Boeroer

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.

? That depends. Several classes can profit from those stats. Everybody who has to do with area of effect abilities/spells and durations (INT) as well as hitting stuff with good accuracy (PER) and causing interrupts (also PER). First to mind come: - barbarian - wizard - druid - cipher - chanter ... I'd say barbarian fits best. But honestly every class has a build where both stats can be important. By the way: for dialogue checks only the stats of the main character count. There are scripted sequences where you can send a party member with fitting stats, but dialogue is always done by the main character.

If you take Fast Runenr you can usually just run away once you get targeted. Enemies don't follow for long if you are faster than they are. And with Shot on the Run you can shoot while running (well, not really, but you can recover quickly while running, stand for a sec, shoot, and run again). Another ability as "oh crap button" would be Escape - or Coordinated Positioning. Although I have the experience that those don't work too well with really squishy rogues. Even though they are instant or fast casts you still have recovery after your attack - before you can escape. Usually you get attacked while there's still recovery left, you get interrupted and again interrupted - you are dead. Running away with higher moe speed always works (unless you are disabled). A geat thing is the Cape of the Master Mystic. It comes in mid game and will turn you invisible instantly once you receive a crit. And a backline rogue nearly always receives crits if he gets attacked. This really saves lives!

And crit chance. Since Carnage gains +1 ACC per level you can crit quite often at higher levels if you also take Accurate Carnage and Weapon Focus. But an interrupt build is usually also a good crit build - since you want to have PER as high as possible anyways. Also, crits don't happen as often as interrupts. For example against the Elmshore ogres Godansthunyr is not enough because their fort is very high. But they get interrupted like everybody else. There's also no immunity to interrupt, only high concentration.

Shatterstar is also annihilating which is the perfect addition to Godansthunyr's stun. Godansthunyr in the offhand will result in stuns (with HoF or Barbaric Blow) and then Shatterstar will follow, crit stunned (and maybe some more) with increased crit damage. If you have Merciless Hand, Dungeon Delver, Azalin's Helmet, Shatterstar and do Barbaric Blow (also +0.5 crit damage) you will not do +50% damage on crit, but instead +150% + stun with the first swing and +200% with the second swing which is neat. Guarding (also Shatterstar) is not needed on this barb, but it's the perfect weapon for a dual wielding fighter in my opinion. The good thing about this increased interrupt value on certain weapons (mostly of backer origin by the way) is that it doesn't count as enchantments and this doesn't take away enchantments points (or slots - however you want to call it).

Hehe, exactly. To make things easier, you can turn off the WYSIWYG editor in the top left corner and see the quote tags.