Boeroer

No, Battle Forged does no longer work with carnage. Retaliation items also worked like that back then. All sorts of retaliation got nerfed so it doesn't work with carnage and also doesn't generate focus. Don't know if it's optimal, Moon Godlike would also be nice, even Pale Elf could be very nice (against Alpine Dragon for example). But all in all it's decent for a barb. Even more so for a monk. Second Chance + Vengeful Defeat is a nice combo, but it only works once per rest (Second Chance got nerfed at some point from 1/encounter to 1/rest) and you have Knockout Injuries at ToI that you can't turn off. This annoys me the most. Of course second chance + Vengeful Defeat can be a life saver. Before you get up again you will deliver some nice blows that will raise the chances of your survival after you get back up. But so far, I didn't want to use this. I would rather put my points into Threatening Presence + Bloodlust and Blood Thirst which really make a strong combo with Rumbalt. Later on I will use my dual hammers only for HoF (will remove Two Weapon Style and pick Vulnerable Attack) and then switch to Rumbalt I guess. At the moment it's: the more foes the better. He goes totally berserk at some point when enemies start dropping and slows down once the last two or three tough ones still stand. Other alternative would be to stick to hammers and take Interrupting Blows + Mourning Gloves. Godansthunyr has 0.75 sec interrupts, Shatterstar has 1 sec. Maybe I don't need Rumbalt at all then. If I don't stun I will most likely interrupt for a good amount of time with each swing (and I will have 0 recovery).

Speechless?

Pope asked about high lvl Kana. Since his stats are fixed all advice around optimizing them is futile. You can use certain items like Gwyn's Band of Union and so on. The max range of Dragon Thrashed you'll get with with Kana will be with Gwyn's Band (+20%), Voice of the Mountaintop (+20%) and an overseeing item (+10%). Scythesong has a really good point: you might want to give Kana some defenses against mind control. If you don't have a paladin with Aegis or a priest then a flipped Dragon Thrashed chanter is really bad for the party.

You could still buy an add-on as slacker backer! DO IT! You know you want the gold badge! Ok, I looked it up again just to be sure - and actually with BIB and Fig combined I would be exactly at gold badge tier. I forgot about a change I made to my pledge. And I also screwed up with the mental math...

Christmas 2018

Oh, that would lift me over to gold badge. Well, I don't give a shart about badges (besides the BIB badge), so all is cool with me! Edit: Oh no, wait, I'm 4 $ short. Hahaha - nice one. The PoE2 Watcher batch looks nice an clean. Keep it, Future Capt'n Fluffle!

Hi, take gear that enhances MIG, INT and PER and Accuracy (like Gauntlets of Accuracy). Use an item that has the Overseeing enchantment (ring, Aloth's Armor or Celebrant's Gloves for example). Pick up the Voice of the Mountaintop amulet (see wiki where to buy it). Use only Dragon Thrashed. Nothing else. The invocations can be Killers Froze Stiff, Seven Nights and The rivive invocation, rest doesn't matter much. Then go the tanky route with a small shield + hatchet (like Little Savior) and thick armor. Only take defensive talents like Superior Deflection, Cautious Attack (if you don't use other deflection buffs via spells a lot) Weapon & Shield, Bear's Fortitude, Body Control and so on as well as Ancient Memory + Beloved Spirits. This will result in a great frontline tank who also heals his fellow frontliners a bit. Put a single hatchet into your second weapon slot and switch to that if you don't get attacked a lot. This will boost your Dragon Thrashed ACC by +12. Switch back to shield set if you get attacked. This will decimate most enemies in very short time. If fighting dragons sing Slay the Beast chant and add two or three Dragon Thrashed in the linger time of Slay the Beast. This will make it a lot easier to hit a dragon with the chant. Make sure to debuff enemies reflexes with a wizard or druid. This can be done with Binding Web for example. If you give Kana a Stag Helmet or the Wyrwood Ring he will be immune to stuck and can move freely where enemies get stuck and receive hefty reflex debuffs. He will crit a lot with the Dragon Chant then.

Steamrolling the Dyrford area atm at lvl 9. Still no Cail... I'm a chicken. I don't really need Tidefall, maybe that's why I don't feel a deep desire to go there. The other thing that repells me is the fps breakdown in that cave. I can confirm that Belt of the Berserker works with Sanguine Plate's Frenzy (Greater Frenzy does not). So all in all I could have three Frenzy uses per encounter for 18.3 each (= nearly a minute of Frenzy). Sadly, the two uses of the Sanguine Plate will overlap all the time because the first one will reduce deflection even further which will lead to another crit pretty soon. Still figuring out how to prevent the second one from triggering. Maybe switching to hammer + shield and drinking a potion of Mirrored Image after the first one triggers? One approach that works amazingly well is to use two hammers in order to reduce enemies to a state where the next hit will most likely kill a foe in carnage range, then switch to Rumbalt or Tall Grass (have boh with dfferent lashes, preferably Rumbalt) or Firebrand. This will result in a lot of 0-recovery attacks with the heavier weapons because every hit usually means a kill (Blood Thirst + Bloodlust). This speeds up fights a lot while some foes already start to fall onto their bottoms because carnage is now nearly even with auto attack accuracy (without Accurate Carnage). Death Godlike would be a good addition to this, but Battle Forged saved my a$$ so many times by now I don't regret picking it. At lvl 9 it already does 18 burn damage on normal hit (base). With Frenzy and stuff (no Scion of Flame yet) it does 25. A crit will do additional 14 damage, resulting in 25/39 burn damage on hit/crit. Maybe I will get a third weapon slot for Sura's Supper Plate and switch to it when I get disabled. Or I will completely switch to that setup. Two retaliations + Flame Shield + Battle Forged + Barbaric Retaliation in the late game should do good damage even when I'm sitting or snoring around. Retaliation also triggers Blood Thirst. My tactics will be the follwing one I get Godansthunyr: Cast Combusting Wounds on the enemies, jump into the fray with Dragon Leap, Frenzy will get triggered because I will receive a crit at once. Then I will trigger Heart of Fury with Godansthunyr in the offhand and Shatterstar in the right. This will most likely stun most enemies in HoF range (with 5 enemies I will have 5 chances on each foe to stun), then with the second strike I will cause crits with Shatterstar (annihilating + Doemenel), doing great damage. After this I will most likely have killed at least two foes. I will switch to Rumbalt and have Frenzy + Bloodlust (speeding my swings up) and most likely every swing will kill the last remaining foes, reducing recovery to zero. Even if not Frenzy + Bloodlust will help with hitting fast. If frenzy wears off before the encounter is done I will switch back to dual hammers. I think I will retrain and remove Two Weapon Style soon...

Ah - now I got it.

But what do you mean with "at once"? You don't pick fighter and then at some point switch to black jacket. Instead, you'd have to decide right from the start which (sub)class you want to play: normal fighter or subclass 1 or 2 or 3.

Heh? What do you mean?

What about a nice broad belt with obsidian plates or something that has room for more weapons (meaning it gives you Arms Bearer). Maybe this is difficult because what happens when you pick Arms Bearer as well AND are an Island Aumaua? Weapon Slot overflow? What about a figurine that calls forth an obsidian animat (THE Black Isle Bouncer ? I mean it could be the same model as an Adra Animat, just black. I'm still intrigued by the idea of an item that summons an obsidian weapon - it's like two items in one. I really like the Forgemaster Gloves and the fact that summoned weapons use every Weapon Focus and also priests' weapon ACC talent.

Yes, that's sufficient. You can tell her "Not right now" or something like that and then go to the Vailian Embassy. I killed all official companions so far - I didn't know if killing Pallegina before going to Vincent Agosti would screw up the Forgotten - so I spared her. Until now... I decided to do Heritage Hill before going to Cail. Should give me one more level - to be on the safe side. Heritage Hill is pretty easy at lvl 8. Only encounter that was tough (nearly went toes up) is the Banshee in the crypt (quest "Missing Setries"). And that's because of the constant terrifying so I can't hit sh!t without enough prayers against fear. Even with single exceptional/spirit hammer. She also has a mean jab and kills summons very quickly... If you ask yourself: "Why does he kill all companions?", well - he's a really mean barb, this one: Booh!

It's a lvl 13 ability that stuns the target. Other than the other affliction based attacks the rogue has (Crippling Strike, Blinding Strike and so on) this is not a full attack but only a primary attack, meaning that you won't use both weapons (if you are dual wielding in the first place), but you right hand weapon only.

I will! In fact I'm buying one of these custom linux computers by the end of June. With an i7-7700K and a Nvidia GeForece GTX 1080. I guess it will cost me about 1,700 €, but at least that should do for the next years... I tried to record something with Kazam while playing PoE a few days ago - but even at lowest settings (which I run anyways) and in light encounters with not much vfx it's a chore. I could lower the resolution though. Maybe I will do that for the later bounty/dragon fights, just to show how the barb holds up. But playing with lower resolution can be tricky, too (blurry, smaller fov and so on).

Eh... just 5 minutes ago I found out that Barbaric Blow works with ranged weapons.

Currently I'm using dual war hammers (Shatterstar + Haba's Hammer) I'm combination with Combusting Wounds and Firebrand. Since Firebrand and also Comb. Woumds don't work well against Cail I might enchant a single war hammer to beast slaying + best lash (I guess freeze). Of course I will also use +10 ACC from survival (only need 4 points for that). I did this with several enemies - like the spirits in the light house for example and the Adra Animat when collecting the pieces of the Engwythan Scepter. I could use Jarpie's War hammer for this (bought it in advance). Or maybe I should do the bounty with Drake's Bell first. I have Blood Thirst. It's quite nice for massive scroll use once you brought the xaurips down in endurance. If one dies from a scroll you can cast the next with no recovery. I didn't use this yet but maybe I have to when meeting Cail. I will try first with a parallel PotD savegame what approach works best. Maybe it's still too risky to fight and I have to sneak to Tidefall with Boots of Stealth and run away with Wild Sprint. The Forgotten where a bit too dangerous already for my taste. Only had 10 health left when the guy with the Sanguine Plate finally died. Those frickin wizards with their Fetid Caress + Necrotic Lance stuff I swear. So far no split & pull. But smart positioning and using a pike when somebody weak stays in front of you while the tough guys can't reach you is very helpful. This made the phantoms in the Throne Room easy. I ignored the two shadows that blocked the doorway for me and used my pike + Combusting Wounds on the phantoms.

Update: The ultimate barb is lvl 8 and just killed the Forgotten. Now I have two Frenzy uses per encounter. Off to Cail the Silent!

In solo, especially Trial of Iron, it's very annoying.

Ciphers have reaping knives. Maybe it will be possible to cast them on oneself in PoE2.

Only possible for the 3rd fighter subclass: B.A. Barracus. This subclass can also wear 10 necklaces.

Absolutely right. And because such an evaluatuon would be way to complicated (at least for me) I'm just judging by experience or "feeling". I have no real aversion whatsoever and try to be objective. Let's put it this way: With my playstyle the rogue is the weakest class. Followed by fighter and then ranger. Mostly because they lack AoE capabilites (CC, damage or support) which I'm very fond of. However, in certain situations they can the better pick (like fighter against dragons for example).

Interrupts would be ok, but the game cancles the whole process randomly and you never know when and why. You have to pause every 0.5 seconds and click on the potion icon again to make sure the game doesn't "forget" that you wanted to drink a potion.

I used -30% because I remembered wrongly. I don't think the numbers change significantly when using -34% instead: Sabre's average base damage is 16. So the rogue hits a single target with 34.4 average and the barb hits the initial target for 29.6 avarage and the carnage targets for 24.8 24.2 average only. Total damage to 5 enemies after 5 hits (without DR): - rogue: 172 - barb: 768 753 Sorry for the wrong number - but it doesn't make much of a difference as you can see. You have to keep in mind that the -34% is only -34% of weapon base damage, not overall damage. Thus, the malus doesn't hurt a lot after you get some other damage mods like exceptional, MIG, One Stands Alone, Blooded, Heart of Fury and crits.

Hi Burrito, "Conjurer" ist the forum rank, not the name. The name is "firkraag888". The second Edge of Reason comes from cloning with the Helwax Mold. The Helwax Mold is an item you can get from a stronghold adventure, called "The Wax Maker". The mold lets you copy one non-soulbound item of your choice and will give you a clone of the item with the exact same stats, enchantments included. You don't need to do this by all means though. If you use We Toki (another unique battle axe) + Edge of Reason for example you will see that this setup is also very nice.