Boeroer

Kind of...? Actually he's pretty close to Zahua. Life is suffering - because will/desire drives us forth even if we achieved everything, it cannot be sated. To stop the suffering you have to deny will (as principle which drives everything). But you can only do that if you really love all living things and especially know compassion and sympathy - because compassion is the true fundament of moral. Something like that iirc? Whatever. The key is how "Will" is defined here. It's a rather big thing in his philosophy. At the same time he ranted about women and Judaism (as religion). Quite common for that time, but still... Shows lack of compassion and love if you aske me.

Are you using an old savegame maybe?

In terms of dps they are better now because OBS increased the attack speed significantly. But it's nowhere near as it was in the last iterations of PoE where its base dmg scaled with level. In Deadfire Animal Companions "only" get a scaling additive dmg bonus instead of the multiplicative one that scaling base dmg was. I never thought that they die too easily. Some of them have regeneration (Boar), higher defenses (Antelope) or higher AR (Bear) and if you don't use them as your main tank (as some players seem to try) they are fine. Of course the higer dps ones (e.g. Wolf, Lion) die sooner than the sturdier ones. If you use them as flankers you will be fine, especially if picking Resiliant Companion. Ghost Heart's summon can be used to tank because it's just 1 Bond for a rel. sturdy but disposable summon that can even have some nice talents.

I just tried Dragon's Dowry with Heart Seeker: I think that's the best weapon to use that ability with. The 30% burning lash works with the "line" AoE and works beautifully with the +100% dmg bonus and the high base dmg. Without any other buff I did over 100 dmg to all dummies in a loooong line. If you like to kite your enemies into a line I think this is a pretty awesome ability/weapon combo - although very circumstancial/niche. Hand mortar's AoE doesn't work with Heart Seeker by the way and low base dmg weapons are just wasted Bond with Heart Seeker.

Should look like this:

I think that's what Faytte meant with "cheese". It is quite ridiculous. I think for solo play Paladin/Monk would be th best choice. The Damage output is not immense but respectable (Lightning Strikes + Eternal Devotion + Turning Wheel means you stack a 45% multiplicative dmg boost), the accuracy can be great (with Endurnig Dance + FoD + Ring of Searing Flames), the defenses are good and you even could make good use of Sacred Immolation without any self damage (Clarity of Agony + good RES + Lone Wolf completely removes all afflictions, including the self damage from SI). With THunderous Blows you'll get some PEN bonus. You also get the highest AR in the game when picking Goldpact Knight (use it with Sworn Rival to avoid Zeal starvation and also use stuff like Inspired Defenses and Stoic Steel - it doesn't stack with Iron Wheel). Another plus: powerful self heals and excellent kiting ability (Zealous Charge + Long Stride is very fast ). Then there's Blade Turning, AoE CC with Raised Torment... I think it's an awesome combo for soloing.

If they would chance Driving Flight so that it worked with all kind of projectiles/jumps like Mind Blades and missiles and also changed the Animal Companion so that it would generate Focus for you Ranger would be everybody's darling.

Yes. The biggest reason for Rage starvation is Barbaric Blow in my opinion. It's too expensive. Also the very non-granular resource costs of abilities (1, 2, 3) don't allow for fine tuning. Rogues have some abilites that are too expensive as well (but they also have one for 1 Guile which makes up for this). If we had a resource pool of 100 instead of 10 and the abilities would cost 10 or 20 or 30 instead of 1 or 2 or 3 you could tune stuff like Barbaric Blow down to 15. Atm you can't. And that leads to a situation where a Paladin with 10 Zeal can deliver 10 Eternal Devotions (or Shared Flames) while a Barb with 10 Rage can only deliver 5 Barbaric Blows. I don't think that Barbaric Blow is twice as good as FoD. Barbaric Smash (refund on kill) does work. But it is flawed on Corpse Eaters: for a Corpse Eater it costs 3 Rage but you'll only get a refund of 2. Also the refund (or 0 recovery) on kill is flawed on itself: you want to make sure that you kill. This nearly always leads to a lot of overkill which lowers the effectiveness of the ability.

Yes, Stasis Shell doesn't influence DoTs. Disintegrate or Toxic Strike + Stasis Shell is basically like Finger of Instadeath (if you can land both of course).

Soul Annihilation only works with melee weapons. How can people question the value of higher ACC against bosses?

Most. But the most powerful ones still do.

Summon lion behind enemy, cast Ectopsychic Echo on him. Evade-roll behind more enemies. Nice! Driving Flight should help you to build lots of focus. Use with dual hand mortars or Watershaper's Focus.

Speaking of FoD: did you know that FoD (like any other dmg dealing ability) gets +5% base damage per additional Power Level? You can only see it in the combat log (look at your dmg roll which exceeds the base damage after some PLs). Since it's PL 1 it scales very well at higher (power) levels. That (maybe combined with with Eternal Devotion which will drop the PL gain a bit though) is a great way to spend 1 Zeal in my opinion. THe dmg bonuses and the dual multiplicative boost (PL + lash) work together nicely. Also because lashes generate focus. Alternating between FoD and Soul Annihilation is kind of... good? Especially when using Magran's Favour + Sun and Moon - but also with WotEP. And it works with Ring of Focused Flames so that you'll have an ACC bonus of +20. It also does +20% burning lash, not 10%. 10% is the "lingering" effect of Eternal Devotion. I don't think FoD is overrated. But it's not mandatory, sure. In a party if wouldn't want to miss it - it's very handy for BoW, too. But when going solo it might indeed be better to spend your Zeal on Greater Lay on Hands or something like that. It's always good to see if somebody comes up with something "different" that works well. Edit: Soul Ignition also works with Ring of Focused Flames by the way.

I agree. It's even so that a certain class is great in a special multiclass combination but meh in another. How do you want to rate that class then? Very complicated.

Hehe - ok.

You are right. I completely forgot that Heating Up also gives you a bonus for Sneak Attack. Sorry for that. :oops: Nevertheless: I didn't want to compare Barbarian to Streetfighter, I just wanted to compare Frenzy to Heating up since Frenzy as an ability was questioned. Other abilites don't matter in that direct comparison of those two abilities because I wanted to show that Frenzy is comparable to Heating Up. So my point was that if one wants to complain that Frenzy is bad because it makes you squishy then one would also have to admit that Heating Up makes you at least as squishy. I don't know how I can make myself more clear.

Then you disregarded it? Weakest class? No idea. I still need to carry all of them in different combos through some playthroughs to make well-founded assertions. Also because there are so many combinations of classes abilities now that it's pretty hard to contain the comparison. For example only looking at single classes. So far there seems to be no clear winner or loser. If I should voice a fuzzy suspicion I'd say that Ranger and Fighter are on my personal bottom list so far.

Yes. Pre-nerf.

Kalakoth's Minor Blights + stuff like Arterial Strike is rather nice. Since it's one-handed you can either go for higher ACC or more speed (if you put a dagger or something into the offhand) . Everything with AoE is great with a rogue because his DoT effects can be applied in an AoE then. That makes the use of Guile highly efficient. Infuse helps to expand the AoE even further. Try Toxic Strike with high INT and Infuse. It builds up dmg per tick like crazy if your INT is high enough. Also Riposte + Spirit Lance is possible. Debuff enemies with a Blinding Strike + buff your own deflection and do some nifty AoE Ripostes while poking them with some more attacks. Or stack defense against Disengagement Attacks (Alacrity, abilities, items) and run around triggering those. This is rather risky but can be great fun. Your speed is so high with Alacrity... Also Nannasin's Cobra Strike got secretly buffed I think. The base dmg is good and it applies a pretty crazy poison with each attack. I tested it with a Spellblade and the single target dmg is pretty good now. Cobra Strike's poison, Deep Wounds and stuff like Toxic Strike and Gouging Strike all stack. Even enemies with high health drop quickly. Watch out: although it has the range of a reach weapon it is considered a ranged weapon. But in the long run I guess a SC wizard may be the more powerful option. Not in the early/mid game though.

Voiceover is English only. Judging by your post your English is good enough to understand the English voiceover. They all talk in a way that even non-native speakers can understand it and everything they say is also presented with text. The German translation is traditionally bad by the way. Ich denke, dass Dir die Englische Version auf lange Sicht besser gefallen würde.

You forget that you can upgrade Frenzy two times. The "problem" with Barb's (and whyso many drop them during early game) is that four things come together that impact the performance in the early game: 1. Low starting deflection: this is especially bad in the early game because your health pool and armor are low compared to enemies' dmg and PEN. 2. Even less deflection with Frenzy: see above. You will receive crits all the time. 3. Higher health pool means nothing at the beginning: usually it means you could take one additional hit - but since enemies crit all the time it doesn't matter at all. Higher health base works very well from the mid game but is rel. useless early on. 4. Low ACC of Carnage and not many crowds to fight: the performance of Carnage is bad in the early game because it not only does low damage and misses a lot but also because you don't fight that many crowds in the early game. It's dmg is also very low. Later on it becomes a great tool because it scales with Power Level (kind of secretly): +5% dmg per additional PL. Corpse Eater food counts. You can reach 100% weapon base damage as raw dmg - which is good. But in the beginning? Meh! And if you want to counter your squishyness with a medium or large shield you will not hit anything with Carnage. BUT: if you have some patience all those disadvantages start to dissolve. Stacking some armor and adding Thick Skinned on top makes a Barb sturdy through damage reduction so that crits from enemies are not that painful anymore. Crits become a smaller portion of enemies' damage at the same time (but still lead to PEN). Being Robust through Stalwart Defiance works rather nicely with the +5 MIG and +5 CON and the more levels you get the more impactful the higher health pool becomes (don't drop CON on a melee Barb!). Carnage suddenly can be superhandy if you meet high AR foes and it scales very well. So, in my opinion those are the reasons why lots of people don't like Barb's: the first impression and experience is bad. Like on PoE1 basically - same reasons. But if you really play them (had three Barbs in different combos during full playthroughs until now) you will discover that they are really good - especially on PotD where there are more enemies with higher AR. I especially like to multiclass them with casters because Frenzy + Bloodlust + Blood Thirst + Rapid Casting is just awesome as well as Lion's Sprint. That really helps to land debuffs. One if the best combos I played so far were Nalpasca/Berserker by the way. Will be putting out a build at some time (just finished the playthrough two days ago). The thing that I don't like on Barbs: compared to other attack abilities Barbaric Blow + upgrades is rather weak. Too expensive and the Power Level entry is too high (doesn't scale as high as let's say Crippling Strike or FoD). Ranged single Barb with Mortars or Watershaper's Focus or Frostseeker (my current Serafen build) is gamebreaking good at higher levels. But of course the early game is important and there the Barb kind of stinks. I like the Savage "all-in" approach, but I think they deserve some means of making them a bit sturdier at the beginning. +1 AR or a flat health bonus that doesn't scale or something like the "numb" enchantment (10% dmg reduction) of Pukestabber when using Frenzy.

Depends. If you can crit a lot with a melee weapon then Swift Flurry. For example a Sage (Spirit Lance + Stunning Surge) is better with Swift Flurry. Procs off itself aside: if you crit ~50% of your attack swings then it's as good as Lightning Strikes. So in most cases Lightning is the better option. Ranged monks can only use Lightning Strikes. Long Pain is considered ranged.

No, Stunning Surge is not an AoE ability. But it works with ranged or melee weapons. Thing is if you use it with AoE weapons (Spirit Lance, WotEP, mortars, rod+Blast) you will nealry always produce a crit (lots of hit rolls= higher crit chance) and that leads to a refund of Mortificaton (besides stunning lots of enemies). So you can spam it endlessly as long as there are a few enemies left. Clear Out is melee only but works with Spirit Lance in a AoE*AoE fashion, leading to an absurd amount of hit rolls. Even better: hand mortars work with Heart of Fury and Whispers of the Wind: AoE*(AoE + AoE + 3 Powder burns AoEs). This leads to an attack that bends your graphics card and wipes mobs completely.

If you are a completionist then the difficulty will drop from mid to late game. But PotD will start quite hard. If you only do critical path then it's too hard. But who does that, right?

You can fix it yourself: click edit and then at the bottom there's a button named "extended option" or something like that (can't remember) - right of the save button. If you click that you can also edit your title.