voad1

Why did Exxodus call you a butt chicken? That was uncalled for. Lol

I am Obsidians legal representative. Lawsuit inbound! Lol

I don't agree. Barbs have terrible survivability. Low deflection and everyone knows what a joke constitution/endurance is. Most min max builds dump it for something else like more damage or deflection. Barbs have low deflection and are very poor at tanking. They have pretty poor accuracy as well. They don't crit often at all, and mine misses strikes often. They have penalties to accuracy for carnage. Most of their talents and abilities are useless. Brute force, threatening presence, yell, shout, wild sprint, vengeful defeat(relying on being taken out of a fight to do damage isn't smart with or with out second chance) Heart of Fury is what? A once per rest attack that adds 25% damage? Barbaric blow is ok, but with barbs low accuracy I either don't land it so it is wasted or I don't crit. Barbs seem better off with just normal damage increase modifiers imo. Thick skinned is a meh defensive ability. Accurate carnage and barbaric blow are the only talents worth taking imo. Stalwart defiance seems good but savage defiance is so good that it doesn't need the added bonus. What good will 10 extra deflection do me for 10 seconds while I am able to regen all my endurance at the same time? And greater frenzy only adds another 6% damage to frenzy. His best abilites are blooded. bloodlust, frenzy, savage defiance, and OSA. Frenzy and Savage Defiance are once per encounter. Frenzy adds a little damage but its best attribute is the added attack speed. Defiance helps with survivability. Bloodlust, blooded, and OSA are all conditional. Blooded you must be under 50% endurance to gain 25% damage, that is ok I wouldn't say it's great because I don't want to be under 50% endurance and once I try to heal I lose my damage bonus. Bloodlust is good but there must be at least 3 opponents for it to be worth anything, since you have to kill 2 yourself with a third being around for you to hopefully use this buff on. And OSA is his best skill. Adds 20 damage flat currently. But you must be engaged by at least 2 enemies. And you are restricted to melee essentially. Rogue can do melee or ranged. And it seems much easier to ensure a Rogues conditionals are met in combat especially with a party. That said I really do enjoy the Barb in this game. Hope some of his talents and abilities are looked at and changed for the better as I am sure a lot of other classes could use the same treatment.

I am sure it is the same for all clases. Barbs have brute force, threatening presence, yell, shout, thick skinned is meh at best.

It gives access to two accurate fast weapons, exactly what we want with damage bonus, also no one else picks Wf: Noble and great weapons are limited. Runner up would be Wf: Ruffian, it's a strong alternative but becomes weaker if other party members hope to use some of those melee weapons. I was going to say but possibly the two best weapons for dw are in ruffian. Stiletto and sabre.

Why wf noble for the barb?

I thought maybe the damagw over time enchant on tidefall would have gave it more dps vs the blade.

I always make a rogue companion that I pump mechanics into. I think they can get about 8 mechanics by level 3. Plus another 2 from resting bonus.

How about it vs estocs such as blade of endless path?

I think all you have to do for tidefall is get to the stronghold and take out Maerwald. Then go directly to that cave and clear it out. Seems pretty early in the game to me.

Opinions on Tidefall vs everything else?

Is the duration of the prone effect caused by a crit with Tall Grass affected by your intellect? If it is not I might swap your intellect and resolve, as getting interrupted with a pike is bad. No one plans on getting hit but it sure seems like it happens a lot If the choice is between dex and might, dex will add more damage. As a rogue you will have a lot of damage modifiers and all are additive. A higher dex gets you more attacks all of which are affected by all of you damage modifiers. As in you get 0.24 might, 0.5 sneak, 0.5 deathblow, 0.2 reckless, 0.2 savage, 0.45 superb for a total of 3.09 damage multiplier at 1.24 attack rate with 18 might and dex for 3.83 damage per base attack speed . A 17 might and 19 dex gets you 3.06 at 1.27 attack rate for 3.88 damage per base attack speed. The more modifiers that are present the less importance there is on might. It matters most in the beginning when you do not have all of the damage modals nor expert weapons. So then for say a barbarian it would be wisest to invest heavily in Dex and Int. You could leave might at 10 and invest the rest in resolve or perception to help with survivability? Your just basically giving up a 30% damage modifier for survivability and there are plenty other damage modifier to take. And is it best to take fast or slow 2 handed? I also read that 2 weapon style only affects recovery and not attack speed. Also for 2 handers. Is Tidefall better than any estoc because of enchants? Better than say b lade of endless paths?

So is Dex much less useful if you decide to wear heavy armor?

Are you saying that might and weapon quality damage are insignificant? As in might is not very useful and can be dumped for a melee dps class?

Well looks like it might be reroll time once again. Lmao. Any opinion on any of those other talents?

Lol, you need to mark spoilers! I have been asking the same question as the OP. But it depends on what you want to do with the character. I am playing a barbarian for instance and I am trying to decide what melee talents would best help improve my dps. There are only about 4 I think I will end up taking, maybe 5. But I am choosing them over class talents. I am playing a barbarian with carnage and dps in mind. So I am taking envonomed strike to poison large groups hopefully. Savage attack for +20% damage for -5 accuracy. Took dual wield talent for 20% increased attack speed. Might take vulnerable strike. Was debating on bloody slaughter or ruffian weapon focus. But I will probably take neither one. Skipping all but one or two barbarian class talents.

I do not think that is exactly what he is asking. I thinke aome abilities are better for offense and defense. Some better for melee vs ranged. Etc.

He is looking for talents to take. Like which class and or non class specific talents are best.

I will... try too I love this game to pieces but it's almost an OCD thing were I must re roll. Thank you for all the information Matt.

Thanks a ton Matt, looks like I will be re rolling my barb again, lol. Went 10 10 18 10 18 12 or something like that last time around. Think I will use perception as a dump stat and pump up might. Was looking at bloody slaughter but I think that has fallen lower on my list of talents to get. I was looking at taking accurate carnage and maybe barbaric blow. Might drop barbaric blow now, not certain. That leaves me 4 to 5 talents to take. I definitely want envenomed strike for it's raw dot. I think that mixed with carnage would be great. Also using a blunderbus as a secondary to open on boss fights would work well I think. Sabres or Stilletos duel wielded. Take duel wield attack speed talent. An vulnerable attack. Negating the speed penalty and adding 5 dr bypass to each weapon. Savage attack and ruffian focus. Plus 6 accuracy to all weapons I plan on using stiletto, sabre, blunderbus. And +15 damage... kind of negating the penalty there as well. I may drop barbaric blow for the weapon focus or vice versa. Not sure. Thought occured to me that with bloody savagery and barbaric blow you could make a barb that focus on weapons with crit procs such as knocks enemies prone crit proc. Use barbaric blow or when they get low health you'd hopefully be knocking mobs off their feet with carnage. Could be fun. But I am taking this off topic I think, sorry.

I am wondering if threatening presence stacks. So say you had a party with 4 to 6 barbs, high int for carnage and increased aoe of threatening presence. If that stacked then you could lower fortitude by 10 points per each barbarian. Lowering fortitude by as much as 60. b0rsuk, threatening presence causes sickness which inflicts -10 fortitude vs will save. Not enough for majority of enemies in beastiary which have 10+ fortitude vs deflection. So most of the time you are still attacking vs deflection instead of fortitude. But it is apparently much better vs kith and also shades. So better than I thought at first. If it were - 20 to fortitude it would be wayyy better though.

Thank you, that is something I didn't know. Makes those skills much more appealing again.

Hopefully OSA will be fixed soon, so Barbarian players won't be forced into dual wielding as a way to be optimal. :/ Lol, yes I suppose it is ridiculous but I am just trying to min max. Maybe it was answered earlier here but is accuracy important enough to invest in a weapon focus For that +6 accuracy? Are dex and int noq the two key attributes for a barb and might can be safely ignored? At -5 accuracy is savage attack worth taking foe the added 15% damage? At -20% speed is vulnerable attack worth taking for 5 dr bypass? Does the recovery penalty of heavy armor greatly affect dps? Too many questions? Lol

barbaric yell and barbaric shout are more defensive debuffing abilities. One essentially lowers enemy accuracy by ten via frightened and the other lowers it by 20 via terrified status effects. Not really for dps. But they can help you on the fron lines I guess.

Even if this were true, it fails to factor in that Torment's Reach spam = ridiculous amounts of damage. Any monk can easily do this. So +50% dmg per hit is ridiculous amount of damage?+50% dmg per hit is on par with a crit, so yes, it is ridiculous amounts of damage when you have a class "critting" every half a second.Lol rogue has as much with normal attacks and doesnt require to get hit... Actually its more because rogue bonus apply before armor and monks after. Barb has +50% dps just from bloodlust and blooded. When you add frenzy it becomes 1.25*1.2*1.33*1.18=135% bonus dps. When you add +20% from unbugged OSA it is now 182% bonus. If you add +25% weapon enchant then barb will have 253% bonus dps!!! There are also enchants with 20% bonus attack speed so it gives us total 324% bonus dps!!! How can you compare your 50% (which is exaggeration because you cant spam it whole fight on every aa) to barbs 324%? And dont forget that barb has also abilities which boost that damage even more like barbarian blow. And yes, barb will crit much more often because of how easy it is to apply weakened stance which translates to +20 acc for barb and another +10 from sickened (threatening presence) which gives barb 25 accuracy advantage over monk. About threatening presence. The majority of creature in game have over 10 fortitude vs accuracy. And sickened according to in game description only lowers fortitude by 10. Threatening presence is the only barb ability that lowers fortitude. So with threatening presence and brute force you are still attacking vs deflection the majority of the time. Not sure vs kith enemies since they dont appear in beastiary. Also there are plenty creatures with + 20 more fort than deflect. It would only help greatly vs shades. Which have much higher deflection than fortitude. This is all from in game descriptions Btw. I think those 2 abilities are a waste. Unless of course the in game descriptions are way off. I think your brain is way off. GL hitting these annoying shadows/shades early game as monk or 5164541854 other high defletion enemies. You don't seem to understand that many high deflection enemies have even higher fortitude. Only a very few would benefit from those abilites. Like shades and shadows. But if you think taking 2 abilities for a small amount of foes is worth it to you then good for you. Sorry this information has hurt your feelings to the point you feel like you need to resort to name calling. Hope you can get over it soon and forgive me for crushing your fragile ego. I am so sorry.