Boeroer

Barbarian has Carnage which turns every auto attack into an AoE attack. Barbaric Blow is not superpowerful but can be good with dual weapons and a high crit rate. Heart of Fury is only 1/encounter because usually everyone is dead when you use it properly. It's that powerful. Besides that most weapon effects (draining, stunning, wounding, spell chances and so on) work with carnage - so you maybe can imagine why people like them. They are also the class that can achieve very high attack speed very early. Monks have some abilities that are 1/encounter, but their other abilites (the most powerful ones) are not limited in use as long as you gain wounds. They have an AoE attack that is very powerful and as long as they have wounds to spend they can wipe the floor with whole groups of enemies. And when they don't have wounds you can use the per-encounter-abilites. Both classes have high endurance and very big health pools - so you can afford to do a very offensive build without the fear that they will go k.o. all the time (might take some levels to build enough health so that the difference to other classes is visible). If you are a beginner with both of them I would recommend a stout barb with good MIG, CON and INT, Veteran's Recovery and Savage Defiance, wielding a great sword (aim for Tidefall) and wearing thick armor. Take Frenzy, Bloodlust and Blood Thirst. This requires low micro compared to a more squishy barb or a monk. A monk requires a lot of resource management but is more powerful if you do it right (just my opinion).

Thank you. There is no penalty for shooting at close range. But talents/abilites like Marksman and Distant Advantage (Wood Elf racial ability) only work when you are more than 4 meters away (I think it's 4, but maybe 5 or so, can't say for sure). So you would lose those bonuses if you shoot from point blank (if you took them in the first place). Those two are the only bonuses that work this way if I'm not mistaken. On the other hand: with a rogue you can get a Backstab bonus with a ranged weapon when you are shooting from a very close distance: 2m or less gives you the Backstab bonus (if you shoot from stealth or invisibilty, +150% base damage). Gunner will reduce the reload speed of blunderbusses, yes. It reduces the reload time for every weapon that has a reload phase: crossbow, arbalest, pistol, blunderbuss, arquebus. It will only reduce the reload time and nothing else. As a side note: armor penalty will not get added to the reloading phase, only the recovery phase. If you don't want to use gun switching (with multiple guns in your weapon slots and Quick Switch) then Gunner is recommended, yes. It stacks with Swift Aim and also Sure Handed Ila. But in this case the stacking is multiplicative which reduces the individual effect of each additinal bonus - the more reload bonuses you stack. So with Swift Aim (50%) + Gunner (20%) and Sure Handed Ila (20%) you will not have a reduced reload time of 90% as one might think (if you added the values), but instead it's "only" a bonus of 68% because you multiply them instead. Still good to stack them. If Pallegina uses an offensive scroll she would lose the marking of the weapn because she will not attack with it, but I think she will retain the bonus from Coordinated Attacks because she's attacking with a spell. But it would have to be a targeted spell like missiles or Stag's Horn. I don't think it works with AoE spells that you target on the floor like Fireball (all speculation). If she uses a scroll that is not offensive (prayer, buff and so on) she will surely lose both. I would not give her lore but survival as you said.

Casting Reaping knives on oneself is a bit uneffective. But why not make it possible?

You could? But you can't see how? Hehe :D

No wait. I just tested it ingame and actually it only benefits the ranger. Mea culpa! THe pet doesn't get +10 ACC. I must have confused this with marking when I was testing all those +ACC things I spoke about above (using Cladhaliath and flanking and so on). I remembered incorrectly. So forget what I was saying about Stalker's Link: it only gives the ranger +10 ACC. Still good, but does nothing for your pet's ACC. But I tested my wolf and bear that I have in an old savegame and they both had 88 ACC (without any buffs, attacking alone) at lvl 13 which I think is pretty solid. My rangers only have 89 at that point (with Twinned Arrows + Stalker's Link = +/- 0) - so pretty similar. And that's with Weapon Focus, an exceptional Stormcaller and 19 PER. Therefore I can't see why the pet should have troubles hitting things.

Doesn't the in-game description say that both profit from Stalker's Link? I thought so...

The wiki is totally outdated on that matter. Stalker's Link got changed a lot since the release. It just gives you and your pet +10 ACC if you attack the same target. No need to be opposite sides or whatever. Just attack the same target and +10 ACC will happen. It's like a vice-versa marking. You can combine it with a marking weapon on the ranger (pet gets +20 ACC, ranger +10), with a coordinating weapon (pet gets +10, ranger gets +14 and +25% damage) or with both (Cladhaliath can be enchanted to be marking and coordinating) and you can also combine that with flanking which will result in the equivalent of another +10 acc for both. So, imagine a melee ranger with a marking & coordinating Cladhaliath (also gets +5 ACC because it's a spear) who has Gallant's Focus, Stalker's Link and flanks with his pet. Pretty high ACC gain for both. You could even add Mob Justice from the Dozens an get another +5 ACC for the ranger.

I was curious. Now this is what you'll find when you google "Swan Gula": Dammit, how do I resize pictures in bbcode again?

Maybe you shouldn't put PoE rogues either into one corner or the other. Why can't they be both nowadays? A shock trooper with a great sword and scale armor - a duelist guy with padded armor + rapier + buckler, a one handed dagger thief. They all say "rogue" to me. So for me Edér and also Ydwin can fit into the rogue class. Maybe it's a broad variety, but which class in PoE isn't? I think OBS saw your frustrating dilemma and thus decided to make the base class rogue a more sturdy kind of shock trooper (Josh talked about that a while ago) while the new Trickster, Assassin and Street Fighter resemble other facettes of popular rogue figures/classes like thugs, thieves, stealthy killers and so on.

It's a bit harder to read. Bright letters with a dark background picture that has some brighter parts on a small screen is more fidgety than with a plain dark background for example.

Its buff duration stealing got nerfed a lot. And also its speed bonus doesn't stack with Frenzy, Swift Aim, Alacrity and such any more.

Yes,Two Handed Style only adds 2.55 damage on hit on average (on Tidefall). It's something that I take if I took every other talent that fits my char. Same with Apprentice's Sneak (even worse) and Savage Attack. Although if you combine them all (+8.5) things become interesting. When going solo your approach is def. a good one. Especially against casters and ranged salves you want to have high defenses at the beginning of a fight.

Right!

Ogres + mind control = dead ogres. Their will saves are bad.

I think with a lot of stealth and Boots of Speed and some figurines you might be able to sneak and run to Drawn in Spring without fighting? But maybe there are some fight that are not avoidable (like the Drake at lvl 5). I never tried this - but I know for example that you don't need the tiny pyramids in order to open the gate in the blight forge map. And you may be able to sneak past the fampyr on his throne at lvl8? In order to get Drawn in Spring you only need to collect some machine parts and that can be done without fighting I guess. Lots of speculation. Would be fun to try though. Making it a seperate kind of "stronghold adventure" with a solo retrained MC.

Lvl 6 in Dyrford is too low. That is an area for higher levels. The pet will hit stuff. It has a totally normal accuracy. Also use Stalker's Link. It will give both of you +10 ACC.

Yes, Distant Advantage will add accuracy to spells, too.

As I said: wounding is still superior to other damage enchantments even with high INT.

Yes, FoD will have +36 ACC at lvl 16. But the +20 ACC of FoD suppress the bonus of Zealous Focus (if you use that). So it's not +42 with Zealous Focus but still "only" +36. With Carnage it's like this: it has a build-in ACC malus of 10. But with every level Carnage gets +1 ACC. So at lvl 10 Carnage will have the same ACC as your initial hit - and at lvl 16 it will even hit better (+6). Add Accurate Carnage and your ACC with it is +11 above your normal ACC at lvl 16. That's a reason why a high level barb can crit a lot with Carnage while he can't hit the broad side of a barn with Carnage when he starts at lvl 1.

Exactly

Higher INT will lead to a longer time of appliance with unchanged damage - so damage per second will suffer a bit. Example: With 10 INT and 15 damage from wounding you will have the base duration (5 secs). So you'll get additional 3 damage per second, right? But the overall damage stays 15 - spread over 5 secs. Now with 20 INT and 15 damage you will have a duration of 7.5 seconds. That is only 2 damage per second and thus lower dps. But the overall damage stays 15 - spread over 7.5 secs. With 1 INT you'd get 5.45 damage per second because wounding would only take 2.75 secs. But still the overall damage stays 15. You see that overall damage stays the same, it just takes longer for the raw damage to apply with higher INT. This can be important (you want to kill an opponent asap for example). In the end you don't necessarily lose the damage - you just have to wait a little longer. Still a drop in damage per second (dps). But it's not that bad and still better than annihilation even with high INT. And maybe sometimes you want it to take longer (like when wounding triggers Predator's Sense).

Why don't you use Arcane Dampener?

Also, Blood Testament Gloves and Tidefall's wounding should add up very nicely - even if you're not hoarding wounds. But if you get pummeled a lot on accident and then start dishing out FoAs with +45% raw damage lashes in addition to the other elemental lashes that's really going to hurt. And even if you only have 1 wound left you'll still get +2% additional raw damage. The +1 ACC per level is not exclusive to FoA. It's likethat with all attack abilites (Flames of Devotions, rogues' strikes, Knockdown, Torment's Reach, even Carnage)

Drawn in Spring. Annihilation on a sabre only adds 6.75 of damage on crit on average. This is always the case no matter the enchanetments, because the additional 0.5 crit damage mod is only applied to the base damage of the sabre (11-16 -> average of 13.5). It's only an additive damage bonus. Another thing that sabres have is that theyare sharp, which adds 2.7 damage compared to Drawn in Spring. Wounding on the other hand is caculated based on the actual damage roll (including all damage mods like Sneak Attack, Deathblows, MIG, enchantments and so on - pre DR!). It's multiplicative and comes as raw damage. And it gets further boosted by MIG bonus. Daggers have an average base damage of 11(9-13). Without any damage bonus wounding would only add 2.75 damage. But now add superb (+45%), Sneak Attack (+50%), Deathblows (+100%) and a crit with Durgan Steel + Merciless Hand + Dungeon Delver (+90%): the damage climbs from 11 to 42.35. Now wounding gets calculated and is 10.59. That's higher than the annihilation of the sabres. Now add the fact that daggers are faster than sabres and that MIG will boost wounding damage: with 20 MIG it would be 14.84. I will put the damage calcs of both side by side (I'm using 20 MIG, superb, crit with Durgan Steel, Merciless Hand and Dungeon Delver, Sneak Attack and Deathblows): Annihilating sabre on crit: 65.48 Drawn in Spring on crit: 59.51 Looks less, but now you'd have to look at the attacks speed. In 500 frames with 10 DEX and no speed bonuses sabre would deal 451,59 (all crits!) and Drawn in Spring would deal 616,05 damage (all crits). Of course it's unlikely that you crit with every strike. And if you don't then annihilation does nothing for you - while wounding would still add damage, even when you graze. So even if you'd crit with 100% of your attacks Drawn in Spring would still be better (with auto attacks). Merciless Hand, Durgan Steel and stuff applies to every non-soulbound or summoned weapon and is not exclusive to annihilating sabres.

Ah, ok. Here you go: PoE1 useful stuff: attack speed calculator, unofficial patch mod, attack speed mechanics, dot mechanics, modals exclusivity rules