Boeroer

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).

Cool, thanks - was just about to search for that post. You saved me some tedious digging.

It's not placed in the game yet. OBS forgot it. But I think they said that this will be fixed with 3.02. Actually a developer in this thread said where to find it then. Have a look at the older posts.

Phew! I'm relieved.

Hehe. If I have time to play today I will try.

Great! Thanks for the info. So it all works with blast - besides Penetrating Shot. Edit: by the way - does the rod cause a proper, regular stun these days or still that affliction that has the name of the weapon and does not debuff like a regular stun?

You're still great Boeroer !Obsidian doesn't have the power to nerf you, and you shouldn't refer to yourself as it ROFLMAO! A good laugh (with whiping tears and all) before I go to sleep.

Yeah - it might be pretty powerful - if it workes with carnage. We'll see.

Why IE mod? Can't you do that with the regular console?

It only procs if you receive a crit. But that happens all the time if you play a melee rogue who's not wearing a shield. Get a crit -> *poof* you're invisible -> switch to your arquebus -> *poof* he's dead. Two times per encounter - it's great.

That's right. Pen Shot only works for the target you initially hit - NOT for the blast. For that you have Penetrating Blast - it's a special talent. The spell chance implements like Golden Gaze and the new Soulbound-Scepter however also trigger with hits from the blast - which is great. I'm not sure about the on-crit-effects. I don't think that the blast does prone or stun on crit for example, but maybe I'm wrong. Didn't test that for a while.

You have to buff and debuff of course. With Gauntlets of ACC, Weakened/Sickened and Brute Force my barb crits a lot. Not against Eyless, Dragons or Thaos of course, but against all those annoying mobs. So I imagine that a Thrust of Tattered Veils here and there might be good. I use that shield on my rogue atm and of course the "Thrust" happens pretty often. It works with Penetr. Shot by the way. And on a ranger with Driving Flight, too.

I don't know it's calculated, but the ACC of the bash attack is only a few points below that of my main weapon. Maybe it's the ACC of the main weapon minus 4 (because of medium shield)?