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Darth Vader is, in fact, a hybrid Swordmage|Defenderlock.  He uses the dark side of the force to curse and then control his enemies.  He is tough and strikes from both range and close up.
He is a superior defender for any troops he leads into battle.
He is of course human, and is an Infernal Pact to represent the evil that dwells within, and Vestige Pact because the secrets of the Dark Side are known only by a few.
All of this is beside the point, however.

Taking into account his Armor of Dark Majesty, Warding Curse, concealment from his Phantom Chausseurs, Trick of Knowledge and Mark of Warding, his defenses sit at roughly 55ac/52f/53r/54w.  White Lotus Riposte will make him painful to attack early on, and the Baldric of Shielding will kick in after that gets trained out to generate some personal thp.  He also has resist 5 all from Strength Through Challenge. 


Defending his minions:
1. He gets the Swordmage's massive mark with Total Aegis, which hits his enemies for -3 to hit his allies.  Protective Hex throws down another -2, setting marked/cursed enemies he hits at -5 to attack his allies.
2. He is a shielding swordmage with TWO uses of his aegis each turn thanks to the latest defender article.
3. All marked enemies take 5+conmod fire damage when they try to attack his allies.
4. All his attacks deal half psychic damage, which triggers psychic lock, throwing a -2 debuff on his target's next attack.  Swordburst makes that an area debuff.
5. Eyes of the Vestige with the Vestige of Leraje immobilizes at-will.  Do I need to explain why sticking people in place is a Good Thing? 
6. Eyes of the Vestige lets him unload his curse more easily, getting a wide variety of bonuses thereby.
7. When he gets his Baldric of Shielding, Shared Pact lets him share his wealth of temp hps with his allies.  If I can find room for Bloodied Boon after that, the amount of thp flying around will be insane.
9. He is loaded with nasty debuffing and controlling powers, which will ruin his enemies' day.  He is truly a master of the Force.


He is tough, he is powerful, he controls the battlefield and he ensures that the only one killing his troops...is himself.
Darth Vader Show
*Double Aegis is retrained to Total Aegis at level 21.

As a variant, you can swap out psychic lock and the sorrowsong blade for a radiant weapon and some form of radiant support, so that Vader will be wielding an actual lightsaber.

Notes about defenses Show

Variants:
Warforged Vader Show


update: 11/27/10 - changed a bunch of stuff that needed changing, made him more viable at all levels (including extensive retraining), and switched him over to infernal/vestige for greater control ability.
update: 11/28/10 - moved vestige to heroic and infernal to paragon, freeing up some feat and retraining space.  Revamped his power selection.
update: 3/14/11 - added the new warforged  variant of Vader.  You can be more machine now, than man.  The variant is mostly the same, but skimps on a couple desired feats, and brings in bloodied boon at the end for a big boost to shared pact.

Nha, my party's Warlord had them at 30, like 54/49/48/50... Just matter of feats and magic item (and the shield can push up them by a +3 for 1 encounter/day).

Btw, nice build... Ever if I would had made Darth an Assault or Esnaring for flavour. Shielding is sooooo light-sided!

May 12, 2010 -- 2:25PM, urpriest wrote:

May 12, 2010 -- 6:14AM, Aeron79 wrote:

Fantastic build ! I'm interested by a Assault version too.

Please can you  detail the progression of the character level by level ?

Would it even need to be different for assault? With a Con MBA, and with most of the riders (as far as I'm aware) not being keyed to Aegis type, it seems like the build could do pretty well just by switching out Shielding for Assault and leaving the rest as is. Unless there's some Shielding-dependent element I'm missing.

There are some powers with Shielding riders that would need to be switched, but nothing too drastic I don't think.

The assault version would also need to change the Baldric of Shielding, perhaps to a Baldric of Assault.  Assault might also benefit from swapping Aegis Vitality for Aegis Accuracy, to make your assaults more potent.