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Post by uncanny on Oct 25, 2011 21:50:03 GMT
Ok, so far so good. Now the kicker (for me in any case): would you play this from pre-immo (like, a few levels pre-immo); or would you go Ability mage till 50 then reincarnate? Guess the question is.. would it present a useful party member as a tank/fallback ability or should it be played as ability until LFFH3?
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Post by redbeard on Oct 26, 2011 3:39:56 GMT
I'm kind of thinking about taking mine from 1 to 60 as a shifter tank. But if my party needs a different type of character I'll use that form. Of course, that's before playing it. Pre-epic, the tank should work as well as anything else in most cases. That will change sometime in epic levels; by level 35 the other forms will be useful up to Xul. I think saves for the drow and Immo might make the tank forms as useful as anything else. With Wildshape LFF1 it might be better to be a ability mage until LFF Humanoid 1 (Or book). I'm beginning to wonder if I should go 5D/10R/25S or /5R/27S. AB would be the same, and both would get 4 attacks per round. I would lose 1 favored enemy and pick up 5 caster levels and 2% conceal on several forms. The only other thing I get from 5 ranger levels is Improved Two Weapon Fighting and unless I find some weapons with immunities and strength or get a Stygian Razor and dual wield Katanas it's a useless feat. Or would the razor's Dev Crit not apply to the shifted weapon? (Second level ranger spells would be useless at level 37.) Or am I missing something?
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Post by uncanny on Oct 26, 2011 8:10:33 GMT
Hmmm... well, actually - I think this might work fairly well; I assume you're taking the fifth ranger at lvl40-ish as a skill dump and feat boost? I have an old secret race build I was shuffling last night with some average kit and it looks like at lvl30+ Drow and Kenku are fairly playable; as well as (surprisingly) Risen Lord. Tiger was a bit rough. With average (nothing randomized and mostly rares and uncommons) kit I was hitting around 68AC on Drow, with 43AB using a saber (Storm Seeker I think, the one with +10 Enh); unbuffed at lvl30. The only downside I encountered was pulling up to lvl40 - the AC didn't seem to improve linearly with higher range kit. I need to play a bit more with that but I'm a bit worried that 35-50 will be a pain in the neck for tank play (only got a week to do so - it's an old lvl55 pixie assassin, so after a week it's kinda dead or not a shifter ). Will try posting some stats @40 with UR + good rare kit this evening.
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Post by uncanny on Oct 29, 2011 10:46:58 GMT
Hmm another thing I was thinking on.. Modron is immune to TimeStop. They also use a crossbow, with some decent ab (it seems). I wonder if this is more critical for a tank to be able to withstand TS: if you have a mage in the party, they can TS when it all hits the fan, and you can still target the main critter; or conversely, if you're fighting a caster and the TS, you can keep targetting them or prevent party wipe.
Thoughts?
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Post by redbeard on Oct 31, 2011 1:19:10 GMT
I don't think you can unshift from what you were in, shift to modron and do anything effective during the duration of time stop. The big thing to prevent party wipe would be to rez the cleric for miracle, and you can't do that in shifted form. No, you could use a potion of life unbounded. Then again, you can't unshift during time stop. So planning on using modron would require planning to be in a non-tank (tank means soaking or doing melee damage) and possibly non-optimal form when you expect a time stop.
I'm not sure I see a situation where I would find this helpful.
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Post by uncanny on Nov 6, 2011 12:27:29 GMT
Time for some feedback I guess So far in the lvl30 range, and tanking is working fairly well since lvl28 or so. AC seems to be about average for a strength based tank(in the mid 70's), though not good enough to be a frontliner it's been good enough that I've been able to hold my own on a few runs. Have had a few instances where Modron would have been handy (a fact I missed was the opportunity to do traps as a modron). Here's the build pattern I've been working from. Why yes, yes it does look similar to the AbilityMage - I used that as a rough template Things I took and why: Epic Prowess: is worth +1 pre-LWF, and +2 with LWF. AB really hurts as you're not a primary melee class like ranger or fighter. Undead: I initially went for abilities, such as - Positive damage FOD and MAGIC DAMAGE on Baelnorn. This shape has been useful for tougher things like Zeryia and the vampire castle.
- Banshee Sonic damage highly useful for mass mob disruption. Wail.. not so much useful, helps reduce trash mobs that hurt but have weak fort. DC at lvl30 was around 32, and it won't grow much by immo (perhaps 1 or 2). There is no plan to get more than LFF1 so this will always be around several DC lower than a normal shifter with undead LFF3.
- Vampire dominate: rare uses.
- Risen Lord is a bit weak to use as a tank, but its very useful when dealing with high critical hits. AC was around 66 at lvl28, and at lvl34 it's around 68 - so you'll to be careful.
Wildshape: I took this since it's free as long as you can get a tag and human epode by the time you get LFF3. As I happen to be the proud owner of a human epode that nobody else wanted in a loca run loooong ago (yay!), I'm all set but this could be a problem if you don't have it. Humanoid shape is the most flexible for this kind of playstyle. Other: Well, last thought to add here is that I kept ranger lower than usual tanks so that the build could have a chance to fill in on some abilities. Non-Spell abilities are untouched compared to normal shifter, since that calculation is not based on levels but instead DC = 10+Form Rank+Wis mod+ (form focii *3). Beholder has been a surprisingly useful shape given the amount of casters I've been up against. So here is the build. Please look and comment - I want to improve wherever possible. One potential improvement is to drop AC Skin, take Grt Wis 10 before Legendary, then instead of GrtWis in legendary take Legendary Form Defence (with a net gain of +1 ac since LFD is +3). This also leads to Paragon Form Defence for an extra 3AC IF you intend to get paragon levels in at some stage (pfft yeah good luck to me!). Thoughts? Zenythri (Human) LN Str:8(12) Dex:10(14) Con:14 Int:14 Wis:18(22) Cha:8 Skills (301 pre-leg) Animal Empathy 63 Craft Armor 63 Craft Weapon 63 Discipline 43 (RANGER) Listen 63 Parry 43 (RANGER) Tumble 60 (Leg) (SAVE 43 BY 40) 1-8 DRUID Blooded, Alertness Armor Proficiency (Heavy) Weapon Focus (Unarmed Strike) 9-16 SHIFTER G Weapon Focus (Unarmed Strike) Great Fortitude Lightning Reflexes 17-20 Ranger FE 1 (Outsiders) Blind Fight 21-39 SHIFTER (28=skills!! excl tumble) AC SKIN EWF UNDEAD Great Wisdom 1-9(!argh!) 40 Ranger (Druid8/Shifter27/Ranger5) Epic Prow LEGENDARY Legendary Skill Affinity (tumble) Legendary Form Focus 1 (Wildshape) Legendary Form Focus 2 (Wildshape) Legendary Form Focus 3 (Wildshape) Epode: humanoid Grt Wis X LWF: Unarmed Legendary Form Focus 1 (Undead)
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Post by redbeard on Nov 12, 2011 15:52:36 GMT
I was thinking about how easy it is to find good weapons for shifters. Crit range and multiplier don't seem to matter much. Neither does the base damage. So shifters seem to be a good character to use the less valuable weapons: Goad, wind fire wheel, sap, dagger, club all do just as good as a katana or rapier (May require Exotic proficiency).
Then I thought about healing mobs and time required to switch weapons. I think that's going to be the achilese heel for this type of build.
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Post by hfb on Nov 13, 2011 7:22:07 GMT
My stab at this build for a friend of mine is as follows. Comments most welcome and I will include my reasoning for you. Anarch Gnome Stats (starting-->race-->subrace-->buffed@lvl60) Str: 10-->8-->8-->22 Dex: 8-->8-->8-->22 Con: 14-->16-->20-->38 Wis: 18-->18-->24-->60 Int: 14-->14-->14-->28 Cha: 8-->8-->8-->22 All stat bumps to Wisdom Build progression (18 Ranger, 5 Druid, 17 Shifter): Pre-20 levels: 16 rnger/4druid (Maxes AB since you do not have enough ranger levels to get the full 20 AB) Post-20 levels: 1druid/17 shifter/2rngr (Control class=Rngr for con bonus and legendary AB progression) Pre-epic: Blooded (LSA-Tumble), WF, GWF, IC, Lightening Reflexes, Heavy Armor, and Gr.Fort (This assumes that you have usable slashing weapons with the lack of Trans focus. Gr.Fort and an FE can be sac.ed if need be.) Epic: Epic Reflexes, Epic Fort, EWF-UAS, EP, GW 1-3 Shifter Bonus: Undead Shape, GW 4 Legendary: LSA-Tumble, LFF-WS 1-3, LFF-Undead 1-2, LWF-UAS Favored Enemies: Outsiders, Aberrations, Monstrous Humanoids(?), and Shapechangers(?) (or GrSF-trans as in the pre-epic list) (Scratch Gr.Fort for SpF-trans if you want to use a rngr bonus for the GrSF-trans. This gets you bludg and pierce for your blade thirst wpn buff. Could get bonus feats from rngr lvls in epic levels but AB is more important.) Skills: AE (max), Concentration (30), CW (max), Disc (max), Hide (max), Listen (max), Parry (max), Tumble (60), CA (36) Epode: Humanoid Book: Illusion for added concealment from cam. Artifact: either wisdom or saves arti (though i do not know where the later is and it would probably be a good idea to reincarnate if you got it so you can save a couple of feats on saves) That is what I got. Cheers and happy hunting, The Dancer
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Post by uncanny on Nov 13, 2011 12:22:14 GMT
hfbYep, that would be ideal for a pure tank style, and I think less issues will arise with AB (enabling you to maybe ignore the lwf and getting in a second LFF on undead, which makes a +3ab +3ac impact on Risen Lord). Another thing is this becomes a ranger-with-shifting-skills, your abilities won't really count for anything. Don't have Anarch to test this one out though :s I like the mix though, it gives some extra cutting ability without compromising on the strength of the shapes, and gets the important epic shapes for humanoid (which normal high-ranger shifter tanks don't get, as it needs 17 shifter levels). I'm really tempted to rebuild my current shifter into this and see how it does in the areas I've been to so far
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Post by dragonledak on Nov 13, 2011 16:30:22 GMT
That is exactly how my humanoid shifter is 18 ranger 5 druid and 17 shifter. It is true with ranger control the abilities become almost useless so I just went con based for pre LL to get a tone of hp and then added some wis is LL for saves. Either way my dc's were not going to cut it. Makes for a unique tank and it is super nice that you can res and restore while in humanoid form.
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Post by hfb on Nov 14, 2011 20:23:47 GMT
Greetings,
Minimally, it seems, going all Wisdom for stat bumps keeps you from just fishing for 1s all the time. Full GW10 just can't be done, from what I can tell--not enough bread with the loss of epic bonus feats.
Possibly the Epic saves feats could be dropped, but that is relatively risky, imo for +1 dc.
Going ranger as control class yeilds the +4 to con and tier 1 ab and that is about it. The spells, really only Bladethirst and Camo, from ranger are also mostly sac.ed. It is a mostly pure tank, but with the wild shapes that are not completly DC dependent thrown in.
The biggest drawback seems to be the damage potential/hit, since many tanks get some kind of bright shiny dmg pump, like sonic damage with thundering rage and the like.
The build listed does have LFF Undead 2, but LFF Undead 3 doesn't fit, unfortunately.
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Post by dragonledak on Nov 15, 2011 0:46:13 GMT
You are forgetting something else that is nice about ranger cc over shifter cc on this build and that is skill selection. I think the rangers skill selection is about as ideal as it gets for tanks only beaten by monks.
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Post by uncanny on Nov 15, 2011 11:13:40 GMT
You are forgetting something else that is nice about ranger cc over shifter cc on this build and that is skill selection. I think the rangers skill selection is about as ideal as it gets for tanks only beaten by monks. Very true, Discipline and Parry being the big ones here. I guess the only thing really I can see as differentiating the two options is with Ranger you get the fullblown LL ab, and potentially can afford to drop out LWF thus can get one more undead focus; while more shifter levels seems to be good for a "can mix it up but not very well" kinda build. Does anyone know whether bladethirst is worth the effort on a 28ranger (the magical +13 being key to getting through most DR) - this is the big one I'm facing on the shifter at the moment, since casters are getting fewer and further between.
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Post by hfb on Nov 15, 2011 19:05:46 GMT
Re: BT.
The choice is between Epode and the +6 BT verses no epode and the possibility of +13 BT. For the latter see the Swiss Army Tank build under the ranger builds section.
If you want to be self-reliant / solo, gotta go with something like the SAT which costs you the wildshape foci.
If you want to limp along or you can rely on casters the first option is best.
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