Boeroer

I'd argue that a dual weapon setup would be better with a Rogue/Barb since most Rogue Strikes are Full Attacks and so is Barbaric Smash (which raises the chance to really kill with it which is important for the refund), but it's not that important. By the way: kill by DoT (for example Barbaric Smash + Blood Frenzy + Deep Wounds) will trigger Blood Thirst, but it will not trigger Barbaric Smash's refund, even if the DoT was the result of a Barbaric Smash. So if you used Barbaric Smash and the enemy barely survived, he will die with the next tick, but it won't refund your Rage unfortunately. Also often enough the DoTs would kill weak enemies that I planned to hit with Barbaric Smash right before the smash landed - which costs the Rage but does nothing. It can be annoying sometimes. One has to watch that and maybe sometimes just switch targets. It would have been cool if Barbaric Smash put a short-lived effect on the enemy so that the Barb would get a refund if the enemy died in that short period of time and not only from the direct smash. But anyway: the combined DoTs in general are potent and cool. Like when you apply some DoTs to several enemies and then turn to some others - and when the first ones die from bleeding out you get Blood Thirst procs. Can even be used when fighting single tough enemies with weak ads. Back to single class Barb: I think players vastly underestimate the usefulness of either Driving Roar or Dazing Shout. I think a multiclass Barb is more interesting and often more potent to play to the way to the higher levels, but once you reach PL 9 with a SC Barb (PL 8 with a Furyshaper) it will pay off imo. Luckily, with all DLCs installed, you can play a fairly long amount of time after reaching PL8/9. Using both shout abilities in combination with Blood Thirst (and so on) is potent debuff/CC + great damage all in one piece - for only 1 point of Rage and short casting times. And when you are going against large mobs the combo of big AoE Daze/AoE knockdown + damage + potential refund via Blood Surge is so much fun imo. But... against single targets it's not that useful I have to say. Unless you use a Chanter with summons that you can kill for Rage (Blood Surge) and 0 recovery (Blood Thirsty). So maybe one has to be certain about the role the Barb or Barb/something should play. Multiclasses can be a lot more versatile. If the goal is indeed to use Heart of Fury then there's of course no alternative to single class. And in my experience single class Barb is good - unlike some other classes like for example Fighter or Paladin (when not using Devine Retribution with summons) - and it's worth playing. One last though: as I said one can do wild stuff with HoF and Barbaric Retaliation, but it often involves weird combos. For example when using dual mortars and also involve Combusting Wounds and Avenging Storm. That's not a very stereotypical Barb setup of course. However, it's fitting for some dudes - for example Serafen as SC Barb. But HoF is also nice for debuffing in an AoE - for example when using a Morning Star with Body Blows (and Spirit Frenzy): -35 fortitude in an AoE can be very useful. One can also combine HoF with club + flail and lower Will and Reflex by 25 in that AoE (cool for Furyshapers who are using the Fear Ward mostly). Or use Ngati's Tusk with maxed Survival and lower enemies non-deflection defeneses just by being there (Hunter of Hunters aura) and lower deflection with the pike modal + HoF. What I personally really liked in my SC Furyshaper run was to combine Battle Axe + modal + Blood Storm with Barbaric Retaliation and the Blood Ward. I needed stellar AR (Patinated Plate and so on) to survive all the initial melee crits, but all the DoTs I placed on the enemies took over eventually and outhealed the damage. Dazing Shout helped a ton, too.

It's funny: Grounded was a project which started as a small "well why not?" project of enthusiasts. When Obsidian announced they will have a game with a new IP, everybody was speculating like crazy about new awesome RPGs and whatnot. And then they revealed Grounded... and most gamors(TM) were like "Lool wut? This is stupid!" Obsidian today:

By the way: Grounded reached 10 million players last week.

Hm... maybe re-equipping the ring will help.

SC Barbarian is good. One of the classes where it can be both great to multiclass or go single class. The reason why SC Barb is good are the abilities of Power Level 9: Barbaric Retaliation: does a full attack when you receive a critical hit. This is very strong if you build a bit around it. It works with melee or ranged weapon, eve ones that deal AoE damage (like mortars for example). If you have a powerful but slow weapon (for example a two-handed Battle Axe with the Bleeding Cuts modal) this ability - in combination with Blood Thirst - can speed you up considerably. Blood Surge: the only way besides Flesh Communion (Corpse Eater), Brilliant and Empower to regain Rage points. The funny thing is that it also works when you kill allies - for example cheap skeleton summons. Driving or Dazing Shout: both are absolutely awesome: cheap and very powerful. It's worth to play a SC Barb just because of one of those: Heart of Fury is good (and you can to some cheesy stuff with it), but imo it's a bit too expensive. But if you employ the right weapon(s) it can totally be worthwhile. My pick would be Furyshaper when I was playing a SC Barb. The Blood Ward (Power Level is absolute fantastic for you and your party because it drains health from any damage that you or your allies cause (excluded: seals, traps and wall spells). This includes damage over time, spells, weapon attacks and so on. You can combine this with Heart of Fury, Barbaric Retaliation and Dazing Shout for example to heal from the damage you dish out. And also on the way to PL 8/9 a SC Furyshaper is cool because he gets to the Fear Ward a lot earlier than a multiclass Furyshaper. And the Fear Ward is very good, too.

I didn't check Shining Beacon's rolls - but I strongly suspect every hit roll applies Blood Frenzy on crit. I haven't tried Storm of Holy Fire but I also guess this should be great because of the multiple AoE "impacts". The best candidates are pulsing spells and offensive phrases though. Slicken, Binding Web, Tanglefoot, Chillfog, Wicked Briars and all that stuff that pulses every 3 secs. Rays will even pulse every second instead of 3 secs. Unfortunately Walls and also the drop traps from Footsteps of the Beast are hazards and won't apply Blood Frenzy. The seal of the Weyc's Wand however should apply Blood Frenzy since it's a weapon ability - and it pulses every second...

I also thought it should. But I checked right before posting to be 100% sure and was surprised it did not. Scion of Flame was applied but not the +10 ACC from the Ring.

Indeed, the Cat speedup will not stack with Frenzy. Frenzy's action speed bonus is weaker so it will get suppressed (but stuff like Spirit Frenzy's staggering or Blood Frenzy's raw DoT will still work! No suppression there). But you can watch it as one additional use of quasi-Frenzy. If you want to spare Rage or have none left you can still speed yourself up an additional time. Good point with the bear form + Thick Skinned. Add a Blunting Belt, Dragon Pendant and Robust from Nature's Balm + Woodskin and later Form of the Delemgan (it all stacks fortunately) and you'll have awesome AR values but 0 recovery penalty. But since OP wanted to fight out of Spiritshift but with LD's Voulge I guess Cat form is still the best pick, even if the speedup doesn't stack with Frenzy's.

??? Why did your whole party die just because your Paladin went down? I usually wait with the party out of sight and only send my the Assassin/Paladin in. He uses Bounding Boots (for leaping next to hte Dragon while stealthed, then canceling the leap mid-air: still landing near the dragon but not breaking stealth), Lover's Embrace and Gouging Strike + Brand Enemy which puts 3 neverending DoTs on the Dragon which speeds things up considerably - but anyway: should he go down while putting DoTs on the Dragon I just let him lie there - and if there are still ads after the dragon died I just lure them up the path and finish them off one by one. Of course a non-Rogue/Paladin will have no means to flee the fight without going knocked out. It's Smoke Veil which will will make things a lot less fiddly. I just hire an Assassin/Paladin for the job. I mean that's totally on theme - calling a hireling for one particular job, right? Multiclass Assassin/Paladin needs more levels to reach Gouging Strike/Brand Enemy unfortunately. I would use SC Assassin if I wanted to get to Vatnir asap then. Just because of Gouging Strike + Lover's Embrace + Smoke Veil.

No that doesn't work. The +1 PEN will work for the burning lash of Wildstrike (which has to overcome enemies' burn DR seperately) but not for the initial attack. Taking Wildstrike Burn doesn't automatically put the keyword "fire" on all your attacks. The Ring of Focused Flames would do nothing for your melee attacks (unless you are a Paladin/Shifter and use FLames of Devotion of course). The weapon itself (Firebrand, Sun & Moon's fire flail head, Dragon's Dowry) or the attack ability (like FoD) has to be tagged with the keyword "fire". With weapons this is invisible unfortunately. And some fire weapons, like Dragon's Dowry, work woith Scion of Flame (+1 PEN) but not with the Ring (+10 ACC) - for whatever obscure reason I haven't bothered finding out...

Yeah, true. Could be modded, but that means changing the progression tables (I think) which is quite a bit of a hassle just for that one ability.

I wanted to try a Bleak Walker/Stalker bc. of the awesome defense and also ACC stacking - but then remembered that Rangers (as Ciphers) don't get Spirit of Decay. Maybe I'll still do it even though I'll have one less PEN (but a metric ton of ACC)...

Yes, but tbh this is also the case with any weapon. Firebrand just makes it so that even the other attack abilites and auto-attacks profit from the Ring's ACC bonus (which is nice, don't get me wrong. ) One can later also add the Helm of the White Void (did I write that already in this thread? Feels like it...) because Black Flames also sickens - which adds another +10 ACC. So all in all +30 ACC with +2 PEN which is very cool imo. In case of crit (which is likely with +30 all-stackable ACC - even if you turn on the Great Sword Modal) your PEN (including the 2 bonus PEN) will get multiplied by 1.5 - which in turn makes Overpenetration very likely, too. When using FoD a lot it may be better to pick another weapon than Fireband maybe and only use that when Zeal is empty or you really want to cause fire dmg (bc. of enemies' AR or so).

Yes, I meant stacking +1 PEN from Scion of Flame and +1 PEN from Spirit of Decay on Flames of Devotion attacks. The Bleak Walker's FoD is keyworded with fire AND corrode - and thus profits from both passives. And it works. I tried it once as a "Templar" concept (only that the Priest wouldn't be an actual Priest but a Druid - a Priest of Galawain if you will) but didn't really play it out. I can't think of any other ability at the moment that does one attack roll which is tagged with two keywords - but for all the abilites that have this the PEN would stack.

True, the per-encounter "AoE attack" of the stag in the unmodded game is very bad. It's the best form in an unmodded game pick imo (Boar as Shifter is also good, but only if you actually stay in boar form and fight with it). If you don't want to fight shifted then Lord Darryn's Voulge and a Morning Star as backup are good picks.

Skaen's Shadowig Beyond is a copy of the original, unpatched Rogue ability of the same name. This means that it will break on DoT ticks unfortunately while the Rogue's version will not (anymore - after patching). But you can totally use it to get the Assassinate ACC, PEN and crit-dmg bonus for direct damage spells and the ACC bonus for DoTs. Seals are hazard spells. Harards are handled as separate entities (in some ways a bit like summons if you will). They do not profit from assasinate etc. Walls and Seals (and traps) do work that way. Unless you meant Sigil spells - they work just fine with assassinate - but as all pulsing spells only the first pulse will profit.

Yes, Berserker/Ancient Exactly what I did. I didn't do that because I used the Stag form and the Community Patch to get dual Carnage (33% raw dmg from Barb + 25% dmg from Stag). Both are nice, BUT: if you summon a Furyshaper's Ward you cannot summon Ancient's summons like Sporelings anymore. I mean you can, but they will replace the ward - which most lieky is not what you want. And the Sporelings are very good imo (especially in combination with Wild Growth). Yes On the Barb's side? Don't think so. Mageslayer makes no sense and Corpse Eater, while thematically a cool pick in combination with an Ancient, is implemented so awkwardly that it's mechanically inferior to vanilla Barb imo. On the Druid's side there's Fury (here I would suggest using Lord Darryn's Voulge), Lifegiver (good with Furyshaper, can't summon anyways) and there's always the Shifter.

I assume you bought the game before you experienced those things?

You would max MIG. There's not much else you can do - except adding Brand Enemy on top of those two with a Paladin. Although that wouldn't hve done much against that dragon...

All attacks from Firebrand count as burn attacks. Scion of Flame and Ring of Focused Flame both work with it. Maybe scrolls?

If you use mainly Imbue:Web and Imbue:Eora you won't have PEN issues and they are fantastic as opening barrage. They will pull most enemies together, render them helpless and perfectly positioned for your Magran nukes. Don't know if you knew it already but Driving Flight AND jumping weapons like Watershaper's Focus will stack their jumps. And imbue spells trigger with every jump. So that would be 3 Binding Web Instances + 3 Pull of Eora Instances - from stealth this will take only very few secs to apply.

Exactly! Yes, no "Clone". Don't know why, maybe it has something to to with instancing the game objects, but whatever. You can look up the names of the spells to remove in the wiki: https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Fan_of_Flames_(Priest_of_Magran) https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Spiritual_Weapon_(Priest_of_Magran) OR - maybe that's the best option if I think about it: don't bother with removin the spells manually but after using SetSubclass and adding the Magran_Deity just go to an inn and retrain, that should be the cleanest solution and less hassle on a game console with a gamepad and so on. That should automatically remove everything and let you level up from 1 to 4 again - I think even the lvl-1 bonus spell.

If you would bring a cipher with Driving Echoes this would be a non-issue. An alternative is indeed the Community Patch. It has nice unique passive icons, too. First time @theleedoing a ninja on me, damn!

Forbidden Fist wants high Resolve in order to keept the duration of any hostile effects extremely short. RES also contributes to deflection which the Wizard has an enormous potential for. And since stacking defenses gives increasing returns this is a nice synergy already. Use Tuotilo's Palm and you'll be tanky as hell. And if you mostly use Forbidden Fist attacks or other primary attacks (Force of Anguish, Torment's Reach, Skyward Kick) you won't lose any dps from the use of the shield but still get get dual wielding recovery speed. Then Sages are very potent in general. Mostly because the combination of either AoE weapon such as Spirit Lance + Stunning Surge, Efficient Anguish etc. is very good, but also because Wall of Draining prolongs all buffs on you, including Swift Flurry, Thunderous Blows, Clarity of Agony (great for a Forbidden Fist), Crucicle of Suffering (also great for a forbidden fist) and whatnot. Also the Wizard has some spells which have friendly fire - which usually are bad to step into, but as Forbidden Fist can give you wounds and healing galore. For example be resistant to DEX affclictions (like from being a wood elf or wearng an item with DEX resistance) and step into your own Binding Webs. You will get hobbled for very short amount of times and every time a hobble wears off you will get healing and a wound. Finally the Forbidden Fist attack enfeebles, which causes +50% duration of hostile effects on the enemy. This includes stuff like Fetid Caress (very strong single target disable in combination with Turning Wheel's +10 INT, which is +30% duration, and enfeebling with +50%). Add some power levels and land a crit - and the enemy might be paralyzed for over half a minute.

Dual wielding with a Kind Wayfarer does twice the healing with FoD compared to a Kind Wayfarer with only one weapon. It's not a big problem, it's just not optimal. As I said, Steel Garrote Paladin/Bloodmage would be a superb synergy with Whispers of the Endless Paths. With a Devoted you can use an Estoc if you accept that a backup weapon will have -10 ACC (not that big of a deal after the early game imo) or if you pick up Monastic Unarmed Training and use your fists against pierce immune foes. Everbody is automatically proficient with fists so a Devoted won't get -10 ACC with them. Pierce resistance (which is just high armor vs. pierce) is not a big problem for a Devoted/Wizard because not only has an Estoc vey high base PEN already an the Devoted adds, but also the Wizard has Expose Vulnerabilities and the Devoted has Penetrating Strike. I don't remember many "resistant" enemies that can withstand that. Pierce immune enemies don't skulk around every corner, but they are more common than most other xyz-immune foes because often skeletons and constructs are immune to pierce. Hence the fallback to fists or a Morning Star for example. Kaylon's suggestion with Soulblade is also very nice - also with Whispers of the Endless Paths. Offensive Parry will generate focus while you parry and the cone attack will apply the raw dmg of the Soul Annihilation attacks to all enemies in the cone (the amount of raw dmg will vary between enemies though). Ciphers get Borrowed Instincts at some point which leads to high ACC but also high defenses which stack with Paladin's defensive passives AND singular deflection buffs (for example from a Priest) which is perfect for Offensive Parry.