Boeroer

I always turn off injuries on K.O. It's just annoying. Especially for this kind of build obviously. You can play that barb as a disciple of Zahua's philosophy - with Novice's Suffering and monk's outfit and so on. Would totally make sense.

Yeah - Defensive Mindweb is a bit strong maybe.

No, not yet... no time to play more than 15 minutes.

You can always switch to other chants - for example that one that eats dragons.

Dammit! Forgot to add the version in the title. Can't edit that...? It's 3.02. Sorry for that!

See the title - is that intended or is it an unwanted sideeffect of recent changes? Like Amplified Thrust generates focus no more and stuff? It really breaks whole cipher builds around retaliation that are fun but not too powerful. I mean not more powerful than the standard Quick-Switch- or Stormcaller-Cipher.

I think you can put the Becklash Beldam off the list because of this: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83186-class-build-the-backlash-beldam-melee-multiretaliation-cipher-tank/page-5?do=findComment&comment=1793464 Don't know why they nerfed this. Maybe it's just a bug - don't know. Maybe it stopped working because of the changes they did to "Amplified Thrust generating focus"...

Shart! There goes another build. But why? It wasn't overly powerful. Stupid nerfs all the time! Now it's all Stormcaller and Quickswitcher ciphers - booooring!

Ah - sure. Stun gets refreshed I guess. But I'm not 100% sure. At least it used to be that way with the "old" stun when I had a barb with Mabec's some time ago.

But ... but .... but brimsurfer says that Paladins are "useless"! How is it that they're so good for you? (Watch out for the pools of sarcasm around your feet.) Hehe - I don't recall what Brimsufer said: But I won't listen to anyone who says "class X is useless" (except of Brindle88, whom I will stomp ). I think that rogues are inferior to any other class... if I use them. Maybe I don't know how to play them, maybe they just don't fit my playstyle, maybe they fall behind because they didn't get that fancy updates lately - but I would never say they are useless. Somebody who says that a paladin is useless may connect "usefulness" to high dps or something. Don't know. Paladins make a playthrough a lot easier - at least for me. Lots of people say priests are mandatory - I skip them most of the time. Don't know why I have the feeling they don't add much to most of my parties. But why would I call them useless? The other day somebody said monks can do nothing other classes can't do better...

Wounding stacks.

Depends on your build idea/playstyle. For example you don't need One Stands Alone and Savage Defiance if you use Tall Grass. Accurate Carnage, Greater Frenzy and all dmg+ and ACC+ things are your friends then. If you want to stand amidst the mob you might want to take One Stands Alone, Savage & Stalwart Defiance, Barbaric Retaliation and talents that help you to survive. With high MIG and INT Veteran's Recovery is good. If you play a dual wielder with sabres and have a paladin and/or chanter and/or priest I highly recommend high MIG and INT, Blooded, Vengeful Defeat and Heart of Fury plus an aggressive approach and second chance. You will go down all the time - but the full attacks of Vengeful Defeat are really good and you can get raised all the time. You will me a monster magnet - like a living bait - but still do good damage.

Three high DR Chanter tanks with the Damage Shield chant and Ancient Memory, Beloved Spirits and Veteran's Recovery and summons are also near to invulnerable. If you time it right, the next fresh damage shield will replace the worn out one, so most of the times grazes just don't get through. Any other damage will get healed instantly by your regeneration. Fights take some time, but you never loose. I cleared Crägholt Bluffs for testing purposes with that setup and only rested once I think. Doesn't work against dragons, but mobs are without chances.

That pretty much sums it up.

Yeah, but Deep Wounds multiple times only refreshes the timer - it's not that powerful. I don't know how it works now, but in 2.03 Envenomed Stike would not generate any additional focus.

On of my favourite build is an Island Aumaua with Quichswitch and Arms Bearer, wearing Ryona's Vembraces and using Lead Spitter any three other enchanted exceptional blunderbusses and also the Talisman of the Uncounquerable. Walk into a fight, pick the enemies with the lowest DR (or cast Body Attunement on the highest DR foe), kill one of them with a single shot. You can do all four shots at the start of the fight - but chances are very high you will overflow with focus. I prefer to just let him shoot once, then start casting. And every time I want to cast somthing else and don't have enough focus I just switch, shoot, cast. It's very rare that I need more than four shots. Also, Runner's Wounding Shot is quite nice with this. It doesn't generate focus but does great DoT damage with this setup. The mciro is not so bad because you will want to micro your cipher anyway when you want him to cast a special spell. On a paladin quickswitching feels much more micro-intense. If you have a Blast Wizard with Golden Gaze or just Exposing Vuln. it gets even better. Even bosses' DR is no problem then. The max DR bypass is 4+3+3+5+5+7 = 27 (24 without Lead Spitter) - enough for nearly every foe. So the blunderbusses will nearly always do their best. But you can also go for arquebuses. It's not that much of a difference since Carow Golan gives no flat +2 focus per hit anymore.

Tall Grass is great - so is any weapon that does something special on hit or crit with a barb (We Toki, Godansthunyr, Hours of St. Rumbalt and so on). The chance the effect procs is much higher because of carnage. But since a barb has rather poor ACC and no class specific means of raising ACC besides of Accurate Carnage, you will need to buff and debuff so you can get the most out of on-crit-effects. If you follow Dorftek's suggestion of lowering RES and don't want to sip potions all the time, you could also use the Celebrant Gloves. They will cast Holy Meditation every now and then if you receive hits and crits. That should boost your concentration. You can combine that with Shod-in-Faith boots for good self healing. You will need that with low RES. A Barb with Tall Grass can stand in the second row and still poke enemies, so he can be build even more aggressive/offensive. Tidefall is also very nice. The AoE draining adds a lot of survivability even with low RES - and the barb's immense health pool prevents early K.O. from low health. But the real deal are melee weapons with spell chance like the Unlabored Blade, St. Ydwen's Redeemer, Grey Sleeper, Vent Pick, The Giamas Morning Star and so on. Because they trigger on 10 to 25% of all hits/crits, a barb will trigger those all the time if his carnage area covers three or more enemies. And since they don't rely on crits, you don't have to push your ACC too much. Unlabored Blade for example is just devastating on a barb who stands in the middle of a mob. He will proc Firebug multiple times - it doesn't even matter if he does any weapon damage - the firebugs alone will kill most ememies quickly. I can see a fire godlike retaliation build with Scion of Flame and Unlabored Blade.

Do it! I would also like to see a trio with some elemental background: like fire paladin, ice chanter and shock druid or something like that.

The attack after the first stun is more likely to be a crit - but then stun gets suppressed. So I don't get the point about "fast flail". As long as you're not superslow it should be easy to stunlock enemies. Or what did you mean?

With only three guys, a paladin with on-kill-effects like that Kind Wayfarer Healbot who was discussed in this forums might be really nice.

Sure works. Also two Zealous Auras are great. Zealous Endurance and Zealous Focus at the same time are awesome - even three paladins are great (focus, endurance, charge). So much healing, so many good per encounter abilities, so much defense. And after lvl 13: so much "firepower".

I think the Cloak of the Master Mystic still has that bug where you sometimes would turn invisible but never turn visible again - until you a) reload or b) some foe hits you accidentially with an AoE effect. Until then you can just wander off and clear the whole map - every attack a Backstab. This happens to me like every time I do a dragon fight. Supercheesy and no fun at all. Ok, the first time it was fun...

chanter tank, druid tank, wizard blaster

I think I said in in some other thread. 3 points of any stat difference make a difference at the beginning of the game, but after that it's marginal. In my experience Pallegina is way better than a hireling until late midgame - simply because she will hit level ups sooner. One level makes a way bigger difference than +/- 5 PER or anything like that. Plus: her special talents ARE awesome. Wrath of the five suns (when build around shooting and missiles and fire) is devastating. She makes an excellent sniper who kills two to three dangerous enemies right at the beginning of a fight despite her low MIG. That's more valuable than most things you can expect from a hireling. And her Sacred Immolation is still great. It's not at it's optimum, but good enough.

Ehm... not entirely. I was more interested in the stat debuffs. But I think it's a hint that now they cause the original stun affliction and not some weird affliction that doesn't work properly. For example the old stun effect on weapons wouldn't cause any stat debuff (and didn't count for sneak attack, that's also true).