Boeroer

Sadly, the Adra Dragon killed my shiny barb. She was the last one standing (badly injured). All my charms hit, but I had a lot of issues with scrolls - they wouldn't go off after the casting animation, I had to recast several times. Maybe I should have killed the PoE process in the task manager and restart to get rid of those minor hickups, but I thought I could still do it. And then, also second chance didn't trigger, hell knows why. I also discovered that Dominion of Sleepers will cause a self hit with Battle-Forged, too (this time for 52 ). It seems that all watcher abilites that will do something with your character might have this issue. I guess it would have been easily possile without those quirks - because I defeatet her several times in the solo non-ToI tests I did before. All bounties so far (didn't do Magran's Faithful and Brynlod yet) and other content was fun and quite easy at lvl 16 with this barb, most normal encounters take less then 20 seconds. Durgan steel helps a barb a lot, especially if he uses CC-on-crit-weapons; more than one or two char levels can. I guess the Alpine Dragon would have been the toughest challenge. If anybody is interested, I could post a class build and describe briefly how I got this far. I guess I will not do another attempt on the ultimate. It's just too time consuming and real life claims its share. So... ulti-barb "Mallet" needs to rest now. It has been a valuable experience.

I discovered that when you use Second Wind (healing ability from your athletics skill) while under 50% endurance (= Battle Forged is on) you will attack yourself once with your own Battle Forged. This can kill you. So: don't use Second Wind with a fire godlike at higher levels!

What ranged bonus? Boreal Dwarves get +15 accuracy against wilder and primordial.

First dragon down: This was way easier than I thought. I expected this to be a tedious fight because there are no ads for Heart of Fury besides that little wurm thingy. I never realized until this ultimate run how good potions of Major Recovery are. The short stuns of the dragon where completely nullified and with a little bit of Whiteleaf I could prevent constant terrify. The rest was just swinging around with both hammers. I didn't even need a scroll. Notice my Knockout injury I got when I struck down the nearly dead dragon with Vengeful Defeat (on purpose - I still have to unlock the last stage of the Redeemer ). Still, the fight took long enough so that all the food bonuses ran out. That's the problem with a barb if there's only one enemy left. Sometimes I really wish I could summon a bunch of enemies just to speed things up. At level 16 the damage of Battle Forged + Scion of Flame + Blooded is very good by the way. Accuracy, too. I guess half of the damage I deat to the dragin was from Battle Forged. But for some odd reason I crit myself with Battle Forged in this fight (for over 60 burn damage although my burn DR was 24...). Don't know what happened there, but this sucks in a ToI run. Now I can enchant Godansthunyr to superb. I will leave one sky dragon eye for another weapon because Shatterstar can be enchanted to legendary with a kraken eye (Godansthunyr can't, 1 point is missing). Since Moonwell is so good I'm considering to retrain again, leaving Veteran's Recovery aside and taking Deep Pockets instead. I'm always short of quick slots. Shod-in-Faith are still nice, but with Moonwell they are also no longer needed. I think I will go and pick up Viettro's Formal Footwear now. edit: all bounties of the main game are sone, too. As expected: very easy. Did 4 or 5 without resting in between. Only the vithrack exarch did cause some problems - or I should say his annoying crystal eaters did. I guess I got too c0cky. But Vengeful Defeat + Ring of Wonder saved me.

Did the Nalrend bounty a few hours ago with an ultimate barb (lvl 16 with dual hammers and durgan steel). Went smoothly - due to Cape of the Master Mystic (never was positioning for Heart of Fury that easy) and two potions of Major Recovery. Those Knockdowns are unbearable otherwise...

True

It depends. As long as you don't hit 0 recovery with your weapon attacks you can take both and will be happy. After White Forge and all you might want to retrain and remove Blood Thirst. If you want to use Two Handers I would stick to it till the end. A rogue with high deflection (via shield, and Weapon & shield Style as well as Escape and so on) and Badgradr's Barricade is actually very nice. You don#t have to babysit him because he's sturdy enough and once you get Deathblows the Barricade's proc will be deadly as hell. It's also the only setup I would recommend Riposte for. If you add Fast Runner, Graceful Retreat and a Cape of Withdrawal or Nightrunner Armor or Echoing Misery boots (+32 defense against disengagement attacks) you can run around freely and provoke attacks that most likely will graze or miss, resulting in some Full Attack Ripostes. It's a good build and not as boring* as the usual dual sabre rogue. It trades offense for defense but is still very potent - especially if you use a lot of those strike abilities (= Full Attacks). You can also add a retaliation item and use Deep Wounds (works through retaliation). *not boring in itself, just because every rogue seems to use dual sabres.

Now I've durgan steel: At lvl 15. It's funny how fights against Battery Sirens are supertough (usually need high dmg scrolls + Blood Thirst for those because of that sharty stuck affliction - can't wear a stag helmet ) while the end fight at the forge is easy peasy. Redeemer + carnage + Blood Thirst + some vessels for the win. I tried to retrain without Blood Thirst - but it's just too good with scrolls to give it up. Now with durgan steel I will have nearly 0 recovery (0.7 frames) in full plate, with Vulnerable Attack and with Frenzy + Bloodlust. I will still keep Blood Thirst. I'm aiming for Interrupting Blows as last talent and want to pick up the mourning gloves. The speed enchantment doesn't stack with Frenzy, but with Bloodlust. And the gloves give me improved interrupts per kill - and Godansthunyr and Shatterstar both have increased iterrupt times (0.75 and 1 sec)... Hope it's worth it. Edit: argh - just remembered the Mourning Gloves are achieved through a stronghold adventure. Dammit!

I also heard this in one of the twitch streams. Can't remember which. "Bond" sounds a bit weird, I have to agree. How about "Objective".

Withdraw in solo game is not working very well. The encounter will end because you are gone - and your withdraw spell will end, too. It works if you first put out some summons though. Preservation shield + preservation item (for example Blaidh Golan hide armor + Solace medium shield) work really well with a chanter. Sure, if you get stunned you won't recite phrases, but you will sing if you suffer from prone. And besides that, you get near untouchable with +100 to all defenses. Sometimes the bonus doesn't get applies properly though.

Bloodlust triggers once you killed 2 enemies. At the moment it seems to carry the "kill counter" over to other fights: sometimes I kill only one enemy and it already triggers. However, it speeds you up by 20% for a few seconds, but more importantly: it stacks with everyting, including Frenzy. Since you will nealry always kill at least 2 enemies with HoF, this will triggeer right after HoF and speed you up for those enemies who are left. Blood Thirst will give you 0 recovery after a kill. This means that no matter how slow you are, your next attack will follow immediately. You can use this to concentrate on damage per hit rather than damage per second - for example with an estoc and makex DR bypass with Vulnerable Attack and so on - and then speed things up with kills, circumventing your sluggishness. You can see how St. Ydwen's Redeemer + Blood Thirst on a barb makes most fights against vessels a joke. With every strike you will most likely trigger the destruction of a vessel, you next strike will come immediately because of Blood Thirst... and so on. Blood Thirst also gets triggerd by retaliation, spells and scrolls and so on. It is obvious that Blood Thirst looses its appeal if you are already very fast and near 0 recovery. As long as this is not the case, it's cool and also works well with Bloodlust. This also means that after HoF you can immediately follow up with the next attack (I like Barbaric Blow for this). Good items that substitute this on-kill-approach are the Executioner's Hood or the Tempered Helm. Mourning Gloves' on-kill-speed enchantment doesn't stack with Frenzy, but with Bloodlust.

For HoF you want dual weapons which do as much damage per hit as possible. So light weapons are out. Sabres are good, axes are good because of annihilating, warhammers are also good because they have two damage types, spears are good because of stunning Cladhaliath and so on... For barb's auto-attacks two handers are also nice. Hours of St. Rumbalt or Tall Grass + Blood Thirst can be a lot of fun. Both are soldier weapons, so you could equip dual hammers just for HoF and switch to Rumbalt or Tall Grass for the rest. Tall Grass has the advantage that you can place the center of carnage more precisely so that you hit as many foes as possible. This also works for HoF. You won't do two HoF-strikes but you will reach more enemies with it most of the time. If your rogue will use a lot of those "strike" abilities (Full Attacks) then go dual wielding or use a bashing shield (when doing Full Attacks, the shield strikes first, delivering the affliction, then comes the main weapon). If you like auto attacks more then I would use a two hander. Tidefall's damage with a high MIG/low INT rogue is very impressive. You can dump your INT to 3 and then wear the Ultimate Hat of Alluring Perfection (Yurdan, Stalwart) in order to reduce INT to 1. Also get Runner's Wounding Shot. You would have to cause afflictions with your other guys though. It's fun. Dual wielding rogue with sabres is also nice of course.

Envenomed Strike: nope, only single target. Barbaric Blow is only good with dual wielding (or with special bashing shields). And it's good if you already have decent accuracy and crit more often. I like it with annihilating weapons like Resolution, Purgatory or Shatterstar and with the Merciless Hand talent (Doemenel). So I would take it later. Savage Defiance will be very good in the early game. It's a strong heal over time at that point, it doesn't need much time to activate and also has no recovery (instant).

Dumping INT on a monk who uses Force of Anguish and Torment's Reach is not smart (pun intended).

Because you have enough other guys who can cause frighten or sicken without having to sacrifice an ability point. If you use Vengeful Defeat (can be nice with a priest's revives and turned off knockout injuries) I would use Blooded.

Except when a drunk fellow chanter is singing silly phrases while you sneak. In that case it's only the cone that matters...

Hahaha. Blends very well with my "Obsidian Animat" suggestion. Wait - since a lot of people complained about not having a dwarf as companion maybe this could be a dwarven obsidian Feargus...

Your approach is totally fine and correct. Doing it this way will make the game so much easier that even PotD is easy (after a few levels). If you now add a lot of accuracy before casting your debuffs you will reach the point where even dragons are jokes for a party on PotD. You need knowledge about stacking rules for that (and it can be confusing because the rules are not very transparent or consistent). For example with a paladin + a priest you can stack Zealous Focus + Inspiring Liberation + Inspiring Radiance + Devotions of the Faithful for your caster. He will have an accuracy bonus of 6+10+10+20 = 46 for his first CC spell (like Chillfog). Then comes your second caster (who will benefit from Devotions + Radiance + Zealous Focus = +36 ACC, too) who targets reflex with Sunbeam and so on. And then you can follow up with damaging spells that target reflex (like Fireball or whatever). Having two healers is fine. However, I prefer healing effects that don't need to be cast in a special moment like Lay on Hands - because most of the time it's too late then. Although Lay on Hands is very good, I concentrate on continuous healing effects that don't need any action at all ("regeneration" effects like Veteran's Recovery and Ancient Memory for example) or spells that can be cast at the start of combat - even if nobody is injured yet - and which stay active for some time: Consecrated Ground, Moonwell, Nature's Bounty, Garden of Life and so on. This way you don't need to use precious "action time" for healing but can concentrate more on buffing/debuffing/dealing damage in the actual fight. If you look at it this way, I like to have multiple healers in my party which are all not focused on healing but bring some (stackable) healing to the table. But this is just my personal preference.

Yes, before lvl 11 (with HoF + bashing shield) his offense is nothing special, albeit better than the offense of a pure fighter or paladin tank with the same stats. With HoF the whole offense thing will improve a lot. HoF doesn't profit from DEX or attack speed, not damage per second or whatever. It's pure damage per hit that counts and HoF favors high MIG, INT and PER, DR penetration and also accuracy in general. Because of that, at that point it doesn't matter that this char has low DEX and is superslow with auto attacks. His HoF will be impressive - even though his main role is a tank. To be honest this is all this build is about: being very tanky while also be able to shine in offense with HoF, circumventing his sluggishness. Then also durgan steel on weapon, shield and armor will start to speed his auto attacks up a fair bit - so he doesn't feel as slow anymore. Sadly - with a whole party at lvl 11 - you won't deperately need this sudden rise of effensive power because most encounters will be too easy for your party anyway. But it's very convient to eradicate whole groups with a tank (!) and end encounters much quicker than before. It even helps in dragon fights because all the ads can be killed faster and your party can concentrate on the dragon sooner.

Right. But if you can skill around FoD like you could in PoE1 (Intense Flames + special talent like Remember Rhakan Field and such + Scion of Flame and so on) you might want to use FoD only anyway. Also spares you ability points to specialize on one single offensive ability.

It's fun and it's viable. Also because the -34% dmg malus on carnage doesn't gimp your damage (it's only reduced by 2 points). After Durgan's Battery there are certainly better weapon choices, but it's viable until the end of the game. And it's a cool concept. MIG increases the bonus damage, so high MIG is mandatory for this. All other percentage-based dmg bonuses are kind of wasted, because they will only influence the whimpy base damage of 5-8. Savage Attack for example will only give you +1.3 damage - that's not worth the talent point. So you'll have a lot of room for different talents - like defensive ones or Veteran's Recovery or whatever suits your playstyle. Jojobobo did a whole run with this and reported his (positive) experiences. Don't know if his thread can be found easily. Sadly, he didn't write a build description yet.

At lvl 20 it's 11. At least that's the case atm. FoD costs 1 point of Zeal. So - 11 FoD per encounter at max. But FoD will not be as powerful as in PoE1 I presume, even if it scales with level.

In the early game he won't hit much without help and graze a lot. But carnage gets +1 accuracy per level so later in it's not that bad. Still I wouldn't use low PER because carnage only happens if you don't miss your initial target and AoE interrupts are a nice thing, too. If you use Novice's Suffering you can dump PER thoughts. The damage difference between graues, hits and crits are marginal when using Novice's Suffering.

Hi. Glad you like it. Yes, frightening + dazing + high deflection add up pretty nicely.

No! 11 FoD uses in each encounter for the win!