Light arrow archer

[Apollos713]

Hello! I've long been a fan of the Legend of Zelda, and would love to make a build that lets me fire "light arrows" like Link. That's pretty tough in DDO, but what I was thinking was a Morninglord 13 Ranger/ 4 Warlock / 3 Cleric. The 4 Warlock is to get Spiritual Retribution from the Enlightened Spirit tree for the light damage. 3 Cleric is for light spell power from Divine Disciple. The rest would be Ranger. The upside of this build is that I can combine force (or electric) damage with light damage (even though it's 3d6) from a bow. However, I give up a lot to get this. I'd love to get feedback and thoughts on the build, specifically:

1. Is there a better way of getting light damage that scales with spell power that I'm not thinking of?
2. Should I even worry about Ranger, or would a Monkcher be better since I'll be a Morninglord and can use the racial AA tree?
3. How gimped would this build be? I'm sure it wouldn't be top, but could I realistically still solo EH and LH quests?

Thanks for any thoughts and feedback, and yes, I know it's a flavor build.

[Kadrios]

I'll have a proper think about the build and run it through the builder later, but I'd say its probably better to keep the ranger levels, and save the 14 AP necessary to get AA from the racial tree, since AP are probably going to be quite tight on the build.

[Saekee]

Paladins get light damage from their cores too and holy sword would give the same expanded crit/multi on bows.
Maybe an elven paladin? AP would be very tight--Kotc Capstone (7d6 light), rest in elf tree to elven AA (6 AP in defender for stance). The pally light damage scales with melee power; not sure if it does so with ranged power.

I have no idea if this would work so please treat with a grain of salt...

[unbongwah]

On a MCed AA build, presuming you're going for the racial AA PrE to get the top-level core enhs (+1 crit multiplier, +25% Doubleshot), then that costs you at least 55 APs (14 to unlock it, 41 for capstone). So the question mark is: what to do with those 25 remaining APs? You can't afford T5 in another PrE, so you look for either the most powerful T4 to combine with it; or the PrEs with the best "low-hanging" fruit (i.e., T1-3 abilities) to complement your build concept.

So your build concept would basically pigeon-hole you into spending the rest of your APs on ES to get Spiritual Retribution, with two APs left over (e.g., +10 Light Spellpower from DiDi). So that's 3d6 light dmg (avg 10.5 dmg per hit); let's presume you can hit 500 Spellpower by endgame so that becomes 63 light dmg per hit. Setting aside whether another T4 PrE is more powerful, there are two issues I foresee:

• Proc-on-hit effects like Spiritual Retribution benefit from having a high rate-of-fire, since they aren't boosted by crits; and bows are still designed to be low RoF / high dmg per hit weapons. I could see a shuriken or maybe repeater build making good use of it, but not a bow user.
• You're splitting your Spellpower focus between Light / Radiance for SR and whatever your primary imbue choice is, which complicates your gear choices.

So it's doable, but I think you'll be underwhelmed by its DPS compared to a conventional monkcher or pure AA these days.

Paladins get light damage from their cores too and holy sword would give the same expanded crit/multi on bows.
Maybe an elven paladin? AP would be very tight--Kotc Capstone (7d6 light), rest in elf tree to elven AA (6 AP in defender for stance).

Even with Holy Sword providing crit bonuses, I'm pretty sure giving up the last two AA cores (+25% Doubleshot) for KotC cap would be a net DPS loss. But then you can only afford 3d6 light dmg from KotC which is actually worse than Spiritual Retribution, since you can boost Spellpower a lot higher than Melee / Ranged Power.

[Apollos713]

Thank you three for the input. It definitely looks like sticking with Ranger for 13 levels is the lesser of all the evils, so I don't have to dump APs into the racial tree. I'm playing a pure ranger right now, so I expect this build will underwhelm, I just want to run this through for fun. I'm hoping that with the Cannith Crafting pass that I'll be able to craft an item with two types of spell power on it, so my gear issues are lessened. That may be wishful thinking. On the upside, this should be a much better defensive build for an archer, so I may be able to survive longer while doing less damage.

This would all be much easier if the Devs just made a light arrows toggle in the AA tree.

[unbongwah]

Since you seem to be committed to this idea, I'd say ML rgr 15 / lock 4 / cleric 1 is your least bad option: 14 APs ML, 41 APs AA, 24 APs ES, 1 AP DiDi. Since you can't afford any more APs in cleric, might as well go rgr 15 for two lvl 4 spell slots (CSW+FoM) and 4th FE. Feats: PBS, Precision, IC:Ranged, Overwhelming Crit, Combat Archery (if you can hit DEX 21), Doubleshot. Do what you like with the rest.

Good luck & have fun.

[Apollos713]

Since you seem to be committed to this idea, I'd say ML rgr 15 / lock 4 / cleric 1 is your least bad option: 14 APs ML, 41 APs AA, 24 APs ES, 1 AP DiDi. Since you can't afford any more APs in cleric, might as well go rgr 15 for two lvl 4 spell slots (CSW+FoM) and 4th FE. Feats: PBS, Precision, IC:Ranged, Overwhelming Crit, Combat Archery (if you can hit DEX 21), Doubleshot. Do what you like with the rest.

Good luck & have fun.

Thank you! And yes, "least bad" is what I knew I'd be shooting for going in.