Author: Steniel
Created: 21-NOV-2024
Boss Token (BT) Cost: 50 Boss Tokens (Race).
Summary #
This a decent build for both solo dungeon and raids that works pretty well even with nordocks.
Its a pretty solid and all-round tanky dps with summon and some utility. But the build is purely single target damage.
My current version of the build has:
- 68 AB, 86 AC, ~650 hp, 100+ dps on 65 AC dummy.
- uncanny dodge, evasion as rogue 4, crit/death immune as vampire. Capped saves would be 63 fort (devcrit immune), 59 will 74 reflex.
- can tank a number of bosses in raids
- provides some CC by holding casters and burners
- I don’t run epic energy resistance fire, but the last feat slot (level 39) is relatively flexible and you can go for it (I prefer blinding speed there)
There are few sub-builds for him with pros and cons.
The guide is splitted into two parts: “how” and “why”. The “why” part (which you can read after the CBC) allows you to understand every decision behind the build and choose a tweak according to your goals and playstyle. For example, a bow-user with 34 dex and blinding speed + rapid shot will perform slightly better in running Moore raid and dead wyrm dungeon due to higher dps vs crit-immune opponents.
The playstyle #
Use extended divine cruelty, bless, aid and prayer to get +8 AB for yourself and +3 for your summon. UMD allows to use flame weapon on your summon (you can buy these scrolls at Abiz seller – in the tent behind the stable).
BG toolset allows you to have a strong summon and a good set of divine buffs, which allows you to easily reach 20 AB bonus cap. Extended spell is a must here to prolong these long enough with limited number of spell slots.
You get 16 casts of divine buffs, so you can run them constantly. However you don’t have 100% uptime for divine shield, so I use it only when there is a real threat or when you need to tank along with the summon. Each buff lasts 2.6 turns.
Always run with you stat window open: you need to see when your buffs falls off, and divine cruelty runs off faster than shield and might.
Try to recast 2 buffs at a time: that way you spend 1 round for 2 buffs and don’t lose much time buffing
Important: stay close and flank! Otherwise you won’t get this juicy sneak attack bonus.
Spellbook management #
lvl1: few blessings, 2 bless weapon (can be cast from “night nectar” item), also few non-extended divine cruelty might be useful when you have only 6 casts of it. Otherwise through in a couple of protections from alignment (yourself and summons). +1 saves always help.
lvl2: all extended divine cruelty. You need that 2-turn extended +5 AB buffs! The basic gear starts off with 6 spellslots here, so you get your minimalistic 12-turns uptime. Keep this uptime always. The exception can be between-rooms encounters, but only if you are just starting out.
lvl3. extended aids, bull strength for minion or for yourself. Aids can also be helpfull for your party.
lvl4. extended prayers. If you got extra spellslots, get death protection and freedom for your summon (or for yourself if you’re playing another race and don’t have freedom on gear)
While aid and bless last an infinity, prayer ends up after 6 turns, so keep an eye on it.
Resource management #
You got 13-16 divine buff casts.
If you run out, you can quickly equip for extra turning item (there are an amulet and a shield) to get the buff and then get proper item back. this can be used for extra 6 casts.
Keep divine might uptime always. Cast divine shield when you anticipate aggro/tanking, there are pretty long periods when you don’t need this AC. Keep in mind though, that lower AC provokes aggro.
Sneak attacks #
In order to achieve the mentioned dps potential you have to sneak attack!
Use your summon/teammate for tanking, keep medium to small distance and flank the target. You will see ‘sneak attack’ message every time you land them. Any shot to hold target is also considered sneak attack.
Summon management #
This guy plays crucial role in saving your ass: he grant you +4 dodge AC aura, and can tank quite a bit of damage. He is not immortal though, so you should keep an eye on his health bar all the time! He can heal himself 2 times, but better watch at this ability as back-up. Always try to drag a healpot on him when bellow 50-20% HP. When damage taken is low, you can continue shooting to keep up dps and wait untill HP falls to the lower end. When summons takes lots of damage, better drag a pot on him a bit earlier, as delivering a pot takes time (and you can heal him too late).
Use stop and follow commands to avoid hitting traps when other people are around. If you are not confident with summons, just keep him in follow mode most of the time and switch to attack only when you are tanking. That will help you to keep summon, heal him on time and avoid loosing him out of sight. But you will loose some dps that way.
Gearing #
Aim to get 12 dex and 12 cha as first priority. Next are 12 wisdom for spellslots and 12 con for hp. Lastly get 12 str for some phys dmg boost on your mighty weapon.
1st step – gearing a fresh 40 #
- get a Tobaro questchain reward, the +4 stats ring ([BRILLIANT] Rift Ringlet (left))
- GTS gear: padded armor, xbow, belt, cloak, boots
- Nordock Craft gear: BG spellslot ring to get enough spellslots for divine cruelty buffs (15 bts)
- spend your first BT’s on nordock bolts to have an unlimited supply of ammo.
- venging nordock ammo might give you a good roll of flat divine dmg bonus instead of dice rolls, but don’t rely on that
2nd step – nordock gear, scrolls and pickpocket #
- get thief rings for cheap +20 pp skill
- get greater sanctuary scrolls or nordock staff with GS spell
Put the thief rings on quickbar and swap them while pp-ing a boss/strong mob under protection of GS spell. Swap your stat ring
- get nordock xbow AND a bunch of keen scrolls or keen sequencer robe. You don’t have keen property on nord xbow and that is essential for your dmg output.
- ESF pickpocket and couple of thief rings allow to pp some non-boss raid targets like moore guardian
Now you can use mord scrolls on deadwyrm to remove his concealment and beat him as fast as 600 seconds. Don’t forget to pp first mini using the ring and GS trick mentioned above. You’ll need a wizard toon/friend to get those scrolls though.
3rd step – Socketable items #
Get green amulet, xbow, ammo and armor. This will give you a hold-on-shoot, which works amazing with ranged weapon, especially with high-APR bow version of the build, since you get better chance to stunlock a target with high APR. Fury tower and goblin armory becomes a breeze with that ability. Also quite useful in raids to CC some high-priority target or save ass of your caster teammate targeted by a burner.
Do you need purple bolts? #
On paper purple bolts don’t look amazing and you even see very similar dummy test numbers with it. However a brief statistical analysis of several runs shows, that adding purple bolt boost your dps by 10% compared to fully gamed greens! Don’t let feeling fool you, stats says you do need to spend those BT savings on these little purple poisonous sticks.
Utility twist #
23 pre-epic skillpoints in disable trap and a bunch of disable trap gems along with detect trap scrolls will allow you to become a full-time trap disabler on par with professional rogue! Throw in a point to open lock at 20 lvl to get some extra loot from chests.
Bow Version #
The following CBC is related to the Heavy Crossbow version of the build. For the bow version, apply the following changes:
- Ability Score Increases (ASI) levels 32/36/40: take DEX instead of CHA
- General Feats levels 30/33/36: take Great Dexterity instead of Great Charisma
- XBow feats (Weapon Focus, Improved Critical and Epic Weapon Focus): take Bow feats instead
- Rapid Reload (level 6 general feat): Take Rapid Shot instead
CBC #
| Class / Race | Blackguard(30), Fighter(6), Rogue(4), Vampire | |
| Abilities | STR: 14 | |
| DEX: 18 (28) | ||
| CON: 8 | ||
| WIS: 14 | ||
| INT: 6 | ||
| CHA: 18 (24) | ||
| Class | Feats & Stats | Skills |
| Ro | 01: Rogue(1): Power Attack | 01: Save(24), |
| Ro | 02: Rogue(2): {Evasion} | 02: Hide(5), Save(25), |
| F | 03: Fighter(1): Weapon Focus: Heavy Crossbow, Point Blank Shot | 03: Save(26), |
| F | 04: Fighter(2): DEX+1, Cleave, (DEX=19) | 04: Save(27), |
| F | 05: Fighter(3) | 05: Save(28), |
| F | 06: Fighter(4): Rapid Reload, Blind Fight | 06: Save(29), |
| F | 07: Fighter(5) | 07: Save(30), |
| BG | 08: Blackguard(1): DEX+1, (DEX=20) | 08: Save(31), |
| BG | 09: Blackguard(2): Toughness, {Smite Good} | 09: Save(32), |
| BG | 10: Blackguard(3) | 10: Save(33), |
| BG | 11: Blackguard(4) | 11: Save(34), |
| BG | 12: Blackguard(5): DEX+1, Extend Spell, (DEX=21) | 12: Save(35), |
| BG | 13: Blackguard(6) | 13: Save(36), |
| BG | 14: Blackguard(7) | 14: Save(37), |
| BG | 15: Blackguard(8): Divine Might | 15: Save(38), |
| BG | 16: Blackguard(9): DEX+1, (DEX=22) | 16: Save(39), |
| F | 17: Fighter(6): Improved Critical: Heavy Crossbow | 17: Save(40), |
| BG | 18: Blackguard(10): Divine Shield | 18: Save(41), |
| Ro | 19: Rogue(3): {Uncanny Dodge I} | 19: Save(47), |
| Ro | 20: Rogue(4): DEX+1, (DEX=23) | 20: Pick Pocket(23), Tumble(10), UMD(20), |
| BG | 21: Blackguard(11): Great Dexterity I, (DEX=24) | 21: Save(1), |
| BG | 22: Blackguard(12) | 22: Save(2), |
| BG | 23: Blackguard(13): Epic Prowess | 23: Save(3), |
| BG | 24: Blackguard(14): DEX+1, Great Dexterity II, (DEX=26) | 24: Save(4), |
| BG | 25: Blackguard(15) | 25: Save(5), |
| BG | 26: Blackguard(16): Epic Weapon Focus: Heavy Crossbow | 26: Save(6), |
| BG | 27: Blackguard(17): Great Dexterity III, (DEX=27) | 27: Save(7), |
| BG | 28: Blackguard(18): DEX+1, (DEX=28) | 28: Save(8), |
| BG | 29: Blackguard(19): Epic Fiendish Servant | 29: Save(9), |
| BG | 30: Blackguard(20): Great Charisma I, (CHA=19) | 30: Tumble(5), |
| BG | 31: Blackguard(21) | 31: Save(1), |
| BG | 32: Blackguard(22): CHA+1, Epic Toughness I, (CHA=20) | 32: Save(2), |
| BG | 33: Blackguard(23): Great Charisma II, (CHA=21) | 33: Save(3), |
| BG | 34: Blackguard(24) | 34: Save(4), |
| BG | 35: Blackguard(25): Divine Shield of Steel | 35: Save(5), |
| BG | 36: Blackguard(26): CHA+1, Great Charisma III, (CHA=23) | 36: Save(6), |
| BG | 37: Blackguard(27) | 37: Save(7), |
| BG | 38: Blackguard(28): Armor Skin | 38: Save(8), |
| BG | 39: Blackguard(29): Blinding Speed / Flexible slot (Fire res, ESF:PP, etc.) | 39: Save(9), |
| BG | 40: Blackguard(30): CHA+1, (CHA=24) | 40: Tumble(5), |
| Statistic | Hitpoints: 414 | |
| Skillpoints: 78 | ||
| Saving Throws (Fortitude/Will/Reflex): 29/25/35 | ||
| Saving Throw bonuses: | ||
| BAB: 29 | ||
| AB (max, naked): 32 (melee), 42 (ranged) | ||
| AC (naked/mundane items only): 25/28 | ||
| Spell Casting: | ||
| Alignment Changes: 0 | ||
| Skills | Hide 5(14), Pick Pocket 23(32), Tumble 20(29), UMD 20(27) | |
“Why” part #
So there are few ways to build an efficient shooter:
The first axis of choice is dex/cha distribution. There are too sweetspots: 28 dex/24 cha, and 34/18 cha. The later reaches 71 AB (capped) and allow to use bow with both rapid shot and blinding speed, gaining significant dps boost from each feat.
The second axis of choice is bow/xbow. Xbow allows to go lower with dex without significant dps loss, since it doesn’t have both ab-decreasing feats and performs well with just 68 AB (capped), that corresponds to 28 base dex. Moreover, according to my tests, there is no statistically significant dps increase beyond this point when using green set and purple xbow/bolts. For example, according to multiple tests, in case of xbow increasing dex from 28 to 34 adds only 2% to damage output, and that difference isn’t even statistically significant. That probably happens in the tests also because spare dex points go to charisma and boost divine dmg bonus of might buff. So there is no point going beyond this AB/dex.
28 dex is also a sweet spot for padded armor, since it corresponds to 15 dex mod cap (and we can’t use cloth since we want a divine shield of steel). The rest of stat potential goes to cha, boosting the divine shield of steel and saves values, as well as increasing the length of divine buffs.
Now the xbow and large crits are fun, but how to build when you’re more of undead legolas type of person?
The main benefit of going bow is higher APR with rapid shot.
You have to sacrifice some AC/saves by lowering charisma to 18 and boosting dex to 34. That allows to have high enough AB to benefit from both APR boosting skills (blinding speed and rapid shot). Once you go below 68 AB there is no point of activating such skills, since there is no increase in DPS after this.
What is better, bow or crossbow? #
These are too different tools for different tasks. And thats what I like about current ADOH balance!
The main benefit of using bow version is 20% higher DPS on crit-immune targets.
The second benefit is higher chance of green DC hold-on-hit: with more APR you get higher chance to do so, as well as higher chance to interrupt those casters, who are your primary target to snipe first.
Crossbow on the other hand results in higher dps when geared with purple weapon/ammo crittable targets, and the xbow build itself is a bit tankier.
I’ve all these build versions in dungeons and raids, and they all performs pretty close and well.
Isn’t 8 con too low? #
No, it isn’t. the build gets to 650 hp thanks to pretty fat class selection, which is fine for ranged, and especially for a 86 AC crit immune ranged! This is buffed/barded dodge capped value however, but pretty easy to have it 90% of the time