Boeroer

A melee ranger with a two hander is actually quite ok in the early game - mostly because of Wounding Shots (is better than the standard Flames of Devotion and also works in melee) and Swift Aim (also works in melee - Vicious Aim only works with ranged weapons). The improved speed and the raw damage let him do good damage early on. The best part is obvioulsy Stunning Shots which also work in melee. Funnily enough Driving Flight + Stunning Shots will also stun the enemy behind your initial target (without doing damage). You have to decide if it's worth it (I mean Driving Flight). With Stalker's Link and Stalker's Torc (random loot item) you'll also get +10 ACC and +20% damage, stacks with Savage Attack and Apprentice's Sneak as well as Two Handed Style. So, the melee damage can be comparable to a fighter's with the addition that from lvl 11 on you will be perma-stunning enemies - a bit like Xaurip Skirmishers or Phantoms do. And never forget the pet! With Predator's Sense, Merciless & Vicious Companion, combined with a wounding weapon like Tidefall on the ranger it will do tremendous damage per hit. It hits slowly - but who cares if it one-shots squishies, right? On top of that the pet can flank with you, giving you both the equivalent of +10 ACC and triggering Merciless Companion, Apprentice's Sneak Attack and also survival's flanking bonus for you. It's quite fun.

Critical hits with annihilating two hander. And only on Firebrand I'm afraid. In the late game with Durgan Steel, superb or legendary enchantment and a burning lash Hours of St. Rumbalt will be better (also because it will crit more often). I also like Runner's Wounding Shot a lot on a paladin. It also works in melee and adds some nice raw damage that can double your damage for one strike. And because it also gets +1 ACC per level it crits more often than auto-attacks. It gives the paladin an additional strike that's not a boring auto-attack. Great with Sworn Enemy!

As far as I know armor penalties don't affect reloading, only recovery. So Armored Grace and such can't have any effect here.

Get Kograk the ogre and other prestige-suckers and try again. Those hirelings are good for raising the defense but keeping the prestige low - until you want it to be high.

Technically FoD (especially of a Bleak Walker) is best with arquebuses against high DR (average base damage of 30) or blunderbuss (7.5 times 6 = 45) against low or zero DR. Not so great with melee weapons like two handers (average base damage of 17). Even things like Savage Attack + Two Handed Style cannot close the gap. Except of course with Firebrand which has 25 plus Annihilating - it does tremendous FoD damage with a Bleak Walker or Goldpact Knight on a crit. Over 200 crit damage on an average damage roll is possible. It's my favorite melee weapon for FoD besides a durganized Hours of St. Rumbalt (usually follows Firebrand in the late game). I know: it's only 3/ rest. But I tend to rest after 3 tough fights anyway. In the easier ones I can still use a regular great sword. I lust love that fiery sword... also great for ciphers (hello focus overflow), monks with Turning Wheel and Lighting Strikes (whooha!) and rogues with invisibility + Deathblows + Backstab (Mr. One-Shot). Bleak Walker with Executioner's Hood, Sanguine Plate and Firebrand is so... fiendish.

Rodriguez, who is dual wielding Buttercut, just called: he wants his Direballs back! Sometimes really good stuff comes from typos in these forums. I would love to see some artsy pictures of a peg-leg dragon, standing on a deck of a ship, holding a harpoon, shouting and slapping sailors to their senses while chasing a big white sea mammal...

Actually "to whale" can also mean to hit or thrash somebody. Totally fits! That - and sea dragons...

Actually I spoke about "Into the Fray" in my two previous posts. I think it can be good, especially with crits as you also mentioned.

No - they work like any other party member and are between official companions (relations, quest, lots of banter and dialogue) and hired adventurers (you buy them and they don't talk at all, hooray).

Yeah, it's totally weapon independent like Clear Out. It does its own base damage and has its own damage type. Both are basically spells. Charge's "crush AoE" is also like this, but Charge's use is limited to melee because it adds a pseudo Full Attack at the target (additional to the crush damage) and that's melee only. Speaking of spell-like abilities: I never used it before, but now I want to try out if ranger's Binding Roots + Thorny Roots is good as caster-killer. Because it targets reflex it's its own debuff: first cast causes stuck and does damage, second cast already has very high crit chance because of stuck... and so on. With Merciless Hand and other crit-talents and items and decent MIG those 5 casts might be enough to kill a priest or druid or wizard or whatever annoying but squishy enemy comes around. It does 2*15 base damage - so basically it's 150 base damage against 10*DR. I have no idea if it works with any DR bypass, ACC buffs like Marksman or Distant Advantage or dmg bonuses... yet. But the range is huge and it's an instant cast. One should be able to spam those 5 uses pretty quickly.

Sure. Depends what you have in the backline, too. If you for example have a backline with reliable and disabling CC then it's no problem. If you go for the self-healing approach then it's an advantage to have classes that have a decent health pool. But I also did a run with Priest of Berath + Tidefall in the middle flanked by dual hammer fighter and dual sabre barb, using Veteran's Recovery and all that self healing stuff. At first the priest had to rest a lot because of low health (not so bad because that also made me spend my spells), but it quickly got better.

Yes, it's the no.1 melee dmg class once it has Heart of Fury and if you know what to do. If you combine it with AoE debuffs and Combusting Wounds it gets really crazy. I like barbs - also because they usually are low maintenance AoE dmg dealers with the option to also do some auto CC as side effect. But they are not especially effective against the tough single enemies - but I think that was the plan all along. Monks are also very powerful if you know them in and out, but require a lot more micromanagement. I can't say that I consider the fighter especially powerful, but he has his niches where he's really usefull - like against dragons. And he's one of the most powerful classes in the early game (together with ciphers, monks and and rogues) and that's also worth something. Regeneration and +20 accuracy nearly right from the start are very good.

Well the chanter is not a great early game tank - same as druid and also barb to an extend. All three are really awesome at becoming "useful" tanks later on but you have to drag them a bit through Act I as frontliners. It's def. a plus if they are not alone in the fray. For me it's fun that way and the reward is that they deliver a very satisfying performance once the build idea manifests more firmly. Yes, also my no. 1 reason why I'd bring a fighter are dragons.

Are you planning to use Into the Fray as well? Because I sometimes use it as a ranged attack. With Disciplined Barrage, Merciless Hand and stuff it does actually pretty nice damage. And you can avoid disengagement if you desperately want to take out an annoying caster who's out of reach. It also works with ranged weapons equipped - as Clear Out. So, Into the Fray and then a Knockdown into the face (preferably with Badgradr's Barricade equipped) can be a pretty nice combo.

Congrats! I even think that the paladin is not needed (personally). Sure, a bit of tankyness and Sacred Immolation is nice, but actually a cipher seems to be even better. A druid would also be neat, but since too many vancian casters tend to raise micro I would prefer the cipher on this one. Thing is the cipher + priest have an easy time to prepare enemy groups for maximum Dragon Thrashed damage. Stuck from Mental Binding is a very powerful debuff for Dragon Thrashed while the priest buffs accuracy. For trashy encounters just a Inspiring Radiance 1/encounter is fine. And for the nasty bosses you can always use your sweet Disintegration. And once you get Defensive Mindweb you build one chanter supertanky in terms of defense, give him defensive chants - and the rest gets retrained for maximum damage via Dragon Thrashed. Also in the earlier game, before lvl 9, the cipher can make short work of trashy mobs via beams.

Yeah - Caed Nua is a spike in difficulty because of the phantoms and other spirits. Phantoms cause stun on graze, hit and crit and also deal Sneak Attack. Being a pale elf and wearing Rhymrgand's Mantle helps a lot. After Caed Nua, in Defiance Bay, the game gets a lot more easy and you can level quickly. I also never use one main tank who's supposed to take all the heat. It's at least two, more often three sturdy frontliners who are not 100% defensively build but can also contribute other things to the party. That's why I seldomly have the problem that my "tanks" are not tanky enough - even in the early game. In my opinion this MMORPG-approach of having tanks that take aggro and can't do much else while having glass cannons in the back doesn't work well in PoE.

Do you have high INT? Because Clear Out is quite nice with a lot of INT. With 10 INT it's meh...

Both are viable. Fighter is pretty straightforward. For some inspirations, read this: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/80748-buildpreview-lady-of-pain/ A 2H-ranger build with nice synergy effects is this one: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83435-class-build-riptide-the-pit-fright-dps-offtank-melee-ranger-double-team-supreme/ You don't have to put the attrivutes in the same way. The trick of this build is to use Tidefall (2H great sword with wounding) and Shod-in-Faith-Boots and provide constant damage buff and healing for your animal companion. The build is rather old so it lacks some of the newer talents/abilites - but it can give you the basic idea. It was pretty nice to play

Reflex defense is as high or low as with any other class. Yes, his endurance and health is pretty low. You can counter that by taking Veteran's Recovery after Weapon & Shield, then Ancient Memory, then Beloved Spirits. In the meantime push survival to 8 and take healing bonus II and put on Fulvalno's Amulett. This helps. After a few levels the lower endurance and health isn't a problem any more. In the first few levels it is. I already said that this is a late bloomer. Still I wonder which enemy downs you in two or three hits? Are you wearing plate?

Everything that deals direct damage (so, no damage over time effects, but several spells) will get a +25% burning lash. Retaliation effects that deal damage are included (Battle Forged, Retaliation, Barbaric Retaliation and so on). You Monk's stuff and paladin's FoD as well as Sacred Immolation will benefit.

I'll only say one word: "Disintegration"

Yes, you can do that. No problem at all. Your self heals and damage will be weaker - but your endurance and health pools will be way bigger. But this will not turn the build concept upside down or so. Just don't get frustrated if you can't hit a lot in the early game. With 10 PER it will take some levels until you don't miss and graze a lot with carnage. That's a normal thing with a barb and gets better with every level you gain.

Why? You don't need to take the domination powers but pick charms and other effects instead. I never found the dominations to be extremely useful anyways.

Consider the Godansthunyr or We Toki + Badgradr's Barricade road (Godansthunyr looks better with that shield). With Disciplined Barrage you will do more crits, and Knockdown + Bonus Knockdown will give you three Full Attacks with +1 ACC per level which will most likely trigger stun or prone and Thrust of Tattered Veils. It's the best "offensive" weapon & shield setup I know of that is not late late game. Then Godansthunyr + Dragon's Maw also looks great and has some nice features. Both are also cool with Charge, because at your target destination you will do a weird kind of instant Full Attack without animation and recovery. In general I really struggle with a fighter in solo playthrougs - even more than with a rogue - until I get Charge. Just lacks AoE stuff - and maybe I'm not patient enough.

I have a big fat second monitor connected to my laptop. Yeah, I'm aiming for something fast again. In 2012 my laptop was over 2000$ and was one of the fastest consumer-laptops. It also has an 18" screen and is a heavy monster. Used to be really fast. 5 years later and it's barely crawling.