Simple alchemist life?

[SpiritofAlba]

Hi forumites. I am nearing heroic completionist for the first time, and I need an alchemist life. I just plan on 1-20, and I don't intend playing much alchemist after that as I have other things I want to do. However, I do want my alchemist life to BE an alchemist, rather than a deep splash pretend something else. I mainly PUG, usually R1 (though happy joining up to mid skulls or elite) and occassionally solo, probably elite, maybe R1. Have +8 tomes, 1 of each PL heroic (other than bard and alchemist), a few EPLs and about 20 RP IIRC, and rather mediocre gear although I can craft.

I am bit daunted by the spell complexity, and I also gather that alchemists tend to be a bit rubbish at low levels. Also a little puzzled that lots of the feats seem to be linked to throwing weapons, but from pugging, it looks like spells are really where alchemists do their dps.

I am relaxed about what kind of alchemist I am. What's the most straightforward but also effective build?

[Careall]

I was recently looking at running an Alchemist too, but the spell combinations generating different effects seem a bit too complicated for my liking.

That aside, I was thinking a dart-tossing build might be fun if one could figure out how to ramp up the dps of throwing darts to ridiculous levels. Think of it from an observer's perspective; your toon throws a few darts and the raid boss is killed. Ok - probably not going to happen, but that's the concept - and it would at least be amusing if a little dart tosser managed to occasionally get the top kill count in quests.

I'd start with the Quick Draw and Rapid Shot feats.
I then turned an eye towards Horizon Walker's third core (level 6) 0 SP Haste SLA (along with decent Enhancements along the way). Pop an Extend metamagic on that bad boi and at level 10 you can keep up a 72% throwing speed.
We can also add in Multitude of Missiles feat for 100% Doubleshot.

At this point, we have a decent delivery system - but the darts are like ICBMs without warheads.

Vile Chemist seems to be a great choice for adding Imbue Poison damage to those pointy tips.
At tier 2 in Vile Chemist, pick up Poison Attack -> Poison Shot to Contaminate your target and makes them vulnerable to poison, which the tips of your darts should be dripping with.
There are a lot of other Enhancements in that tree that will improve Doubleshot, Attack, and Damage.
Vile Chemist's tier 4 Wave of Poison looks like it might be a decent Maximixed/Empowered SLA for handling AOE situations.
You could try on the +2 Crit Threat Range in tier 5, but the dart itself isn't doing a lot of damage - and multiplying by 2 is kind of meh. I don't know.
Wherever you can, increase Poison Spell power (I know - I know - duh!)

For Race, Drow can add some Imbue Dice. Halflings can get sneak attack dice. Tieflings can add fire damage as the target loses hit points.

Spells: I saw some nice dart-tossing spells. One that acts like an Action Boost for Doubleshot. Another spell adds Imbue Dice.

If you don't mind splashing 4 levels of rogue, you can make grenades from spare trap parts you may have collected over your past lives. They're considered darts, so would get all the benefits plus add some damage. They also arc instead of taking a straight path, so they can be used to hit enemies up on platforms. If you do that, you may want to look at the tier 4 Mechanic Enhancement, Fletching, so you can reuse those grenades 80% of the time. Sweet, but expensive on the AP cost just for that.

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Still, that's not an Alchemist theory build, it's a dart-tosser that happens to be an Alchemist. I'd like to see what builds folks who know how to play Alchemists post too. Until then, if you have a Lesser Heart of Wood, it might not be too bad of an idea to give a try and post how it goes.

[voxson5]

Just go bomber - google ddo alchemist build and you should get a faurly decent layout for feats etc.

Grab some Borderlands scepters (neg + acid), farm the devotion + fav element scepters from the planar eyes pack (lv 12), get bottle of shadows from ...?home of memory (gatekeepers /cerulean hills), 4-7 pc feywild gear.

Metas go on your sla's, not your normal spells (maybe quicken on sprint boost).

First level go 4 ap into Apocothary for cause wounds sla, 2nd 4 go bomber for vial sla, then go falconry for sprint boost/hp or feydark for sp/gor my back

Run around gathering mobs, nuke with cause wounds, finish out.

At lv 6 respec or spend points to get 3rd core in Apocothary for cause serious sla.

At 12 respec into bomber for t5's and sprintboost + multivial to cap.

[Careall]

I gave the dart tosser a try. I started with a fresh toon, like I would on HC; no money, no gear, no past lives.
By level 8, the build was rocking and doubling the kill count of the other player I was running with. It's a bit squishy, but it can usually kill things fast enough to not worry about being squishy.
It has high single-target DPS, so I added a few AOE SLAs as voxson5 recommended, and that works well.
Using poisons is a bit tricky since you need to debuff a lot of things before you can do serious damage. Once you get the hang of that, it's not as complicated as figuring out that spell combo thingy.

[Hobgoblin51]

Just go bomber - google ddo alchemist build and you should get a faurly decent layout for feats etc.

Grab some Borderlands scepters (neg + acid), farm the devotion + fav element scepters from the planar eyes pack (lv 12), get bottle of shadows from ...?home of memory (gatekeepers /cerulean hills), 4-7 pc feywild gear.

Metas go on your sla's, not your normal spells (maybe quicken on sprint boost).

First level go 4 ap into Apocothary for cause wounds sla, 2nd 4 go bomber for vial sla, then go falconry for sprint boost/hp or feydark for sp/gor my back

Run around gathering mobs, nuke with cause wounds, finish out.

At lv 6 respec or spend points to get 3rd core in Apocothary for cause serious sla.

At 12 respec into bomber for t5's and sprintboost + multivial to cap.

this is mostly true. i ignore bomb til around 7/8. i use inflict for aoe and dont forget the poison aoe you get in level 2 spells. it actually deals decent damage. i am running an ice alch, the only probs i had was skeletons.

i would ignore feydark mostly if u r going only to 20 - at 20 i would lose falcon for fey

[C-Dog]

Here is a recent related thread:

o https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6574025