Knightmare (Heavy Armor Melee Pale Master)

[FengXian]

Hi everyone!

This is a build I have been having tons of fun with, and it's proved to be much more viable than expected, although it was created a few years ago, so I'm looking for suggestions and help to optimize it for the current endgame, which should be fairly easy.

The concept is to have a THF, heavy armored fleshie pale master with decent damage and great survivability, but most of all excellent utility (it's also VERY F2P friendly). This build is ideal for those players who can't or don't want to grind all the clickies, to carry all the scrolls to UMD (which you still should max and use scrolls with anyway) and so on. It also requires no past lives although the more points you start with, the better ofc.

For the race, I went Half-Elf for the arcane fluidity enhancements, which allow you to wear any heavy armor with a 0% arcane spell failure.

The class split is 12 Wizard (must have for Shroud of the Wraith), 6 Fighter (Stalward Defense) and 2 Rogue for situational evasion and trap skills.

For abilities, you max INT and CON.
The former you use for hit and damage via Strategic Combat from Harper Agent, reflex save with Insightful Reflexes as well as SP, trap skills and some occasional DCs.
The latter is for survivability clearly. Other abilities are of some use too but the build isn't MAD by any means.

The Stalwart Defender tree gives you a lot of tanking capabilities with its huge bonuses to HP, Armor, Saves, PRR, Incite and even some item defence.

The Pale Master tree gives you even more survivability with a TON of immunities, a huge 25% incorporeality and some nice bonuses like ghost touch, con damage and +20 balance.

Harper Agent provides you with the aforementioned Strategic Combat, KTA which benefits are maximized in this build and some extra spell power.

Eldritch Knight gives you some nice extra defense with Improved Mage Armor (+10% AC!!), Improved Shield (10prr, MM immunity) and the stacking 25% damage reduction from arcane barrier in the unlikely case you drop below 50% HP.
EK also provides an extra Cleave effect to reset Momentum Swing, which is your main source of damage as a twist. You can reset it with Cleave, Eldritch Strike and Lay Waste, with means it will be on short CD 100% of the time basically.

On top of that you can count on all the mage buffs, extended/quicken'd if need be, so Haste, Displacement, GH, Tenser's Transformation etc., are all free to you and casting them takes away as little as possible from your DPS (extend also means you have to recast them much less often).

Death Aura and Negative Energy Burst are just insane with the lv 29 Master of the Dead feat, and Scion of Shadowfell helps you heal even more (not that you really needed more, but hey).

You can easily use Legendary Dreadnaught as your ED for quick farming, but if you really need to get tanky Unyielding Sentinel makes you literally immortal.

Last but not least, the build can reach decent, although not the highest levels of Intimidate, and with some gear swapping I'm pretty sure it could hit almost any DC in the game (not confirmed though^^).

P.S.: with the very niche undead nature, it's also fairly easy to setup the gear since there are some items clearly designed for such a character.

I'm looking for some advice and feedback, I will try and post an up to date build when I can but I'm hoping we can work it out together, thanks!

[gummolo]

Have you ever tried to shift AP spent on SD to Kensei tree to get sweet +1 threat and multi?

[SpartanKiller13]

Have you ever tried to shift AP spent on SD to Kensei tree to get sweet +1 threat and multi?

Given that the PM tree isn't fantastic, I'd assume that is part of this? +1 Crit Range and +20 MP is IMO better than 10% incorp from T5 PM. Either way can get +1 Crit Multi from Kensei C3.

The concept is to have a THF, heavy armored fleshie pale master with decent damage and great survivability, but most of all excellent utility (it's also VERY F2P friendly). This build is ideal for those players who can't or don't want to grind all the clickies, to carry all the scrolls to UMD (which you still should max and use scrolls with anyway) and so on. It also requires no past lives although the more points you start with, the better ofc.

Death Aura and Negative Energy Burst are just insane with the lv 29 Master of the Dead feat, and Scion of Shadowfell helps you heal even more (not that you really needed more, but hey).

I'm looking for some advice and feedback, I will try and post an up to date build when I can but I'm hoping we can work it out together, thanks!

My immediate feedback is that it looks viable for Elite, but you'll probably have issues with Reaper. PM builds fall off hard in Reaper because they depend on self-heals over time, and the 60-96% penalty thereon basically prevents burst healing and requires a lot of downtime healing. Plus side is that as a PM Melee the Lost Souls will let you spam a lot of buffs/heals.

If you have a PM group, you'd also be fine. I just think that you'll have a lot of trouble solo/PUGing in the current meta of Reaper.

[unbongwah]

We already have a few threads about wiz / ftr builds, so I'm not gonna reinvent the wheel here, I'll just point you at them.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...fferent-builds
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...e-Bladesingers!
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...r-First-Lifers

[FengXian]

Have you ever tried to shift AP spent on SD to Kensei tree to get sweet +1 threat and multi?

Hey,

Unfortunately the build is very AP hungry as is, and it's not something you can solve with racial PL either; SD just gives you too much survivability compared to the damage you would gain from Kensei. You can definitely swap to Kensei for faster farming though.

Reaper is a great point, I guess you can still pull off R1/2 but as self healing drops even further it would be an issue.

@unbongwah: thanks, yeah I had missed your Wraith Blade build which is pretty similar save being a DPS version, I had seen some of the other builds but they're either centered or not-undead^^

I suppose the limited self-healing on Reaper is something you can't really work around except Pale Master parties or some dedicated Harm healer, although I think you'd still be able to pull it off at 30% self healing.