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.