The following is my current build that is leveled to 24 (with banked XP to 25 approaching 26). |
The character is a True Neutral Purple Dragon Knight (PDK) level 20 Favored Soul (FvS) and is my favorite zerger for grinding Epic Destinies to date. When not grinding Fate Points the character is in Exalted Angel but has wings regardless of ED and is fun all the time... I love duoing this FvS with my 12F/6M/2P in Air Stance with 'Running with the Wind' twisted for fun... Sometimes this build is doing too much AoE damage I have agro problems so I sometimes sub in my Tank instead of the 12F/6M/2P for boss fights to control agro and between the Diplomacy on the FvS and the Intimidation on the Tank agro is pretty manageable. Note: I have multiple accounts and usually leave at least 2 people at the entrance to level multiple characters at the same time and more chest loots and prefer to play the 12F/6M/2P for the speed/DPS unless a Tank is better for a particular fight. I do this when solo or in small groups (I often duo or 3-6man with my kids &/or friends) and if we ever get over-zealous and pull to much (or get sloppy) it is nice to have a tank/rezzer in reserve to reconstitute the party... |
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The details of the build are below but the highlights are as follows: |
- AoV Condemnation: Reduces Fort upto 50% on bosses; |
- AoV Condemnation: Increases Light & Alignment damage upto 50% on bosses; |
- Warpriest Vulnerable: Increases all damage upto 20% on bosses; |
- Exalted Angel Rebuke Foe: Increases Light & Physical damage upto 25% on bosses; |
-PDK max Charisma for if/when I eventually LR+2 the FvS20 to splash at least Paladin2 for Divine Grace to saves. |
-PDK max Charisma for higher DCs with ED abilities and more FvS mana; |
-PDK max Charisma for max UMD utility and max Diplomacy as with all the AoE the build can get unwanted agro. |
-PDK max Charisma to use Charisma to hit/damage with swords via PDK 'Cormyrean Knight Training'. Not going to do the DPS of a strength build but should be able to hit stuff and I can get up to 100% damage with melee for now; |
-Two-Weapon-Fighting (TWF) so I can dual wield Celestia (I UMD master's touch for short-swords) and being Neutral I still break all DR even with Exalted Angel's Blessed Blades and get upto +100% melee damage as Celestia when properly wielded deals light damage; |
-Max Healing & Light/Fire/Force-Physical spell damage for fun/synergy and can get upto +95% damage with light spells; |
-TWF Ameliorating Strike for great mana free AoE healing; |
- Divine Vessel' from Warpriest for mana free AoE Light/Fire damage as often as every 25 seconds (jury is still out on this as it seems to take forever to charge but is nice when it fires and it can do +95%/20% on bosses); |
- Divine Wrath every 15 seconds for big AoE heal & huge light AOE (upto +95% damage on bosses); |
- Mana-free AoE-line Sunbolt every 9 seconds (upto +95% on bosses); |
- Single target damage from Avenging Light, Searing Light, & Nimbus of Light (all upto +95% on bosses); |
- Twisted Energy Burst: Fire for big fire AoE Explosion every 30 seconds (upto +20% on bosses); |
-Twisted Boulder Toss for large mana-free single target physical damage every 20 seconds (upto +45% bosses); |
-Twisted Wild shots for large mana-free single/multiple target physical damage every 15 seconds (upto +45% bosses); |
-Can Blur and Haste the party without any Arcanes. |
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Note: While the above is one of my funnest builds to-date I doubt it is Epic Elite viable... To go Epic Elite I would switch to LG 18FvS/2Paladin PDK which would still give most of the above plus awesome saves but sadly you would lose the mana-free sun-bolt and breaking DR on everything if you stay with Celestias in Exalted Angel (because being LG ED:EA's Blessed Blades will add LG to Celestia and Celestia will no longer break all DR unless you always have an artificer around)... |
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Fun Playstyle (EH & below): Refresh Haste on party and ideally let someone wade into combat with you coming after (my 12F/6M/2P wades in then shadow-fades). While they focus Agro on the other target you refresh Divine Intervention on yourself if needed & come in hot (use wings if necessary) and: |
- Cast Renewal on yourself as you wade in to proactively HoT any incoming damage and refresh during combat if/as needed; |
- Pop Energy Burst AoE on everything & get your Archon to start firing building up charges; |
- Pick the farthest target and try to line up as many enemies as you can in your AoE-line mana-free SunBolt; |
- Wild shot as many as you can mana-free; |
- Boulder-Toss biggest threat or casters/ranged still standing (if anyone); |
- If anyone in party needs healing pop dual-proc Ameliorating Strike (80%) for mana-free healing & renewal/heal if critical; |
- Pop Diplomacy if you have too much Agro and/or incoming damage for renewal to out-pace; |
- Start swinging dual Celestia until you get a sun Burst to hopefully blind Everyone and build up Divine-Vessel charges. |
- If Divine Vessel doesn't have enough charges to auto-proc and Divine Wrath does then manually fire Divine Wrath (especially if others need healing). |
If things are still alive, while waiting for the above cool-downs to recharge, alternate between melee and spamming cheap light spells (meta'ed-Avenging Light & non-meta'ed-Searing-Light to do DPS & to build charges for Divine-Wrath) |
- In later levels try out Ruin and Hell-Ball and if they don't bring much to the table then choose something else (maybe more light spell power?). |
- If things are hot or dangerous and/or the party needs healing do a quickened-Mass-Heal; |
- Rinse/repeat; |
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On bosses obvious play more cautiously and try to do the following: |
- Make sure you refresh Divine Intervention on yourself well before it runs out and cast Renewal on yourself every 8 seconds or so (refresh a little early to be safe); If your AoE heals are not enough you can actually keep both on the tank as well if you hot key and can multi-task well (I prefer to supplement with quickened Mass-Heals or Mass-Cures if really needed instead). |
- Make sure you have transferred your SoC to someone in the party who can keep agro (use diplomacy if/as needed to transfer agro away) to build up x5 stacks of Condemnation; |
- start building triple stacks of Divine Punishment on boss; |
- Rebuke Boss x5 stacks; |
- Melee smite to AS heal everyone and build up stacks of Vulnerable; |
- With excess charges do Divine Wrath to AoE heal everyone; |
- Blow your cooldowns as you can while not messing up the above; |
- Swing your Celestias while examine'ing the Boss to make sure your stacks are maxed (I like to set auto-attack on to help). Cast Mass-Heals or Mass-Cures if red-bars are dropping too fast for dual-proc'ed AS and Divine-Wrath to keep high... |
- While/when things are established pop Ascendance to assume Angelic Presence and make sure Astral Vibrance is toggled to further supplement AoE healing and do more AoE light damage; |
- If things go south you have your Divine Intervention to fall back on; |
- If things go further south you have the free rez from Death Pact to fall back on; |
- If things go further south you also likely have "Reborn in the Light" to fall back on; You build up charges very fast but you can skip the pre-boss shrine and pop a mana potion instead if you want to insure it will be ready if needed. If Ascendance has finished and the boss is still not down you can try to purposefully die and pop this (I don't really do that but may try it for fun). |
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All and in all very fun and forgiving build… |
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The details on the Epic Hard and below build (I will post my thoughts on an EE version next): |
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Note: The newly updated Character Planner is awesome but very complex and understandably still has some bugs… It wouldn't let me change initial class on a PDK (I LR+1'ed to be a pure FvS to get the mana-free Sun-Bolt) so this is planner is with Human. Instead of the human APs spent take PDK core 0 and the PDK 'Cormyrean Knight Training'. Also as Human I tried to take '(Deity) Follower of the Silver Flame' and then the FvS AoV 'Ascendancy/Light of the Flame' for the mana-free 'Searing Light' to approximate the PDK Deity & mana-free Sun-Bolt but the Character Planner would not let me so I threw the 41st point into inquisition because I could not spend it on Ascendancy. Otherwise I think it is accurate and is what I have been running with lately but it is easy to respec as needed... |
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Lastly, note also that the tomes and being a 36 point build are mostly optional. The hard thing for TWF is that you need a Dex of 15 for the first TWF feat and a Dex of 17 for the next two TWF feats. If you don't have 36 points or don't have the Dex tome the main thing would be to make sure your Dex is 15 and then 17 before taking the TWF feats. You could cost effectively start at 15 or even 16 Dex and then use a level up to make it 17 Dex and not use a tome at all and not hurt the build too much. I also like skills so my int is higher that other people may recommend but I wanted all the skills maxed that I maxed... |
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