Get a hireling. Better healing. Can raise you when you die.

Also your hp are low, make sure you have a devotion item if you are casting heals, twist meld into darkness, displacement scrolls are better than blur, kill stuff fast, and get more prr and mrrr.

What is your build? I'm sure people can offer more help if we know more than "melee".

That's just it, I don't understand where to get things from :/  Didn't necessarily want build specific advice, just general advice.  Maybe I'm not that bright, but I don't see how to get from 750ish hp to the 3k in that video, even with the level difference.

At 20, I have the following

HP Stuff (42 Con total)

+8 Con
+2 Insight Con
+20 Vit
+30 False Life
+45 Hp from enhancements
+9x4 Reaper points (spent in for CC dc's)

Avoidance/Defense
Displacement
25% Incorp
5% Dodge (Capped, I have more)
+24 Sheltering Item
45 Balance

Neg Amp
+33 Profane
+15 Insightful
+40 Filigree

Saves (47/44/44)
+ 6 Resistance
+ 2 Good luck
+ 4 Morale

AC (62)
5 Dex
15 Armor
4 Shield
16 Misc
10% Enhance

52 Int

Web DC 50 (53 in reaper)
Banshee DC 53 (56 in reaper)

Magister for Int and spell DCs

Twisted
Energy Burst
Spell pen
Ephemeral Evolution (PRR)
Endless Faith (10% SP)

7 primal past lives
3 divine
3 arcane
3 martial

You can do fine with less than 3k in R1. But you do want to try to get over 1000 probably.

I honestly don't know much about palemaster/eldritch knight as a melee if thats what you're going for. That explains the low HP. I don't think 62 AC does too much at level 20 running R1 but AC is one of those things you have to go crazy with to make it effective. If you're wearing heavy armor you might be better off wearing lighter armor and trying to get your dodge cap higher. I used to run a swash bard with displacement, ghostly, and around 35ish dodge, which I guess is around 70ish miss chance (75 if you always miss on a 1) and she did ok with less than 1K hp.

Are your self heals hitting for a lot? If not boost your spellpower if you can.

I will tell you that tier 3 of shadow dancer, meld into darkness I carry on every melee I have. 15 seconds of 100% dodge every 2 minutes will save your ass MANY TIMES. Gives you time to heal, and kill stuff, or cast ddoor and regroup. There aren't many fights outside of boss fights on R1 that last a lot longer than 15 seconds. Obviously that doesn't help against casters. Some of those twists you have can probably be replaced.

Sid wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2019 at 6:11pm:

stfu and even try to do r7, you fucking faggot

Cripey wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2019 at 11:14pm:


I'm running an EK/PM atm for funsies.  Hence the web/wail.  Took the pm for the 25% incorp and balance, took mithral body to uncap my mrr cause it'll cap in a few levels.

The reason for no meld is the last time I seriously played, meld just took you to dodge cap which I already hit.  Looks like that was changed though. Same with the mp from shadowdancer.

Wish I had a ton of reaper points, only have the 9 atm and using them to make sure I land web, haven't managed to farm any sets so needed the dcs.

Alex DeLarge wrote on Jul 3^rd, 2019 at 12:42am:


Ahh this is one of those, why does my flavor build not preform threads

Cripey wrote on Jul 3^rd, 2019 at 3:24am:


Lol, no, this is a tell me the things that everyone assumes everyone else knows, about playing epic reaper in melee range.

Things I've learned so far:
Meld got fixed, isn't crap anymore
Shadowdancer got buffed
PM healing is insufficient for a melee
I might be better served switching from web to mass hold?
I'm missing 11 points in my main stat, gonna try and figure out where from

On that note, what's missing from this list at 20 for a stat (other than artifact bonus)?
8 enhancement
2 insightful
1 profane
1 quality
1 filigree

Edit: And yes, it's my fault for thinking that if they made a filigree set for weapon using pms, that it would be playable :/

Tene wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2019 at 4:38pm:


It sounds like you have everything defensive wise on your radar, which is more than most but here are a few points to consider (and I can solo R1 right up through the Storm Horns)

You have dodge, but do you have the highest dodge you can get into your build?  I'm usually hitting 20+ dodge by epics.

Do you have the AC and PRR boosts from EPLs?  Those help.

How many reaper points do you have?  It's pretty rough and I probably died at least once per quest when I hit epics until I got past 15 reaper points.  After that it got much easier every point I got in.  Personally I build defensively then go all in on offense with my reaper points to compensate for the scaling.  I throw about 7 points into Grim Barricade, then everything else goes into Dread Adversary until I get my damage up (think it takes about 25 points) then switch back to Grim again.

But until you hit higher numbers in reaper points and some of your defenses, if you're only dying once per quest, don't let it get to you.  That's part of sharpening your reaper teeth.

Only other thing might be tactics.  As a solo player the tactic of make the mob, stick the mob, destroy the mob works very well for me.

Especially through levels 20-25, epic reaper is totally do-able with just about any class - you just need to know where your weak spots are in your build then compensate for anything lacking with tactics.

Star rubies and upgraded bracers of the wind can also help you become a mob destroyer.

Thanks for the help guys, switched to shadowdancer and made a few of the other suggested changes and things are fine now.

Just to clarify something for the grumpy people, I normally stop reaper at 20, and I know it's a flavor build, but elite quests were at the point where I'd have to fall asleep to die, so I needed some help to get it to the next point cause I'd rather try and fail than be bored.

All in melee including swapping to LD, and only use spells for healing and no-DC CC like sleet storm or Otto's Irresistible or PW:Stun.

You have to be an uber that doesn't need advice to pull off DC + DPS at the same time.

And yes, you should have gone inquisitor if you can't survive in reaper melee.

Have you tried lowering the difficulty?   

Tene wrote on Jul 3^rd, 2019 at 4:31pm:

Wait. OP listened to the advice he asked for.

Is this even DDO anymore?

You are missing:
1) reaper points and hp overall. Epic reaper MUCH harder than heroic. With 700 hp on whatever build some champs will 2 hit you. And some mobs have doublestrike.
2) good build. You seems to have decent gear, but melee wizard in magister is not stuff that will work on epic reaper on few lifer.
3) pastlifes. With many pastlifes and knowledge od the game almost any silly build will work. Pastlifes giving +6-7 stats, 36 ac at 20, 38 prr, 18 mrr etc etc.

Overall, I would not recommend you run solo lower-mid epic content until manage to build better or nuat get more power creep.