I suck, please help me!

[crudd26]

Hey guys, I need your help. I’m terrible at coming up with anything but builds that are all but useless, so I’m turning to my fellows for some help. Any advice or guidance y’all can provide would be greatly appreciated.

What I’m trying to build: last wizard past life. I usually do at least 2 levels of arti, because they’re my favorite play style so far, I like trapping, and I like runearms.

What I’ve got to work with: VIP, past lives (3x sorc, 1x cleric, 1x fvs, 2x arti, 2x wiz)

I was initially thinking of going 6/14 arti/wiz using a lot of crossbow and rune arm with spells supporting, but since other lives I’ve tried to build turned out not to work so well, I figured I might as well see if anyone else could help me build something that accomplished my goals and didn’t suck. Thanks to anyone that followed all that, and especially to those that can offer any help.

- Ammonihah

[unbongwah]

I posted an arty 6 / ftr 6 template for HTRs here: tier-5 Battle Engineer + Strike w/No Thought gets you +1 crit range & multiplier, +10% runspeed (Tactical Mobility), +12% Doubleshot (10% Agility Engine, 2% Kensei cores), Endless Fusillade, decent amount of Ranged Power (20 RP from Unlock Potential, 4 from Weapon Focus+Spec Ranged feats, plus whatever you can afford from Harper). Remaining 8 levels are whatever your TR class is. You're on your own for self-healing, though.

[crudd26]

I posted an arty 6 / ftr 6 template for HTRs here: tier-5 Battle Engineer + Strike w/No Thought gets you +1 crit range & multiplier, +10% runspeed (Tactical Mobility), +12% Doubleshot (10% Agility Engine, 2% Kensei cores), Endless Fusillade, decent amount of Ranged Power (20 RP from Unlock Potential, 4 from Weapon Focus+Spec Ranged feats). Remaining 8 levels are whatever your TR class is. You're on your own for self-healing, though.

Thank you! I’ve only taken a quick glance so far, but it looks way better than what I was coming up with. Maybe some day I’ll get the hang of building (though I doubt it, maybe I should just stick to stealing from other people). Any other hints, tips, or advice are welcome. 9 lives in and I still suck at this.

[C-Dog]

I was initially thinking of going 6/14 arti/wiz using a lot of crossbow and rune arm with spells supporting...

W/ the Template build suggested above, make sure your spells are only "supporting" - anything in the offensive category w/ a Saving Throw (i.e. pretty much anything except Magic Missiles, and even those) will be very weak, as the Caster Level will be FAR below character & quest level.

Think defensive spells like Blur/Displacement, utility spells like Merfolk or Invis, late game spells that give your weapons a metal or alignment bypass, etc etc.

Also, if you're only going to 20 and then TR again, remember that this is largely a max 18-level build, not 20 - you'll stop at 18 and bank 20, then only be at 20 long enough to grab your Tokens, then repeat. So if that, don't count too much on those last 2 levels.


(Edit - if you read the prev post, gonna think about it some more, post my own thread on it)

[Selvera]

Maybe some day I’ll get the hang of building Any other hints, tips, or advice are welcome.

My advice on getting the hang of building is to start really simple. Think about a pure-class build that focuses on a single enhancement tree and does everything that you would expect that enhancement tree does; then dips into the other class trees to improve on it. Think about useful gear for this build; what feats you'll need and the strengths/weaknesses of this build/archetype. This will almost always end up with a decent character (unless you pick a really bad enhancement tree like Eldritch knight; don't pick that one).

For example; say you wanted to make a rogue/assassin (just picking that because that's what I started with when I was new). You'll take all of the core abilities and all of the tier-5 abilities from the assassin tree (for now); as well as a good bunch of other stuff in the tree. You'll notice that it gets some stuff such as: Cores give dexterity to hit/damage with daggers and kukris; Cores give more critical hits with daggers/kukris; Tier 5's give more critical hits with daggers/kukris; Capstone and a bunch of enhancements give a bunch of extra sneak attack damage. And a bunch of attacks allow you to use add dexterity or intelligence to DC's. Also it grants bonuses for wearing light armor and dodge chance.

So you can surmise that from this tree; you'll need to wield either daggers or kukris and either dexterity or intelligence will be your main focused stat. You'll notice that it has dexterity to damage natively; but no intelligence; so if you wanted to focus on intelligence you would have to use some other method (such as the harper enhancement tree) to get intelligence to damage. So focus on dexterity. You'll get your damage primarily by critical hits and sneak attack; so you want to optimize for being able to sneak attack a lot (look for ways to get this with items/build options) and bypassing enemy fortification (which stops sneak attacks and critical hits). You'll also notice that the tree has no AoE damage, so you'll be killing enemies one at a time. You'll also want to wear light armor and itemize dodge.

But you'll only want to spend 41 to 50ish points in a single tree or else you'll start running out of good things to get from the tree; so you have 30 to 39 points to invest in different trees. So think about what your rogue does and doesn't do.

Mechanic: This tree is for ranged damage and doing traps. You use daggers or kukris; which aren't ranged weapons; so that part of the tree isn't useful for you; but you do do traps, and if you're finding difficult to disarm traps in quests you've come across; investing some points to get better at disabling traps is a good idea.

Theif Acrobat: This tree is good for quarterstaff attacks and dodge/movement speed. You don't use a quarterstaff so don't use those bonuses; but you do dodge attacks and movement speed is always good. So picking up those things from this tree can be a good idea.

Harper/Vistani: If you have these; they are good supplementary damage. Vistanii is specifically for dagger damage; you can use daggers, it's a great tree to invest in! Harper gives the option for intelligence to hit/damage; which allows you to take the intelligence route that those DC abilities hinted at you being able to do.

In terms of feats; you know that you're a melee combatant, so you'll want the standard suite of melee feats. This means you want Improved Critical with the weapon you're using (piercing for dagger or slashing for kukri... yuck they're different so you'll probably have to pick one of those weapon types to be better then the other); as well as a stance feat (either power attack or precision). Since you're damage comes from critical hits and sneak attack; precision is better! (Because it lets you bypass fortification). And you'll want 3 style feats (either two handed fighting, two weapon fighting or single weapon fighting); since daggers/kukris are both one-handed weapons; this narrows your choice down to either two weapon fighting feats or single weapon fighting feats.

If you follow a thought process like this and pick an enhancement tree which is not eldritch knight; you're pretty sure to make a solid pure-class character of any class. Once you've become good at making a good pure-class character, then you can start thinking about what your next pure-class character could gain/lose if you take levels in a different class.

[Gabrael]

a very easy build you can use to farm class PLs is rogue6/arti4-6/whatever8-10
get both the rogue tier 5 alacrity to non repeater, vorpal on 19-20, doubleshot 10% and core INT to dmg, along with arti tier 4 fusillade, +10% doubleshot, and tier 1 +3 AB, and use either artificer insightful strike or harper INT for attack and you got yourself a very dangerous great crossbow build that can accommodate 8-10 levels in any class you hate to farm PL, and you get to use same gear every lives.