Boeroer

I'm sorry for your ignorance. Now it's Pallegina speaking by the way. Feather and five suns: no doubt, no?

He has decent RES. Giving him a hatchet and a small shield is a good idea if you mainly use his spells. Small shield only because other shields will give him a malus to ACC - also with spells. Having good deflection and not too low DR will prevent that annoying rushers want to attack him first all the time. I you want to attack with him then you can give him the magran talent and Weapon Focus Soldier/Knight. Then he's good enough with an arquebus/sword. Don't forget that he has awesome ACC buffs for the party that all work on himself, too. The lowish PER doesn't matter much. I also think that's the main reason the devs game him low PER - because he can easily compensate it with spells.

It's absolutely your decision how many party memners you want - but there's no noticable difference between 5 or 6 party members when it comes to experience gain and leveling. If you want to grab an official companion later then it's all OK. If you want to use an hireling it's not too wise to wait for too long because the xp-gap between you and a newly hired adventurer will become bigger and bigger the more you level before hiring.

You don't need minmaxing at all, not even for solo PotD. But it can be fun and it can squeeze out a little bit more performance in those special areas you planned your build around. But it also leads to vulnerabilities. The trick is to work around those vulnerabilities while keeping the advantage of the maxed stats. As I said: fun!

Even if they are completely underpowered in the late game they can still eat some nasty disables that would otherwise hit you.

Does he indeed have perfect memory? As far as I understood the special thing about him is that he remembers his past lives after returning from the wheel while every other soul doesn't. That doesn't necessarily mean that he has perfect memory.

First it was Eder, now it's Aloth - the website changed. First it was pipe and grain and talking about Eothas --> Eder No it's a book and a key and talking about god's secrets and the Leaden Key --> Aloth Next will be an arse on a pyre and talks about being a douchebag --> Durance

That will work well. Minmaxing stats is not necessary because they are are not superimportant in this game anyway. Sure, 5 points more in a certain stat is good, but you will not gimp your character if you give him 13 MIG instead of 18. That's a nice thing about this game. The difference between 18 DEX and 3 DEX or 18 CON and 3 CON is very noticable though. And if you feel you could use more DEX and less MIG for example, just go to an inn and retrain a bit until you are pleased.

If you are at an inn and open the dialogue for resting or shopping, you will also see a dice symbol. That's the one for retraining. Every inn has it. You will retrain everything from lvl 1 on. A ranger can even pick a different animal companion. For a wizard it's even better: You can fill some grimoires with all your spells before retraining and then, when retraining, pick different spells than those which are in your spell books. Then, after retraining, you'll relearn all your old spells from your books and you'll have the most aweseome variety of spells. Health can only be healed via resting or with four other things: - Potion of Infuse with Vital Essence - Infuse with Vital Essence spell - Wound Binding talent - Field Triage talent Since camping supplies are cheap or lie around for free and there are a lot of inns all over the place (and rooms are cheap, too) most people don't use the two talents. Concerning your complaints: you just need to play a bit longer in order to get a feeling for it. The game mechanics are not supercomplicated, but there's little information about it in the game. You have to find most things out yourself (or ask in the forum). For starters: it's all about accuracy vs. defenses - buffing and debuffing. If you figure out how to do this the game's easy. Don't waste your priest's spells and time for heals. Use him mainly to buff your party. After that, use wizard and druid to debuff (or even disable) the enemy. Anything that causes afflictions is good. Only then attack with all damaging thingies you have.

Time siphon does not stack in quality, but in quantity - meaning that you will only get +15% attack speed (but this 15% stack with any other speed buff except itself) but the more often you hit the longer the duration will get. With a barb for example you will have 120+ seconds after a few attacks and then you could switch to another weapon setup and use the speed buff for those 120 secs.

Theoretically it works this way. In practice you won't be fast enough to prolog your buffs endlessly with a fighter - well, it might work with dual wielding and a second weapon with the speed enchantment and Two Weapon Style plus high DEX. It's more easy to do this with a barb, because he hits multiple targets via carnage. A fighter can't do it that easily. It works best if you hit foes that have active buffs, then you'll steal more time for your own buffs, but if you hit generic mobs you will most likely not gain endless durations. So: you will extend your durations, but maybe not endlessly with a fighter. If you want you can read my Leech barbarian build for information around Spelltongue. I described how it works in combination with the barb's self buffs. Pretty sure you can siphon some knowledge for your fighter.

That is totally right. A good party composition and good party "combos" (buffing accuracy before attacking, using CC effects and so on) is the key to an easy playthrough. Pure damage will not win battles for you. But it sure can be fun.

For my usual barb I'd go for high MIG and INT, then PER, then CON, then DEX and then RES. High MIG and INT are benefical for a lot of stuff: self healing via Veteran's Recovery and Savage Defiance, buffs like Frenzy, then Carnage, Vengeful Defeat, Heart of Fury and stuff like that. Since you can speed up your barbarian pretty nicely with Frenzy, Bloodlust and Blood Thirst and also dual wielding if you like, DEX isn't so important for me. With a Two Hander you want to have a bit more DEX than with two weapons. If you have low RES you want more CON, if you have low CON you might want to put more points into RES. High CON is very benefical for barbs because their already high base values for endurance and esp. health will lead to tremendous pools if they also get the bonus from CON. This is good when you rely on self heals with low deflection. Else your endurance will be ok but your health will be low after few fights. High MIG and CON will lead to a great fortitude defense - and that's the most important defense in my opinion. You can dump RES if you're going the high CON road with self healing. Only problem will be interrupts when you get surrounded by mobs. Potion of Spirit Shield helps a lot as does Holy Meditation (from items or a priest). You can also dump DEX if you're dual wielding and use Frenzy + Bloodlust. Especially for the nest ability of the barb, Heart of Fury, you need no DEX at all. But you don't need to. It's perfectly ok to leave the not so important stats at 10 and give the more important ones a 15 or so. What is important and what not is also determined by your role in the party and your build idea. As you pointed out, the Golden Dragon is supposed to be a tank with a shield and therefore doesn't need a lot of CON. But he wants high RES to avoid damage. This is a special build though. Normally I wouldn't put too many points into RES when I'm building a barb. Usually the offensive way is a lot of fun - and you can pair it pretty nicely with Veteran's Recovery, survial bonus for healing and any item that gives +25% to healing received. Also, a Girdle of Mortal Protection is good: it takes away 27% of the critical damage which is near to the damage an normal hit scores. This is very good if you have low deflection and receive a lot of crits. All in all your dps will be great while you will be sturdy as a fighter. This combo of good offense and good self healing is very effective.

I find Powder Burns to be a weak ability, but maybe that's just me. If it would work with Swift and Vicious Aim and the self blindig part would be removed it would be OK I guess.

If you are on steam, try to verify your game cache. This might help.

Plan C: one single chanter with The Dragon Thrashed and boots of speed, running around them in circles.

Who fixed that? Allen Inversion?

After the tears dried: It's one of the best two handed weapons in the game. Comes superior, has the speed enchantment (which is one of the best) and has also marking, which is also great if you know how to use it. As all other weapons in PoE, it's no game breaking stuff. Just a good unique weapon.

Great blunderbuss build: Island Aumaua wizard with Arms Bearer, Quick Switch and focus on max DR bypass (Pen. Shot, Ryona's Vambraces, Expose Vulnerab.) and Combusting Wounds. Cast Expose Vul. and Combusting Wounds on the enemies and then shoot them with your blunderbusses. Awesome! Most of the time you will do additional >100 burn damage with CW. Not the usual wizard build - but one of the best gun wielders in my opinion. Spell Mastery Expose V. & Combusting W. Nice additions are things which generate a lot of hits, like most missile spells and wall spells. Guess I'll have to post that build at some point. Soon I'll have more time, I promise. You can also take a ranger and use one or two Rings of Searing Flames. With Driving Flight this will generate even more hits, but it lacks a bit DR bypass. Not a problem with a ful party though.

One can't see OP's text when on mobile. Guess I didn't miss much. Too lazy to mark it in order to make it visible.

It's Eder speaking. Would love to see him in PoE2 as well.

If you want you can also take Novice's Suffering and skip weapons altogether. Jojobobo of this forum tried that and was very pleased. It's because the damage of grazes, hits and crits don't differ that much with fists - it's a weird game mechanics thing. Since barb's carnage already has reduced accuracy and tends to graze more often, this is a good synergy. Also works well with high might. I think Jojobobo hasn't posted his build yet. I think he did a solo PotD run with the unarmed barb.

Priest = MC is indeed a rewarding choice. In my opinion, priest is the most powerful and useful class at higher levels (lvl 9 and above). The only thing at which they suck is the early game.

A good way to make a barb who is not a late bloomer is to give him high might and intellect and then take Veteran's Recovery. This removes the most frustrating part of the barb in the early game: his squishyness. Add Savage Defiance and combine this self heal approach with Fulvano's Amulett or a Belt of Bountiful Healing and 8 points of survival for the +40% healing bonus. Suddenly you are even sturdier than a fighter while dishing out AoE damage. Normal to high CON will give you lots of health which is not too unimportant if you rely on regenerating your endurance. Dual wielding is not mandatory, but surely fun with a barb. Heart of Fury (lvl 11 ability - great stuff) is best with two weapons. I also like Great Swords a lot on a barb. With high accuracy (great if you have a priest) the "Hours of St. Rumbalt" is one of the best options for a barbarian in my opinion. Tidefall is really nice, too. A very nice spear is the Vile Loner's Lance that you can buy in the Salty Mast in Copperlane. It causes -5 to enemies' defenses and has a 1 sec interrupt values which is twice as long as usual. With this spear you should choose high perception and take Interrupting Blows. You can of course use a one handed approach, a shield or another spear.

You should use your priest as buffer for defenses (including prayer) and accuracy mainly. Healing is OK, but buffing is the best part of the priest. The combo I would always cast is Inspiring Radiance followed by Devotions of the Faithful. +30 to ACC that stacks with other ACC buffs for the whole party is a huge advantage at the start of a battle. I personally don't use healing a lot with a priest because I like it when chars can heal themselves with things like Veteran's Recovery and so on. And then I like it if healing abilities are spread over the party. It's too bad if your only healer gets disabled. Paladins, chanters and druids can be good healers in one way or another, too. It's absolutely no problem to play without a priest. But it's right that they can make the game easier. But for example there's a scroll for every prayer. You only need a guy or a gal with lore. The only prayer like things which aren't on a scroll are the (single ally) litanies against minor & major afflictions.