Hello, and welcome to my breakdown of the Eldritch Knight for wizards!
If you want a video explaining my thoughts on the character and current build should you look no further than
here!
Let's start with some frequently asked questions.
How much better is the revamp?
The difference is night and day. Previously, 80% of the stuff in the EK tree could be gathered by taking 1 level of fighter. Additionally, there was no synergy with spells and in fact the tree reduced your casting ability with Tenser's transformation.
The revamped tree has scaling elemental damage on hit, synergies between casting spells and melee attacks, incentives to weave spells in between hits, cool unique abilities, and increased casting ability with the sacrifice of being in melee.
Oh yeah and like 4x as much damage. This tree went from something you use to get 10% bonus AC from the mage armour enhancement to something you consider on almost every kind of wizard or sorcerer.
Is EK good for levelling?
Absolutely. Wizards routinely struggle with spellpoint issues during the levelling process, and EK alleviates this issue with attacks that don't cost any spellpoints to empower. The added damage from the Spellsword enhancements might be small at first, but even a little spellpower makes it much stronger. The tree grants access to armour and a lot of universal spellpower allowing a large variety of spells available as
well as good access to defensive armour and shields for the levelling process.
I personally played as warforged and I never ran into issues while levelling on reaper mode. For those squishies out there, you may desire to dip into the pale master tree for levelling (depending on the difficulty you play on).
Is EK good for epics?
Absolutely! Once you reach epics you get access to so many new options and being able to level with magister or draconic incarnation without sacrificing your melee powers is amazing. It's also super fun to just
jam level 9 spells while swinging your sword around. I feel like epics really hits that level of class fantasy you want with Eldritch Knight.
Depending on your available gear and past lives, jumping into epic elite or reaper in epics might be a bit difficult, but the damage from spellsword is noticeable large once you hit level 20, dealing almost 200
damage per strike as well as your base weapon damage/effects.
Is EK good for end-game?
Yes and no.
Can you build an EK who can act as your CC/instakiller? Yes and the additional damage from spellsword and your spells will give you value against monsters traditionally immune to physical damage on high
difficulty like elementals.
Can you build and EK who does monstrous R10 DPS? No, you cannot. EK is going to land like 30% behind monk in terms of DPS, especially because some monsters with higher elemental resistances can cause major issues for your dps. This is due to how damage is calculated in this game. Flat reductions/increases are applied first, then percentage based increases. As a result, if you have a monster with 30 fire resistance, you need to do more than 30 fire damage before you calculate spellpower or your damage is reduced to 0, which is why you sometimes see those weird white 0s show up. This means that for raiding purposes against monsters like the shadows of hate from Strahd you will find yourself dealing 0 damage most of the time, regardless of spellpower. Until this calculation is changed, I do not recommend EK for DPS since you can't penetrate elemental resistance in R10 or hard raids.
It's viable for endgame and raiding, but you just need to understand what your character is doing. Your role in R10 should be as crowd control first and foremost, with decent DPS on the back end, with enough
defensive to take a few hits. This isn't to say you can't spec all in on dps, but be aware that you will find issues killing mobs fast enough in R7+.
The trade is being able to cast spells are range vs 25% more HP and more DCs as well as melee dps. Figure out what fits for your playstyle as opposed to the standard CC/instakill wizard.
My build
Strimtom's Eldritch Knight
Wizard 20
True Neutral Warforged
I chose warforged because it made self healing a non-issue and really tightened the whole experience. 10/10, def the best option for levelling and reincarnating.
Stats
. . . . . . . .28pt . . 32pt. . .36pt . . Tome . . Level Up
. . . . . . . .---- . . ----. . .---- . . ----. . .--------
Strength. . . . 10. . . . 8 . . . .8. . . .+6. . . .4: INT
Dexterity . . . .8. . . . 8 . . . .8. . . .+6. . . .8: INT
Constitution. . 18. . . .20 . . . 20. . . .+6. . . 12: INT
Intelligence. . 18. . . .18 . . . 18. . . .+6. . . 16: INT
Wisdom. . . . . .6. . . . 6 . . . 10. . . .+6. . . 20: INT
Charisma. . . . .6. . . . 6 . . . .6. . . .+6. . . 24: INT
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28: INT
The stats are fairly straight forward. INT and CON are really all you need, with some strength for good measure. Rest of stats are dump stats. You can use wisdom if you would consider using mass frog.
Skills
. . . . . 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
. . . . .------------------------------------------------------------
Concent . 4. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 23
Repair. . 4. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 23
Spellcr . 4. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 23
Balance . 2. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. 11½
UMD . . . 2. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. 11½
Search. . 2. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. . .11
Swim. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. 1. 1. 1½ 1½ 1½ 1½ 2. 11
Haggle. . . . . . .½ .½ .½ .½ .1 .1 .1 .1 .1½ ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. ½. . .11
Jump. . . . .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .½ .1 .10
. . . . .------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . .24. 7. 7. 8. 8. 8. 8. 9. 9. 9. 9 10 10 10 10 11 11 11 11 11
Basic skills. Spellcraft, UMD, Balance. The rest are flavour.
Feats
.1. . . . : Shield Proficiency
.1 Wizard : Spell Focus: Evocation
.3. . . . : Completionist
.5 Wizard : Quicken Spell
.6. . . . : Past Life: Wizard
.9. . . . : Shield Mastery
10 Wizard : Spell Focus: Enchantment
12. . . . : Adamantine Body
15. . . . : Knight's Training
15 Wizard : Mental Toughness
18. . . . : Improved Critical: Slashing
20 Wizard : Improved Mental Toughness
21 Epic . : Arcane Insight
24 Epic . : Embolden Spell
26 Destiny: Perfect Two Weapon Fighting
27 Epic . : Insightful Reflexes
28 Destiny: Perfect Two Handed Fighting
29 Destiny: Dire Charge
30 Epic . : Improved Shield Mastery
30 Legend : Scion of: Feywild
This is for a shield using Eldritch Knight. The feats are much more forgiving for a Single weapon fighter EK. If you don't have completionist or past life wizard, take greater spell focus for enchantment and evocation instead.
Enhancements (80+7 AP)
Eldritch Knight (Wizard) (42 AP)
- Eldritch Strike, Spellsword, Imbue the Blade, Subtle Force, Subtle Force II, Eldritch Blade
- Improved Mage Armor III, Arcane Siphon III, Toughness II
- Improved Shield III, Spellpower Boost III
- Eldritch Accuracy, Synergetic Magic, Intelligence
- Knight's Transformation, Shield Striking III, Force's Point
- Improved Knight's Transformation, Knight's Controller, Force's Edge, Eldritch Tempest III
Harper Agent (22 AP)
- Agent of Good I, Intelligence, Agent of Good II
- Harper Enchantment, Traveler's Toughness III
- Magical Endurance III, Know the Angles III
- Highly Skilled I, Strategic Combat, Intelligence
- Intelligence
Warforged (12 AP)
- Improved Fortification, Warforged Constitution, Improved Fortification II, Warforged Constitution II
- Mechanist III, Construct Toughness
- (none)
- +15 Melee and Range Power
Archmage (11 AP)
- Jump
- Subtle Spellcasting I, Wand and Scroll Mastery III
- Efficient Quicken III
For enhancements, we are going straight in for all the good stuff out of eldritch knight. I didn't take some of the defensives like MRR or armor feats since warforged gets adamantine body to supersede this. Harper is used for intelligence, archmage is used to reduce the cost of quicken spell which will always be active.
Destiny (24 AP)
Draconic Incarnation
- Energy Sheath: Electricity III, Intelligence
- Out with bang: Electricity III, Precise: Evocation II, Intelligence
- Dragon Heritage: Black I, Intelligence
- Energy Burst: Acid III, Spell Knowledge I, Intelligence
- Dragon Breath
- Energy Vortex: Acid
Twists of Fate (20 fate points)
- School Specialist: Enchantment (Tier 2 Magister)
- Legendary Shield Mastery (Tier 2 Sentinel)
- Endless Faith (Tier 1 Exalted)
- Intelligence (Tier 1 Magister)
- Intelligence (Tier 1 Shadowdancer)
I like going into draconic for epics because it just has that fun factor. You get a good amount of intelligence and a lot of good spells, really helps solidify the burst damage. Passively, with feats, enhancements, ship buffs, and destiny abilities you manage to rock 27% double strike without factoring items which is awesome.
GEAR
Head: Pansophic Circlet
Neck: Kindred Pendant
Trinket: Echo of Ravenkind
Cloak: Phase Cloak
Belt: Burnscar Sash belt
Ring#1: Legendary Band of Insightful Commands
Ring#2: Legendary Spinneret
Gloves: Legendary Blurfingered Gloves
Boots: Slavelords (Strength - Accuracy - UMD - Quality Con?)
Bracers: Lorefueled Pack Banner
Chest: Legendary Memory of Fine Regalia
Goggles: Cannith Crafted (Necromancy Focus 6, Insightful Evocation 3, Insightful Int +7)
Weapon: soulrazor
Shield: Giants Platter for defense.
Filigree (All rare):
Otto: +1 Int, PRR, MRR, Spellpower (+1 int, 14MRR, 5PRR, +200
SP, +2 all dcs)
Beholder: +1 Int, MRR, Spellpower, +2 Int (+3 int, 9MRR, 2PRR, 10
spellpower, +1 spell pen, +2 dcs)
There we have it, the wizard.
If you have any questions, do let me know and I will do my best to answer or add details. I will be adding a second SWF build in the future when I have more time to this post. Thank you and drive safe.