Welcome to Neverwinter Oathbound Paladin Devotion Stella Build MOD14/15
Hey Guys!! Mork Kenji here! I’m back playing Neverwinter with a new Stella. There will be 2 build that you can choose:
Powershare Heal vs DPS Heal. Both have different set up, so it’s up to you to choose according to your game play.
This setup is similar with my Paladin Tank so it’s easy to switch anyway. LoL. Enjoy!!
Update: 25 December 2018
Below, available in pdf, is my Mod 15 PvE Control Wizard guide. I decided to make a separate guide for mod 15 rather than updating my Guide to Wizardry (I’ll update it eventually, maybe) for two reasons. First, due to the amount of changes a lot of things requires rewriting which will take extra time, and second, I wanted to make it a bit shorter and more user friendly and easier to read focusing on the most important things limiting a bit all the theorycrafting and math parts.
This is in my opinion the most optimal way to build and play CW in mod 15.
Just to be clear, this is guide focusing on explaining the class, its mechanics and how everything can work together depending on the situation. If you’re looking for a copy paste build, you’ll probably be disappointed because there isn’t one here. If you’re looking to run one and the same loadout with the same powers for everything, you should probably play a different class because CW won’t work like that. I made this guide with the intention to explain everything as simple as possible for average players.
This is the primary trash clearing loadout for dummies if you have high crit chance. Can also be used for soloing.
Evocation – increases AoE damage
Storm Spell (needs high crit chance) – extra burst in AoE
Oppressive Force – for mobs
Ice Knife – for single enemy
Chilling Cloud – primary at will when other powers are on cooldown
Storm Pillar – fully charge for extra 5% damage for 20 seconds
Conduit of Ice – for control and procs
Icy Terrain – for control, freezing mobs and procs
Disintegrate – for finishing single enemies, hardest hitting CW single target power
Steal Time – main source of damage in AoE, hardest hitting CW AoE power
If you have time before engaging enemies – fully charge Storm Pillar, then Conduit of Ice from far away, get close to mobs and drop Icy Terrain, immediately after if you have daily ready use Oppressive Force and Steal Time. Finish with Disintegrate and if mobs are still alive, use whatever is off of cooldown. When powers are on cooldown use Chilling Cloud.
This is the primary single target and support loadout for dummies. Hybrid buff/debuff/DPS loadout for bosses, can also be used for support or when not having high crit chance to run SS in AoE.
Chilling Presence (for more DPS) – increases damage of all powers OR 
Combustive Action (for more support – needs daily every 5 seconds) – 24% debuff to enemies hit by daily
Swath of Destruction – 20% debuff on bosses
Oppressive Force – if there are adds on bosses
Ice Knife – for single target damage
Ray of Frost – primary at will when other powers are on cooldown
Scorching Burst – to apply Smolder on boss and to proc Swath of Destruction 20% debuff
Ray of Enfeeblement – 40% debuff on boss
Icy Terrain – for chill stacks
Disintegrate – main source of damage on bosses, hardest hitting CW single target power
Fanning the Flame – secondary source of damage OR 
Icy Rays – for damage and more AP gain
Use Scorching Burst (just tap it once, no need to charge it) to apply Smolder on boss and proc 20% debuff, Ray of Enfeeblement for 40% debuff, drop Icy Terrain under boss for chill stacks and use Disintegrate, Fanning the Flame and Ice Knife for damage. Hold Ray of Frost when other powers are on cooldown. If boss spawns adds – use Oppressive Force.
Evocation (for more DPS) – increases AoE damage OR Swath of Destruction (for more support) – 20% debuff to all enemies affected by Smolder
Combustive Action – 24% debuff to all enemies hit by daily power and extra AP gain when mobs die
Oppressive Force – for mobs
Ice Knife – for single enemy
Chilling Cloud – primary at will when other powers are on cooldown
Scorching Burst – to manually apply Smolder (mostly not needed)
Fanning the Flame – for applying Smolder to enemies
Icy Terrain – for control, freezing mobs and procs
Disintegrate – for finishing single enemies, hardest hitting CW single target power
Steal Time – main source of damage in AoE, hardest hitting CW AoE power
Start with Fanning the Flame on biggest enemy from far away to apply Smolder, get close to mobs and drop Icy Terrain, immediately after if you have daily ready use Oppressive Force (to apply Smolder and debuff) and Steal Time. Finish with Disintegrate and if mobs are still alive, use whatever is off of cooldown. When powers are on cooldown use Chilling Cloud.
This is the support loadout for dummies offering more reliable Controlled Momentum 10% damage buff than random Fury 20% buff and it’s best used in synergy when having in group another better DPS CW running Renegade. It’s more forgiving than Rene to keep up Combustive Action debuff because it requires daily every 8 seconds instead of 5. Thanks to extra control it can provide with easy freezing mobs, it can also be helpful when soloing to not get overwhelmed by mobs at lower level.
The goal for this build is to maximize shareable power and recovery as much as possible. Running an AC and a DO is no longer considered “meta”, so it is more important than ever for an AC to share high amounts of power and be able to spam dailies like no one’s business. I maximize power through straight power, as well as through Assassin’s Covenant, which causes you to lose 10% (+2.5% for each additional) of your Defense, Deflection, and Life Steal, and gain the combination of lost stats as shareable power. In the interest of keeping this guide as straightforward as possible, I don’t go into depth about the reasons behind all of my choices. Safe to say, all decisions made were due to buffiness.
Note: This is an end-game support build for dungeon running and is not designed for solo content or newborn clerics who may have different needs as they build their way up.
Disclaimer: This is the build I run on my DC, however I’m sure there are many others that are just as good, if not better. I have done my best to make this as useful and accurate as possible. I even attempted to math, so you’re welcome.
Race:
1. Dragonborn
-Grants you +2 to any two stats.
-Power and Critical Strike are increased by 3% (This is shareable)
-Receive 5% more healing from all spells and abilities
2. Sun Elf
-Grants you +2 Intelligence.
-Grants you +2 Dexterity or +2. Charisma
-Inner Calm: Your inner peace and serenity cause you to focus more clearly on the task at hand. +2% Action Point gain
-Sun Elf Grace: Your bottomless grace increases your resistance to Crowd Control effects by 10%
3. Half Elf
-Grants you +2 Constitution
-Grants you +2 Charisma or +2 Wisdom
-Knack for Success: You are just naturally better at many facets of life, gaining +1% Deflect, +1% Critical Severity, and +1% Gold Find
-Dilettante: Grants +1 to a non-class Ability Score
Note: Dragonborn is the best due to the extra powershare. Due to looks, I chose to pass on that and use Sun Elf.
Effect per point (after 10):
STR – 1% Critical Chance, 1% Damage Resistance, 1% Stamina Regeneration
DEX – 1% AoE Damage Resistance, 0.5% Deflection Chance
WIS – 1% Damage Bonus, 1% Healing Bonus, 1% Control Bonus, 1% Control Resistance
CON – 2% Maximum Hit Points
INT – 1% Recharge Speed
CHA – 1% Combat Advantage Damage, 1% Recharge Speed, 1% Action Point Gain, 1% Companion Stat Bonus
Note: You are able to reroll the stats as much as you want. I went high CHA/WIS, but you can balance your stats depending on what you feel you need.
Power: The hands down most important stat for any AC. This should always be top priority, as you share a large portion of your power with your party. Not all power is shared, so the easiest way to get a decent measurement is to go by the power from items, seen when you hover over your power stat on your character sheet. 30k power by items is suitable for most high-tiered dungeons, but 40k is recommended and can be achieved with enough time or money.
Recovery: This is the second most important stat, impacting the recharge speed for encounters and action point gain. Without having a Divine Oracle DC to pop Hallowed Ground (HG), the AC needs to be able to keep Anointed Army (AA) and HG up as much as possible. And it doesn’t hurt to be able to spam off encounters as well to keep your rotation smooth.
Action Point Gain: Can be increased by initial Wisdom roll, Action Point Gain Jewel reinforcement kits on Neck, Waist, and Ring slots, offhand artifact stat, etc.
Critical Strike: Never increase at the expense of power, but it has it’s uses. For this build, healing is a side effect of buffs, not the goal. However, heals can crit, so if it’s not taking away from your power go for it.
Defense/Deflection/Lifesteal: As high as possible to increase power.
At-Wills:
Encounters:
Class Features:
Daily Powers:
(Assuming you start combat with no divinity)
Boss Fight Scenario:
You are standing in the circle about to enter a boss fight. Drop Divine Glow on as many of your allies as possible, then pop Anointed Army immediately after spawning in. Position yourself behind the highest DPS and stick to him/her like glue. Then use your At-Wills Blessing of Battle until you have full divinity. Divine Glow on yourself, DPS and boss, then use your R1 to go into divinity mode and drop another Divine Glow. Spam Break the Spirit on the boss two times, using up the rest of your divinity. At this point you will have three blue orbs circling you, allowing you to cast a fully empowered encounter. Then you start over with building up your divinity. For the first fully empowered attack I use a fully empowered Exaltation and from that point on only Break the Spirit is empowered. After every empowered Break the Spirit refresh Exaltation on your chosen DPS (basically treating Exalt like a Devo Pally treats Bane).
AA > DG > BoB until Divinity is full > DG >
R1 > DG > BtS until until out of Divinity > fully Empowered Exaltation on highest dps
After that BoB until Divinity is full > DG > R1 > DG > BtS until out of Divinity > fully Empowered BtS > Exalt highest DPS and continue until everything is dead.
Mob Fight:
Same basic principle. However, if you’re with a group that kills the mobs before you can even get halfway through your rotation, you can switch it up. You can focus on casting Divine Glow as often as possible, so you can spam Anointed Army, as keeping that buff up is more beneficial than debuffing an enemy that is dying half a second after you cast Break the Spirit anyway. Throw in exaltation if your DPS aren’t running around like coked-out butterflies.
Spam dailies as often as possible. AA always during mob fights, alternate AA and HG during boss fights. AA is best popped right before enemies are engaged for maximum power share.
These are my “NC AC” feats (no cleanse Anointed Champion). I dropped Cleanse for the simple reason that cleanse can impair the damage of a GF DPS who runs Survivor’s Wraps.
If you have a spare loadout, you can put a point in Cleanse for when no one is running Survivor’s Wraps. It can come in handy when your group gets poisoned (i.e. Haiti fight in FBI).
As a self-described power hungry DC, all of my equipment choices were made based on the power share capabilities. So much of it is situationally based that I list the how’s and when’s of the power on equipment for the ones that have multiple viable options so you can choose what works best for you.
I use “->” to show the conversion of Defense/Deflection/Life Steal to Power. Numbers are based on having 3 Assassin’s Covenants and I ignored decimal points to simplify things.
Head:
1. Rex Corona (Tier 3 Soshenstar Hunt)
+2,149 Power
+1,066 Defense converts to -> 159 Power
– Equip power stacking up to 2,400 before it ends at 2 mins
**Total power share stacks up to 4,708; after the 2 mins dropping down to 2,308
2. Guise of the Wolf Clan (Mysterious Merchant)
+516 Power
+1,490 Defense -> 223 Power
– Equip power + 2,000 when in group
**Total power share 2,739
3. Decaying Habit (Barovia Hunt)
+2,735 Power
+605 Defense -> 90 Power
– Equip power for the first minute stacks up to 2,100. After the 1st minute, power drops by 250 every 5 seconds, to a total loss of 3,000.
**Total power share stacks up to 4,925; after the 1st minute dropping to 1,925
Note: Rex is best overall but Decaying is best in melt groups and Guise is best in extended fights.
Chest:
1. Faithlord’s Restoration Chasuble (Seals of the Crown)
+1,762 Power
+1,433 Defense -> 214 Power
– Equip power when you’re health is 50% or more +1,500 Power
**Total power share 3,476 (as long as you stay above 50% health, which should be 99% of the time)
2. Bronzewood Restoration Eziwa (Masterwork)
+2,734 Power
+1,470 Defense -> 220 Power
– Equip power when facing only one enemy +1,500 Power
**Total power share 4,454 with one enemy; 2,954 with multiple enemies
3. Knotted Garbs (Barovia Hunt)
+2,552 Power
+1,082 Defense -> 162 Power
– Equip power for the 1st 10 seconds of combat +1,500 Power
**Total power share 4,214 for the first 10 seconds, then 2,714 for the remainder of the fight
Note: Faithlord’s is best overall, but if there is only one enemy Bronzewood beats it out. Knotted is best if you can murder everything in 10 seconds.
Arms:
1. The Executioner’s Bracers (Barovia Salvage drops, CR)
+3,281 Power
+605 Defense -> 90 Power
**Total power share 3,371
2. Vivified Restoration Isikrinis (Seals of the Brave)
+1,465 Power
+860 Defense -> 129 Power
-Equip power when healing or damaging your target for more than 15% of your maximum hit points, gain 1% power
**Total power share 1,594 + ??? (this will vary based on your own power and it would be difficult to gauge how often it procs and the amount during combat)
Note: The Primal arms have the potential for a ton of power share, but is reliant on you being able to proc it consistently. Executioner’s is more reliable and a safer bet.
Mainhand:
Feathered Teotlanextli (Masterwork)
Offhand:
Feathered Ilhuilli (Masterwork)
Feet:
1. Faithlord’s Restoration Pigaches (Seal of the Crown)
+1,699 Power
+955 Defense -> 143 Power
**Total power share 1,842
2. Bronzewood Restoration Qalisas (Masterwork)
+1,758 Power
+980 Defense -> 147
**Total power share 1905
Note: The Bronzewood has slightly more power, however the equip bonus for Faithlord’s gives +1,500 Recovery when your health is more than 50% (versus the Critical chance equip bonus for the Bronzewood).
Neck:
Fanged Beaded Amulet (Masterwork)
Rings:
1. Ring of the Gravestriker +5 (Omu Patrols)
+543 Power
– Equip power when health is greater than 85% +1,000 Power
**Total power share 1,543 when health is greater than 85%
2. Ring of the Gravestriker +4 (Omu Patrols)
+478 Power
– Equip power when health is greater than 85% +800 Power
**Total power share 1,278 when health is greater than 85%
3. Beaded Restoration Ring (Masterwork)
+651 Power (673 if +1)
**Total power share 651 (673 if +1)
4. Bronzewood Raid Ring (Masterwork)
+651 Power (673 if +1)
– Equip power when facing only one enemy +1,000 Power
**Total power share 1,651(1,673 if +1) when facing one enemy
Note: Equip powers of Gravestriker rings of the same rank do not stack, and same type of masterwork rings equip powers do not stack.
Waist:
Beaded Sash (Masterwork)
Shirt:
1. Prelate Gemmed Exquisite Elemental Chainmail (Professions)
+228 Power
+172 Defense -> 25 Power
**Total power share 253
2. Bloodstained Shirt (Epic GWD)
+379 Defense/+928 Life Steal ->196 Power
– Equip power gain 25 Power for each percentage of health you are missing
**Total power share 196 + Equip power
3. Shirt of the Chultan Merchant
+462 Defense -> 69 Power
– Equip power gain 150 Recovery for each member in your party
Note: Ideally a DC should be standing back behind the DPS and buffing, not taking damage. So the Bloodstained shouldn’t proc enough to outweigh the power share of the Prelate’s.
Pants:
1. Makos’ Spare Travel Pants (Manycoins Bank Heist Skirmish)
+110 Defense -> 16 Power
– Equip power for the first 10 seconds of combat +1,500 Power
**Total power share 1,516 for the first 10 seconds, 16 after that
2. Adamantine Chausses (Masterwork)
+469 Power (488 if +1)
+209 Defense -> 31 Power (32 if +1)
**Total power share 500 (520 if +1)
Note: Makos’ gives extremely high power at first but after the 30 seconds Adamantine shares more.
Major Power Kits
Major Action Point Gain Jewels
Main:
Sigil of the Devoted
Heart of the Black Dragon
Additional Artifacts:
In order of recommendation
*Empowered Illusionist’s Mask (+1000 power, +1000 recovery, +600 AP gain)
Tome of Ascendance (+1000 power, +1000 defense, +600 deflection, +600 lifesteal)
Symbol of Fire (+1000 power, +600 recovery, +1000 defense)
Symbol of Air (+1000 power, +1000 recovery, +600 movement)
*Can only be acquired through Halloween event.
Weapon:
Plague Fire
Frost
Dread
Armor:
Barkshield
Negation
Soulforged
Offensive Slots:
Radiants for power
Defensive Slots:
Black Ice, it gives the highest amount of stats for converting to power through Assassin’s Covenant.
Companion Slots:
Bonding Runestones
Companion Equipment Slots:
Silveries for Recovery as companion equip stats don’t powershare.
If you’re concerned about diminishing returns with recovery and have no issues keeping your dailies up, Gigantics give a nice mix of Crit, Recovery and Arm Pen.
Only one per category as multiple potions, elixirs, etc will not stack. For example, if you take a recovery potion and then a crit potion you will only benefit from the crit potion. Not all varieties of each are listed, as some are suboptimal. Power from potions and other consumables does not share.
Potions:
Enhanced Tidespan Potion (+1,000 Recovery, duration 1 hour and persists through death)
Enhanced Potion of Accuracy (+1,000 Critical, duration 1 hour and persists through death)
Superior gives the same stats and length but do not persist through death. Effervescent gives 2k stats but are pricey.
Elixirs:
Persist through death and last one hour.
Sunlord’s Gift Elixir (+350 Recovery, chance to gain 5% of your Action Points over 20 seconds)
Elixir of Fate (+1 to Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma)
Wild Storm Elixir (+350 Critical Strike, increases your Critical Severity by 10%)
Stronghold Food:
Purchased with guild marks, lasts 30 mins.
Ratatouille (+5,000 additional Maximum Hit Points, +1,000 Recovery)
Seared Tuna (+5,000 additional Maximum Hit Points, +1,000 Critical Strike)
Event Food:
Lathander’s Dew (+1% Action Points every 3 seconds, duration 30 mins)
Watermelon Sorbet (+10% Power, +10% Recovery, duration 30 mins)
Pumpkin Soup (+3% Critical Chance, +5% Critical Severity, duration 35 mins)
Squash Soup (+3% Critical Chance, +5% Critical Severity, duration 30 mins)
Reusables (potion tray slotted)
*Empowered Chain of Scales (randomly one of the following:+1,000 Regeneration, +2,100 Power, +420 Defense, +6% Life Steal Severity, +6% Deflection, +10% Stamina Regeneration, +6% Critical Severity)
Adorable Pocket Pet (randomly one of the following: -5% threat, +5% Critical Severity, +250 Regeneration, +250 Action Point Gain)
Tymora’s Lucky Coin (+371 to a random stat)
*Must be empowered through Omu hunts/dungeons, starts with only +1,000 Regeneration.
Other
Invocation Blessing (randomly one of the following: +427 Critical Strike/Deflection, +427 Power/Defense, +427 Armor Pen/Lifesteal, +427 Recovery/Regeneration, 15 min duration)
Assassin’s Covenant
You lose 10% of your Defense, Deflection, and Life Steal, and gain the combination of lost stats as Power.
Increases by 2.5% with each stack (12.5% with 2, 15% with 3, etc)
1 Regal, 2 Enlightened
Shepherd’s Devotion
Whenever you use a Daily power, your teammates Defense, Deflection, and Movement are increased by 5% of your Power for 10 seconds.
1 Regal, 1 Barbed, 1 Illuminated
Artificer’s Persuasion
Whenever you use an Artifact power, your Recovery, Movement, Action Point Gain, and Stamina Gain are increased by 10% of your Power for 15 seconds.
2 Barbed, 1 Illuminated
For the insignia slots, Brutality is BiS because it has power and recovery. For a slightly more reasonable price, you can run all Dominance and Mastery.
Combat Power:
Warpainted/Commander Tyrannosaur
Summons the Tyrannosaur, causing your enemies fear, rooting them for 5 seconds, and lowering their defense by 10% for 10 seconds.
If targeting a minion, the Tyrannosaurus will consume them.
Equip Power:
+2000 power (epic) / +4000 power (legendary)
or
Flail Snail (epic) / Coastal Flail Snail (legendary)
Using a Daily Power grants 15% / 25% of your total Action Points over 10 seconds.
Summoned:
Con Artist (3 rings, easy to gear)
Chultan Tiger (2 rings, 1 neck, gives slightly better dps)
Sellsword (1 neck, 1 waist, 1 swordknot, difficult to gear with not as high stats as mastercraft rings, +300 power)
Actives:
(All were chosen due to power as Active Bonus)
Deepcrow Hatchling (+1,500 power)
Skeleton (+660 power, +660 lifesteal)
Archmage’s Apprentice (+660 power, +660 lifesteal)
Ghost (+400 power)
Dragonborn Brawler (+300 power)
Dragonborn Raider (+300 power)
Sharandar:
Dark Fey Hunter – 1/1
Fey Elusiveness – 1/1
Elven Haste – 1/1
Elven Tranquility – 1/1
Elvish Fury – 1/1
Dread Ring:
Reliquary Keepers Strength – 1/1
Evoker’s Thirst – 1/1
Forbidden Piercing – 1/1
Enraged Regrowth – 1/1
Endless Consumption – 1/1
Icewind Dale:
Weathering the Storm – 1/1
Appreciation of Warmth – 1/1
Rapid Thaw – 1/1
Cool Resolve – 1/1
Winter’s Bounty – 1/1
Underdark:
Primordial Might – 1/1
Primordial Regeneration – 1/1
Drow Meditation – 1/1
Dwarves Stamina – 1/1
Abyssal Strikes – 1/1
Tyranny of Dragons:
Dragon’s Claws – 1/1
Dragon’s Shadow – 1/1
Dragonscale Defense – 1/1
Dragon’s Greed – 1/1
Dragon’s Thirst – 2/3
Dragon’s Fury – 1/3
Maze Engine:
Abyssal Syphoning – 1/1
Demonic Influence – 1/1
Demonic Swiftness – 1/1
Engine Inspiration – 1/1
Elemental Evil:
Wave of Force – 1/1
Heart of Stone – 1/1
Blazing Resilience – 1/1
Wall of Wind – 1/1
Storm King’s Thunder:
Cold Hearted – 1/1
Hardy Constitution – 1/1
Chill Determination – 1/1
Glacial Strength – 1/1
Healing Warmth – 3/3
The Cloaked Ascendancy:
Aura of Hope – 1/1
Fiery Frenzy – 1/1
Fey Briars – 1/1
Vision of Beyond – 1/1
Jungles of Chult:
Tyrant’s Terror – 3/3
Overgrown – 2/3
Fight not Flight – 1/3
Death’s Blessing – 2/2
Ravenloft:
Ageless – 3/3
Bloodlust – 1/1
(or Righteous Sacrifice 1/1)
Acquisitions Incorporated:
Confidence Boost – 3/3
Taking a Break – 1/1
Welcome, Scourge Warlock. This guide is brought to you by fellow warlocks over at the Facemelters United discord server. Given the lack of a comprehensive, up-to-date guide for warlocks, we have decided to bring one to you. In this guide, we will cover the basics of SW mechanics, as well as your three main builds you should go for: Hellbringer (HB) Temptation, HB Damnation, and Soulbinder (SB) Fury.
An important note: This is a guide. Following this guide isn’t going to guarantee you Paingiver right away, but putting in time and practice will certainly help that, if such is your goal. Your playstyle may vary, and you may find a better way to do things than this guide lays out. We welcome any questions and feedback you may have, and encourage you to experiment and push yourself. While we at Facemelters feel that the content within is solid and well founded, there is always a way to improve. We hope you find that way, and pass the information on to the rest of the community.
Happy Melting!
Metallic Ancestry Dragonborn, followed closely by Human are currently (Mod 15) the best races for a dps SW (on an end-game toon at least) thanks to the 3% buffed power from MADB and the 3 additional Heroic feat points which will be put in Blood Pact of Cania from Human, with Tiefling coming up close. But ultimately it doesn’t matter beyond a few percentage points.
| Stats | Gained Effects for every point above 10 |
Constitution
|
+1% Damage +2% (base) HP |
Charisma
|
+1% Crit chance +1% Combat Advantage Damage +1% Companion Influence |
Intelligence
|
-1% Resistance ignored +1% Recharge speed |
Constitution and Charisma are the 2 most important stats for a SW, with Constitution being better on an end-game toon with high (100%) critical strike chance, while Charisma is more interesting for a newer character. Intelligence is not worth investing into since it has a low impact on endgame performance due to cooldown resets from a well built party.
Since Constitution is NOT the Warlock’s primary stat while still being its +% Damage enhancer, it pretty much makes the best initial roll:
| STR | CON | DEX | INT | WIS | CHA |
| 10 | 16 | 10 | 12 | 10 | 16 |
Ability scores are not rolled individually. Instead, all six values are selected simultaneously, by randomly picking a row from the following table:
| Primary | Secondary | A | B | C | ∑ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18* | 13 | 13 | 10 | 10 | 8 | 72 |
| 18 | 13 | 13 | 10 | 8 | 10 | 72 |
| 18 | 13 | 13 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 72 |
| 17 | 14 | 13 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 74 |
| 17 | 13 | 14 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 74 |
| 17 | 13 | 13 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 75 |
| 17 | 13 | 13 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 75 |
| 16** | 16 | 12 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 74 |
| 16 | 15 | 13 | 11 | 11 | 9 | 75 |
| 16 | 14 | 14 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 75 |
| 16 | 13 | 15 | 11 | 11 | 9 | 75 |
| 16 | 12 | 16 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 74 |
| 15 | 15 | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 76 |
| 15 | 15 | 13 | 11 | 10 | 12 | 76 |
| 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 12 | 11 | 77 |
| 15 | 13 | 15 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 76 |
| 15 | 13 | 15 | 11 | 10 | 12 | 76 |
| 15 | 13 | 14 | 12 | 12 | 11 | 77 |
So – in our example, you rolled for the highest Charisma – 18 and a Constitution of 13 (In pink and marked with * in the table above). As you levelled up to rank 70, you added a point to Charisma (a further 7 points) and 7 points also in Constitution. That means that you have
Combat Advantage (Charisma) : 18 + 7 = 25
Damage (Constitution) : 13 + 7 = 20.
Every point above 10 will give you 1% towards your Combat Advantage (Charisma)/Damage (Constitution).
Remember that all classes have a 15% combat advantage as base too
Combat Advantage(Charisma) : 25 – 10 + 15 (Base) = 30%
Damage (Constitution) : 20 – 10 = 10%
How much DPS does that mean ?
As you can see from the graph, 30% Combat Advantage (25 points in Charisma) = an 11.5% DPS increase plus the DPS increase from Constitution : 20 – 10 = 10%
11.5 + 10 = 21.5%
That’s a combined 21.5% DPS increase if we roll for the highest possible Charisma that we can get.
Let’s try that again but this time look at maxing Constitution.
Remember that Constitution is a secondary stat for us Warlocks and the highest we can roll is 16 for Constitution (In blue and marked with ** in the table above) and 16 for Charisma. If we also add in the 7 points for Constitution and Charisma like we did before :
Combat Advantage (Charisma) : 16 + 7 = 23
Damage (Constitution) : 16 + 7 = 23
As it’s 1 point for anything over 10 that gives us
Combat Advantage (Charisma) : 23 – 10 +15 (Combat Advantage base) = 28%
Damage (Constitution) : 23 – 10 = 13%
Our graph shows us that 13 points
As you can see from the graph, 28% Combat Advantage (16 points in Charisma) = an 10.1% DPS increase plus the DPS increase from Constitution : 23 – 10 = 13%
10.1 + 13 = 23.1%
That’s a combined 23.1% DPS increase if we roll for the highest possible Constitution that we can get.
When we look at how the stats work for us and how the stat points equate to DPS it’s clear to see that when you’re near end-game and able to hit the Critical Strike cap then you should be looking to roll for Constitution as your max stat.
| Constitution is better to take then Charisma |
| Paragon / Tree | Fury (Damage) | Damnation (Puppet build) | Temptation (Heal/Buff) |
| Hellbringer
(DPS/Buffs) Always use Pillar of Power. |
+ More consistent damage – One less encounter slot due to having to use PoP |
+ Beginner/Solo Friendly – One less encounter slot due to having to use PoP |
+ More Buffs + A tiny bit of mitigation + Tons of Heals + Very simple to play |
| Soulbinder
(Single Target DPS/ better self-heal over time) |
+ High Single Target Damage – Risky to use on AoE |
+ Beginner/Solo Friendly – You lose HB buffs |
Use Hellbringer instead, your team needs the buffs |
Many people believe that Hellbringer is easier to play than Soulbinder. The Hellbringer paragon has your buffs available quicker than Soulbinder and primarily revolves around the Pillar of Power encounter power. The damage is a little lower than what the Soulbinder paragon can deliver but the lifesteal aspect is a bit better and helps with some survivability. It’s a great path for playing to help you understand the Warlock, and good for levelling up your toon. Due to the nature of the Pillar of Power it’s also the only paragon that you should be using for the Temptation tree. The Temptation Tree is used to build the Templock and what you’ll see most people asking for when looking to put runs together for CRL, CODG etc.
Templock covers 2 roles : healer and buffer.
The buffing aspect
is not tied to gear at all
and is very easy to pick up. All you need to do is place your Pillar of Power (with Power of the Nine Hells Feat) correctly, use your tab/RB on the main target and throw Dreadtheft as often as you can.
The healing aspect is directly tied to the damage you do and your lifesteal stat, so you need to increase both your dps and your lifesteal if you want bigger heals. The way healing works for the warlock is based on the lifesteal chance, not the lifesteal severity. Let’s say you deal 1M damage and have a lifesteal chance of 20%. If you successfully performed a lifesteal then you will heal your team for 20% of 1M = 200,000 HP that you’ve just healed for. But you’re constantly hitting, you’ll have Pillar of Power (AoE powers only 30% effective) down which will be dealing damage and healing, you’ll be using other powers which will also be dealing damage (some over time too) and every tick of damage that you deal has a chance to heal you and your team. So look at your damage in the combat log, see what you’re hitting for and then think “Hey, I’ve got 40% lifesteal and doing 2M in damage, that’s … erm … 800,000 HP – do any players have that much HP?”
The answer is “No”, so 40% lifesteal chance would be too much. Your team will be full of health but think about all those stat points you put into lifesteal – you could use those to help your Defenses Ignored, Critical Strike or Power. Work out how much is good for you.
The Soulbinder paragon adds a new mechanic to the SW : Soul Sparks.
There are 5 levels of Sparks and each level contains up to 6 sparks (max : 30 sparks)
Soul Sparks are generated when inflicting a critical hit or by using the at-will ‘Essence Defiler’, or the daily ‘Immolation Spirits’, and they have several effects:
You need some time to generate sparks (depending on the setup you use), and part of the game becomes managing your sparks (you ideally want 2~4 completed levels if you’re playing with soul scorch) and not losing your momentum.
Auxiliary Stats all have very high diminishing returns and it is, in most cases, not worth putting more than 1000 points into them. At 1000 points they will provide an increase of 8.1% to their related stat. Auxiliary Stats are:
Action Point Gain, Combat Advantage Bonus, Control Bonus, Life Steal Severity, Stamina Gain, Incoming Healing Bonus, AoE Resist, Control Resist, Companion Influence, Gold Gain.
Thanks to
Mcklaud (Hunter Ranger guide) for the easy breakdown
The best damage multiplier is Armor Penetration until your resistance ignored exceeds the mob’s damage resistance
But with enough gear it is easy to have too much of it, so you shouldn’t focus on it more than you have to. Your equipment will likely get you most of the armour penetration stats that you need an easy quick boost is the epic mount insignia of aggression.
If you find that you’re still way under the mark on the armour penetration have a look an option to consider is taking the Armour Penetration Guild Boon if you have it; this is a huge amount of stats though so you’ll likely have way too much and would need to re-do your stats again as a result.
The second-best damage multiplier is critical strike (especially if you play a SB build, which is dependent on critical strike to get its buffs and fire its main damage encounter). Aim for 95 %, as it can also be temporarily buffed by potions and food from the guild.
In reality
there’s an Optimal Power/Critical strike ratio which depends on a lot of factors
, but given that you should run bonding stones and that most parties should increase your Power (and your pet’s which is redirected to you) to some extent, it is better to invest in critical strike to have a functional toon.
This is predominantly the “dump” stat where you’ll dump any extra stats into once you’ve hit the caps. It’s generally got a higher priority than recovery as you’ll do more damage with each hit if you have more power, however you’ll hit more often with more recovery. Power is still better than recovery especially for solo play, when you get to end-game and running dungeons, you’ll be given a ton of power from the support classes and at this point you should be ensuring you have enough recovery.
About 12k (procced) recovery is nice, but that’s not necessary to invest heavily in it if you run with an OP and a good AC DC (which is what most end-game parties want anyway).
The Ruthless enchantments come with both Critical Strike and Recovery, as well as the Gigantic and Black Ice.
These are not in order of priority are these will differ depending on what you actually need.
No matter how much defence you have some enemies will still hit you for more than you can defend against, especially as some have piercing damage. You need to be able to take the hit, this is where your amount of hit points come into play. HP is the most important defensive stat for this reason, and it is the only defensive that that increases your damage independent of mount power bonuses, thanks to Aura of Courage from an Oathbound Paladin.
The defence stat is there to mitigate the amount of damage that you’ll receive from a hit. It won’t stop piercing damage. For tank builds, most players get to the 80% mark and stop there, anything more isn’t really helpful. You can spec up to 100% if you choose to do so but the benefit from the extra 20% is not as good as the benefit from HP, deflect or lifesteal. Your team should have some Shepherd’s Devotion mount powers slotted, so you can expect an increase in your defence and deflection when that procs.
This was explained a bit in Soul Desecration but I’ll put it here again for ease of reference:
The actual formula is complex but to give a very simple explanation of how this works: Let’s say you hit for 100,000 and you have a 50% lifesteal chance and a 75% lifesteal severity. If you had performed a lifesteal on the 100,000 hit then you would steal health of 75,000 (100,000 * 0.75). You heal your team for the amount of lifesteal chance that you have, which is 50%. So, you’d heal the team for 37,500 (75,000 * 0.5). AoE powers are only 30%, but that’s 30% from each target hit.
Given that for most stats 400 points equals 1% for a stat then you might want to put a few points into lifesteal. You do get a nice amount of lifesteal as you’re a Warlock and some from your boons too. You want to ensure that you can heal yourself between one hit and the next and also heal your team. Consider how hard you will hit the target. If you’re in a team and you find that you’re hitting the enemy for 500,000, that’s about 187,500 healing that you’re delivering (assuming 50% lifesteal chance and 75% lifesteal severity) which is more than enough to heal a character from almost dead to full health. You’ll be lifestealing frequently so you don’t need to go crazy with the amount of lifesteal that you get.
For a Warlock your deflection rating is really low and dumping points into this stat for the rare chance it will proc is not really beneficial compared to HP, Defence or Lifesteal. If you get some deflection from your gear because you chose it for a different stat then great but don’t actively pursue it.
Combat Advantage is used to inflict more damage to the target if you have combat advantage over them. To know if you have combat advantage, look at the circle on the ground underneath the enemy. You’ll see a white area there, that’s where you want to stand to gain the combat advantage; it will turn purple or blue when you have it. Scourge Warlocks have some powers that give combat advantage regardless of your positioning in relation to the enemy which makes it easier to get a bit more damage. The combat advantage stat suffers from some harsh diminishing returns meaning that the more you put into it the less you’re going to get from each point you put into it.
In the graph above (courtesy of Janne (http://jannenw.info/pages/mechanics/ca)) you can see how bad that really is. Putting about 1200 points here gives a nice benefit to our damage (we also have a 15% CA bonus as standard) the 8.69% for 1200 points is added to our 15% giving a total of 23.69% combat advantage.
Action Point Gain (APG) above 1000 isn’t always a good thing to aim for; throwing more into the APG won’t make the daily come back that much faster after 1000 points. Recovery will help with APG, and power cooldowns, which, by extension, also boosts APG. APG gems in a companion will not transfer more APG to you, as anything that a companion does not have a stat in on their sheet will not transfer to you via bondings or augment powers.
If you’re into PVP, then on your PVP build you can pick up some extra glory is you would like to. It’s coming from the utility slots but as you’ll likely want to be moving fast to either chase a fleeing opponent, race to the next checkpoint or in some-cases run away, you’ll likely be running with the Dark enchantment for the movement.
Unless you are constantly swapping enchantments from one piece or gear to another when switching loadouts then you can drop a few enchants in the utility slots to pick up extra gold but honestly, it’s so easy to come by that you’ll only use your utility slots for either increased refinement point drops with either the Fey, Dragon, Quartermaster enchants or Dark for the extra movement speed.
This part will assume the following :
Your Critical Severity should be at least equal to :
75 (base) + 15 (Devastating Critical feat) + 6.5 (Tyranny of Dragons boon) +2 (Icewind Dale boon) +2 (Cloaked Ascendancy boon) + 10 (Wild Storm Elixir) + 2.5 Razorwood = 113
And your Combat Advantage :
(15 (base) + 14 (Charisma) + 9 (Tertiary Stat))*1.1 (Underdark boon) +25 = 66.8
For a total of 179.8% Critical severity + Combat Advantage
Which means that 10% additional severity grants 10/(100+179.8) = 3.57 % damage increase
As for traditional stats, the only 2 offensive stats left are recovery and power. Given that the dps increase you get through recovery in a group is hard to quantify (it mostly comes down to gut feeling and the groups you run with), I will just say that Recovery is better on Hellbringer than it is on Soulbinder, and that with a good group, you don’t need to invest at all with Soulbinder. If you need recovery, you can use Black Ice or Ruthless Enchants (on an optimised toon).
For Power, since 100k Power is a x3.5 damage multiplier, you need 400*3.5 = 1400 Power for a 1% damage increase. The better the party, the less your own power makes a difference.
In an end-game team with tons of debuff, A 10% buff is much better than a 10% debuff as debuff suffers from both relative increase (since debuffs are additive), and diminishing returns (which is something introduced in mod 12). This explains why the debuff from class-features (and their associated off-hand bonus) are subpar. More info can be found on
Janne’s Site
| Name | Effect |
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Gain 6/12/18/24/30% more Action Points when attacking Cursed targets with At Wills.
With Hellbringer you’ll use Dailies and At-Wills in Group content, if you’re at 100% crit chance without Weapon Mastery then take this but you should really try to balance the stats on your character as that’s 1200 points that could be better used in another stat. You can either take Toughness (9.89% HP boost) for extra survival or take Energizing Curse |
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Increases your Critical Chance by 1/2/3%.
Notes: As Critical Strike is easy to get at end-game level you’re using 3 feat points that equates to 1200 Critical Strike. At end-game if you’ve got too much crit then you could ignore this and put the points into Energizing Curse as you’ll be using At-Wills regardless of how good your cooldowns are, however on a fully optimised toon that’s 1200 points you’ve got in crit that could be in power. |
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Increases your maximum Hit Points by 3/6/9% (9.89% HP boost).
You’ll want this on Group Dungeons and, when solo, you’ll melt things without a worry at end-game level. It’s great for the survivability and also extra DPS when in a group with a Paladin and Aura of Courage. |
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Shadow Slip consumes 2/4/6/8/10% less stamina.
Notes: You’ll never need this, you’ll move plenty fast in dungeon with Shepherd’s Devotion and for solo runs there’s much better feats to use. |
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Your Encounter powers deal 2/4/6% more damage.
You’re using encounter powers and they’re the main source of your damage for Creeping Death. Put 3 points here. |
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You create 2/4/6% less threat.
It’s worthless. |
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Encounter cooldowns reduced by 2/4/6/8/10%.
This is roughly 2000 points in the recovery stat, even with mount bonuses in end-game content, you’ll still have powers on cooldown, this at least reduces that further. Put 5 points in here. |
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When under 30% Hit Points, Heals are 5/10/15% more effective on you.
On the rare chance that you’re this low on health, your lifesteal will heal you for 15% more. With the amount of damage that you deal, coupled with how much health you have, a normal lifesteal will get you have to full health without this feat. It’s just a waste of feat points at end-game. |
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Increases your Life Steal Chance by 1/2/3%.
It’s ok for low item level players but at end-game, your lifesteal and the amount that you’ll lifesteal will be more than enough for any dungeon, it’s just a waste of feat points. |
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Increases the amount of bonus damage Constitution gives you by 1/2/3/4/5%.
Each point in here gives about a 1.18% dps increase so 5 points here. The total damage increase with 28 Con and 5 points is 5.9 % (1+5*1.18*0.01=1.059 Credits goes to @thefabricant for the formula) If you’re not human take only 2 points in Blood Pact of Cania which is a bit more than 1% damage increase per point. |
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Increases your Critical Severity by 5/10/15%.
You’re at 100% critical strike chance, take this to maximise damage. |
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Increases the damage dealt by Lesser Curse and Deadly Curse 10/20/30%.
Scornful curse doesn’t always proc when you think it should. Independent tests done by people on Discord show that it’s only proccing on 1 or 2 hits. Better to place the points into something that’s more consistently working to maximise. |
| Name | Effect | ||||||||||||||||||
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When a Cursed target is killed, you deal 40% of your weapon damage as Necrotic damage to up to 3 targets near the recently slain.
· Notes: This scales with power and buffs. · Solo: It’s just rubbish · Trash: You’ll get this additional damage as long as you curse the target (any curse will do) even if you’re not the person that kills the target. At end-game the mobs die super-fast so you’ll not really notice that this has kicked in. · Boss: This would only proc on a boss with adds and even then, you’d have to hit the add near other adds/the boss for it to proc. It sounds great but it’s impractical to use it. |
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After a critical hit, your next attack will also deal 8/16/24/32/40% of your weapon damage as Necrotic damage.
· Notes: This scales with power and buffs and the effect does not expire when you leave combat. Critical Promise mostly behaves like a weapon enchant proc on your next hit when you critically strike. If you hit several enemies at the same time, you will only deal the damage to one of your targets. It’s the best of the two you can choose from . · Solo: Has better use in solo play against mobs as well at end-game compared to Daughter’s Promises. · Trash: You’ll get this buff as long as you curse the target (any curse will do) even if you’re not the person that kills the target. At end-game the mobs die super-fast so you might not get a chance to get the benefit from the first mob, but you’ll get it on the second as it doesn’t expire. · Boss: This will proc on the boss as soon as you perform a critical strike and will take effect on your next attack. These don’t stack but if you’re at 100% critical strike chance then after your first hit you’ll have this buff until the end of the fight. |
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When a Cursed target is killed, your damage is increased by 1/2/3/4/5% for 15 seconds.
· Notes: This doesn’t stack, so killing 1, 2 or 10, you’ll only get the 5% damage increase. · Solo: When leveling and it takes a little bit of time to kill the mobs it has some benefit to you. When you’re end-game and rushing from mob to mob it will give you that bit extra of a damage boost. · Trash: Mobs die fast in end-game groups. When looking at Codg and T9, once you’ve cursed and the mob has died you need to get to the next mob quickly before this expires. · Boss: If the boss has adds, then absolutely have this. If it’s a boss without adds then don’t bother, it’s going to give you nothing. |
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Your Soul Sparks now also increase your damage by .06/.12/.18/.24/.3% per Soul Spark.
· Notes: This table shows what you “should” be getting, 9% on average, but thanks to Cryptic there is some variation in the actual buff amount. · Solo: You’ll be generating sparks as part of this path, you might as well benefit from the damage increase. · Trash: In group play, you’ll be running dungeons a lot and going from one mob to another quickly. If you still have spark left then this gives you a boost to your initial damage, if you can get from one mob to another fast enough. · Boss: It’s a big damage percentage and you’ll be generating lots of sparks as you melt the boss down. Remember that damage increases in Neverwinter are multiplicative, not additive so this damage increase is also multiplied with the other buffs you’ll get. You can hit some big numbers thanks to keeping high sparks and this feat. |
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Your Lesser Curse also causes the target to have 1/2/3/4/5% less Damage Resistance.
· Notes: This is a debuff, there’s a 300% cap on debuffs that an enemy can have and this would count as 5 towards that 200 cap. · Solo: When running solo, you’ll never make the 300% cap so this means more damage that you’ll deal. It’s worth taking it. · Trash: In low-debuff groups this is helpful as you’re probably not going to hit the cap, in high-end groups you’ll be at the buff cap and this debuff potentially delivers nothing extra. You’ll never just play in meta-groups though so it’s probably worth taking anyway but for meta groups you could just take 1 or 2 points and throw the other 3 at something else. · Boss: Exact same reason as “Group”. |
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When foes deal Damage to you they become Helltouched for 10 seconds. Foes who are Helltouched take 2/4/6/8/10% more Damage from you.
· Notes: · Solo: For this to proc, you need to take a hit. If you’re one-shotting the enemies this doesn’t deliver anything for you. In the end-game solo play, you’ll not one-shot the enemy, they will hit you. For those rare instances when you do one-shot compared to when you will get hit, you’ll get hit more than you one-shot. Take the feat. · Trash: So, this can be hit-or-miss depending on the dungeon, your group, your playstyle and your positioning. If you’re running as DPS in endgame there’s going to be other DPS in there and the GWF, GF, HR, TR can deal insane damage compared to the warlock. In CODG, the HR can one-shot spawn kill the mobs before they’ve even moved. You will get hit, this will proc but the mobs will be down too quickly to get prolonged benefit from this at end-game level. When running with groups that are not end-game yet you’ll definitely be taking damage and you’ll get that 10% increase. · Boss: A boss will absolutely hit you and with the amount of hit points they have, they’ll not melt so fast. You gain lots of benefit from this one. |
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When attacking a Cursed target, you deal an additional 5/10/15/20/25% of your weapon damage and scales with your power and buffs.
· Notes: Any curse will trigger this. As PoP is giving lesser curse, you’ll have them cursed all the time. It’s better than Critical Promise despite sounding worse. It actually procs on all the enemies you hit (as long as they are cursed), can critically strike, and procs on every tick of Pillar of Power for instance (whereas Critical Promise doesn’t proc). It is okay to take on AoE fights (if you just don’t murder the mobs with Gates of Hell) but still underwhelming on single target. If you don’t have a Proc enchant like Feytouched, you can use dread and still get sparks with this feat. · Solo: You’ll get a slight uplift in the damage that you do when you receive Companions Gift from the Bonding runestones and a further uplift from the mount bonuses. That being said it’s not a lot compared to burst damage but it does proc on every tick of your powers. · Trash: This performs much better in group play than in solo play as you’re getting a lot of buffs and power share from the group members. You’ll be using Pillar of Power and getting some nice benefit from this if the group hasn’t melted the mobs in the blink of an eye, · Boss: Bosses take a while to die, you’ll get a nice additional chunk of DPS from this feat. It’s worth slotting it. |
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At-Will and Encounter powers deal up to an additional 3/6/9/12/15% bonus damage as the target’s health diminishes.
· Notes: · Solo: When you’re leveling your warlock or you’re trying to get to end-game level you’ll get some good use from this as it’ll take you a little bit of time to kill the enemies. At end-game level you’ll be hitting the enemy pretty hard (for a SW anyway) and whilst they’ll not be dead from the first encounter that you cast, they’ll take the additional damage from this. Note that the damage per tick doesn’t miraculously increase in damage as the health diminishes. This is calculated on the initial hit. · Trash: At end-game the mobs die super-fast when you’re running with other end-game players. Due to the long pre-cast times for most of our powers then chances are that you’ll be hitting the mob with your first when they’ve already lost some health. As the mobs die quickly using Gates of Hell and this feat helps it to deliver the killing blow to many of the enemies, timing is everything on this though. Worth taking it. · Boss: You’ll be hitting the boss frequently and the more the health diminishes the more powerful your attacks will be. Coupled with the Demon Lord set (a.k.a. the Orcus Set) and if you’re running with a Fire Archon and Killing Flames you can get some decent numbers from this. |
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Your Warlock’s Curse increases your damage against affected targets by an additional 2/4/6/8/10%.
· Notes: Curse as you run into battle and try to get three enemies as it increases damage of Warlock’s Curse from 20% to 30% and increases Tyrannical Curse debuff effectiveness from 25% to 35 % · Solo: Good for trash clearance · Trash: Good for Mobs as this will increase your damage · Boss: An additional 10% damage, the challenge is seeing that you have still got the curse on the boss as you have some curse consume powers and also some bosses are so tall that you cannot see the top of their head. Best to always add a curse into your rotation. |
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Killing Flames deals 5/10/15/20/25% of its damage to foes within 20 feet of the primary target. This damage is split equally among the affected targets. If there are no other targets, the primary target takes all the damage.
· Notes: This is not a 70/30 split, it’s 100/30 · Solo: Mobs die quickly, you’ll not see a huge benefit from this as you’ll usually be running with Fiery Bolt as your AoE attack. · Trash: Mobs die quickly at end-game, you might find that your best alternative to getting damage will be to switch to Killing Flames and try to pick-off one enemy before they get slaughtered by the GWF, GF, HR, TR. · Boss: This is 130% extra damage, coupled with Killing Flames this adds some nice damage. |
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When you deal damage with your At-Will, Encounter, or Daily powers to targets affected by your Warlock’s Curse they are afflicted with Creeping Death. Creeping Death deals 75% additional damage as Necrotic damage over 6 seconds. Creeping Death stacks. This actually works with any curse, not just Warlock’s Curse.
· Solo: Mobs die pretty fast, this rarely comes into play. · Trash: Mobs die crazy fast in end-game, and as such, this rarely comes into play. · Boss: With a ton of hit points on the boss, this is a must. This feat basically does one third of your damage on single target, and scales with buffs.
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| Name | Effect |
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Gates of Hell now deals 5/10/15/20/25% more damage and generates 10/20/30/40/50% more Action Points for each target killed.
Additionally, the DoT component of Hellish Rebuke now deals 5/10/15/20/25% more damage. (This part is bugged and doesn’t work) · Notes: This is not working on the Hellish Rebuke’s DoT so you’re only getting the increase from GoH. · Solo: Great when coupled with Gates of Hell, you’ll always be using Hellish Rebuke anyway. · Trash: Great when coupled with Gates of Hell, you’ll always be using Hellish Rebuke anyway. |
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When a Curse is removed from a target, deal 10/20/30/40/50% of your weapon damage to that target.
· Notes: This does scale with buffs/power, but it still deals low damage. It procs when Curses expire or are removed. · Solo: Mobs die quickly, you’ll not see a huge benefit from this as you’ll have killed the mobs by the time the curse has expired or been removed unless you’re exclusively running curse consume powers, but then the damage is still not great as you’ll not have great buffs when running solo. · Trash: Mobs die quickly at end-game, you’ll get the most benefit from this when using curse consume like Soul Scorch etc but because of the quick mob deaths you’ll get very few ticks. |
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When your Warlock’s Curse is removed from a target, that target has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to be afflicted with a Lesser Curse.
· Notes: is only useful if you use Curse Consume powers and don’t use All-Consuming Curse. · Solo: Mobs die quickly, you’ll not see a huge benefit from this as you’ll have killed the mobs by the time the curse has expired or been removed unless you’re exclusively running curse consume powers, but then the damage is still not great as you’ll not have great buffs when running solo. · Trash: Mobs die quickly at end-game, you’ll get the most benefit from this when using curse consume like Soul Scorch etc but because of the quick mob deaths you’ll get very few ticks. However if you warlock’s curse 4 targets then the first enemy that was cursed will have the warlock’s curse removed and will then be afflicted with a lesser curse. As you’ll be using curse bite on this build that means that you’ll be hitting 4 enemies and not 3 so even more damage for you. |
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When a Cursed target is killed, the slayer of that target is Healed for 20/40/60/80/100% of your weapon damage every second for 3 seconds.
· Notes: It’s free healing but you’re a warlock that already comes with decent lifesteal anyway. · Solo: If you’re a squishy warlock that’s just leveling up or you’re not at end-game level then this does have some benefit to you to help keep you alive. At end-game level there’s not much benefit from it, you’ll have enough defense and lifesteal that you’ll not notice a difference whether you have this feat or not. · Trash: In a group at end-game, you’ll mostly be asked to become Templock and this feat is just irrelevant. The Templock heals only work in the group, not for players outside of the group and I’d suspect that this feat works in that way too. If you’re DPS and not Templock then you’ll only notice this if you/the team is squishy. |
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The Damage and Damage Resistance buffs provided by Pillar of Power now last for 1/2/3/4/5 seconds after you leave its area, and allies can now receive 10/20/30/40/50% of the buffs’ effect.
· Notes: This no longer increases Pillar of Power’s buff value for allies. · Solo: You should know how to stay in your circle when running solo. Even if you’re squishy you need to learn to move around in your circle and avoid being hit. · Trash: As this build is primarily for trash mobs, it is useful in groups if you have to move around to get in range of the mobs to damage them. |
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Your Soul Puppet now deals 200/400/600/800/1000% more threat, and your Soul Puppet gains an additional 10/20/30/40/50% of your Maximum Hit Points.
· Notes: In low item level groups the puppet might pull aggro. Couple Mocking Spirit with Spirit Fire to aggro multiple enemies at once. · Solo: When leveling your character or if you’re super squishy then making the soul puppet more tanky and also taking more threat really helps you for survivability. When you’re end-game level you’ll have enough defense and lifesteal that you won’t need the Soul Puppet. · Trash: If you’re running content with low-level teams then the puppet can help out but it will take the agro from the tank. Depending on how good the tank is that can be helpful. Some low-level tanks have issues with Orcus in Castle Never. If you’re end-game you’ll not need the Soul Puppet, not even for the combat advantage and the end-game tanks might not appreciate losing threat. |
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Foes near your Soul Puppet now also take damage 15/30/45/60/75% of your Weapon Damage as Fire damage every second.
· Notes: Best used with the Wrathful Souls feat for getting a bit more out of this. · Solo: If you’re leveling up or squishy and find you’re running away a bit in combat then the bit of damage and the agro of the Soul Puppet and allow you to stand off a bit and hit from range It’s nice for the survivability. When you’re at end-game level this is just an increase in damage; you’ll have hit the mobs hard before the Soul Puppet has joined the fight you’ll not really notice the difference. · Trash: It’s a bit of extra DPS and helpful for the team but it’s not gonna make you leap up the damage board. |
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While you have a Soul Puppet active you take 5/10/15/20/25% less damage.
Your Soup Puppet’s Max HP is increased by 20/40/60/80/100% · Notes: · Solo: If you’re levelling up or squishy then this helps you with survivability, if you’re end-game is just a waste of feat points. · Trash: The tank or Soul Puppet will be taking the agro, you’ll not be needing to take this unless you’re in those rare groups where you’re all squishy and the tank doesn’t keep agro. |
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Your Soul Puppets have a 5/10/15/20/25% chance to apply Lesser Curse when they attack a target.
Your Soul Puppets deal 2/4/6/8/10% more damage to targets affected by Lesser Curse. · Notes: · Solo: Leveling or end-game the chance of applying a curse is always helpful especially if you’ve not noticed that the curse was expended and you have not applied a new one. · Trash: You’ll not see any benefit from the additional 10% damage that the puppet can do, the mobs will die quickly at end-game for the puppet to apply a lesser curse. |
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While you have a Soul Puppet active you deal 3/6/9/12/15% more damage and Life Steal for 1/2/3/4/5% more.
· Notes: · Solo: Levelling or end-game you’ll always have the soul puppet available and 15% damage increase is a big amount. You’ll want this. · Trash: Similar to the Solo notes, it’s 15% damage increase and that’s multiplicative. |
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Your Soul Puppets deal 20/40/60/80/100% more damage, and their attacks now siphon some of that health to you, healing you for 2/4/6/8/10% of their damage.
· Notes: Mod 13 updated this to also work with the Spiritfire feat. The lifesteal has been fixed so that it does deliver the amount that it should (before mod 13 it was delivering less healing) · Solo: Levelling up this is nice to give you a bit of healing if you’re a bit squishy. When you get to end-game you’re not going to notice the heals and you’ll do much more damage than the soul puppet. · Trash: Similar to the Solo notes, it’s not going to provide anything helpful. |
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Your Soul Puppet moves faster and no longer dissipates after 20 seconds; it’s attacks recharge your encounters by 1 second. Targets marked by Warlock’s Curse are corrupted and will spawn a Soul Puppet when killed or Warlock’s Curse is consumed. Soul Investiture increases your encounter power damage by 10% per stack. Additionally, every 15 seconds, the next time you deal damage you spawn a Soul Puppet if you do not have one..
· Notes: Any curse will do, not just the Warlock’s Curse but it doesn’t work if you one-shot the target. Soul Investiture stacks up to 5 times, this increases the puppet’s damage by 20% per stack for 20 seconds and you encounters by 10% per stack – max stacks = 50% increase to the damage fro your encounter powers. · Solo: Keeping the soul puppet around is great as this helps with the damage increase from Ghastly Commander and the other healing if you’re squishy. · Trash: Helpful for Ghastly commander but all other benefits are explained in earlier feats. |
You’ll be there for the buffs and the heals. You can run your Templock to deliver some DPS or you can go for a more defensive style and run as a Tanklock.
As a Templock, Hellbringer is the only way to go; people will want you for the Pillar of Power. If you do still want to have a look at running a Soulbinder Templock for the fun of it, feel free, just note that you’ll not get many games in groups.
| Name | Effect |
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When damaged, you have a 2/4/6/8/10% chance to apply Lesser Curse to your attacker.
· Notes: You’ll take hits, no doubt about that, this helps to add the curse but lesser curse is so easy to apply that you’ll not need this. · Solo: Solo as a Templock is really tanky this will apply the lesser curse to enemies that you are attacking when you get hit. It’s just there to help you if you’re lazy. · Trash: When you run as a Templock you’re needing to apply the Warlock’s Curse which works with the temptation tree’s capstone. The lesser curse only helps you out. · Boss: You will be applying the Warlock’s Curse in the boss fight for the team to deal damage. In terms of team build this is not worth it. |
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On critical hits, your Life Steal Chance and Life Steal are increased by 1/2/3/4/5% for 4 seconds.
· Notes: · Solo: You won’t need 100% crit chance for this as you’ll have plenty of lifesteal, you’ll be using a different feat tree when playing solo anyway. · Trash: This is the more favourable of the two feats to choose from at tier 1. You’ll hit often enough and hard enough that you don’t need to push too high on the life-steal chance anyway. Taking this means you can put more stats in to other more import areas. · Boss: Much like the Group entry, it’s the best of the two and helps with stat point allocation. |
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Striking Cursed foes has a chance to grant 1/2/3/4/5% of the Warlock’s Max HP as Temporary Hit Points to allies near the Warlock.
· Notes: This has a 1 minute internal cooldown · Solo: This would grant temporary hit points to your companion. If you’re solo as a Templock the amount of heals that you’ll do as a result of the lifesteal will pull the agro to you and not the companion. Your lifesteal also heals your companion. You’ll never need this when solo. · Trash: When you are in a group some characters actually benefit from having temporary hit points to proc their feats. This is helpful for the team and worthy of some points especially if you get to the battle first. · Boss: Similar to the group play, this will help to proc some feats on other characters in your party and will also help with the squishy DPS characters. |
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Targets affected by your Hellish Rebuke At-Will deal 1/2/3/4/5% less damage.
· Notes: · Solo: If you’re looking to take hits then this does help with that but even at low level with the Templock build you’ll not need to reduce the incoming damage. That being said if you need to choose between this and Compounded Soul, choose this. · Trash: Trash die fast, you’re not gonna Hellish Rebuke every one of them. · Boss: Exactly the same as the group entry, you should definitely have this when in a group and at the Boss stage. |
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When a foe dies within 30′ of the Warlock, a random nearby ally gains 2/4/6/8/10% of their AP.
· Notes: The HR doesn’t really benefit from this much as they don’t realty use their daily powers but all other classes will find this bery helpful. · Solo: There’s no nearby ally to give the AP to. Companions do not have action points. For solo templock this is a waste of points. · Trash: You’re expected to be in the centre of the fight and this will help boost the action point gain for your team. Take this always. · Boss: For a boss that has adds this is great to help the team on the AP gain. For the Atropal in CODG there’s no “adds” and it’s not helpful. Still pick it up unless you want a boss build specifically for “no adds” bosses. |
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When you Life Steal there is a chance to gain Revelry. Revelry increases the Move Speed and Power of nearby allies by 4/8/12/16/20% for 5 seconds.
· Notes: Dark Revelry buffs players and their (non-augment) pet for 20% of their ‘base’ Power (It doesn’t take into account some stuff like guild boons though) as well as increasing their movement speed. So, it is not as good as people may think, but a buff remains a buff nonetheless. · Solo: This buffs the companion and therefore you a little. · Trash: Your team benefits from this, only those in your group though. So, if it’s a 10-man skirmish only the 4 people in your group will get the benefit. Be careful in CODG, you can go running off the elevator before you know it. · Boss: Again, only helps the group it’s really worth taking, careful on the platform and the pull/push. |
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Enemies within 50′ of you deal 1/2/3/4/5% less damage and take 1/2/3/4/5% increased damage
· Notes: This is a debuff and subject to diminishing returns and the debuff cap. It’s a 50’ radius. · Solo: The enemy doesn’t hit as hard but as a Templock you’ll not likely care. · Trash: Helpful to keep the squishy DPS from dying. It’s worth the points. · Boss: Same as the group entry, helps survival. |
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You and all teammates within 50′ of you gain 1/2/3/4/5% Life Steal Chance and 2/4/6/8/10% Life Steal Severity.
· Notes: · Solo: You’ll have so much lifesteal already that you don’t really need the extra from here. However 5% = 2000 stat points that you could put to better use like Critical Strike, Power etc. · Trash: You’ll be healing your teammates with your lifesteal or the other heals from other support classes. It’s not a feat worth taking for group play. · Boss: Just like the group entry, except if you’ve lost the heals from DCs or other support classes this could be helpful especially if you’ve become incapacitated (grabbed by a claw etc). Should you choose this just for that reason, probably not. |
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You restore 1/2/3/4/5% stamina each time you take damage, using a daily power grants combat advantage to you and nearby allies for 4/6/8/10/12 seconds.
· Notes: Eldritch Momentum is better than Darkness. · Solo: You’ll not need the stamina, you’re not needing to run away as a Templock. · Trash: Only helpful if you need to shadowslip to the next mob if someone from the team has run ahead and you’re trying to keep them alive. Whilst that’s a noble thing for you to do, it splits the team. If someone is too stupid to work with the team and run as a group and they die that’s their fault – “you can’t heal stupid”. · Boss: The stamina gain is not shared to the team, this is just for you. There’s very few exceptions where you’re ever likely to need to shadowslip in a boss fight; perhaps when you’re levelling up and you’re at Orcus in Castle Never when he casts the Orbs. When you’re more end-game and in Castle Never your life steal will heal you faster that the orbs can damage you. Not a stat that you should invest in. |
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Enemies damaged by Blades of Vanquished Armies or Harrowstorm briefly deal 2/4/6/8/10% less damage to you and take 2/4/6/8/10% more damage from you for 6 seconds.
· Notes: · Solo: If you’re Templock you don’t need to worry too much about the incoming damage when solo; you can handle what’s coming at you. · Trash: If your tank is not that good and you find that you’re running as an off-tank then this will help you to stay alive. If you’re choosing between this and Eldritch Momentum, choose this. · Boss: Exactly the same as the group entry. |
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Your powers now heal your allies for a percentage of their damage equal to your Life Steal chance. This effect is 30% as effective on Area of Effect powers. The healing component of your Vampiric Embrace now also heals nearby allies for 100% of its value
· Notes: Allies now deal 20% increased damage to enemies affected by Warlock’s Curse. It also passively gives you a 10% lifesteal chance increase. The damage buff from the Soul Bonding lasts up to 5 min and affects all allies. (In Codg, you can literally see the Atropal being cursed even after ganging up on Acererak). · Solo: This heals your companion, keeping the companion around helps you with defeating enemies. · Trash: This is one of the reasons that you’re being picked up as a Templock. The heals are helpful to the team especially when you lose some of the support team. You’ll almost always be topping the healing board – not anything worth bragging about though. · Boss: Helps to keep the team in the fight, and boost the health of your team. Your curse is a buff for your allies. |
In this part we’ll cover the decent powers of the SW. For the numbers I will assume all powers are at rank 4/4. For AoE, most of our powers have a target cap of 5 (But I didn’t test them all individually). If you want to compare the base damage of SW abilities you can check
SW Ability Coefficient (AKA Base Damage)
(credits to Sharpedge)
Apart from Eldritch Blast (which applies an AoE burst on the 3rd hit) all SW at-wills attack only a single Target. Hellish Rebuke is the hardest hitting at-will available to our class and Essence Defiler grants utility to the Soulbinder Paragon by providing soul spark generation.
You shoot fire at your enemy. The 3rd deals damage in a small radius. This is one of your fastest at-will powers and benefits from Murderous Flames.
Deals an initial hit on an enemy. The enemy then takes 62.5% with Gatekeeper Empowerment feat of the initial hit every 1.5s up to 7 times. This dot cannot stack.
A quick and low damage at-will that grants Soul Sparks. On top of the spark that you gain if you perform a critical strike, you’ll automatically grant one soul spark. The 3rd hit grants 3 sparks on a cursed target. If you have 100% critical strike chance and hit 3 times, you’ll gain:
1 spark for the 1st hit + 1 spark for the 1st critical strike.
1 spark for the 2nd hit + 1 spark for the 2nd critical strike
3 sparks for the 3rd hit + 1 spark for the 3rd critical strike.
With 100% critical strike chance and 3 at-will hits you’ll gain 8 Soul Sparks.
(Secondary at-will for Templock) : This at-will comes with both a melee and a ranged version. The melee version deals more damage and reduces enemy damage output for 5-6 seconds (up to roughly 20% at 4 stacks with the off-hand feature).
This is typically the main source of damage for a Scourge Warlock.
A single target encounter that should probably be slotted for bosses, but is still viable on AoE if you’re using Tyrannical Curse and/or the Murderous Flames feat that adds a little splash. Its main characteristic is that the damage increases as your target’s HP gets lower (2x damage when the target is at/below 25% hit points), and the cooldown is fairly small. If it kills the target then you gain extra Action Points and you spawn a Soul Puppet (or add Soul Investiture to your existing Soul Puppet if you already have one summoned).
You fire a Laser aimed at your target for up to 6 seconds, dealing damage while it is active. Reactivating it, being dazed/stunned/knocked or entering shadowslip while it’s active will deactivate it. This power can hit any target it passes through, and you may move to reorient it, but it will always be aimed at your original target, or its corpse.
What makes it great though is that on top if its damage if you’re hitting a cursed target, it will briefly (as in only while the spell is active)
debuff it’s damage resistance by 25%
and increase slightly your resistance making it a must-use on a Templock build.
Your standard ‘Shoot a fireball at your target and watch it explode’ power and one of our ‘better’ AoE powers. The enemies next to your target will take less damage from the splash effect compared to the main target you aimed at unless the other targets are affected by a curse. If the other enemies are affected by a curse then they will take the full damage from the fiery bolt too. As an example, you can apply Lesser Curse to some enemies, Warlock’s Bargain another enemy and Warlock’s Curse 3 other enemies then use the Fiery Bolt. All the cursed enemies will take the full damage from the bolt and not just the small splash damage.
Deals medium damage to cursed targets. A fun power (that you don’t have to aim !) to use and it 2 charges and a very short cooldown. Perfect for those fade away moments. Due to the two charges, dropping PoP for the instant lesser curse, then Curse Bite, Killing Flames/Harrowstorm and another Curse Bite will really cut those mobs down to size and you’ll have another charge of Curse Bite ready to go soon after you’ve dispatched that last pesky mob. An unfortunate facet of this power is that it does not generate action points, though this in practice is a rather minor issue.
A must have on HB 24/7. This power places a 13’ fiery green circle on the ground which deals some (little) damage. Its selling points are that it increases your party’s resistance, damage (24% for you, and 18% for party members), and decreases the enemy’s resistance and damage dealt by 10 %…. if they stand in it. Always place this under both the dps and the boss/enemies. You can freely move away from it if you have PoT9H damnation feat.
A Must have on SB Single Target. This Powers requires and consumes 6 Soul sparks on use (One level) and deals damage. If the target is afflicted by your Warlock’s Curse, the curse is consumed and the enemy takes Damage over time equivalent to the initial hit. This dot ticks every second and stacks.
A Tornado of Fire. Kinda. This power moves with your target. In Mod 15, the animation times for encounters were reworked and this one was no exception, it went from a slow cast time to something much more reasonable. It also synergies really well with Aura of Courage from the Paladin, so comes with a nice amount of DPS; an under-rated power, give it a try when you’re in a group with a Paladin and decide for yourself.
A decent single target power. You sacrifice 15% of your HP to curse your target and steal life from your target (depending on damage dealt) over time. Additionally, 15% of the damage you take while this curse is active is redirected to the cursed target, making it good for PVP.
Blades appear around you and deal damage to enemies around you. Blades will periodically fling to cursed (any curse, not just Warlock’s Curse) nearby enemies. Additionally, it increases your deflection chance. This power requires you to stay near your target(s) for an extended time.
An excellent single target encounter, which deals damage over time and lifts your target into the air for its duration. I won’t talk about the normal version since it is simply underwhelming. The Warlock’s Curse Consume has nice damage, will proc % damage feats/Aura of Courage, and has a nice property for SB in that it generates 11 Soul Sparks when you perform a critical hit and have either a weapon proc enchant (Feythoughed) or Killing Curse. An extra feature of the encounter is that your target takes extra damage from Curses and Soul Puppets.
One of our few AoE Powers that doesn’t require a target. This Power deals damage in an Area and briefly prones enemies. It has a low cooldown at first, but it gradually increases as you use this power in quick succession.
Highest damage single-target daily. It has some nice damage with a little bit of burst and a quick cast time. It’s a fire-and-forget power with a quick to tick DoT. It will immobilize for a small period of time as a Control power. The Brood of Hadar’s Bite is classified as melee splash damage.
It’s not the hardest hitting daily, it has a bit of splash damage but apart from the nice visuals, it’s not worth using compared to Brood of Hadar. Brood casts faster, hits a bit harder and as it’s a control power it will proc Combatant’s Maneuver, even if a target is control immune.
Applies a Tyrannical Curse to one target (see the curses section). It’s situationally the daily to use when it comes to dealing with packs that don’t die instantly. It’s good for when you’re running solo and you’re not quite end-game item level.
Summons two spirits that regularly shoot your target for around 12s. Their attacks have a 50% chance to grant you a soul spark.
After a long delay summons a Portal, which after another delay fires a giant laser towards your position when you summoned it. Grants extra AP if it kills targets.
This daily has good burst, if you manage to land it and time it with buffs. To aim it, you position the gates, and potential targets are located between them and you.
| PRO-TIP – The Trickshot: if the portal isn’t too far, it can also hit enemies behind you, making it useful for enemies you don’t want to face, or alternatively if you want to hit the enemy just in front of you that wouldn’t get hit because of the target cap. |
Shadowslip is a class mechanic but we thought it important to mention. it gives you control immunity. It also increases your damage resistance by 100%. This effect diminishes 20% every second down to a 40% increase, so essentially the effect diminishes for 3 seconds. The first second of this power, you are actually considered immune to damage, which makes it useful against enemies with armor penetration.
When you place your Warlock’s Curse on a target that is not already affected by it, you deal damage to your target
Your at-will debuffs your target’s resistance to your damage by 5%. This can be used up to 3 times.
Your Hellish Rebuke (At-Will) initial hit is increased by 50% but the DoT portion is lost, which is ideal if you plan to spam it. Additionally, critical hits briefly (less than 2s) grant you combat advantage against your target.
Everything you critically strike will be afflicted by a lesser curse. This ensures all your powers gain their curse synergy effect, and that creeping death procs.
You slowly regenerate your Action Points as your Soul Sparks fade when out of combat. Unless you rush mobs and you kept Soul Sparks when rushing from one mob to the next, your daily should ready by the next fight.
On daily use you recover 25% of your action point over 10s (Preferred choice). (There are other much cheaper mounts who grant only 15%)
Keep in mind that daily spamming on support builds will also give your team protection/movement through Shepherd’s Devotion (insignia bonus) and Combat Advantage.
For new players you could always look for an Armour Pen/Crit Chance passive power to help you along until you no longer need it.
If you can’t get a snail, you can choose whatever stat bonus you need. Typically power is suboptimal due to the small relative increase it gives in an endgame group. Usually, critical strike or recovery is a better path to go.
There’s plenty to choose from, though there are only a few that are viable:
Whenever your summoned Companion attacks, you gain 3% of your Power and Defence for 10 seconds. This effect can stack up to 4 times.
When your companion attacks and gets all 4 stacks up, they stay up for a long time, this gives us 12% more power. This works great with Artificer’s Persuasion which procs after you use an artifact power.
You lose 10% of your Defence, Deflection, and Life Steal, and gain the combination of lost stats as Power.
If you’re running a support class that gives power share then this makes sense. If you’re running solo then you can take this, but when you’re running with a group the extra power that you’ll get from the bonus doesn’t give that much compared to the loss of defence and the other mount bonuses that you should take. Remember, the power boost from a Warlock to the party is on the BASE power of the target group member, not from your power.
Whenever you control an enemy, you gain 5% Combat Advantage damage for 10 seconds.
If you have control powers slotted then this is a nice boost to your DPS. You’ll be using Hadar’s Grasp and Brood of Hadar which are both control powers and will proc this bonus, just remember to get combat advantage to make use of this. It’s important to note that even though bosses are immune to control powers that doesn’t mean that you can’t still proc this bonus on them. When you cast a control power (Hadar’s Grasp as an example) the game will proc the mount bonus then check to see if the target is immune, it the target is immune then they will not be controlled – but the mount bonus has already procced.
When your Stamina is above 75%, you move 15% faster. When your Stamina is below 25%, gain 15% of your Power as Stamina Gain.
This can be a divisive power as some people just don’t think it’s needed. If you never have issues keeping up with a group and you’ve always got a lot of stamina then you might not need to have this slotted. However, if you find that you’re running pretty slowly and not staying with the group then consider having this bonus. If you’re a Templock in a dungeon and you’re not keeping up with the group and dropping the Pillar of Power for the DPS classes you’re not being that helpful to the team. Decide for yourself based on how you and your group play as to whether you need this or not.
Another consideration is the boots that you wear. If you’ve got high AP gain and recovery and can afford to lose that from the Primal boots then you might consider the Enduring Boots for the extra DPS as this mount bonus gives you a lot of stamina but you’ll need to be at 100% stamina for those boots which again will affect how you need to play to benefit from them.
Whenever you use a Daily power, your teammates Defence, Deflection, and Movement are increased by 5% of your Power for 10 seconds.
This is one of the best mount bonuses in the game. If you’re in a team and all got this mount bonus then you’re really helping each other to survive with the Defence and Deflection, the movement is great too if you need the speed boost to run down some stairs in T9. (They fixed the Daily/Cancel glitch but if you’ve slotted the Sigil of the Devoted then you’ll be back to full action points in no time.
Whenever you use an Artifact power, your Recovery, Movement, Action Point Gain, and Stamina Gain are increased by 10% of your Power for 15 seconds.
This is where you see a lot of people using the “Heart of the … Dragon” artifacts for the 15 second artifact cooldown and procing the mount bonus. You can cast the artifact just before battle to get that extra recovery and action point gain. 15 second artifact cooldown and 15 second mount bonus = 100% uptime if you can safely cast and hit nothing. Notice that it also gives stamina gain too – in case you’re considering those Enduring Boots.
You have a 4% chance after killing a foe to find a Refining Stone at your feet.
This does have an internal cooldown and you’ll see that “Wanderer’s Fortune” pops up on screen but you get no refining stone. You don’t need to remove the bonus when this happens; you do still get some refining points even after the cooldown has kicked in. Always remember that when the new Mods land there’s always something that you need to level up (usually a new weapon set) so it’s great to have a nice pool of refining points ready and waiting.
Whenever you activate a Mount Combat Power, you gain an increase of 10% to your Power, Recovery, Armor Penetration, Critical Strike, Defence, Deflection, Regeneration, and Life Steal.
Any mount combat power will proc this bonus although it does work really well with the Tenser’s Transformation combat power. Now the thing to consider here is that 10% increase on the Armour Penetration and Critical Strike. If you’re already at the cap then these are just wasted but the power and recovery are extremely useful. However in Mod 15 the BiS mount combat power is from the Swarm and that’s also got a faster cast time than Tenser’s too.
A Comprehensible insignia list can be found
here
When it comes to insignias and what you need always look at your stats and see what you need when your companion is not available. Try to be as effective as you can for the team when your companion has been pushed off a ledge etc. When you’re running solo that’s not much of an issue and you can choose what you need when your companion is present so you’ve only got to concern yourself with when they’re not around.
Whether you’re a DPS or a Templock look for your Armour Penetration and Critical Strike above all others and take into account the Cavalry’s Warning mount bonus if you have a legendary mount. For healing the team (when it’s needed) then the DPS you deal is what you should be looking at.
If you’re just starting out or on a limited budget, any insignia type (Green, Blue or Purple) will get the bonus, you can swap these out for higher stat value insignia when you’re able to get them.
While we wanted this to be more of a guide than a build, we also felt that it was important to show the boons and give a reasoning for why they were chosen so that you can take that mindset and apply it for future mods as they become available.
If you’re respeccing your character, don’t just rush through the boons as quickly as you can. Take a few minutes after applying a few boons to hit a target dummy and see the effect that it’s had on you before you pick a few more.
Whether DPS or Templock – you’re a DPS character and should look to still pick offense over defence.
For
DPS
try to follow this mindset:
I need to maximise my damage dealt. I first must get past the enemy defence (Resistance Ignored). Once I can beat their defence I need to hit as hard as possible (Critical Strike, Critical Severity and Power). I’m a Warlock and will have Combat Advantage from my powers, I will use my companion/group to flank the enemy (Combat Advantage) and I will take his health to heal myself or my team (Lifesteal)
For
Templock
it’s slightly different, you want to buff then kill. You might be a Templock but you’re still DPS:
I need to help my team to kill the enemy. I first must buff my team and debuff the enemy (Buff/Debuff) then I must maximise my damage dealt.
When healing your team, you only really need about 15% – 20% Lifesteal chance. With the numbers that you’ll be hitting it will be enough to ensure your team is fully healed when you lifesteal.
For Guild boons we take Power (Armor Pen is good if you can’t cap it)/Hit Points
Set Bonus: Gives up to a 20% damage buff depending on the difference between your HP and the target’s HP. So, how does this work?
It takes your current HP and divides that by your max HP to get the % of your health. Then it does that for the target. Then it subtracts one from the other, and gets the absolute value (takes away the negative), and divides that number by 5 to get your final damage boost Modifier. So, let’s say you are at 100% health, and Orcus is at 40%.
1(100%)-0.4(40%)= 0.6
0.6/5= 0.12 or a 12% damage buff
Why is it BIS? Well, there are a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, we stay at 100% health most of the time. We don’t typically draw aggro, and the volume of hits we perform combined with lifesteal means we don’t stay under 100% for very long. Secondly, if you have seen a common theme, it’s that damage% modifiers are almost always superior to any other. The stats on this set are not ideal for us, but that is honestly irrelevant compared to the damage buff. Thirdly, while it is true that the damage modifier will never make it to 20%, it doesn’t have to get too high to start out performing our other options.
Many Thanks to Tennessee James (Lilia Drakon) and the Insatiable Peanut Guide to Stabbing (Trickster Rogues Guide for the info).
This can get tricky since you should balance stats with both gear and enchants, so there isn’t a unique way to build your toon, and what you put on it obviously depends on your gear advancement.
If you have enough armour penetration you should heavily focus on critical strike and power. I consider other offensive stats more or less wasted.
The one thing to think about here – percentages are more important than stats. So even though a piece of equipment has better stats than another if the percentage from the equip bonus is not as good as the one with “lesser” stats, go for the one with the best percentage.
Mod 15 Goal : Curselord’s Raid Ushanka, Gallant Raid/Assault Cowl
Notable Mentions : Vistani
The equip bonus gives you 5% increased damage when you kill something. Fairly OK when you’re against mobs, chances are you’re not going to get to the second mob before the increase has expired. When in boss fights, you’ll be looking to kill a minion then focus on the boss. A great way to get this is to use Tyrannical Curse when the minions appear – you’ll hit them hard and once they’re dead, you’ll get that bonus as you’re melting the boss. This headpiece alters how you want to fight. For most people, the Barovian head will be more feasible, and work nearly as well.
Mod 15 Goal : Hag’s Rags, Primal
Notable Mentions : Vistani
Some people run with the Fured Kiuno of the Bear, which does have nice stats but you’re not a Melee class, the only two melee powers that you have are the Hand of Blight when in melee range and the Brood of Hadar’s Bite. Hag’s Rags are BiS for the Scourge Warlock,
Mod 15 Goal : Eyestalk Wrappers, Terrored Grips, Primal
Notable Mentions : Jawripper’s Gloves, Pioneer, Pilgrim
Most of your powers are classed as Ranged making the Eyestalk Wrappers the clear BiS for the arms, if you’ve not got them but somehow managed to get the Jawripper’s
Gloves they’ll do too but as you’ll definitely be using your At-Will powers the Jawripper’s
Gloves won’t help with that. Eyestalk Wrappers come from Erjellel (a T2 hunt), while Jawripper’s
Gloves come from the Tyrant (T3 Hunt), making the former much more accessible.
Mod 15 Goal : Masterwork 3 (+1) Weapon Set, Primal, Pilgrim
Notable Mentions : Primal
The Primal weapons are good, with a nice set of stats and a good equip bonus. For running solo, you’ll only proc the bonus if you get hit hard enough. An easy way to proc them is the Warlock’s Bargain encounter power. When in a group your support team should always be proccing this for you.
Masterwork weapons are best in slot due to their significantly higher weapon damage. The group buff is simply icing on the cake.
Mod 16 is approaching an no-doubt there will be some great weapons there too; if you don’t have Masterwork weapons then stick with Primal.
Mod 15 Goal : Enduring boots
Notable mentions, Primal, Curselord’s Raid/Assault Pigaches
Ideally, you’ll want to run with the Primal if you’re wanting some extra Action Point gain, if you have lots of Action Points coming in, though, you could try swapping to the Enduring Boots. There will be times when you’ll be using your stamina to catch up to people in groups or to rush to the next location and drop your Pillar of Power in advance to help the DPS when you’ve gone Templock. When you’re running solo then the Enduring Boots are a nice little boost. If you’re using the Eclipse enchantment and use it wisely you have 6 seconds of shadowslip and Enduring Boots boost at the same time.
Mod 15 Goal : Baphomet’s Infernal Talisman
Notable Mentions : Company Executioner Cloak
For DPS, it’s still the Demon Lord’s Set for the set bonus. If you’ve not yet managed to pick that up, you can go for the Company Executioner Cloak which gives +2 to your Charisma.
Mod 15 Goal : Ring of the Shadowstalker + 5 and +4
Notable Mentions : Ring of Offensive Action, Bronzewood and Beaded Masterwork rings
You’ll be looking to get the rings based on their equip bonus with the Offensive giving a 3% increase after you cast a daily power and the Shadowstalker for increased damage when you’re close to the enemy (so usually all the time).
Since we use dailies fairly often, the Ring of Offensive Action is a good and farmable option. It is acquired by giving Lich Lore to an old acquaintance in Omu. The Lore can be farmed every hour by killing Thayans or doing HEs.
Mod 15 Goal : Demogorgon’s Girdle of Might
Notable Mentions : Greater Belt of Black Ice, Greater Plated Band of Constitution
Run with the Demon Lord’s set if you’ve got it. If you’re still working your way towards it, then either the Black Ice belt for the stats or the Greater Plated Band of Constitution for the +4 points to your constitution are worth looking into.
Mod 15 Goal : Upper Primal Paints
Notable Mentions : Shirt of the Chultan Merchant
This works on all SW dailies except Tyrannical Curse
The Upper Primal Paints increase the damage of your daily power, it’s something you should work towards getting. This Shirt of the Chultan Merchant will give you 150 recovery points for every party member (this includes you) which is a 750 increase to your recovery. If you’re running as a Templock and there for the buffs/heals it doesn’t matter what you run although this will help with the cooldown on the Dreadtheft encounter that you’re likely using. That being said, the 4 second encounter cooldown that you’ll be getting every time the DC casts Anointed Army – you can stick with your Upper Primal Paints and still be spamming.
Mod 15 Goal : Shimmerweave Pants +1
Notable Mentions : Lower Primal Paints, Sandy’s Assault Pants
Shimmerweave Pants +1 are cheap pants and available on the trade house if you can’t make them yourself. They’re purely for the stats but they offer the most stats out of all the trousers on offer. The Lower Primal Paints are simply for the stats, you’ll rarely need the extra lifesteal from the equip bonus. With Sandy’s Assault Pants if you take a big hit then you’ll stun the attacker for a few seconds (long enough to get your health back). Obviously if the enemy is immune to stuns (like bosses) then it’s not any help. Sandy’s Assault Pants are good for solo play and group play at mobs especially if you’re not in a melt group.
The reinforcement kits can be made through your professions and cost 100,000 astral diamonds to make one at “Major” level. They’re not bound so you can sell them to make some astral diamonds but it takes a while to make some of the materials needed.
Try to plan out what piece of kit you need if you can. If you decide to make some for Armour Penetration and see that you are way over the cap and need to get another reinforcement kit then that’s gonna be really expensive, plus the kit that you’ve got on your equipment at the moment will be destroyed when you add the new kit.
Action Point Gain, Regeneration and Stamina can only go on Neck, Ring and Waist slot items.
All others can go on Head, Armour, Arms and Feet.
You can put reinforcement kits onto the gear that your companion is wearing but the only stat that actually transfers to you is regeneration.
Always pick according to what stats you NEED :
Ideally you want to use double or triple stats enchants since they give overall more stats. Black Ice currently give the best mix of endgame stats.
Whilst levelling you can go with some Darks for Lifesteal or you can get some HP, it’s what you need for survival. If you pull in enough healing from the lifesteal then just use Radiants for HP. You’ve got several feats (Hope Stealer 5%,Aura of Cruelty 5%, Soul Bonding and a few boons) that will give you more than enough lifesteal that you don’t need to stack any Dark enchants in the defense slots. Your HP is also useful when you’re in a group with a Paladin. They use a feat called Aura of Courage and this will give you extra damage based on the max HP that you have.
In Mod 15 refinement points are so easy to come by that the only real usage for your utility slots are either Dark for more speed or a few Quartermasters for more refinement.
If you want to compare how enchants work in general and with SWs I recommend you to check
RJC’s weapon enchant comparison
. Keep in mind that creeping death (which is most of our damage in single target, less in AoE) doesn’t scale with anything that doesn’t boost the original hit (I.E. Vorpal/Feytouched/Dread)
That’s why, for a Single Target DPS Setup, you need Vorpal / Dread / Feytouched. For a buff/debuff purpose (Templock) we’d recommend Dread, but any debuff enchant can work. Templock can still comfortably use a fey while retaining 99% of their group utility.
Here are some explanations :
SWs main damage powers are pretty bad at proccing enchants if you compare to GWF or even pre-nerf CW.
SW’s main source of damage, Creeping Death (Fury Capstone) only scales with Encounter/At-Will/Dailies damage, which makes boosting your base damage with Vorpal / Dread / Feytouched the best option.
At Transcendent and Unparalleled level this enchantment is BiS for DPS, a lower ranked Feytouched loses out to a Vorpal due to the downtime of the Feytouched buff. Additionally, Feytouched boosts all damage coming from you, including feats like Killing Curse, Bloody Death in ToNG, Aura of Courage, etc. It is for this reason that it tends to perform on par with and usually better than Dread in groups. When Feytouched procs it also does an additional hit.
The buff only activates after an encounter power. See the rotations section for more info.
At unparalleled level this gives a 55% critical severity to you, a 3% debuff to the enemy and a 3% reduction to the enemy’s damage.
Depending on the amount of critical severity that you have you will find that the vorpal doesn’t perform as well as it looks on paper, thanks to how combat advantage bonus damage and critical severity are added together in the damage formula.
If you’re on a budget a Perfect Vorpal is a good way to start off.
Here’s what the Vorpal looks like :
| Crit Sev + Combat Adv | Vorpal | Damage Increase |
| 1.6 | 0.55 | 21.15% |
| 1.61 | 0.55 | 21.07% |
| 1.62 | 0.55 | 20.99% |
| 1.63 | 0.55 | 20.91% |
| 1.64 | 0.55 | 20.83% |
| 1.65 | 0.55 | 20.75% |
| 1.66 | 0.55 | 20.68% |
| 1.67 | 0.55 | 20.60% |
| 1.68 | 0.55 | 20.52% |
| 1.69 | 0.55 | 20.45% |
| 1.7 | 0.55 | 20.37% |
| 1.72 | 0.55 | 20.22% |
| 1.73 | 0.55 | 20.15% |
| 1.74 | 0.55 | 20.07% |
| 1.75 | 0.55 | 20.00% |
| 1.76 | 0.55 | 19.93% |
| 1.77 | 0.55 | 19.86% |
| 1.78 | 0.55 | 19.78% |
| 1.79 | 0.55 | 19.71% |
| 1.8 | 0.55 | 19.64% |
| 1.81 | 0.55 | 19.57% |
You can quickly see that just on paper, when you have a combined combat advantage damage and critical severity greater than 175% then the Feytouched will deliver more damage as that’s a flat 20% damage all the time. Just remember to add that 55% to your combat advantage damage + critical severity when finding your total. With all of the buffs that happen in high-end groups you could well find that you’re past the 175% mark for combined critical severity and combat advantage bonus. If you are then you should be on the feytouched.
The dread enchantment only works on your encounter powers. If you find that you’re using your at-will powers a lot, don’t even consider looking at dread unless you’re running as a Templock and using it just to stack up on the extra debuffs. It’s even really good for dungeon runs in end-game content, but a word of caution, the Feytouched is reducing the incoming damage to your warlock by 20%, that’s a HUGE piece of defence right there. If your group is not spamming the mount bonus Shephard’s Devotion and you are squishy then you’re not ready to run with the dread in end-game content, stick with the Feytouched, it’s still giving a decent damage boost and some nice defence too.
| Crit Sev + Combat Adv | Dread | Damage Increase |
| 1.6 | 0.8 | 30.77% |
| 1.61 | 0.8 | 30.65% |
| 1.62 | 0.8 | 30.53% |
| 1.63 | 0.8 | 30.42% |
| 1.64 | 0.8 | 30.30% |
| 1.65 | 0.8 | 30.19% |
| 1.66 | 0.8 | 30.08% |
| 1.67 | 0.8 | 29.96% |
| 1.68 | 0.8 | 29.85% |
| 1.69 | 0.8 | 29.74% |
| 1.7 | 0.8 | 29.63% |
| 1.71 | 0.8 | 29.52% |
| 1.72 | 0.8 | 29.41% |
| 1.73 | 0.8 | 29.30% |
| 1.74 | 0.8 | 29.20% |
| 1.75 | 0.8 | 29.09% |
| 1.76 | 0.8 | 28.99% |
| 1.77 | 0.8 | 28.88% |
| 1.78 | 0.8 | 28.78% |
| 1.79 | 0.8 | 28.67% |
| 1.8 | 0.8 | 28.57% |
| 1.81 | 0.8 | 28.47% |
You can take your regular DPS enchant, but if you’ll be more useful to the team if you use a debuff enchantment that they don’t already have. Dread is one that’s not taken by too many support class at the moment so it’s a good place to start.
On mod 15 we used Feytouched and Lightning (I won’t recommend Lightning but it’s fun to play with and helps with trash clearing)
On SB Paragon, you’re going to see higher numbers with Dread than with Feytouched, but you get easy spark generation with Feytouched and Hadar’s Grasp (ranged, cannot be interrupted, and higher damage, procs) which makes the Feytouched the preferred choice for Single Target.
Assuming a Critical Strike Severity + Combat Advantage Damage of 150% with permanent uptime, and that 75% of our damage (without a dread) benefits from Dread (this number can be changed with rotations/playstyle/team.) we get :
DPS gain with Unparalleled Dread enchant :
0.75 * (0.8/(1+1.5)) = 0.24 (24% damage Increase) to encounters only.
Feytouched buffs all damage by 20%. The extra damage it buffs beyond your encounters makes it outweigh dread in most parties.
As you can see the difference, is small. However, if you don’t have combat advantage, Dread wins, but Feytouched has the advantageof spark generation with Hadar’s Grasp.
This adds 25% deflection to whatever you currently have. The Eclipse is great to help with your survivability but it’s also great for movement too. When you shadowslip and run out of stamina, the Eclipse enchantment will refill your stamina to full again (30 second internal cooldown). It’s perfect if you are doing speed runs or running Enduring Boots.
Each hit you take, you gain 4% damage resistance, 1.5% increased healing and 1.5% increased recovery for 10 seconds and can stack up to 10 times.
In terms of stopping a hit, it’s not brilliant if you can’t survive the first one. If you’re squishy right now, don’t look at getting the Negation yet, you’ll need a bit more survivability on your character before you’re ready for this one.
If you can survive a hit then look at getting this one simply for the recovery. The recovery kicks in at Transcendent level so build your negation up to that level before you start wearing it.
Works best in damage over time areas or where you’ll be taking (near) constant damage. As a Templock you should be right in the middle of the action, dropping the Pillar of Power and debuffing everything you can find. If you can take the first hit then the Negation is the way to go.
This enchant gets a charge every 6 seconds up to a maximum of 4 charges. If you take a hit it will protect you for a certain amount of damage depending on the number of charges that it has. At unparalleled level this will absorb :
Works best when you have a gap between combat so that it can recharge.
This is great to increase your survivability but does have a big drawback. If you are under the effects of a Damage over Time, this will stop the barkshield from generating a new stack until the damage over time effect has cleared.
If you die this will instantly bring you back to life. At perfect level it will give you 6000 HP, and some additional HP over time too. If you die, as soon as you are back on your feet you’ll be down again, though you lose all of your Soul Sparks, your Tyrannical Curse if it’s up, and all your buffs (unless they persist through death).
If you’re on a budget, the Lesser is ok to get you going.
It’s best used in non-AoE heavy areas, mostly solo play when you’re just doing your dailies.
You don’t need all of these, we’re just mentioning the ones you should be looking into.
(-Recommended-) Soul Sight Crystal as main artifact for DPS. It comes with 1000 Power, 1000 Lifesteal and 600 Control Bonus and when activated will give a 50% damage bonus buff for 10 seconds. When you’re running as DPS it’s the obvious choice for bosses but it is also good on trash since it works with Tyrannical Curse, but that’s harder to pull off.
For Trash, Sigil of the Devoted (DC Sigil) is a decent starter as it allows you to use your dailies more frequently, making trash clearing a little more forgiving. Alternatively, using Artificer’s Persuasion with a Heart of the … Dragon artifact will accomplish similar things, with better uptime.
Decanter of Atropal Essence also works thanks to its 10% buff for an extended period of time.
What you use when in a support role will depend on what the other members of the group are already wearing. The debuffs from two of the same artifact do not stack so you want to mix them up as much as possible.
For secondary artifacts, you need the Shard of Orcus’ Wand for the complete set, then artifacts that balance your stats: Armour Penetration, Critical Strike, Power. Below is a list of the more commonly used ones that help out but there’s a lot of artifacts available, have a look to see what you NEED.
Before we jump into the rotations, it’s worth looking at a how the class actually plays. In our animations you have 3 parts to each At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Artifact and Combat Mount Power usage:
The Pre-Cast animation happens before the game actually casts the At-Will, Encounter etc. Some of the animations for our encounters and dailies are very long, particularly Hadar’s Grasp and Gates of Hell and it can be interrupted. It’s important to understand what’s going on in the fight and how best to deal with our long cast times. If you’re in a red area or can see that the enemy will perform a “disruptive” attack such as a Knock-back, Prone, Stun attack then don’t try casting a long cast time power. You’ll get interrupted and that’s a waste of time when you could have either moved out of the way, dropped into a standing-still-shadowslip or hit a quick at-will for some added dps. In some cases, the effects triggered by a power are triggered in the Pre-Cast animation meaning that you can shadowslip to cancel the power but still gain the effect such as mount bonuses.
Example of a Pre-Cast animation – Brood of Hadar : Character raises right arm in the air then brings it down towards the ground.
The cast part of any power is those few frames where the effect of the power you’ve used is applied and calculated. This part of the sequence also triggers the cooldown counter and helps to identify which part of the animation sequence is the cast.
Example of a Cast animation – Brood of Hadar : the right hand touches the ground and you’ll see a black trail on the ground.
The post-cast animations can be interrupted which is a good thing if you’re the one doing the interrupting. All the effects have happened in the earlier part of the sequence (the cast part) so the end animation is just there for the look and nothing else.
You can shadowslip to cancel the post cast animation with no negative effects and allow you to either move to safety or quickly get into the pre-cast animation of another power. Note that entering shadowslip sometimes takes longer than the post-cast animation, check your timing.
Example of a Post Cast animation – Brood of Hadar : The black trail (the brood) moves along the ground towards the targeted enemy. The Scourge Warlock stands up straight and enters combat stance.
In a nutshell: When it comes to animation cancelling, practice cancelling during the post cast phase to speed up your rotations and maximize your effectiveness.
Most of the DoTs’ damage (pre-debuffs) is calculated on the first hit. For instance Soul Scorch’s DoT does 1/6 of the initial hit each tick. This means that whether you deal damage as DoT or not, you should fire your most powerful abilities when buffs reach their peak (minus the time it takes for said abilities to land). It also means that the moment your target gets under 50% HP, your DoTs won’t be magically affected by the Fire Archon Active bonus, but only newly applied DoTs will.
Note that buffs affect outgoing damage from you. Damage resistance debuffs affect incoming damage the target takes.
The Scourge Warlock can apply curses to its enemies which have different effects :
Many of the Scourge Warlock’s powers have different effects upon cursed targets. These effects fall into two categories, Curse Consume and Curse Synergy.
| PRO-TIP You can’t benefit from the damage boost of a Warlock’s Curse on a target affected by Tyrannical Curse, which means that you lose dps, however, you can still apply Warlock’s Curse to the T-Cursed target and the curse consume mechanic will still work |
Some spells (Killing Flames mostly) and a feature can spawn a Soul Puppet which is essentially a pet that attacks enemies. It lasts for 20 seconds (timer stops when not in combat). Performing an action that would normally summon a Soul Puppet will reset the timer back to 20 seconds and heal the soul puppet to full health.
The Soul Puppet has the same critical strike chance as the player, it’s attacks can now critically strike and has a Critical Severity of 50%
It deals some damage and you can even make it off-tank lower dungeons with a specific feat.
Using some feats in the Damnation Tree you can increase the hit points of the Soul Puppet to match the same amount of HP as yourself. You can also transfer 25% of the damage that you take to your soul puppet, given that you can heal the puppet to full health by performing an action that would normally summon a Soul Puppet, this will help to make you much more tanky.
From mod 13, the Chultan Tiger is the best summoned pet for single target, since it has both a decent active (Damage and speed for a limited time) and a debuff which is triggered only if it has Combat Advantage. It also has the same slots as an Air Archon (2x rings, 1 neck slot, 3x offensive slots) making the transition easy. The only downside is how stupidly he dies. You’ll be looking to put a +4 and +5 version of the Gravestriker rings on your pet along with the Electrum Necklace of your choosing.
(Gravestriker + 5, when your health is greater than 85% your power is increased by 1000 [800 for the +4 variant])
This power does transfer to you through Companion’s Gift when the bonding runestones proc.
Yojimbo is a new companion that was recently released in the the Lanterns event. It’s arguably the BiS companion given the debuff will last for longer than 25 seconds (Chultan Tiger) and is active on up to 3 enemies compared to one (Chultan Tiger). However a word of caution for this companion; he has a teleport attack that will make him appear behind his enemy, it’s his first attack. On any enemy that is on the edge of a platform (Dragon Turtle [FBI], Atropal [CODG], Ras Nsi[T9] occasionally) he will teleport behind them, there will be no platform for him to stand on and he will die requiring a re-summon when you’re out of combat. Until this teleportation/death issue is solved the Chultan Tiger is still the way to go for now.
Sellsword/Con Artist/Rebel Mercenary are also decent summoned pets thanks to the debuff they bring; however, their active powers aren’t the best. If you’re running as a Templock you can also consider using the Earth Archon or a Dancing Shield. These won’t be helping your DPS at all but they do bring something to the table. The Earth Archon is somewhat tanky and will take the hit that would have potentially killed the pet for one of the DPS class, that helps the team to keep delivering the hurt on the enemy. The Dancing shield is the current best debuff companion with a 20% debuff (twice that of the Sellsword) it’s also good at not falling off ledges and can help to defend the companions for the DPS group members. Remember, as a Templock you’re gonna deliver plenty healing and you’re not there for the DPS, you’re there for the buffs/debuffs that you have.
If you do not plan on getting those I’d recommend getting the Air Archon (Or Fire Archon, but it has the bad habit of placing itself out of buffs)
In Mod 15, the BiS gear for the companion are the Electrum sets. Power/Critical Strike with a single offense slot. You may be thinking that Illusionist’s Gambit or some other double offense slot would be better, the additional stats that the Electrum provides is more than the 1400 stat points that a R14 triple stat enchant would give you.
25% Combat Advantage.
+2.5% Critical Severity.
A 25% increase to your combat advantage damage is a big increase.
Increases your damage against targets not at full health by +2.0/3.0/5.0%. Each additional active Archon increases this bonus by .5 %
The moment you hit something (or someone else does) then this companion will be active.
Increases your damage against ta
rgets by +3/4/6% when you are at full health. Each additional active Archon increases this by .5%
You should have near permanent uptime with those with the amount of dots proccing lifesteal, and on top of that they synergize well.
Deal +3/4% increased damage. This effect is increased to +7/8% damage while on Stronghold map.
4% increased damage 100% of the time makes it the better option to have than the Fire Archon as that’s only active 50% of the time but would have given a 0.5 increase to both the Air and Earth Archons. Expect this to be replaced by the new Razorwood companion from Mod 14.
Notable Mentions
Dailies : Brood of Hadar/Immolation Spirits
Encounters : Soul Scorch / Spark Generator / Spark Generator or Killing Flames
At-Will : Essence Defiler
Class Features : Dust to Dust and All-Consuming Curse (or Deadly Curse if you have Relentless Curse feat)
Weapon Enchant : Feytouched (Preferred) or Dread
Spark Generators, by order of preference :
Hadar’s Grasp (only works when Critically Striking and Proccing Enchants) / Blade of Vanquished Army (melee only) / Dreadtheft (only viable at lower IL).
At low IL you should probably take two of them to get good spark generation.
If you have a proc enchant (Feytouched) you should use Hadar’s Grasp.
Curse your target and fire off an Essence Defiler to get the companion to attack. This will proc your Bonding Runestones and give you Companion’s Gift. Open up with Immolation Spirits and a spark generator (which needs critical strike, that’s why it’s important to fire them after Companion’s Gift) followed by a combo of Killing Flames then Soul Scorch + Warlock’s Curse, once your sparks are starting to get low (3 levels and under) use your spark generators/Immolation Spirits and use Killing Flames/Soul Scorch/Brood of Hadar when they get high (You ideally want to time this part when the buffs are up).
This is a tricky part for a SW since there’s no ‘one fits-all” rotation (It depends on the packs, you, and your team). But here’s some ideas.
Then there are two schools of thought
Our advice on this part is, experience different rotations to see which fits you and the situation best. (ex : Don’t use BoVa when you can’t be at melee range for extended periods)
Encounters : Pillar/Dreadtheft/Whatever
At-Wills : Hand of Blight and Hellish Rebuke
Class Feature : ACC (for DT Curse Synergy) + Whatever
You should place your Pillar of Power under the dps (and the enemy at the same time if you can) whenever you have the cooldown, and use Dreadtheft for burst phases/whenever you have it available. Don’t be afraid of cancelling dreadtheft if you need it.
Make sure to use a Hellish Rebuke as this will have some chip damage and also some additional DoT healing. Use your Hand of Blight too as the additional debuff from the last hit will help the DPS to chunk the enemy and add to the group survivability.
You have to use Warlock’s Curse once in a while on your target (Though on bosses, the Curse duration, if it doesn’t expire due to the limit of cursed targets, is really long) to ensure your allies can be benefit from the buff. If you use a curse consume power here remember to curse the target again.
Except Cursing, placing Pop and using DT, you are pretty much free to do what you want. (That’s why we can say you can use whatever for 3rd encounter slot, though we often use Killing Flames, Fiery Bolt or Warlock’s Bargain).
SW Ability Coefficient (AKA Base Damage)
The SW Discord, which is pretty much where all the SW discussion takes place
Janne’s Website which contains a lot of general info and tools about the game that are not explained in detail in this guide. You don’t have to read all the sections, but it helps understanding how some stuff work.
Sharpedge’s CW Mechanics Guide
General Info on Weapon Enchantments
RJC’s weapon enchant comparison
The Synergy Guide
Stabbing Group Synergy Guide
Updated List of Insignias/mounts
Bethel’s Insignia bonus tool
This section will be updated with the most common questions asked regarding our guide as it receives feedback
Hello everyone my name is kitty 1007 but please call me kitty . So to start off this is my scourge warlock build for end game I will explain everything about and I will touch base on how to start off your warlock for new players as well.
Races: Human, gain additional heroic feats . Your defence 3% higher. Also with the additional heroics feats you will gain more damage .
For new player I do suggest starting off as a tiefling until you think your stats are high enough to change over to human but that just a suggestion.
Stats : your main stats as a warlock are charisma , constitution and intelligence
Because I want to do more damage I rolled my constitution to 18 so would it will be at 28 which is the highest you can go with a warlock .
Paragon paths : Hell Bringer
Hell bringer is my favourite paragon path it’s what caught my eye when I first started .
Gear: New players once you get to lvl 70 go a full primal set to start off until you are ready to do castle Ravenloft.
Head : Curse Lord’s Assault Ushanka for now I will be changing to the Gallant raid cowl in the future
Armor : Hag’s rags
You can get this armor piece by doing the Ras Manca hunt in barovia
I chose this piece because of the 3 % more damage with ranged powers
Arms :
I use these arms for the encounter power stack with the boots of the willed
Main hand : Exalted Obsidian Tecpatl
I chose this set because of the set bonus
Gives you 10% more damage . Which is great
I have set my equip bonus to hellish rebuke because it’s my main at-will plus it will give me 12% more damage
Off -hand : Exalted Obsidian Tecpatl
In my artifact stat increase I have chosen action point gain but you can choose in what you are lacking stats
In my artifact class I use deadly curse
Feet: boots of the willed
Neck : Baphomet’s infernal Talisman
Waist : Demogorgon’s Girdle of Might
Great for any dps class you deal up to 20% damage based on the difference in hit points percentage between you and the target .
You will only get this bonus if you have the whole set
Also the waist gives you +2 Constitution and +2 strength which adds to your stats
Rings :
&
I have chosen these rings because of the equip bonus witch is great for end game like castle ravenloft to cradle.. Etc and hopefully one I’ll get +5 shadow stalker 
Shirt & pants :
upper Primal paints
Mako’s spare travel pants
Best shirt and pant out so but the shirt has great stats for damage output.
Artifacts
Main : soul sight crystal for 50% more damage
Shard of orcus wand for set bonus for demo set
fragmented key of stars
Thayan Book of the Dead
Again stat wise
You can choose any artifact for these two last ones for your stat gain
Enchantments:
Weapon enchantment : unparalleled Feytouched
With the fey touch you will need to have 100% crit because it doesn’t add additional crit stats
Armor enchantment : Transcendent barkshield
This enchantment is great you can take more hits and so you can do more damage but you do have to count how many times you get hit especially in boss fights .
In my gear I run all brutal and radiants for power, crit , and hit points you can swap the radiant in your defense with black ice but that is your choice.
And in my utility slots I run dark for movement speed gotta keep up with the group but also keeping up in dps
Feats :
DPS loadout :
DPS master soul puppet:
Templock :
I’ve done a lot with experimenting with the temptation path and this is the best I’ve have gotten so far a lot of heals and buffs
Soul binding path :
Everything from gear to mounts and artifacts are the same just the feats I don’t use this loud out a lot but I tried it out for myself to see what it does put out pretty decent damage but I miss my cuddle puddle when using it .
Powers:
Encounters for tr.
I also have been switching out fiery bolt with curse bite
Companions
For my main I use the chultan tiger for the boost
Ring of grave riker +5
bronze wood raid ring+1
electrum raid necklace +1
I run r14 brutals in all slots
3 r14 bonding runestone grants 65% x3 = 195% of companions stats for 30s
Active companions
Razorwood
25% combat advantage
+2.5% critical severity
Air archon
Increases your damage by +5.0% pulse .5% for other archons
Earth archon
Increase your damage by +6%
When your at full health
Pulse. 5% for other archons
Siege master
Deal 4% increased damage
Only in t9g and cradle replace the siege master with the Alpha compy
+3% increased damage and that increases to 5%
In t9 and cradle
Mounts and mount bonuses
Mounts powers
Combat power : tenser’s Transformation
Equip power : 4000 power dps
4000 recovery templock
Mounts insignia powers
Shepherd’s devotion: increases your powers by 5%
Cavalry warning : whenever you activate your mount power you gain an increase of 10% to everything
Magistrate’s patience: when ever your critical strike targets take psychic damage equal to 10% to your power pulse it heals your teammates for 3% of their hit points
Artificer’s persuasion : whenever you activate your mount power your recovery, movement, action point gain and stamina gain increases by 10% of your power
Protector’s camaraderie: whenever your summoned companion attacks you gain 3% of your power and defense for 10 sec stacks up to 4 x
Boons
Guild boons
Power
Defense
This one is up to you
Sharandar
Dark fey Hunter
Fey precision
Feywilds fortitude
Elven ferocity
Elvish fury
Dread ring
Reliquary keeper’s strength
Evoker’s thirst
Forbidden piercing
Shadow touch
Rampaging madness
Icewind dale
Encroaching tactics
Refreshing chill
Sleet skills
Cool resolve
Winter’s bounty
Under dark
Primordial might
Primordial focus
Drow ambush tactics
Dwarven stamina
Abyssal strikes
Tyranny of dragons
Dragon’s claws
Dragon’s gaze
Draconic armor breaker
Dragon’s greed
3x dragon’s fury
The maze engine
Abyssal siphoning
Demonic influence
Demonic swiftness
Baphomet’s might
Elemental evil
Wave of force
Heart of stone
searing aggression
Gale of retribution
Storm King’s thunder
Cold hearted
Hardy constitution
Icy wrath
Glacial strength
Chill of winter
The cloaked ascendancy
Aura of hope
Fiery frenzy
Soothing zephyr
Aberrant power
Jungles of chult
Tyrant’s terror x3
Overgrown x3
Lingering curse x2
Ravenloft
3x undying death
1x blood lust
Thank you for taking the time to go through and explore my build if you have any questions or concerns feel free to contacted me at @kitty1007ps4
Or on my YouTube channel link below
vvvvvv
https://www.youtube.com/user/chikwe101
***This is a work in progress. The demand for this guide was so high I felt it more important to get the screenshots online with incompleted text than to make everyone wait a week. At least with the screenshots, you can get the mechanics of the builds. Expect regular updates. I haven’t missed a day yet, and most days I’ve done two.***
Hello. Right now this is sort of a scratch guide. I’ve begun with screenshots. I’ll go through and start adding support text at lunch or this evening to flush it all out.
Let me start by telling you what this is and what this isn’t. This is meant to be a guide for people who have been playing Neverwinter a while and are looking to adapt their existing character to the changes on Mod 16. I haven’t spent a lot of time going into subjects like the best race. I’ve always felt you should play a race you want to identify with anyway, and most players reading this guide are probably locked into a former decision unless they have a race reroll token sitting around.
I built this guide on the shoulders, as they say, of giants. Unlike Isaac Newton, however, I’m not insulting a third party with a short joke. I’m just acknowledging a lot of people did a lot of work on the test servers so I wouldn’t have to. I’ve linked to them on the thanks page.
To give you just a little starting background: to prepare, I made sure I had 1200 Seals of the Brave and I exchanged them at the Yawning Portal for Seals of the Crown. I took those to Barovia, ran a Demogorgon and an Isle of Tuern and managed to get a breastplate, arms, and legs from the Barovian seals vendor. Other than that, I’m running with the bonding runestones I worked hard to grind up to 13 and 12 before the mod drop, some 13 lvl runestones in the companion gear, and the gear given to me during the questline or things I earned from Seals of the Brave during Mod 15. I just swapped out my shirt and pants and two rings for gear earned during the campaign for items better than stuff I had before Mod 16 dropped.
I run 3 loadouts. I’ve cobbled some of this together from other people’s advice. I’ll link credits tonight, so check back. I don’t want them to go unheralded.
Solo: Solo is for adventuring alone. It relies on Burning Light to handle most of my blocking for me, and Sacred Weapon to handle most of my stamina regeneration. It likely isn’t a highly efficient tanking build, as it isn’t focused on pulling a lot of agro. I built it for DPS and survivability, and also to play with one or two keys on my Razer Orbweaver without thinking about it too much. It plays the most like Mod 15 OP with Templar’s Wrath and infinite temp HP. I blast through story content with this gear.
Tank: I built this for dungeons. Hard to tell how effective it is yet with things being as they are. I seem to pull agro, that’s for sure. Then I often get one or two-shotted by Demogorgon or a trash mob and die. I believe that’s an issue with the scaling mechanics they’ve already acknowledged, not the build. Or maybe I’m just bad at getting my shield up. PEBKaC.
Healer: This should be sound, but I don’t have a lot of experience with healing. If you have feedback, feel free to message me, here or on discord, and I’ll incorporate your notes. I mainly built it from the builds of people who seem more experienced than myself.
I’m definately in the “Play what you love” camp. You’re going to have to stare at this character for hundreds of hours. You have better like what you see, and the more you identify with the character, the more you will love them. Honestly, you can make any race work. On top of that, Mod 16 has shaken things up in the middle of the game, so likely your racial decision has already been made.
That said, let’s take a moment and look at the races, for the sake of new players.
Dragonborn (Purchased Race): +2 bonus to any two stats is nice, it allows you to make sure you aren’t wasting your stat points. Draconic Heritage increases incoming healing, giving a good bonus for tank builds. Draconic Fury helps with criticals, and DPS isn’t our focus, but it’s always nice when soloing. All in all, it’s easy to see why the Dragonborn has been the optimal paladin choice in the pen and paper game since 4th edition.
Human: If you are of a certain age, the human is the paladin race in your head, for reasons going back to 1st edition D&D, when they were the only valid choice. With a +3 to any one stat and +250 to all offensive and defensive ratings, they are still an iconic choice, especially with the new combat system.
Half-Orc: Not the most optimal choice. They can get a +2 to constitution, which is good, but the Dex bonus isn’t that useful to us. The other two racial abilities, Furious Assault and Swift Charge, are about DPS and mobility. Not huge boons for a class whose primary mechanics limit mobility.
Wood Elf: The wood elf is probably slightly better than the half-orc. It has the same problems on the surface, with one relevant stat bonus and one DPS racial ability and one movement racial ability, but the movement ability helps resist slow effects, which can be annoying even to a tank.
Sun Elf: All the sun elf abilities are at least useful to a paladin. The stats are both relevant. Inner Calm helps action point gain, which is good for any class, and Sun Elf Grace increases resistance to control effects, which is better than the wood elf version in pretty much every way.
Dwarf: The dwarf isn’t a bad choice. One of the stats will be useful for a tank, both of them for a healer. Stand Your Ground, while not necessary, helps defend against annoying knockback while tanking. Cast Iron increases defense. That seems great, but you’ll probably hit your defense from items and wish this was something else eventually.
Halfling: The halfling is another good middle of the pack choice. They get one relevant stat bonus for sure, either charisma or constitution. Nimble Reaction gives a bonus to Deflect, which has the same issue as Cast Iron, above. Bold gives resistance to Control Effects, which is always useful.
Half-Elf: The half-elf is a fairly strong choice, as the middle of the pack races go. All the stat bonuses are relevant, plus they get an additional +1. Critical Severity is increased and they Gain a bonus to Deflect, which we’ve discussed previously, so mainly this choice is about the stats.
Tiefling: I’d place the tiefling up in the top tier races. All the stat bonuses are relevant. They gain a DPS bonus on bloodied targets, which isn’t bad, but they also can reduce the damage a target deals when they take damage, which is great for a tank. Or a healer. Really it’s great for anyone who doesn’t like pain.
Drow: The drow might be at the low end of the choices here. They only have one relevant stat. Their debuff is only really useful for DPS. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t help your primary roles. Trance only helps HP regeneration out of combat, which is already pretty high.
Metallic Ancestry Dragonborn (lockbox only): The metallic dragonborn is much like the normal dragonborn, except the healing and DPS are reduced for more HP. All in all still a great choice. Mostly, you probably choose this because you CAN.
Moon Elf (Purchase Only): The moon elf is much the same as the sun elf, except they gain a smaller bonus to AP, but a bonus to Stamina regeneration as well. Top tier.
Menzoberranzan Renegade (Purchase Only): The same problems as the drow, except you had to pay for the privilege of making this sub-optimal choice.
There are many good guides and tutorials on the optimal offensive and defensive ratings. Rainer has at least one good video on the matter, with supporting google docs. You can see the link to his youtube page on my Thanks! tab.
But here it is in a nutshell.
Each foe has a rating. This determines the minimum rating you need to overcome their defense or to defend against their attack.
It also has a maximum effective value. Meaning that at a certain enemy rating, having offensive and defensive ratings above a certain level is useless.
There is no maximum optimal value for Power or HIP.
I’ll list here the optimum high value for each of the ratings at level 70, again at 80, and for Lair of the Mad Mage. Going above these values gives you no benefit.
All the supporting math stuff, for those of you who don’t have families and friends to love you, is below the table. The table is for those that need to get stuff done. And even it, you can just look at the Lvl 70, 80, and Lair of the Mad Mage numbers.
Remember, going above these optimal numbers give you no additional advantage.
| Stat | Rating (70/80/LotMM) | Lvl 70 | Lvl 80 | Lair of the Mad Mage | Base | Cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Armor Penetration | 7000/10000/16000 | 57000 | 60000 | 66000 | 50% | |
| Accuracy | 7000/10000/16000 | 57000 | 60000 | 66000 | ||
| Critical Strike | 7000/10000/16000 | 52000 | 55000 | 61000 | 5% | 50% |
| Combat Advantage | 7000/10000/16000 | 97000 | 100000 | 106000 | 10% | 100% |
| Defense | 7000/10000/16000 | 57000 | 60000 | 66000 | ||
| Deflection | 7000/10000/16000 | 57000 | 60000 | 66000 | 50% | |
| Critical Avoidance | 7000/10000/16000 | 62000 | 65000 | 71000 | ||
| Awareness | 7000/10000/16000 | 67000 | 70000 | 76000 |
The stats above are listed in what most people consider the order of priority. Armor Penetration, the Accuracy, then Critical Strike or Advantage. That is probably still technically true for tanks, but once those stats are high enough they aren’t actively holding you back, it’s probably best to reprioritize Defense, Deflection, Crit Avoidance, and Awareness until those are optimized, then go back and finish optimizing your attack stats. You just can’t afford to be dying every 30 seconds as a tank and as long as you’re hitting enough to grab aggro, you’re doing most of your job, offensively. Let the DPS pull their weight.
The stats are paired in opposition. The pairs are these:
| Stat | Counterstat |
|---|---|
| Critical Strike | Critical Avoidance |
| Combat Advantage | Awareness |
| Deflect | Accuracy |
| Armor Penetration | Defense |
The basic math works like this:
So if you have a Deflect of 40,000 at 70th level, your foes have a Accuracy rating of 7,000.
You have a 33% Deflect chance.
Character Sheet
This is me with mostly seal gear from Barovia, a few quest pieces from the quest line, and a decent (but not fully upgraded) set of bonding runestones on my companion. Companion’s Gift has activated. As you can see, I have some tuning to do, but I’m scaled up to 80 in the stronghold, so these aren’t final numbers and I haven’t done much tuning.
Your stats changed considerably for this mod. They now do the same thing for every class, which is a bit more in line with classic D&D. The important thing are the bonuses each stat give. They are ½ bonuses and ¼ bonuses based on the stat value, expressed as a percentage. Here is a list of the stats:
So if you have a 20 strength, you would have a 10% Stamina Regeneration, and a 5% Physical Damage Boost.
All of our attacks deal magical damage. Only three of our at wills deal physical damage. So our most important stats are Con, Int, and Cha. I recommend a 20 Con, a 20 Int, and the rest into Cha. For a healer build, Wis is more important than Int.
Up until just a bit before going live, augments were far superior than fighting companions. They corrected that just an update or two before launch, giving all companions the same set of bonuses and bringing them on an equal footing. So now, play what you like but be conscious of two things:
Don’t stress right now about gaining companion gear, even though they changed the requirements in Mod 16 so that they can only use actual companion gear and not your cast offs. The first chest you get when you accept the Undermountain quest gives you a three companion gear pieces. These pieces are better than the level gear you get while running the campaign, so you’ll use them quite a while. This only downside is that they only have offense slot. They take runestones.
You get better companion gear at the end of the campaign, so just run the campaign.
As for the companion powers, you essentially want to choose abilities to bolster those rating on the optimization page. Go to your stronghold or somewhere you can attack and set off your comp. When they give you their boosts, see the effects of the ratings, but be aware of any scaling in that zone. Use that to tweak which companion abilities you select and which runestones you slot in the companion gear. Remember, Power and (when you get defensive slots) HP have no optimum value. When you have the others optimized stack as much HP and Power as you can.
Defendi’s Paladin Companions
Update: I was running into a bug sending me into an infinite charging state with Burning Light that turned off stamina regeneration for good. I’m not sure if it was putting me into infinite blocking. I’ve updated the text to remove the references to you losing all passive stamina regeneration with Burning Vengeance.
This is the build I use for running around and consuming story content. It is fun. Not fun like, “Hey, I’m playing D&D in a video game” fun. It’s funner than that. It’s fun like whyn you got your first protective sports cup, and ran around the high school locker room, wearing nothing but high-tech ultra plastic and three elastic straps screaming “Kick me in the jimmies!” to everyone who would listen.
For the sake of joke symmetry, I wrote several versions of that analogy for the female paladins as well, but they all sounded like I was punching down. The first rule of good joke writing is to never punch down. Unless you are testing a high-tech ultra plastic protective sports cup. Obviously.
Anyway. That’s what it’s like playing this solo tank build. But with fewer trips to the school counselor.
As mentioned in the stats tab, we’re shooting for a 20 con for 10% HP Boost and 5% AP Gain, a 20 Int for the 5% Magical Damage Boost and all the charisma we can get for the Companion Influence and Recharge Speed. Here’s how that worked out for me with my human paladin.
Note that I have at least one item giving me a stat bonus, in this case to STR and Con. I’ve already had to retrain on to keep my Con at 20. YMMV. Go for the 20/20 goals and don’t stress if your distribution doesn’t match mine.
At will selection is simple. At level 70 use Valorous Stike and Radiant Strike. When you get Shielding Strike at level 71, swap it in instead.
I like to put radiant strike on the right mouse for the lunge as an opener.
When you get shielding strike, it will be your primary method of regenerating stamina, so use it as often as possible.
Levels 70-76, Burning Light, Sacred Weapon, and Smite.
Levels 77+ Burning Light, Relentless Avenger, and Smite.
This is the bread and butter of this build, coupled with shielding strike. So by default, this power takes two seconds to charge and while it’s charging it puts up an automatic block ahead of you that acts much like the temporary HP in Mod 15. This only works for frontal attacks and it uses your stamina. With the feat below, it can be charged as long as you want, but it stops blocking if you run out of stamina. You stop regenerating stamina while charging.
We mainly take this for the stamina restoration. It has a long recharge, though, so we’ll ditch it later.
Bam! You want some of this? Oh how about you? Bam! Oh, you want some too… Bam!!!
While smite does more damage when fully charged, I’ve found its not usually worth it. It’s funner just to lay about, and it probably does more damage overall. I don’t have hard numbers to back that up, because it’s so much funner just to use it as much as possible. And seriously, this is your solo build. Who are you trying to impress? Your pets? Your cat is never going to be impressed, and your dog already worships you unconditionally. So… Bam!
Update: I did a statistical analysis of smite, both using it as often as possible and trying to wait until the optimum time to strike. Using it as often as possible is fairly simple, you can do that with simple button mashing. Timing for the moment your divinity hits maximum is trickier. In a relaxed battle, I saw an improvement in DPS of 21%. I could see that reaching even higher with a perfect execution, maybe as high as 25%. However I wanted a frantic, real-world situation, so I also attempted it while running Demogorgon. During Demogorgon, trying to wait for the bar to fill, my DPS with smite dropped to 62%. I just couldn’t stay on top of that bar while managing everything else during the fight. So I’ll keep probably keep using it as often as possible. While someone with better skill at managing multiple systems might get more out of it, I’ll likely continue only seeing increased DPS on the battles where I don’t need it.
Good damage, short cooldown and it has a lunge with a range of 60′. Yes, please.
Divine Judgement and Radiant Charge get the job done. One for single foes and one for groups of mobs.
(Bam!)
Increases damage when your soloing. See the name of this build.
Increases divinity gain. (Say it with me… Bam!)
Our Feats are straight-forward.
Sacred shield gives us our extra stamina gain from sacred weapon through 76th. Since we don’t use heal on this build and don’t care much about threat if we did, it’s an easy choice.
This ups the effectiveness of Burning Light. For some reason I haven’t adequately determined, people using this build generate a large number of AP from blocking.
More Divinity. (Bam!)
Turns you from a team player to a loner.
Reduces Divine Champion cost and ups the damage blocked to 75%.
As you can see, I selected Power and HP at every possible opportunity. I get most of my optimizable stats from my companion, as I’ve mentioned. The rest I get from gear. There should be no need to spend boons on things like deflect, but if you need and you have retrain tokens to put them back later, that’s a valid band aid.
When I topped out my HP and Power, I spent on Control Resitance on Tier 4 and AP Gain and Recovery Speed on Tier 5. For my Master Boon on this build I have Enhanced Application. This gives us Self Healing, the a Heal Over Time, then a Reduction to Enemy attacks on successive ranks, and helps with making you independent in a game without Life Steal.
I get most of my healing from Redemption (the Companion Ability) and that My Master Boon.
These are self-explanatory. I selected Power, HP, and XP until I hit 80. Then I swapped XP for Mount speed so my sparkle pony has jets.
Defendi’s Paladin Guild Boons
This is our straight-up tank build. It’s not as fun as playing the solo build. What’s the old saying? Healing is an art, DPS is a science, tanking is a job. Playing this build is a little bit more of the job.
This build emphasizes blocking, technique, and passive mitigation. Whereas the solo build is about everything working passively as long as you mash your encounters and dailies as soon as they pop, the tank build is about positioning and using your tab and shift key wisely. And also mashing your encounters and dailies as soon as they pop. Does the Neverwinter EULA allow for simple keystroke macros? They mention using third party software to alter gameplay, but I’ve never known a company to consider the basic software functionality of your keyboard to qualify for that. At any rate, you could accomplish the same with three heavy marbles and turning down the error sound in your audio settings.
The disadvantage of this build? The AP recharge speed. The AP recharge speed on my solo build is so good that I’m wondering if it’s a bug. I put the question to discord and at least one person saw a similar speed on a GF build, so it’s not unique to the Paladin. For the moment, I’m going forward with the premise that’s it’s working as intended. At the very least, it’s a bug, not an exploit, because we’re certainly using it as intended. Nothing hinky is going on to get that speed. You have to not use a Burning Vengeance/Burning Light build at all to avoid it, and they can’t ask us to do that.
Which means…shoot. I need to add another build. <Furiously begins to test Hybrid Tank.>
As with the solo version, various gear can affect this. Your mileage may vary. Shoot for the 20/20 Con and Int for the HP and Magical Damage. All your attacks do magical damage. Dump the rest into Cha.
Defendi’s Paladin Tank Powers
At will selection is simple. At level 70 use Valorous Stike and Radiant Strike. When you get Shielding Strike at level 71, swap it in instead.
I like to put radiant strike on the right mouse for the lunge as an opener.
When you get shielding strike, it will nicely supplement your stamina regeneration, so use it as often as possible. Remember, your stamina equals your temporary HP, but only when you’re blocking.
Levels 70-76, Vow of Enmity, Sacred Weapon, and Absolution.
Levels 77+ Vow of Enmity, Relentless Avenger, and Absolution.
Welcome to threat generation. Vow of Enmity is an area attack. It doesn’t do a lot of damage, but it put you at the top of the threat ranking for everyone it hits. This handles the lion’s share of the aggro portion of your tanking job.
We mainly take this for the stamina restoration and increased threat. It has a long recharge, though, so we’ll ditch it later and rely on shielding strike.
Reduce damage taken by 20%? Putting the tank in tanking.
What’s better than a tank? A flying tank. Like, a tank with force leap. A jedi tank. So be it.
Technically, you should have Shield of Faith and Probably Divine Protector as your Dailies. Maybe switch divine protector for Heroism at 80th. But here’s the thing. I don’t know how many instances I’ve tested this build on where DPS just wasn’t bringing the thunder. You notice how I say Shield of Faith and Divine Protector but in my screenshot I have Diving Judgement slotted? DPS wasn’t bringing the thunder and the tank had to lay down the law Tuesday. So don’t be afraid to swap in a big hitting daily if you prop into a dungeon and realize that all the DPS are 800 iLevel less than you. <Sigh>
Increases divinity gain. You’ll need this for your Tabbing pleasure.
Because no matter how often we try to teach DPS to mitigate their own threat, it’s always us saving their damned bacon.
Seriously. You know the other old saying: If the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault. If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault. If DPS dies, it’s their own damned fault. Back in my SWTOR days, I ran a tank one group for three years or more. My main, however, was DPS, and I was good at him. One day I was playing with a buddy from my tanking group and he had an inferiority complex about tanking for me. “I’m just not good at tanking,” he said.
“No, man. Get that out of your head. You only think that because you notice every time I take agro from you. You don’t realize. I’m a well-built, experienced DPS. I can take aggro from you at will. There’s nothing you can do to generate as much threat as I generate if I nova. Your job isn’t to keep threat off me. Your job is to generate threat and to protect the healer. My job is to generate barely less threat than you, and I ride that ragged line every battle. I pull agro. I back off. I pull agro. I back off. None of that’s on you. You’re doing great.” Actual conversation.
But make it easier for them. Take Aura of Valor.
Our Feats are straight-forward.
Sacred shield gives us our extra stamina gain from sacred weapon through 76th. Since we don’t use heal on this build, it’s an easy choice.
It really doesn’t do anything for us, but neither does the other.
Another way to increase Divinity.
Plus 50% to incoming heals when your daily is up.
Reduces Divine Champion cost and ups the damage blocked to 75%.
Tank Boons
Defendi’s Paladin Tank Boons
As you can see, I selected Power and HP at every possible opportunity. I get most of my optimizable stats from my companion, as I’ve mentioned. The rest I get from gear. There should be no need to spend boons on things like deflect, but if you need and you have retrain tokens to put them back later, that’s a valid band aid.
When I topped out my HP and Power, I spent on Control Resistance on Tier 4 and AP Gain and Recovery Speed on Tier 5. For my Master Boon on this build I have Focused Retaliation. This reduces the enemy’s Armor Penetration and Accuracy, hindering their ability to do us harm. At the highest tier, it’s a damage shield.
These are self-explanatory. I selected Power, HP, and XP until I hit 80. Then I swapped XP for Mount speed so my sparkle pony has jets.
Update: I was running into a bug sending me into an infinite charging state with Burning Light that turned off stamina regeneration for good. I’m not sure if it was putting me into infinite blocking. I’ve updated the text to remove the references to you losing all passive stamina regeneration with Burning Vengeance.
Let me start by explaining how this build came about. I noticed on my solo build that my AP regeneration was super fast. Like, 3 seconds between dailies. My tank build received nothing like that, so there were big instances where I’d switch to my solo build because it made more sense, even though I really needed to be tanking better than it allowed. Also, the solo build is easier to play.
As soon as I switched to my first version of this build, he started with the fast AP regeneration as well. So I broke out ACT and discovered, assuming it can trank this correctly, that I’m getting most of my AP regeneration from block. Now I’m a little hesitant there still because I don’t know for sure that ACT can track Divinity Regeneration or if it’s ignoring that or putting it in the wrong bucket, but that does jive with what I’m seeing. My build that blocks constantly skyrockets the AP regen. My build that has to stop fighting whenever he wants to block regenerates very slowly.
I can’t tell you for sure if this is working as intended. If so, this is my favorite tanking build at the moment. The pure Tank build might technically be more efficient, but this one is far more forgiving of little mistakes and misteps. Plus, it’s funner to play. I spent my first night running MEs screaming “Kick me in the jimmies!” at every monster. Not sure what my group thought of that, especially since I don’t think they were native English speakers.
But if want to run around with groups, tanking and fighting at the same time with wild abandon while screaming, “Kick me in the jimmies!” at every monster you see, this is the build for you. This joke needs no version. It’s way funnier if our sister paladins to exactly that as well.
Update: I’ve discovered since that the Thaumaturge can have similar AP regeneration, so I think this is working as intended.
You are probably sick of this same image by now.
Defendi’s Paladin Hybrid Powers
At will selection is simple. At level 70 use Valorous Stike and Radiant Strike. When you get Shielding Strike at level 71, swap it in instead.
I like to put radiant strike on the right mouse for the lunge as an opener.
When you get shielding strike, it will be your primary method of supplementing your stamina regen, so use it as often as possible. Basically, all this is the same as the Solo Build.
Levels 70-76, Burning Light, Sacred Weapon, and Vow of Enmity.
Levels 77+ Burning Light, Relentless Avenger, and Vow of Enmity.
This is, again, the bread and butter of this build, coupled with shielding strike. So by default, this power takes two seconds to charge and while it’s charging it puts up an automatic block ahead of you that acts much like the temporary HP in Mod 15. This only works for frontal attacks and it uses your stamina. With the feat below, it can be charged as long as you want, but it stops blocking if you run out of stamina. You stop regenerating stamina while charging.
This might be our new Burnadin. Am I allowed to make that call?
We mainly take this for the extra stamina restoration. It has a long recharge, though, so we’ll ditch it later and rely on shielding strike.
What’s better than a tank? A flying tank. Like, a tank with force leap. A jedi tank. Screaming, “Kick me in the jimmies!” So be it.
Welcome to threat generation. Vow of Enmity is an area attack. It doesn’t do a lot of damage, but it put you at the top of the threat ranking for everyone it hits. This handles the lion’s share of the aggro portion of your tanking job.
Now, you might think I’m going to say you should have Shield of Faith and Divine Protector as your Dailies. But here’s the thing. I don’t think you can survive that way. You’re tanky, yeah, but if you alternate Shield of Faith and Divine Protector and your allies are moving around and every 6 seconds you’re getting a new ally and taking all their damage? I don’t know if anyone is that tanky. Maybe if you have the world’s best healer. I suggest this:
70-79: Shield of Faith and Divine Judgement and Radiant Charge. Maybe just Divine Judgment. Radiant Charge, every 6 seconds, might be a legit epilepsy risk for other players. I wish I were making a joke with that. At the very least, it clutters the battlefield and makes it hard to pick targets.
80: Shield of Faith and Heroism. Then you’ll alternately get really big and everyone will wonder if your multi-classed into Barbarian. (Do they still do that, I haven’t played mine yet?)
Increases divinity gain. You’ll need this for your Tabbing pleasure.
Because no matter how often we try to teach DPS to mitigate their own threat, it’s always us saving their damned bacon.
I told my Yoda-like tank story on the other tab.
Our Feats are straight-forward.
Sacred shield gives us our extra stamina gain from sacred weapon through 76th. Since we don’t use heal on this build, it’s an easy choice.
This ups the effectiveness of Burning Light. For some reason I haven’t adequately determined, people using this build generate a large number of AP from blocking.
Another way to increase Divinity.
Plus 50% to incoming heals when your daily is up. And your daily should always be up. Always. Until they decide we’re broke and patch it.
Reduces Divine Champion cost and ups the damage blocked to 75%.
Defendi’s Paladin Hybrid Feats
Defendi’s Paladin Hybrid Boons
As you can see, I selected Power and HP at every possible opportunity. I get most of my optimizable stats from my companion, as I’ve mentioned. The rest I get from gear. There should be no need to spend boons on things like deflect, but if you need and you have retrain tokens to put them back later, that’s a valid band-aid.
When I topped out my HP and Power, I spent on Control Resistance on Tier 4 and AP Gain and Recovery Speed on Tier 5. For my Master Boon on this build I have Focused Retaliation. This reduces the enemy’s Armor Penetration and Accuracy, hindering their ability to do us harm. At the highest tier, it’s a damage shield.
I mean, the only thing interesting here, if you already read the other two builds, is that I’ve completed Undermountain and one more level of Icewind Dale since I took the other screenshots, so I’ve finished those Tier 5 boons and dropped back down to 3 and started work on Companion Influence. I’ve done that on all the builds.
These are self-explanatory. I selected Power, HP, and XP until I hit 80. Then I swapped XP for Mount speed so my sparkle pony has jets.
Defendi’s Paladin Guild Boons
Defendi’s Paladin Healer Stats
This uses the same philosophy as the solo/tank stats, however, we swap Wis for Int.
Defendi’s Paladin Healer Powers
Defendi’s Paladin Healer Boons
Defendi’s Paladin Guild Boons
Enchantment discussion will go here.
Gear discussion will go here.
Artifact discussion will go here.
Defendi’s Paladin Stable
I don’t think anything in here is too difficult to come by. I’ve never tried to get a really exotic stable. I’ve just happened on everything in here when trying to get other stuff.
The following people helped build this guide. Unknowningly.
Rainer’s youtube videos have been invaluable. You can find him here.
Obsidiancran3 wrote a good primer I read that helped me with many, many of my initial choices. You can find it here.
I also mined this video by Swart Lodewyk for ideas for power and feat selection.
Thanks to all who helped!
Well module 16 has been here about a week now, I’ve been reluctant to redo this guide for this module a bit because so much went into my last guide and the entire foundation it was built on has been removed from the game…but anyway here it is.
I have been on the test server since February (the day it was released i was on it), was initially very hyped that cleric would have a “dps” role as i have always played and built Parwen for good dps. I ran Arbiter (the dps path) for about 2 months there, I hated it, clunky mechanics, unintuitive, boring “feat” setup, any damaging power was a huge divinity drain, 1 heal and it cost half your divinity to cast….. it almost drove me away from this game, so when module 16 went live i just picked Devout and thats all she is going to be unless something major changes. Her damage has been surprisingly very good, and her healing actually is respected now, she’s always been an excellent healer, but prior to this module most people didn’t notice 
Powers
Feats:
All top row…..how hard was that?
So for first feat I chose Empowered Soothe…..soothe isnt much of a heal, this helps a bit…good in a pinch but not gonna save anyones life. i dont use healing word so there is no point in me feating it, also the feat adds 6 seconds to it if you cast another heal on the ally, so unless you slot all heals or are aiming soothe or some other complicated nonesense i see no use for it. but to each there own.
2nd feat i went with Battle Prayer, why? it works, Rhythm of the Heavens doesn’t actually do anything…at all.
3rd feat i went with Blessed Armaments, because exalt is now part of my rotation and the 20 magnitude damage effect adds to my AOE build…..which is what this build primarily is, an AOE damage cleric build, with some healing! I tried the 10% damage feat for awhile, but as it relies on full divinity and I more often then not burn it to 0, i don’t get much use from it.
4th feat Persistant Guardian, Guardian of the Faith is my main single target heavy hitter, of course i want it to add a persistant healbot for 25 seconds, no brainer!
5th feat i went with Angel of Life, it does come in useful when i’m all out of divinity and the team is getting slaughtered by a boss or something, the other feat relies on channeling divinity for 4 seconds to increase your healing by 5%….i don’t have time for that!
Rotation:
Q = exalt,
E = bastion/sunburt/divine glow
R = Daunting Light
1 = Flamestrike
2 = Guardian of the Faith
At-will 1 = Scattering Light
At-will 2 = Soothe
Combat:
When combat begins i exalt then start firing away with Scattering Light, this procs all my companion powers and the AOE damage starts ticking, blast away with daunting light and dodge around, continually firing scattering light. If the team needs me to heal i slot bastion and will reasonably dish out heals as needed, Soothe i use only for my own personal healing, far too hard to aim it reliably at anyone else. If a big group of mobs come together then you know its time to bust that Lantern of Revelation and drop Flamestrike! for bosses its cool to slot Soul Sight crystal…remember to exalt before using it and make SURE your daily is up so you can get that Guardian buffed!
and thats basically what combat is reduced to now…..1 paragraph.
Ability Scores:
DEX and CHR all the way, the rest are useless. (interestingly this applies across the board for any class now)
Dex is movement speed and crit severity
Chr is companion influence
Boons:
Most are useless, power and HP have no cap, armor pen and combat advantage are good to get here because i’m still not capped on either (technically because of scaling, but i’m far overcap for lvl 80 content on most stats)
movement boon is 10% speed but only works outside combat…..better then other choices in my opinion.
Companion influence boon is a must to max.
crit sev and ap gain for tier 5
master boon Focused Retaliation at rank 3…..this boon omg….it puts all other boons in the Graveyard. Boss Killer. (on encounter use chance to mirror all damage back to attacker for 15 seconds)
had 2 free points at the end so i went with dmg/resist to undead.
Companions:
Summoned i use Stalwart Golden Lion
he’s a tank type pet, has 700k max hp and gives passive damage buffs to the team while absorbing 10% of the damage anyone within 5′ of him takes. love it
for level 70 content with punishing scaling i will change to an augment, Legendary Ioun Stone of Might
right now im at around 96,000 base armor penetration with the lion, with an augment its like 110,000+ so for most level 70 content this puts me about 8k or so undercap with the lion, which works fine for me. but if its too bad because of lowered defense stats as well i will change over to the augment.
my companion power is Redemption, on receiving damage there is a chance (seems like 100%) to heal you and your companion for 4% max hp over 10 seconds
Utility:
vicious dire wolfs presence:5% chance to interrupt and a do an additional 30 magnitude hit (tooltip says 30% weap dmg).
celestial lions presence: 50% chance on companion power use to give you a 10% damage buff (100% uptime, but only with a companion summoned, no effect with augment)
if i run an augment i swap celestial lions presence to baby owlbears presence: 10% if you don’t crit to deal 20% of your power as an additional hit (i only have the owlbear at uncommon quality)
Offense:
Grung’s insight: on critical hit add a 40 magnitude poison dmg every 2 seconds for 12 seconds (nice visual too!)
Death Slaad’s presence: chance on attack to add a stacking poison that deals 20 magnitude damage, stacks up to 5x and at 5x it explodes, damaging all enemies in a 15′ radius. (tooltip says 20% weapon damage)
Defense:
Mighty Insight: +2000 power +4000 deflection
Runestones:
all 6 are arcane rank 11 (+400 armor penetration)
she had all rank 14 Ruthless this past module, but i’m not trading them for bound runes, i just bought some cheap r8’s and ranked them up and will continue to do so. -__-
Mounts:
had to change a few things here
Oppressors Reprieve, seems to be a constant heal for ~2k every second in combat, can multiproc.
Beserekers Rage: I dont add crit to my build in any way if i can help it, this balances that out a bit i feel and also its better than nothing since i also am lacking deflection.
Protectors Camaraderie: always need arpen
Gladiators Guile: thankfully wasn’t nerfed too hard, 10% run speed at 75% or more stamina.
Knights Defense: an interesting one i discovered, it deals 1 damage to you every 15 seconds, in combat or not, and this damage activates the heal every time, also procs some other heals for me, like my legendary mount Providence, and Astral Deva’s Insight (offense slot companion equip power).
Gear:
Head: crown of the lost king (got this from using runes and trading them to Zok for chests, Zok is the slaadi under the stairs in the community zone of Undermountain)
Chest: spy guild (seal vendor)
Arms: crash guards (expedition reward, boss drop)
Weapons: alabaster (get these from doing expeditions, i got mine from the ladys rewards at the end, took 4 days of doing 3 a day, others say they have had the expo bosses drop them)
Main Hand Feature is Scattering light does 10% more damage, its 40 magnitude so from my calculations this buffs it up to 44 magnitude.
Offhand Features are Armor Penetration ~ +2100 and +10% crit severity
Feet: Gurtunks booties (expedition reward, boss drop)
Neck: Baphomet’s Infernal Talisman (so we’re back to this again eh?)
Rings: Assault ring of the spy’s guild x2 (seal vendor)
Belt: Demogorgon’s Girdle of Might (Like an old friend)
Shirt: Ebony Stained Raid Shirt (expedtion reward)
Pants: Prized Raid Trousers of the Cult (expedition reward)
Artifacts:
Main is lantern of Revelation or Soul Sight Crystal, also i find some small use out of Gond’s Anvil of Creation.
Orcus shard is mandatory for set bonus.
for the other 2 i want more apren usually….but do what you need to.
Enchants:
Armor: Elven Battle (nothing changed here <3)
Weapon: Dread (Vorpal or Lightning is probably better but i dont care, also not trading for bound enchants so w/e)
Offense Slots are all Radiant r14, except one which is the Heart of Fire.
Defense Slots are all Brutal r14
Utility slots are all Dark r13….except 1 has the Anniversary r14 Dark.
Overloads are rank 1 and 2 Mark of the Undead Ward.
About Level Scaling:
to do level 70 content now you need roughly 2x the stats you would for level 80, so if you need 60k arpen for lvl 80 you need about 120k for level 70 (i’ve found 106,000 to be the actual baseline) so for venturing back to 70 stuff you may want to beef up your defense and definately accuracy, also a good time to use that owlbear cub unless you wanna stack 100k+ crit as well.
So thats my guide for now, any questions feel free to comment here, hit me up ingame, or email me at iamsmokingone@gmail.com
<3
She walks in light, her faith guiding her every step, she knows no fear for she is the Avatar of the Divine….
“Be Faithful, be Virtuous, but above all my friends, be Righteous!”
-Parwen
Edit (1/06/19): Updated boons, added: 4k power companions; 2 more healing insignia bonus; a few more gear options (CTA weapon set and staff of flower neck/belt set).
This is still a W.I.P. I’m still learning and testing, so this is just a bit of the basics and things I’ve found that work for me. If you have any suggestions/use a build in a different way/have any other tips please pm or send me a mail ingame (Marielle@aphas#9250). I would love to learn more about the different approaches players are taking with this class.
This is not nor will it ever be a complete and complex guide. It’s purpose is to explain the basics and give a general idea of the class, so that players know what to do. (Another reason for making this guide was because CTA was a few weeks ago and the amount of lvl 80 clerics that did so little damage or didn’t heal was too much…)
Link to the guide in a google docs format: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JUYORhU_YT53d5IPXSlqepTOCaIwmIR6DHDuKdeQz8U/edit?usp=sharing
Another note I want to make is about the Arbiter build. I know there is another build around that utilizes the Perfect Balance feat, but I won’t be discussing it right now because:
Again this is just my opinion for now, it might completely change over the next couple of weeks and after more testing so if you use this build and find it works better than the one I explain here then please do let me know and give me a few tips so I can understand it better. Note: The change from 6 to 4 stacks needed is nice but not sure if it makes it worth it, needs a lot of testing still.
If you only have 2 loadouts then I would recommend having 1 Arbiter and 1 Devout build.
If you’re still new/mid game then the Full Heal build would be better, else go for the Buff build. Or just do a mix of whatever you want, there isn’t that much diversity so it’s hard to mess up and make a build that’s unplayable.
This new mechanic is common to both Arbiter (dps) and Devout (heal) clerics. It’s the replacement of the old empowerment system. It’s really easy to understand and if you’ve played any other fantasy game/mmo just think of it as mana. If you haven’t then… It’s basically a pool of points (divinity) you have and some encounters require a certain amount of points to be used instead of having cooldowns.
To recover any divinity you’ve used just press tab and you’ll start praying (keep tab pressed to keep praying). The amount of divinity recovered is increased when outside of combat. Arbiter (dps) cleric can also recover divinity with the other new mechanic “Scales of Judgement”.
This is the new mechanic exclusive to Arbiter (dps) cleric.
When you inspect the tooltips of At-wills, Encounters and Dailies you’ll see that there are some extra lines compared to the Devout path. These are “Added Effect: Increases Radiant/Burning Judgement by X” and “Radiant/Burning Judgement Effect: Increases magnitude by X”.
You will also notice that in every one of those tooltips the judgement that’s increased will be different to the one that’s used to increase the magnitude. Think of this as juggling. You build up a certain type of judgement to increase the damage of the power and in return you’ll get the other judgement. Don’t worry, it’s easy to understand after playing around for a bit.
The important information to take out of this new mechanic is that:
This build revolves around using a main damage encounter and 2 support encounters. It has a very forgiving rotation and easy divinity management. It can be used for both solo and group content.
INT + CON
INT gives magical damage boost so it’s a must. CON is more of a preference for the ap gain, you can also go with CHA for companion influence and recharge speed or DEX for crit severity.
Piercing Javelin – Having a guaranteed crit on your next Searing Javelin is pretty great.
Tipping Scales – This makes Divine Glow useful.
Sudden Verdict – This will help a lot in maintaining your divinity.
Critical Sun – More useful than the other option, and having a chance to use this daily again isn’t bad at all.
Angel of Death – Both options here are meh (this option can be great but it takes forever to build the stacks) and don’t really matter but since we won’t be able to use the other one with this build it’s better to pick this one.
You can have a max of 70 boon points after completing all campaigns. If you go with the options I suggest below you’ll still have 7 points left (you don’t use boon points for the Master boon option, so that’s 3 free upgrades). Just use them on whatever you prefer. You can choose the Dino Power in Tier 3 for damage bonus vs dinos (although since there are hardly any dinos in dungeons it’s really a niche boon) or Simple Support in Tier 3 for extra companion influence or Marathon Runner in Tier 2 for movement speed or just go with the boons that give you the stats you’re missing.
Recruit’s Training 5/5 – Power
Cultist’s Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Cultist Power 5/5 – Damage bonus vs cultists
Squire’s Training 5/5 – Power
Demonic Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Demonic Mastery 5/5 – Damage bonus vs demons
Knight’s Training 5/5 – Power
Dino Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Captain’s Training 5/5 – Power
Necrotic Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Necrotic Mastery 5/5 – Damage bonus vs undead
Severe Criticism 4/4 – Crit Severity
Call of Power 4/4 – Action Point Gain
Deathly Rage 3/3 – For AoE
Blood Lust 3/3 – For ST
Lance of Faith – This will be your main at-will. It has the fastest cast time and will create 1 Burning Judgement per hit.
Conflagrate – This will be your secondary at-will. Mostly use it to slightly empower BtS and to build up radiant stacks for your daily. Slightly long cast time but you can move during the initial part so it’s helpful if you need to dodge.
Divine Glow – Trust me, this is decent but ONLY with the feat. This will help us create our own proc when RNG isn’t in our favor (will explain this better in the rotation section).
Break the Spirit / Bastion of Health – If you’re using this build for solo play then Bastion can be useful for any “oh no” scenarios. Else just use BtS to not only debuff your biggest target but to also buff your damage with the class feature Doomsday.
(AoE) Searing Javelin / (ST) Forgemaster’s Flame – This will be your main source of damage. Consumes Burning Judgement stacks and has a decent divinity/magnitude ratio.
Celestial Prominence – This is your AoE daily. Consumes Radiant Judgement stacks and with the feat Critical Sun it has a chance to double proc.
Hammer of Fate – This is your ST daily. Consumes Burning Judgement stacks.
Expanded Faith – More divinity = more encounter uses.
Doomsday – Increases your damage for 10 secs when you use BtS, so it’s nice for burst damage phases.
This build focuses more on party play. Although it heals less than Full Heal build it should still be enough and instead provides a little buff and can help with dps if divinity is decent.
WIS + CON
WIS gives outgoing healing so it’s good option to try and maximise your heals so you don’t waste too much divinity spamming encounters. CON is for the action point gain, so you can get Anointed Army more often.
Repeated Blessings – This helps keep the HoT from Healing Word during encounters, thus reducing the amount of divinity you use.
Battle Prayer – Increases the divinity you get when praying after using an encounter. Better than the other option.
Towering Light – Free damage increase.
Anointed Arms – This makes Anointed Army give a 3% damage buff, so it’s an important feat to take.
Angel of Life – Both options here are meh (this option can be great but it takes forever to build the stacks). Note: Is it even working?
You can have a max of 70 boon points after completing all campaigns. If you go with the options I suggest below you’ll still have 7 points left (you don’t use boon points for the Master boon option, so that’s 3 free upgrades). Just use them on whatever you prefer. You can choose the Dino Power in Tier 3 for damage bonus vs dinos (although since there are hardly any dinos in dungeons it’s really a niche boon) or Simple Support in Tier 3 for extra companion influence or Marathon Runner in Tier 2 for movement speed or just go with the boons that give you the stats you’re missing.
Recruit’s Training 5/5 – Power
Cultist’s Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Cultist Power 5/5 – Damage bonus vs cultists
Squire’s Training 5/5 – Power
Demonic Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Demonic Mastery 5/5 – Damage bonus vs demons
Knight’s Training 5/5 – Power
Dino Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Captain’s Training 5/5 – Power
Necrotic Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Necrotic Mastery 5/5 – Damage bonus vs undead
Blessed Touch 4/4 – Outgoing Healing
Call of Power 4/4 – Action Point Gain
Blessed Advantage 3/3
Sacred Flame – Good for ST.
Scattering Light – Good for AoE.
Blessing of Light – This helps increase the healing potency of your next heal power so it’s decent since the more you heal with a power the less you’ll have to use that power, thus saving you a bit of divinity.
Bastion of Health – This is your main healing encounter. It has a low divinity cost and a high healing magnitude making it a must.
Cleansing Light – This is a really important encounter specially for Master Expeditions since it removes almost all debuffs. And it’s also an AoE so even easier to use.
Healing Word – Although it has a high divinity cost it can be kept up permanently as long as you just use another healing on affected targets (with the feat) so it’s a nice HoT to have.
Geas / Daunting Light – If the party doesn’t need that much healing then you can replace Healing Word with either one. Geas is great since it doesn’t cost divinity to cast and does a decent amount of damage and provide a small damage debuff to the target but it’s a single target encounter and the cooldown is a bit long. Daunting Light’s AoE is extremely small but if you have spare divinity then you can use it to help the party with dps.
Anointed Army – The only remaining buff that clerics can offer nowadays (and you need to have the feat for it to even exist).
Guardian of Life / Hallowed Ground – This is just a backup daily for when your party is hurt and you’re out of divinity. Use GoL if the party is dispersed, use HG if it’s close together.
Expanded Faith – More divinity = more healing.
Swift Prayers – Unlike Arbiter, Devout cleric can’t just build up judgements and then convert them into divinity so we will need to pray from time to time and being able to keep moving while doing so is good.
This is a pure healing build. It’s main focus is keeping you and everyone else alive. It’s mostly for pvp but it also works great for the new dungeon while still learning it. (easier to keep players alive with this build compared to the buff build).
WIS + CON
WIS to increase your healing, CON to build up ap faster so you can use your dailies faster.
Repeated Blessings – Since Healing Word costs a decent amount of divinity to use, having this feat helps and turns it into an almost perma HoT.
Battle Prayer – You get extra divinity when praying just by using your divinity encounters. Better than the other option.
Blessed Armaments – This is more for pvp, just in case you need extra damage resistance.
Persistent Guardian – This grants the dailies Guardian of Faith and Guardian of Life a HoT which can be extremely useful to high damage taking situations and/or when you’re low on divinity.
Angel of Life – Both options here are meh (this option can be great but it takes forever to build the stacks, is it even working?).
You can have a max of 70 boon points after completing all campaigns. If you go with the options I suggest below you’ll still have 12 points left (you don’t use boon points for the Master boon option, so that’s 3 free upgrades). Just use them on whatever you prefer. You can go with some dps increasing boons (priority is demons > undead > cultists > dinos) or with Simple Support in Tier 3 for extra companion influence or just go with the boons that give you the stats you’re missing.
Recruit’s Training 5/5 – Power
Cultist’s Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Squire’s Training 5/5 – Power
Demonic Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Marathon Runner 5/5 – Movement speed
Knight’s Training 5/5 – Power
Dino Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Captain’s Training 5/5 – Power
Necrotic Bulwark 5/5 – HP
Disenchanting Aura 5/5 – Control Resistance
Blessed Touch 4/4 – Outgoing Healing
Call of Power 4/4 – Action Point Gain
Blessed Advantage 3/3
Sacred Flame – Good for ST.
Scattering Light – Good for AoE.
Blessing of Light – This helps increase the healing potency of your next heal power so it’s decent since the more you heal with a power the less you’ll have to use that power, thus saving you a bit of divinity.
Basically the only constant will be Bastion of Health, the other 2 encounters will depend on the dungeon/boss.
Bastion of Health – This is your main healing encounter. It has a low divinity cost and a high healing magnitude.
Healing Word – Although it has a high divinity cost it can be kept up permanently as long as you just use another healing on affected targets (with the feat) so it can turn into an almost perma HoT.
Cleansing Light – An AoE cleanse. Can remove almost all debuffs (stuns are currently bugged and can’t be cleansed).
Intercession – Highest healing magnitude encounter. It’s not divinity based, has a cooldown instead, and it’s ST but can be extremely useful in certain situations (for example to completely heal the cocoon player on the 1st boss of LoMM).
Guardian of Life – Gives an initial heal to everyone and after it provides a HoT afterwards (with the Persistent Guardian feat).
Hallowed Ground – Reduces damage taken and gives a small HoT. The area is a bit small so the group needs to be close together.
Expanded Faith – More divinity = more healing.
Swift Prayers – Unlike Arbiter, Devout cleric can’t just build up judgements and then convert them into divinity so we will need to pray from time to time and being able to keep moving while doing so is good.
When you enter combat with a group of mobs you’ll want to start off by using Conflagrate while moving closer to your targets. This will build up 3 Radiant Judgement stacks which will be used to then empower Break the Spirit (use it on the mob with the highest HP/defenses). By using BtS you’ll proc the class feature Doomsday giving you increased damage for 10 secs. Then use Lance of Faith to build up Burning Judgement stacks. Once you have enough (at least 4 stacks, 6 is perfect but meh, each fight is different so learn to improvise, don’t try to be perfect all the time) position yourself so that the mobs are mostly in a line and then use Searing Javelin on the first mob of the line. Once you use it you’ll gain a Radiant Judgement stack. Either quick tab to turn it into divinity or just use Lance of Faith again and it’ll be consumed, slightly increasing the damage of the first hit.
If you’re lucky you will sometimes get a Sudden Verdict proc after using Searing Javelin or Break the Spirit. This will instantly fill your judgement stacks. When this happens just quick tab to get back some divinity (if you get the proc from BtS, thus making you have full burning stacks, and your divinity is almost at max then you can use the stacks for SJ instead of turning them into divinity).
If you get a Piercing Javelin proc then just build Burning Judgement stacks and use it before it expires. As always just consider the fight you’re on, how much HP the mobs have, etc and try to figure out how many stacks would be enough.
Keep repeating this until either the mobs die or you have less than half divinity (meaning that RNG hasn’t been nice to you and you got no Sudden Verdict procs). When this happens you keep the Radiant Judgement stack that was created when you used Searing Javelin (or if you’ve already used it then use an at-will to get 1 stack of anything) and use Divine Glow. This will instantly fill your judgement bar and increase your divinity gain. Quick tab to convert the stacks into divinity and then if you get a Sudden Verdict proc on your next encounter, perfect, if not then use Conflagrate once and quick pray to get a bit extra divinity. Repeat if needed until you’re at a “safe” divinity level.
Last thing to talk about is the daily and when to use it. Basically use it when you think it’s needed, when the mobs still have a lot of HP left and are tough to kill, etc. I’ll be talking about the Celestial Prominence daily since the other one is mostly for ST. Just place it in the center of the mobs and then wait 5 secs before activating it. An orb will appear in the center of the daily once 5 secs have passed so you know it’s ready. This will increase the daily’s damage and range. While waiting for those 5 secs, use Conflagrate twice to build up Radiant Judgement stacks which will also increase the damage of the daily. If you have Divine Glow off cooldown you can use it to instantly get full radiant stacks as well. If you’re lucky the daily will crit and it will proc Critical Sun feat, thus giving you a free Celestial Prominence. Just repeat the building of stacks/waiting 5 secs if that happens.
The rotation for ST is basically the same as the AoE. Use Conflagrate to then empower Break the Spirit, build up Burning Judgement stacks by using Lance of Faith and then use Forgemaster’s Flame, check divinity and keep repeating until the mob is dead.
Your divinity management is the same as for the AoE rotation. You either get lucky with Sudden Verdict procs or you just create your own by using Divine Glow.
When you’re facing a boss try to do your burst phase when your party uses their buffs/debuffs. Basically build up 6 stacks of Burning Judgement, use your artifact, your mount power (if you have it) then use Break the Spirit, Forgemaster’s Flame, Lance of Faith once, Divine Glow to get full burning stacks again then FF again. This should give you the most damage in the span of 10 secs. If you have full ap then you can either replace the first FF for Hammer of Faith or you can use Celestial Prominence between the 2 FF.
Okay so the rotation for Devout cleric is as follows. You start off combat and then… you wait for someone to get hurt. *sigh* Devout clerics combat is mostly reactionary and compared to Arbiter it is a bit boring since there isn’t anything to balance/empower. But fine I’ll try to make this a bit more engaging.
So at the start of an area/before entering combat you can use Healing Word on your party to give them a HoT and then just keep refreshing that every 6 secs or so with Bastion of Health. That should give you something to do and be enough for most fights, with the occasional extra bastion if their HP goes down more. If you missed refreshing HW then just use it again.
In between bastions instead of walking around waiting just use your at-wills to do a bit of damage and use Geas when it’s off cooldown. If you have extra divinity and know the fight well enough (knowing there won’t be any surprise parts that will require you to heal more) then you can use Daunting Light instead.
If someone gets hit with a debuff then just use Cleansing Light. Takes a bit to cast and the target will keep moving so just try to predict where the target will be and use it there. (Wizards especially like to move so don’t feel bad if you miss them… 4 times… in a row… wasting divinity… *sigh*)
Divinity management is harder for Devout clerics so try not spam too much. You can also just pray while waiting for someone to get hit. Try to always have max divinity before fighting a group of mobs and try to keep it above 50% at all times in case of emergency.
For the daily Anointed Army, try to use it when the dps will do their burst damage. If you don’t know the players in your party then it’s always safe to use it right after they use their artifacts.
This rotation will be for the Devout – Full Heal build.
Start of the dungeon to 1st boss. Use Bastion of Health, Cleansing Light and Geas. This part is easy. Just heal when needed, cleanse any debuffs that appear and just use geas from time to time to pretend you’re doing something.
1st Boss. You’ll want to replace Cleansing Light for Intercession here. As soon as someone aggroes the boss use Guardian of Life and immediately use Envenomed Storyteller Journal artifact to recover the ap (if you don’t have that artifact with the ap page then use Sigil of the Divine, basically anything that recovers ap). The boss immediately starts their rotation which can do quite a bit of damage, specially to squishier classes if they get aggro, so by using the daily at the start we now have a HoT for a bit, giving us time to position without worrying about healing too much. Use bastion whenever it’s needed and instead of spamming at-wills waiting for someone to get hurt, just keep praying until you’re back to full divinity.
Once the mimics spawn go to your designated corner (which you’ll be sharing with the other support/tank). Here just place yourself in front of the mimic to try to slow it down and use Geas + your at-wills (I would also recommend having a Doohickey in your potions belt and using it for dps against the mimics). You’ll be doing almost no damage but hopefully can stall it enough for the dps to kill their mimics. As soon as this phase ends the boss becomes targetable and will then pick a player to turn into a cocoon. You need to pay close attention since you’ll need to fully heal that player as soon as you can, else everyone will get 1 shot. An easy way to see who gets cocooned is by looking at their HP. The cocooned player will lose a lot of HP so instantly use Intercession and use your daily right after. Use bastion on the player if his HP is still not full and use your artifact again if it’s off cooldown.
As always, not every boss fight is the same so just use your daily if your party’s HP goes down too much but try to always have Intercession up before a mimic phase ends so it’s easier to heal the cocooned player. Also try to keep your divinity up all the time by praying and using Blessing of Light to increase your healing, thus reducing the amount of bastions you need to use.
Between 1st and 2nd bosses. Same as before 1st boss, use Bastion of Health, Cleansing Light and Geas, heal when needed, pretend to do damage.
2nd Boss. Replace Geas for Intercession and Cleansing Light for Healing Word. This boss is easy but can be hard to manage divinity if he gets too many overcharges. For the first part just use bastion when needed, and keep your divinity at max. Once the worm goes away just stay away from the center and try to destroy some rocks. After that is when the fun part (for healers) starts. Now group up with everyone and just do your best trying to heal the damage. Use Healing Word once everyone is together for the HoT, keep it up with bastion and use your daily as often as you need and artifact when it’s off cooldown. Once the overcharge ends just work on getting your divinity back to max while checking if anyone needs healing. Repeat once again but now with adds! (Do not kill the adds, they will weaken the boss if kept alive).
Between 2nd and 3rd bosses. Same as before.
3rd Boss. Replace Geas for Intercession. This boss and it’s adds can do a decent amount of damage so you need to pay attention. For the most part it’s a pretty simple fight. Wait for players to get hurt, heal them, pray to get divinity up. Avoid red areas since they deal a lot of damage. Use your daily when the tank starts getting attacked too much. After a few rounds of adds the tower phase will start. During this part just make sure your divinity and ap are at max, if they are then just try to help out destroy the towers with your at-will. Once all the towers are destroyed go to the center and immediately use Hallowed Ground. This will help mitigate the damage and help with healing. Afterwards the boss will do a bit more damage so just heal when needed until it’s dead.
Since capping the offensive stats is easy and healer path doesn’t require any specific stats I will be using the same gear for all builds (with a few exceptions). I’ll be listing a few options for every category since when starting out it might be hard to get the best option right away. I’ll list starting from the best.
Protégé’s Hood/Crowned Coif – Can be bought with seals of the deep which can be obtained from the dungeon “Lair of the Mad Mage”. Equip bonus: ”+5% damage in the undermountain”. Currently the best for undermountain areas and LoMM dungeon.
Broken Cap of the Omnipotent – Chance to drop from the Chest of Fallen Adventurers, which can be bought with rune etchings (which can be obtained when opening the end chest from Master Expeditions) or from Master Expedition bosses. Equip bonus: “When you kill an enemy, your power increases by 5% for 10 secs”. Great for AoE outside of Undermountain (haven’t been lucky enough to get it to drop so can’t be sure if it has an internal cooldown).
Crown of the Lost King – Chance to drop from the Chest of Fallen Adventurers, which can be bought with rune etchings (which can be obtained when opening the end chest from Master Expeditions) or from Master Expedition bosses. Equip bonus: “When in combat with only one enemy, your Power is increased by 2000”. Great for ST outside of Undermountain.
Hood/Coif of the Spy’s Guild – Can be bought with seals of the mountain which can be obtained from basically anywhere except the new dungeon. Same as protégé’s one except lower stats.
Murme’s Soup Bowl – Chance to drop from the Chest of Fallen Adventurers, which can be bought with rune etchings (which can be obtained when opening the end chest from Master Expeditions) or from Master Expedition bosses. Equip bonus: “When you kill an enemy, your Damage increases by 5% for 5 seconds. (30 second cooldown)” Decent for outside of Undermountain but the cooldown is a bit long.
Ebony Stained Hide/Scalemail – Chance to drop from the end chest of Master Expeditions when using at least one Empowered Rune, from the Master Expedition quest or from Lair of the Mad Mage’s end chests. Equip bonus: “When you damage or heal your target for more than 10% of your Maximum Hit Points in a single blow, you gain 1% power for 10 secs (Max stack 10)”. Currently the best for support and maybe dps. (but currently bugged… it increases defense instead of power).
Gurdunn’s Defense – Chance to drop from the Chest of Fallen Adventurers, which can be bought with rune etchings (which can be obtained when opening the end chest from Master Expeditions) or from Master Expedition bosses. Equip bonus: “+1500 power, – 2500 defense” Great piece for both dps and support.
Hag’s Rags – Chance to drop from the T3 hunt “Ras Manca” in Barovia. Equip bonus: “Your ranged powers do 3% more damage”. Although it has lower stats it might still be worth it for dps loadout. (Note: it seems that the equip bonus can only be stacked up to 2x so if you already have 2 ebonized rings then it’s not worth using this piece)
Haunted Hides of the Hall – Chance to drop from the Chest of Fallen Adventurers, which can be bought with rune etchings (which can be obtained when opening the end chest from Master Expeditions) or from Master Expedition bosses. Equip bonus: “For the first minute you are in combat, you will gain 200 Power every 5 seconds. If you stay in combat for longer than one minute, you will lose 250 Power every 5 seconds, to a total loss of 2600 Power.” Can be decent but only for fast fights.
Shattered Plate of the Fallen / Robes of the Last Profit – Chance to drop from the Chest of Fallen Adventurers, which can be bought with rune etchings (which can be obtained when opening the end chest from Master Expeditions) or from Master Expedition bosses. Equip bonus: “For every 5 seconds you are in combat, you gain 125 Power. If you stay in combat for longer than 2 minutes, this ability will no longer be active.” Both have the same equip bonus but they differ in terms of stats (shattered has deflect/awareness while robes has armor penetration/awareness).
Protégé’s Trimmed/Weathered Gloves – Can be bought with seals of the deep which can be obtained from the dungeon “Lair of the Mad Mage”. Equip bonus: ”Gain 250 Power for each player in your team.” Currently the best out of the new lvl 80 pieces.
Crash Guards – Chance to drop from the Chest of Fallen Adventurers, which can be bought with rune etchings (which can be obtained when opening the end chest from Master Expeditions) or from Master Expedition bosses. Same as protégé’s but lower stats.
Braces/Bracers of the Spy’s Guild – Can be bought with seals of the mountain which can be obtained from basically anywhere except the new dungeon. Same as Crash Guards but lower stats.
Terrored Grips – Chance to drop from the T2 hunt “Cusca” in Barovia. Equip bonus: “Your encounter powers do 3% more damage”. Although it has lower stats it might be better for dps loadout.
Gurtunk’s Booties – Chance to drop from the Chest of Fallen Adventurers, which can be bought with rune etchings (which can be obtained when opening the end chest from Master Expeditions) or from Master Expedition bosses. Equip bonus: “Gain 200 Power for each enemy you are engaged in battle.” Currently the best out of the new lvl 80 pieces.
Primal Restoration/Raid Qalisas – Can be bought with seals of the crown. Equip bonus: “When you kill an enemy, you gain 3% Action Points.” Even though it has low stats the increase in ap might be good for add heavy dungeons. (Doesn’t seem to have an internal cooldown).
Enduring Boots – Can be bought with Mako’s Favor in Omu. Equip bonus: “When your Stamina is over 75%, your damage is increased by 3%.” Although it has lower stats it might still be worth it for dps loadout.
Wyvern’s Eye Necklace / Wyvern-Skin Belt – Can be bought from the Undermountain campaign store for 2.5k Coalesced Magics or from the AH. Set bonus: “When you use a Daily power, create a rune on the ground for 6 sec, empowering any ally who stands upon it with 5,000 power, 5,000 armor penetration, and increases outgoing damage by 5%.” One of the newer sets introduced in mod 16. Mostly for Healer/Support builds.
Baphomet’s Infernal Talisman / Demogorgon’s Girdle of Might – Can be obtained as a quest reward from “The Horned King” in the Maze Engine campaign (neck) or chance to drop from the trial “Demogorgon (Master)” (belt) or bought from the AH (both). Set bonus: “Deal up to 20% additional damage based on the difference in hit point percentage between the player and target.” Still the best for DPS builds even with lower stats.
Jhesiyra’s Tattered Mantle / Trobriand’s Conduction Cable – Chance to drop from the Chest of Fallen Adventurers, which can be bought with rune etchings (which can be obtained when opening the end chest from Master Expeditions) or bought from the AH. Set bonus: “When you use a Daily power, you do 15% more damage to enemies that are not facing you for 10 seconds.” One of the newer sets introduced in mod 16. Decent for DPS builds.
Woven Vine/Blooming Cord – Chance to drop from the Chest of Fallen Adventurers, which can be bought with rune etchings (which can be obtained when opening the end chest from Master Expeditions) or bought from the AH. Set bonus: “When you use a Daily power, create a rune on the ground for 6 sec, empowering any ally who stands upon it with 5,000 Awareness, 5,000 Combat Advantage, and become immune to control effect.” One of the newer sets introduced in mod 16. Mostly for PvP but good for pure Healers in PvE as well.
Ebonized Restoration/Raid Ring – Chance to drop from the end chest of Master Expeditions when using at least an Empowered Rune or from the Master Expedition quest. Equip: “Increases your ranged powers damage by 3%”. The rings do stack with each other (either 2x of the same type or Restoration+Raid) and since cleric is a ranged class it works with most of our powers (not sure if it increased healing from bastion/etc, need to test it still).
Silver-Gilt Restoration/Raid Ring – Chance to drop from mobs inside Runic Heroic Encounters in Undermountain. Basically the same as the ebonized rings but with slightly lower stats.
Ring of the Shadowstalker +4/+5 – Chance to drop from the weekly quest “Fane of the Night Serpent” in the Jungles of Chult-Omu campaign. Equip: “Your Powers deal 2/2.5% more damage when you are 25′ or closer to your target.” These rings only stack if it’s a +4 and a +5, 2 of the same type won’t. Healing from bastion/etc is increased by these rings.
Ebony Stained Shirt – Chance to drop from the end chest of Master Expeditions when using at least an Empowered Rune or from the Master Expedition quest. Equip: “When your Stamina is over 75%, your damage is increased by 3%.” Any version of this shirt can be used, just go with the stats you prefer.
Protégé’s Shirt – Can be bought with seals of the deep which can be obtained from the dungeon “Lair of the Mad Mage”. Equip: “Whenever you Critically Strike with your Powers, you have a 10% chance to reduce your Encounter Power cooldowns by 1 second. This effect may only occur once every 5 seconds.” Any version of this shirt can be used, just go with the stats that you prefer. Since clerics don’t have that many cooldowns I prefer to go with the ebony equip bonus, but it’s your decision.
Shirt of the Spy’s Guild – Can be bought with seals of the mountain which can be obtained from basically anywhere except the new dungeon. Same as protégé’s version but slightly lower stats. (It’s currently NOT in the seal store, maybe it’s a bug or devs forgot to add it, Idk)
Protégé’s Trousers – Can be bought with seals of the deep which can be obtained from the dungeon “Lair of the Mad Mage”. Equip: “Whenever you Critically Strike with your Powers, you have a 10% chance to gain 25 Action Points. This effect may only occur once every 5 seconds.” Any version of this trousers can be used, just go with the stats that you prefer. Extra ap is always nice.
Trousers of the Spy’s Guild – Can be bought with seals of the mountain which can be obtained from basically anywhere except the new dungeon. Same as protégé’s version but slightly lower stats. (It’s currently NOT in the seal store, maybe it’s a bug or devs forgot to add it, Idk)
Prized Trousers of the Cult – Chance to drop from the end chest of Master Expeditions when using at least an Empowered Rune or from the Master Expedition quest. Same all other options above but lower stats.
Symbol/Icon of the Mighty – Can be bought for 6 Token of Heroes each from the CTA season store. Set bonus: “When you score a critical hit there is a chance that you and nearby allies are granted the following: +1% Outgoing Damage; +1% Outgoing Healing; -1% Incoming Damage. This effect may stack up to 10 times.” Best overall weapon set for support now that it has been updated to lvl 80.
Alabaster Holy Symbol/Icon – Chance to drop from the Master Expedition quest. Set bonus: “At the start of combat, your Power and Critical Strike will be increased by 1% for every enemy you faced when starting combat, to a max of 10% for 10 seconds. If facing only one enemy at the start of combat, your Power and Critical Strike will be increased by 5% for 1 minute. When you kill an enemy, this buff will refresh.” Best overall weapon set for dps.
Burnished Scepter / Icon – Can be bought with seals of the deep which can be obtained from the dungeon “Lair of the Mad Mage”. Set bonus: “If you are hit or healed for more than 15% of your Maximum Hit Points in a single blow, your Power and Defense will be increased by 5% for 10 seconds.” For boss fights that last longer than 1 minute and have no adds, this should be better than Alabaster set.
Feathered Teotlanextli / Ilhuilli – This can be crafted using Masterwork III recipes or purchased from the Auction House. Set bonus: “You and nearby allies are granted the following: +2% Outgoing Damage; +2% Outgoing Healing; -2% Incoming Damage. This effect may stack up to 5 times when allies are equipped with a set of Stronghold weapons.” The set bonus is still good for support but since it’s a lvl 70 weapon set it has lower stats and lower damage.
Ebonized Holy Symbol/Prized Blessed Symbol of the Cult – Chance to drop from the end chest of Master Expeditions when using at least an Empowered Rune or from the Master Expedition quest. If you didn’t already have MW 3 set then just use one of these 2 sets until you can get one of the lvl 80 sets.
Used for its active bonus and less because of its stats (although it also helps to have good stats). It should be the first artifact to get to mythic for the reduced cooldown.
Envenomed Storyteller Journal (With AP page) – This could be bought during the Tales of Old event “Lair of the Mad Dragon” version so it’s currently unavailable until it comes back again. If you managed to get this then great! Although it has been nerfed it still gives more ap than the DC sigil but not sure if it’s still the best option, needs more testing.
Soul Sight Crystal – Good for dps builds during boss fights.
Lantern of Revelation – Good for support builds to provide an extra debuff.
Wheel of Elements – Although the % is lower it’s still a nice artifact to use on the main dps of your party for the fire buff.
Sigil of the Devoted – If you don’t have the Envenomed Storyteller then you can still use this one. It only gives 25% of your ap so it’s not that great but it’s something.
Used for the stats/set. Will only be listing the current top ones:
Wyvern-Venom Coated Knives /Shard of Orcus Wand / Arcturia’s Music Box – Only used for the set bonus. If you’re not using any of these sets (using MW set for example) then just go with Arcturia’s Music Box since it gives 1.5k power.
Trobriand’s Ring – A lvl 80 artifact with 3k power.
Staff of Flowers – A lvl 80 artifact with 3k power.
Capping the offensive stats (armor penetration, accuracy, critical strike) is easy with high rank bondings and an augment pet so when you’re at that point I would recommend Radiant enchantments since power doesn’t have a cap. Until then just focus on first capping crit (for healers) or first capping armor penetration/accuracy (for dps).
Capping the defensive stats (defense, deflect, awareness, crit avoidance) can be harder than the offensive stats but still doable so at the end using Radiant enchantments is a good option for extra HP. BUT don’t forget that mobs can debuff and scaling is a thing so having stats over the cap is not that bad! So just use enchantments that have HP + whatever stats you’re missing.
Most weapon enchants are currently useless unfortunately so the best option right now is Vorpal. It works well for both heal and dps builds since it also affects healing. Another decent option is Holy Avenger for the small HoT and shield but it’s mostly for healing builds. Lightning can also be a decent option for AoE but it’s only for dps builds.
Currently I consider Barkshield to be the best option for the large mitigation it provides. Soulforged is still a decent option but with the new death system it’s not that needed. Bloodtheft can also be an interesting option but not really needed as well.
Currently all companions can be viable thanks to the new rework to bondings proccing and gear slots but as usual some are more viable than others. Augment companions take the lead in this since they provide an additional 100% of your pet’s gear stats instead of attacking in combat (which isn’t a problem at all now that companions do almost no damage). Every augment will have 3 increased stats and what this stats are will depend on it’s type. The one I recommend using is the Polar Bear Cub since it’s 3 stats are power, critical strike and awareness and it’s player bonus power is +% outgoing healing so you can save up on buying an extra pet for that (plus it’s a baby polar bear… it’s adorable). Another good augment is the Bulette Pup (power, defense and combat advantage) but it’s player bonus power is meh at best for clerics.
If you don’t want to use an augment pet then I would recommend using one that can give your party a buff like Harper Bard.
Clerics have 2 offense slots, 2 utility slots and 1 defense slot. I’ll be listing a few options, you decide which ones you prefer to use.
Deepcrow Hatchling – “+8000 power”. Offense slot.
Energon – “+32000 Maximum Hit Points”. Utility slot.
Alpha Compy – “Increases your power by 5%. This effect is doubled in all of Chult”. Utility slot.
Tamed Velociraptor – “You are Part of the Pack. You and any allies that are Part of the Pack gain 2000 power. This effect may stack up to 5 times.” Offense slot.
Ioun Stone of the Feywild – “+10% outgoing healing bonus, + 2000 deflect”. Defense/Utility slots.
Neverember Guard – “+10% outgoing healing bonus, + 2000 awareness”. Offense slot.
Polar Bear Cub – “+10% outgoing healing bonus, +2000 defense”. Defense/Utility slots.
Quickling – “+10% outgoing healing bonus, +2000 critical strike”. Offense/Utility slots.
Rebel Mercenary – “+10% outgoing healing bonus, +2000 accuracy”. Offense/Utility slots.
Kenku Archer – “+4000 power, +2000 armor penetration” Offense/Utility slot.
Ghost – “+4000 power, +2000 critical strike” Offense/Utility slot.
Mercenary – “+4000 power, +2000 combat advantage” Offense/Utility slot.
Minstrel – “+4000 power, +2000 awareness” Defense/Utility slot.
Neverember Guard Archer – “+4000 power, +2000 defense” Utility slot.
Storm Rider – “+8000 maximum hit points, +4000 power” Utility slot.
Batiri – “+4% damage versus bosses”. Offense slot.
Netherese Arcanist – “5% damage against enemies that are not facing you”. Offense slot.
There are 3 pieces of epic companion gear that drop during the Undermountain campaign. These 3 provide the most stats and all have 2 offense slots. These are the Pearl Ring of the Companion (obtained when completing “Hot Pursuit” quest, the Wyllowwood to Terminus expedition and getting all 9 relics), Choke Chain of the Companion (obtained when completing “Waning Darkness” quest in Vanrakdom) and Plated Belt of the Companion (obtained when completing the quest “Neverember’s Envoy”).
As for stats, at endgame you’ll be using Empowered runestones for the power, since all your other stats will already be capped. Until then just use whatever gives you the stats you’re missing.
Potency – “Chance on hit to increase your power by up to 2,000 and your companion’s critical avoidance by up to 4% for 15 seconds when your companion is near. The value of the buff depends on the quality of your summoned pet”. Pets with this power: Batiri, Cold Iron Warrior, Frozen Galeb Duhr, Renegade Evoker, Siege Master, Staldorf, Water Archon, Yeth Hound.
Potent Precision – “Chance on hit to increase you and your companion’s critical severity by up to 4% for 15 seconds when your companion is near. The value of the buff depends on the quality of your summoned pet”. Pets with this power: War Boar, Fire Archon, Hawk, Panther, Rebel Mercenary, Swashbuckler, Traveling Entertainer, Werewolf, Xuna.
Redemption – “Chance on hit to heal you and your companion for 4% maximum health over 15 seconds when your companion is near. The value of the buff depends on the quality of your summoned pet”. Pets with this power: Mage Slayer, Cockatrice, Deepcrow Hatchling, Flame Sprite, Goat, Grazilaxx, Greenscale Bowman, Iron Golem, Minstrel, Moonshae Druid, Pig, Skeleton, Snowy Fawn, Will-O’-Wisp.
In mod 16, capping stats is really easy once you’re starting to get near endgame so a 5/10k power mount will be the better option. Until then just get an epic mount with 5k on the stat that you need most.
Warpainted/Commander Tyrannosaur – “Summons the Tyrannosaur, causing your enemies fear, rooting them for 5 seconds, and lowering their defense by 10% for 10 seconds. If targeting a minion, the Tyrannosaurus will consume them.” Good for support.
Swarm – “Summon a swarm of bats which will release you from most control effects, and increase your damage by 5%. Your target will be slowed by 5%, take 5% more damage, cause 5% less damage, have their critical chance reduced by 5%, and have their Action Point Gain reduced by 5% for 10 seconds. Target is debuffed for 5 seconds in PvP”. Good for dps.
Swift Golden Lion – “Summon your Celestial Lion to knock back nearby foes and grant nearby party members 30% of their Maximum Hit Points as a Shield for 10 seconds. After 10 seconds, affected party members gain up to 3 stacks of Radiant Weapon based on the amount shield remaining. Radiant Weapon grants 2% additional damage as radiant damage for 12 seconds. You may have no more than 8 stacks of Radiant Weapon from any source.” Good for pvp, but can also be used in pve for any “oh no” scenarios.
Insignia bonus have been nerfed quite a bit so I’ll just list a few that are still a semi useful.
Gladiator’s Guile – “When your Stamina is above 75%, you move 10% faster. When your Stamina is below 25%, gain 10% Stamina Gain.” (Regal / Illuminated / Enlightened)
Shepherd’s Devotion – “Whenever you use a Daily power, you and your teammates’ Defense is increased by 1500, and their Movement Speed is increased by 10%”. (Regal / Barbed / Illuminated)
Artificer’s Persuasion – “Whenever you use an Artifact power, your cooldowns are reduced by 2 seconds”. (Barbed / Barbed / Illuminated)
Cavalry’s Warning – “Whenever you activate a Mount Combat Power, you gain 1000 to all your ratings for 10 seconds”. (Crescent / Barbed / Enlightened)
Knight’s Rebuke – “Whenever you receive Combat Advantage damage from an attack, you are healed for 1,5% of your Maximum Hit Points over 5 seconds”. (Crescent / Crescent / Regal)
Oppressor’s Reprieve – “Whenever you are Stunned, Knocked, or Rooted, you are healed for 5% of your Maximum Hit Points over 5 seconds”. (Crescent / Illuminated / Illuminated)
Survivor’s Blessing – “Whenever you Deflect an attack, you are healed for 1% of your maximum Hit Points over 5 seconds”. (Crescent / Crescent / Barbed)
Barbarian’s Revelry – “Whenever you perform a Critical Strike, you are healed for 1% of your maximum Hit Points”. (Crescent / Enlightened / Enlightened)
Traveler’s Treasures – “You have a chance after killing a foe to find Rough Astral Diamonds”. (Enlightened / Enlightened / Enlightened)
Wanderer’s Fortune – “You have a chance after killing a foe to find a Refining Stone” (Crescent / Regal / Illuminated)
Reason why i choose Charisma over Dexterity is because Charisma gives you Companion influence and a little of recharge speed, which is way better than some severity and movement speed from dexterity.
Powers/feats:
Feats we are going to use are: Relentless Speed, Bloodspiller, Overpenetration, Steel Slam and Relentless Battlerage.
Reason why you’re going to use Not so fast:
Click on me
As you can see it procs like crazy, and you just need to get one reset to make it better than punishing charge + it does refresh your trample the fallen everytime you use it.
Passives are steel blitz and trample the fallen.
Encounters:
Not So Fast
Indomitable Battle Strike
Bloodletter
Atwills:
Sure Strike
Relentless Strike
Dailies:
Savage Advance
Avalanche of Steel
Watermelon Sorbet OR Major or superior flask of potency, wild storm elixir, squash/pumpkin soup and m15 3% damage potion which you can get from swag bags from campaign(Acquisitions incorporated) store.
Also you can use one of these: Tymora coin, Chain of scales or pocket pet. I prefer to use chain of scales, you can get additional critical severity from it.
With mod 16 changes you’re going to use companions that add stats you don’t have capped yet, in any other case go with power ones.
Current best summoned companion is bulette pup due to it’s increased power stat(and some others of course). The reason why I don’t have it yet is because I’m too poor to buy one right now, so I’m sticking with my mod 8 ioun 
Noncombat:
In combat with tenser:
Stats you’re going to get before you start stacking power are:
118k CA to get 100% bonus when you have combat advantage
68k Critical Strike to get 50% crit chance(max)
70,5k Armor Penetration (2,5k more due to our overpenetration feat)
68k accuracy
If you catch them all you can start stacking your power in any possible way.
You can find some usefull things like caps for each level, most companion stats and a lot of other things.
Hi, guys. I’m Viperion (Vip for short), and I’ve been around in Neverwinter for quite some years. My first character was a wizard and then I thought of playing more so I also tried the ranger, and eventually the warlock. For some reason, rogues, fighters and barbarians (GWFs) never grabbed my interest. Then… an idea struck me: to try out the support and tanking roles. We needed clerics in the guild also, tbh. And a few years ago I also created a cleric and a paladin and I’ve been playing both ever since.
Mod 16 has been quite a twist of the game but some players do like the changes we’ve been presented. Myself included. I have adjusted my cleric’s support playstyle from a buffer bot to a heal bot.
In this guide we will be covering the following topics:
I hope you’ll enjoy this build. If you have more questions or you’d like to discuss in the game, my cleric is Viperion Nexus@vasile1991
For a healer I think that it doesn’t matter very much which race you pick, as long as you’re eyeballing WIS, DEX or CON. I am currently a dragonborn which allows adding +2 to any two ability scores and I’m OK with this choice. I also get that small damage boost that DPSes want it so much. It probably helps when I solo with my Arbiter loadout.
Again, Devout is for healing, if you want to deal any kind of damage, go Arbiter.
I have picked WIS+DEX but WIS+CON is also a good choice if you want that AP gain or (small!) HP gain from CON.
The reason I went for WIS+DEX is that WIS helps with healing and DEX helps with critical healing.
The powers which are not grayed out in the image below are the ones I find useful. We will discuss them individually below.
Some other situations could require Sunburst (e.g. the Yester Hill BHE in Barovia or demonic heroics).
I have excluded Healing Word because it eats a lot of Divinity and the heals are not very great. More info about the “why” in the Divinity Management Tips section.
When the AP is filled, most of the times it’s Guardian of Life the daily to use (but only if there’s an actual need for extra healing).
Both Hallowed Ground and Guardian of Faith are situational. I use Hallowed Ground for phases when a big blow is about to happen (e.g. Trobriand’s or Ras Nsi’s one shot). The only situation I use Guardian of Faith so far is during Arcturia’s mimics phase, if the tank didn’t manage to defeat the mimic in time.
The only good ones I consider are worth slotting are:
The following image displays what I decided to use starting with mod 16. You won’t need to follow strictly these items, we will tackle them individually and provide alternatives.
The best weapon set in the game right now is the Watcher set which is good to have for every class. But for the moment, it’s extremely hard to obtain. If you have the free time to farm for it, then sure, go ahead. But if you don’t, the Alabaster set is just as good.
The Burnished set, is not suitable for a cleric healer either because of how its bonus works. You will need to get hit or be healed for more than 15% of your max HP. Read again. Not to hit but to get hit. And not to heal but to be healed. The part about getting hit isn’t too acceptable for a healer role, it’s what a tank is good at. You might say getting healed could work. Yes, it could however, you will develop this weird habit of heaing yourself instead of efficiently spending your divinity on your party.
In the image above, I’m using the Burnished main hand weapon only to benefit from the base damage and stats from these new mod 16 sets, which are way higher than the other existing sets in the game. Do not use the Burnished set on a cleric, I was just unlucky not to drop my Alabaster main hand already… I will get rid of it as soon as I get my Alabaster main hand weapon.
First of all, let me clear this out – you don’t need necessarily to wear the items as a set. But since sets have some extra bonuses, it’s nice to pair the items as a set. However, I strongly recommed to use some of the new mod 16 artifact equipment set items just because they have so much better HP compared to the previous ones. That extra HP will help you with better survivability.
I am currently using the Enchanted Thumb set (more commonly known as the flower set). It’s not a cheap one, mainly because of the artifact, the Staff of Flowers which drops from Zok’s chests (the Yawning Portal pretty face goblin). The artifact is very good for a support to use as an active. Also the set belt, has WIS+CHA which are good for a support healer. For alternatives, I suggest the Constructed Demiset set (more commonly known as Trobriand set) since the ring piece should be part of your equipment. Or, if you’d like to have the Wyvern-venon coated Knives artifact as an active, go for the Wyvern set.
Radiants for your offense slots (more Power means better heals)
Radiants for your defense slots (more HP means better survivability). Alternatively, you can use Demonics like me to also cover some Deflect and Crit Avoidance defense stats.
Dark for your utility slots for companion influence (if you think that stat actually can make a difference). Alternatively, Quartermasters for RP bags.
Vorpal for your critical heals.
Soulforged for a 2nd chance to dodge that red better.
Mainly use artifacts which have the Power stat on them. With mod 16, the Staff of Flowers and Trobriand’s Ring are especially good due to their 3k Power each.
Other good options are: Wheel of Elements (bonus damage to use on a DPS character), Sigil of the Cleric (some AP over time), Sigil of the Paladin (damage resistance buff and heals).
Power kits for armors. The +1s are slightly better.
Stamina regeneration kits for accessories. Since the stamina regen ones won’t be too much of a game changer, you can alternatively use Combat Advantage ones for the times when you run content with other people as Arbiter.
Aim for all the power boons, all the HP boons, the resistance boons vs demons/undead, companion influence, movement speed, AP gain and Outgoing Healing.
For the Stronghold boons, make sure to use the Power boon, the defense boon (if you didn’t cap defense yet) or the HP boon.
There are two important things to mention here: use an augment-type companion as your active and use companions with powers which deal with Power increase and Outgoing Healing increase.
There can be other choices, of course, but this is what I’m currently using for now:
The companion gear I use is the ones you get from the Undermountain quest line (make sure during all expeditions you find all 9 relics). They all have offense slots and in every offense slot I’m using Empowered Runestones for more Power.
Bonding runestones as high as possible. This is important.
Any mount with 5k Power boost is fine. Even better, one with 10k Power boost such as the Arcane Whirlwind or the Black Ice War Horse.
Ideally, you’d like to go for Domination insignias to boost your power. However, these are so not affordable for most players at the moment. When offense improvement is too expensive, consider defensive improvement. I’m using a few Domination insignias but I am also focusing on increasing my HP through Prosperity insignias and Deflect through Evasion insignias.
In this section we will speak about the DOs and DON’Ts a cleric healer should keep track of in a group.
I’ve heard this way too many times: Cleric divinity just sucks! The Cleric healer is an awful experience. To be honest, I have thought so too in the beginning. However, I took a step back to analyze what cause that awful feeling about this healing spec. The big truth is it’s a class that requires some brains, you can’t just throw out all your healing and then the next moment the boss sneezes, you find yourself out of divinity.
Here’s a list of situations or issues which cause your divinity meter to go down fast:
1. Healing when not needed.
The truth is I’ve seen far too many healers who just heal all the time. This will decrease your divinity meter fast and in the end, you’ve barely been effective with anything.
2. Healing in too many places at once.
Now this is something big, many players maybe don’t even realize. It’s that kind of thing that’s so obvious, you don’t even realize it. This happens very often.
When you run in a group, especially with ranged characters, you will notice people might be scattered all over the place. The tank aggroes the boss, some DPS who actually takes advantage of the Combat Advantage is on the other side of the boss, and some other wizards are dealign damage but from a distance. This is at least three spots to heal: one for the tank, one for the smart DPS that deals Combat Advantage from the other side of the boss and one for the far-away wizards. Oh, and you too!
Some bosses have certain mechanics that ignore the threat from the tank, and just target the DPSes or the healer. I think it’s obvious where I’m hinting. To keep your party alive, you need to heal 3-4 times for the 3-4 spots where players are located. This will cause you to run out of divinity very fast.
Since this build doesn’t use Healing Word because we have already agreed it heals very poorly based on how much divinity it eats, you will need to “educate” the players to stick together. It’s simple as that. One heal to heal them all Well, two actually, cause if they’re near the tank, they’re probably dead.
3. Dealing damage instead of praying
You might want to be useful with something, so you want to deal damage. Worse, you’re using divinity-based damaging encounters like Daunting Light… Please stop.
You’re helping the party by healing them and keeping them alive. That’s your job. Your damage can very easily be covered by a competent DPS character. So embrance your role, you’re there to heal and not dps.
Now that we’ve agreed on you having to heal instead of dealing damage, we also have to make sure you pray to recover your divinity. Between fights of clearing monsters, it’s nice to pray out of combat to regen the divinity faster. However, for longer fights like boss fights, you will need to identify small timeframes when the fight is going just fine without your intervention, and just pray to recover your divinity. This habit will extend the overall ability of spamming healing with Bastion of Healing.
This section will just reiterate some of the previous points. It will also add a few new tips that should help to your overall experience as a healer:
Welcome to my guide for fighters! I’d like to apologize for grammatical errors, my native language is not English. I will try to avoid as many grammatical errors as possible.
With the arrival of module 16, we are faced with a completely different game, new classes, new mechanics and changes that have transformed the Neverwinter in a dramatic way. One such change is the extinction of the former Guardian Fighter and the birth of the Fighter. It is a class suitable for players who want to be at the forefront of the battle, being able to absorb large amounts of damage. Paired with a good healer, the fighter is an almost unbeatable tank.
The purpose of this guide is not only to show a build you can copy and use in your character, but to provide a basis for building it correctly and teaching the new mechanics of the class so that you can understand and play your game with your Fighter, providing a better understanding and real learning. Try different equipments, talents and powers and learn how to create your own build.
Para quem fala português deixo o link do atual guia traduzido:https://docs.google.com/document/d/15_K5BfmUXtmlsYC4qaryxSQsRSffgCAPJcCOIaYesO0/edit#
Races
Choosing the race of your Fighter is something quite personal, so there is no right or wrong, better or worse. The difference between them does not significantly influence the build’s ability. But there are always those who prefer to choose a race that favors the class better. In this context, only the races that most benefit the Fighter will be listed:
Abilities
For your Tank to be able to play its role in the DGs you need to focus on Strength and Constitution. The Strength will help you maintain your stamina and increase your damage, which will be indispensable to keep you aggro. Every decent Tank has to invest in Constitution as it is very useful to regenerate your stamina in addition to increasing the fighter hitpoints.
Stats
Critical strike base: 5%
Critical strike cap: 50%
Defense cap: 50%
Deflect cap: 50%
Combat Advantage base: 10%
Combat Advantage cap: 100%
Powers are a resource that must be chosen carefully, many that you will use to keep enemies fixed on you (aggro) others will keep you alive and still be able to protect your group or even aid in damage. This part of the guide aims to show you the best possible choices for choosing powers, feats, paragons, at-wills and other mechanics of the class.
Paragon
The Paragon for the Fighter is called Vanguard and can give you the means to make it a powerful Tank on the front line.
At-Will
Encounter
Daily
Mechanic
Class Feature
Feat
Enhanced Application is the best option for Master Boons, in tier 5 the best options are: Wellcome Blessings, Second Wind and Call of Power, from tier 4 to 1 focus on the boons of health and power points, use any remaining points other boon you need.
Guild Boons
Companions
Something that has also changed drastically were the mates, some of whom applied buffs and debuffs while using their skills were nerfed and can not do that anymore. Partners can only use items unique to their type, different from before they could also use player items. Companion equipment is now universal and can only be equipped with runes. The spaces of the active companions were 5 and could store them in different types. Now the classes have spaces for offensive, defensive and utilitarian companions, each of which has its own space and bonus. Augments are now widely used as summoned companions, as they give more statistics overall. I recommend using summoned one of the companions who are in the dedicated spaces. Below are some options, so choose according to the need of your Build:
Mounts
Mount Insignia Bonuses
Here are some suggestions for weapon enchantment and armor, but feel free to try others, as much can still change in the current module. I chose some options very recommended by other Fighters:
There is not much to talk about about equipment as there is no formula ready! Feel free to choose the equipment that best provides statistics and buffs at your fingertips. The best equipment is the one you can get in the moment of need. Just be careful to choose upgraded items that can provide useful buffs.
Much has changed about the artifacts in module 16, but its functions, however, have not changed yet. Usually the choice of artifacts is determined by three main reasons:
Guide created in 06/10/2019
The goal for this build is to maximize shareable power and recovery as much as possible. Running an AC and a DO is no longer considered “meta”, so it is more important than ever for an AC to share high amounts of power and be able to spam dailies like no one’s business. I maximize power through straight power, as well as through Assassin’s Covenant, which causes you to lose 10% (+2.5% for each additional) of your Defense, Deflection, and Life Steal, and gain the combination of lost stats as shareable power. In the interest of keeping this guide as straightforward as possible, I don’t go into depth about the reasons behind all of my choices. Safe to say, all decisions made were due to buffiness.
Note: This is an end-game support build for dungeon running and is not designed for solo content or newborn clerics who may have different needs as they build their way up.
Disclaimer: This is the build I run on my DC, however I’m sure there are many others that are just as good, if not better. I have done my best to make this as useful and accurate as possible. I even attempted to math, so you’re welcome.
Race:
1. Dragonborn
-Grants you +2 to any two stats.
-Power and Critical Strike are increased by 3% (This is shareable)
-Receive 5% more healing from all spells and abilities
2. Sun Elf
-Grants you +2 Intelligence.
-Grants you +2 Dexterity or +2. Charisma
-Inner Calm: Your inner peace and serenity cause you to focus more clearly on the task at hand. +2% Action Point gain
-Sun Elf Grace: Your bottomless grace increases your resistance to Crowd Control effects by 10%
3. Half Elf
-Grants you +2 Constitution
-Grants you +2 Charisma or +2 Wisdom
-Knack for Success: You are just naturally better at many facets of life, gaining +1% Deflect, +1% Critical Severity, and +1% Gold Find
-Dilettante: Grants +1 to a non-class Ability Score
Note: Dragonborn is the best due to the extra powershare. Due to looks, I chose to pass on that and use Sun Elf.
Effect per point (after 10):
STR – 1% Critical Chance, 1% Damage Resistance, 1% Stamina Regeneration
DEX – 1% AoE Damage Resistance, 0.5% Deflection Chance
WIS – 1% Damage Bonus, 1% Healing Bonus, 1% Control Bonus, 1% Control Resistance
CON – 2% Maximum Hit Points
INT – 1% Recharge Speed
CHA – 1% Combat Advantage Damage, 1% Recharge Speed, 1% Action Point Gain, 1% Companion Stat Bonus
Note: You are able to reroll the stats as much as you want. I went high CHA/WIS, but you can balance your stats depending on what you feel you need.
Power: The hands down most important stat for any AC. This should always be top priority, as you share a large portion of your power with your party. Not all power is shared, so the easiest way to get a decent measurement is to go by the power from items, seen when you hover over your power stat on your character sheet. 30k power by items is suitable for most high-tiered dungeons, but 40k is recommended and can be achieved with enough time or money.
Recovery: This is the second most important stat, impacting the recharge speed for encounters and action point gain. Without having a Divine Oracle DC to pop Hallowed Ground (HG), the AC needs to be able to keep Anointed Army (AA) and HG up as much as possible. And it doesn’t hurt to be able to spam off encounters as well to keep your rotation smooth.
Action Point Gain: Can be increased by initial Wisdom roll, Action Point Gain Jewel reinforcement kits on Neck, Waist, and Ring slots, offhand artifact stat, etc.
Critical Strike: Never increase at the expense of power, but it has it’s uses. For this build, healing is a side effect of buffs, not the goal. However, heals can crit, so if it’s not taking away from your power go for it.
Defense/Deflection/Lifesteal: As high as possible to increase power.
At-Wills:
Encounters:
Class Features:
Daily Powers:
(Assuming you start combat with no divinity)
Boss Fight Scenario:
You are standing in the circle about to enter a boss fight. Drop Divine Glow on as many of your allies as possible, then pop Anointed Army immediately after spawning in. Position yourself behind the highest DPS and stick to him/her like glue. Then use your At-Wills Blessing of Battle until you have full divinity. Divine Glow on yourself, DPS and boss, then use your R1 to go into divinity mode and drop another Divine Glow. Spam Break the Spirit on the boss two times, using up the rest of your divinity. At this point you will have three blue orbs circling you, allowing you to cast a fully empowered encounter. Then you start over with building up your divinity. For the first fully empowered attack I use a fully empowered Exaltation and from that point on only Break the Spirit is empowered. After every empowered Break the Spirit refresh Exaltation on your chosen DPS (basically treating Exalt like a Devo Pally treats Bane).
AA > DG > BoB until Divinity is full > DG >
R1 > DG > BtS until until out of Divinity > fully Empowered Exaltation on highest dps
After that BoB until Divinity is full > DG > R1 > DG > BtS until out of Divinity > fully Empowered BtS > Exalt highest DPS and continue until everything is dead.
Mob Fight:
Same basic principle. However, if you’re with a group that kills the mobs before you can even get halfway through your rotation, you can switch it up. You can focus on casting Divine Glow as often as possible, so you can spam Anointed Army, as keeping that buff up is more beneficial than debuffing an enemy that is dying half a second after you cast Break the Spirit anyway. Throw in exaltation if your DPS aren’t running around like coked-out butterflies.
Spam dailies as often as possible. AA always during mob fights, alternate AA and HG during boss fights. AA is best popped right before enemies are engaged for maximum power share.
These are my “NC AC” feats (no cleanse Anointed Champion). I dropped Cleanse for the simple reason that cleanse can impair the damage of a GF DPS who runs Survivor’s Wraps.
If you have a spare loadout, you can put a point in Cleanse for when no one is running Survivor’s Wraps. It can come in handy when your group gets poisoned (i.e. Haiti fight in FBI).
As a self-described power hungry DC, all of my equipment choices were made based on the power share capabilities. So much of it is situationally based that I list the how’s and when’s of the power on equipment for the ones that have multiple viable options so you can choose what works best for you.
I use “->” to show the conversion of Defense/Deflection/Life Steal to Power. Numbers are based on having 3 Assassin’s Covenants and I ignored decimal points to simplify things.
Head:
1. Rex Corona (Tier 3 Soshenstar Hunt)
+2,149 Power
+1,066 Defense converts to -> 159 Power
– Equip power stacking up to 2,400 before it ends at 2 mins
**Total power share stacks up to 4,708; after the 2 mins dropping down to 2,308
2. Guise of the Wolf Clan (Mysterious Merchant)
+516 Power
+1,490 Defense -> 223 Power
– Equip power + 2,000 when in group
**Total power share 2,739
3. Decaying Habit (Barovia Hunt)
+2,735 Power
+605 Defense -> 90 Power
– Equip power for the first minute stacks up to 2,100. After the 1st minute, power drops by 250 every 5 seconds, to a total loss of 3,000.
**Total power share stacks up to 4,925; after the 1st minute dropping to 1,925
Note: Rex is best overall but Decaying is best in melt groups and Guise is best in extended fights.
Chest:
1. Faithlord’s Restoration Chasuble (Seals of the Crown)
+1,762 Power
+1,433 Defense -> 214 Power
– Equip power when you’re health is 50% or more +1,500 Power
**Total power share 3,476 (as long as you stay above 50% health, which should be 99% of the time)
2. Bronzewood Restoration Eziwa (Masterwork)
+2,734 Power
+1,470 Defense -> 220 Power
– Equip power when facing only one enemy +1,500 Power
**Total power share 4,454 with one enemy; 2,954 with multiple enemies
3. Knotted Garbs (Barovia Hunt)
+2,552 Power
+1,082 Defense -> 162 Power
– Equip power for the 1st 10 seconds of combat +1,500 Power
**Total power share 4,214 for the first 10 seconds, then 2,714 for the remainder of the fight
Note: Faithlord’s is best overall, but if there is only one enemy Bronzewood beats it out. Knotted is best if you can murder everything in 10 seconds.
Arms:
1. The Executioner’s Bracers (Barovia Salvage drops, CR)
+3,281 Power
+605 Defense -> 90 Power
**Total power share 3,371
2. Vivified Restoration Isikrinis (Seals of the Brave)
+1,465 Power
+860 Defense -> 129 Power
-Equip power when healing or damaging your target for more than 15% of your maximum hit points, gain 1% power
**Total power share 1,594 + ??? (this will vary based on your own power and it would be difficult to gauge how often it procs and the amount during combat)
Note: The Primal arms have the potential for a ton of power share, but is reliant on you being able to proc it consistently. Executioner’s is more reliable and a safer bet.
Mainhand:
Feathered Teotlanextli (Masterwork)
Offhand:
Feathered Ilhuilli (Masterwork)
Feet:
1. Faithlord’s Restoration Pigaches (Seal of the Crown)
+1,699 Power
+955 Defense -> 143 Power
**Total power share 1,842
2. Bronzewood Restoration Qalisas (Masterwork)
+1,758 Power
+980 Defense -> 147
**Total power share 1905
Note: The Bronzewood has slightly more power, however the equip bonus for Faithlord’s gives +1,500 Recovery when your health is more than 50% (versus the Critical chance equip bonus for the Bronzewood).
Neck:
Fanged Beaded Amulet (Masterwork)
Rings:
1. Ring of the Gravestriker +5 (Omu Patrols)
+543 Power
– Equip power when health is greater than 85% +1,000 Power
**Total power share 1,543 when health is greater than 85%
2. Ring of the Gravestriker +4 (Omu Patrols)
+478 Power
– Equip power when health is greater than 85% +800 Power
**Total power share 1,278 when health is greater than 85%
3. Beaded Restoration Ring (Masterwork)
+651 Power (673 if +1)
**Total power share 651 (673 if +1)
4. Bronzewood Raid Ring (Masterwork)
+651 Power (673 if +1)
– Equip power when facing only one enemy +1,000 Power
**Total power share 1,651(1,673 if +1) when facing one enemy
Note: Equip powers of Gravestriker rings of the same rank do not stack, and same type of masterwork rings equip powers do not stack.
Waist:
Beaded Sash (Masterwork)
Shirt:
1. Prelate Gemmed Exquisite Elemental Chainmail (Professions)
+228 Power
+172 Defense -> 25 Power
**Total power share 253
2. Bloodstained Shirt (Epic GWD)
+379 Defense/+928 Life Steal ->196 Power
– Equip power gain 25 Power for each percentage of health you are missing
**Total power share 196 + Equip power
3. Shirt of the Chultan Merchant
+462 Defense -> 69 Power
– Equip power gain 150 Recovery for each member in your party
Note: Ideally a DC should be standing back behind the DPS and buffing, not taking damage. So the Bloodstained shouldn’t proc enough to outweigh the power share of the Prelate’s.
Pants:
1. Makos’ Spare Travel Pants (Manycoins Bank Heist Skirmish)
+110 Defense -> 16 Power
– Equip power for the first 10 seconds of combat +1,500 Power
**Total power share 1,516 for the first 10 seconds, 16 after that
2. Adamantine Chausses (Masterwork)
+469 Power (488 if +1)
+209 Defense -> 31 Power (32 if +1)
**Total power share 500 (520 if +1)
Note: Makos’ gives extremely high power at first but after the 30 seconds Adamantine shares more.
Major Power Kits
Major Action Point Gain Jewels
Main:
Sigil of the Devoted
Heart of the Black Dragon
Additional Artifacts:
In order of recommendation
*Empowered Illusionist’s Mask (+1000 power, +1000 recovery, +600 AP gain)
Tome of Ascendance (+1000 power, +1000 defense, +600 deflection, +600 lifesteal)
Symbol of Fire (+1000 power, +600 recovery, +1000 defense)
Symbol of Air (+1000 power, +1000 recovery, +600 movement)
*Can only be acquired through Halloween event.
Weapon:
Plague Fire
Frost
Dread
Armor:
Barkshield
Negation
Soulforged
Offensive Slots:
Radiants for power
Defensive Slots:
Black Ice, it gives the highest amount of stats for converting to power through Assassin’s Covenant.
Companion Slots:
Bonding Runestones
Companion Equipment Slots:
Silveries for Recovery as companion equip stats don’t powershare.
If you’re concerned about diminishing returns with recovery and have no issues keeping your dailies up, Gigantics give a nice mix of Crit, Recovery and Arm Pen.
Only one per category as multiple potions, elixirs, etc will not stack. For example, if you take a recovery potion and then a crit potion you will only benefit from the crit potion. Not all varieties of each are listed, as some are suboptimal. Power from potions and other consumables does not share.
Potions:
Enhanced Tidespan Potion (+1,000 Recovery, duration 1 hour and persists through death)
Enhanced Potion of Accuracy (+1,000 Critical, duration 1 hour and persists through death)
Superior gives the same stats and length but do not persist through death. Effervescent gives 2k stats but are pricey.
Elixirs:
Persist through death and last one hour.
Sunlord’s Gift Elixir (+350 Recovery, chance to gain 5% of your Action Points over 20 seconds)
Elixir of Fate (+1 to Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma)
Wild Storm Elixir (+350 Critical Strike, increases your Critical Severity by 10%)
Stronghold Food:
Purchased with guild marks, lasts 30 mins.
Ratatouille (+5,000 additional Maximum Hit Points, +1,000 Recovery)
Seared Tuna (+5,000 additional Maximum Hit Points, +1,000 Critical Strike)
Event Food:
Lathander’s Dew (+1% Action Points every 3 seconds, duration 30 mins)
Watermelon Sorbet (+10% Power, +10% Recovery, duration 30 mins)
Pumpkin Soup (+3% Critical Chance, +5% Critical Severity, duration 35 mins)
Squash Soup (+3% Critical Chance, +5% Critical Severity, duration 30 mins)
Reusables (potion tray slotted)
*Empowered Chain of Scales (randomly one of the following:+1,000 Regeneration, +2,100 Power, +420 Defense, +6% Life Steal Severity, +6% Deflection, +10% Stamina Regeneration, +6% Critical Severity)
Adorable Pocket Pet (randomly one of the following: -5% threat, +5% Critical Severity, +250 Regeneration, +250 Action Point Gain)
Tymora’s Lucky Coin (+371 to a random stat)
*Must be empowered through Omu hunts/dungeons, starts with only +1,000 Regeneration.
Other
Invocation Blessing (randomly one of the following: +427 Critical Strike/Deflection, +427 Power/Defense, +427 Armor Pen/Lifesteal, +427 Recovery/Regeneration, 15 min duration)
Assassin’s Covenant
You lose 10% of your Defense, Deflection, and Life Steal, and gain the combination of lost stats as Power.
Increases by 2.5% with each stack (12.5% with 2, 15% with 3, etc)
1 Regal, 2 Enlightened
Shepherd’s Devotion
Whenever you use a Daily power, your teammates Defense, Deflection, and Movement are increased by 5% of your Power for 10 seconds.
1 Regal, 1 Barbed, 1 Illuminated
Artificer’s Persuasion
Whenever you use an Artifact power, your Recovery, Movement, Action Point Gain, and Stamina Gain are increased by 10% of your Power for 15 seconds.
2 Barbed, 1 Illuminated
For the insignia slots, Brutality is BiS because it has power and recovery. For a slightly more reasonable price, you can run all Dominance and Mastery.
Combat Power:
Warpainted/Commander Tyrannosaur
Summons the Tyrannosaur, causing your enemies fear, rooting them for 5 seconds, and lowering their defense by 10% for 10 seconds.
If targeting a minion, the Tyrannosaurus will consume them.
Equip Power:
+2000 power (epic) / +4000 power (legendary)
or
Flail Snail (epic) / Coastal Flail Snail (legendary)
Using a Daily Power grants 15% / 25% of your total Action Points over 10 seconds.
Summoned:
Con Artist (3 rings, easy to gear)
Chultan Tiger (2 rings, 1 neck, gives slightly better dps)
Sellsword (1 neck, 1 waist, 1 swordknot, difficult to gear with not as high stats as mastercraft rings, +300 power)
Actives:
(All were chosen due to power as Active Bonus)
Deepcrow Hatchling (+1,500 power)
Skeleton (+660 power, +660 lifesteal)
Archmage’s Apprentice (+660 power, +660 lifesteal)
Ghost (+400 power)
Dragonborn Brawler (+300 power)
Dragonborn Raider (+300 power)
Sharandar:
Dark Fey Hunter – 1/1
Fey Elusiveness – 1/1
Elven Haste – 1/1
Elven Tranquility – 1/1
Elvish Fury – 1/1
Dread Ring:
Reliquary Keepers Strength – 1/1
Evoker’s Thirst – 1/1
Forbidden Piercing – 1/1
Enraged Regrowth – 1/1
Endless Consumption – 1/1
Icewind Dale:
Weathering the Storm – 1/1
Appreciation of Warmth – 1/1
Rapid Thaw – 1/1
Cool Resolve – 1/1
Winter’s Bounty – 1/1
Underdark:
Primordial Might – 1/1
Primordial Regeneration – 1/1
Drow Meditation – 1/1
Dwarves Stamina – 1/1
Abyssal Strikes – 1/1
Tyranny of Dragons:
Dragon’s Claws – 1/1
Dragon’s Shadow – 1/1
Dragonscale Defense – 1/1
Dragon’s Greed – 1/1
Dragon’s Thirst – 2/3
Dragon’s Fury – 1/3
Maze Engine:
Abyssal Syphoning – 1/1
Demonic Influence – 1/1
Demonic Swiftness – 1/1
Engine Inspiration – 1/1
Elemental Evil:
Wave of Force – 1/1
Heart of Stone – 1/1
Blazing Resilience – 1/1
Wall of Wind – 1/1
Storm King’s Thunder:
Cold Hearted – 1/1
Hardy Constitution – 1/1
Chill Determination – 1/1
Glacial Strength – 1/1
Healing Warmth – 3/3
The Cloaked Ascendancy:
Aura of Hope – 1/1
Fiery Frenzy – 1/1
Fey Briars – 1/1
Vision of Beyond – 1/1
Jungles of Chult:
Tyrant’s Terror – 3/3
Overgrown – 2/3
Fight not Flight – 1/3
Death’s Blessing – 2/2
Ravenloft:
Ageless – 3/3
Bloodlust – 1/1
(or Righteous Sacrifice 1/1)
Acquisitions Incorporated:
Confidence Boost – 3/3
Taking a Break – 1/1
Hi, guys. I’m Viperion (Vip for short), and I’ve been around in Neverwinter for quite some years. My first character was a wizard and then I thought of playing more so I also tried the ranger, and eventually the warlock. For some reason, rogues, fighters and barbarians (GWFs) never grabbed my interest. Then… an idea struck me: to try out the support and tanking roles. We needed clerics in the guild also, tbh. And a few years ago I also created a cleric and a paladin and I’ve been playing both ever since.
Mod 16 has been quite a twist of the game but some players do like the changes we’ve been presented. Myself included. I have adjusted my cleric’s support playstyle from a buffer bot to a heal bot.
In this guide we will be covering the following topics:
I hope you’ll enjoy this build. If you have more questions or you’d like to discuss in the game, my cleric is Viperion Nexus@vasile1991
For a healer I think that it doesn’t matter very much which race you pick, as long as you’re eyeballing WIS, DEX or CON. I am currently a dragonborn which allows adding +2 to any two ability scores and I’m OK with this choice. I also get that small damage boost that DPSes want it so much. It probably helps when I solo with my Arbiter loadout.
Again, Devout is for healing, if you want to deal any kind of damage, go Arbiter.
I have picked WIS+DEX but WIS+CON is also a good choice if you want that AP gain or (small!) HP gain from CON.
The reason I went for WIS+DEX is that WIS helps with healing and DEX helps with critical healing.
The powers which are not grayed out in the image below are the ones I find useful. We will discuss them individually below.
Some other situations could require Sunburst (e.g. the Yester Hill BHE in Barovia or demonic heroics).
I have excluded Healing Word from this build.
The problem with this encounter is that it eats way too much Divinity compared to the amount of the initial heal. Furthermore, the healing over time aspect is unreliable because it might proc when healing is not needed at all (full HP already) or it might not proc when it’s extremely needed (right before a big blow from the boss). This means that the predictability of the fight from a healing management perspective is affected, because it cannot be controlled at all by the healer, as it’s controlled by the game via the healing over time ticks. So you need to jump in with Bastion of Healing interventions anyway. Bastion of Healing is far superior to Healing Word because of almost x3 less Divinity used for a doubled amount of burst HP healed and the fact that you control when healing happens. Having to use Bastion of Healing on top of Healing Word just means that Healing Word is not enough to do the job properly. As a result, I have decided to drop using Healing Word entirely and ever since I’ve been so much happier with my divinity management. It no longer drops fast as it used to and I now rely on the healing upon the press of a button when I know it’s really needed. This idea is reiterated in the “Divinity Management Tips” section.
When the AP is filled, most of the times it’s Guardian of Life the daily to use (but only if there’s an actual need for extra healing).
Both Hallowed Ground and Guardian of Faith are situational. I use Hallowed Ground for phases when a big blow is about to happen (e.g. Trobriand’s or Ras Nsi’s one shot). The only situation I use Guardian of Faith so far is during Arcturia’s mimics phase, if the tank didn’t manage to defeat the mimic in time.
The only good ones I consider are worth slotting are:
The following image displays what I decided to use starting with mod 16. You won’t need to follow strictly these items, we will tackle them individually and provide alternatives.
The best weapon set in the game right now is the Watcher set which is good to have for every class. But for the moment, it’s extremely hard to obtain. If you have the free time to farm for it, then sure, go ahead. But if you don’t, the Alabaster set is just as good.
The Burnished set, is not suitable for a cleric healer either because of how its bonus works. You will need to get hit or be healed for more than 15% of your max HP. Read again. Not to hit but to get hit. And not to heal but to be healed. The part about getting hit isn’t too acceptable for a healer role, it’s what a tank is good at. You might say getting healed could work. Yes, it could however, you will develop this weird habit of heaing yourself instead of efficiently spending your divinity on your party.
In the image above, I’m using the Burnished main hand weapon only to benefit from the base damage and stats from these new mod 16 sets, which are way higher than the other existing sets in the game. Do not use the Burnished set on a cleric, I was just unlucky not to drop my Alabaster main hand already… I will get rid of it as soon as I get my Alabaster main hand weapon.
First of all, let me clear this out – you don’t need necessarily to wear the items as a set. But since sets have some extra bonuses, it’s nice to pair the items as a set. However, I strongly recommed to use some of the new mod 16 artifact equipment set items just because they have so much better HP compared to the previous ones. That extra HP will help you with better survivability.
I am currently using the Enchanted Thumb set (more commonly known as the flower set). It’s not a cheap one, mainly because of the artifact, the Staff of Flowers which drops from Zok’s chests (the Yawning Portal pretty face goblin). The artifact is very good for a support to use as an active. Also the set belt, has WIS+CHA which are good for a support healer. For alternatives, I suggest the Constructed Demiset set (more commonly known as Trobriand set) since the ring piece should be part of your equipment. Or, if you’d like to have the Wyvern-venon coated Knives artifact as an active, go for the Wyvern set.
Radiants for your offense slots (more Power means better heals)
Radiants for your defense slots (more HP means better survivability). Alternatively, you can use Demonics like me to also cover some Deflect and Crit Avoidance defense stats.
Dark for your utility slots for companion influence (if you think that stat actually can make a difference). Alternatively, Quartermasters for RP bags.
Vorpal for your critical heals.
Soulforged for a 2nd chance to dodge that red better.
Mainly use artifacts which have the Power stat on them. With mod 16, the Staff of Flowers and Trobriand’s Ring are especially good due to their 3k Power each.
Other good options are: Wheel of Elements (bonus damage to use on a DPS character), Sigil of the Cleric (some AP over time), Sigil of the Paladin (damage resistance buff and heals).
Power kits for armors. The +1s are slightly better.
Stamina regeneration kits for accessories. Since the stamina regen ones won’t be too much of a game changer, you can alternatively use Combat Advantage ones for the times when you run content with other people as Arbiter.
Aim for all the power boons, all the HP boons, the resistance boons vs demons/undead, companion influence, movement speed, AP gain and Outgoing Healing.
For the Stronghold boons, make sure to use the Power boon, the defense boon (if you didn’t cap defense yet) or the HP boon.
There are two important things to mention here:
Bonding runestones must be as high as possible.
There can be other choices of companions, of course, but this is what I’m currently using for now:
The companion gear I use is the ones you get from the Undermountain quest line (make sure during all expeditions you find all 9 relics). They all have offense slots and in every offense slot I’m using Empowered Runestones for more Power.
Any mount with 5k Power boost is fine. Even better, one with 10k Power boost such as the Arcane Whirlwind or the Black Ice War Horse.
Ideally, you’d like to go for Domination insignias to boost your power. However, these are so not affordable for most players at the moment. When offense improvement is too expensive, consider defensive improvement. I’m using a few Domination insignias but I am also focusing on increasing my HP through Prosperity insignias and Deflect through Evasion insignias.
In this section we will speak about the DOs and DON’Ts a cleric healer should keep track of in a group.
I’ve heard this way too many times: Cleric divinity just sucks! The Cleric healer is an awful experience. To be honest, I have thought so too in the beginning. However, I took a step back to analyze what cause that awful feeling about this healing spec. The big truth is it’s a class that requires some brains, you can’t just throw out all your healing and then the next moment the boss sneezes, you find yourself out of divinity.
Here’s a list of situations or issues which cause your divinity meter to go down fast:
1. Healing when not needed.
The truth is I’ve seen far too many healers who just heal all the time. This will decrease your divinity meter fast and in the end, you’ve barely been effective with anything.
2. Healing in too many places at once.
Now this is something big, many players maybe don’t even realize. It’s that kind of thing that’s so obvious, you don’t even realize it. This happens very often.
When you run in a group, especially with ranged characters, you will notice people might be scattered all over the place. The tank aggroes the boss, some DPS who actually takes advantage of the Combat Advantage is on the other side of the boss, and some other wizards are dealign damage but from a distance. This is at least three spots to heal: one for the tank, one for the smart DPS that deals Combat Advantage from the other side of the boss and one for the far-away wizards. Oh, and you too!
Some bosses have certain mechanics that ignore the threat from the tank, and just target the DPSes or the healer. I think it’s obvious where I’m hinting. To keep your party alive, you need to heal 3-4 times for the 3-4 spots where players are located. This will cause you to run out of divinity very fast.
Since this build doesn’t use Healing Word because we have already agreed it heals very poorly based on how much divinity it eats, you will need to “educate” the players to stick together. It’s simple as that. One heal to heal them all Well, two actually, cause if they’re near the tank, they’re probably dead.
3. Dealing damage instead of praying
You might want to be useful with something, so you want to deal damage. Worse, you’re using divinity-based damaging encounters like Daunting Light… Please stop.
You’re helping the party by healing them and keeping them alive. That’s your job. Your damage can very easily be covered by a competent DPS character. So embrance your role, you’re there to heal and not dps.
Now that we’ve agreed on you having to heal instead of dealing damage, we also have to make sure you pray to recover your divinity. Between fights of clearing monsters, it’s nice to pray out of combat to regen the divinity faster. However, for longer fights like boss fights, you will need to identify small timeframes when the fight is going just fine without your intervention, and just pray to recover your divinity. This habit will extend the overall ability of spamming healing with Bastion of Healing.
This section will just reiterate some of the previous points. It will also add a few new tips that should help to your overall experience as a healer:
we continue to say, that much of the equipment of the old module is still bis in the mod 16, such as the Hag’s Rags [(+3% damage at a distance)that together with the new ebony ring that has the same bonus, they increase the damage you get with remote powers by 6%] , Grips of Terror (+3% damage with encountering powers) , The set of the demon lord (1%-20% damage depending on the life of the enemy) , Enduring Boots [(+3% damage when your resistance is over 75%) I chose these instead of the ebony shirt, so I was able to take advantage of the bonus of the protected shirt to have a recharge of the powers to meet faster] , Ring of the Shadowstalker +5 (total damage increased by 2.5% if you are less than 25 feet away from the target).
As for the new equipment, in addition to weapons, I recommend using the protector’s shirt and trousers , as well as the head of the protégé that increases the damage by 5% in the sub-mount maps. including the new dungeon “Lair of the Mad Mage”.
you prefer an increase in damage for a very simple reason, after a certain amount of time you get a particular effect, it is not true more than 1000 power = 1% dps but this value goes up, as we can see on the site:
jannenw
on which we can see how the various game mechanics work and above all how the calculation of the dps works , including some really useful tools to calculate your current dps.
I highly recommend raising intelligence and charisma
INT to maximize magic damage, CHA to increase the speed of recharging powers and the influence of the partner
POWERS
In aoe I use these powers with great satisfaction, those circled in red find them particularly useful in combat
there is no mandatory rotation, the important thing is to make sure that combustion is activated, the ice terrain on the tab helps to position it where it is needed even if you are not close.
the same I recommend this: TAB> Q> E> R, and in the charging time use the mouse with chilling cloud with more enemies and ray of frost against only one.
like daily I prefer to use furious immolation, because even if it does less damage than oppressive force, there is a larger and more effective range of combustion applied to the enemy.
In single target simply exchange 2 powers the TAB and the Q with:
Ray of Enfeeblement on TAB and Repel on Q
the best Class Feature for the thaumaturge magician in this module for me are Critical Conflagration and Chilling Presence (I use them both on mobs and bosses)
For the talents it is compulsory to use: Glowing Flame, Frigid Winds, Critical Burn and Directed Flames , while I find that the first one can be decided individually, I find them both good, both RelativeHaste and Smoldering Recovery.
As for the Boons I use these:
I find both the configuration that fits better on various occasions, the reason why in the master boons or chosen “Blood Lust” is because I don’t change the gifts from one build to another, and since “Deathly Rage” is activated only if you kill , I don’t find it useful at all against the bosses.
Enchantments
with this new module a lot of things have changed, both the game mechanics and your and the various enemies’ statistics, various test facts and opinions exchanged with other players have led to the conclusion that the best spells to use for the DPS are “Radiosi”, to be used in both attack and defense slots.
the reason? because the other statistics can be easily reached by taking advantage of your and partner’s equipment bonuses, and in this mod the power takes on a much more important role so having a lot of it is always better.
In utility slots, I recommend “Dark” because increasing the influence of your partner is just as useful to raise all the statistics.
while on the equipment of the companion I highly recommend “Empowered Runestone”while as runestones on the companion you always put bonding runestone.
Best Companion
the choice of the companions is relative, one should choose the companions to use based on the gaps that one has in the statistics, to understand, if one is an almost end-of-game player, obviously he will have all the high statistics and will have reached the maximum limit for each one of them, so he will choose comrades who give him “Power” as a bonus, such as the deep crow newborn, the kenku archer, the minstrel, Alpha compy etc etc.
I leave you the link below of one of the best auto wiki written on this mod, and I really feel like thanking the author for the great help he has given to me and many others.
POCKET WIKI MOD16
Always choose a budding companion, non-combatant or defender, the best 2 companions to have summoned for the dps are the bulette puppy and the quasit, due to their increased power and other offensive statistics
Mounts Bonus
if you do not have a legendary mount do not use the first bonus, change it with (Knight’s Rebuke , Survivor’s Blessing)
if you have questions let me know in the comments, or if you notice errors in the text let me note that I will arrange to fix everything.
I hope I was helpful!
Hello fellow rangers, with all the changes mod 16 has brought to the ranger some of you might be confused as to how you should build your ranger. That’s why I am here!
I have a few builds that I have been testing and have had fun/success so far so I figured I’d share them!
First off, my build is not complete yet, but hopefully I can provide a general explanation as to what I plan on using for equipment in the future.
This post is not yet complete I figured I’d go ahead and put this out there though. I plan on adding the stat caps for normal level 80 content and Lair of the Mad Mage soon as well as updates on the build as I make them! I’ll also try to make it much less a wall of text for those of you who would rather see the powers and what not.
First Build: Warden Melee build for aoe and single target
At-wills:
These are the best aoe and single target at will combination in my opinion even thought storm strike feels a little slow. If you dont like how slow it is you can use rapid strike.
Encounter Powers:
This is what I typically use, I haven’t really tried using Split the Sky/Throw Caution for the damage buff, but I feel like it could be I nice way to start off your rotation. Just be careful since aggro is still a little iffy so you might jump in and use throw caution, get aggro then die since your defense is reduced severely.
Daily:
Snipe has a really good magnitude although I tend to not use it. I mostly use Call of the storm for the added lightning attack plus you get added magnitude on all your attacks if you use the enhanced conductivity feat.
Class Features:
If you are like me and too lazy to switch between after each boss you can run Aspect of the pack and Blade Storm since they work pretty well in both scenarios. If you are hitting combat advantage cap you can run any of the other three.
Feats:
Currently I am running Focused, Storm’s Recovery, Blade Hurricane, Skirmisher’s Gambit, and Enhanced Conductivity. This are the feats that I have the most fun playing with at the moment but that doesn’t mean the other feats are useless. This build I never switch to ranged so if you like using your ranged powers you can follow my other build below.
Boons:
Companions:
I still have a lot of work to do on my companions so here are some links to some really helpful videos on some of the best companions in Mod 16.
The Assist Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGCJGr5XId4
Silv3ry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C74gUtgtSo
Also if you are confused on how the new companion system works I recommend this video by Rainer
Rainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzx7miGjjAE
Mount Powers and Insignias:
For your equip power either go for power or a stat that is not at cap yet.
For the insignia bonuses, I am currently running with Gladiator’s Guile, Assassin’s Covenant, Protector’s Camaraderie, Artificer’s Persuasion and Champion’s Return. If you have a legendary mount you can swap Champion’s return for Calvalry’s Warning. Other good options include, Combatant’s Maneuver, and Shepard’s Devotion. Just pick and choose which ones you want to use. You can also use Champion’s Return, Victim’s Preservation, Barbarian’s Revelry, Oppressor’s Reprieve or Survivor’s Blessing for soloing content if you are having a hard to staying alive. Use the insignias to get stats to cap. There is a lot of min/maxing you can do with insignias so i wouldn’t recommend worrying about what insignias you are using until later on.
Gear:
Even with all the new gear that Mod 16 added, a lot of people are saying the old hunt gear is still BiS. Now if you don’t really care about having “the best” gear there is still plenty of gear you can get from undermountain Master Expeditions and seal vendor in yawning portal.
Personally I will be testing several different pieces and the ones I plan on using in my final build are…
Hood of Spy’s Guild/Protege’s Hood
Fured Kiuno of the Bear
Terrored Grips
Heels of Fury
Alabaster set for weapons (these are not that hard to get so just do your MEs everyday and get all 9 relics)
Orcus set
Ebony Stained Shirt
Spy’s Guild/Protege’s Pants
The other three artifacts will most likely be Wyvern-Venom Coated Knives (active), Arcturia’s Music Box, and Staff of Flowers.
For my rings, I am not sure if I want to go for Shadowstalker +5 and +4 or try some of the new rings from MEs so I will try to update once I have gotten them to test.
Character Sheet Rolls:
I recommend putting all your points into Strength and then Dexterity or Charisma.
Enchants:
For weapon enchantment I recommend either vorpal or lightning as these are the only two enchants I have seen to be useful as of the time of making this post. All the other enchants are pretty bad in my opinion.
For armor enchantment I recommend Barkshield since it will help you not get one shot in dungeons if you happen to pull aggro from the tank. You can really use any armor enchant you want though.
For offensive slots again just use whatever you need to cap stats.
For defensive slots I recommend hp are maybe double or triple stat enchants with hp defense or deflect.
For utility slots I recommend using darks for companion influence.
Companion Gear and Runestones:
For your companions equipment and runestones just use the gear that helps you get to caps, that is the most important thing in this new mod (if you can’t tell by how many times i’ve said to hit those caps :P)
That is pretty much it, or at least all I could think of when creating this post! If you have any questions about what I have said, leave a comment and I will answer it to the best of my ability or refer you to someone I know can help! Thanks guys and hope you all enjoy playing Ranger in Mod 16
P.S. I will be adding the other two builds soon so make sure you check again soon.
Hello everyone my name is kitty 1007 but please call me kitty . So to start off this is my scourge warlock build for end game I will explain everything about and I will touch base on how to start off your warlock for new players as well.
Races: Human, gain additional heroic feats . Your defence 3% higher. Also with the additional heroics feats you will gain more damage .
For new player I do suggest starting off as a tiefling until you think your stats are high enough to change over to human but that just a suggestion.
Stats : your main stats as a warlock are charisma , constitution and intelligence
Because I want to do more damage I rolled my constitution to 18 so would it will be at 28 which is the highest you can go with a warlock .
Paragon paths : Hell Bringer
Hell bringer is my favourite paragon path it’s what caught my eye when I first started .
Gear: New players once you get to lvl 70 go a full primal set to start off until you are ready to do castle Ravenloft.
Head : Curse Lord’s Assault Ushanka for now I will be changing to the Gallant raid cowl in the future
Armor : Hag’s rags
You can get this armor piece by doing the Ras Manca hunt in barovia
I chose this piece because of the 3 % more damage with ranged powers
Arms :
I use these arms for the encounter power stack with the boots of the willed.
You can also use jaw rippers aswell
Main hand : Exalted Obsidian Tecpatl
I chose this set because of the set bonus
Gives you 10% more damage . Which is great
I have set my equip bonus to hellish rebuke because it’s my main at-will plus it will give me 12% more damage
Off -hand : Exalted Obsidian Tecpatl
In my artifact stat increase I have chosen action point gain but you can choose in what you are lacking stats
In my artifact class I use deadly curse
Feet: boots of the willed
You can also go with the enduring boots if you are low on recovery
Neck : Baphomet’s infernal Talisman
Waist : Demogorgon’s Girdle of Might
Great for any dps class you deal up to 20% damage based on the difference in hit points percentage between you and the target .
You will only get this bonus if you have the whole set
Also the waist gives you +2 Constitution and +2 strength which adds to your stats
Rings :
&
I have chosen these rings because of the equip bonus witch is great for end game like castle ravenloft to cradle.. Etc and hopefully one I’ll get +5 shadow stalker ?
Shirt & pants :
upper Primal paints
Mako’s spare travel pants
Best shirt and pant out so but the shirt has great stats for damage output.
Artifacts
Main : soul sight crystal for 50% more damage
Shard of orcus wand for set bonus for demo set
fragmented key of stars
Thayan Book of the Dead
Again stat wise
You can choose any artifact for these two last ones for your stat gain
Enchantments:
Weapon enchantment : unparalleled Feytouched
With the fey touch you will need to have 100% crit because it doesn’t add additional crit stats
Armor enchantment : Transcendent barkshield
This enchantment is great you can take more hits and so you can do more damage but you do have to count how many times you get hit especially in boss fights .
In my gear I run all brutal and radiants for power, crit , and hit points you can swap the radiant in your defense with black ice but that is your choice.
And in my utility slots I run dark for movement speed gotta keep up with the group but also keeping up in dps
Feats :
DPS loadout :
DPS master soul puppet:
Templock :
I’ve done a lot with experimenting with the temptation path and this is the best I’ve have gotten so far a lot of heals and buffs
Soul binding path :
Everything from gear to mounts and artifacts are the same just the feats I don’t use this loud out a lot but I tried it out for myself to see what it does put out pretty decent damage but I miss my cuddle puddle when using it .
Powers:
Encounters for tr.
I also have been switching out fiery bolt with
curse bite
For temp : mobs
blades of vanquished armies
Curse bite
Piller of power
Personals are the same as dps
Temp powers for single Target:
Piller of power
Dread theft
Blades of vanquished armies
Companions
For my main I use the chultan tiger for the boost
Ring of grave riker +5
bronze wood raid ring+1
electrum raid necklace +1
I run r14 brutals in all slots
3 r14 bonding runestone grants 65% x3 = 195% of companions stats for 30s
Active companions
Razorwood
25% combat advantage
+2.5% critical severity
Air archon
Increases your damage by +5.0% pulse .5% for other archons
Earth archon
Increase your damage by +6%
When your at full health
Pulse. 5% for other archons
Siege master
Deal 4% increased damage
Only in t9g and cradle replace the siege master with the Alpha compy
+3% increased damage and that increases to 5%
In t9 and cradle
Mounts and mount bonuses
Mounts powers
Combat power : tenser’s Transformation
Equip power : 4000 power dps
4000 recovery templock
Mounts insignia powers
Shepherd’s devotion: increases your powers by 5%
Cavalry warning : whenever you activate your mount power you gain an increase of 10% to everything
Magistrate’s patience: when ever your critical strike targets take psychic damage equal to 10% to your power pulse it heals your teammates for 3% of their hit points
Artificer’s persuasion : whenever you activate your mount power your recovery, movement, action point gain and stamina gain increases by 10% of your power
Protector’s camaraderie: whenever your summoned companion attacks you gain 3% of your power and defense for 10 sec stacks up to 4 x
Boons
Guild boons
Power
Defense
This one is up to you
Sharandar
Dark fey Hunter
Fey precision
Feywilds fortitude
Elven ferocity
Elvish fury
Dread ring
Reliquary keeper’s strength
Evoker’s thirst
Forbidden piercing
Shadow touch
Rampaging madness
Icewind dale
Encroaching tactics
Refreshing chill
Sleet skills
Cool resolve
Winter’s bounty
Under dark
Primordial might
Primordial focus
Drow ambush tactics
Dwarven stamina
Abyssal strikes
Tyranny of dragons
Dragon’s claws
Dragon’s gaze
Draconic armor breaker
Dragon’s greed
3x dragon’s fury
The maze engine
Abyssal siphoning
Demonic influence
Demonic swiftness
Baphomet’s might
Elemental evil
Wave of force
Heart of stone
searing aggression
Gale of retribution
Storm King’s thunder
Cold hearted
Hardy constitution
Icy wrath
Glacial strength
Chill of winter
The cloaked ascendancy
Aura of hope
Fiery frenzy
Soothing zephyr
Aberrant power
Jungles of chult
Tyrant’s terror x3
Overgrown x3
Lingering curse x2
Ravenloft
3x undying death
1x blood lust
Thank you for taking the time to go through and explore my build if you have any questions or concerns feel free to contacted me at @kitty1007ps4
Or on my YouTube channel link below
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https://www.youtube.com/user/chikwe101
This build is made for tanking 70 level content as well as LOMM. In mod 17 content stat caps will go up and as it is to my understanding new trial will require a lot more defensive stats and HP as it will have several “tank checks”. However, critters ratings for earlier content will remain the same and you can keep rocking this build and gear.
I will not be explaining basics such as positioning and mechanics of a fighter but I recommend builds by rjc9000. Also, you can learn a lot from Janne’s site about damage, aggro and game in general. For mod 16 help (stats, counterstats, companions) see Rainer’s pocket wiki.
BTW, I apologize for any grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.
Pick whichever race gives you CON or/and STR. Any other race bonus is not gonna be important in long run, but if you have extra money you can buy Dragonborn for more damage. For ability score you also want to choose STR and CON for obvious reasons. Most of your attacks deal physical damage, more HP = better, and stamina generation is very important now. I’ll be testing Gith race soon because it gives nice stamina regeneration boost.
The key is to balance your offensive and defensive stats. If you go full defensive, it’s going to be difficult to cap offensives and hold aggro. If you go full offensive, you’re gonna die a lot and be useless as tank.
Your offensive priorities are armor penetration, accuracy and crit. Armor penetration is definitely your first priority then the rest. Defensive priorities are similar: defense to counteract enemies arm pen, deflect and crit avoidance. I would cap defense first, then deflect and get as much of crit avoidance as you can get through gear. Crit avoidance has pretty high cap so just get it as much as you can without sacrificing other stats.
The easiest way to cap those stats is to put it on your companion. New companion gear has a lot of numbers so you can mix and match until you get what you need, and don’t be afraid to even use lesser IL or green equipment for that, stats are what’s important, not IL. After you cap on those, you want to aim for more power and HP. CA is also good if you can get it, but it’s damned hard to cap if you want to cap all the above stats. Awareness does not seem useful to me if you’re doing your job right. Enemies shouldn’t have CA over you. However, it can be useful, but don’t choose it until you’ve have maxed your priorities.
Only two utility stats are important: stamina regeneration and movement speed. While recharge time is nice to have, it is not something to invest in, and this build is based on other ways to reduce your cooldowns. As for AP gain, we really don’t have good dailies, but by dealing damage and using your encounters you generate AP fast enough so we’re gonna focus more on that.
Pick whatever stat you’re lacking and if you’re not lacking any choose power, HP, damage and damage reduction on demons, cultist and undead (not on dinos). Speed boon, stamina regen and companion influence boons are a must have.
I really don’t like that healing boons proc when you have 25% or less HP, I rather avoid getting myself in that kind of situations.
First two boons are good for mobs so you can run them on AOE loadout.
But I would like to take a minute to tell you about the real killer – Focused retaliation. First of all, it procs on encounter use, and fairly often. I find that is much better chance for tanks to take boon that procs on encounter use rather than on kill, especially on bosses. And second of all, did you notice that you get hit a lot? Have you ever reflected 100k hit back? Feels great. I run this boon on both loadouts and it makes a big chunk of my damage.
% damage buff pieces are always better than raw power. It is much easier and better to have flat damage buff than compensate for that with power. Keep in my that only two of same equip bonuses stack so use only two of % melee damage. Ideally, you would have Heels with Kiuno (it has CA), grips and Shadowstalker +5 and +4. But if you’re having difficulty capping arm pen or accuracy, you can wear new rings and opt out for another armor and feet.
Terrored Grips > 3% on encounter powers
Heels of Fury > 3% on melee
Fured Kiuno of the Bear > 3% on melee
New rings from ME’s that give 3% on melee
Shadowstalker rings (+5 ih you’re lucky and +4) > 2.5 % + 2%
Choosing other gear because of higher IL or little bit better stats will result in loosing damage and problems in holding aggro over high DPS players. You don’t want new successor gear. You want your defense to be constantly capped since there is no evidence that % of defense goes over the 50% cap. Bonus that reduces % of damage is different, it works, but there are better ways to mitigate damage. Also remember, 3k power doesn’t mean 3% more damage, there is relative increase when it comes to power, so it is always better to have flat damage bonus.
The rest of the gear you can choose based on your missing stats. Take any helmet that have 5% damage in Undermountain if you’re running ME’s and LOMM. For shirt you want either the one giving you 3% damage when you have full stamina (isn’t that rarely?), or the one reducing your encounter powers. I have opted out for latter. For pants choose between AP gain and % damage reduction.
BIS weapon set for tanks is Burnished set because it procs basically all the time. However, any other mod 16 set is good if you got it first.
Neck and belt are discussable. If you want to dish out more damage, go for demon lord set, or if you want more damage reduction go valhala. IMO Best would be any of new sets because you gain 50k-ish HP from them + AP gain. Constructed demise set is cheap, and +2 DEX and CHA are somewhat good. Reflective set is IMO BIS, it has damage debuff and STR and CON (all great). However, I also like Wyvern set for buff but dislike useless INT bonus. So, pick what you like.
Considering enchantments, it’s simple: radiants, radiants and more radiants. But if you’re poor like me, you want radiants in offense (if everything else is capped), and some dual or triple stat ench in defense that has HP. I found savages great for capping that crit avoidance. A lot of people have recommended having one high rank tenebrous enchantment, and it seems really good, after some testing I see it procs relatively often.
In utility slots you want either darks or tactical enchantments. Dark will give you extra stats from your companion and tactical will give you incoming healing so you get more heals. I’m running darks but will try tactical especially with new trial coming.
Armour: elven battle on rank that has stamina regen bonus.
Weapon: lightning is great for AOE aggro, bronzewood or holy avenger for the party, vorpal for more ST damage
Active: BIS is Wyvern-venom Coated Knives after Lantern and Heart of x dragons nerf. It is a must have for buff, debuff and encounter cooldown reduction.
Other: whatever completes your set, and new (better, more stats) or old (less stats) artifacts with power or stats you need
Augments are, and I can’t stressed this enough, absolutely a must for tanks. You have to cap a lot of offensive and defensive stats so every little bit will help. Also, that extra HP you will get means a lot. Choose Bulette pup for extra power if you can afford it, but any other augment will do. As for companion equipment, take whatever it suits you stats-wise. You want it to have stats that are a priority – arm pen, accuracy, crit, defense and deflection so they are easy to cap.
Offensive slot is occupied by Deepcrow hatchling for 8k of power. Since you already have Bulette pup on legendary take its healing power to one of defense slots. In other defense slots you can put incoming healing bonus, HP, or any stats you need. In utility I find Energon’s HP to be best.
I’ve wanted to buy Armored Griffon so I can abuse Wyverin for more damage, but after announcement of new trial I’ve changed my mind and am saving for War Triceratops for more HP. Epic version that gives 25k of HP is also good or you can put some of the missing stats here, however I would rather put here uncapped stats like HP or power.
Insignia bonuses have been severely nerfed in mod 16. I use same as most of folks healing bonuses in lack of better ones: Champion’s return and Barbarian revelry. Gladiator’s guile is probably the best bonus there is – it grants movement and stamina. Artificer’s persuasion is great in combo with Wyveryn artifact as you can shave of 2 seconds from your encounters every 15 seconds. In fact it so great that I have two of them. I know, I know, but it shaves off 2.8 seconds or something like that and every second counts in fast paced fights. You can use another healing bonus instead, there are plenty of options you can check here (credit to SkullElf).
I basically use this build for AOE as well, I just change one class feature and one encounter.
Shieldthrower over Staying power. It is excellent aggro tool with very short cooldown. 10\10
Second feat doesn’t matter, most of the time I don’t use Cleaving bull on bosses and never Tide of Iron.
Combat balance – simply, it goes over defense cap. With stamina regeneration boon and Elven you won’t have problem with stamina regeneration.
On this screenshot I have chosen Determination because I was testing it in sticky situations. Anyways, I don’t find the effect very useful and I don’t know what does most attacks means according to Cryptic so I’m not using it. I will be switching to Bladed Rampart that I use more often but it doesn’t really matter.
Focused retaliation – you use Dig in on bosses when you know there are big hits coming in or when you know you need every bit of protection you have. It boosts your incoming healing which you will find very nice in this situations and also damage. 10\10
I only use cleave and threatening rush. I’ve tried Brazen slash and Tide of iron, but they just don’t feel right. Cleave is excellent for AOE, it’s fast and works in a big arc, think of it as pre-16 WMS. I sometimes even use it on bosses as well when I have no fear anyone will steal my aggro as I can dish out more damage with it considering how fast I can swing it.
Threatening rush is your main single target at will. I can’t explain how awesome this power is. It works as gap closer, it generates more aggro, has decent (well, better than tide of iron) casting time and magnitude.
There are two encounters that will never leave your slot, either on AOE or ST. Shield throw because it is hands down the best encounter we have and linerbreaker because it is the best AOE encounter we have. Why do I use AOE encounter on bosses? In most boss fights there are mobs, and in some there are pretty mean mobs so you want to have a power that can aggro them so rest of the party can do their own things. Also, it generates more threat. Enough said.
Shield throw combined with Shieldthrower feat is probably the coolest thing about vanguard fighter. You can spam it every 6 seconds or so, it is a great threat multiplier and has decent magnitude. Not to mention how cool you look while you throw your shield. Also it is ranged, so really great for aggroing a group of mobs from a far and breaking those rocks on Boreworm.
Third power I use on most bosses is Anvil of doom coupled with Anvil of challenge passive. It will put you on top of the threat list and because how much damage you will deal it will keep you there. Use it with Anvil of challenge if you know there is possibility that you will die so you can gain aggro instantly, or you think any dps might take it. If that’s not the case, take the Ferocious reaction class feature instead for a little bit of more dps.
So choose between Anvil of challenge and Ferocious reaction depending on the situation, however in any given situation you want to have Combat superiority. What you get is practically non-stop 10% increase in at-will damage thanks to shieldthrower feat. It may not sound a lot, but you don’t really have a better choice. You may be tempted to use Shield talent for stamina regeneration, but it only works when you are not using you shield and there are better ways to manage your stamina.
Nr. 1 daily that I use is Earthsaker. Being only vanguard’s damaging daily it isn’t great, but I use it because we lack better ones. This is actually for AOE as it is great for aggroing large crowd when you are caught off guard, but it is decent for bosses when you want to do extra damage.
Determination is also decent as it gives you 10% more damage but if you use it never take Perfect block feat because it will put 3 min ban on its use.
Second daily slot I like to call “Oh shit, I’m gonna die button”. Second wind isn’t what it used to be. Since you have to attack to gain HP I don’t slot it in new mod. Attacking means letting you shield down and probably insta death if you have 20% of health and you healer is out of divinity or sparks. Once I’ve gotten used to tanking without life steal I’ve learned to withdraw strategically (that’s a fancy name for running away). I raise my shield and backpedal in circle so I’m not always in range of an attack. That’s way I use Bladed rampart as it passively reduces incoming damage.
Smash buttons and spam Threatening rush. If you know there will be mobs spawning, save Linebreaker for them. If you think you are going to die, save Anvil for instant aggro. Don’t forget to dig in for big hits and use Wyverin if you can turn around real quick. Try to use Wyverin on beginning or right before fight because most Dps’s are using alabaster bonus.
As I’ve said, feats are the same because I’m lazy and only change one power and class feature so read ST page first. There is a second version to this build that is based on using Enforced threat with Staying power feat and Tide of Iron with Rising Tide but I honestly don’t see much difference regarding aggro. Whenever I use ET it puts me on top of threat list but I end up in orange in one sec. So, it does what it says but it’s not great. And I really dislike using power that feels empty, when I press button I want to see some damage numbers.
At wills are the same, but you will be using Cleave a lot. Fast Cleave in combination with Lightning is excellent for our lack of good AOE encounters.
Instead of Anvil, I use Bull charge. It is great for gap closing and getting ahead of Dps’s and you also get bonus damage when you hit multiple enemies. And instead of Anvil of challenge, I use Greater endurance.
Now, let’s face it, we lack really good AOE aggro grabbing encounter. That’s why getting to mobs first is the best thing we can do. You just have to be mobile. Take that movement boon, slot Greater endurance and drink Lightwine, it will boost you to be a little bit faster than most DPS classes. For that reason we use Threatening rush and Shieldthrow on mobs so we can quickly grab attention of a strayed mob.
What I mostly do is hit group of mobs with Shieldthrow from a far to aggro them, then use Bull charge to get there first. Next step depends on the damage of your party. If my party isn’t high on DPS I use Dig in real quick for Retaliate effect to deal more damage, then I circle around mobs for CA, use Linebreaker (because I can hit all of them), and then spam Cleave. If they are not dead, hit Shieldthrow again to biggest mob or the one that isn’t hitting you, use Bull, retaliate etc. until they are dead. If your group is HDPS, use Linebreaker instead of retaliate because while you kneel, DPS may take aggro from mobs and you are left waiting for a hit that isn’t coming. I generally refrain from using retaliate in this kind of parties because it is too slow, but it can come handy as 4th encounter.
Don’t forget to activate Wyverin in between fights to help your party and reduce your cooldowns because if you go in without Linebreaker or Bull charge you’re gonna have a hard time getting that aggro. I like to save Earthshaker for that kind of situations or when I know that we will merge two or more groups of mobs as it has decent radius.
Plus tip: Doohickey works on multiple targets.
Plus plus tip: you can leave while mobs have a little bit of health. Mobs don’t turn to Dps’s right away and as they will finish them in a 2 seconds, you have a head start to next group.
A lot of people asked for LOMM tanking tips and guide. On Arcturia I use Bull charge, Linebreaker and Anvil with Anvil of challenge passive. At the start of the combat I use all three encounters and then spam Threatening rush since I save encounters for mimics. You want to block that attack with black thing under you, it always comes 3 in a row so you have time put down your shield in between to regenerate stamina a little bit. Before hitting a mimic use Wyverin, Doohickey and then all three encounters, should be enough. Now, I don’t use Anvil and Bull charge on her except at beginning and the end of the fight since using Linebreaker and Threatening rush is enough to keep aggro during the fight. Remember that priority is to kill mimics, a lot of parties don’t even have tank for this fight. I ditch Shieldthrow for Bull for more damage. If there is a party member with red arrows above their heads run to them so you take part of theirs damage.
Boreworm is straightforward fight, except for the golem phase. I use standard encounter setup here. When fighting golems, after 2nd rock phase, try to be right next to wall because otherwise those bastards will push you away from party and you will die for sure. I save daily for them, which one – depends on the healer. After the phase ends, run to the boss so you pull golems to him; when he does his swing attack they will die.
Trobriand can be really messy fight if your party have to much of dps. Always wake up scaladars one by one with Trobriands red cone attack, so you don’t end up with 4 at the same time. His cone attack will stun you, so avoid it if you can, if you can’t use Dig in. If you end up with more scaladars than you can handle, cuss loudly at dps’s, aggro them all with Linebreaker, hit Bladed Rampart, and start backpedaling with your shield up. Scaladars are meanest up close, they only have one range attack you can see so it is easy to block. If your stamina falls under 25% use Dig in and pray. Save Anvil in case you die, no one wants Trobriand chasing him. After portal phase, use Phalanx daily if you don’t trust your healer or for extra protection. Use Dig in on his palm attack in last phase of the fight, it hits like a truck and completely drains my stamina.
Big thanks to my partner in life and game that hooked me to this game @pablos#6151
Thanks to all the good people that provided player base with all the information about the game.
And thanks to all my guildies who dragged me along in all the big dungeons while I was just a small tank, especially to @valmadoran84.
After a few months of module 16 being live and seeing nobody plays Whisperknife, and there are no guides for it here I decided to make one because I feel like the path is perfectly fine and actually very fun to play.
When module 16 went live i had over 300 respec tokens on my Rogue, I tried every combination of Feats Several times for Whisperknife and this is what I ended up deciding worked best for the way I play this class , I have 1 Assassin Loadout, which I don’t use and don’t even know the feats on.
<Feats>
1. Last Moments
2.Hidden Attacks
3.One with the Shadows
4.Shadow of Demise
5.Ambusher’s Haste
<Personal Powers>
Dagger Threat and Advantageous Position
~Combat~
<Single-Targets>
Q=Shadow Strike
E=Vengeance’s Pursuit
R=Lashing Blade
1=Hateful Knives
2=Courage Breaker( I actually do not use any daily Besides Hateful knives, this is just there to fill this slot!)
At-Wills are Sly Flourish and Shuriken Toss
<Multi-Target>
Stealth, then aim at the toughest enemy and throw Shadow Strike immediately followed by Vengeance’s Pursuit 2x, and then if there are more then 1 enemy, use lashing blade on whatever other enemy is nearby as Shadow of Demise will kill the first target, Dodge roll out of the way and use shuriken toss until your Stealth is back and powers are all off cooldown, then repeat the rotation above.
One nice trick is that Vengeance’s Pursuit is a power with a follow up and when the initial hit kills the enemy or if you hit them with something else and kill them the power resets, so you can go into stealth and then take out targets one at a time with it because you have Combat Advantage and also the initial hit does not drain any stealth, it will have no cooldown as long as you do not do the follow up attack, its tough to master but very fun to do.
<Bosses>
Soul Sight—>Stealth–> Shadow Strike—> Vengeance’s Pursuit 2x –> Lashing Blade–> Hateful Knives (if you got a daily up!) then this is the only time I use Sly Flourish and I use it to fill in the Remainder of my Shadow of Demise while I still Have Combat Advantage from Advantageous Position.
then dodge roll away from melee range and go back to Shuriken Toss as you wait for Encounters to Recharge.
<AOE>
Q= Path of the Blade
E= Smoke Bomb
R= Blade Flurry
1= Hateful Knives
2= Whirlwind of Blades
Start combat with a non stealthed Path of the Blade because it lasts 2x as long and then go into Stealth, roll right into the center of all the Enemies and use Smoke Bomb then Blade Flurry followed by a Dodge roll away from combat, use Shuriken toss and continue Dodging if needed, if Encounters come off cooldown, repeat the rotation above, or use your own discretion.
Whirlwind of Blades has some potential use for trash, but as trash dies so fast I feel it’s a waste of a Daily, but if you have to use it then do it at the start of the fight, stealth then Whirlwind and hope it clears the room, if not use Smoke Bomb–> Path of the Blade–> Blade Flurry and dodge roll away and toss shurikens until its over or you can do the rotation again 
^ this works best for AOE, but mostly I don’t bother changing powers up and will just use the Single-Target Powers selection for an entire dungeon.
<Companions>
I use the Owlbear Cub as summoned Companion and the rest are just for Armor penetration and Combat Advantage as this is not my main character so I do not spend much on her.
Companion Power is Potent Precision, when you attack there is a chance to gain 5% Critical Severity for 15 seconds (seems to stay active nearly 100% in combat)
2 Choke Chain of the Companion
1 Pearl Ring of the Companion
6 Empowered Runestones
<Insignia Bonuses>
Gladiator’s Guile and then any Defensive ones that work for you, I use Barbarians Delight and Revelry as well as Victim’s Preservation and Champions Struggle.
<Ability Scores>
DEX for Movement Speed and Critical Severity and STR for Physical Damage and Stamina Gain.
<Boons>
She doesn’t have many as you can see, I will eventually take all the Power and HP boons , Movement Speed (Tier 2) and Companion Influence (Tier 3), Action Point gain and Critical Severity (Tier 4) and for the remaining boons I will choose Combat Advantage and Armor Penetration, Blood Lust 3/3 for Master Boon.
<Gear>
Head:Hood of the Spy’s Guild (Yawning Portal seal Vendor)
Chest: Gurdann’s Defense (Master Expedition drop.)
Armor Enchantment: Shadowclad
Arms: Crash Guards (Master Expedition drop.)
Weapons: Alabaster (RNG based reward for completing master expedition)
Weapon Enchantment: Vorpal
Main Hand Artifact Feature: Shuriken Toss deals 10% more damage.
Off Hand Artifact Enhancement: Power and 10% Critical Severity.
Feet: Primal Assult Butisi (chult/barovia seal vendor)
Neck: Baphomet’s Infernal Talisman
Rings: 2x Ebonized Raid Ring.(ME chest reward or end reward)
Waist: Demogorgon’s Girdle of Might
Shirt: Restoration Shirt of The Spy’s Guild (seal vendor)
Pants: Ward Trousers of the Spy’s Guild (seal vendor)
Offense Slots: Radiant
Defense Slots: Slivery
Utility Slots: Dark
It’s not much, but I told someone I would do this guide…Enjoy 
Welcome to Lorkeon’s Guide to Paladins (Mod 17). Before diving into the paladin, I want to establish an expectation: this is not a collection of screenshots telling you what to take. This is an informed observation about the paladin class overall, and while I will make mention of my personal picks, it will always be with an explanation of why I do or do not use a power, as well as use-cases for all of those powers. My goal is for someone that finishes reading this document to understand when and why I do or do not use a specific power, feature, or feat.
As far as the structure of this document, I’m covering the tabs on the character sheet in order. While I will have short summaries at the end for the two paragon paths, for most of the document I will cover both paths in the same section. Justicar is the tank paragon, and Oathkeeper is the heal paragon. I play both equally, as my guild rotates roles around a lot so I can find myself tanking or healing on any particular content.
So on the first tab of the character sheet we’ll cover Race, Attributes, and Equipment. Some of these require more focus than others.
With Mod16 this has become less important than ever; at most any particular race is going to net you 2 extra attribute points or a minor effect. Pick the race that you want to look at for the duration of the character’s life. Any advantage that one race may or may not have over another race is so small that the standard deviation of random number generation is going to be larger than the difference. I like human paladins; I come from old-school D&D where paladins were always human. That was the extent of my choice.
So your attributes is really an extension of the Race question, isn’t it? Whatever race you choose, you’re going to have to select an attribute(s) to increase. Let’s look at how your attributes impact your paladin:
For a Justicar, the two attributes you’re going to want to raise are Constitution & Intelligence. Block stops up to 50% of your maximum hit points, so you want to layer on as much health as you can, and all paladin damage is radiant (magical) so Intelligence will boost your overall damage.
For the Oathkeeper, I would instead recommend going with Intelligence & Wisdom. Wisdom is going to boost your Outgoing Healing, which you want to pick up every scrap of that you can. Again you pick up Intelligence because every class should boost the attribute that increases your damage.
But let’s review what the other attributes offer; when evaluating artifact equipment you might be looking at gaining some of these, so let’s understand which is better. Strength is the weak attribute for paladins; it does not boost our damage, and Justicars have many ways to recover stamina already. Dexterity is a good pickup for any class; Critical Severity is always welcome, and no one complains about running a little faster. Charisma is another solid choice; because Recharge Speed is always good, though Companion Influence is lackluster (more on that in Companions). However a paladin’s core powers are tied to Divinity, not cooldowns, reducing the usefulness of Charisma.
So this is the big question–what is the best gear to wear!? I won’t focus on that, because that changes all the time. With Mod 17 here, the best gear from Tower of the Mad Mage has equip bonuses that replace all of the level 70 Chult/Barovia items that were clung to in Mod 16. Basically anything that gives flat percentage boosts to damage is probably the absolute best. However if you have full Successor and Protege gear? You’ll be just fine. All that really matters are your caps, so let’s talk about those, instead.
For Lair of the Mad Mage, the end-game content as of Mod17, 60K points for level 80 content, 68K for Lair of the Mad Mage, and 80K for Tower of the Mad Mage. A few stats like Accuracy start hitting a soft-cap around 8-10K before the hard-cap, when adding more Accuracy has the same impact to your overall damage as just adding more Power. The same goes for Deflect, when you reach a point where your life expectancy against incoming damage increases the same if you just add more Hit Points.
So what stats do you focus on hard capping? For both paragons:
And that’s it. Now before veterans freak out–I’m not saying to ignore the other stats. I’m just saying it’s not essential to cap them, when Power & Hit Points are the other option:
I’ll say again, I’m not suggesting that these stats aren’t important, just that you should get enough from your gear and companion that you don’t need to allocate slots to them.
The most obvious is your gear you wear. As I mentioned before there are some older pieces of gear with great Equip bonuses, but you’ll be fine if you’re newer and just go with Spy Guild/Protege/Successor/etc. For your main/offhand you will want to get Alabaster (Mountaineer if RNG hates you), and you should get a good neck/waist (most important is to have the extra enchant slots). I like the Wyvern set because I get DEX/INT from it. Any of the new sets are fine though; the Electric Collar/Charged Restraints are really cheap after all, and there’s nothing wrong with DEX/CHA.
The next source of stats (and probably the most important) is your companion. As of this writing, your best gain is from an augment. There are lots of augments to choose from, and the main driver for your choice should be the 3 bonus stats that augment has. I’ll get into the choices I like in the Companion section, but for right now I like any augment companion with a boost to Hit Points, Power, or Deflect. Along with that augment companion, you need Bonding Runestones. The better they are, the more stats your augment is transferring to you. Additionally, Bonding Runestones have no cost to unslot, so they are very simple to swap between characters through the shared bank–so it’s a really solid, safe investment. Runestones are a good way to tweak any stats you are coming up short on, or just stack on more power with them if you are capped where you want to be.
Then you have your mount insignias. One of your first goals should be to get 5 mounts with 3 insignia slots each, and fill them with rare insignias. As far as insignia powers go, I always want Gladiator’s Guile (at least once) on my characters, Wanderer’s Forturne (because I still need RP) and after that I pick up any “when X happens, heal for Y” powers that I can manage. Epic insignias cost a fortune and are one of the worst returns for investment you can buy. Get rares, fill out any stat gaps you have, and then stack on power.
The last spot you can work on is your enchantments and armor/jewel kits. Again, look at your stats, and if you have any holes left (you really shouldn’t) then plug them, and after that stack on the power and hit points. You can pick up some power and stamina with armor/jewel kits, and that’s usually my pick there.
So this is the meat and potatoes of any class guide. I’m going to focus on giving my take on every power, feature, and feat, as well as the best use-cases for them. I will conclude this section with what my preferred choices are as well.
Every class can have two class features active at any time; for paladins, only one of them can be an Aura power, and it must be placed in the top slot.
Boons accomplish a couple of things for your paladin. First (and most obvious), they give you increases to your stats. Second, they increase your item level, 25 points at a time. Lastly, at the Master Tier, they give you access to some pretty strong bonuses. So how do you earn boons? Two ways:
So the primary way you earn boons is by completing campaigns from previous modules. There are a lot of them, and one can quickly get overwhelmed with the idea of doing all of them. The first thing to do is relax–you don’t have to do them all at once. My advice is to just pick a campaign, and do the quests for it. If you have more play time, do another one. If you get bored, stop and run a dungeon or hang out with guildmates. Some of the campaigns (Maze Engine, Sharandar, Dread Ring) are very small time commitments each day, while other campaigns (Tyranny of Dragons, Storm King’s Thunder) are massive, long treks that require significant amounts of time daily that drain your soul, and finally the latest campaigns (Chult, Ravenloft, etc) are progressed with weekly quests instead of dailies.
My advice is to just work on them when you feel like it. If you really don’t feel like it, you have another option: campaign buyout tokens. You can find these both in the ZEN store and in the Auction House. If you are earning 100K AD a day from doing dungeons and other stuff, you can buyout most of the early campaigns within a week. Even the newer campaign buyouts can be earned within 2 weeks. Getting to 60 total boons is a big deal though, as that’s both 1500 item level, as well as unlocks all 3 of your Master Boons.
So what boons should you take? Remember that I value Defense, Armor Penetration, and Critical Strike heavily; they are your priority to cap. The other stats I see value in, but don’t believe you should go out of your way to cap them; your companion and bondings will mostly take care of them. Because of that, I don’t like taking those stats in boons, either. My focus is on Power > Other Stuff > Hit Points.
In the first four tiers there is a 5-point boon that grants 1250 Power at 5/5. You should take all of these as your priority. Also in the first four tiers, there is a 5-point point that grants 5% increased damage & damage resistance to a specific enemy type at 5/5; I also like taking these. Finally, in each tier there is a special effect, for Gold Gain, Movement Speed, Companion Influence, or Control Resist. I like to take all of these as well. Grand total that’s 60 points of boons. If you like a different set of Boons in Tier 1-4, go for it. I think these are the best bang for your buck, but they aren’t super critical.
Tier 5 is important though. You can put 4 points in two boons (8 total) at this tier. For both paragons I prefer to choose Critical Severity, and Recharge Speed. Critical Severity and Recharge Speed are both rare stats to pick up, so they are great to get here. Incoming/Outgoing Healing, and Stamina Regen are all good for paladins, but there are sources for all of them on enchants, companions, and armor kits already.
At Master Tier you get 3 more points to spend, 1 for every 20 boons you have spent. For Justicar you should take Focused Retaliation, which gives you a chance to mirror all damage back to the attacker for 15 seconds when you use an encounter power. On Oathkeeper you should select Blessed Resilience, which gives you a chance to restore 12% stamina to anyone you heal, which is huge for tanks.
The second set of boons you receive is from joining a guild. The Stronghold gives you access to three boons, Offense, Defense, and Miscellaneous, and which ones you can select depends on the structures in your guild. You can get quite a few extra stat points from these. I’m not going to get into how to build the structures and maintain them, that’s well beyond this guide–we’re just going to look at which boons to take:
That’s everything I have to offer on your boons; they are quite worth getting, whether you do that by grinding the campaigns out, buying them in the auction house with AD, or just breaking out the wallet and buying some campaign completions using ZEN.
Companions changed a lot in Mod 16, so I’ll start with the basics in case the reader is new to the game or at least new to this mod.
Your companion tab has a couple different sections. First, you have your summoned companion. This is the companion that will follow you around and battle your enemies beside you. They can level up to 40 when legendary, and they higher level they are, the higher their stats. When your companions hit their max level (35 at epic for example) you can use Companion Upgrade Tokens (from Lockboxes or ZEN Store) or Astral Diamonds to upgrade them to the next color. (White > Green > Blue > Purple > Orange) You can have lots of companions. The base stats of your companion are determined by their level, the amount of Bolster they have, and your Companion Influence. I just introduced two new terms there, so let me explain them.
Bolster is a percentage multiplied by the base stats of your summoned companion, that is determined by the five best quality pets you have in that category (Fighters, Creatures, Invokers, Mystical, Beasts). For example, I have an Ioun Stone of Might on my paladin, which is a Mystical companion. My best five companions in that category are 1 legendary, and 4 epic. You get 3% bolster for a legendary, and 2.5% for epic, so that’s 13% bolster to any Mystical companion I summon. Companion Influence is gained from various sources, including Charisma, Dark enchantments, and Boons. It also boosts the base stats of your summoned companion, regardless of category.
The downside of these two stats is that they boost the base stats of the companion, not their stats after you include their gear and runestones, so the end result is these two stats have a much smaller impact on your companion than you might hope. Let’s move on to the gear.
On the right side of the Companion window, you have 3 slots for Bonding Runestones, and 3 slots for Companion Gear. The Bonding Runestones each transfer a portion of your pet’s stats to your character. The Companion Gear slots can only equip gear specifically for companions; you will get a Pearl Ring of the Companion, Choke Chain of the Companion, and Plated Belt of the Companion during the Undermountain campaign–these are the best gear you can get for them right now. Each piece of companion gear has 1-2 slots that you can put runestones, which work like enchantments for companion gear. With Mod 17 there has been new companion gear introduced which you can opt for to improve your stats even further.
The catch here is that your Bonding Runestones transfer the stats of your companion including the gear and runestones. At max rank, 3 rank 15 Bonding Runestones will transfer 210% of your pet’s stats to your character. Additionally, if you use an “augment” companion, rather than fight beside you they have a bonus of 1000 stat points to three of their stats, and transfer 100% of their stats to you. That means that you get 310% of your augments stats transferred to you, and an extra 3100 in three stats, depending on the companion you use.
For this reason, augment pets are the optimal companion for reaching your stat caps. As far as which companion you should use? You want an epic augment at least, and getting it to Legendary (1 million AD to upgrade) should be a priority. This also is why getting up to rank 15 Bonding Runestones is also critical. Plus, because Bonding Runestones don’t cost gold to take out of their socket, you can freely swap them between your characters, making them an incredibly good investment.
The last section of the Companion tab is the enhancement section. Along the bottom you have 6 slots; the top left is your companion power. Each companion you own has a different power that you can slot here. My preferred one is either Power, or Critical Severity if you have a companion that offers it. The remaining slots are for enhancement powers, which again are offered by each companion. It’s important to note if a companions enhancement can be put into Offense, Defense, or Utility slots, which vary by class. A paladin has 1 Offense, 3 Defense, and 1 Utility slot.
There are hundreds of pets and different options for these enhancement powers, and each player will have ones they prefer. I like Outgoing Healing% when Healing, because there are not a lot of sources for it. I like Deflect when tanking. Because I haven’t felt like running two different sets of enhancement companions, I currently use Neverember Guard, Polar Bear Cub, and Rebel Mercenary (all give 10% Outgoing Healing Bonus at legendary), as well as Ioun Stone of Might and Goat (+4000 Deflect each) in my last two slots. This leaves me with over 50% Incoming & Outgoing healing on both specs, which I’ve been happy with.
You might want to focus on Power or Combat Advantage, or whatever else. This is really a personal customization here. I will acknowledge that a huge source of Combat Advantage is from these enhancement slots–you can pick up 24K Combat Advantage with the right enhancement companions.
Ah… mounts. There are tons of mounts in the game, and we love them for getting us from point A to point B quickly. They also offer us another avenue to increase out stats however! This is done with Insignia Slots. You can have up to five mounts in your “Stable”, and each one will have up to 3 insignia slots (rare and better have 3 slots, while white/green have 2). Your first goal with mounts should be to get 5 mounts that are rare or better, unlocking 15 insignia slots.
The combination of insignia types you use will unlock various Insignia powers, but none of them are going to be earth shattering changes to your character. I like Gladiator’s Guile (movement speed when stamina full) and Wanderer’s Fortune (refinement stones drop from kills) a lot, as well as anything the heals when I kill, crit, deflect, get controlled etc. If you use the same insignia power twice, the second one will be half effect, the third will be a quarter (the max you can have). What’s more important is that you have 15 insignias. Green insignias are better than nothing (and very cheap) while Rare ones are the best bang for your astral diamonds.
You can get most stat combinations on insignias, you just need to look through them. My preferred insignia is of course Dominance, which has Power as the primary boost. Some insignia types don’t have Dominance available, and I use Brutality with them. Free free to tweak your insignias to fit your stat needs, though ultimately most people are going to end up with Dominance/Brutality in the end as they hit their stat caps.
You also get access to an Equip Power gained from your available mounts (I use +5000 power from Guard Drake) as well as a combat power if you have a legendary mount (which I do not).
As I said in the beginning, my goal was to explain how all of the abilities of a paladin work, in both paragons, so you can make an informed decision as to how you will run your own character. At the same time, I’d like to give a summary of what I run myself, now that I’ve explained all of these powers and mechanics.
I hope I’ve made it clear that your powers (and sometimes features) should be changing throughout a dungeon, based on the content. I’m going to give an example of what I would run during a Lair of the Mad Mage dungeon, from both paragons:
Dailies: Divine Judgement, Shield of Faith
Features: Aura of Valor & Divine Challenger
Feats: Sacred Shield, Baneful Strikes, Divine Pursuit, Sheltering Light, Unyielding Champion
|
LOMM |
At-Wills |
Encounters |
|
Trash Clear |
Shielding Strike, Oath Strike |
Bane, Vow of Enmity, Burning Light |
|
Arcturia |
Shielding Strike, Oath Strike |
Smite, Sacred Weapon, Relentless Assault |
|
Bore Worm |
Shielding Strike, Radiant Slam |
Bane, Vow of Enmity, Divine Touch |
|
Trobriand |
Shielding Strike, Radiant Slam |
Smite, Sacred Weapon, Binding Oath |
Dailies: Lay on Hands, Sanctuary
Features: Aura of Restoration, Timely Intervention
Feats: Critical Touch, Prayer of Opportunity, Spirit of Austerity, Divine Intervention, Emissary of Warding
|
LOMM |
At-Wills |
Encounters |
|
Trash Clear |
Valorous Strike, Radiant Slam |
Bane, Divine Touch, Burning Light |
|
Arcturia |
Valorous Strike, Divine Fulmination |
Bond of Virtue, Divine Touch, Circle of Power |
|
Bore Worm |
Valorous Strike, Radiant Slam |
Smite, Divine Touch, Circle of Power |
|
Trobriand |
Valorous Strike, Divine Fulmination |
Bond of Virtue, Divine Touch, Circle of Power |
This should give you a solid understanding of what powers I’m using and why, as well as adapt it for any specific content. The only thing I would add is that when I’m soloing, I run in Oathkeeper. When soloing for an extended period (Legacy Campaigns for example) I run:
Playstyle is really simple; run up to a pack, pop off a full Burning Light. If there are three or more targets still alive, use Bane, otherwise use Smite. If you need to block, use Channel Divinity instead.
by Themus@eugee – PC (/u/dmjason)
Welcome to Themus’s Guide to Wizards (Mod 17). Before diving into the wizard, I want to establish an expectation: this is not a collection of screenshots telling you what to take. This is an informed observation about the wizard class overall, and while I will make mention of my personal picks, it will always be with an explanation of why I do or do not use a power, as well as use-cases for all of those powers. My goal is for someone that finishes reading this document to understand when and why I do or do not use a specific power, feature, or feat.
As far as the structure of this document, I’m covering the tabs on the character sheet in order. While I will have short summaries at the end for the two paragon paths, for most of the document I will cover both paths in the same section. While both are DPS roles, Thaumturge is the stronger AOE build, and Arcanist is the stronger single-target build. I play both equally, using Thaumaturge for trash clearing (and soloing) and Arcanist for boss fights.
There is a lot of testing and math involved with the wizard, most of which was done by Sharpedge; I’m not going to go into the detail that he does, as anything I put together will just be a poor repetition of the work he has done. Instead I will include links to his guide to wizard mechanics in the summary, and simplify my own presentation.
Last Updated: 2019-Sep-03
So on the first tab of the character sheet we’ll cover Race, Attributes, and Equipment. Some of these require more focus than others.
With Mod16 this has become less important than ever; at most any particular race is going to net you 2 extra attribute points or a minor effect. Pick the race that you want to look at for the duration of the character’s life. Any advantage that one race may or may not have over another race is so small that the standard deviation of random number generation is going to be larger than the difference. The cover of my 1st edition players handbook had a human wizard on it; so that’s what I wanted for my wizard. That was the extent of my choice.
So your attributes is really an extension of the Race question, isn’t it? Whatever race you choose, you’re going to have to select an attribute(s) to increase. Let’s look at how your attributes impact your wizard:
For both paragons, you want to increase your Intelligence, as all of your damage is magical. For the second attribute I recommend Dexterity to improve your Critical Severity. You want to hit hard and crit harder, and I believe this is the best combination to do so.
But let’s review what the other attributes offer; when evaluating artifact equipment you might be looking at gaining some of these, so let’s understand which is better. Strength offers almost nothing to wizards; Stamina Regeneration is not a significant gain for us. Constitution is a mediocre attribute for DPS roles; more HP is always good, and AP gain never hurt anyone, but I would never strive to get it. Wisdom is the healer’s attritube, and something a wizard should pass on given the choice. Charisma is a solid choice and my third pick after INT & DEX because Recharge Speed is always good, though Companion Influence is lackluster (more on that in Companions). However the Thaumaturge has significant cooldown reduction already, and the Arcanist uses a lot of fast cooldown encounters already, so the impact of Charisma is mitigated a bit.
So this is the big question–what is the best gear to wear!? I won’t focus on that, because that changes all the time. With Mod 17 here, the best gear from Tower of the Mad Mage has equip bonuses that replace all of the level 70 Chult/Barovia items that were clung to in Mod 16. Basically anything that gives flat percentage boosts to damage is probably the absolute best. Sharpedge’s mechanics guide (link in Summary) has a nice breakdown of all the decent equip powers if you want to go for those. However if you have full Successor and Protege gear? You’ll be just fine. All that really matters are your caps, so let’s talk about those, instead.
For Lair of the Mad Mage, the end-game content as of Mod17, 60K points for level 80 content, 68K for Lair of the Mad Mage, and 80K for Tower of the Mad Mage. A few stats like Accuracy start hitting a soft-cap around 8-10K before the hard-cap, when adding more Accuracy has the same impact to your overall damage as just adding more Power. The same goes for Deflect, when you reach a point where your life expectancy against incoming damage increases the same if you just add more Hit Points.
So what stats do you focus on hard capping? For both paragons:
And that’s it. Now before veterans freak out–I’m not saying to ignore the other stats. I’m just saying it’s not essential to cap them, when Power & Hit Points are the other option:
I’ll say again, I’m not suggesting that these stats aren’t important, just that you should get enough from your gear and companion that you don’t need to allocate slots to them.
The most obvious is your gear you wear. As I mentioned before there are some older pieces of gear with great Equip bonuses, but you’ll be fine if you’re newer and just go with Spy Guild/Protege/Successor/etc. For your main/offhand you will want to get Alabaster (Mountaineer if RNG hates you), and you should get a good neck/waist (most important is to have the extra enchant slots). I like the Wyvern set because I get DEX/INT from it. Any of the new sets are fine though; the Electric Collar/Charged Restraints are really cheap after all, and there’s nothing wrong with DEX/CHA.
The next source of stats (and probably the most important) is your companion. As of this writing, your best gain is from an augment. There are lots of augments to choose from, and the main driver for your choice should be the 3 bonus stats that augment has. I’ll get into the choices I like in the Companion section, but for right now I like any augment companion with a boost to Power or Combat Advantage. Along with that augment companion, you need Bonding Runestones. The better they are, the more stats your augment is transferring to you. Additionally, Bonding Runestones have no cost to unslot, so they are very simple to swap between characters through the shared bank–so it’s a really solid, safe investment. Runestones are a good way to tweak any stats you are coming up short on, or just stack on more power with them if you are capped where you want to be. In addition to your active companion, you also have five enhancement slots (3 offense, 1 defense, 1 utility) which allow you to slot powers from all of the companions you have.
Then you have your mount insignias. One of your first goals should be to get 5 mounts with 3 insignia slots each, and fill them with rare insignias. As far as insignia powers go, I always want Gladiator’s Guile (at least once) on my characters, Wanderer’s Forturne (because I still need RP) and after that I pick up any “when X happens, heal for Y” powers that I can manage (Barbarian’s Revelry, Oppressor’s Reprieve, and Survivor’s Blessing). Epic insignias cost a fortune and are one of the worst returns for investment you can buy. Get rares, fill out any stat gaps you have, and then stack on power.
The last spot you can work on is your enchantments and armor/jewel kits. Again, look at your stats, and if you have any holes left (you really shouldn’t) then plug them, and after that stack on the power and hit points. You can pick up some power and Combat Advantage with armor/jewel kits, and that’s usually my pick there.
So this is the meat and potatoes of any class guide. I’m going to focus on giving my take on every power, feature, and feat, as well as the best use-cases for them. I will conclude this section with what my preferred choices are as well. Before getting into the powers though, let’s discuss what makes the paragon paths different.
The Arcanist specializes in single target damage, with a handful of hard-hitting, fast cooldown arcane encounter powers, all boosted by arcane mastery stacks which build up quickly. They are capable of a barrage of rapid fire encounter powers with the right daily use. Their AOE damage output is lackluster, because of limited AOE powers which tend to be awkward or lack synergy.
The Thaumaturge on the other hand specializes in AOE damage, with full suite of hard-hitting, variable cooldown fire & cold encounter powers, all boosted by arcane mastery and chill stacks, but more importantly, constantly proccing Smolder, which will represent the majority of this path’s damage output. When it comes to single-target, this path is quite capable of dealing solid damage especially in combination with the feat Shatter Strike, but will generally still fall short of what the Arcanist can do to a boss.
Wizards have a fourth spell mastery slot for their encounter powers. I will detail the effects of putting a power in the mastery slot [M] with each description.
Every class can have two class features active at any time, these powers are passive.
These are passive skills for all wizards.
Boons accomplish a couple of things for your paladin. First (and most obvious), they give you increases to your stats. Second, they increase your item level, 25 points at a time. Lastly, at the Master Tier, they give you access to some pretty strong bonuses. So how do you earn boons? Two ways:
So the primary way you earn boons is by completing campaigns from previous modules. There are a lot of them, and one can quickly get overwhelmed with the idea of doing all of them. The first thing to do is relax–you don’t have to do them all at once. My advice is to just pick a campaign, and do the quests for it. If you have more play time, do another one. If you get bored, stop and run a dungeon or hang out with guildmates. Some of the campaigns (Maze Engine, Sharandar, Dread Ring) are very small time commitments each day, while other campaigns (Tyranny of Dragons, Storm King’s Thunder) are massive, long treks that require significant amounts of time daily that drain your soul, and finally the latest campaigns (Chult, Ravenloft, etc) are progressed with weekly quests instead of dailies.
My advice is to just work on them when you feel like it. If you really don’t feel like it, you have another option: campaign buyout tokens. You can find these both in the ZEN store and in the Auction House. If you are earning 100K AD a day from doing dungeons and other stuff, you can buyout most of the early campaigns within a week. Even the newer campaign buyouts can be earned within 2 weeks. Getting to 60 total boons is a big deal though, as that’s both 1500 item level, as well as unlocks all 3 of your Master Boons.
So what boons should you take? Remember that I value Defense, Armor Penetration, Critical Strike, and Combat Advantage heavily; they are your priority to cap. The other stats I see value in, but don’t believe you should go out of your way to cap them; your companion and bondings will mostly take care of them. Because of that, I don’t like taking those stats in boons, either. My focus is on Power > Other Stuff > Hit Points.
In the first four tiers there is a 5-point boon that grants 1250 Power at 5/5. You should take all of these as your priority. Also in the first four tiers, there is a 5-point point that grants 5% increased damage & damage resistance to a specific enemy type at 5/5; I also like taking these. Finally, in each tier there is a special effect, for Gold Gain, Movement Speed, Companion Influence, or Control Resist. I like to take all of these as well. Grand total that’s 60 points of boons. If you like a different set of Boons in Tier 1-4, go for it. I think these are the best bang for your buck, but they aren’t super critical.
Tier 5 is important though. You can put 4 points in two boons (8 total) at this tier. For both paragons I prefer to choose Critical Severity, and Recharge Speed. Critical Severity and Recharge Speed are both rare stats to pick up, so they are great to get here. The AP gain boon isn’t a terrible pickup, either if you prefer.
At Master Tier you get 3 more points to spend, 1 for every 20 boons you have spent. For both paragons I like Deathly Rage, it’s a significant damage bump, particularly on a character that tends to do lots of rapid hits instead of one big hit.
The second set of boons you receive is from joining a guild. The Stronghold gives you access to three boons, Offense, Defense, and Miscellaneous, and which ones you can select depends on the structures in your guild. You can get quite a few extra stat points from these. I’m not going to get into how to build the structures and maintain them, that’s well beyond this guide–we’re just going to look at which boons to take:
That’s everything I have to offer on your boons; they are quite worth getting, whether you do that by grinding the campaigns out, buying them in the auction house with AD, or just breaking out the wallet and buying some campaign completions using ZEN.
Companions changed a lot in Mod 16, so I’ll start with the basics in case the reader is new to the game or at least new to this mod.
Your companion tab has a couple different sections. First, you have your summoned companion. This is the companion that will follow you around and battle your enemies beside you. They can level up to 40 when legendary, and they higher level they are, the higher their stats. When your companions hit their max level (35 at epic for example) you can use Companion Upgrade Tokens (from Lockboxes or ZEN Store) or Astral Diamonds to upgrade them to the next color. (White > Green > Blue > Purple > Orange) You can have lots of companions. The base stats of your companion are determined by their level, the amount of Bolster they have, and your Companion Influence. I just introduced two new terms there, so let me explain them.
Bolster is a percentage multiplied by the base stats of your summoned companion, that is determined by the five best quality pets you have in that category (Fighters, Creatures, Invokers, Mystical, Beasts). For example, I have a Bullete Pup on my wizard, which is a Creature companion. My best five companions in that category are 1 legendary, and 4 epic. You get 3% bolster for a legendary, and 2.5% for epic, so that’s 13% bolster to any Mystical companion I summon. Companion Influence is gained from various sources, including Charisma, Dark enchantments, Insignias, and Boons. It also boosts the base stats of your summoned companion, regardless of category.
The downside of these two stats is that they boost the base stats of the companion, not their stats after you include their gear and runestones, so the end result is these two stats have a much smaller impact on your companion than you might hope. Let’s move on to the gear.
On the right side of the Companion window, you have 3 slots for Bonding Runestones, and 3 slots for Companion Gear. The Bonding Runestones each transfer a portion of your pet’s stats to your character. The Companion Gear slots can only equip gear specifically for companions; you will get a Pearl Ring of the Companion, Choke Chain of the Companion, and Plated Belt of the Companion during the Undermountain campaign–these are the best gear you can get for them right now. Each piece of companion gear has 1-2 slots that you can put runestones, which work like enchantments for companion gear. With Mod 17 there has been new companion gear introduced which you can opt for to improve your stats even further.
The catch here is that your Bonding Runestones transfer the stats of your companion including the gear and runestones. At max rank, 3 rank 15 Bonding Runestones will transfer 210% of your pet’s stats to your character. Additionally, if you use an “augment” companion, rather than fight beside you they have a bonus of 1000 stat points to three of their stats, and transfer 100% of their stats to you. That means that you get 310% of your augments stats transferred to you, and an extra 3100 in three stats, depending on the companion you use.
For this reason, augment pets are the optimal companion for reaching your stat caps. As far as which companion you should use? You want an epic augment at least, and getting it to Legendary (1 million AD to upgrade) should be a priority. This also is why getting up to rank 15 Bonding Runestones is also critical. Plus, because Bonding Runestones don’t cost gold to take out of their socket, you can freely swap them between your characters, making them an incredibly good investment.
The last section of the Companion tab is the enhancement section. Along the bottom you have 6 slots; the top left is your companion power. Each companion you own has a different power that you can slot here. My preferred one is either Power, or Critical Severity if you have a companion that offers it. The remaining slots are for enhancement powers, which again are offered by each companion. It’s important to note if a companions enhancement can be put into Offense, Defense, or Utility slots, which vary by class. A wizard has 3 Offense, 1 Defense, and 1 Utility slot.
There are hundreds of pets and different options for these enhancement powers, and each player will have ones they prefer. With both paragons I aim for all the Power & Combat Advantage I can manage. In my defense slot I use Laughing Skull (4K power), in my offense I use Tamed Velociraptor (10K power), Deepcrow Hatchling (8K power), and Staldorf (8K advantage), and in my utility I use Barbarian Shaman (4k power/2k advantage).
You might want to focus on other stats, maybe to reach caps. This is really a personal customization here. I will acknowledge that a huge source of Combat Advantage is from these enhancement slots–you can pick up 24K Combat Advantage with the right enhancement companions, but in Mod 17 when you unlock the trial you can pick up a piece of companion gear with 12K advantage on it, which is then tripled by your bondings!
Ah… mounts. There are tons of mounts in the game, and we love them for getting us from point A to point B quickly. They also offer us another avenue to increase out stats however! This is done with Insignia Slots. You can have up to five mounts in your “Stable”, and each one will have up to 3 insignia slots (rare and better have 3 slots, while white/green have 2). Your first goal with mounts should be to get 5 mounts that are rare or better, unlocking 15 insignia slots.
The combination of insignia types you use will unlock various Insignia powers, but none of them are going to be earth shattering changes to your character. I like Gladiator’s Guile (movement speed when stamina full) and Wanderer’s Fortune (refinement stones drop from kills) a lot, as well as anything the heals when I kill, crit, deflect, get controlled etc. If you use the same insignia power twice, the second one will be half effect, the third will be a quarter (the max you can have). What’s more important is that you have 15 insignias. Green insignias are better than nothing (and very cheap) while Rare ones are the best bang for your astral diamonds.
You can get most stat combinations on insignias, you just need to look through them. My preferred insignia is of course Dominance, which has Power as the primary boost. Some insignia types don’t have Dominance available, and I use Brutality with them. Free free to tweak your insignias to fit your stat needs, though ultimately most people are going to end up with Dominance/Brutality in the end as they hit their stat caps.
You also get access to an Equip Power gained from your available mounts (I use +5000 power from Guard Drake) as well as a combat power if you have a legendary mount (which I do not).
As I said in the beginning, my goal was to explain how all of the abilities of a wizard work, in both paragons, so you can make an informed decision as to how you will run your own character. At the same time, I’d like to give a summary of what I run myself, now that I’ve explained all of these powers and mechanics.
When I’m on my wizard, instead of swapping powers back and forth I tend to swap between loadouts instead; I use Thaumaturge for trash clearing and soloing (where AOE is most useful) and I switch to Arcanist for boss fights. However listed below I will include what I would change my powers to for boss fights in each paragon path:
Dailies: Arcane Empowerment, Arcane Singularity
Features: Arcane Presence, Storm Spell
Feats: Spell Twisting, Snap Freeze, Chaos Magic, Striking Advantage, A Step Above Mastery
| LOMM | At-Wills | Encounters |
| Trash Clear | Ray of Frost, Storm Pillar | Steal Time [M], Lightning Bolt, Icy Terrain, Shard of the Endless Avalanche |
| Boss Fight | Ray of Frost, Storm Pillar | Ray of Enfeeblement [M], Disintegrate, Repel, Entangling Force |
Dailies: Ray of Frost, Scorching Burst
Features: Chilling Presence, Critical Conflagration
Feats: Relative Haste, Glowing Flames, Shatter Strike, Critical Burn, Directed Flames
| LOMM | At-Wills | Encounters |
| Trash Clear | Ray of Frost, Scorching Burst | Chill Strike [M], Fireball, Icy Terrain, Conduit of Ice |
| Boss Fight | Ray of Frost, Scorching Burst | Ray of Enfeeblement [M], Repel, Entangling Force, Conduit of Ice |
When leveling, soloing, I stick with Thaumaturge; it’s got great AOE damage, which is the majority of what soloing is about, and when needed can swap in single target powers for a nasty boss mob. Nothing complex about the rotation; I lead off with Icy Terrain or Conduit of Ice depending on the range, and then dump encounter powers. If there are multiple targets left and my AOEs are cooling down then I use Scorching Burst, otherwise it’s Ray of Frost till everything dies or an encounter power comes up.
and outs of all things wizard, including gear options much more detail into the powers than I’ve gone into here. It’s an invaluable resource for any wizard and I treat it as my almanac when thinking about how I prefer to play my wizard.