Crack Slinger (80 Cleric, Furchin)

Some remarks about slingers in general, gear, spells and this build:

Why slinger over arcane archers?

Slingers, as a cleric quasi, have many supportive spells like massheals, massresurections, greater restores, healing circle, concentration party buff and can make their bullets do certain special things (more below). Or in other words: It is an archer type class just like an AA but with tons of extras, which can do alot more for the group than an AA could ever dream of. And when it comes down to damage, well those who have seen this slinger in action know how well it does in damage actually (but don't fear, it still is in the low end)

Divine Slingers are a long distance support class. They use, as the name implies, slings and shoot divine bullets (they get autoreplenished once you reach slinger status at Level 15). They can enhance their bullets with certain specialties, like aoe heal on hit (to support the tanks), breach on hit, silence, bigby's interposing hand and knockdown. But to get all of those you have to be a pure slinger, as this build is. Learning to use those abilities properly, is key to be a good support for the party, though they will not directly notice it very often.

To give a bit of ideas: Cornigons are harmless when knocked down, Rakshasas loose their defense very quickly when you breach off their buffs, and try the silent bullet on casters in general (e.g. Illithids bosses have some trouble with a stuned voice ), and tanks that get healed constantly as bonus to their own regen will live much longer in a hard fight. Experiment what you can do against what to get a better grip of it.

Very similar to an Arcane Archer, you are able to choose any elemental damage type or divine or magic for your bullets on the fly. That allows you to always do the best possible damage against any mob you encounter. Of course this also demands to memorize their weaknesses (the HGX addon helps big time with that).
Special:
- If you choose a damage type and DO NOT choose a special ability for the bullet, you will inflict that damage type to the mob, weakening their resistance somewhat against it and making the whole party do more damage. The specialty gets reset everytime you choose a new damage type.
- Your bullets will ALWAYS do some divine damage. If you encounter a mob that heals on divine, most of the time you will be better off not attacking it at all. (e.g. Superior Orthons, Paragon Baatorian Steel Golems, The Wardens)

As slinger you rely heavily on buffs. The most important offense ones are divine power and divine favor. Divine power has a much longer duration for slingers (1 turn/level (turn = minute)) and must be up all time. It grants you legendary BAB of a fighter (= higher attack bonus) and grants you extra attacks at level 45 and 55.
Divine favor adds 5 points of damage and if you cast it extended at level 60, it lasts 6 minutes granting a substantial damage bonus over the long term.

You also have tons of helping self buffs for extra conceal and elmental resists/immunities and many other things. You profit from the two schools I choose on this the most and on top of it add two very nice party supportive epics and paragon epics. The abjuration one grants you and the party exotic resists and the paragon spell renders the whole party unslackable. The divination epic gives you the ability to cast a map wide resurrection and the paragon grants +20 rolls for a turn for the party and -12 saves to the mobs. Analyze your spell-book and it´s spells for more details.

Some might think that enchantment would be beneficial too, because of the special high ab bonus it grants when you cast GMW on yourself. I tested that often enough to say it is completely obsolete. Once you have your hands on any sling with a +16 ab bonus (or even +17 from the beholders) this will do nothing for you. That is because it actually adds only attack bonus to your weapon and not true enhancement like on a melee weapon.

You will wear a heavy or medium armor and medium shield with this character. With high abjuration focus, you can cast "Magic Vestment" on them and can boost the AC of the armor and shield up to +20 with psf abjuration.

Try to cover breach and mord all the time. That in combination with augury will keep you from getting debuffed, though augury with higher divination focus will protect more and more efficiently against debuffs of all sorts (recast it regularly).

Babbling Fishes from locatha help a lot to push your listen higher. This helps a lot in hells to circumvent their high conceals. In combination with a "of the salamanders" augmenter or with the "clairvoyance" and bard-song you can max out listen.


Creation and stats:




Skills (level 60 / level 80):




I know that heal is rather low, but you are a wisdom based character. With that you get a really high bonus to your healing skills anyway, and can afford to put more into others. Same goes for Listen.

Leveling:

- all stat points into Wisdom.
- Pandect: Rapid Shot
- Book: Abjuration
- Race: Halfling
- Subrace: Furchin
- Class: All Cleric
- Artifact is pretty free. I used the strength one on it for some extra damage and the stun immunity. But you are open to choose what you prefer. Wisdom surely is a good alternative for this build.

Pre Epic Levels:

Level - feat/stat

1 - Domain Powers (Knowledge, for Clair Voiance Listen Buff) or Fire (Elemental imm buff and Firewall)
- Domain Powers (Strength)
- Blooded
- WF Sling (from subby)
- EWF Sling (from subby)
3 - Spell Focus (Divination)
4 (Wisdom +1)
6 - Zen Archery
8 (Wisdom +1)
9 - Metamagic (Extend Spell)
12 (Wisdom +1)
- Greater Weapon Focus (sling)
15 (Slinger status reached)
- Greater Spell Focus (Divination)
- Weapon Specialization (sling)
16 (Wisdom +1)
18 - Lightning Reflexes
20 (Wisdom +1)

Epic Levels:

21 - Great Wisdom I
23 - Great Wisdom II
24 (Wisdom +1)
- Great Wisdom III
26 - Great Wisdom IV
27 - Great Wisdom V
28 (Wisdom +1)
29 - Great Wisdom VI
30 - Epic Prowess
32 (Wisdom +1)
- Great Wisdom VII
33 - Great Wisdom VIII
35 - Great Wisdom IX
36 (Wisdom +1)
- Improved Critical (sling)/Great Strength I
38 - Epic Spell Focus (Divination)
39 - Power Critical (sling)/Great Strength II
40 (Wisdom +1)
- Concentration +43, Discipline +19, Listen +19, Parry +39, Craft Weapon +39

The improved and power critical can be exchanged for other feats, if you use an augmenter for it what I recommend. My suggestion is to use Great Strength feats as seen above instead.

Legendary Levels:

41 Epic Spell Focus (Abjuration) (book)
42 Legendary Skill Affinity (Tumble)
45 Legendary Weapon Focus (sling)
48 Legendary Luck
51 Legendary Spell Focus (Abjuration)
54 Legendary Spell Focus (Divination)
57 Legendary Reflexes
60 Great Wisdom X

Paragon Levels:

63 Paragon Weapon Focus (sling)
66 Paragon Spell Focus (Abjuration)
69 Paragon Spell Knowledge (Abjuration)
72 Paragon Spell Focus (Divination)
75 Paragon Spell Knowledge (Divination)
78 Pretty free, I took Paragon Waterbreathing out of convenience

The order of the feats in the paragon section is pretty open, though I would take the PWF first in any case.

Saves:



Attack Bonus:

At 60 it is 97 (fully buffed/maxed out skills/+14 Gear/0x demi)
At 80 it is 110 (fully buffed/maxed out skills/+16 Gear/2x demi)

And this is the only real downside in comparison to an AA. The ab is for a ranged class pretty low (too low in my opinion esp. that you must substract 2 ab even for using rapid shot)

Weapons:

Forget the secret hell sling, it failed my test!

Use any sling with added might to it. That is one of the main boosts to get a decent amount of damage (hence the rather high strength on this toon). The uro one is the one I use most of the time. The beholders one is a good one to fight a boss. There is no way to max out the might bonus sadly. Not even with the level 80 cheese.

Gear:

This is pretty much what I use right now, feel free to use other stuff as you see fit. I have added an augmenter with ic/pc sling on the boots.

Helm - Gaze into the Abyss (Vestige, Slots, Caster stats (+16 caster stats at level 80), amnesia imm)
Gloves - Asmo (main battle stats boost and good ele/exo imms)
Neck - Varies, mostly Igwills (Abyss amulet, good phyiscal imms, exo resists, confusion and charm imm, 70 SR)
Rings - variable bur mord imm ring and another imm ring (universal contumacy is pretty nice to use)
Boots - Mordenkainen's Mockery (Bur breach boots with phys imm +IC/PC aug)
Belt - Abyssal Girding (abyss cleric caster belt, mainly for the wisdom but also slots can be exchanged for something else if it has +16 wis before 80. At 80 use w/e you need, but the slots are great)
Cloak - Cloak of the the Axerian Grandmaster (Tia cloak, slots and physical imm) or any that gives you imms. I use a special Rakshasa's Hide.
Armor - Divine Agony (Stygia cleric armor), maybe something else, but slots are hard to pass up.
Shield - Any large shield, what ever suits your gear setup. I use one with an OC/DC aug added. AC doesn´t matter (+20 ac buff ftw)

Spells:

This is the current setup with fire domain instead of knowledge, since I have the gear to cover my listen in other ways but other than that it ain't much different.