Boeroer

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.

Well, Dual Wielding itself halves your recovery time, and Two weapon style multiplies this with 1.2. A simple speed enchantment on the BotEP only adds a 1.2 multiplier - so it does not come even close to dual wielding in terms of speed. But the Speed enchant is surely good.

What? Really? I didn't know that. Thanks for the info. How exactly does it work? Will you get more than 40% health out of it then?

The good thing about Spelltonge is that you can steal attack speed and durations and then switch to a different setup. I didn't do a whole solo game with that Leech. But I did some bounties solo just to see how he performs on it's own. Turned out is was doable without pulling and splitting. I just stood in the midst of Nalrend and the Gang and kept hitting. Frenzy, Consecrated Ground, Savage & Stalwart Defiance, Suppress Affliction, Scroll of Defense, potion of Eldrtich Aim: they all didn't wear off and soon all Ogres were dead. I had low health afterwards but didn't go down. So if it still works that way I suppose you can solo with that. The big problem is getting Spelltongue.

I tried a monk with durance's staff yesterday. Also took Turning Wheel and Lightning Strikes and Scion of Flame. It's OK but not as good as fists with Torment's Reach. One problem is that the game will always choose crush damage if foe's crush and burn DR are the same. Even if you would do more damage with burn damage. So in many encounters in which attacking with burn would be nicer because of Scion of Flame he just hits with crush. You could surpass that with Firebrand, that's burn only - but that's kind of weird on a monk. Also: quarterstaffs are slow and don't hit much harder than fists. If you want to concentrate on CC, your hits are too slow (for my taste). Using FoA five times in a row feels like eternity compared to fists. And attacking from the back row is not a great option. How will you get any wounds? It's no fun to always shoot your monk in the back.

Yeah... something's not right in PoE at the moment. Double ACC malus from Savage Attack, Thrust of Tattered Veils procs twice, and now I discovered that Iconic Projection hits multiple times while it passes the enemy/allies. It not only does it's described damage/healing, but a lot more. If the target is big (Spidr Queen, Ogres and the like) they get hit up to 6 times with it. I can't say I saw that in former game versions - prior to 3.0. They screwed up some core mechanic or something.

Oh, that's so cool! I want to build a disabler monk with FoA, Stunning Blows and Skyward Kick next and this is really good news for him.

Oh right: forgot about that. You should be able to send your steward in a palanquin or something.

I think they have boots of speed and Long Stride. I build a monk like that once - plus Fast Runner - and he was a bit faster than those Brawlers. By the way: if you use boots of speed and Long Stride and Fast Runner your monk's duplicates will also be superfast.

Erm... are you sure the cone works like carnage now? Because back in the days it didn't. All the on crit effects would only apply to the initial target. When did that change?

Depends. Most of the time - when I'm not using thick armor - I get wounds faster than I can spend them with Torment's Reach - and that only costs 1 wound. So you will have 10 attacks with Torment's Reach that get +50%, +45% and so on. Force of Anguish is also cheap. If you like to use it only now and then Turning Wheel could still be good for you.

You can also loot the hoard of the Alpine Dragon without fighting: the bug of the Cape of the Master Mystic is still active (despite OBS saying differently in the patch notes). When it occurs, travel to Longwatch Falls, go into that cave and just steal everything. The dragon will not notice you. All later dialogue will be the same. By the way the "cast Seal on crit" from Black Sanctuary is only 1/encounter. At least it used to be.

Yeah - especially if you have high defenses and thick armor it can take some time until you get some wounds. A few cc attacks at the beginning could make fights a lot easier if you lack other CC options.

Defensive Devil with Badgradr's Barricade, Godanthunyr and lots of Full Attack Abilities is just awesome. All those Thrusts of Tattered Veils flying around that work with Deathblows. That base damage is quite high - so a ToTTV plus deathlows becomes a Thrust of Sledgehammers. However - this can't compete with a melee ranger who uses a wounding weapon (Tidefall or Drawn in Spring) who flanks with his wolf pet which is build for dps. Stunning Shots works in melee now - the damage and CC is just awesome and I think it surpasses most (if not any) melee dps rogue builds. Add Aspirant's Mark and Stalker's Link and you will crit all the time.

I'm so happy that tough Metzla only wields that weak Forgotten Tear of the Beloved. Imagine her with an exceptional sabre... ouch!

You will have two 25%-lashes. It's a bit sad. I'm running this build at the moment with Zahua and it's great - but I have to say I really miss my Force of Anguish. With very high attack speed and lots of wounds it's just so much fun to send 10 enemies prone for more than 10 seconds in quick succession. I'm thinking about building a monk who accumulates lots of disables and CC - FoA, Stunning Blows, Skyward Kick, Girdle of the Driving Wave for another Knockdown (? maybe not needed), Lavender Hippiething, Binding Rope, Glittering Gauntlets, Enervating Blows. That way I could start with CC right at the beginning of the fight and use wounds whenever they occur. Should be nice. Maybe instead of fists I will use weapons with on hit/crit effects - since it's not about damage? But sorry, I'm drifting off...

No - those don't work with any DoT effect. Only plain, direct damage. THis includes damage from Chill Fog, Sacred Immolation, Malignant Cloud and so on - since that's not DoT but comes in "pulses" of direct damage. Summoning? Depends what you want to do. Ogres are really great for blocking: big feet and lots of endurance. Against monsters with AoE (fire) damage a drake is great (most endurace of all summons, lots of fire DR). The Swamp Spore is surely great on the backrow to confuse an domnate foes - but it takes forever to summon it and the fight is over most of the time by then. The Phantom can be summonued very quickly but at higher levels it just dies instantly. But you can use it to cast Ectopsychic Echo on it.

Tough is one thing, (hopefully) bugged abilities are another (that's one FoA from one Brawler here):

That's where the Ring of Unshackling comes in handy, my hard rocking amigo. It's duration also get's prolonged by Spelltongue - but every time it does that it also supresses new afflictions. It's like a re-appliance after every hit. No annoying afflictions (that can be supressed) at all. At least this was the case before the latest patch. Don't think they changed that - too specific. You can still be stunned of course. Like when they stun you and you can't hit anymore - I think then you also can't remove the stun affliction. For that situation I prefer the following setup: the shield you get from the drake in the Endless Paths lvl 5 (forgot the name, Brysomthing's Solace) + any other preservation item (like Blaidh Golan). Those stack! If you get stunned, switch to that shield setup (switching still works) and you will have +100 to all defenses. Same with prone. On top of that you can wear another item that has Break Out (-50% stun and prone duration). You will get stunned, but not for long and you will niot get hurt a lot with +100 to all defenses. This doesn't work with paralyzed and petrified. Against Lagufaeth (who paralyze, not stun - sadly) you can use that shield Alia Braccia that you get from the monks in Twin Elms. It turns 100% ranged Grazes to misses and reflects them back. You just need to make sure that your deflection is high enough to let them graze. Use a Scroll of Defense and Stalwart Defiance, then it should work. Then they are paralyzing themselves all the time and it's a cakewalk. And then tehere's allways scrolls against affliction that grant immunity and... also get prolonged by Spelltongue! @Raven: yes, seems bad at first. But on the other had it also crits now - which is quite aweseome if you have some means of debuffing deflection without paralyzing (like Binding Rope, Aspirant's Mark and so on) and buffing ACC. I would say it's even better in a party - if you're not using dumped PER and don't fight against monsters that are too high of level. For soloing this is bad, I agree. The good thing with the barb is that he can possibly stack 5/4 retaliations (that cause damage) a once (5 if he's a fire godlike): Battle Forged + Potion of Flame Shield or Mantle of the Wreathing Flame + Garodh's Chorus or Coat of Ill Payment or Hiro's Mantle or Vengiatta Rugia + Sura's Supper Plate. With high MIG, Greater Frenzy, One Stands Alone and Vulnerable Attack you can accumulate a pretty high retaliation damage. And then think of all the new items that do something when you receive hits/crits, like Binding Rope, that Laveder thingy, Swaddling Sheet and so on. I think it could be viable in solo mode - combined with carnage and the buff-prolonging setup that keeps up Savage Defiance and Frenzy and all other buffs all the time... But I never did a solo run, so who knows for certain? Also - to get to Spelltongue you will have to do beat a good amount of the game without that effect.

Right. It will be quite the challenge. Barbs + solo is a bit like sawed off shotgun + elephant.