Best Balanced Build

[radagast]

Not seen much posted in the Builds threads of late so i thought i would see what everyones most balanced build is ac and ab.

Not the best but i can manage an AC of 85 and AB of 60 with my cleric/monk/sd and about the same with my pally/sd/monk. (make it without true strike) I do alot of soloing so balance is king 

So whats your best balanced toon's ac ab and stats, i presume most will be dragons but lets have some imaginatative ones. 

[NLawson]

I stole my most balanced one from Sest, gets about 65 ab (caps at 72 I believe, can hit 70 for short durations from the fighter widget) and 72 ac (caps at about 75 I think), as well as imp exp. It can also remove up to 15 or something ac from certain targets, if the shield-disarming and ac-draining widget abilities are both active at once. I don't like dragons, but I don't do a lot of soloing either, so that build fits nicely in small parties.

[pinkpuff]

The 1ftr/38cleric/1monk archer builds are amazingly balanced if you have the correct items. I think on mine they get 66ab, 86ac, 6 attacks, 17 irresistable per hit, all the benefits of 38 cleric lvls (gets about 14 400+ hp heals). Plus it can give the party something like 3ab, 4 dodge ac, 3ish deflect ac, and 2 natural ac.

Probably the best balanced build I have seen since it has uses in every situation, especially as an elite healer/secondary hitter.

[radagast]

Nice  I'm doing something similar with 35 cleric (needed for full divine power) 2 sd (for uncanny dodge) and 3 monk to top up skills ends up with 20 wis, 20 dex and about 18 - 20 chr (for divine might/shield) as well as full cleric but dc's are the sacrifice for toe-toe melee, still good buffs though might be a bit stretched compared to your archer build.

[pinkpuff]

Doesn't sound bad at all but I'd definitely go for more dex or wis. Pretty sure mine finish with at least 32base wisdom so you'd max at 60ab. It's really hard to work in the skill points for hide/ms too.

Definitely need some changes to classes to make things interesting again since there are only really 3-4 builds that are any good these days.

[Nobutadas]

Definitely need some changes to classes to make things interesting again since there are only really 3-4 builds that are any good these days.

You should elaborate more about what changes you'd like to see.

[pinkpuff]

Well, i'd definitely like to see Rogues get some sort of bump. Maybe a widget that grants +1ab at rogue lvls 31, 33, 35, 37, 39 and gives an extra attack or 2 when blinding speed is used. This would be far from overpowering since even with a full +5 ab from 39 rogue levels you're still looking at about 57ab max, which isn't all that much. The 2 attacks when blinding speed is used could be rogue only (maybe give other classes 1 attack since they're dexers too) and doesn't stray too far from the dex = speed and therefor more attacks mentality.

5 more ab and a couple attacks would be very useful but all in all still wouldn't make them one of the more played classes since the damage on a dexer is something along the lines of SHIT. Even with 39 rogue levels for massive sneak it still isn't all that massive and most good str melees will hit for just about as much anyways (all of mine hit for more).

If a widget is used maybe 'adding' 2 ab when two weapons are equipped to nullify the dual wield penalty, and adding in 5 shield ac wouldn't be so bad either.

Again, all of those things together doesn't make a pure-ish rogue uber, but makes them playable. Still looking at 57ab/75ish ac. One of reasons dexers are so terrible is that having a whopping 4-5 more ac than a str toon means less than nothing. It's a server where your discipline score is more important than your armor class.

Since they'd still have terrible damage in general and would put up 0's on the crit immune bosses (and how many of those are there now? 100?) maybe they should get a heavily detuned version of the auto-damage ability that the bosses get. Something tells me that when the dev's decided to give the auto damage to bosses that it probably wasn't the bosses themselves campaigning to keep a level playing field. In other words they don't care, but players do.

[radagast]

PP like the idea about the rogue.

Its annoying that the 2 closest classes to it SD and assassin get huge concealment AND in the case of assassin a +5 or so to attack for only 30 lvls.

[NLawson]

I must admit I do like the idea of rogues getting bonus damage versus critical immune targets - there are enough reasons not to play sneaks already, it'd be nice to toss them a bone for once. If you made it rise as their sneak damage rose - say, 2*sneak dice, then you would get somebody with 10d6 sneak damage doing 20 damage on a crit immune target, 15d6 would get 30 damage, etc.

Before the concealment was boosted for assassins and SDs, I would have suggested giving the self-conceal feats for free every 5 rogue levels from 10 up (10, 15, 20, 25, 30), with 50% permanent conceal at 30 rogue. That's a pointless gesture now, since taking assassin instead of rogue would grant more conceal, more ab, access to poisons, and the same sneak damage.

Something I always disagreed with is that certain classes are faction specific (assassin, blackguard, paladin)...though I suppose if the exp penalty wouldn't be removed, there's no way in hell the alignment restrictions for classes would be. I'm not sure exactly what the worry is, though - most of the builds that take advantage of forbidden alignments wouldn't be THAT outside of the norm here anyway.

Got a bit sidetracked there: I like the way this is going - some good ideas there PP.

[pinkpuff]

Wouldn't mind seeing the shapes for Polymorph Self and Shapechange allow the use of items like the shifter script does from druids/shifters. Definitely wouldn't be overpowered since it would take high caster levels to not be dispelled and ab would still be pretty craptacular.

I'd really like to see something nice for bards too. I remember mentioning a widget some time ago that gave a small perform bonus for lvls over 20 or 30, was that added? If so, rock on. Thought I saw it somewhere. But..I'd like to see them get a special version of monster summoning 6 since 6th level bard spells are the very definition of useless. Nothing too powerful on the summon, maybe something between the lvl 9 summon spell and the mummy.

Rangers are...well, rangers. They just suck and I can't make a suggestion for improvement without making them like the other classes. Whenever I log on and see people playing rangers i smh till I'm dizzy.

Fighters are sort of ok atm, but not real impressed with changing the widget to make lower total fighter levels better and making higher level fighters worse than what they were.

At one point I remember Red Raisin saying something about trying to make qstaves finessable and allow for monk attacks like a kama. That would open up some fairly interesting builds and keep them from being too powerful since its a 20/x2 range weapon.

PDK is pretty useless. Some better abilities would certainly not be out of the question. Needing 38 base cha for some of the abilties to max is a...slightly impossible to say the least, and not worth it even if you could. Maybe give them a mount summon like Pally/BG except make the PDK's actually grant the character some decent bonuses? Changing one of the abilites to give a +10-20ish perform would be nice, I could see a bard30/pdk5/hs5 being a decent build for party play. Maybe give them a free feat that allows using charisma for attacks instead of dex/str, kinda like zen archery.

Doing something about the alignments would be nice too. The fact that you can't make a evil harper is annoying at best, especially considering that BG's get terrible ab and harper is really the only way to do it. Rogue5/harper5/bg30 smiter? And let's face it, a pally/pm wouldn't be all powerful, nor would a monk/barb. If you can think of a build or two that would abuse 2 classes to the point of insanity then by all means post about it. Even a barb/druid/monk wouldn't overly special.

XP penalty. Never saw a point in that. I've heard arguments against removing it saying that players shouldn't be so lazy and if you can't be patient then you shouldn't make the build. Those arguments came from the same person who campaigned for auto max hp at each level. Makes tons of sense..

[-firecracker-]

I'd really like to see something nice for bards too. I remember mentioning a widget some time ago that gave a small perform bonus for lvls over 20 or 30, was that added? If so, rock on. Thought I saw it somewhere.

Right, they have a bonus of +1 perform for every level past 20.

[radagast]

Other things i wouldnt mind being looked at for rogues.

Pickpocket - Is there any point to this skill? I only know of 2 instances in the game were it is useful. The mysterious catacombs and the rogues arena. Is it of any practical use e.g. can you actually steal something worthwhile or farm using this skill? If not can we have some (over the top if you like) boss types which you actually have a precentage chance of getting something decent without having to beat it to death.

Open locks - Why cant we open all locks? Fair enough you can really high lvls on most things but again apart from a few places which can be bashed anyway i cant see to much use for this skill either.

I realise its hard to balance the game but it seems the only builds worth doing to do ANYTHING are dragons, dedicated hitters or meatshields. Going a high level rogue seems pointless simply because those skills are only useful occassionally. Cant hit, cant damage so theres no incentive.

I agree about the rangers as well. A massive 35 lvls gets you a +5 or 6 ab but if you go dex the damage is woeful and if you go str then the ac is so it doesnt really improve much for that build.

[Terrorble]

Rangers and rogues are hard.  Their niche lies in traps, tracking, locks, and favored enemies.

I hate that Bane of Enemies is hard coded.

I did add a nice effect for cure crit wounds for level18+ or 20+ rangers.

Rogues/rangers/assassins get keens sense at some point now, and have the Call Out feat (which I admit isn't that useful against NPCs).

We can have locked doors that can't be bashed, but it seems like pixies are better than most rogues and it's just annoying when you show up somewhere only to find you can't progress because you HAVE to have a lock picker to get past.

I have some new random loot generating chests for low levels in play that require some rogue skills, but I haven't had time to flesh that idea out too far past that.  I am using a random trap system from the vault in several areas, but it's limited atm.  Disarming them gives good xp.

Some of the epic traps are useful.

I'd like to create a widget that takes into account craft trap, set trap, and (emphasis on) ranger/rogue levels to determine the DC and damage of a trap.  As opposed to having static DCs and damages on pre-defined trap types (i.e. how it is now, deadly frost trap has a certain DC and does a certain amount of damage)  This way, the 37wiz/1ranger/2SD isn't the best trapper simply due to skill dumping, and you could build to be better.  If it worked, you could bypass having to carry trap kits around, and just carry the components since it would both craft and set the trap in one step.

but, my previous attempts to work on traps have ended with:   ?

That's the direction I'd go if I could to put rangers and rogues back on the map.  It'd be nice to allow X/day of certain trap types to be made based on ranger/rogue levels - almost like a form of spells for them.

I really like the idea about removing the -2 for dual wield penalty.  I have toyed around with that idea before, I even thought it'd be cool to grant AC bonuses for dual-wielding certain weapon combos.  I might be able to accomplish this with one of the player tool feats, but I've had issues adding this sort of AB bonus before.

What happens is, I can add an AB bonus easily when something is equipped, but when it is unequipped, there's no way to specifically remove that bonus.  The only way to remove it is to strip all AB bonuses... and nobody wants that.  It's the same reason the xbow bonus setup adjusts the enchantment/attack bonus on xbows rather than adding the appropriate AB bonus (that xbow thing has to be the hack-iest thing I've done here  ) 

Hmm, talking about this makes me wonder about a few things.  Maybe there's hope yet.

[radagast]

Thanks for the reply and the effort Terror, i realise it might seem like moaning for the sake of it and of course everything cant be balanced or brought into the game (forgot about those damn pixies) some good ideas though thanks for the hard work. 

[NLawson]

I've been really busy, but in my spare time I've been trying a new server on-and-off recently to see how other people like to play. I'm sure a lot of you have heard of it, and wouldn't be surprised if a lot of you have played it, or still do - Heart of Winter. Rather than trying to come up with ideas from scratch, take some inspiration from some of the changes other people make on other servers. I'm not saying copy them exactly, but if they have a good idea then why not use it, or tweak it to suit GvM?

Go have a look at HoW - they have some really cool changes done to their classes (though their spell changes have NOTHING on us) and their subraces are pretty awesome. Some of their ideas are a bit dumb - like giving DDs +1 ab per 5 levels or so, as well as 10% physical immunity at level 10, and then 5% every 4 levels after that...especially since there's pretty much NO DR outside of feats. Another idea I wouldn't suggest (that they use) is giving dual-wielders and 2H users +6 shield ac for free. What I WOULD suggest is that the way they coded this could really help with the "removing dual wield penalties" idea, since they don't seem to use player tool feats to do it...maybe find a way to put an extra +2 ab on any weapons wielded in the offhand, if the player has X Rogue/Ranger levels?
No harm in scouting for ideas though, right?

[pinkpuff]

Scaling traps would be awesome but I wouldn't really look at traps as the skill that saved the rogue.

I'd just like to see a melee improvement for rogues for the most part. Not something that would make them the best hitters or anything but something that would at least allow them to be a solid secondary hitter. By making that a reality you could actually use more traps in areas and locks on things since there would actually be rogues to deal with them.