The Meteor Shower: 12Monk/5Wizard/3Rogue Shuriken Insanity

[jakeelala]

I've edited this 7/24/14 to reflect that there is no reason to be drow anymore, just go Halfling. Since Halfling crit threat range enhancements to thrown weapons is fixed, it is the superior choice by a healthy margin.

Stats: Dex 20, Wis 16, rest Con and Int for skillz

Halfing
1 Rogue: PBS
2 Monk: Dodge
3 Monk: Quickdraw, Precision
4 Monk:
5 Monk:
6 Monk: Shuriken Expertise
7 Monk: 10K
8 Wizard: Extend
9 Wizard: Rapidshot
10 Wizard
11 Wizard
12 Wizard: Precise Shot, Quicken (Could take MT if you want)
13 Monk
14 Monk
15 Monk: IC Thrown
16 Monk
17 Monk
18 Monk: IPS
19 Rogue
20 Rogue
Epic21: Completionist
Epic24: Deflect Arrows
Epic26: Who Cares
Epic27: Epic Reflexes
Epic28: DoubleShot

Enhancements are:
Halfing: 17AP for Master Thrower, +3 Saves, 2 Dex, 3SA dice.
EK: 31AP to Get Perma Tensors
Ninja: 8'ish AP Just enough for Core 2 extra shurikens, maybe enough for +3 Dodge Cap.
Acrobat: 15AP to Haste Boost, Dex, and Shadow Dodge I only take 2 tiers of Haste boost as it's useless on this character, as is everything else in this stupid tree except shadow dodge and Dex.
Shintao: 1AP 5% healing amp and 10 Pos SP.
-------
72'ish? Play with the rest.


Over the last 6 months this particular character went from a 5 year old bank toon, to a epic/heroic completionist and about 12 different non-stoned lives through lvl28 as different shuriken builds. I borrowed heavily from Distributed's Pew Pew thread and also the ****hole DDO forums Shuricannon and Backwoods Chucker threads, which are awesome. My very fist Shuriken build for this toon was a 20 Monk Shuricannon. But because I was too busy trying out different builds and play testing them relatively thoroughly, I never posted any specific builds until now.

Honestly the ultimate inspiration for this build was the question that I realized lay at the power equation for ANY shuriken build:

How high can I get my Dex?. So far, it's 85, but that's without any twisted from other ED's, I could pick up reasonably 1 or 2 since I have epic completionist. Running around without pots it's about 76-78 reliably.

Dexterity is so far and away the primary stat of a shuriken build that literally nothing else should stand in the way of acquiring more dexterity short of a direct DPS increasing alternative (like say, the argument for Overwhelming Crit, which I currently do not take). It increasing you atk/dmg directly as it's the stat for those with shuriken. It also directly increases your ranged dps by 2% for every point of Dexterity you take through the action of Shuriken Expertise and Ninja Spy's Core 2 enhancement. And it's also one of your more powerful defensive stats because it increase the crucial Reflex save.

The most significant, class specific boosts to Dexterity are: Wizard/Sorc based Tensers Transformation (+4 Stacking Dex, Str and Con) and Shadow Dodge from the Rogue Thief-Acrobat tree. Tensors also gives the unique bonus Full BaB bonus. For ranged/throwing attacks, the difference is considerable at BAB 28 (somewhere between 3-5% from 24 BAB, though I am meaning to retest it again more thoroughly one of these days). Shadow Dodge also gives +3% Dodge.

So, the argument I had in my head for a long time was: why not just use shroud clickies for displace and scroll tensers? The answer is, you can do that. But, you're taking a HUGE DPS hit if you are not meticulous and perfectly attentive to always being Tensered all the time. Also, mine can't be dispelled. I can't run out of it in the middle of a quest. I don't have to switch weapons, cast it, and switch back every-time I want it's benefits. I don't know how anyone else plays but I know how I play: fast and with a focus on doing as much damage as I possibly can as fast as I can. I don't even like to let off the DPS to heal myself unless I absolutely have to. Doing DPS is as much about spending as little time as possible NOT doing DPS as it is about being built and geared properly. To that end, I feel perma-Tenser is actually vastly superior to scrolled Tenser's. And the effects of Tensers are so important to this build, you honestly should really never be without it. It's like Blinding Speed. Assuring the permanence of your most crucial abilities, I think, is the top priority.

I know that when I did not have perma-Tensers, I did not have 100% uptime for Tensers. In reality I would have been lucky to manage 70%, realistically. In my mind, that makes Perma Tensers at least 30% better than scrolled Tensers. Once you build for Shadow Dodge and Perma Tensers, the rest falls into place pretty easily.

Speed Tests:
I did some tests just now at lvl 25, in Shiradi. I have whirling wrists, but 0% Doubleshot. I tested using consumable Throwing daggers. The reason for this is that I am strictly testing thrown attack animation speed, not procs. If I used Shuriken, the extra procs from Shuriken Expertise and Ninja Spy would actaully cause more than 1 dagger to come out of the stack on throws, and therefore I wouldn't actually know if the animation is faster in one test vs another because the dice rolls are pseudo-random. Instead, we can control that factor by just throwing daggers, since they can only come out one at a time. Tests were done with no buffs except blinding speed (22% alacrity) and with/without Tensors.

To throw 2 stacks of 50 Throwing Daggers:
BaB 19 (12/5/3 Epic 5): 89.36 Seconds
BaB 25 (Tensors Up): 78.18 Seconds

I couldn't believe my eyes. That's a ~12% DPS increase. If Wiki is right and BaB increases attack animation speed every 5 BaB, that would explain this large number since my test crossed the Threshold at 20 and 25 BaB using Tensors (19->25) which would make every 5 BaB around 6% increase, at least for throwing weapon animations.

[jakeelala]

My most recent gear layout is:

Head: Masque
Neck: Mystic Eleidons (+4 Inisght Dex/Con)
Cloak: +10 Resist Prismatics
Belt: 11 Con / 50 HP (need to upgrade to Battleragers)
Gloves: Epic Claw
Boots: 125% Fort/10% Dodge
Ring: Stalker/Consuming Dark/DunRobar TS
Ring: Avithoul
Eyes: EE Shadowsights +11 Wisdom
Bracers: Dumathoins +11Dex / 30 PRR / 45 Resists
Body: BlackDragon
Trinket: eGem of Many Facets
Off Hand: TF 150 Pos/Dragons Edge/22% Healing Lore or Seeker 10/Deception VII SS.
MainHand: Many and varied Shuriken

Regarding Shuriken Damage
Is a Cormyrian Spelltouched lvl 24 star better than a Thunderforged Tier 3? Not even close. Its not speculation, it's just math.

Touch of Flames: 10-60 = 35 Average Proc Damge
Dragons Edge or Aoe Fire Proc: DE is 70*.1 = 7 Average Damage per hit
Mortal Fear = 8 to 64: 36 Average Proc Damage, but it's ENORMOUS power comes in it's 5% proc which does thousands of damage to mobs if they have thousands of hitpoint. This is almost impossible to Calculate on a per/throw basis, but it VASTLY eclipses any other proc on TF and all possible procs on a Spelltouched.

So, 35 + 7 + 36 = 78 Proc Damage per throw + incalculable proc effect on non red/purple mobs that does THOUSANDS of damage 5% of the time.

Vs.

Lets just look hypothetically at an ideal Cormyrian throw for fun:

First Static Mod: 2-12, avg 7 per missle (whatever, light, fire, frost, you pick) - Dealers Choice!

Second Static Mod: 9.15 dmg/hit avg. with Lightning Strike. I'm fairly certain this highest consistent DPS mutation for the second effect.

Third Static Mod: This one is utility, and there are no DPS options short of I think Imp Curse/Curse which are horrendous. Set this to Life Stealing, or Crippling which is semi useful. This makes it even with the slot on a TF you can put a Level Drain augment in which you should if it's for trash. Meteoric for trash immune to level drain/bosses. Edit: Sorry. There is a small DPS one that can go here over Level Drain: Roaring which is 2-12 on a crit so 7.5*0.10 = basically nothing ok it's really .75 damage per missle/per throw. Changing absolutely none of the calculus here.

Fourth Static Mod: There are all sorts of horrible things that can spawn here on a Corm star that ruin what would otherwise be a top shelf weapon. Alas, there are 2 good mutations for this tier: Hemorrhaging and Fracturing. Since one only works on stuff with blood, and the other only works on stuff with bones, and since they're so close in damage, let's just say 7.5 average damage here.

so:

7+9.15+7.5= 23.65 Damage.

Now, let's get crazy. Let's just say every single time you threw a cormyrian thrower with these idealized stats, Unbelievably, every. single. time. the spellplague effects were the very same idealized ones on the star itself!!1!?. Wouldn't that be a sight.

So 23.65x2 = 47.3 avg damage per missle/per throw. Well, as I mentioned above, in calculable proc damage without an augment slotted a properly constructed TF shuriken is doing 78 Damage per missle/per throw. And that's WITHOUT it's base damage increase over a Corm which is 2(d2) vs. the TF's 4.5(d2), which in and of itself is 3.75 dmg per missle/per throw.

No possible mutation of a lvl 24 Cormyrian shuriken in any conceivable situation could ever possibly do even 75% of the proc and base damage of a Thunderforged shuriken, as demonstrated in this example.

And of course, that's only if your Spelltouched never procced Aligned, or Silver, or Curse, or Paralyze, or Parrying, or Freezing Ice, or or or or.....

Also, TF Tier 3 are +12! vs. a Corm's +6. So add ANOTHER 6 on TF over and above a Cormyrian.


So in closing:
This shows that it's not even close. Although, proc damage is usually about equal to base damage, and if you build correctly, your Sneak Attack should be around 60-70 as well. So, that lowered proc damage is actually skewed a bit down since it's 50% of the Thunderforged, but proc damage is only representing 33-50% of the total weapon damage in actuality.

So lets say:

Base Damage is about 90% because of the huge Enchantment Bonus Difference, but all else is equal (Dex Mod, Deadly 10/11, Past lives, etc, it's the same character just a different weapon).
Proc Damage is about 50%
and
SA is unchanged at 100%

1+.9+.5 = 2.4 vs. 3 for TF. .6 is 25%. So, in a perfectly ideal situation with a perfect Corm star and perfect procs, it's truly 25% behind. Again, the procs aren't nearly perfect, we can guesstimate the best mutation of Cormyrian star you can get safely to be about 33% worse than a Thunderforged.

[jakeelala]

ED choices are Shiradi or Shadowdancer. I favor Shadowdancer because the DPS is a bit higher agains most red/purple names since you can't Nerve Venom them. You get a 5% damage proc against them though from SD, and more SA which applies to them as well. For a nice Defense splash that doesn't reduce your DPS too much, GMoF is actually pretty cool for no fail saves and Dex stat options.

Also, if you train Executioners shot, you have a ranged assassinate every 30 seconds that can be coupled with IPS to line up a bunch of mobs and instakill them. Currently with temporary Dex buffs, I can get that save up to about a 72 Fortitude save.



Just for clarity, yes I am aware that it's a 35% chance to instakill. But remember, this build averages about 2.6 Shuriken/Animation BEFORE 10k or Doubleshot, obviously sometimes it's 1-2 and sometimes it's 5-6, but the law of averages is universal.

[Xiadais]

Have you ever considered halfling for better IPS? Sure, it won't help you on bosses, but everywhere else being shorter is a gigantic help in hitting things with IPS.

[jakeelala]

Have you ever considered halfling for better IPS? Sure, it won't help you on bosses, but everywhere else being shorter is a gigantic help in hitting things with IPS.

It is a sad reality that this can be an issue. To be honest, it's only an issue with small mobs, mostly wolves, sometimes kobolds or shadows.

Halfing is fine, but you do lose some things as well:

-Feat if Drow
-SA damage range if Elf

But overall, halfing is a perfectly reasonable choice. This build isn't that tight on feats, so a halfing can be made to work. If they fix the enhancements, it's sort of a no brainer.

[Blackheartox]

It is a sad reality that this can be an issue. To be honest, it's only an issue with small mobs, mostly wolves, sometimes kobolds or shadows.

Halfing is fine, but you do lose some things as well:

-Feat if Drow
-SA damage range if Elf

But overall, halfing is a perfectly reasonable choice. This build isn't that tight on feats, so a halfing can be made to work. If they fix the enhancements, it's sort of a no brainer.

Ask yourself, can you actualy play a halfling for longer time in ee-s? xD

On a sidenote, healing would be nice if you could fit in mark and maximize for cures, not like its needed, but its handy

[jakeelala]

Ask yourself, can you actualy play a halfling for longer time in ee-s? xD

On a sidenote, healing would be nice if you could fit in mark and maximize for cures, not like its needed, but its handy

Sure, all reasonable adjustments.

[funnyone]

What are your starting stats, and what is your level progression?

[jakeelala]

Gotten some PM's about starting stats and level progression.

My level progression was:
Rogue-Monk 6-Wizard 5-Monk 6-Rogue 2. This allows you to have the most skill points possible for traps and such.

Starting stats were:

Str 8
Dex 20
Con Whatever is left
Int 12 i think
Wis 15 or 16
Cha 8

Basically: max Dex. Then make your wisdom respectable. Then make your Con respectable. Then add whatever you have to Int. Or you can reverse that and go less Con (like me since I have 9 primal pastlives for almost 99 HP at lvl 28). All that matters for damage is Dex and Wisdom.

[jakeelala]

People keep asking me about Ranger/Monk/X splits. I think EllisDee said it best in another thread:

Don't sleep on 5 wizard: permanent tensor's! 12/5/3 monk/wizard/rogue is a very strong thrower build: full BAB, +7 dex over pure monk, plus some wizard buffs, all of which are extended since what else are you gonna take as a wizard bonus feat? Nightshield, Protection from Evil, Mage Armor, Blur, Haste and Displacement. The first four should last 10 minutes each.

Good point.

Skipping 5 Wizard for the very questionable benefits of Ranger is not a good plan. And I did for a number of lives on my shuriken character for a long time until I wised up. It also opens up whirling wrists/blinding speed as thrown attack rate is capped, you don't need 28 BaB and Blinding Speed and Whirling wrists so you can play around a little more and alos not be stuck in Shiradi or only twisting Whriling wrists.

At 28 the difference between blinding speed, ww, and Bab 28 vs Only BaB 28 and BS is .75 secs/throw vs. .69 secs per throw.

Pretty insignificant!

The only reason this is advisable I think is because you are going to ETR grinding and you really want to be able to run in Melee Destinys sometimes. Which is fine. You sacrifice highest DPS thrown for versatility. That's totally cool, just be clear about what you're doing.

[unbongwah]

Are you on Sarlona? Could've sworn I ran thru eVON 3 this weekend with a shuriken build with this exact split.

My most immediate question is: why no Combat Archery? It's only a modest increase with shurikens, but every little bit helps, I presume, particularly since you don't have the feats nor STR for OC.

[jakeelala]

Are you on Sarlona? Could've sworn I ran thru eVON 3 this weekend with a shuriken build with this exact split.

My most immediate question is: why no Combat Archery? It's only a modest increase with shurikens, but every little bit helps, I presume, particularly since you don't have the feats nor STR for OC.

Wasn't me. I'm on Khyber. But my build has been on *ahem* other forums for at least a month or two so I'm not suprised people are starting to see more in the wild. Maybe I'm doing something right

Because I believe Dex/Deflect Arrows/Stances are more important. If you need the Dex, it becomes much more atttractive. If the extra dex would make your final score odd, CA is probably better. Depends on your Equipment, your Tomes, and your other feats.

CA is a cool feat, based on other considerations. I'm also not convinced yet the damage applies to thrown. Like Ranger PL, the feat explicit states it applies to Ranged combat, which is distinct in the DDO (most of the time) from Thrown combat. The Dodge definitely does apply.

[EllisDee37]

I guess the two key benchmarks to shoot for:

1) Reach the hardcoded dodge cap. What is it (25%?) and how do we reach it?
2) Reach the hardcoded throwing rate cap. What is it (requires testing) and how do we reach it?

Everything else is secondary, but I'm a sucker for details. I want to give my thrower a healing flask from cove, meaning I have to choose which thrower build I'm going with by Wednesday.

Looks like I'm sitting down tonight to hammer out the actual build specifics for both: level progression, skills, feats, etc...

[jakeelala]

I guess the two key benchmarks to shoot for:

1) Reach the hardcoded dodge cap. What is it (25%?) and how do we reach it?
2) Reach the hardcoded throwing rate cap. What is it (requires testing) and how do we reach it?

Everything else is secondary, but I'm a sucker for details. I want to give my thrower a healing flask from cove, meaning I have to choose which thrower build I'm going with by Wednesday.

Looks like I'm sitting down tonight to hammer out the actual build specifics for both: level progression, skills, feats, etc...

Thrown Speed with every single Thrown speed increase caps hard at about .69-67 sec/animation. Like you take all of the feats I have, then you hit 30% haste boost, and the thrown speed is unchanged.

That's enough for me. Can only imagine that changing with a BaB bump to 30.

[jakeelala]

I guess the two key benchmarks to shoot for:

1) Reach the hardcoded dodge cap. What is it (25%?) and how do we reach it?
2) Reach the hardcoded throwing rate cap. What is it (requires testing) and how do we reach it?

Everything else is secondary, but I'm a sucker for details. I want to give my thrower a healing flask from cove, meaning I have to choose which thrower build I'm going with by Wednesday.

Looks like I'm sitting down tonight to hammer out the actual build specifics for both: level progression, skills, feats, etc...

My testing on other forums where I originally posted this build thread has numbers. So does a link I included someone else did but it seems to have been deleted from the DDO forums so you have to look at the Google cache version. Maybe I'll repost here.

[jakeelala]

from the cached version of the thread on thrown attack speed by Furian

Ok, so I've spent a bit of the afternoon doing some testing on max SPS (shurikens per second). First, forget for a moment the number of projectiles thrown per throw animation and focus on the animation itself. I've come to the conclusion that Haste, Haste Boost, Echoes of the Ancestors Shiradi, and likely the ToD AA ring set are useless at a high BAB. There seems to be a hard cap of 84 throw animations per minute for my BAB. Let's review:

For this test, the toon has the Quick Draw & Rapid Shot feats, the only feats that effect thrown speed. The toon also has Whirling Wrists, which (supposedly) gives 60% attack speed with thrown. That remains to be tested. Anyway, that this is my starting point. I'm working with an active BAB of 28. Here's what happened when counting the attack animations for a 1 minute duration:

Test 1: No boosts
84 attack animations in 1 minute

Test 2: Haste (supposedly 15% attack speed boost)
84 attack animations in 1 minute

Test 3: Haste & Echoes of Power Shiradi Stance (supposedly 10% attack speed boost)
84 attack animations in 1 minute

Test 4: Haste & Echoes of Power Shiradi Stance, Haste Boost for 20 seconds (supposedly 30% attack speed boost)
84 attack animations in 1 minute

As you can see, at BAB 28 all attack speed boosts gave no additional throws.

That being said, with a lower BAB these things DO have a minute effect. Without Tensors Transformation my BAB is only 18. The results from BAB 18 are:

Test 1: No boosts
78 attack animations in 1 minute

Test 2: Haste
80 attack animations in 1 minute

Test 3: Haste & Echoes of Power Shiradi Stance
82 attack animations in 1 minute

Keep in mind that it takes 30 seconds to see a difference of 1 throw. If haste runs out during a fight and you were to take the time to re-cast it, even with quicken you've already negated a good deal of the benefit. If you are the type of player that equips a clickie for haste, then you've likely negated 100% or even lost an attack or two.

My conclusion: At end game, don't attempt to increase DPS through attack speed... it's not going to happen.

Anyway, I just thought i'd share. If others have tested this with bows and such, i'd be interested to see those results.

[EllisDee37]

Well, hmmm. The way I'm reading that is that max BAB is a hard requirement on any thrower build, and other than that there is no way to improve your attack speed in any way. Not one single thing you can do after maxing your BAB.

Do I have that right?

[jakeelala]

Well, hmmm. The way I'm reading that is that max BAB is a hard requirement on any thrower build, and other than that there is no way to improve your attack speed in any way. Not one single thing you can do after maxing your BAB.

Do I have that right?

No. But it's really important. I *think* BaB is like racial healing amp or finger necklace. It changes the variable that gets increased by Ranged alacrity sources, as opposed to being a ranged alacrity bonus itself. But I'm not great at math stuff

Honestly no one seems to know for sure, we just have estimates for the amount of bonus various things have. But there is a wall that seems to get hit right around .7 sec/throw

[EllisDee37]

How important is int? What skills do we need? My initial stat breakdown looks like:

Abilities          28pt    32pt    34pt    36pt
Strength             8       8      10       8
Dexterity           20      20      20      20
Constitution        12      12      12      12
Intelligence        10      10      10      10
Wisdom              14      14      14      16
Charisma            10      10      10      10
<End Table>

In a nutshell:

28pt: 20 dex, 14 wisdom, 12 con
30pt: add +2 strength
32pt: take back the +2 strength from 30pt and add +2 wisdom (16 instead of 14)

[jakeelala]

How important is int? What skills do we need? My initial stat breakdown looks like:

Abilities          28pt    32pt    34pt    36pt
Strength             8       8      10       8
Dexterity           20      20      20      20
Constitution        12      12      12      12
Intelligence        10      10      10      10
Wisdom              14      14      14      16
Charisma            10      10      10      10
<End Table>

In a nutshell:

28pt: 20 dex, 14 wisdom, 12 con
30pt: add +2 strength
32pt: take back the +2 strength from 30pt and add +2 wisdom (16 instead of 14)

well it's subjective, do you want to be able to do traps? if not, you have plenty of skill points for things like balance, concentration, heal, and umd. Listen and Spot are nice for seeing mobs, your dex is so high you don't need much at all in OL, it's just search and disable really. Other than that it all looks about right. Equipment and tomes not withstanding of course.

Also about Furian's post (which is not on DDO forums for some reason anymore, maybe he was banned?) I think it's largely informative but I think it's also important to have verification by someone else of what he observed. My observations are largely in line with it, but I also have Blinding Speed, which is 7% more than Haste. And if you look at the original Thread he had some sort of ranged attack speed item on he didnt realize until after testing (he said 9% but I assume he meant 10% from a cannith trinket) which doesn't invalidate the tests but does confuse them somewhat.