Dazling's Benchmark Favored Soul

[Blastyswa]

Hello, this is Dazling. As part of my Benchmark Build series, my most recent release is Dazling's Benchmark Favored Soul. There is a video available showing the build, and a variety of showcase videos at various levels available in the videos description. Additionally, there is an about 25 page google document going over a lot of the decisions in the build. Additionally, A (less than 25 page) version of the build will be posted here in this post.

Video:

Google Document: Big Document


Dazling’s Benchmark Favored Soul

TL;DR: Dazling’s Benchmark Favored Soul is a pure 20 favored soul build designed to function in all content. The race we use is Tiefling. Our ability scores should have maximize charisma, 14-16 constitution, and our remaining points can fill out intelligence and dexterity. Our only real important skill is Diplomacy. Our spells are largely guided by the Divine Spell Analysis Spreadsheet, so that we end up taking mainly high damage spells as well as important support spells. Our reaper points should be spent into Thaumaturge. For enhancements we go 41/23/16 Angel of Vengeance/Beacon of Hope/Tiefling, picking up whatever increases our DCs and light damage from Angel of Vengeance, a solid array of healing stats and additional charisma from Beacon of Hope, and Fire Bypass, more charisma, and various defenses from Tiefling. Our Epic Destiny is Exalted Angel, with tier 4 Primal Avatar providing additional defense and DCs. Gearing is subjective, but I recommend a gear setup using 3 piece autumn, 3 piece Flamecleansed Fury, and 2 piece winter using Legendary Wild Flame or Legendary Sceptre of Combustion.


For all of the builds in the Dazling’s Benchmark Build Series, we will have a small set of rules and guidelines we’ll go about in making the builds. These rules are as followed:

All builds should function well at all levels of play, which we mean as being comfortable with solo reaper 1 while leveling, and solo reaper 4 at maximum level. The builds are intended to be able to transition well into group play at higher reaper skulls or solo play at higher skulls if supported with past lives, rare gear, and high reaper points, but that is not their primary testing ground.

All builds are 20 levels of one class: in this case, favored soul.

All builds will heavily utilize an Epic Destiny intended for that class. There’s nothing wrong with having a Fury of the Wild Fighter, a Draconic Incarnation Favored Soul, or a Shiradi Champion Rogue- but for this series, classes will stick to their intended epic destiny for tier 5’s where possible.

All builds will utilize only class and race enhancements. Similar to the epic destiny restriction, we aren’t trying to make a barbarian who has a significant amount of points invested into the flavor of a knife fighting rogue, a Favored Soul with many points set up as an arcane illusionist, or a Ranger who is heavily focused into being a planar guardian. For this reason, no universal enhancement trees will ever be used on these builds.

All builds should be accessible to any player. No tome or PL requirements, and we’ll avoid paid races, although if a paid race would perform better it will be mentioned.

All builds should maintain the flavor of the class. These builds are primarily geared towards effectively, but tied in with rules 3 and 4 we’re trying to have high effectiveness while still feeling like the base class. Builds that heavily utilize different flavor can be plenty strong, but for these builds we want our Barbarians to feel like Barbarians, our rogues to feel like rogues, etc.

All builds will be limited to 15 reaper points. This is for my testing the build, not for other people playing it- I just don’t want the success of the build to be based on the reaper points on the character I use.

With all that said, let’s begin looking into the build itself.

Class

Obviously for our class we will be choosing Favored Soul- as a favored soul, we’ll try and focus on nuking damage with fire, force, and light, although we’ll also utilize any other spells that are high value even with lower spellpower. We’ll have a decent amount of healing, but since we’re trying to be fully functional as a solo build, we aren’t going to focus on healing and support features such as tier 5 Beacon of Hope, although there are features there that are very good for a healing or support build.

Race

For our race, we’re going to go with Tiefling. Aasimar or Dragonborn could both be good picks as well, and you can always make most things work on race, but any other race is going to struggle with dealing with fire immune enemies in some way. Since for this build we’re focusing on soloability in all content, it’s important not to be significantly worse whenever a fire immune enemy appears. If you don’t mind being significantly worse against fire immune enemies you can make another race work just fine.

Sometimes people have concerns about the uptime of tieflings fire immunity bypass, which is fair- it’s a 5 second duration on a 10 second cooldown ability. However, since we are a combined light and fire caster, that isn’t the worst thing ever for us. You’ll generally want to follow up your scorch with Celestial Bombardment, Fire Storm, Holy Fireball, and Flamestrike, and then during the 5 seconds of downtime you can cycle through your other abilities that aren’t fire based, like Divine Wrath, Searing Light, Cometfall, etc. You’ll occasionally have Exalted Angel procs trigger into an immune enemy, mess up your rotation, or miss an enemy with scorch, but it’s still a lot better than just being weak to anything with fire immunity.

Ability Scores and Skill Points

When it comes to casters ability scores, I like to always maximize my main stat- whereas a martial can get away with missing a few points more often, casters having less DCs is a massive damage loss when a lot of spells will have half effectiveness on a save. Beyond that, I recommend putting Constitution at 14-16, I like Intelligence at 12 for a few more skill points, and then raising Dexterity a little bit for reflex saves isn’t bad with leftover points. I'd roughly recommend 8/10/14/12/8/20 as a 28 point build stat array, or 8/14/16/12/8/20 as a 36 point stat array, with the stat amounts between those two probably just pulling from dexterity.


For skill points, I would recommend putting a couple of points in tumble and use magic device, and then maximizing your search and diplomacy. Beyond that, spellcraft is nice for a tiny bit of extra damage. If you have extra skill points from tomes, Jump, Heal, or Concentration can all be fine.

Spells

Spells is a big category, and I’m not going to go super in detail on it. If you’re wondering why a particular damage spell was taken, it was probably guided by my post here (DDO Divine Spell Analysis) where I do the math on spells to figure out what’s good.


1st
Nimbus of Light
Cure Light Wounds
Nightshield
Bless

2nd
Deific Vengeance
Soundburst
Find Traps
Spawn Screen

3rd
Searing Light
Magic Circle Against Evil
Prayer
Protection from Energy

4th
Holy Smite
Death Ward
Freedom of Movement
Inflict Critical Wounds

5th
Flame Strike
Raise Dead
Divine Punishment
Slay Living

6th
Blade Barrier
Heal
Cometfall

7th
Resurrection
Protection from Elements, Mass
Destruction

8th
Fire Storm
Holy Aura
Death Pact

9th
Divine Wrath
Celestial Bombardment
Implosion


You should generally be primarily casting the highest level damage spell you can, and filling in your rotation with the spells in descending order from it. Deific Vengeance and Searing Light both remain good economy spells at high levels. Personally I think the idea of a set damage rotation in a game with various cooldowns and cooldown reductions like this one is somewhat silly, but in general just hitting the highest level spells whenever they’re off cooldown is a good idea.



Feats

For our deity feat, I recommend Olladra. Having a huge heal is very handy, and it has a good bonus effect as well. Olladra also is able to be used in almost any circumstance: I haven’t yet found a time where I’ve been crowd controlled and it doesn’t work, and you can even use it while unconscious. Even if that gets fixed/changed, it’s still the best one in my opinion just based on the effects it provides.

At level 2 we take charisma to damage but it doesn’t really matter, and at level 7 I’d always recommend taking the health. We’ll likely never run out of spell points from 7+ anyway, and no one likes running out of hit points. For our absorptions, I would recommend Electric, Cold, and Sonic. Normally I’d take Fire over Cold, but because I use Crown of Snow with this gearset (permanent fire shield (cold)), cold is the better endgame pick in my opinion. If you don’t use Crown of Snow, I’d take fire instead.

That brings us to actual feats. Here is a complete list of what we’ll be taking:

1. Maximize Spell
3. Quicken Spell
6. Empower Spell
9. Enlarge Spell
12. Heighten Spell
15. Force of Personality
18. Empower Healing Spell
21. Wellspring of Power
22. Epic Spellpower: Light
24. Burst of Glacial Wrath
25. Epic Spellpower: Fire
27. Master of Light
28. Deific Warding
30. Intensify Spell
Legendary. Scion of Celestia
31. Fount of Life


The first 5 metamagics are all very helpful for boosting our DPS in various ways, as well as providing bonuses to our DC casting and to our healing, I would never recommend skipping any of them. Force of Personality makes our will saves pretty much no fail in all content, but if you have a lot of past lives you might be able to get away with dropping it and letting the past lives carry your will saves. Empower Healing is flexible, you could easily take something else if you want.

Wellspring of Power is flexible, it’s a nice little bonus but the downtime is pretty large. Epic Spellpower: Light boosts our main damage type, and there aren’t a lot of other strong options at 22. At 25 you could take something else that you like more over Epic Spellpower: Fire, such as sense weakness for getting bigger numbers on enemies that were about to die anyway. Burst of Glacial Wrath gives us some useful CC, but you could swap it out for something else if you wanted. Master of Light means our Searing Lights are some of our best single target damage, although the other spells it boosts doesn’t do much. Deific Warding is a nice defensive bonus, and Intensify is a good DPS bonus and free thanks to our Epic Destiny. Fount of Life gives us more defenses from our Epic Destiny, but I’d actually recommend Legendary Toughness if you have a constitution tome- you need 21 constitution to take Legendary Toughness, and we just can’t justify dropping our DCs that much if we don’t have a tome. Legendary Toughness is pretty much strictly better than Fount of Life though if we have a tome. Scion of Celestia should be pretty obvious, it’s the only Scion that primarily buffs light, and it gives us evocation DCs and some good defensive bonuses as well.

Reaper Points



For our reaper point allocation, we will go with a full 15 points into Thaumaturge, picking up a level 3 memento, 3 cores, and all of the spell DCs, spell penetration, and charisma we can grab for 15 points.

Beyond that, I would recommend putting points into Barricade: bolstering our PRR and Reflex Saves will make big differences to our defenses, and getting the doubled scaling on HP lets us get into higher skull reaper quicker to feel effective.

Enhancement Points



By level 20, that’s what you can expect your enhancement points to look like. Along the way, my recommendation would be to prioritize getting Sun Bolt, then Close Wounds. After that, get your Caster Levels from Intense Faith, and then continue spending points in Angel of Vengeance until you have your tier 5’s, potentially doing jiggle points into Tiefling on the way. Once you have your tier 5’s, go into Tiefling for Scorch, and then finish out by filling out Beacon of Hope. By level 32 your Nimbus of Light and Sun Bolt SLA’s will have reduced use- you could potentially swap them out at that point if you would like, but they’re vital for leveling, you’d be gaining a relatively small benefit by doing so, and they can still be useful as very cost efficient damage dealers even at high level.

If you have a universal AP Tome, I would recommend grabbing Feydark tier 1. If you have racial AP from some source, if you have enough you could get additional healing from Beacon of Hope, or even get core 5 Beacon of Hope.

Epic Destinies



This is what you can expect your Epic Destiny to look like by 32. Along the way, I would recommend getting your Angelic Form mantle and Sun Pillar Epic Strike from Exalted Angel immediately, and picking up Shard Storm and Spirit Boon for +2 Charisma from Primal Avatar. After that, get a few of the goodies in both of the trees, and at 23 you’ll want to pick up the upgrade to Shard Storm and your healing aura from Exalted Angel. Beyond that just fill out with various DC and powerful abilities.

We go Acid over Fire in Primal Avatar for a variety of reasons- we already have a few “heal to full” buttons, we have trouble dealing with spike damage which Shard Storm’s temp HP helps with, and Shard Storm is just better single target damage even with less spellpower, and our single target DPS needs more help than our AoE. Reborn in Fire is fine to take though, it’s not going to kill the build either way, and Reborn in Fire having a big heal on a short cooldown might help us more at r8-10, that’s just not what this build is built around.

I really like Exalted Angel core 4 being healing, but the damage amount actually scales OK as well, taking either should be fine.

In my experience your healing rotation if you end up having to be the healer is just not quite enough if you don’t have the Mass Moderate Wounds SLA from Exalted Angel and Healing Cocoon from Primal Avatar- in particular, AoE healing is difficult with only your epic moment, divine wrath, and your Beacon heals. If you don’t find yourself having to heal others very much, your healing is probably fine without those abilities.


If you have additional Epic Destiny points from tomes or past lives, I would recommend picking up some additional cost reduction from Primal Avatar tier 4, which ensures that you can keep your metamagics on at all times with no problems. Beyond that, going 4 points into Draconic Incarnation for a fire core and for no fail fortitude saves on a 1 would be a reasonable idea.

Gear

I wouldn’t recommend fixating on the gear too much for a build, gear is very update dependent, and by far the easiest thing to adjust for a build. With that said, I personally really like using the following gearset.

Hat: Crown of Winter
Necklace: Dinosaur Bone Artifact (Light Spell Crit, Light Spell Crit, Light Spell Crit, Profane DC)
Trinket: Cannith Crafted Charisma/Parrying/Insightful Impulse (Substitution: Bronze Figurine)
Cloak: Hallowed Trail
Belt: Black Satin Waist (Quality Charisma)
Ring 1: Ring of Fall’s Decay
Ring 2: Ring of Winter’s Chill
Gloves: Gloryborne Gauntlets (Deadringers is a valid alternate)
Boots:Legendary Windriders
Bracers: Hallowed Castigators
Armor: Blessed Vestments
Goggles: Collective Sight (Constitution, Insightful Constitution)

Mainhand: Wild Flame (Sceptre of Combustion is a valid alternate)
Offhand: Resplendent Fury (Insightful Charisma)

Important Augments:
Resistance, Dexterity, Exceptional Charisma/Imperial Globe, Festival Charisma if you have, Evocation Topaz, Necromancy Topaz, Sheltering Sapphire for MRR, Charisma if not using Cannith Crafted


When making your own gearset, I’d mainly just recommend trying to figure out what your goals are on the build and what your weaknesses are (In this case, the goal is high Light, Force, and Fire damage, and the biggest weakness is susceptibility to spike damage), and then choose sets that fill in those gaps, and then fill in gaps in those sets with gear that helps. In this case, we do Flamecleansed Fury and 3 Piece Autumn for nuking, 2 piece winter for some more defense, and then fill in with good single pieces.

Personally I recommend something like this for your sentient filigrees:

Weapon:
1. Dragonsoul Cha +1
2. Otto’s Irrevocable Power Cha +1
3. Otto’s Con +1
4. Otto’s PRR +3
5. Random Cha +1 OR Raid Cha +2 <This is where I’m at at the time of making this guide>
6. Random Cha +1 OR Second Raid Cha +2
7. Dragonsoul Electric Absorption
8. Dragonsoul <Whichever Element you didn’t choose from Favored Soul> Absorption
9. Random Cha +1 OR To Hell and Back Cha +1 (If using Raid augments)
10. Dragonsoul <Some other element you kind of want absorption to> Absorption

Artifact:
1. Dragonsoul Cha +1
2. Otto’s Irrevocable Power Cha +1
3. Random Cha +1 OR Raid Cha +2
4. Random Cha +1 OR Second Raid Cha +2

If you use raid filigrees, I’d prioritize them over Otto’s.

Don’t worry about the gear too much, the DCs actually overshoot quite a bit for r4 (My current DCs are around 105-110, and I’m not fully optimized and don’t have PLs).


Conclusion

I actually had an especially great time making this build, I’ve played a lot of casters over the years but it’s been a while since I touched my favored soul- I was very happy to see that it was a very, very smooth play experience at all levels of gameplay. I’ll actually likely be personally using this build quite a bit myself just for TRing, as well as keeping the flagship at max level for running various content. Hopefully this helped give some people fun ideas for playing some Favored Souls. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

[Tilomere]

I learned a lot about EDs and specific gameplay from your detailed writeups.

One of the things I didn't like about the builds is that they use $200 worth of sentience at 20, $200 worth of sentience at cap, and don't have $5 supporting enhancement trees.

This is particularly problematic with the Barbarian build, that gets a lot of it's armor piercing and power from sentience. Without that, that barbarian doesn't hit very hard especially 20-25, and especially against reapers which have tons of fortification. For example, your barbarian ends up at 30 with the fortification bypass insufficient to crit a heroic reaper:


and has a build centered around needing to crit with adrenaline.

The other problem I had was pacing. You talked about hitting for 24k at level 24 on your barbarian with adrenaline, once every 8 seconds. Which is a little bit more than the previously legendary spells hit for in heroics, AoE. This is the cold half of Tsunami on a non-optimal DG 17 druid 1 wiz (I'm too cheap to buy the +1 heart or to level as a dragonborn from 1):


You aren't bringing up why your FvS works smoothly, but the barbarian doesn't, which is pacing, or bring up how much worse the pacing disparity is without $200 of sentience at 20, which causes the barbarian to lose most of it's power and armor pen at level 20, which having much less of an impact on maximized FvS spells.

Even with $200 in sentience, your barbarian with upgraded epic destiny strike at 24 hits a single target for a tad harder than an all purpose healing support heroic caster crits using AoE spells. Without that sentience, and especially against high fort reapers, that barb implodes because base power and armor pen are both low.

The other problem I had was you talked about not knowing the impact of reaper points. Reaper points are more or less HP, but as a barbarian (or FvS) you generally have enough bonus HP from class that reaper points don't matter much. What matters is rotation elegance: initiating with AoE CC, following with AoE DPS, with backup CC, with constant healing for dealing with red named attrition and mobs that resist CC.

As a non-tactical using barbarian, the rotational elegance isn't there. You swing at mobs, and they swing back. Being able to adrenaline one out of a pack of 8 isn't particularly meaningful. That's what is holding the build back. Compare that to a s&b barb/bard/rogue swash that initiates with Dire Charge, Cleaves with chains that knock down, then does a shield throw stun, then does a followup Dire Charge, all the while gaurdbreaking.

Or a pure rogue that does Dire Charge into Chains knockdown while applying LGS Salt.

The self healing on the barb also also isn't highly refined, such as unending renewals or other ED spell powered healing (razorclaw if needed), or using SWF offhand versatility + orb for 100% spell crit. An OS barbarian has plenty enough hp. This is why you find FvS to have smoother gameplay, because FvS spells have AoE CC, and FvS has built in healing. It is enough to simply be a FvS caster, but to be a barb (or rogue) you have to jigsaw your ED, gearing, and gameplay.

You are handicapping both builds without using secondary trees. It takes 20k points for the sentience you are using at 20, anther 20k points for the sentience you are using at cap, plus you are using expansion and gear from multiple sources but you aren't using 500 points to buy supporting trees or using supporting trees you get for free from maxing favor from multiple sources? The barbarian for example, can stop using rage for precisions (25% fort bypass, then use diplomacy with inquisitor for 25% for bypass since it isn't ranged, then add falconry debuff for another 50% fort bypass, which adds to 100% additional fort bypass, which would allow it to crit reapers. Plus then it could use tactical/bird attacks for CC due to having a trance. If a build is so purely dependent on crits in reaper mode, it should have 200% bypass for reapers.

Also not a fan of Diplomacy over Concentration on a caster. Mobs have poor engagement of ranged characters, so consider 8 points off PA and put it in US for 450% threat. Mobs hit this hard in high reaper:


I think this is post stat-squish, basically some champions will 1-shot multistrike or dual wield double tap a tanky uberpletionist all-reaper point melee in a single swing. So your melee build needs to shift as you climb skulls into not allowing mobs to attack, even once. So it's not so much a question of reaper points, since reaper points don't provide CC.

This is why the barbarian build isn't elegant enough, and why it isn't as smooth as FvS even when scaled down to lower reaper. This is also why you want 450% threat on your caster, to pull aggro off and protect melee players making "benchmark" builds with no CC. When you do that, you will find that your healing isn't as weak as you thought, now that benchmark melee in your groups aren't really taking tons of damage anymore. For example, think of how much less healing a benchmark melee requires if you are tanking a pair of doom reapers or a red named dungeon boss simply by standing on top of a bookshelf.

+1 for calling out Olladra, and explaining it can be used while unconscious that I learned, plus all the FoTW intricacies I learned from the barb build, and for detail. Even if I disagree with you, I still appreciate and learned off of it, so thank you!

[Blastyswa]

Heya Tilo, thanks for the feedback! You had a lot of good points in here, so I'm going to do a bit of a detailed quotey response.

I learned a lot about EDs and specific gameplay from your detailed writeups.

One of the things I didn't like about the builds is that they use $200 worth of sentience at 20, $200 worth of sentience at cap, and don't have $5 supporting enhancement trees.

This is particularly problematic with the Barbarian build, that gets a lot of it's armor piercing and power from sentience. Without that, that barbarian doesn't hit very hard especially 20-25, and especially against reapers which have tons of fortification. For example, your barbarian ends up at 30 with the fortification bypass insufficient to crit a heroic reaper:


and has a build centered around needing to crit with adrenaline.

So I'll make sure and clarify this better on future videos and posts, but I actually don't use that sentient filigree arrangement for leveling. On the Barbarian I used a 5 piece blood feast (which becomes my swap-in blood feast when I swap over to my cap weapon) and on my Favored Soul I used a 4x Wreath of Flame Combustion Sceptre.





I didn't include a lot of guidance on gearing for leveling since I wanted to try and keep things relatively short and clean, so it totally makes sense to think that I meant the sentience for 20 and 32, but for epic leveling I found that both of them sailed very smoothly through epic levels just using those fairly easy to get filigrees.

I should also probably clarify (and will do so in builds going forward better) that while I recommend filigrees for all filigree slots, in practice I'm only using the first 5-6 or so, and I try and order them roughly according to power level so that the most important stuff is taken first. For example, my Favored Soul is currently using 4 piece dragonsoul and some charisma filigrees, but she doesn't have the otto's irrevocable power stuff yet. My Barbarian has 2x Longshadow and 5x Dreadbringer, but doesn't have the shattered device set filled yet. I considered the 20k-40k amount of sentient xp to be reasonable enough to obtain so the build should be almost entirely online by that point, the remaining filigrees are just for if you want to really go hard on them.


While a small part of the enhancement tree avoidance is because of the cost, it's actually mostly just because I'm planning to do builds for all of the classes, and when I came up with my initial concepts for all of them I noticed a few similarities in how I built them- the casters were consistently putting 11+ points in Feydark Illusionist, the melees were consistently putting 8-11+ points in Vistani Knife Fighter, the monk was barely even using monk stuff because it was so deep into falconry, half of the other martials were deep investing for trances or alternate to-hit and damage, and they basically all ended up feeling way too similar. So, a big part of the universal enhancement tree avoidance rule is just to make sure the builds are really leaning into what their own class is best at, and it also means more points to spend on interesting racial trees without having to be a racial completionist. Of course those universal trees are used for a reason: GCS is really good, vistani is really good, trances are really good, etc. But if I were to use those on all the builds I just don't think they'd be very interesting and fun, and there'd be a lot of overlap.


For the barbarian fort bypass, I didn't find leveling the fort bypass to really be a problem, and at cap it actually reaches 100% fortification, although 5% of that is behind one of the higher up filgrees. My gameplay videos I recorded were actually unfortunately before I got the 20% from Dreadbringer, but at this point I'm at 95% (it shows as 96% actually, think it's a visual bug?) and I haven't really noticed adrenaline ever not critting with that much, although I still plan to get the Shattered Device pierce filigree in soon.

Fortification Bypass Breakdown:
30% Artifact Bonus
30% Dreadbringer
21% Crocodile Tooth
9% Lionheart Ring
5% Guild Buffs
5% Shattered Device
= 100% Fortification Bypass

The other problem I had was pacing. You talked about hitting for 24k at level 24 on your barbarian with adrenaline, once every 8 seconds. Which is a little bit more than the previously legendary spells hit for in heroics, AoE. This is the cold half of Tsunami on a non-optimal DG 17 druid 1 wiz (I'm too cheap to buy the +1 heart or to level as a dragonborn from 1):


You aren't bringing up why your FvS works smoothly, but the barbarian doesn't, which is pacing, or bring up how much worse the pacing disparity is without $200 of sentience at 20, which causes the barbarian to lose most of it's power and armor pen at level 20, which having much less of an impact on maximized FvS spells.

Even with $200 in sentience, your barbarian with upgraded epic destiny strike at 24 hits a single target for a tad harder than an all purpose healing support heroic caster crits using AoE spells. Without that sentience, and especially against high fort reapers, that barb implodes because base power and armor pen are both low.

I already mentioned to the first bit that I was a bit unclear on the filigrees which is on me. For leveling, I generally felt that the barbarian felt smoother in epics if anything. In heroics the FvS could easily blow everything up before it had a chance to move while the barbarian had to run up and hold left click for a second or two to accomplish the same result. In epics both of them had very quick clear times with the FvS still being a bit quicker, but the FvS had a few leveling deaths when it got stunned and nuked before I had a chance to harper pin or otherwise react, while the barbarian went from 1-30 with zero deaths I'm fairly sure because if he got stunned I had twice as much HP and PRR/MRR to fall back on. I don't think I'd ever recommend any melee for clearing speed when compared to a caster, but the defense disparity was pretty noticeable, especially since neither of them really have any past life support. I'd also say an AoE vs. single-target comparison isn't really fair to martials in general, even heavily AoE focused martial builds aren't very likely to beat out a well built sorc/FvS/druid throwing out 9th level spells. And of course, against a boss that adrenaline applies a lot more immediate pressure than the AoE spell.

The other problem I had was you talked about not knowing the impact of reaper points. Reaper points are more or less HP, but as a barbarian (or FvS) you generally have enough bonus HP from class that reaper points don't matter much. What matters is rotation elegance: initiating with AoE CC, following with AoE DPS, with backup CC, with constant healing for dealing with red named attrition and mobs that resist CC.

As a non-tactical using barbarian, the rotational elegance isn't there. You swing at mobs, and they swing back. Being able to adrenaline one out of a pack of 8 isn't particularly meaningful. That's what is holding the build back. Compare that to a s&b barb/bard/rogue swash that initiates with Dire Charge, Cleaves with chains that knock down, then does a shield throw stun, then does a followup Dire Charge, all the while gaurdbreaking.

Or a pure rogue that does Dire Charge into Chains knockdown while applying LGS Salt.

The self healing on the barb also also isn't highly refined, such as unending renewals or other ED spell powered healing (razorclaw if needed), or using SWF offhand versatility + orb for 100% spell crit. An OS barbarian has plenty enough hp. This is why you find FvS to have smoother gameplay, because FvS spells have AoE CC, and FvS has built in healing. It is enough to simply be a FvS caster, but to be a barb (or rogue) you have to jigsaw your ED, gearing, and gameplay.

I've gotten a decent amount of r8+ play on both of the builds at this point, and I'd say the reaper point difference is very noticeable: as an easy example, I have an affirmation on the FvS that I swap in fairly often when on higher reaper. There's been quite a few times when that FvS with 1700-1800 or so health with 15 reaper points spent gets knocked down to under a 1000 health while I have affirmation up, and because I didn't get one-shot I have a chance to wings away, heal back up, and avoid the death. Of course, Affirmation is then down for a minute. If either of the builds had another +50 reaper points or so to get 500-1000 extra HP from barricade (counting cores 2 and 4, depending on % HP scalars, etc. etc.), that would very frequently translate to surviving in situations where the build otherwise would've died.

Part of the issue with the barbarian, and part of the issue building melees in general, is that the metric I ended up using as the "benchmark" for calling the build up to standards was r4 solo at max level, and both builds have been able to handle that pretty well. Unfortunately, there's a really big divide, especially for melees, between being able to land stuff like stunning blow/improved trip in r4, versus landing them at r8-r10. Getting DCs for r8+ without jeopardizing our effectiveness in other areas by reducing our DPS or defense is pretty difficult, especially when we're trying not to require things like Ancient Tactics, fighter PLs, etc. For the barbarian, in r4 a lot of times our initial engagement with 8 enemies looks like 1. We adrenaline the reaper immediately, which applies the Adrenaline CC effect to it (it works on reapers despite being a knockdown, which is weird and kinda nice), 2. We stunning blow, it stuns one of the enemies with lower fortitude saves, 3. We improved trip, which knocks down 2 more, and our Legendary Telekinetic knocks one down, 4. We ear smash the famine reaper that just spawned which negates it for 6 seconds, and now we're looking at 2-3 threatening enemies, which we can handle just fine in r4. And while your linked builds do seem fun and strong, doesn't Tilomare have quite a few past lives on him? And of course he's using raid gear, raid augments, and festive augments, which are all fine and good to use but really cut down on the accessibility of a build. If I designed a build that I planned to play on Dazling I'd probably design it significantly different to how I design the Benchmark Builds, just because there's a lot more you can do with past lives, raid gear, and reaper points being able to carry any weak aspects of the build. But then I'd have to start off the build saying "I played this on a character with 130 past lives, so I have no idea how it plays with zero". Not a criticism of your build or meant as an insult, it's just a big difference in how you fundamentally can build a build, hopefully that's coming across well over text.


Funny enough I actually really like the self-healing on the barb, in some ways more than the FvS: between Rage, Orcish Rage, Occult Slayer burst, and Primal Scream, there's a lot of really good ways to spike a bunch of healing. The biggest thing I like about the FvS is the combination of being reasonably hard to kill unless I get sloppy, having the great clear speed of a caster, and having all that extra mobility from level 17-25 until everyone gets access to my cool wings at 26. It's more the type of build I'd TR with, but I tend to not enjoy melee TRs as much in general.

You are handicapping both builds without using secondary trees. It takes 20k points for the sentience you are using at 20, anther 20k points for the sentience you are using at cap, plus you are using expansion and gear from multiple sources but you aren't using 500 points to buy supporting trees or using supporting trees you get for free from maxing favor from multiple sources? The barbarian for example, can stop using rage for precisions (25% fort bypass, then use diplomacy with inquisitor for 25% for bypass since it isn't ranged, then add falconry debuff for another 50% fort bypass, which adds to 100% additional fort bypass, which would allow it to crit reapers. Plus then it could use tactical/bird attacks for CC due to having a trance. If a build is so purely dependent on crits in reaper mode, it should have 200% bypass for reapers.

I mentioned this above as well, but the biggest reason I don't use universal trees is just because it homogenizes the builds a lot more. Dropping rage would potentially be fiddly, and basically rules out Adrenaline (I think, if it's still a rage? Just realized i haven't tried it on a precision build since pre-ED pass, could be wrong on that one), and you're losing a pretty significant amount of stats from the rage bonuses. In your recommended split though, I'd need 11 points into Inquisitive and 21 points into Expose Weakness, so I'm sinking at least 32 points into universal trees. By that point I'd presumably use any universal tree bonus, so for best results I'd probably take the trance from Falconry as well for at least 1 rank, so I only have 47 points remaining. At that point if I still want a capstone from Barbarian I'd only have 6 points remaining, and almost half of my points went into universal trees. If I designed every build like that, then after a few Benchmark martial builds there just really wouldn't be much difference in them. Part of the goal I have here is to make builds that feel like the meat of the class, so if a new player sees my Benchmark Barbarian build and gives it a go I want it to feel like "Oh wow, I'm shrugging off blows with muscle and swinging a big sword and stuff, I feel like Conan/Guts/Insert other cultural reference here", not "Ok, now I beg the enemy not to kill me again before having my pigeon attack him". Nothing wrong with the other type of build, it's just not really what I want to go for.

Personally I haven't ever used the Tenser's Boxes, Dazling has a stick or two in the 100-150k range and I have about a dozen BTA items with 20-40k sentient xp that I use for alts and for builds like this. I do think I'll probably do something more like "Here is what your filigrees should look like for the first 5-6 filigrees that you can get by grinding rares in Feywild/Saltmarsh/IoD, and here are the rest of the filigrees if you grind for way too long or if you whale out on boxes" in the future though, to make it a bit more clear where the build is being tested at.


I haven't really seen the 200% bypass number recommended before, 95-96% has seemed to work fine against all of them in my play experience, and I have a deconstructor and cracking attack to help out a bit I suppose. Adrenaline will also CC them unless it's a doom anyway, and by r8 I'd expect the build to have a bit more struggles.

Also not a fan of Diplomacy over Concentration on a caster. Mobs have poor engagement of ranged characters, so consider 8 points off PA and put it in US for 450% threat. Mobs hit this hard in high reaper:


I think this is post stat-squish, basically some champions will 1-shot multistrike or dual wield double tap a tanky uberpletionist all-reaper point melee in a single swing. So your melee build needs to shift as you climb skulls into not allowing mobs to attack, even once. So it's not so much a question of reaper points, since reaper points don't provide CC.

This is why the barbarian build isn't elegant enough, and why it isn't as smooth as FvS even when scaled down to lower reaper. This is also why you want 450% threat on your caster, to pull aggro off and protect melee players making "benchmark" builds with no CC. When you do that, you will find that your healing isn't as weak as you thought, now that benchmark melee in your groups aren't really taking tons of damage anymore. For example, think of how much less healing a benchmark melee requires if you are tanking a pair of doom reapers or a red named dungeon boss simply by standing on top of a bookshelf.

+1 for calling out Olladra, and explaining it can be used while unconscious that I learned, plus all the FoTW intricacies I learned from the barb build, and for detail. Even if I disagree with you, I still appreciate and learned off of it, so thank you!

I tend to run Quicken 100% of the time on casters so the only time Concentration helps is scrolls, and usually I'm not scrolling in the middle of combat. Personally I like having the high Diplo to make sure I'm not the one facetanking a Doom or something, and even without any threat I've had issues on the FvS with having to be careful the initial part of my rotation doesn't pull stuff off of intended tanks, so not sure I'd want even more threat to increase that issue, if anything I've been considering speccing away the 5% light absorption from EA to pick up -30% threat. But I do see your point, and it's a valid one. The Benchmark Barb tends to run in with about 6k HP if I proc affirmation and Rage shield, which has typically been enough to avoid getting one shot, and Improved Uncanny has been a pretty effective button for doom tanking (or just running in circles since it's not really meant as a tank, but it has a bunch of speed buttons!), or Hood of Unrest although I try to avoid using it in the Benchmark showcases since it's locked behind a seasonal event.


Thanks for the feedback, glad you learned something with Olladra and FoTW, humorously I only figured out the unconscious thing because I got knocked out by spikes in Jeet's mind and accidentally bumped the button. You had some good tips and tricks as well, I do plan on giving a few things a try on my non-benchmark characters, and I'll change up how I do future sentient filigree tips to make it a bit more clear how much is expected. That universal tree restriction rule is probably going to stay though, even though everyone hates it :P

[cmecu]

I have to say that was one heck of a presentation. I watched the entire thing from beginning to end. I have a Favored Soul on my 2nd account that I use for healing. He was a 3 Pally 17 FVS .. was tanky and a good healer. He also is a Bladeforge. .. I did end up using a heart of wood to get rid of his pally, so he is now pure 20 FVS. With that being said I plan to Epic TR him back to 20, and run him with my main account character. I was debating which was going to be faster as the quicker zerger.. my melee on main account or fvs caster. So thats why I was looking up FVS builds and I seen yours. So its going to be decent dps, looks like it can clear packs of monsters quickly on R1.. but I am curious what is your single target boss spells ? Im guessing you still use your AOE, but do a sunbolt , or what exactly? This will be just for leveling r1 speed, so I would guess it wont take a lot anyway to kill the boss at end of quests?

[Blastyswa]

I have to say that was one heck of a presentation. I watched the entire thing from beginning to end. I have a Favored Soul on my 2nd account that I use for healing. He was a 3 Pally 17 FVS .. was tanky and a good healer. He also is a Bladeforge. .. I did end up using a heart of wood to get rid of his pally, so he is now pure 20 FVS. With that being said I plan to Epic TR him back to 20, and run him with my main account character. I was debating which was going to be faster as the quicker zerger.. my melee on main account or fvs caster. So thats why I was looking up FVS builds and I seen yours. So its going to be decent dps, looks like it can clear packs of monsters quickly on R1.. but I am curious what is your single target boss spells ? Im guessing you still use your AOE, but do a sunbolt , or what exactly? This will be just for leveling r1 speed, so I would guess it wont take a lot anyway to kill the boss at end of quests?

Thank you for the feedback, and glad you enjoyed! For single target DPS, my rotation is typically very similar to my AoE rotation, especially for r1 questing; Celestial Bombardment, Divine Wrath, Holy Fireball, Flame Strike, Fire Storm, Sun Pillar and Searing Light's on whichever enemy has the most HP (For the single target rotation, that just means the boss of course), and in between hit any other useful abilities like Shard Storm (Which is phenomenal single target DPS even without being acid or poison specced), defensive abilities, etc. Usually by the time you've tapped between all of those, parts of the rotation are beginning to come off cooldown, and then it's just a matter of hitting buttons when they're off cooldown in roughly the priority I just listed as a rotation. If there are multiple tanky enemies near each other to take down (typically anytime there's multiple bosses in melee), I'll swap to Carrion Swarm instead of Sun Pillar: based on my mathing, single stacking Carrion Swarm is pretty similar DPS to Sun Pillar and Dragon Breath assuming all ticks go through, and once a fight goes long enough that you can multistack it it's definitely very good in a boss fight, especially with multiple enemies that aren't immune to the damage types.

I have Divine Punishment, and sometimes use it: mathwise it's worth the cast if a fight lasts long enough for you to get it to about 2 stacks typically, but a lot of bosses will actually go down before 10-20 seconds passes. If you're doing a really big enemy triple stacking Divine Punishment is a great damage source though.

[Mordek]

When making your own gearset, I’d mainly just recommend trying to figure out what your goals are on the build and what your weaknesses are (In this case, the goal is high Light, Force, and Fire damage, and the biggest weakness is susceptibility to spike damage), and then choose sets that fill in those gaps, and then fill in gaps in those sets with gear that helps. In this case, we do Flamecleansed Fury and 3 Piece Autumn for nuking, 2 piece winter for some more defense, and then fill in with good single pieces.

trying to figure out why you picked Force? was this a typo? is it supposed to be cold to help with glacial blast?