This is an alternative way to think about, play, build, and gear a melee that I use! I'll be laying out three example builds for this paradigm, this melee build, a ranged build, and a caster. Here is a different melee build of the same paradigm that can be adapted to a few classes and weapon styles.
This build is in final form now. I run across several problems in my DDO playing. One is a lack of appropriately difficult and engaging groups, since many players like to level in R1 and only play challenging high reaper dungeons at cap. This is the standard paradigm. A second problems is a lack of balance that allows a lot of builds to play effectively either leveling in R1 relative say to an arcane, or at cap in high reaper relative to whatever power builds are currently dominating due to the need to monetize an otherwise fantastic free game. Another problem is that I am an explorer, and I can't sit still on a build at cap. This conflicts with the way that progression is heavily focused on cap legendary play. And I need my character to progress, so I can explore new things.
So what I am trying to do is create more fun for myself. I'm trying to create a way to play a wider variety of builds and enjoy both progression, challenge, and exploration. If self-healing is neutered in high reaper, fine, I'll play a self-healing build in lower reaper. If a fun build I want to play like inquisitor is nerfed in high reaper, fine, I"ll play in lower reaper. If I'm level 20, and there are only EN dailies and R1 Lords of Dust groups in my level bracket, fine, I'll just apply to a group in a different level bracket and play there where there is appropriate challenge. Or I'll just start soloing legendary reaper at level 20 and make my own group as I play. Now I'm using a new build I'm exploring to illustrate this, because this is me killing multiple birds with one stone!
First, I need to start off with what this build isn't. This isn't a build to turn the whole room to ash in a few seconds with no cooldown. You will never do this, for example:
Now the reason you will never do that, is because of Dire Charge. You see, melee get such a large power bump at 29 that they have to be gimp 1-28 so it evens out. Now I have lobbied to get Dire Charge nerfed, which would open up melee power that could be distributed to lower levels, but instead of nerfing Dire Charge directly SSG just nuked helpless damage over and over to redistribute some of the power of Dire Charge. It is what it is, whatever. This lack of power 1-28 is why melee isn't considered a strong leveling build, to the point that a very un-fun standard paradigm developed where melee pike off of the uber arcane zerging R1 for 28 levels to get to fun dungeons at cap. Your level 15 melee non-crit damage will be less than 200 per hit including procs to a few mobs at a time:
No, what we are making is a charisma paladin that hits for less than 200 a hit non-crit at level 15. Paladins have high charisma synergy, and can get charisma to hit and damage from feydark illusionist, insightful to hit and damage and tactics from divine might, instant kill based on sunder DC and charisma with holy retribution, defend against effects with divine grace which gives charisma bonus to all saves, and even heal based on charisma bonus with lay on hands. So we are pumping our charisma up. You may need more strength based on the tome level you are at.
Now, hitting for less than 200 of course assumes you have best in slot, well, everything. Now the reason for having such a good 15 gear set is to carry other people 15-20, to balance out getting carried some 20-30. So, think of this as a Karma building set.
(right click to open pictures in new tab to make them bigger and more readable if you need)
So if we play normally side by side with equally geared and built arcane casters, they are just going to annihilate everything. Therefore, we shouldn't just play normally and level in R1 and do high reaper at cap paradigm. That's an arcane caster paradigm, and what arcanes are exactly suited to do. No, we need a new melee paradigm, and melees suck 1-28, so we are just going to have to wing it.
So I came up with is a new paradigm. We are going to start off as an iconic, so that we can start closer to 20, where we can enter legendary dungeons where progression iis rewarded. Now, there is lots of special things about level 20. First, while heroic quests are full of under level lockouts and power leveling penalties and various things to reign in how the game is played, at 20 it opens up a bit, and the power leveling penalties for grouping with higher level players goes away, as does the level lockouts, which means we can get to appropriately difficult dungeons regardless of what level that dungeon is. Now, leveling melee aren't all that, but even still, the appropriate difficulty for a well built level 20 melee character still turns out to be around Legendary R3 solo, R4-6 grouped.
So we are going to take our level 20 character, and walk directly into legendary reaper skipping all epic quest. Now legendary has many benefits, including:
1) Additional doubling of Reaper XP on top of additional multiplier for being a higher level dungeon
2) Double Sentient XP for legendary level 29 items (versus 28) on top of additional value for being a higher level item
3) Additional Sentient XP item drop rate due to expansion weapons (Morninglord, Nightmother, Ferrocrystal)
4) Additional Sentient XP drop rate due to artifacts and crafting materials, including in sagas.
5) Higher regular experience and saga experience.
6) Appropriate challenge
Another important things this does is leave behind the terrible group experience of playing with uber casters zerging R1 epic Lords of Dust. You group in legendary midskull reaper where an uber caster won't join, because they are either level 29-30 and in R8-10, or because at levels 20-28 they can't follow and function because they are DC based, and legendary DCs require legendary gear. So we get more enjoyable grouping, appropriate difficulty, and better progression while being able to continuously reincarnate and explore new builds! Plus, even if we play the same build a few times, by doing the dungeons in different orders and at different power levels and ability sets we get different experiences to explore!
Now we might as well plan for this, and level 15-20 in heroic dungeons without legendary equivalents unless we need better heroic gear, Gianthold and Lordsmarch can get you some character bag space, but this plan doesn't have us leveling at all in House K quests, so we will need to trim our reincarnation cache down as needed. Now, we need a really kickass gear set and setup at level 20, so this is where I'm at. Stats will be a bit higher if you use a prowess potion and spell power potion from commendations, but I'm not sure if I'll make enough commendations for both and heart seeds from alts raiding to keep both up:
(right click to open pictures in new tab to make them bigger and more readable if you need)
Start at level 15 with KoTC with both cleaves and reconstruct SLA from BF. Replace a cleave with Confront any Foe twist in epics. Trim extra BF/VKF AP if needed.
(right click to open pictures in new tab to make them bigger and more readable if you need)
About 4 out of 5 groups will not have a healer. To overcome the reaper 2/3rds self healing penalty we will need to triple stack multiple healing sources. Here we are using Renewal + Reconstruct SLA + paladin healing. A barbarian would use 3 of barb healing (OS) + Renewal + Consecrate+Sacred Ground + Cocoon. A rogue or fighter would use Renewal + Cocoon + Consecrate+Sacred Ground.
Melee also have a hard time with lag which is common now, where the game stops updating for periods of time. Sometimes mobs will seem to stop dealing damage to your character, but it really is just a lag issue, and server side they are still attacking. To better deal with this, keep chaining self-heals into and fighting as normal until lag ends. Maybe your character survives. Maybe not.
Here is gear I use at 20, I tried to make a set that will work for strength, dex, wisdom, or charisma for a variety of builds:
(right click to open pictures in new tab to make them bigger and more readable if you need)
A few 21-26 upgrade items:
Legendary mobs such as red names in Sharn have around 180 or so fortification, more on some mobs, less on trash, which is why we built this way:
25% Precision
15% KoTC
5% Guild
5% Artifact Part of the Family Set
12% Enhancement
25% Twists
25% Sentience
5% Beats me, why are there so many types of the same stat in this game?
------------
117% Fortification Bypass at 20
Enemy mobs have up to around 180 or so fortification bypass in legendary, so twist and craft additional fortification if you aren't a warforged or undead.
Here is a level 28 upgrade set, it has more fortification, so you can drop some out of bladeforged for other more strikethrough in bladeforged instead:
(right click to open pictures in new tab to make them bigger and more readable if you need)
Here is a level 29 upgrade set, it has more fortification bypass on weapon, so you can drop some out twists for Martial Hymn + Sense Weakness + Confront Any Foe + Legendary Tactics to support Dire Charge OPness::
(right click to open pictures in new tab to make them bigger and more readable if you need)
So we will take this or similar setup and level in legendary reaper at some difficulty grouped or solo to cap, finish a few legendary quests at cap we missed, and then reincarnate for first time bonuses. As such, the most important gear setup is level 20, and the second important gear set is level 15, with 29 being more or less irrelevant, since our 20 set is already good enough and is what is used to clear the majority of legendary reaper quests. For example, my testing with Pew Pew, Lazorz found that by the end of level 28 we are mostly done with good legendary reaper xp quests, with less then a dozen good quests remaining to do for first time bonuses and to cap with:
(right click to open pictures in new tab to make them bigger and more readable if you need)
You can increase the amount of cap quests you have by running more raids as you level.
All our epic 20-29 quests we skip in epics, and do only in heroics for 15-19 leveling. We do Immortality Lessons Heroic Elite a few times per life for Heroism Augments. This maxes out favor with as few as possible repeat quests other than Immortality:
(right click to open pictures in new tab to make them bigger and more readable if you need)
This paradigm is really good for getting your class + iconic past life with first time bonus xp, because it is able to harness all that legendary first time bonus xp as leveling xp. The normal paradigm of level up then do reaper xp at cap wastes all the regular legendary xp. This also works well leveling 1-30 for both a racial/class and epic past life, where you do 1-20 in quests without legendary versions, then level 20-30 in legendary for max favor. My inquisitor ended up with 400k total reaper xp and 2400 favor per iconic life, and I expect to get similiar on a melee.
Epic Past Life Feat Toggles: HAMP, Doublestrike, Ancient Power, Enchant Weapon
Iconic Past Life: Bladeforged Repair Spell Power
If you find you aren't getting many kills, it is probably because your holy retribution is currently too low, due to a lack of tactics bonuses or charisma. Twist legendary tactics in replacing Dance of Flowers, and activate the tactics martial epic past life.
Anyways, this paradigm can be adapted to other builds that are either weak leveling such as other melee builds or that aren't top builds for high reaper, like a self-healing melee, or a shiradi missiles spell+ranged power build, or other lower dps builds that don't rely on DCs. You can adapt this for your own use by getting all your iconic and class past lives with tons of reaper and sentient xp at the same time. ESoS is by far the most powerful level 20 weapon in DDO, so I hope you have one,
Oh, last but not least, the reason we reincarnate when we have finished the quests we want is due to repeating quests at R8 at cap makes less than half of the RXP of leveling in quests first time R6. Repeating also doesn't earn any DDO points from favor. Plus, repeating quests at cap reinforces only doing the easiest legendary quests, in exactly the same way, with exactly the same character, which becomes boring. That's three strikes against the current paradigm for me.
I don't want to leave you with the idea that this build only groups, it can solo, and what you can do is start soloing R3 or so as people join your group and go from there. Here is one where I forgot to swap boots back from Tempest Spine solo.
If you can solo R3, you can contribute and group in low to low-midskull reaper, and in PUG legendary raids. Note that the difficulties are all relative to whatever power level your character currently has. For example, on my handwrap razorclaw lives I started with Epic Hard solo to EE grouped Feywild saga daily for a lot of levels for gear. I started EH a few lives ago, but as my understanding of melee under level soloing legendary goes up, and the gear set gets better, the difficulty goes up with it. However, you don't have to group, and can also start soloing some legendary raids at 20:
Bring Tensor's scrolls and cookies or other insightful strength gear:
Bring Haste Scrolls for puppies:
Happy Holidays! This alternative paradigm is my gift to you! I hope you can use it to find joy playing that weaker build you want! A self healing melee isn't a good leveling build compared to an arcane under the standard paradigm, and it isn't a good high reaper cap build due to the self-healing penalty, but it is solid in midskull reaper, and I enjoy it. Due to this alternative paradigm, my enjoyment is increased by being able to play it and still progress well on all fronts (RXP, SXP, Past Lives, Gear, Sentient Filigree, and DDO Points from favor). If you level starting with the level 30 legendary quests, then 31, then 32, it works out smoothly in R4 or so, R5 or so with a healer or at 28, and R6 at 29.
-T
Appendix
Bugs found while playing:
1) After you craft an item you have to bank it and pull it out of the bank or relog or something to get it to have the proper durability and hardness.
2&3) Neither the augment nor the imbue with shadowblade spellcasting implements your spell power augmented weapon.
4) The warforged racial trait of immunity to paralysis doesn't work against spell ward paralysis or drow poison.
5) Blessed purpose doesn't stack on reapers.
Edit 12/20 Updated AP spread innow that I played through most of the legendary quests in pugs, added some gear updates for 21-26, and a 28 gear set.
Edit 12/21 Added 29 set.
I really, really tried to make a Feywild "hybrid" set, but Feywild isn't designed to make hybrids. It is designed to add 20% hp at a tradeoff of 35-50% healing spell power, or specifically to unmake hybrids and fit more builds to the "20% hp to survive, but can't also function as a hybrid healer" EDF paradigm. Feywild is good if you want to make a pure strength + some charisma dps character and turn your paladin into a fighter, but not very good if you actually want to make a paladin.
Edit 12/22 fixed 29 gear set for 29 neck, shackles, and updated ESoS for sets at 29. Swapped 30 feat to quicken to help heal better. TY Jilsephe for finding errors!
Edit 12/23 Added in notes that you can also do PUG legendary raids as you level.
Edit 12/25 Added in notes that we are making a charisma paladin, and why we use tactics bonuses.
Edit 12/27 Added in a caster build link.
Edit 1/13 Revamped build, abandoned hope of dps setup due to population of healers in game.
Edit 1/14 Added note on dealing with lag and a bug list
Edit 1/16 Found out Sense Weakness works again, swapped up main hand weapon for more fortification bypass to free up twists for it at 29 with Dire Charge,
Edit 1/17 Finished revamping 28 and 29 gear sets for Sense Weakness twist to replace existing fortification bypass twist.
Edit 2/28 Linked in new build.