Have to admit, I don't follow the changes to the game religiously (though I'm vaguely aware of tweak improvements to a few classes and trees recently), nor do I really keep up with the flavor of the month builds.

So, instead of "why the fuck are so many people doing so many stupid things", I'm going to ask "is there something here I'm missing?" - because I've been noticing a ton of people (wings on their names, not just clueless new players) swinging great swords with classes I don't think should be swinging great swords.

Are any of these viable at all?

Clerics with great swords (I know there are some decent cleric maul builds out there - but if memory serves correctly - not for fleshies.  Could be wrong though).
FvS with great swords
Wizards with great swords
Clerics, FvS and wizards duel wielding long swords.
Wizards duel wielding what I think might have been bastard swords.  Way too large to be long swords.

Bonus round

Warlocks trying to melee with anything past a shield build.  I've seen some impressive tanky 'locks but my overall understanding of 'locks when it comes to melee is "don't bother."
Warlocks duel wielding daggers.
Warlocks duel wielding long swords.
Auralocks attempting to up-close melee with their duel staffs.
Warlock throwing knife build?  This one seemed especially silly to me since it was an auralock.  I almost understand trying to melee instead of blocking (...almost) but...kind of pointless to go ranged where your aura isn't doing any damage, isn't it?

Pretty much everyone I've seen doing any of these things have been just shy of worthless in a group, but are they trying to do something worth wild and just screwing it up?  Because, again, I've seriously been seeing a lot of casters using melee weapons recently.

Final bonus question

WTF do wolf form druids need so many spellpoints for?  Last few I've ran with's contribution to the group seems to be just blasting through their blue bars in combat but still making like well below average kills, then sucking up every lost soul that drops that other people could be using for instant kills, CC or healing the party.  About to start banning them from my groups 

Bumwummer wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2018 at 9:04am:


Totally forgot to mention that.  Epic.  In heroic I'd be more forgiving - allowing more for someone testing a build or just sucking in general.

Skoodge wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2018 at 8:58am:


He was probably deep in visanti and se. ES gives Spiritual Retribution amd Celestial spirit for scaling 3d4 and 3d6 damage onhit. Build is silly indeed. My guesses: a) people playing to test b) people playing for fun c) folks no clue how to build viable toon and just doing their best

To answer the Wolf Druid question, we just need the SP for buffs, combat attacks, and healing as needed. But there's an incredibly useful enhancement that gives you +15 Temporary SP when you crit which lasts for 5 sec, and this stacks infinitely (well, as many crits as you can stack within 5 secs lol). If you're smart and have good reactions, you can use these temp SPs to use all of your attacks which cost SP.

I mainly just run dailies for epics and don't really seriously play in Reaper when it comes to epics so it may very well be the case that Wolf Druids are underwhelming in those difficulties. But I can tell you from personal experience that all through heroic elites/R1s, throughout epic elites I've run, as well as most epic normal grind quests, I pretty consistently out-DPS everyone else in the group except for certain Warlocks. Sneak Attacks + high mobility + extra 15% damage against helpless + Ram's Might + a lot of other things make wolf DPS pretty good. Alpha Strike is also a good cleave attack to supplement Cleave/GCleave.

I can also attest that SP management is no problem for me... and I only have 13 levels of druid. The temp HP enhancement is awesome and one of the best uses of AP in that tree if you're a wolf form. I always have extra SP to buff at the beginning and heal my party as needed. This has always been the case so I'm at a loss as to how these wolves you're meeting are running out of SP.

Perhaps the wolves you're seeing are just retarded, or being played by actual IRL wolves. Or perhaps the meta drastically changes in higher difficulties which I never play (very well possible). I don't know, nor do I pretend to know, but I can offer my two cents at least, for what it's worth.

Quote:

I was thinking actual whales. DDO marketing seems clueless enough. They might be targeting all the shows at seaworld.


Skoodge wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2018 at 9:21am:

Sounds like what you got, Skoodge, is seawolves.