Hannibal - The Grandmaster Tactician Template

[Sydril]

This is an abstract template for an endgame tactician with tactical dcs approaching a no-fail range in current end game content. The purpose of playing a tactician in Epic & Legendary Elite is not to be a top DPS party member but to function as a crowd control specialist and stopgap for character deaths and party wipes.

Race: Any. Half Orcs have an advantage of inherent strength but any race works. My personal tactician is a TWF Elf, which is not optimal but perfectly functional.

Class: Level 20 Pure Fighter

Alignment: Any

As a template This is laid out to maximize tactical DC's but there is a great deal of flexibility in race and weapon fighting style choice.

Feats:

1. Combat Style (Single, Two Weapon, Two Handed or Shield), Stunning Blow
2. Power Attack
3. Sap
4. Improved Sunder
6. Combat Expertise, Improved Trip
8. Improved Critical: Weapon Style (Pierce, Slash, Bludgeon)
9. Tactical Training (+2 Tactics)
10. Tactical Combatant (+4 Tactics)
12. Tactical Mastery (+6 Tactics), Weapon Focus: Weapon Style
14. Weapon Specialization: Weapon Style
15. Greater Weapon Specialization: Weapon Style
16. Tactical Supremacy (+8 Tactics)
18. Magical Training (this is for use with Cocoon), Improved Combat Style
20. Greater Combat Style
21. Overwhelming Critical
24. Quick Draw
26. Tactician (+2 Tactics)
27. Blinding Speed
28. Perfect Combat Style
29. Dire Charge
30. Greater Weapon Focus: Weapon Style
30. Astral Scion (+4 tactics)

Enhancements:

An argument could be made in favor of Vanguard for a Sword & Board Tactician but I prefer Kensai for maximized DC's A Vanguard would lose about 9 DC over a Kensai (3 from tier two tactics, 2 from capstone and 4 from power surge) but would get +3 to stuns and some other benefits from vanguard. The choice is preferential.


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You can also achieve a very high double strike which is not a primary goal of the build but a nice perk. Here's my elf with relatively little gear and no epic past lives with a 61% after a block and cut.


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This build can achieve 100+ tactical feat DC's at level 30, and a Dire Charge DC of close to 130.

Here's an example of some of the DC's you might see:






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There are a few ways to manage Epic Destinies depending on your Weapon and Combat Style choices. Legendary Dreadnought with minimally Sense Weakness and Cocoon twisted in is probably the best choice.

[dethdukk]

I'm very impressed with your DC's... could you possibly post a summary of how you got to 125 on the stun? Is that a sustainable DC? Hows the HP/PRR/MRR on the build?

Edit: You have so many points into stalwart to get to T5, why not just go down the stalwart core line instead of Kensai? You could still get access to power surge, and the stalwart tree capstone gets you 2 DCs as well... that would free up points to put into Vangaurd to pick up the +3 stunning DC from there as well.

You have quick draw, which I assume is to lower the amount of time boosts take to go off. Why not just pick up a cleave? You can use cleave to break the time boosts lock out attack animations.

[Sydril]

I'm very impressed with your DC's... could you possibly post a summary of how you got to 125 on the stun? Is that a sustainable DC? Hows the HP/PRR/MRR on the build?

Edit: You have so many points into stalwart to get to T5, why not just go down the stalwart core line instead of Kensai? You could still get access to power surge, and the stalwart tree capstone gets you 2 DCs as well... that would free up points to put into Vangaurd to pick up the +3 stunning DC from there as well.

You have quick draw, which I assume is to lower the amount of time boosts take to go off. Why not just pick up a cleave? You can use cleave to break the time boosts lock out attack animations.

The DC's listed are standard without any short term buffs, only boat buffs and gear. I typically have 10-13 minutes of power surge per rest which adds another +4 to those.

In addition to the tactical bonuses listed in the layout, there's +6 from Legendary Tactics in Dreadnought Tier 1, +3 from fighter past lives, I think I had around a 64 strength when I took those screenshots (I may be wrong on that but close) and for gear currently wearing random lootgen +15 Stun (enhancement) belt and random lootgen armor +11 Combat mastery (Enhancement, doesn't stack with stun belt) with +6 insightful combat mastery.

I tried the stalwart capstone for a while but it's a bit dps less than kensai (-2 Strength, -19% doublestrike, -2 haste boost & power surge). Vanguard has some merit but only if you spec for sword and board, and even then it's not optimal for tactical dcs.

For PRR / MRR it's currently around 100 / 60 in medium armor (the lootgen i mentioned is scale mail) which I actually prefer over heavy since it makes it easier to get the 20% or so dodge without a low end cap. Hit points are around 1300 in Dreadnought, 1800-1900 in Sentinel. not great, but not too shabby for a 12 con elf. You could tweak the feat selection and add toughness / epic toughness and easily break 2000 with a dwarf. I was thinking a single weapon fighting waraxe dwarf would be very solid for optimized dps.

[unbongwah]

An argument could be made in favor of Vanguard for a Sword & Board Tactician but I prefer Kensai for maximized DC's A Vanguard would lose about 9 DC over a Kensai (3 from tier two tactics, 2 from capstone and 4 from power surge) but would get +3 to stuns and some other benefits from vanguard. The choice is preferential.

You're forgetting the real advantage of VG, IMO, namely two extra stun abilities: Stunning Shield & Shield Champion's 5% stun chance on shield bash. You can hit ludicrous DCs for these abilities because they're boosted by char lvl as well as Stunning bonuses. But that's a completely different build, IMO, so I'll save it for my own threads.

Interesting choice, going for T5 SD instead of Kensei (Keen Edge). I keep forgetting Block & Cut no longer requires having a shield equipped (which seems like a bug to me, but whatever).

However, if your focus is on maxing DCs on a pure ftr, it makes sense to invest in Harper for Know the Angles.

[Sydril]

You're forgetting the real advantage of VG, IMO, namely two extra stun abilities: Stunning Shield & Shield Champion's 5% stun chance on shield bash. You can hit ludicrous DCs for these abilities because they're boosted by char lvl as well as Stunning bonuses. But that's a completely different build, IMO, so I'll save it for my own threads.

Interesting choice, going for T5 SD instead of Kensei (Keen Edge). I keep forgetting Block & Cut no longer requires having a shield equipped (which seems like a bug to me, but whatever).

However, if your focus is on maxing DCs on a pure ftr, it makes sense to invest in Harper for Know the Angles.

I tried KTA but it was sucking into my healing cocoon pool. The first incarnation of this build was actually a tier 5 harper with extended displacement dragonmarks (hence the elf). The alternate for me i think would be to drop the +6 str and others from T5 stalwart (those hp are too valuable to give up in endgame) and leverage the dc loss with a harper splash, something like 41 kensai, 26ish stalwart and the rest in harper. Not a bad split but not the direction I went with.

Also as a crowd control specialist, in LE raids where mobs are hitting for for 2000+ damage its imortant to land the stun, trip etc up front. I really really like the vanguard capstone, but its a random proc and even when you're haste boosted and shield bashing like a tazmanian devil if you don't land that initial blow you're probably dead or running for your life.