Boeroer

Like Forgemaster's Gloves will give you the spell Firebrand (3/rest) which summons the weapon Firebrand.

HoF deals more damage, sure. But with Charge you are so fast and mobile while dealing great damage, it's just awesome to zoom to casters, do a Knockdown, zoom to the next and so on. Also great that the target at the receiving end will take the damage of Charge and an additional Full Attack's damage. Most of the time that means instant death. Too bad it comes so late. It would make the fighter a much better class if you could take Charge earlier. You didn't think of Take the Hit + Triggered Immunity. Besides that little trick - I can't remember if the 50% damage was pre DR or not. If it's pre DR it would be benefical since DR would apply twice. But I guess it was raw damage, right? However, the trick is (or was) to build one very sturdy fighter with tons of CON and maxed out self heals who doesn't get hit a lot. I simply used a pike setup for the second row. That fighter could attack from the secons row, didn't get hit by enemies a lot and healed damage he got from Take the Hit via Constant Recovery, Rapid Recovery, CLoak of the Tireless Defender, Survival 14, Belt of Bountiful Healing and so on. A lot of damage gets concentrated on him and is not spread over the whole party, so healing is easy: you only need to heal him. That way you can build your front line a lot more damage oriented. Backside is that you always have to stay close.

Fighter is an example of how a single ability can turn a class from ok damage dealer to totally awesome damage dealer: Charge... @ MaxQuest: If Take the Hit wouldn't be so bugged (in combination with mind control - you will receive the damage of charmed/dominated foes, even if the mind control ended) it would be a very good ability. Tried it with a super-regenerating fighter once and it was awesome for the overall party sturdyness as long as nobody got mind controlled. Also Guarding Stance would be great if it only stacked with other deflection buffs.

Cool. I really like monks with a roguish attitude. Stilettos are a good choice because there are even slashing ones in the game: the Lagufaeth stilettos do slash damage instead of pierce. Just keep two of them with you for the encounters with pierce immune foes. That way you don't need to use ugly clubs or big sabres. A few ideas: - Azureith's Stiletto: procs Jolting Touch. Jolting Touch works with Turning Wheel and Blood Testament, meaning it gets up to +50% burning and +20% raw lash. With your abilities/talents/items it's one of the best on-crit weapons for a monk if you can switch to it once you gained 10 wounds. I would even consider Animancer's Boots (3 Jolting Touch per rest) if you don't have issues with endurance loss. The damage can be very impressive. - Veteran's Recovery: If you take it as first talent it's very beneficial. If you use it as the last talent it's of not much use in my opinion. It scales with level and that's cool, but later in the game you won't have such big issues with endurance loss than you will have at the start of the game (especially with Iron Wheel). Instead, you could think about Vulnerable Attack for the later game. Some dudes have really high DR... Without Gauntlets of Swift action or Spelltongue you won't get to 0 recovery with Vulnerable Attack on, but you'd only have 5 frames. And it would benefit the retaliation of Vengiatta Rugia, too. - Enervating Blows: they really fit the theme and work wonderfully well with retaliation (Vengiatta Rugia), Force of Anguish and Apprentice's Sneak Attack. Weakening is a strong debuff of fortitude, and a lot of cc spells and afflictions target fortitude - including prone (Force of Anguish). And you will deal sneak damage automatically once you landed a crit with weapons or via retaliation. Another plus: if you have another rogue you will cause instant Deathblow conditions with a crit of Force of Anguish. - Belt: I consider Trollhide Belt to be quite weak - even though its regeneration effect has no time limit. But 1 endurance every 3 secs is neglectible. How about the Broad Belt of Power? +4 (+2 MIG, +2 RES) to stats with one single belt is quite awesome. Also a broad belt might look rogueish. - Headgear: Munacra Arret fits nicely to Vengiatta Rugia (I mean visually) - and 3 charms per rest with high accuracy are always nice and strong CC. Like the rogue part of your character talked the enemy into something.

Sounds good. Don't make your damage dealers too squishy and your frontliner too defensive (menaing they can't deal any damage). And I would strongly recommend a priest if that's you first PotD experience.

Well, one could argue that dual wielding + two weapon style (and also durganized stuff) don't speed up your casting directly - but since your weapon attacks will have very low accuracy you can start casting sooner after you swung your weapon than without those things. This can boost the amount of spells you can put put out in a given timespan IF you are attacking with weapons in between.

Attack speed modifiers only influence the recovery time, not the casting time. Durganized weapons or weapons with speed enchantment only reduce the recovery of the weapons' attacks. But things like Mourning Gloves, Gauntlets of Swift Action, Spelltongue's Time Siphon do indeed reduce all recovery, including casting.

With Vulnerable Attack and still having 0 recovery it's all good. Good thing about rapier + dagger is that you'll have two damage types. Dagger + dagger can be nice because of Flick of the Wrist + dagger's inherent +5 ACC. Sword of Daenysis + Vulnerable Attack + Ryona's Vambraces would have 11 DR bypass, March Steel Dagger 8 DR bypass. That's great with high attack speed. High attack speed is also nice when it comes to casting. You can intersperse spells a lot faster if you don't have recovery on your weapons. Only thing that is always bad with low dmg weapons are lashes - no matter how much DR bypass you stack. Luckily you can use Body Attunement to lower enemies' DR directly.

You can also do that. Thing is that Two Weapon Style and also WF Peasant work for both tusks and fists (or dual hatchets or spears). It's just efficient. If you take Veteran's Recovery as first talent and are not in the frontline you should be good. Novice's fists are not bad in the early game. Especially then you will graze a lot more than later in the game - and as I said the fists don't care as much about grazes as weapons do. In the early game there are also not many crush immune foes. I simply liked it that you don't need to care about weapons.

One time. It will get looped.

Basically it all boils down to: raise your accuracy as much as you can -> use crowd control, including disables, on your enemies -> deal damage -> stay alive.

As I already said, the fight took far less then a minute at lvl 10, not 11. Because I used scrolls + Blood Thirst. At level 11 it would have been a lot easier because of Heart of Fury, but still not as easy as with a caster. It's more risky with a barb (if you want to play him like a barb). You have to get into the fray in order to hit as many foes as possible with carnage. For a caster nearly all tough fights are easier. You place yourself accordingly so that you can't get surrounded and then unleash all your spells, preferably buffs first, then CC and then damage. Most AoE spells have such a big area that you can hit most of the Xaurips + Cail. That way you will kill all the annoying priests as well who - in the barb's case - would start to heal their allies all the time and that's annoying as hell. You can't do anything but use scrolls to deal with that if you can't reach them with carnage. I used 15 Crackling Bolts with nearly no recovery (because nearly every Bolt caused the death of at least one xaurip) and it was good. But this just demonstrates how powerful spells are. And even a lvl 11 character can be killed by Cail if you make a mistake- or one of the remaining bugs emerges (potion drinking for example). This is Trial of Iron after all and you don't want to get too bold.

That's why I don't use squishies. Well, maybe one or two... at max.

Hi. Let's see if I can put it all together from memory: Focus on spiritshift damage and self heals: - maxed MIG and INT - survival 12 (+2 from Sanguine Plate): Healing Bonus III - Veteran's Recovery; works in shifted form and stacks with the boar's own regeneration. - Shod-in-Faith boots (let them trigger, then shift) or Sandals of the Forgotten Friar (to boost unarmed damage when not shifted and get a nice spell bind). Greenstained Boots are also nice. Shod-in-Faith has the benefit of not needing any casting time. It might get suppressed by your own healing spells though. A super potent healing source is Garden of Life, but you have to cast it on corpses. The more corpses the bigger the (AoE) healing. - Sanguine Plate (let it trigger, then shift) - Celebrant's Gloves (sometimes trigger before shifting, sometimes not) - Fulvano's Amulet (doesn't work while shifted, but good when not) - Wildstrike Belt (obviously) - spells and Spell Mastery like Form of the Delemgan, Moonwell, Nature's Balm, Taste of the Hunt (no mastery) or so. - take Novice's Suffering. It doesn't stack with the spiritshift tusks, but in human form you will have quite low accuracy and will graze a lotand don't crit much. Novice's Suffering doesn't care because the base damage is superlow but the flat bonus damage is high. This bonus damage doesn't change on crits or grazes, giving you persistent damage. You also don't need to put any resources into enchanting these "part time weapons". Novice's Suffering also works great with high MIG. - Weapon Focus Peasant (for tusks and fists) - Savage Attack (doesn't work well with the fists, but great for the tusks) - Two Weapon Style - Wildstrike/Greater Wildstrike (whatever element you like) - Heart of the Storm (or Scion of Flame or another element, depends on Wildstrike and the spells you like best). Since Avenging Storm is very good while going melee and I also like things like Relentless Storm and Nature's Terror I would pick shock/Heart of the Storm. But fire also works well for example. - think about Envenomed Strike. It's very good with high MIG and INT. - as for race you could think about Fire or Moon Godlike because Battle Forged or Silver Tide also work while shifted and you won't have headgear while shifted anyway. Dwarf or wild orlan fit the theme quite well. Because your high INT works a bit against wounding's DPS it's smart to attack different foes with each strike if you have two or more enemies that engage you at the same time. With Shod-in-Faith, survival bonus and self regeneration it's hard to knock you out after some levels, but you have to watch your health!

I have a lot of Knockouts on purpose when I use a barbarian with Vengeful Defeat. Besides that I don't have them that often. In Trial of Iron you can't turn off Knockout Injuries. Usually I don't play with dedicated tanks but sturdy frontliners who can take a beating but won't try to hold a lot of enemies singlehandedly. I also don't use DPS glass cannons. That way my party never collapses just because the main tank gets disabled or I can't kill stuff because my DPS squishy goes down. I like all classes except rogue. Not because I don't like the class itself, but because it lacks interesting abilities, is tedious to play and is not very effective for all that afflictions hassle (except early game). I also did solo playthroughs with every class and agree that casters like wizard and priest are easier than martial classes. Priest is special because he has all the prayers and also all the good ACC buffs. You can't substitute spell spamming. This barb is a special challenge. Especially because I go full offense and only survive through self heals and carnage-cc and interrupts. I'm aiming for the Ultimate achievement with this. Bounties will work, but dragons might prove to be too difficult, we'll see. I already have serious issues with Adragans despite my very high fortitude defense. My general rule of thumb is that accuracy beats everything else in this game - so that's my focus. One reason why I like paladins and priests. Dragons are a joke if you can always crit-charm or crit-prone them with a char whose ACC you buffed into the sky. Barbs and monks are special fun for me because of their mechanics. I can't record vids and play at the same time. My hardware is to weak. I run PoE at minimum graphics (resolution 1920*1080) and still have fps drops in certain maps. I will soon buy a new machine, but it will not be sooner than July I guess.

As long as he is using a damaging chant most enemies should stick to him. Always send him in first before the others unstealth. In my opinion, everything related to engagement (Hold the Line, guarding, Defender etc.) is pretty useless.

Lvl 10, not 11. The fight gave me the xp for the level-up. Tough encounters are always easy with casters. Rest before, unleash all spells and win, then rest again. Chanter or paladin at lvl 10 would take some time to kill him, bit less risky for sure. With a barb it took like 1 minute, but it's more risky. Especially because my barb is dual wielding hammers and has no shield. RES is 3. Good thing is that a barb with decent CON can take a lot of beating at lvl 10 - with enough self healing capabilities. A caster will die quickly if he gets surrounded (shouldn't happen, but might) because his health will run out. Ever tried Cail solo on PotD with a level 10 character - no kiting, no pulling? A paladin could do it of course, but it'll take forever. Now at lvl 11. I'm doing WM I - and the Craig Ogres in Stalwart, including Darzir, were a cakewalk. I sneaked Godansthunyr from the Sky Dragon's place and now also carnage's ACC leads to some stuns every now and then (exceptional enchantment). I carry the stunning hammer in the offhand because that's the hand that attacks first with Full Attacks. HoF will first stun most enemies and then comes Shatterstar with the high Interrupt and the annihilating crits. Works pretty nicely so far. Also, Battle Forge now starts to really do some serious damage. Next talents/ability will be Blooded and Scion of Flame I guess. Since I'm below 50% endurance all the time (and only drink potions or activate Savage Defiance once I hit around 20% endurance) this should be OK and add +45% damage to Battle Forged and +25% to Barbaric Retaliation.

It works like so: The marking character ("marker") has to click on the target with an attack (auto-attack or special targeted attack. AoE attacks that use the ground as possible target don't work). As long as the marker keeps attacking the target the party member who stands nearest and attacks the same target gets +10 accuracy for any type of attack (here, AoE attacks also profit, examples below). Reloading, recovery and so on don't interrupt marking. As long as the marker is in the usual attack cycle he will provide the bonus. If the marker uses healing or any other action that interrupts his attacking, the marking will be lost. It will work again as soon as the marker clicks on the target again with an attack (or if the AI chooses to attack). This seems like a lot of hassle, but the great thing is that marking stacks with any other accuracy bonus and won't get suppressed. If you handle it in a smart way, you can give a single party member +30 stackable accuracy with marking alone: dual wield two marking weapons and pick Coordinated Attacks. Those all stack and will further stack with Zealous Focus for example. If you're a Darcozzi paladin you can even stack +10 ACC with Inspiring Liberation on top. If you have a priest you can add Devotions and Inspring Radiance, too. A few examples: - Pallegina with Shame or Glory and Coordinated Attacks attacks a dragon with auto-attacks. - Edér stands nearest and tries a Knockdown on the dragon. He has Disciplined Barrage on. - Edér's Kockdown will have the following bonuses: +20 Disciplined Barrage, +10 marking, +10 Coordinated Attacks, + Edèr's level as ACC bonus for Knockdown (every ability based attack, including spells, have this, stacks with everything, too) and + Weapon Focus and weapon enchantment and whatnot. - Edér will most likely knock down the dragon even though dragons have +10 resistance to Knockdown - Pallegina (same setup) attacks a Xaurip High Priest. Around the priest stands a bunch of other xaurips. - Durance stands nearest and casts Shining Beacon on the whole bunch. - Durance hits all xaurips with the usual ACC and the High Priest with +20 ACC (resulting in a crit most of the time) and so on. Also note that as soon as the character that benefits from marking stops attacking, the marking bonus will go to the next nearest party member who is attacking the same target. Example: - Pallegina attacks same Xaurip High Priest. - Durance stands nearest and casts Shining Beacon (same result as above). After casting he switches to idle mode. This is automatically done if AI is off. - Aloth stands a bit farther away and starts casting Freezing Pillar. Freezing Pilllar hits the xaurip bunch after Shining Beacon, Durance is already in idle mode. Aloth will get +20 ACC for the Xaurip High Priest. It is the time of the hits that count, not the time when the attacks are started. So it's enough if Durance turns idle just a fraction of a second before Aloth's spell hits and the marking bonus will go from Durance to Aloth. Since it's very difficult to hit at the exact same time with two casters' spells (and luckily so), most of the time all casters will benefit from marking - if AI is off and they all hit the marked target at some point - with any kind of attack. Marking can't be applied in an AoE (carnage doesn't work, Torment's Reach doesn't work and so on). It only marks a single target. Thus, it's a great tool do quickly disable or kill dangerous single enemies. While makring from dual wielding stacks, it doesn't stack if you use two maker chars on the same target (don't ask me why, it's just like that). You can also do something like this: - Priest casts Inspiring Radiance and Devotions of the Faithful (+30 ACC for paladin no. 2) - Paladin no. 1, Darcozzi, with two marking weapons and Coordinated Attacks, Liberating Exhortation and Zealous Focus attacks dragon and casts the exhortation of paladin no. 2 (+46 ACC for paladin no. 2). - Paladin no. 2, Bleak Walker, Remember Rhakan Field, Firebrand, Sworn Enemy, Merciless Hand, Azalin's Helmet, Dungeon Delver, Weapon Focus whatever, Savage Attack, Two Handed Style, Intense Flames, Scion of Flame, Beast Slayer attacks dragon with Flames of Devotion (+44 ACC + lvl + lvl*3 ACC + 25 base ACC). So, the Bleak Walker will attack the dragon with an ACC bonus of +120 ACC + lvl + lvl*3 + 25 base ACC. He will deal a crit 100% of times and do +150% crit damage bonus, + all the other damage mods I listed above (including Sworn Enemy's +20% bonus and so on). He will deal massive damage to the dragon. Best would be if a wizard would have cast a petrifiy on the dragon first (also profiting from priest's buffs and paladin No. 1's marking stuff). As you might guess marking + coordinated attacks is one of the best ways to deal with dragons, charm them, knock them down, stun them... whatever. I tested all this (again) two days ago for another thread, so i'm 100% sure it works this way.

It doesn't count towards Sneak Attack and Deathblows - that's my major criticism.

- yes - yes - yes - it's weapon & shield, not dual wielding - the monk (with Torment's Reach) is one of the few classes where it can make sense to pick a bashing shield (which has no special procs like Badgradr's Barricade). It doesn't matter if you are using your fist or a weapon.

You are right. And besides that the Distracted affliction isn't very potent, too. Completely useless ability.

Marking weapon + Coordinated Attacks + Sworn Enemy + Enigma's Charm + Zealous Focus + Outworn Buckler + Weapon & Shield Style.

The fists (or better: Transcendent or Novice's Suffering) have some issues. First of all their accuracy bonus doesn't translate to special attacks like Force of Anguish and the cone of Torment's Reach while weapons' accuracy bonuses do. You can't use single weapon style with fists to increase accuracy, too. Secondly, they solely deal crush damage. Lastly, you can't enchant them. Lashes and durgan steel are powerful things and your fists can't have them. This means that your fists will be superior weapons at the start of the game but weapons catch up and overtake at a certain point in the game. If you'd want a CC specialist monk who uses Force of Anguish to its full potential you would be way better off if you'd use a single dagger, spear or rapier than using fists for your FoA attack. If you want your Torment's Reach to crit a lot you'd be better off with dual daggers, too. The damage of the cone of Torment's Reach doesn't have anything to do with your weapon damage. It has its own base damage. But it uses the accuracy of your weapons. Your fists' accuracy bonus doesn't get used.

It does nothing for the time in between the two strikes of TR, but you can spam TR even faster with it because it reduces the recovery between every use. If you are already at 0 recovery because of Swift Strikes and durgan steel it's obviously pretty useless (unless you want to wear more armor or use Vulnerable Attack).

Playing one last party playthrough for PoE2 at the moment and thought I should do it with my first PoE char again (Boeroer). It used to be a rogue - but after Act II I restarted and took a monk instead (with a rogueish attitude) because monks are much more fun.