Boeroer

The description of Time Parasite is a bit misleading. With high INT I constantly get a duration around 90 seconds which is enough for most fights on PoTD if you have a party.

Hahaha... somewhat true.

Then add Time Parasite later on and you can add things like Vulnerable Attack or Cautious Attack plus fat armor without any recovery. Time Parasite lasts the whole fight most of the time (if you're not solo). Before that you could use potions (Power, Alacrity) or Outlander's Frenzy to further boost your recovery. With TIme Parasite and the stuff Kaylon said it might even be that you don't need to wear Gauntlets of Swift Action (which you'd have to find first, they are random loot) but can take other gloves like Ryona's Vembraces (+3 DR bypass) or Gauntlets of Puissant Melee (+10% melee damage) or bracers of Deflection or whatever suits you.

Some of the Soulbounds can be made to proc more often. There are some abilities that work with the proc chance and you will see the effects a lot more often: - high atttack speed up to 0 recovery: especially good when the spell that gets triggered is AoE based - for example with the Unlabored Blade or Stormcaller you shouldn't care so much about damage per hit but hits per second in order to proc the effect as ofter as possible. You can combine this with all points below. - Carnage: every enemy in range lifts the chance up. When you hit one enemiy, you'll have 10%, if you can reach two woth one strike, you'll already have 19%, if you hit three, it's 27% per strike and so on. St. Ydwen's Redeemer on a barb with Blood Thirst is the bane of all vessels. He will destroy one vessel in a group all the time and reset his recovery to 0 after each kill. Turns hard encounters against all kind of vessels into a child's birthday party (which can be pretty tough, too, I tell you... ). - Torment's Reach: same as carnage, but a Full Attack and can be a much bigger AoE with high INT - Twinned Arrows: is basically like a twice as fast hit rate: nearly doubles the proc chance but takes away a few percent because of the lower ACC. - Driving Flight (plus Twinned Arrows): Targets behind the initial ones also proc the effect. With one shot you can hit two enemies, nearly doubling the chance. With Twinned Arrows AND Driving Flight you will roll 4 hits instead of one - lifting the proc chance up from 10% to 34%. This is why Stormcaller is so much better on a ranger than on a cipher or a chanter. - Blast: like carnage. One special item is The Golden Gaze sceptre. It has two projectiles and therefore works like Twinned Arrows plus blast: You will have two hits per shot which trigger blast each. So you will have a higher proc chance as with with blast alone. Let's assume you can reach 5 enemies with the blast: that's 10 hits because of the two projectiles instead of 5. This means your proc chance per shot goes up from ~10% to ~40% per shot. That's why it only has a 5% proc chance per projectile - it would trigger all the time if it weren't so. So I think that's why the chances are not too high.

Tanking with one (or two) main tanks is still tricky in open spaces against fast enemies. It's easier to build sturdy characters who still do good damage but don't fold over when the get looked at. In general, the best party composition is one where the buffs and debuffs match each other. So for example a tanky monk with Enervating Blows and Force of Anguish and a tanky barb with Threatening Presence and a stunning weapon would cause Weakened and Sickened on the enemies around them which helps enormously with the knockdown effects and also allows caster to land their spells which target fortitude or will way better. Please note that the Chillfod Chanter is just a quite ordinary chanter until you get certain feats like items with healing received bonus, survival regenration bonus and later on the +100% healing chant. If you have reached that and also have a priest or someone with Shod-in-Faith boots or a paladin or whoever heals, then your party will be near invincible when it comes to endurance loss. Until that chant you can of couse use this chanter like a Dragon Thrashed Chanter (who is also superpowerful) and then retrain later. The stats match both types. Also Kana Rua (official comp.) can play that role well if you'd like to use companions (which i recommend for at least the first playthrough) The Juggeraut is always fun and easy to play and works well with every party. You just need to know how monks work. He can be played by Zahua (White March I - takes until lvl 6-8 to get there). Torment's Reach has no friendly fire. But monks require some micromanagement because of the wound management and the use of his great abilities. Scheemer's Needler can be played like an ordinary priest plus a tiny rogue. It's quite nice in the early to mid game. Later on you will pretty much cast all the time because the spells are so powerful. If you are looking for low micro classes then sturdy melee chanters, barbs and fighters are best in my opinion. Barbs can be played with very low micro after some levels because they are good with their auto-attacks and still do AoE damage all the time. Chanters can just stand around an damage stuff with a chant while fighter's AI script is smart enough to be left alone for some time. Ranged characters in general require less micro. A blaster wizard, a ranger or a ranged rogue can do good damage with auto attacks. Generally speaking casters of all sorts are the most easy to play. You can build them sturdy enough and they still can dish out tons of AoE dps or CC spells. They just need some levels to accumulate enough spells so that you don't have to rest all the time. Ciphers can be very satisfying after some time because they can do a lot of weapon damage and add very powerful but cheap mind control spells which can turn impossible encounters to easy ones.

At least you will be able to use some potions and scrolls - if you're allowed to use them. Ok, then you would probably use a prayer anyways and put on the most effectivegear. But true, those preservation items are really strong, especially because one is a shield and stacks to +100 to all defenses. Takes prone's and stun's debuffs away and makes you near invulnerable - but you are still disabled. And it doesn't help against blind or confuse or something like that. So without scrolls and potions we might see chars which are equipeed with all kinds of gear that protects you against certain disables. Crossed Patch, Solace shield, Hermit's Hat and such. @Kingsman: we're all missing things from time to time and the descriptions in the game are rather vague, it's true. But maybe you understand now why this can be really powerful with a barb and why this lifts him up quite a bit. Those items are also really good on a rogue by the way. Especially if he's after casters. They will give him 50% of Deathblows just by landing crits and the target can't fight back. You should try it out. I once had a rogue with The Hours of St. Rumbalt and it was awesome. Way easier to play than a dual sabre rogue in terms of babysitting and still great damage because of Annihilation on the blade. And I also think we turned this discussion which started somewhat fiery into a good one. Let's just ignore the scatological comment...

But while they are down you can easily cast/use buffs and all that and when they get up you'll have an advantage.

Yeah - I know it's a bit risky. I want to get a +concentration item asap but I didn't want to retrain then - I just see how it goes like this. Against certain foes it's really bad. For example the gouls at Anslög's Compass hit really fast. If I have to fight more than 3 at a time I nearly get perma-interrupted. Against Xaurips and stuff it's no problem. With 18 PER I also interrupt a lot, so it's kind of a balance against those slow hitters.

Once you can reach 0 recovery without Two Weapon Style and the dual-wield bonus of 50% that's true. But also keep on mind that every Estoc only has pierce damage and with dual sabres you can either have two damage types with an additional +20% damage without drawbacks (Bittercut) or dual Annihilation which will boost you damage, too. And you can spare those Potions of Alacrity which you are addicted to. Ciphers have no Full Attack abilities, so dual wielding doesn't do as much for them as for monks, barbs, fighters and rogues. But I still think dual sabres can outdps estocs if you don't drink potions all the time. You can also wear thicker armor that way. With Time Parasite and Durgan Steel you can wear Plate and use Vulnerable Attack and still have 0 recovery. Don't think it's much of a difference anyway. As I said I also like estocs for ciphers. Especially earlier in the game where you don't have a lot of DMG mods and the 5 DR bypass has a really big impact. I also think there is no "best approach". A cipher with a reach weapon can also be nice. Llawran's Stick with a glass cannon build is fun and gets a lot of focus. You can wear Durance's Staff for backup when you meet crush immune foes or ones with low burn DR.

The first 2 sabre guy looks good. You don't need Vulnerable Attack with sabres which get +95% damage boost from talents alone. Better be faster. You could also use Resolution + Purgatory because of the Annihilation - gives you more focus on crits and doesn't cost you a talent point like Spirit of Decay for Bittercut. But Bittercut has two damage types and Spirit of Decay also works with a corrosive lash, that's a plus (also for focus). Estocs work great until mid level - but dual wielding sabres will outperform them in the end - even the Blade of the Endless Paths. But if you like them you can use them - absolutely viable and cool looking. If you have high MIG and INT I would recommend Veteran's Recovery instead of Greater Focus. Makes you much more sturdy. If you go down you can't hit stuff. But greater Focus cann allow you better alpha power strikes - so you decide.

Kingsman - now I know why you think barbs are weak. There are several types of weapon enchantments which do things on hit and/or crit: - Overbearing: every time you do a crit, you roll a prone atteck with the same ACC against the target's fortitude. If you graze or hit or crit, the target will be prone. So those weapons do not exactly cause prone on crit 100% of the time, because you have to hit with the fortitude roll as well, but most of the time it works. A worst case scenario is an enemy with high deflection and also high fortitude. Those have two good chances to prevent a disable. Luckily most mobs don't have that. Examples: Tall Grass, Hours of St. Rumbalt, The Temparacl, We Toki... - Stunning: same as above, but stuns instead of prone. Examples: Godansthunyr, Mabec's Morning Star, Cladhaliath (if enchanted properly), Rod of Pale Shades... - Confusing: same as above, but confuses. Only example: Sabra Marie - Spell Striking: Will trigger a spell or effect when you score a crit . The spell/effect also has to pass a hit roll with the same ACC. Most of these are 1/encounter, Badgradr's Barricade has unlimited procs per encounter. Azureith's Stiletto causes Jolting Touch, Bleak Fang Touch of Rot... - Spell Chance: will trigger a spell or effect with a percentage based chance every time you hit or crit. No per encounter limitations. Example: Grey Sleeper, Forgotten Tear of the Beloved, Unlabored Blade, Wodewys, St. Ydwen's Redeemer... (this is what you, Kingsman, were speaking of I guess...?) - Then there are enchantments like persecuting, disorienting, interfering, dazing and so on. Those work every time you hit or crit - no % chance or anything. Bujt the effects are weaker. Disorienting does -5 to all defenses (doesn't stack), Interfering lowers ACC a bit, dazing dazes of course. Examples: Captain Viccolo's Anger causes Fatigue on hit/crit which is awesome - but comes very llate and is quite special. St. Wyglet's Cudgel causes Persecuting, Vile Loner's lance causes Disorienting. Spelltongue also has a very special thing like this: it steals duration for your buffs and makes you faster per hit/crit. As a barb you can prolong your own buffs forever with carnage while you take away buffs from all enemies you hit with carnage. All those work with Carnage (melee only), Blast (implements only), Driving Flight (ranged only) and Torment's Reach (melee only). If you have a barb with high ACC and Accurate Carnage, you might want to take stunning or overbearing weapons. Stunning is better, but you get that later than overbearing weapons. Once a target gets disabled, the second hit is even more likely to disable it again and again and so on. After some strikes usually all enemies in carnage range are disabled (if their level/defenses are not too high for you). Barb's attack speed helps a lot to stunlock because he can land multiple hits while the effects lasts, prolonging the durations even further. Normally, in my experience, the group of enemies won't get up again once they are down. For example it's very easy to prone-lock most bounties when you debuff and buff good enough. Nalrend's Ogres are quite easy with a barb with high ACC because they have low deflection. They don't get up once they fall - if you hit fast enough and your INT is good. Spell Striking is also nice, but th fact that it only triggers 1/encounter makes it weaker in comparison to the above and I reserve them for other chars. Spell Chance is great for barbs that have not too high ACC because it also works on hits and not only on crits. When you swing at 6 enemies with carnage the chance to proc the Spell Chance is of course much higher than with any other character (besides Blast/Torment's Reach). So, things like Unlabored Blade trigger way more often with a barb than with a rogue or fighter or so. That's basically it. I guess most forum users can confirm this. So a main reason why barbs can be great are overbearing or stunning weapons - best is to combine them with a weapon and ability that lowers defenses. FOr example: Wodewys (Spell Chance: Nature's Mark) lowers deflection by 10 - then you can crit even better with We Toki, which will cause prone every time you crit and su a successful fortitude check. Maybe I will do a video to show the effect of those different weapons with a barb. It's quite awesome and the main reason barbs can be superfun. With Heart of Fury against 6 enemies and such weapons most of the time 5 are dead and the last one is disabled for like 20 secs. Because HoF against 6 enemies means 36 attacks against each enemy, once they get disabled the net attack hits even harder. Monks can also do it, too (with more damage usually because of the power and enhanced chances of Full Attacks), but they need wounds and therefore can't keep up the stunlocking for too long.

No, not really about the fighter, I think he's just too limited to counter all possible builds of rogues or monks, but that's ok. But why that "half brain" statement? It's like you want to be shouted at. But what about the facts?

I have max PER, 17 MIG and 20 CON. 2 DEX and 3 RES. Will see how this works. FIrst thing I did when I came to Gilded Vale was killing the moon godlike backer npc for his plate.

Monk maybe. Rooting Pain can be a pain in the back for a rogue - and I don't think a barb is a match for a monk in 1:1 situations anyways. But rogues have the big advantage of the first strike - be it with Shadowing Beyond or a ranged weapon that causes a massive debuff like Sap or Blinding Strike. I guess if everything is allowed and both are build properly then the rogue will win most 1:1 fights against a barb - and maybe also against the monk. It's all about the alpha strike. Ranged Sap and then stunlock with dual weapons which have on-crit-effects will be very deadly. If you would outrule disables like stun, prone and weapons which do this - or if you use scrolls against those afflictions it might look different. I guess it's also very depended who announces his build first so that the other can answer it with a specially tailored build. You would have to use "blind building" and so on to make it fair. Maybe we should set something up! Sounds fun. :D This discussion inspired me to do a barb solo run on PoTD by the way. I want to do every encounter in the game. I did all the Gilded Vale related quests and all fights except Temple of Eothas and Raedric's Castle. I'm in the Temple now at char lvl 4 (or 5? Can't remember). So far I had no bigger problems. Sporelings and Xaurip Skirmishers were a bit hard though without "mild cheese" (splitting, kiting, lots of consumables). Atm I'm using dual fine sabres with 0 recovery - and 2 DEX . Maybe I will retrain once I get a weapon with on-crit-effect like The Hours of St. Rumbalt. Disabling, Annihilation and Blood Thirst sounds like a good combination to me. Let's see...

I guess because none of us knows exactly which points you made are facts in your opinion. Some of your statements I already adressed or I even agreed to them. Would you mind to repeat the things you think are facts one last time and sum them up - like in a short list or so? Then I will try to answer every one if I can. And I'm not saying that I will try to falsify each one as hard as I can. I will only say what I think about every point and we can discuss that in a constructive way if we disagree.

It's easy to work around that bug: win your fights on the first try.

Solid wizard build. Reminds me of my childhood. I had Castle Grayskull and my friend had Snake Mountain. Those were good times. Ach, but it's still good times if you ask me. Blast with Blights is always nice. Did you use K. Pames because of the looks or because of the +3 RES? Another question: Why didn't you use a blue Coastal Aumaua?

With all respect, but how is that clear? It's just your opinion. I have very different experiences for some of the classes you named above: PVP aside (I think we agree here), how could a melee fighter, rogue (without spell use), ranger or even paladin (below lvl 13) be better vs groups (priest using spells is certainly great against groups, but certainly not when using melee attacks only - even with great buffs)? A fighter doesn't even do significantly more damage to the initial single target than a barb (if the barb is fighting more than one enemy). The fighter has more special attacks though, but how could he possibly be better against groups? He's great at locking down positions, refuse to die, doing a little bit CC and taking down tough enemies - and that's it in my opinion. A paladin is good at doing burst damage - but against mobs that's just not enough. Taking out casters or other squishy but harmful enemies he can do, but against mobs he's just a low dps guy with great support abilities and good defenses. At level 13 he becomes a bane of all melee mobs, but until then I wouldn't call him that. A melee rogue can never be as good at taking out groups because he simply deals less damage in a given time and can not disable whole groups at once. He just can't walk into a group of enemies and attack them all while knockig them prone or just interrupt them. He will get pummeled to death quickly. He would have to run around a lot, retreat if he gets targeted by more than one or two foes and so on. A melee rogue is just a pain in the back when he has to deal with a lot of enemies. The barb can just stand there and do swing after swing with the proper equipment. A melee ranger... I think I don't have to elaborate on this. I think he can do even more single target damage than the common melee rogue with the proper equipment (Drawn in Spring + Predator's Sense and other pet stuff, max flanking dmg bonus and so on). But against groups? I can't see how he can be better than a barb. Even a ranged ranger is only good against groups if he has Stormcaller or uses Powder Burns (which is not as powerful as one might think). While trying out hundrets of builds it was seldomly a barb who had problems soloing the hefty bounties like Nalrend an the like. Actually barbs (just like monks) of higher levels were pretty good at it if not build too squishy. Casters, ciphers and chanters were even better most of the time. The casters because they can just spam every spell they have (that's a ton at higher levels) and then rest, the cipher because he can spam cheap mind control spells all the time and give the enemies bait while hitting them, the chanter because he can combine great defenses with a devastating AoE offense, be it chant or invocation. But fighters, rogues and rangers always had problems with that (without using the usual tricks like kiting, splitting or using a ton of consumables or using a lot of spell binding items). Even a paladin's Sacred Immolation might be not enough to kill a big bunch of upscaled ogres. I don't want to say that I know best (because at least MaxQuest and Kaylon always know better - and I don't mean that in an ironical or sarcastical way), but my experience (which is more than 2.5K hours of gameplay, most of that testing builds with all the classes) isn't totally useless either I guess.

Hehe - yes, too many choices. Back in the days, when disorienting stacked, dual Vile Loner's Lance would have been one of the best choices (not in terms of style). I once showed that you can reduce most bounty groups to 0 deflection with that in an AoE via Frenzy + carnage... besides causing massive interrupts. Now there are a lot of great choices. Spellongue + Unlabored Blade is also nice. Or dual Spelltongue (looks stupid though). One of the best setups may be Unlabored + Dragon's Maw. Great AoE damage But that comes so late that I wouldn't want to make up a special build for that.

There are two speed enchanted weapons in the Knight's Weapon Focus: Rimecutter (axe - can be bought from Azurro) and The Last Blade of the White Forge (sword - Burial Isle - late game) - But I guess you mean fast like daggers and stilettos are fast, not enchantments. Those weapons have low base damage and therefore are not too good with carnage. There's one sword which has rending (3 DR bypass): Cat's Claw (Galawain's Maw, Twin Elms - late game) True - you have to enchant them yourself to superb if you need that. There are also no sabres with on-hit or on-crit effects. However, the high base damage is good for your carnage. As Kingsman pointed out, the reduced damage of carnage can have difficulties to overcome DR - so a higher base damage is better. You should also consider Vulnerable Attack. It slows you down but gives all of your carnage hits a +5 damage bonus - so to speak. Bittercut will look really nice on a Nature Godlike and the two damage types are also nice. Plus: with Srpit of Decay you can boost the sabre's damage by +20% - also good to counter the lower carnage damage. With high MIG (+24% and more), Savage Attack (+20%), One Stands Alone (+20%), Spirit of Decay (+20%) and maybe Blooded (+25%) your malus for carnage (-34%) will be more than neglected. They will do +75% damage - like a rogue with 18 MIG and Sneak Attack (without further dmg mods). So not too bad I think. Takes some levels though. Later on you could even duplicate that sabre so that Spirit of Decay really pays off.

At the beginning of the game this is absolutely true. He can't hit sh*t and will go down quickly if you don't put him in the thickest armor and give him recovery or a priest bodyguard - or give him a reach weapon. But as I said this gets better and better with every level because the impact of starting values like ACC and Deflection decreases (because each level adds more accuracy and deflection than this "little" difference in starting accuracy and deflection), along with the impact of high DR (the DR:endurance ratio drops with every level - especially quickly for barbs and monks) while the impact of high CON increases enormously. With barbs the "curve of awesomeness" starts really low but rises expoentially (or the "curve of crappyness" drops exponentially, as you like ) while the rogues curve starts at a higher level but rises more slowly (but makes some big steps - for example when he gets Deathblows). By the way I made those terms up - there is no official curve of awesomeness - although now that I think of it there should be. For me that's not true but I guess it depends how you play the game and if you're solo or not and so on. And how you define "easy". For me (and maybe only me) this statement would be true if you replace barb with fighter - or a conventional rogue (I mean melee only). Those two will start off way easier than a barb but during the game their performance gets more and more tedious for me because you have to kill every enemy individually. I mean not so tedious that it's bad - just more tedious than a barb, and less fun. It's so satisfying to stun whole groups with a barb - or to trigger the destroy vessel enchantment of the Redeemer with every swing while being surrounded by constructs. But I also think such things change with time. At the beginning I liked rogues, especially with the usual tank+glasscannons setup - and I hated paladins and especially monks. Can't say why. Now I absolutely love monks and like paladins a lot. By the way, dear thread opener Graschwar: a combination of Godasthunyr and Badgradr's Barricade is equally aweseome for barbs and rogues. Stun them and then proc the Thrust of Tattered Veils while having good deflection and reflexes is nice. The barb triggers the Thrust in an AoE quite often and the rogue can apply Deathblows. Things get really messy with >5 foes in reach + Stun + Thrust of Tattered Veils + Heart of Fury or Vengeful Defeat. I first thought my headphones got roasted... Unlabored Blade with that shield and HoF/Vengeful Defeat is also very nice if you have party members who can stun/prone for you. But that shield causes instant eye cancer when you give it to a Nature Godlike, so... Wodewys fits nicely. It's an axe that procs Nature's Mark (-10 deflection and reflex in an AoE). You can pair later with We Toki, an axe that causes prone on crit. First proc Nature's Mark and then prone them more easily while doing +50% crit damage (axes are all annihilating). Looks great on a Nature Godlike. THose you get pretty late, that's the downside. THere's also a superb axe that has draining, Edge of Reason - also great, also late. Another great option for a barb would be Tall Grass, a pike that you can buy relatively early - has prone on crit as well. It's green and it has a vegetarian name - it cries out for a Nature Godlike. But of course it's a two handed weapon and may not be what you're looking for.

It's correct: a good rogue would kill a good barb in PvP anytime. But 1:1 fights are not the strength of a barbarian. But what you can do with a proper barb is for example to solo most bounties without splitting, running and kiting and without summons. I played a lot of melee rogues so far and most of them were great damage dealers - but none of them could do that. And also with fighters I couldn't do it repeatedly. With all the other classes it's no problem. You could say now that I suck at rogues and fighters, but I don't think so - they just have other strengths and weaknesses than a barb or a chanter or a paladin. However, a rogue with Deathblows and spells from items and scrolls can overcome this limitation. He can do great single dps well as AoE damage and is a real powerhouse and also flexible. So I'd say if you want to build the absolute best powerplay char with the best equipment and so on then a rogue with spells might be ahead of the barb. But I didn't want to start a discussion about what's better - rogue or barb. So we don't have to prove anything. All I'm saying is that one shouldn't say barbarians are bad only because he/she doesn't like them. They are simply not bad. I for example don't like fighters and think they are very limited - but I wouldn't tell a newcomer that it's a fact that they are bad and it's a self gimp to use them. I just would point out what his strength and weaknesses are and what you can do to make it work. Especially if he pointed out that he would like to play a certain class. There are lots of people out there who like fighters and think they are great. So why shouldn't the newcomer also like them? Same with a barb. For me the common barbarian provides more fun than a common rogue. And I'm sure there are other players who think like that - those have most likely completed one or more playthroughs with them and know that they are weak at the beginning and get better and better with levels and special items. So maybe barbs are not so crappy after all. Let the newcomer try it out and decide if he likes them or not. Why pushing him away from a barb - also when he pointed out that he likes playing an underdog. He wouldn't want to play a Nature Godlike if he was looking for pure powergaming. But even with that I don't think it's a gimped character. It's totally viable even on PoTD. Edit: a sturdy barb is also good if you don't like micromanagement too much. For example I think that monks can be more powerful if build properly - but they need a ton of micromanagement to be. A barb can be a nice addition to a party where you already have some micro intense chars like monk/casters/rogue/ranger.

Which Weapon Focus did you use? Knight or Peasant? Or none of the above?

Help me out: what's Woed? Wodewys?

A ranged paladin dps can be good if he also uses a marking weapon and coordinated attacks as well as on-kill-effects (search the forum for Forward Observer, Darcozzi Commendatore and Damaging Healbot). He's a great supporter then and can buff a friend's ACC by +20 just by targeting the same enemy. On kill he can heal and raise defenses passively. It can be a really nice thing. But of course the rogue would do a lot more damage. He's not as flexible though. If you only want a lot of damage and don't care for support and now think "Hell, why did I chose a dps ranged paladin" then I'd recomend a blaster wizard instead of a rogue. A rogue is better at the beginning and better against single targets - but the wizard can use on-hit and on-crit effects with blast's AoE and also can deliver powerful spells. After some levels he will be more useful than a ranged rogue in most encounters. But that's just my opinion. Ranged rogues can be fun, too. A shot from an arquebus on Deathblows can be very satisfying.