1-30 Reaper Clonklock

[Deathlylife]

I would like to thank you for posting this build, it looks really fun and I can't wait to get up to epic levels to realize it's true power. Currently Level 10 and will post another update when I hit 20

I am currently working on leveling this and have a few comments for people that may want to attempt this build as I have.

1) If you are used to and like monk, this build does not play/feel/act remotely like a normal monk. There are way fewer buttons to press and unarmed damage will be lower due to lack of monk levels.
2) If you plan on running in pugs or certain static groups like I often do, it is suggested to take Ki Shout from tier 1 Shintao. It helps immensly with those annoyi.. helpful ranged teammates that decide to shoot one monster before you can grab agro and have the entire monster group spread out over half the map out of range of cleaves. Ki Shout acts like intimidate but uses your concentration instead and is very useful since you can keep everything close for your cleaves and save your teammates from unwanted agro and damage.
3) I feels really slow in low levels. Your cleaves suck compared to a Barbarian or Fighter, and your 1v1 dps is laughable compared to a real monk. But, I can say that the build scales really well when the content gets tougher. Your damage will still not be optimal at mid levels but you have temporary hit points to spare and will outlast large pulls and tough enemies longer than anyone else.

Disclaimer: You may have better damage if more investment is made than 2 cannith crafted items and the rest is random gen loot. (Yes the build is so awesome that I just keep Con, Cha, Spell Power, and False Life updated)

[Gargoyle69]

Apparently they are nerfing invisibility guard next patch.

I must've missed that one, where's that from?

[Gargoyle69]

Aggro changes. When they lose target on you due to invis, they will attack next person on aggro list, instead of going into search mode for you. No more casters and archers walking into your loving embrace while grouped.

Ohhhhh, right you are.

Bummer :-(

[Gargoyle69]

10d6 light damage on hit from spiritual retribution

Do you mean 3d6? Or am I missing something?

[Klazan]

Is this generally speaking the best version of a MorningLord Clonklock progression? I wouldn't have same tomes all the way across the board, but at least for stats and level progression:

Morninglord Clonklock
8/6/6 Cleric/Monk/Warlock
Lawful Neutral Morninglord


Level Order

1. Cleric . . . . .6. Warlock . . . .11. Monk . . . . . 16. Cleric
2. Monk. . . . . . 7. Warlock. . . . 12. Monk. . . . . .17. Cleric
3. Warlock . . . . 8. Warlock. . . . 13. Monk. . . . . .18. Cleric
4. Monk. . . . . . 9. Warlock. . . . 14. Cleric . . . . 19. Cleric
5. Warlock . . . .10. Monk . . . . . 15. Cleric . . . . 20. Cleric


Stats
. . . . . . . .36pt . . Tome . . Level Up
. . . . . . . .---- . . ---- . . --------
Strength. . . . 14. . . .+4. . . .4: CON
Dexterity . . . 15. . . .+5. . . .8: CON
Constitution. . 14. . . .+5. . . 12: CON
Intelligence. . 14. . . .+4. . . 16: CON
Wisdom. . . . . 13. . . .+5. . . 20: CON
Charisma. . . . 11. . . .+4. . . 24: CON
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28: CON

Feats

.1. . . . : Power Attack
.1 Deity. : Follower of: Amaunator
.2 Monk . : Two Weapon Fighting
.3. . . . : Dodge
.3 Warlock: Pact: Fey
.4 Monk . : Mobility
.6. . . . : Cleave
.9. . . . : Great Cleave
10 Monk . : Path of Harmonious Balance
12. . . . : Improved Two Weapon Fighting
13 Monk . : Spring Attack
15. . . . : Combat Expertise
18. . . . : Whirlwind Attack
18 Deity. : Amaunator's Brilliance
21 Epic . : Greater Two Weapon Fighting
24 Epic . : Improved Critical: Bludgeoning
26 Destiny: Perfect Two Weapon Fighting
27 Epic . : Overwhelming Critical
28 Destiny: Elusive Target
29 Destiny: Dire Charge
30 Epic . : Epic Damage Reduction
30 Legend : Scion of: Arborea

[Deathlylife]

Sorry I did not respond earlier Tilomere, I decided to continue with my original plan of getting to 20 before making another post.

In regards to Monk having less of a damage increase due to 1d6 unarmed vs the 3d6 light damage. That is very misleading as it is not actually split as clearly as that. Base Assumptions for my calculations are auto attack damage only, they will have the same attack speed (allows for me to only calculate damage per hit and not over time), and that they will be using the same wraps (therefore extra damage from on-hit effects can be neglected) With that stated I will start with your build with 3d6 and 200 light spell power (could be higher or lower depending on gear and past lives) that will be 9-54 damage per hit or 31.5 average. Now for a monk they will get 1d6 unarmed damage. But they will also be spending their enhancements differently and will supplement that damage with +4 damage, 2d6 sneak attack die, and 20 melee power. Making the damage ((1d6+4)*1.2) + (2d6*1.8) which is 9.6-33.6 per hit and if a critical profile of 20x2 (only for base damage, not sneak attack damage) is taken into account the damage would be 9.9-34.2 thus making the average increase in damage to be 22.05.

Now if you are on reaper difficulty the damage from enlightened spirit counts as spell damage and takes a greater reduction in damage then melee damage. Using the data collected and compiled on the DDO Vault the 31.5 average light damage on 1 skull will only deal 71% damage and be reduced to 22.365 and the 22.05 average melee damage will deal 91% and be reduced to 20.081. In Reaper 1 skull the damage difference is reduced to 2.284. This of course is only for level 10.

When level 12 hits for a pure monk the damage will drastically increase due to +1 crit multiplier and range from enhancement and +1 crit range from the feat Improved critical bludgeon. The elite damage for a pure monk would become 24.3 while your build will gain 11 spell power (CC lvl 10 to a lvl 12 spell power+ insight difference) and become 32.655. Now applying the reaper penalties to damage, pure monk becomes 22.113 and your build is 23.185 with a difference of 1.072 damage per hit.

Now I concede that your build will do more damage per hit in elite and reaper at both level 10 and 12. But the difference you stated before was incorrect and is in actuality much smaller. I will stand by my earlier statement that a pure monk 'feels' like having more damage 1v1 when playing (probably due to larger base damage numbers as I often don't look at additional effect damage) but the math shows that your build will do more damage then a pure monk in a 1v1 scenario.

I am out of time for now, but I will make another post later for those that are interested in an individuals experience of how the build feels in late heroics and early epics (20-22 so far) when hitting level 20 and unlocking what feels like 'God Mode'.

[Deathlylife]

This is yet another post of an individual's experience with leveling this build. Just as a disclaimer my primary play style is melee characters of varying degree from a focus on Barbarian at level cap 20 to a focus on Monks now a days.

Upper Heroics:
As mentioned previously, the build feels a little slow up to level 12 but is fairly survivable if proper care is taken (don't try and tank 50 mobs at once while soloing skull 3-4). When level 12 was hit, wow, you now have Burst/Blast/WWA. In addition you grab Displacement SLA and Shining Through, you can no longer die and can even make mistakes with little to no consequence. The build becomes the play style I love to play, gather the dungeon, cleave to death, and move on. Even in skulls 1-4, you become difficult to kill and will most likely be your groups tank while still getting high kill counts. Now the build felt amazing level 12-16 with the highest kill counts and surviving all hits. Once level 17-18 hits you may need to work harder to keep up the kill count against late game builds (Instant Kill Wizards, FVS, and Clerics), but you will still be amazing at tanking damage and groups will love you for keeping the agro off everyone else and making the run a breeze. Now it was not suggested in the original post (at least I don't remember it so) but in the Shintao Tree you will spend 11 points, it is suggested to get the 3 cores, 20 prr, and 10% off hand. The last 2 points are nice to spend on Ki Shout. It acts like intimidate but uses your concentration score for the skill check. This will allow you to run past a few mobs that the archer/caster already hit and take their agro as well as getting you close to the back lines for maximum efficiency of cleaving.

Early Epics:
The only way to describe this build in early epic levels is 'God Mode'. As soon as level 20 is hit, you become an unstoppable juggernaut tanking all damage and dealing all of the damage. Your group will never get near your kill count (except for this one level 30 instant kill wizard which had 2 more kills then me while only level 21). I admit that tree form takes a little getting use to but is fast to learn how to use properly. I suggest hitting some daily EN runs to learn tree form first if not familiar with it, but after a few quests you can kick up the difficulty and be fine. Now this build is pretty amazing and if properly used will leave your party in the dust of a cleared dungeon. Ran an EE Wiz King with 4 others (all level 26+) while only level 20, I took a tower solo while the high levels split for the other towers. Even while only level 20 and solo in a tower, my tower was cleared fastest, and I was needed to help finish another tower. Now these high level characters may not be the best players or have the best builds, but it still was impressive by how much this build could do with little practice being a Tree. After this I decided to push the build and joined a group for EE Gianthold quests. This build hardly stuttered. Once again in a group of high levels (26+), this build was the tank and still had the highest kill count (twice all others combined). I have to say the build is very impressive if a level 21 can rofl stomp multiple EE Gianthold quests and was no where near the group 75% of the time while they tried to catch up and decided to just get breakables instead. I have made it to level 22 so far and can only imagine the power this build will have in Late Epics.

Thank you to Tilomere for sharing this build. It is the most powerful melee based build I have come across in a long time. I have always loved melee characters and no longer feel left behind when compared to ranged and casters. This build allows for great defense and top tier damage at the same time, while being fun and easy to play.

[DrawingGuy]

I personally consider Tree builds to be on the "broken/exploity" side like Wolfsploiter - you bypass the super slow and super powerful attacks of AoN and get super fast and super powerful AOE attacks. I've played several tree builds, and they were cake-walks. If you had parties that had people that actually used heal scrolls, you'd do well in higher reaper as well (at least until you hit the 1-shot wall). Though I do not see it getting changed even the Druid pass, as the cleave bypassing and the animal combat stance exploit are separate issues... and if they were to fix it, it would take deliberate changes specific to AoN and would kill AoN in general without other drastic changes. I probably won't play another Tree build unless I get bored, and it would be on an alt.

That said, there was a minor error in your "layered defenses" - and what may be a question:

- A layered defense also has GS smoke item, for fog 20% miss chance. Mobs will hit through smoke/fog 80% of the time. You can also cast fog as a warlock, but it will affect you as well.

- A layered defense also has a blur/lesser displacement/invis gaurd item with varying concealment bonuses (warlock levels means you can just cast blur). Mobs will hit through this 75% of the time (using lesser displacement value in middle).


Both Smoke and fog spells provide a "concealment" check, which does not stack nor is a separate check from other concealment sources. More specifically, every single source of concealment is seen as an "enhancement" bonus, and like having a Bulls Strength buff and an enhancement STR item, the game will simply check against the highest value. This is not to say carrying Fog would be a waste - where True Seeing bypasses all personal Concealment, it does not bypass external sources, so Fog will still give you 20% against mobs that have True Seeing. In short, though, in your overall defensive math, you need to drop the "80% hit chance" entirely, so your 25% becomes 30.7%.

The other big items is I noticed that you're claiming Invis Guard gives 50% concealment bonus. Unless they changed Invisibility secretly at some point in the game, it does not provide a concealment bonus, nor a miss check chance of any kind. While it's true you might trigger search mode on targets 2m away, you'll break it almost instantly while actively attacking. I've tried Invis guard items in the past, and my "layers of defense" meant it triggered rarely, so the benefit of mobs attacking in a rare almost instantly lost window so they might attack a place I'm not at... not worthless, but a situation too rare to be worth slotting.

Personally I live on Displacement clickies (I carry 10*2 clickies), and slot a blur/lesser displacement in case it gets dispelled or have a longer fight that I'm in a situation I could not safely reapply it. No reason to not have the best defenses possible.

[DrawingGuy]

Hmm, I thought it did stack. I'll check it when I hit 11 again.

Ahh, so I thought invis gaurd gave concealment but it doesn't. I still love using it though to send archers and casters into search mode, at least until update 36 hits. Token of the proven that I was using still gives dusk or lesser displacement separately.

Admittedly I hadn't tried an Invis guard item in the last aggro change - I know a search mode could trigger for up to 30 seconds in the current iteration, but I would think your losing invis would have still instantly stopped that. If not, u36 does indeed change that with my testing showing aggro updating either instantly or within 3 seconds if there is no damage or other factors triggering an update faster. I didn't really test solo-stealth, but rogues/stealth running with friends should be happy with the update as they can shed aggro onto their friends much more easily. I'm personally excited that my handwrap monk will finally be able to touch a slowly moving target again.

As for testing the "stacking", unless things have changed, people have already tested it. Dusk is the lowbie concealment < Concealment from fogs < blurry trumps concealment (even though the value is the same) < lesser displace < displacement. The main advantage of fogs is the fact that True Seeing does not pierce them... but that means yours does not as well. Smoke Screen (like on GS items or the other handful of items it can be found on) is not considered a fog, so True Seeing still works against it. My understanding is it is coded just as a Blurry, and will still pop "blurry" over your head rather than "concealment", but admittedly I haven't used a smoke screen item in so long, I don't remember.

[Phil7]

Interesting build for a few past lives nice!
I remember tree builds falling behind on dps pre reaper when we ran a lot of slavers and LE Shrouds, so I stopped bothering with them.
But their solo ability is very strong

[Maelodic]

How has the build performed in u36?

[DrawingGuy]

The Warlock changes only will have affected heroic levels for this build - As the ES bursts are no longer insta-kill win buttons through heroic, you can either rely on melee and traditional cleaves using ES light damage to supplement, or just not care as it's still solid large AOE damage. The second you hit 20, you'll no longer be using ES bursts instead relying on AON and traditional cleaves to spam the OP attacks of your tree form. The only "loss" in epics is 3d6 off your aura and 6 light damage potential off your on-hit, but all of that is a non-factor (less than 1% reduction) in your real damage potential. Warlock was always for the temp HP and aura procs for AON anyways, and neither of those got touched in u36.

[Zistra]

Human (non-humans delay 1 feat)
14 Strength, 15 Dex, 14 Con 14 Int, 13 Wis, 13 Cha, levels in Con (dex if required by tomes for twf feats)

Can you explain why the stats you've chosen? I get that Dex is for TWF feats, but the rest have me shaking my head. OK, Cha gives more temp HP and Int more skill points and Con more HP, but is there more to it than that? And what about Wis?

[MrChipinator]

I thought there was a big angry stick that came through and smashed tree/wolf/thrower builds recently. Or is this still "working"?

[DaveyCrockett]

Nothing has changed recently with AoN. Build still does solid+ DPS...

[vraelliott]

Any particular reason for the 8th cleric level? Seems to me 7 Cleric/7 Warlock/6 Monk would be about the same but would allow a 3rd level Warlock spell (DDoor or Displacement). PL would still go to Cleric.

[SocratesBastardSon]

I know this is probably obvious, but don't forget to cast Aid - it stacks with False Life.

[SpatzAI2]

I just finished going to 20 on this build thought I'd comment.

First off I always wonder how much of a build success is because of that they bring to the table because of what you start with so I'll say what I had. 2 heroic monk PLs, 3 epic for doublestrike, fully tomed up, a bunch of old gear including no longer found clickies (Shield, Mage Armor, Haste etc) , and absolutely no Reaper XP

This was a weird build for me because this is the first time I've ever built 1-20 for the purpose of doing something very different in Epic. Also aside from one of the author's other builds I tend to go pure 20. Generally the build performed exactly as advertised. You feel a bit squishy till Stanch kicks in, it helps for a time, then once you get Shining Through you feel unkillable till thing power up again. Web offers some crowd control early on. Later if you have the Everlasting FOM Flask , strongly recommend Sleet Storm with it for solo play for when you get in trouble. Go with the defense Reaper line instead of the offense (I was told anyone that plays melees in reaper already should know this). You need something with Ghostly/ethereal/GhostTouch for the reapers, I was using Eternal Rest for a long while. Biggest disagreement I had with the original post is the usefulness of Dark Delirium. Sounded like this super powerful stun to keep the Reaper out of the fight long enough to beat him to death. Didn't work like that at all. The broke enormously quickly, which if it is really a 10% chance to break for any type of dmg, and the aura is doing 3 different hits of dmg, and your fists 4 or 5, would explain why it didn't seem to last very long. I had much more luck using it as a stun till I close or stun the reaper, let everything else charge me, kill it, and then hopefully deal with the Reaper alone. Out of all my chars, this guy played mostly like my Throw Your Weight Around Dwarf Con Barb. Have a massive amount of HPs, spin in a circle a lot, hope your HPs last through the fight. Overall I was happy with it, but I only did this because I always wanted to try a Tree build. I did end up with 7 reaper points as I hit 20

Now that I hit 20 got to completely regear and redo enhancements. I went looking for info on Tree builds, http://ddowiki.com/page/Avatar_of_Nature is all I found. Anyone know how accurate that still is or have any other useful tidbits?

When coming back here to look at what to do now that I hit 20 I see both this and all the author's posts were deleted. In case anyone doesn't know you can use http://cachedview.com/ to recover. I am getting some weird messages from my antivirus when I do that, so be careful.

[Nimdeadlee]

When coming back here to look at what to do now that I hit 20 I see both this and all the author's posts were deleted. In case anyone doesn't know you can use http://cachedview.com/ to recover. I am getting some weird messages from my antivirus when I do that, so be careful.

No you can't. Google's cache only saves the last cached version which was 3 days after the deletions and the webpage isn't in the Wayback machine. If you don't have a local copy you're never getting it.

[Klazan]

No you can't. Google's cache only saves the last cached version which was 3 days after the deletions and the webpage isn't in the Wayback machine. If you don't have a local copy you're never getting it.

Does anyone have the original post or can re-post? Was looking to run through and try it out this life...