Boeroer

@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.

You really think 4 ACC make any difference when you do flank all the time and also have Stalker's Link? That's a permanent +20 ACC buff on top of your very high30 base ACC. You could even dump PER to 3 and this build would still work. I wouldn't do it, but it would work.

The cloak is a cloak and the Coil is a belt. You can wear them both at the same time. Yes, it stacks with quick switch for some weird effects. You can easily skip recovery with that setup when you switch all the time right after each attack - before the recovery bar appears. It needs some timing, but it still works: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83181-nice-item-ability-combinations-what-works-and-what-doesnt/page-4?do=findComment&comment=1752969 Edit: It will also skip reloading sometimes. But this cheese really takes the fun out of the game. But I can see potential for solo runs aiming for achievements.

Huh? Weakened and Sickened used to stack completely. If it doesn't anymore, they surely nerfed that on purpose. It was very powerful.

Coil of Resourcefulness.

Search for "The Dull Runner". Or look into the new build index AndreaColumbo did. It's the first thread (sticky). It's also there. I'm on my mobile atm... sorry. Can provide a link later.

Even if it hurts only you? Edit: I don't say it's not worth it. Especially if you are more of a flanker. I'm just curious. Besides that, 3 INT works with paladins. They have some nice abilities that don't use INT at all. My build did rely more on gunshots than everything else, so It's not comparable. But I tried to stick to those abilities that don't rely on INT at all.

Your Sacred Immolation's radius will be really small. Is it worth taking? When I did my 3 INT dps paladin build I skipped it because the radius was so underwhelming that it didn't make up for the self damaging part.

Yeah it gets suppressed by a lot of other debuffs. However - I think it's great a an opener for every encounter because it's fast and... well... it's per encounter. After that your more precious debuffs (targeting defl. or refl.) will hit better.

If bash will work with carnage you could also try Badgradr's Barricade. It has bash and has (or had?) unlimited spell strikings of Thrust of Tattered Veils. Together with a priest or any other buffer/debuffer those would be triggered a lot - adding nice damage to your bash on crits.But looks good only with Drawn in Spring. It's a good thing that this weapon is great.

But - you just could hold back your FoD until you are in need of a lot of healing and then combine FoD + kill = double AoE healing.

I like barbs with shields. How about The Vile Loner's Lance (spear)? It has ok damage, an awesome interrupt time of 1 sec, has +5 ACC because it's a spear and it causes -5 to all defenses on hit. Use Interrupting Blows, buff PER and DEX, use Threatening Presence and the Barb Yell to lower concentration and you will have a nice AoE interrupter who also lowers defenses. Good thing about this spear is that it comes very early. You could also use Cladhaliath for stunning if you like on-crit effects. With axes I would take We Toki - but that comes quite late. Dragon's Maw and Unl. Blade are very nice of course - but they come too late to plan a build around that. You will play at least 70 to 80% of the game without this combo. You can retrain of course once you get them.

If you use Shod-in-Faith and LoH you will be fine.

Cool. Would be really interested to see this combined with Sword & Shepherd, Shod-in-Faith and Silver Tide. Might result in an unbending party.