December

Hi people,
Busy month for me, moving house next week, then going to the Czech Republic to visit family in the second half of the month and lots of work inbetween. I'm still planning to show up occassionally for Festivult and some questing but I'll probably be on much less than usual.
Mic

Reckluse ver 11.2013, versatile centered scimitar kensei with repeaters

I've changed my multiclass gimpling again so I thought I'd put the current build on here, mostly for me to ponder it further when I can't log the character but also for guildies if any of them are interested in checking it out. The concept for this character has always been a bit of a jack of all trades, he can do several things but doesn't excel at any of them. Regardless of the build I use, I always want to be a decent melee, be fairly self-sufficient (UMD, self-heals, acceptable saves), have a ranged option (ideally repeaters because they're cool) and be able to do traps. In this incarnation I also want to see if I can get my Hide and Move Silently high enough to be sneaky. The level split and abilities were partially inspired by the U19 Centered Kensei Cleaver but I modified the build a fair bit to suit my gimpy needs and playstyle.


Level 28 Lawful Neutral Halfling Male 
(8 Fighter / 6 Monk / 6 Artificer / 8 Epic) 

Fighter 8 = Bonus feats, Kensei damage, centered with scimitars and longswords (One with the Blade).
Monk 6 = Earth Stance for extra damage on 19-20 crits, some other monky abilities that I always wanted to try but didn't because I couldn't face playing a proper monk.
Artificer 6 = Free repeater prof, trap skills, UMD, Fussilade! And a few other useful goodies.

Leveling and feats
1 Artificer, Point Blank Shot
2 Monk, monk bonus: Power Attack
3 Monk, Cleave, monk bonus: TWF
4 Monk
5 Monk
6 Monk, Precise Shot
7 Monk, monk bonus: Toughness
8 Artificer
9 Artificer, Great Cleave
10 Fighter, fighter bonus: Improved TWF
11 Artificer, arty bonus: Imp Crit Ranged
12 Fighter, Master of Forms, fighter bonus: Imp Crit Slahsing
13 Fighter
14 Fighter, fighter bonus: Greater TWF
15 Fighter, Weapon Focus Slashing
16 Fighter, Weapon Specialisation Slashing
17 Fighter
18 Fighter, Improved Precise Shot, fighter bonus: Greater Weapon Focus Slashing
19 Artificer
20 Artificer
21 Epic feat: Overwhelming Critical
22
23
24 Grandmaster of Forms
25
26 Destiny feat: Perfect TWF
27 Epic feat: Blinding Speed
28 Destiny feat: Elusive Target

Stats with current gear
Str = 15 base + 7 levels + 8 item + 3 enh + 3 tome + 2  ship = 38 atm, need to work on items and twisted Primal Scream will add another 5 for 15 mins per rest, so ultimately I'll mostly run about with 45 or so
Dex = 16 base + 4 tome + 6 item + 2 ship - 2 Earth Stance = 28, not sure I'll have gear slots to improve this
Con = 16 base + 3 tome + 9 item + 2 ship + 4 Earth Stance = 34, planning to slot more augments
Int = 14 base + 3 tome + 6 item = 23, want to improve this a bit to increase repeater dmg
Wis = 9 base + 2 tome + 6 item + 2 ship = 19
Cha = 8 base + 2 tome + 6 item + 2 ship = 18

HP = currently 770 in Grandmaster and 815 in Dreadnaught in Earth Stance
SP = currently 665 with Shroud cloak, mana is exclusively used for Cocoon so I'd get away with less if I wanted to make a different cloak.
PRR = 62 (30% damage off) in Grandmaster or 47 (24% damage off) in Dreadnaught in Earth Stance
Dodge = should be between 15 and 20% once I get decent Dodge 9% boots
Heal amp = 80% incl. ship buff
UMD = 44 unbuffed (with drow mask)

Saves
Fort 50
Reflex 44
Will 45
This is in Grandmaster in Earth Stance with current gear and with full ship buffs and GH, ie. the general values I have when questing. These saves are not great and if I switch from Grandmaster to something else they drop considerably, especially Will and the Reflex, considering I want to be able to do EE traps which might involve getting through some. I can switch to Water Stance for +6 to all saves but then I lose a lot of hitpoints and some DPS and Ki regain so I'd probably only use that to get through traps or extra tricky situations. In general I want to work on the saves some more to stand more chance on EE - replace Res 7 augment with 8, slot a Good Luck +2 somewhere and perhaps some +2 ins Dex or Wis augments.

Skills
UMD and Search full ranks, Disable Device 19 ranks
Balance 10 ranks, Concentration 11 ranks, Hide and Move Silently 10 ranks, Open Lock 5 ranks, Tumble 1 rank

Full UMD and Search are a must. Only 19 ranks in Disable Device by mistake (I added 1 Int point in planner I didn't have) - could fix this via LR at the expense of other skills but can't be bothered, I'm just 4 off the maximum and I can always get extra items to boost it. Currently have a +15 item but can get a +20 one, +5 enhanced from Tinker's Goggles and +6 Int skills from Shroud.

Enhancements
Halfling 1 AP = +1 saves
Battle Engineer 24 AP = First 3 core abilities, 2x Field Engineer, 4 tiers of Crossbow Training, Endless Fussilade, 3x Melee Wrack Construct, 1x Damage Boost, 1x Extra Action Boost, 1x Str
Arcanotechnician 3 AP = First core ability and 2x Scroll Mastery
Ninja Spy 7 AP = First core ability, 1x Sneak Attack Training, 1x Faster Sneak, Fists of Iron
Shintao 11 AP = First core ability, 2x Deft Strikes, 3x Iron Skin
Kensei 34 AP = First 3 core abilities, 3x Extra Action Boost, 1x Haste Boost, 1 one of the two lines that are prerequisities for One with the Blade; One with the Blade, 2x Contemplation, 2x Str

This might still change since I'm testing the character for now, but some of the ones above are a must: the Kensei Spec and One with the Blade, Iron Skin, Fists of Iron, Fussilade and a few others.

Gear - current + desired
Head = EH Black Dragon +3 Ins Con and something or +8 Con and slot +2 Ins Con
Goggles = Deadly of Accuracy (the best I can get, preferably with two slots)
Trinket = Epic Gem of Many Facets (Claw set) or Planar Focus for extra PRR when using Needle
Necklace = kept free for swap-ins like immunites, deathblock, True Seeing etc.
Armour = Flawless Black Scale Robe, probably slot +14 PRR
Cloak = Shroud Conc Opp +6 Wisdom +4 Cha skills +6 con skills +30 HP
Bracers = Convalescent (20% heal amp) of Parrying VIII (+4 stacking saves... and AC)
Belt = Epic Spare Belt (+5 tactical DC, slotted Con 7 and Resistance 7)
Ring 1 = Epic Stalker (Seeker 6, Manslayer, 2 slots, currently +6 Dex and other not filled)
Ring 2 = crafted +6 Int of Greater False life, 2 slots, unfilled for now
Gloves = Epic Gloves of the Claw (Claw Set, +6 Str and 30% heal amp)
Boots = Fortified of Dodge, ideally with a slot or slots

This is gear setup is a mixture of what I already have and what I need to get.


Weapons
Scimitars - because I already have a decent collection from previous lives and because they look cool! Also, as a halfling I'll never have high Strength and high raw damage and this build doesn't have much sneak attack damage, instead it relies on things that proc on crits (Radiance, Life Stealing etc.) and scimitars crit often. I use an assortment of Radiances, Lightning Strikes, Frostbites, Brigand's Cutlasses and others.
Longswords - hooray, now that they changed Kensei from a single weapon to groups of weapons, I can also use longswords now. This mostly means dual Oathblades which are excellent for all those drow and Khyber quests.
Repeaters - because they look cool and because you can use Fussilade with them! I use Needle, Holy Burst of Radiance and a few others. Planning to get Epic Doublecross Bow and Silver Slinger.
Handwraps - mostly Wraps of Endless Night at the moment, very good for undead. Need to get Grave Wrappings. Now that I'm thinking about it, they have Soul Eating so they might do nicely until I grind myself a pair of Life Stealing Cormyrian scimitars.

Playstyle
Most of the time I run about centered with dual scimitars and longswords. I start every fight with a healing curse, then bascially rotate healing curse, Fists of Iron, both cleaves and 3 other elemental strikes. Probably quite close to how people play monks, however to me pushing all the buttons is entirely new! Well, not entirely to be honest, I'm already used to rotating things from pew pewing on Micron so I set up my shortcuts in a similar way.

I switch to repeaters (and therefore lose centered stance) for burst damage using Fussilade, either on bosses or to make use of Improved Precise Shot for bunches of mobs, when there are a few archers in a line or when meleeing gets tricky and I want to kite mobs with Radiance or something like that.

Apart from lower difficulties and easier quests I have Displacement on almost constantly. I have a Shroud displacement clicky and might make another one or two later on for longer fights but I mostly use scrolls. They're cheap and with my arty scroll knowledge they are 42 seconds so they last through most fights a stack of 100 gets you 70 minutes of Displacement.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths
Okay melee damage. In the pugs I've done on this build so far I was either on par with other rmelees or ahead of them (incl. some powergamer dudes) and there's still more damage to get from a few abilities and from the +4 artifact bonus on Claw set. But mostly, versatility - UMD (raising and healing people, removing neg levels, basically unlimited Displacement, True Seeing scrolls, high level Prot from Evil wands etc.); traps; most locks except the most difficult ones. Ranged option for casters in situations where you benefit from IPS.

Weaknesses

• Saves arencould be better. Need to work on them but they might never be good enough for, say, soloing really hard EE quests with caster or stunning mobs.
• No FoM, the only reliable defense against Hold and some other nasty spells. One option is to farm VoN for Kundarak Boots, which might be rather tiring and I'm already farming them on Micron - not sure I can have another char running that raid considering the LFMs are few and far between these days. An easier but more gimpy option is the make an epic Timeblade and stick it in off-hand in situations where the risk of getting held. It would mean a drop in DPS but it might just work. Another option is to try and get a Sireth - unfortunately I stupidly took Antipode for the second raider's box (first was Needle) which turns out to be not very useful on this build, and getting the Sireth from the raid might prove even harder than getting Kundarak boots.
• Can't think of a reliable CC option. Could do with a way to neutralise a mob and ideally make it helpless as well. I could swap out Toughness for Stunning Blow or Fist, but the lowish Strength doesn't really support a workable Stunning Blow and the lowish Wis doesn't really support a workable Stunning Fist. I've done the maths and I could reach roughly mid 50s on the DC on both (slightly higher on Fist), which is okay for most EH and possibly some older EE but not for newer EE content. And the thing is, on EH stunning mobs is just convenient but not necessary whereas in harder EE content stunning a mob can sometimes be the only sensible way of killing it before it kills me, unless one wants to kite it for ages with a repeater. I can think of two options. One is to switch to Fury when I really need to and use Overwhelming Force. But that's a compromise because Fury isn't an ideal destiny for this build. Another, rather gimpy option is to farm a Mornh or Phosphor, swap out Toughness for Imp Crit Bludgeoning and use the Anvil of Thunder from LD for about a 35% chance to stun every 12 seconds. But that means losing centered stance and a considerable chunk of DPS so it's probably a no no. I'll have to think about it and see if I can figure out a way to neutralise mobs using another ability or item enhancement.

That's it. Comments are welcome.

Update 20 today

As downtime has been extended by an hour (surprise surprise!), I thought I'd throw a link to the release notes on here as Jerry traditionally didn't include it in the OP in the downtime thread:
https://www.ddo.com/en/update-20-release-notes

Highlights:

• Two new free quests, one in Forgotten Realms, other in Eberron (Mournlands - exciting!), both high level it seems
• VIPs get extra 15% XP until December 12 instead of the usual 10%
• New enhancement tree, Eldritch Knight
• Iconic and Epic Reincarnation
• Heroic TR XP changes - less XP now needed (as Epic TR will now be the main grind :p)
• A +5 stat tome for 5000 favour, yay! Finally a reason to farm favour again.

Agenda

Hi dudes,
I keep forgetting what items I'm after and what quests I want to run on which characters so I've put together

this little Google Docs list.

Feel free to check it and if you find that some of the quests are ones you need to run yourself, let me know and we can arrange something!
I will probably add a few seals, shards and scrolls at some point, at the moment they're scattered across several toons so I'll have to do some sort of consolidation first to find out what I actually need.
I have also included a list of few general lootgen items I'm looking for, if you happen to have any of them, let me know and we can trade.

Mic

Level 85

Thanks to the joint effort of all guildies and the fact that Turbine still haven't turned renown decay back on (still don't know if this is intentional or if they've just forgotten about it) we are now level 85. Thanks everyone for your contribution, no matter how big or small.
We can buy the biggest ship now but it costs 2000 astral shards and we're at 120. Shards are quite costly, 5000+ Turbine points for 1000 shards. I'm happy to buy 1000 shards and leave the remaining 900 to you guys, however I'm low on points now and would have to buy a bigger points bundle. I'd prefer to wait until points are on sale - I'm hoping Turbine will put a sale on at Thanksgiving/Halloween. Unless someone has more points than sense and nothing to do with them, there's no need to spend more money on the ship than we have to, it's not like we need it urgently.
M.

Across the pond

Hi dudes,
I'm going on a two week business trip to California this Saturday. I expect I'll probably get bored occasionally at the hotel in the evenings and log in, however as that that will be morning for you guys, you probably won't see much of me, maybe except the weekend. I'll be back on Friday 4th October.
Have fun and behave in the meantime!
Mic

DC/crashing issues

Hi guys,

Not sure if this is mentioned in the known issues or somewhere like that but I have noticed that when I crash or DC rather than log out properly, some changes I have made on my characters are lost. I'm pretty sure I have lost some changes I made to my shortcut bars (eg. I moved a thing from one bar to another, then crashed at some point before logging out and when I came back, it was back on the original bar). I also suspect this even affects plat sharing via shared bank. I deposited some cash on Reckluse, then crashed and when I logged back in, the money was gone from the bank. I panicked a bit but then logged Reckluse and the plat seemed to be back in his inventory.

So if you find out you're missing something, it might be worth a try checking the character who had it originally.

M.

Holiday!

Hi dudes,
I'm going to CZ for two weeks and I'll be busy so you might not see much of me, although I'll probably pop up every now and then as usual. In case we don't meet online, I'll see you in August. Have fun. :)
M.

Vs needs PDK EEs

Hi guys, Vs wants to upgrade her Balizarde and needs PDK quests on EE. If any of you need them on any of your chars, let me know and we can do some runs together. As I've been a bit busy and haven't been on every night, it would be best if we schedule a specific time. Catch me in game to talk about this or reply here if interested.
M.

Serious bug

Hi,
Needless to say, Update 18 brought a couple of new annoying bugs but this one is quite serious in that it can break quests and waste your time so I thought I'd point it out here.
Whenever you are carrying out an action that has a progress bar, like searching, using certain runes or items and the action is interrupted by you moving, you being attacked etc, the action will be finished before the progress bar is full. I believe this can be beneficial in some cases (I think I've had a few cases where I searched for a trap box, interrupted the progress but still found the box) but in other cases it can lead to you not being to complete a quest objectives, as described here - the party got interrupted while using the torches in Shadow King, the torches were lit but it didn't count towards the objective and they couldn't light them again.
So until this gets fixed, whenever you're doing something that has a progress bar or takes some time to complete and it's required for completion, make sure there are no mobs about that might attack you and make you sure you don't move or otherwise cancel the action.

Mic

+2 shinies

Hi guys, there's a +2 loot bonus on 'till the 26th. I'm mostly focusing on capping Reckluse at the moment but I wouldn't mind running Eversmile through EH Gianthold to get her flagged, I have some +2 gems from Otto's Box in the bank, might be nice to see if I can get some good lootz, with a total of +4. Not sure when I'll be on at the weekend but do let me know if you're interested. Also I've been talking to Deev about EE High Road quests so we could do that as well if there's interest.

M.

Update 18 today it seems!

So there's downtime 7-11 EST today and apparently they're releasing Update 18! There are no release notes yet but a few things Jerry mentions here sound exciting:

• New Forgotten Realms quests - yay!
• New cosmetic armour system - possibly yay, depending on what it'll be like.
• Skill tomes - hmmm.
• Invisibility fix - yay, let the zerging commence again!
• Quest fixes "including a fix for seals and shards in Web of Chaos" - yay, might finally be able to make an Epic Silver Slinger, Epic Doublecross Bow and a few more bits, it's only taken them a year to fix this?

Anyway, I'll post a link to the release notes when they're available. :)
EDIT: The notes have been posted.

M.

Level 79, getting there!

Hi dudes,
We're level 79 now. Time to pop that renown pot that's been collecting dust in your bank and get us to 80! Also there's a well timed +15% renown bonus on until Sunday so let's get cracking!

M.

New forums

So I went to the DDO forums this morning, only to find out there are new forums! ;) There seems to be a lot of uproar about it, just like about any other change ever made to the game.

If you find the new layout as annoying as I do, you could try using the mobile version skin. It's what I've switched to and it's more bearable than the default one in my opinion. Hopefully they add more options later on.

Maintenance moved

Hi dudes,
The 12 hour maintenance that was scheduled for today has been moved to Thursday, starting at 6 AM EST.
See you tonight. :)

Mic

Level 75 + away for the weekend

Hi guys,

Last night we hit level 75. I didn't think we'd ever make it but thanks to the fact that Tangy and Jidaro are playing again (in addition to Hanne who plays consistently), we started progressing again - albeit slowly - and got there. Yay us!

Hannah and I are going to Derbyshire tonight. We're coming back on Sunday night and I'm planning to be on for a bit then to take advantage of the +20% XP bonus.

Mic

Forum and domain changes

Hi dudes,

I'm in the process of making some changes to my hosting accounts and domains. The current hosting + associated domain thenewblood-forum.com will expire on June 23, 2013. I have a new hosting but I'm not sure I'll move the forum to it because noone has used it in ages. We're a tiny, casual guild now and have no need for a forum. And, to be honest, the forum wasn't exactly busy even when we were a fairly active guild 2 or 3 years ago. If I decide to keep it, I'll post the new URL but it probably won't have it's own fancy domain. There is some handy info on the forums that I use from time to time, like the Titan or Shroud puzzle thing. If I don't keep the forum, I'll make a new page on this blog where I'll compile all such stuff.

I'm also letting expire the domain that I've been using as a fancy shortcut for this blog, ie. thenewblood-ddo.org. It will expire on July 5, 2013. After that date, the blog will only be accessible via its default blogspot URL which is micron-ddo.blogspot.co.uk.

Mic