strawberrybacon wrote on Dec 7^th, 2011 at 8:32am:


BS.  I'm painfully straight-laced and normal.

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It's an MMO. Number crunching is the name of the game and the key to success, same as PnP. Though that's a bad place to base your expectations for effectiveness on. Builds that work there don't really work here and vice versa. It only works if you know what parts are still applicable. Keeping your Con up for example.

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Lolwut. Prior experience in PnP helps, but only if you know what's the same and what's different. If you don't, you're going to make a gimp build. If you have that experience but apply it wrongly, you're going to make a gimp build.

Now the premades available in game are terrible, but the builds on forums are usually better about passing the competence check. And the ones that don't are useful in their own right. I really don't think anyone should be falling for Snootch's lies anymore. Just to name one example.

Anslet wrote on Dec 7^th, 2011 at 9:09am:


It’s actually DDOHarmony.  (I have personally seen 2 couples meet on DDO.)

Epoch wrote on Dec 7^th, 2011 at 9:37am:


This is why my first toon was a 1 FvS/1 Cleric/10 Fighter. Then I made a Drow Barbarian.

I had to do things my way. Trial and error is so much easier than looking for builds which have been tried and tested over the last 4 or more years.

Especially using a character planner which doesnt actually tell you anything about how the toon will play in game, or what gear will be required for it to be effective.

I also know that Im so brilliant that whatever design I come up with, will be greater than the designs poured over by the masses of experienced players who freely share with the player base.

nothing wrong with a decent forum build.  I have tinkered with forum builds, though I have been playing for years, because there are some good ideas to start from there.  I remember one of my very first characters when cap was 10 was a 9 paly 1 cleric!  Not the most epic build, but I didn't really get how good it could be until I started reading on the forums some things to do to make it better.
Same with AC builds; I can hit 85 or so in a raid enviroment with my S&B Paly, but when I started looking at how these forum builds were hitting high numbers it helped me streamline MY build.
My favorite forum build was one impaqt put together 18fvs/2monk that I had a blast leveling (though to be fair I did mod that one too to fit in the fvs pre).

Not everyone has the time or inclination to research everything from here to Sunday to figure out how to build the MOST optimal character; some people just want something solid from start to finish & the forum builds fill that niche nicely.  And they are very helpful tools for midrange players to increase their knowledge and skill by comparing/contrasting "that" build with their own.

Most premade builds don't actually give that much information as to the why of things.  They are just posts about their build with some dumbass name and how uber it is with everyone that they chose.  Some of them don't get into the why of it, some of them are not even remotely updated and outdated to the point of being completely gimp.  Does the build say that? Nope.

Some of the builds are created for endgame, meant to pwrlvl and definitely not meant to be in the hands of a beginner.  So what do beginners do? Make them and brag about great their build is as they die for a 4th time in ww pt 1.

Turning to turbine for documention is horrendous, I will agree with pope there.  Even the few of their guides I have read make me get stabbity. 

Turbine has something going on here that most mmos dont have, full customization.  Their own builds prove that they barely grasp the concept of their own game.  I would like to see a party of preset builds go do LOB on epic.  In MMOS where the only decision you make is what your spell/ability order use is and just try to get the next piece of gear in the new raid/group area, the only mistake you can make is your order of use.  Which even in then is rather trivial if you aren't completely stupid.  DDO has far too much customization, much to the bane of others.  Doing a little research on the forums or other sites isnt that hard.  We used to have a feat guide and a spell guide, player made (I really don't know if it is still in existence).

The thing, is many of you are taking your personal experience with builds on the forums and applying them to this argument.  So you aren't a complete fuckwit and you learn what changes need to be made to alter it to yourself.  The fact that you tweak the builds to yourself shows you had more then just a complete newb understanding of the game. 


I dragged you into this because you deserve to be here rest.


Tobril wrote on Dec 7^th, 2011 at 6:11pm:

I was running the exploiter before it was ever posted on the forums.  Meh, you don't hear me whining about it.  There is no credit to take.  If you feel entitled to some credit, post a build and give it a new name then point out the differences.  Congrats, you are now special.


Doesn't really explain much:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=333942
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=279133
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=353260
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=353110


Outdated:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=289591

Fucking worthless:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=347595

Endgame, highly geared, that explains what matters to endgamers not to a noob - but is still recreated by them:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=349837



These are just builds I grabbed from the first page of the builds forum (or were linked in one of the threads I opened up.

You guys may have gone digging, or even read all the posts.  Comparing every newb who comes in to what you have done is ridiculous.

If you look through the next few pages of the builds forum you will see completely fucked up builds. 

I wouldn't mind posted builds if people actually had to meet some requirements when posting them.  Like indepth explanations, or something rather so newbs could gain an understanding.

RE: PreGen vs. Custom Builds:
I think Epoch’s fundamental problem is with people who play a pregenerated build and simply don’t understand why the builder made the decisions they made.

A couple examples I have seen of this:

1) There are people who think “the Monster” is “the best DPS in DDO”.  That hasn’t been the case for years .  (And, it’s arguable that it was ever true in the first place.)

2) I did a “Sacred Fist”/Clonk character for my completionist’s last incarnation.  During this time I had a fairly “noobish” guildie attempt a similar build.  The guy has a level 20 monk that he’s fairly proficent with and a level 20 sorc that he’s ok with.  He just couldn’t make the connections on what makes the class combo fun.  I had to practically kill every trog caster in elite Acid Wit for him to bother to learn about the Destruction and Slay Living spells.

The only time I’ve found template builds useful was to glean the “what’s fun about this class” information from the threads.  But, threads like “the Path to Enlightenment” can serve that purpose as well.


OK, on topic:

My favorite character “builds” are:

My level 20 STR based pure rogue.  This is also the only character that I have that I dread doing a TR on.  I got into him because in Module 6 my guildies were having a blast with the Assassin II PrE.  So, I gave it a shot and had a lot of fun as well.

My Shintao monk.  I got into monks because I was in a PuG with Garth on Sarlona and he was talking about how much fun he was having on his monk.  (At the time I had given up on my monk.)

My completionist:
  I’m not done here.  But, I found these lives to be a lot of fun:
- 2 Rogue/2 Fighter/16 Barbarian.  I honestly wish I did this incarnation as my first 36pt build rather than my gimp ass fighter incarnation.  The one thing I hated (potions) was “fixed” with the inclusion of guild potions and this guy was surprisingly solo friendly.
- 1 Rogue/18 Monk.  Monks make surprisingly good trapmonkeys.  Not something I would do as a permanent character.  But, a lot of fun for purposes of levelling.
- 2 Rogue/18 Wizard.  Built this with a P&P character I had in mind.  But I read up on Ghoste/Mr. Cow’s threads on the subject of wizards and applied my knowledge of rogues to level this character.  It also didn’t hurt that I managed to gather a stupid amount of caster levelling gear on this character.
- 2 Monk/18 Cleric.  Had a lot of fun on this character as well.  I was trying to make a character that emulated the “Sacred Fist” PrC from Pencil and Paper D&D.  I went Stunning Fist/TWF chain/caster metas and punched stuff in the face.

“Builds” I’m not fond of:
- Paladins.  Pure or splashed  I grit my teeth while saying this.  But, I really hate the gameplay of paladins past level 10.  I really, really want to like them.  But, God help me, the constant rebuffing cycle sucks diseased donkey balls.  I have a TR paladin that I only level if I have absolutely no other characters in that level range.  And, I really want to TR him again into a rogue.  My completionist is currently stuck in this incarnation and my solution so far is to break up his levelling with my monk and to run a Free to play Wizard and leave him at the quest entrance.
- Fighters.  This class is *so* fucking bland.  I cannot find a fighter build that appeals to me.  It’s everything in DDO that I hate, with absolutely nothing that I like about DDO.

Edit:
Epoch wrote on Dec 8^th, 2011 at 2:24am:


Including this build in your list isn’t really fair to the O.P. of that thread.  He clearly stated that he likes the concept of a gish martial arts wizard but doesn’t like the current builds available becasue he wanted lich form.  He also clearly stated that he wanted some feedback on what he had come up with.  Lastly, he mentioned that it would probably be a level 1-19 character.  But, he was hoping someone had some insight into how to make it a viable endgame character.  It’s more of a “Help me out” request than an “Admire my awesomeness” thread.

I think it's a real shame the preset builds are a bit gimpy. I know when I started and had no clue I really liked the concept of being able to rely on a sensible build. The glorious thing about DDO is its customisability, but in the same way it's pretty daunting for a newb, or at least the newb I was.

I'm no DPS calculatiion freak, to be honest, and I've had a lot of fun with some of the popular builds. My most liked melee is still my Exploiter, and while she might not be UBER DPS OMG I think she plays well. I would like to like my capstone pally, but I just don't. I'm probably going to end up TRing her, which of course I've decided having dropped a pile of epic tokens into slots. Grrr. I've also had heaps of fun with my Superior Soul, and she's my go character for epics and so on.

Most of my other stuff is pretty generic - finesse based minimonk, caster cleric, WF necro specced AM. The wizzie and the monk were both rolled and specced with the help of people I knew played the class well.

I'm not really that focussed on optimal DPS - mostly I like survivability, particularly when levelling, and I seem to be playing far less endgame content with the changes since U11 - so that's more important to me. One of the surprising hits was my completionist's last life - couldn't stand the concept of a barb so it was a 10 barb / 8 bard / 2 rogue frenzied beserker / warchanter / trapsmith. Ran with a Blitz build that life and while he blew me out of the water DPS wise, I can't count the number of times I rezzed him / his henchie / killed the mobs while he was a soulstone.

Oh, the bardbarian monstrosity was an elf. I like elves. I've gone elf again this live (warchanter). If I'm going to slowly acquire that much XP I want to watch an attractive backside running around Stormreach

Terebinthia wrote on Dec 8^th, 2011 at 5:54am:


I'm sure Weirdly will be along to validate you later tere 

Flav wrote on Dec 8^th, 2011 at 6:10am:


There's an idea for if my static group feels sadistic... full party of Snootch builds.

Just need to make sure I have a Heart of Wood to fix it when we hit 20.

https://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=168687

January 7 2009.

Monks, if you care to remember, were released in June, 2008.

I was running the exploiter long before it was posted, as were others.  I don't care if it was written down on paper - if you want to go that far, it was created back in the day of the batman builds.  "If only we had monk we could have awesome ac!" A jesters dream at best back then. 

Nice try though.

*quick edit* If you want to bring in paper instead of using the forums, let us bring in the original pnp game and the games based off of it.  The exploiter build is a common theme in games like neverwinter when people want to solo instead of bringing half assed companions that aren't worth a shit.  Different variations but traps and evasion with high ac are the common theme.

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I'll agree that they have to at least pay some attention to the fact it's a different game.  But a solid understanding of when different classes get what and experience building characters in general definitely helps in DDO.

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There's actually a guild for those type of toons on Sarlona.  It's called Shortbus Heroes.  You have to randomly roll 3 classes and a race, then randomly roll for which of the 3 classes you take at each level-up.  Many of us randomly rolled our stats as well.  I made a little web app to roll random toons following the guild rules. 

Several in the guild also play it as no-twink so it's a pretty easy guild to jump in to as a break from your normal server as well.  I generally gave up before level 12 even...it's just not very fun to have a build you don't like.