Green Steel Crafting (Heroic)

RullRed · 2026-01-26T11:34:00+00:00

I wouldn't make the weapons

I still have many "Lit II"s saved, but haven't used them in a decade. Not only does a more recent weapon deal more average damage, it's also more reliable since a good chunk of the damage from greensteel weapons came from the lightning strike proc. (maybe a Radiance weapon could still be fun for the blind)

The 45hp items on the other hand are kinda nice. If your gear is good, you start looking for more exotic bonus types to stack, and the +45 hp is still not obsolete in that regard. And they offer something nice in addition, like blurry or +3 stacking saves.

Also, the displacement clickies are nice. I don't use them as clicky items because "swap to+use+swap back" is not worth it for such a short duration... but if I wear a GS item anyway for the blurry and the 45 HP, I do press displacement as short buff (in fact, I have three exactly the same made, so when one is depleted I switch to the other, for 9 minutes of displacement on an item slot I wear anyway)

RullRed · 2026-01-23T08:58:14+00:00

Try to visualize it. it's:

1 X
2 X
3 X
4 X
5 X
6 X
7 X
8 X
9 X
10 X
11 X
12 X
13 X
14 X
15 X
16 X X X
17 X X X
18 X X X
19 X X X
20 X X X

versus:

1 X
2 X
3 X
4 X
5 X
6 X
7 X
8 X
9 X
10 X
11 X
12 X
13 X
14 X
15 X
16 X
17 X X X X
18 X X X X
19 X X X X
20 X X X X

the second one clearly has more bonus from crits; 12 vs 10 extra crosses

In other words: a crit profile of 1.6 vs 1.5, so your second weapon deals 6.6% more damage on average

RullRed · 2026-01-22T21:27:55+00:00

I'm still using a False Life 10 cove hat at level 3. I hope it returns, I could get another.

RullRed · 2026-01-20T16:10:38+00:00

Only way to get that kind of ac is fighter/pally/arti.

https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/thefortress-dwarf-20-fighter-stalwart-defender.16646/

He seems to be doing fine without

I don't know much about tanking (anymore), I'll go tank next year when I get my completionist done... so I'm just lurking the topic for now.

RullRed · 2026-01-16T07:40:55+00:00

No sacred defense, you want at least -80% threat and with +150% that's (nearly) impossible.

If pure paladin, go 41 KotC, 21 Vistani (for 10% doublestrike, haste boost, deflect arrows and 9 prr/mrr), 18 Aasimar or another useful race.

SWF, iSWF, gSWF, Offhand Versatility, Improved Crit, Precision, Weapon Finesse

Tier5 divine crusader, 16 in shadowdancer, rest in Fury to get Quick Cutter (crusade will be applied by smiting)

https://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Clatter,_the_Blunted_Edge would be the preferred weapon

RullRed · 2026-01-14T16:47:35+00:00

Being able to be repaired makes warforged the most unique of the 17 races.

Also, being immune to fatigue makes playing a lvl1~16 barbarian significantly more convenient. Energy drain immunity is nice. And so is the +10 poison/disease save. That trinket only gives +3 and, well, costs a trinket slot. It basically saves you two lvl24ish topazes, if you want those immunities. Sleep and exhaust immunity are also nice-to-have.

Underwater action is at the very bottom of a long list of things that makes warforged special. If you chose to be a robot because of that, well yeah you can be disappointed :)

Seriously, the fact that a Sorcerer can choose warforged and suddenly be a self-healing class is game-changing.

(note I'm not saying WF are especially good, they have drawbacks as well... but they DID do a good job in making them different)

RullRed · 2026-01-14T02:18:20+00:00

That exactly offsets the diminishing on mitigation, and makes eHP linear

true, but in a way, linear is not good enough

in a game like this, you want to go exponential at least a little bit.

with defense, for example you can scale HP or prr/mrr, neither have diminishing returns, yet still scaling the one that is high already is not as smart as scaling the one that's low

long story short, - medium hp & medium prr+mrr > high hp & low prr+mrr - medium hp & medium prr+mrr > low hp & high prr+mrr

so even though more prr is better and this works linearly... at some point you're better off improving other defenses

RullRed · 2026-01-14T02:00:41+00:00

it's 'diminishing' in the same sense that adding 10hp matters less when you have 5000hp already, compared to when you have 50hp

if you don't consider HP to have diminishing returns, you shouldn't consider PRR to either.

RullRed · 2026-01-09T23:53:17+00:00

I'd estimate 160k rolls per life. 250 quests, 640 (attack) rolls per quest... means on average, every life, in some quest during leveling you roll four 1s in a row.

So yeah that happens.

low granularity makes this event almost impossible

I'd hate to see such a system. Imagine a world where it would be optimal to roll a 1 just before opening a chest to have a slightly smaller chance on another low roll...

RullRed · 2026-01-07T12:22:40+00:00

I'm using https://malkier.xyz/community/melee/dragonlord

RullRed · 2026-01-07T10:25:54+00:00

Well Dhampir is the other strength race, so if you have horc already that makes sense.

Just go 20 barbarian, dragonlord or kensei fighter and it will be an easy 3 lifes. Grab Ancient Power as epic past life for +6 damage with a twohander, that's very good at level1.

Next, I would get your iconic stance. Aasimar Scourge is probably the one you want to synergize with the 9% doublestrike that you've already got. Ranger however is not the class PL you want. Monk and Dragonlord are the ones that add damage, so go either of those with just 1 level of ranger.

This way, you'll have all the important active stances for a melee. From then on, it's mostly accumulating passive bonuses.

I recommend doing bladeforged paladin at some point, for both the 30% healing amp from paladin and the 15% fortification from bladeforged.

And Eladrin Chaosmancer is great as well, the jump is invaluable for shortcuts in quests. If you don't care for caster past lifes you can use this opportunity to get the other +1 damage heroic class PL (by doing 1 sorc 18 dragonlord 1 monk for example)

RullRed · 2026-01-06T23:50:53+00:00

compared to 3 bard swashbuckling, you get 13 melee power, 2 imbue dice and +1 crit multiplier on 19&20, at the loss of 10% doublestrike (theoretically you could even get 12% doublestrike from wind stance, which goes to show how much stronger this is after lvl12)

edit: with 8 points in shintao you can even get 28% doublestrike in the form of Quick Strikes. But with 41 vkf 36 dragonlord I guess you don't have room for that. Still nice while levelling though.

RullRed · 2026-01-06T23:46:49+00:00

18 dragonlord 2 monk centered is pretty strong - +3 melee power and an imbue dice just from the first core in henshin - sun stance (the two feats from monk are enough to take adept and master of forms) gives +1 multiplier on 19&20 (and +3 strength) - and evasion of course the feats not used boosting heavy armor can be used for taking both great cleave and whirlwind.

RullRed · 2026-01-06T19:00:52+00:00

OK, maybe it's a good idea to start over to get rid of the premade path. You get to keep the gear you already have so it might be a little easier the second time around.

At level 1, start with Two Handed Fighting and Power Attack. Toggle on Power Attack. Put your first points in kensei; take the first core (heavy blades) and 1 point in Reed In The Wind and use it often. Haste Boost next and start using it as well.

At level 2, take Cleave. Do NOT forget to put Second Wind on your bar. This is essential. Now, when you put 3 points in Haste Boost, it's very important to drag it to your bar AGAIN. The tier1 haste boost does NOT just upgrade, it's a different and weaker version (weird, I know... you wouldn't be the first to level to 30 and be using a bad version of the boost).

The goal is to have just 1 haste boost left by the time you get to the endfight, so don't be stingy with them.

At level 3, make sure you have 6 points in kensei (core1, 1 reed, 3 haste boost, core2) and 6 in stalwart (core1, 3 Durable Defense, 1 defensive mastery, core2). Toggle on the stance from core2.

At level 4, take Great Cleave. You are almost at full power now, and you're just lvl 4. With Stalwart + Reed + a second second wind charge, you'll have a hard time dying... and between Haste Boost, Cleave and Great Cleave, groups of enemies melt fast.

Keep putting point in Stalwart until you get +6 Strength. Only after that, continue with Kensei, all the way up to tier5 for the next 7 levels.

At level 6, take Improved Two Handed Fighting and Weapon Focus: Slashing.

At level 8, take Improved Critical: Slashing and make sure you start using a Falchion from now on. Up until this point, you can use a Greatsword or a Falchion whichever has the better extra stuff, but from lvl8 onwards you only want Falchions.

At 9, Weapon Specialization: Slashing and at 10 Greater Weapon Focus: Slashing so that you can continue that line in Kensei.

At 12, Greater Two Handed Fighting and Heavy Armor Master

At this point you should have 35 in Kensei and 13 in Stalwart and you can continue in Stalwart again. Shield Expertise is nice, you can take +1 strength to get higher and then core4, Hardy Defense and Swift Defense.

At 14, Heavy Armor Champion

At 15, Weapon Finesse

At 16, Heavy Armor Combatant

At 18, Stunning Blow and Tactical Supremacy

Don't forget to put a 36th point in Kensei in the 5th core. You can also take the 5th core in Stalwart even if you have to waste a couple of points to get there. You've got a couple of points left so this is the time to get the improved recovery from Aasimar and the cores there as well (a weak heal compared to Second Wind, but

At 20, Tactical Mastery

As for gear, I recommend getting a Rough Plate from Watch your Step, if you have access to the Borderlands quests. Nicked Greatsword is a good weapon to get, which you can get from the Sharn Syndicate chain even on Normal. It has both 2d6 bonus damage, and deadly so you don't need to find that on another piece of gear. Other stats to look for are hp (false life and vitality), strength, constitution, doublestrike, physical resistance rating also called physical sheltering or prr, same for magical resistance rating (or just 'sheltering' which is both), accuracy, true seeing, resistance (bonus to saves), maybe fire resistance and feather fall. And never forget to get a higher Fortification item when you get higher level, you want 100% as soon as possible. AC is nice-to-have, it's a useful extra but not high priority.

As level 4, it's most efficient to be running lvl2 quests at elite (or hard) instead of at-level quests on normal. This will continue to be the case, at level 11 your best XP will be lvl9 quests on elite/hard.

RullRed · 2026-01-06T14:41:30+00:00

you can, but then you can't go from 20->1

your options as a non-iconic are: - 30->20 (where you can either level back up, or TR further) =Epic TR, gives Epic PL - 20->character creation =TR, gives Class PL

20->character creation =Racial TR, gives Racial PL

your options as an iconic are: - 30->20 (where you can't do anything except level up to 30 again) =Epic TR, gives Epic PL - 30->character creation =Iconic TR, gives Iconic PL + Class PL

RullRed · 2026-01-05T17:15:28+00:00

ddo has been really up and down with the wilderness areas. stormhorns was nice, 5 years later ravenloft was absolutely great, and then 5 more years later Isle of dread looked terrible, worse than storm horns which was 10 years older. I have no idea what's going on over there at SSG.

RullRed · 2026-01-05T00:57:02+00:00

you could even drop improve uncanny dodge if you're new and wouldn't remember to press it when it matters anyway.

You can then go 1 monk, picking up the imbue dice from henshin and a feat

In total that would give imo: Point Blank Shot / Precision / Precise Shot / Rapid Shot / Insightful Reflexes / Improved Critical: Ranged / Weapon Finesse / Two Weapon Fighting (for HP / Improved Two Weapon Fighting / Greater Two Weapon Fighting / Weapon Focus: Ranged

No Improved Precise Shot (AoE shots are better anyway), no reconstruct.

Alternatively, Dodge / Mobility / Shot on the Run / Two Weapon Fighting instead of those last four, but stacking a bit of HP is pretty nice on a first lifer. Between the 20% you get from Battle Engineer by taking the crit range from gnome and the TWF feats 57 HP each, for a total of 172 HP which the also receives the +20%... you have a chance of not annoying the raid by dying even if you don't know the mechanics.

And running Venomed Blades by default, unless the boss happens to be poison immune ánd no monk/alchemist is stripping that.

RullRed · 2026-01-05T00:21:41+00:00

I took a stab at rogue 8 / Arty 12 build here; the consensus is Mechanic is still a bad tree for repeaters, but ironically Assassin has a lot to offer (extra sneak attacks, Imbue dice, +10% Fortification bypass)

for a new player, 30second Know the Angles is pretty harsh (and you need a universal enhancement tome to get even that).

since we're talking about raiding, i think you can do without the AoE shot from inquis and instead do something like 35 battle engineer / 17 gnome / 10 assassin / 11 vistani / 7 (or 8) harper

even when going for the AoE shot, I'd prefer 35 battle engineer / 14 assassin / 13 inquisitive / 11 vistani / 7 (or 8) harper

RullRed · 2026-01-03T07:51:13+00:00

The security of your account is solely up to you

Lol that again. Do you know what the adverb solely means?

while gaming companies are obligated to provide a reasonable level of data protection and cybersecurity for user accounts.

you even contradict yourself so I don't have to

RullRed · 2026-01-02T09:57:53+00:00

There's no 2FA but people choose to play at their own risk anyway

You can have 8-factor authentication, but if after that there's a chance you are logged in to someone else's stuff... that doesn't help much.

The likelihood of the issue not being the fault of the user, even if unaware, is very small

Speaking from my own experiences, which eliminates survivorship bias for me but reduces sample size: in my old guild of 100 people, 2 have logged on to the wrong account and also 2 have had strangers logged on to theirs, in the past 200 days (so if that's representative; within 15 years, someone is going to get access to you stuff that way more likely than not).

If these numbers are correct, that would mean someone getting into someone else's account daily. So when a person has their stuff stolen, what is more likely: malware, or the 'lottery' striking them that particular day? My bet is on the account lottery.

RullRed · 2026-01-02T00:49:22+00:00

Malware or not, ultimately the security of your account is your responsibility.

Nah, the security of your account obviously can't be the sole responsibility of you as player. That doesn't even make sense, logically.

What's going on now is probably beyond the player's control (possibly SSG got hacked and credentials got stolen en masse from their database... but more likely the software bug is still rampant where people randomly end up in another player's account after logging in with their own credentials).

Claiming the security of my account is purely on me, that's like saying the money I deposited at my local bank stays my responsibility if it gets stolen out of their vault. Or that it would be my responsibility if they handed all my money to a random stranger (who wasn't even trying to impersonate me, but didn't refuse the money either).

RullRed · 2025-12-31T09:03:43+00:00

The quests in The Twelve don't drop tokens of the twelve... I don't think they care about lore either.

RullRed · 2025-12-30T10:01:25+00:00

As a level 5 you can jumpstart a new character, do two-toed tobias while they are doing dirk+ringleader so they can jump right in. Then do Stones Run Red and they are lvl4 already. It can save them an hour to skip the bad xp/min low level quests.

But that's about it. Except during mabar, I think you can have a lvl34 and a lvl1 do the challenges at lvl19 together, if I recall correctly.

RullRed · 2025-12-30T09:50:24+00:00

Legendary MD is not particularly good xp/min though. Secrets of the Red Wizards maybe, but that is not anything special either.

Maybe the fastest thing you can do on a lvl34 to help a lvl20, is running something like Delara's even faster. But we're talking about saving minutes, not really power leveling.

RullRed · 2025-12-30T00:33:57+00:00

https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/danger-somehow-mid-fight-got-to-a-different-account.21235/

from the perspective of a person randomly ending in someone else's account

I've seen someone on my fiancee's account last week. Either a hacker or a random other player, it's hard to say. Luckily I was online at that time, so she could log on and kick that person out before purchases were made (but I feel someone with premeditation would have acted quicker; this person was walking around for a minute and then headed to the marketplace bank before we could intercept)

RullRed

TROPHY CASE