I’m a member of a small guild (6 members) on Sarlona, Heros of the Dragon’s Wrath (yes, I know, it’s mispelled – don’t get me started!).
Due to the various times the members play, some of us have ended up with characters further ahead then other members. It’s made playing together a bit more problematic – which is annoying.
So I’ve suggested to the other guild members that we create a static group, we all agree to only play when everybody else is around and try and play at least once a week. So far everyone thinks it’s a good idea. The trouble is we’re having problems deciding what the class structure should be.
My initial thoughts were 1 dps, 1 healer, 1 caster, 1 rogue (all that xp for traps!) – but what about the other 2 spots? I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts!
grimordes blog 
Something that can take damage and something that can do ranged damage?
definitely a bard for a static group! 2 tank type dps will be good since there will quest where the 6 of you have to split up.
My thoughts? Any 6 strong players will work 95% of the time.
A static group won’t work if everyone’s got a class they enjoy but one person’s stuck in a role they don’t like. For example, while I play FvS like an arcane, I would hate being stuck in the arcane spot in a static group as it just wouldn’t be as fun. Take whatever you guys enjoy playing most, put it all together, shake well and see what you end up with and tweak as necessary. If you’re uncomfortable with dodging traps or having no healer or caster/CC, make those changes or make up for it in other areas. If you’re a solid group and don’t plan on raiding/epic play a bard or even a wand whipper will be fine for healing. Learning to go without can really strengthen your play style and future builds.
going to suggest a possible unusual party build. been playing quite awhile and have come to conclusion that lot of what people are to scared or ignorant to try out something out of the box even if its by far superior. this is based alot around getting from builds what equip cant.
-1 high hp character with good dps, the high hp is the important point here but cant be to bad dps.
-blitz 12fight6barb2rog or a 18pala/2monk.
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=264744
the 18pala/2monk is such a obvious build dont know any good thread for it
-or a healing amp build 12pala/7monk/1rog
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=238298
this is not someting im very experinced in chosing so toke 3 of the most famous on the forums builds. all three are wellknown and generally accepted as great builds
you want a couple of verstile character that can do some dps a large amount of mini-max dps toons are not a good idea unless u run raids nonestop and nothing else and not really then either.
1 multibard in here makes the whole melee team run smother.
-id suggest 1 battle warforged sorc 16sorc2monk2fighter this means 1 dps that selfheals.
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=181901&highlight=healing+amp&page=6
not really uptodate on these after last sorc PrE changes but 1 of these buggers in the team is never a wrong thing
-1battle bard in a 6man party the bard should be pretty heavy multiclass. id suggest 12fighter8bard im very experinced when it comes to bards made over 7 of them to cap different multis and know what im talking about here but the 16bard2rog2fighter is a nice choice also but does not offer as much in a 6man thats more of a raid bard. best possible build … who knows its very very good though.
-1battle fvs cant go wrong here you could make a 18cleric/2fighter instead if you prefer both are great choices.
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=268346
-1caster wizard pure WF (sorc valid but much much harder to equip wizard being a 2of10 and sorc being 8of10)
so now we have
-battle sorc tukaw WF 16sorc/2rog/2monk
-battle bard 12fight/8bard advantge of lot of fighter lvls is that it can take agro otherwise your going to rely to much on sneak attack.
-battle fvs sole surivor 20fvs str build
-1tank gave 3 options here
blitz, abomination 18pala/2monk, solar phoenix 12pala/6monk/2rog best if WF race.
-1caster wizard WF lvl20wiz or 18wiz2rog
-last slot should have rogue skills unless your wiz is 2rog. bit to tired to make a good suggestion on possible build here
very far oftrack from the standard party but in 99% of the game content this party will
die less
complete much faster
use less resources
not to meantioning all of the builds being very fun to play.
While I’d agree, that what matters most is that you enjoy the group first and foremost, like everyone, I have some preferences of my own :3.
First off, while a healer is a given, I’d consider scrapping the rogue – if you just want a trapmonkey, wizard with 2 rogue levels (or even just one, should you be so inclined, as this will help him get the important spells earlier) should be able to handle any traps you encounter as wizards tend to run skyrocketing INT and with that, skillpoints to burn (and DDO’s skill system doesn’t limit you to half max skill value on crossclass skills, that are class skills for one of your character’s other classes, confusing as that may sound). This means your caster wouldn’t pack as much of a punch and their CC would be a bit more easily resisted, but it saves you a character spot, which, I believe, is all kinds of awesome.
As for the bard, you have 2 choices, essentially – warchanter or spellsinger (apparently virtuoso is great in epic content having one of the few CCs in the game, that reliably land in there). Spellsinger, as the name implies, mainly augments the group’s spellcasting ability, which is nice, but melee is more efficient in most of the current content. Therefore, I’d say, that the main benefit of running a spellsinger bard is the fact, that with a bit of forethought, it’s respeccable to virtuoso, which is golden for epics (or, again, so I am told, as an avid altoholic, I’ve never realy gotten into epics). Warchanter on the other hand would require a heart of wood (dedicated warchanter builds generally run gimp charisma, often splashing into melee classes – especially fighter for free traits) if you want to respec him, but most likely it’ll let you tear through nonepic mobs with a melee heavy group.
So, if you want to hit epics someday, I’d prolly go with: heals, trapwiz, sorc, spellsinger, 2xdps
For balls-out brawling: heals, trapwiz, warchanter, 3xdps
An interesting twist would be to roll a WF-only group, eliminating the need for a standard healer and letting you swap it out for an extra arcane (preferrably sorc), meaning you will NOT run out of healing – the downside here is that you may have some trouble rezzing, so be sure that at least one of your DPSes is a paladin or lightmonk to avoid the shrine trips or, worse yet, playing with a crippled group if you have no shrine unlocked (high UMD scores on the trapwiz and everyone with a decent CHA score would be welcome too, as a way to use the rez scrolls) – as a matter of fact, a lightmonk would really shine in the caster heavy group thanks to the SP cost reduction move…
As an afterthought, I thought I’d explain the thinking behind the diffrent group setups a little more:
As it stands, it looks a bit like the group setup should depend on what PrE the bard choses to take. Funnily enough, that’s actually true, more or less – diffrent bard prestiges specialize in augmenting diffrent types of characters, but you shouldn’t need more than one bard, meaning you’ll want to get the most out of that one guy’s buffing. So, what’s with the 2 DPS in the spellsinger group? Since the group has no rogue, you’d end up very light on physical damage without them – and obviously, the most reliable tactic in this game is “bash it until it dies”. The same logic, both in terms of fully exploiting the bard and the overall utility of melee, is the obvious underlying theme of the warchanter group – counting the bard himself (as a well built warchanter can do DPS on par with an unbuffed DPS toon) you get 4 DPS characters, all of them nicely boosted (here’s a thought – a lot of warchanter’s DPS boosting comes from increasing damage dealt per hit. Now, while a warchanter usually goes with twohanded as they’re lighter on feats, you may want to encourage others to run monk/TWF builds as they’ll benefit considerably more).
The WF variant does not in fact offer any considerable increase in raw firepower despite the extra sorc. Instead, the point is, now every arcane in your group (except for the bard :d) is a healer. While, as I’ve mentioned earlier, it means more healing SP for the group, that’s just one of the benefits. The other is redundancy – when in most groups the healer goes down, others often follow suit. In this case? Not so much, as you’ve always got backup. Furthermore, the new sorc PrEs are very element specific meaning inherent difficulties in some quests (IE fire sorc and Enter the Kobold). With this setup, you’ll be able to alternate between the character fixing people from quest to quest to make sure the arcane who would find most monsters in the area resistant or immune to his abilities is still put to a good use. This means, that the spellsinger option might actually be the more interesting one for a WF group even though 3 of your casters take a -2 racial hit to their casting stat, as it simply takes the whole idea further.
Just wanted to say – thank you for all the info. You guys have given me a lot to think about! Some great ideas there 🙂
On the WF party thread, how about 3 arcanes, say 2 savants (air and fire? covers all bases and their damage output is good)and wiz with a hint of rogue.
Then a bard perhaps. Bards are a bit of a mystery to me.
A sword&board tank to get good intimidation and a dps melee.
I suppose the tank could be a paladin and the dps could be monk, then theres two in the party that can resurrect WF.
For a regular party…. 6 Pale Masters. For a raid… 12 Pale Masters. Just make sure a couple can UMD a raise dead scroll and it’s a perfect party.
Behold the moving ball of death.
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