Best Righteous-Focused options

[Nodoze]

Note: Please note that I changed the Title of this First Post but haven't figured out how to change the Title of the thread from "Best Righteous-Focused options" to "Best Righteous Ameliorating Strike builds" so sorry for any confusion to those who come to this thread after the change...

My hope is that people reading this thread will share their thoughts and ideally any fully fleshed out builds. I reserved a few posts after this initial post so that if we have good discussion and people post links or builds (or I find them in other threads) I can add them to the beginning of the thread so people don't have to read the entire thread to get the most important information... I will try to keep this Initial Post (IP) and the other top reserved posts updated with the most important pieces of information...

After discussion/feedback in this thread the purpose of this thread has been refined to be focused on finding the "Best Righteous Ameliorating Strike builds" for those who are also interested in trying to fully leverage Ameliorating Strike in their builds and also don't like not being able to take "Righteous Weapons" while allocating Action Points (APs) in the Warpriest tree to get "Ameliorating Strike"...

Originally this thread was zeroing in on "Righteous-Focused" Ameliorating Strike (AS) builds because I just happened to working with the Kensei tree with my current duo/trio but after more research from other threads and good feedback in this thread (+1s to everyone who contributed!) I broadened the topic as "Righteous AS" could be combined with many interesting combinations from many trees including Kensei, Tempest, Barbarian, Defender, etc and my real initial intent was to try to understand the various combos, document them in one place, and then chose the right ones to fit into my duos/trios as well as document what would be viable Righteous Ameliorating Strike builds to bring to EE parties/raids.

To level set people who haven't studied the trees yet, you can do AS with any weapon but you can get consistent dual-procs when TWF/doublestriking (& can get triple+ procs when double-striking while TWF) but you can only leverage "Righteous Weapons when using a "Deity Favored Weapon". Deity Favored Weapon combinations limits Righteous Weapons to the following racial combinations:

• - Righteous-Greatword: Requires Warforged or Bladeforged races with Bladeforged being better with the SLA and power of the forge; Ideal weapon(s): Epic Sword of Shadows (eSoS)?
• - Righteous-Shortwords: Requires Drow race and can give dual-procs via TWF Ameliorating Strikes from the WarPriest tree. Ideal weapon(s): ? (Celestia loses DR breaking with Righteous Weapons ).
• - Righteous-Scimitars: Requires Elf or Half-Elf races and can give dual-procs via TWF Ameliorating Strikes from the WarPriest tree. Ideal weapon(s): ?
• - Righteous-Focused Maces: Requires PDK, Morninglord, or Shadar-kai races and can give dual-procs via TWF Ameliorating Strikes from the WarPriest tree. Ideal weapon(s): ?
• - Righteous-Longswords: Open to multiple races (maybe all) and can give dual-procs via TWF Ameliorating Strikes from the WarPriest tree. Ideal weapon(s): ?
• - Righteous-Longbow: Open to multiple races (maybe all/most) but not able to leverage the melee Ameliorating Strike with a Bow. Ideal weapon(s): Pinion? If you went this route maybe you could range from Pinion and then jump up and smite and then jump back (credit idea to mna).

After reading the other threads about Rangers and Barbarians doing dual-proc TWF Ameliorating Strikes (with triple+ procs when you get double-strikes) as well as S&B builds maybe also getting an Ameliorating Strike proc on both main-hand double-strikes & shield bashes, I am thinking that really what most people are after is the mana-free healing from Ameliorating Strikes (ideally at least dual-proced). Note that multiple enhancement trees offer similar benefits to the Righteous enhancements though ideally it would be best to have both (hence why I originally called this thread "Righteous-Focused"). I will try to break out them as follows:

- Warpriest: Tier4 Righteous Weapons gives +4hit/+4damage & tier 5 Wrathful Weapons gives +5/+5 with vorpal adding 6seconds of 3d4 light damage. Biggest advantage is you need to spend 20APs anyway to get Ameliorating Strike (AS) so it would be great to get the bonuses while unlocking AS. Thematically it "fits" to be a Deity favored weapon but it doesn't have to be. Other benefits in the tree include Divine Might, Smite Weakness/Vulnerable, Wall of steel, Sacred touch, Inflame, etc. Benefits can be combined with the below trees:

- Kensei: Tier4 Kensai focus gives +5hit/+4damage (+2more damage if THF) & Tier 5 allows you to be centered. The Kensei tree requires feats Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization , & Greater Weapon Focus further increasing your damage with the weapon plus there are some other goodies in the Kensei tree (Power Surge, Meditative Focus, Spiritual Bond, Extra Action Boosts, +Tactics, etc).

- Tempest: Tier4 Whirling Blades gives +4hit/+4damage when TWF, but more importantly, if TWF, Core4 at Ranger level 12 gives you +20% off-hand attacks so 100% off-hand attacks with the full TWF feats while other classes can only get 80% off-hand attacks plus Ranger 11 gives you the TWF feats for "free" plus should allow you to get Many-Shot... Other benefits include essentially Improved Evasion via Evasive dance, Deflect Arrows, Improved Parry, etc. If you don't want to invest too much in Ranger you can get the first +10% off-hand strikes with only 3 levels in Ranger and only 6AP in Tempest.

- Shintao: Level 1 with only 7AP in Shintao gives a +10% off-hand strike via tier 1 enhancement - Deft Strikes which stacks with the Tempest bonuses so Monk1 by itself can get you 90% offhand & adding only Ranger level 3 with 6AP in Tempest will get you the other 10% for 100% off-hand strikes. Monk 2 gives you Evasion and monk splashes in general give you monk stances which now only need feats to improve (no longer need multiple monk levels)...

- Others?: Haven't really studied the barbarian, or other trees much (yet)...

Much more thinking to do on interesting combinations of TWF Ameliorating Strikes (AS) so some class splits that come to mind:

-3+R/4+FvSoC/1+M: 3+ Ranger with at least 4 levels of Favored-Soul or Cleric (FvSoC) and at least 1 level of monk one could get 100% dual-proc AS while centered with Monk weapons or short-swords with any race (Drow also getting Righteous Weapons). Add the Whirling Steel Strike feat and could use longswords centered without having to go into the Kensei tree to get Focus weapons...

-Stalwart Defender T5 can get ~50% sustained Double-Strike & ~72% half of the time with S&B when fully geared.

Lastly, I haven't thought about unarmed monks and Ameliorating Strikes and curious if Unarmed fists with hand-wraps will proc Ameliorating Strikes...

Gotta get going on some other stuff in RL so I will think on this while doing other things...