Boeroer

Sure, it's my fault. :| I lure little kids to the weird side of the character creation and all... I do builds that are unusual or (hopefully) interesting and still work well. Why should I post the obvious? Not very entertaining. I'm not Obsidian's official build encyclopedia where you can find all viable builds - I just do that stuff for my own amusement so I limit myself to the werid stuff like a Barb with a dead wish. That's not necessarily the "best" way (although it's pretty good). That doesn't mean the obvious doesn't work well. For example the great sword wielding barbarian works really well. No need to be a fencer. Sure - there are some nice synergies between a certain rapier and carnage and HoF - but that doesn't make other, more traditional builds bad. Give him a great sword and make him strong and meaty, give him frenzy, bloodlustand blood thirst and he will be good and lots of fun. Aim for the Hours of St. Rumbalt and see the magic of carnage + prone + high damage. Or use Tidefall and look at the tremendous wounding damage and the self heal via carnage + draining. Both variants are lots of fun and powerful. Atm I'm playing a barb tank with weapon & shield and dazing + frightening via shouts - also very nice. And on the other hand - you don't have to stick to the traditional monk. Play him like a fighter with a two hander in fat armor and he will do great. Just pretend he's a templar or whatever suits you. I think rogues are a bit weak compared to the other classes, especially because their late game abilities are not as "wow" as those of other classes - but they still do a lot of melee damage. Also, the impression of paladins is wrong. He's a great mixture of support and sturdiness. And paladins are actually better tanks than fighters. Fighters are good tanks, but even better at other things, like disrupting the enemies' back line without going down. Paladins also have the best healing abilities in the game. Look out for the "damaging healbot". And of course there's no rule that says you can't habe two fighters in the party. Maybe you did a little bit too much research about what's the optimum when you just should have started a game and see where it gets you?

Yes, the 3.04 patch will change how people see 2handers. At the moment the only disadvantage of sabres is their single damage type. And you can go around that by using Bittercut. 2handers have some of the best uniques because you can get them early and they have some nice enchantments (Hours of St. Rumbalt, Tidefall, Blade of the EP, Tall Grass etc.). Esp. great swords with their 2 damage types are good. But the high base damage of sabres and the ability to dual wield them and therefore get +50% speed as well as Full Attacks is obviously better. Also using a shield while having nearly the same damage or using one handed style is better - if you don't look at uniques but only judge the plain base weapon. When sabres' damage will be changed from higher base to a mere +20% bonus, 2handers will be a real alternative. The difference in damage per hit between dual wielding swords and using a great sword is very obvious - especially against enemies with high DR. +20% damage is a lot weaker than higher base damage - especially if you have a lot of damage mods like rogues, ciphers or fighters have. But atm sabres are the best option for DPS.

You can do anything with the build-in console, you don't necessarily need any mod. But that will deactivate achievements

Frenzy will not only give you a bit more damage and speed, it also boosts your fortitude by 16 points (even 24 with Greater Frenzy). That's a hidden gem. Who cares for -10 deflection. Bloodlust stacks with Frenzy, so it's not too bad - especially with a two hander. It speeds up any action, not just autoattacking. Blood Thirst also triggers when you kill with spells or retaliation. 0 recovery spell casting with AoE spells is pretty nice in hard encounters. Nobody else can do that. I killed Darzir's Gang with scrolls of Fan of Flames when I was soloing with a barb. Both are good when you have HoF: after HoF both will be on - you will be able to add an attack right after HoF (Blood Thirst) - like Barbaric Blow - and then continue with +20% speed for the rest of the fight. Fun fact: when you use Spelltongue with HoF you will not only have 15% attack speed from Spelltongue for a looong time, but also Bloodlust and Frenzy will have huge durations and will last until the rest of the fight - as well as the normally very short damage bonus of HoF (+20%) which gets prolonged a lot because of the man many hits you generate with HoF. All other things like Savage/Stalwart Defiance will also have ridiculous durations after HoF with Spelltongue. Blooded is nice when you want to have <=50% endurance or lower anyways. Like when you are a Fire Godlike and want to stack retaliations or when you want to abuse Vengeful Defeat. Blooded works with everything, also spells and leaps and shouts. Same as One Stands Alone, which is also good. Both stack. I don't use it if I don't plan to hit 50% endurance frequently. I think Thick Skinned is not too bad when you take it early and later retrain for something else. With a Blunting Belt and Thick Skinned you can easily do with a much thinner armor at the beginning of the game. Later on it becomes less powerful. DR can't keep up with the damage output of enemies so it doesn't matter that much towards the end of the game. Eye of the Dragon: I think it's one of the most useless abilites in the whole game if you have a party. I can imagine it's nice for soloing: You will be of higher level than most monsters most of the time and thus will have free movement and will suffer no disengangement attacks. Echoing Shout works with Blooded and Blood Thirst and also triggers Bloodlust - it can be seen as a powerful spell - especially because it's range is so huge and it bounces. In close quarters it can be really devastating. It's also nice to have with a barb with high move speed, kiting a bit so that enemies follow you in a straight line and then turn around and shout. Dragon Leap is great in combo with HoF. I love it! edit: man, never got ninja'd so hard.

Deathblows with "normal" weapons is not as powerful as one might think. Especially with weapons which you normally would associate with rogues, like daggers and such - small, fast weapons. That's because their base damage is low. Deathblows "only" doubles that base weapon damage. And you need to keep up 2 afflictions for that. Normally an enemy is dead anyway when it suffers from 2 afflictions (most of the time one of them is a disabling one) - it may take a little more time to finish it off but disabled is disabled. It would be cooler if Deathblows would simply upgrade Sneak Attack - so that you still need only one affliction. Remember that you get Deathblows at level 11 - a level at which the barb gets Heart of Fury for example. And nobody can seriously argue that those two are on par. Druids ca get a +50% or even +60% lash - now that's powerful especially with those hefty base damage from claws. Lashes are not claculated with weapons base damage, but the actual damage they do. Crits and all dmg mods will be taken into account. That's why shifted druids normally do 100+ damage hits at highter levels without the need to cause any affliction and fuzz like that. And on top he casts spells like Relentless Storm which prevent that he gets hit. And you then can even pimp that lash damage with things like Scion of Flame. So the druid outperforms the rogue not only in single target damage, but he also has spells which deal AoE damage, cause CC and whatnot. I'd say it's not fair. If a rogue is supposed to be THE single target dps machine he should have something with less fuzz and more ooph. Or he needs more staying power. Or something else that makes him unique. THe only thing in whoich rogues are good is the earlygame because they start with that +50% damage bonus which is great that early in the game. With anything that has high base damage Deathblows is nice of course - like guns. But they are so slow that when you miss the point where an enemy has 2 afflictions you have to wait forever for your second shot - and who knows if the 2 afflcitions are still up then. It's a micromanagement hell. That's why Fireballs or most other spells become nasty things when Deathblows get applied. Instead of 30 damage a Fireball would do 60. It's basically double damage with spells. A high level rogue is the prefect scroll user because of that. But I don't think that was intended.

What is 2wf? St. Ydwen's Redeemer - map Durgan's Battery, at the northern edge of the map, between Galvino's Hut and the Battery. It's THE BEST weapon gainst undead. Works with any weapon focus and binds to paladins. For spirits enchant any weapon you like with spirit-slaying. Ravenwing is nice. There's also "Whispers of Yenwood" which you get very early in Caed Nua's throne room (in an urn right at the entrance). It comes with Spirit-Slaying and gives +2 CON. It also looks kind of cool.

For me, it would be OK if the rogue's abilities were just a bit stronger and his starting values not so crappy in comparison to fighters and monks. Sure, ACC is nice, but why have deflection and endurance to be so low that they fall on their face every time an enemy looks at them. They have no spells to make up for this like for example wizards or ciphers have. Atm, ciphers are the better rogues. Making Deep Wounds stack would be an easy and powerful change. Making Finishing Blow blow less. That "more damage the more dead the target" thing is just bad. Make it so that it gives a massive dmg bonus when the target has <=50% endurance. Make Smoke Cloud also weaken or blind targets. Make Shadow Step trigger Backstabs. Give certain weapons like daggers and stilettos bonus Backstab damage or give them auto annihilation when a rogue wields them or even better: give them higher base damage with a rogue. A talent that heightens crit damage like the Merciless Hand. Maybe both of the crit converter abilities/talents could do this. Add some rogue only items that are really good. For example a belt or gloves that add a 10% corrosion/poison lash to every weapon. Make stealth worthwhile: let the rogue enter stealth again during combat. Maybe 1/encounter. Make traps worthwhile when rogues lay them. For example they could have higher damage or do sneak attack. Let rogues lay more than one trap. Let them drop traps in encounters. Such things would keep them non-mystical while making them interesting. Then make Clear Out per encounter so fighters get some love, too and we're good.

A rogue with dual Flames of Fair Rhian and Taluntain's Staff = 9 Fireballs per rest... and all spell bindings he can get besides that, making him a caster basically. Damaging spells work with Deathblows (not sneak attack). Fireballs on Deathblows = double damage = Direballs.

Only rogue that is fun for me atm is the "Direballs" rogue.

Barb and monk may overlap a bit. If you play the monk more like a disruptor in the enemy backline then they work together perfectly well I guess. Or a barb who engages from the flanks instead of standing in the middle and the monk in the fray instead could also work. I can always recommend a priest. His buffs make every party a lot better and every playthrough easier. He needs a few levels to show his awesomeness. Chanters are always nice if you want dps power combined with tankyness and low micromanagement. Wizards are very flexible and awesome disablers and have good self buffs. Druids are less flexible but more sturdy (without spells) and also have really good CC and damaging spells. Spiritshift turns them into single target melee dps monsters that have no match - but it doesn't last too long. For me, rogues are the weakest class overall atm and I seldomly recommend them. Paladins: awesome support and sturdyness combined with good burst damage and some great order specific talents. After lvl 13 good DPS, too.

This is true if: - you run straigt into an encounter (no preparation time) - for the generic trashmob fights (buffs too much fuzz - select all, pick atarget and autoattack ) - your level is too high compared to the enemies (it can't get better than crits, so why bother) and/or - difficulty level is below PoTD (which is the same as the point above basically) And it can be true if you have lots of squishies in your ranks that get knocked down quickly. In those situations it can be better to start with disabling/CC and attacks right away. But if you scout with your tank first (so that you're barely in range for ACC buffs like Insp. Radiance) and trigger the encounter so that most enemies will engage him first you will ahve enough time for ACC buffing and debuffing before you start attacking. As I said most of the casts can be done parallel with a slight shift in timing and not necessarily sequencially.

This is a good post, though I wouldn't wait to cast Returning/Relentless Storm untill after buffs are cast since they re-check your accuracy and intelligence every time they hit, which makes them great spells to open encounters with immediately since they'll still take advantage of buffs cast later. That is right. Spell with pulsing or returning hits like Chillfog, Relentless Storm and so on can be cast right away. Every pulse will be rolled with the actual accuracy of the caster. And some of them take forever to cast anyway - so when you finish them a priest might have cast Insp. Radiance and another buff in the meantime.

Monk throughout the whole game I'd say. After lvl 11 it's barbarian because of Heart of Fury and his huge endurance pool (which he gains through level ups). My current barb tank (!) has dealt 90k more damage than my second best dps char - my wizard - and at the same time he's the sturdiest member of my team (all lvl 16). But as I said: monks are good dps guys and sturdy right from the start.

Maybe you become pumice stone when petrified?

On monks and barbs higher CON is nice because they already get more base endurance and health than other classes - this means the +5% from every point of CON leads to more endurance than on a fighter or chanter or so. A monk with maxed CON can easily reach 500 Endurance at the end of the game. If you add self heal like a boss you become unkillable by the usual mob - even if your deflection is crappy. Another good thing: your fortitude will be very good, which prevents nasty things like petrify. Becoming a stone pillar will get you killed - no matter how high your endurance is.

Empored Interdiction doesn't give a bonus to the weakening part by the way - only the dazing one. It's a bug that never gets fixed. Besides that, Painful Interdiction is nice. It's important (if you want the maximum effect of debuffs) that you buff your ACC before trying to apply debuffs. Because of that, my usual buffing/debuffing procedure is (if those chars/abilites are in the party, only a few examples): Phase 1: Buffing ACC - Priest casts Inspiring Radiance (+10 ACC stacks with everything) - Fighter casts Disciplined Barrage - Wiz casts Eldritch Aim - Cipher casts Tactical Meld (+20 ACC which stacks with everything) - Paladin with Coordinated Attacks & a marking weapon attacks an enemy whom a debuffer wants to hit later (+20 ACC which stack with everything). - Paladin with Inspiring Liberation raises a debuffer's ACC by 10 (stacks with everything) - Paladin with Sworn Enemy and Munacra Arret cast Swoen Enemy on the target he wants to charm - Priest casts Devotions - and so on... Phase 2: Debuffing and/or CC - Priest still casts Devotions - Priest casts Painful Interdiction - Wizard casts Chillfog or whatever debuff that fits - Druid casts Returning Storm or whatever debuffing spell - any char with high ACC casts Aspirant's Mark - Cipher casts Phantom Foes (if he has focus, else he shoots with hightened ACC) - and so on Buffing other stats than ACC (like defenses or DR) can be done after that. Only then do I start with damaging attacks. This way every fight - even dragons and bounties - become easy. If you have good timing you don't need to wait with casting the debuffs until the ACC buffs finish: the ACC bonus counts if it hits you before you hit the enemy. That means that even if the Inspired Radiance hits you after your debuff spoell went off, but before it reaches the nemey, it counts for the hit roll. So you don't lose as much time as you think. Debuffing with high ACC is great because it leads to a lot of crits which means *1.5 duration... which can spare you spells and a lot of hassle. Some special tricks how you can raise a debuffers ACC to the sky so that he can then crit with his debuff, in this case the enemy is the Alpine Dragon: A paladin with Coordinated Attacks (+10 ACC), a marking weapon (+10 ACC) casts Inspiring Liberation (+10 ACC) on a cipher and then attacks the dragon while a priest casts Inspiring Radiance (+10 ACC). The cipher casts Tactical Meld on the paladin (+20 ACC). The cipher now can hit the dragon with 60 bonus ACC, let's say with a cheap Whisper of Treason. Usually that means a crit. The Alpine Dragon gets charmed for over 20 secs (if your INT is good). By the way: charm is a hefty debuff. He could also have used Eyestrike or whatever. Same game with a fighter with Disciplined Barrage and Charge, followed by Knockdown. It's very easy this way to cause prone on dragons - even if they have resistances. 3 Knockdowns are usually enough to keep the dragon down till it's dead (if you INT is good). A weapon with overbearing or stunning helps a lot of course - and also procs on dragons with such high ACC values - even upscaled dragons.

Yeah, that makes dual wielding kind of mandatory with charge. That additional Full Attack without recovery and all is the real advantage of the ability which makes it really strong. It may be that this is a bug, but I would vote for leaving it in even if it is - because Charge comes so late and the fighter has few really strong dps abilites besides Charge.

Yeah, with a corrosive lash and Spirit of Decay it's one of the best one handed weapons in the game. The dual effect of Spirit of Decay (raising weapon damage itself and also the lash damege which is based on the weapon damage before DR) makes it way better than it first looks on paper.

Depends what cloak. If it has +5 to all defenses like Cloak of Comfort (stronghold adventure) it stacks with the ring of deflection. If it's a cloak of minor deflection with +5 to deflection it doesn't stack. Annihilation gives you +50% weapon base damage (= the damage a generic sabre has without any modifier) when you do a critical hit. A crit with annihilation adds 100% of base weapon damage instead of 50% - like deathblows would. A weapon with 10 base damage would get +10 damage on a crit in that case instead of 5. I wouldn't say that it's massive, but it surely is a good enchantment - especially on sabres with their high base damage (will get nerfed in 3.04 into a mere +20% dmg bonus) and also for characters who can expect to crit a lot. A melee wizard with Eldritch Aim + Merciless Gaze + Martial Power can be such a character. Those sabres are nice unique weapons and the fact that you can get Resolution that early is another plus, I agree. They would work very well on a melee wizard. But I think TIdefall is equally good because of wounding. Wounding is the best dps enchantment in the game because of the way it gets calculated. It not only profits from MIG but also does raw damage. And it gets calculated based on the whole damage you do when you hit - not only weapon base dmage. It's basically like a raw DoT lash. You get way more damage per hit and buy that with slower attacks compared to dual wielding. By the way the best one handed dps weapon is still Drawn in Spring because of Wounding - if you have enough MIG. So - if you want, you can stick to Tidefall. Besides its great enchantments it has two damage types, which is great, too. It's one of the best weapons in he game. Bittercut is better than Resolution and also Purgatory in my opinion. It gets +20% damage with Spirit of Decay (which is kind of nice and somewhat balances out the Annihilation of Resolution & Purgatory, although you need to pick a talent for that) - but the real advantage is: it's the only sabre which has two damage types (corrode and slash). Many enemies in the game are resistent to slash, so you lose a lot of dps when attacking them with a "normal" sabre that only does slash damage. The only enemy you can't hurt with Bittercut are earth blights. For any other enemy you'll never need to change the weapon again when you use Bittercut. Another plus: it has some nice spell bindings. Maggots (get fixed in 3.04 - doesn't do anything atm) and Vile Thorns. Vile Thorns is 3/rest - and in this case it is an instant cast without recovery - not like the original druid spell. Don't ask me why - I think it's a bug because the description says something else - but it's like that. Wth two Bittercuts you can spam 6 * Vile Thorns in a few seconds if you want to, killing most foes in an arc in front of you. It can make tough encounters really easy. A drawback is the -10 defense to poison attacks! If you duplicate Bittercut you will have -20, which is hefty. So watch out if you meet vessels with poisonous spells and such things! IN this case - you could switch to Resolution & Purgatory. A thing about spell bindings: they work even when you use Martial Power. Normal spalls are deactivated, but spell bindings/chances and spell holdings (and also scrolls) are not!

That's likely - he said he just finished Act II. The first time he posted he was lvl 8.

You can also leave CON as it is and put more efford into "virtual endurance" - meaning self healing with healing bonuses. Veteran's Recovery + Shod-in-Faith + >80% healing bonus from MIG, items and survival makes up for a LOT of missing CON. Of course you can combine both high CON and great self heals and have an even bigger wound pool.

Trust me: Citzal's Spirit Lance needs no enchantment. If you take Spirit of Decay I would stronlgy recommed using Bittercut + corrosive lash instead of Tidefall. Bittercut is a sabre in WM I (early find) and causes corrode damage. This corrosive weapon damage also gets boosted by Spirit of Decay, not only the corrosive lash. You can even dual wield it once you get the Helwax Mold via Strongold adventure - which lets you clone any item except soulbounds. With Alacrity and Two Weapon Style a wizard can reach 0 recovery in plate armor pretty easily. Or you just take a shield and become even more sturdy. Another really nice weapon for a melee wizard is Spelltogue (WM I, a bit later than Bittercut). Its hits steal 15% attack speed as well as durations from enemies' buffs and put them onto your own buffs - prolonging them.

Yes, the buffing needs time. It can be annoying in trash mob fights - if you normally don't use a lot of buffs like with priests of so, it can be a bit tedious. Good thing is that most of the wizard's buffs are fast casts or even instant casts like Arcane Veil. Even faster if you cast Alacrity first. The spells are a necessity until you outlevel enemies. After you get some spell mastery uses it all gets easier of course. Less resting and so on.

I don't know if it's intended that charge is followed by a weapon attack when you arrive at the target - but it sure is fun and takes out most normal foes. It may even be that the hit that follows is a full attack - didn't test that. That would call for dual wielding. With a pike for example you only get one additional hit. I use Disciplined Barrage + Aspirant's Mark before I charge with Tall Grass atm - so usually an enemy who's prone or dead is the result. The only tiny downside of Charge is that weapons on-crit effects like prone or stun don't work - except on the final target.

A good level to start WM is from 6 (tough!) to 9 (rel. easy). After the initial fight in the town things get easier, so don't be worried. As AeonsLegend said, some cross class talents are good and some are so-so. Keep your hands off of Rhymer's Summon for example, it's so bad - but Aspirant's Mark and Veteran's Recovery are really good.