Eldritch Knight idea

[Morrissey87]

Hey first of all I'm new here, one month playing ddo.
Since I saw the eldritch knight tree I wanted to make one but I couldn't find any updated build that actually takes more than a couple of points in the tree, so I came up with this. I'm still testing it on the run but here is the idea:

1 Rogue/6 Fighter/ 13 Wizard -- You could get 12 wiz and 8 fighter maybe stronger but I like being able to open locks and disarm traps.
Build is planned for lvl 20, I know nothing about epic destinies I haven't got there yet so any suggestion would be appreciated.

Race - Warforged for self heals, great toughness and bypass easier the ASF while wearing mithral body armor.

Abilities:
STR 16 All level ups on INT
DEX 8
CON 16
INT 18
WIS 6
CHA 6

Skills: Spellcraft, Open Lock, Search, Disable Device, Spot, a few ranks on jump, concentration, repair and umd.

Feats:
1 - Rogue: Mithral Body
2 - Fighter bonus: Power Attack
3 - Fighter bonus: Cleave
3 - Fighter: Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Bastard Sword
4 - Wizard bonus: Quicken
5 - Wizard: none
6 - Wizard: Insightfull Reflexes
7 - Wizard: none
8 - Wizard Bonus: Spell Focus: Enchantment
9 - Wizard: Greater Cleave
10 - Wizard: none
11 - Fighter: none
12 - Fighter: Shield Mastery
12 - Fighter bonus: Weapon Focus: Slashing
13 - Fighter: none
14 - Fighter: Improved Critical: Slashing
15 - Wizard: Shield Mastery
16 - Wizard: none
17 - Wizard bonus: Spell Penetration or Heighten Spell
18 - Wizard: Improved Shield Mastery
19 - Wizard: none
20 - Wizard: none

Enhancements:

12 AP Harper
0 - Agent of Good I
1 - Harper Enchantment, Strategic Combat I
2 - Versatile Adept I II, Know the Angles
3 - Strategic Combat II

04 AP Warforged
0 - Improved Fortification
1 - Inscribed Armor III

26 AP Vanguard
0 - To the Fore!, Shield Combat, Vicious Shield
1 - Shield Specialization I, Shield Smash III
2 - Stunning Shield III, Action Boost: Melee Power
3 - Fatal Bulwark, Shield Reposte III
4 - Shield Charge III, Myrmidons Edge III

38 AP EldritchKnight
0 - Eldritch Strike, Spellsword: Electric, Spellsword II: Acid
1 - Improved Mage Armor III, Toughness III
2 - Improved Shield III, Martial Training
3 - Arcane Barrier III, Critical Accuracy III, Inteligence
4 - Shield Striking III, Critical Damage III, Inteligence
5 - Eldritch Shield, Eldritch Tempest III

Spells:
Lvl 1: Protection from Evil, Nightshield, Jump, Expeditious Retreat, Ray of Enfeeblement.
Lvl 2: Resist Energy, Blur, Gust of Wind, Invisibility, Web or Touch of Idiocy.
Lvl 3: Repair Serious Damage, Haste, Ray of Exhaustion, Displacement, Fireball
Lvl 4: Repair Critical Damage, Crushing Despair, Dimension Door, Stoneskin, Remove Curse
Lvl 5: Protection from Elements, Teleport, Feeblemind, Waves of Fatigue
Lvl 6: Greater Heroism, Tenser's Transformation, Reconstruct
Lvl 7: Otto's Sphere of Dancing, Power Word: Blind

Let me know what you think.

[Enoach]

You are on the right track with the EK Tree. It works best well supported by other melee trees.

Might I suggest a different split 1/8/11 Rogue/Fighter/Wizard

You want at least 10 Levels of Wizard for the Extra Wizard Feat, going melee focus you want more focus towards buffs and non-save and non-Spell Resistant. 11 levels of wizard is needed for the Reconstruct Spell.

Based on this, I would recommend against the Spell Penetration Feat and Heighten is really iffy on its benefits to your melee focus.

With going bastard sword and shield you might consider taking the Two Handed Fighting feats to improve your glancing blows.

Also, you take spell focus Enchantment, but that seems to be to support the Otto's dancing ball in your level 7 spell list. Might I suggest you would get more out of Extend for your buffs especially your short term ones like Haste, Displacement and Tensor's

[Morrissey87]

That was my first idea. 8 levels of fighter and 11 of wiz, but then I realized by taking 11 I wouldn't benefit from the spellsword dmg increase, which it doesn't seem to be a lot idk, maybe it's better leave that and take those 2 fighter levels to take those thf feats then. And I made a mistake and put shield mastery twice which leaves space for another feat which could be power critical?
The wiz feats I didn't know exactly what to take to be honest, the idea is to buff myself with spells so maybe extend is better since I won't reach the dcs in endgame anyway. And the other wiz feat idk what's left mental toughness, the others are pretty useless on this build.
I played a bit with another wiz focusing more on spellcasting but it turned out it didn't perform well in either melee or spells so focusing more on melee since the trees help seems better. Having some cc spells is always good, specially to debuff. The otto's dance is super strong but on second thought I won't get any benefit from it not being an enchanter focused.
What I don't know is if matters or not losing the spellsword upgrade at wiz lvl 12, it says it upgrades from 2d4 to 3d4 which would be a 50% increase in elemental damage.
The eldritch strike scales with general character levels so it doesn't matter, but it gains damage from spellsword too.

[Enoach]

If the spellsword elemental damage scaled with spell power (which it does not at this time) I would agree with you that it would be a tough call to lose that +1d4.

Mental Toughness is a thought as more spell points for short term buffs or supporting DOTs is always helpful. But keep in mind that you can use non-DC and non-Spell Resistant spells. The level 5 spells have two Damage over Time spells where adding a Maximize along with appropriate spell power can be added dps between swings.

As for CC, Web is not the end-all-be-all of CC but it does cover a lot of bases. So Conjuration Focus would also not be a bad idea.

[unbongwah]

The basic idea is fine, but your build makes some suboptimal choices:

• S&B DPS is significantly weaker than other combat styles outside of specific builds (like Swashbuckler or pure Vanguard). THF/SWF/TWF will always be the better DPS options. This is in part because:
• Kensei is a much stronger DPS tree than Eldritch Knight (or Vanguard). Tier-5 Kensei beats tier-5 EK; and not having Strike w/No Thought (lvl 6 core) is also a major DPS loss.
• Speaking of EK, what's good about it is the defensive buffs (particularly Arcane Barrier); the arcane spell failure reduction is important too. Its DPS is just weaksauce; grab the base Cleave and maybe some doublestrike and ignore the rest.
• If not going for Evasion, Adamantine Body is superior to Mithral Body. You need to invest in more ASF reduction, but that's not really a big deal.
• I would recommend STR-primary INT-secondary instead. While it's possible to do melee/caster DPS hybrids, it's hard to pull off on a first life. Better to stick to being good at one thing (i.e., self-repairing melee toon) than being bad-to-mediocre at two things, IMO.

Have a look at Ghwyn's thread and CThru's Arcane Warriors.

[Morrissey87]

Mi idea was to try Eldritch Tempest and try to get the most of the tree, try to make it work in a way. I know it's not optimal based on player experience but it could be fun and viable at the same time with some effort. I thought about going two handed with adamantine and kensei, with greatsword but I thought it could be fun a shield build more tanky and it benefits from both trees. Since I wanted eldritch tempest in the first place I needed extra points on the tree and the other traits are useless except those that reduce the ASF. Having perma Tenser's seems a waste since I can cast the spell myself.
About going more on STR, I was thinking it may be better yes. I could leave INT with the necessary to cast lvl 6 spells and the rest to STR with lvl ups in str so I can use the harper tree points on something else maybe take those Kensei lvl 6 core.

About the spellsword, you are right it doesn't scale with spellpower which is weird being the rest scaling with spell power so it would be better to lose that die for a couple of feats.

The spell I was thinking maybe prismatic ray since it has no save. Ray spells have no saves generally so it could be an option, and disintegrate too as a filler.

[unbongwah]

The spell I was thinking maybe prismatic ray since it has no save. Ray spells have no saves generally so it could be an option, and disintegrate too as a filler.

Scorching Ray has no save, but Prismatic Ray certainly does, depending on which effect(s) proc. The blind effect is automatic, but since it only applies to CR 8 or below, it's of limited use.

Prismatic Ray's death effects used to ignore Death Ward/-block, making it useful against mobs which couldn't normally be instakilled. Unfortunately, that got nerfed in U34 along with a couple other instakills.

[Ghwyn]

If you're going melee, 11 wiz is all you need. Depending upon past lives, 1 level of rogue is enough to no fail everything in the game. If you don't have past lives and want to trap well, go int based. Str based has better dps though. Spells are for buffs and heals only.

I went S&B for the fast cleave animation. Its been a while since ive played that style, so I don't know if it still works. I like investing heavily into EK tree and go for heavy armor (adamantine) for more prr.