What’s the point of Fighter Vanguard?

[Hoglum]

I’m curious, why would you take the Vanguard tree to capstone? I have a sword and shield Fighter and was dabbling in the Vanguard tree. Ultimately I changed to Kensei. Vanguard seems have a lot of nice stuff for the shield bashing but bash is limited to 1 swing per second. At some point I figured I’m better off boosting my sword damage. It seems once you attack fairly quickly you’ll get your 1 swing per second or really close to that.

I do not know how many swings per second you get with a B-sword but having 30% (imp shield bash + shield combat 1) vs 60% (30% + vicious shield 1 + shield combat 2 + shield to the face) makes me wonder if you actually get substantially more shield swings.

At 30%, you’ll generally make a shield swing every 3 attacks or so. At 60% you’ll swing every other attack. With a limit of 1 per second it looks to me that if you’re swinging the sword fast enough you get very close to the 1 swing allowed per second. I concluded it’s probably better to go with boosting sword damage rather than shield damage.

The other boost Vanguard offers is an increased attack speed in general. This is nice but is it enough to overcome heavily investing in Kensei? I have a lot of points invested in the defender tree which I don’t think are negotiable so I’m tossing remaining points into Kensei currently. Vanguard looks really cool but that shield bash limit of 1/sec strikes me a too limiting to invest too much in it.

Am I missing something? Thoughts?

[unbongwah]

Bear in mind Vanguard was introduced in Update 23 two years ago and hasn't really been buffed much since then. So of course the recent Kensei DPS improvements shine by comparison. Go back six months or more and you'll find plenty of threads bemoaning how bad S&B fighters are compared to paladins; "OMG when is Kensei gonna get buffed?!?1!?" Well, it got buffed in U31, so now the complaint is "OMG why is Vanguard so bad compared to Kensei?!?!1!" Round `n round we go...

I've theory-crafted S&B Kensei builds which were 41 Kensei (capstone) / 31 VG (cores) / 7 Harper (KtA) / 1 human (Dmg Boost) - no defensive stance at all, just pure melee DPS. For maximum LULZ I thought about running in FotW to use Adrenaline + Good Death w/d.axes for x5 crits.

[psykopeta]

Think about vanguard as... A tanky swashbuckler lol

U get some nice (and high dc) stuns, also based on that combat style u have doublestrike and attack speed so u can be atrtle, no need to grab extra aggro thingies

An example of what a vanguard can be, is the steel maiden build, nice ac, prr and not bad dodge, woth that an cocoon u can go to cap (imagine the damage avoidance/mitigation) with 1 vampirism wrapon and blitzing it's amazing how unstopable u become(takes more time that with a full dps toon, but in most scenarios u can't die)

[Enoach]

Vanguards main features in my opinion...

• Shield Bash (Turns that metal disk hanging in your off hand into a threat) - Essentially a counter to TWF's Offhand - So more hits possible per combat cycle
• Stun(s) - Using the Shield to stun mobs - Stunned mob is defenseless thus has additional damage that not only you benefit from but others in your party
• Attack Speed - Fast Main hand strikes
• Improved AC/Defense - While not better then defender it works well in conjunction

As for the capstone, the 5% chance that a Shield Bash also does a stun doesn't seem like a lot but if you look at it as 1 in every 20 Shield Bashes it is essentially the same chance as a Vorpal Strike.

[FranOhmsford]

Long before the recent Kensai upgrades I got browbeaten on these forums into changing a S+B Pally from KotC to Vanguard - A couple days later I changed back because KotC may not have been optimal for a S+B Pally but Vanguard for me was Worse! {I'm never going to be "Optimal" anyway!}.

I still much prefer the Cleaves from KotC to anything Vanguard gives!

At the end of the day personal preference is far more of a driver than people on these forums give it credit for! {Myself incl. at times}.

[BigErkyKid]

No point. It is a rookie trap. Vanguard was OK in combination with paladin when it came out, now it is vastly outdated.

[Phil7]

flavor build only
Vanguard lives were fun tho
Not a build to choose for fast past lives or max melee dps

for quick/easy past lives as a melee you need aoe damage and running speed.
THF + cleaves (barbarian,pally,fighter,monk, fvs/splash whatever)
or tempest w/ DoD

for top melee dps build I would play THF fighter or tempest ranger, but I prefer Fighter <3
I'm sorry but paladins, barbs and the rest are not on the same level

[Hoglum]

Thanks for the feedback folks. That's about what I thought. I does seem like a newbie trap. From what I've read, the 1 second limit was added after the fact (not 100% on this, just going by memory). I'm thinking shield bash may have been getting too close to TWF for damage output so they reigned it in. In the process they essentially destroyed the tree since it's mostly centered around that bash.

I put enough points into it to grab the stunning shield, bonus to DC's & shield combat 1 so some decent low hanging fruit. I like the idea of the Vanguard though, just tight on AP to go in too far.

[Qhualor]

Thanks for the heads up. Didn't realize my pure Vanguard Fighter fell into this newbie trap. I should pay more attention to my characters performance.

[unbongwah]

Haven't you heard? THE NUMBERS HAVE SPOKEN

[Enoach]

Thanks for the heads up. Didn't realize my pure Vanguard Fighter fell into this newbie trap. I should pay more attention to my characters performance.

Haven't you heard? THE NUMBERS HAVE SPOKEN

I find it amusing myself that often that which is calculated in a vacuum always seems to perform differently outside of the vacuum. But people will still point to the results from the vacuum.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

imo vanguard is decidedly worse than a kensei in both overall. maybe you get somewhat higher prr with the shield, but then you are mostly definitely giving up some combination of tactics/dps that i would find unacceptable. if you go with the example unbongwah listed in this thread, then you dont have defensive stance. that is unilateral unnacceptable for le damage, unless you only run easy stuff or always run in a group and are capable of never pulling too much aggro (difficult if you do any dps that would justify such a build existing).

kensei though gains better dps with better weapon choices with no sacrifice, and has very comparable defenses. the prr you can get on a pure harmor kensei is seriously ******** (on a pure bf kensei i was hitting 250 prr situationally (blitz, tensers, bf/deific warding/ephemeral evolution stacks) without even maxing prr past lives (admittedly i do think i have 5 or 6, so notquite 0...but not quite 9 either). you also get 20% hp without having to sacrifice anything.

kensei is just hands down better.


as far as what is the best way to build a snb fighter from enhancements, i think its a personal preference. when the kensei buff happened i looked pretty extensively at trying to build a snb vanguard fighter that could take advantage of the buff but i never came away from one satisfied. given that large chunks of the power of kensei and vanguard are in the tier 5s and 18/20 cores, they are mutually exclusive, meaning you either build a sword and shield kensei, or a vanguard with some minor kensei buffs.

[elvesunited]

While my vanguard melee is a paladin and not a fighter ...

He holds his own in legendary Shroud, Legendary Tempest, etc.
and doesn't lack in dps.

But a lot of that is dependent on taking the vanguard capstone and having a strong named shield with a high base damage value that can really be effected by the vanguard +W bonuses.

The Epic Demonic Slab has a damage of 6.25[3d10] and expanded crit range. It may only hit once per second. But in the hands of a vanguard it does a lot of damage with that hit. I imagine a vanguard fighter with more emphasis on damage and melee power than saves and self healing would hit even harder.

[FranOhmsford]

given that large chunks of the power of kensei and vanguard are in the tier 5s and 18/20 cores, they are mutually exclusive, meaning you either build a sword and shield kensei, or a vanguard with some minor kensei buffs.

This is my problem with Kensai.

AP Spend as you level:

1 AP: Core 1 {Required but wouldn't be taken if it wasn't}
3 AP: Tier 1 Weapon Group Spec.
5 AP: Tier 1 Exotic Wpn Mastery Heavy Blades if using Khop or B-Sword {Otherwise useless}.
6 AP: Core 2 {Uh what the heck?}
8 AP: Wpn Group Spec.
10 AP: Ascetic Training: Conditioning x2

So for our first 10 AP in the tree we receive a total of:
+3 to hit and damage with our favoured weapons {This is Double Specialization from 2nd Ed. AD&D but in 2nd Ed. AD&D monsters rarely had more than 100 hp total EVER! In DDO they have 100 hp at Lvl 4!}
+2 Fort Saves
+10 HP
+10 Fortification

OK now we move on and we're still taking stuff just to build up the tree...

11 AP AND Min Lvl 5: Strike with no Thought {Guessing we've put the rest of our AP up to this point into Stalwart}.
14 AP: Tier 3 3xCrit Mastery
16 AP: Tier 3: Wpn Group Spec.

Getting better with Crit Mastery and Strike with no Thought but we're still taking what is basically an AP tax in Wpn Group Spec. And our bonuses are still relatively weak compared to many other Trees with low lying fruit.


And yes I know I didn't take the almighty Haste Boost but you have 5 of these or 6-8 if you spend AP on the extra boosts as well and I find I'm constantly holding on to those boosts and not using them! So I just stopped taking them!
Also that's an extra 9 AP spend to get 8 Haste Boosts! - It's going to be a while before you get the higher stuff then!