Jarlhen

Cipher and Chanter are a fair bit ahead of all the other classes. Rangers and paladins are a fair bit behind. Then everyone else kind of ends up in the middle. The big problem to me is that ranger and paladin are just two pointless classes outside of RP. Then it's weird that Cipher and Chanter are so damn good. Cipher especially. But I think most other classes are pretty solidly balanced. Monk certainly isn't bad, monks are very good actually. No, paladin and then ranger are the big issues to me.

I feel that the flaming sword ability should be an AoE if it's only going to be used 2x per battle. Secondly, the paladin needs something that results in passive damage increase bonuses. For instance, the boosts to the flaming sword ability could be made permanent. 25% corrode damage is in no way, shape, or form overpowered or unbalanced. Just give them some talents or something that adds a natural damage increase. Or perhaps an increase in attack speed or lower the recovery penalty from armor. As it stands literally every single class is capable of more damage than the paladin. Hell, changing the focused enemy ability to encounter instead of rest would be enough. Monks and barbarians naturally do more damage. Fighters need only pick one or two and they're out-damaging the paladin. Ciphers, chanters, wizards and priests all have spells that do more damage than the paladin. But if they're given the same equipment as the paladin, for instance a 2her, they'll do the same damage just auto-attacking. Rogues and rangers do more damage as well, talents or not. The buffs that the paladin brings aren't that good either. I mean, they're not bad, it's just that priests and druids are both capable of more damage and have better buffs than the paladin. There is no reason other than RP to bring a paladin. It is, without a doubt, the only pointless class in the game right now. And that's tremendously frustrating as I love the paladin from an RP point of view. And I feel as if only a few small changes would bump them up enough to at least be middle of the pack. By taking a sub-par damage dealer and combining it with a mediocre buffer you do not get a good all-arounder. You get a sub-par damage dealer capable of mediocre buffs. And why on earth does the paladin start with lower accuracy than the fighter? Make the paladin really accurate and at least his hits would be hard. I just feel as if the class is lacking substantially. It's like all the pieces are there but they're scattered. Putting a few of them in place would push the class up to be far more reasonable.

Because dexterity influences your attack speed. Higher attack speed means more Carnage. So you'll do more damage to numerous people faster. Perception gives you deflection and interrupt, both which are good. But, assuming you don't dump perception, high dex means attacking faster which means exponentionally more interrupt attacks regardless of perception. Deflection is nice, but it's more of a tanky stat. So it comes down to: Do you want to do damage or do you want to prevent it? As a damage barbarian it seems reasonable that you want to do damage. But you might not want to dump perception if you're concerned.

In my experience anything but maxed resolve/perception is a waste of stats outside of conversations. In other words, I find it it's far more necessary to min/max in this game than in other games. A few points in deflection will do next to nothing for your survivability. It's all out or nothing at all. As a barbarian I just take the endurance talent and if they kill me even when I'm using that they would have killed me no matter what. It's a bit unfortunate, but I see no reason to try and balance things in this game. The only reason I don't dump half my stats to 3 is for conversations and RP reasons. ETA. I say necessary, but I don't mean that you have to min/max or you'll fail. It's perfectly viable to run through this game with 13 or 14 or whatever in every single stat. It's just that other than conversations there's not really any point to it.

At this stage I've been running my barbarian for awhile. I just pumped might/dex/int high. That's pretty much all you need and you're golden. Now I'm pondering a paladin instead

This was for that fire quest, right? Because it was weird to me. I would have expected to get some kind of loot for a fight like that. Got nuffin!

I'd like to hear your justification for upping con to 18 on your paladin build? I'm also wondering why you'd dump int on your barbarian? Carnage is a huge part of their DPS output. And again, con. I'd like to hear the actual numbers you get with 18 con compared to 10 at say lvl 7 or 10 or whatever. Justification makes it sound like I'm calling you out, that's not the case. It's more of a friendly question.

A lot of people are running monks with a one hander, shield and heavy armor. The issue is twofold. A, you can't enchant or upgrade your fists. Yes, they get a bit better on their own over time, however they're still inferior to weapons. B, monks need wounds to do... well anything. And to balance the amount of damage you take it's much easier to just slap on heavy armor and a shield. Now, I'm not saying that it's the right way to go. I'm saying a lot of people do it. I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't, but to me the monk is a bit poorly designed. I get that Obsidian wants to give people choices and all that. But the truth is that it's not always a great thing. That said, the monk is capable of some serious DPS. They also work as tanks. Overall it's an amazing class, in a really good state when it comes to numbers. It's just that wearing full plate, sword and shield seems a bit weird on a monk yet here it's not only viable it's downright pretty good.

I'm really not sure about blooded. Maybe you need to be a better player than me but if I'm below 50% that means I'm going to die within the next five seconds or I'm going to be healed to full within the next two. That 50% bonus might kick in for one or two strikes and then that's kind of it. Perhaps once you hit higher levels it's different, but at lvl <6 it's utterly pointless for me to waste a talent on it.

Having pondered a bit more I've concluded that constitution is utterly pointless. At lvl 4 I'm at 96 endurance with 10 con and 114 with 16. That's pretty much half a hit's worth of HP. You do lose a larger amount health, but that's hardly as important (used the console to test btw, so if there's any oddities with that that might explain it). It does push up your fortitude to 64 compared to 52, however, that number isn't going to do that much for you. Remember, Brute Force ATTACKS the enemie's fortitude, you're still using your crappy accuracy. So to me constitution is utterly pointless.

Having messed around with paladins a bit now I'm not entirely sure if they're that bad. Since most abilities/talents for the paladin are supportive you can freely grab a weapon style, weapon focus, bloodlust, savage attack (grap the +accuracy aura earlier and you'll be fine). It's not going to be very exciting but I find it hard to see how paladin DPS is that bad. It seems like it's largely lacking in AoE. For instance: Flames of whatever: 100% weapon damage (+25% corrosive/flame with talent, nto sure if they stack, 2/encounter) Aura of accuracy: +6 accuracy Weapon focus: +6 accuracy Weapon style: 1.15x damage Bloody slaughter: 20% hits to crits +0.5 crit damage Savage attack: 1.2x damage, -5 accuracy Sworn enemy: 1.2x damage +15 accuracy (3/rest) This is just off the top of my head. Since paladins get great defenses by themselves you're free to take the general offensive talents without really sacrificing anything. I'm not sure if the same can be said of for instance barbarians. Paladins are lacking in options though, they really are. It's pretty clear that they're designed to tank and support. But I think it's possible to build them to do acceptable damage too though. Just, if you build a barbarian the same way he'll do it to 5 enemies at once. And a monk will do it three times over plus have good offensive AoE and CC abilities. Essentially paladins just seem a bit meh rather than outright blah.

I'm really unsure as to how the damage is calculated. I'm almost positive I've seen carnage hits almost as high as the normal hits. I also know that carnage can miss. This implies to me that A, it's a percentage, B, they can crit. I'm really not sure though, I could be remembering it wrong.

So I'm pondering a barbarian here. I like 2-handed classes in most games so I thought I'd try one here. Question is how to balance the stats? Might is a given, max might. But then comes the issues. How important is dex for a 2-hander? Perception increases resistance to interrupt, isn't that quite important for a 2-hander? Intelligence seems quite important for a barbarian due to the cleave mechanic. I think constitution speaks for itself. That means that resolve is the only stat that doesn't seem particularly important for barbarians. Essentially I'm trying to figure out the importance of each stat when running a 2-hand barbarian. So far all the builds I've seen are for DW barbarians. Is DW really that superior to 2-handers?

Doesn't low perception mean you'll be getting interrupted a lot? Also, is a 2h barbarian on par with a DW barb? I imagine perception becomes significantly more important if you're running with a 2h. I mean you're going to get hurt, no matter what. Also, how important is intelligence for a barbarian in practice? In theory it sounds good, but in reality isn't your party going to be swarmed pretty much non-stop? So everyone is going to be standing quite close to one another all the time, no?