Champion of Darkness: A Drow Tempest FighterBuild Melee-Magthere Champion / Gladiator Champion / Indomitable Champion
"Oh, you think darkness is your ally. But you merely adopted the dark; I was born in it, moulded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but BLINDING!"
Motivation: While looking through some of the new and interesting Dragon Magazine Themes designed for Drow Characters in the Builder, I started to become really enamored with the idea of making a Melee-Magthere Champion. Although I realize that Drow do not usually make the best Defenders, I decided to take a shot at designing a half-decent one for pure fluff and narrative purposes. What I have accidentally stumbled upon, however, might actually be a surprisingly potent Character that also has a lot of Drow-specific thematic goodness!
The name Champion of Darkness came forth due to the fact that his Theme, Paragon Path, and Epic Destiny all use the term “Champion”, and the strategy involved with the build relies heavily on keen use of the “Cloud of Darkness” Racial Power.
Build Explanation: As previously stated, your effectiveness with this character revolves entirely around the optimal use of Cloud of Darkness. Because of this, your pre-disposition toward the Striker-Defender Role becomes outweighed by decidedly Controller-esque behavior. You will sacrifice overall DPR, but you’re ability to lockdown a group of key enemies (especially Solos) will increase exponentially!
Not only do you become ridiculously sticky, but you also become frustratingly difficult to hit. Tricks like Cloud of Darkness and Cloak of Distortion help you elude only the most adamant... or fortunate... of foes. Fair warning; this might severely annoy your Dungeon Master (but hey, you’re a Drow. Since when did you care for Mercy?).
IMPORTANT NOTE: I am brand new to the concept of serious optimization, especially theoretical High-Level optimization such as this. As such, there are a few areas that were left Blank (---) or Open-Ended (???) because I am not sure what the best choice would be for the build. I’m hoping more experienced Optimizers can help me in selecting more appropriate or effective choices to really get the most out of it. I also built this character as if the campaign or adventure initiated at Level 30, so a natural or logical progression of Feats is absent... I’ve simply cherry-picked the Feats I would want/need, without worrying about retraining or Tier-by-Tier effectiveness.
I'm also an HTML Noob, so sorry if this looks awkward.
====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ====== Champion of Darkness, Level 30 Drow, Fighter (Weaponmaster), Gladiator Champion, Indomitable Champion Build: Arena Fighter Fighter Option: Combat Superiority Fighter Talents Option: Tempest Technique Epic Heroism Option: Strength Epic Heroism Option: Dexterity Backround: Born Under a Bad Sign (Born Under a Bad Sign Benefit) Theme: Melee-Magthere Champion
FINAL ABILITY SCORES STR 28, CON 12, DEX 26, INT 10, WIS 15, CHA 12
STARTING ABILITY SCORES STR 18, CON 10, DEX 14, INT 8, WIS 11, CHA 10
FEATS Two-Weapon Defense Level 1: Xen'drik Weapon Training Level 2: Heavy Blade Expertise Level 4: Two-Weapon Fighting Level 6: Agile Superiority Level 8: Clutch of Darkness Level 10: Knife in the Dark Level 11: Web Spinner (???) Level 12: Darkness Reign Level 14: Cloud of Poison Level 16: Blade Opportunist Level 18: Heavy Blade Opportunity Level 20: Improved Defenses Level 21: Heavy Blade Mastery Level 22: Lolth Blessed Level 24: Fist of Night (???) Level 26: Rapid Combat Challenge (???) Level 28: Mobile Warrior Level 30: Slashing Storm (???)
ITEMS Master's Blade Drow long knife +6 x1 Drow long knife +6 x1 (---) Elderhide Armor of Dark Deeds +6 x1 (???) Elven Chain Shirt (epic tier) Iron Armbands of Power (epic tier) x1 Cloak of Distortion +6 x1 Eye of Awareness x1 Strikebacks x1 Diamond Cincture (paragon tier) x1 Rushing Cleats x1 Shadow Band x1 Ring of Guarded Will x1 Backlash Tattoo x1 ====== End ======
Combat Strategy:
Get Surrounded:Although your AC is not High-End Optimized (18+Level rather than 20+Level, though Shadow Band helps), the core of your effectiveness is directly proportional to the amount of enemies you have adjacent to you. Give in to your suicidal tendencies and aggravate as many bad guys as you can, so they all want to get in your face. Results are best when you snag tough-guy Elite types or even Solos that are high value threats to your team. Most of the powers selected for this character are ones that allow you to either pull enemies toward you in Burst AoEs, or attack multiple targets. This will aid you greatly in getting swarmed.
Enter the Darkness: This is where things get good. Once you believe you have enough enemy attention and you have a few monsters adjacent to you, pop your Cloud of Darkness Racial Ability as a Minor Action. Because of your Clutch of Darkness feat, you should be able to have captured everyone adjacent to you, plus any stragglers who might be a square away. When this happens, all enemies will be Blinded and you will be Totally Obscured, which is a massive defense buff and a real incentive for enemies to try and escape the Cloud. But here’s a problem; if they are adjacent to you, they cannot shift to a square that is not Adjacent to you thanks to the Gladiator Champion “Whirlwind of Destruction” feature. This gives them two options, either:
A. Try and take a crack at you with a large penalty to the attack roll versus your respectable defenses, or...
B. Move away from you with a Standard Move Action, since shifting is denied. This will provoke an Opportunity Attack (Side Note: Some would argue that an enemy could Teleport from the Zone, which is true. But because Cloud of Darkness eliminates Line-of-Sight, the monster would specifically need a power that allows them to Teleport without it).
With Agile Superiority, you have a +8 bonus to OA’s, with another +2 from Blade Opportunist and additional +1 from Strikebacks. Thats a +11 Bonus on top of your base +37 to hit, making a whopping +48. With the Combat Advantage your enemies yield to you for being Blinded, that is essentially +50 to hit. It’s highly unlikely you’ll miss (although there are a few Stance Powers and Utility Powers built in to the character to reverse that Possibility, should you happen to do so). Your accuracy with OA’s is important because once your Cloud of Darkness is up, you’ll be using EVERY STANDARD ACTION to sustain the Zone with “Darkness Reign”. This is where your DPR gets dramatically lowered, barring the use of an Action Point... which is convienently counter-balanced by the fact that on the use of an AP, you also regenerate a use of Cloud of Darkness, meaning you can start these shenanigans once again later on in the battle. The big upside is, however, with Heavy Blade Opportunity you can use an At-Will attack to substitute a Basic Melee Attack. This brings us to..
Bind Your Foes: As soon as an enemy tries to move away from you, OA with Knockdown Assault. Yes, yes, the damage is pitiful... but you’re not looking for damage. Your looking for the Prone. Because Knockdown Assault counts as an Opportunity Attack, your Level 5 Melee-Magthere Champion feature allows you to slow them until the end of their turn. With Combat Superiority, they also have their move action interrupted. Now not only has their movement been stopped, but they are Proned, AND Slowed. This puts them in an awkward position. They either move while Proned & Slowed (resulting in only a 1 Space movement for most monsters, as Crawling lets you only move half your speed, and Slowed reduces your base Land Speed to 2 squares), or they choose to use their new Move Action to stand up. Either way, the Monster is still trapped within the zone of your Cloud of Darkness, and susceptible to all it’s effects (more on that covered later).
If your enemies happen to stray too far away from you and seem as if they might make an escape on one of their future turns, you can instead shift or simply move about (since the enemies have a -7 penalty to OA's against you) to use Footwork Lure. Using Rushing Cleats will allow your Slide to place them in a square more towards the center of the Zone. After you enter their square with the shift granted by Footwork Lure, you can use Mobile Warrior to slink back to the center of the Madness to further entrap your victims. The Gladiator Champion at-will “Fail to Disappoint” feature also aids you in this regard.
There are also several avenues to Slow, Prone and Immobilize enemies with other powers and features in the build. Lurking Spider will help you spread Slows out on Immediate Reactions, and Black Widow’s Bite can Immobilize on a Trigger. Tangle Up can also Prone enemies with whom you are striking with Footwork Lure, allowing you to slide and prone in one big movement. Finally, the “Webspinner” feat in combination with your Frequent use of OAs and increased critical hit threat range (19-20) will net you some lucky Immobilization+Prone combos, which can be absolutely crippling.
Bleed ‘Em Slow: The main drawback to this style of play is the greatly reduced amount of Standard Action attacks, but there are ways around this. Firstly, enemies within your Cloud of Darkness are taking 5 Poison Damage per round, which is decent enough (unless they have poison resistance). Slashing Storm provides a moderate bonus of +2, making it +7 Damage to adjacent enemies per Round. However, should you Bloody any of these adjacent enemies, the Gladiator Champions “Halo of Destruction” feature would trigger; adding an ADDITIONAL +9 damage, which could also set off some painful AoE Bloody-damage Domino Effects.
The real heavy-hitting combo available here is using Stance Powers in combination with your Master's Blade Long Knife to generate a large amount of aura damage. For example, take a look at "Reaper's Stance", which generates an additional +8 Damage on all your OAs, as well as 1[W] to all adjacent targets an inflicts Ongoing 10 (Save Ends). Mix this with "Force the Battle", and now all your OAs do an additional 1[W], and you can make Free Action At-Will attacks (with the aforementioned +8 bonus) to enemies who remain adjacent to you. Throw in Burst attack powers (especially on Action Points) for best results. If you have a multitude of adjacent targets, thats a lot of stacking damage being spread around.
In addition to auto-damaging and stances, you also have access to some Immediate Reaction-style attacks that trigger when your hapless prey strikes back at you. Abilities like Masterful Parry and Revel in Pain ensure that you will still be generating enviable damage even while your Standard Actions are pre-occupied sustaining your Darkness zone.
Evasive Maneuvers:Despite wearing Hide Armor and not packing a Shield, your Defenses are pretty decent given your healthy Dexterity score and Item Selection. You also have a few ways of increasing your ability to dodge damage or improving damage resistance through Powers. Obviously, staying within the zone of your Cloud of Darkness is a huge boon against attackers in and of itself. But another interesting note is that ranged Artillery attackers will also be relatively useless against your assault on their close-quarters teammates. Cloak of Distortion grants a -6 Penalty to enemy ranged attack rolls, not counting the -5 for being totally obscured. With -11 to hit, Artillery may as well be shooting straight up into the sky.
Teamwork: Other than the infrequency of standard action attacks, this is probably the builds second most prevalent weakness. You do not play very nicely with others. Because your Cloud of Darkness totally obscures the affected zone and blinds all CREATURES inside, you apply a hefty debuff to both friendly Ranged and Melee attacks aimed at the enemies caught within. The bottom tagline “You are immune to these effects” also means that other allied Drow or comrades with Darkvision are also susceptible to the negative attributes of the Cloud. Basically; you have to handle all combat situations like a lone wolf, separating yourself from the group quickly to agitate and imprison important targets while your teammates clean up whatever other threats might be present. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however. You are still denying creatures within your Cloud of Darkness the ability to effectively engage or damage your teammates, so you are (for all intents and purposes) completing your Defender objective quite adequately... and to a degree, ensnaring key mobs and thinning the enemy herd is a rather effective strategy.
The main problem arises when battling enemies with massive health pools. Because of your lower damage output, it’s unlikely that you alone will be able to finish off a Solo or even meaty Elite. Your constant pestering and pummeling of a larger target while your friends conquer the lesser enemies will tend to draw fights out (especially since they cannot effectively help you gang up on the solo due to your debuffs). More often than not, you will be distracting and sticking down a primary adversary long enough that it is the only creature left on the field, where you will then allow your Cloud of Darkness to dissipate so the entire party can finish the Boss off. As long as your Dungeon Master or fellow party members aren’t driven insane by this methodical approach, you’re in the clear... but I could see where it might wear away the patience of more aggressive teammates, or with groups where combat tends to run faster.
Ending Notes: Basically, I’m just looking to see what people think, gain some feedback/perspective, and acquire some advice or opinions on how to better improve the character. I think that as it stands, the build does a great job of fulfilling a very niche market for Drow who would like to tackle the Defender role, and it satisfies a lot of character-driven tropes built around Dark Elf fighters in general (which was the original intention).
I need help with a few things in the Item Department (mainly, what would make a suitable Off-Hand enchantment, and what would be the best for Armor), as well as a few Feats. For example, how necessary is Rapid Combat Challenge seeing as allies aren’t likely to be adjacent to enemies in your Cloud of Darkness? Is Fist of Night necessary? Would Two-Weapon Opening/Threat/Flurry be more viable? That sort of thing. There's also still a large portion of GP Available for Wondrous Items or Consummables that would be tactically beneficial.
In closing, thank you for everyone who sat and read this whole thing, hope you enjoyed it; and I can’t wait to hear what people have to say!
1) Welcome to making builds. A Valiant first effort.
2) Generally speaking you need to make cases for not using the following. Please do so:
Superior Will Improved Defenses (before level 20) Auspicious Birth / Born under a Bad Sign Not taking a multiclass. In most defender cases a reason why you didn't take Battle Awareness, as a fighter you have to justify why you didn't take one at all. I might have missed the multiclass because I honestly don't know a lot of the feats you took off the top of my head.
3) Also, for build purposes, please make a listing of what you took at what levels and what you retrained what with instead of just the final product. Very few people play at 30 and even fewer start there. We want to be able to see how your build develops. Normally this is by making a few snapshots of different levels (1, 11, 16, 21, 30 at minimum in my opinion) but you can do it with the final build if you break it up a little more.
I'll try to comment more later.
Currently working on making a Dex based defender. Check it out here Spoiler:Show
Need a few pre-generated characters for a one-shot you are running? Want to get a baseline for what an effective build for a class you aren't familiar with? Check out the Pregen thread here If ever you are interested what it sounds like to be at my table check out my blog and podcast here Also, I've recently done an episode on "Refluffing". You can check that out here
Maytr, he didn't take Battle Awareness because Weaponmaster Fighters can't MC Fighter. Your right about Superior Will. I think he want's help on the building up process.
I like the concept at least, don't know how it would work out in execution and I imagine leveling up would be a pain. TWF/TWO would probably be a good idea as I believe it would work on his OAs. Did he have Weapon Mastery in there? He should qualify.
Few things. 2) Generally speaking you need to make cases for not using the following. Please do so:
Superior Will Improved Defenses (before level 20) Auspicious Birth / Born under a Bad Sign Not taking a multiclass. In most defender cases a reason why you didn't take Battle Awareness. I might have missed the multiclass because I honestly don't know a lot of the feats you took off the top of my head.
Well, like I said. The original intention was never to have a SUPER-OPTIMIZED character, I kind of just found an interesting combo of abilities and decided to do a write-up of it. That being said,
I didn't take Auspicious Birth merely because I wanted Stealth Training (for Flavor reasons, really), and the additional Hit Points weren't the largest concern for me. If someone would rather have the +15 HP, they could make the change with little to no detriment to the overall effectiveness of the character.
Once again, I stated earlier I didn't do a full write-up of the build Level-by-Level because I'm a little inexperienced and unsure of the best progression. You could easily take Improved Defenses whenever you'd like in the build earlier than 20, probably swap it with Web Spinner if you really needed it. I was just playing with the feat section for best combinations of powers.
In regards to a Multiclass, the build is very Feat-Intensive as it is, and the character doesn't really need any class features or skills from another class to be effective. Also, "Battle Awareness" is a Fighter multiclass Feat and the base Class is a Fighter, so I can't take it.
Superior Will? I guess it would be a good move to jam it in there. Like I said, there are some feats in the initial selection I'm not sure if I'm keeping. I could swap it in. But the character is already receiving a +4-5 bonus to Will purely from Items, if I'm not mistaken.
3) Also, for build purposes, please make a listing of what you took at what levels and what you retrained what with instead of just the final product. Very few people play at 30 and even fewer start there. We want to be able to see how your build develops. Normally this is by making a few snapshots of different levels (1, 11, 16, 21, 30 at minimum in my opinion) but you can do it with the final build if you break it up a little more.
I'll try to comment more later.
Like I said, I will eventually alter it for level-by-level progression, I just wasn't sure of what it is yet.
I don't think this plan is very wise. Standard actions to sustain is going to frustrate the **** out of every party member you have. If you're not attacking with your standard actions, you're just not contributing sufficiently to the fight, regardless of how sticky you are. And you'll have to move to get to new enemies, otherwise you're defending against one or two things you're next to, and since your darkness doesn't move with you, your trick is done. Some enemies can also punt you out of your darkness. And if you're drowning enemies in darkness that your allies can't see, they're not going to be able to kill them all that easily.
Drow tempest fighter is a workable build, but not this way.
I like the concept at least, don't know how it would work out in execution and I imagine leveling up would be a pain. TWF/TWO would probably be a good idea as I believe it would work on his OAs. Did he have Weapon Mastery in there? He should qualify.
He does have Two-Weapon Fighting and Weapon Mastery, yes. He doesn't have Two-Weapon Flurry or Opening, which are things I would like for him to obtain. Just wondering what could be taken out of the original Feat List. Same thing for Superior Will.
@ The section on your attacks. If you pick a better supported set of weapons / tricks you can add prones/slides much much easier. If you are going to slow them, World Serpent's Grasp can be a good addition since it turns your slows into prones.
@Bleed 'Em Slow section "Slow and steady" does not win the race in 4e. Murdering them by throwing a Ranger shaped ICBM through their chest wins the race. Your damage will mean that while you might lock things down your contribution to ending the encounter is going to be rather pitiful. 5 Poison damage per round isn't respectable its negligible. Ongoing 10 at 30 is also negligible
Also, while I may indeed have missed it (I'm still reading through and going to look up the feats in a minute) everything you locked down is in your cloud which effects your allies as well. That seems a little... counterproductive. I see you mention it but that it is just something to deal with instead of a deal-breaker. Also Cloud of Darkness cannot be seen through by creatures with darkvision. The fact that it blocks your allies from having Line of Sight is also a pretty big problem assuming you want to be healed or get bonuses from several of the "can see and hear you" effects of leaders.
@Evasive Maneuvers. Artillery and Ranged will never shoot you. They will shoot your squishy team mate instead.
Currently working on making a Dex based defender. Check it out here Spoiler:Show
Need a few pre-generated characters for a one-shot you are running? Want to get a baseline for what an effective build for a class you aren't familiar with? Check out the Pregen thread here If ever you are interested what it sounds like to be at my table check out my blog and podcast here Also, I've recently done an episode on "Refluffing". You can check that out here
You don't need a level-by-level progression RCNovak.
Assuming the enemies are blinded within the cloud Mengu, how often do you think they will push him away?
RCNovak, you should consider switching your dailies over to all stances. Something like Force the Battle, Reaper's Stance, Unyielding Avalanche at level 30. Having burst powers doesn't make much sense if you're using your standard actions to sustain the Cloud.
I imagine something like Warrior's Urging and then popping the Cloud and popping a stance (depending on if you had to move into position before Urging). That way, you get them into position, blind them, keep them close, and deal auto-damage.
I'll try to go over the feat selection in a minute.
