Boeroer

I never felt a lack of it. My second melee hero will get the buff anyway, only my range companions are not affected. I rather stat him more tanky. Fair enough. I like it higher. But I also made a build with 3 INT - also works.

Hehe - I really don't get Finishing Blow. I mean I get it that the mechanics kind of represent the name of the ability. But it's still kind of stupid though.

I'm sorry if you feel offended. That was not my intention. I just wanted to point out that telling newcomers something like "XY - which you chose - is bad. You will gimp yourself" is not the best way to get them started. I didn't like the way that came out too much and that's all. I don't want to crucifiy you for that and I did not want to attack you personally. If it came out like that, I say sorry. I'm german - and we have a reputation of beeing too direct. So I blame it on my background and culture. Barbs still rock though. And of course they are better at hitting mobs than at taking out single targets. But they do more damage per hit nonetheless - especially if you have a group with good CC capabilites. They are not so great against tough foes with high defenses - like dragons and the like. A rogue is clearly the better choice here. But in general a barb can be great mixture of dps and tankyness ans is not weak per se. He's just very squishy and can't hit stuff at the beginning without help - but this problem disappears after some levels. One of my first chars was a high DR, low RES barb with Tidefall and Shod-in-Faith. He was awesome. To be honest all classes were awesome with the right builds and the right party. I think a lot of people complain about barbs because their first impressions can be really bad. Whereas rogues rock from the beginning because their high base ACC and high damage are big advantages in the early game and can lead to the impression that this class is way stronger than a barb - which it is until a certain level. There are also a lot of people who say monks are bad. It's just because they didn't get how the class works - meybe because it's a bit more complicated than a fighter or a wizard - and dump it. Edit: Oh yeah - 3.03 brings us Heart of Fury 1/encounter. One of the most powerful abilities in the game for dual wielding mob strikers. I love it!

Barbarians being squishy is only true during the first levels - afterwards they become very sturdy characters if you give them a lot of CON. Their health and endurance pool will be enormous. The reasons I explained above. It's also not true that a barb does mediocre damage. He does more damage per hit than any other melee character as long as there are enough enemies. Another cool thing is that any weapon procs work with carnage - as well as interrupts. Barbs can be a lot of fun. Most people dump them in the early game because they are squishy at first and they never play them again. Then they judge the entire class on that short and incomplete experience. Barbs can be very effective - especially on PoTD where there are more enemies than on lower difficulties. Also - taking one's own opinion and limited experience and then state those as proven facts is not optimal for advising newcomers. I always try to tell both sides of the story (if I feel there's more than one). If I'm not 100% sure or haven't much experience I will put a "in my opinion", "for me" or "maybe" into the sentence. But I make a lot of mistakes. So keep sharp and be sceptical. And most importantly: try things out for yourself - this can be fun, too.

Ah, and I forgot: Aspirant's Mark fits pretty well into the Nature Godlike theme. It's a great ability for the early to mid game, especially for barbs (they don't have to nevessarily cast it themselves - because low ACC and all - but here it fits. And with 15 PER and ACC bonus from camping you should hit often enough). It debuffs enemies deflection by -8 in a big AoE (bigger than carnage's). It's like +8 ACC for the barb - which can make a huge difference. Basically it's like a spell mastery that you can have at lvl 1. I love it!

One additional advice: daggers are good for your ACC at the early game. They give your primary and caranage hits +5 ACC, which is great at the early game. And they are pretty fast. That's why you feel they work best at the moment. At lower levels the enemies don't have very high DR - so the dagger can punch through, even with the lower damage from carnage. But later on you will meet foes which are armored, and the daggers may fail you. It's not a problem of the barb. That's the problem with all fast weapons as long as you don't have any means of DR bypass like Vulnerable Attack (which slows you down) or rending (like stilettos, estocs or maces have). Later on dual sabres are one of the best options for a dual wielding barb. THeir base dmage is nearly as high as that of two handed weapons and there are great sabres in the game. One of them can be obtained very early. Their Weapon Focus group also contains stilettos - one draining stiletto can be found in the same dungeon as the sabre Resolution - they make a good team until you get better gear. Another: don't send your barb into the fray first with 3 RES. When he gets surrounded and the enemies have high interrupt values (like Ogres) he will not be able to hit because he will be constantly interrupted. Drink a potion of Spirit Shield then or cast Holy Meditation on him with a priest. That should help when this happens. It's ok though in most cases when you attack second to your main tank or whoever dares to take all the initial heat. Later on you can find items which do the same as the potion and the spell, then it's all good with 3 RES. By the way you can get a plate armor in Gilded Vale when you kill the moon godlike backer npc who stands right of the temple of Eothas. You will not lose reputation and the other town folks will not turn aggressive.

Iron Wheel = one of my favorites. BUT: thicker armor is especially good at the early game. And you can feel the difference immediately. That is because you put a flat damage reduction as protection on top of a small endurance/health pool. So let's say you have 12 DR from plate and 50 endurance. Your DR will be nearly 25% of your endurance. If you get hit and only 2 MIN damage make it through (instead of 12) you can take 25 hits before you go down. Without armor it's only 5 hits (almost only 4). So that is a huge effect. It's like having 300 endurance instead of 50 (250 damage catched by DR and 50 endurance). That's six times your endurance as a "virtual" pool. Later on your endurance will climb to very high levels while your DR can't keep up with that. When you add additional "virtual" endurance like regenration and other healing, DR starts to look even more unimportant at higher levels. Even 30 DR are only 7,5% of 400 endurance (which a monk can reach easily with high CON). And MIN damage from enemies is also higher. It's still useful for characters with low endurance pools, but monks can easily wear lighter armor without loosing too much sturdiness. THat's also a reason why barbs with even max CON are so squishy at the beginning (and many players dump them then) but grow into great meat shields later on. Iron Wheel on the other hand is quite useful because it doesn''t slow you down and will give you lots of wounds when you need them (when you have none) but will protect you once you collect more and more wounds. It has a good synergy with Turning Wheel, Blood Testment Gloves and Rooting Pain: when you have 10 wounds you don't want to take any more damage. Since you can't prevent that completely the automatic adaption of Iron Wheel's DR is a good thing.

I my experience a more sturdy party is more easy to play compared to a tank + glasscannon party - if you don't want to use chokepoints throughout the whole game. Less defeats and reloads, less resting. Casters for example don't lose much damage potential if you build them tanky, whereas a fighter supertank does like zero damage. So I like to mix sturdy melee guys which can either do good damage (dragon thrashed chanter, paladin with quickswitch and guns and sword&board, DPS fighter, tanky barb, rogue with shield, monk) or which can give support (marking paladin, summoning chanter) with sturdy casters (which can also be frontliners). One or two glass cannons can be fun though and seldomly get swarmed. Like a 3 CON 3 RES bow ranger or something.

Why is INT not needed for a paladin besides Sacred Immolation? It affects the AoE of your auras and the amount of healing you do with Lay on Hands and all other heals except Healing Chain. It affects all Exhortations. It even affects the range of the heraldic aura you have with the Outworn Buckler. It affects Veteran's Recovery as well. So I would say it's a pretty important stat for a paladin unless you use a very special build (there are some).

No difference to my childhood then. We recorded music from the radio stations on tape. We had 3 TV channels - to get the third one, my dad had to climb up the roof an turn the antenna until we yelled from down below - later on he installed a motor and put a cable from the roof down to the living room. My dad was an ordinary mason and steel fixer but could afford to build a house and buy a brand new car (usually a BMW 3 series) every second year. We had no children's seats - just a thick pillow for me and a gym bag for the baby. We had no seat belts in the rear either. The first computer I programmed ran Unix and didn't even have floppy disks, but a tape drive. It's screen had two colors: black and green. Our first PC was worth a furtune. It had MS-DOS, fancy floppy disks which broke once you looked at them sharply and the monitor (which was like 1 meter long but only had 14") had CGA graphics - meaning 4 colours: black, white, cyan and magenta. The only games on it were a Submarine Simulator and something with a cat that had to jump from window to window. Sweet memories - but some things really sucked now that I think of it.

Stats are ok. Survival got buffed a lot... and fatigue doesn't exist any more - at least you don't get tired from travelling any more. Athleletics now only gives you an ability that can heal you a bit - but it doesn't scale with level and you really don't need it as a paladin if you have Lay on Hands. Survival gives you camping bonuses that stack with bonuses from sleeping in an inn. You can have higher DR, higher ACC against certain enemies, more movement speed, a bonus on the healing you receive, bonus damage against flanked targets and longer duration for consumables. That makes it a very flexible tool and it's very powerful, too. You can get +10 ACC with only 10 points of survival (so, very early if you pick the right background). As I said: if you combine high MIG like 18 (+24% healing) with an item (+25%) and camping bonuses (up to +60%) you will heal yourself with double power - even more if you also buff INT (prolongs Veteran's Recovery and also Lay on Hands). Lore is for scrolls, yes. The prayer scrolls are superuseful - and also some other non-offensive stuff like Moonwell, Valor, Defense and so on. Those which don't have to hit enemies but support your fellow party members are great for a paladin who has not too high ACC but high INT (and MIG). If you take the special talent of the Kind Wayfarers that heals on kill (and mybealso Inspiring Triumph), they can also be a good way to generate kills. A scroll of Maelstrom or a Scroll of Fireball (with Scion of Flame, high MIG and INT) can kill some foes and trigger lots of healing and deflection buffs. Later on your Sacred Immolation can do that for you, too.

I wouldn't advise to try to be under 50% endurance all the time because the Nature Godlike's racial isn't too powerful. It doesn't justify to be unter 50% endurance all the time (unless you want to build around Vengeful Defeat, One Stands Alone and Blooded, paired with dual sabres and a second chance item or a reviving party member - which can be pretty powerful). The Wellspring of Life stacks with everything though - so you can add it's stat bonus to the ones you get from (Greater) Frenzy, which can be nice. But as I said it doesn't normally justify being at 50% all the time. But it can make a bit of a difference when things go bad. With max CON, MIG and INT you can take Veteran's Recovery and Shod-in-Faith boots and also a Belt of Bountiful Healing or Fulvano's Amulet for +25% healing. Add Savage Defiance and put on a fat armor as Loren Tyr said and you will be a very sturdy frontliner - even a good tank if you're not alone. You will still do good damage. Even when you run out of health you can sip a Potion of Infise with Vital Essence - it works with MIG and Healing Bonus and will give you back a lot of health. You can even drink it at the beginning of a fight and it will prevent health loss. Potions of Regeneration also work nicely with those stats. Same with a Scroll of Moonwell. So make sure you have enough lore for that (or a druid in the party). I wouldn't recommend using the survival bonus for more healing buffs, because your ACC is quite low and it might be better to boost your ACC against certain enemies in order to hit better with carnage. If you combine this with dual wielded draining weapons you will be near unkillable as long as you don't get disabled (stunned, paralyzed, petrified and so on). Luckily, your very high fortitude will prevent that most of the time. Draining works with carnage, so if you hit 5 foes you will get healed a lot. It's a great way to create a sticky tank which enemies won't rush past. Like Loren said. Nature Godlikes look great. Especially with Argwe's Adra or any other greenish armor. Even with Blaidh Golan hide armor (one of my favorite barb armors) they look awesome. But their racial could be better. It woul be great if Wellspring of Life would be triggered for 10 seconds or so everytime you receive a crit. Or if you could activate it like Frenzy 1/encounter.

A barbarian has not too good starting accuracy - and carnage has even reduced accuracy values. So maybe you should take a few points from CON, INT and MIG and put them into PER. Maybe something like 17,17,17 and 15 PER. This makes a difference in the early game when it comes to hit rolls and it also lets you do more interrupts, which can be especially powerful because of the AoE of carnage. It's also better with weapons which do things on crits - although one handed weapons with such properties come a bit late. Higher PER is also good for your reflex defense. At the moment your fortitude is very high (which is good), your will is good (not so important as fortitude) but your reflex is very bad. No bonus from PER but a high malus from low DEX. So things like fireballs and dragon breaths and most other AoE stuff will damage you badly. BUT - high CON is nice for barbs because they have the highest base values of endurance and health and the +5% from each point of CON will result in absurdly high numbers, which can be a live saver and also prevents a lot of resting. Half of your endurance can be more than a fighter's full endurance. So if you are OK with the fact that it will be harder to hit things at the beginning of the game you can leave it like that (I'm talking about PotD - on all other difficulties it will be all good). When you find items that give you a bonus to concentration and also Shod-in-Faith boots you might want to retrain and dump RES to 3 and put it all into PER. That way you will have it all.

The most important skill is survival. Then comes lore, then athletics. Stealth is useless for a paladin. And I guess he will not be your mechanic. If you want to be very sturdy even with a two hander then pick Veteran's Recovery and Lay on Hands, boost survival up to 14 in order to take +60% healing received bonus from camping and put on an amulet or belt with +25% healing received bonus. You will regenerate/heal like a boss. Flames of Devotion is a full attack. That means that dual wielders will strike twice with it. That's why some people use two weapons. A two handed one is also OK. Best option for me is always two arquebuses for Flames of Devotion plus a weapon & Outworn Buckler. But that's just me. There are gloves in the game which summon the burning great sword Firebrand which works really well with Flames of Devotion and Scion of Flame. There's also a Great Sword that destroys vessels (=undead) - it's also a good fit for a paladin.

Another early speed weapon is the Sword of Daenysis which you can buy in the Salty Mast. Despite it's name it's a rapier - and also has rending, which is great for fast, light weapons. And there's also Spelltongue. It not only steals attack speed, but also duration for your buffs like Constant Recovery, Disciplined Barrage, Fighting Spirit and so on. Plus: it takes the buffs off of enemies.

That pushes "Overkill" onto a whole new level.

That's why it's a rule of thumb. I have thick thumbs. The first five levels of the Endless Paths are a bit weird because you would normally jump into the pit and then ascend back. The difficulty of those levels is a bit reversed. And also it's very unlikely that you reach the ogres when you're lvl 3. After Maerwald and stuff you will be of higher level most of the time.

Where to go first - it depends. On the items you want to use early, on the level you have, if you like a challenge or if you like to steamroll everything. I personally do the first levels of the Endless Paths (until I get Persistence) and quests in Defiance Bay until I reach level 6 to 9 (depends on the party, 9 tends to be too easy most of the time), then I start the White March - because you get so many new quests which will level you up even more quickly and there's also some nice gear waiting for me that I use a lot (Bittercut sabre, Stormcaller bow, Ring of Changing Heart, Cape of the Master Mystic, Wayfarer's Hide and so on). And then I just go here and there as I like. Before doing WMII I normally start Act IV in order to buy some other neat items in the shop tent in Twin Elms and to fetch Blood Testment gloves or Purgatory. I would never skip the Endless Paths until the late game because then it's way too easy. A rule of thumb is that if your level matches the level of the Endless Paths you're on then you're good. I think The Paths are not meant to be explored in one single rush.

One of the most tedious parts can be the Endless Paths of Od Nua. There are not too many camping supplies and there's also not a master staircase on every level. So returning to town or Brighthollow can be time consuming and boring - especially because of those very looong loading screens. The whole "no resting" thing is mostly about convenience. It's not expensive to get camping supplies or to rest in a town. It's even for free at Brighthollow. It only costs you a lot of time. As Kaylon said all that travelling can be a pain in the back. But it's ok that it's tedious. If it were too easy to get supplies or if we had fast travel options everywhere then all the per rest abilities would be too powerful and the healing talents would be totally useless (atm they are not totally useless with the right build). Edit: and what Raven said.

Yeah - I wasn't sure if the game treats blunderbuss shots as a single hit when it comes to the "highest damage dealt" or "highest crit" (or what it's called) statistics.

Hm, wouldn't a blunderbuss be able to do higher damage than an arquebus? At least in theory? Of course it's more unlikely that you crit with all six projectiles and you need to shoot a foe that has not too high DR - but in theory the damage should be higher, shouldn't it? Or is this not counted as one single crit but six different ones?

Cool - thnaks for testing. Maybe that got fixed or my game had a hickup when I tested this. It was around 2.03. Are special abilities like Blinding Strike now also working with Backstab? Because back then they didn't trigger Backstabs but only did "normal" damage - even if I was stealthed or buggy-cape-invisible.

I tried this some time ago when the neverending invisibility bug of the Cape of the Master Mystic was not fixed yet. So I was able to use Finishing Blow while being invisible. But as I said: it didn't work. I got some really weird numbers then. Somebody should try (with an arquebus) if this is still the case.

Ah - now I get it. That's obviously right. Never thought about it that way.

Jap, I also used it in the Chillfog chanter build when the +100% healing received chant is on. Heals over 130% health then. It's great when you play with high MIG and good healing bonuses from equipment and camping.