Boeroer

Yeah. So it's totally cool to give a melee dps guy who is normally not exposed to attacks 0 recovery AND high DEX. It's just so that most melee frontliners can use a bit of CON and RES and therefore need to lower some other stats - and DEX is the least painful for a dual wielder with fancy speed buffs (or so it seems).

Hehehe - finally someone noticed. I do that with nearly every build (at least the newer ones) - using a song that is already there and twisting it a bit. Most of them are a bit more popular though (see "Ice Ice Baby" with the Chillfog build and so on). Also I think that necroing a build thread is totally ok. They are meant to diccuss and develop.

Chanters have one healing spell, but it's bad (at least that's my conclusion ). But they have an aura that works like Constant Recovery of a fighter, and it has the AoE range of their chants (=very big). It even stacks with Veteran's Recovery. They can reach better regeneration this way than fighters while also healing everything around them a bit while chanting. They have buffing chants and invocations. But those are not too good. The paralyzing invocation is one of the best though, especially when Brisk Recitation has lowered the chanting taime a lot so you build up phrases more quickly. White Worms is also superpowerful if you know the tricks how to make it so. But the most effective approach for me is to combine high "normal" defenses (without chants and invocations, just talents and items) with damaging chants. First of all those chants attrack enemies and secondly most mobs will die before they can harm you too bad. Especially the Dragon Thrashed is so powerful that you don't have to tank long. Just long enough to survive the first 40 seconds or so whithout loosing too much health. One thing with chanters: If you give them 3 DEX and never use invocations you're good. But if you want to build up phrases quickly and then do a lot of invocations please note that your recovery after an invocation will be abysmal and you won't chant in that time. That means not healing as well as well as no quick phrase reloading. So high DEX can help you a lot if you want to use Invocations as quickly as possible. If you don't want to build a tanking chanter but a ranged one I highly recommend high DEX in order to cast things like "Killers Froze Stiff" or "White Worms" or "Seven Nights" and whatnot. Edit: edited the text a bit, sorry...

In my opionion cipjhers are still powerful because of the cheap mind controls like Whisper of Treason. In (solo) encounters you can start by charming one enemy, the rest will hit him instead of you - you can regain focus and then cast Puppet Master (which lasts way longer and is also not too expensive) and rinse and repeat. Against vessels or other immune foes you need to do something else, like paralyzing or Antipathetic Field (awesome when you're soloing and have high movement speed, the casting range is huge) or other stuff, but usually those tactics work great. The problem of focus famine when fighting high DR enemies I overcome by using guns with quick switch. Whenever I need focus desperately I switch and fire. Ciphers more than double their power if you have two of them instead of one. Be it Ectopsychic Echo, Going Between, Pain Block, Tactical Meld or Reaping Knives. Especially Reaping Knives get ridicoulous when they cast them on each other: both ciphers will get the focus from the raw damage they cause as well as the focus from the damag the other cipher does. To basically you doulbe the fopcus gain for both ciphers and you will overflow with focus after a few seconds while doing aweseome damage even against high DR foes. When you combine two flanker Hearth Orlan ciphers (played like rogues) with Phantom Foes, max flanking bonus from camping and items, coordinating or vicious weapons and later reaping knives they are a lot of fun.

Barbs seems the way to go specially because we can abuse weapon procs. I guess I would need very high dex/per to abuse them right? You need high PER, not necessarily high DEX. Dual Wielding, Two Weapon Style and Frenzy will lower your recovery a lot so high DEX is not needed. It would be useful when you decide to use Tall Grass because there's no dual wielding and two handed style then. But it's ok then because with a reach weapon you can park him behind the front line and poke from a distance. You don't need that much armor and CON then and can put something into DEX.

It doesn't negate it, it only doesn't do as much for you as if you'd have a slow weapon or even one with reloading animation. At first the your recovery gets calculated and after that the DEX bonus gets applied. So let's assume you have 100 frames of recovery and 20 DEX (30% speed bonus), then your 100 would be reduced by 30% which would mean 70 frames (don't know if it's calculated like that, most certainly not, but let's just pretend it's like this to make my point clear). You'd win 30 frames because of your DEX. Now, with dual wielding your weapon recovery gets halved. Two Weapon Style lowers this even more. Most other speed mods get multiplied with that. You might end up with - let's say 20 frames of recovery (or even zero if you can stack a lot of buffs). Now look at your bonus you get from DEX: 30% of 20 is 6 frames which will give you 14 frames for 20 DEX. You only gain 6 frames for an investment of 10 points of DEX. In the first case you gained 30 frames. The ratio of DEX to frame gain is 10/30 in the first case and 10/6 in the second. If you have reached 0 recovery and put your DEX to 3 you won't see a lot of difference while attacking. You will be a bit slower because DEX not only lowers your recovery, but also speeds up the attack animation itself (and reloading animation - those are not affected by "attack speed" buffs). So it's not completely useless even if you have 0 recovery. However - it does less for you than with slower "base" recovery. That's why DEX is not super benifical for your attack speed when you already have a very fast recovery phase. BUT - some of those speedups like Dual Wielding, Two Handed Style and Durgan Steel and so on only affect weapon attacks. Every other action like drinking potions, casting and stuff will be superslow in animation and recovery if you have 3 DEX. YOu will get interreupted a lot while drinking or casting if you stand in a mob and DEX and RES are low. Your superslow animation will start all over again when you get interrupted, it's a chore. I play a solo barb atm with 3 RES and 2 DEX and 0 recovery - but when it comes to drinking and casting I have to be supercareful not to get interrupt-locked. But I like the challenge.

Time Parasite speeds you up like a potion of Alacrity would, but for a longer duration - and it slows the enemy down. Like Alacrity, Frenzy and stuff it gets multiplied, not added. It is expensive. Normally I don't start with it. My "usual" cipher is an Island Aumaua with 4 weapons sets, three of them fiulled with guns, and the Coil of Resourcefulness or Quick Switch. Last weapon set is melee with shield or dual wielding. I usually go for +20% against flanked as a camping bonus and put on an item which does +10% to flanked and Archer's Gloves. And I also add Apprentice's Sneak Attack. With Biting Whip I will have a dmg. mod of +95% without MIG bonus for my shots. So I start the fight with a low cost mind control spell like Whisper of Treason, then usually Phantom Foes. Then I shoot all my guns and will have max focus. If I see that focus will overflow then I stop at no. 2. Then I cast Time Parasite and go into melee. With 0 recovery you will generate focus very quickly and you can cast CC spells again. If I have Reaping Knives it's the spell I want to cast before Time Parasite. With this strategy it feels like it's worth the focus cost.

A monk with dual weapons and high CON is absolutely great and sturdy anough, Torment's Reach is a Full Attack meaning that he will strike with both weapons in quick succession causein an AoE crush cone which can be huge each time he swings - but he is not low micro. A fighter can be a good low micro hybrid between dps and sturdyness. Knockdown is also a Full Attack. A high CON/MIG/INT barb with thick armor, dual weapons and Shod-in-Faith boots plus Veteran's Recovery and Savage Defiance is low micro and sturdy.

Speaking of party synergy once more: The Devil of Caroc is really good as a frontliner rogue with shield - preferably Badgrad's Barricade + Godansthunyr war hammer or a sabre. Then pair her with a wizard who does poison AoE spells like Malignant Cloud or Noxious burst (like Bilestomper wizard). She's immune to that - so you can just drop those spells on her while she attacks foes. Some of those spells will weaken which also counts for Sneak Attack/Deathblows. It's an aweseome team. Mad Hornet is a build that you would want for a hireling I guess. The stats of the Devil are not so cool for that build and more importantly you can't take off her breatsplate - which is cool for melee but quite useless for somebody like the Mad Hornet.

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.