Boeroer

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!

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.