insignificant. Hireling healers are readily available (though hireling rogues are not). Group members are also readily available. Play whatever you feel like playing and don't restrict yourself from resources such as the rest of the playerbase on the server.

If you really intend to duo the entire game without relying on hirelings or groups, a fleshy barbarian or fighter for one of the slots is unlikely to end well. There is no single character that can provide everything between deathward / fom, resists, haste & displace, trap skills, healing, crowd control, and killing. The closest you'll get is a splashed bard, wherein you will still be reliant on gear and ship buffs for your resists, and you will never have deathward without Tangleroot clickies, rendering several quests infeasible.

If you're simply looking for a pair of characters that have a close relation within a full group, play a casting divine alongside a barbarian.

[Grenada]

If you have access to warforged:

1. a fighter warforged, built to take aggro and a beating.
2. an 18/2 wizard/rogue warforged, I'm thinking necromancy focused archmage with repair spells to keep both of you up, and the trapping skills for when it's needed.


Alternatives:
1. barbarian warforged
2. 20 artificer warforged. No insta-kill, but you get a pet to help with dps, and some fun Warforged specific spells. Oh, and you get to machine gun your way through the waterworks, plus access to repair spells.


F2P?
1. dwarf fighter (my sig has an easy one if you like it)
2. human cleric (focus on spell damage and healing)

[Nysrock]

A 18/2 Wizard/Rogue and a FVS would do nicely too.

[morticianjohn]

You can try utilizing hirelings for healing and select a trap capable toon like an 18/2 wiz/rogue

[MarDeRoam]

Build/character choise advice for small groups (2/3 players) has been asked before, but i can't find the specific threads right now.
A google search did show this beautifull gem post from Sirgog.
It's some kind of guide to starter groups, give it a read, it might help you deciding what you want.

Oh, and Hi Welcome to you both ofcourse!

[Arianrhod]

Without getting anything from the DDO store you won't have access to WF, half-elf, half-orc, drow, monk, favored soul or artificer (some of those can be earned eventually with favor, others can only be purchased).

A few things to consider - will you want to rely heavily on hirelings, or avoid using them unless absolutely necessary? Will you be satisfied with skipping some content due to not having the right stats/skills/etc. (disabling traps, finding secret doors, opening locks, working levers & runes), or are you more the "explore every nook and cranny" types? And, of course, general playstyle - if you both want to tear through everything as fast as possible, for instance, you might not be very happy with wizards or clerics who need to swap out spells to suit the occasion, or rogues who can seem like they're taking forever to search out trap boxes.

If you want to have rogue skills in the group, you'll probably want a "splash" rogue - wizard with 2 rogue levels or ranger with 1 rogue level (first level as rogue for oodles of skill points). You'll also want both characters to have self-healing capability, so each can keep going long enough to get to a shrine if the other falls - cleric, bard, paladin, ranger or dragonmarked halfling of any class can do this (though the paladin or ranger will need wands, at least at first). Any class with the Use magic Device skill can eventually have decent self-healing capability, but it takes a few levels (or more than a few, without twink gear or tomes) to get the skill high enough to self-heal reliably.

If you'll be using hirelings a lot, consider that of the hireling types, healers tend to be most useful, while meleers tend to be least useful, so you'll need the actual player characters to be able to handle any melee without expecting the hirelings to do it. Hirelings can do in a pinch for casters (firewall, for instance), but they tend to die...a lot. So it's a good idea to have one of the player characters be a capable caster (wizard or sorceror) as well.

So...that leaves you with a few good combinations: paladin and wizard/rogue, sorceror (possibly a dragonmarked halfling if you don't want to wait till relatively high level for self-healing) and ranger/rogue, cleric and wizard/rogue or ranger/rogue...
If you don't care about the rogue skills, can stick with pure classes, just make sure to have some way to heal them (hirelings, if nothing else).

Oh, and start with decent con - generally spend 6 build points on it, even on a wizard or rogue

[VileSin]

Wow, quick responses, thanks! And decent suggestions and a good couple links too. I don't think we're planning on going duo ONLY - if we need more people we'll obviously get more people. But we'd like to not have to RELY on others to do too much either.

Is there a decent wiz / rog 18/2 build anywhere so I could see how it works? I'd be interested to see if it suits my playstyle.

[MarDeRoam]

You might wanna check this thread to read up on a wiz/rogue build.
It has several build options along with advise.