U45 TWF Paladin 18 / monk 2 (longswords, Whirling Steel strike build)

[magaiti]

There are changes in U45 that favor TWF style:
1) The new Divine Might adds flat damage rather than ability modifier
2) KotC tree has a new to-hit/to-damage line, with up to +9/+9 bonus.

The idea of the build is to use dual longswords while centered, thanks to Whirling Steel Strike feat.

Level Split:
18 pally give us Holy Sword, Zeal, and 5th core in Sacred Defender, as it looks completely insane in U45 previews (+3 Lay on Hands, +25 HAmp, +10% hp).
2 monks give us 2 feats, Sun Stance for strength and crit, and some Shintao enhancements (+10% offhand chance and +20 prr).


Race: any with bonus STR/DEX/CHA (Drow, Dragonborn, etc).

Stats: we need 4 (Str and Cha for damage, 17 Dex to qualify for TWF, and Con for HP).
So, this might be hard for new players. Lots of Ability Tomes recommended.


Feats:
(assuming Knight's Training is available in U45 KotC tree)
(Cleaves are available in KotC tree)

1 · · Paladin(1)· · · ·Stunning Blow, Follower of the Sovereign Host (Longswords)
3 · · Paladin(3)· · · ·Completionist / Child of the Sovereign Host
6 · · Paladin(6)· · · ·Precision
9 · · Paladin(9)· · · ·Improved Critical: Slashing Weapons
12· · Paladin(12) · · ·Weapon Focus: Slashing Weapons (required for Whirling Steel Strike)
15· · Monk(1) · · · · ·Adept of Forms, Monk Bonus: Two Weapon Fighting (requires 15 DEX, assuming starting 9 dexterity, and +6 tome)
16· · Monk(2) · · · · ·Monk Bonus: Whirling Steel Strike
18· · Paladin(16) · · ·Master of Forms
21· · Epic(1) · · · · ·Overwhelming Critical
24· · Epic(4) · · · · ·Improved Two Weapon Fighting (requires 17 DEX, assuming starting 9 dexterity, and +8 tome)
26· · Epic(6) · · · · ·Perfect Two Weapon Fighting
27· · Epic(7) · · · · ·Greater Two Weapon Fighting
28· · Epic(8) · · · · ·Elusive Target / Tactician / DR: Adamantine
29· · Epic(9) · · · · ·Dire Charge
30· · Epic(10)· · · · ·Grandmaster of Forms, Scion (Arborea / Ethereal)


AP:
31 Sacred Defender for 5th core. take anything useful there is, keep in mind you won't qualify for Greater Sacred Defense (requires armor or shield, not compatible with Monk)
8 Shintao (+10% offhand chance and +20 prr).
rest into KotC / Racial.

Destiny: Divine Crusader (Tier 6 Book of War gives us another +9/+9 to each hand, for our 18 Pally levels)

[palladin9479]

Wind form would actually be much better DPS wise.

+4 Dex, -2 Con
15% melee & throwing speed[/B]

+12% melee double strike

Having said that, investing 31 points into sacred defending but not being able to use the greater defense boosts really sucks, along with not having the AC bonus from armor and what not. This build also matures extremely late, not having GTWF until almost cap. DEX is mostly a dump stat on Paladin so having to rely on it kinda sucks, at least not without some racial PL's to get the feat requirements down.

Having said that, 15% melee attack speed and 12% more double strike is really nice. Makes it competitive with SWF, would need to see the moving animation speeds.

:Edit:

Take that back, turns out the melee speed enhancement is the same as haste and alacrity, so 15% is what everyone gets anyway. And with that the utility of this build kinda fell apart, it's pretty much just +1 to super crit on sun and +12% double strike on wind, while requiring that you wear cloth instead of the massive defense bonus from heavy armor and sacred defender.

[Powerhungry]

Similar idea, but use ranger for TWF (no DEX requirements for TWF feats)

[magaiti]

This build also matures extremely late, not having GTWF until almost cap.

It cab be helped by taking more DEX at character generation, but this will result in less STR/CHA at cap, so it's a tradeoff.

DEX is mostly a dump stat on Paladin so having to rely on it kinda sucks, at least not without some racial PL's to get the feat requirements down.

I'm pretty sure RPLs don't help you with feat requirements, only base stats and tomes do.

Having said that, 15% melee attack speed and 12% more double strike is really nice. Makes it competitive with SWF, would need to see the moving animation speeds.

I'm pretty sure TWF is more competitive than SWF even without said bonuses, because offhand attack and offhand doublestrike result in more attacks per second than SWF speed bonus.

:Edit:
Take that back, turns out the melee speed enhancement is the same as haste and alacrity, so 15% is what everyone gets anyway.

Yep, that speed is useless. Both extra crit and doublestrike result in about 5% dps increase, but Sun also gives STR, which boosts Stun DC.

And with that the utility of this build kinda fell apart, it's pretty much just +1 to super crit on sun and +12% double strike on wind, while requiring that you wear cloth instead of the massive defense bonus from heavy armor and sacred defender.

Again, it's a tradeoff. You get Evasion (I totally forgot to mention it in the build, btw) and higher dodge cap (provided you can muster enough dodge on your gear to take advantage of it).

And Greater Sacred Defense is overrated. It only gives us what,
20% HP bonus - only useful in heroics (doesn't stack with epic defensive fighting stance);
6 STR - sucks to not have it, but we get access to Sun Stance instead;
6 CON - so we lose about 120 HP at cap (90 * 1.35). Considering the fact that melees nowdays have 2k+ hp, thanks to gear/rxp power creep, I'd say its only 5% of average player's HP pool at cap.

[Palna]

Looks like a fun build, might be a little glass-cannony with low PRR but guess survivability depends on how high you can get your dodge. I'd start with 11 dex, with +6 from tome kicking in at L15 will be able to get the TWF feats much earlier. I'd also drop, or at least respec out stunning blow after a few levels as I find Dire Charge enough CC and get Quicken for your Resurrects.

Feats

 1        : Weapon Focus: Slashing
 3        : Completionist
 6        : Precision
 9        : Improved Critical: Slashing
12        : Adept of Forms
12 Monk   : Whirling Steel Strike
13 Monk   : Two Weapon Fighting
15        : Improved Two Weapon Fighting
18        : Greater Two Weapon Fighting
21 Epic   : Overwhelming Critical
24 Epic   : Master of Forms
26 Destiny: Perfect Two Weapon Fighting
27 Epic   : Grandmaster of Forms
28 Destiny: Tactician
29 Destiny: Dire Charge
30 Epic   : Quicken Spell
30 Legend : Scion of: Arborea OR Astral Plane

Personally I'm sticking with my 15/5 paladin/ranger for now but will be picking up alot more from KotC

Edit: BTW isn't wind stance 15% speed enhancement and won't stack?

[Fedora1]

15· · Monk(1) · · · · ·Adept of Forms, Monk Bonus: Two Weapon Fighting (requires 15 DEX, assuming starting 9 dexterity, and +6 tome)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the +6 stat tome kicks in until after you finished your level-up choices for L15. So if you started with 9 dex you may not be able to take TWF at this point. Not 100% sure.

[magaiti]

Looks like a fun build, might be a little glass-cannony with low PRR but guess survivability depends on how high you can get your dodge. I'd start with 11 dex, with +6 from tome kicking in at L15 will be able to get the TWF feats much earlier. I'd also drop, or at least respec out stunning blow after a few levels as I find Dire Charge enough CC and get Quicken for your Resurrects.

PRR should be decent, we still have Sacred Defense for 25 PRR, SD cores 4-5 give some more, and Shintao T2 enhancement gives 20 PRR as well.

I was also thinking about dropping Stunning Blow for another feat (or having an extra feat if going Human). I'd rather take Child/Beloved of Faith, for more to-hit and flat damage to each hand.
I think resurrection spells are fine without Quicken, as long as you have maxed concentration.

[magaiti]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the +6 stat tome kicks in until after you finished your level-up choices for L15. So if you started with 9 dex you may not be able to take TWF at this point. Not 100% sure.

I'm pretty sure tomes do kick-in during level-up, as long as you have them read beforehand.
Comes from my own in-game experience, and fiddling with at least two different character calculators.
Level 1 is the only exception, +2 tome only kicks in after character creation.

But even if you miss your chance during level up, you only need to visit Fred to swap a feat.
For example, you can swap in Power Attack as a level 1 feat, with 11 starting STR and +2 tome.

[Palna]

PRR should be decent, we still have Sacred Defense for 25 PRR, SD cores 4-5 give some more, and Shintao T2 enhancement gives 20 PRR as well.

I was also thinking about dropping Stunning Blow for another feat (or having an extra feat if going Human). I'd rather take Child/Beloved of Faith, for more to-hit and flat damage to each hand.
I think resurrection spells are fine without Quicken, as long as you have maxed concentration.

Maybe enough with concentration, but I’d rather have non-interuptable fast cast ressurect for those hairy raidsaving situations than +2 att/dmg.

[palladin9479]

I'm pretty sure TWF is more competitive than SWF even without said bonuses, because offhand attack and offhand doublestrike result in more attacks per second than SWF speed bonus.

Actually it's not.

TWF only makes sense if your standing still fighting a brick wall that never moves and has infinite HP. The moment it starts moving around TWF damage drops off a cliff due to the way the attack animations work when you take more then a few steps. For whatever reason SWF and S&B, which use the same animations, don't slow down or reset on move. It's why you can't really twitch fight with them. What this means in game play is that when a monster moves, you can continue to chase it without losing attack speed due to animation resets. It also means that you can move from one monster to another and not lose attack rounds, it plays like a chainsaw where your just quickly cut down monsters one after another. Twist in Haste Boost from LD, or just run in LD and you can see some really hilarious stuff as 75% attack speed with 90%+ double strike that doesn't reset on move.

This is why I really wanted them to add Shield Master and Imp Shield Mastery to EDF, would make a KoTC + Vanguard build with the Vanguard capstone and Leg Best Defense hilariously fun.

[DDOisFree]

I thought I would mention that I already run something similar with Shortswords - 10 Rogue / 6 Monk / 4 Paladin Halfling, and maximize all the cloth protection I can (most points in Sacred Defense). Such builds would eventually become near invincible up to EE, as you would rarely ever be hit and have invincible saves, but reaper changed that and even in R1, trying to melee in cloth armour is incredibly hard as you not only get hit more often, but often 1-2 shotted by physical damage. In contrast to this my permanent first live 20 fighter in heavy armour and with all the heavy armour feats generally takes at least 3 hits to be killed in R6, and can still survive a single hit from red names, normally enough for a healer to keep him patched up (meteor swarms etc to the face still kill him unlike evasion builds though, I'm working towards building up my soft saves next).

Admittedly my rogue majority build has a lot less HP than 18 paladin or 20 fighter, but in the current game and reaper content if you want to bother with melee you need to use armour - I still often see melee Monk based builds with over 2K HP or even more than my Fighter die a lot faster while both are meleeing the same mins in R5+ difficulties, and also around 1K HP EK melee builds can't withstand a single blow, just based on my observation from joining a bunch of R5 and R6 content with my heavy armour build as it's my only character I keep at level 30 to play that.

I've actually found a perma first life pure fighter to be the most viable build for Melee in high level reapers so far.

I'm just checking out this sub forum for info on the paladin updates as I have two builds that splash 4 Paladin levels as such.

[magaiti]

Actually it's not.

TWF only makes sense if your standing still fighting a brick wall that never moves and has infinite HP. The moment it starts moving around TWF damage drops off a cliff due to the way the attack animations work when you take more then a few steps. For whatever reason SWF and S&B, which use the same animations, don't slow down or reset on move. It's why you can't really twitch fight with them. What this means in game play is that when a monster moves, you can continue to chase it without losing attack speed due to animation resets. It also means that you can move from one monster to another and not lose attack rounds, it plays like a chainsaw where your just quickly cut down monsters one after another. Twist in Haste Boost from LD, or just run in LD and you can see some really hilarious stuff as 75% attack speed with 90%+ double strike that doesn't reset on move.

This is why I really wanted them to add Shield Master and Imp Shield Mastery to EDF, would make a KoTC + Vanguard build with the Vanguard capstone and Leg Best Defense hilariously fun.

Apparently, you are implying that TWF loses offhand attacks when moving.
But wiki says otherwise:
https://ddowiki.com/page/Attack_sequ...eapon_Fighting
After Update 5, an off-hand attack would have a chance to proc on any main hand attack now, instead of being predetermined on certain attacks.

[palladin9479]

Apparently, you are implying that TWF loses offhand attacks when moving.
But wiki says otherwise:
https://ddowiki.com/page/Attack_sequ...eapon_Fighting
After Update 5, an off-hand attack would have a chance to proc on any main hand attack now, instead of being predetermined on certain attacks.

I didn't say that at all.

The entire TWF animation slooooowwss down whenever you move. You can see this yourself quite easily, stand still holding down the attack button and watch your character go through the four step sequence. Now in the middle of that sequence start running while holding down the attack button, notice how slow the attacks became. While still holding the attack button down come to a stop and watch that it takes a few seconds to resume normal attack speed. Now repeat the same steps with SWF, notice that there is no slow down in animations while running and resuming the normal four cycle happens immediately on stop. It's the animation speed that is really slow.

This is important because in actual game play, monsters like to jump back and run around a lot, plus monsters are never just standing right next to each other for you to casually move from one dead target to the next. This means that your attack cycle will get interrupted often and you will have to move to continue attacking the same target or move to the next. It's one of the reasons ranged and casters are OP, they don't need to worry about monsters running out of melee attack range.