The Dungeon Master: The Artificer Class

If you have been living under a rock you may not have noticed that the newest update has hit the live servers of Dungeons and Dragons Online. Naturally, I bought the currently-pay-only Artificer class and created an elf artificer that is based on the mighty repeating crossbow. After the first couple of dungeons, I noticed one thing that stuck with me till the end – the new class is a pretty power-playing class. At least, that is what I have noticed from it in my build that I did. The build focuses on the crossbow and supporting it. My feats were selected to maximize crossbows, and are support by healing spells and/or buffing spells. Let’s not forget my little Iron Defender – the first pet available in DDO – you get as an Artificer. He handles the tanking aspect of battle. This combination is quite the power full one. As of this posting – knocks on wood – I haven’t died once. In some dungeons the pitiful monsters haven’t even scratched my armor!

Pew, Pew on you!

The prestige enhancement you get as an Artificer, there’s another treat. Gaining a bonus to confirm critical hits, add to that the fact that the same bonus applies to the critical damage you do is quite a perk considering that critical damage with a crossbow is high itself. Gotta love synergy. Also available is an ability called ‘Endless Fusillade.’ This ability turns your crossbow into a gatling gun. Enabling the humble crossbow to reload itself instantly so you can fire continuously.

Oh, and that pet system I just mentioned, awesome. Your Iron Defender has its own enhancements. I made my Iron Defender a tank using his enhancements to add Intimidate, more armor, damage reduction and to generate additional threat. Not interested in outsourcing tanking duties? Other enhancements enable your metallic friend to generate less threat or do sneak attack damage, creating viable bonus DPS specializations. Supportive choices include Trip and Sunder. To that I would say take Trip, because Sunder makes the armor class go down but Trip makes the guy fall over and not attack which is quite the good thing. Mainly a personal choice.

I do believe they made the new class a bit overpowered, possible to the detriment of the Rogue class. The Artificer can also use the skills Open Lock and Disable Device, can take a better a beating than a rogue, can use repeating crossbows from the start and that metallic buddy is worth a second nod. Combined, those abilities mat put the rogue class out of a job and less desirable overall.

This is coming from a rogue player: I’d rather be an artificer then a rogue now!

What say you, dungeon crawlers?

1 Comment

  1. Nice article ^^
    I’ve only got one comment against: As of this posting – knocks on wood – I haven’t died once. You can die if someone is stupid enough to call the whole dungeon to you.

    Maybe would be nice for some people to know that the pet is like a hireling and can carry your soulstone.

    I’m looking forward to see more about DDO soon. Thanks for covering DDO again on lorehound :)

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