Raven Darkholme

It's not worth in every single fight, that's more of a solo thing. It is still very worth in Dragon Fights, you could wait to do those till you are level 16 and then take backlash last talent. (or just work with respeccing) Well you can invest in melee, I did too in my trio party, but your main damage will still come from chants and stacking dragon slashed with 2 chanters is pretty strong so why not.

Maybe I wasn't clear. You don't want to get hit by any damaging abilities that target will if you are squishy, some of them probably can instakill you. There is no such thing as melee dps cganter, if you want melee dps pick barbarian, chanters do their damage passively so tank is much better.

So I consoled myself a mindweb party, since I figured this would work well with spiritshift. But now I have a very dumb question. Has anyone ever tested whether Withdraw stun actually triggers + 50 def while prone or stunned? I've read recommendations for this back when I did my trio run and did not have a priest, but this time i actually thought of creating a priest and it turns out the + 50 def doesn't show up, neither in the stats nor combat log.

But aren't there a ton of non-aura attacks that Psychic Backlash can be used against? Mainly fampyr's but their attack is ranged anyway. (Tho there is no guarantee they will target your cipher if all your party is immune to charm.) But vs undead raedric and Fampyr lord there are frighten auras anyway, probably in all other major fampyr fights too, I don't remember the White March one well enough tho. Ofc backlash works against a lot of single target abilities, but if you don't solo there is never a guarantee to get hit by it. (which is probably a good thing with a squishy ranged char )

Yeah, if you don't play with meta information Boeroers suggestions are much better.

Yes but only if you get the mentioned Might bonuses before harder fights (inn, whore, food) which will give you +6/7 but involves a little traveling. With Frenzy you will have 20/22 (21/23 with stronghold) Mi that way without item bonuses, with a +3 Belt/Helmet, Gift from the machine amd Galawain's boon you will have up to 29 Mi even tho your base Mi is 10. edit: also keep in mind this is only before level 11 when you get HoF. If you have Heart of Fury dual wieldinbg and dumping Dex and maxing Mi is way stronger.

Before Heart of Fury I would advise slightly higher if not max Dex and as already mentioned 2handed, preferebaly Firebrand. If you don't mind always resting at an inn with at least +2 Mi and getting the dwarven whore bonus for +2 Mi and eating food before fight and using Frenzy you can get away with lower Mi than 16:

Companions and AI is kinda hard, since chanters are ideal for this, but then again, does it really matter if they use the wrong abilities every now and then? You don't need to thrash fights in 2 minutes like AI chanters would, do you?

In maxquests Attack Speed calculator Swift Aim doesn't increase melee Attack Speed, but unless I'm confused it actually does, right?

But you get Frenzy at level 1 and it's per encounter. Ofc if it was just attack speed DaoM would be better but in the combination of stats frenzy gives I find the attack speed the nicest, but also as said above at low levels i afforded to put less stat points into Mi and Con because of Frenzy. If you use Frenzy later for max damage on HoF the attack speed doesn't matter anymore ofc.

If I can I try to take note of the amount of damage I take. I also have autopause on low end and low hp. But yeah if you don't feel confident maybe skip it. The main beauty about frenzy is the attack speed increase.

Depends on your stats. For the barbarian before HoF, since I mainly attacked with Firebrand, which is 2handed, I needed max Dex, so I couldn't max Mi and I even dumped Con all the way. This meant i not only needed frenzy to make up for that, but also have max bonuses, through resting, whore and consumables for every serious fight. This is probably not a good approach if you're learning how to play the class, so if you have 10 base Con and 15 base MI (at least) you might not need Frenzy. Also bear in mind there's Sanguine Plate which gives you 2x frenzy per encounter if you get crit, I also used that quite a lot, unless I needed Stun/Prone reduction.

Damn I just realized you lose all equipment bonuses including rings as spiritshift. That sucks.

Does Novice's Suffering work with spiritshift? Also holy sheet dat damage at level 1.

I feel like interrupt and stun compliment each other very well. Before I started this barb I also had a consoled barb and I tried both routes of having 2x stun or 2x interrupt weapons and it just doesn't work as well, because there's enemies you won't reliably crit as a barb and interrupt on certain enemies which attack slowly (like the bear in Russetwood) doesn't happen the exact time it would reset their attack so all you get is 1 second interrupt from their relatively long recovery phase, unless you stop attacking until their recovery is just about finished and time it perfectly. (Or you have no recovery but you need durgan's for that and a solo barb has a hard time with doing the battery before level 11 and then comes HoF...). But if you have both stun and interrupt (especially Godans... which has 0.75 interrupt on top of stun) even if you only graze an enemy the stun will help out the interrupt and vice versa. (interrupt always seems to reset a recovery after a stun wears off)

Crit without stun weapons

Dirty fighting, one handed style and Merciless gaze. I didn't mean in comparison but all over.

When you're too cheap to use Prayer against fear scrolls.

Here's one of the last times I'll use Firebrand with my barb, because of HoF coming in. The damage is quite respectable, with Might not being close to maxed (with more mnight I had crits with 100 damage but Dex seemed the bette roption)

The rogue get's most crits by far because of 50% hit crit conversion and high acc. A barb get's more damage out of crits but he isn't ranged.

Yeah, I just didn't expect some super generic mobs, I never even pay attention to, will stunlock me to death with it. :D

I just died to a random ambush in Defiance bay, because my threatening presence kept triggering Psychic backlash. Feelsbad when enemies use your own strategy against you.

Alpine Dragon:

I just crit a corrupted druid for 85 damage with firebrand. I only have 15 base MI. I don't have 2handed style. And this would be possible with level 4. (I'm 7)

The interrupt build will still happen when I get HoF, the only question is how many enemies actually survive long enough to get interrupted. And yeah Spiritshift druid is something I wanted to try for quite some time.