Melee 101

 

Suggested Skills for Melee Styles

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Many classes within the melee styles use similar skills, although some skills are more useful to say, a monk, than perhaps a fighter. Feel free to make your own judgment call on what skills will best serve you!

• Intimidate

Key Ability: Charisma
Plan to play defense during enemy encounters? Intimidate will aid you in drawing the attention of your enemies, so only invest in this if you'll be doing such a thing!

• Jump

Key Ability: Strength
DDO has active combat, so being able to jump high – which is exactly what investing skill points into Jump allows you to do – is incredibly useful! A general rule is that 10 points will do just fine.

• Balance

Key Ability: Dexterity
Enemies will often attempt to knock you down, and balance is important because while you're making friends with the floor, enemies are still attacking! The fighter class isn't a natural with the Balance skill; each skill point will only raise Balance by half, so keep that in mind.

• Tumble

Key Ability: Dexterity
Put at least one point into Tumble, otherwise your character won't be able to roll or side-step in combat – which is done by pressing "Shift" + a movement key.

• Concentration

Key Ability: Constitution
The monk relies on ki for special attacks, and concentration allows you to retain a higher base ki. Concentration also slows the rate at which your built-up ki dissipates. Tip! Intelligence affects how many skill points you get each level. While barbarians have many class skill options, it isn't necessary to have a high intelligence score, because you're going to want strength and constitution more than most other scores.

Suggested Feats

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In this section of Melee 101, we'll suggest some feats for the various classes that fall under this style of play. However, remember that these are merely suggestions, and that experimentation is always a good idea in DDO. 

Tip! Press the "C" key on your keyboard to open your character window. From here, click the "Feats" tab to see all the feats you get just for earning a new level in your class. These feats don't automatically set themselves in your hotbar!

Useful Feats for Any Melee Class

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Some feats are just plain useful! Melee classes can never go wrong with these feats:

• Toughness

Like a brick house, this feat boosts your survivability!
Increases your hit points, affording your character greater survivability. It never hurts to have additional health, even if you're playing a sturdy class like fighter or paladin! Tip! Toughness is useful initially, but where it really shines is opening up bonus Toughness enhancements that further increase your health quota.

• Power Attack

Using melee weaponry? Hit harder! Feel stronger!
Requires: Strength 13 (or higher)
When using Power Attack mode, you trade some accuracy (+5 attack bonus) for an equal amount of damage. Power Attack adds double the bonus to damage if you're using a two-handed weapon, although even if you're dual-wielding weapons, it's still a very worthwhile feat!

• Combat Expertise

Want to play defensively? Use this mode to trade accuracy for more of it!
Requires: Intelligence 13 (or higher)
While using Combat Expertise mode, you trade up to 5 of your attack bonus for the same amount of extra AC. Spells cost double spell points to cast when this mode is active. This is an essential feat for players who want their characters to have a high Armor Class, but note that this requires at least 13 Intelligence, which may require a sacrifice in other stats to get.

Fighter

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This class can use a wide variety of weapons, all sorts of shields, and the sturdiest of armors. They can also train in several more combat abilities than the other melee classes. Whether you want to wield one big weapon, two regular-sized weapons or sword-and-shield – the fighter can accommodate. 

Don't forget about useful feats for any melee style class.

• Two Handed Fighting

Swing a two-handed weapon into multiple foes, like a boss!
Requires: Strength 15 (or higher)
Increases the damage of glancing blows (regular attacks that strike multiple enemies) when wielding a two-handed weapon by 10%. Also grants a 3% chance for weapon effects to trigger on glancing blows.

• Two Weapon Fighting

Take this feat to feel like a dual-wielding, dragon-slaying machine.
Requires: Dexterity 15 (or higher)
Reduces the penalty for fighting with two weapons; increases the chance to produce off-hand attacks when fighting with two weapons (or as an unarmed monk) by 20% to 40%.

Barbarian

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Barbarians are able to absorb a good deal of damage, but that isn't their primary purpose. What barbarians do incredibly well in DDO is overwhelm their enemies with raw physical might. A barbarian using their rage feat can tear through almost any foe – armored or not. 

Don't forget about useful feats for any melee style class.

• Two Handed Fighting

Swing a two-handed weapon into multiple foes, like a boss!
Requires: Strength 15 (or higher)
Increases the damage of glancing blow attacks when wielding a two-handed weapon by 10% (from a base of 20% normal weapon damage). Also grants a 3% chance for weapon effects to trigger on glancing blows.

• Stunning Blow

Stun a foe, or two if you're dual-wielding!
Using this attack, you may stun the target for a few seconds. Some creatures may be immune to the stun effect. A successful Fortitude save negates this effect. (DC 10 + Str mod)

• Cleave

Swing your weaponry through a group of enemies!
Requires: Power Attack (feat)
Activate this ability to attack one or more enemies in an arc in front of you.

• Improved Critical: Slashing Weapons

Increase your chance to land a critical hit with slashing weapons!
Requires: Base Attack Bonus +8
Doubles the base critical hit threat range of any slashing weapon you use. This feat does not stack with item effects that double threat range like keen and impact.

Paladin

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Most people see a heavily-armored paladin and think, "Oh that class just gets attacked a lot." While it's true that a paladin can be built into one of DDO's most supreme defensive classes, they can also deign to smite evil with tenacious divine magic, really big weapons, or even dual-wielding weapons! 

Don't forget about useful feats for any melee style class.

• Extend Spell

Your beneficial paladin spells will last twice as long.
While this metamagic feat is active, spells with durations last twice as long, but they consume 10 additional spell points.

• Improved Critical: Slashing Weapons

Increase your chance to land a critical hit with slashing weapons!
Requires: Base Attack Bonus +8
Doubles the base critical hit threat range of any slashing weapon you use. This feat does not stack with item effects that double threat range like keen and impact.

Monk

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The monk is a guru of dodging attacks and dealing out large amounts of damage. Considered a somewhat advanced class by most players, the monk takes a fair amount of know-how about DDO and the D&D 3.5 rule set to truly master. Don’t let that scare you, though! Monks are a really fun class to play. 

Don't forget about useful feats for any melee style class.

• Luck of Heroes

Become more resilient against the dangers of Eberron!
You survive when no one expects you to come through. You receive a +1 to all saves. (ie Will, Reflex, & Fortitude).

• Two Weapon Fighting

Take this feat to feel like a dual-wielding, dragon-slaying machine. Punch dragons in the face with both hands.
Requires: Dexterity 15 (or higher)
Two hands, two handwraps – two weapons! Reduces the penalty for fighting with two weapons; increases the chance to produce off-hand attacks when fighting with two weapons (or as an unarmed monk) by 20% to 40%.

• Stunning Fist

Feel like a deadly ninja; stun foes with your bare hands!(Fists?)
Requires: Monk class
A swift unarmed attack to vulnerable areas that cause your target to be stunned for a short period of time.

Advanced Customization & Enhancements

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Tip! Enhancements are different than ability scores, skills, and feats; enhancements are never permanent choices. You may reset your chosen enhancements for free once a week has passed, or for a set amount of in-game currency at whatever time you prefer. 

If you need the basic run-down on enhancements, click here to read Character Stats 101! 

Enhancement suggestions are tricky because of their flexibility. When building any character in DDO, you should always be planning ahead. This advice applies to skills, feats, ability scores & enhancements. Here's a good example why: 

A player -- let's call him "Gary" -- wants to build himself a heavily-armored paladin variant. 

Sounds like a great idea! I'd highly suggest taking the Dodge feat, as it gives a +1 bonus to AC that stacks with all other bonuses to AC. However, there's a prerequisite (a requirement that must first be met) before Gary can take Dodge. The prerequisite is that Gary's character must have a Dexterity (Dex) score of 13. 

When making a new character remember to look at the ability score screen, because every even-numbered ability score increase (12, 14, 16, etc) raises your ability score modifier by +1. Unfortunately, because of this even-numbered +1 many new players assume that having an odd number (such as Dex 13) has no inherent value – this is untrue! 

For example, Dodge is a highly useful feat; it's possible to learn Dodge at level 1, but Dodge requires a Dex score of 13 or higher. If Gary wants Dodge, he's going to need that 13 Dex first! 

So how can Gary know this ahead of time? 

There’s a sorting option to show “unavailable,” during character creation and in-game on your character sheet (press "C" on your keyboard). By selecting this you can see all the character abilities yet to come – whether you qualify or not.