Boeroer

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)?

Actually it's great. Can't image what it does on a barb as soon as bash works with carnage. Aaand it looks good with Drawn in Spring - which is also nice for barbs.

So, the conclusion is, that stealth + Backstab ist not the most overpowered combination. It works with lower-level mobs most of the time. For all other foes you will have to rely on invisibility. You can get that from the Cloak of the Master Mystic (2/encounter), Nightshroud (1/rest), Shadowing Beyond (2/rest) and Feign Death (uhm... don't know atm). Actually, if you combine invisibility with Backstab, Deathblows and Finishing Blow (including Devastating Blow & Killer's Work) things get pretty nasty. You can do it 3 times per rest and with a gunshot you will likely kill every foe in the game instantly if he has lost half of his endurance (if you don't miss or graze). But it's not for every-encounter-use.

I used to be great. They nerfed it big time.

@Blades of Vanatar: Funny, I also tried that. The ice invocations are pretty good. But there are no good scrolls or spell binding items that support the ice theme.

Does Threatening Presence and maybe the Executioner's Hood do the same thing? I mean, drawing attention? I know that "Come, Sweet Winds of Death" of the chanter causes foes to attack him. Which is nice if you play him as a tank.

Well I did it several times before - I know what you have to do- and it worked. But not anymore. At least for me. As I said - maybe just a bug.

It also has something to do with the level cap and the expansions. Lvl cap got raised from 12 to 16. And some of the most awesome abilities (that buffed some classes big time) were introduced with WMI & II. The thing is that the rogue and the barb just got the crappy new abilities while other classes got fancy ones - and rightfully so. It would be fair if rogue and barb's new toys would get some polishing in order tobe able to keep up with the rest. Well, rogue got the flanked/distraction thing, which is really nice - and Backstab got buffed to 150% - but they also were given some really useless oder underwhelming things. And Barbs only got nonsense besides Barbaric Retaliation. I wouldn't mind if new abilities opened up whole new build ideas but didn't fit into the usual build paths. Like the Long Pain for monks for example. It's pretty useless of you want to build the typical monk - but it's so unique (and good) that you can invent a whole new build around that - love it!

Hahaha. "Bottom of the barrel" is a bit exaggerated - but basically right.

Maybe - but then they should spread those not-so-good abilities over all classes. Atm barb and rogue suffer the most from a lot of underwhelming abilities at high levels compared to the other classes.

It's kind of sad that the monk can cause weakness on crit and the rogue has a 1/encounter ability for that. Rogues and on-crit-effects feel like a really good team. Especially with Dirty & Vicious Fighting and Reckless Assault. Edit: Riposte on Graze is a must. It would be even better if the graze would be turned into a miss at the same time. That shield Aila Braccia does that: It reflects ALL grazes from ranged attacks (shots & spells) while turning them into misses. When there's such a good shield out there - why is riposte so bad? Even the monk gets 50% reflection on misses with his soul mirror.

Yeah - it really felt like a bug, too. No hint that this behaviour was inteneded - like a small text like "You step into the chamber but nothing happens" or something.

Morning Star modified? Maybe - that would be really sad though. And make the barb even worse - I mean if he can't even abuse that, what should he do (besides the things that he can always do: being good at abusing carnage with unique weapons).

I think rogues are quite underwhelming at the moment. The first thing I would do is to make Deep Wounds stackable. I mean it's DEEP WOUNDS, not a slap on the butt. If I cause more than one Deep Wound they should all bleed. That would be a serious buff. Now that you talked about on-kill-reset of abilities I have the idea that the whole rogue concpet could be build around it - like monks are build around getting wounds and ciphers are build around getting focus. Because the only thing a rogue has that could bring him back to lead in term of single target dps are his special full attacks that also cause afflictions. But not if you limit them to 1 or 2/encounter. The rogue could start with a certain amount of points (or simply uses) which he can use for his special attacks - and gain additional points (or simply uses) if he kills a foe. Wouldn't that be nice? And quite simple, too. I'm testing a Barb build atm where he would steal spells with that unique morning star and then combine that with Frenzy & Bloodlust & Bloodthirst (= *1.33 casting speed, *1.2 casting speed after two kills for some time, even zero recovery after a kill). Since you can chain cast those stolen spells without limit in a given time it could be devastating powerful to combine those two things. You just need to steal a powerful DMG spell. By the way on high DEX rogues, fighters and monks who like to pick off casters that morning star is already wow. Besides that special idea (and some other weird things with carnage and the idea of an all-retaliation barb as fire godlike with potion of shielding flames, Supper Plate & another ret. item plus Barbaric Ret.) I think the barb is slowly falling behind. Rangers are really good atm - monks always were. Fighters I don't like too much, but you can't deny they are a really powerful combination of sturdyness, ACC and good weapon damage. I think most of the higher level powers of barbs are just - let's face it - cr@p atm. Just compare Sacred Immolation to Eye of the Storm. The one is just aweseome (no nerf please!), the other just... "WTF? How weak is that?". Would be a good ability for a ranged squishy who wants to escape melee foes.

If you use Boots of Speed it's much easier to pull off Backstabs. Just make sure to start encounter with another character and keep being stealthed. When battle officially starts, you will be able to sneak much faster. Sneak doesn't work like "OK I have 12 Stealth, so people won't see me". Actually, they will always start to notice you no matter how high the stealth skill is. What the skill does for you is it slows down the time foes need to detect you (how fast the yellow/red circles fill up). So fast movement does wonders. But how you report it it seems like it's bugged at the moment. It was no problem to pull off Backstabs with 8 stealth in 2.0+ games.

Sadly - not anymore. I tried it the toher day and it won't work anymore. Maybe it's just a bug - but I tried again in another playthrough and that also didn't work. You get the symbols glowing, pick up the soul vessel, try to do the ritual - but nothing happens.