Boeroer

It may not be superduperoptimal, but it's totally viable to take Secrets of Rime for a druid. You will still have access to all the other non ice spells. Most of those don't even profit from any elemental bonus damage talent. You'll have Winter Wind (which is nice), Blizzard (nice debuff on top of the damage) and Hail Storm (huge AoE). Those are nice spells for dps. I see no problem there. Actually, chanters have the most powerful freeze spells when it comes to pure damage. And they can cast it without per rest uses. But they can't spam. Wizards with Chill Fog, Shadowflame, Bitter Mooring, Freezing Pillar and Freezing Rake are also very nice.

Nice! You crafted and refined a build idea which I was thinking of from time to time. But I never had the time to do a playthrough with such a barb. I'm sure this works nicely. And the best thing is that you can get those spears early. I would recommend the Executioner's Hood (looks good with the Wayfarer's Hide) for the head slot - it has a frightening aura and that lowers enemies' concentration even further. You could skip Barbaric Yell then. Your best friends wil be priests with Painful Interdiction & Crowns for the Faithful, a Wizard with Expose Vuln. and a chanter with "Stumbling o'er words" and that Zephyr Poleaxe. You should write a PM to AndreaColumbo since he's manageing the class build index.

The original question was "pc-vs-hired-pally" by the way.

Generally yes. Less immunities and the debuff is more hefty. You can get that from Godansthunyr (war hammer) and Cladhaliath (spear), too.

Does nobody know anything about this? I find it pretty annoying. Also, the patch notes say nothing about this - only about retaliation not being an autohit anymore. That's ok with me - although it's another unnecessary nerf...

Now the rogue is considered to be the weakest class - please do new video!

I had exactly that. Err.. without Minor Blights. The Golden Gaze with nearly no recovery, Interrupting Blows and Penetrating Blast ist great. It's all Expose Vuln., interrupts and dying.

Dual Wielding sabres is good for barb's dps because of the high base damage of sabres. You need a bit of base damage to compensate for the loss of damage from carnage. It only has 60% of the original damage I think. That's not too good if you have low base damage since it has to overcome the normal DR of foes. Dual wielding with faster, lighter weapons might result in lower damage overall because lots of it gets eaten up by enemies' DR. You can counter that with Vulnerable Attack and other means of DR bypass though (rending, Ryona's Vembraces and so on). The only thing that is not so great about sabres is that there is not one which does something nice on hit/crit. Two Handed weapons have the advantage of higher base damage but are also a lot slower. But there are some nice two handed weapon with special on hit/crit effects that work especially well with barbs: Hours of St. Rumbalt, Tall Grass, Tidefall, St. Ydwen's Redeemer, Grey Sleeper, Mabec's Morning Star and so on. We could also take weapon & shield into account. When bash will work with carnage, this is a good setup with those bashing shields that do something on hit/crit. Namely Badgradr's Barricade and Dragon's Maw. The Maw's enchantment for barbs is very nice. Imagine that with the Unlabored Blade... phew. Drawn in SPring with Badgradr's Barricade is also a great setup. I#M just playing this with the Devil of Caroc and it works great. For some reason Thrust of Tattered Veils will now shoot twice every time I crit with the bash... but hush! Don't tell OBS!

Swift and Vicious Aim also work by the way. If anyone was asking themselves that question (which probably nobody did)...

Yes, it does. With that, durgan refinement (or the Engwithan Sceptre) and Alacrity you can easily reach 0 recovery with implements. Did that with the Golden Gaze (2 projectiles) and it was great.

Happens all the time for me - since WMI was released.

Well - when they cast Iconinc Projection they are kind of cool.

I just start the game, use the console to give me some nice items and level up to 16 and then I teleport to Thaos and that's it... Sounds a bit like

It surely is a nice idea and a fun ability.

Absolutely right. But I have to say that in this subforum I only meet reasonable people (except the occasional brindle here and there who does no real harm). Maybe it's because we are all full nerds.

Reach weapons might be an option. With Llawran's Stick and durgan refinement you can become pretty fast and do good damage with your Soul Whip. Dual Wielding with Outlander's Frenzy or Sanguine Plate might also be good if you play more like a rogue. I mean the damage is not that much lower than Sneak Attack's.

I always turn off injuries on K.O. It's just annoying. Especially for this kind of build obviously. You can play that barb as a disciple of Zahua's philosophy - with Novice's Suffering and monk's outfit and so on. Would totally make sense.

Yeah - Defensive Mindweb is a bit strong maybe.

No, not yet... no time to play more than 15 minutes.

You can always switch to other chants - for example that one that eats dragons.

Dammit! Forgot to add the version in the title. Can't edit that...? It's 3.02. Sorry for that!

See the title - is that intended or is it an unwanted sideeffect of recent changes? Like Amplified Thrust generates focus no more and stuff? It really breaks whole cipher builds around retaliation that are fun but not too powerful. I mean not more powerful than the standard Quick-Switch- or Stormcaller-Cipher.

I think you can put the Becklash Beldam off the list because of this: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83186-class-build-the-backlash-beldam-melee-multiretaliation-cipher-tank/page-5?do=findComment&comment=1793464 Don't know why they nerfed this. Maybe it's just a bug - don't know. Maybe it stopped working because of the changes they did to "Amplified Thrust generating focus"...

Shart! There goes another build. But why? It wasn't overly powerful. Stupid nerfs all the time! Now it's all Stormcaller and Quickswitcher ciphers - booooring!

Ah - sure. Stun gets refreshed I guess. But I'm not 100% sure. At least it used to be that way with the "old" stun when I had a barb with Mabec's some time ago.