Boeroer

Barbs are only squishy in the early game and later become serious meat shields even with lowest deflection. With Bloodlust (stacks with Frenzy) and Blood Thirst you can make Two Handers pretty fast with a barb. Firebrand is a nice option if you want a very good mid-game weapon and it can be used until the end if you want to spare enchantment ingredients for other party members. Other good picks are Tidefall, Hours of St. Rumbalt or Tall Grass. With a reach weapon you can place Carnage more effectively. However, if you want to use Heart of Fury (who doesn't?) and Barbaric Blow I would go for dual wielding the heavy one-handers. Resolution + Bittercut is a nice combo, so is Shatterstar + Godansthunyr and We Toki + Wodewys. So basically sabres, hammers or battle axes. Dual spear looks ridiculous and dual maces and swords lack good uniques for this task. All light weapons are a bad pick for Heart of Fury. A great end game weapon (and worth retraining) is Acuan Giamas, a morning star. It is not only wounding which is the best damage related enchantment in the game, it also steals wizard/druid/priest spells on hit and works with Carnage. You can then cast all stolen spells as often as you want/can in a given timespan. They work with Blood Thirst. So for example if you steal Calling the World's Maw from a druid you can cast it over and over again until enemies start to die which lets you cast with zero recovery. It makes all fights where kith spellcasters are involved a joke. True Mage Slayer if you want. Superlate though.

Firebrand with Doemenel is nice. Because it doesn't care that much that you can't speed-enchant it when you have Bloodlust + Blood Thirst. Hm... but how is it different from using Forgemaster's Gloves and a Potion of Flame Shield (besides the stat points that won't make a whole lot of difference)? Don't think it needs a nerf because of that. I played a retaliation barb exactly like that, but added Battle Forged and Blooded, One Stands Alone of course and so on. Flame Shield stacks with Battle Forged. It is strong. But I have to say the damage output is dwarfed by a Monksterlasher who uses the same approach - despite that he has no Blood Thirst. I also had the impression that Hours of St. Rumbalt is a better pick after you get Durgan Steel and Sky Dragon Eyes. +8 accuracy, more speed, even higher crit modifier of *1.3, *0.45 dmg, crit conversion and two damage types - and prone on crit of course. This all makes is the better weapon although it's base damage is lower. But yes - until that Firebrand is a beast. And you need zero enchantment resources to be great. By the way: Colored Coat triggers Wicked Briars as spelldefense which also trigger Blood Thirst when they kill with a pulse. It's a nice addition. The binding rope ensures you crit a lot more with Firebrand. Not in a solo game unfortunatly and not when using this special belt of course.

No idea - I only bound my soul to my wife and maybe I'm proficient in dealing with her modals now.

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/94446-items-bezas-toothed-blade/?hl=%2Btoothed+%2Bblade

How Do you want to implement universal weapons with the current proficiencies? If you have let's say 4 profs and get a universal soulbound weapon: which modal will be displayed in the UI? All 4 side by side? Or the game picks one for you? I guess the days of universal weapons are over - except if you simply get the fitting proficiency automatically while binding+wielding the soulbound weapon. For example the soulbound dagger will give you the proficiency for daggers if you don't already have it.

Or just make a barb/monk and check if Enervating Blows and/or Swift Flurry work with carnage-crits. Or use a battle axe (raw DoT on hit) or use a pike (reduced defenses on hit). Or a mace (reduces AR on hit) and so on.

Well... It nearly doubles your amount of spells per encounter. That is pretty useful.

They didn't stack in PoE either, so I'd say this is intended.

Is it set that we will be having enchantment? Because atm there's no such option. At least Josh said that things like lashes can't be enchanted anymore. That means that monk's fists don't have that special disadvantage like in PoE. Same with Durgan Steel I guess. So if they have the base damage of a sabre but are way faster then they are powerful. Still doesn't explain why you can't be proficient with them and get a nice modal as well as stuff like grazes and extra PEN. If it's too powerful then please nerf the damage a bit.

Oh! Nice one! Could also add up nicely with Blooded to an overall damage boost of 50%. The paladin has a passive that makes him resistant to intellect afflictions. That means that the confuse of the frenzy doesn't get applied. I wonder if Heart of Fury will be in later. Because I can totally see a game breaking thing with Beckoner/Berserker: summon 6 skeletons (with the upgrade that they split into two lesser versions after death) then trigger friendly-fire HoF. This would generate a quadzillion of (carnage)hits and would make the "Beckserker" great against multiple foes as well as single ones.

No idea. It's still too much new stuff happening that I have to process so I couldn't concentrate on testing out those things. But I'm curious, too. Also if the carange-crits give the Skald phrases or not.

Nice synergy between Blade Turning and Riposte. But I'm asking myself: is Blade Turning considered a miss so that it can trigger Riposte? And since I didn't try it out yet: does it redirect the attacks to an ally or enemy or both?

Hehe - I agree. I like to break the game, too.

Yes, the current multiclass solution in Deadfire is quite nice in my opinion. Rather transparent and not overcomplicated - but it gives you freedom of choice.

Hi again and thank you. Three of my four biggest bummers of the beta already got adressed: - Penetration will get a more granular effect - Some universal talents will return - Priests will not be restricted in spell choice anymore - but instead get bonus spells for their chosen deity. That's kind of a double-buff. Which only leaves the overly long casting times on most spells (especially on summoned weapons this is bad). But maybe they first want to check how those compare once the melee-recovery-bug got patched: atm one handers all have 1 sec of recovery only. But only the light weapon should have that, not hammers/swords and so on. those are supposed to have 3 seconds of recovery. They will patch that - and maybe then the spells don't feel as sluggish anymore in comparison. So for my taste it's going into the right direction. And to be fair: there are also lots of cool new things in the Deadfire beta. The thing is: I will not comment as much about the things that I'm ok with but rather write something when I want it to be changed because I don't think it's good. I guess devs only have limited time and attention and I don't want to clutter the beta forums with stuff like "xyz is ok, so leave it in".

Same problem with the Ogre (Transmuter): the sassy pose... Nah - I meant his head is in the clouds as well.

If you're using Blast then I'd pick wands. They are a lot faster and the Blast' AoE damage is totally independent from the weapon's damage. So: the faster you hit the more Blasts you generate = the more AoE dps. Except when you have the Golden Gaze rod. This one fires two projectiles per attack which each trigger Blast. Which makes this the optimal blasting implement (besides Kalakoth's Minor Blights).

... aaand summoned weapons as well. Rest I completely agree with.

Hi! In Deadfire Predator's Sense and Merciless + Vicious Companion are still in (playing the beta right now). I can't say if there will be a wounding great sword though. Rangers in Deadfire seem to have lost some melee capability, but you can now multiclass - and a class combination of ranger + rogue seems to be very fitting for this PoE1 build. Because the rogue has some abilites now that grant everlasting wounding effects (targets bleeds out until encounter ends). So that would trigger Predator's Sense all the time as well without having a special weapon like Tidefall. A special subclass of rogue is the Stalker - he gets bonuses when he and his pet fight near to each other - perfect fit. For therogue subclass I'd go with Streetfighter I guess. It's a good class if you want to offtank a bit and get some beatings every now and then (gets stronger then). Not much has changed with this build since I wrote about it. There are some new items and maybe also a few talents, but the core of the build is still viable and unchanged. So - have fun playing!

Dire Blessing for the win!

In PoE engagement had nothing to do with reach. You could not engage with a quarterstaff when standing 1.8 meters away, but you could hit. I guess it's the same in PoE2...?

Deep Pockets would be nice on a Nalpasca by the way. I mean: where else to put all dat dope?

Exactly

True, true. The Watchful Guardian is also a good spell atm by the way.

I disagree the reason casters were so much better was because they each had a combination of area cc, damage, and buff that out classed most of the martial classes abilities to do the same and could be cast at greater rates later in the game. It had near nothing to do with caster ability to be build like a warrior. Those abilities just allowed you to change the traditional role a caster is suppose to occupy enough to make for interesting builds. Let's say for argument that you're correct. It still means, by your very own words, that the caster classes were built to be able to do everything whereas the warrior classes were not. So my point still stands. I think a lot of us disagree because your point was "new people searched for powerful classes and the answer was casters because of flexibility to do what martial classes do," and that rings false to us. As in, yes the answer was casters, but not because of flexibility. A new player searching for powerful classes is looking for a class that is powerful out of the box (with easy to use, powerful spells), not looking to build mages who are good at melee (which is a niche thing that takes knowledge of the systems to pull off, not something a new player would have any interest in doing). That's not true. I was deliberately abstract in my post in not specifying the exact things identifiable with warrior classes vice caster classes. My point was that the caster classes could take on the roles/functions of warrior classes in a party, however those roles/functions may be defined, but the reverse was not possible. Or put another way, one could have a party of entirely casters and successfully win all battles whereas a party of entirely warriors could not do so (at least not for someone like me where I've admitted I am not a hardcore player). That is true. But it has nothing to do with the talents but all with the spells and abilites those casters have. FOr example a wizard can fill the role of a barbarian because he can summon Citzal's Spirit Lance and go wild with Martial Power. He can grab his self buffs and replace the fighter tank. A druid can replace a rogue because he can do MORE single target damage with Spiritshift + Wildstrike + Avenging Storm while also being able to cast Relentless Storm. Those are all results of the somewhat unbalanced spell/ability design and not of the talents which only round the pickture a bit. If a rogue would have get an ability which drops a poisonous bomb and destroys low-level enemies with it - it would be like a spell - and it would be cool. But unfortunately OBS didn't introduce such things. Don't blame the talents for the somewhat poor ability pool some martial classes have in PoE.