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Apr 8, 2010 -- 4:51PM, Alphastream1 wrote:

Good stuff! I'm just looking over the options and wondering about the obvious polearm synergy. Are there any builds that have some interesting ideas? I've so far had blinders to anything regarding polearms.

Well, the obvious thought is to exploit that Stygian Adept (fear powers gain auto slide 1) with a tiefling and polearmcheese.  Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work out right.  The Ardent only gets three fear powers, two of which are forced-move granters to begin with, and all of which are con-based.  Polearmcheese requires moderate investments in dex/wis/str, and the tiefling int bonus is largely wasted.

Mind you, the idea of a tiefling walking around with a dreadful-looking glaive, with terror wrapped about him like a cloak, howling for his enemies to kneel before the terrifying might of the Blood of Turath is pretty cool, and having a leader that it's hard for enemies to get adjacent to might be nice, but it's a build that really wants to wait for Psionic Power 2 to come out so that it can have more fear-based powers to play with.  There's also the fact that it's pretty severely MAD (though, admittedly, hellfire blood helps here a fair bit).  It's really very much one of those "do you want the power in heroic, or are you willing to wait for paragon?" questions - it's *possible* to have a push2+knockdown as an at-will as early as level 3 with Unnerving Shove (weapon vs fort, no less) but it requires a con of 14, a wis of 15, and a dex of 15.  Not cheap, by any stretch.  On the other hand, if for some reason you have hit the rolled-stat jackpot, there are worse ways to spend it, especially if you pull somethign bizarre like straight 15s.

As an expansion on the tiefling polearmfearcheese, it gets noticeably more reasonable if you're willing to awit for paragon.

Required stats at paragon:
- cha as high as possible
- con as high as possible after that
- dex 13, str 13, wis 14

16(+2)cha/14wis/13dex/13str/12con/8(+2)int

dump heroic statbumps into cha/dex and cha/str, then go cha/con with the rest.  You can get the polearm trio at paragon, pick up hellfire blood, pick up the items that give you boosts to fear attacks (I seem to recall a headpiece or something that gives you a bonus to hit with fear powers) and you're actually doing quite nicely for yourself.  If you're willing to lose the whole PG/HBO opportunity attack schtick, you actually do a fair bit better - you can drop the str to 12, the wis to 13 and take the 14 in con, then exotic weapon proficiency for a greatspear and have the same base accuracy as a weapon talent fighter with a +3prof weapon.  If you don't really care about having Battle Awareness be your fighter MC, you can even ditch the str completely and take the con-based MC feat from MP2.

In the end there are a number of ways to play it, and the results start looking pretty nice, but the fact that you only have 3 fear powers really hurts quite a lot as you get up in levels.  It gets a little easier as the Ardent also has a number of interesting attack-granting powers that are pretty clearly intended to be swapped out for each other (starting with Ire Strike) but even going with a mix of attack-granters and fear powers you wind up feeling rather anemic towards the end.  The build is in larval form now, and waiting for Psionic Power before it can truly flower.

On the other hand, the fear powers that we do have are mostly low-level.  If you're starting a game at level 1 that levels slowly, and/or play LFR, where you swap between characters based on the stuation, putting together a larval-form Tiefling polearmfear ardent now and figuring that PsP will be there when you need it might not be a bad bet.

Side note: there are two statline builds for this.  The cha/wis build has the obvious advantage that it cuts down a touch on the otherwise rather severe MAD issues.  On the other hand, being in melee means that con is good anyway, con might (depending on your str) cover a NAD that wis never will, and fear powers are currently rather strongly con-themed, and likely to remain so.  My personal inclination is to go cha/con, but that doesn't mean that cha/wis is a mistake by any means.

I looked over the rest of the powers but while i agree with most there are a few i view as misrated. Just giving some feedback. 

17th

Diamond defense assault- seems to work for both equally, why mark it for Enlightened builds?

19th

Temporal Acceleration- I would think that it is more black. It can be used on a charge, and even locked the bad guy down for a round on a miss. the zone being a burst 2 is a nice bonus since most zones ardents seem to produce are 1. And once the bad guy in the zone drop your allys get a bonus to speed to go after the next guy.

Vitality Tansfer- i rank it sky blue. I really like this power. 1. huge bonus that it is reliable. 2 Its more accurate (attacking fort). 3 a free surgless heal for your entire party 90% of the time that you have a little control over when it does go off.

27th

Restorative Bastion- i think would pe purple. the first arugment is more useful than focusing most of the time. But really what saves it from being red in my book is that it attacks fort and should be more accurate.

29th

Violent Spark- I think you over estimate this. (i also dont know of an at-will warlord attack that does that much damage). The bonus to damage would be quite pathetic for the con ardents, and the save might not even be needed once you use the power. I think it might be sky blue for an enlightened but black for a euphoric.