Concept: Make an Arcane Archer with lots of Cleric levels, focus solely on wisdom, and get Zen Archery. Get yourself killed every time in PvP, but make your party members very glad you're along.
Skills: Max concentration and spellcraft. That'll leave 116 skill points to play with; I maxed tumble cross-class with 40 of them. Maybe you could take some hide and move silently, or spot and listen with the rest.
AB (longbow): +48/+43/+38/+33 (+46/+46/+41/+36/+31 with Rapid Shot, +1 within 30 feet)
Damage (longbow): 1d8+8 (+1 within 30 feet)
AC (full plate): 25 (includes 20 ranks of tumble)
Max HP: 392
Saves: Fortitude 28, Reflex 27, Will 31 (+8 vs. spells)
Obviously, all of these stats will benefit a great deal from Cleric buffs.
Spells (Wizard): 0 - Ray of Frost x4 1 - True Strike x4
There's a fair amount of flexibility in the build. The spell selection, of course, can be modified to your tastes. The saving throw feats were taken because there wasn't much of anything else I wanted; you could take Called Shot instead of Lightning Reflexes, and a couple more Great Wisdoms, or maybe Greater Ruin, instead of one or both of the epic ones. Trickery would be a good domain to take, but I stuck with Magic for RP purposes, and Healing on general principles (it's a support cleric build, right?). You could also min/max the starting stats to get more wisdom, if you wanted.
Advantages: -Level 23 Cleric with the Healing domain, and all the spellcasting that implies -Pretty good AB, really good with buffs -Good saves -4 attacks per round -Epic spells
Disadvantages: -Low AC (buffs can help with this) -Low damage (again, buffs) -Not enough caster levels to overcome spell resistance, or to effectively use offensive spells with saving throws -I want a level of Monk!
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I did test the build, so unless I've done something extraordinarily dumb, it should work as posted. Any comments?
Edited By griphook on 01/18/06 18:28
Whoops! There's a new forum sticky since the last time I was here!
Well, I got almost everything, but here's what I missed:
You might look at: Cleric of the Bow (Cleric 20 / Wizard 1 / AA 19) Click Here
Might help your build some. For example, why have 10 CHA when you aren't using any CHA in your build? Drop it to 8 and add it to something that can help the build more.
Personally, I don't know why anyone would make this char with WIZ instead of BARD. Bard allows UMD and Tumble, though it does take two levels of bard instead of one Wiz. My favorite AA build is Charismatic Divine Archer (bard 3/cleric 16/arcane archer 21) Click Here Which you can easily add more cleric levels for more spells.
Heh, I would go with 3 attacks and abuse Divine Power.
Why is he not a Cleric/AA/Bard? True Strike is hardly useful with all the Clerical buffs...
I personally wouldn't bother with the epic spells. If you can't get Epic Warding, it's really no use
Do support archers really need that high saves? You're not supposed to be running around the battlefield getting Dev-Critted and Wail-of-the-Banshee'd, or Fireballed, are you?
Good suggestions; I've taken most of them into account. If I'd noticed that Cleric of the Bow build, I might not have bothered, it's pretty solid. Anyway, here's the reworked version:
As to exploiting Divine Power for AB, it would work fine, but I'm trying not to let too much cheese into the build.
try to fit normal , greater and epic spell focus evocation in ... wis based without using implosion is a waste
you could drop cc and icc for those feats ... due to the fact you use a bow you cant use imp exp while casting so you can cast while using def casting mode
and take only 2 bard to get a cleric bonus feat more , you get nuthin from 3 bard except a few skill points more .
Edited By bloodymerc on 01/17/06 10:34
AA used to require 2 BARD and for some reason it'll let you do it with only 1 now. I've continued to use 2 just in case bioware 'fixes' this again.
Having the third bard level around 37-40 is good for maxing tumble.
Any cleric over 20 is probably a waste. Your spell DC's are going to be lower than most clerics so I'd try to make your char the best it can be at what it is. I see it is a powerful archer that can buff/heal/raise. I'd drop the 21,22 cleric and add two AA level's for more archer power.
I'd drop your CHA to 8 and increase your WIS. Drop CC and ICC since you are in the back plinking arrows for the most part. Plus you can always switch to def casting mode for making a heal/raise stick. I'd add blindfight and Great Wis for a total of 32 WIS. (bard spells don't help the build one bit) I'd probably drop two of the great wis for Extend Spell(for ext divine power) and Still Spell(for stilled mass heals).
-pc
cleric lvls over 20 make your spells last longer and you will be harder to dispell
blind fight is a must , forgot to mention to it
with wis 30 and +12 from items ( i ve never seen a server where you were not able to max out at least one ability ) and epic sf evocation your implosion dc will be 44 and most crit immune and /or death magic immune creatures have really low fort saves
dont forget your sof dc will be 40 and your hammer of gods will be 35 what is pretty good against fighter types , blade barrier is nice as well .
I'm sorry...I was thinking of overcoming SR...not your casting DC's. My error.
-pc
Why focus in divination... drop that and use it towards epic evo focus. Epic evo focus is a must for PvM [where you're mainly going to excel with this build, you could also do well in PvP party battles as a combat medic].
SR will be your problem though, as highlighted. I know of worlds where you will need at least 25 spell penetration points to get through mid-epic mobs. Drop the two reflex improvement feats.. you're not going to need them. Get in at least Greater spell penetration; that way you can punch through at least SR29 (roll of 1 does not autofail for SR checks afaik); which is about 3 below the max you can put on an item, so at worst you will rely on rolls of 4 to punch through well-equipped builds [yes monks get more, but hey you got some truly nasty buff spells in that case].
All in all a really interesting build. I really would consider dropping 5 AA levels though, and getting in more cleric for the bonus wis feat, but then that's just the spell chucker inside o' me speakin .
The divination isn't a Spell Focus, it's just the specialized school that you automatically pick as a level 1 Wizard, and I forgot to remove it when I changed to Bard.
I think you're right about the spell penetration, but I already dropped the saving throw feats.
Good suggestions; I've taken most of them into account. If I'd noticed that Cleric of the Bow build, I might not have bothered, it's pretty solid. Anyway, here's the reworked version:
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The divination isn't a Spell Focus, it's just the specialized school that you automatically pick as a level 1 Wizard, and I forgot to remove it when I changed to Bard.