Build Request: What's the zergiest of zerg bulds?

[Ereshkigal]

Build requirements:

Action Boost: Movement Speed, with the most uses possible
1 level of Barbarian for the 10% base speed bonus ( at least )
Spring Attack Feat - I realize this will probably not come online until near the end of heroics.

I am torn between Human for Dimension Door and Dragonborn for Memory of Flight at early levels. Personally I feel like Memory of Flight is overall more useful than DD, and if pugging, there's a chance someone else will have DD that will help you, while someone else having Memory of Flight will not, so I prioritize getting Memory of Flight first, and begrudgingly accept that means no Dimension door until epic levels. (I know that past life racial enhancement points will make a huge difference here in terms of how early Memory of Flight could be attained.)

Any other "Leap" abilities that operate on different cooldowns, or perhaps adding Leap of Faith from Exhalted Angel even if it does share a cooldown, since it can store up charges that can be used fairly quickly when needed.

Optimization:

I'd like to see a heroic class level split something like 9/1/10 or 6/6/8 where the 10 or the 8 would be cycled through all the classes for reincarnation, and the other classes would remain fixed every life. I know this screams inquisitor crossbow build, but since that's been done to death, I'd love to see a different take on this. Or, alternately, could a Feydark caster build work? Color Spray/Fan of Shadowblades/ Shadowblade + some level limited AOEs from 9 levels of another caster class potentially? I feel like if there's a good answer this is where it is, but maybe the damage output would be too restricted to be useful


The goal here is to gain these speed/leap abilities at the lowest levels possible, to allow bursts of speed, especially in those quests where you have significant space between areas where you must fight things (Think about Red Rain from Masterminds of Sharn). All this without hurting the survivability and damage output of the build. No point in being able to move more quickly, if your damage output is so low that it restricts how quickly you can move through a quest.

[Discpsycho]

Some of these goals will be mutually exclusive - classes with leap abilities aren't the same one with Action Boost bumps.

Action Boost: Movement Speed, with the most uses possible

This locks you into:
- Barbarian 2+: FB T2 gives +3 action boosts. FB T2 contains Sprint boost, and this also fulfills the 10% Barb runspeed requirement. Minimum 11 AP
- Dragonborn or Half-Orc: T2 gives +3 action boosts. Dragonborn gives a leap at T4, so that wins in sheer mobility. Minimum 16 AP
- Fighter 1+: Kensei gives +3 action boosts. Minimum 7 AP, but as long as you're zerging you may as well pick up Haste Boost for 10 AP total
- Artificer 2+: Battle Engineer T2 gives +3 action boosts. Minimum 11 AP

This leaves you with 32 AP (assuming no racial points) and 15 class levels to split between Fighter, Barbarian, and Artificer. Per your survivability requirement, you'll probably snag Blood Tribute, so it's only 29 more AP

For heroic clearing speed, without any other gear knowledge I'd surmise Caster > THF melee > SWF melee > repeater > TWF melee. Arcanotechnician gets Blast Rod in T4 and Lightning Bolt in C4, and Dragonborn's energy breath is another nuke, albeit Cha-based. Put 3 more points in Dragonborn T4 for +3 Evo/Conj DCs, then the remaining 26 into Arcanotechnician to maximize your electric damage.

Your class levels should be 2 Barb, 2 Fighter (bonus feat x2), 16 Arti (bonus feat x4) to maximize nuking damage. With 13 feats you'll have plenty of opportunities to pick up Dodge/Mobility/Spring Attack without neglecting metamagics. Max Int for DCs, Cha secondary if you're doing a heroic life and want the Dragonborn nuke to fare better, Dex enough for Dodge ASAP, possibly some in Str to THF until casting kicks in. You can squeeze in Spring Attack at level 4 (Barb 1 Dodge, Fighter 2 Mobility, Barb 3 filler feat, Fighter 4 Spring Attack), but there'll be a trade-off of slower leveling with delayed Arti levels

For epic clearing speed, I'm not so sure. The lack of T5 may put your DCs into an unmanageable range, but once again that's gear- and PL-dependent

[Ereshkigal]

Some of these goals will be mutually exclusive - classes with leap abilities aren't the same one with Action Boost bumps.



This locks you into:
- Barbarian 2+: FB T2 gives +3 action boosts. FB T2 contains Sprint boost, and this also fulfills the 10% Barb runspeed requirement. Minimum 11 AP
- Dragonborn or Half-Orc: T2 gives +3 action boosts. Dragonborn gives a leap at T4, so that wins in sheer mobility. Minimum 16 AP
- Fighter 1+: Kensei gives +3 action boosts. Minimum 7 AP, but as long as you're zerging you may as well pick up Haste Boost for 10 AP total
- Artificer 2+: Battle Engineer T2 gives +3 action boosts. Minimum 11 AP

This leaves you with 32 AP (assuming no racial points) and 15 class levels to split between Fighter, Barbarian, and Artificer. Per your survivability requirement, you'll probably snag Blood Tribute, so it's only 29 more AP

For heroic clearing speed, without any other gear knowledge I'd surmise Caster > THF melee > SWF melee > repeater > TWF melee. Arcanotechnician gets Blast Rod in T4 and Lightning Bolt in C4, and Dragonborn's energy breath is another nuke, albeit Cha-based. Put 3 more points in Dragonborn T4 for +3 Evo/Conj DCs, then the remaining 26 into Arcanotechnician to maximize your electric damage.

Your class levels should be 2 Barb, 2 Fighter (bonus feat x2), 16 Arti (bonus feat x4) to maximize nuking damage. With 13 feats you'll have plenty of opportunities to pick up Dodge/Mobility/Spring Attack without neglecting metamagics. Max Int for DCs, Cha secondary if you're doing a heroic life and want the Dragonborn nuke to fare better, Dex enough for Dodge ASAP, possibly some in Str to THF until casting kicks in. You can squeeze in Spring Attack at level 4 (Barb 1 Dodge, Fighter 2 Mobility, Barb 3 filler feat, Fighter 4 Spring Attack), but there'll be a trade-off of slower leveling with delayed Arti levels

For epic clearing speed, I'm not so sure. The lack of T5 may put your DCs into an unmanageable range, but once again that's gear- and PL-dependent

Thanks for the input!

My personal plan is to finish racial & epic reincarnations before starting the heroic ones - which is what I want to use this build for. So grabbing Memories of Flight will be cheap and early but the while the split you suggest sounds great, it wouldn't work for my purpose, as I want to have a single build for all heroic class lives, which means more likely a 1/8/9 split or possibly a 6/6/8 split, with the highest level class in the split being the one that changes each life and the other two classes remaining the same. Basically I only want to have to farm level sets of gear for 1 class, not all.

thanks very much though, what you shared has been helpful.

[Alternative]

How about 2 barb 8 rogue acrobat, would give 18% run speed (10 barb +1 per rogue level in acrobat tree), access to sprint boost, and Vault (leap) at tier 5. You can then be human for DD.

Also with the same staff gear you can do monk and sacred fist lives, which get their own run speed and thus don't need the barb (alignment conflict).

[Discpsycho]

Warning, controversial opinion:

If you're doing heroic lives only, consider / 6 Fighter / 2 Barbarian. With full racials (Dragonborn, as before), 11 points Kensei and 11 FB, that leaves just under 60 points, and using these you can get two extra dashes by going T5 in...Vanguard. 35 points is enough for Shield Charge (non-targeted dash) and Brutal Impact (% HP), leaving 23 points for the best of whatever your heroic class has to offer, or Feydark if you want to use shadowblades. As a fallback or for better clearing, pick up only Shield Charge (23 points; 12s cooldown but requires target) from Vanguard T4 and save your 35 points for something like Feydark

With GCS, your two targeted dashes aren't as unappealing, since you can CC mooks before they hit you and Red Alert slows down your zerging. Your dashes have CDs of 12s, 15s, 20s, and 30s, giving you a ceiling of 15 dashes per minute. Between the FB, Kensei and DB action boosts (+9 total), you have 14 uses of 20s each, or 280s of sprinting over the course of 6 minutes.

Most of your fighting time in heroics is spent vs packs rather than bosses, and if you're not a caster class or don't want to use Feydark nukes, THF + Bastard Sword should make quick work of those. Shield bashing is reasonably good damage in heroics, it just falls off in Epic because of the 1/s animation cap. Kensai haste boost lets you single-target dps bosses or mandatory choke points

[Ereshkigal]

How about 2 barb 8 rogue acrobat, would give 18% run speed (10 barb +1 per rogue level in acrobat tree), access to sprint boost, and Vault (leap) at tier 5. You can then be human for DD.

Also with the same staff gear you can do monk and sacred fist lives, which get their own run speed and thus don't need the barb (alignment conflict).

nice!

[Ereshkigal]

Warning, controversial opinion:

If you're doing heroic lives only, consider / 6 Fighter / 2 Barbarian. With full racials (Dragonborn, as before), 11 points Kensei and 11 FB, that leaves just under 60 points, and using these you can get two extra dashes by going T5 in...Vanguard. 35 points is enough for Shield Charge (non-targeted dash) and Brutal Impact (% HP), leaving 23 points for the best of whatever your heroic class has to offer, or Feydark if you want to use shadowblades. As a fallback or for better clearing, pick up only Shield Charge (23 points; 12s cooldown but requires target) from Vanguard T4 and save your 35 points for something like Feydark

With GCS, your two targeted dashes aren't as unappealing, since you can CC mooks before they hit you and Red Alert slows down your zerging. Your dashes have CDs of 12s, 15s, 20s, and 30s, giving you a ceiling of 15 dashes per minute. Between the FB, Kensei and DB action boosts (+9 total), you have 14 uses of 20s each, or 280s of sprinting over the course of 6 minutes.

Most of your fighting time in heroics is spent vs packs rather than bosses, and if you're not a caster class or don't want to use Feydark nukes, THF + Bastard Sword should make quick work of those. Shield bashing is reasonably good damage in heroics, it just falls off in Epic because of the 1/s animation cap. Kensai haste boost lets you single-target dps bosses or mandatory choke points

sounds like it's worth a try for sure, but some of the dashes share cooldowns don't they?

[Discpsycho]

sounds like it's worth a try for sure, but some of the dashes share cooldowns don't they?

The wiki doesn’t confirm or deny this, but it’s pretty trivial to roll up an Iconic to test this

Update: Tested with a PDK since a Dragonborn wouldn't have T5; Spring Attack, Shield Rush, and Shield Charge are all on separate cooldowns

[C-Dog]

What's the zergiest of zerg bulds?

Build requirements:...

Your approach is a bit self-contradictory - you're asking for "the best", then immediately putting limitations on how to achieve that. If you aren't sure, don't limit yourself - just a suggestion.

Many of the speedy toons one sees running around simply have 3 Iconic Past-lives of Tiefling Scoundrel - +30% innate is a nice QoL boost to any build.

I'd like to see a heroic class level split something like 9/1/10 or 6/6/8 where the 10 or the 8 would be cycled through all the classes for reincarnation, and the other classes would remain fixed every life.

This is called a "Reincarnation Template" - something that can get most or all class past-lives by plugging them in to a strong base build.

Warlock can achieve a lot of what you're asking for, too (with a Barb splash for that +10%). Warlock has a "+1%/class level" speed burst built in that can be triggered infinitely, they start with a solid AoE attack and can be shifted to a self-healing melee later once they get the Aura. Not as many boosts, but better AoE for faster mob-clearing - you would have to choose for yourself which is "zergier" overall.


Here are some unsorted links to other (non-Inquis/Repeater) TR Template ideas
o https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post6026461
o Genl discussion https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post6052356

o "Easy leveling" builds https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6556746

o ?! Sorc template for melee PL's! (Tilomere!) https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6552243

o TR template Warlock 9 https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post5964591

[LavidDynch]

Best race is tabaxi, they are just silly fun. Well played there by SSG.

Ranged.
1barb, 6 arti, 13 rogue/ftr -- close to zero downtime and can do high R while leveling without hesitation. No quests will be annoying for this split. oh and it only takes like 6-9x full 1-30s to get the base boosts of past lifes.

Melee.
15 or 20 monk, staff tabaxi is a whirlwind. 1 barb, 8ftr, 11 rogue works as well.. I prefer monk due to Abundant Step, 6s CD (Vault got 15s CD).
I never use sprintboosts other than the PDK boost, I find melee DPS lacking a bit, so you want to keep haste boosts off CDs, esp when zerging and reapers can pull half the dungeon on you.

Casters.
I keep em pure. To get more firepower and better spell progression.. my personal choice would be sonic warlock (best pact for leveling and misty step!).