New Player Confusion

prophecy174 · February 2017

Howdy everyone! I am a new player to Neverwinter, but a semi veteran to MMO's. That being said, I am finding the game to be quite confusing and frustrating. Long story short, my little brother and I are wanting to run with just our two man team. We were having difficulties figuring out which classes to play, ones that would compliment each other. We had narrowed it down to one being a Great Weapons Fighter or Trickster Rogue, and the other being a Devoted Cleric or Oathbound Paladin. We tried, for two weeks, to find comprehensive guides and/or builds for said classes. We could barely understand about 1/4 of the information found. We decided to go ahead and try GWF paired with a OP. I found a decent guide for a Dev OP, but also found a compendium for OP. The only issue is that some of the information seems to be out of date. And possibly pre-nerf. Is the info still relevant? What has changed? And is the build guide a good solo/two man army Paladin?

Paladin Compendium:
http://mmominds.com/2015/11/24/sharpedges-pve-paladin-compendium-m8-devprot/

Paladin Dev/DPS Guide:
http://mmominds.com/2016/06/21/mod-9-devotiondps-paladin-build-neverwinter/

dupeks · February 2017

I'll jump in here and say: specific builds aren't that important until you hit lvl 70 and start doing "hard" end-game content. I also recommend going on the Auction House and getting a Dragonbone, Ancient Mulhorand, or Ensorcelled Mulhorand weapon. These will scale up as you level and are generally pretty powerful but nowadays relatively affordable.

That said, if you want an easy solo-duo-friendly build for a Dev-OP I suggest Becky's
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1225403/doing-it-all-wrong-devop-easy-mode-for-soloing

You can find a couple other build ideas in the OP Class Forum:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/categories/the-citadel

For GWF, the Lia Knowles' PvE SM Destroyer build is probably the way to go:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/551091/mod-10-lia-knowles-gwf-destroyer-dps-for-pve-build/p1

And the associated GWF Class Forum:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/categories/the-militia-barracks

fatkidhatchets · February 2017

I main a Devoted OP. I tell everyone there are 8 different ways to build every character. Build how you enjoy.

What most people fail at when making a character is actually gearing up and selecting their proper companion and friends. These play a huge role in your characters ability to function in the game. I generally recommend an Augment Companion to start, this companion will give you 100% of its stats. This will allow you to adventure fairly easily especially if you gear him up. As you go, save your diamonds and refinement points for the all mystical Bonding Runestones. So many people still don't know about these or how powerful they truely are. Bonding runestones change the game, once you get Rank 10 (you can switch at rank 9 also, but I waited till 10) you will stop using your augment companion. I recommend the Will o Wisp to everyone. The 25% control Resist and 15% control bonus is hard to compete with if you understand deminishing returns. It also is a 2 offense, 1 defense, 3 ring slot companion. At this point you will also want to be sure ou are using Protectors Comraderie on your mounts. The buffs from all of this will give you enough power/crit/defense to blow your way through most things. And of course as you progress, you will improve the companions gear and enchantments giving yourself even more of a buff.

A properly built companion is worth more than getting your artifacts, neck, belt, and weapons to legendary/mythic. it looks like a daunting task when you see its cost, but once you get them, you have them and life goes alot smoother from there.

armadeonx · February 2017

+1 for the Lia Knowles GWF build. You're right that the Paladin has gone through a lot of changes in the past year but these were mostly aimed at the Protection path.

Becky's build is a solid way forward but there's always the opportunity to tweak later on with respec tokens - you get a free one when you complete one of the campaigns. It's more important to get the race and the initial ability score roll right as they are more expensive to correct.

However if you're looking for a pally with good solo ability you're better going with the protection path. Unlike the traditional tank, the prot pally tank by going heavily into a dps focus as it's main defence is temporary health. The harder you hit, the more you generate.

Understanding stat point allocation is crucial to all classes and you should be aware that when you look at your stats screen, you can scroll down and see a lot more.

Armor Pen is often misunderstood by new players but it works like this:

All players and enemies have a DR (damage reduction) stat that reduces the amount of incoming damage they receive. This is countered by RI (resistance ignored). So if your enemy has a DR stat of 50% they will negate half of all incoming damage unless the attacker has points in RI. To hit the enemy for full effect you'd need your RI to be -50.01%.

If you're RI is too low, you'll increase your DPS output more by putting points here than putting them in power or crit.

The highest DR you're likely to encounter is 60% which is on Tiamat (I'm not sure on the SKT bosses) but you won't come across anything higher, so both of you should aim for -60.01% RI.

Resistance Ignored is increased via ability scores (on some classes), armor penetration and RI boons. Your companion can also give you a boost but without high level Bonding Runestones equipped you won't get a lot.

Armor Pen increases RI at just under 100 pts AP to 1% RI
Defence increases DR at 400 pts to 1%
Recovery is 200 pts to 1% though only the pally should put points here, the GWF doesn't need it. Recovery does 2 things: Reduces the cooldown time on encounters, and increases Action Point gain which speeds up how quickly your Daily charges.

sundance777 · February 2017

The game is fairly confusing. There is a wiki to help look things up but really most of the game seems like a figure it out yourself or ask someone else that already did that: http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Neverwinter_Wiki

If you want the quick character solution method, copy a build. I did not do that on my first couple of characters and while I had to progress a bit through the school of hard knocks, I enjoy my first two characters way more than those that I used a build guild from the start. Rather than read a build guild, read what all the powers and feats do and think about how to pair them together to get the desired results.

https://nwcalc.com/ has a nice little UI to help figure out where you would put points, although the tool is a bit outdated, I still use it now and then to look at some of the basics.

hopeless02 · April 2017

Never got a handle on the Paladin healing aura it only got better once i got that healing encounter power to back up the daily laying on hands!

As long as your fighting stance isn't glitches I'd say either a warlock or guardian fighter and a cleric might work better.

Still as long as you're having fun is more important!

New Player Confusion

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