Boeroer

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.

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.