Boeroer

At least it doesn't rust...

Good. I'd take Veteran's Recovery and Savage Defiance to counter the rel. low CON and he shouldn't be squishy. I did my ultimate attempt with a max MIG, nearly max PER, max CON (because of Battle Forged) and max INT build with only 3 DEX (not needed for HoF at all) and it worked well, too.

Yes. A ranged caster like wizard with implement is rel. straightforward and doesn't need a build description. In this forum you will most likely find tricky, funny or special builds which are viable nonetheless. Some of them are especially powerful. Some of them are "only" more fun to play than the generic xy classbuild. Wizards with summoned weapons for example are both: fun and powerful. You basically spare a lot of spells (you only need one or two casts - weapon and a buff or debuff to be effective in a fight). And the weapons are really good. Wizard with weapon and shield has some nice synergies on the defensive side: shield, Arcane Veil and Wizard's Double and such things stack pretty nicely.

Hehe - Firebrand is nice. It's also great on a cipher and a backstab-roue.

Lore is only useful if you plan to use scrolls. That skill is for nothing else. Now it depends which scrolls you want to use with a character. If it's mostly defensive scrolls you can take anybody with high INT who is not a caster (because those already have spells and usually don't need scrolls). For example a barbarian, a fighter, a paladin, a monk, a chanter or whatever. If you also want to utilize offensive scrolls (CC or damage) I would give lore to a character with high INT, high accuracy and high MIG (in case of damaging scrolls). Something like a fighter, rogue or monk. Actually rogues are really great for this beause Deathblows (lvl 11) which does +100% damage on targets with two afflictions also works with spells (= spells do double damage). Additionally, spells which deal crush, pierce or slash damage also work with Deep Wounds (Twin Stones, Concussive Missiles, Bounding Missiles and so on). This makes the rogue the no.1 offensive scroll (and spell binding items) user. Usually one character with lore is enough. I give him all the scrolls and let him loose if things get tough. There are some items in the game which will give you +2 lore. This is neat because you only hae to give 8 lore and still be at 10 where you can use the strongest offensive scroll and spare some skillpoints for something else like survival. I consider survival to be one of the best skills. the camping bonuses are really good. For example +10 accuracy that early in the game (with only 4 skill points) is hard to beat.

Barbs have Carnage - they hit in an AoE with every auto-attack they do. Besides that: Chillfog, Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon - and try Combusting Wounds with Chillfog and also Combusting Wounds with a barb's carnage area. It's great.

Huh? What's that? A companion. She is a Barbarian. Ah, ok. That's what I may do. I hope she has reasonable stats. Can I retrain non-custom NPCs? Yes, but not their 1st level choice and not their stats.

In a party a barb with a pike using Heart of Fury is also good. He can place the centre of HoF better than a dual wielder and eventually reach one or two more enemies which may boost the overall damage further than a second swing might do (because of the exponential growth of hits with every additional enemy) - in some cases.

I would recommend a pike barb and a paladin with Outworn Buckler. Barbs and reach weapons go well together.

No, if your MC is lvl 6 you can hire adventuerers of lvl 5. They will be actually higher of level than your actual hirelings.

Try this with a fighter: In the end it's Vengeful Defeat + Second Chance (on Argwe's Adra armor) that saves the day.

They do more damage and can possibly also cause disabling effects in an AoE with their autoattacks (carnage) because things like stunning translate to carnage. In my opinion they are a lot better overall than fighters - in most ways. Just in the early game the fighter is clearly better.

Mind Control is a strong effect that helps a lot against enemy casters. Go and buy "Munacra Arret" from Sonild in Admeth's Den in the Copperlane district. You can buy stuff from her once you finished the first quest of the Dozens (doesn't lock you out of the other factions yet). It lets you charm 3 times per rest is is great on any party member with high accuracy, like fighter, rogue or paladin with Zealous Focus and Sworn Enemy (also look here: Ploi). Another source of mind control would be your wizard with confusion spells. Or use Slicken or anything else that disables those pesky casters completely while you shoot at them. Fighter with a pike can be nice. More battlefield control with Knockdown since your reach is bigger. If it's Gimli you can pretend it's a dragonlance.

Yes, the weapon choice. Barbs are great in any party in my opinion. Also they can be build in many different ways and be fun to play.

Anyways, I only took those talents once. I would never recommend them unless you have a very special build. Potions of Inf. w. Vital Ess. is always the better option. Or the spell itself (as a mastery) if you're a wizard.

It's because usually he has crappy deflection (because he concentrates on dealing damage and not on defenses) and because he's a rogue. Rogues really have terrible starting values for a martial class (except accuracy).

If you rest after every hard fight, why would you want that talent? You heal completely with resting. :D

My main is level 6; and the rest are very close to level 5. If I hire a new Gimli, then he will be level 1, right? I think that's too much to catch up. No, you can hire an adventurer at MC-lvl minus 1. So he would be lvl 5. Costs more money though.

It's more for solo. THere you can't stick to one weapon anyway. Barb with hammers, maces or axes are fine.

Why don't you just hire a new Gimli in a tavern? If you're not too high a level it shouldn't be too bad with the XP loss. Or is Gimli your MC?

Shatterstar is really good that early in the game.

Actually they have endurance times 6 as health. Monks have x5. In the early gane you can't feel it because their deflection is very low and the difference to other classes is not that big (in flat numbers). But wirh every level the difference in endurance and esp. health increases until they are meat shields. Same with his Carnage: He has an accuracy malus of -10 to carnage, meaning his carnage attacks have 10 less accuracy than the main attack. But carnage is an ability and all abilites get +1 accuracy per level. So at a certain point you hit better with carnage than with your main attack. And it's level 10 obviously. If you take Accurate Carnage (talent) it's lvl 5. So, if you manage to beat the early game with a solo barb it gets a lot easier. HoF is truly nice - but it's still not a supergreat solo class. Not compared to casters. Of course it's a great solo class if you hate resting - like the chanter. By the way: solo barb with Blood Thirst + St. Ydwen's Redeemer against groups of vessels = pure fun!

What do you mean with "better than the paladin"? In which way? The non-flanking part is realy good - if you care about deflection and loss of endurance at all. Tall Grass is nice because you can place Carnage, Barbaric Blow and HoF better, but of course HoF is way more powerful with two weapons (if you don't kill your main target with the first swing - because then no second swing will follow: always initally attack the sturdiest target with HoF when dual wielding). I did an Ultimate attempt with a dual wielding hammer barb with Vet Recov. and Savage Def. and so on and it went really well. I got killed accidentially by a bug (Second Wind triggers Battle FOrged on yourself, killing you when endurance is low). The fat health pool is not an obvious advantage in the beginning, but with every level he gets more meaty until heatlh really isn't a problem.

It heals health (or gives you extra health if it's already full) and doesn't exactly work like the tooltip or the description says. The health is not taken away afterwards. And it also works with healing bonuses from survival and items.

Rogue: The rogue per se has low endurance, low health, low deflection (the other defenses are the same as with other classes). So he really is on the squishy side (even if you give him decent CON he drops all the time in the early game). Keep him in stealth (scouting mode) until most enemies engaged with your melees. Only then attack with the bow. If he's visible right from the start he will get attacked immediately because he has low DR, low endurance and also low deflection. There are a lot of enemies who love to attack those squishies first. If you send him into melee he will die even sooner. Kepp him out of the fray and let the enemies engage with your front line first. That way it's less likely that enemies break out of engagement, risk a disengagement attack and go for the rogue (although it's still possible). After some levels things get better. If you feel it's too bad give him Veteran's Recovery. This will help a lot. And as soon as you get Borresaine you shouldn't have too many issues anyway. (buy it in Copperlane from the aumauan merchant who's located at the bottom right on the marketplace - marketplace is in front of the expedition hall which sits in the upper right of the Copperlane map). There is no real aggro system in PoE. There are just some preferences of the AI. It determines which basic strategy an enemy will choose (like enemy barbs like to go for low deflection for example). If you could kill the Ogre Matron Zolla easily you shouldn't have any problems with Raedric.