Boeroer

Of course it's viable. I don't think it's as good a a bow ranger, but it's good. With very high DEX and Swift Aim you can reload pretty fast. You can see the difference best when you use arquebuses. On the other hand you can always go for Vicious Aim and use an Island Aumaua, Arms Bearer and Quick Switch. With Powder Burns and Scion of Flame you should reach pretty nasty AoE damage numbers. Don't forget to wear that unique eyepatch when you burn your powder.

No, they are always faster.

It's about the fact that Bittercut's corrosive damage, including all +% dmg mods and corrosive lash, gets multiplied by 1.2. All burn lashes also get multiplied by 1.2. This results in higher FoD damage than with an arquebus shot. If the target has higher corrode DR than slash DR you are right. But Bittercut will always favor corrode damage as long as corrode DR is equal to slash DR (or lower). With Durance's staff it's the other way round by the way. It has crush/burn. Bitter cut has corrode/slash. This also works perfectly well without FoD by the way. And like the Blades of Vanatar said: dual sabres are a lot faster than an arquebus.

Thanks a lot!

Totally makes sense. After our "Monsterlash" conversation I briefly tested a Bleak Walker like this - with dual Bittercut an all the lashes and elemental talents you mentioned above. The FoD strikes are really... devastating! Way more powerful than an FoD arquebus shot - since it's a full attack and the full weapon damage plus lashed get multiplied by Scion of FLame and Spirit of Decay. And the normal attacks also deal a lot of damage because of that trick. So I can absolutely confirm the aweseomness of that part.

The best armor overall (for me) is Blaidh Golan. Combine it with Ilfan Byrngar's Solace and you are unhittable if you get stunned or prone (+100 to all defenses). It's light (= fast enough) but not too light (has ok DR). With durgan reinforcemant it only has a 10% penalty. You can get it very early and it looks great on barbs, rangers or druids - together with a Stag Helmet or The Dunryd Demon or Garodh's Chorus.

That's not the case. At least not anymore. I also thought that at least on-crit-effects didn't work with blast - but they do now. Maybe they changed that behavior in one of the patches. The Golden Gaze's Spellchance increased with Blast since WM1 was out. Exp. Vulnerabilities triggers all the time when you hit whole packs of foes.

The Golden Gaze, Curoc's Brand and Gyrd Háewanes Sténes are pretty good on ranger, too: with Driving Flight the proc chance goes up a lot (as it does with blast from the wizard) - and with Outlander's Frenzy + Vicious Aim + Dangerous Implement + Stunning Shots that's a nice combo. It's +74% damage with Stalker's Link+Torc and +30 ACC with Stalker's Link. I find the Golden Gaze to be especially good because Exposing Vulnerabilities is a nice spell and gets triggered often. And the two projectiles often hit different targets with Driving Flight, stunning even more foes with Stunning Shots. Not to speak of interrupts - this implement is one of the best weapons for a ranged interrupt build. But all in all a wizard still can do this better I guess. But it's an option if you meet pierce-immune foes or want to have more than two ranged rangers (with Stormcaller & Persistence) in the party...? On A fighter i can imagine that all his dmg mods plus Dangerous Implements add up pretty nicely up to 50% - but then I ask myself: why not use a rogue with deathblows for that (+225%)?

Is there anybody who knows which item has the "Spellbind: Barring Death's Door" enchantment? I just can't figure it out. Or are those scrolls/potions?

But that does nothing for you if you miss.

Look at this build: Bath!t Crazy Works really well with Hiravias - one of my favourite builds of all times. Sturdy, great CC and debuff. Lots of damage for a tank, too. Look at the synergy of Blaidh Golan + Ilfan Byrngar's Solace: not only will you have -50% stun and prone duration, but you will also have +100 to all defenses if you got stunned or prone - because shield and item enchantments stack! This guy is nearly always up and casting.

I'm just developing a Vengeful Defeat build (with an appropriate backstory to explain why he kisses the groud all the time) - and I can only say it's so much fun. He surely needs a priest/paladin/chanter or scroll user to be effective, but the combination of "Barring Death's Door" and 1 health is so much fun. He gets up aaand down... and up aaand down again. He just can't die! And every time he goes down he nukes his surroundings like crazy. You don't need DEX or CON or RES at all. I dumped RES and CON, maxed MIG, PER and INT and put the rest in DEX. Even works when he's totally disabled with prone/stun/petrified and so on. It's like you boosted your revival-abiltity with a nice AoE damage talent or something. And the best part is: the monsters only want to hit him and him alone. He's like living bait which shouts "Hit me!" - and they do! I think I will post a class build tomorrow if I find the time to write it all down.

I find that Holy (+Brilliant) Radiance alone burns most vessels to ashes. Especially if you play a priest who has maxed MIG from the start and uses Maegfolc Skull & Abydon's Hammer and casts Chamion'S Boon on himself before casting the radiance. Does the Sanctifier talent also work with Holy Radiance? Never thought about that. It would be the (perma)death for nearly all vessels I think. Even Eyeless should be afraid of that. Who need St. Ydwen's Redemmer when he has a Brilliant-Radiance with +112% damage. What would that be? More than 300 burn damage on lvl 16 with flawless dispositions I guess...

Any weapon with low damage profits from VA if you hit fast enough. There's a break-even point for every weapon/foe combonation where it makes sense to use it. And it's a no brainer if you have zero recovery even with VA on. Also, for a monk's Resonant Touch it can be important since you have to do 10 DMG to build it up. Same for retaliation: no-brainer. With Twinned Arrows and Blunderbusses it's also good. I mean Penetrating Shot of course.

If you wear items with Spell Holding (like Sanguine Plate or Shod-in-Faith for example) and you receive a crit in kith form then the spell gets triggered. You can then spiritshift and the spell keeps on going. So you could say it works as one might expect. But you can never be sure in PoE.

If you dual wield you don't need that much DEX. And with 3 RES you will get hit/crit a lot. With 3 CON you will go down very quickly. I wouldn't do that. In fact with a Fire Godlike I would try to raise CON as high as possible. Because when you drop below 50% endurance and Battle Forged gets activated you want to have a lot of endurance left (in plain numbers). And 50% of 400 is more than 50% of 200, right? Because you plan to get hit a lot you will also go down more often than others. You can use Vengeful Defeat as an additional form of retaliation. With a chanter, priest of Paladin in the party (or all of those) you will have tons of revivals. So if your barb falls under 50% endurance and starts to retaliate with fire, he will likely go down after some time and retaliate with Vengeful Defeat. This is very powerful if you use it with dual sabres. Also, with dual sabres, Barbaric Blow is good. Add Heart of Fury for the really hard mobs (like bounties). Because you want to go under 50% endurance, you might also want to take Blooded. And One Stands Alone. Those add nice damage to your sabres - if you're surrounded and under 50% endurance. Also take Vulnerable Attack - it's good for your carnage. So if you go down, you will have a +40% damage modifier most of the time and do a big AoE Full Attack with increased crit chance. Most "swarmers" don't survive this or will at least get stopped. Then revive and do again. There's also a pair of rings that is quite funny with this: You can swap 100 endurance once per rest without losing health. So if you want to trigger Vengeful Defeat on your barb - use the ring so he loses 100 edurance and gives it so somebody else. Then revive.

I will publish a "Season 2" of my build series. One build for every class. This time the basic theme is "Twisted Builds". Basically I try to take a class and let it do things that it#s normally not supposed to do. For example I have a rogue who plays like a wizard, a barb who plays like a monk and so on. Those builds are not especially powerful (well in some cases they are), but totally viable for PotD. I hope that this brings back some excitement in battle. Because I will have to change my usual tactics a lot. We'll see what I will come up with.

They are all dual wielding I think. Novice's Suffering doesn't work with spiritshift weapons - it also says it in the talent despription. If you skill towards Spiritshift the melee damage really gets nasty.

Thanks a lot!

It has speed, so yes. Ok, so now it's all correct I guess.

I also encounter this. I'm canceling mire and more of my playthroughs because after some point it just gets so trivial and it's all routine. As you said: cast my per encounter stuff like Inspiring Radiance and Aspirant's Mark an whatnot, then just storm the field. Select the whole party and target one enemy. When he explodes target the next. No tactics needed - just be quick and don't waste time with micro. Then, after a lot of such fights, and after killing the bosses except Thaos (who is a wussy) I quit because there's no point. I proofed my builds are viable. Everything else I saw many times before. I don't think it's the games fault. I just played it more often then intended I guess. I would so love to see an arena where you could put builds into. Not even multiplayer duels - just put in your build and have a smart scripting API that would allow you to tell the character how to behave (more complex than now). Then let them fight. Like dog fights or robot fights. You train them, but you don't control them during fights. Would be so much fun to see my builds fighting against the LoP or the Juggernaut.

It's very hard to steal enough time for endless durations without carnage. But with very high attack speed it might be doable. Like... dual wielding Spelltongue.

As far as I know it's either Shatterstar or Strike Hard that has the interrupt bonus. Not both. Can't remember which one it is. So if it's Shatterstar (which would be nice because you can get it so early) you can take Strike Hard off the list.

Retaliation doesn't generate focus any more - at least at the moment. So you can take the Backlash Beldam build and throw it into the litter box. Which is sad. I don't know if it's a bug or intended. But Psychovampiric shield got buffed. So it's possible to build a tanky cipher. Cipher's endurance and deflection are not super high, so I would always use a shield. My favourite single weapon for a melee cipher is a sabre - preferably Bittercut because it has two damage types. Sabres have high base damage and work best with your soul whips's dmg bonus. Then I would follow the advice of my fellow posters and use a gun for the alpha strike in order to get a good chunk of focus at the beginning of a fight. A nice combo coukd be to use Antipathetic Field and Bittercut (plus corrosive lash) with Spirit of Decay. This will multiply your beam and overall weapon damage of Bittercut (as long as it applies corrode damage) by 1.2 (not like the other dmg mods that just add percentage of base damage).

It's not as powerful any more. But it is still viable. I just wouldn't count on retaliation as my main damage source. See it as a bonus to your weapon damage. The main reason it's not as powerful as it used to be is that it doesn't work with carnage any more. Neither Battle Forged nor item retaliation. So you don't need a barbarian to make retaliation work. But as KDubya said: the new barbaric retaliation ability is nice and stacks with the other ones.