DDOCast 499 - Past Lives

[pjstechie]

We take a look at past lives with our advice on which ones we like and how to get started with them then we venture into Ravenloft with the release of Update 37: The Mists of Ravenloft!

Have thoughts on this show, ideas for round table topics, questions you’d like us to answer, or topics you’d like to see us debate? Leave us a comment, send us an email (ddocast@gmail.com) or give us a tweet (@ddocast)!

Check out www.ddocast.com for mp3 audio, our show calendar, swag, archives, and more!

Want to support the show? You can feed the kobolds (give money) on our Patreon page! We use these gifts to support the show and give out prizes.

Past Lives - 2:53
Greetings from Korthos with Grandern - 54:23
Game News - 1:03:37
Community News - 1:33:08
Lightning Post - 1:36:45
Closing - 1:43:45

Watch shows live at twitch.tv/ddocast

Pre-purchase Ravenloft
Ravenloft FAQ
Ravenloft Release Notes
DDO Chronicle 262
Axel DDO: Ravenloft Release Notes
Citi DDO: Starter Gear & You
Syp: Epic Stories & Vague Loot
Grimorde: Ravenloft

[FuzzyDuck81]

Assorted thoughts for today

With the extra power levels more recently, barbarian is IMO less important now than it used to be, though it's still amazing for the early levels.

The purchased heroic past life feats generally aren't really worth it now I think, though there's a couple of exceptions;
-The cleric healing word is good since it accepts metamagics, great for arcane casters & I got a lot of mileage out of it on my warlock - if you're playing an aasimar with their healing hands too, then you'll have a far easier time of things.
-Wizard is nice for the DC boost and the magic missile is great in epics for shiradis with the sheer number of projectiles.
-Warlock's delver of the forbidden no-save confusion effect doesn't break stealth, which can be a lot of fun on sneaky types - drop it on the champion in a group and watch with popcorn.
-The rogue sneak of shadows one can be surprisingly effective too if you're able to keep enemies in a vulnerable-to-sneak-attack state - so rogues with shiv & improved feint, rangers with exposing strike, monks with unbalancing strike etc. & it's 60sec duration means it can be active through multiple action boosts. It synergises really nicely with the astral scion too since that grants bonus sneak attack based off your hide score & this boosts your hide score as well as granting the bonus damage, AND sneak attack damage is boosted by melee power.

You focussed on wizard past life for the DC boost but I've found the passive part is even more useful for my characters that don't do really do DC casting but still have spells, as it means the few no-save ones I use like irresistible dance, power words etc. have a much better chance of working on things with spell resistance.

Martial sphere skill mastery has some significant bang for your buck - triple stacked, it's skill focus in literally every skill, that's the equivalent of 21 free feats! Naturally, the more skill-focussed your character the better it'll be in practice but if you've done a bunch of martial past lives you can always just activate skill mastery when you need the boost then switch back to doublestrike for the fighting.

I like fast healing since as well as working like a defacto die hard feat it effectively has double scaling since the healing granted increases as you level and is boosted by healing amp too, so at higher levels on barbarians & monks in particular you can often find yourself not really needing to heal up all that much between fights as a big chunk of it will happen automatically. Saying that though, colours of the queen is still my favourite for the occasional "oh, i destroyed that boss in 1 lucky hit" moment.

Pro tip for ravenloft - if you have some time to spare, run to the quest & don't use the teleport as you can find altars like in ToEE which give you some big buffs which will carry through into the quest, only being dispelled on death or entering a public area - though i'm not sure yet if they're fixed types & locations or not, will be investigating later on - I'm guessing this is WAI since altars in part 1 of toee will carry over if you go straight into part 2 & it effectively acts as a really nice extra bonus for taking the time to explore.

[Livmo]

Pro tip for ravenloft - if you have some time to spare, run to the quest & don't use the teleport as you can find altars like in ToEE which give you some big buffs which will carry through into the quest, only being dispelled on death or entering a public area - though i'm not sure yet if they're fixed types & locations or not, will be investigating later on - I'm guessing this is WAI since altars in part 1 of toee will carry over if you go straight into part 2 & it effectively acts as a really nice extra bonus for taking the time to explore.

Between Oath and Mad Tea in a van down by the river, the 2nd to last island northeast has the Altar of Defense form ToEE. Hit that first before doing HE on those quests.