[CLASS BUILD] The Rauatai Captain (party buffing paladin tank)

[SimpleEnigma]

Like any proper aumaua Halgrim sought after the secrets and art of war. Since a child begged for books on battles, fighting styles, great generals... anything remotely related to war and the men who fought in them. Once an adult the military quickly recruited him. Halgrim was not the fastest or strongest aumaua, but his military knowledge and intelligence was surpassed by only the top ranks of the Rauatai military. However unlike most in Rauatai, his true passion veered towards land warfare instead of naval combat. Placed into the infantry officer program he quickly mastered the battle theory taught by his superiors. In fact on a few occasions he challenged the theory taught, bringing in references from battles no aumaua was within leagues of.

 

Fed up with his clamoring for more training while ignorantly slighting his instructors, Halgrim's commander came up with a shrewd plan. Pulling some favors the Rauatai army allowed for Halgrim to join the paladin order Shieldbearers of St. Elcga, with the condition that the army could recall Halgrim at any moment of need. Learning under the storied order was a dream come true for Halgrim while his commanders hoped the order's legendary control and tact would sink in him as much as their battle acumen.

 

Always eager to learn, Halgrim volunteered for an assignment to travel to Defiance Bay to report on the deteriorating political climate in the city. He hoped that he would get a chance to learn about the Saints War. Especially how it ended - there was no way it ended from blowing up a god... right?

 

 

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The Rauatai Captain

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Difficulty: Hard v. 2.03

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Class: Paladin

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Race: Coastal Aumaua (Any tanky race will work)

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Background: Rauatai - Scholar

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Stats:

 

MIG: 15

CON: 9

DEX: 10 

PER: 15 

INT: 17

RES: 12

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Abilities/Talents (a=auto, !=important, r=recommended):

Faith and Conviction(a)

Lay on Hands(!)

Zealous Focus®

Flames of Devotion(!)

Inspiring Triumph®

Sworn Enemy

Righteous Soul

Sacred Immolation®

 

Deep Faith(!)

Shielding Touch(!)

Shielding Flames(!)

Weapon Focus: Soldier®

Critical Focus

Weapon and Shield Style

Two-Handed Style

 

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Items (! = essential, r = recommended):

 

Weapon set 1: Shatterstar® or Godansthunyr® with Outworn Buckler(!)

Weapon Set 2: The Hours of St. Rumbalt®

 

Boots: Fulvano's Boots

 

Head: The Pilgrim's Last Vigil

 

Armor: Heldrik's Coat®

 

Neck: Ruphec's Watchful Cloak

 

Belt: Broad Belt of Power

 

Rings: Snerf's Folly® Ring of Wonder®

 

Hands: Pilferer's Grip®

 

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Greetings! This is a shameless copy of Boeroer's class build template. This is also the maturation of a build idea I posted earlier. The main idea of this build is to leverage the Shieldbearer specific talents to create a Paladin tank that makes his allies tankier. With this build, FoD, LoH, and killing blows by the paladin will grant his allies in range more defense plus another defense bonus from Outworn Buckler. Since our captain wants to get last hits he needs to have respectable offensive capabilities. For this reason this build will work much better as the player character - we depend on Faith and Conviction (further enhanced by Deep Faith) to shore up our tanky stats. I am currently progressing through Hard difficulty - and despite being new to Hard difficulty this this guy is having a smoother time than some of my Normal characters.

 

This build is focused around triggering the defensive auras as much as possible, keeping them up as long as possible, and affecting the whole team with the buffs. Because of this Int is our most important stat. I use Perception to help buff the paladin's accuracy and by mid game to reliably crit. The secondary objective of this build is to prone enemies with Godansthunyr and The Hours of St. Rumbalt. All the defensive buffs help your back line deal with those inevitable jerks that run straight past your tanks. This also allows your other tanks to build for more damage (for instance I have Eder dual wielding sabres right now). Keep in mind that all the defensive buffs in this build do NOT affect the paladin so make sure you can survive.

 

The ideal way to start off an engagement with the captain is to have him last hit a weak mob with FoD right off the bat. This gives two of the buffs at the start of the fight and should last long enough to kill any high damage enemies or those that escaped through the front line. Swap between 1H&S and 2H as needed to maintain a good balance of tankiness and damage.

 

While I was originally only aiming for INT and PER, once you get all the accessories this build should be able to pass nearly all the mental mind checks in the dialog. For those looking for that holy grail of effective in combat and a strong conversationalist out of their main character - this is the closest I have come up with.

[Boeroer]

Nice!

 

And also nice template.

 

I had a similar idea with a quick switching Island Aumaua with arquebuses+FoD and a Kind Wayfarer who heals and buffs defenses. But I never played with that and never put it on paper. Cool that you did.

 

Two questions:

 

It is still the case that Inspiring Triumph stacks with Shielding Touch, but not Shielding Flames (or was it the other way round? One of those did not stack with the others, can't remember which). Torm51 wrote a bug report before 3.0 beta came out - maybe they fixed this?

It doesn't matter of course if they don't overlap all the time.

 

Remember that Pilferer's Grip's 10% armor recovery bonus did not stack with durgan reinforcement's bonus (sadly). This was also reported to Aarik and he put it in the bug database - don't know if they want to change this or if they already did.

[SimpleEnigma]

I just tested all 3 abilities together with the Outworn Buckler and as far as I can tell they all stack (a whopping +30 deflection and +12 to other defenses!). However just about any other defensive bonus will get overridden so choose your companions' talents carefully.

 

I did not know about the Pilferer's Grip/Durgan Steel issue though. In that case I'd probably go Bracers of Enduring or Bracers of Endless Rage. The low health pool from low constitution has him needing to rest more often than I'd like so I'm using gear to compensate for that. I'd probably do +int or +per for the armor enchant but I imagine the accessories you want will depend a lot on the party you have.

 

I thought of your quick switch paladin but all the weapon switching was a bit more micro than I wanted. If only you could program the AI to automatically do that. 

[Boeroer]

Great - thanks for the test. That's good news. Maybe they also altered the behaving of Pilferer's Grip then (which would make them way more powerful).

 

Yes - Quick Switch is a lot of micro. With a hotkey command one can reduce that a bit but it still requires you to pay a lot of attention to that quick-switch-guy.

Edited February 2, 2016 by Boeroer

[Mocker22]

For a character meant to buff party members I think coordinated attacks would be outstanding. I've never really cared for Sworn enemy, so that might be a good switch. Also Inspiring Triumph is iffy to me on a paladin. Its hard to reliably get killing blows on a pally. Liberating Exhortation could be quite nice here.

 

If this is for a main player character then I would drop Deep Faith. Its an extremely minor buff when compared to how much your getting from faith and conviction already. Also Critical Focus doesn't stack with the third level priest buff that enhanced hit to crit. If you want to increase your dps some to make sure you can get final blows then I would look at Intense Flames and/or Scion of Flame.

[SimpleEnigma]

Critical Focus can definitely be replaced by anything else. There's a good chance I won't even end up taking it myself. I like Deep Faith for the early game tankiness since the low constitution is most inconvenient then. Sworn Enemy is to help the paladin be more effective against bosses and such but is certainly swappable.

 

Inspiring Triumph is surprisingly easy to activate, just as long as you give your paladin a chance to last hit some squishy minion that seem to be thrown in most fights. Of the talents you listed this is the one I'd keep. I like your idea to replace critical Focus with intense flames and I'll probably update the build to reflect that.

[SimpleEnigma]

I recently beat the game with this build (pre WMII) and I made some optimizations (too bad I can't edit them in). First up St. Ydwen's Redeemer is awesome with this build. The Destroy Vessels makes for easy Inspiring Triumph procs plus of course the other goodies St. Ydwen brings. I also wore Sun-Touched Mail of Hyran Rath. Transitioned into more of an off tank as this build really needs an Eder type (and a ranger pet as well). Go with Intense Flames and Scion of Flame and your Sunbeams get pretty nasty. I also picked up Righteous Soul because disables are the worst. I didn't end up taking Sworn Enemy, Critical Focus, or Weapon & Shield style.

 

In the end this build worked best as tanky fiery ball of buffs. I did respectable damage while also having 2-3 defensive buffs up on my group most of the time. This build is best with a melee heavy party to soak up the buffs. Priests, Rogues, and Barbarians in particular like that extra tankiness to shield their frail souls. Also completely ignore the items in my original post as I didn't know that you couldnt stack the same stack bonuses. Instead I tried to get the highest stat boost across the board. Buff Constitution first because the low CON can lead to a lot of early game resting if you are tanking a lot.

 

I bet a tankier version of this build would work sticking with Outworn Buckler and going with plate armor like White Crest Armor.

 

Oh and this build can hit all RES/PER/INT convo checks with some proper resting and gear. (One thing I just realized - where are the Shieldbearer convo options? I think there are supposed to be 2 or 3 checks for them but I don't remember seeing any )

Edited February 26, 2016 by SimpleEnigma

[Boeroer]

Ah - nice idea with the Sun-Touched Mail - I should put that on Pallegina because with her special Sworn-Enemy-talent she's my Scion of Flame at the moment.

[SimpleEnigma]

Ah - nice idea with the Sun-Touched Mail - I should put that on Pallegina because with her special Sworn-Enemy-talent she's my Scion of Flame at the moment.

Towards the end of the game I realized Paladins make for pretty solid battlemages because of their high int and might. I bet there's a solid build out there for a paladin that focuses on fire spell items. Casting speed is quite lackluster though.

[Boeroer]

I do that with a chanter all the time because they also tend to have high MIG and INT. You can get 7 Fireballs per rest with the Sabre from the Endless Paths (Flames of Fair Rhian: 3/rest), Taluntain's Staff (3 per rest) and Curoc's Brand (1/rest). How many uses does the Mail have? Alltogether that's nice for a "Pyromancer" . And then there's also scrolls of course.

[SimpleEnigma]

I do that with a chanter all the time because they also tend to have high MIG and INT. You can get 7 Fireballs per rest with the Sabre from the Endless Paths (Flames of Fair Rhian: 3/rest), Taluntain's Staff (3 per rest) and Curoc's Brand (1/rest). How many uses does the Mail have? Alltogether that's nice for a "Pyromancer" . And then there's also scrolls of course.

The mail has 3 uses. I briefly added other items like molten shield and such but I ended up with so much stuff to cast I was hardly swinging my sword!

[hilfazer]

Also Critical Focus doesn't stack with the third level priest buff that enhanced hit to crit. If you want to increase your dps some to make sure you can get final blows then I would look at Intense Flames and/or Scion of Flame.

Are you sure? Critical Focus is a passive so it should stack with everything.

[AndreaColombo]

Are you sure? Critical Focus is a passive so it should stack with everything.

 

It counts as active because it's part of a modal.

[hilfazer]

Thanks. Didn't know it got changed.

[AndreaColombo]

^ to the best of my knowledge it was always like that?

 

I'll try and test later for the sake of safety.

[Elric Galad]

No it wasn't.

Passive talent added to active abilities count as passive for stacking purpose.

 

The best known example is inspiring liberation which stacks with any accuracy buff.

Greater frenzy mig and con stack with spell meanwhile frenzy mig and con don't.

 

I've always heard that critical focus does stack.

[Boeroer]

So why don't you guys just run a quick test so that we all know for sure?

[Elric Galad]

 

 

Remember that Pilferer's Grip's 10% armor recovery bonus did not stack with durgan reinforcement's bonus (sadly). This was also reported to Aarik and he put it in the bug database - don't know if they want to change this or if they already did.

 

I just realized that Pilferer's Grisp is useful when you wear Ryona's Breatsplate... as it is the only armor you can't durganize.

Edited February 26, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Boeroer]

Ha - true!