The Call --- to Soundburst

[Pilgrim1]

Hey, I wanted to say that I build a wierd fighter/bard/rogue deep gnome or something mix that was int based and ran color spray, birst of glacial wrath, and dire charge.

I didn’t have a bunch of past lives and my gear and feats where not optimal but it was rather fun to run in elite/EE questing. I found that at cap it didn’t work as well as a more streamlined toon. It failed somewhat hard in epic reaper questing. I may try something similar with a better toon, both gear and build.

But i wanted to say a build like this can and will work. One of the advantages of going charisma/int is you can twist in energy burst to.

[Pilgrim1]

Another way to get AoE stuns that I have been thinking is to use the ranger tempest enhancment dance of death with a stunning effect. I think stunning blow and the bards frozen abilities are the only ones you can do it with since I dont think you can get stunning fist to work anymore. Maybe something like charsima with bard/ranger/FvS would work well with this build.

As far as I know the only ways of getting AoE helpless is:
Sound burst
Color spray
Mass hold monster/person
Symbol of stunning (and the dragon mark version of it)
Dance of death + stuning weapon effects
AoE bard freeze

And in epics
Sound burst
Burst of glacial wrath
Dire charge

Let me know if i missed anything.

[Jetrule]

Another way to get AoE stuns that I have been thinking is to use the ranger tempest enhancment dance of death with a stunning effect. I think stunning blow and the bards frozen abilities are the only ones you can do it with since I dont think you can get stunning fist to work anymore. Maybe something like charsima with bard/ranger/FvS would work well with this build.

As far as I know the only ways of getting AoE helpless is:
Sound burst
Color spray
Mass hold monster/person
Symbol of stunning (and the dragon mark version of it)
Dance of death + stuning weapon effects
AoE bard freeze

And in epics
Sound burst
Burst of glacial wrath
Dire charge

Let me know if i missed anything.

Renegade Master maker has battle fist which is a small arc aoe stun. I can get 2-3 with it. Greater shout stuns and gives helpless. In a long cone aoe. There are probably more. But that is all that springs to mind.

[Hjarki]

Another way to get AoE stuns that I have been thinking is to use the ranger tempest enhancment dance of death with a stunning effect. I think stunning blow and the bards frozen abilities are the only ones you can do it with since I dont think you can get stunning fist to work anymore. Maybe something like charsima with bard/ranger/FvS would work well with this build.

As far as I know the only ways of getting AoE helpless is:

Dance of Death only works with basic attacks - not special attacks like Frozen Fury. You'd need something like Northwind that simply procs on attacks - except not Northwind itself (it has a cooldown). It should work with Balanced Attacks, but that only procs on Vorpal for 2 sec - it's nice, but you're not going to keep a crowd locked down indefinitely. Likewise, I know Overwhelming Force doesn't work with Cleave. There might be some multi-attack mechanism that Adrenaline/Overwhelming Force work with, but I don't know of one.

Ranged combat tends to work a lot better because you can use Pin/Otto's Whistler in conjunction with Improved Precise Shot.

Sound burst
Color spray
Mass hold monster/person
Symbol of stunning (and the dragon mark version of it)
Dance of death + stuning weapon effects
AoE bard freeze

Stunning weapons have an extremely low proc rate (even lower than Vorpal) and the DC is such that they won't work outside of (early) heroic levels. Wild Shape'd Druids have an AE freeze, a single target freeze, a single target Maul and an AE sonic stun. Vanguards also get a shield stun proc, but it's only 5%. Halt Undead can also render undead helpless - which is great (very few effects can render undead helpless) and bad (it can only render Undead helpless, not anything else).

There's also the question of the utility of AE helpless on a melee character.

For casters, it's tremendous - you Hold everything in the room, then you dump an equally large AE on them to exploit the extra damage.

For melee? It's a lot more problematic. The range of your AE melee is fairly small. Moreover, the risk involved in laying down AE control while in melee range is tremendous - it's often far easier to lay in some sort of soft control like Earthquake or Otto's Sphere to neutralize the group and then move in to take enemies down one-by-one since you don't actually lose all that much. In most cases, your damage on your single target is so much greater than your secondary target damage that the fact you only get +50% helpless on the primary target isn't a big difference.

There's also the issue of the impact on your character. I've already mentioned that the approach here is almost certainly inferior to Bard and FvS builds in terms of both damage and control - there's a tremendous negative impact on the dps of a TWF ranger trying to shoehorn a weak Soundburst into the build. For solo, this might be justifiable. For multiplayer play? It just doesn't make any sense at all. Rather than have a melee dps that's constantly interrupting their rotation with a weak control effect, you could have a full-fledged caster specialized in locking down enemies do it - and then everyone else is able to exploit that helplessness at full force.

[Pilgrim1]

Renegade Master maker has battle fist which is a small arc aoe stun. I can get 2-3 with it. Greater shout stuns and gives helpless. In a long cone aoe. There are probably more. But that is all that springs to mind.

I didn’t know that the renegade master was an AoE, good to know. I had forgoten about greater shout, I had thought it didn’t give helpless dmg.

Hjarki’s post

Druids get snowslide but i think thats it for AoE helpless effects. If your thinking of howl it does not add the helpless state (it also can last fewer than 6 seconds which is a real pain).

[Hjarki]

I didn’t know that the renegade master was an AoE, good to know. I had forgoten about greater shout, I had thought it didn’t give helpless dmg.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't, although I can't check right now.

Druids get snowslide but i think thats it for AoE helpless effects. If your thinking of howl it does not add the helpless state (it also can last fewer than 6 seconds which is a real pain).

I was referring to Savage Roar.

[cru121]

Symbol of stunning (and the dragon mark version of it) - does not make enemies helpless

Here's a list but it probably hasn't been updated recently.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Helpless#Extra_damage

[Maelodic]

I was referring to Savage Roar.

Last time I tested, Savage Roar does not give helpless.

[Tilomere]

Losing the last two cores in Tempest

I've played a tempest before. Missing Dance of Death due to mob movement, or being unable to line up and hit multiple mobs after DoD due to needing to move to stay alive or again due to mob movement made me dislike tempest and not use it for years.

If it takes losing the last two cores to get a gameplay I like, then *poof!* There go the last two cores.

There's also the issue of the impact on your character. I've already mentioned that the approach here is almost certainly inferior to Bard and FvS builds in terms of both damage and control - there's a tremendous negative impact on the dps of a TWF ranger trying to shoehorn a weak Soundburst into the build. For solo, this might be justifiable. For multiplayer play? It just doesn't make any sense at all. Rather than have a melee dps that's constantly interrupting their rotation with a weak control effect, you could have a full-fledged caster specialized in locking down enemies do it - and then everyone else is able to exploit that helplessness at full force.

This is a group game. Isn't there also a tremendous impact on dps of the group when you have a different group character that specializes in locking down enemies doing no damage?

I didn’t know that the renegade master was an AoE, good to know.

It also works on almost everything.

... power creep.

It also can't be power creep, because clerics are designed to DC cast in reaper without bonuses from caster enhancement trees, as two out of three of their enhancement trees have 0 DC and 0 spell pen, and the third has a small +2 DC to a single spell school and only +3 spell pen. The cleric part is working exactly as they designed it to work.

Now you may disagree to how clerics are designed, and can certainly bring that up in the cleric pass, but this build is entirely within the scope of how clerics are designed to work on live.

Plus you give me way to much credit. I didn't make this build idea. SSG made it with their game design, and SSG revealed it by peeling (nerfing) away the monk and warlock and VKF versatility splashes that were covering it up. If SSG hadn't nerfed those splashes, I would have never known a tempest could cast in R10.

That being said, the way that arti breaks spell pen on a roll of 1 with a 3 cleric splash on epic reaper drow in an arcane destiny without twisting spell pen is pretty clever! Clever of SSG of course. Heh!

[Silverleafeon]

!

+++1

Well done!

+Kudos for realizing how overlooked Order's Wrath really is.


Many melee out there who just need a bit of CC from someone in the party to function really well.

[Silverleafeon]

i'm not as young as i used to be. Chasing kited mobs around on a melee just isn't so appealing to me anymore.

lol

[Tilomere]

lol

Oscar Wilde — 'With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.'

The reason I posted this wasn't just for melee. When people ask about ranged and shuriken builds in heroics, the answers are:

Can shuris actually be used at low levels without it being remarkably painful as far as damage goes?

To Echo the above.... ... Shurikens are brutally painful in heroics. Imo slap repeater proficiency in an iconic with ips then take the feat out @ 20.

I am aware ranged sucks early on, i usually will run ninja spy with dex to dmg wraps early on, but if i am going warlock early i can just use blasts earlygame

I advertise you:bad idea. Even melee is far better. Shuri is a pain even with optimized build in heroic...

It isn't going to turn a ranged character into a warlock, but with 85% bonus helpless damage in heroics on a ninja ranged or monkcher build maybe some of that brutal pain can be shared with others!

[Maelodic]

It isn't going to turn a ranged character into a warlock, but with 85% bonus helpless damage in heroics on a ninja ranged or monkcher build maybe some of that brutal pain can be shared with others!

I don't really think there's much that can be done to make Shuri's work pre-20.

Other throwers seem to do fine, vistani+swashbuckler seems to do fine.

[Hjarki]

+++1

Well done!

+Kudos for realizing how overlooked Order's Wrath really is.

I don't know how 'overlooked' it is. Being able to inflict a 6 second daze (not helplessness) only on Chaotic enemies isn't really all effective. You need to be fighting some fairly specific content for it to be useful at all and even against that content it's not a particularly strong spell - at best it could be argued it's decent for the level.

I don't really think there's much that can be done to make Shuri's work pre-20.

Other throwers seem to do fine, vistani+swashbuckler seems to do fine.

Any pre-Epic throwing build loses 60% attack speed from Whirling Wrists and ~33% raw attack rate from raw BAB.

I've also never seen a practical Swashbuckler + Vistani build - there's no way you can compete with Shuriken Expertise + 10k Stars even in heroic levels for raw damage. About the only reason to do that sort of build would be to exploit Coup de Grace and it's a lot more practical to simply use Shuriken for that purpose.

[Tilomere]

Any pre-Epic throwing build loses 60% attack speed from Whirling Wrists and ~33% raw attack rate from raw BAB.

I've also never seen a practical Swashbuckler + Vistani build - there's no way you can compete with Shuriken Expertise + 10k Stars even in heroic levels for raw damage. About the only reason to do that sort of build would be to exploit Coup de Grace and it's a lot more practical to simply use Shuriken for that purpose.

Yea, but that attack speed only applies to part of the throwing animation and is on diminishing returns and subject to caps especially when under haste boost, so it is really less.

4 bard (swash + soundburst + bardic rage) > 8 ranger (IPS, sniper shot, killer, ram's might) > 1 divine (divine might) > 7 more for past life with a nightforge spike does pretty well. When you sniper shot double crit through a couple helpless mobs they just explode.

Dashing Scoundrel + Killer + Strike's Like Lightning + Swashbuckling + EPL Doubleshot is 60% doubleshot, before gear in heroics. I didn't have VKF to try at the time. I hear it doesn't work through because IPS is bugged with throwing daggers.

[Hjarki]

Yea, but that attack speed only applies to part of the throwing animation and is on diminishing returns and subject to caps especially when under haste boost, so it is really less.

4 bard (swash + soundburst + bardic rage) > 8 ranger (IPS, sniper shot, killer, ram's might) > 1 divine (divine might) > 7 more for past life with a nightforge spike does pretty well. When you sniper shot crit a helpless mob it just explodes.

If you take the same basic build and use a melee weapon, you'll do substantially more damage. The base attack rate for melee weapons is virtually the same (10% variation) across the entire range of BAB while the attack rate of ranged weapons is over double at cap what it is on a first level character. Your raw damage per attack will also be much higher with a melee weapon.

Keep in mind that Swashbucker Throwing builds aren't competitive against Swashbuckler melee at cap. When you've halved the attack rate for thrown but not melee down at level 12, they're even less competitive.

Even against other thrown weapons, the Nightforge Spike isn't appreciably better than Shuriken and Throwing Knives even in the narrow level range where it's appropriate because the heightened criticals are counterbalanced by the significantly lower attack rate/hit chance. You also have to consider that the stat you need for Soundburst (or any other Bard control) isn't the stat you use for thrown weapons so your attack and/or damage is going to be significantly lower than it would be on a conventional melee build.

[Tilomere]

I had no problem being competitive on a swashbuckler thrower at level 12. You get IPS at level 12 and T5 DWS doubleshot and damage. That's a great level!

[Maelodic]

If you take the same basic build and use a melee weapon, you'll do substantially more damage.

Fine =/= Better

Also my gear probably sucks too much or I'm using the wrong shuri or something but I do substantially more damage in heroics with a weapon that doesn't have a 1d2 20/2x profile even with the doublestrike.

[Hjarki]

Fine =/= Better

Also my gear probably sucks too much or I'm using the wrong shuri or something but I do substantially more damage in heroics with a weapon that doesn't have a 1d2 20/2x profile even with the doublestrike.

All Swashbuckling thrown weapons are 15-20/x3 with Improved Critical at minimum. On a 1[w] weapon, the difference between a Great Sword and a Shuriken is +5.5 damage - which is far less than you're likely getting from your damage stat and supplemental damage like Sneak Attack/Resonant Arms. In the heroic levels, it's possible for Vistani Knife Fighter to keep up with Shuriken Expertise. In the epic levels, Shuriken Expertise easily outstrips VKF attack rate and requires a significantly smaller investment (one feat vs. half your APs).

Even for Monks, you're still going to be running 17-20/x2 @ level 12. With even a modest (let's say 30) Dexterity, that Monk has 60% more damage with Shuriken. Not only does that "60% extra" affect all of your damage rather than just your base damage, but it's much larger than the benefit you'd gain by having a better critical profile.

In any case, the damage dealt by a thrown weapons Swashbuckler in heroic levels is painfully low compared to the damage a comparably developed melee Swashbuckler deals. You're attacking much less frequently for much less damage. There's a reason you almost never see such builds.

[Tilomere]

In any case, the damage dealt by a thrown weapons Swashbuckler in heroic levels is painfully low compared to the damage a comparably developed melee Swashbuckler deals.

Maybe your build, but I found with mine if our group of 5 players ran across 10 mobs I could spend 2 seconds at the start of a fight stunning and gibbing a couple mobs with IPS sniper shot (or CDG if going T5 SB), then AFK the rest of the fight and still have my share of the kill meter, and pull out a bow and hit manyshot to deal my part of boss dps.

However, I can completely see from your point of view as someone who believes in dps specialization who doesn't believe in being able to land soundburst that swashbuckling throwing doesn't work in heroics, since you aren't able to make use of IPS CDG.