Boeroer

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.

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.