Boeroer

You can easily prolong it with WoD (did a lot of tests with it when doing my mini-mod for the weapon) but I never tried if this persists after combat ends...

Yes - as I said the base invocation "The Brideman" gives proper inspirations like "Set to their Purpose also does", but weirdly enough the upgrade "Each Kill fed his Fury" gives direct attribute bonuses (no "official" inspirations). I don't think it's a problem with the prolonging. For example Blood Storm and Wildstrike Frenzy seem to have no problem with prolonging inspirations/other effects on crit or kill. Imo somebody just made a mistake when implementing the ability. Just a guess though. Anyway this seems to be the reason why that ability stacks with inspirations. Like Ben Fidel's Neck (-10 to all defenses) stacks with afflictions. Maybe same underlying stacking mechanics.

If Disciplined Strikes gets suppressed by all means use Tactical Barrage instead. Not only +1 Power Level and +5 INT - which is beneficial for your AoEs and durations - but can also be used to counter Berserker Frenzy's confusion.

Okay I did some attacks first and now saw both Frenzy and Intuitive convert hits to crits in the combat log. Can't say anything about actual percentages though. Maybe the log just displays whatever - but if Intutitive would get supressed by Frenzy I would assume it wouldn't get mentioned in the combat log. But as I said: I don't trust the log with conversions. When I have more time I will do more attacks so that there are statistically somewhat relevant numbers - to see if the percentage comes near 30% or more. So far it seems they do stack though. I always assumed all conversions stack because of their "roll one after the other" mechanic.

Nope. No mention of suppression on the char sheet in combat nor in the tooltips when one hovers over the portrait (or the list of active effects right of the portrait which opens another sort of tooltip). Will do some attacks later, must get groceries first.

They get suppressed? That's new to me. I never read about that in any Brute build discussion but this is important. I mean it makes sense since both are actives. But how does one determine that? Is it listed as suppressed on the char sheet? Or doing a lot of attacks and observe that only Berserker Frenzy gets shown in the combat log? There is some issue with conversion display in the combat log. For example Debonaire conversion never gets displayed even though it's 100% - instead the combat log shows Uncanny Luck or Dirty Fighting (which one you have). So I don't trust the log there. If there's no simple way in order to be sure one would have to do a certain number of hits and check whether the percentages match (kind of) 30% or 47.5%?

Yes, you have to decide which of the two classes you want to bind the soulbound item to.

You can even skip Tactical Barrage (or one of the two other PL buffs) and get two Stones of Power. If you stack them in the stash after the fight you can use the Power Surge (+1 PL, stacks with every other PL bonus) in every fight. It's very convenient because it has no duration (lasts till the end of the fight). Lord Darryn's Voulge is indeed nice on any Barb-combo. The Brute also gives you Clear Out which is cool with any AoE effect (like Static Thunder). Amra with Riven Gore is nice on a Brute, too. Dual Carnage on crit and even more importantly Clear Out pushes the initial enemy into the two Carnages it procs which means it not only gets the two attack rolls from Clear Out but 4 Carnage rolls on top. Riven Gore triggers quite often and then it's Blood Thirst + Cleaving Stance time. By the way: a Brute whom I also liked (but who was a bit specialized) was Fury/Unbroken with Disengagement goodies. Fear Ward terrifies your enemies and should they disengage they eat massive disengagement attacks (nice in combination with Brute Force and Mob Stance - Barbaric Shout already gives you +3 engagement so you can go with Mob Stance instead).

Solo it's a pain but in a party (especially with a Paladin) not so much. Barbarian gets Stalwart Defiance eventually which helps a lot imo.

It is I guess because it's not giving inspirations but direct attribute buffs. Only the upgrade does this. The basic invocation gives the fitting inspirations. I guess it's an oversight.

If you want to dual wield I would check out the unique one handed weapons and decide which ones I like best. It's all about the enchantments. Like Helz said it's usually better to have one weapon set with one sort of damage type and a second set (or even third) one alternative dmg types. When mixing dmg types in one set you will rarely have the optimal outcome. A dual wielding Devoted can make good use of unarmed attacks as fallback: everybody gets the proficiency for unarmed combat automatically, Devoted included. Fists do crush damage - so for example a Devoted could any non-crush weapons set mainly (for example swords with pierce/slash dmg) and pick Monastic Unarmed Training for his fists as fallback for the situations when he meets foes who have a weakness against crush damage.

Nope, not like that. Conversions will get rolled one after the other until they all got rolled or until one actually converts. So in your example first Berserker Frenzy checks if it will convert a hit to a crit. If not, then Disciplined Strikes gets checked and so on until one triggers or all got checked without success. Thus, the stacking is a series of chances. You can calculate the final chance rel. easily as follows: Multiply the chances NOT to convert (so for example Berserker Frenzy has a 70% chance not to convert - or a 0.7 multiplier). 0.7 Berserker Frenzy * 0.7 Barbaric Blow * 0.75 Disciplined Strikes = roughly 0.37. So you'll have a 37% chance NOT to convert - or in other words a 66% chance to convert. You can simply add more multipliers to that calculation (Uncanny Luck, weapon conversions, Blood Slaughter etc.). Berserker/Fighter has one of the highest "passive" melee crit conversion rates of all multiclasses. I even think the highest if you consider Bloody Slaughter, too. Barbaric Blow is very good with high crit chance (in addition to its own conversion) because it does a lot more dmg then. It's quite expensive so it better be worth it. By the way: usually different kinds of conversion won't "chain". So for example a hit from a graze-to-hit conversion will not get converted further to a crit. The general rule is: only one type of conversion per attack.

Well, Berserker excels at melee compared to the other Barb subclasses due to 30% crit conversion and ofc the higher PEN. Both is great with the Voulge/Static Thunder. He pays with hefty self dmg and confusion. The confusion is bad with the Voulge because you will hit your buddies with Static Thunder. Besides that - a Furyshaper makes as good a melee fighter with the Voulge as any other Barb subclass. Also - if you get some engagement (for example via Barbaric Shout and/or the Pollaxe modal) you can really profit from the Fear Ward: enemies will eventually disengage when terrified and thus grant a lot of disengagement attacks which will apply Static Thunder as well. This is cool. By the way: using Nature's Terror in combo with a Fear Ward is not redundant because Nature's Terror will have higher ACC and will soften up the Will defense of enemies for the Fear Ward.

I personally like Furyshaper/Beguiler a lot. Berserker/Ascendant is also cool once you get rid of confusion. While ascended you can make good use of Action speed buffs (Frenzy, Bloodlust) and Blood Thirst to squeeze a lot of spells into the ascended phase - with +3 PEN (cipher passive + Tenacious). Speaking about witches: I never tried - does anybody know if Static Thunder from Lord Darryn's Voulge generates focus?

Lord Darryn's Voulge is great in melee with a Barbarian because Carnage works with Static Charge. That turns the Voulge into an AoE weapon. You don't need to bind the Voulge to the Barbaria class for this. You can bind it to the Druid class and get the +3 PL to Storm spells and get Static Charge, too. The Barbarian side would give static thunder which would also disorient - but imo one can pass that as a Tempest and go for the +3 PL for storms instead.

The +2 PEN of Devoted + the Tenacious inspiration of Berserker Frenzy (also +2 PEN) gives the Great Sword enough PEN. Also because it has two damage types as well (pierce/slash) so even if pierce or slash AR of the enemy should be really high: most of times it's not both. The main avantage of the Morning Star is Body Blows + Brute Force. If you have a preference for Great Swords you can totally go with that.

I don't know. Barbarian solo on PotD needs quite long to become good. I did an Ultimate with a Barb and is was more demanding than for example Wizard. I think I would try Wizard. Prepare to rest a lot.

If you want to use a two handed weapon then Morning Star is the best pick for a Brute imo. Brute gets "Brute Force" (how fitting) from the Barbarian side which lets the Barbarian target fortitude for his attacks if it is lower than the defense his action was originally targeting. The Morning Star modal "Body Blows" does -25 fortitude which is a huge debuff. The Barb can also apply Staggered automatically via Spirit Frenzy which is another -10 fortitude on top of the -25. This is very good. It makes the -25% dmg from the modal totally worth it. Attacks like Mule Kick or Clear Out trget fortitude to being with, so again the Morning Star shines. It also shines when it debuffs fortitude for your party's casters. Some of theoir best spells target fortitude, too. In addition to that (especially important with Devoted who doesn't want to switch ot another weapon type), Morning Star has decent PEN (unlike Great Sword) and two damage types (crush/pierce) which is a great combo imo because often enemies who are resistant to pierce dmg are often especially vulnerable to crush dmg. The Morning Star has lower base dmg than the Great Sword - but base dmg is less important than PEN. The Willbreaker is the best Morning Star in most situations. Saru Sicher is also good (especially vs. non-poison-immune bosses) and you can get it quite early. I'm a sucker for INT so I would always go for high INT (it's also great with Unbending). I would be cautious with very high MIG. You'll get +5 from Frenzy anyway and maxed Might also means maxed self damage from Berserker Frenzy - which can get really hefty at higher levels due to power level scaling (yes, the self damage scales up as well). Don't go too low either though. I thingk I would settle around 13-15 or something like that. DEX is a multplicative damage influencer. I would go rel. high. Like 16 or so. CON isn't very important. PER is nice to have, not only for early game accuracy but also because you need it for discovering traps and other secrets. 16+ If you're not planning to have high deflection (difficult anyway because of Frenzy) you can dump it to 3. I would go with something like this I guess: MIG: 14 CON: 10 DEX: 17 PER: 17 INT: 17 RES: 03 This is without Berath's Blessings. If you pick human your RES is 4 minimum instead of 3.

Well, +3 PEN is better than +1, especially with spells - and the +2 also applies to spells that don't have the elements keyword. I even combine that with Heart of the Storm and such to get +4 PEN. And should you overpenetrate - well there aren't that many spell dmg bonuses anyway, so... Confusion is easy to counter. Use Svef (it's no problem to find/craft/buy enough Svef for every fight until you find a better countermeasure), some of the resistance food or get Devil of Caroc Breastplate early with some mechanics and enchant it with Mechanical Mind. One could argue that Helwalker/Fury would be better because he also gets Tenacious without the confusion and on top gets high MIG and INT (and besides the casting speed that's a valid point) - but in my case it's just that a "Fury" and "Berserker" just fit so well thematically. Like... fury & rage...

Creative and very hacky. I like it.

I personally would use Steel Garrote because the passive healing can be nice - but you'll have to make sure to afflict enemies before. But it doesn't matter much I guess. I thought Goldpact would work with Magran but haven't played paladin/priest for ages so I guess I was wrong. When going solo you shouldn't stick to a particular weapon setup all the time. For example against fire-resistant/immune foes that "fire-power" setup will do not much for you. Keeping it in a second weapon slot for the times you want to cast your fire stuff is good though imo. My main weapon setup would include a shield. Paladin's strength is his defenses - putting a shield on top makes this even better because defense values have increasing returns. And for example the medium shield modal only slows down your melee attacks but not your casting. So that's a good defensive boost without a drawback (while casting buffs at the start of battle for example). I am a loved of large shields in this game due to the awesome modal. It's perfect to open combat and cast all your buffs (which don't need accuracy) in rel. peace and once you're buffed up switch setup and go full attack mode. It also helps a LOT to survive the gun/crossbow onslaught that happens at the start of boarding fights. But all the talk was for Paladin which you don't use anyway (sorry). But with Bloodmage/Magran I would actually do the same: use a large shield while buffing up (no acc needed) and only then switch to your "offense mode". Instead of Sun & Moon etc. you could also look at Chromoprismatic Staff (also PL bonuses but not only fire) or Blightheart (+10% corrosive lash for all your damaging spells - cool - and also a healing effect that can be prolonged with Wall of Draining and/or Salvation of Time). High AR is great when going solo. Wizard has Spirit Shield and Iron Skin which are great in combination with a heavy armor. Of course you won't need that once Barring Death's Door + Wall of Draining is on.

Furyshaper/Ancient is a bit meh because of the summoning limit as Eric said Berserker/Ancient has some minor quirks, too: as an Ancient you will most likely cast a lot of raw damage spells like Plague of Insects, Insect Swarm, Infestation of Maggots, Venom bloom and so on. First of all those are often all foe-only and using Berserker Frenzy will turn them into friendly fire. Plague of Insects has a very big AoE. You def. don't want cast confused Plague of Insects on your party. Also confusion from Berserker Frenzy will shorten the duration of those spells. In case of DoTs losing duration hurts because it's like a multiplicative dmg loss (less ticks from the DoT). You can get rid of confusion though - so those problems can be circumvented. Use special food, drugs or items to become resistant or get Smart (from party member?) to cancel the confusion. The biggest reason to go Berserker/caster is the Tenacious inspiration which gives +2 PEN - which otherwise is extremely useful for damage dealing with spells - but in case of raw damage spells... it doesn't do anything. Of course you can just use other spells - but then you're not using the Ancient's increased Power Level with beast/plant spells. But once going into melee the +2PEN is great again. So one could make the argument that you only should go Frenzy after casting spells - which would be a valid point. Of course the healing capabilities of the Ancient are good to counter the Berserker's self damage, too. So overall it's a minor inconvenience imo - once you circumvent confusion. Ancient's DoTs are cool with Barbarian passives, not only Spirit or Blood Frenzy but most notably Blood Thirst. You can cast some DoTs at the start of the fight and then go into melee. While the DoTs work and eventually kill some enemies you'll get 0 recovery attacks every now and then which speeds up your melee attacks considerably. If you use the Community Patch then my recommended Spiritshift form would be Stag. Because the CP turns the really bad 1/encounter lol-carnage ability of the stag form into a weaker "proper" Carnage passive like the Barb has - weaker but it stacks with the original - which is cool. Double Carnage for the Stag. Is it important to you to play an Ancient druid? If yes I would go with Berserker, vanilla Barb or Corpse Eater (because it fits so well thematically imo). If you would also consider other Druid subclasses: as Waldemilson said Berserker/Fury is cool - it is not so much about Spiritshift but high PEN and casting speed with elemental spells. Berserker/Shifter is also pretty nice. This one's mostly about Spiritshift though. Use the healing in between shifting to counter Berserker's self damage.

The first three all work (I would recommend another Paladin subclass though because Flames of Devotion isn't really important solo and it's the only thing the Bleak Walker excels in) - but /Bloodmage will be the most powerful and also versatile multiclass option because you can combine all your buffs, healing over time and especially Barring Death's Door with Wall of Draining - then they will last for the whole fight.

Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure (unique grimoire required) uses an invisibility that only breaks when you deal any sort of damage*. Thus you can cast all the CC and debuffs you want: if they don't deal damage they won't lift the invisibility of A's Brilliant Departure. Like all other beneficial effects that are attached to your character the invisibility itself can be prolonged with Wall of Draining. Watch out: Bloddmage's Blood Sacrifice deals damage to you and it will lift the invisibility! So you have to time it right if you want to regain spell uses with Blood Sacrifice. For example when most enemies are controlled or after you broke the invisibility anyways (e.g. with Concelhauts Corrosive Siphon to heal up or Amplified Wave or whatever). A's Brilliant Departure can buy you a lot of time to cast (and gain focus from those casts as Beguiler), run from sight, reposition yourself and so on. Other sources of invisibility that you can prolong with Wall of Draining could be potion of invisibility or the invisibility from Slippers of the Assassin. They break on any attack roll you do - but not from damage over time ticks like Disintegrate or Bleeding Cuts. Because those don't do attack rolls anymore once they got applied. Pulsing spells (Chillfog, Malignant Cloud etc.) are not "DoT" (damage over time). They will roll a new attack with every pulse which will lift those invisibility effects from potion or slippers. *Wall spells excluded, they will not break the invisibility even if they deal damage.

I wouldn't say switching weapons to match enemies' AR isn't recommended. In fact I would def. recommend it. Bleeding Cuts is great against certain enemies but against the common mob it's counterproductive because the damage needed to kill a rel. weak enemy is applied faster without the modal AND you'll get more focus from the overall dmg you applied (because the dmg of Bleeding Cuts doesn't generate focus). Against slash resistent enemies I'd argue it's nearly always better to switch to a dmg type you can fully penetrate with instead of insisting to use Battle Axes' underpenetrating slash dmg + Bleeding Cuts. Because the raw dmg Bleeding Cuts does is based on the slash dmg you did and that can be pathetic when severely underpenetrating. What I said there is with the assumption that you don't use recovery-skipping effects and prolong them indefinitely with certain item effects (see Strad of Favor trick). Instead of switching dmg types (e.g. from quarterstaff to pike or whatever) you can also try to stack PEN and/or use weapons with two dmg types. This avoids switching in many cases. But dual dmg weapons usually have lower base PEN so it's not a no-brainer. Some weapon types who normally only have single dmg and decent base PEN have uniques who have dual dmg types. I found that the Morning Star is one of the weapon types which have a great mix of PEN and dual dmg. Also the modal can be very helpful for certain spells (e.g. Disintegrate, Killing Bolt and whatever targets fortitude). Willbreaker + Make them Flinch + Gauntlets of Greater Reliability is one of my current go-to setups because it lets you apply the modal to anybody eventually (miss-to-graze conversion), it has good PEN, crush/pierce dmg AND also lowers Will on hit which is kind of cool for a Wizard/Cipher. But I wouldn't advocate for making this your one and only weapon choice - at least not for a solo run... Soul Annihilation is great - but if you miss all your focus will be gone for nothing. So if you want to make SA you main source of melee dmg you should make sure you don't miss. There's one-handed weapons with high accuracy (e.g. Rapier + modal, esp. Rännig's Wrath or Kapana Taga with some enemies engaged or whatever). If you use them with nothing in the offhand it's a lot harder to screw up Soul Annihilation. At least in the early game where I find misses are very common and are very frustrating. Another way can be to use the modal of the small shield. You can switch it on for a shirt while to get the +15 ACC for your next attack (also works if you evade a melee attack by stepping to the side if not engaged) and then use that +15 ACC for Soul Annihilation. You can of course combine stuff like an accurate weapon with the small shield modal. This is only for the early game imo - or if you meet foes which are really hard to hit. Later on you have several sources of ACC buffs so often you can just use whatever (I mean if we talk about not missing Soul Annihilation). One exception is Sun & Moon - this is so good with Soul Annihilation that it's a viable weapon for the whole game imo. You get two chances to not miss SA - and if the first flail head hits, then the second one will generate focus already which is great, too. Citzal's Spirit Lance is pretty cool with Soul Annihilation because the AoE of the Lance applies different portions of raw damage to all enemies. The initial target gets the normal raw dmg of SA and then there's some internal workings at play that give different amounts of raw dmg to the enemies in the AoE. I suspect that those hits generate focus which will get dumped into raw dmg immediately (but you can't see that). Draining Touch is very good on a Wiz/Ciph because not only has it very high base dmg and does corrode dmg - it also targets Will instead of deflection. A Wizard/Cipher has so many tools to lower Will in enemies. For example you can use Kapana Taga in the offhand + modal and Draining Touch in the main hand. Modal lowers enemies' Will by 25. Miasma lowers enemies Will by another -40 (!) and then drop Secret Horrors and Ringleader... what isn't charmed will get annihilated by your (and your Phantom's) Draining Touch (+SA if you want). And even the charmed/dominated ones you can kill quickly. An insanely good weapon against all forms of vessels is Grave Calling. It can create a foe-only Chillfog that counts as weapon attack. That means the Chillfog will generate focus for you (fuel for Soul Annihilation all the time). It also has an enchantment that applies paralyze+ to an enemy if the sabre has done some hits. This also works with the Chillfog! So the Chillfog will generate focus for you AND freeze enemies in place as well. And the best part is that if a vessel is killed by the Chillfog it counts as weapon kill so that will proc another Chillfog. It can snowball into a cascade of death for all vessels on the screen (which are not immune to freeze dmg). Never forget your Phantom which carries the same items as you. Citzal's Spirit Lance * 2 is cool. With the example above (Kapana Taga + Draining Touch) you can also let your Phantom engage enemies (Kapana Taga can give +2 engagement, if you wear Reckless Brigandine it can get another engagement etc.). You can send it in to "tank" some enemies and then drop some terrify effect on them once the Phantom has engaged 2 or 3. They will disengage eventually and get hit by the Phantom's truck-like disengagement attacks. Not bad for a summon I think. You can also give it very protective gear and really use it for taking aggro for you for a long time - or even give it "suicide" gear so you can send it to enemies while you are invisible/stealthed/away - and when it dies it will explode with several AoE bursts (for items see Great Swords Effort, Mantle of the Seven Bolts or Cape of the Falling Star, Effigy's Husky...). This can be very helpful to thin out groups of enemies before you feel confident enough to face them head-on. It can also be useful to let that happen while you two are in the thick of it all since those AoEs are foe-only. There's the Shroud of Phantasm (cape) that summons 6 copies of you which have very low health. If you are in a pinch you can have 6 death explosions that might kill enemies around you and save you). Those copies also can cast all your spells (unlike Essential Phantom). Also - even as a Soulblade - never forget Mind Control. Stuff like Ring Leader is impacting the outcome of an encounter so much. It's like summoning a bunch of creatures who fight for you while taking out the same number of enemies. I can't emphasize enough how powerful that is. Combine with Phantom and you'll have a small temporary army fighting for you. Also here stuff like Miasma and club+modal can help a lot. Especially when using Brilliant Departure first and cast Mind Control on a bunch of enemies in calm. Then finish of the non-controlled with melee + SA or whatever. Tl;dr Wiz/Cipher is an incredibly versatile class combo. I personally would prefer Psion or Beguiler for solo (using Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure to stay hidden and cast CC like there's no tomorrow while my Phantom does the DMG) but that would be a totally different playstyle than what you are looking for I guess.