Please Critique my first build

daslaya2012

Hey all. This is my highest level character in the game thus far, been playing about a month and have tinkered with 7 different characters. This toon here has been my favorite and a blast to play so far. A quick background, he is an implant from COH, one of my stalkers. So keeping Night Warrior and DB is a must. Here is the build, I am currently level 22, and am not real sure what other powers to pick that would benefit this guy.

PowerHouse (Link to this build)

Name: Master of Chaos

Archetype: Freeform

Super Stats:
Level 6: Strength (Primary)
Level 10: Recovery (Secondary)
Level 15: Dexterity (Secondary)

Talents:
Level 1: One of Mind and Body
Level 6: Mighty
Level 9: Tireless
Level 12: Relentless
Level 15: Agile
Level 18: Impresario
Level 21: Martial Focus

Powers:
Level 1: Rain of Steel
Level 1: Blade Tempest
Level 6: Night Warrior (Rank 2, Rank 3, Silent Running)
Level 8: Bountiful Chi Resurgence (Rank 2, Resurgent Reiki)
Level 11: Storm's Harvest (Rank 2, Red-Eyed Dragon)
Level 14: Sword Cyclone (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 17: Form of the Tempest (Rank 2, Gifts of the Storm)
Level 20: Eye of the Storm (Rank 2, Blade Beyond the Veil)
Level 23: Overdrive
Level 26:
Level 29:
Level 32:
Level 35: Fury of the Dragon (Rank 2, Real Ultimate Power)
Level 38:

Travel Powers:
Level 6: Athletics
Level 35:

Specializations:
Strength: Swole (3/3)
Strength: Physical Peak (3/3)
Strength: Quick Recovery (2/2)
Strength: Aggression (2/2)
Brawler: The Glory of Battle (3/3)
Brawler: No Escape (3/3)
Brawler: Penetrating Strikes (2/2)
Brawler: Offensive Expertise (2/2)
Warden: Fortified Gear (3/3)
Warden: Elusive (2/2)
Warden: Tenacious (2/2)
Warden: The Best Defense (3/3)
Mastery: Strength Mastery (1/1)

Some of the powers I was thinking about taking were
Parry for my block with Elusive Monk
Intensity (do i even need it?)
Masterful Dodge (again, would this help this build?)
Smoke Bomb Lunge with Sudden Strike (do i need this?)

So I am asking you experts for help and critiques please. If you have better ideas for me I am all ears, I am trying to learn the game better.....Thanks everyone!!

@DaSlaya

daslaya2012

Ok so I hit 23 last night and was not impressed with overdrive. So made some changes, and I can get used to it, however, I am looking for long utility in this toon, to make him stay survivable. He is ok for now.... hoping to get him better with your guys's help. So here are the changes:

1 Rain of Steel (advantages)
1 Smoke Bomb Lunge (advantages)
6 Night Warrior (Rank 2, Rank 3, Silent Running)
8 Conviction (Rank 2, Rank 3)
11 Storm's Harvest (Rank 2, Red-Eyed Dragon)
14 Form of the Tempest (Rank 2, Rank 3)
17 Sword Cyclone (Rank 2, Rank 3)
20 Eye of the Storm (Rank 2, Blade Beyond the Veil)
23 Molecular Self-Assembly


So i grabbed Smoke Bomb Lunge to help with MSA, as well as conviction, plus its nice to get more max HP. The problem i see now though, is that conviction takes a ton of energy to use, and I never seem to have enough energy when i need it in a pinch. Should I have stuck with Bountiful Chi Resistance or any other better recommendations? Again, not sure what to grab next, maybe Parry with Elusive Monk. Thoughts?

pugdaddy

Parry w/Elusive Monk is the best Block power for melee toons.
I would make Dex primary and take the dodge/avoid specs. Also, find a +avoid piece of primary defense gear and put a +dodge lucky gamblers gem on it.

swedsandbro

I'd switch out Storm's Harvest for Dragon's Wrath (The rush buff is what you're after. Cost discount and energy over time), take out all ranks from your form (Never needed), Maybe take the Butcher's Blade adv. for Sword cyclone (For an AoE killer to use from stealth) and think about picking up the following powers: Evasive maneuvers with adv. (Aggro wipe and Dodge buff), Masterful dodge (Oh ****!-power), BCR obviously and maybe something to restealth, like smoke bomb.

kelbornx

Here's my Dual Blade build, just with Night Warrior subbed in place of Way of the Warrior:

PowerHouse (Link to this build)

Name: Dual Blade DPS - Night Warrior

Archetype: Freeform

Super Stats:
Level 6: Dexterity (Primary)
Level 10: Intelligence (Secondary)
Level 15: Constitution (Secondary)

Talents:
Level 1: The Fist
Level 6: Martial Focus
Level 9: Physical Conditioning
Level 12: Body and Mind
Level 15: Relentless
Level 18: Acrobat
Level 21: Coordinated

Powers:
Level 1: Rain of Steel
Level 1: Night Warrior (Rank 2, Rank 3, Silent Running)
Level 6: Form of the Tempest
Level 8: Eye of the Storm (Rank 2, Blade Beyond the Veil)
Level 11: Dragon's Wrath (Rank 2, Tiger's Courage)
Level 14: Smoke Bomb Lunge (Sudden Strike, Nailed to the Ground)
Level 17: Parry (The Elusive Monk)
Level 20: Bountiful Chi Resurgence (Rank 2, Resurgent Reiki)
Level 23: Masterful Dodge
Level 26: Molecular Self-Assembly
Level 29: Ego Surge (Rank 2, Nimble Mind)
Level 32: Sword Cyclone (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 35: Evasive Maneuvers (Sleight of Mind)
Level 38: Resurgence

Travel Powers:
Level 6: Athletics (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 35: Teleportation

Specializations:
Dexterity: Combat Training (2/3)
Dexterity: Gear Utilization (3/3)
Dexterity: Deadly Aim (3/3)
Dexterity: Expose Weakness (2/2)
Warden: Fortified Gear (3/3)
Warden: Ruthless (2/2)
Warden: Elusive (2/2)
Warden: The Best Defense (3/3)
Vindicator: Aggressive Stance (2/2)
Vindicator: Merciless (3/3)
Vindicator: Focused Strikes (3/3)
Vindicator: Modified Gear (2/2)
Mastery: Dexterity Mastery (1/1)


If you're stacking Dodge, I would definitely go with BCR/RR over Conviction. Conviction is a good heal, but it's very costly. BCR is cheap, and RR heals you every time you dodge. With Parry (The Elusive Monk) and dodge gear, you should be dodging a lot. Not as much as a WotW build, but enough. With a enough Cooldown Reduction you can stack BCR/RR, too.

Dragon's Wrath is a better single target ability than Storm's Harvest. DW gives you the Rush buff on full charge. Rush gives you a cost discount to your melee powers, and gives you energy every second. The duration is 1 sec per stack of Focus on you. Basically you want to tap-spam this until you get 5+ stacks of Focus, then full charge for Rush, tap-spam till Rush is about to expire, refresh the buff, etc etc.

Eye of the Storm vs Sword Cyclone: I take both, but I take them at different times. EotS is a "defensive AoE", which is perfect for leveling so I take it early. SC is big damage AoE which is great for fleshing out a build at the end. It also costs a LOT more than EotS. The Butcher's Blades advantage turns it into a charge, but the full charge cost is pretty ridiculous, so I left it as a maintain.

Smoke Bomb Lunge and MSA: These two work perfect together. The advantages on the Lunge are both great to have. NttG is a must have to PvP, and somewhat useful in PvE. Sudden Strike gives you +15% Crit Severity to your next crit... which is a pretty awesome buff. It doesn't state the internal cooldown, but it's something like 8 seconds or so.

Other skills: Masterful Dodge, Resurgence, Ego Surge, Evasive Maneuvers. Active Defenses and Offenses. MD is the "best" Active Defense right now, and with SS CON Resurgence is very nice too. The Nimble Mind advantage on Ego Surge gives you 6% crit chance, +1% per 10 points of CON. We have SS CON. This will be a huge crit buff. You could also take Intensity (+STR/DEX), Lock N' Load (6% crit chance, 25% cost discount) or Ice Sheathe (+17% crit severity, chance to apply Chill) if you don't like Ego Surge. Evasive Maneuvers gives a dodge buff, and the advantage gives it a 50% chance to wipe your threat. Very useful.

Super Stats: DEX, INT, CON. Pretty much everything in Martial Arts scales off of DEX. We want high DEX to scale The Elusive Monk on Parry and Focus from Form of the Tempest. INT fuels MSA, reduces the high costs of Dragon's Wrath and Sword Cyclone, and helps reduce the cooldown on BCR (since you can stack the heal and RR buff). CON because, well, we're melee DPS here. If you pull aggro some cushioning is never bad. It also fuels the crit on Nimble Mind.

Specializations: Basic DPS specs. The chosen specializations maximize your damage and add survivability. You can swap Expose Weakness in DEX with Evasion for more Avoidance if you wish (probably a good idea since this build has NW instead of WottW). Fortified Gear increases your Defense, The Best Defense turns your +Defense into +Offense, and Aggressive Stance turns 20% of your Offense into Defense... which loops with The Best Defense into more Offense. This gives you both a high Defense and Offense score. Modified Gear also helps fuel Aggressive Stance. As a general rule, Vindicator > Brawler/Avenger unless you're making a very specialized build. You get more crit severity in Vindicator and more raw damage through the Aggressive Stance/The Best Defense loop. DEX Mastery because the other options are useless for this build.

Gear: While leveling try and keep your stats even in the gear. Slot crit into Primary Offense, Dodge into Defense, and Cost Discount into Utility.

At 40:
(primary)
Heroic Gloves of Precision - DEX/DEX/Crit
Heroic Breastplate of Agility - DEX/CON/Dodge
Heroic Helmet of Utility - DEX/INT/Cost Discount
(secondary)
Acute (DEX/Crit) until enough Questionite for: Vigilante's Critical Belt (Crit/Primary SS (DEX))
Acrobatic (DEX/CON)
Cunning (DEX/INT)

This gives you high DEX, with moderate CON/INT. You want to shoot for ~300 DEX, ~150 CON/INT, or a similar ratio. When you get higher rank mods obviously those numbers will be higher.

If you don't know, at 40 you can do daily missions for UNITY (that reset at 5pm server time) for a total of 18 Silver Champion's Recognition per day. Plus 2 from the Alert Daily (GRAB the Money and Run atm; Harmon Labs, etc). Each Heroic piece costs 35, so you can get geared out in 3 days. No need to buy the pieces from other players unless you're really lazy.

daslaya2012

Thank you all for the help and this betters my understanding of the game more. I figure once I can get one toon, all set up and to 40 I can then build more more efficiently. Hence enhancing the fun times! I am reworking the build now with all the suggestions, and will see how it all turns out. For my final question, what role should i be playing this guy in, with a similar build to that above? Hybrid or something else, this is one aspect of the game that still confuses me a bit, at least how to efficiently maximize my guys, thanks!

kelbornx

You would want to be in the Melee Damage role. +25% melee damage and your Super Stats reduce your threat generation. Unless you rely heavily on self healing (such as Lifedrain or Devour Essence), Hybrid role isn't too useful for a DPS.