Level 20 Fighter - help me fix him

[Pehtis]

I returned to this game after 2 year hiatus mid way through this year. Over 2 years ago I rolled a human Two weapon fighter with Bastard Sword focus. It was a flavor build at the time based on noticing so many cool bastard swords freely available in weapon shops and auction house and hoping DDO would some day give BS some love. Recently I heroic (level 20) capped him. Below is my character at level 20 naked. I will keep my two weapon wielding bastard swords feats. Everything else I am happy to reconsider. I intend using the Lesser Reincarnation thingy DDO gave us to fix him and need your help with suggestions.


Human Fighter
Starting Base Stats: Level 20:
Str: 16 +1 Human enh + 2 Kensai enh Str: 26 (Naked with Kensai tree enhancement maxed)
Dex 16 (+1 tome taken later) Dex: 17 (Naked with Kensai tree enhancement)
Con 14 (+2 tome taken later) +1 Human enh Con: 21 (Naked with Kensai tree enhancement maxed - not sure where the rest of the CON came from)
Int 10 Int: 10 (Naked with Kensai tree enhancement)
Wis 8 Wis: 8 (Naked with Kensai tree enhancement)
Cha 12 (+1 tome taken later) Cha: 13 (Naked with Kensai tree enhancement)

All level ups to Str.

Skill Focus:
Intimidation (all points) -> currently sitting at 30 naked
Jump -> currently sitting at 26 naked
*Balance (hybrid) -> currently sitting at 14 naked (never understood why this is hybrid skill on a fighter)


Feats Taken (in no particular order):
Cleave
Great Cleave (really don't like it as it is only main hand attack)
Force of Personality (taken for will saves)
Two Weapon Fighting
Improved Two Weapon Fighting
Greater Two Weapon Fighting
Oversized Two Weapon Fighting
Improved Critical: Slashing
Power Attack
Skill Focus: Intimidation (yep think I may have to swap this. But for what? My intim works ok atm on Elites)
Weapon Focus: Slashing
Greater Weapon Focus: Slashing
Weapon Specialization: Slashing
Greater Weapon Specialization: Slashing
Two Handed Fighting (in case need to S&B the extra glance blow of BS might be useful)
Shield Deflection (only took it because there was nothing else plus I took a handful of stalwart tree enhancements to make using shield situationally worthwhile)


Originally I had Stunning Feat but got rid of it when I realised I needed to be a hammer user to make it remotely useful (I know recent update changed this). I swapped it out for Power Attack. I do not think I will ever get my Strength high enough (I am not a grind/twink gear kind of guy) to make my stuns land so not sure if it is worth revisiting.



Your help will be greatly appreciated.



PS This is a pure build discussion (no splashes)

[EllisDee37]

12/6/2 fighter/monk/? is probably your best bet, choosing either pally or ranger for the 2 ? levels.

[bigdmag]

I have a pure 2WF and he seems to fair well. Only real weakness ( for most pure fighter builds) is he isnt very self reliant, in other words he needs a healer to keep him alive but he does dish out the damage. Not being self reliant may make some groups annoyed, but you'll pull you weight in the DPS department. Now mine is half-orc so its a little different but if I were you:

1. I would drop the skill focus Intimidate- you will pull enough aggro without it and your not really a "tank" so you will not really
want to pull aggro of everything around you. It will get you killed even faster. Intimidate is for builds that can survive the aggro
generally speaking.
2. drop the THF feat and shield deflection. Unless your planning on building a "tank" or a 2HF, these feats will not really benefit you
there are feats that will benet you more as a TWF.
3. drop force of personality. You can drop Charisma, since you dont need Intimidate, and raise Con. More HP's. You can get more will
saves fro enhanceents
4. Thats 4 feats to replace. Take Kopesh= lots of crits and big numbers... take power critical = bigger crits....take stunning blow = mob
beater and you can get your strength high enough to be useful....Take toughness = more HP's.
5. Take overwhelming critical once you get to epics and the crits get really fun.
6. You can get +'s to your stun DC in Legendary Dreadnought and from weapons.
7. Trip kopesh in 1 hand, stunner in the other and trip/stun/cleave/great cleave...repeat.
8. Kensi line of enhancements and whatever you want left in human. You can also get some in the stalwart defender line. I take the one
that gives better dodge and dex modifiers. dodge will be more beneficial than AC ( you cant get useful AC unless you really build for it)
9. Get haste boost and you will rip through a lot of content. Even better when your in a good party.

My guy rips through EH stuff with a Hire healer pretty well ( I take the ship dummy down in about 6 to 8 seconds). I cannot really do EE with this build as the survivability is low and hires just cant keep me up. However in a group on EE he does fairly well. My strength may be a touch higher than yours as Im half-orc and have tomes, but you should be able to get into the upper 40's or 50's. If you TR sometime switch to half-orc and go 18 strength/ 16 dex ( with your +1 tome you'll have enough for GTWF)/ rest con. All skill points into Balance/jump whichever you want.

There are 2wf multi class build that do add survivability if this is what you want. If you want to be pure then I would focus on everything to DPS and getting your dodge up. Give up the "Tankish" feats they spread you to thin. When your a pure build you either tank all the way or not at all <----- some will disagree and there are builds that can do both, but most of them are multi-class. You could keep Bastard swords but your losing a little DPS, Kopeshes crit more and for higher numbers.

[Inoukchuk]

12/6/2 fighter/monk/? is probably your best bet, choosing either pally or ranger for the 2 ? levels.

Agreed, the enhancement pass made adding 2 monk to anything very powerful (and 6 is very appealing for shadow veil). 12/6/2 with the 6/2 being monk/pal or pal/monk will give you incredible saves (if you remember to build in some CHA) with evasion and awesome DPS. More monk gives shadow veil, more paladin gives divine might without having to twist in EDs that you won't have for a long time. My personal take is shadow veil isn't needed except on epic elite, so 6 paladin for DM and unyielding is great, or 6 ranger for manyshot with 2 monk levels and you probably want to run on normal or hard difficulties until you have a good ED maxed (fury or dreadnought) and some fate pts for twists.

To spell some of this out, 12 fighter / 2 monk / 6 paladin will give you power surge, one with the blade (allows you to be centered with your non-monk weapons), evasion, great saves, unyielding sov for some emergency healing, and from epic destinies you'll want to twist dance of flowers and cocoon. If it's me, I take stunning blow to go with my HUGE str bonuses and twist in tactics from dreadnought and run in fury. You'll want to take the monk stance feats up to master, run in earth stance, use earth attacks and take fists of iron (if you can stand all the clickies).

[Pehtis]

Thanks for the post. It's in keeping with what I was thinking. I can't bring myself to take toughness feat anymore (sure the extra 20 points is nice but not worth the price of a feat) on any toon. But you say stunning blow might actually be semi useful esp with Epic tree (it still worries me that I will be ineffective in 20+ content).

Should I take Improved Sunder to help with Stunning Blow? Is the Fort reduction enough in epics?

I have a pure 2WF and he seems to fair well. Only real weakness ( for most pure fighter builds) is he isnt very self reliant, in other words he needs a healer to keep him alive but he does dish out the damage. Not being self reliant may make some groups annoyed, but you'll pull you weight in the DPS department. Now mine is half-orc so its a little different but if I were you:

1. I would drop the skill focus Intimidate- you will pull enough aggro without it and your not really a "tank" so you will not really
want to pull aggro of everything around you. It will get you killed even faster. Intimidate is for builds that can survive the aggro
generally speaking.
2. drop the THF feat and shield deflection. Unless your planning on building a "tank" or a 2HF, these feats will not really benefit you
there are feats that will benet you more as a TWF.
3. drop force of personality. You can drop Charisma, since you dont need Intimidate, and raise Con. More HP's. You can get more will
saves fro enhanceents
4. Thats 4 feats to replace. Take Kopesh= lots of crits and big numbers... take power critical = bigger crits....take stunning blow = mob
beater and you can get your strength high enough to be useful....Take toughness = more HP's.
5. Take overwhelming critical once you get to epics and the crits get really fun.
6. You can get +'s to your stun DC in Legendary Dreadnought and from weapons.
7. Trip kopesh in 1 hand, stunner in the other and trip/stun/cleave/great cleave...repeat.
8. Kensi line of enhancements and whatever you want left in human. You can also get some in the stalwart defender line. I take the one
that gives better dodge and dex modifiers. dodge will be more beneficial than AC ( you cant get useful AC unless you really build for it)
9. Get haste boost and you will rip through a lot of content. Even better when your in a good party.

My guy rips through EH stuff with a Hire healer pretty well ( I take the ship dummy down in about 6 to 8 seconds). I cannot really do EE with this build as the survivability is low and hires just cant keep me up. However in a group on EE he does fairly well. My strength may be a touch higher than yours as Im half-orc and have tomes, but you should be able to get into the upper 40's or 50's. If you TR sometime switch to half-orc and go 18 strength/ 16 dex ( with your +1 tome you'll have enough for GTWF)/ rest con. All skill points into Balance/jump whichever you want.

There are 2wf multi class build that do add survivability if this is what you want. If you want to be pure then I would focus on everything to DPS and getting your dodge up. Give up the "Tankish" feats they spread you to thin. When your a pure build you either tank all the way or not at all <----- some will disagree and there are builds that can do both, but most of them are multi-class. You could keep Bastard swords but your losing a little DPS, Kopeshes crit more and for higher numbers.

[bigdmag]

Thanks for the post. It's in keeping with what I was thinking. I can't bring myself to take toughness feat anymore (sure the extra 20 points is nice but not worth the price of a feat) on any toon. But you say stunning blow might actually be semi useful esp with Epic tree (it still worries me that I will be ineffective in 20+ content).

Should I take Improved Sunder to help with Stunning Blow? Is the Fort reduction enough in epics?

It is viable in EH fairly consistent, i solo quite a bit. In EE it lands on casters fairly well but not melee types to often. Once again Im a half-orc( Iwould recommend h-orc if you can ) so my strength is a bit higher than yours, so mine would land a little bit better. I use sunder to, but dont really notice what its doing, i cycle through sunder,stun,trip,cleave and great cleave. All I know is in EH I stun and trip just about everything. In EE its less but still lands. The DPS is very good overall. I cannot solo EE as I have no real self healing. But in a full EE party I mop stuff up. Once you twist in Sense Weakness, your stunned mobs go down like a submarine with a screen door In Dreadnaught, if I can get a blitz going Im hitting for 230's or so with crits in the 1000's or more (every 3 to 6 hits is a crit normally) , stunned mobs go down with 2 or3 hits sometimes because they take even more damage. I actually didnt think I would like the pure fighter because of the lack of self healing but I have grown to like him. He really hits hard and fast and takes things down fast. If there is a bard and an arty in the group, its lights out for the mobs, they are literally mowed down in seconds.