Manty5

Absolutely true. Barbs have monstrous health pools, so that helps.

> The Shod-in-Faith boots are nice, but they only trigger on a crit. It's a harder task to NOT get your barbarian crit. He's one of the lowest deflection (and reflex/will/fort) of the frontliners, and few people give them shields, and none of their recommended (and indeed, necessary) stats are the ones boosting deflection. You'll have no trouble getting him critted. Getting him to survive the crit... ah, there's the task.

You'd just need a talent that levels up with the ranger. You know how monk fists auto-upgrade every 4 levels or so? Do the same thing here with inherent pet damage reduction and penetration of enemy damage reduction. Also accuracy and base damage to keep pace with weapon quality upgrades. And don't make the rangers pay a talent for each of these. That's boring. Then to make them actually fun, make 2 of the pets do something other than melee, one could spit out random heals on the owner, another does single-target 8m range debuffing at the cost of it's attack, and one of the 4 remaining should have a reach attack. Maybe even give one an elemental attack instead of vs. deflection. Then you'll have some REAL choice in your AC. Rangers are less in need of power than they are in need of flavor. They're hands down the best gun users in the game. We could also brainstorm on this thread as to what "free" talents the pets could get. Something like Escape on the wolf.

If a carnage barb uses a dual-damage-type weapon like sword's slash/pierce, will the carnage slash/pierce be optimized individually for each foe's vulnerability, or does every enemy take the same damage type, presumably predicated on the main hit's damage type? I'm not sure that the log would properly show it if it was rolled individually.

Casting Cancelhaught's omnipresent doorjamb?

> since the whole party is not getting hit. Play POTD.

Perhaps you missed the part where Shieldbearers buff the entire party and Darcozzi... does not. +deflection combined with aura that converts incoming hits to grazes? Sweet synergy. +Rogue accuracy combined with graze to hit aura? Um... your rogue shouldn't be grazing in the first place. Maybe Kana will notice the difference.

Dangit. There goes my whole cipher build, and I'm on level 7 already. Whole reason I took quarterstaff over pike was the perceived increased DPS, and now I learn my beatstick is enchant-space-consuming trash and it's not like the rest of the uniques of that type have any worthwhile abilities(for god's sake, the superb weapon has frigging GUARDING. On a REACH WEAPON.) Well, thanks for letting me know. EDIT: Drath, I'd go with Soldier for Grieving Mother and give her Jena's lance enchanted to exceptional with an arquebus for the opening shot. Ciphers get physical damage bonuses, but not physical weapon accuracy bonuses, hence graze to hit is one of the more useful uniques for them. Tall Grass is nice, but you're not there to stun them you're there to get more focus smacking them as hard as you can.

> If people want to role play their characters in a certain way, why not just leave them be? If they want to RP in a more DnD stereotypical way, I don't really care. You're misunderstanding cause and effect. I'm perfectly happy leaving them be. It's their tromping around the forums lecturing people about how they're worshipping the one true roleplaying God that's offensive. Maybe they don't actually mean it that way, but they're terrible writers if so because that's how they come off. They're almost as bad as the "lowering a stat to 8 is min-maxing" crowd. Can't enter a forum anymore without them sniffing down their long noses. > I'm not all that enamored with pistols. Oh, sure, they can hit hard. There's no denying that. My problem with them is their short range, which I find rather limiting. They're only 2m shorter than aquebuses, reload and fire quicker (important if you're not using quick switch cheese), have a good enough damage to reload ratio to make taking the reload talents worthwhile, and you have one with a crit bonus that is of more magnitude than the inherent penalty. I think I read somewhere here that the overall DPS for a rogue with a pistol outdamaged all the other choices. However, what you say is totally true. You have to be careful to move the front lines forward enough so that the ranger can reach the enemy mages. I admit there are times I'm tempted to go arbalest or crossbow and say foo to the DPS. Maybe when that one speed arbalest is fixed.

Wounding shot's quite nice for a firearms-ranger. I'm running Sagani with dual pistols and it's a really nice opener to Wounding shot-swap-Wounding shot on the two most dangerous squishies. When that squishie is also a melee (Like Xaurip Skirmashers with paralyse), the hobble is even a nice bonus. A Warbow rogue with a Gun Ranger is a nice pair to take out high-value backrow targets. You just need a blind on top to activate deathblows. Also: Way too many people on these forums saying that they're "role-playing" when what they're ACTUALLY doing is finding an excuse to hold to ancient D&D conventions instead of adapting to PoE's universe. PoE isn't a place where monks run around naked (although sometimes they do go unarmed) and Priests are front-line fighters infused with powerful self-only buffs and only wizards use wands. For example if you want to make a Paladin that's like its D&D counterpart, that's fine. But don't say that you're roleplaying better than the guy who treats them more like war-leaders than holy warriors.

Let me just add this to what Razorchain said: All these bonuses are ADDITIVE bonuses, so your max might isn't going to influence how much the other bonuses give. That said, CON gives even less benefit to a rogue and if you neglect both CON and STR, your fort saves are going to suck, leading to knockdowns/stuns being likely to crit. You'll have to compensate for that somehow if you drop STR. Edit: That said, if you want to use items they usually use your might, so less might means weaker offensive scrolls and healing potions, especially the boots that give Jolting Touch or the gloves that give Touch of Rot.

Before we get into that discussion AGAIN, let me just say that there's a lot of people who vastly prefer warbow rogues, myself included. Crits tend to get rid of DR concerns fairly nicely, and cloudpiercer is just devastating in the right hands... ROGUE hands. No one's going to deny that pistol rangers with max reload buffs are nice too =)

Given only those choices, I'd say: Blesca's Labor because the endurance drain is the most important of the procs. Bleak Fang isn't a bad second. I personally use Azureith's Stilletto, wielded without a shield, for the knockdown attempts as maximizing accuracy gives me a chance to proc jolting touch while also giving the best chance for a long knockdown. Then I swap to Saber/Bashing Shield or Oidhreacht/Bashing Shield for the rest of the battle. Fighters have great natural accuracy and an available graze-to-hit talent, so flail's inherent ability is a little bit less useful for them.

Sounds great Idleray. Consider Miasma of Dull-mindedness as an addition to your deflection-reducing needs. Since it reduces both PER and RES by 10 each (!), it reduces defelction in a way that stacks with blindness. If only there wasn't a confusion spell in the same tier, such painful decsisions... Also, Greatsword is in the same family as Pike, which means your Barb can attack from the second row with Tall Grass if he needs to(crowded or doorway situations). That weapon increases crit chance, and stuns on crit.

> Sword of Daenysys (rapier) would be awesome if the speed mod worked I've seen a lot of references on this forum on speed mods on weapons not working. Are they just plain not working in general, haven't they been fixed yet, does anyone plan on fixing them, has it been confirmed with the latest patch? I'd like to know because I'd be annoyed if my quarterstaff wasn't actually performing as advertised.

Actually, I'm playing a base INT Pale Elf quaterstaff cipher now, using only the fast-cast and damaging spells when possible with some pain blocking for my monk after she gets too many wounds. It's a lot of fun. One question though... does enemy DR affect focus gain? I haven't been able to find any posts on the topic. So if I swing my quarterstaff at something with 30 blunt DR, am I going to have almost no focus gain? Is the DR from guns and estocs going to increase that gain? EDIT: I agree with MadDemiurg below me. The solution isn't to gimp the spell, it's to make the cost worthy of the effect. So put it up a few tiers. People will still USE it, they just won't be able to SPAM it.

I'd just reduce all cipher casting times, in the extreme to 0's across the board. You're already wasting melee time every second you're sitting about waving your hands, the casting part of being a cipher is interfering with the warrior part of being a cipher. Also it's annoying to cast, wait for the spell to fire, then manually select your melee target again. So this would even be a UI improvement! It's not like melee is so powerful that giving the cipher more "hitting people with a stick" time is going to unbalance the class. Agree on binding seeming like a more powerful spell than its casting level would imply. If that puts me at risk of Exoduss deeming me "unenlightened", I'll somehow survive. Maybe. EDIT: A thought... maybe the 0 casting time can be a talent or automatic ability at level 9, so that ciphers get a power jump at the same time as the other casters? EDITEDIT or... Ha! making the cipher be able to choose a level 1 (level 2 spell at level 11) spell to cast on strike with the melee weapon! Base it on weapon class or interrupt, a high-interrupt weapon casts the spell at 80% power, a 0.75s interrupt weapon casts it at 60% power... Never mind that's too crazy to work... unless you paid 50% of your focus gain or something. Imagine a mind-blades quaterstaff!

Your plan won't work out quite the way you imagine. What will actually happen: 1. You fire your pistol, beginning a long weapon recovery period. 2. You swap weapons, adding more recovery. 3. By the time you are ready to invoke frenzy, the enemy will already be hitting you. 4. The enemy is still hitting you as you finish the casting of frenzy. 5. NOW you can start doing the stuff that a barbarian is meant to do, well after combat is begun. It's much better to start your frenzy just as your teammates fire their opening salvo. The timing works out so that you are all ready to meet the incoming enemy at about the same time. I recommend you use dual stilettos and dual sabers. That way you can choose your damage type according to the enemy's weakness. You'll still eventually have one draining weapon for each set.

How are you handling conditions without a priest? I know druid has healing easily as good as priest, but if there's an equalvelent to suspending conditions, I don't know of it.

Moria Brown: That's horrible! You're horrible! This thing is horrible! Everything's horrible! Argh! But really, Cipher's so much easier to mass-slaughter the caravan it's not even funny.

Pallegina doesn't really have the stats for big damage. However, the lower the strength of the character, the MORE important it is to have a high-damage weapon to overcome DR. Also, Flames of Devotion synergizes a lot better with a high damage weapon. My recommendation? Download and install IEMOD off the Nexus, because otherwise Pallegina is going to have gimped protections because she's not a player-character. When she has the proper protection levels that a paladin is supposed to have, that will bring her up to almost the same level of tankiness that she would have had without IEMOD and using a shield. You have to decide what disposition her unique paladin order should be, do that in the options.

If anything, KW and Shieldbearers have pulled even further ahead, given that landing that vital FoD is less of a problem.

The accuracy buff for FoD will have interesting effects for effect-on-crit weapons, and lead to less "wasted" FoD whiffs. > Though, I'm surprised the extra Aura effects were rolled directly into them instead of split off into separate Talents a la Crit Focus. I'd say paladins were quite talent-starved already without creating new requirements.

You can respec Durance just fine and it causes no issues. You cannot however give him a background that gives him +1 to mechanics, since you're only levelling him up, not rerolling stats. In fact, having Durance as a mechanic is a great idea, since he has magical "traps" (the wards) and mechancs skill affects their accuracy. But if all you want is to change the skill values:

Looking at the various posts in this thread, it looks like PoE has managed to make a shutdown strategy with interrupt not very viable as a main focus, so it might be better to incorporate interrupt only as part of a larger strategy that will succeed even without interrupt. For example Miasma of dull-mindedness is a terrific spell that debuffs deflection along with some concentration (by subtracting 10 resolve). Combining that with a barbarian using one of the enhanced interrupt duration weapons is worthwhile even for just the deflection debuff, and the enhanced-interrupt weapons tend to be good weapons on their own.