Boeroer

It's a shame that all the good morning stars either come WAY to late or you have to be lucky to get them. I mean a unique weapon in the pit of no return, come on... Acuan Giamas is one of the best weapons in the game. It is so much fun to use it with a rogue: escape to a backline caster, hit him and eventually steal spells. If you do, stop hitting the guy (because if he dies your spells will be gone) and cast damaging spells nonstop with Deathblows. If you can't steal, the wounding makes short work of any enemy anyway. Also works very well on a fighter with Charge & Disciplined Barrage: crits with spell guaranteed. Imagine this weapon against the Hunting Lodge bounty. Mabec's is also very nice - but I did a TON of playthroughs and got it only twice. Pikes: besides Tall Grass the assortment is quite meh. But Tall Grass is great and it can be obtained early, so ok. Estocs: all unique estocs are great in some way. The Blade is obviously good, Drake's Bell can be brought to insane DR bypass per hit and has an unusual burn DR bonus that stacks with everything and The White Spire has Spell Bindings (which is always good) and Disorienting. And it looks so good! Pollaxes: I agree. Although there are some nice specimen they also come too late. Wind's Arm is good if you have an interrupting barb and/or a blast wizard in the party and stand by their side. A chanter with "The Champion braved the Horde alone" and the "Thick grew their Tongues" phrase combined with this and most enemies ate interrupt-locked in an AoE. Quarterstaffs: also really sad. Llawran's Stick is ok because it comes early and Durance's Staff is also nice because of the two damage types and the lash it comes with. But then it's over. No overbearing staff (would have been fitting), no interfering staff (dito) only that really lame Wendwalker. It's the opposite as with Morning Stars: the good ones come very early and then there's nothing.

I also like Boreal Dwarves a lot with barbs because of the inherent +15 ACC against two creature groups which can lead to easy fights because carnage crits all the time when fighting those. And at the beginning of the game (which is the hardest part of all, esp. for a barb) it's a huge boost. Then I would aim for 4 and then 10 survival asap to add +10 / +15 ACC. THis way your barb will not miss all the time. If you plan to take Frenzy, Bloodlust and Blood Thirst (which I'd do) then you really don't need 20 DEX. 10 CON can work, but without a shield I'd give a barb more CON. On a barb CON pays off because his base vaules of endurance and health (as well as the higer values at level up) work really good wtih the +5% per point of CON. After some levels they turn from squishies in meat shields because of that. At level 16 you can around 500 endurance which is twice the endurance your other chars have and around 6000(!) health. As long as your healing is good this guy won't go down easily. But you can't feel that in the first few levels. I wouldn't leave PER at 10 - carnage already has lower ACC than your normal attack - and one of the best things that you can do with carnage is to apply AoE interrupts and AoE on-crit effects. If you take Veteran's Recovery (which I would do asap) you want high MIG and INT (doesnt need to be maxed). Watch out for Belt of Bountiful Healing or Fulvano's Amulet: they are great together with Veteran's Recovery. If you feel that you ACC is high enough you can also use the survival bonus for healing which also really boosts your survivability. At the beginning of the game high DR is very effective and high endurance is not. But during the game thios drastically changes. Because DR doesn't scale as much as enemies' damage which on the other hand doesn't scale as much as endurance. So as the others said, you can start with heavy armor and then - with each level up, you can choose lighter armor if you feel like it.

Funny how different things can be perceived - I think it's one of the lamest fights in the game. Gather in a niche and cast all your Chillfogs in front of you while the Dragon Thrashes - done. There are no ranged enemies so they have to stand in the fog in order to reach you.

Hm... that's hefty difference. What class was it? Certain circumstancial dmg mods like Sneak Attack don't get listed on the char sheet. Also, Confident Aim is bugged and it's damage gets piled up on save/realod.

Then it's Shatterstar. Thanks!

I like Hours of St. Rumbalt a lot. The combination of annihilation and overbearing and the high ACC makes it one of the best weapons for crit based builds. But Tidefall is also very nice. WF Soldier has all the good stuff: Tall Grass, Godansthunyr, Shatterstar, Strike Hard - even The Temparacl is good. You can easily equip a party with soldier weapons only and will not gimp yourself in any way.

Actually I don't really know. It's hard to determine. But based on my experience it seems to me that something is not workig properly, because when I use Drawn in Spring vs. a simple exceptional sabre with HoF the sabre leads to better results (= more foes dead). Or maybe it's just because with high INT wounding DoT takes some time - but you want your foes dead at once with HoF - and not 10 secs later.

Why? War hammers already have two damage types: pierce and crush. Actually now I have doubts if it was Shatterstar or Strike Hard... I guess Shatterstar. It's one of them.

Yarp Have a look at the ingame weapon description.

It's a spear - Vile Loner's Lance is just the name. In my opinion it's the best one handed interrupt weapon for a barb. If you want to dual wield and not duplicate Vile Loner's I would use Shatterstar (1 sec) + Godansthunyr (0.75). Both have higher interrupts as the usual war hammer (0.5), and have great enchantments like Annihilating and Stunning. It's the best dual wielding interrupt setup for me because it also has two damage types. Vile Loner's is so nice for a barb because it has +10 ACC compared to other weapons which is great with carnage and also crit-interrupts. Maybe it's even better when wielded single handedly because of more crits - never tested that. Mosquito is a rapier by the way.

Use Durance to cast a protecting spell against paralyze. That's mainly it. If you don't have lvl 5 spells yet use Circle of Defense - that can also help. Then wear items that protect you from paralyze - like Fenwalker Boots and the Wayfarer's Hide. And/or use the chanter's +10 to fortitude/will phrase and build up for "Shatter their Shackles", then you can switch to Dragon Thrashed.

Firebrand doesnt target reflex anymore, that was changed in 2.03 or so.

I meant the famous musketeers from literature and movies by the way - not the historical ones. And I know they are French.

The Vailian Republics have that italian/renaissance flavour, the italian-like lingo and also the fashion. Darcozzis seem to be inspired by the musketeers - so rapier + dagger would totally fit.

Also: only a paladin is able to wear the Outworn Buckler, which is the best shield until you find Little Savior and improves his and his fellows' defenses even more. I often chose a paladin only because of that shield.

A Darcozzi paladin would object I guess.

Hehe. Too bad wounding doesn't generate focus. Did you ever test Firebrand + Scion of Flame with a cipher? Maybe combined with Myth Fyr from a chanter? The focus gain should be good...

The best 1h dps weapon is Drawn in Spring - which is a dagger. The March Steel Dagger has speed and is also great because you can get it early. So: rapier & dagger is a good setup for DPS because of those. The Sword if Deanysis has rending and speed, which is a great combination for dps. But two rapiers looks kinda awkward... Mosquito has a tremendous interrupt value of 0.75 sec which is amazing for a fast weapon (which normally have 0.35 sec). And it has draining. It is smaller than most other unique rapiers and doesn't look as weird as a second weapon in the offhand. If you combine mace and rapier the vailian style militia will come and throw you into a pit filled with cheap copies of Finreah's Grace.

What people also sometimes miss is that a chanter who wants to focus on melee (and NOT use the obvious "The Dragon obliterates everything" chant) can deal good damage via his self buffs which he can keep up 100% of the time with lvl 1 phrases after some levels with decent DEX and INT - and later also with "The Champion braved the Horde alone", which lasts surprisingly long. Another nice touch is to use a burning lash on your weapon and sing the "Myth Fyr" phrase and combine it with Scion of Flame. That way you will have a 60% burning lash on your weapon (while others in range also get lashes) which is way better than Sneak Attack and such. It's not as powerful as the Dragon Slashed, but if you want to go the melee road it's definitely good. The Champion invocation also gives you ridiculous interrupts - combine that with high PER, Interrupting Blows and an item that gives you better interrupt values and you are THE disruptor. And as I said: the damage per hit is pretty nice, too. Also works with ranged weapons obviously.

Eh? Do Time Parasite and Alacrity stack?

Why not WF noble? The term "noble savage" is made for this.

Right. The percentage based mods of the base damage only add up. Crit damage is no difference. But crits also prolong durations.

The full attacks are nice - but I agree that there's not enough of them to make a huge difference once the targets get meatier and/or come in higher numbers like Raven said. Maybe that's the main reason why rogues stink on PotD.

Can't say - I never play those.

Invest in survivability during the first level ups. Veteran's Recovery and thick armor will prevent a quick knockout. It's no problem to bring such a rogue and make him viable in a party. You can balance out his squishyness by focusing on a more defensive approach - he already comes with high ACC and Sneak Attack - so no need to boost offense further with talents during the first levels. With a few stat tweaks and some talents you can make him nearly as sturdy as a fighter. Well sort of... Soloing without too much kiting needs a combination of sturdiness and sustained AoE damage. I think that's the reason you don't see a lot of fighter and rogue solo runs. But generally I agree that rogues are a bit underwhelming. Also always the easiest enemy in kith encounters. It's not like you think "oh noo - here comes the nasty rogue!" More often it's "oh noo - there comes the nasty drunk orlan monk".