I spent a day playing one of my alts to raise her a few levels* and was really, really surprised how well she performed and how much fun the throw together T/A build** was.

I only threw two pieces of decent gear her way, the rest was total starter gear, but she completely held her own in all the reaper quests I ran as well the elite quests I soloed.  Even jumping in with a guildie well under level for Tear, my champion T/A completely kept up where I expected her to spend most of her time as a soul stone.

I was leaning towards LRing a different class to get my rogue past lives, but now I'm kind of curious to play with an acrobat build instead.  Has anyone else tried it?

I'm thinking maybe a level of barb for speed and boost to THF and probably at least a level of fighter for the skills boost, outside of that I really have no idea where to go (except Monk, still don't have it and won't have it till it goes on sale).  No clue what to do for race either.  Horc cause they look cool with staffs?  Human for mark of passage?  Elf for the dex?  Any ideas at all?

*Not that it matters, but I had a few tomes I wanted to get out of her inventory left over from back in the day when Turbine used to actually sometimes give us cool, free stuff.  You know, you wouldn't play for 6 months or so and when you logged back in all your toons would have extra items in their inventories.

**Yeah, I know you're supposed to go crossbow not acrobat, but I'm sorry, I can't do it.  I usually play ranged in every game but ddo.  That whole running backwards thing while trying to thin out the mob just...looks so silly to me.  I've tried it, I just can't do it.

I did a barb/rogue stick build a few years ago.  I will look it up when not at work and see what was broke since then.

5 Foot Step wrote on Jul 27^th, 2017 at 11:07am:


Yeah, just for a TR.

No splash, really?  Haven't looked into it yet (and haven't done much with fighters ever or the new barb trees) but I thought a splash might buff up the power.  Very rare for them to design a tree that holds up well enough on its own

The most important part of any stick build is to farm your named quarterstaves beforehand.
- Elemental Bloom will be one of your trusty sidekicks in heroics.  It has an enhanced crit range and multiplier that stacks with the TA enhancements.
- Greensteel triple positive is your other main sidekick as heroics has a metric fuck ton of undead to fight.
- Light Unending will be your DR breaker.

As for build advice:
- If you’re just doing heroics, you’re probably best off going pure rogue.  You already have access to fast movement in the TA tree.  The level 18 core is really nice.  You should be rocking a 50+% doublestrike by level 18.
- If you go into epics, I would recommend pure or the 2 monk splash.  The capstone is basically Tier 1 Dance of Death + auto trip with a quarterstaff. 
- Your primary defenses will be Dodge, and Deception.  In fact, you may find filling out your Max Dodge to be your #1 gearing problem.
- Don’t fear the THF chain.  AoE sneak attack is fun.
- Do not stress out about getting the Killer enhancement from the Assassin tree.  It doesn't stack with Quick Strike.

Toke wrote on Jul 28^th, 2017 at 1:21pm:


Looks interesting, I may play with the build for one of my barb lives, I've considered trying a pure dex barb for years now.

They always talk about barbs being glass cannons, but they're only glass cannons if you make them out of glass.  Biggest mistake a lot of barbs make is completely ignoring dex.  They put it all in str and really only end up with two additional points more str than my builds.  Big difference (besides I use tomes and max dex gear) is they kill in one swing what it takes me a swing and a glancing blow to kill, but they spend a lot of their time tripped or as a soul stone because they have shit for saving throws.

I wouldn't bother putting any points in swim or probably not any in hide (with how well sneaking doesn't work any more).  Those points would go further in balance.  Looks fun though.